He obviously liked that in her, but it was equally obvious that he was far too wise a man to fall in love, especially with a putative soul-mate.

Love, in the opinions to which Lisa held firm at the age of twenty-two and Morgan Miller at the age of thirty-four, was merely a matter of self-conditioning and of learned helplessness. Neither of them wanted anything to do with it.

Sex, of course, was a different matter—so different that they wasted little time in courtship before leaping into bed together.

Morgan Miller explained to Lisa, in dribs and drabs, that he had made an irrevocable decision never to get married. This was not so much because he considered his vocation essentially monkish—although he did have a distinct ascetic streak—but because he could see no virtue or purpose in the institution of marriage other than to provide protective cover for children. He was the kind of man who felt obliged to practice what he preached, and it would have been a flagrant violation of his neoMalthusian credo to bring more children into a world that was heading for a population crisis, so there was no earthly need for him to get married. To do so, even if he made his intentions clear to his intended spouse, would have constituted a misrepresentation of sorts. Even a long-term monogamous relationship without benefit of ceremony would have been a compromise reeking of bad faith. He had, of course, taken the precaution of obtaining a vasectomy, by courtesy of the local Marie S topes Clinic, but that had not been sufficient to clarify his peculiar conscience, so he explained to Lisa with all due alacrity that he did not intend to enter into a long-term relationship with her, and would terminate their arrangement if ever it seemed likely to become habitual.

Lisa, at twenty-two, could not imagine that she would continue to see Morgan Miller once she had obtained her doctorate and committed herself completely to some newly hatched state-of-the-art police laboratory, so she had not thought the assertion worth exploring, let alone challenging. She was, however, prepared to tease him about the firmness of his resolution not to maintain the presence of his own precious genes within the great human pool.

“You don’t believe in positive eugenics, I take it,” she felt free to observe after they had consummated their purely utilitarian relationship for the third time, nineteen days after their first meeting. He was the proud possessor of an exceedingly capacious bed whose cast-iron frame and carved head- and footboards must have dated from the Edwardian era, when presumably it had been designed to accommodate a whole family. It was pleasantly situated near the neatly net-curtained southwest bay windows of an equally venerable detached house on the gentler slope of Beacon Hill. It was the ideal venue for idle conversation in the late afternoons of autumn, and Lisa was already looking forward to the sultry evenings of summer.

“I don’t believe in taking genetic determinism to absurd lengths,” Miller told her in response to her question. “I’m an undistinguished specimen, physically speaking, and the quality of my mind has far more to do with my education than any genes I might have inherited from two parents, one an accountant, the other a primary-school teacher. I have, of course, deposited an abundant sample of my semen in a convenient gene bank, in case the world should ever feel that it needs more of my kind, but I am content to leave that decision to those who come after me. It is entirely possible that I shall accomplish far more by winning converts to the cause of algeny than by spreading fertile semen far and wide.”

“What’s algeny?” Lisa asked, as he had clearly intended her to do.

“The true scientific successor to alchemy. Chemistry never had the same objectives, and the fact that inorganic chemistry evolved so much faster than the chemistry of life distorted subsequent opinions as to the nature of the alchemical enterprise. Algeny is the science-based art of practical evolution: the constructive use of our newfound genetic wisdom. I am trying hard to popularize the term, as are a few other enlightened souls, but we have made little progress as yet.”

Such pillow talk as Lisa had been involved in before meeting Morgan Miller had tended to the monosyllabic, and she definitely preferred the new kind, even while recognizing the absurdity of its contrived pomposity.

“So you won’t be volunteering for the first experiments in human cloning?” she prompted, electing to stick to her own agenda rather than feed him the cues that would allow him to ride his own hobbyhorse comfortably into the neatly framed sunset.

“I shall not,” he confirmed, accepting her drift for the moment. “Edgar Burdillon might, but Edgar has ambition, as you’ve doubtless noticed. If he thought it might further his career … but in all likelihood, he lacks the necessary narcissism. I’m no admirer of conspiracy theories, but I strongly suspect that long before Roslin’s favorite sheep was unveiled to the world five years ago, there was more than one rich narcissist in America who had already commissioned his employees to carry forward the task of duplicating him with all possible expedition. There’s no fool like a vain fool, and American fools are currently the vainest of the vain. Not that I have anything against Americans per se, of course—the USA produces the world’s best-educated and most highly accomplished scientists, even if it has to import most of the raw material from the Far East. Its native stock has, alas, been temporarily ruined by feminism.”

“I don’t see how,” Lisa retorted—a little acidly, because she considered herself a feminist and could not abide the contemporary fashion that led so many women of her generation to refuse the label.

“Not intentionally, of course,” he said, smiling as if the tenor of her response had scored him a point in some mysterious game. “Indeed, it might be more accurate to say that it is the reaction againstfeminism that has secured the unfortunate and unintended consequences. The fact that more and more American women have become scientists during the last thirty years would not have been problematic had they simply been absorbed into the prevailing culture of science, but the growing resentment against them felt by their male colleagues and the consequent closure of ranks has resulted in the emergence of a distinct cultural divide. In England, which is nowadays among the last nations to be overwhelmed by the tide of cultural progress, we still speak of the two cultures as a way of contrasting science and the absurdly misnamed humanities, but the only genuine culture is scientific and technological, and the only meaningful cultural divisions are those that develop within science.”

“I see,” Lisa was quick to say, anxious not to be forced back into a purely submissive role, meekly accepting of his penetrative wisdom. “You’re talking about holism versus reductionism—holism being seen as metaphorically female, with an emphasis on consensus and conciliation, while reductionism is metaphorically male, on account of being individualistic and imperialistic. But every geneticist knows that it’s a false dichotomy—and even if it weren’t, I can’t see how it’s spoiled a whole generation of American scientists.”

“That’s not what I said,” Miller pointed out. “What I lamented is its present effect on the raw material of science: the brains of the young. In recent years, far too many feminists have been sidetracked into compiling what they imagine to be a feminist critique of science and technology, criticizing their supposedly excessive masculinity—and however nonsensical such critiques may be, they have had their influence on educational practice and evaluation. It won’t last, of course—feminists will realize soon enough that they have been tricked.”

“Tricked? By the great secret conspiracy of male chauvinists?”