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.

"You are not privileged to make love," she said. "You have done an outrageous thing. There is no precedent for such behavior. It cannot be tolerated and you will both be punished. How severely I am not in a position to say. But you will be punished. You can rest assured of that."

"They may find themselves begging for death!" the Monitor-caste security guard said, halting at her side and slapping the metal-handled whiplash against his left palm with a look of brutal impatience in his red-rimmed, slitted eyes. He held himself very straight, his gaze passing from Teleman to the girl and lingering with an insulting, utterly brazen boldness on the ivory-textured whiteness of her unbound breasts.

"Be quiet," the bony woman said. "I'll do the talking."

She looked directly at the girl, and her voice, when she spoke again, was harsh and derisive. "I have seen love-privileged man plant senseless kisses on fat lips," she said, her color rising, "and the sight has revolted me. But what I just saw was far more revolting. What is your name, girl?"

"Alicia," the girl replied. "We have done nothing wrong, nothing that is in the least shameful. The shame is all in your mind. You are a shriveled-up old harridan. You don't know the meaning of love and never will. No man would look at you twice."

The gaunt woman's face flamed scarlet. But her voice did not rise. She lowered it deliberately to a whisper and said with a venomous inflexion, strangely like the hiss of a cobra. "You will regret such talk. I warn you. For conduct so outrageous the death penalty may well be mandatory. The Monitors will decide by secret ballot. It is not for me to say. If it were, I would pity you, for I would like very much to tell this very dutiful and conscientious guard that he need exercise no restraint whatever."

"What would you have him do? Rape me?"

"Be silent, you little fool. You are straining my patience beyond endurance."

"He is a brute and would like to rape me. I can see it in his eyes."

"That is not true and you know it. He is a high-minded man and the very sight of you revolts him."

"That is true," the guard said, smiling. "The very sight of her revolts me." He winked as he spoke, but covertly and resumed his brazen staring.

The hypocrisy of it infuriated Teleman. Or perhaps it was the girl's incredible and splendid courage that made him leap to her defense, with no concern for his own safety.

He lunged forward and struck the security guard a resounding blow on the jaw, sending him reeling backwards.

The guard was taken so completely by surprise that he nearly fell. He had to throw out his arms to maintain his balance on the moving strip, and his staggering gait made him look distinctly ludicrous. He dropped the whiplash and bent to recover it, but before he could bring it into play Teleman was upon him. The hand-to-hand struggle which followed was a test of strength and Teleman was no weakling.

The two men fought with no holds barred, primitively and savagely. They rolled over four times, gouging, kicking, pummeling. Teleman absorbed punishment stoically, groaning only once and meting it out with a vigor and assurance that surprised him.

Fist fights and close in-fighting in general were not to his liking and he had no strong desire to engage in physical combat for its own sake. He liked to think of himself as a completely civilized man who had risen above such barbarism. But there were times....

It was curious, but he did seem to be enjoying it, getting a thrill every time his right fist landed solidly on meaty flesh or increased the redness of the guard's leering, ruffianly face, already bloodied by a dozen previous jabs, the sturdiest kind of jabs delivered with a maximum of accuracy.

Over and over. Hit hard and often, and stop worrying about bruised knuckles or what would happen if the ugly son should get in a really crippling blow. It can't happen if you don't give him a chance to breathe freely or get his second wind. Keep at it, keep pounding away at him and you'll wear him down and turn him into a limp clown begging for quarter, begging for just a chance to get to his feet and wipe the blood from his mouth and blink glazed eyes in the sunlight.

It didn't end in quite that way. The thick-bodied security guard simply sighed once, heavily and unexpectedly, and rolled over on his back. He lay supine on the moving travel strip, his breathing harsh and ragged, in a grotesque sprawl with one arm twisted under him.

"You've killed him!" the gaunt woman shrieked. "You won't escape the death penalty now. Unlawful love-making and now deliberate, wilful homicide. You've attacked and killed a security guard. There is no more terrible crime—"

Teleman got to his feet slowly and a little wearily, rising first to one knee and shaking his head to clear it. For an instant he swayed unsteadily but he managed to retain his balance until the wave of dizziness passed.

"I haven't killed him," he said. "It might be better if I had. The most terrible crimes are the ones you would like to commit and usually do commit in the end. The brutal sadism in him may take many lives before someone discovers just how dangerous he is. He is about as high-minded as a rattlesnake."

"That's a lie!" the gaunt woman cried in furious protest. "Security guards are completely impartial. They do what they have to do to protect society from criminals like you and this girl. Unlawful love-making would destroy all specialization and without specialization we would all perish. The wickedness in you is beyond belief!"

