The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMating centerThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Mating centerAuthor: Frank Belknap LongRelease date: August 19, 2023 [eBook #71441]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Chariot Books, 1961Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATING CENTER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Mating centerAuthor: Frank Belknap LongRelease date: August 19, 2023 [eBook #71441]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Chariot Books, 1961Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
Title: Mating center
Author: Frank Belknap Long
Author: Frank Belknap Long
Release date: August 19, 2023 [eBook #71441]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Chariot Books, 1961
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATING CENTER ***
The Mating Centerby FRANK BELKNAP LONGCopyright 1961[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]A Chariot BookEXCITING READING FOR MENPrinted in the U. S. A.The characters in this book are entirely fictitiousand are the products of the author's imagination. Theyin no way represent actual people.
by FRANK BELKNAP LONG
Copyright 1961
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A Chariot BookEXCITING READING FOR MEN
Printed in the U. S. A.
The characters in this book are entirely fictitiousand are the products of the author's imagination. Theyin no way represent actual people.
TELEMAN BEGAN TO TREMBLE....
The lovely woman approaching him on the travel strip was non-sex-privileged—he could tell by her attire—but she looked at him boldly.
As she came abreast of him she stumbled, and he instinctively flung out his arm to catch her. The feel of her body against his sent a shock through his system.
She was trembling also, and she whispered strange words to him. "It is breaking down! Can't you feel it? The love instincts are returning—"
"No," he protested.
She clung to him, grinding her body against his. "Love me," she whispered. "I know you want me. I can see it in your eyes."
He tried to push her away.
"Look at me," she pleaded. "Am I not beautiful?" She unbuckled the golden belt at her waist so that the brief, diaphanous garment hung free, revealing the generous curves of her body. She stood very straight, her full red lips slightly parted, her jutting breasts heaving with the intensity of her emotion....
PROLOGUE
The Guiding Specialist paused, as if to stress the importance of what he was about to say. "Love," he went on, his voice rising slightly, "must be stripped of all artificial romantic glamour and exposed for what it is: a necessary biological technique for the propagation of the race. Its exercise must be confined to a rigorously selected few men and women whose sole function in our society is to further that aim."
A murmuring arose in the hall and ran back and forth between the tiers.
The speaker paused again and his features took on a harsher aspect, so that his image on the lighted screen no longer seemed beneficent but resembled more that of a man passing inexorable judgment.
There was a murmuring in the seven-tiered speaker-guidance hall, a heightening of tension, a drawing together of many thoughtful minds.
The hall had a seating capacity of eight thousand, and every seat was taken. Every seat was occupied by Ruling-Caste Monitors, the guardians of the most powerful and complex World State that Earth had ever known.
It was a society of gigantic industrial plants and research laboratories, of vast agricultural projects, of inland waterway and harbor-spanning bridges, of atomic generators and throbbing power turbines, of parks and playgrounds and athletic arenas where recreation was carefully supervised.
It was the first experiment in survival on a planetary scale to sanction taboos which previous ages would have rejected with horror, and to punish the violation of those taboos with the sternest kind of repressive measures and personality-transforming techniques.
"Far back in the twentieth century," the speaker went on, "the kind of social control which we have succeeded in exercising would have seemed a folly and a madness. It would not even have been achievable on a purely scientific basis, for our remote ancestors did not have sufficient scientific knowledge to subdue and regulate the love impulse and keep it from becoming a danger to the entire social fabric.
"We have been much too lenient," he said. "When the love-impulse manifests itself outside of the mating centers we must punish the offenders immediately. No mercy can be tolerated. We must not attempt to deceive ourselves as to the extent of the evil. We must wear no blindfolds. We must not condone or overlook the wickedness of a few individuals simply because they possess unusual qualities of body and mind. All who offend must be brought to judgment."
The whispering began again and this time it seemed to annoy the speaker. The frown on his face increased in severity and a tiny muscle in his jaw began to twitch.
Before he could completely regain his composure an hysterical scream rang out at the rear of the hall.
"It is you who are cruelly distorted and blind. You call the refusal to deny all men and women the right to love a madness and a folly. But it is you, it is all of us, who are mad! We have cut ourselves off from joy, from beauty, from everything that is truly creative and life-transforming. And I, for one, will not submit. I will no longer endure such a tyranny."
The words followed closely upon the scream, and there could be no doubt that the voice was that of a woman. She had risen in her seat on the elevated, next-to-last tier, and she was trembling violently, her face drained of all color.
There was a shocked silence for an instant and then one of the male Monitors cried out: "This is a shame and a scandal. She is herself a Monitor! That she should dare—"
"Yes, I will dare!" the woman proclaimed defiantly. She was standing very straight now, and her voice was no longer hysterical, but firm and unyielding. She was a woman of striking beauty, with lustrous dark hair and flashing dark eyes, and her pale brow was encircled by a tiara which glittered in the light from the screen and gave her an almost regal aspect.
"I am in love with love and I am not ashamed. I am proud."
As she spoke the woman unfastened her outer garment and quickly removed it, tossing it from her with a gesture of prideful disdain.
