EIGHT

"The glass," Monitor 6Y9 murmured, aloud to herself. "I must go back

and look at the glass again. I must see how the pursuit is progressing,

the pursuit of the two worst criminals of all. When they spoke to

me as they did on the travel trip a strange premonition came upon

me. Those two are my real enemies, for there is in them a will to

resist such as I have never encountered before. When I met them a

voice seemed to whisper deep in my mind: 'It will be their lives or

yours--and the security of all of the Monitors, and the Advisors and

all of us who rule will hang in the balance until they are captured and

brought to justice. There is in them a power, a defiance, so fierce

and intractable that it could disrupt all of the binding energies of

our world just as an atom can, by exploding, destroy all matter in its

path. A single atom, and when two such atoms are joined...."

The gaunt woman stopped walking and looked up at the high white walls

of the corridor she had been pacing, back and forth, like a caged

tigress.

"No ... no ... no," she murmured. "I cannot go back and look at the

scanner-glass until my mind has grown calmer, and my will has been

strengthened, and I am more completely myself again. Perhaps the

pursuit has failed and they can no longer be traced. Perhaps they have

already been surrounded and have escaped from the trap by a stroke of

blind luck, or because some strange destiny has set them apart from all

others. Perhaps all of the para-guards are lying dead in the forest."

The gaunt woman drew herself up, a look of stern self-reproach coming

into her eyes. "Enough of such fears and misgivings. _They will be

captured._ I will find the strength to pursue them relentlessly, night

and day, to pursue them until their will to resist has been shattered

and they stand broken and defenseless before the Council. If I should

need more strength than I possess--and I have great strength--I will

draw upon the strength of our world. Wait, wait, let me think. It may

help me now to look well upon that strength. The new bio-chemical

techniques for changing the structure of the human body, altering its

glandular functioning, eradicating the need for love--yes, that great,

genius-inspired key, the solution perhaps to all of our problems.

"The experiment in Research Laboratory 79 H! A completely new kind of

man--woman later if the experiment is successful, a man without any

love impulses at all, but strong and robust, high-minded and socially

dedicated. For three centuries we have tried to eradicate the love

impulse by rigorously controlled selective mating of the least amorous,

until we thought we had succeeded in creating a great and enduring

society of completely non-amorous specialists. But we were tragically

mistaken and everywhere the old, dangerous ugliness is weakening the

very foundations of our world and threatening us all with destruction.

And all because our best minds were not sufficiently genius-inspired.

"We knew a great deal about glandular therapy and had even employed it

experimentally, in a cautiously limited way, to make the long-range

results of selective mating more effective and permanent. But even

there we were at fault. We did not proceed boldly enough. We drew back

from gland surgery and from combining carefully controlled glandular

injection therapy with the newest and most brilliant developments

in surgery. We did not have the boldness of vision, the courage and

foresight, to create a completely new kind of man--to alter the

physical structure of the human body as it has never before been

altered in the entire history of our race, except very occasionally by

accident and disease.

"A new race of men! Why should we draw back from that, why should we

hesitate now when our peril is so great, and we may all go down into

everlasting night and darkness?"

The gaunt woman drew herself up. She seemed to draw strength from the

vehemence of her own convictions, which she continued to express aloud

to herself, as if she were herself a listener and needed to hear her

own voice affirming what she knew to be true.

"The experiment in Laboratory 79 H! For six months now we have waited

patiently to be told whether it is a success or a failure. We have

waited long enough. The Council may condemn me if I go now and demand

that the final test be made at once, in my presence. But I shall take

that risk. I have the right to demand, I will make my authority felt.

The subject has undergone six months of glandular therapy; four of

surgery. They might prefer to postpone the final test for another week,

but I am quite sure it will not endanger the subject if it is performed

at once. I shall be the first to know!"

The gaunt woman stopped pacing and directed her steps toward the

end of the corridor, and from there passed quickly down the shorter

corridor which branched off from it, and threaded a maze of ten more

blank-walled corridors until she came to the closed entrance panel of

Laboratory 79 H.

The panel opened with a dull droning when she dialed the code numerals

on the combination lock, and she passed quickly into the silent,

high-ceilinged compartment and remained for a moment motionless,

letting her eyes adjust to the dim light and steeling herself for the

stern exercise of her authority which she knew would be required of

her, for surgical specialists could be very stubborn.

