Part 9

The Chief Monitor smiled thinly, his eyes also intent on the glass. "I'm afraid that you have merited a reprimand," he said. "From what I have heard your conduct this morning was inexcusable. Without first securing permission from the Council you witnessed a surgical experiment which turned out very badly. Your own rash haste may have been responsible for the failure. The surgeons were not yet ready to conduct the final test but you frightened them into complying with your demand. I do not like what happened. I do not like it at all."

The Chief Monitor was not only soft-spoken. He was so mild-mannered and non-aggressive in aspect that it seemed incredible that he could have risen to a position of authority so great that he could have reversed a century of enlightened human progress with a single spoken word. He had pale brown hair and pale eyes, and he did not look at all like a man accustomed to issuing commands. But then, quite suddenly, the brown eyes would flash with an ice-crystal brilliance and hardness and in such moments his supremacy was not difficult to understand.

His eyes were ice-crystal cold now.

"I have often wondered," the Chief Monitor said, speaking with a candor that sharply increased the gaunt woman's fear, "How I would feel if I had experienced the stirring. Would I rebel as courageously as that pair?"

The gaunt woman knew how dangerous it was to share the inmost thoughts of a man so powerful, but she could do nothing to turn the conversation into safer channels and was afraid to oppose him even slightly.

"I see I startle you," the Chief Monitor went on calmly, the slight smile still on his lips. "But should we not all examine ourselves critically from time to time, and ask ourselves the really great and important questions. We all are what we are, and only a fool is afraid to face the truth about himself."

The gaunt woman remained silent, her pallor so pronounced now that it resembled the pallor of a corpse.

"The truth will come out," the Chief Monitor said, and sighed and turned from the glass. At the door he paused to deliver a few parting words of advice.

"Personal animosity in a Monitor is an unforgivable offense," he said. "Without a full and honest confession it could, in special circumstances, justify the death penalty."

When the door glided shut the gaunt woman stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Then some of the animation returned to her eyes and she returned to the glass and watched a towering ground-warfare robot joined by a second robot beside an oak tree of massive dimensions. She saw the two machines turn and start walking away from the oak tree, their conical heads turned toward a more distant part of the forest, the revolving disks of their eyes flashing with electro-magnetic, spectroscopic rays.

She watched them move forward through the forest, saw the forest vista changing. The canopy of foliage overhead changed shape and color. Now it became less dense, now more luxuriant. They skirted areas of quagmire, where the forest floor was strewn with wet leaves, carefully seeking firm footage, guided by their spectroscopic vision which could pierce beneath the surface layers of earth with rays of invisible spectrum wave-length.

Suddenly one of the metal giants halted and a flash of blinding light darted from one of the three atomic blast tubes projecting from its globular body-box. The roar of the limited atomic blast was not audible in the scanner-glass, but its violence shook the forest, sending five gigantic trees toppling and tearing a yawning gap in the canopy of foliage overhead, through which the sunlight streamed in wavering banners.

The first robot had gone on ahead, the scanner-glass which projected vertically from its conical head vibrating as it transmitted to the scanner-glass a continuous sequence of images. Suddenly it halted, as the other robot had done, in obedience to a transmitted message from a flying machine hovering directly overhead and waited until its companion came abreast of it again. Then both robots resumed their ponderous and slow advance, carefully testing each foot of ground before they rested their weight upon it.

The gaunt woman drew in her breath sharply. "In a moment now--only a moment more!" she whispered aloud to herself. "They must be very close to them by this time. They have traveled a considerable distance. The moment I have waited for so long is here at last. If I am brought to judgment, even if I am condemned to death, this moment of triumph will be worth all the humiliation, all the harsh injustice I may be forced to endure. I will go to my death with my head held high, knowing that I alone had the strength of will to root out and destroy an evil that the others attacked half-heartedly or found excuses for. These two are the worst offenders, the most brazen in their defiance of the law. If I succeed in destroying them--and I will--I will set an example that the others will have to follow. They will have no choice, for a martyr in a stern and just cause has many followers when the noose is drawn tight."

The two towering robots had halted again. They were standing very still, their conical heads turning slowly from right to left. Their spectroscopic eyes cast dull circles of radiance on the ground in front of them and their aspect was somehow vaguely disturbing, hard to explain. They seemed bewildered and confused, if human emotions can have any counterpart in a robot of metal and glass and whirring internal gadgetry.

Suddenly one of the metal giants turned and retraced his steps for a few yards, his conical head still turning slowly back and forth, in a manner that would have seemed comical to a less tense onlooker. The gaunt woman's throat felt constricted and she strained fearfully forward, her eyes glued to the glass.

