The gaunt woman knew how dangerous it was to share the inmost thoughts of a man so powerful, but she could do nothing to turn the conversation into safer channels and was afraid to oppose him even slightly.
"I see I startle you," the Chief Monitor went on calmly, the slight smile still on his lips. "But should we not all examine ourselves critically from time to time, and ask ourselves the really great and important questions. We all are what we are, and only a fool is afraid to face the truth about himself."
The gaunt woman remained silent, her pallor so pronounced now that it resembled the pallor of a corpse.
"The truth will come out," the Chief Monitor said, and sighed and turned from the glass. At the door he paused to deliver a few parting words of advice.
"Personal animosity in a Monitor is an unforgivable offense," he said. "Without a full and honest confession it could, in special circumstances, justify the death penalty."
When the door glided shut the gaunt woman stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Then some of the animation returned to her eyes and she returned to the glass and watched a towering ground-warfare robot joined by a second robot beside an oak tree of massive dimensions. She saw the two machines turn and start walking away from the oak tree, their conical heads turned toward a more distant part of the forest, the revolving disks of their eyes flashing with electro-magnetic, spectroscopic rays.
She watched them move forward through the forest, saw the forest vista changing. The canopy of foliage overhead changed shape and color. Now it became less dense, now more luxuriant. They skirted areas of quagmire, where the forest floor was strewn with wet leaves, carefully seeking firm footage, guided by their spectroscopic vision which could pierce beneath the surface layers of earth with rays of invisible spectrum wave-length.
Suddenly one of the metal giants halted and a flash of blinding light darted from one of the three atomic blast tubes projecting from its globular body-box. The roar of the limited atomic blast was not audible in the scanner-glass, but its violence shook the forest, sending five gigantic trees toppling and tearing a yawning gap in the canopy of foliage overhead, through which the sunlight streamed in wavering banners.
The first robot had gone on ahead, the scanner-glass which projected vertically from its conical head vibrating as it transmitted to the scanner-glass a continuous sequence of images. Suddenly it halted, as the other robot had done, in obedience to a transmitted message from a flying machine hovering directly overhead and waited until its companion came abreast of it again. Then both robots resumed their ponderous and slow advance, carefully testing each foot of ground before they rested their weight upon it.
The gaunt woman drew in her breath sharply. "In a moment now—only a moment more!" she whispered aloud to herself. "They must be very close to them by this time. They have traveled a considerable distance. The moment I have waited for so long is here at last. If I am brought to judgment, even if I am condemned to death, this moment of triumph will be worth all the humiliation, all the harsh injustice I may be forced to endure. I will go to my death with my head held high, knowing that I alone had the strength of will to root out and destroy an evil that the others attacked half-heartedly or found excuses for. These two are the worst offenders, the most brazen in their defiance of the law. If I succeed in destroying them—and I will—I will set an example that the others will have to follow. They will have no choice, for a martyr in a stern and just cause has many followers when the noose is drawn tight."
The two towering robots had halted again. They were standing very still, their conical heads turning slowly from right to left. Their spectroscopic eyes cast dull circles of radiance on the ground in front of them and their aspect was somehow vaguely disturbing, hard to explain. They seemed bewildered and confused, if human emotions can have any counterpart in a robot of metal and glass and whirring internal gadgetry.
Suddenly one of the metal giants turned and retraced his steps for a few yards, his conical head still turning slowly back and forth, in a manner that would have seemed comical to a less tense onlooker. The gaunt woman's throat felt constricted and she strained fearfully forward, her eyes glued to the glass.
The second robot joined the first in his backward exploration of ground already traversed. They stood with their heads close together, as if trying to decide what should be done next. But that, of course, was absurd and the gaunt woman was completely aware of how preposterous it was. A machine could not think for itself, a machine could not feel.
Her conviction was well-founded and the two metal monsters had put their heads together quite accidentally while avoiding a near collision. The avoidance of the collision had been directed from the flying machine by remote control and there was actually nothing human in the behavior of the robots at all.
The gaunt woman knew all that, but the knowledge could not prevent a knot of cold horror from contracting about her heart. The two metal monsters were at a standstill. Unmistakably they had reached a dead end and could search no further. They no longer knew where to look, or even what they were looking for.
The scanners which projected from their conical heads ceased suddenly to vibrate, and the instant the vibrations stopped the scanner-glass went dark.
A voice spoke out of the blackness. "I regret to report that the ground-warfare machines can no longer function. Their scanning screens have lost track of the two fugitives. The pickup mechanism has gone dead."
For an instant the gaunt woman could not swallow, could not even breathe. Her throat felt parched and constricted and there was a horrible tightness in her chest.
Suddenly all the tightness was gone and a scream, terrible, prolonged, welled up in her throat and issued from her lips. It stopped once abruptly and then went on and on, and only ceased when she seized a metal chair and smashed the scanner-glass to fragments, and collapsed in a heap at it base.
The forest was enveloped in weaving shafts of light. The light stabbed downward, moved between the trees, cascaded across brightly gleaming fungus growths and the boles of century-old trees and logs which forest mold and weevil beetles had turned into vegetable skeletons.
The forest was clamorous with voices. Para-guards moved between the trees, searching with flashlights that sent tunnels of radiance boring into the depths of shadowed crevices and deep caves and even between the tangled roots of titan oaks half-torn from their moorings by freakish bolts of lightning.
A hundred feet from the edge of the forest a guard more venturesome than his fellows descended into the depths of such a tangle, the bole of the oak looming enormous above, and found himself in the strangest of gnomelike dwellings, with winding corridors bathed in a pale blue light and his raised voice echoing from every corridor. It was a house of enchantment, a house underground and easy to people with all manner of elfish creatures.
But the two fugitive lovers had not taken refuge there. The beam of the guard's flashlight shone on emptiness and desolation and no trace of hidden lovers.
