Julia wasn't in the apartment when I got home. But Taigue was.
He was sitting in one of the new chairs as though he owned the place.
This time he hadn't come alone. The other chair was occupied by an MEP
patrolman armed with a bludgeon gun.
"Come in," Taigue said. "We've been expecting you."
I don't know why I should have cared after the events of last night,
but the thought of what he might have done to Julia crystallized my
blood. "Where's Julia?" I said.
"Why, what a unique coincidence, Mr. Bartlett. Truly, our minds run
in the same channel, to coin a cliché. I was about to voice the same
plaintive question."
He was still fasting, and the increased gauntness of his face
accentuated the fanatical intensity of his eyes. "If you've hurt her,"
I said, "I'll kill you!"
Taigue's ugly, dolichocephalic head swiveled on his thin neck till he
faced his assistant. "Look who's going to kill someone, Officer Minch.
Our esteemed candidate for the Letter himself!"
That one set me back on my heels. I felt the strength go out of my
legs. "You're out of your mind, Captain. I'm legally married and you
know it!"
"Indeed, Mr. Bartlett?" He reached into the inside pocket of his
coat, withdrew a folded sheet of synthetic paper. He tossed it to me
contemptuously. "Read all about your 'marriage,' Mr. Bartlett. Then
tell me if I'm out of my mind."
I unfolded the gray document, knowing what it was and yet refusing to
accept the knowledge. All warrants for arrest are unpleasant to the
recipient, but an MEP warrant is triply unpleasant.
In addition to being a warrant, it is an indictment, and in addition
to being an indictment, it is a sentence. A marital offender has
automatically waived his right to a trial of any kind by the very
nature of his offense. The logic of the first Puritanical legislators
was muddied by their unnatural horror of illicit sex--an inevitable
consequence of their eagerness to atone for the sexual enormities of
their forebears.
I read the words, first with disbelief, then, as the realization of
Julia's motivation dawned on me, with nausea:
CHARGE: _Adultery, as per paragraph 34 of the Adultery Statute,
which states in effect that all unofficial marital relationships,
regardless of potential ameliorating factors, be construed as
asocial and classified as adulterous acts_.
CORRESPONDENTS: _Roger Bartlett, cit. no. 14479201-B: Julia
Prentice, cit. no. 14489304-P_.
PARTICULARS: _M. I. check, suggested and carried out by MEP Captain
Lawrence Taigue, disclosed discrepancy in compatibility factors of
aforementioned correspondents. Further check revealed deliberate
altering of data cards before M. I. computation, rendering said
computation invalid and resultant 'marriage' unofficial and
therefore adulterous._
SENTENCE: _Public chastisement in the arena of the Municipal
Coliseum_.
DATE OF CHASTISEMENT: _June 20, 2151_.
AUTHORIZED ARRESTING OFFICERS: _MEP Captain Lawrence Taigue; MEP
Patrolman Ebenezer Minch_.
(_signed_) _Myles Fletcher_
MARRIAGE ADMINISTRATOR
_June 8, 2151_
"Well, Mr. Bartlett? Must you read the words off the page to get their
import?"
My mind was reeling but it still rebelled against the reality of
Julia's guilt. I grabbed at the first alternative I could think of.
"_You_ changed the cards, didn't you, Taigue?" I said.
"Don't be ridiculous. The mere thought of bringing an oafish clod like
yourself into even transient intimacy with a sublime creature like
Julia revolts my finer sensibilities. Julia altered the cards--as you
perfectly well know. But she did not alter them of her own free will.
You forced her to alter them."
I stared at him. "For God's sake, Captain, use your head! Why should I
do such a thing? How--"
"_Why?_" Taigue had risen to his feet. His eyes were dilated. He
breathed with difficulty. "I'll tell you why! Because you're a filthy
animal, that's why. Because you looked at an ethereal woman and saw
nothing but flesh. Because your carnal appetite was whetted and your
lecherous desires had to be fed at any cost.
"But you're not going to get away with it!" He was shouting now and
his trembling fingers were inches from my throat. "I myself will cast
the first stone. But before I do, you'll confess. When the Hour is
near, you'll realize the enormity of your lust, just as they all do,
and you'll fall on your knees and ask forgiveness. And when you do,
you'll automatically absolve Julia of all guilt. _All_ guilt, do you
understand, Bartlett? Julia's purity must be restored. Julia's purity
_has_ to be restored!"
I brought my right fist up into his stomach then. Hard. I had to. In
another second those yearning fingers would have clamped around my
throat.
