"Mike O'Driscoll - The Future Of Birds" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'driscoll Mike)

"I've been dreaming about the disease."
I see the momentary panic in his eyes before it is replaced by a synthetic
reassurance. "It can't harm you, my dear."
"It killed the woman who discovered it," I say.
He smiles and says, "A woman, Estela, which only confirms my point. What
Dr Komatsu found in her tests on pre-cancerous cells from a patient's
ovaries - the dysfunctional estrogen - merely served to illustrate what it
was she would die from."
"She was an expert," I persist. "And she couldn't save herself."
Kleinfeld shakes his head, as if speaking to a capricious child. "It
caught up with her too fast. By the time she discovered that luteinizing
hormone was triggering an abnormal reaction in estrogen, and that symptoms
were only manifesting in women, she was already at the haemorrhaging
stage. She lived just long enough to establish the viral origins of the
gonadotrophin mutation. It was left to others to prove that this Hormonal
Dysfunction Virus caused the disease."
"But I carry the virus," I tell him, watching his reaction.
"Yes, as do eighty per cent of males; but there are absolutely no cases of
activation of the disease in men."
"How do you know it will stay that way?"
"Our knowledge of HDV is still growing, but the latest research indicates
that the presence of male hormones may inhibit the viral activation. It's
apparent that HDV is hereditary, and lays dormant in both male and female
until the onset of a premature puberty. When the pituitary gonadotrophins
are at a high enough level to stimulate production of the sex hormones,
this process triggers the virus which in turn causes the dysfunction of
the estrogen in the ovaries. The indications are that when sex hormone
production begins in males, the androgens produced somehow prevent the
virus from becoming active."
"I produce high levels of estrogen," I say.
"Yes," he agrees, "but you still produce androgens in sufficient
quantities to counteract HDV." He pauses, as if to savour a triumph. "A
feature of the surgery I performed on you six years ago; you carry the
virus but it cannot interact with your production of female hormones. The
triggering process cannot take place."
Despite the words, I sense his doubt. "Am I to be replaced?"
He frowns. "What have I just told you? There are no reported cases of
Komatsu's Syndrome in transsexuals."
Soon afterwards, Heinrich, my null, drives me back through the morning
rain to my apartment overlooking the River Spree. As I undress I hear the
phone hum but I make no move to answer it. He picks it up, listens, then
informs me that Spengler wishes to speak to me.
Spengler owns The Birds of The Crystal Plumage. He had me brought to
Berlin; everything I have, has come from him - this apartment, the car,
the clothes, the dust and the body, most of all the body. Sometimes I feel
I have as little free will as Heinrich. He is a eunuch in mind as well as
in body, conditioned by hypnotics to respond only to my commands.
Reluctantly, I take the phone. "Estela," Spengler says, "Some business
associates are stopping in town tonight. I want to take them to the club.
They're keen to see your act."