Part 1

The Mating Center

by FRANK BELKNAP LONG

Copyright 1961

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

A Chariot Book EXCITING READING FOR MEN

Printed in the U. S. A.

_The characters in this book are entirely fictitious and are the products of the author's imagination. They in 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. I _know_ you 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.