But I forgot about Patrolman Minch and his bludgeon gun. Even before
Taigue hit the floor, the first charge struck me in the shoulder, spun
me around so that I faced the wall. The next one caught me squarely in
the back of the neck, turned my whole body numb. I sagged like a cloth
doll. The floor fascinated me. It was like a dark cloud, rising. A
dark cloud, and then a swirling mist of blackness. And then--nothing.
* * * * *
Prison cells are ideal for objective thinking. There is a quality about
their drab walls that brings you face to face with reality.
The Coliseum cell in which I was confined possessed the ultimate in
drab walls. The reality with which I was faced was the ultimate in
unpleasantness....
On our wedding night, Julia had told me that she had worked at Marriage
Administration Headquarters for three years. But when I mentioned
Taigue's concern over her, she was amazed. She said she hardly even
knew him, that he had never spoken a word to her, had never--to her
knowledge--even looked at her.
But he had looked at her without her knowledge. Of that I was sure. He
had looked at her a hundred, a thousand, a million times. He had sat at
his desk for three years, admiring her, adoring her, worshipping her.
Beyond her physical appearance, however, his Julia bore no relation to
the real Julia. His Julia was far more than an ordinary woman. She was
the exquisite vase into which he had thrust the flowers of his idealism.
The celibacy vows he had taken when he was ordained an MEP officer
were only partly responsible for his attitude. The real key lay in
his physical ugliness--an ugliness that had probably influenced his
decision to become an MEP officer.
He had never spoken to Julia, or looked at her openly, because of a
deep conviction that he would repel her; and he had rationalized his
reticence by attributing it to his rigid interpretation of his duty
as an MEP officer. The only way he could realize his love for her was
by elevating that love to a higher plane. This had necessitated his
elevating Julia also.
Taigue loathed sex. He could tolerate it only when it came as a result
of a society-sanctioned marriage. With respect to Julia, he could not
tolerate it at all, because the intrusion of sex upon his exquisite
vase of flowers sullied both flowers and vase.
When he discovered that the Marriage Integrator had matched Julia
with an ordinary mortal, he could not accept the validity of the
computation; neither could he accept the fact that Julia had applied
for a husband. He had to find a loophole somewhere, a means to
rationalize the danger to his flowers. When he learned that Julia
herself had contrived the computation, he immediately transferred the
blame to me, thereby absolving Julia.
But his logic was shaky, and he knew it. He couldn't quite believe the
lies he had told himself. His edifice was tottering and he needed my
confession to shore it up. Therein lay my only hope.
For Taigue would buy that confession at any price. And I would sell it
for only one price--
My life.
And so I sat there in my lonely cell, through the gray daytime hours
and through the dark nights, waiting for Taigue.
I thought often of Julia. In spite of myself I thought of her, and
in spite of myself I kept hoping that she would continue to elude
the country-wide search which Marriage Enforcement Headquarters had
instigated the morning of my arrest.
I thought of her not as Taigue's vase of flowers, but as the pale girl
who had said "I do" with me at the mass-wedding ceremony; as the lovely
girl who had lingered in the hive passageway, waiting for me to carry
her across the threshold; as the unforgettable girl who had been my
wife for a dozen precious hours.
But most of all, I thought of her as the deceitful woman who had
intended to use me as an instrument in the ghouls' exploitation of the
Cadillac Cemetery.
As she had used Betz and Kester before me.
I had her whole _modus operandi_ figured out. Her system was simple.
When a cemetery sentry applied for a wife, she simply notified an
available sister-ghoul, entered her application along with the
sentry's, and then altered the resultant data cards so that they came
out of the integrator in the right combination. It took a lot of
know-how, but she hadn't worked at Marriage Administration Headquarters
three years for nothing. She hadn't taken the job in the first place
for nothing, either.
Being a senior sentry, I had rated her personal supervision. I had no
idea as to what wiles she would have employed to make me voluntarily
neglect my duty to Cadillac; but I had an uncomfortable suspicion that
they would have worked.
* * * * *
Taigue didn't come until the last day--the last hour, in fact. I was
sweating. The Coliseum seamstress had already sewn the big scarlet
letter on the breast of my gray prison blouse and the Coliseum barber
had just been in to cut my hair. I could hear the distant shuffling of
feet on the stoning platform and the faraway murmur of many voices.
Taigue was still fasting. Ordinary MEP officers were usually content to
fast their required day per week and to let it go at that. But Taigue
was not an ordinary MEP officer. He stood before me like a Bunyanesque
caricature. Caverns had appeared above the ridges of his cheek bones
and his eyes had retreated into their depths where they burned like
banked fires.
"Short hair becomes you, Mr. Bartlett," he said, but his irony lacked
its usual edge. Moreover, the ghastly paleness of his face could not be
wholly attributed to his physical condition.
