"Bound limb to limbAnd breast to breast,And I would give my soul for thisTo burn forever in burning hell."
"Bound limb to limbAnd breast to breast,And I would give my soul for thisTo burn forever in burning hell."
"Bound limb to limbAnd breast to breast,And I would give my soul for thisTo burn forever in burning hell."
"Bound limb to limb
And breast to breast,
And I would give my soul for this
To burn forever in burning hell."
It seemed incredible, but they could still breathe. It was almost suffocatingly cramped in the narrow space into which they had wedged themselves. But there were eroded patches in the half-decayed wood which let in the air and by controlling their breathing they could avoid straining their lungs to bursting and turning and twisting in a tormented way.
As they clung together time lost all meaning, for moments perhaps dangerously long. They were only aware of each other's nearness, and the sweetness of not caring, not even allowing themselves to think and grow fearful again.
What aroused them to an acute awareness of danger drawing near they never quite knew. The snapping of a twig in the forest gloom, perhaps, or the screaming of a bird winging skyward, or the slow, steady clump of boots where the ground was not soggy and the stillness magnified sound.
From whatever cause arising, Teleman's alertness became instant and all-pervasive. Alicia, too, stiffened in alarm, her fingers tightening on his arm.
"Listen," she whispered. "Did you hear—"
"Be quiet," he warned. "I think he's close to the log. If we stay just as we are he may pass us by."
Silence for a moment. Then, unmistakably, another sound—a grunt of anger and frustration close at hand. It came clearly to their ears and suddenly, to Teleman, further waiting in complete stillness seemed an affront to his dignity as an angry and embattled man. It was intolerable and could no longer be endured.
Recklessness and defiance overcame him. He raised his fist and pressed firmly and with all his strength against the rotting inner surface of the log. He did not forget to exercise caution, tried not to make a sound. He knew that he was taking a very great calculated risk, but a peep-hole was vital. Complete sightlessness was no longer to be endured.
The wood crumbled under the steady pressure, flaked away in a patch a little wider than his hand. Sunlight flooded into the log, and the sudden brightness dazzled him for an instant. Then his vision steadied and he realized that the brightness was caused by a single shaft of sunlight slanting downward across the log. Beyond the shaft the forest was still gloom-enshrouded, bathed in a half-light that made the flickering shadows seem grotesquely alive, waltzing nightmare shapes caught up in adanse macabre.
In the midst of the shadows a silent, gray-uniformed figure stood with his back to the log, a hand-gun gleaming at his hip, his heavyset body, shaven head and bull-like neck giving him an aspect of primitive brutishness.
Security guards, whether airborne or not, were specialists of an unusual sort, with a biogenetic heritage of brutal callousness which made them unique. Callous from birth, they were under compulsion to exercise restraint, killing only when necessary. They were dangerous and deadly at all times, accurate in the use of weapons and completely sure of themselves. But the deadliness had to be triggered by a Monitor's command, set in motion by desperate men and women in flight.
Pity was alien to their nature, for compassion of any kind seemed monstrous and abnormal to them and human frailty they could not even understand. And yet ... there was something quiet, dark and inwardly tormented about them, a restlessness, an unease, as if they could not quite bring themselves to believe that they were not as other men.
The figure did not move as Teleman stared, did not even change the position of his head. There was a small gleaming instrument in his right hand and the hand was half raised and he seemed to be listening. Teleman knew that the instrument was a small, portable scanner and that he was using his eyes alone. Sound did not interest him, and there was no need for him to listen with his ears.
In a sense, though hewaslistening, with his entire body, standing tense and alert, and watching a tiny needle oscillate and vibration frequencies register on the scanner's luminous dial.
It had to mean that he was overstimulated in a deep, preoccupied way, caught up in such a trancelike intensity of concentration that it would take a shout to arouse him or the crash of a falling branch. He would be unlikely to hear small sounds. The splintering of wood even—although rotting wood does not splinter and it can be peeled away in damp fragments or torn loose with a violent wrench.
It wasn't the first time that Teleman had watched a para-guard stand immobilized and entranced and abnormally on edge, but in an almost infantile way. The brutish simplicity of their natures predisposed them to devote all of their energies to one thing at a time, to make progress slowly and in step-by-step fashion. Now luck—blind luck perhaps—was making that limitation play directly into his hands. The para-guard was abnormally preoccupied, and he was facing away from the log.He was facing away, his back was turned.
Teleman used both hands to tear a wide gap in the rotting wood. The decay was not uniform and the outer bark remained firm here and there. But he managed to rip apart enough of the soggy, flaking wood to clear a space for his head and shoulders. He widened the gap further by swaying vigorously from side to side, half propelling, half dragging himself from the log to the forest floor.
The leaves directly beneath the log cushioned his descent, but did not crackle as he rose swiftly and agilely to his feet. He turned just as swiftly, his eyes darting to Alicia's white face framed in the gap, and pressed a finger to his lips. There was a look of wild startlement in her eyes but she managed to nod in quick understanding, answering his look of reassurance with a thin, tight smile.
FOUR
Less than thirty feet separated him from the para-guard. He covered two-thirds of the distance without haste, moving stealthily, his muscles tensing in preparation for a leap. Ten feet from the guard he abandoned all caution, not caring if the man heard him and turned. He preferred to grapple with a slightly alerted opponent. It was the surest way of measuring an antagonist, of estimating the quickness of his reflexes with hair-trigger accuracy. It was also the surest way of getting just the right grip on him from the start.
A twig snapped beneath Teleman's no longer cautious tread and the para-guard swung about with a hoarse cry. He was still turning when Teleman flung himself upon him. Teleman's left arm whipped around the guard's waist and tightened. He drew back his right arm and sent his fist crashing against a meaty jaw. He swung the man around and went staggering with him across the forest aisle, hitting him again and again with all his strength, jabbing at his stomach, his nose, landing solid blows on both sides of his face. He had the advantage of surprise and refused to relinquish it, putting a savage fury into each blow, giving the other no chance to regain his breath.
But it was far from a one-sided struggle. The guard was armed and that knowledge alone can speed the recovery of a man caught off guard and forced on the defensive. He also outweighed Teleman by thirty pounds, had a longer reach, and a thick-muscled strength which no city-bred man could hope to equal.
He got in a jarring right hand blow to Teleman's jaw before he broke free, loosening the lighter man's grip by kneeing him in the stomach and shattering it completely by twisting his torso sideways with a violent lurch. Teleman went staggering backwards, blood bubbling from his mouth and running down his chin. He wiped the blood away with the back of his hand, shook his head to clear it and kept his distance for an instant, his eyes on the para-guard's right hand.
The guard's bony-knuckled hand was darting toward the weapon at his hip when Teleman moved in close again. He lashed out with both fists, directing one blow at the guard's battered, bleeding nose and splaying his fingers to spread the blood over the man's rage-inflamed eyes. The other blow caught the guard on the wrist and was aimed with such accuracy that the weapon remained where it was.