There was no way of tracing them, of ferreting them out. Cunning could not do it, or any kind of subterfuge. Voices offering Monitor truce, Monitor pardon, beguiling and deceptive, could not flush the two lovers from cover.
Where were they? No one knew, no one dared to boast that he thought he knew, for para-guards and their more cautious commanders lived in mortal fear of the Monitors, even though they served them dutifully and claimed the rewards which were a security guard's due: the right to creep at nightfall into the mating center compartment of a sex-privileged woman and take her by force if she resisted his advances.
There were a few para-guards who refused to conform to that pattern of behavior, but their forbearance was not admired by the majority of their fellows.
Through the dark the tracer beams moved, the flashlights flickered, but no one knew what had become of the fugitive lovers. And the penalties could be dire, for the Monitors did not readily forgive failure.
Everywhere the search continued, through every aisle of the forest, in every recess between the rocks, in every hidden nook and cranny.
But not quite everywhere. Deep in the forest gloom a pool of still black water mirrored the moonlight and in the pool two naked lovers clung breast to breast, thigh to thigh, waiting in stillness for the night to pass.
In the darkness of that strangest of nights the man whispered: "I never thought we would spend our bridal night in this way. I never thought we would leave our clothes on the bank, concealed and neatly folded, and shiver the whole night through. But at least we are completely safe, completely secure. The scanner beams are deflected when they pass too close to water and the water itself absorbs some of the rays. If they should find this pool by accident we will know what to do."
"Why are you telling me all this again, darling, when you have spoken about it before?"
"It helps me to talk. Remember—if we hear footsteps we will move closer to the bank and hide ourselves in the reeds. We will be safe as long as we hold tightly to each other and stay here until the sun rises again."
"Oh, darling, I love you so much, even when you worry needlessly about me, and seem to feel that if we find ourselves in danger again I will not know what to do. I will know exactly what to do. I will know exactly what to do. Can't we talk about more important things?"
"Are all women like that, Alicia? I mean, do they get upset and angry when a man is practical and puts first things first and does all that he can to safeguard and protect them? I know so little about women, because I have never before been in love, and all of the women I have met—"
"Never mind the women you have met. All women in love are difficult at times, my darling, and you must try to know exactly what to do. Can't we talk about more important things?"
"Darling, I do love you. You must believe me."
"Kiss me then. Kiss me passionately. I have waited so long for this moment, when we would be completely alone together in the night. But it has come at a strange time. I am not even sure that I can respond now as a woman should. The water is so cold."
"We can climb out on the bank if you wish. It will be taking a risk that I should prefer not to take, for your life is more important to me, more precious, than even that moment of complete fulfillment which seems to lovers not minute-long but eternal. But if that alone will please you...."
"Darling, what a way for a lover to talk! Do you no longer desire me?"
"You know better than that."
"Then prove it to me, now!"
He was the first to ascend the bank, drawing her up after him. They stood for a moment at arm's length, hands clinging, each feasting on the sight of the naked body of the other. The moonlight gleamed on Alicia's white flesh, and shining droplets of water trembled on the tips of her jutting breasts. Bending down, he clamped his lips to hers, his tongue searching. She responded with ardor, and clung to him so fiercely that they both toppled backwards on the soft grass of the bank.
Their love-making was so passionate that their lips remained constantly joined, and all of the tender explorations which accompany love were accomplished with the artful movements of hands that clasped and unclasped and darted with an eagerness that could not be restrained, to the most secret citadels of Aphrodite, and the pleasure gardens of Eros enshrined.
When the pulsing warm moment came when two become one the night seemed to hold its breath and only the woman's wild cry of ecstasy broke the stillness of the sleeping forest.
FOURTEEN
The long, blank-walled anteroom of the mating center was crowded to capacity with love-privileged men and women who had been granted short emergency leaves and were waiting to have their identification disks checked.
Teleman and Alicia stood very quietly in one corner of the large room, forcing themselves to remain calm and hardly glancing at the men and women about them.
They did not even allow their thoughts to dwell on the final stages of their almost miraculous escape—their unobserved ascent to a travel strip on the far side of the forest in the early hours of the morning, their journey on the strip in garments new to them, their self-consciousness when they glanced down at the insignia which proclaimed that their destination was a mating center and that they could walk openly in the sunlight as lovers, and pass a security guard or a Monitor without fearing that they would be stopped and questioned.
Had they wished they could have even paused and embraced openly on the strip, exchanging light, casual caresses, but that they had not done. Their love was neither light nor casual and the memory of the fulfillment which had come to them above a star-mirroring pool of still water was still too vivid and glorious to permit them to engage in the more superficial varieties of love-play.
Those varieties would occur later as a natural accompaniment of love, for even the deepest and most genuine love must have its lighter aspects, but for the moment they had been content to walk quietly on the strip hand in hand, their eyes shining with a memory-glow that had caused a few of the pedestrians to turn and stare at them in envy which they had not attempted to disguise.
They waited now with the glow still in their eyes, while the check-in security guard placed identity disks into a machine which quickly tested their genuineness and ejected them with a faint, whirring sound.
He sat at a desk in a far corner of the anteroom, a harassed and very busy man, with a look of boredom on his face and a restless impatience in his eyes.
"Too many leaves," he muttered, so loudly that his voice carried to everyone in the room. "It makes quite unnecessary work for us. If I had my way I would permit no love-making outside of a mating center. But I am not a Monitor and I suppose I have no right to complain. I suppose that in exceptional cases some kind of safety-valve must be provided for the disgusting thing which you people are always talking about. Romance! It used to be a taboo word, but now you use it quite openly."
He paused an instant, then went on complaining, the whirring of the machine making it difficult for Teleman and Alicia to catch all of his words.
"Of course, strictly speaking, no emergency leaves are granted on that basis. But I, for one, am not deceived. I know precisely why so many of you ask for emergency leaves. Illness, a death in your immediate family, the need to visit long-neglected relatives and friends. Faugh! If I were a Monitor I would accept no such excuses."
