NINE

The tall surgeon stood very still, regarding her for a moment with

a level, noncommittal stare. Then, slowly, a look of calculated

risk-taking came into his eyes and he turned to the others with a

slight shrug. They nodded in assent and he turned back again to face

the Monitor.

"I believe we can conduct the test now," he said. "We can inject the

illusion-producing drugs now and they take effect almost immediately.

We could have wished for more time but--" He shrugged again. "We need

not send for the girl. She is here and--"

"The girl?" the gaunt woman cut in sharply.

For answer the tall surgeon turned and walked across the laboratory to

a small panel set in the wall. He gripped the projecting knob of the

panel and turned it about in his hand and the thin partition of metal

glided back into the wall, revealing a glimmering square of radiance.

"You may come out now," the surgeon said. "We have decided to conduct

the final test immediately. You have received your instructions and

should be prepared to display your great beauty without fear and

without shame."

A soft, feminine voice, so strangely beautiful and well-modulated that

it seemed almost musical came in reply from deep within the radiance

but the Monitor could not catch what was said. She heard only the

surgeon's words as he turned, stepping back from the panel aperture and

facing her again.

"She has been schooled in every amorous enchantment," he said. "She

knows how to dance and sing, and use her body's grace as only the

love-privileged can do, when they have been taught far more than

the love-privileged are permitted to know. Even when they abandon

themselves to love in the mating centers the love-privileged know that

what they do must be veiled in secrecy, hidden from the light of day.

They know that what they do is really shameful, a necessary evil, and

that it would bring a blush to even the virginal cheeks of a woman such

as you.

"Only this girl has been schooled in all of the ancient rites, the

forbidden mysteries of love. Only this girl can tempt a man to madness

without degrading herself in any way. For what she does she does

voluntarily, as a great sacrifice, and in the interests of science. If

the experiment is successful we will honor her for her courage and even

though she is one of the sex-privileged we will think of her as pure.

We will think of her as a dedicated specialist, just as selfless in her

devotion to all that is best in our society as an engineer or surgeon

or skilled industrial worker, and we will know, and be grateful deep in

our hearts, that she has helped to save us all."

The gaunt woman's cheeks had flushed scarlet and anger flamed in her

eyes. But before she could reprimand the surgeon for speaking so

immoderately--was he secretly the girl's lover?--the woman he was

defending emerged from the panel aperture and stood with the radiance

at her back and her head held high, her eyes darting from the Monitor

and the four surgeons to the still form on the table.

The gaunt woman stared at her with a sharp intake of her breath. That

a beauty so dazzling should dare to flaunt itself in proud defiance

before the eyes of a Monitor who had never given a thought to her own

beauty or lack of it, seemed outrageous, too intolerable to be endured.

So great was the girl's beauty that it seemed almost to pass beyond

perfection, to envelop her in an aura that was individual and unique,

setting her apart from all other women, and igniting a spark of ardent

responsiveness in the four surgeons which was plainly visible in their

eyes. That the surgeons had looked upon the girl's loveliness before,

the Monitor could not doubt, and that very realization increased her

anger until she could no longer breathe.

She began violently to tremble, her gaze passing from the girl's

lustrous dark eyes and full red lips to her white shoulders and firm

young breasts and then downward to the thin gauze garment that did

not at all succeed in concealing what seemed the worst affront of

all--thighs that seemed fashioned for the caresses of a lover's hands

and a darkness in a shadowed hollow that only such a lover, whispering

softly in the night, would have felt the slightest impulse to explore,

with degradation stamping him for what he was, a passion-aroused beast.

The surgeon turned with quiet dignity and addressed his three

associates, his determination to ignore the Monitor's rage clearly

evident in the firm tones of his voice.

"Remove all of the bandages, and make the injection before he begins

to stir. Remove the bandages first. He has been conscious for several

hours now, but perhaps not fully conscious. You will know how to awaken

him, but be sure to make the injection before he opens his eyes. It

will take effect in twenty or thirty seconds."

For the next five minutes no one in the laboratory spoke. Neither the

surgeons, who were too busy carrying out instructions to even exchange

glances or the two women who stood facing each other with dagger-points

dancing in their eyes.

The girl seemed to sense what the Monitor was thinking and to resent it

as a matter of pride. But she remained silent and self-contained and

only the tightness of her lips and the dark hostility with which she

parried the gaunt women's accusing stare betrayed a vulnerability which

her pride could not quite overcome.

What broke the stillness at last was the strangest and most unnerving

of all sounds: a groan from the man who had not moved even under the

administration of the figures in white hovering over him, a man who had

lain as if dead for so long that it seemed impossible that he could

stir, and open his eyes and let out his breath explosively after so

short an interval of time.

The man on the table sat up. He sat up so quickly that the surgeons

withdrew from him in consternation, as if they had not anticipated so

instant a response to the gentle massage which they had applied to his

chest, and the swiftly following injection.

The Monitor turned pale and took a quick step backward and the girl

seemed equally shaken, although she did not remove her eyes from the

tall, gaunt figure who sat looking at her with his chest rising and

falling and his hairy legs dangling. Only the surgeons retained their

composure, recovering quickly from their first shocked recoil and

regarding the figure without horror.

The man on the table was both a giant and a monster. His chest was

barrel-shaped and ridged with three bands of muscle which completely

encircled his body and rose and fell with his breathing. His massive

shoulders were ugly and misshapen, the shoulders of a giant whose

too rapid growth had brought about the cruelest kind of deformity.

His arms, which were matted with coarse black hair, seemed abnormally

foreshortened and were less than half the length of his lower limbs,

which were very long and only slightly less hairy.

