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Broadcast Network. Only it didn't come off. Your news story never got any further than the memory banks in the news offices, and the Department of the Written Word canceled it within seconds. And then they took you in for interrogation and questioning, Aubry. They stripped your mind bare of all it contained and they rebuilt it to their own specifications. They had nothing against you for they realized you weren't one of the subversive group. But from you they learned about my sister. She disappeared the next day. She was passed to the Department of Mortic Revenue and she paid the tax in full.

"You're beginning to understand, aren't you, Aubry. They learned about Aquilegia from you, and they learned about me from her. I was one jump ahead. I managed to get away and I've been on the run ever since. That's why I've come here—for refuge. I need help, and because of what Aquilegia was to you, I have the right to ask your help.

"You still don't see the whole picture, do you? The man in deep freeze was the answer to the problem. I spent ten years in the secret laboratory making cytological tests on thousands and thousands of male remains, the majority no more than dehydrated skeletons. And then we found a man in a state of good preservation. He was dead, admittedly, but the whole and undecayed, with a cellular structure giving for the first time a real chance of carrying out practical work on the chromosome structure of the cell nucleus.

"We couldn't bring the man back to life. We couldn't even bring a single cell back to life. But chromosomes aren't living things; they are complex molecules arranged in patterns on the cell nucleus, and they operate by biochemical mechanisms. What we could do, by precision microsurgery, was to transfer the chromosomes from a dead male cell to a living female cell. In that way we hoped to create a synthetic male gamete.

"Don't you see how, Aubry? Here you are, living in a sta-