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Aubretia pursed her lips and sipped her drink, but said nothing.

"As you know, Aubry, parthenogenetic twins are identical. I knew about you and Quilly, and I knew she always had a high opinion of you. That's why I came here."

"You keep referring to this—this 'Quilly' in the past tense."

"Because she's dead. I thought that might mean something to you."

Aubretia stood up and walked purposelessly around the room. "It doesn't mean anything to me. I don't know you and I don't know your sister. I can't understand why you came here or what I could possibly do for you."

"Then let me refresh your memory," Aquilegia said ominously.

"I am a scientist," Aquilegia explained. "I work, or rather I worked for the Department of Biophysics. I used to be a trusted member of a secret government research unit, but I was also a member of a subversive organization. I worked in an underground laboratory on experimental cytology. Doing what? Simple enough, obvious enough, if you stop to think about it. I was trying to create a synthetic gamete with twenty-three chromosomes.

"You see the point, don't you, Aubry? A gamete with twenty-three chromosomes is a male gamete, and you can use it to fertilize a twenty-four chromosome ovum and produce a male child. But it's not so easy. The only living cells we have to deal with are female, and in five thousand years no one has ever succeeded in getting rid of the unwanted sex chromosome.

"And then the man arrived. You remember the man, don't you, Aubry? The man they found inside the rocket that was buried in the polar ice cap. He was dead, of course; dead for more than five thousand years, but in deep freeze all that time. You ought to remember, because you were the one who tried to break the news of the man on the National