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not die. It was a matter of indefinables, of some subtlety in the exact mechanism of surgical micro-cytology, of some precise factor in the artificial synthesis of a male gamete. It was some unpredictable phenomenon in advanced biochemistry, in discrete cell physiology. It was a phenomenon that might not be reproduced again for a decade, or a hundred years, or ever again. All in all, a miracle, but a miracle of patiently applied science over a long period.

The embryo grew and grew, and began to differentiate. Limbs began to appear, and a head and a beating heart. The artificial placenta supplied oxygenated blood to the tiny living creature, and the saline solution in which it was immersed was maintained precisely at a temperature of ninety-eight point four degrees Fahrenheit.

Gestation was rapid, accelerated by carefully conceived electronic control, by automation applied to human embryology. Cordelia's estimate of ten weeks proved to be a little on the pessimistic side. At the end of eight weeks the embryo was already a male child weighing four pounds and more, still attached to the artificial placenta, but moving its limbs with aggressive energy. It became apparent that the child would, within the fortnight, be ready for independent existence, ready for severing from the placenta and removal from the saline solution, ready to learn to breath and cry and suckle on electronically fed teats. Or, as Cordelia recognized with a faint feeling of revulsion which had its origin in compulsory fertility and parthenogenesis, ready for birth.

Her own interest in the male child grew steadily from day to day. This was something quite different from the normal routine procedure of birth. Females were being produced on what might almost be regarded as an assembly line basis every hour of the day, but here was a male, growing and developing under experimental laboratory conditions. A creature unique in time and space, unique, at any rate, for five millennia.