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matic induction by subterfuge. She surveyed briefly the many clinical prophylactics required by law during the course of a year: the antibiotics and the antivirus serums, the anticarcinogenic injections, the antisenility drugs and the gynotropic stimulants on which the extended romantic life of the community depended. It was feasible—indeed, practicable—that one of the many compulsory hypodermics considered necessary to modern health and hygiene might contain a parthenogenetic factor, a drug that would induce division and subsequent fertile development of the quiescent ovum. There was no possible way in which the ensuing pregnancy could be differentiated from any hypothetical case of natural parthenogenesis.

She recalled her own experiences in the State Maternity Center, the two long and boring pregnancies (ostensibly of natural origin) which she had endured in a quiet spirit of conscientious duty. She sometimes wondered vaguely about the two children whom she had never seen. They would be five and six years old now, alike as photostats, resembling herself in every detail, and undergoing the assembly line education of the State Institute at one of the many giant schools dispersed throughout the country. Children she would never know, and, if it came to the point, children with whom she could one day unwittingly have a love affair. Such was the complex structure of modern society determined by the adaptation syndrome, or by hypnotic cerebral conditioning—whatever you liked to call it.

Resentment filtered slowly into her mind, a vague unspecified resentment without form or orientation. And with it came the realization that her executive post of responsibility was neither executive nor responsible, was no more than a minute reflexing component in a vast automation network of synthetic news and propaganda. She was a human relay, a robot agent detailed to pass on authorized news to the main press and broadcast information channels, and a safeguarding