“But for what purpose?”
There was an interval of silence in the darkness. Both women were pallid ghostly forms, quite motionless. The coloured lights of the city reflected in tiny clusters from the surface of the ambrosia bottle and the curved glasses on the table.
Presently Aquilegia said: “I’m sorry, Aubry. I think perhaps I’ve been talking too much, and I can see I’m confusing you. Let’s forget about it for now. Perhaps well pick up some other time.”
“No,” Aubretia insisted. “I want to know what all this is about. What are you trying to prove.”
“Nothing at all, darling. Nothing that can make any difference to us.”
“It has something to do with the man.”
“Forget about the man. He’s probably been reduced to smoke and ashes by now.”
Something in the tone of her friend’s voice arrested Aubretia’s attention. She saw the dead naked body of the man in her minds eye. “You know something, Quilly,” she stated. “The man hasn’t been destroyed at all; is that it?”
“All right,” Aquilegia said wearily. “He hasn’t been destroyed. He’s in cold storage in a secret underground laboratory outside Lon, along with hundreds of other dead men. But don’t ask me how I know or why. It’s a long story and I’m tired, and so are you. Let’s go to bed, darling.”
“All right,” Aubretia murmured reluctantly. “But I shan’t sleep.”
“I don’t want you to sleep…. Not for a long time,” said Aquilegia.
She led the way from the dark veranda into the room, switching on the light. From there, arm in arm, slightly drunk, they walked slowly into the bedroom.
IV
The next day Aubretia suffered from an increasing sense of restlessness. The blue gin had obliterated most of her memory of the previous night, and only the outline of her conversation with Aquilegia remained, a blank silhouette without detail. But there was disquietude beneath the surface of her mind. She found it difficult to concentrate on routine work.
Early in the morning she called in at the biophysics laboratory for news of Gallardia, but there was none. Her place had been taken by an immense, florid woman of indeterminate age, with glossy inflexible features that had probably been rejuvenated by plastic surgery. The Annex was empty, and it was as if the man had never existed.
The news releases of the night, stored in the memory bank, were unsensational. A giant sunspot was disrupting intercontinental radio communications; an elderly woman in China had produced parthenogentic triplets (a minor miracle of applied cytology, Aubretia recognized); car exports were up by nearly one percent on the previous year; and the government had modified one of the regulations concerning mortic revenue to stimulate voluntary induced parthenogenesis in older women. It was the formula as before, with the accent always on childbirth, whether artificial or induced.
But, according to Aquilegia (and Aubretia remembered this distinctly) there was no such thing as natural parthenogenesis. It was a myth, a fiction designed to cover up systematic induction by subterfuge. She surveyed briefly the many clinical prophylactics required by law during the course of a year: the antibiotics and the antivirus serums, the anti-carcinogenic injections, the anti-senility drugs and the gynotropic stimulants on which the extended romantic life of the community depended. It was feasible — indeed, practicable — that one of the many compulsory hypodermics considered necessary to modern health and hygiene might contain a parthenogentic factor, a drug that would induce division and subsequent fertile development of the quiescent ovum. There was no possible way in which the ensuing pregnancy could be differentiated from any hypothetical case of natural parthenogenesis.
She recalled her own experiences in the State Maternity centre, the two long and boring pregnancies (ostensibly of natural origin) which she had endured in a quiet spirit of conscientious duty. She sometimes wondered vaguely about the two children whom she had never seen. They would be five and six years old now, alike as photostats, resembling herself in every detail, and undergoing the assembly line education of the State Institute at one of the many giant schools dispersed throughout the country. Children she would never know, and, if it came to the point, children with whom she could one day unwittingly have a love affair. Such was the complex structure of modern society determined by the adaptation syndrome, or by hypnotic cerebral conditioning — what ever you liked to call it.
Resentment filtered slowly into her mind, a vague unspecified resentment without form or orientation. And with it came the realization that her executive post of responsibility was neither executive nor responsible, was no more than a minute reflexing component in a vast automation network of synthetic news and propaganda. She was a human relay, a robot agent detailed to pass on authorized news to the main press and broadcast information channels, and a safeguarding filter to query items of suspect news value, items such as the man.
She tore a piece of paper from a pad on the desk and wrote on it with a graphomatic stylus.
Scientific Democracy.
Her handwriting was small and neat, but sloped irregularly across the page. Freedom within the State. A pause while she gathered her thoughts. What did that mean? Freedom toconform with the requirements of the State? The square-jowled features of the Mistress of Information stared hollowly into the dark recesses of her mind. There will be no news release, and I shall make arrangements immediately for the body to be incinerated. Freedom to do as you are told by government officials.
Aguilegia’s voice echoed faintly within her brain. He hasn’t been destroyed. He’s in cold storage in a secret under-ground laboratory
But why? For what purpose? In a world of women where man was an obsolete device from ancient history, what was the point of Aguilegia’s statement?
She replaced the graphomatic on the desk and stared vacantly at the luminous flowers on the spindly table. Aquilegia was a trusted friend: she couldn’t be entirely wrong. The government and the State were not all they seemed to be on the surface. News was being suppressed to fit a pattern, an unimaginable pattern with an unimaginable purpose.
“To hell with it!” she said aloud. The suspicion and uncertainty had to be resolved once and for all. An imp of mischief began to spin and whirl and twist in her brain, inspired and stimulated by the hangover factor of the blue gin in her system. She was the Press Policy and Administration Officer, wasn’t she? Surely the title implied that she was competent to originate policy and determine the nature of administration without continual reference to the Department of the Written Word. Surely she had the right to use her own discretion.
She switched on the videophone and dialled ‘B’. The broadcast pilot lamp flashed three times. She paused uncertainly, uncomfortably aware that what she was about to say would be recorded by memory banks in every newspaper office and television newsroom in the land. And, more ominously, on the monitor bank in the office of the Mistress of Information.
She dictated slowly. “General release. The body of a man in well-preserved condition has been discovered buried deep in the polar ice by the Fourteenth Arctic Geophysical Expedition. After a preliminary examination the body has been removed to a secret laboratory for further research.”
A pause — five seconds.
“Statistics show that there are virtually no natural parthenogentic births. All births are induced surreptitiously…”
A red light winked on the video control panel. The circuit went dead. She realized abruptly that her broadcast had been cut off by a master circuit. Pale and motionless she waited for the inevitable noise of the videophone buzzer. It came ten seconds later.