"Greg Egan - Cocoon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

She smirked slightly. "What happens if I give the job to someone else? And charge the l
of you with trespass?"
"If you hire another company, we'll be happy to hand over all the samples and data we'
collected."
She nodded distractedly. "I'll hire you, of course. Since four? I'm impressed. You've ev
arrived before the insur-ance people." As it happened, LEI's "insurance people" owned 49
percent of Nexus, and would stay out of the way until we were finished, but I didn't see any
reason to mention that. Lansing added sourly, "Our so-called security firm only worked up
courage to phone me half an hour ago. Evi-dently a fiber-optic junction box was sabotaged,
disconnecting the whole area. They're supposed to send in patrols in the event of equipmen
failure, but apparently they didn't bother."
I grimaced sympathetically. ' 'What exactly were you peo-ple making here?"
"Making? Nothing. We did no manufacturing; this was pure R & D."
In fact, I'd already established that LEI's factories were all in Thailand and Indonesia, w
the head office in Monaco, and research facilities scattered around the world. There's a fin
line, though, between demonstrating that the facts are at your fingertips, and unnerving the
client. A total stranger ought to make at least one trivial wrong assumption, ask at least one
misguided question. I always do.
"So what were you researching and developing?"
"That's commercially sensitive information."
I took my notepad from my shirt pocket and displayed a standard contract, complete wit
the usual secrecy provisions. She glanced at it, then had her own computer scrutinize the
document. Conversing in modulated infrared, the machines rapidly negotiated the fine detai
My notepad signed the agreement electronically on my behalf, and Lansing's did the same, t
they both chimed happily in unison to let us know that the deal had been concluded.
Lansing said, ' 'Our main project here was engineering im-proved syncytiotrophoblastic
cells." I smiled patiently, and she translated for me. "Strengthening the barrier between the
maternal and fetal blood supplies. Mother and fetus don't share blood directly, but they
exchange nutrients and hor-mones across the placental barrier. The trouble is, all kinds of
viruses, toxins, pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs can also cross over. The natural barrier c
didn't evolve to cope with AIDS, fetal alcohol syndrome, cocaine-addicted babies, or the n
thalidomidelike disaster. We're aiming for a single intra-venous injection of a gene-tailorin
vector, which would trig-ger the formation of an extra layer of cells in the appropriate
structures within the placenta, specifically designed to shield the fetal blood supply from
contaminants in the maternal blood."
"A thicker barrier?"
"Smarter. More selective. More choosy about what it lets through. We know exactly wh
the developing fetus actually needs from the maternal blood. These gene-tailored cells wou
contain specific channels for transporting each of those substances. Nothing else would be
allowed through."
"Very impressive." A cocoon around the unborn child, shielding it from all of the
poisons of modern society. It sounded exactly like the kind of beneficent technology a
com-pany called Life Enhancement would be hatching in leafy Lane Cove. True, even a lay
could spot a few flaws in the scheme. I'd heard that AIDS most often infected children durin
birth itself, not pregnancy-but presumably there were other viruses that crossed the placent
barrier more fre-quently. I had no idea whether or not mothers at risk of giving birth to chil
stunted by alcohol or addicted to cocaine were likely to rush out en masse and have
gene-tailored fetal barriers installed-but I could picture a strong demand from people terrif
of food additives, pesticides, and pollutants. In the long term-if the system actually worked
and wasn't prohibitively expensive-it could even become a part of rou-tine prenatal care.