"You who appear merely as an image on a screen, but can see and hear me clearly enough through the audio-visual recorders which protect you so well from anger and rebellion, and a violence which you fear! And you who are seated here in the security of your high office, pretending to be all-powerful and untroubled, but knowing full well that whirlwinds of rebellion are undermining your power, day by day, hour by hour. All of you! Monitors, Guiding Specialist, cravens to the bone, look upon me as I am.
"I am not ashamed of my body. Look well upon my beauty, which was given to me for a purpose which you are too tragically crippled in body and mind to understand. Look well—and for the first time—on a beauty which was made for light and love and laughter. For grief, too, and a mutual sharing in a fulfillment which was once the heritage of every man and woman on Earth. To love and be loved is also a right, and if it is grasped firmly and with courage no power on Earth can destroy the glory of it."
The woman continued to remove her garments, tossing them aside one by one until she stood naked and unadorned in the downstreaming light. Her full breasts were high and proud and rose-tipped. Her narrow waist flared into generous hips, the hips of a fully mature woman. Her long thighs were the texture of velvet. She was the essence of sex, and she displayed it like a badge of honor.
For a moment there was complete stillness in the speaker-guidance hall. Then, in the midst of the gathering, someone began to sob....
The guidance specialist droned on. "Our society could not endure for a single day without the skills of men and women who have been trained to perform just one task well." His great golden head on the illuminated tele-screen stood out with a startling clarity, holding his audience spellbound.
"Specialization in every human activity has kept disaster from overtaking us, as it has overtaken so many of the powerful world civilizations of the past," he went on eloquently. "We have created a social structure that should endure for five thousand years. It has already stood firm for four centuries. But now that structure is being undermined by a very great evil.
"It is being undermined by the strongest and most rebellious of human impulses: the blind, uncontrollable urge of men and women everywhere to make love, to mate and reproduce themselves. If that primitive aberration is not stamped out, if stern measures are not taken at once, our society will collapse."
ONE
Teleman couldn't remember when he had first experienced the strange torment. The restlessness, the almost frightening desire to behave like some mad criminal, would come upon him at the most unexpected moments.
He'd find himself turning his head and staring wildly at the women who passed him on the travel strip. He'd watch them while they went striding on ahead of him toward the mating and child-rearing centers, never taking his eyes from them until they were swallowed up in the golden glow from the distant buildings.
It was incredible, and completely unlawful. It made no sense at all. He was an engineer and a construction worker, not a sex-privileged man. Theoretically all physical desire had been eliminated from his biogenetic heritage for four generations.
In the year 2061 only one man in fifty was supposed to feel the stirring. He had read about it in books, of course. But the scientific descriptions had never stirred him before, and neither had the sight of the passing women, swaying their hips in voluptuous abandonment as they went about their appointed tasks.
The very word "seductive" had been to him an intellectual concept solely. Emotionally it had awakened no response in him, no real understanding of how a man could be drawn from his work by enticements of the flesh that were as coldly meaningless as a row of numerals set down at random on a blank sheet of paper.
Meaningless once, but now.... NOW.... Another woman passed him, her eyes downcast, her tightly-sheathed breasts burgeoning despite their bound state, breaking through the restraining, semi-translucent fabric. Like great tropical blooms the breasts of the women seemed, ensnared by clinging vines which were parasitic and wholly pernicious, a new growth introduced by Man in a jungle of his own cruel planting.
How cruel it was to select one woman out of fifty and say to her alone: "You may mate and bear children." How cruel to compel the rest to conceal their charms and pretend to be completely sexless!
Teleman drew in his breath sharply. What was happening to him? Why should he feel angry and resentful when he knew that only one woman in fifty could be stirred by the sight of a man, or respond to a man's love-making? Had not all other women been made virtually sexless in their mental processes by selective mating and other gene-altering techniques?
Surely a woman without physical desire had no need to appear seductive or to flaunt her charms. And surely a man without physical desire would not care at all if a woman lacked a mating look, and was just a human being more fragile than himself with contours that were softer and more rounded.
Am I going mad? he wondered. In all the books there was no reference to the possibility of a change in non-sex-privileged men and women. It could hardly occur biologically. How could it, when all desire had been bred out of the non-sex-privileged for four generations?
To every man his appointed task, his niche in the social fabric. And to every woman. The sex-privileged were naturally in the minority. How could it have been otherwise, when there was so great a need for trained specialists in an advanced technological society? How could a reasonable and thoughtful man fly in the face of what history had confirmed time and time again?
Had not three great societies gone down in flaming ruin because Man had permitted his animal instincts to block the road to progress?
Another woman passed him and this time the stirring became almost uncontrollable. He had a wild desire to abandon all restraint, cross the strip to her side and plead with her for permission to take her into his arms and make passionate love to her. She was blonde and very beautiful, her hair a golden fleece spread fanwise across the dazzling whiteness of her shoulders. Her garments were free-flowing, all of her charms tantalizingly unconfined. The tips of her full breasts were clearly visible, pushing against the material of her tunic, and the other curving, secret places of her body were revealed in the play of light and shadow, the rippling of fabric. Her eyes were not downcast, but bold and fearless and she met his gaze searchingly and without embarrassment, as if she were greeting a sex-privileged man without shame in the mating center.
