And as for parthenogenesis, either in its auto or hetero forms there was barely a single news item that did not refer in one way or another. It was one of the fundamentals — like eating drinking and cremation, and it seemed sometimes as if the government were deliberately over-emphasizing the importance of parthenogenesis in society. On the whole it was an unsavoury subject. No woman voluntarily sought childbirth, either by natural or induced methods, and when it came it was invariably an ordeal to be under gone in the course of duty and for the sake of mortic allowances.
The voice of the memory bank droned on unheeded, and the sheets of printed paper piled up on the desk. In due course she would have to filter the news reports and pass them via the respective channels to the press and broadcasting agencies concerned. But the day was young, and there was still time to sit and dream in inactive idleness.
The monitor buzzed shrilly on the desk. She switched off the memory bank and keyed the intercom.
“Aubretia Two Seventeen,” said the monitor. “Gallardia Nine Fifty would like you to go down to the Biophysics Lab Annex right away, please.”
Aubretia thought quickly. The woman known as Gallardia was Senior Cytologist in the Department of Physiology, a thick-set woman of square face and contact lenses over her yellow-stained eyes. A competent scientist, she had a cynical twist in her brain. What on earth could she want with the Press Policy Department?
“I’ll be right down,” Aubretia answered.
The Annex was four storeys below, on the eighteenth floor of the Biophysics building. It was a small room adjoining the large laboratory, and it contained part of the equipment store together with a small refrigerated mortuary bank. In the laboratory itself a great deal of research into the physiological basis of parthenogenesis was carried out, and the Annex was frequently used for specialized experimental work related to the field — the dissection of women, for instance, who during life had shown symptoms of aberration from the parthenogentic norm.
Gallardia was waiting for her at the main door to the laboratory. Her square face seemed a little oblong, as if her chin had dropped with excitement.
“Ah, Aubretia!” she said, simmering. “You handle news.” Aubretia contrived to smile politely. “I don’t handle it.
“I vet it.”
Gallardia retracted her chin, and her face became square again. “Well, then, I’ve got something sensational for you to vet. This way.”
She led the way through the laboratory to the Annex. Aubretia noted briefly the long benches and the glass and chrome apparatus and the technicians — some of them only young girls in their teens — wearing the approved-patten, transparent plastic overalls. They continued into the smaller cube of the Annex, with its racks and shelves and cupboards and, in the centre of the floor, an adjustable operating table with a sheeted body.
Gallardia placed a proprietary hand on the centre of the body and regarded the other woman with an air of restrained triumph. “What would be the most fantastic event you could imagine?” she demanded
Aubretia spread out her hands non-committally. “That’s hard to say. A woman from Mars, perhaps?”
“Nonsense. We know there are no women on Mars.”
“From outer space, then.”
“No, no. That is fantasy. This” — she thumped the shape under the sheet — “is fact!”
“I really haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Then take a look.” Gallardia drew back the sheet, revealing a white waxen head and shoulders.
“She’s got a lot of hair,” Aubretia observed. “Peculiar face too. Kind of hard. Ugly.”
Something caught her eye. She leaned forward quickly and inspected the dead face. “I could almost swear…”
“What?”
“More hair here, around the chin… like stubble.”
Gallardia drew back the sheet a little further. “And on the chest,” she pointed out.
Aubretia retreated in mild revulsion.
“No breasts,” Gallardia went on, “Only nipples of a rudimentary character.”
“Then who is she? What’s happened to her?” asked Aubretia, wide-eyed.
With a conjuror-like sweep of her arm, Gallardia removed the sheet altogether, revealing the full length of the naked corpse. “There!” she stated with evident satisfaction.
Aubretia was only conscious of certain grotesque detail. Her stomach seemed to contract and her abdomen to twist up inside itself. Her rational mind rejected the obvious explanation. Across a gap of five thousand years it was impossible, yet…
“It can’t be!” she gasped in horror.
“But it is,” Gallardia stated emphatically. “You are looking at a man!”
II
The vaguely horrific image of the man stayed in Aubretia’s mind for the remainder of the day. There was no sense of contact with humanity. Death in itself had created an invisible barrier behind which the corpse was no more than a bleached artefact crudely wrought in human shape, but different enough from womankind to be alien and remote. And with the image was a certain indefinable fear, not of the body in the Annex, but of something more fundamental, something that had to do with herself and Aquilegia and Gallardia, and all the women of the world. The fear was a shadow behind the shape of the man, not fully visible, yet significant in a chill way, darkening the perimeter of her consciousness with a sense of the unexplained.
Back in her office Aubretia struggled to recall Gallardia’s terse description of the discovery of the body, and the anatomical and cytological evidence that proved beyond doubt the incredible fact of maleness. It was necessary to draft a report for submission to the Mistress of Information in the Department of the Written Word. The man was not yet public domain, and it was for the Mistress to determine whether the news could be released to the world.
It seemed that the Fourteenth Arctic Geophysical Expedition, while carrying out a radar survey of the ice layer close to the North Pole, had recorded a strong localized echo at a depth of some twenty-five feet below the surface. Further tests with spectrum analysers had revealed a mass of metal in roughly cylindrical form, pointing downwards at a steep angle into the frozen mass of the polar cap. There were traces of aluminium and beryllium and copper, and, surprisingly, distinct evidence of radioactivity.
Thermonuclear heaters were then used to melt a funnel in the ice, and presently the members of the expedition uncovered the strange object. It was a rocket. This was an exciting discovery, for no rocket had been launched or even made on Earth for more than four thousand years. The earlier groping efforts at interplanetary flight had been quickly abandoned after preliminary radar and video surveys of the moon and the nearer planets by small robot rockets had revealed nothing to justify the enormous expenditure which an attempt to launch manned rockets across space would involve. It seemed more logical to womankind to devote worldly wealth on the development of the Earth and its inhabitants, feminine mind saw neither sense nor sanity in space
But it was part the mythology of history that men had men had taken the problem of interplanetary flight seriously. Nobody knew exactly when, for records were incomplete, but certainly many thousands of years ago. And this strange rocket buried in the polar ice was of a different pattern from those of the abortive rocket era in the age of women. It was straight and slender and functional. There were no little devices or artistic shaping of the hull fittings so characteristic of the feminine designer. A psychologist might have described its shape as phallic in origin, but there were no psychologists in the party, and, anyway, the word had been meaningless for some five thousand years.
The rocket was intact and sealed. It had been necessary to cut through the hull with arc-burners in order to gain access to the interior. Inside a tiny control cabin they had found the body, frozen solid, encased in a metal and plastic pressure suit.