"I don't intend to argue with you about it," Teleman heard himself saying, surprised by his own boldness. "This girl has done nothing criminal and neither have I. I intend to go on protecting her—with my life, if necessary."

The bony woman swayed back and forth, gripped by such an ungovernable access of rage that it drained all of the color from her cheeks and twisted her features into a mask so repellent that it made Teleman shudder and look away.

Alicia had drawn close to him again, and suddenly his arm was about her and they were facing the trembling, fury-convulsed crone together, in complete defiance of the authority she was still attempting to wield. The security guard was moaning and stirring a little but Teleman did not give him a second glance.

"We're leaving the strip," he said. "If you don't want to be hurt you'll stay right where you are. Don't compel me to use force to keep you here. I've never struck a woman in my life but I won't hesitate to use force if you turn stubborn. I'll have no choice."

"I'll shout for help," she threatened. "The instant you leave the strip! Just how far do you think you'll get? They'll put electronic scanners on every stretch of woodland, every back country shelter, every dwelling in this region. You'll be caught quickly enough, and brought back and punished. You're making the mistake of forgetting that we're living in a complex technological society with an interlocking network of crime-preventing mechanisms. No criminal can hope to escape for long."

"We'll risk it," Teleman said. "With luck I may be able to draw some of those mechanical fangs."

"A single, carefully directed blow on the head would knock her unconscious," Alicia said, a sudden hardness in her voice. "She might suffer a concussion, but the chances are she wouldn't. She has invited it by threatening to shout. Do you want me to do it? If you'll just let me have that whiplash for a moment—"

"No," Teleman said firmly, tightening his hold on her waist. "You're justified in suggesting it and I'm almost tempted to say yes. But I guess, because I'm a man, I can't be quite that objective and sensible about it. I couldn't just stand here and let you do it."

"I'm sorry I suggested it," Alicia said, all of the harshness gone from her voice. "I didn't really want to, but—"

"You'll be sorry you didn't!" the gaunt woman said, her eyes blazing with defiance and contempt. "Strike me if you dare. I haven't told you, but I'm Monitor 6Y9. Remember that! I am one of the Ruling Monitors. When you are brought back I will vote with the others—for death!"

"Wear the insignia on your uniform next time," Alicia flung back at her. "No, no. Strip yourself naked and wear it as a brand between your shriveled breasts. It is a mark of shame. I would rather die in torment than be a Monitor with all men hating me, and all women. Is that why you go in disguise, in the uniform of a female security guard? Is that why?"

"There is no need for me to wear the insignia of my high station," the gaunt woman said, drawing herself up in pride. "It is visible in my bearing. Monitors walk differently and talk differently from all other specialists. We look upon even the love-privileged with scorn."

"The truth at last!" Alicia flared. "Take care not to say that in public. You would be torn limb from limb!"

"Soon our rule will be absolute," the gaunt woman said. "There are strange and disturbing stirrings, rebellions taking place. Here and there the gene-controlled mutations are reverting to ancestral type. Men and women are becoming—aware of sex again. All men and women, not just the sex-privileged. It is an outrageous regression, a corruption and a threat. It must be stamped out, by all of the Monitors acting in unison and imposing penalties so severe that no one will dare to do what you have done here today. No one not sex-privileged; and even the sex-privileged have become too numerous. Do you hear? Even they have become too numerous and just thinking about it—the bridal bed, everything that takes place in the mating centers night and day—has become hateful to me."

"That does not surprise me!" Alicia cried. "Envy can become a corrosive blight."

"It is not envy!"

"Listen to me, old woman, I will tell you what takes place in the mating centers. A young man, strong-limbed and comely, removes all of his garments and walks with proud and eager steps into the chamber of his beloved. She too has removed—"

"No, be quiet. I will not listen. Are you lost to all shame?"

"Not as lost to shame as you are, old woman. Listen well. You may never hear it again, at least, not from lips as eloquent as mine. It is all a great glory new to me—a glory just discovered, just revealed. So I can speak of it without restraint and without false modesty. It does not bring a blush to my cheeks. Why should it to yours?"

"You are a lewd wanton."

"No, I am a proud and honest woman who knows what it means now to love and be loved in return. Listen well. She is reclining on a couch, and the moonlight shines on her young breasts. He is approaching, you see, quietly so as not to startle her, and for a moment as long as forever his eyes linger on that which only a true lover is privileged to see. Then very gently and tenderly—"

"Stop! I will not listen. If you are not silent I will shout now, so loudly that you and your lover will never reach the edge of the strip. You will be caught and brought back before you have gone a hundred feet into the countryside."