He knew at once that she was a sex-privileged woman. No modesty of attire had been imposed on her. Her lips were heavily rouged and her slender young body had the supple grace of one adept in the arts which can only be learned at Eros' shrine.
She returned his gaze steadily for an instant, with an unmistakable look of amorous invitation. Then, slowly, her eyes hardened and her lips curled in scorn and derision. His hesitation and the flush which had mounted to his cheekbones had quite transparently given him away. He was not one of the sex-privileged. She instantly lost all interest in him, and moved away from him with a slight shrug, as if the stern taboos erected by society did not in any way concern her.
A feeling of despair, of bitter hopelessness, made him groan inwardly and increase the length of his stride. Swiftly the moving travel strip continued to carry him toward the heart of the city, past suburban gardens bright with vermillion-petaled flowers and small artificial lakes which gleamed like gigantic garnets in the early morning sunlight.
It was difficult to wait patiently on the travel strip for the city to sweep close. Walking was not illegal and few energetic men and women could resist an impulse to exercise their legs and swing their arms before their technological duties compelled them to perform just one task well in a glass-enclosed activity cell.
One task well! He must never allow himself to forget how important that was. There would always be a constantly growing need for men and women conditioned by heredity and training to bend a machine to their will or secure the right answers to difficult problems in the research laboratories and industrial administration units. Without such specialists the entire fabric of twenty-first century civilization would be rent asunder. In fact—
Teleman began to tremble. A non-sex-privileged woman had brushed with outrageous brazenness against him and he had thrown out one arm in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. Off balance, he had gone stumbling past her, and now she was at his side, grasping him firmly by the elbow and helping him to his feet.
She was trembling also, and her breath was warm on his face. The dark wilderness of her hair was more intoxicatingly fragrant than he had ever dreamed a woman's hair could be. She was whispering strange words to him, her breath quickening.
"It is breaking down! Can't you feel it? Can't you tell? For five days and nights now I have wanted only one thing—to be embraced by a man. But no man free to choose a mate would look at me twice, because I am not supposed to feel as I do. If I should attempt to visit a mating center I would be condemned to death. The man, too, would be punished. To court me would be a crime—anti-social, monstrous."
She touched the small, glittering insignia on her right breast, invisible from a distance, which indicated all too clearly her precise status as a specialized industrial worker. Instinctively Teleman glanced down at his own status insignia. On his right shoulder there gleamed a tiny silver bridge supported by hydraulic pillars, a miracle in miniature of engineering perfection.
For the first time the silver emblem seemed a badge of dishonor, an insult to his dignity as a man with the blood warm in his veins and a desperate need to love and be loved.
Her voice became cajoling. "To a sex-privileged man making love to me would be a crime. But you can look at me, touch me, hold me close if you wish. The Monitors have passed no laws to protect a woman like me or a man like you. Who would believe that we could desire each other in an intimate, physical way? Let us show them how mistaken they are! Let us make a mockery of their cruel laws here and now! Let us make love boldly as we have every right to do."
"No!" he heard himself protesting. Forcibly, almost brutally, he freed himself, untwining her clinging arms and turning his face aside to avoid the maddening thrust of her lips against his tightly clenched teeth.
"For five minutes I have been watching you!" she cried. "Listen to me. Don't be a fool. Iknowyou feel as I do. You have followed and disrobed with your eyes every woman who passed you on the strip, and some of them were quite ugly, if you would like me to be completely honest about it. Perhaps you resent candor in a woman and prefer the lying sort. I don't particularly care, because I know that I am so desirable in your sight that you would like to take me into your arms and tell me how beautiful I am. To whisper it tenderly while you unloosen my gown and—"
"No! It would be a dark and terrible crime!" Hammers had started pounding in Teleman's temples and he could scarcely breathe.
"You fool, you fool!" she went on quickly, unbuckling the golden belt at her waist and throwing back her head. Her shimmering dark hair was a miracle of loveliness, the sunlight bright upon it. She stood very straight, her knees together, her full red lips slightly parted, morning-dew moist.
"Some of the women who passed were not beautiful at all. But others were radiant and when you stared at them your eyes lit up. In your eyes desire was a high-leaping flame. You were powerless to quench its bright splendor. You were tormented and afraid. But you did not really want the fire to dwindle and expire. I was watching you closely. I could not have been mistaken. There are some things no woman can be deceived about."
She moved close to him again. She caught his right earlobe between her lips, nibbled at it, whispered passionately into the chambered recess, "Fire! In your veins and in mine! In every breath we draw and when we breathe as one."
"No!" he cried, in desperate protest.
"Look at me," she pleaded. "Am I not beautiful? Make love to me now. Do not be afraid. There are no other pedestrians close to us at the moment. If they see us at all we will in nowise astonish them. The sex-privileged often embrace quickly and furtively on their way to the mating center, when distance turns them into small, barely distinguishable figures black against the sunrise. Everyone expects it of them, since they are naturally on fire with impatience."
"I have never seen—"
"At close range, no. But surely you have seen men and women acting strangely at a great distance, bobbing like tiny sails in a breeze when fortune favors them, and gives them as wide an expanse of empty travel strip to rejoice in as we now have at our disposal."
