Page:World Without Men (HT osu.32435053364535).pdf/13

"More hair here, around the chin . . . like stubble."

Gallardia drew back the sheet a litle further. "And on the chest," she pointed out.

Aubretia retreated in mild revulsion.

"No breasts," Gallardia went on. "Only nipples of a rudimentary character."

"Then who is she? What's happened to her?" asked Aubretia, wide-eyed.

With a conjuror-like sweep of her arm, Gallardia removed the sheet altogether, revealing the full length of the naked corpse. "There!" she stated with evident satisfaction.

Aubretia was only conscious of certain grotesque detail. Her stomach seemed to contract and her abdomen to twist up inside itself. Her rational mind rejected the obvious explanation. Across a gap of five thousand years it was impossible, yet . . .

"It can't be!" she gasped in horror.

"But it is," Gallardia stated emphatically. "You are looking at a man!"

The vaguely horrific image of the man stayed in Aubretia's mind for the remainder of the day. There was no sense of contact with humanity. Death in itself had created an invisible barrier behind which the corpse was no more than a bleached artifact crudely wrought in human shape, but different enough from womankind to be alien and remote. And with the image was a certain indefinable fear, not of the body in the Annex, but of something more fundamental, something that had to do with herself and Aquilegia and Gallardia, and all the women of the world. The fear was a shadow behind the shape of the man, not fully visible, yet