Part 5

The voices came drifting toward him out of the darkness, halting his cautious step-by-step advance, causing him to stand utterly motionless, with every nerve alert.

A man's voice and a woman's voice. He heard the woman's voice first, vibrant with emotion, both languid and intense, as if, in some sudden awakening after a dream of rapture, there was a need for words to make happiness and fulfillment as complete as possible.

"We came back because we had to, my dearest one, my beloved," the woman was murmuring. "And you carried me upstairs, just as you did on our bridal night. It all seems so unbelievable even now. We dared to be recklessly romantic, true lovers in the old, half-forgotten way--we dared to be true to ourselves. We had the courage, we dared."

"I know," the man whispered, his voice tender and exultant. "And when we refused to pass our first night together in a mating center. We soared to heights that had to be scaled again. We are too desperately, madly in love to accept a lesser glory. We had to be alone together in this simple, beautiful cottage in the woods. Only here can we pluck the uttermost rose of love, surrender ourselves one to the other in a secret place of our own choosing. Only here can we know how the poet felt when he wrote: 'Love is like a shining river, its banks flower-bright, with secret shrines and bowers which lovers alone may enter and become imperishably entwined. Love is a flowing, a radiance in the night.'"

"I'm glad that we came back last night," the woman murmured. "If we had waited we might have lost a little of our courage and any loss might have made us hesitate to defy the Monitors and risk everlasting disgrace. In a way, I feel like a woman who is not love-privileged, who has been denied the fulfillment of a woman's greatest need."

"A man's greatest need too, my darling," came in quick reply. "Remember that, always. No man can live without love and be creative in the highest sense. He cannot be bold and far-seeing and dare the stars. He needs the embrace of a woman, the undying love of a woman, a mutual sharing in all of love's secret delights or he will shrivel in his inmost being. He will become a mockery and a sham--a walking sepulchre filled with dry bones that rattle in every passing gust. He will become a tyrant and fool, venting his inner frustration and his rage on those weaker than himself--the helpless, the defenseless, the socially maladjusted who in many ways are often superior to himself."

The voices fell silent. But there were sounds in the darkness, a stirring, a moving about and to Teleman, still standing motionless, it was easy to imagine what was taking place in the room at the end of the hallway.

He did not wish to intrude. He would have struck down and perhaps attempted to kill anyone intruding on Alicia and himself, had the situation been reversed.

But now the need for immediate, drastic action forced him to thrust all such considerations aside. The man and woman in the room just beyond were sex-privileged and that fact alone had suggested a daring course of action which he had no right, if only for Alicia's sake, to postpone.

It was a scheme so audacious that the first move had to succeed and the second and the third. Each would be charged with danger, and the stakes would be survival or almost certain death.

The man making love in the room at the end of the hallway was for the moment defenseless, unaware that an intruder had entered his home and was listening to his every spoken word. If there was a weapon in the dwelling it was probably not within his reach. He would have to leap out of bed and cross the room to get his hands on it. It might even be in the room downstairs.

He appeared to be the kind of man Teleman would have been proud to number among his friends. The woman too was exceptional; warm-hearted and courageous. But Teleman could not risk appealing to them directly. Their sympathy and understanding might bridge all gulfs and lead to a lasting friendship. But he would still have to ask too much of them and expose them to too much danger. They would have to agree voluntarily to a plan which would place their own lives in jeopardy.

He had no right to force such a choice upon them, no right to make an appeal which their own generous natures might prevent them from refusing. Unless they were found in the dwelling bound and completely helpless the Monitors would refuse to believe that they had not taken part in a criminal conspiracy to aid two fugitive lawbreakers.

They might still have difficulty in explaining their presence in the dwelling, for the love-privileged were required by law to spend their nights in the mating centers. But recreational leaves were sometimes granted and the man and the woman were highly intelligent, and would know how to speak with eloquence in their own defense. Their lapse was not a serious one, and Teleman was quite sure that they would know how to turn aside the wrath of the Monitors. It took great courage to do what they had done. But they would not be subject to the death penalty, and would escape with no more than a stern admonition.

To mar the happiness of a man and woman so desperately in love even for a day and a night made Teleman sick at heart. But he had no choice. All of the Monitors' rage would be directed against Alicia and himself and he could not let Alicia die....

He moved cautiously forward, dreading what he must do, and was not aware that he had reached the door of the room until he saw the white sheets of a bed gleaming faintly in the darkness.

He stood for a moment in the doorway, unseen, unheard, waging an inner struggle with himself. Should he make some slight sound to warn them, risk that much before he advanced upon the bed to make his presence known in an unmistakable way?

The man would have to be ordered from the bed and threatened with the hand-gun which Teleman had taken from the para-guard. Teleman hoped that he would not have to use the gun as he had used it against the guard to exact instant compliance from the man. But he was prepared for any contingency, no matter how desperate.