"I told you what I would do if you shouted," Teleman said warningly.

"Her words are more hateful than anything you could do! Keep her quiet or I will take her by the throat and cut off her breath with my bare hands."

"Scarecrow hands, old woman. The bony hands of a witch. Listen well to the delights of young love in the dark. Oh, I'm forgetting. It isn't quite dark. The moonlight is slanting down and—"

The gaunt woman clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes, swaying back and forth in inner torment.

"Quick!" Teleman whispered, tapping Alicia lightly on the arm and gesturing toward the edge of the strip. "No pedestrians within fifty yards. We won't get a better chance!"

She nodded, darting a swift glance at the slumped security guard, who was still groaning and stirring a little, but had given up his attempt to rise.

"Three men went past without interfering," she breathed. "That was blind luck.... It shows what fear can do."

"No one will try to stop us, even if she starts shouting," Teleman whispered, his fingers tightening on her arm. "Not right away. People stay out of trouble when they can."

"I know. But hurry. We have no time to lose."

They turned and started walking with no appearance of haste for an instant, their shoulders almost touching. The gaunt woman continued to sway back and forth, her lips tightly compressed, her eyes glazed and unseeing.

Close to the edge of the strip they abandoned all caution and broke into a run. But not before Teleman said, with glowing admiration in his eyes: "I knew what you had in mind. But I never thought it would work. You shattered her emotionally. Better than a blow until it wears off."

"Much better," she agreed. "You see, darling, I'm an emotional therapy specialist. And it works both ways. You can use it to heal—or bring about a kind of sick shock reaction. A self-induced hypnosis."

"Bitter frustration can explode in the brain like a time-bomb, if you know how to light the fuse," she added, pride in her specialization making her voice ring out triumphantly. Then she was running at his side.

THREE

The travel strip overlooked a spacious lawn adorned with neatly trimmed hedgerows and stately trees. Behind the gleaming waters of a fountain three peacocks walked to and fro, their tails spread resplendently in the dawn light. There was only one dwelling visible from the strip, the white stone residence of an agricultural supervisor.

In the near distance there loomed a stretch of open countryside, the bright waters of a small lake and several acres of densely forested woodland. A long range of distant hills was also visible from the strip, their domed summits sparsely covered with tall firs and hemlocks and scrub oaks that grew in circular clusters.

At the edge of the moving strip there was a thirty foot drop, straight down to soft grass and earth spongy enough to cushion the jolt of a carefully calculated leap and diminish the risk of a sprained ankle or an even more serious injury. But the risk could not be lightly dismissed, and Teleman hesitated for an instant, holding Alicia very tightly to him.

"We've got to chance it," she whispered. "We've no choice."

"All right," Teleman said. "I'll go first."

He kissed her. She returned the kiss with fervor, pushing her lips hard against his mouth and running her fingers through his hair. She let out a long sigh when he released her and moved quickly to the edge of the strip, measuring with his eyes the distance from strip-edge to grass, getting the feel of the distance.

"Don't tighten up too much," he said. "Leap out just a little and tell yourself you're going to land on your feet. Watch how I do it."

"Don't worry, darling. I'll make it."

"It won't hurt to be sure. All right—here I go."

He leapt out and down, landing on his feet. But the jolt was severe, throwing him off balance. He sprawled forward on the grass, picked himself up and stared up in concern, rubbing his right shoulder vigorously and flexing his knees.

The slight stiffness and bruised feeling evaporated almost immediately, but not his alarm. "Wait," he shouted. "It shook me up a bit. I'm going to catch you. Do you hear? Catch you in my arms. That's the best way."

"I'm lighter than you are!" she shouted back. "I won't land so heavily."

"I still think—"

"No, darling. Here I come."

His breath caught in his throat when he saw her spinning through the air. But she landed without mishap, and with a lightness which a professional acrobat would have envied. She swayed a little but did not fall, and she was smiling when he reached her side. He took her in his arms and they remained motionless for an instant, breathing harshly, their hands entwined. Then she buried her face in the muscular rib-cavern of his chest and clung to him in a fierce and impatient way, as if even in that moment of great danger she would have welcomed the coming of the night.

There was a stirring in his loins and a restless tide of passion surged through him. But he contented himself with stroking her hair and whispering words of reassurance.

"We've got to keep moving. Agricultural supervisors don't go about armed so I'm not worried about being stopped before we reach the forest. Probably he's indoors sleeping. If he comes to the door I'll tell him we've got a hunting permit. If he demands to see it, a blow to the jaw will give us all the time we'll need."