"There are at least five men and women coming toward us," he protested, but his throat was so dry the words were barely audible.
"Mere marionettes, dwarfed by distance. Think of them as such. What do they know of love's splendor? In all likelihood they are non-sex-privileged men and women, empty husks, hollow shells filled with ashes. We were like them once, but all that is changed now. Embrace me quickly and boldly. Hurry! Whisper sweet words to me. Call me your life and your bride. Lover, be bold. Lover be sweet and gentle and fierce and ardent. Can you not see that I am aflame with passion? Make haste, my darling, my dearest one. The opportunity may not come again."
He looked at her then, really saw her in all of her womanly completeness for the first time. She had loosened all of the constricting bands which had confined her charms from neck to ankle only a moment before, so that her attire was now as free-flowing as the garb that was worn in the mating centers and occasionally on the travel strip by sex-privileged women who were unusually bold and fearless.
He did not stare at her garb for long. In mute adoration, his temples throbbing, he let his gaze travel downward from her pale, beautiful face to her swelling bosom and perfectly formed hips and the enchanting whiteness of her sylph-slender thighs.
The twin mounds of her breasts were rose-tipped and tip-tilted and there was a tiny mole just above her navel which made the whiteness seem even more of a miracle, just as a tiny beauty-patch will often enhance the loveliness of a face designed by nature to drive a man to a frenzy of desire, amidst a carnival-bright shower of confetti and the strains of amorous music.
His temples swelled to bursting and there was a roaring in his ears and deep within his groin a trip-hammer had started up and was pounding faster and faster.
She moaned and swayed toward him. Then she was in his arms and he could no longer see even her full, red lips, moist and trembling and so hungry for kisses that he feared for an instant that he would not be permitted to breathe.
He spread his mouth over her lips to subdue their vehemence and her tongue rebelled and came through in darting defiance and with so fierce an ardor that his mouth seemed filled with weaving filaments of flame.
His hands moved up and down and across her back and he held her so tightly pressed to his finely muscled body and she pressed so passionately against him in return that it was hard to believe that human flesh could endure so close an embrace without dissolving into fiery motes swirling mindlessly about in the blazing heat of the sun.
But the ecstasy which came to them both in the same moment was not mindless and if there was a dissolving it was of a different nature entirely.
TWO
His arms were still tight about her and she was murmuring strange words of endearment when one of the approaching pedestrians swung about and gestured to a lean, big-boned woman a few feet to the left of him. Both pedestrians increased their strides, their shoulders jogging in the sunlight.
The first gesturing pedestrian was a man with a squat, muscular body and coarse-featured face. He was not a civilian. He wore the iron-gray uniform of a Monitor-caste security guard and the insignia of his rank, a silver mace, glittered conspicuously on his chest. A thick leather belt encircled his waist, and a flexible metal rod terminating in a catgut whiplash dangled at his hip.
The big-boned woman also wore a uniform. It was so tight-fitting that it seemed molded to her body, accentuating its angular contours and stripping her of every vestige of femininity. Lantern-jawed and gimlet-eyed, she bore down upon Teleman and the girl in his arms with a stride so vigorous that she quickly outdistanced the man, who was moving forward resolutely enough but without undue haste.
Teleman turned pale when he saw her. He swung about, relaxing his grip on his companion's slender waist, and taking a swift step backward. His alarm communicated itself to the girl and she stepped back also, letting her arms drop to her side and shaking her head, as if her hair, in its wild disarray, had become a brand of shame as dangerously revealing as her flushed face and heightened breathing and the crumpled condition of her attire.
The memory of what had just happened seemed suddenly like a stone around Teleman's neck. He felt weighted down and helpless, and filled with a terrible burden of guilt. He felt as if he had been hurled from the heights into a dark, deep well and was sinking down in thrashing helplessness and despair, with the weight still attached to his throat.
He dared not meet the bony woman's savagely condemnatory gaze or the gaze of her companion, who had gripped the whiplash at his waist in one of his wide hands and was using the other to gesture with.
The bony woman was the first to speak. She came to a halt directly in front of Teleman and the girl and looked them up and down, her lips curling back from her teeth in scorn and loathing.
"You are not privileged to make love," she said. "You have done an outrageous thing. There is no precedent for such behavior. It cannot be tolerated and you will both be punished. How severely I am not in a position to say. But youwillbe punished. You can rest assured of that."
"They may find themselves begging for death!" the Monitor-caste security guard said, halting at her side and slapping the metal-handled whiplash against his left palm with a look of brutal impatience in his red-rimmed, slitted eyes. He held himself very straight, his gaze passing from Teleman to the girl and lingering with an insulting, utterly brazen boldness on the ivory-textured whiteness of her unbound breasts.
"Be quiet," the bony woman said. "I'll do the talking."
She looked directly at the girl, and her voice, when she spoke again, was harsh and derisive. "I have seen love-privileged man plant senseless kisses on fat lips," she said, her color rising, "and the sight has revolted me. But what I just saw was far more revolting. What is your name, girl?"
"Alicia," the girl replied. "We have done nothing wrong, nothing that is in the least shameful. The shame is all in your mind. You are a shriveled-up old harridan. You don't know the meaning of love and never will. No man would look at you twice."
