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Aubretia gripped her glass with fingers that trembled slightly, and drained the blue liquid in a single fiery gulp. The fairy lights of the city in the precipitating gloom danced hazily beyond focus. Aquilegia's face was a smooth white mask in the darkness.

"Would it surprise you to learn that there are no natural parthenogenetic births whatever?" Aquilegia continued. "There never have been. Possibly one or two cases in ten million that cannot be authenticated anyway."

"Quilly!" gasped Aubretia. "You can't be serious."

"But I am, darling."

"But the live birth quota of hundreds of babies every day by parthenogenesis."

"Induced parthenogenesis, Aubry, simply applied cytology. The ovum is persuaded to divide and subdivide and develop without fertilization, by artificial means."

Aubretia stood up again, swaying slightly, and leaned against the balcony railing, holding it tightly with one hand. "That's not true. Four years ago I had two babies by natural parthenogenesis."

"How do you know? In this age of disease-free living any one of the prophylactic injections we have periodically could be a parthenogenetic stab. The rest follows automatically."

"They wouldn't dare. It would be an infringement of personal liberty."

"That's rather a platitude for you, Aubry. In point of fact we haven't any personal liberty; we are 'free' only in so far as we comply with the adaptation syndrome. And that is something of a misnomer. It isn't a syndrome at all. It's a pattern of behavior enforced from outside. We're conditioned—all of us."

Aubretia sighed, and placed her empty glass on the table. "I've never heard you talk this way before, Quilly. It alarms me. It's not as if there were any evidence for what you say.