He gave the thick-muscled brute no time to absorb punishment and go on the offensive again. He lashed him twice across the face with the edge of his hand, stamped on his foot and, because more than his own life was at stake, abandoned all scruples, and kneed him in the groin with such vigor that he groaned, bent almost double and went reeling backwards.
Teleman darted after him, whipped the hand-gun from its sheath on his hip, reversed it, and brought the weapon down sharply on a very thick skull. The guard slumped to his knees, shivered once convulsively and fell forward on his face. He lay still.
Teleman stood staring down at him for an instant, breathing harshly, black nausea clawing at his stomach. Then the wave of giddiness passed and he bent, unbuttoned the slumped man's uniform at the throat and slipped his hand down over the cold flesh directly over a heart that still appeared to be beating steadily, with no break in its rhythm.
Teleman waited for a moment to make sure, swayed a little, straightened, shook his head for the second time, and walked unsteadily back to the log.
Alicia arose from the log, ran to him and locked her hands behind his neck. She drew his head down and kissed him so passionately on the mouth that it increased his unsteadiness and almost stopped his breathing.
He was still clasping the hand-gun which he had taken from the guard and he tapped her gently on the shoulder with it, and ran the long steel muzzle gently up and down her spine, hoping that the firm, bizarre caressment and the cold feel of it would calm her and enable them both to recover a little from shock and strain and torment, and decide what they still must do to save themselves.
"If I'd been armed I could have taken him completely by surprise and knocked him unconscious without a struggle," he whispered. "I've managed to knock him unconscious, all right, with his own weapon. But I had to be as brutal as he was. It went against the grain somehow."
"But you had no choice," she breathed in vehement protest. "Darling, you had no choice at all. It was your life or his. And he's not dead, is he?"
Teleman shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he'll recover. But I couldn't just give him a light, friendly little tap on the skull. I had to make sure he wouldn't just blink his eyes and come at me again."
"You made sure. You did very well, darling. I'm proud of you."
Teleman sighed. "You've no reason to be," he said. "There must be a better way of solving human problems than going at it tooth and claw like beasts of the jungle. You'd have a right to feel proud of a man who could think out a way. I'm afraid it's beyond me."
"But we have to resist tyranny," she said. "We have to fight with every weapon we can seize hold of—with our naked fists when there's no other weapon. That's simple common sense, human nature being what it is."
"I've heard that argument before," Teleman said. "I'm not sure that it completely convinces me. But I haven't got what it takes to think out a better answer. Someday a man will be born who will have such a great, calm, wise mind that it won't even seem like a problem to him. He'llknowthe answer, and other answers as well, to other life-destroying and beauty-destroying and peace-destroying problems. Answers must be found or Man will go down into everlasting night and darkness."
"The man you speak of. He'd have to be ... a very great scientific specialist."
"He will not turn his back on science. You can be sure of that. Without science there can be no truly great and enlarged world view, no perfect society, no Utopia worth building. But he will be more than a scientist and more than a specialist. He will know how to create a completely new kind of human being."
"And love? Will he leave that out?"
"No, I am sure that he will not. It will be the cornerstone and the arch, and the gateway to all splendor. He will remove all the blindfolds, free all the captives who are imprisoned now by a cruel, needless hatred of beauty."
Teleman turned and stared at the slumped and unstirring para-guard, his lips tightening in grim apprehension. "We're cutting down our chances by standing here talking," he said. "I've never talked to a woman before with such a complete baring of my inmost thoughts. It made me forget for a moment where we are, and what has happened, and how great the danger is. We may not be alive a week from now to talk again in this way, with complete trust and understanding. It's a strange, new, intoxicating kind of fulfillment. If we were not in love and you were not so very beautiful—"
She nodded, her eyes shining. "I know," she said. "I forgot the danger too. We'd better bind him before we go on. I could tear a strip of cloth from my dress."
He shook his head, bent and quickly unlaced one of his medium-length civilian boots. "There are no laces on his boots," he said. "They're the kind you pull right on. But this will do to bind his wrists together. I'll cut the other lace in half and make it do double duty—half a lace for each of my boots. Seven or eight threaded eyelets will keep a boot on securely enough."
Despite the grimness of their mood, a faint smile flickered across Alicia's lips. "All right. But don't blame me if your boots fall off. A girl can only offer. I could as easily—"
"You'd be just as beautiful if you were in tatters," Teleman said, grateful for the way the banter in her voice had relieved his tension, and matching it with a levity that wasn't entirely forced. "Just as beautiful, give or take a few inches of added glamour. But I like you the way you are."
"You'd see more of me!"
"If you'd said that when I first met you and there was a para-guard to bind I'd have begged you to go ahead and rip your dress to shreds. I'd tell you I needed eight or ten strips of cloth at least."
"You mean you're becoming jaded, lover?"
"Not exactly. But you can't improve on a snow-white lily in all of its natural glory. Not when you've once seen the lily."
"That just goes to show how blind you still are in some respects. If a woman's attire is unusual and exciting, it's more exciting when she takes the dress off. Of course some women wear black to conceal all of their charms because that's exciting too in a different way. I read that in one of the old books. But it must be true, because all of our experience confirms it."
Teleman reached out and took firm hold of her hand again. "We've got to keep moving," he warned. "They'll be dropping another para-guard any moment now."
"I know," she breathed. "They'll surround the forest. We'll be completely at their mercy, with all escape cut off."
"This stretch of woodland extends for miles," Teleman said, his fingers tightening on her hand. "If we can find an isolated dwelling we'll have at least a fighting chance. There are certain ways of making scanner readings come out wrong. There are neutralizing techniques. With all of the household equipment of a dwelling to work with I may be able to confuse them completely. They'll have to search every square foot of the forest to get to us, and an exhaustive search takes time. With fifteen or twenty hours of grace, I may be able to work out some plan of escape that will get us to a crowded center undetected. We'll see!"
"But even if we lose ourselves in a crowded center they'll find us in the end," Alicia protested. "I want desperately to believe we'll have at least a fighting chance. But I'm too much of a realist—"
"Just don't think about it, darling," Teleman whispered. "Not right now. Trust me and believe in miracles. Just enough, anyway, to stay right where you are while I bind our friend."
The forest grew increasingly dense as they continued on, the foliage-filtered sunlight suffusing the darker recesses with an eerie, emerald glow. The droning of the flying machine had diminished and they heard it only as a faint, far-off echo.
They moved swiftly but cautiously, picking their way between tumbled masses of fallen foliage, huge, brightly-colored mushroom growths, and boulders overgrown with moss. They were five or six miles from the bound para-guard when they emerged quite suddenly into an acre-wide clearing and saw a small, stone-walled dwelling glimmering in bright sunlight.
FIVE
Fifty miles from the densely forested area where Teleman and Alicia had taken refuge, and completely unknown to them, another rebellion was causing the Monitors concern.
It was the first open challenge to their rule that could not be met with measures limited in scope: the drone of flying machines in pursuit of individual fugitives, the billowing of parachutes above airborne security guards, the slow, relentless descent of guards under instructions to kill if the fugitives resisted arrest or became too stubborn and resourceful.
