The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert

been conditioned to be here right now!”
    â€œLiz, you’re being unreasonable.”
    â€œUnreasonable? Look at me! They can take a piece of my skin and grow an identical copy. Me! Identical! How do you know I’m me? How do you know I’m the original me? How do I know?”
    He gripped her free arm and for a moment had no words.
Presently, he forced himself to relax, shook his head. “ You’re you, Liz. You’re not flesh grown from a cell. You’re … all the things we’ve shared … and been … and done together. They couldn’t duplicate memories … not that with a doppleganger. ”
    She pressed her cheek against the rough fabric of his jacket, wanting the comfort of it, the tactile sensation that told her body he was here and he was real.
    â€œ They’ll make dopplegangers of our son,” she said. “That’s what they’re planning. You know it.”
    â€œ Then we’ll have many sons.”
    â€œFor what reason ?” She looked up at him, her lashes damp with unshed tears. “You heard what Glisson said. Something from outside adjusted our embryo. What was it?”
    â€œHow can I know?”
    â€œSomebody must know.”
    â€œI know you,” he said. “ You want to think it’s God .”
    â€œWhat else could it be?”
    â€œAnything—chance, accident, some higher order manipulator. Maybe someone’s discovered something they’re not sharing.”
    â€œOne of us? They wouldn’t!”
    â€œNature, then, ” he said. “Nature asserting itself in the interest of Man.”
    â€œSometimes you sound like a cultist!”
    â€œ It isn’t the Cyborgs ,” he said. “We know that .”
    â€œGlisson said it was beneficient.”
    â€œBut it’s genetic shaping. That’s blasphemy to them. Physical alteration of the bioframe, that’s their way.”
    â€œLike Glisson, ” she said. “That robot with flesh. ” Again, she pressed her cheek against him. “That’s what I fear—they’ll do that to our son … our sons. ”
    â€œThe courier service outnumbers the Cyborgs a hundred to one, ” he said. “As long as we stick together, we’ll win.”
    â€œBut we’re just flesh,” she said, “and so weak.”
    â€œAnd we can do something all those Sterries together can’t do,” he reminded her. “We can perpetuate our own kind. ”
    â€œWhat does it matter?” she asked. “Optimen never die. ”

8
    S vengaard waited for night and checked the area through the observation screens in his office before going down to the vat room. In spite of the fact that this was his hospital and he had a perfect right here, he was conscious of doing a forbidden thing. The significance of the interview at Central hadn’t escaped him. The Optimen wouldn’t like this, but he had to look in that vat.
    He paused in the darkness of the vat room, stood there near the door, realizing with a sense of detachment that he had never before been in here without the full blaze of lights. There were only the glow bulbs behind gauges and telltales now—faint dots and circles of luminescence by which to orient himself.
    The thrap-thrap-thrap of viapumps created an odd contrapuntal rhythm which filled the gloom with a sense of urgency. Svengaard imagined all the embryos in there (twenty-one at the morning count) their cells reaching out, doubling and redoubling and re-redoubling in the strange ecstasy of growth—becoming unique, distinct, discrete individuals.
    Not for them the contraceptive gas that permeated Folk breathing spaces. Not yet. Now, they could grow almost as their ancestors had grown before the genetic engineers.

    Svengaard sniffed.
    His nostrils, instinctively alerted by the darkness, sensed the amniotic saltiness of the air. From its odor, this room could almost have been a