The expedition had made no attempt to strip the body, partly because it was obviously dead, and partly because it was thought that the examination ought to be left to those whose job it was to deal with such matters. In due course the body and certain items of equipment from the rocket were flown back to civilization, where they were passed to the appropriate scientific departments concerned. Not a single woman in the expedition had even suspected that the body might be that of a man, despite the implication of the unfamiliar rocket design. Men were the last thing any woman would think of in this day and age.
The body had been removed from the pressure suit at the Aeronautical Research centre. The suit, it seemed, was of major interest, but the body, clothed in quaint attire which bore no parallel to any kind of wearing apparel in current use, was quickly disposed of by sending it intact to the Department of Biophysics. And so it reached the brusque efficient hands of Gallardia, who soon discovered that she had come into possession of a man, albeit a dead one.
The body was in a remarkably fine state of preservation, probably due to the conditions of burial in ice during thousands of years. But now, no longer in deep freeze, it would obviously deteriorate rapidly unless the usual steps were taken, Gallardia was presumably working on it now, injecting formaldehyde into the veins and performing the preliminary evisceration. She had already made a cytological test of body cells and counted forty-seven chromosomes on the nuclei — positive proof of sex, if proof were needed.
There was nothing in the clothing to identify the man, only a few printed papers in a foreign language that neither Gallardia nor Aubretia could identify, and a gold ring on one finger of the corpse bearing the engraved letters. “R. D.”
All this, of course, was the news story of the year, perhaps of the century. In a world in which the male sex had been abandoned by nature some five thousand years earlier as an unnecessary extravagance of evolution, the presence of a real man, even a dead one, was an item of profound interest. It was a stark reminder of prehistoric days when womankind existed at the level of the animals in the field, before nature had decided that a change was desirable in the mechanism by which the species could be perpetuated. It brought back the days when there were such things as men, now almost legendary creatures of a bygone mythology.
It was as if, for instance, they had found a Cyclops That’s how real and unreal was the man in the Annex.
Aubretia switched on the videophone and dialled the number of the Department of the Written Word. Then she changed her mind and pressed the cancel button. This was something that would have to be discussed on a person-to-person basis. It was too important, and the videophone was too impersonal.
She put on her purple cloak, pulled the snake chain, and made her way to street level.
“The body will have to be erased without trace,” stated the Mistress of Information. Her eyes were expressionless and her long triangular face was swarthy and serpentine. “There is no need to look bewildered, my dear. I am merely reciting government policy. All human remains identified as male are incinerated without delay.”
“But why?” asked Aubretia, not understanding. “Surely the discovery of… of a man… is a matter of priority news.”
The Mistress of Information shook her head slowly. It was the lethargic motion of a pendulum in the padded vastness of the pastel office. “Please believe me when I say that it has no news value whatever. I am not permitted to explain why. So far as the contemporary world is concerned, the male sex ceased to exist some five thousand years ago.”
“I agree. That is recognized. But surely the body of a man has some historic, some scientific value.”
“None whatever.”
The Mistress of Information stood up and walked idly around the room, making no sound on the thick white pile of the carpet. She moved like a phantom among the slender fragile shapes of the furniture. Occasionally she glanced obliquely at her visitor, but there was no warmth or sympathy in her eyes, only a cold calculating shrewdness.
“There is such a thing,” she said quietly, “as the parthenogentic adaptation syndrome. It has been a reality for five thousand years and it determines the pattern of our life, of our existence. We have to recognize its influence and comply with its requirements in terms of social behaviour.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand…”
“Then I’ll try to explain, in so far as my terms of reference will allow me. Long, long ago the human race was split into two sexes — male and female — just as are the lower animals at the present day. Sex, of course, is a mechanism designed to achieve perpetuation of the species. More than that, it is a mechanism whose purpose is to produce variants in the species. By random admixture{admixture: the result of interbreeding between two or more previouslyisolated populations within a species} of the differing characteristics of individual men and women, children were produced em bodying composites of those characteristics.
Sometimes they were mutants, offspring bearing new characteristics which had emerged for the first time. The object of this undisciplined intermarriage of eugenic strains was to produce off spring of differing survival capacities.”
“You mean,” said Aubretia, “the survival of the fittest.”
“Exactly. In other words — evolution. The germ cells of both males and females carried the essential physical and physiological characteristics of the individuals concerned in the genes on the chromosomes in the nuclei of the cells. Marriage produced mixture. The chromosomes and the genes were brought together. New permutations and combinations of human anatomy and physiology arose at each birth. Some were more suited to survival than others. In such a way, by natural selection, nature sought to change the form of man, slowly adapting him to his environment.” The Mistress smiled. “You will pardon me in using the word man in the generic sense. I could just as well have said woman.”
Aubretia nodded, feeling rather out of her depth. She was beginning to acquire a new respect for her superior, and wondering just how much of what she was saying was factual, and not merely a recital of governmental viewpoint.
“Natural selection, survival of the fittest, is the simple mechanism of evolution, designed to adapt a living animal to its environment, to ensure survival of the species. But what happens when the animal concerned starts adapting the environment to itself?”
Aubretia said nothing: she had nothing to say.
“Immediately, the evolutionary process of nature breaks down. Natural selection no longer applies. Survival of the fittest becomes obsolete. In fact, survival becomes the prerogative of those who, by wealth and power, can mould their environment to their own liking.”
“All right,” Aubretia murmured. “But what has all that to do with men?”
“There comes a time,” the Mistress stated portentously, “when nature begins to realize that the methods she employs are no longer suited to the conditions which apply. What is the point of producing variants when the fittest no longer survive, when those who survive are not necessarily the fit test? Variation and natural selection become meaningless. Sex as a variant technique becomes useless. Survival is deter mined by artificial factors: the ability to live in congenial surroundings, to buy the best medical aid, to reduce the labour of life by the acquisition of mechanical labour-saving devices, and so on.”
“You talk about nature, but how could nature know?”
The Mistress raised an admonishing finger. “Nature is all wise. Towards the end of the twentieth century, when the development of unlimited atomic power completely negated the process of natural evolution, nature finally came to terms with the human race. Reproduction was still necessary, but variation was a waste of time and uneconomic.”