On the bright waters of a land-locked harbor a pleasure boat two hundred feet in length was moving toward the harbor's only outlet, a narrow, winding channel which threaded its way between high banks to the open sea.
The boat, like a thousand similar craft on a hundred rivers and bays, was graceful in all of its aspects; graceful when the gleaming dark hull caught the sunlight and it veered slightly in its course, its many brightly-colored pennons fluttering in the breeze, graceful in the slant of its brow, the beauty and perfection of its high, glass-encased central cabin, and the rail of burnished bronze which completely encircled its foredeck.
It was designed for pleasure, but the pleasure was limited in scope, confined by Monitor vigilance to athletic activities which were strenuous and energy draining and to games which required intense concentration and intellectual skill.
No prolonged relaxation was permitted and any indulgence in pleasures which were taboo was instantly reported and punished. No beguiling of the senses was tolerated and spectator-entertainment on any level did not form a part of the recreational needs which the pleasure boats had been designed to serve.
There were no lighted screens with men and women in romantic roles standing on high balconies in a sunset glow and indulging in pleasures which could stir the imagination in unlawful ways. No dazzling drama and poetry and wild laughter, with lovers' hands entwined and lips pressed to eager lips in passionate abandonment in scenes too pulse-stirring for the non-love-privileged to endure.
Absolute sobriety was insisted upon. To the non-love-privileged such dramatic portrayals were not only taboo, they were an affront to the dignity and self-respect of industrial or scientific specialists in any field. There was no temptation in a strict sense, or so the Monitors were still determined to believe. If, in a few men and women outside the mating centers sex was beginning to rear its primitive head, and the old, dangerous impulses were making themselves felt, no such danger had existed when the pleasure boats had first been launched. Even now, such impulses were just beginning to manifest themselves, and the criminals could be exposed and brought to justice.
It was not too late, and the pleasure boats' recreational regimen had been designed to give such criminal impulses no encouragement at all. The original plan had perhaps been wiser in that respect than an earlier age had realized. Or perhaps the Monitors who had ordered the pleasure boats to be built and launched had feared that such impulses might someday arise, and had taken precautions to make sure that the recreational taboos would be strictly enforced.
There were security guards on all of the pleasure boats, but they wore no uniforms and mingled freely with the other passengers. Some were disguised as athletes, others as members of the crew or participants in one or more of the many intellectual games and archery contests.
In the pleasure boat which was now moving toward the open sea, its hull resplendent in the sunlight, one such guard stood on the open foredeck. He was a splendid figure of a man and quite unlike most security guards in build and carriage, with the slender hips and broad, straight shoulders of a trained athlete. There was nothing brutish or over-muscular about him, and he had handsome features and keen blue eyes. He was naked to the waist and wore about his loins an abbreviated, dark-blue tunic fastened at the waist with a silver buckle.
He stood motionless, staring at the high banks of the seaward-winding channel which the pleasure boat was just entering. Across the deck toward him another man was moving with an almost catlike agility, his hand at his waist, his face set in harsh lines. He was a little taller than the disguised security guard and outweighed him by fifteen or twenty pounds. The swiftly advancing man was accompanied by a woman whose face was contorted in a grimace of hate, a grimace so extreme that it marred the beauty of her features and gave her an almost demoniac aspect. Her dark hair, whipped into wild disarray by the wind and her flashing dark eyes made her seem even more like one of the Furies, a woman distraught and thirsting for vengeance.
The man at the rail did not hear the approaching pair until they were almost upon him. And by then he could do no more than swing about and stare at them in horror. The woman's companion had drawn a long, gleaming knife from the belt at his waist and the instant the security guard turned he plunged it into the startled man's stomach with a vigorous downward thrust, whipped it free and plunged it even more deeply into the security guard's side, giving him no time to ward off the attack with his hands or take a swift step backwards.
The guard groaned and began instantly to slump, a crimson stain spreading across his stomach from the gaping wound which the first thrust had left in the white flesh just above his tunic.
The face of the knife-wielder was dark with rage and the veins on his temples stood out like whipcords. He did not even permit the security guard to slump completely to the deck or to groan again and relieve a little of his torment. He caught him under the arms as he slumped, lifted him up, and slammed him back against the rail.
He shifted his hold on the mortally wounded man's body, gripping him firmly about the knees and bending him backwards across the rail until the sagging weight of his shoulders outbalanced the lower part of his body.
After that there was no need for the knife-wielder to shove vigorously to send the security guard toppling into the bay. But he did shove vigorously, in an excess of rage, breathing heavily as he watched his hated victim throw out one arm in a last futile effort to save himself. The woman screamed and covered her eyes as the guard went plunging downward.
The sound of the guard's body striking the water was drowned out by the drone of the pleasure boat's engines. There was a shower of spray and a bubbling froth on the water for an instant and then the bay was smooth again. They could not even see his slowly turning body as he sank, for the pleasure boat was moving rapidly.
The man turned abruptly and caught the woman in his arms. He gripped the hem of her garment just above the neckline, and with a choking sob tore it from neck to waist, completely baring her bosom. He buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and strained her to him, his hands unyielding on her naked shoulders. So fierce was his embrace, so firm and impetuous the pressure of his finger-tips in love's behalf that she cried out in pain but did not plead with him to release her. Instead she found his hand and clasped it tightly, whispering: "Yes, yes, I know. Yes, my darling. It was hard to do, and terrible. But you had no choice."
He released her after a long moment and began slowly to caress her hair, smoothing and rearranging it a little as he did so, making the dark, wind-ruffled tresses look less unruly and twining one strand around his finger in gentle love-play.
Gradually, as the gentleness of his caresses blurred the memory of a hateful violence, the color returned to her cheeks and she drew close to him again and kissed him on the lips.
"It was his life or ours," he said. "And the lives of every man and woman on this ship. We discovered the identity of that guard just in time. If he had kept silent, if he had not revealed his identity to you, he would have sent out a message which would have destroyed us all, for we are all in revolt. That is the great miracle. We drew strength from one another and love-making no longer seems criminal to us."
"It was never criminal," she said. "Only to the warped minds of the Monitors would anything so beautiful seem less than what it is—life's most generous gift to men and women everywhere. It breaks down all barriers, dissolves all hatreds."
"It dissolves all unjust hatreds," the man said. "But I hated that security guard because of what he said to you. Even though I knew the wonder of your love, I could not quite drive hatred from my mind. But that is not why I killed him, and perhaps it is a fault in me. I am only human."
"I hated him too," the woman acknowledged. "No, I do not think it a fault in you or in me. We have a right to hate treachery and hypocrisy and deceit. If that guard had sent a message of warning to the Monitors and they had ordered us all destroyed I would not have held him responsible, even though you had to kill him to save the lives of a hundred men and women. He would have simply been carrying out orders. What I hated him for was his betrayal of the Monitors, not out of sympathy for us, but to gain a cruel and brutal advantage for himself."
