"Jeff Hecht - Squirrels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hecht Jeff)

did you find?"
"Not what I expected. There were two distinct genetic patterns in city
squirrels, but only one was present in the country." She looked down at the
single folder of papers on her clean desk. "The genetic-variation statistics
are odd. Very odd."
"How so?"
"Natural populations show bell-curve distributions of many
characteristics. The rural squirrels did, and so did the city squirrels
without the odd genes. The two patterns matched except for a very minor
genetic drift that might be the start of the urban squirrels learning to look
out for cars, or some such thing."
"What about the others?"
"On superficial examination of their anatomy, they were identical with
the other squirrels. Yet they showed no real genetic variation among
themselves, like inbred white mice."
"Do you have an explanation?" The provost had heard she had some very
odd ones.
"I thought someone here at the university might have released some
inbred squirrels after experimenting on them. Or maybe there had been some
natural inbreeding on campus. To check those theories, I examined other
populations. I spent several months driving around the city, collecting
road-killed squirrels. Two months ago, I flew to Chicago to visit my nephew,
and made more collections there."
I nodded. That was something else that worried the provost.
"I found the same populations in the rest of the city, and in Chicago.
The fractions weren't always the same, but some urban squirrels everywhere
have the same odd extra genes. The extra genes are homogeneous. Remarkably,
unnaturally homogeneous. I think they're bioengineered clones."
"Oh!" Although the recorder was taking everything down, I wrote it on
my notepad as a point to stress to the provost. "Who could have released
them?"
"I wondered that, myself. Did you know that one of the fraternities had
a stuffed squirrel that someone had caught on campus back in the thirties?"
"Was that the one that disappeared from their house three weeks ago?"
She nodded, her eyes sparkling impishly. "The very one. Thanks to PCR,
I was able to extract a fair amount of DNA from the skin. It was one of the
bioengineered clones."
"But that's impossible. Nobody could do bioengineering during the Great
Depression."
"No, it's not impossible, because we aren't doing the bioengineering.
Someone else is, young man. Someone else has been for a long time. You know, I
used to think people were crazy when they said they thought they were being
watched. But now I know they were right. We are being watched by squirrels
genetically engineered to be living tape recorders. And that's why I called
the provost, because we really have to get the word out to the public about
this. I can't do it all myself, not at my age."
I nodded as her story grew wilder. Nutty as a fruitcake, as my
grandmother used to say. Professor White had devised a very elaborate
conspiracy theory, blaming mysterious aliens for genetically engineering
squirrels that had spied on people for decades. She hadn't found the aliens,