Two flights, three flights, he ascended, and suddenly they were facing a roller door in a corridor. She turned to him, and he thought he could detect an element of sadness in her eyes.
“You will not be the first to pass through this door,” she said, “and you will not be the last. Men do not vary. Even unto death they seek to enlarge their horizons, they seek escape. I shall not stop you now. Escape if you wish.”
Her fingers touched her waist, pressing a concealed button on the unseen belt. The door rolled aside. Old Gavor remained motionless.
“Go,” she ordered.
He hesitated. “Tell me: am I the last man?”
There was a ghost of a smile on her lips. “You are what you are, Gavor. Once you are dead there will be neither men nor women on Earth. Now go.”
Old Gavor walked into the corridor beyond the door and into the world.
The corridor was long and dark, and as he walked along it the air grew progressively colder. Old Gavor shivered in his sombre gray clothes. But there was a faint glow of light on the walls ahead, and he hurried towards it on his stumbling legs.
The glow became brighter and the cold became more intense, and presently the corridor came to an end. He was in the open, under a sky of midnight blue, with an immense crimson sun lying low on the horizon. Something flickered and undulated above him, and in a brief glance he observed the intermittent luminous curtains of aurora. The air howled with wind, and the ground was white with snow and ice. His breath frosted as it left his lips.
For fully a minute he stood motionless, surveying the wasteland, aware of the biting sting of cold in his flesh and bones. There was nothing on the immense white wilderness before him. It might have been a plateau in Antarctica, some bleak expanse of subzero landscape devoid of life and hope. The midnight sun glimmered dully; it was the colour of blood.
He turned towards the corridor, but it was already sealed. The gleaming width of a metal door stared blankly at him. Above and on all sides the building towered — solid, cylindrical, with no light, but reflecting the dark red glow of the polar sun from its rounded concrete surface.
Many things became clear to Old Gavor. This was the prison, a citadel in a remote frigid comer of the world. This was the last abode of man, the final sepulchre of the male sex. The freezing wind whined in his ears and plucked at his clothes, paralysing his body with every gust. He hammered on the door and screamed against the noise of the elements, but his voice was drowned in the tumult of nature.
How many men, he wondered, have perished this way-seeking freedom? How many have sought civilization, only to find raw nature? How many frozen bodies are out there in the snow and ice, dreaming the blank dreams of death while, thousands of miles away, the world they knew has reshaped itself and forgotten about them and their kind.
He hammered and screamed, but the door remained closed, and in the course of time the cold became gentle, and transformed itself into sleep. Acting on some unguessabie instinct he moved off into the snow, away from the building, towards the crimson sun, seeking privacy for the final intimate act of his life, the release of life and the acceptance of death.
If I am the last man, he thought, then this is indeed a moment of history.
Within the hour his body was buried beneath inches of snow, and the blood in his veins had crystallised into scarlet
XV
An event of major importance had occurred in biophysical laboratory number five. Cordelia, scientist in charge of experimental synthetic cytology, took the trouble to lock the incubator and lock the laboratory door before leaving the State Biophysical centre. The thing in the main thermostatically controlled incubator was so vital that she felt constrained to deliver the progress report personally to the Senior Mistress of Applied Cytology in the Ministry of Biophysical Research.
Cordelia, a woman of seventy-two, had made full use of modern cosmetic techniques, and her metabolic control had been precisely judged for more than two decades. Consequently she had all the superficial appearance of an adolescent female, except for the maturity of her eyes and the overfull roundness of her breasts and abdomen, the result of three compulsory visits to State fertility centres where induced parthenogenesis had resulted in the birth, over four years, of eight identical baby girls.
But her mind was wrinkled and leathery, impregnated with specialized science and technology, and twisted in the accepted Lesbian fashion of contemporary society. The thing in the incubator was alien and incomprehensible, but it represented success. For centuries, perhaps millennia, women scientists had laboured after the shadow, as alchemists of ancient history had sought the Philosopher’s Stone, and now, finally, the shadow had taken shape. The thing in the incubator represented the pinnacle of scientific achievement; and it might also be the problem of all time.
She travelled by underground mobile roads to the select government zone of the city, and ascended to the fourteenth story of the Department of Science and Technology. There was some difficulty with the receptionist and the under-secretary; the Senior Mistress of Applied Cytology was by no means readily accessible. After a twenty minute delay she was admitted to the secretary’s office, and ten minutes later finally reached the inner sanctum and found herself greeting the Mistress herself.
The Mistress was a woman of indeterminate age, fleshy without being fat, rigid without being bony. Her face was flaccid, her eyes small but deep. Her flat breasts were lacquered purple as was the custom among higher government officials. She wore a short black skirt and black sandals, contrasting with her hair which had been varnished snow white.
“Sit down, Cordelia,” said the Mistress of Applied Cytology. “I must apologize for keeping you waiting, but pressure of work is, well…” She smiled thinly. “Unexpected interviews are always difficult to arrange.”
Cordelia nodded sympathetically. “I understand, Mistress. But I have some very important news about test four-six-five.”
The Mistress opened a drawer in her desk and produced a box file which she opened, withdrawing a number of papers. She flicked through them rapidly, then selected one particular typewritten sheet.
“Four-six-five,” she murmured thoughtfully. “That’s in the chromosome linkage series.”
“The Arctic man,” Cordelia explained. “The one they found in the ice three years ago.”
“I remember.”
“He was in a remarkably well-preserved state. We were able to isolate many thousands of perfect cell nuclei — gametes. of course-bearing twenty-three chromosomes. They were dead, but the chromosomes were transferable. It took i long time to perfect the technique: precision micro-cytology using scalpels invisible to the naked eye. We had to remove the chromosomes from a male gamete and transfer them to a living female ovum, matching them perfectly so that natural affinity would occur; so that the cell would live, and divide and grow, keeping its forty-seven chromosomes, growing and developing all the time…”
“I know; I know…”
“Well, the Arctic man was shared among eighteen cytological laboratories. I had an allocation of gametes along with the rest. Four days ago I performed my four hundred and sixty-fifth micro-cytological transfer.”
“And… what happened?”
“I succeeded, Mistress. The cell is still alive. It has already divided and subdivided more than twenty times. Each new cell has forty-seven chromosomes. I’ve checked with the ultraviolet phase-contrast microscope. There’s no mistake.”
The Mistress of Applied Cytology pursed her lips and studied Cordelia as if she were a new virus strain. “In other words,” she said, “you claim to have produced a living male embryo.”