The woman tightened her lips and her eyes flashed again in bitter anger. "I hated him because he made brutal advances to me, clasping me like a ruffian while I struggled to free myself, and insisting that I endure a night of shame and horror in his embrace—demandingthatas the price of his silence. I did not submit and he had to free me, but his loathsome kisses still burn my mouth. If love is forced on a woman by a man not of her choice how can it be other than intolerable and degrading to her integrity as a human being?
"What woman does not desire, in her secret heart, to have for a lover a man who is capable of virile love-making, who is not afraid to embrace her as you did just now, with such ardor that she cries out, and wishes almost that he would take his questing hands and burning lips away and yet is swooning with the sweetness of it, and would never forgive him if he became less vehement before hot tides of passion flow in the moment of love's supreme fulfillment. What woman would not welcome such love-making, would not rejoice in it? But what woman, by the same token, wishes to be taken against her will by a man whom she does not love? There is an ugly word in the old books for that kind of love-making. It was called rape."
The man's face had gone very pale. He said: "If I had known that he had dared to embrace you I would not have stabbed him. I would have seized him by the throat and killed him with my bare hands."
"I told you that he did not harm me. His rough embrace was hard to endure, but it was over in a moment and an embrace is not a ravishment. A thing like that can happen to any woman, and often does. It need not cause you torment. And he has paid, hasn't he? You have avenged me to the full, although you killed him for a different reason."
"I believe I would have killed him for that reason alone if I had known about it."
"You are very jealous, my darling, very hot-headed. No man, no matter how much of a brute he may be, deserves to die if he merely seizes a woman briefly and presses rough kisses upon her lips, however unwelcome those kisses may be. I do not feel that I have been seriously soiled or degraded. He was a coward and his cowardice recoiled upon himself. He was afraid that I would betray him to the Monitors. If I could offer proof that he had made me pregnant his fate would have been sealed along with ours."
The man's face was deathly pale now. "Do you have to talk like that? Do you have to say such things? You know what it does to me."
"I simply wished to make you realize that you are torturing yourself quite needlessly. I remain a virgin still. We are new to love, darling—you and I. We have never experienced the full glory of it, not in an intimate way. Because I am new to love I speak perhaps with too much candor. I do not even know how to choose the right words, the delicate words that a woman should perhaps use when she speaks of such matters. I do not know—I am not sure. There is so much in the old books that I do not completely understand. You must teach me, darling, teach me the exact meaning of the forbidden words and just what words a woman should choose."
He stood looking at her for a moment in complete silence, the color coming back into his face, his eyes on her young, full-bosomed beauty. He could not take his eyes from the twin mounds of her firm, tip-tilted breasts and the rosy pinkness that suffused her exquisite throat.
"I will teach you the meaning of more than just the words," he said. "There is so much that I should like to teach you if you are willing to be taught. We are new to love, as you have said, but I feel, somehow, that I know more about it than you do."
"Are you saying that because you are a man?" she asked, and her voice held a tantalizing hint of mockery.
"I'm not sure," he said. "But I do feel that. What does it matter? Do you really wish to know more?"
Her eyes answered for her, increasing in brightness and tenderness, fastening on his face with a look of surrender and appeal.
He stepped forward and gathered her into his arms. He carried her across the deck toward the glass-encased central cabin, murmuring endearments, his arms tight about her. She rested her head on his chest, pressing her lips against the hollow of his throat, moving them back and forth with the exciting eagerness, the fierce impatience, of an amorously aroused woman abandoning herself to an anticipation of love's delights.
"I will take you to my cabin," he whispered. "It is ill-equipped for the exploration of an experience new to us, for the strange, bright wonder of love's complete fulfillment. There are darts and a circular target on the wall, a double bar on a metal support for morning exercises, a wooden board on a table that I yesterday overturned in rage, because the game oftrig, which I have never really liked, seemed to me to have eight ivory-inlaid figures too many and my opponent was more skillful than I. It is a sparsely furnished cabin, an almost Spartan cabin, for the athlete and rather dull-witted agricultural specialist that I thought myself to be."
"Until you fell in love," she whispered.
"Yes, darling, until I fell in love. And there is no man on this ship and no woman who does not now feel as we do. Our rebellion is a courageous one, unalterable in purpose. The ship is ours and we shall take it to sea. We shall know all of love's delights for many days and nights and the Monitors will be powerless to interfere."
They had entered the central cabin and he had set her down and she was walking now with one arm about his waist, her head resting against his shoulder.
The cabin was dimly lighted and on both sides of them the strangest of murmurings arose. They could not see clearly into the shadows, but what they could not see they sensed—the presence everywhere of men and women like themselves, walking back and forth in a trancelike stillness, enraptured by the preliminary intimacies of love. They caught a glimpse of white limbs in the shadows, of bodies pressed breast to breast or even more amorously intertwined, with lips joined to lips and hands interlocked, and there were a dozen lovers standing motionless and making no sound at all.
"Why do they not all go to their cabins?" the woman whispered, brushing with her lips her companion's ear. "You would think they would be consumed with a fierce impatience. There are many things about love that I do not understand."
"They are consumed with impatience," the man replied. "But they wish to prolong what would otherwise be over too quickly. I'm afraid there are many things about love which you have yet to learn."
"Did I not just say so? You are my teacher, are you not?"
"I am, my darling," he whispered. "But you will also be my teacher. There is no end to the things a woman can teach a man about love."
"I have only one question to ask you now. Shall we tarry here as these others are doing?"
"No, I am incapable of such restraint. My impatience is too great."
"Very well. We will go directly to your cabin and you will teach me as you have promised to do. I hope that I will be an accomplished pupil and not disappoint you in any way."
"I hardly think that you will disappoint me, my darling."
"How can you be sure? The old books say that a woman like myself, a woman who has always been—"
A slow flush crept up over her cheeks and she gripped his arm tightly. "Oh, I cannot say the word."
"You said it once before. A woman who is still virginal. That is not unusual at all. In fact, all of the non-love-privileged have been virginal, and only now—I am myself a virgin, although the term sounds a little ridiculous when it is applied to a man. But I cannot help that, and it is no disgrace, really, for it is common to us all. It is an absurdity which we shall soon put an end to."
"You mean to say—"
"Let us not be technical about it, my darling. According to the old books a man who has preserved his chastity is also called a virgin."
"And you have preserved yours? Are you telling me the truth?"
"A woman's curiosity. Well—"
"Tell me the truth. When did you first experience the stirring?"
"Perhaps a month ago."
"And in the past four weeks you have never—"
"Well...."
"Do you think it would make me love you less?"
"No, I do not think that. And I will be honest with you. I—"
"Never mind. Do not tell me. I do not want to know. It is only natural for a man to lie a little about that, according to the old books, and I will not hold it against you. But make sure that you love me tonight, darling, make sure that you love me well."
"I will," he promised. "I will, darling. I will."
The cabin was in total darkness, but the man switched on the light as they entered, and the sparse furnishings leapt into instant relief, three chairs and a table, the athletic cross-bar he had mentioned, and in the corner a couch.
