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.