Part 3

"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.

"Bound limb to limb And breast to breast, And I would give my soul for this To burn forever in burning hell."

It seemed incredible, but they could still breathe. It was almost suffocatingly cramped in the narrow space into which they had wedged themselves. But there were eroded patches in the half-decayed wood which let in the air and by controlling their breathing they could avoid straining their lungs to bursting and turning and twisting in a tormented way.

As they clung together time lost all meaning, for moments perhaps dangerously long. They were only aware of each other's nearness, and the sweetness of not caring, not even allowing themselves to think and grow fearful again.

What aroused them to an acute awareness of danger drawing near they never quite knew. The snapping of a twig in the forest gloom, perhaps, or the screaming of a bird winging skyward, or the slow, steady clump of boots where the ground was not soggy and the stillness magnified sound.

From whatever cause arising, Teleman's alertness became instant and all-pervasive. Alicia, too, stiffened in alarm, her fingers tightening on his arm.

"Listen," she whispered. "Did you hear--"

"Be quiet," he warned. "I think he's close to the log. If we stay just as we are he may pass us by."

Silence for a moment. Then, unmistakably, another sound--a grunt of anger and frustration close at hand. It came clearly to their ears and suddenly, to Teleman, further waiting in complete stillness seemed an affront to his dignity as an angry and embattled man. It was intolerable and could no longer be endured.

Recklessness and defiance overcame him. He raised his fist and pressed firmly and with all his strength against the rotting inner surface of the log. He did not forget to exercise caution, tried not to make a sound. He knew that he was taking a very great calculated risk, but a peep-hole was vital. Complete sightlessness was no longer to be endured.

The wood crumbled under the steady pressure, flaked away in a patch a little wider than his hand. Sunlight flooded into the log, and the sudden brightness dazzled him for an instant. Then his vision steadied and he realized that the brightness was caused by a single shaft of sunlight slanting downward across the log. Beyond the shaft the forest was still gloom-enshrouded, bathed in a half-light that made the flickering shadows seem grotesquely alive, waltzing nightmare shapes caught up in a _danse macabre_.

In the midst of the shadows a silent, gray-uniformed figure stood with his back to the log, a hand-gun gleaming at his hip, his heavyset body, shaven head and bull-like neck giving him an aspect of primitive brutishness.

Security guards, whether airborne or not, were specialists of an unusual sort, with a biogenetic heritage of brutal callousness which made them unique. Callous from birth, they were under compulsion to exercise restraint, killing only when necessary. They were dangerous and deadly at all times, accurate in the use of weapons and completely sure of themselves. But the deadliness had to be triggered by a Monitor's command, set in motion by desperate men and women in flight.

Pity was alien to their nature, for compassion of any kind seemed monstrous and abnormal to them and human frailty they could not even understand. And yet ... there was something quiet, dark and inwardly tormented about them, a restlessness, an unease, as if they could not quite bring themselves to believe that they were not as other men.

The figure did not move as Teleman stared, did not even change the position of his head. There was a small gleaming instrument in his right hand and the hand was half raised and he seemed to be listening. Teleman knew that the instrument was a small, portable scanner and that he was using his eyes alone. Sound did not interest him, and there was no need for him to listen with his ears.

In a sense, though he _was_ listening, with his entire body, standing tense and alert, and watching a tiny needle oscillate and vibration frequencies register on the scanner's luminous dial.

It had to mean that he was overstimulated in a deep, preoccupied way, caught up in such a trancelike intensity of concentration that it would take a shout to arouse him or the crash of a falling branch. He would be unlikely to hear small sounds. The splintering of wood even--although rotting wood does not splinter and it can be peeled away in damp fragments or torn loose with a violent wrench.

It wasn't the first time that Teleman had watched a para-guard stand immobilized and entranced and abnormally on edge, but in an almost infantile way. The brutish simplicity of their natures predisposed them to devote all of their energies to one thing at a time, to make progress slowly and in step-by-step fashion. Now luck--blind luck perhaps--was making that limitation play directly into his hands. The para-guard was abnormally preoccupied, and he was facing away from the log. _He was facing away, his back was turned._

Teleman used both hands to tear a wide gap in the rotting wood. The decay was not uniform and the outer bark remained firm here and there. But he managed to rip apart enough of the soggy, flaking wood to clear a space for his head and shoulders. He widened the gap further by swaying vigorously from side to side, half propelling, half dragging himself from the log to the forest floor.