The gaunt woman's face flamed scarlet. But her voice did not rise. She lowered it deliberately to a whisper and said with a venomous inflexion, strangely like the hiss of a cobra. "You will regret such talk. I warn you. For conduct so outrageous the death penalty may well be mandatory. The Monitors will decide by secret ballot. It is not for me to say. If it were, I would pity you, for I would like very much to tell this very dutiful and conscientious guard that he need exercise no restraint whatever."
"What would you have him do? Rape me?"
"Be silent, you little fool. You are straining my patience beyond endurance."
"He is a brute and would like to rape me. I can see it in his eyes."
"That is not true and you know it. He is a high-minded man and the very sight of you revolts him."
"That is true," the guard said, smiling. "The very sight of her revolts me." He winked as he spoke, but covertly and resumed his brazen staring.
The hypocrisy of it infuriated Teleman. Or perhaps it was the girl's incredible and splendid courage that made him leap to her defense, with no concern for his own safety.
He lunged forward and struck the security guard a resounding blow on the jaw, sending him reeling backwards.
The guard was taken so completely by surprise that he nearly fell. He had to throw out his arms to maintain his balance on the moving strip, and his staggering gait made him look distinctly ludicrous. He dropped the whiplash and bent to recover it, but before he could bring it into play Teleman was upon him. The hand-to-hand struggle which followed was a test of strength and Teleman was no weakling.
The two men fought with no holds barred, primitively and savagely. They rolled over four times, gouging, kicking, pummeling. Teleman absorbed punishment stoically, groaning only once and meting it out with a vigor and assurance that surprised him.
Fist fights and close in-fighting in general were not to his liking and he had no strong desire to engage in physical combat for its own sake. He liked to think of himself as a completely civilized man who had risen above such barbarism. But there were times....
It was curious, but he did seem to be enjoying it, getting a thrill every time his right fist landed solidly on meaty flesh or increased the redness of the guard's leering, ruffianly face, already bloodied by a dozen previous jabs, the sturdiest kind of jabs delivered with a maximum of accuracy.
Over and over. Hit hard and often, and stop worrying about bruised knuckles or what would happen if the ugly son should get in a really crippling blow. It can't happen if you don't give him a chance to breathe freely or get his second wind. Keep at it, keep pounding away at him and you'll wear him down and turn him into a limp clown begging for quarter, begging for just a chance to get to his feet and wipe the blood from his mouth and blink glazed eyes in the sunlight.
It didn't end in quite that way. The thick-bodied security guard simply sighed once, heavily and unexpectedly, and rolled over on his back. He lay supine on the moving travel strip, his breathing harsh and ragged, in a grotesque sprawl with one arm twisted under him.
"You've killed him!" the gaunt woman shrieked. "You won't escape the death penalty now. Unlawful love-making and now deliberate, wilful homicide. You've attacked and killed a security guard. There is no more terrible crime—"
Teleman got to his feet slowly and a little wearily, rising first to one knee and shaking his head to clear it. For an instant he swayed unsteadily but he managed to retain his balance until the wave of dizziness passed.
"I haven't killed him," he said. "It might be better if I had. The most terrible crimes are the ones you would like to commit and usually do commit in the end. The brutal sadism in him may take many lives before someone discovers just how dangerous he is. He is about as high-minded as a rattlesnake."
"That's a lie!" the gaunt woman cried in furious protest. "Security guards are completely impartial. They do what they have to do to protect society from criminals like you and this girl. Unlawful love-making would destroy all specialization and without specialization we would all perish. The wickedness in you is beyond belief!"
"I don't intend to argue with you about it," Teleman heard himself saying, surprised by his own boldness. "This girl has done nothing criminal and neither have I. I intend to go on protecting her—with my life, if necessary."
The bony woman swayed back and forth, gripped by such an ungovernable access of rage that it drained all of the color from her cheeks and twisted her features into a mask so repellent that it made Teleman shudder and look away.
Alicia had drawn close to him again, and suddenly his arm was about her and they were facing the trembling, fury-convulsed crone together, in complete defiance of the authority she was still attempting to wield. The security guard was moaning and stirring a little but Teleman did not give him a second glance.
"We're leaving the strip," he said. "If you don't want to be hurt you'll stay right where you are. Don't compel me to use force to keep you here. I've never struck a woman in my life but I won't hesitate to use force if you turn stubborn. I'll have no choice."
"I'll shout for help," she threatened. "The instant you leave the strip! Just how far do you think you'll get? They'll put electronic scanners on every stretch of woodland, every back country shelter, every dwelling in this region. You'll be caught quickly enough, and brought back and punished. You're making the mistake of forgetting that we're living in a complex technological society with an interlocking network of crime-preventing mechanisms. No criminal can hope to escape for long."
"We'll risk it," Teleman said. "With luck I may be able to draw some of those mechanical fangs."
"A single, carefully directed blow on the head would knock her unconscious," Alicia said, a sudden hardness in her voice. "She might suffer a concussion, but the chances are she wouldn't. She has invited it by threatening to shout. Do you want me to do it? If you'll just let me have that whiplash for a moment—"
"No," Teleman said firmly, tightening his hold on her waist. "You're justified in suggesting it and I'm almost tempted to say yes. But I guess, because I'm a man, I can't be quite that objective and sensible about it. I couldn't just stand here and let you do it."