He raised his eyes suddenly and called out two names. "Richa Malgroon. Taja Ramole. Your identification disks are in order. Come here and take them, and go quietly to your compartment in Section 9Y66. For all I care you can make love romantically all night long—right here in the mating center. That should content you, I should imagine. Why should you go to a vine-covered dwelling in the forest? It's all down here. You have a dwelling in the forest where you spent your—revolting word out of the old books—honeymoon. This time you were granted five hours leave. You took a day and a night. But I have instructions not to censure you. It seems your original excuse was accepted and the Monitors can be very lenient. Too lenient, if you want my honest opinion."
He coughed to clear his throat. "All right, come and get your disks. I have a feeling that you spent the night in that cottage, unlawfully. But I have no way of proving it, and the Monitors have given me instructions which I am duty-bound to accede to."
Alicia nudged Teleman's arm. "He's talking to us," she whispered. "Quick, darling. Go to the desk and take the disks, and try to act completely composed, as if we had been here many times before and are not in the least offended by his rough manner and outspokenness. I have never heard a security guard speak so frankly. It is very strange. I believe he is himself secretly rebellious and that his words have a double meaning."
Teleman nodded, pressing her hand and stepping quickly to the desk. He accepted the disks in silence and returned to where Alicia was standing.
"We can go now," he said. "Section 9Y66, compartment 66. We go through the door on our left. We'll find someone who can direct us to the right section and compartment. It will be no problem. But we mustn't act as if we didn't know."
They walked across the room and through the door and found themselves in a dimly-lighted corridor which was, for the moment, completely deserted.
They walked to the end of it, turned right and traversed another equally deserted corridor. As they walked along it Teleman found that he could no longer keep to himself thoughts which had badly shaken him and forced him, for Alicia's sake, to pretend otherwise.
"I'm afraid that we have made a mistake in coming here," he said. "We did not know that the couple whose identity we have assumed had such a completely documented past history.The Monitors know about the dwelling!They know that we took refuge in the dwelling. Don't you realize what that means? We may have walked into the deadliest kind of trap. We thought the couple had escaped from the mating center by stealth, without having been granted any emergency leave at all. But apparently they had a five hour leave and simply took the risk of extending it.And the Monitors know about the cottage. They know we were there, so every guard here must have been alerted. The guard at the desk must know exactly who we are."
"I did not want to alarm you," Alicia said. "But the same thought occurred to me. Darling, what shall we do? If wearetrapped—"
She moved into the circle of his arms, and he silenced her for a moment with a kiss. Alicia rubbed her body against him, and Teleman felt a strong urge to tear the garments from her body and take her there in the corridor, to press her down on the hard floor ... but he pushed back the tide of desire and spoke quickly.
"I'm afraid we are. I'm afraid we're in the deadliest kind of danger. Why they did not seize us immediately I do not know. Perhaps they intend to seize us in the privacy of our compartment, without causing any commotion, without letting the others here know what is going on. It is entirely possible that they planned it that way. That frustrated old woman we encountered on the strip; if she is the Monitor in charge such a capture might appeal to her in a cruelly whimsical way. To let us think ourselves safe and then to take us by surprise!"
"If you are right, darling, what shall we do?"
"We'd better not go to our compartment. I had no intention of doing so, but I spoke as I did in the anteroom because I didn't want to frighten you. I wanted to get you out of there as quickly as possible."
"You still haven't answered me. What shall we do?"
"We've got to escape from this place in some way. But first we've got to find out more about it. How many deserted corridors are there, how many doors and windows, how many compartments where nothing but records are stored, or mating center furniture. How many compartments which are seldom visited, where we can hide...."
Had Teleman known, events were to take place in the next forty hours which were to shake the entire structure of the society of which he was a part, and make all of his desperately seized-upon plans for escaping from the mating center completely unnecessary. But he had no way of knowing, no way of even suspecting that he was to become an instrument of destiny and overthrow a tyranny unique in human history.
Had he known, he would not have believed that such an event could take place and that his own very human qualities and the courage of the woman at his side would elevate them both to greatness.
In the world of the Monitors, the human factor was very precariously balanced. Certain basic human instincts had been repressed or denied. But they could not be repressed forever and the most basic impulse of all could not be repressed without building up tensions volcanic in intensity.
The instinct which could not be repressed could not even be discussed in the world of the Monitors. Its denial and repudiation was basic to the survival of that world. All reference to it in the old books had been stippled out, and when men and women talked of love they did not know that they were treading on dangerous ground in respect to that impulse, which was a woman's crowning glory.
Even Teleman, despite his historic role, did not know or suspect until he emerged from another corridor into a compartment so large that it must have filled two-thirds of the building's interior. He did not know until he was standing in the entranceway, staring through a pale blue radiance at tiers upon tiers of cribs encased in sterile glass. He did not know until he saw the babies.
Tiers upon tiers of cribs and in each crib a sleeping human infant.
And in a few cribs a crying and a reaching out of tiny hands for arms that were not there, the arms of the mothers.
In each crib a man or woman of the future, still in swaddling clothes, but beginning to become aware of the world that he or she would someday inherit.
A thousand tiny faces stared up into the blue-lit immensity above the sterile cots, some rosy-cheeked and smiling, and fully awake, but most sleeping soundly. There were thin and peaked faces as well as rosy ones, contented faces and hungry-looking faces, and faces that looked completely innocent and faces that resembled the countenances of little old men, worn by years of toil, and faces that asked questions and faces that were content to express neither anger nor fear nor high intelligence but wore a look of untroubled innocence.
Teleman was too shaken to do more than stare silently and it was Alicia who put what they both felt into words, her eyes shining with a bright, newly-experienced kind of tenderness.
"I've heard about them but I've never seen them before. How beautiful they are, even the very thin ones and the angry ones! All of the future is here. But there is something lacking also. I feel it—I know it to be so. We are told that they will grow to manhood and to womanhood lacking nothing, but I cannot believe that the Monitors do not lie about that.