The woman did not linger in the doorway staring at the furnishings of the cabin. She went directly to the couch and reclined upon it, saying in a quiet voice, "Sit down beside me, darling. Lie down if you wish. You look very tired. It has been a terrible ordeal. The taking of a human life is never easy, even when it is justified, and for the sake of others. I had no right to ask you to make love to me. I had no right to expect it."
He turned off the light before he crossed the room to sit beside her. After a moment she was in his arms, her lips seeking his in the darkness. Their lips were quickly joined, and in another moment he gently removed the tunic which encircled her loins. The root of his manhood came vigorously to life and her body seemed to melt beneath the demanding ardor of the caresses.
Her loins quivered and flesh bruised flesh in the tenderest of bruisings. Complete fulfillment came to them both at the same moment, and for a full minute they neither moved nor spoke, content to remain locked in each other's arms in the warmth and melting languor of passion's afterglow.
They slept at last, content, at peace, unaware that all about them terrible dark storm clouds were gathering.
The flying machines came in swarms, encircling the pleasure ship without warning. They came trailing jets of liquid fire, and assembled in circular formation directly above the ship. Around and around they flew, black mechanical hawks with iron talons, their crews on the alert and awaiting orders, their spread wings darkly silhouetted against the red disk of the sun.
They swooped and soared, but did not open fire. Far below the ship continued on its course, as if their presence in the sky in no way concerned the men and women on board. Sleeping men and women for the most part, made drowsy by the aftermath of love, reluctant to stir and greet the dawn when it was so much more pleasant to rest in the arms of a beloved partner.
So much more pleasant to rest and sigh contentedly and turn over and go to sleep again, while in the air death hovered and the air was filled with the steady drone of wings.
No one on board the pleasure boat knew that the body of a slain security guard had been washed ashore further along the coast and a message found on him. They would not have succumbed to panic if they had known, for their rebellion had strengthened their courage and they had known from the first that the ship would be in danger during every moment of the voyage.
Escape to a desert island in the untraveled traffic lanes of the South Pacific had been the one thread of hope they had dared to take seriously. From that slender thread they had woven a fabric of shimmering bright colors—an island colony which the Monitors would never discover, small white dwellings on a coral atoll, a world in miniature where the right to love and be loved could not be taken from them, a new world in the making.
But first the long voyage, the long honeymoon beneath the stars. Days and nights of rapture, of almost continuous love-making while the constellations wheeled above them and new strength flowed into them.
They had dared to dream and to act boldly, but from the first they had been prepared for the disaster which had now come upon them. The Monitors had been warned and the air above the ship was black with wings and there could be no escape now, for each flying machine carried a deadly cargo.
The order to open fire was given twenty minutes after the black mechanical hawks had assembled in battle formation above the slow-traveling vessel.
The message was in code and it was quietly communicated to the pilot-commander of each flying machine, by a uniformed man with an expressionless face standing stiffly at attention. The message bore the signature of three Monitors and was countersigned by the entire council of Monitors with the code letters which the Council used when it was summoned into emergency session.
There was no escape from that message. It was delivered in completely undramatic fashion and there was no drama in the quiet response of the commanders. The bearers of the messages were simply dismissed with a nod and when they returned to their battle stations their faces were still expressionless.
A little tightening of the lips here and there perhaps, the faintest glint of sympathy and compassion in eyes ordinarily cold and duty-disciplined.
On the flying machines there were a few men who had experienced the stirring and so could have wished that they were not security specialists and could meet and mingle with women, know the soft caress of a woman's hand and look with tenderness into a loved face and abandon themselves to all the delights of the dark as the rebels far below had done.
But on none of the flying machines was there any hesitation or open rebellion when the order to open fire was given.
The carrying out of that order was immediate and cataclysmic. The entire sky seemed to burst into flame. There was a roaring and a screaming and the black mechanical hawks careened down the sky, each dropping an egg on the water below and wheeling and returning and dropping more eggs until the thunder of their wings became deafening.
The eggs did not explode instantly. They bobbed about for a moment in the water on both sides of the smoke-enshrouded ship and in its screaming wake and directly in front of it.
Then, one by one, the eggs stopped bobbing. Each gave birth to a mushrooming monster, a shape of flame that went spiraling skyward.
The air about the ship seemed to quiver and flow inward, as if to fill a vacuum that was all flame and thunder. A blinding glare united the mushrooming spirals, spread out and beyond them until sea and sky became enveloped in a swirling incandescence.
When the incandescence vanished the ship was gone. Nothing at all moved upon the waters.
SIX
The dwelling had an abandoned look. There were drawn blinds on all of the windows, and the flower beds running parallel with the front lawn were heavily overrun with weeds. Tall asters drooped on wilted stalks and most of the plants of brilliant bloom had withered and turned sere.
Teleman and Alicia approached with caution, however, keeping their voices lowered and treading softly until they were standing directly under the dwelling's projecting eaves.
The metal entrance panel was massive and overgrown with clinging vines. When Teleman depressed the switch to the right of it a faint, humming sound arose.
They stood in the shadows that clustered thickly at the base of the dwelling's two-story facade until the panel glided completely open, and the main-floor interior came into view. From the entranceway they could see almost the whole of a large, square room with two windows, furnished simply but tastefully with several chairs of natural wood, a center table and plants in copper urns.
Teleman tapped Alicia lightly on the arm. "I'll go first," he said. "We'll speak in whispers. We've got to move cautiously until we're absolutely sure that the place is as deserted as it looks."
"I'm not too worried," Alicia said. "Only an ordinary citizen would live in a dwelling as modest as this."
"Ordinary or not, he could be armed and dangerous," Teleman pointed out. "Particularly if we're taken by surprise."
Alicia nodded. "You're right, of course. Go ahead, darling. What I really meant was, I'm not worried because we're together. If we run into trouble we'll know how to deal with it."
The light which streamed into the room from the two windows dappled the floor in patches, and they took care to stay close to the right-hand wall and well out of the light as they moved from the entranceway to the base of an ascending stairway. The stairway, like the chairs and table, was of natural wood and each of its ten or twelve steps was covered with a thick coating of dust.
Teleman started and grew instantly alert, his eyes narrowing as he stared down intently at the first four steps. There were markings in the dust, faint but unmistakable. Someone had ascended the stairs quite recently, leaving elongated impressions which were completely free of dust.And that someone had not come down!
Teleman drew in his breath sharply. That the elongated impressions had been made by the soles of boots he could not doubt. Ascending boots, for the toes pointed forward and there were no opposite impressions with the toes pointing toward him. Not all of the impressions were clear but there was faint corrugations in the dust even on the one step where, at first glance, he had noticed only the dust.
"What is it?" Alicia whispered. "What are you staring at?"
"There's someone upstairs," he replied, keeping his voice lowered but gripping her wrist tightly to make sure that she would remain completely still. "Footprints in the dust. See them? Don't move, even slightly. I'm going up a few steps, but I'll be very careful."