"I'm sorry I suggested it," Alicia said, all of the harshness gone from her voice. "I didn't really want to, but—"
"You'll be sorry you didn't!" the gaunt woman said, her eyes blazing with defiance and contempt. "Strike me if you dare. I haven't told you, but I'm Monitor 6Y9. Remember that! I am one of theRuling Monitors. When you are brought back I will vote with the others—for death!"
"Wear the insignia on your uniform next time," Alicia flung back at her. "No, no. Strip yourself naked and wear it as a brand between your shriveled breasts. It is a mark of shame. I would rather die in torment than be a Monitor with all men hating me, and all women. Is that why you go in disguise, in the uniform of a female security guard? Is that why?"
"There is no need for me to wear the insignia of my high station," the gaunt woman said, drawing herself up in pride. "It is visible in my bearing. Monitors walk differently and talk differently from all other specialists. We look upon even the love-privileged with scorn."
"The truth at last!" Alicia flared. "Take care not to say that in public. You would be torn limb from limb!"
"Soon our rule will be absolute," the gaunt woman said. "There are strange and disturbing stirrings, rebellions taking place. Here and there the gene-controlled mutations are reverting to ancestral type. Men and women are becoming—aware of sex again. All men and women, not just the sex-privileged. It is an outrageous regression, a corruption and a threat. It must be stamped out, by all of the Monitors acting in unison and imposing penalties so severe that no one will dare to do what you have done here today. No one not sex-privileged; and even the sex-privileged have become too numerous. Do you hear? Even they have become too numerous and just thinking about it—the bridal bed, everything that takes place in the mating centers night and day—has become hateful to me."
"That does not surprise me!" Alicia cried. "Envy can become a corrosive blight."
"It is not envy!"
"Listen to me, old woman, I will tell you what takes place in the mating centers. A young man, strong-limbed and comely, removes all of his garments and walks with proud and eager steps into the chamber of his beloved. She too has removed—"
"No, be quiet. I will not listen. Are you lost to all shame?"
"Not as lost to shame as you are, old woman. Listen well. You may never hear it again, at least, not from lips as eloquent as mine. It is all a great glory new to me—a glory just discovered, just revealed. So I can speak of it without restraint and without false modesty. It does not bring a blush to my cheeks. Why should it to yours?"
"You are a lewd wanton."
"No, I am a proud and honest woman who knows what it means now to love and be loved in return. Listen well. She is reclining on a couch, and the moonlight shines on her young breasts. He is approaching, you see, quietly so as not to startle her, and for a moment as long as forever his eyes linger on that which only a true lover is privileged to see. Then very gently and tenderly—"
"Stop! I will not listen. If you are not silent I will shout now, so loudly that you and your lover will never reach the edge of the strip. You will be caught and brought back before you have gone a hundred feet into the countryside."
"I told you what I would do if you shouted," Teleman said warningly.
"Her words are more hateful than anything you could do! Keep her quiet or I will take her by the throat and cut off her breath with my bare hands."
"Scarecrow hands, old woman. The bony hands of a witch. Listen well to the delights of young love in the dark. Oh, I'm forgetting. It isn't quite dark. The moonlight is slanting down and—"
The gaunt woman clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes, swaying back and forth in inner torment.
"Quick!" Teleman whispered, tapping Alicia lightly on the arm and gesturing toward the edge of the strip. "No pedestrians within fifty yards. We won't get a better chance!"
She nodded, darting a swift glance at the slumped security guard, who was still groaning and stirring a little, but had given up his attempt to rise.
"Three men went past without interfering," she breathed. "That was blind luck.... It shows what fear can do."
"No one will try to stop us, even if she starts shouting," Teleman whispered, his fingers tightening on her arm. "Not right away. People stay out of trouble when they can."
"I know. But hurry. We have no time to lose."
They turned and started walking with no appearance of haste for an instant, their shoulders almost touching. The gaunt woman continued to sway back and forth, her lips tightly compressed, her eyes glazed and unseeing.
Close to the edge of the strip they abandoned all caution and broke into a run. But not before Teleman said, with glowing admiration in his eyes: "I knew what you had in mind. But I never thought it would work. You shattered her emotionally. Better than a blow until it wears off."
"Much better," she agreed. "You see, darling, I'm an emotional therapy specialist. And it works both ways. You can use it to heal—or bring about a kind of sick shock reaction. A self-induced hypnosis."
"Bitter frustration can explode in the brain like a time-bomb, if you know how to light the fuse," she added, pride in her specialization making her voice ring out triumphantly. Then she was running at his side.
THREE
The travel strip overlooked a spacious lawn adorned with neatly trimmed hedgerows and stately trees. Behind the gleaming waters of a fountain three peacocks walked to and fro, their tails spread resplendently in the dawn light. There was only one dwelling visible from the strip, the white stone residence of an agricultural supervisor.