The second robot joined the first in his backward exploration of ground already traversed. They stood with their heads close together, as if trying to decide what should be done next. But that, of course, was absurd and the gaunt woman was completely aware of how preposterous it was. A machine could not think for itself, a machine could not feel.

Her conviction was well-founded and the two metal monsters had put their heads together quite accidentally while avoiding a near collision. The avoidance of the collision had been directed from the flying machine by remote control and there was actually nothing human in the behavior of the robots at all.

The gaunt woman knew all that, but the knowledge could not prevent a knot of cold horror from contracting about her heart. The two metal monsters were at a standstill. Unmistakably they had reached a dead end and could search no further. They no longer knew where to look, or even what they were looking for.

The scanners which projected from their conical heads ceased suddenly to vibrate, and the instant the vibrations stopped the scanner-glass went dark.

A voice spoke out of the blackness. "I regret to report that the ground-warfare machines can no longer function. Their scanning screens have lost track of the two fugitives. The pickup mechanism has gone dead."

For an instant the gaunt woman could not swallow, could not even breathe. Her throat felt parched and constricted and there was a horrible tightness in her chest.

Suddenly all the tightness was gone and a scream, terrible, prolonged, welled up in her throat and issued from her lips. It stopped once abruptly and then went on and on, and only ceased when she seized a metal chair and smashed the scanner-glass to fragments, and collapsed in a heap at it base.

The forest was enveloped in weaving shafts of light. The light stabbed downward, moved between the trees, cascaded across brightly gleaming fungus growths and the boles of century-old trees and logs which forest mold and weevil beetles had turned into vegetable skeletons.

The forest was clamorous with voices. Para-guards moved between the trees, searching with flashlights that sent tunnels of radiance boring into the depths of shadowed crevices and deep caves and even between the tangled roots of titan oaks half-torn from their moorings by freakish bolts of lightning.

A hundred feet from the edge of the forest a guard more venturesome than his fellows descended into the depths of such a tangle, the bole of the oak looming enormous above, and found himself in the strangest of gnomelike dwellings, with winding corridors bathed in a pale blue light and his raised voice echoing from every corridor. It was a house of enchantment, a house underground and easy to people with all manner of elfish creatures.

But the two fugitive lovers had not taken refuge there. The beam of the guard's flashlight shone on emptiness and desolation and no trace of hidden lovers.

There was no way of tracing them, of ferreting them out. Cunning could not do it, or any kind of subterfuge. Voices offering Monitor truce, Monitor pardon, beguiling and deceptive, could not flush the two lovers from cover.

Where were they? No one knew, no one dared to boast that he thought he knew, for para-guards and their more cautious commanders lived in mortal fear of the Monitors, even though they served them dutifully and claimed the rewards which were a security guard's due: the right to creep at nightfall into the mating center compartment of a sex-privileged woman and take her by force if she resisted his advances.

There were a few para-guards who refused to conform to that pattern of behavior, but their forbearance was not admired by the majority of their fellows.

Through the dark the tracer beams moved, the flashlights flickered, but no one knew what had become of the fugitive lovers. And the penalties could be dire, for the Monitors did not readily forgive failure.

Everywhere the search continued, through every aisle of the forest, in every recess between the rocks, in every hidden nook and cranny.

But not quite everywhere. Deep in the forest gloom a pool of still black water mirrored the moonlight and in the pool two naked lovers clung breast to breast, thigh to thigh, waiting in stillness for the night to pass.

In the darkness of that strangest of nights the man whispered: "I never thought we would spend our bridal night in this way. I never thought we would leave our clothes on the bank, concealed and neatly folded, and shiver the whole night through. But at least we are completely safe, completely secure. The scanner beams are deflected when they pass too close to water and the water itself absorbs some of the rays. If they should find this pool by accident we will know what to do."

"Why are you telling me all this again, darling, when you have spoken about it before?"

"It helps me to talk. Remember--if we hear footsteps we will move closer to the bank and hide ourselves in the reeds. We will be safe as long as we hold tightly to each other and stay here until the sun rises again."

"Oh, darling, I love you so much, even when you worry needlessly about me, and seem to feel that if we find ourselves in danger again I will not know what to do. I will know exactly what to do. I will know exactly what to do. Can't we talk about more important things?"

"Are all women like that, Alicia? I mean, do they get upset and angry when a man is practical and puts first things first and does all that he can to safeguard and protect them? I know so little about women, because I have never before been in love, and all of the women I have met--"

"Never mind the women you have met. All women in love are difficult at times, my darling, and you must try to know exactly what to do. Can't we talk about more important things?"

"Darling, I do love you. You must believe me."

"Kiss me then. Kiss me passionately. I have waited so long for this moment, when we would be completely alone together in the night. But it has come at a strange time. I am not even sure that I can respond now as a woman should. The water is so cold."