SEVEN

Monitor 6Y9 stood staring at the electronic scanner-glass, her gaunt body stooping a little, her face half in shadow. Behind her the high white wall of a Security Observatory towered, totally blank from floor to ceiling and shining with a dull lustre. At her side stood a bearded young man in the somber black garb of an Advisory Specialist, his face almost as gaunt as the woman's and scarcely more masculine in aspect, for the woman was an Amazon in build and strength despite her leanness.

"They have escaped," the gaunt woman murmured. "See there! That blind, stupid pig of a para-guard lying bound and nothing but a stretch of dense woodland beyond with no scanner pickup anywhere."

"No reason to take it so much to heart," the bearded man said, a slight smile on his thin, almost bloodless lips. "You seem to hate them for personal reasons, and that surprises me. I'd advise you to keep how you feel to yourself. If they have committed the grave crime you've charged them with--and attacking that guard was just as grave a crime--they will have to answer for their criminal behavior with their lives. Doesn't that satisfy you? To feel personal animosity toward a lawbreaker is inexcusable in a Monitor. It would be inexcusable in me."

"You are a fool!" the gaunt woman said, turning upon him with a gesture of angry defiance, her dark eyes flashing. "I am not obliged to take your advice, for my authority is superior to yours."

"You might do well to heed it," the young man said. "Your authority is not superior to the Supreme Council of Monitors in full, law-making session. And an Advisory Supervisor, even an Advisory Specialist, can strongly influence the voting."

"And why should you influence the Council in a manner unfavorable to me," the gaunt woman demanded. "Have I not always been your friend? Don't forget, it was I who elevated you to your high station. If you turn against me now you will regret it."

The young man inclined his head. "Perhaps. I do owe a great deal to you. But personal animosity can distort judgment, and further threaten our supremacy. I do not like it. We must act coolly and without bias."

"How can I act coolly when those two accused me of--" The gaunt woman hesitated and tightened her lips, a deep flush creeping up over her cheekbones. "On the travel strip they accused me of secretly harboring criminal impulses as monstrous as their own," she went on in a sudden, uncontrollable burst of rage. "They dared to affront my ears with outrageous and shameful insinuations. They said that I too had experienced the stirring and that I refused to face the truth about myself and that the repression of that baseness in me had made me cruel and vindictive. They said I was envious of what they did openly and without shame, in the full light of day."

"Was it really as bad as all that?" the Advisory Specialist asked, his voice not entirely lacking in sympathy. "Well, I can understand how you must have felt. But at least they only made love openly when the travel strip was deserted for many paces and when you were still in the distance. You told me so yourself."

"I could still see them. The security guard could see them as well."

"It might have been better if you had shut your eyes to what you saw. The rebellion is spreading rapidly and we encounter many such criminal transgressions daily, even on the travel strips. Those two were unusual in many ways, more daring than most of the others, willing to take greater risks. To defy a Monitor as they did, threatening her with physical violence and to leave the strip and take to the woods in a daring bid for freedom, skilfully eluding pursuit, displaying extraordinary intelligence, outwitting us at every turn. Surely you must realize that it has set a dangerous example which others may not be slow in following!"

"That is why they must be caught and brought to justice!" the gaunt woman cried, her fury making her tremble and congesting the whites of her eyes. "The death sentence must be imposed as quickly as possible. They must stand before the Supreme Council, stripped naked, exposed in all of their shame, and they must be forced to make a full confession. Oh, we shall not spare them. _I_ will not spare them. I shall demand that right.

"I shall force them to reveal all of the monstrous details of their nights together in the dark: the criminal moments of unlawful love-making, her wantonness, his amorous abandonment to her every illicit whim. It is the woman who is always the most to blame. She has led him on and destroyed him, for no man can resist a woman skilled in all of the wiles and enticements of the harlot. Yes, yes, yes ... I will use that old, almost forgotten word. I have read the old books and I know what a harlot was and what a harlot did. I will fling the word in her face. Harlot and courtesan, strumpet and destroyer of men!"

"There is another word, a more ribald word, that you had best not say," the young man advised. "You must try to control yourself and exercise calm judgment when you make the charge. Otherwise the Council will accuse you of bias."

"Let them accuse me! I will speak my mind."

"I have advised and warned you," the young man said. "I can do no more. And I'm afraid you're forgetting that they must first be captured. Look at the glass. More para-guards are descending and the scanner beams are moving again. Another stretch of woodland is coming into view. Their capture may not be long delayed. There is consolation in that--it is an encouraging step forward. The pursuit has been resumed."

The gaunt woman swung about to face the glass, her eyes brightening, a rapacious eagerness in her stare.

