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Endangered Species
Robert Kerr-Doiren
Starr Chichester stopped on the narrow staircase, abruptly,
and smiled. For perhaps the first time in her life, certainly the first time
since she was a girl, the tatty poster on the concrete wall caught her
attention. There were so many of these posters about, all of them variations on
a theme, and they had been in place for so many years now, that they tended to
blur into the background. Virtually every bare wall, light-post and community
noticeboard still carried at least one of them---although the electronic
monitors and screens had given up the advertisements on the subject long since.
Everyone thought them redundant. The sole reason the posters themselves survived
was that no one could be bothered to remove them. This particular one read: "A
Proven Health Risk," and some hand, most probably feminine, had sketched a pair
of hornrimmed glasses and dotted in two crossed eyes over the stylized testicles
adjoined to the threateningly erect penis.
Chuckling, and wondering idly how many years had elapsed
since the vandalism, Starr reached out and traced a long vertical tear in the
poster. Of course she should report him. It was a simple enough matter to do.
One press of the correct icon, in any public booth. The "Ministry Of Health And
The Family" would follow up sharpish and no mistake. She could do it
anonymously.
But it had been fun, such fun...
Right up to the moment of revelation, as it were, she had
been perplexed by his reluctance. He was a handsome enough young male, after
all, tall and slim and obviously fit. And she had all the correct apparatus.
Yet he had resisted. Why?
What had interested her initially was the sheer absence of
rumours. Quite simply, no one, not a single female in the Department, seemed to
have slept with him. As it was inconceivable that anyone should have, and the
word not spread, "it followed as the night the day"---who wrote that? some male
long forgotten, and no doubt best left so---that the event in question had not
taken place. Never able to
resist a challenge, a trait listed as both a fault and a strength, depending
upon which |
