Page:World Without Men (HT osu.32435053364535).pdf/9

and effeminacy: a large desk with slender legs, a dainty ivory table supporting an ornate crystal bowl of the newest kind of flowers that had been grown in phosphor nutrients so that the pentals glowed in luminous hues, graceful padded chairs, oval mirrors, and an arched window with stained glass panes in a variety of dilute rainbow colors. It was a woman's room in a woman's building in a woman's city.

Aubretia entered the office with a distinct sense of repose, almost of homecoming. The sensation was to formula, of course. It was part of the applied psychology of labor administration. Domestic apartments tended to be functional and austere while offices and factories were generally as comfortable and luxurious as applied science could make them. The result was increased productivity.

She pulled the snake-chain on her purple cloak. Immediately the garment coiled itself into a compact collar encircling her neck. She removed it and hung it on a peg behind the desk.

The pilot lamp on the memory bank unit was flashing green. She sat down and pressed the control button with a slim finger, then concentrated on the crisp impersonal voice of the recorder as it intoned the news messages of the night.

General release, said the voice. Opening of new I. P. Center. A brief pause. Today at thirteen hundred hours the Mistress of Biogenetics will officially open the new I. P. Center at Lon South. The Center will specialize in the application and development of the latest techniques in the science of induced hetero-parthenogenesis with the object of increasing the variant factor of derivative types, which is not at present possible with normal auto-parthenogenetic methods. Ten seconds of silence. Electroscan pictures and detailed technical handouts will be distributed via authorized news agencies within twenty-four hours.

A long pause. The memory bank unit whirred and clicked,