"There is something that should be here that is not here. They have a need, a need that is just as strong and complete in itself as the love which we have for each other."
The sobbing was so far away and so low that they scarcely heard it at first. It came from the opposite side of the enormous room, and they could not see the woman with bent back and tearstained face who was kneeling beside one of the cribs, and tenderly caressing the cheeks of a sleeping infant.
FIFTEEN
They heard only the sobbing for a moment and then the voice of the woman rang out in the stillness. There was pain and bitterness in her voice, and frustration, and a terrible unhappiness.
"He is my child!" she cried. "I know he is my child! You took him away from me, and put about his neck a chain and a metal tag bearing only two letters and a serial number. Cold, cruel letters engraved on metal!
"A serial number only, to mark him forever as lost and abandoned, a child who will grow to manhood knowing nothing of a mother's love, a mother's selfless devotion.
"You have cheated us and denied us the right to think of ourselves as the mothers of men. You have denied us the great and wonderful joy of looking upon the face of a sleeping child and knowing that the child has need of us. We cannot take our own flesh into our arms and cradle the tiny, precious new life that love has brought into the world and feel, because every mother is proud in a wholly wonderful way, that we have been privileged beyond all other women."
"We cannot suckle and nourish that life with the sweet flowing of a mother's milk. We can never know the tenderness and joy of feeling that the love which we bestow can never be wasted, that it is a gift given freely and without stint, and that all we ask in return is to feel the tug of tiny hands at our breasts and the moving about of a small body in gentle, contented drowsiness."
"You have cheated us in another way. You have made even love's beginning seem ugly, by stripping it of all tenderness, all romantic glamour. You have set us apart from the rest of society, you have veiled what we do, looking upon it as a necessary evil, and you have turned your faces from the mating centers in shame, as if loving were a crime and an abomination.
"You have made it a crime in the eyes of society. The non-love-privileged who would be as we are you look upon as the most depraved of criminals. When they have the courage to rebel openly you track them down unmercifully, as our ancestors tracked down and destroyed the wild beasts of the jungle. Some of them behave like beasts, because they have never known love and in them there is also a burning hatred, an anger that is primitive and cruel. But others are men and women of dignity and strength, who give themselves to each other in tenderness, and who know how love can transform the world about them, and everything that is in the world, until the whole of life shines with undying splendor. They can never—"
The accusing voice of the woman was drowned out abruptly by the metallic rasp of an entrance panel opening and closing and another voice so filled with rage that it rose almost instantly to a scream.
"What are you doing here? Who gave you permission to come here? Did you bribe a guard by the lewd display of your charms, or a promise to sleep with him? All of these infants belong to us now, for we are the guardians of the future.Nowdid I say? They have always belonged to us, even when they were still in the wombs of women such as you, women who perform a necessary but hardly to be admired function in our society.
"You are nothing but wantons and evil temptresses, skilled in all the arts of the harlot, and the men whom you seduce with your charms are no better than jungle savages. How dared you come here? You have no right to look upon a single one of these infants, for they have ceased to be attached to the primitive matrix out of which they have emerged, and we will teach them all that they need to know."
"You will teach them to be as you are!" the kneeling woman cried, a reckless defiance in her voice. "You will do your best to teach them to be harsh and merciless, vindictive and consumed with envy. You will not wholly succeed, for some of them will not surrender their birthright, and will discover for themselves that life without love is too harsh a burden to be endured. They will never know a mother's love, but even without that love a few will have the strength to resist the harshness and the hate that comes from never having experienced a moment of tenderness and affection in childhood."
There was a moment of silence, followed by the sound of a sharply administered slap, and a cry of rage so sharpened by the boiling up of all that was cruel and vindictive in the woman who had been forced to listen to words that had stung her to the quick that it resembled the cry of an animal.
It was Alicia who came to the kneeling woman's rescue, darting so swiftly across the enormous room that she was gripping the enraged woman by the arm and twisting her about before the shock and pain of the blow vanished from the eyes of her accuser.
From the opposite side of the room the two women had resembled shadow-enveloped phantoms, their features barely distinguishable, their identities masked by distance. It was as if Alicia had emerged from one room into another, the first filled with light and the other enshrouded in darkness.
Only when she gripped the enraged woman's arm and swung her about did the gaunt face with its cavernous dark eyes and prominent cheekbones cause her eyes to brighten with the shock of complete recognition and the anger which that recognition aroused in her.
It was an anger that went far beyond the hot indignation which had sent her darting across the room to the kneeling woman's rescue. It was an anger impossible to control, an anger that flamed and shuddered in the depth of her mind until she feared it would consume her.
Recognition came into the Monitor's eyes at almost the same instant, and she tried quickly and desperately to free herself by jerking her arm violently backwards. She had never before doubted her own strength, and it was hard to believe that so frail-looking a woman could grip her wrist with the bite of steel in her fingers. It was even hard to completely believe in that frailness, for her own gaunt body with its man's strength had made her a poor judge of the physical qualities of a normally developed woman.
She seemed to realize suddenly that Alicia was not particularly frail and had a strength now that she would not have possessed had she been less enraged and less certain that she could do what the gaunt woman feared most—strike her with such violence that she would drop to the floor unconscious.
The blow, when it came, was quick and incisive. Alicia's tightly-clenched fist caught the gaunt woman just below the ear and made her sway dizzily. But she did not fall, and Alicia had to strike her once more, on the point of the jaw, to win a complete victory.
The gaunt woman groaned and sank to the floor, a dull glaze overspreading her pupils. Alicia let go of her wrist and took a swift step backward, staring down at her slumped and unmoving body with a look of startled disbelief on her face and a slight diminishment of her anger.
Her anger flamed hotly again when she turned toward the woman by the crib and saw the swelling red welt which the gaunt woman's brutal slap had left on her right cheek.
The woman by the crib was no longer kneeling. She had gotten to her feet and was looking at Alicia with a warm gratefulness in her eyes.