The leaves directly beneath the log cushioned his descent, but did not crackle as he rose swiftly and agilely to his feet. He turned just as swiftly, his eyes darting to Alicia's white face framed in the gap, and pressed a finger to his lips. There was a look of wild startlement in her eyes but she managed to nod in quick understanding, answering his look of reassurance with a thin, tight smile.

FOUR

Less than thirty feet separated him from the para-guard. He covered two-thirds of the distance without haste, moving stealthily, his muscles tensing in preparation for a leap. Ten feet from the guard he abandoned all caution, not caring if the man heard him and turned. He preferred to grapple with a slightly alerted opponent. It was the surest way of measuring an antagonist, of estimating the quickness of his reflexes with hair-trigger accuracy. It was also the surest way of getting just the right grip on him from the start.

A twig snapped beneath Teleman's no longer cautious tread and the para-guard swung about with a hoarse cry. He was still turning when Teleman flung himself upon him. Teleman's left arm whipped around the guard's waist and tightened. He drew back his right arm and sent his fist crashing against a meaty jaw. He swung the man around and went staggering with him across the forest aisle, hitting him again and again with all his strength, jabbing at his stomach, his nose, landing solid blows on both sides of his face. He had the advantage of surprise and refused to relinquish it, putting a savage fury into each blow, giving the other no chance to regain his breath.

But it was far from a one-sided struggle. The guard was armed and that knowledge alone can speed the recovery of a man caught off guard and forced on the defensive. He also outweighed Teleman by thirty pounds, had a longer reach, and a thick-muscled strength which no city-bred man could hope to equal.

He got in a jarring right hand blow to Teleman's jaw before he broke free, loosening the lighter man's grip by kneeing him in the stomach and shattering it completely by twisting his torso sideways with a violent lurch. Teleman went staggering backwards, blood bubbling from his mouth and running down his chin. He wiped the blood away with the back of his hand, shook his head to clear it and kept his distance for an instant, his eyes on the para-guard's right hand.

The guard's bony-knuckled hand was darting toward the weapon at his hip when Teleman moved in close again. He lashed out with both fists, directing one blow at the guard's battered, bleeding nose and splaying his fingers to spread the blood over the man's rage-inflamed eyes. The other blow caught the guard on the wrist and was aimed with such accuracy that the weapon remained where it was.

He gave the thick-muscled brute no time to absorb punishment and go on the offensive again. He lashed him twice across the face with the edge of his hand, stamped on his foot and, because more than his own life was at stake, abandoned all scruples, and kneed him in the groin with such vigor that he groaned, bent almost double and went reeling backwards.

Teleman darted after him, whipped the hand-gun from its sheath on his hip, reversed it, and brought the weapon down sharply on a very thick skull. The guard slumped to his knees, shivered once convulsively and fell forward on his face. He lay still.

Teleman stood staring down at him for an instant, breathing harshly, black nausea clawing at his stomach. Then the wave of giddiness passed and he bent, unbuttoned the slumped man's uniform at the throat and slipped his hand down over the cold flesh directly over a heart that still appeared to be beating steadily, with no break in its rhythm.

Teleman waited for a moment to make sure, swayed a little, straightened, shook his head for the second time, and walked unsteadily back to the log.

Alicia arose from the log, ran to him and locked her hands behind his neck. She drew his head down and kissed him so passionately on the mouth that it increased his unsteadiness and almost stopped his breathing.

He was still clasping the hand-gun which he had taken from the guard and he tapped her gently on the shoulder with it, and ran the long steel muzzle gently up and down her spine, hoping that the firm, bizarre caressment and the cold feel of it would calm her and enable them both to recover a little from shock and strain and torment, and decide what they still must do to save themselves.

"If I'd been armed I could have taken him completely by surprise and knocked him unconscious without a struggle," he whispered. "I've managed to knock him unconscious, all right, with his own weapon. But I had to be as brutal as he was. It went against the grain somehow."

"But you had no choice," she breathed in vehement protest. "Darling, you had no choice at all. It was your life or his. And he's not dead, is he?"

Teleman shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he'll recover. But I couldn't just give him a light, friendly little tap on the skull. I had to make sure he wouldn't just blink his eyes and come at me again."

"You made sure. You did very well, darling. I'm proud of you."

Teleman sighed. "You've no reason to be," he said. "There must be a better way of solving human problems than going at it tooth and claw like beasts of the jungle. You'd have a right to feel proud of a man who could think out a way. I'm afraid it's beyond me."