In the depths of the brightly illumined glass the forest seemed elfin and remote, enveloped in a weaving interplay of light and shade. Five para-guards were descending slowly above a boulder-strewn stretch of forest floor, brightened here and there by red and yellow fungus growths and moss-covered logs that glowed with a faint phosphorescence in the shadowed hollows between the rocks.

One by one the para-guards reached the ground, threw off their cumbersome air-suspension equipment, and checked the firing mechanism of their hand-guns, their faces harsh and grimly purposeful in the downstreaming light. Two of them were equipped with portable scanners and as they moved the instruments about the scene shifted and another stretch of woodland filled the glass. A patch of open sky swept suddenly into view and across it a flying machine darted, looking, in the glass' miniature reproduction of the scene, not unlike an enormous, blue-black hornet.

"They must be taken alive," the gaunt woman breathed. "With success so near I would be a fool not to change my original orders. Even if they resist they must not be attacked with weapons. I will issue new orders immediately."

"I would advise you to give it careful thought," the young man said. "You will be risking the lives of five para-guards. The man is armed now and--"

"Be silent. I shall do as I please. The death of five guards would be a very cheap price to pay for the apprehension alive of such monstrous criminals."

The young man sighed. "Have it your own way, then. But the Council may not take a kindly view of such head-strong behavior. After all, human life has _some_ value."

The gaunt woman's eyes flashed again in anger, but before she could reply the entrance panel on the opposite wall of the Security Observatory glided open, and an armed guard stood framed in the aperture. He stood stiffly at attention, his hand raised in salute, his expression tense, but deferential, as if the news he had to convey would have burst from his lips if he had dared to ignore discipline.

The Monitor regarded him irately for an instant, and although the anger in her eyes was not meant for him it caused him to take a swift step backward.

"What is it?" she demanded. "Don't just stand there. Speak up."

"We followed your instructions and dropped seven para-guards at the opposite end of the forest," he said. "They have captured a man and a woman. They may be the two you seek, though it is hard to believe they could have covered so many miles. They were dragged from a tangle of underbrush, locked criminally in each other's arms. They are not sex-privileged."

The gaunt woman stood very still, her lips paling a little, an indescribable look, of shock and triumph commingled, perhaps, coming into her face.

"Where are they?" she demanded, her voice so choked with emotion that the guard had to strain to catch the words. "What have you done with them?"

"They are here," he said. "I knew that you would want me to bring them here immediately. They are just outside--"

"Bring them in! You try my patience. Bring them in and be quick about it."

The guard swung about and was gone for a moment. When he returned he was accompanied by a man and a woman, both securely gagged and with their hands tied behind them.

The woman was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with exotically beautiful features, her eyes almond-shaped, her skin so fair and delicately textured that it seemed almost transparent. The man was well past his first youth, but still in his prime, with a lithe strength in his build and posture, an absence of excess weight, which made it hard to think of him as a man approaching middle age. He was deeply sun-bronzed, and had the look of a man who has lived most of his life under open skies. There was great strength in his features as well, features too rugged to be thought of as handsome but radiating a strange kind of sensitivity, as if he were both an athlete and poet, man of action and dreamer of dreams.

The woman was shaking her head violently in an attempt to dislodge the gag, her dark eyes flashing with anger, but the man stood very still and straight, regarding his captors with a coldly defiant stare. There was contempt in his gaze as well, a proud disdain which he made no effort to conceal.

The gaunt woman stood staring at them for a moment with a look of bitter, rage-envenomed disappointment on her face. Then, quite suddenly, her eyes clouded over and became almost opaque, like the eyes of a cobra poised to strike.

"I had never thought to encounter such stupidity," she breathed, more to herself than to the uneasily staring guard. "Why were they brought here? They do not in the least resemble the other two. I have never set eyes on them before. They are complete strangers to me and strangers who stand accused of the most revolting of crimes should not be brought into my presence at this time. It is more than I can endure."

The guard's ruddy face changed color, becoming almost pale. "We had their description, nothing more," he said, quickly and defensively. "No likenesses were transmitted, since you yourself could only describe them. We had to make sure. We thought it was just barely possible--"

"Silence, you fool. I have heard enough. Give me your whiplash. I will not need your hand-gun. Just the whiplash."

"You are not going to--" The guard's face was deathly pale now. "No, no, try to understand. I have not merited--"

"You blundering stupid fool! It is not you I am going to chastise. It is these two. I will listen first to what the woman has to say. Then, if she has no shame, if she will not confess her guilt and admit that she has been justly accused, as all criminal offenders must do, I will punish her. Give me the whiplash."

"Yes, of course," the guard said, unbuckling from his waist the flexible metal rod terminating in five catgut thongs which the gaunt woman was now regarding with a fixed, almost hypnotic intensity. Some of the color had crept back into his face and he breathed a long sigh of relief as he handed it to her.