Even more repellent than the giant's ill-shaped body was the almost

Neanderthal-like primitiveness of his face. The jaw was massive, the

features coarse and the brow sloped as sharply backward as the brow of

an ape. But there was nothing apelike in the burning intensity of his

deep-sunken eyes, or the intelligence which animated the rest of his

features as he fastened his gaze on the girl who still stood silently

regarding him, her fingers pressed to her throat.

"Start dancing," the tall surgeon whispered, tapping her gently on the

arm. "We'll soon know whether or not he can be stirred in an amorous

way. I would have spared you this ordeal if I could, but there is no

subterfuge which would enable us to postpone it in the presence of a

Monitor. She is envious of your beauty and will not like what you must

do. But she will have to watch. The success or failure of this test

touches her at too vital a point. She is a Monitor and must become a

judge--a cold, impersonal maker of decisions. I am not like that, but--"

"I know," the girl whispered, grasping his hand and pressing it warmly.

"If you were love-privileged you might have taken me into your arms and

covered my lips with burning kisses. And I should have liked that. I

should have liked that very much."

The surgeon tightened his lips and turned away from her, a look of

torment on his face. "Dance," he whispered again. "There is no time to

be lost. In a few moments the effects of the drug will begin to wear

off."

The girl nodded, and walked toward the center of the laboratory. The

eyes of the man on the table followed her and when she was standing

almost directly in front of him, and less than eight feet from the

table, his rigidly erect body seemed to stiffen still more and a look

of bewilderment came into his eyes.

The girl began to dance.

Her movements were slow at first, and although no music accompanied the

slow turning of her body and the graceful weaving motions of her arms,

she seemed to be dancing in response to rhythms sensuous and beguiling

and audible to her alone. It was almost as if her inner ear had become

attuned, at the very beginning of the dance, to melodies unheard and

she was pirouetting about to the accompaniment of measures that,

beginning as a series of widely spaced chords, would soon change their

tempo and became in an instant tumultuous and wild.

That instant was not long delayed. Faster and faster her movements

became and she was suddenly whirling and swaying in utter abandonment,

her head thrown back, the veins in her throat pulsing as she whirled.

Faster and faster she moved, until she seemed not so much a living

woman as a shape of flame, her thin gauze tunic floating up above her

knees and exposing her shapely legs and the milk-white flesh of her

thighs.

Then, abruptly, she ceased to whirl, and stood poised on the tips of

her toes, like a bird in flight coming miraculously to rest amidst a

fluttering tumult of beating wings and spinning, skyward-ascending

feathers. Her arms were bent sharply at the elbows and she was

clutching at both of her breasts and arching her torso backwards.

For a full minute she remained on her toes, her eyes half-closed, her

moist red lips opening and closing; as if, hovering in the air above

her, an invisible lover was draining the sweetness of her lips between

moments of trancelike rapture.

Then her body was in motion again and as she turned slowly about on her

toes she unfastened the hem of her tunic and let it slip from her.

White and unblemished and tormentingly beautiful was her unclad body,

and in the splendor of that complete baring of all her charms gross

sensuality seemed to turn coward, to flee her presence and to hide its

face, so that for an instant she seemed almost virginal, a creature of

fire and air untouched by passion.

The moment might have passed and changed her again to a woman of flesh

and blood, voluptuous in all of her movements, infinitely demanding and

infinitely desirable. But before the illusion could be shattered the

man on the table cried out hoarsely and descended to the floor with a

slow swaying of his entire body.

He advanced upon her with his arms extended, his cavernous, dark

eyes aflame with desire--a desire so fierce in its stark, primitive

directness that it was pure animal. He caught her in his arms before

she could cry out or leap aside, and crushed her to him.

He lowered his head and kissed her lips hungrily and his arms became

iron bands that bruised her flesh cruelly. She screamed and struggled

and tried to free herself, but there was no escaping from the terrible,

primitive strength of those arms or from the hands that had begun to

explore every part of her body.

There was no escape and she felt herself to be sinking down into a dark

sea filled with horrible nightmare shapes that could only in the end

deprive her of reason and cloak a little the horror that was about to

come upon her.

It was not a man's strength which saved her, causing the giant to groan

and release his grip upon her, causing him to take a staggering step

backwards and sink to the floor with a convulsive grimace. It was an

instrument of science, a long, sharp needle, jabbed into the giant's

right shoulder by a man of cool presence of mind in a moment when a

blow would have been worse than useless.

It was the same man who spoke calmly, in reply to a woman's voice

raised in a terrible, accusing anger.

"You have failed and the Council will want to know why!" Monitor 6Y9

was screaming. "You will pay for your failure, never fear. The Council

will not forgive stupidity."

"No, I am afraid the Council will call us all to account," the man said

in reply. "But we did our best. We tried."

It was horrible. She could hardly breathe and every nerve in her body

seemed to be in rebellion, causing her temples to pound, her heart to

beat tumultuously.

In all her life the gaunt woman had never known such torment of mind

and body. Returning to the Observatory she had staggered twice and

almost fallen and even now her knees seemed about to give way beneath

her.

She clung to the metal frame supporting the scanner-glass and looked

deep into the glass and saw nothing that pleased her. A dark expanse

of woodland, nothing more. No para-guards moving between the trees, no

flying machines in the narrow stretch of sky overhead, nothing.

And then, quite suddenly, she did see something and straightened in

stunned disbelief, the wild beating of her heart subsiding.

The trees had thinned out and a clearing had come into view between the

trees. In the center of the clearing was a small white dwelling and the

scanners were moving slowly toward it.