He took her firmly by the shoulders and held her at arm's length, a warm gratefulness in his eyes. "We've got to keep moving," he said. "I haven't time to say all the things I'd like to say to you, not one small part of all the wonder-talk. Do you understand? The guilt feeling is gone, washed away."

She nodded, her eyes shining. "No regrets, darling. I'm glad for both of us."

They moved swiftly in the dawn light, across the wide lawn and between the towering trees, sending the gold and emerald peacocks fluttering into the shadows of titan oaks and cedars, their own smaller shadows lengthening on the dew-bright grass.

Teleman straightened in sudden wariness as they drew near to the white-stone dwelling of the supervisor. He reached out and took his companion's hand, and they moved with even swifter steps past the east wall of the building. No one appeared in the doorway and there was no stir of movement behind the half-shuttered windows with their orange awnings and projecting sills.

Then the dwelling was behind them and they were moving across a stretch of open woodland, weaving in and out between tumbled, lichen-encrusted boulders and the gray, bark-denuded boles of century-old trees. One of the larger trees had been lightning-blasted and several were mere rotting stumps looming ghostlike and isolated against the dark green foliage of the denser forested region just beyond.

A golden-winged hawk, startled by their approach, arose with a tumultuous flapping of wings and went soaring southward, and from a shadowed pool less than twenty feet in diameter there came a sudden splashing and the hoarse croaking of frogs.

Teleman bent, picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the dark water, standing motionless as he watched the ripples spread out and slowly disappear.

"Why did you do that?" Alicia asked, coming to an abrupt halt at his side. Her hurrying steps had brought a flush to her cheeks and she spoke almost breathlessly, her eyes wide with alarm.

"The scanners," he said. "The instant she alerts the guards they'll put scanning beams on us and pinpoint every move we make. They'll know exactly where we are. But we're safe so far."

"Safe? How can you be sure? You mean that pebble—"

He nodded. "Infra-beam electronics just happens to be part of my specialty. If they were scanning us now the rhythm of those ripples would be quite different. You'd get a more pronounced jerkiness—a jerkiness I've learned precisely how to identify at a glance. That kind of hair-trigger recognition is part of my job. You can't build a good bridge without such knowledge. Not even a good bridge, let alone more complex structures."

"Oh, darling," she whispered. "I'm glad we're both specialists. It may help us in a far more important way. If we can outguess them all—"

"We have a fighting chance," he said, his fingers tightening on her hand. He picked up another pebble and tossed it into the stream. The rhythm of the ripples remain unchanged.

"Love," he whispered. "Our new specialty, my sweet beloved. It's new, but I think—I think we know more about it right now than they do. Compared to us, even the love-privileged are jaded, blind to the bursting wonder, the glory of a fulfillment so complete that it changes everything we think and say and do. Do you mind if I call you my life and my bride?"

"Of course not," she breathed, coming into his arms again and drawing his head down until it rested in the soft hollow between her breasts. She swayed a little, her eyes closed, her moist red lips parted. Then she drew in her breath convulsively, and slipped from his embrace, still caressing him with her eyes.

"We're in the deadliest kind of danger and you're acting like a moonstruck boy," she said. "Don't you realize—"

"I only know that I love you," he said. "The guilt feeling is gone now, washed away. I realize we haven't a moment to lose. You don't have to remind me. But you've changed the world for me and I had to tell you. I had to make sure that you feel as I do. A man who flees for his life in a parched wilderness loses nothing if he pauses for an instant to quench his thirst. When he is renewed and refreshed, more life and strength flows into him."

"But we'll be much safer when we're deep in the forest," she said. "They'll still know where we are if they pick us up with the scanners. But we can weave about, hide in a cave, make it more difficult for them to overtake us."

"We won't hide," he said. "We'll keep moving until our strength gives out. There are ways of defeating the scanners. If we can get far enough away we may be able to disguise ourselves, take on a new identity."

"I don't see how—"

"Just wait and trust me. Talking about it right now will only delay us."

He reached out and took her hand. "You're right about the need for haste. Come on."

"One more kiss first, darling!"

Her lips burned against his again for an instant. He opened his lips and her tongue darted like a wet lash into his mouth and her hands dropped to her side in passionate surrender. She moaned a little and then pushed him away from her, letting out a long sigh.

"I was the impulsive one that time," she whispered. "Forgive me, darling."

They were out of breath again from running when they reached the heavily forested region. The dark barrier of vegetation which loomed before them cut off two-thirds of the sky and seemed filled with a vast murmuring, as if a thousand small furry creatures were breathing in unison while the wind sighed between the trees and owls hooted from the higher branches.