"You and this man," she said. "You had the courage to come here, too. The others would come if the great longing to look upon our babies which we all share could be strengthened by example and a greater firmness of purpose. All, all would come. Is one of these babies yours?"
Her eyes had rested on Alicia's face for a moment, but now she was looking at Teleman, who had moved quickly to Alicia's side.
Alicia turned in surprise, for she had completely forgotten that she was not alone and would never be alone again. For the barest instant she had forgotten, not realizing that a man's stride would hardly permit a woman to outdistance him in the rapid crossing of a room.
"No," Teleman said to the woman by the crib. "We are not love-privileged and are here for the first time. Many months will pass before we are parents, I'm afraid."
The woman's eyes widened in stunned disbelief. "Not love-privileged. Then why are you here?"
"We are fugitives," he said. "And if we are captured we will be sentenced to death. Our presence here is known, and that woman—" he gestured toward the slumped form on the floor—"was planning to take us by surprise. She would have entered the compartment we were instructed to occupy with armed guards and we would have had no chance at all to save ourselves. We were not quite sure until now, but as she is here in the center there can be no doubt as to the kind of surprise she had in store for us."
The woman by the crib looked at Teleman for a long moment with a growing bewilderment in her eyes. "But how did you get those garments and that insignia? If you are not love-privileged—"
Alicia said: "If we were not in such danger we would tell you more, for there is nothing we would not want you to know. A few words perhaps, we can risk that. But if she begins to stir—"
"I'll see that she doesn't get up," Teleman said grimly. "She has forfeited all right to be treated as a woman."
Alicia nodded and moved quickly to the other woman's side. She whispered to her for a moment and the look of bewilderment vanished from the dark-fringed eyes that a few moments before had been wet with tears.
She turned abruptly, her shoulders held straight, her eyes shining in a strange way. "My name is Leguria," she said. "I am known throughout the center as one who holds her own life of small account, if in a moment of crisis others can be persuaded not to draw back from a dangerous undertaking. I will tell you something which you may not know. Not only this center but all of the centers are seething with unrest. A widespread revolt, a revolt that would sweep away all opposition, needs but an added spark and total victory will be within our grasp. It can come overnight, if just the right spark is applied."
She did not look at Teleman alone, but let her gaze pass from his strained and questioning eyes to the eyes of the woman who stood facing her.
"You could be the spark," she went on, her voice calm but vibrant with a deep undercurrent of strong emotion which gave her words a kind of passionate eloquence. "Both of you. Your rebellion must have caused a great deal of talk. I had not heard of it, but at times I keep very much to myself, and events of great importance remain unknown to me for days. Do you know who that Monitor is? She is the second most powerful Monitor on Earth. She can be over-ruled by the Council and the Chief Monitor but otherwise her power cannot be questioned by anyone.
"I do not know why she has pursued you so implacably. Perhaps you provoked her beyond endurance, in some wholly accidental way. But the reason does not matter. Only the fact that she has pursued you as few others have been pursued—has singled you out and accused you of the blackest of crimes.
"Don't you see? She has played right into our hands. She has provided us with a weapon. Your flight is by now known to thousands, all that you have endured at her hands. And you are not criminals. You have only to talk freely, to bare your inmost thought, and all of the love-privileged in this and the other centers will know what kind of man and woman you are. You cannot hide dignity and courage, generosity and quiet strength. A criminal is known by his words the moment he opens his mouth. You have said but a few words to me, but they have not been the words of a criminal. No one will believe her. They will believe you. Even if you had remained silent I could have discovered the truth about you, just by looking steadily into your eyes."
"But how can we talk openly to the men and women here?" Alicia asked. "Every minute we remain here we are endangering our lives. We would accept that risk gladly if our voices could pass beyond the walls of this room and reach a hundred men and women, or even a handful. But in a place as well-guarded as this how can our voices be heard?"
"They will be heard. And you will talk not to fifty or a hundred men and women, but to all of the love-privileged. A third of the guards here are on our side and will not hesitate to help us. I will speak to the ones we can trust. The center is very large, and it would take hours to make a complete search of every room, medical unit, and storage vault. You will be well-concealed until we can set up a transmitting instrument and make a few other necessary arrangements. Your image will appear on a hundred screens, in every one of the mating centers. A coded message will be sent to all of the centers, and everywhere, when you are ready to speak, the recreational halls will be crowded. In all of the halls there are screens, for there has never been a ban on visual entertainment for the sex-privileged, and the meetings will take place so quickly that the guards will be taken by surprise and will not have time to interfere. When the Monitors become aware of what is happening it will be too late. In every center there will be guards we can depend on. I do not think that we will fail."
Leguria stopped speaking, and touched the red welt on her cheek. But there was no bitterness in her eyes, only the stern and unyielding look of a woman wholly dedicated to an undertaking that must not be permitted to fail.
It was Teleman who voiced a doubt, but only because the tribute she had paid him seemed too flattering.
"Even if they are convinced that I am not a criminal," he said, "will that ignite the spark? I am just one lawbreaker among many, even though I have antagonized a Monitor who wields unusual power. Many men and women have been unjustly accused and condemned to death. Will just one more act of injustice anger them so much that it will give them the will and the strength to revolt?" He shook his head. "I would like to think so, but I can't. It may anger them a great deal. But it will not be enough by itself. You must appear with me on the screen and talk to them as you talked just now. Tell them about the children who will grow up cut off from all love and warmth and tenderness. Tell them about the babies which they will never see. Then Alicia will talk to them too. You are both very beautiful, and it is a mistake to ignore beauty or to think of it as unimportant when you are making that kind of appeal.
"When I speak to them I will follow your advice. I will tell them the simple truth. Then I will have something to add that will be certain to carry weight. It will not be an untruth, for I will be looking ahead into the future and I will be thinking of my son. I will speak to them as a father."