She nodded, her fingers creeping over his hand and tightening for an instant. "Yes, be careful. If the stairs should creak—"
"They won't. Stay right where you are and don't worry."
Teleman ascended cautiously, testing each step before he passed to the next by resting his weight upon it guardedly, his ears alert for the slightest sound. The wood did not creak and he reached the top step in complete silence.
The stairs ended in a circular corridor bisected by a narrow beam of sunlight which filtered down from a small, diamond-shaped window high in the wall. The footsteps did not end at the top of the stairs, but continued on down the corridor to vanish in total darkness.
Teleman had intended merely to check each of the dust-covered steps to make sure that all of the footprints pointed in one direction. But now, having satisfied himself in that respect, he abandoned all caution.
Returning down the stairs only to ascend again after a moment or two of calm thought would be wasting precious moments. Better, he told himself, to go on immediately and put an end to all uncertainty. He was quite sure that Alicia would understand and not attempt to follow him.
He glanced quickly back down the stairs, saw her slender form crouching in the shadows and waved to her. Without changing her position she returned the gesture, her eyes shining in the half-light.
Reassured, he turned and advanced across the circular corridor, taking care to move stealthily. The corridor terminated in a hallway so narrow that his shoulders grazed both sides of it when his tread became slightly hesitant and he shifted his equilibrium in the darkness.
The hallway was as black as pitch. With no glimmer of light to guide him he continued on, straining his ears as he traversed the narrow passageway and the upstairs room which he was almost sure he would find at the end of it.
Then, quite suddenly, he stopped trying to visualize the room arrangement on the second floor of the dwelling. It ceased to matter, ceased to seem important. He was only aware of the voices.
The voices came drifting toward him out of the darkness, halting his cautious step-by-step advance, causing him to stand utterly motionless, with every nerve alert.
A man's voice and a woman's voice. He heard the woman's voice first, vibrant with emotion, both languid and intense, as if, in some sudden awakening after a dream of rapture, there was a need for words to make happiness and fulfillment as complete as possible.
"We came back because we had to, my dearest one, my beloved," the woman was murmuring. "And you carried me upstairs, just as you did on our bridal night. It all seems so unbelievable even now. We dared to be recklessly romantic, true lovers in the old, half-forgotten way—we dared to be true to ourselves. We had the courage, we dared."
"I know," the man whispered, his voice tender and exultant. "And when we refused to pass our first night together in a mating center. We soared to heights that had to be scaled again. We are too desperately, madly in love to accept a lesser glory. We had to be alone together in this simple, beautiful cottage in the woods. Only here can we pluck the uttermost rose of love, surrender ourselves one to the other in a secret place of our own choosing. Only here can we know how the poet felt when he wrote: 'Love is like a shining river, its banks flower-bright, with secret shrines and bowers which lovers alone may enter and become imperishably entwined. Love is a flowing, a radiance in the night.'"
"I'm glad that we came back last night," the woman murmured. "If we had waited we might have lost a little of our courage and any loss might have made us hesitate to defy the Monitors and risk everlasting disgrace. In a way, I feel like a woman who is not love-privileged, who has been denied the fulfillment of a woman's greatest need."
"A man's greatest need too, my darling," came in quick reply. "Remember that, always. No man can live without love and be creative in the highest sense. He cannot be bold and far-seeing and dare the stars. He needs the embrace of a woman, the undying love of a woman, a mutual sharing in all of love's secret delights or he will shrivel in his inmost being. He will become a mockery and a sham—a walking sepulchre filled with dry bones that rattle in every passing gust. He will become a tyrant and fool, venting his inner frustration and his rage on those weaker than himself—the helpless, the defenseless, the socially maladjusted who in many ways are often superior to himself."
The voices fell silent. But there were sounds in the darkness, a stirring, a moving about and to Teleman, still standing motionless, it was easy to imagine what was taking place in the room at the end of the hallway.
He did not wish to intrude. He would have struck down and perhaps attempted to kill anyone intruding on Alicia and himself, had the situation been reversed.
But now the need for immediate, drastic action forced him to thrust all such considerations aside. The man and woman in the room just beyond were sex-privileged and that fact alone had suggested a daring course of action which he had no right, if only for Alicia's sake, to postpone.
It was a scheme so audacious that the first move had to succeed and the second and the third. Each would be charged with danger, and the stakes would be survival or almost certain death.
The man making love in the room at the end of the hallway was for the moment defenseless, unaware that an intruder had entered his home and was listening to his every spoken word. If there was a weapon in the dwelling it was probably not within his reach. He would have to leap out of bed and cross the room to get his hands on it. It might even be in the room downstairs.
He appeared to be the kind of man Teleman would have been proud to number among his friends. The woman too was exceptional; warm-hearted and courageous. But Teleman could not risk appealing to them directly. Their sympathy and understanding might bridge all gulfs and lead to a lasting friendship. But he would still have to ask too much of them and expose them to too much danger. They would have to agree voluntarily to a plan which would place their own lives in jeopardy.
He had no right to force such a choice upon them, no right to make an appeal which their own generous natures might prevent them from refusing. Unless they were found in the dwelling bound and completely helpless the Monitors would refuse to believe that they had not taken part in a criminal conspiracy to aid two fugitive lawbreakers.
They might still have difficulty in explaining their presence in the dwelling, for the love-privileged were required by law to spend their nights in the mating centers. But recreational leaves were sometimes granted and the man and the woman were highly intelligent, and would know how to speak with eloquence in their own defense. Their lapse was not a serious one, and Teleman was quite sure that they would know how to turn aside the wrath of the Monitors. It took great courage to do what they had done. But they would not be subject to the death penalty, and would escape with no more than a stern admonition.
To mar the happiness of a man and woman so desperately in love even for a day and a night made Teleman sick at heart. But he had no choice. All of the Monitors' rage would be directed against Alicia and himself and he could not let Alicia die....
He moved cautiously forward, dreading what he must do, and was not aware that he had reached the door of the room until he saw the white sheets of a bed gleaming faintly in the darkness.
He stood for a moment in the doorway, unseen, unheard, waging an inner struggle with himself. Should he make some slight sound to warn them, risk that much before he advanced upon the bed to make his presence known in an unmistakable way?
The man would have to be ordered from the bed and threatened with the hand-gun which Teleman had taken from the para-guard. Teleman hoped that he would not have to use the gun as he had used it against the guard to exact instant compliance from the man. But he was prepared for any contingency, no matter how desperate.
SEVEN
Monitor 6Y9 stood staring at the electronic scanner-glass, her gaunt body stooping a little, her face half in shadow. Behind her the high white wall of a Security Observatory towered, totally blank from floor to ceiling and shining with a dull lustre. At her side stood a bearded young man in the somber black garb of an Advisory Specialist, his face almost as gaunt as the woman's and scarcely more masculine in aspect, for the woman was an Amazon in build and strength despite her leanness.
"They have escaped," the gaunt woman murmured. "See there! That blind, stupid pig of a para-guard lying bound and nothing but a stretch of dense woodland beyond with no scanner pickup anywhere."