It was the Advisory Specialist's turn to look at her in consternation. He stepped quickly forward and laid a restraining hand on her arm.

"You must be quite mad!" he said, warningly. "The Council will not overlook or forgive the use of a whiplash by a Monitor in a private interrogation. The very word you used--_chastise_. It is a brutally primitive word, a word out of the old books, a completely unscientific word that should be strictly excluded from the vocabulary of a Monitor. You will bring ruin and disgrace upon both of us. I will not be a party to it."

"Then go!" the gaunt woman cried, almost screaming the words. "I have always suspected you were nothing but a coward. Go, leave me. I can no longer endure the sight of you."

Without a word, his face as pale as the guard's had been, the young man turned and left the Observatory, the entrance panel closing behind him with a dull droning.

Grasping the whiplash firmly, the gaunt woman stepped quickly forward and tore the gag from the dark-eyed girl's mouth.

The girl recoiled a step, and stood for an instant motionless, her shoulders held straight and her eyes still blazing with anger. She did not seem to want to be the first to speak, for she kept her lips tightly compressed and her chin tilted defiantly. So fierce was her pride and uncompromising dignity that for the briefest instant the gaunt woman hesitated, as if some vestige of human feeling, of compassion and respect deep in her nature was urging her to be merciful. Then, as quickly as it had arisen, the impulse vanished, and the enraged Monitor unleashed a torrent of vituperation, her voice trembling with fury.

"Lascivious wanton, lewd temptress, abandoned harlot! How many men have you betrayed? How many men have you aroused unlawfully, tempting them to engage in acts of criminal carnality which all of the lessons of their childhood and early adolescence had given them the strength and wisdom to withstand? And the glandular injections, the wise, sane quieting of desire, its almost complete eradication in high-minded specialists in a hundred fields whose social dedication has made our society what it is--how dared you flaunt your brazen primitiveness openly and destroy what it has taken centuries to create?

"You have committed the most terrible of crimes. You have discovered in your wickedness that here and there, among a few men who are criminals at heart, the old, dangerous impulses are stirring again and perhaps have never been wholly subdued. And because they are stirring in you, because you are an abandoned creature lost to all shame, you have led many such men along pathways of gross sensuality, of unlawful desire. How many? A hundred, a thousand? You do not need to tell me. I can guess. It is always the woman who is most to blame, even when she consorts with men who are themselves criminals, as is this man here."

The girl spoke then, for the first time. She did not raise her voice and the anger which flamed in her eyes did not make her words come in a rush, as the Monitor's words had done. She spoke with dignity and each word was chosen with care and each word fell on the gaunt woman's ears with the force of a stinging rebuke.

"If you had wisdom and warmth and understanding you would have said, quite simply: 'He is a man--you are a woman. No woman can live without love and give to the world the best that is in her, and increase the world's store of radiance and tenderness and beauty. And no man can live without love and be complete in his inmost being, and have the courage of his beliefs and build proud new worlds on the ashes of a world such as this, a world which is dying."

"If our world is dying, you have helped to kill it!" the gaunt woman cried, her face dark with rage. "Do you hear? You have helped with your wantonness. You were caught making love in the forest like--like wild animals."

"No, you are mistaken," the dark-eyed girl said quietly. "We were making love with dignity, tenderness and beauty."

The gaunt woman's rage could no longer be constrained by anything short of violence. The words that came to her lips in reply were never uttered. She could no longer articulate and the words became a low muttering which continued even when she seized the hem of the girl's white garment and ripped it from her shoulders, baring her back from neck to waist.

She raised the whiplash and brought it down with all her strength on the girl's naked back. Three times she raised the punitive weapon and brought it down with relentless violence, her breath wheezing in her throat.

The thongs cut cruelly into the girl's flesh, raising long crimson welts, and sending her staggering forward. She raised her hands to her face and dropped to her knees, but she neither cringed nor cried out. She remained kneeling in an upright position, in an attitude that only great courage could have enabled her to maintain. She was trembling a little, but she continued to hold her shoulders straight and did not even moan when the whiplash descended for the fourth and last time.

The gaunt woman was raising the weapon for another blow when the man hurled himself against her, battering her with his shoulders and elbows until the whiplash went clattering and she collapsed backwards against the electronic scanner-glass, shaking but not shattering it, and sank with a groan to the floor.

She remained sprawled out on the floor for a full minute, clutching at her side, twisting about in pain, and trying several times to rise, her eyes darting in desperate appeal toward the guard. Her lips moved but no sound came from them, for her throat had been bruised so severely that her vocal cords throbbed dully and she could not even take a deep breath, or summon the strength to speak.