SIXTEEN
The Chief Monitor stood up and walked to the window and stared out over the sleeping city. The woman on the couch stirred drowsily and changed her position on the couch, letting her sleeping garment fall open, and revealing a long, white, sensuous body that many men had found attractive, but never before a Chief Monitor.
"I'm cold, darling," she whispered. "Please come back and cover me up. And I wish you would rub my back a little more. You have such strong and beautiful hands—the hands of an artist."
The Chief Monitor did not turn. He continued to stare out across the city and after a moment a tiny muscle in his jaw began to twitch.
"Is it really my hands you like," he said at last. "Or the way I kiss you, or the words I speak? Or do you talk that way because you know I am susceptible to flattery and it would be a very great blow to you if I should decide that another woman would please me more?"
A slight pout appeared on the woman's face, but she did not appear to be offended.
"How many women have you had, darling?" she asked, her voice tantalizingly low-pitched, so that the Chief Monitor had to strain to catch the words. "Do not be afraid to tell me. No man who can make love with such perfect understanding of how to best please a woman could have passed many nights alone. How many, darling? Fifty, one hundred?"
"You know better than that," the Chief Monitor said, still not turning. "I have loved a dozen women perhaps ... no more."
The woman on the couch sighed. "Well, a dozen is not too bad for a man who tells everyone that he has not loved at all. How long can you keep up the deception, darling? You behave so impetuously at times. Almost like one of those mad lovers in the old books. Who would think to look at you that you could become so masterful in bed!"
The Chief Monitor turned abruptly, his eyes blazing with fury. "I will not listen to such talk. I do not have to listen. Don't think for a moment that I do not know that you secretly despise me. You are two-faced, and there is a thinly-veiled mockery in everything you say, even when you appear to be paying me a compliment!"
The woman sighed, changed her position again, and stretched out white arms in the darkness. "Don't be silly, darling. That is not true at all. Come here. Have I not always succeeded in convincing you that the harsh things you say to me at times are completely untrue? Have you ever held a more responsive woman in your arms. Tell me! Have you?"
"You are responsive only when it is to your advantage to convince me that you are not as cold and cruel and calculating as I know you to be. You are incapable of loving anyone. You tempt a man beyond endurance and then turn completely cold. You have done that time and time again."
The woman arose from the couch, unfastened the hem of her sleeping garment and let it fall to her feet. She stood completely naked before him, her body gleaming white, her red lips slightly parted.
"Come here, and stop being a fool," she said. "I demand that you come."
The Chief Monitor shook his head and turned back to the window. In all his life he had never felt quite so angry or experienced at the same time so strong a stirring of desire.
He could not take his eyes from the woman's reflection in the window pane, but he did not want to turn and go to her.
He was still staring when he saw it—a tiny red flare in the distance, in the very heart of the sleeping city. It did not alarm him at first, for there were many ways of explaining it, even though he had never seen anything precisely like it before.
It did not alarm him until it grew swiftly larger and brighter and another flickering red flame appeared on the outskirts of the city and still another close to the first, and a darting streak of fire ran along the roof of one of the nearer buildings and lit up most of the sky.
Even then he might have managed to maintain almost complete mastery over his nerves, if the flares had not been accompanied by a far-off murmur, as if many voices had suddenly broken in upon the stillness of the night and were shouting in anger or in overwhelming fright, and converging toward some central point to join with other voices in producing an even greater volume of sound.
"What is it?" the woman demanded. "What are you staring at? Does the city at night fascinate you so that you forget that there are women out there whom even your power could not seduce? They are asleep in the arms of their lovers and might not find you as attractive as I do. There are some women—"
The blasts cut her off in mid-speech, five, evenly spaced blasts that shook the bed and rattled the windowpanes. The Chief Monitor's control broke completely. He swung about and crossed the room without even looking at the woman, who was staring in dismay at the red glare that was creeping into the room from each of its three tall windows.
The tele-panel set in the wall hummed when the Chief Monitor clicked it on, and a moment later the small screen lighted up and a face that he had never seen before stared at him out of the radiance.
"Security Alert," came in a troubled voice. "There are fires and explosions taking place all over the city. We do not yet know what is causing them. An aerial attack is one possibility. Most of the fires are in the vicinity of the mating centers. And people are assembling in the streets. Most of them are armed and they are shouting threats."
The Chief Monitor clicked off the panel and the radiance dimmed and vanished. He had an impulse to rush from the room and take steps which would bring all of the Monitors together in emergency session. But he forced himself to think calmly. He had to be sure first and two or three minutes was not a very long time to wait.
He paced the floor for five full minutes, deciding that the more he knew the more swift and certain would be his mastery of the situation when he was in full possession of the facts. He completely ignored the woman who lounged on the couch, the luscious curves of her body deliberately exposed to his eyes.
It was necessary, he told himself, to know exactly what was happening. He could not afford to blunder, for the slightest mistake in a situation as unbelievable as this could destroy him. An armed uprising? A rebellion of the non-love-privileged? Or a rebellion in the mating centers? A rebellion of security guards? Who had launched the aerial attack, if it was an aerial attack? Was it a revolt or a counter-revolt? Perhaps a revolt had started somewhere in the city and immediate steps had been taken by Security Alert to counter-attack from the air.
No, no, that had to be ruled out. He had just been in communication with Security Alert and if they had ordered a counter-attack they could hardly have remained in ignorance of it. Unless the operator he had talked to had not been as fully informed as the Alert's emergency command.
It was just barely possible.
He had stopped pacing and was turning to click on the tele-panel again when a blinding white glare filled the room, and a sheet of flame wrapped itself around him, burning the flesh from his bones and causing his face to shrivel and blacken until its lineaments dissolved in a weaving spiral of fire.