In the near distance there loomed a stretch of open countryside, the bright waters of a small lake and several acres of densely forested woodland. A long range of distant hills was also visible from the strip, their domed summits sparsely covered with tall firs and hemlocks and scrub oaks that grew in circular clusters.
At the edge of the moving strip there was a thirty foot drop, straight down to soft grass and earth spongy enough to cushion the jolt of a carefully calculated leap and diminish the risk of a sprained ankle or an even more serious injury. But the risk could not be lightly dismissed, and Teleman hesitated for an instant, holding Alicia very tightly to him.
"We've got to chance it," she whispered. "We've no choice."
"All right," Teleman said. "I'll go first."
He kissed her. She returned the kiss with fervor, pushing her lips hard against his mouth and running her fingers through his hair. She let out a long sigh when he released her and moved quickly to the edge of the strip, measuring with his eyes the distance from strip-edge to grass, getting the feel of the distance.
"Don't tighten up too much," he said. "Leap out just a little and tell yourself you're going to land on your feet. Watch how I do it."
"Don't worry, darling. I'll make it."
"It won't hurt to be sure. All right—here I go."
He leapt out and down, landing on his feet. But the jolt was severe, throwing him off balance. He sprawled forward on the grass, picked himself up and stared up in concern, rubbing his right shoulder vigorously and flexing his knees.
The slight stiffness and bruised feeling evaporated almost immediately, but not his alarm. "Wait," he shouted. "It shook me up a bit. I'm going to catch you. Do you hear? Catch you in my arms. That's the best way."
"I'm lighter than you are!" she shouted back. "I won't land so heavily."
"I still think—"
"No, darling. Here I come."
His breath caught in his throat when he saw her spinning through the air. But she landed without mishap, and with a lightness which a professional acrobat would have envied. She swayed a little but did not fall, and she was smiling when he reached her side. He took her in his arms and they remained motionless for an instant, breathing harshly, their hands entwined. Then she buried her face in the muscular rib-cavern of his chest and clung to him in a fierce and impatient way, as if even in that moment of great danger she would have welcomed the coming of the night.
There was a stirring in his loins and a restless tide of passion surged through him. But he contented himself with stroking her hair and whispering words of reassurance.
"We've got to keep moving. Agricultural supervisors don't go about armed so I'm not worried about being stopped before we reach the forest. Probably he's indoors sleeping. If he comes to the door I'll tell him we've got a hunting permit. If he demands to see it, a blow to the jaw will give us all the time we'll need."
He took her firmly by the shoulders and held her at arm's length, a warm gratefulness in his eyes. "We've got to keep moving," he said. "I haven't time to say all the things I'd like to say to you, not one small part of all the wonder-talk. Do you understand? The guilt feeling is gone, washed away."
She nodded, her eyes shining. "No regrets, darling. I'm glad for both of us."
They moved swiftly in the dawn light, across the wide lawn and between the towering trees, sending the gold and emerald peacocks fluttering into the shadows of titan oaks and cedars, their own smaller shadows lengthening on the dew-bright grass.
Teleman straightened in sudden wariness as they drew near to the white-stone dwelling of the supervisor. He reached out and took his companion's hand, and they moved with even swifter steps past the east wall of the building. No one appeared in the doorway and there was no stir of movement behind the half-shuttered windows with their orange awnings and projecting sills.
Then the dwelling was behind them and they were moving across a stretch of open woodland, weaving in and out between tumbled, lichen-encrusted boulders and the gray, bark-denuded boles of century-old trees. One of the larger trees had been lightning-blasted and several were mere rotting stumps looming ghostlike and isolated against the dark green foliage of the denser forested region just beyond.
A golden-winged hawk, startled by their approach, arose with a tumultuous flapping of wings and went soaring southward, and from a shadowed pool less than twenty feet in diameter there came a sudden splashing and the hoarse croaking of frogs.
Teleman bent, picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the dark water, standing motionless as he watched the ripples spread out and slowly disappear.
"Why did you do that?" Alicia asked, coming to an abrupt halt at his side. Her hurrying steps had brought a flush to her cheeks and she spoke almost breathlessly, her eyes wide with alarm.
"The scanners," he said. "The instant she alerts the guards they'll put scanning beams on us and pinpoint every move we make. They'll know exactly where we are. But we're safe so far."
"Safe? How can you be sure? You mean that pebble—"
He nodded. "Infra-beam electronics just happens to be part of my specialty. If they were scanning us now the rhythm of those ripples would be quite different. You'd get a more pronounced jerkiness—a jerkiness I've learned precisely how to identify at a glance. That kind of hair-trigger recognition is part of my job. You can't build a good bridge without such knowledge. Not even a good bridge, let alone more complex structures."
"Oh, darling," she whispered. "I'm glad we're both specialists. It may help us in a far more important way. If we can outguess them all—"
"We have a fighting chance," he said, his fingers tightening on her hand. He picked up another pebble and tossed it into the stream. The rhythm of the ripples remain unchanged.
"Love," he whispered. "Our new specialty, my sweet beloved. It's new, but I think—I think we know more about it right now than they do. Compared to us, even the love-privileged are jaded, blind to the bursting wonder, the glory of a fulfillment so complete that it changes everything we think and say and do. Do you mind if I call you my life and my bride?"
