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probably due to the conditions of burial in ice during thousands of years. But now, no longer in deep freeze, it would obviously deteriorate rapidly unless the usual steps were taken. Gallardia was presumably working on it now, injecting formaldehyde into the veins and performing the preliminary evisceration. She had already made a cytological test of body cells and counted forty-seven chromosomes on the nuclei—positive proof of sex, if proof were needed.

There was nothing in the clothing to identify the man, only a few printed papers in a foreign language that neither Gallardia nor Aubretia could identify, and a gold ring on one finger of the corpse bearing the engraved letters. "R. D."

All this, of course, was the news story of the year, perhaps of the century. In a world in which the male sex had been abandoned by nature some five thousand years earlier as an unnecessary extravagance of evolution, the presence of a real man, even a dead one, was an item of profound interest. It was a stark reminder of prehistoric days when womankind existed at the level of the animals in the field, before nature had decided that a change was desirable in the mechanism by which the species could be perpetuated. It brought back the days when there were such things as men, now almost legendary creatures of a bygone mythology.

It was as if, for instance, they had found a cyclops. That's how real and unreal was the man in the Annex.

Aubretia switched on the videophone and dialed the number of the Department of the Written Word. Then she changed her mind and pressed the cancel button. This was something that would have to be discussed on a person-to-person basis. It was too important, and the videophone was too impersonal.

She put on her purple cloak, pulled the snake chain, and made her way to street level.

"The body will have to be erased without trace," stated