SEVENTEEN
It seemed to monitor 6Y9 that an eternity had passed since she had picked herself up from the floor of the sterile-crib nursery and found herself alone. She could remember how she had felt at that moment—the red blaze of fury that had danced before her eyes, the sickness at the pit of her stomach, the waves of nausea which had made her reel and almost fall to the floor again. She could remember all that very clearly. But the search that she had ordered conducted through every room in the center, that futile and fruitless search was a hazy blur in her mind. Her emotions had been so overpowering that they had almost blotted the details of that terrible failure from her waking mind at least, and if she remembered them at all it would be only in dreams, dreams from which she would awaken screaming and bathed in cold sweat.
She remembered more clearly the three faces on the lighted tele-screen, mocking her. The hated pair had eluded her vigilance and concealed themselves somewhere in the center until the terrible moment when they had appeared on the screen and stirred ten thousand men and women with their dark lies and accusations, blackening her character until she wanted to scream and could no longer endure what they were saying about her.
The revolt. The terrible, criminal revolt that had started in the mating centers and was now sweeping the city, and would spread to other cities if it were not put down immediately.
How clever they had been, how wise in their criminal depravity! They had dared to putthat womanon the screen and she had spoken of motherhood and love, as if a harlot could have any understanding of such things.
But it was not too late. There was still time. Now, now, all would be avenged.
The hideous flood of memories dwindled and fell away and she looked down through the thrumming, transparent floor of the flying machine's cockpit and let less appalling memories take complete possession of her mind.
How quick she had been to act, to assume command, to bypass Security Alert and the Chief Monitor and to order an aerial counter-attack!
This was surely her greatest moment, for no one could stop her now from bombing every one of the mating centers, bombing them into smoking heaps of rubble.
And the men and women in the streets, criminals all, she would see that not one of them escaped.
Oh, she would make very sure. Armed rebels on foot could not hope to escape alive when the bombs started falling. And they would find themselves trapped in a raging inferno and the rebellion would be crushed forever and no one would ever dare rebel again.
A firm hand on her arm caused her to turn. An aerial fleet commander stood at her elbow, a look of deep concern in his eyes. He was a tall, handsome-looking man, darkly bearded. He held himself very straight and she could not help admiring the breadth of his shoulders and the attractive curliness of his hair.
"The last machine in the line of flight has dropped four bombs," he said. "And we have just—"
The gaunt woman straightened, cutting him short with an abrupt, angry gesture.
"Four bombs! What are you talking about? I heard no detonations."
"The last machine is flying very low and it has fallen behind," the commander replied, the look of concern still in his eyes. "That's why you didn't hear the bombs explode. But that is not what I am worried about."
The gaunt woman's stare sharpened. "Just what are you worried about?" she demanded.
"He has dropped the bombs far wide of the targets," the commander said. "That in itself would not be a grave cause for concern, for it would indicate merely poor marksmanship. But he appears to have—perhaps it was not deliberate, but—"
The commander paused, realizing that he was putting all this very badly. But the woman before him was no ordinary Monitor and her formidable aspect made him feel unusually nervous and ill at ease. The news he had to convey was disturbing, and he was a little afraid of alarming the Monitor unduly.
He coughed to clear his throat and tried again.
"He has not only dropped the bombs wide of the targets," he said. "He has dropped them on thewrongtargets."
The gaunt woman stared at him for a moment in stunned disbelief. "What are you trying to say? Have you taken leave of your senses? How could he?"
"It is hard to explain. It's as if he had deliberately managed to miss a target and direct the bombs to another target close by, so that you could only accuse him of missing one target and accidentally hitting another. But it almost seems as if more than just poor marksmanship is involved, because every bomb destroyed an important communications center, or administration building. Not a single bomb hit a mating center or any of the public squares which you gave us instructions to bomb."
The gaunt woman gripped both arms of the revolving metal chair in which she had been sitting and descended to the metal platform which ran the full length of the cockpit. She stool very still, transfixing the commander with a terrible, accusing stare.
"You fool!" she cried. "You slow-witted imbecile! Of course it was deliberate.That man is a traitor."
The commander had turned deathly pale. "But it doesn't make sense," he said, defensively. "If he is a traitor, why doesn't he leave the squadron and bomb strategic targets without so cleverly masking his intentions that it is difficult to charge him with treason?"
"You are a worse fool than I thought. It is to his advantage to stay with the squadron. If he were alone in the sky he would be a perfect target for our long-range aerial projectiles. We could bring him down in a matter of minutes. But if he appears to be merely a bad marksman another man who is a stupid commander will play right into his hands. There is a dangerous traitor in the squadron and you have done absolutely nothing about it. Do you know just what targets he bombed?"
"As I told you—all vital centers."
"How vital? Major centers?"
"No, it isn't quite that bad. But we are flying very close to the Council building now, and that's why I thought—"
"Never mind what you thought. Are you sure he only dropped four bombs?"
The commander hesitated, gnawing at his underlip.
"Well?"
"We can't be completely sure. The atomic diffusion bombs do not detonate and their trajectory is invisible from the air. He could have dropped one and we would not know."
"The deadliest kind of bomb!" The gaunt woman shuddered. "The heat destroys everything in its path. A white incandescence, hotter than the Sun's photosphere. It burns through flesh and bone, reducing the human body to charred ash in a matter of seconds. I would not wish such a fate on my worst enemy."
The flying machine shuddered suddenly, as if it had flown through a raging windstorm and was being buffeted from both sides. The cockpit trembled throughout its entire length and the metal chair spun about on its support so violently that if the gaunt woman had still been sitting in it she would have been hurled with violence to the floor.
The blast which followed close on the first convulsive lurch of the machine could be heard even from the air. The sound penetrated the glass-enclosed cockpit and made the gaunt woman's ears ring and the red flare which accompanied the blast was so bright that it dazzled her eyes.
Looking down, she could see the terrible core of the explosion beginning to expand, thinning a little as it spread outward and enveloping the surrounding streets and buildings in a fiery glow.
"The Council Building!" the commander groaned, his voice almost a sob. "He must have unloaded a rack of at least eight bombs."