"Of course not," she breathed, coming into his arms again and drawing his head down until it rested in the soft hollow between her breasts. She swayed a little, her eyes closed, her moist red lips parted. Then she drew in her breath convulsively, and slipped from his embrace, still caressing him with her eyes.
"We're in the deadliest kind of danger and you're acting like a moonstruck boy," she said. "Don't you realize—"
"I only know that I love you," he said. "The guilt feeling is gone now, washed away. I realize we haven't a moment to lose. You don't have to remind me. But you've changed the world for me and I had to tell you. I had to make sure that you feel as I do. A man who flees for his life in a parched wilderness loses nothing if he pauses for an instant to quench his thirst. When he is renewed and refreshed, more life and strength flows into him."
"But we'll be much safer when we're deep in the forest," she said. "They'll still know where we are if they pick us up with the scanners. But we can weave about, hide in a cave, make it more difficult for them to overtake us."
"We won't hide," he said. "We'll keep moving until our strength gives out. There are ways of defeating the scanners. If we can get far enough away we may be able to disguise ourselves, take on a new identity."
"I don't see how—"
"Just wait and trust me. Talking about it right now will only delay us."
He reached out and took her hand. "You're right about the need for haste. Come on."
"One more kiss first, darling!"
Her lips burned against his again for an instant. He opened his lips and her tongue darted like a wet lash into his mouth and her hands dropped to her side in passionate surrender. She moaned a little and then pushed him away from her, letting out a long sigh.
"I was the impulsive one that time," she whispered. "Forgive me, darling."
They were out of breath again from running when they reached the heavily forested region. The dark barrier of vegetation which loomed before them cut off two-thirds of the sky and seemed filled with a vast murmuring, as if a thousand small furry creatures were breathing in unison while the wind sighed between the trees and owls hooted from the higher branches.
Quickly they passed into the dark wilderness between the trees, over areas of moist peat moss and across gigantic, hollow logs overgrown with ghost-pale creepers that seemed dreamlike and unreal in the half-light. A faint luminescence streamed from a few of the ground-hugging fungus growths and there were vapor shrouds everywhere, hanging suspended in the air and coiling sinuously about the boles of trees so massive that they resembled redwoods in girth and height, and conveyed an even more awesome impression of hoary age.
They were perhaps eighty feet beyond the edge of the forest wall, well within its pulsing heart of darkness, when they heard the thrumming.
It was faint and far-off at first, but it grew steadily louder, causing Teleman to halt abruptly and stare upward in alarm. High above his head the interlocking branches formed an almost solid ceiling of dark green foliage stirred only slightly by gusts and flurries of wind. Suddenly, as he stared, a gust of unusual force blew two of the branches apart, revealing a narrow patch of open sky.
Across the patch a shape moved, glinting metallically in the sunlight.
The flying machine hung poised almost directly overhead, like a great, hovering hawk with its wings wide-spread. It was moving, but slowly, slowly, as if seeking out prey in the forest aisle, the thrumming of its twin turbines sounding very much like the steady beating of wings.
The foliage overhead stirred again and the patch of open sky disappeared.
"They know where we are," Teleman said, standing very still. Alicia shivered and moved a little closer to him, her lips white. Above their heads the thrumming sound grew in volume, drowning out all the small voices of the forest. Almost at their feet a startled hare broke from cover and went scurrying into the shadows.
"If they're scanning us now it will be easy for them to send a para-guard after us," Alicia said, her eyes sharpening as she stared upward. "He'll be carrying a hand-scanner, and a hand-gun. He'll have no scruples about opening fire."
"They may drop more than one para-guard," Teleman said. "We'd better head for cover fast!"
He swung about, his gaze sweeping the forest aisle with detail-observing accuracy. There were several fallen branches directly in his line of vision, and a thin shaft of downstreaming sunlight glistened on a tangled mass of vegetation. His lips tightened when he saw the log. Huge, grayish and half rotted away, it stood out like a giant's thumb against the clotted greenery.
He gripped Alicia's arm and gestured. "That log looks hollow. If we can crawl inside it will be as good a blind as any. Hand-scanners aren't as accurate as big scanners. Not half as accurate. We've got to guard against being taken by surprise, caught defenseless in the open. If we can get far enough into that log they'll have to search. It will give us a breathing spell."
"It's worth trying!" Alicia breathed. "Come on!"
They were half way to the log when they saw the para-guard descending. There was a glistening high up between the trees and they saw the dangling, rust-colored boots of the airborne man before his head and shoulders came into view a hundred feet above the forest floor.
They crawled into the big log on their hands and knees, clearing a space for themselves by thrusting vigorously with their shoulders and scooping out handfulls of damp, weevil-shredded wood and clinging vegetable mold.
They wedged themselves deep into the log, their bodies pressed so close together that their breaths commingled and they became aware of each other's heartbeats. Cheek to cheek in stifling darkness they clung to each other, flesh bruising flesh in an intimacy so strange and unexpected that for an instant it drove all thought of danger from their minds.
Lines from a half-forgotten poet in one of the old books flashed into Teleman's mind, giving that intimacy a timeless aspect, making it seem eternal.