Page:World Without Men (HT osu.32435053364535).pdf/19

"All right," Aubretia murmured. "But what has all that to do with men?"

"There comes a time," the Mistress stated portentiously, "when nature begins to realize that the methods she employs are no longer suited to the conditions which apply. What is the point of producing variants when the fittest no longer survive, when those who survive are not necessarily the fittest? Variation and natural selection become meaningless. Sex as a variant technique becomes useless. Survival is determined by artificial factors: the ability to live in congenial surroundings, to buy the best medical aid, to reduce the labor of life by the acquisition of mechanical labor-saving devices, and so on."

"You talk about nature, but how could nature know?"

The Mistress raised an admonishing finger. "Nature is all wise. Towards the end of the twentieth century, when the development of unlimited atomic power completely negated the process of natural evolution, nature finally came to terms with the human race. Reproduction was still necessary, but variation was a waste of time and uneconomic."

"But why?"

"Consider: Five thousand years ago the population of the world was half male and half female. A billion men and a billion women. There you have a supreme example of the extravagance of nature."

"Extravagance?"

"Of course. One man could fertilize a thousand females—ten thousand in the course of a lifetime; yet nature provided an average of one man per woman. The result of such extravagance was sublimation of unexpended masculine drive in other spheres: war, faster and faster air and ground travel, interplanetary flight. The cosmos itself became a mons Veneris at which mankind as a whole set his cap."

Aubretia shifted uncomfortably on her chair. The trend of the conversation made her feel uneasy, aroused in her mind