"But we have to resist tyranny," she said. "We have to fight with every weapon we can seize hold of--with our naked fists when there's no other weapon. That's simple common sense, human nature being what it is."

"I've heard that argument before," Teleman said. "I'm not sure that it completely convinces me. But I haven't got what it takes to think out a better answer. Someday a man will be born who will have such a great, calm, wise mind that it won't even seem like a problem to him. He'll _know_ the answer, and other answers as well, to other life-destroying and beauty-destroying and peace-destroying problems. Answers must be found or Man will go down into everlasting night and darkness."

"The man you speak of. He'd have to be ... a very great scientific specialist."

"He will not turn his back on science. You can be sure of that. Without science there can be no truly great and enlarged world view, no perfect society, no Utopia worth building. But he will be more than a scientist and more than a specialist. He will know how to create a completely new kind of human being."

"And love? Will he leave that out?"

"No, I am sure that he will not. It will be the cornerstone and the arch, and the gateway to all splendor. He will remove all the blindfolds, free all the captives who are imprisoned now by a cruel, needless hatred of beauty."

Teleman turned and stared at the slumped and unstirring para-guard, his lips tightening in grim apprehension. "We're cutting down our chances by standing here talking," he said. "I've never talked to a woman before with such a complete baring of my inmost thoughts. It made me forget for a moment where we are, and what has happened, and how great the danger is. We may not be alive a week from now to talk again in this way, with complete trust and understanding. It's a strange, new, intoxicating kind of fulfillment. If we were not in love and you were not so very beautiful--"

She nodded, her eyes shining. "I know," she said. "I forgot the danger too. We'd better bind him before we go on. I could tear a strip of cloth from my dress."

He shook his head, bent and quickly unlaced one of his medium-length civilian boots. "There are no laces on his boots," he said. "They're the kind you pull right on. But this will do to bind his wrists together. I'll cut the other lace in half and make it do double duty--half a lace for each of my boots. Seven or eight threaded eyelets will keep a boot on securely enough."

Despite the grimness of their mood, a faint smile flickered across Alicia's lips. "All right. But don't blame me if your boots fall off. A girl can only offer. I could as easily--"

"You'd be just as beautiful if you were in tatters," Teleman said, grateful for the way the banter in her voice had relieved his tension, and matching it with a levity that wasn't entirely forced. "Just as beautiful, give or take a few inches of added glamour. But I like you the way you are."

"You'd see more of me!"

"If you'd said that when I first met you and there was a para-guard to bind I'd have begged you to go ahead and rip your dress to shreds. I'd tell you I needed eight or ten strips of cloth at least."

"You mean you're becoming jaded, lover?"

"Not exactly. But you can't improve on a snow-white lily in all of its natural glory. Not when you've once seen the lily."

"That just goes to show how blind you still are in some respects. If a woman's attire is unusual and exciting, it's more exciting when she takes the dress off. Of course some women wear black to conceal all of their charms because that's exciting too in a different way. I read that in one of the old books. But it must be true, because all of our experience confirms it."

Teleman reached out and took firm hold of her hand again. "We've got to keep moving," he warned. "They'll be dropping another para-guard any moment now."

"I know," she breathed. "They'll surround the forest. We'll be completely at their mercy, with all escape cut off."

"This stretch of woodland extends for miles," Teleman said, his fingers tightening on her hand. "If we can find an isolated dwelling we'll have at least a fighting chance. There are certain ways of making scanner readings come out wrong. There are neutralizing techniques. With all of the household equipment of a dwelling to work with I may be able to confuse them completely. They'll have to search every square foot of the forest to get to us, and an exhaustive search takes time. With fifteen or twenty hours of grace, I may be able to work out some plan of escape that will get us to a crowded center undetected. We'll see!"

"But even if we lose ourselves in a crowded center they'll find us in the end," Alicia protested. "I want desperately to believe we'll have at least a fighting chance. But I'm too much of a realist--"

"Just don't think about it, darling," Teleman whispered. "Not right now. Trust me and believe in miracles. Just enough, anyway, to stay right where you are while I bind our friend."

The forest grew increasingly dense as they continued on, the foliage-filtered sunlight suffusing the darker recesses with an eerie, emerald glow. The droning of the flying machine had diminished and they heard it only as a faint, far-off echo.