"No reason to take it so much to heart," the bearded man said, a slight smile on his thin, almost bloodless lips. "You seem to hate them for personal reasons, and that surprises me. I'd advise you to keep how you feel to yourself. If they have committed the grave crime you've charged them with—and attacking that guard was just as grave a crime—they will have to answer for their criminal behavior with their lives. Doesn't that satisfy you? To feel personal animosity toward a lawbreaker is inexcusable in a Monitor. It would be inexcusable in me."
"You are a fool!" the gaunt woman said, turning upon him with a gesture of angry defiance, her dark eyes flashing. "I am not obliged to take your advice, for my authority is superior to yours."
"You might do well to heed it," the young man said. "Your authority is not superior to the Supreme Council of Monitors in full, law-making session. And an Advisory Supervisor, even an Advisory Specialist, can strongly influence the voting."
"And why should you influence the Council in a manner unfavorable to me," the gaunt woman demanded. "Have I not always been your friend? Don't forget, it was I who elevated you to your high station. If you turn against me now you will regret it."
The young man inclined his head. "Perhaps. I do owe a great deal to you. But personal animosity can distort judgment, and further threaten our supremacy. I do not like it. We must act coolly and without bias."
"How can I act coolly when those two accused me of—" The gaunt woman hesitated and tightened her lips, a deep flush creeping up over her cheekbones. "On the travel strip they accused me of secretly harboring criminal impulses as monstrous as their own," she went on in a sudden, uncontrollable burst of rage. "They dared to affront my ears with outrageous and shameful insinuations. They said that I too had experienced the stirring and that I refused to face the truth about myself and that the repression of that baseness in me had made me cruel and vindictive. They said I was envious of what they did openly and without shame, in the full light of day."
"Was it really as bad as all that?" the Advisory Specialist asked, his voice not entirely lacking in sympathy. "Well, I can understand how you must have felt. But at least they only made love openly when the travel strip was deserted for many paces and when you were still in the distance. You told me so yourself."
"I could still see them. The security guard could see them as well."
"It might have been better if you had shut your eyes to what you saw. The rebellion is spreading rapidly and we encounter many such criminal transgressions daily, even on the travel strips. Those two were unusual in many ways, more daring than most of the others, willing to take greater risks. To defy a Monitor as they did, threatening her with physical violence and to leave the strip and take to the woods in a daring bid for freedom, skilfully eluding pursuit, displaying extraordinary intelligence, outwitting us at every turn. Surely you must realize that it has set a dangerous example which others may not be slow in following!"
"That is why they must be caught and brought to justice!" the gaunt woman cried, her fury making her tremble and congesting the whites of her eyes. "The death sentence must be imposed as quickly as possible. They must stand before the Supreme Council, stripped naked, exposed in all of their shame, and they must be forced to make a full confession. Oh, we shall not spare them.Iwill not spare them. I shall demand that right.
"I shall force them to reveal all of the monstrous details of their nights together in the dark: the criminal moments of unlawful love-making, her wantonness, his amorous abandonment to her every illicit whim. It is the woman who is always the most to blame. She has led him on and destroyed him, for no man can resist a woman skilled in all of the wiles and enticements of the harlot. Yes, yes, yes ... I will use that old, almost forgotten word. I have read the old books and I know what a harlot was and what a harlot did. I will fling the word in her face. Harlot and courtesan, strumpet and destroyer of men!"
"There is another word, a more ribald word, that you had best not say," the young man advised. "You must try to control yourself and exercise calm judgment when you make the charge. Otherwise the Council will accuse you of bias."
"Let them accuse me! I will speak my mind."
"I have advised and warned you," the young man said. "I can do no more. And I'm afraid you're forgetting that they must first be captured. Look at the glass. More para-guards are descending and the scanner beams are moving again. Another stretch of woodland is coming into view. Their capture may not be long delayed. There is consolation in that—it is an encouraging step forward. The pursuit has been resumed."
The gaunt woman swung about to face the glass, her eyes brightening, a rapacious eagerness in her stare.
In the depths of the brightly illumined glass the forest seemed elfin and remote, enveloped in a weaving interplay of light and shade. Five para-guards were descending slowly above a boulder-strewn stretch of forest floor, brightened here and there by red and yellow fungus growths and moss-covered logs that glowed with a faint phosphorescence in the shadowed hollows between the rocks.
One by one the para-guards reached the ground, threw off their cumbersome air-suspension equipment, and checked the firing mechanism of their hand-guns, their faces harsh and grimly purposeful in the downstreaming light. Two of them were equipped with portable scanners and as they moved the instruments about the scene shifted and another stretch of woodland filled the glass. A patch of open sky swept suddenly into view and across it a flying machine darted, looking, in the glass' miniature reproduction of the scene, not unlike an enormous, blue-black hornet.
"They must be taken alive," the gaunt woman breathed. "With success so near I would be a fool not to change my original orders. Even if they resist they must not be attacked with weapons. I will issue new orders immediately."
"I would advise you to give it careful thought," the young man said. "You will be risking the lives of five para-guards. The man is armed now and—"
"Be silent. I shall do as I please. The death of five guards would be a very cheap price to pay for the apprehension alive of such monstrous criminals."
The young man sighed. "Have it your own way, then. But the Council may not take a kindly view of such head-strong behavior. After all, human life hassomevalue."
The gaunt woman's eyes flashed again in anger, but before she could reply the entrance panel on the opposite wall of the Security Observatory glided open, and an armed guard stood framed in the aperture. He stood stiffly at attention, his hand raised in salute, his expression tense, but deferential, as if the news he had to convey would have burst from his lips if he had dared to ignore discipline.
The Monitor regarded him irately for an instant, and although the anger in her eyes was not meant for him it caused him to take a swift step backward.
"What is it?" she demanded. "Don't just stand there. Speak up."
"We followed your instructions and dropped seven para-guards at the opposite end of the forest," he said. "They have captured a man and a woman. They may be the two you seek, though it is hard to believe they could have covered so many miles. They were dragged from a tangle of underbrush, locked criminally in each other's arms. They are not sex-privileged."
The gaunt woman stood very still, her lips paling a little, an indescribable look, of shock and triumph commingled, perhaps, coming into her face.
"Where are they?" she demanded, her voice so choked with emotion that the guard had to strain to catch the words. "What have you done with them?"
"They are here," he said. "I knew that you would want me to bring them here immediately. They are just outside—"
"Bring them in! You try my patience. Bring them in and be quick about it."
The guard swung about and was gone for a moment. When he returned he was accompanied by a man and a woman, both securely gagged and with their hands tied behind them.
The woman was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with exotically beautiful features, her eyes almond-shaped, her skin so fair and delicately textured that it seemed almost transparent. The man was well past his first youth, but still in his prime, with a lithe strength in his build and posture, an absence of excess weight, which made it hard to think of him as a man approaching middle age. He was deeply sun-bronzed, and had the look of a man who has lived most of his life under open skies. There was great strength in his features as well, features too rugged to be thought of as handsome but radiating a strange kind of sensitivity, as if he were both an athlete and poet, man of action and dreamer of dreams.
