  The newly discovered z=5.8 quasar SDSSp J104433.04-012502.2 was recently
detected in X-rays and found to be extremely X-ray weak. Here we present the
hardness ratio analysis of the XMM-Newton observation. We consider various
models to explain the detection in the soft X-ray band and non-detection in the
hard band, together with its X-ray weakness. We show that the source may have a
steep power-law slope, with an absorber partially covering the continuum. This
may be X-ray evidence to support the argument of Mathur (2000) that narrow line
Seyfert 1 galaxies, which show steep power-law slopes, might be the low
redshift, low luminosity analogues of the high redshift quasars. Heavily
shrouded and steep X-ray spectrum quasars may indeed represent the early stages
of quasar evolution (Mathur 2000, Fabian 1999) and SDSSp J104433.04-012502.2 is
possibly giving us a first glimpse of the physical evolution of quasar
properties.
