"Robert Reed - Treasure Buried" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

carnosaurs. Tailored monitor lizards, in effect. But how could shy near-humans
compete with that scale of things?

Eventually Wallace was aware of sitting alone, Potz and her coffee gone and
his stomach aching from hunger. He had forgotten lunch. What time was it? Three?
He went to the cafeteria, bought candy bars and Pepsi, then returned to his office
intending to work. Only he found himself daydreaming about MekalтАЩs wife, his
imagination taking him as far as a conversation at the ball park. Of course the chance
of Wallace ever having the chance seemed remote. He was famous for his
imagination тАФindeed, almost everyone in the industry knew one or two Wallace
stories тАФ but to save his life he couldnтАЩt envision anything more than speaking to
the girl, and then just for a few moments. In passing.

тАЬSo forget it,тАЭ he warned himself. тАЬGet to work, will you?тАЭ

Potz had given him some data. Wallace sipped warm Pepsi, then a cold dose
of old coffee, punching up files he had begun during graduate school. They were like
old trusted friends, these files. Trusted but secretive. Genetic maps flowed past him
on the screen, in vivid colors, thousands of base pairs forming unique, easily
recognizable patterns that were almost repeated in other species. Related ones or
not, it didnтАЩt matter. Every eukaryotic organism on Earth had excess DNA. Most of
it was leftover stuff from ancient times. Early life had been sloppy, genetically
speaking, full of useless genetic noise that natural selection had flattened into a kind
of hum. Flat, harmless. A lot of the DNA was poly-A тАФ adenine bases repeated for
huge spans. But what Wallace had noticed when he was twenty, what had struck him
as puzzling, were chunks of DNA buried in the poly-A. Bursts of static, sort of.
There were several thousand base pairs, some of it common to all eukaryotes. Yet
the stuff produced no polypeptides, nor did it seem to influence the expression of
any other genes. What could be so important that it was shared by green algae and
PhDs? He had no idea. Which was why he recorded new data whenever possible.
For more than a decade, Wallace had plotted the differences between all sorts of
species, finding no evolutionary patterns. None. It was such a useless but distinct bit
of genetic noise тАФ a biochemical shout, more than anything тАФ and he found it
humbling to consider the problem every little while. Like now. PotzтАЩs algae data
added to the puzzle, and Wallace perched over the screen, hoping against hope for
some kind of inspiration.

What made no sense, he knew, was misunderstood.

Misunderstood, or wrong. And either way Wallace felt a sacred duty to solve
or to fix.

тАЬWhat are you doing?тАЭ asked a girlтАЩs voice.

And now Wallace began explaining the problem to the imaginary Mrs. Mekal,
her standing over him with the blonde-white hair hanging limp, the soft ends brushing
against his cheek and feeling very nearly real.

WALLACE WENT to three other softball games. R&D won once, managing to
squeak past a pack of gray-haired Executives 11-10, but MekalтАЩs wife never showed