There were four surgeons in the laboratory, and so absorbed were they

in their immediate task that they remained for an instant unaware

that the door had opened and closed and that a Monitor stood silently

watching them.

It was perhaps just as well that they did not know, for her presence

might have unnerved them at a critical moment. In almost the precise

center of the laboratory a tall form, swathed in bandages, reposed on a

white metal table, and the surgeons were busily engaged in removing the

bandages from a pair of legs that seemed abnormally long and from arms

that terminated in thick-fingered, hairy hands and were not so much

long as abnormally muscular and strong-sinewed.

The shoulders of the man on the table seemed abnormally muscular

too, and so broad that they resembled more the shoulders of a giant

than those of a man of average weight and stature. The surgeons were

whispering to one another as they unwound the bandages, as if the

gravity and importance of their task had bound them over to silence

or a few words of necessary conversation for so long a period that to

raise their voices now, when so critical a moment was at hand, would

have seemed like a desecration.

It was the gaunt woman who raised her voice, breaking in upon the

whispering with sharp words of command, and causing the surgeons to

swing about in consternation.

"You appear to have exceeded your authority," she said. "You were

instructed not to remove the bandages or conduct the final test before

notifying the Council. I can think of only one explanation and it

does not heighten my respect for you. It diminishes it greatly. You

so dreaded the possibility of failure that you preferred to conduct

the final test in complete secrecy, for a failure that takes place in

the absence of witnesses can sometimes be covered up with a fine flow

of excuses. Well, there will be no excuses now. I am here to witness

everything that takes place and I will report what I have seen to the

Council."

The tallest of the four surgeons and the one nearest to the Monitor, a

darkly bearded man with eyes so pale that they seemed almost colorless,

was the first to recover his composure.

"We were about to conduct the final test," he said. "We were removing

the bandages to study the responses of the subject preliminary to the

test, which will not take place today. He must be injected with drugs

first, so that when he awakens he will not know precisely where he

is, and behave accordingly. We wish him to think himself in a mating

center or, better still, a temple of love where nothing amorous is

forbidden. There were many such temples in the ancient world, as you

know, and before we subjected him to glandular surgery we made sure

that he would read the ancient books and become familiar with all of

the rites and practices which would awaken, even in the kind of man he

was originally, amorous impulses of a criminal nature.

"He was, as you also know, a non-sex-privileged man who had experienced

the stirring to a moderate extent but had not succumbed to it, and we

selected him for that reason. We thought--"

"I do not care what you thought!" the gaunt woman rasped, her

impatience making her tremble. "Just tell me what you hoped to

accomplish."

"Very well. I will try not to confuse and bewilder you by discussing in

detail the surgical aspects of the problem and all of the difficulties

which we encountered. Quite simply, our problem was to bring about such

a profound physical change in his somatic and glandular functioning

that he would experience no amorous emotion at all when he looked

upon a woman. We have known for a long time that the pituitary gland

exercises a profound influence on the love-impulse. When the gland is

very active the love-impulse is inhibited or destroyed completely.

"When the gland is very active the entire structure of the human body

changes. The body becomes more massive, particularly the jaw, wrists,

hands and ankles. In the past this condition has occasionally been

brought about by disease, and the victims of this disease were known as

acromegaliacs. When it occurs in childhood it produces a very unusual

kind of human being--a pituitary giant. A pituitary giant is robust

and virile-looking enough in outer aspect but his amorous impulses are

extremely sluggish and in some cases completely absent.

"In this subject we have not only increased the activity of the

pituitary gland, we have used many other surgical and glandular

injection techniques to alter the functioning of virtually every gland

in his body. And we have made some more generalized somatic alterations

too, and employed some of the newer chemicals in a very daring kind of

body-changing and brain-altering experiment.

"He is truly a new kind of human being. His appearance may do violence

to our preconceived ideas of what constitutes good looks in the

male, particularly in the eyes of a sex-privileged woman. But if the

experiment is a success we shall soon become accustomed to seeing many

men of this kind moving about and assuming a dominant role in our

society. We shall have solved our greatest problem and removed a threat

to our entire way of life."

"And the final test?" the gaunt woman demanded. "You say you were

planning to conduct it tomorrow. Could you not conduct it now, in my

presence? I have allowed myself to be impressed, despite my better

judgment perhaps, by what you have just said. As a ruling Monitor, I

could bear witness to your success, if you do succeed, as few others

could do. And if you fail my testimony as to your complete honesty of

purpose would carry great weight with the Council."