The woman was shaking her head violently in an attempt to dislodge the gag, her dark eyes flashing with anger, but the man stood very still and straight, regarding his captors with a coldly defiant stare. There was contempt in his gaze as well, a proud disdain which he made no effort to conceal.
The gaunt woman stood staring at them for a moment with a look of bitter, rage-envenomed disappointment on her face. Then, quite suddenly, her eyes clouded over and became almost opaque, like the eyes of a cobra poised to strike.
"I had never thought to encounter such stupidity," she breathed, more to herself than to the uneasily staring guard. "Why were they brought here? They do not in the least resemble the other two. I have never set eyes on them before. They are complete strangers to me and strangers who stand accused of the most revolting of crimes should not be brought into my presence at this time. It is more than I can endure."
The guard's ruddy face changed color, becoming almost pale. "We had their description, nothing more," he said, quickly and defensively. "No likenesses were transmitted, since you yourself could only describe them. We had to make sure. We thought it was just barely possible—"
"Silence, you fool. I have heard enough. Give me your whiplash. I will not need your hand-gun. Just the whiplash."
"You are not going to—" The guard's face was deathly pale now. "No, no, try to understand. I have not merited—"
"You blundering stupid fool! It is not you I am going to chastise. It is these two. I will listen first to what the woman has to say. Then, if she has no shame, if she will not confess her guilt and admit that she has been justly accused, as all criminal offenders must do, I will punish her. Give me the whiplash."
"Yes, of course," the guard said, unbuckling from his waist the flexible metal rod terminating in five catgut thongs which the gaunt woman was now regarding with a fixed, almost hypnotic intensity. Some of the color had crept back into his face and he breathed a long sigh of relief as he handed it to her.
It was the Advisory Specialist's turn to look at her in consternation. He stepped quickly forward and laid a restraining hand on her arm.
"You must be quite mad!" he said, warningly. "The Council will not overlook or forgive the use of a whiplash by a Monitor in a private interrogation. The very word you used—chastise. It is a brutally primitive word, a word out of the old books, a completely unscientific word that should be strictly excluded from the vocabulary of a Monitor. You will bring ruin and disgrace upon both of us. I will not be a party to it."
"Then go!" the gaunt woman cried, almost screaming the words. "I have always suspected you were nothing but a coward. Go, leave me. I can no longer endure the sight of you."
Without a word, his face as pale as the guard's had been, the young man turned and left the Observatory, the entrance panel closing behind him with a dull droning.
Grasping the whiplash firmly, the gaunt woman stepped quickly forward and tore the gag from the dark-eyed girl's mouth.
The girl recoiled a step, and stood for an instant motionless, her shoulders held straight and her eyes still blazing with anger. She did not seem to want to be the first to speak, for she kept her lips tightly compressed and her chin tilted defiantly. So fierce was her pride and uncompromising dignity that for the briefest instant the gaunt woman hesitated, as if some vestige of human feeling, of compassion and respect deep in her nature was urging her to be merciful. Then, as quickly as it had arisen, the impulse vanished, and the enraged Monitor unleashed a torrent of vituperation, her voice trembling with fury.
"Lascivious wanton, lewd temptress, abandoned harlot! How many men have you betrayed? How many men have you aroused unlawfully, tempting them to engage in acts of criminal carnality which all of the lessons of their childhood and early adolescence had given them the strength and wisdom to withstand? And the glandular injections, the wise, sane quieting of desire, its almost complete eradication in high-minded specialists in a hundred fields whose social dedication has made our society what it is—how dared you flaunt your brazen primitiveness openly and destroy what it has taken centuries to create?
"You have committed the most terrible of crimes. You have discovered in your wickedness that here and there, among a few men who are criminals at heart, the old, dangerous impulses are stirring again and perhaps have never been wholly subdued. And because they are stirring in you, because you are an abandoned creature lost to all shame, you have led many such men along pathways of gross sensuality, of unlawful desire. How many? A hundred, a thousand? You do not need to tell me. I can guess. It is always the woman who is most to blame, even when she consorts with men who are themselves criminals, as is this man here."
The girl spoke then, for the first time. She did not raise her voice and the anger which flamed in her eyes did not make her words come in a rush, as the Monitor's words had done. She spoke with dignity and each word was chosen with care and each word fell on the gaunt woman's ears with the force of a stinging rebuke.
"If you had wisdom and warmth and understanding you would have said, quite simply: 'He is a man—you are a woman. No woman can live without love and give to the world the best that is in her, and increase the world's store of radiance and tenderness and beauty. And no man can live without love and be complete in his inmost being, and have the courage of his beliefs and build proud new worlds on the ashes of a world such as this, a world which is dying."
"If our world is dying, you have helped to kill it!" the gaunt woman cried, her face dark with rage. "Do you hear? You have helped with your wantonness. You were caught making love in the forest like—like wild animals."
"No, you are mistaken," the dark-eyed girl said quietly. "We were making love with dignity, tenderness and beauty."
The gaunt woman's rage could no longer be constrained by anything short of violence. The words that came to her lips in reply were never uttered. She could no longer articulate and the words became a low muttering which continued even when she seized the hem of the girl's white garment and ripped it from her shoulders, baring her back from neck to waist.
She raised the whiplash and brought it down with all her strength on the girl's naked back. Three times she raised the punitive weapon and brought it down with relentless violence, her breath wheezing in her throat.
The thongs cut cruelly into the girl's flesh, raising long crimson welts, and sending her staggering forward. She raised her hands to her face and dropped to her knees, but she neither cringed nor cried out. She remained kneeling in an upright position, in an attitude that only great courage could have enabled her to maintain. She was trembling a little, but she continued to hold her shoulders straight and did not even moan when the whiplash descended for the fourth and last time.
The gaunt woman was raising the weapon for another blow when the man hurled himself against her, battering her with his shoulders and elbows until the whiplash went clattering and she collapsed backwards against the electronic scanner-glass, shaking but not shattering it, and sank with a groan to the floor.
She remained sprawled out on the floor for a full minute, clutching at her side, twisting about in pain, and trying several times to rise, her eyes darting in desperate appeal toward the guard. Her lips moved but no sound came from them, for her throat had been bruised so severely that her vocal cords throbbed dully and she could not even take a deep breath, or summon the strength to speak.
The girl's enraged lover came and stood over her, glaring savagely down at her and shaking his head in a vain attempt to dislodge the gag. He was not aware that the guard had caught and correctly interpreted the Monitor's unspoken message and was now standing directly behind him with a small, metallically gleaming hand-gun in his clasp.
The guard raised the weapon slowly and took careful aim, centering its double sights on a small mole in the middle of the enraged man's back.
The report of the weapon was loud in the Observatory, shaking the scanner-glass as violently as the Monitor's heavily collapsing body had done. The impact of its energy charge lifted the enraged man up and hurled him back against the wall. His body struck the wall and rebounded, hurling him forward to the floor.