Gods, this Rocsates! The books, as well he knows, are so ancient, and so delicate, that they are kept in an air-tight tomb; lest, being handled, they be destroyed and all knowledge within them lost. Therefore, they have not been read in the known history of our race. And Rocsates has been anxious for an excuse—

"Sias," he went on, "if there exists such knowledge as I seek, is it not indeed lost to the memory of Man? And if so, are not the books the only place where it may be found?"

Rocsates, it is suspected, will never ask a question unless he knows the answer beforehand. And so I acquiesced, and agreed, and granted permission. And with much misgiving and foreboding of evil, the Conclave adjourned.

Several weeks elapsed before Rocsates requested that the Conclave meet. I called the meeting at dawn and so it was yet early in the afternoon when formalities were concluded and Rocsates granted leave to speak.

"Some of those among you are She's," he began. "And you know you are different from the rest of us. To the advantage, your skin is fairer and your features more often handsomer than ours. To the disadvantage, your excretory system is not so mechanically dextrous as ours. And, you may say, why should this not be so? There is, indeed, no reason why we should all be identical. Perforce you have the advantage, perforce we do. Yet there is one other distinction.

"Some among you She's have the swelling of the breasts. And does there exist no reason for this? Was there not, perhaps in ancient times, a cause for this? Do you not wonder, She's, whence you come and for what reason?"

"Rocsates," I interrupted. "All this is fascinating, of course. But if you could be quick—"

"Of course," he replied. "In the course of my reading I have read many books, and while they are all vague on the subject, this I have discovered:

"That there was indeed a time before the machines, in fact the books were created in that time, for not one of them mentions the machines. Then reproduction was carried on by individuals, without help of the then nonexistent machines. The She's are not wanderers from another land, but they have lived with us for all time; they are not another race, but we are all types of one race. And the fact of reproduction is somehow intimately related to the physical distinctions of the She's!"

These last sentences were shouted to be 

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