Charles Maine - World Without Men

“They must have said the same kind of thing seven thousand years ago,” said Koralin, smiling mystically. “May I stay here for a day — two days.”

Aubretia took a deep breath, then made her decision. “I’m sorry, Koralin. It’s a risk I dare not take. I’m convinced that security are watching me. It wouldn’t be fair to you, or me, or to the child.”

The disappointment that darkened Koralin’s eyes was suppressed almost instantly. She looked down at the child, still lying white and motionless on the table, but there was no softening of the hard determined lines around her mouth. “Aubretia, I appeal to you…”

“I’m sorry. I must ask you to go.”

Koralin picked up the child. “We’ll get by. Security is never one hundred percent perfect, not in seven thousand years. Have you a car, Aubretia?”

Aubretia nodded.

“May I take it for a few days? I’ll have it returned.”

“They’ll be stopping all cars.”

“I’ll take a chance. I may be able to cut across country in the outer suburbs.”

Aubretia frowned “I wouldn’t want the car damaged

“Aren’t you prepared to make any kind of sacrifice?”

“For what? I can’t believe in your dream, Koralin. If they arrest you in my car then I’ll be in trouble I don’t want to be involved All I ask is to be left in peace.”

“All right. We’ll leave you in peace”

Carefully Koralin wrapped up the inert child in the paper and placed it in the plastic bag, pushing the crimson cloak on top. Her movements were methodical and unhurried. When she had finished she took the bag by its handle and moved towards the door.

She turned finally towards Aubretia and said: “Give me one hour, please.”

“One hour?”

“Before you call the police.”

Aubretia seemed to sag a little, breathing deeply “Trust me, please, Koralin, in spite of whatever I did two years ago and whatever you think of me now; trust me this once. I shan’t call the police.”

“Thank you,” said Koralin simply. Clutching the bag tightly she went through the door into the darkness of an un-guessable future.

After Koralin had gone Aubretia went out on to the balcony overlooking the city. Her mind was tranquil enough, for she had already dismissed Koralin and her strange quest as an irrelevancy. The streets below, warmly floodlit, were peaceful enough, and the lights of the tall buildings were calm and colourful. There was nothing to indicate the tightening web of security, and indeed, security might have been a myth.

For the good citizen, she thought, life is pleasant enough. Security is for the misfits, the agitators, the wild dreamers who might undermine the stability of the State. Women like Koralin, for instance, who not only pursue their own tortuous antisocial concepts, but seek to drag others into the engulfing whirlpool of their intrigues. As for the male child, it was nothing but a freak. The human species had progressed beyond the shallow condition of heterosexuality. The primitive and crude had been abandoned millennia ago, and human reproduction was now an exact science. Society was stable, the future secure, and the good citizen had nothing to worry about.

Unless…, another horrific thought stabbed needle-like at her brain. Supposing they discovered that Koralin had been here, in her apartment, with the male child? They would inevitably interrogate her, check up on every movement since she had left the laboratory in Lon, and the truth would emerge. Aubretia, they would say, the woman with a record. Two years ago she underwent hypnotic re-orientation for subversion, and now she has done it again. She has harboured a criminal without notifying security. And they would confer with the Department of Mortic Revenue and decide whether her potential usefulness in society was enough to justify continued survival, or whether this second lapse merited judicial euthanasia.

Panic seized her heart with icy fingers. Trembling and chilled she hurried into the thermostatic warmth of the apartment and pressed the button on the videophone.

“Please,” she said urgently, “get me security, quickly…”

Two days later Aubretia found a letter waiting for her on her return from the office. It was written in Valinia’s tiny, neat handwriting and had been slipped under the door. Aubretia frowned as she picked it up, remembering that her friend from the apartment below had stayed away longer than usual on this latest visit to Lon.

She removed her cloak, sat down and read the letter.

Dear Aubry:

When you receive this I shall have come and gone. I am returning only to pack, and then go back to Lon. My assignment here is finished. You never suspected, did you, Aubry, that I was planted on you for security purposes?

But now you have nothing to fear. Your record is good, and after your exposure of the Koralin woman the other night, the Controller of Internal Security has decided that you no longer need supervision. Unfortunately we have not yet located the Koralin woman or test, four-six-five We believe she is still in Birm, but reports suggest that other women are now involved, and hey may act as a chain to smuggle the specimen out of the country. If you hear anything, contact security immediately.

The trouble is spreading. Since experiments in micro-cytology have been stopped, cytologists throughout the world are protesting. Some are demanding that test four-six-five should be allowed to survive. It is amazing how quickly news travels. The poison seems to be creeping into some of the civil population, too, particularly in Asia, where the syndrome is probably weaker than elsewhere.

Several attempts have been made to sabotage units of the World Brain Network, and other public utilities and government offices.

We are not anticipating such disorder in this country, but we have to be prepared. There is a full security mobilization, which is why I have been recalled to Lon. Apart from a general air of restlessness, especially among the scientific strata of society, there have been no demonstrations.

It is strange how a small thing can unbalance a perfectly planned society. Perhaps stability is geared in some way to purpose and direction, and perhaps the stabilizing factor was research into the synthetic creation of a male human.

Without that focal point of endeavour, like the nucleus of a cell, it may be that society tends to lose its purpose, to disintegrate. The psychology of a social perversion-neurosis is very complex. However, the situation is under control. When we have apprehended the Koralin woman and test four-six-five, we shall be able to enforce complete stability once more.

Until then…

The explosion flung one of the windows of the room inwards in a cascade of glass splinters. The building shook as if in the steel grip of an earthquake. Alarmed, Aubretia dropped Valinia’s letter to the floor and crossed cautiously to the window.

There was something wrong with the sky. Towards the east the deepening purple of approaching night was aflame with a livid, orange stain. An alarm bell sounded remotely, echoing from the walls of the buildings lining the cavernous streets. As she watched incandescence burst into spontaneous life further south, in the direction of the Department of Statistics. Another shuddering explosion occurred. More alarm bells, and in the road far below the distant murmur of excited voices grew.

She stared in horror at the glowing stains of destruction in the sky. “It has started,” she told herself fearfully. “Things are worse than Valinia said. All because of one male child. This is the end of all things…”

But a voice in the darkness of her mind whispered: “This is only the beginning…”

While the manuscript of World Without Men was being prepared for publication, the staff of Ace Books were startled to see two news items, appearing independently, which unexpectedly underline the credibility of Charles Eric Maine’s novel. One appeared in a story in the New York Times , for Oct. 16, 1957. This told of the announcement at a meeting of a “planned parenthood” society of advanced work on a “synthetic steroid tablet” to be taken orally to create a limited period of sterility. Several such projects are being experimented with in various laboratories, with a certain amount of success.