Quickly they passed into the dark wilderness between the trees, over areas of moist peat moss and across gigantic, hollow logs overgrown with ghost-pale creepers that seemed dreamlike and unreal in the half-light. A faint luminescence streamed from a few of the ground-hugging fungus growths and there were vapor shrouds everywhere, hanging suspended in the air and coiling sinuously about the boles of trees so massive that they resembled redwoods in girth and height, and conveyed an even more awesome impression of hoary age.

They were perhaps eighty feet beyond the edge of the forest wall, well within its pulsing heart of darkness, when they heard the thrumming.

It was faint and far-off at first, but it grew steadily louder, causing Teleman to halt abruptly and stare upward in alarm. High above his head the interlocking branches formed an almost solid ceiling of dark green foliage stirred only slightly by gusts and flurries of wind. Suddenly, as he stared, a gust of unusual force blew two of the branches apart, revealing a narrow patch of open sky.

Across the patch a shape moved, glinting metallically in the sunlight.

The flying machine hung poised almost directly overhead, like a great, hovering hawk with its wings wide-spread. It was moving, but slowly, slowly, as if seeking out prey in the forest aisle, the thrumming of its twin turbines sounding very much like the steady beating of wings.

The foliage overhead stirred again and the patch of open sky disappeared.

"They know where we are," Teleman said, standing very still. Alicia shivered and moved a little closer to him, her lips white. Above their heads the thrumming sound grew in volume, drowning out all the small voices of the forest. Almost at their feet a startled hare broke from cover and went scurrying into the shadows.

"If they're scanning us now it will be easy for them to send a para-guard after us," Alicia said, her eyes sharpening as she stared upward. "He'll be carrying a hand-scanner, and a hand-gun. He'll have no scruples about opening fire."

"They may drop more than one para-guard," Teleman said. "We'd better head for cover fast!"

He swung about, his gaze sweeping the forest aisle with detail-observing accuracy. There were several fallen branches directly in his line of vision, and a thin shaft of downstreaming sunlight glistened on a tangled mass of vegetation. His lips tightened when he saw the log. Huge, grayish and half rotted away, it stood out like a giant's thumb against the clotted greenery.

He gripped Alicia's arm and gestured. "That log looks hollow. If we can crawl inside it will be as good a blind as any. Hand-scanners aren't as accurate as big scanners. Not half as accurate. We've got to guard against being taken by surprise, caught defenseless in the open. If we can get far enough into that log they'll have to search. It will give us a breathing spell."

"It's worth trying!" Alicia breathed. "Come on!"

They were half way to the log when they saw the para-guard descending. There was a glistening high up between the trees and they saw the dangling, rust-colored boots of the airborne man before his head and shoulders came into view a hundred feet above the forest floor.

They crawled into the big log on their hands and knees, clearing a space for themselves by thrusting vigorously with their shoulders and scooping out handfulls of damp, weevil-shredded wood and clinging vegetable mold.

They wedged themselves deep into the log, their bodies pressed so close together that their breaths commingled and they became aware of each other's heartbeats. Cheek to cheek in stifling darkness they clung to each other, flesh bruising flesh in an intimacy so strange and unexpected that for an instant it drove all thought of danger from their minds.

Lines from a half-forgotten poet in one of the old books flashed into Teleman's mind, giving that intimacy a timeless aspect, making it seem eternal.

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.

The guard groaned and began instantly to slump, a crimson stain spreading across his stomach from the gaping wound which the first thrust had left in the white flesh just above his tunic.

The face of the knife-wielder was dark with rage and the veins on his temples stood out like whipcords. He did not even permit the security guard to slump completely to the deck or to groan again and relieve a little of his torment. He caught him under the arms as he slumped, lifted him up, and slammed him back against the rail.

He shifted his hold on the mortally wounded man's body, gripping him firmly about the knees and bending him backwards across the rail until the sagging weight of his shoulders outbalanced the lower part of his body.

After that there was no need for the knife-wielder to shove vigorously to send the security guard toppling into the bay. But he did shove vigorously, in an excess of rage, breathing heavily as he watched his hated victim throw out one arm in a last futile effort to save himself. The woman screamed and covered her eyes as the guard went plunging downward.

The sound of the guard's body striking the water was drowned out by the drone of the pleasure boat's engines. There was a shower of spray and a bubbling froth on the water for an instant and then the bay was smooth again. They could not even see his slowly turning body as he sank, for the pleasure boat was moving rapidly.

