“More. Nearly thirty thousand children in all, including those produced in incubators. And every one a girl.”
“Not bad, eh? And I’m not finished yet.”
“By no means. The incubators are still breeding your progeny. Who knows, one might be a boy. That would change the course of history.”
“I wasn’t thinking of incubators,” said Gavor scowling. “I meant like in the old days. Why don’t I have women to stay with me now?”
The girl smiled. “At seventy-five? Besides, it’s wasteful. We have more efficient methods.”
Old Gavor grunted in disgust. “Glass tubes and machinery. I don’t like it. Besides, I’m not so old as I look. Once in a while I’d like to…”
“I’ll speak to the Mistress about it, but it’s not quite so simple as you think. There have been changes in society during the past generation. Very few of the mature women of today remember men at all, and they accept the world of women as normal. Women are born into a matriarchy, and, if anything, they look upon men as obsolete freaks of nature.”
“Bah!” Gavor breathed indignantly. “You send them in to me. I’ll show them who’s a freak.”
“It is a matter of basic psychology. When you have women living together without men, there has to be some kind of emotional outlet which is independent of the male sex. In other words, Gavor, the society you are living in is rapidly becoming homosexual; but in the nicest possible way.”
“Bah!” Gavor repeated.
“The truth is that there are very few women alive today who would not be repelled by the thought of having relations with a man, with you, for instance. And those who are old enough to remember, and preserve something of their formed heterosexual mentality, have already passed the climacteric. They are not eager.”
“What about you? You’re a likely girl.”
“I am as the others — a Lesbian.”
“You ought to be ashamed to admit it.”
“Shame died a natural death when Sterilin was invented. We have to adapt ourselves to the new conditions of living as best we can.”
“Well, Lesbian or not, you could do an old man a good turn.”
She smiled sardonically. “I should be exceeding my terms of reference. All I can do for you is to prescribe a bromide.”
“To hell with your bromide.” He stood up suddenly and grasped her arms with hard, bony fingers. “You’re supposed to look after me, give me what I want.”
She twisted her arms from his senile grip with a lithe flexing movement. “Don’t be an old fool, Gavor. You’re living in a past that died a long time ago. I’m a tolerant woman, but not that tolerant.” She pushed him back into his chair. “Sit down and cool off. You should be making your plans for the next world, instead of getting intoxicated on your gonadotropic hormones. Women are different nowadays, and the sooner you realize it the better. They think differently and behave differently. The basic things of life are different. Men are no longer necessary, and women don’t miss them.”
Old Gavor attempted to sneer, but his beard concealed the twist of his lips. “How about the next generation? Incubators won’t help you there.”
“We don’t use incubators, other than for experimental work in embryology The next generation is assured Scientists discovered the secret of parthenogenesis many years ago. We can produce the next generation to order, by drugs and radiation.”
“It’s not natural. It won’t work forever.”
“We don’t rely on nature any more; science is more reliable. And parthenogenesis works, and will go on working for five thousand years — ten thousand — a hundred thousand.”
“But only girls.”
“Of course. That’s the beauty of it, the simple basic economy. Parthenogenesis can only produce females. And those females can only produce more females. There will never again be another natural male birth unless we can create a male embryo artificially in the laboratory. And that seems unlikely.”
“I don’t like your world,” Old Gavor said sadly. “It is cold and inhuman. All those women having drugs and radiation, without love, without any kind of human relationship
“Stop feeling frustrated and sorry for yourself, Gavor. The women are happy enough. You see, they don’t know about the drugs and the radiation. That is a State secret known only to a limited number of State officials. The great majority of women in the world believe that parthenogenesis is natural, a modern miracle of nature to compensate for the disappearance of man. They marvel at it. They delight in it.”
“So you don’t even stop at deception:
“The truth is not always politic. Society is in the process of adapting itself to new conditions of living. We in authority must do our best to help the adaptation along: a white lie here, a little merciful distortion there, and a little general enforcement of overall policy”
“Like encouraging Lesbianism…?”
“That is only one factor among many. In a way you are privileged, Gavor. You have lived long enough to witness the birth of a new era in human affairs, the creation of a completely different society, a new kind of world. When you die history will start again for a new humanity of only one sex. We are trying to plan ahead, to anticipate the social forces that will operate in the years to come, and to legislate for them. ’
Old Gavor shook his head slowly. “You are using words an old man doesn’t understand. I’m tired. I don’t want to hear any more.”
“That’s better,” the girl said gently. “You’ve had a tiring day and it’s getting late. Time you thought about going to bed.”
Old Gavor regarded her sulkily. “I should have thought that on my birthday, at least…”
“I promise that I’ll mention it to the Mistress. She may be able to find a volunteer, but it will take time. Well, good night, Gavor.”
He didn’t bother to reply. She left the room quietly. He was only conscious of the offensive words that echoed Andre echoed in his brain:
She may be able to find a volunteer.
If I am the last man, then I ought to be king of the world, Gavor told himself in a mood of childish resentment. I ought to be the patriarch. A little tin god with unlimited power. But what am I really? Just an old man confined to a suite of rooms. I’m a prisoner, and I can’t even be sure that I am the last man. I only know what they tell me. It may be lies There may be other men, too, men who are also prisoners These new women have their own standards of conduct. Ethics I don’t even begin to understand.
Why, only twenty years ago there were at least four thousand men in the State Male Reservation. Those were the good days. Before the scientists got to work on this parthenogenesis business, when men were still necessary, and when the few remaining ones were stallions in a stud, with nothing to do but keep the birth statistics from falling to zero. And all the time the women were waiting and praying for the birth of a male child, as if it were some kind of second Messiah But it never happened. Once nature starts something, she never lets up.
And yet it was then that the trouble started, when we men allowed ourselves to be rounded up and used as a kind of fertility machine. We could have been masters of the situation. Instead we lived from day to day, telling ourselves that what we were doing was a solemn duty for the sake of a dying humanity, and we allowed the women to take control.
We did not foresee that the State Male Reservation was the first step in the establishment of the new kind of society. Science had solved the problem of survival, and induced parthenogenesis had arrived. The sociologists and psychologists were already at work visualizing the structure of the coming world without men. The foundations had to be laid.
They’re strange, these modern women. They’re cold, hard, utterly without sentiment. Their brains think dispassionately, just like the electronic computers they use to assist their planning. Why, one of these days they may even build a big electronic computing engine to do their thinking for them.