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Central.
    Every gene surgeon had this drummed into him during his education, “Natural selectivity is a madness that sends its human victims groping blindly through empty lives.”
    Optiman reason and Optiman logic must do the selecting.
    As though he straddled Time, Potter felt the profound certainty that the Durant embryo, if it matured, would encounter a fertile mate. This embryo had received a gift from outside —a wealth of sperm-arginine, the key to its fertility pattern. In the flood of mutagen which opened the active centers of the DNA, this embryo’s gene patterns had shaken down into a stable form no human dared attempt.
    Why did I introduce the mutagens just then? Potter wondered. I knew it was the needed thing. How did I know? Was I an instrument of some other force?

    â€œKrebs cycle fifty-eight and climbing steadily,” Svengaard said.
    Potter longed for the freedom to discuss this problem with Svengaard … but there were the damnable parents and the Security people … watching. Was it possible anyone else had seen enough and knew enough of this pattern to realize what had happened here? he wondered.
    Why did I introduce the mutagens?
    â€œCan you see the pattern yet?” Svengaard asked.
    â€œNot yet,” Potter lied.
    The embryo was growing rapidly now. Potter studied the proliferation of stable cells. It was beautiful.
    â€œKrebs cycle sixty-four seven,” Svengaard said.
    I’ve waited too long, Potter thought. The bigdomes of Central will ask why I waited so long to kill this embryo. I cannot kill it! It’s too beautiful.
    Central maintained its power by keeping the world at large in ignorance of the ruling fist, by doling out living time in the form of precious enzyme prescriptions to its half-alive slaves.
    The Folk had a saying: “In this world there are two worlds—one that works not and lives forever; one that lives not and works forever.”
    Here in a crystal vat lay a tiny ball of cells, a living creature less than six-tenths of a millimeter in diameter, and it carried the full potential of living out its life beyond Central’s control.
    This morula had to die.
    They’ll order it killed, Potter thought. And I will be suspect … finished. And if this thing did get loose in the world, what then? What would happen to gene surgery? Would we go back to correcting minor defects … the way it was before we started shaping supermen?
    Supermen!
    In his mind, he did what no voice could do: he cursed the Optimen. They were enormous power, instant life or death. Many were geniuses. But they were as dependent on the enzymic fractions as any clod of the Sterries or Breeders.
There were men as brilliant among the Sterries and Breeders … and among the surgeons.
    But none of these could live forever, secure in that ultimate, brutal power.
    â€œKrebs cycle one hundred even,” Svengaard said.
    â€œWe’re over the top now,” Potter said. He risked a glance at the computer nurse, but she had her back to him, fussing with her board. Without that computer record, it might be possible to conceal what had happened here. With that record open to examination by Security and by the Optimen, it could not be hidden. Svengaard had not seen enough. The forehead lens only approximated the full field vision. The vat nurses couldn’t even guess at it. Only the computer nurse with her tiny monitor screen might know … and the full record lay in her machine now—a pattern of magnetic waves on strips of tape.
    â€œThat’s the lowest I’ve ever seen it go without killing the embryo,” Svengaard said.
    â€œHow low?” Potter asked.
    â€œTwenty-one nine,” Svengaard said. “Twenty’s bottom, of course, but I’ve never heard of an embryo coming back from below twenty-five before, have you, Doctor?”
    â€œNo,” Potter said.
    â€œIs it the pattern we want?” Svengaard asked.
    â€œI