The gaunt woman's face was a colorless mask, her lips distorted in a grimace that drew the flesh so tightly together on both sides of her mouth that it gave her features an almost mummy-like look. She remained for a moment rigid, unable to move or speak, and so abnormal was her aspect that the commander wished that he had kept silent and let realization come to her slowly.
He was even more appalled when she reached out and fastened her hands on his wrists. She tugged at him, drawing him toward her. She twisted his wrists savagely and then released him with a violent shove.
"Blast him down! Order the entire squadron to attack him with projectiles at once! They are to abandon all strategic bombing. Do you understand? If his machine does not go spiraling down in flames within the next five minutes you will pay for your stupidity with your life."
The commander nodded and withdrew, his throat so dry that he could no longer swallow and his gait so unsteady that he arrived in the gunnery compartment reeling like a drunken man.
Gradually the gaunt woman regained control of her shrieking nerves and some of the color crept back into her face. She reseated herself in the revolving chair and strained forward, waiting for the sky to light up with the bright flare of projectiles and the still brighter flare of a flame-enveloped and tailspinning flying machine.
She knew that she would not be able to see the actual destruction of the machine, for it was the last in line and, as the commander had informed her with his stupidity heavy upon him, flying very low. But she would know quickly enough, for the commander would not be slow in breaking the news when one or more of the projectiles found its mark.
She waited and as the shock and rage which she had experienced on seeing the Council building blasted to rubble began to wear off, she became more reconciled to what had happened. It was just possible that the Council—all of the Council—had been within the building, summoned into emergency session by the Chief Monitor. That was perhaps too much to hope for, but she saw no reason to let the unlikelihood of that darken her mood. At least half of the Council would be gone, for half of the Council resided in the building. It greatly reduced the number of her enemies and immeasurably enhanced her prestige.
There was the sudden, blinding flare of a projectile and she stiffened in anticipation, her eyes darting to the empty sky immediately above her and then sideways, hoping that the target-tagged machine with its traitor-pilot would increase its speed in a last-minute escape maneuver and come into view for a moment. If only she could witness the direct hit, could see it explode in the air!
Her hopes soared until she could scarcely breathe. But the traitor did not come into view. There was another bright projectile flare and the second machine in the squadron came abreast of the cockpit window, flying parallel at a distance of eighty or ninety feet.
There was something wrong with the way the second machine was flying. It had put on a sudden burst of speed, but now it was slowing down and wobbling from side to side.
It was unmistakably in trouble. Its cockpit seemed to sag, as if one of the interior struts had given way or the entire structure had been half shot away, on the side that was hidden from her.
Heavy black smoke began suddenly to spiral from the machine's middle section, coalescing into a thick black cloud in the air above it. It wobbled more violently from side to side and then, quite suddenly, it was plunging downward, twisting and turning in a zigzagging tailspin as it went spiraling toward the earth.
The gaunt woman was given no time to recover from the shock of that totally unexpected defeat. Another machine came into view in the sky above her and burst almost instantly into flame. Two more projectile flares lit up the sky, turning the bright silvery sheen of a third machine's wings to crimson as it turned completely about in the air and plummeted downward like a wounded falcon, its tail feathers in wild disarray.
The fourth defeat she did not see. News of it came to her through a speaking tube, in a voice that she recognized, a voice that brought a hot flush of anger to her cheeks.
"The squadron leader is dead. He's shot down five machines so far. There's nothing we can do. He keeps outmaneuvering us at every turn. There are eight or ten different ways a really brilliant pilot can hold his own and be more than a match for a whole squadron. He knows all of them."
The gaunt woman slammed the speaking tube down with such violence that it abraded the flesh of her knuckles, causing her to wince in pain.
She steeled herself to endure without complaint what she feared would be coming—the destruction of a sixth machine and a seventh. And after that? There were only nine machines in the squadron.
It was even worse than she had imagined it might be. Two of the four remaining machines were shot down almost simultaneously. She did not see them fall but the two bright flares that lit up the earth far below left no doubt as to what had happened.
Feeling a dull, hollow ache in her chest, she found herself wondering whether the machine in which she sat, would be next, or would tragedy overtake the only other remaining machine first?
She was not left long in doubt. A dull concussion shook the cockpit, and she was thrown violently forward. For an instant a kaleidoscope of changing colors seemed to spin and whirl about her. With the spinning came a dizziness and black nausea clawed at her throat.
She dragged herself to her feet, and clung to the long metal rail on the right side of the cockpit, staring out through a splintered surface of glass at nothing at all.
For a moment nothing and then she saw him. She saw the machine that had outfought and outmaneuvered an entire squadron and in the cockpit a pilot who wore upon his chest the bright insignia of the love-privileged.
She saw the pilot's face.
Clearly, clearly she saw it, and he must have seen her face, for he was staring straight at her.
It was the face, the one face above all others that she hated with every breath she drew and would hate until she ceased to draw breath.
For one awful moment she looked into Teleman's eyes and saw Teleman's lips move in pity.
Then she was falling. Down and down into a swirling abyss of emptiness, falling with the broken and burning machine ... falling, falling.
EPILOGUE
"The revolt can't be stopped now," Leguria said. "We shall have our new world and we shall all be a part of it."
She drew herself up, her eyes shining, and smiled at the man and woman who had just climbed down from a smoke-blackened flying machine, a machine which only an aerial engineer who had built bridges in the deep jungle would have known how to maneuver with skill in an hour of decision.
Dusk was falling and its purple glow, deflected downward from the shining glass of the machine's cockpit, aureoled Leguria's hair in a soft radiance.
"I may have seemed to you a strong-willed and determined woman," she said. "But I am not really like that at all. It is just that circumstances change people."
She nodded and fell silent, and Teleman and Alicia were content just to be together in the peaceful quiet of the countryside, until the twilight deepened and gave birth to a wild rush of stars.
They lay down together under those stars, and let passion creep over them slowly, knowing that they had time now, and freedom to love.
THE END