The man turned abruptly and caught the woman in his arms. He gripped the hem of her garment just above the neckline, and with a choking sob tore it from neck to waist, completely baring her bosom. He buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and strained her to him, his hands unyielding on her naked shoulders. So fierce was his embrace, so firm and impetuous the pressure of his finger-tips in love's behalf that she cried out in pain but did not plead with him to release her. Instead she found his hand and clasped it tightly, whispering: "Yes, yes, I know. Yes, my darling. It was hard to do, and terrible. But you had no choice."

He released her after a long moment and began slowly to caress her hair, smoothing and rearranging it a little as he did so, making the dark, wind-ruffled tresses look less unruly and twining one strand around his finger in gentle love-play.

Gradually, as the gentleness of his caresses blurred the memory of a hateful violence, the color returned to her cheeks and she drew close to him again and kissed him on the lips.

"It was his life or ours," he said. "And the lives of every man and woman on this ship. We discovered the identity of that guard just in time. If he had kept silent, if he had not revealed his identity to you, he would have sent out a message which would have destroyed us all, for we are all in revolt. That is the great miracle. We drew strength from one another and love-making no longer seems criminal to us."

"It was never criminal," she said. "Only to the warped minds of the Monitors would anything so beautiful seem less than what it is—life's most generous gift to men and women everywhere. It breaks down all barriers, dissolves all hatreds."

"It dissolves all unjust hatreds," the man said. "But I hated that security guard because of what he said to you. Even though I knew the wonder of your love, I could not quite drive hatred from my mind. But that is not why I killed him, and perhaps it is a fault in me. I am only human."

"I hated him too," the woman acknowledged. "No, I do not think it a fault in you or in me. We have a right to hate treachery and hypocrisy and deceit. If that guard had sent a message of warning to the Monitors and they had ordered us all destroyed I would not have held him responsible, even though you had to kill him to save the lives of a hundred men and women. He would have simply been carrying out orders. What I hated him for was his betrayal of the Monitors, not out of sympathy for us, but to gain a cruel and brutal advantage for himself."

The woman tightened her lips and her eyes flashed again in bitter anger. "I hated him because he made brutal advances to me, clasping me like a ruffian while I struggled to free myself, and insisting that I endure a night of shame and horror in his embrace—demanding that as the price of his silence. I did not submit and he had to free me, but his loathsome kisses still burn my mouth. If love is forced on a woman by a man not of her choice how can it be other than intolerable and degrading to her integrity as a human being?

"What woman does not desire, in her secret heart, to have for a lover a man who is capable of virile love-making, who is not afraid to embrace her as you did just now, with such ardor that she cries out, and wishes almost that he would take his questing hands and burning lips away and yet is swooning with the sweetness of it, and would never forgive him if he became less vehement before hot tides of passion flow in the moment of love's supreme fulfillment. What woman would not welcome such love-making, would not rejoice in it? But what woman, by the same token, wishes to be taken against her will by a man whom she does not love? There is an ugly word in the old books for that kind of love-making. It was called rape."

The man's face had gone very pale. He said: "If I had known that he had dared to embrace you I would not have stabbed him. I would have seized him by the throat and killed him with my bare hands."

"I told you that he did not harm me. His rough embrace was hard to endure, but it was over in a moment and an embrace is not a ravishment. A thing like that can happen to any woman, and often does. It need not cause you torment. And he has paid, hasn't he? You have avenged me to the full, although you killed him for a different reason."

"I believe I would have killed him for that reason alone if I had known about it."

"You are very jealous, my darling, very hot-headed. No man, no matter how much of a brute he may be, deserves to die if he merely seizes a woman briefly and presses rough kisses upon her lips, however unwelcome those kisses may be. I do not feel that I have been seriously soiled or degraded. He was a coward and his cowardice recoiled upon himself. He was afraid that I would betray him to the Monitors. If I could offer proof that he had made me pregnant his fate would have been sealed along with ours."

The man's face was deathly pale now. "Do you have to talk like that? Do you have to say such things? You know what it does to me."

"I simply wished to make you realize that you are torturing yourself quite needlessly. I remain a virgin still. We are new to love, darling—you and I. We have never experienced the full glory of it, not in an intimate way. Because I am new to love I speak perhaps with too much candor. I do not even know how to choose the right words, the delicate words that a woman should perhaps use when she speaks of such matters. I do not know—I am not sure. There is so much in the old books that I do not completely understand. You must teach me, darling, teach me the exact meaning of the forbidden words and just what words a woman should choose."

He stood looking at her for a moment in complete silence, the color coming back into his face, his eyes on her young, full-bosomed beauty. He could not take his eyes from the twin mounds of her firm, tip-tilted breasts and the rosy pinkness that suffused her exquisite throat.