"We can climb out on the bank if you wish. It will be taking a risk that I should prefer not to take, for your life is more important to me, more precious, than even that moment of complete fulfillment which seems to lovers not minute-long but eternal. But if that alone will please you...."

"Darling, what a way for a lover to talk! Do you no longer desire me?"

"You know better than that."

"Then prove it to me, now!"

He was the first to ascend the bank, drawing her up after him. They stood for a moment at arm's length, hands clinging, each feasting on the sight of the naked body of the other. The moonlight gleamed on Alicia's white flesh, and shining droplets of water trembled on the tips of her jutting breasts. Bending down, he clamped his lips to hers, his tongue searching. She responded with ardor, and clung to him so fiercely that they both toppled backwards on the soft grass of the bank.

Their love-making was so passionate that their lips remained constantly joined, and all of the tender explorations which accompany love were accomplished with the artful movements of hands that clasped and unclasped and darted with an eagerness that could not be restrained, to the most secret citadels of Aphrodite, and the pleasure gardens of Eros enshrined.

When the pulsing warm moment came when two become one the night seemed to hold its breath and only the woman's wild cry of ecstasy broke the stillness of the sleeping forest.

FOURTEEN

The long, blank-walled anteroom of the mating center was crowded to capacity with love-privileged men and women who had been granted short emergency leaves and were waiting to have their identification disks checked.

Teleman and Alicia stood very quietly in one corner of the large room, forcing themselves to remain calm and hardly glancing at the men and women about them.

They did not even allow their thoughts to dwell on the final stages of their almost miraculous escape--their unobserved ascent to a travel strip on the far side of the forest in the early hours of the morning, their journey on the strip in garments new to them, their self-consciousness when they glanced down at the insignia which proclaimed that their destination was a mating center and that they could walk openly in the sunlight as lovers, and pass a security guard or a Monitor without fearing that they would be stopped and questioned.

Had they wished they could have even paused and embraced openly on the strip, exchanging light, casual caresses, but that they had not done. Their love was neither light nor casual and the memory of the fulfillment which had come to them above a star-mirroring pool of still water was still too vivid and glorious to permit them to engage in the more superficial varieties of love-play.

Those varieties would occur later as a natural accompaniment of love, for even the deepest and most genuine love must have its lighter aspects, but for the moment they had been content to walk quietly on the strip hand in hand, their eyes shining with a memory-glow that had caused a few of the pedestrians to turn and stare at them in envy which they had not attempted to disguise.

They waited now with the glow still in their eyes, while the check-in security guard placed identity disks into a machine which quickly tested their genuineness and ejected them with a faint, whirring sound.

He sat at a desk in a far corner of the anteroom, a harassed and very busy man, with a look of boredom on his face and a restless impatience in his eyes.

"Too many leaves," he muttered, so loudly that his voice carried to everyone in the room. "It makes quite unnecessary work for us. If I had my way I would permit no love-making outside of a mating center. But I am not a Monitor and I suppose I have no right to complain. I suppose that in exceptional cases some kind of safety-valve must be provided for the disgusting thing which you people are always talking about. Romance! It used to be a taboo word, but now you use it quite openly."

He paused an instant, then went on complaining, the whirring of the machine making it difficult for Teleman and Alicia to catch all of his words.

"Of course, strictly speaking, no emergency leaves are granted on that basis. But I, for one, am not deceived. I know precisely why so many of you ask for emergency leaves. Illness, a death in your immediate family, the need to visit long-neglected relatives and friends. Faugh! If I were a Monitor I would accept no such excuses."

He raised his eyes suddenly and called out two names. "Richa Malgroon. Taja Ramole. Your identification disks are in order. Come here and take them, and go quietly to your compartment in Section 9Y66. For all I care you can make love romantically all night long--right here in the mating center. That should content you, I should imagine. Why should you go to a vine-covered dwelling in the forest? It's all down here. You have a dwelling in the forest where you spent your--revolting word out of the old books--honeymoon. This time you were granted five hours leave. You took a day and a night. But I have instructions not to censure you. It seems your original excuse was accepted and the Monitors can be very lenient. Too lenient, if you want my honest opinion."

He coughed to clear his throat. "All right, come and get your disks. I have a feeling that you spent the night in that cottage, unlawfully. But I have no way of proving it, and the Monitors have given me instructions which I am duty-bound to accede to."

Alicia nudged Teleman's arm. "He's talking to us," she whispered. "Quick, darling. Go to the desk and take the disks, and try to act completely composed, as if we had been here many times before and are not in the least offended by his rough manner and outspokenness. I have never heard a security guard speak so frankly. It is very strange. I believe he is himself secretly rebellious and that his words have a double meaning."