They moved swiftly but cautiously, picking their way between tumbled masses of fallen foliage, huge, brightly-colored mushroom growths, and boulders overgrown with moss. They were five or six miles from the bound para-guard when they emerged quite suddenly into an acre-wide clearing and saw a small, stone-walled dwelling glimmering in bright sunlight.

FIVE

Fifty miles from the densely forested area where Teleman and Alicia had taken refuge, and completely unknown to them, another rebellion was causing the Monitors concern.

It was the first open challenge to their rule that could not be met with measures limited in scope: the drone of flying machines in pursuit of individual fugitives, the billowing of parachutes above airborne security guards, the slow, relentless descent of guards under instructions to kill if the fugitives resisted arrest or became too stubborn and resourceful.

On the bright waters of a land-locked harbor a pleasure boat two hundred feet in length was moving toward the harbor's only outlet, a narrow, winding channel which threaded its way between high banks to the open sea.

The boat, like a thousand similar craft on a hundred rivers and bays, was graceful in all of its aspects; graceful when the gleaming dark hull caught the sunlight and it veered slightly in its course, its many brightly-colored pennons fluttering in the breeze, graceful in the slant of its brow, the beauty and perfection of its high, glass-encased central cabin, and the rail of burnished bronze which completely encircled its foredeck.

It was designed for pleasure, but the pleasure was limited in scope, confined by Monitor vigilance to athletic activities which were strenuous and energy draining and to games which required intense concentration and intellectual skill.

No prolonged relaxation was permitted and any indulgence in pleasures which were taboo was instantly reported and punished. No beguiling of the senses was tolerated and spectator-entertainment on any level did not form a part of the recreational needs which the pleasure boats had been designed to serve.

There were no lighted screens with men and women in romantic roles standing on high balconies in a sunset glow and indulging in pleasures which could stir the imagination in unlawful ways. No dazzling drama and poetry and wild laughter, with lovers' hands entwined and lips pressed to eager lips in passionate abandonment in scenes too pulse-stirring for the non-love-privileged to endure.

Absolute sobriety was insisted upon. To the non-love-privileged such dramatic portrayals were not only taboo, they were an affront to the dignity and self-respect of industrial or scientific specialists in any field. There was no temptation in a strict sense, or so the Monitors were still determined to believe. If, in a few men and women outside the mating centers sex was beginning to rear its primitive head, and the old, dangerous impulses were making themselves felt, no such danger had existed when the pleasure boats had first been launched. Even now, such impulses were just beginning to manifest themselves, and the criminals could be exposed and brought to justice.

It was not too late, and the pleasure boats' recreational regimen had been designed to give such criminal impulses no encouragement at all. The original plan had perhaps been wiser in that respect than an earlier age had realized. Or perhaps the Monitors who had ordered the pleasure boats to be built and launched had feared that such impulses might someday arise, and had taken precautions to make sure that the recreational taboos would be strictly enforced.

There were security guards on all of the pleasure boats, but they wore no uniforms and mingled freely with the other passengers. Some were disguised as athletes, others as members of the crew or participants in one or more of the many intellectual games and archery contests.

In the pleasure boat which was now moving toward the open sea, its hull resplendent in the sunlight, one such guard stood on the open foredeck. He was a splendid figure of a man and quite unlike most security guards in build and carriage, with the slender hips and broad, straight shoulders of a trained athlete. There was nothing brutish or over-muscular about him, and he had handsome features and keen blue eyes. He was naked to the waist and wore about his loins an abbreviated, dark-blue tunic fastened at the waist with a silver buckle.

He stood motionless, staring at the high banks of the seaward-winding channel which the pleasure boat was just entering. Across the deck toward him another man was moving with an almost catlike agility, his hand at his waist, his face set in harsh lines. He was a little taller than the disguised security guard and outweighed him by fifteen or twenty pounds. The swiftly advancing man was accompanied by a woman whose face was contorted in a grimace of hate, a grimace so extreme that it marred the beauty of her features and gave her an almost demoniac aspect. Her dark hair, whipped into wild disarray by the wind and her flashing dark eyes made her seem even more like one of the Furies, a woman distraught and thirsting for vengeance.

The man at the rail did not hear the approaching pair until they were almost upon him. And by then he could do no more than swing about and stare at them in horror. The woman's companion had drawn a long, gleaming knife from the belt at his waist and the instant the security guard turned he plunged it into the startled man's stomach with a vigorous downward thrust, whipped it free and plunged it even more deeply into the security guard's side, giving him no time to ward off the attack with his hands or take a swift step backwards.