Page:World Without Men (HT osu.32435053364535).pdf/33

filter to query items of suspect news value, items such as the man.

She tore a piece of paper from a pad on the desk and wrote on it with a graphomatic stylus. Scientific democracy. Her handwriting was small and neat, but sloped irregularly across the page. Freedom within the State. A pause while she gathered her thoughts. What did that mean? Freedom to conform with the requirements of the State? The square-jowled features of the Mistress of Information stared hollowly into the dark recesses of her mind. There will be no news release, and I shall make arrangements immediately for the body to be incinerated. Freedom to do as you are told by government officials.

Aquilegia's voice echoed faintly within her brain. He hasn't been destroyed. He's in cold storage in a secret underground laboratory.

But why? For what purpose? In a world of women where man was an obsolete device from ancient history, what was the point of Aquilegia's statement?

She replaced the graphomatic on the desk and stared vacantly at the luminous flowers on the spindly table. Aquilegia was a trusted friend: she couldn't be entirely wrong. The government and the State were not all they seemed to be on the surface. News was being suppressed to fit a pattern, an unimaginable pattern with an unimaginable purpose.

"To hell with it!" she said aloud. The suspicion and uncertainty had to be resolved once and for all. An imp of mischief began to spin and whirl and twist in her brain, inspired and stimulated by the hangover factor of the blue gin in her system. She was the Press Policy and Administration Officer, wasn't she? Surely the title implied that she was competent to originate policy and determine the nature of administration without continual reference to the Department of the Written Word. Surely she had the right to use her own discretion.