"I will teach you the meaning of more than just the words," he said. "There is so much that I should like to teach you if you are willing to be taught. We are new to love, as you have said, but I feel, somehow, that I know more about it than you do."

"Are you saying that because you are a man?" she asked, and her voice held a tantalizing hint of mockery.

"I'm not sure," he said. "But I do feel that. What does it matter? Do you really wish to know more?"

Her eyes answered for her, increasing in brightness and tenderness, fastening on his face with a look of surrender and appeal.

He stepped forward and gathered her into his arms. He carried her across the deck toward the glass-encased central cabin, murmuring endearments, his arms tight about her. She rested her head on his chest, pressing her lips against the hollow of his throat, moving them back and forth with the exciting eagerness, the fierce impatience, of an amorously aroused woman abandoning herself to an anticipation of love's delights.

"I will take you to my cabin," he whispered. "It is ill-equipped for the exploration of an experience new to us, for the strange, bright wonder of love's complete fulfillment. There are darts and a circular target on the wall, a double bar on a metal support for morning exercises, a wooden board on a table that I yesterday overturned in rage, because the game of trig, which I have never really liked, seemed to me to have eight ivory-inlaid figures too many and my opponent was more skillful than I. It is a sparsely furnished cabin, an almost Spartan cabin, for the athlete and rather dull-witted agricultural specialist that I thought myself to be."

"Until you fell in love," she whispered.

"Yes, darling, until I fell in love. And there is no man on this ship and no woman who does not now feel as we do. Our rebellion is a courageous one, unalterable in purpose. The ship is ours and we shall take it to sea. We shall know all of love's delights for many days and nights and the Monitors will be powerless to interfere."

They had entered the central cabin and he had set her down and she was walking now with one arm about his waist, her head resting against his shoulder.

The cabin was dimly lighted and on both sides of them the strangest of murmurings arose. They could not see clearly into the shadows, but what they could not see they sensed—the presence everywhere of men and women like themselves, walking back and forth in a trancelike stillness, enraptured by the preliminary intimacies of love. They caught a glimpse of white limbs in the shadows, of bodies pressed breast to breast or even more amorously intertwined, with lips joined to lips and hands interlocked, and there were a dozen lovers standing motionless and making no sound at all.

"Why do they not all go to their cabins?" the woman whispered, brushing with her lips her companion's ear. "You would think they would be consumed with a fierce impatience. There are many things about love that I do not understand."

"They are consumed with impatience," the man replied. "But they wish to prolong what would otherwise be over too quickly. I'm afraid there are many things about love which you have yet to learn."

"Did I not just say so? You are my teacher, are you not?"

"I am, my darling," he whispered. "But you will also be my teacher. There is no end to the things a woman can teach a man about love."

"I have only one question to ask you now. Shall we tarry here as these others are doing?"

"No, I am incapable of such restraint. My impatience is too great."

"Very well. We will go directly to your cabin and you will teach me as you have promised to do. I hope that I will be an accomplished pupil and not disappoint you in any way."

"I hardly think that you will disappoint me, my darling."

"How can you be sure? The old books say that a woman like myself, a woman who has always been—"

A slow flush crept up over her cheeks and she gripped his arm tightly. "Oh, I cannot say the word."

"You said it once before. A woman who is still virginal. That is not unusual at all. In fact, all of the non-love-privileged have been virginal, and only now—I am myself a virgin, although the term sounds a little ridiculous when it is applied to a man. But I cannot help that, and it is no disgrace, really, for it is common to us all. It is an absurdity which we shall soon put an end to."

"You mean to say—"

"Let us not be technical about it, my darling. According to the old books a man who has preserved his chastity is also called a virgin."

"And you have preserved yours? Are you telling me the truth?"

"A woman's curiosity. Well—"

"Tell me the truth. When did you first experience the stirring?"

"Perhaps a month ago."

"And in the past four weeks you have never—"

"Well...."

"Do you think it would make me love you less?"

"No, I do not think that. And I will be honest with you. I—"

"Never mind. Do not tell me. I do not want to know. It is only natural for a man to lie a little about that, according to the old books, and I will not hold it against you. But make sure that you love me tonight, darling, make sure that you love me well."

"I will," he promised. "I will, darling. I will."

The cabin was in total darkness, but the man switched on the light as they entered, and the sparse furnishings leapt into instant relief, three chairs and a table, the athletic cross-bar he had mentioned, and in the corner a couch.

The woman did not linger in the doorway staring at the furnishings of the cabin. She went directly to the couch and reclined upon it, saying in a quiet voice, "Sit down beside me, darling. Lie down if you wish. You look very tired. It has been a terrible ordeal. The taking of a human life is never easy, even when it is justified, and for the sake of others. I had no right to ask you to make love to me. I had no right to expect it."

