"Paul Preuss - Human Error" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

badge with somebody else's picture on it, and told Toby to fasten it to the lapel of his linen sports jacket.
The security guard in the lobby glanced at Toby's face and then at the badge, and then up at Adrian. The
guard smiled; the forms had been preserved. Toby was allowed inside to see, for the first time in his life,
a bioelectronics research facility in action.

Chief Scientist Dr. Adrian Storey presided over a virtual maze of laboratories. In some the
furnishings were mundane: long benches with outlets for electricity and spigots for gas and water, sinks,
shelves of glassware and reagents stacked to the ceiling, and everywhere boxes of tissues and paper
towels. The aisles were narrow, and technicians worked elbow to elbow. Toby was reminded of his
science classes in public school; here the facilities were shiny and new, but to his surprise, the crowding
and mess and noise were intense, worse than school days.

Toby was struck by the refrigerators. The walls were fairly lined with refrigerators, some with
radiation symbols on their doors, others bearing the similar but somehow more menacing crab-clawed
"biological hazard" warning signs. The monotony of refrigerators was only occasionally relieved by an
egg incubator, a centrifuge, or a tubby autoclave. In time Toby was to learn that when biochemists fight
for territory it is more likely to be wall space than floor space they scrap overтАФnot so much a place to
stand as a place to stand their refrigerators.

The biology labs were only the beginning. The maze continued through rooms devoted to
electronics and optics, equipped with gleaming instruments of glass and steel, some of which Toby
recognized, some completely alien.

They passed air-locked clean rooms where electronic circuitry was transformed from drawings into
engraved crystal, etched into existence. They passed closed steel doors behind which thousands of small
mammals were born, lived, and occasionally diedтАФthough most died on the benchтАФin stacked plastic
and steel cages.

Finally Adrian brought him to the center of the labyrinth, the computer graphics room. They entered
and closed the door behind them.

It was a dark place, silent except for the hiss of air conditioners. Toby imagined
monumental supercomputers lurking beyond the walls, serving the giant video screens in front of him.

"Sit down. I'm gonna show you some bugs." Adrian began busily tapping at a console
keyboard with fingers that were remarkably nimble for their length: on the triple screens an
extraordinarily twisted shape sprang into existence, a form that resembled nothing so much as a Henry
Moore sculpture some vandal had splashed with gaudy paint.

"Here's a classic," said Adrian. "The coat protein of Type II polio. The proteins pack
to form its shell." He tapped the keys, and on the screens identical copies of the protein multiplied to
form a spheroid, like a radar dome. "That's the A formтАФand here's the B." The diagrammatic proteins
reassembled themselves on the screen as Toby watched; the packing was different, but the resulting
spheroid was much the same, forming a protective shell. "And inside the shell is this little string of RNA."

"The RNA is what gives this geometric beast its killing power, then?"

"Shit, you're a poet."

Toby recoiled. "Really, must you speak only in scatological obscenities?"