О дивный новый мир / Brave New World. 4 уровень

“Tomorrow,” he would add, smiling at them in a slightly menacing way, “you’ll be settling down to serious work. You won’t have time for generalities. Meanwhile…”

Meanwhile, it was a privilege. The boys scribbled like mad.

The Director advanced into the room. Tall and rather thin, he had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And in this year of stability, A.F.632, it didn’t occur to you to ask this question anyway.

“I shall begin at the beginning,” said the D.

H.C. “These are the incubators.” And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. “The week’s supply of ova. Kept at blood heat[1 - Kept at blood heat – поддерживаемые при температуре крови (=37 °C)]. The male gametes,” and here he opened another door, “they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes.”

He gave them a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction; continued with the technique for preserving the ovary alive and actively developing; referred to the liquor in which the eggs were kept; and, leading the students to the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes and was let out drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how this receptacle was immersed in a warm solution containing free-swimming spermatozoa; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky’s Process[2 - Bokanovsky’s Process – метод Бокановского].

“Bokanovsky’s Process,” repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult. But a bokanovskified egg[3 - a bokanovskified egg – яйцо, подвергнутое бокановскизации] will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into an embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.