"Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huxley Aldous)

Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long
chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his
full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And
anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to
you to ask it.

"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students
recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved
his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them
explained, "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened
another door, "they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood
heat sterilizes." Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly
across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first,
of course, of its surgical introductionтАУ"the operation undergone voluntarily for the
good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six
months' salary"; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the
excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of
optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached
and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually
showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out
drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs
which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a
porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch the operation) this
receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming
spermatozoaтАУat a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic
centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of
the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained
unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized
ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until
definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again,
after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.

"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined the
words in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will
proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a
perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making
ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.

"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consists of a series of
arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough,
the egg responds by budding."

Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.

He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a
large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took