He turned off the light before he crossed the room to sit beside her. After a moment she was in his arms, her lips seeking his in the darkness. Their lips were quickly joined, and in another moment he gently removed the tunic which encircled her loins. The root of his manhood came vigorously to life and her body seemed to melt beneath the demanding ardor of the caresses.

Her loins quivered and flesh bruised flesh in the tenderest of bruisings. Complete fulfillment came to them both at the same moment, and for a full minute they neither moved nor spoke, content to remain locked in each other's arms in the warmth and melting languor of passion's afterglow.

They slept at last, content, at peace, unaware that all about them terrible dark storm clouds were gathering.

The flying machines came in swarms, encircling the pleasure ship without warning. They came trailing jets of liquid fire, and assembled in circular formation directly above the ship. Around and around they flew, black mechanical hawks with iron talons, their crews on the alert and awaiting orders, their spread wings darkly silhouetted against the red disk of the sun.

They swooped and soared, but did not open fire. Far below the ship continued on its course, as if their presence in the sky in no way concerned the men and women on board. Sleeping men and women for the most part, made drowsy by the aftermath of love, reluctant to stir and greet the dawn when it was so much more pleasant to rest in the arms of a beloved partner.

So much more pleasant to rest and sigh contentedly and turn over and go to sleep again, while in the air death hovered and the air was filled with the steady drone of wings.

No one on board the pleasure boat knew that the body of a slain security guard had been washed ashore further along the coast and a message found on him. They would not have succumbed to panic if they had known, for their rebellion had strengthened their courage and they had known from the first that the ship would be in danger during every moment of the voyage.

Escape to a desert island in the untraveled traffic lanes of the South Pacific had been the one thread of hope they had dared to take seriously. From that slender thread they had woven a fabric of shimmering bright colors—an island colony which the Monitors would never discover, small white dwellings on a coral atoll, a world in miniature where the right to love and be loved could not be taken from them, a new world in the making.

But first the long voyage, the long honeymoon beneath the stars. Days and nights of rapture, of almost continuous love-making while the constellations wheeled above them and new strength flowed into them.

They had dared to dream and to act boldly, but from the first they had been prepared for the disaster which had now come upon them. The Monitors had been warned and the air above the ship was black with wings and there could be no escape now, for each flying machine carried a deadly cargo.

The order to open fire was given twenty minutes after the black mechanical hawks had assembled in battle formation above the slow-traveling vessel.

The message was in code and it was quietly communicated to the pilot-commander of each flying machine, by a uniformed man with an expressionless face standing stiffly at attention. The message bore the signature of three Monitors and was countersigned by the entire council of Monitors with the code letters which the Council used when it was summoned into emergency session.

There was no escape from that message. It was delivered in completely undramatic fashion and there was no drama in the quiet response of the commanders. The bearers of the messages were simply dismissed with a nod and when they returned to their battle stations their faces were still expressionless.

A little tightening of the lips here and there perhaps, the faintest glint of sympathy and compassion in eyes ordinarily cold and duty-disciplined.

On the flying machines there were a few men who had experienced the stirring and so could have wished that they were not security specialists and could meet and mingle with women, know the soft caress of a woman's hand and look with tenderness into a loved face and abandon themselves to all the delights of the dark as the rebels far below had done.

But on none of the flying machines was there any hesitation or open rebellion when the order to open fire was given.

The carrying out of that order was immediate and cataclysmic. The entire sky seemed to burst into flame. There was a roaring and a screaming and the black mechanical hawks careened down the sky, each dropping an egg on the water below and wheeling and returning and dropping more eggs until the thunder of their wings became deafening.

The eggs did not explode instantly. They bobbed about for a moment in the water on both sides of the smoke-enshrouded ship and in its screaming wake and directly in front of it.

Then, one by one, the eggs stopped bobbing. Each gave birth to a mushrooming monster, a shape of flame that went spiraling skyward.

The air about the ship seemed to quiver and flow inward, as if to fill a vacuum that was all flame and thunder. A blinding glare united the mushrooming spirals, spread out and beyond them until sea and sky became enveloped in a swirling incandescence.

When the incandescence vanished the ship was gone. Nothing at all moved upon the waters.

SIX

The dwelling had an abandoned look. There were drawn blinds on all of the windows, and the flower beds running parallel with the front lawn were heavily overrun with weeds. Tall asters drooped on wilted stalks and most of the plants of brilliant bloom had withered and turned sere.