I shut my eyes and pictured another madhouse and another wild chase back down the corridor. But this time it didn't happen. The two men nodded to one side. The wall opened, and we stepped in, out of sight.

Into an elevator.

Down, down, down ... into the depths of the Earth, it seemed. Finally the elevator stopped.

"We get out here," one of the men said.

We were in a dank, dungeon-like place. We started up a cold, crawling corridor, but happily turned off before we had gone too far. One of my male escorts opened a door.

"Here he is, boss."

A man sat behind the desk—unshaven, naked to the waist. His face was aggressively male; his bare chest was covered with a thick mat of black hair. "My name is Lola," he said, in a rumbling basso. "Welcome to our happy land."

"Lola?" I asked.

"Isn't it a beaut? The women take men's names now—and we get theirs. Lola," he repeated, bitterly.

"So that explains Phil and Sam, then."

"What?"

"Two chicks I met topside, before all the fuss began. I couldn't understand why they were named like that."

"Now you do," Lola said. "Let's get down to business: you come from 1957, don't you?"

"That's right. I—"

"You know what it's like to live in a world where men were supreme. Right?"

"Right."

"We're in a pretty bad fix here," Lola said. "The women grabbed control about three hundred years ago. It started with little things like running for office, and now it mushroomed into this. We're under their heels! And we can't do a thing about it!"

"Why not? Do they outnumber you?"

"Yes and no," Lola said. "In terms of actual arithmetic, we're about even; they've got a slight numerical edge, not much. But in terms of 

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