"Did you come to receive my confession, Captain?"
"Whenever you're ready, Mr. Bartlett."
"I'm ready now."
He nodded solemnly. "I thought you might be. I discounted Julia's
insistence that she acted of her own free will."
That shook me. "Julia? Is--is she here?"
He nodded again. "She gave herself up a week ago. She confessed to
altering the data cards--insisted over and over that she alone was
to blame. I tried to tell them, I tried to explain to the Marriage
Administrator that she couldn't possibly be to blame, that she was an
innocent tool in the hands of a hardened adulterer. But he wouldn't
listen. No one would listen. They sewed the letter on her this morning.
They--they cut her hair."
I tried to tell myself that she had it coming, but it wasn't any good.
I felt sick. I kept seeing her crumpled body lying in the arena and
the cruel stones scattered in the dirt and the blood on them. Julia's
blood--
"Well, Mr. Bartlett? You said you were ready to confess."
"Yes," I said. "I presume you're ready to pay my price?"
"Price?" The emaciated face showed surprise. "Do you expect to be
reimbursed for relieving your conscience, Mr. Bartlett?"
"You can put it that way if it makes it easier for you."
"And what do you think your confession is worth?"
"You know how much it's worth, Taigue. It's worth Julia's life--and
mine."
"You try my patience, Mr. Bartlett."
"You try mine too."
"My wanting your confession is a purely personal matter. Both you and
Julia will die in the arena regardless of your decision. Adultery
charges are irrevocable."
"I'm not asking you to revoke any charges," I said. "All I'm asking you
to do is to get Julia and me out of here alive. You can do it."
He stared at me. "Mr. Bartlett, your incarceration has affected your
mind! Do you really think I'd free you, even if I could, and give you
further opportunity to vitiate Julia?"
My thinking hadn't been nearly as objective as I'd imagined. I should
have realized that Taigue would rather see his flowers dead than
expose them to additional "defilement." I was desperate now, and my
desperation got the better of my judgment. "Is my confession worth
Julia's life then?" I asked.
He raised an arthritic hand to his forehead, wiped away a glistening
film of sweat. Presently: "Mr. Bartlett, I'm afraid you don't
understand the situation at all. Your perspective is so warped by wrong
thinking that 2 and 2 fail to make 4 to you, either by multiplication
or addition.
"Don't you see that Julia _has_ to die? Can't you understand that, even
though she is innocent, her reputation is still hopelessly tainted by
your illicit affections? Can't you realize that I wouldn't save her
even if I could?"
I did realize finally, though his fanaticism stunned me. He was more
than a mere zealot; he was a monster. But if Julia was his goddess,
marriage enforcement was his god. He could not buy a guarantee of his
goddess' purity if the price involved the desecration of his god. He
needed my confession desperately, but he didn't have the authority to
torture it out of me and he couldn't pay the price I had asked. My one
hope of escape had turned out to be a pretty worthless item.
But it was still my only hope. If I could find another way to use it,
it might still net me my freedom, and Julia's too.
There was one way. It was drastic and it might not work; but it was
worth a try. "All right, Taigue," I said. "I understand your position.
Bring Julia here and I'll confess."
"Bring her here? Why? All you have to do is admit you coerced her to
alter the data cards. Her presence isn't necessary."
"It's necessary to me."
He looked at me for a moment, then turned abruptly and left the cell.
He told the patrolman, whom he had posted by the door, to wait, then he
disappeared down the corridor. The patrolman closed the cell door but
didn't bother to lock it. He didn't need to. The bludgeon gun in the
crook of his arm was a sufficient deterrent.
Presently I heard Taigue's returning footsteps. They were accompanied
by other footsteps--light, quick footsteps. My heart broke the barrier
I had erected around it, rose up, choking me.
When I saw her shorn hair I wanted to cry. Her face was more like a
little girl's than ever, but the blue eyes gazing straight into mine
were the eyes of a mature woman. There was regret in them, but no
shame.
I turned away from her. "Dismiss your assistant," I told Taigue. "What
I have to say is none of his business."
Taigue started to object, then changed his mind. With the reassurance
he so desperately needed at his very fingertips, he wasn't in the mood
to argue over trivialities. He took the patrolman's bludgeon gun, sent
him on his way, re-entered the cell and closed the door. He leaned
against the genuine steel panels, directed the muzzle of the gun at my
chest.
"Well, Mr. Bartlett?"
"You asked for this, Taigue," I said. "You wouldn't have it any other
way. Julia, come here."
She stepped to my side. Seizing the lapels of her Hester Prynne prison
dress, I ripped it down the middle and tore it from her body.