Teleman nodded, pressing her hand and stepping quickly to the desk. He accepted the disks in silence and returned to where Alicia was standing.

"We can go now," he said. "Section 9Y66, compartment 66. We go through the door on our left. We'll find someone who can direct us to the right section and compartment. It will be no problem. But we mustn't act as if we didn't know."

They walked across the room and through the door and found themselves in a dimly-lighted corridor which was, for the moment, completely deserted.

They walked to the end of it, turned right and traversed another equally deserted corridor. As they walked along it Teleman found that he could no longer keep to himself thoughts which had badly shaken him and forced him, for Alicia's sake, to pretend otherwise.

"I'm afraid that we have made a mistake in coming here," he said. "We did not know that the couple whose identity we have assumed had such a completely documented past history. _The Monitors know about the dwelling!_ They know that we took refuge in the dwelling. Don't you realize what that means? We may have walked into the deadliest kind of trap. We thought the couple had escaped from the mating center by stealth, without having been granted any emergency leave at all. But apparently they had a five hour leave and simply took the risk of extending it. _And the Monitors know about the cottage_. They know we were there, so every guard here must have been alerted. The guard at the desk must know exactly who we are."

"I did not want to alarm you," Alicia said. "But the same thought occurred to me. Darling, what shall we do? If we _are_ trapped--"

She moved into the circle of his arms, and he silenced her for a moment with a kiss. Alicia rubbed her body against him, and Teleman felt a strong urge to tear the garments from her body and take her there in the corridor, to press her down on the hard floor ... but he pushed back the tide of desire and spoke quickly.

"I'm afraid we are. I'm afraid we're in the deadliest kind of danger. Why they did not seize us immediately I do not know. Perhaps they intend to seize us in the privacy of our compartment, without causing any commotion, without letting the others here know what is going on. It is entirely possible that they planned it that way. That frustrated old woman we encountered on the strip; if she is the Monitor in charge such a capture might appeal to her in a cruelly whimsical way. To let us think ourselves safe and then to take us by surprise!"

"If you are right, darling, what shall we do?"

"We'd better not go to our compartment. I had no intention of doing so, but I spoke as I did in the anteroom because I didn't want to frighten you. I wanted to get you out of there as quickly as possible."

"You still haven't answered me. What shall we do?"

"We've got to escape from this place in some way. But first we've got to find out more about it. How many deserted corridors are there, how many doors and windows, how many compartments where nothing but records are stored, or mating center furniture. How many compartments which are seldom visited, where we can hide...."

Had Teleman known, events were to take place in the next forty hours which were to shake the entire structure of the society of which he was a part, and make all of his desperately seized-upon plans for escaping from the mating center completely unnecessary. But he had no way of knowing, no way of even suspecting that he was to become an instrument of destiny and overthrow a tyranny unique in human history.

Had he known, he would not have believed that such an event could take place and that his own very human qualities and the courage of the woman at his side would elevate them both to greatness.

In the world of the Monitors, the human factor was very precariously balanced. Certain basic human instincts had been repressed or denied. But they could not be repressed forever and the most basic impulse of all could not be repressed without building up tensions volcanic in intensity.

The instinct which could not be repressed could not even be discussed in the world of the Monitors. Its denial and repudiation was basic to the survival of that world. All reference to it in the old books had been stippled out, and when men and women talked of love they did not know that they were treading on dangerous ground in respect to that impulse, which was a woman's crowning glory.

Even Teleman, despite his historic role, did not know or suspect until he emerged from another corridor into a compartment so large that it must have filled two-thirds of the building's interior. He did not know until he was standing in the entranceway, staring through a pale blue radiance at tiers upon tiers of cribs encased in sterile glass. He did not know until he saw the babies.

Tiers upon tiers of cribs and in each crib a sleeping human infant.

And in a few cribs a crying and a reaching out of tiny hands for arms that were not there, the arms of the mothers.

In each crib a man or woman of the future, still in swaddling clothes, but beginning to become aware of the world that he or she would someday inherit.

A thousand tiny faces stared up into the blue-lit immensity above the sterile cots, some rosy-cheeked and smiling, and fully awake, but most sleeping soundly. There were thin and peaked faces as well as rosy ones, contented faces and hungry-looking faces, and faces that looked completely innocent and faces that resembled the countenances of little old men, worn by years of toil, and faces that asked questions and faces that were content to express neither anger nor fear nor high intelligence but wore a look of untroubled innocence.

Teleman was too shaken to do more than stare silently and it was Alicia who put what they both felt into words, her eyes shining with a bright, newly-experienced kind of tenderness.