The gaunt woman was staring into the scanner-glass, and gripping the
metal frame so tightly that her knuckles had a mottled look.
"At last!" she breathed, leaning sharply forward. "Those machines have
never proved their worth until now. What a fool I was to oppose the
project on the grounds of economy. Only two machines when we could have
had twenty. But never mind, the two are doing very well."
"Are they?" said a quiet voice at her side. "I would not be too sure.
The man is clever as well as courageous. And the woman knows how to
keep fear at arm's length, always. You have met your match in that
pair."
The woman swung about, an angry flushing suffusing her face and
accentuating the boniness of her cheekbones. The flush was of short
duration, for fear and anger seldom walk hand in hand, and pallor is
very likely to accompany fear.
The Chief Monitor smiled thinly, his eyes also intent on the glass.
"I'm afraid that you have merited a reprimand," he said. "From what
I have heard your conduct this morning was inexcusable. Without
first securing permission from the Council you witnessed a surgical
experiment which turned out very badly. Your own rash haste may have
been responsible for the failure. The surgeons were not yet ready to
conduct the final test but you frightened them into complying with your
demand. I do not like what happened. I do not like it at all."
The Chief Monitor was not only soft-spoken. He was so mild-mannered and
non-aggressive in aspect that it seemed incredible that he could have
risen to a position of authority so great that he could have reversed
a century of enlightened human progress with a single spoken word. He
had pale brown hair and pale eyes, and he did not look at all like a
man accustomed to issuing commands. But then, quite suddenly, the brown
eyes would flash with an ice-crystal brilliance and hardness and in
such moments his supremacy was not difficult to understand.
His eyes were ice-crystal cold now.
"I have often wondered," the Chief Monitor said, speaking with a candor
that sharply increased the gaunt woman's fear, "How I would feel if I
had experienced the stirring. Would I rebel as courageously as that
pair?"
The gaunt woman knew how dangerous it was to share the inmost thoughts
of a man so powerful, but she could do nothing to turn the conversation
into safer channels and was afraid to oppose him even slightly.
"I see I startle you," the Chief Monitor went on calmly, the slight
smile still on his lips. "But should we not all examine ourselves
critically from time to time, and ask ourselves the really great and
important questions. We all are what we are, and only a fool is afraid
to face the truth about himself."
The gaunt woman remained silent, her pallor so pronounced now that it
resembled the pallor of a corpse.
"The truth will come out," the Chief Monitor said, and sighed and
turned from the glass. At the door he paused to deliver a few parting
words of advice.
"Personal animosity in a Monitor is an unforgivable offense," he
said. "Without a full and honest confession it could, in special
circumstances, justify the death penalty."
When the door glided shut the gaunt woman stood for a moment as if
turned to stone. Then some of the animation returned to her eyes and
she returned to the glass and watched a towering ground-warfare robot
joined by a second robot beside an oak tree of massive dimensions. She
saw the two machines turn and start walking away from the oak tree,
their conical heads turned toward a more distant part of the forest,
the revolving disks of their eyes flashing with electro-magnetic,
spectroscopic rays.
She watched them move forward through the forest, saw the forest vista
changing. The canopy of foliage overhead changed shape and color.
Now it became less dense, now more luxuriant. They skirted areas of
quagmire, where the forest floor was strewn with wet leaves, carefully
seeking firm footage, guided by their spectroscopic vision which could
pierce beneath the surface layers of earth with rays of invisible
spectrum wave-length.
Suddenly one of the metal giants halted and a flash of blinding light
darted from one of the three atomic blast tubes projecting from its
globular body-box. The roar of the limited atomic blast was not audible
in the scanner-glass, but its violence shook the forest, sending five
gigantic trees toppling and tearing a yawning gap in the canopy of
foliage overhead, through which the sunlight streamed in wavering
banners.
The first robot had gone on ahead, the scanner-glass which projected
vertically from its conical head vibrating as it transmitted to the
scanner-glass a continuous sequence of images. Suddenly it halted, as
the other robot had done, in obedience to a transmitted message from
a flying machine hovering directly overhead and waited until its
companion came abreast of it again. Then both robots resumed their
ponderous and slow advance, carefully testing each foot of ground
before they rested their weight upon it.
The gaunt woman drew in her breath sharply. "In a moment now--only a
moment more!" she whispered aloud to herself. "They must be very close
to them by this time. They have traveled a considerable distance. The
moment I have waited for so long is here at last. If I am brought to
judgment, even if I am condemned to death, this moment of triumph will
be worth all the humiliation, all the harsh injustice I may be forced
to endure. I will go to my death with my head held high, knowing that
I alone had the strength of will to root out and destroy an evil that
the others attacked half-heartedly or found excuses for. These two are
the worst offenders, the most brazen in their defiance of the law. If I
succeed in destroying them--and I will--I will set an example that the
others will have to follow. They will have no choice, for a martyr in a
stern and just cause has many followers when the noose is drawn tight."
The two towering robots had halted again. They were standing very
still, their conical heads turning slowly from right to left. Their
spectroscopic eyes cast dull circles of radiance on the ground in
front of them and their aspect was somehow vaguely disturbing, hard
to explain. They seemed bewildered and confused, if human emotions
can have any counterpart in a robot of metal and glass and whirring
internal gadgetry.
Suddenly one of the metal giants turned and retraced his steps for
a few yards, his conical head still turning slowly back and forth,
in a manner that would have seemed comical to a less tense onlooker.
The gaunt woman's throat felt constricted and she strained fearfully
forward, her eyes glued to the glass.
The second robot joined the first in his backward exploration of ground
already traversed. They stood with their heads close together, as if
trying to decide what should be done next. But that, of course, was
absurd and the gaunt woman was completely aware of how preposterous it
was. A machine could not think for itself, a machine could not feel.
Her conviction was well-founded and the two metal monsters had
put their heads together quite accidentally while avoiding a near
collision. The avoidance of the collision had been directed from the
flying machine by remote control and there was actually nothing human
in the behavior of the robots at all.
The gaunt woman knew all that, but the knowledge could not prevent a
knot of cold horror from contracting about her heart. The two metal
monsters were at a standstill. Unmistakably they had reached a dead end
and could search no further. They no longer knew where to look, or even
what they were looking for.
The scanners which projected from their conical heads ceased suddenly
to vibrate, and the instant the vibrations stopped the scanner-glass
went dark.
A voice spoke out of the blackness. "I regret to report that the
ground-warfare machines can no longer function. Their scanning screens
have lost track of the two fugitives. The pickup mechanism has gone
dead."
For an instant the gaunt woman could not swallow, could not even
breathe. Her throat felt parched and constricted and there was a
horrible tightness in her chest.
Suddenly all the tightness was gone and a scream, terrible, prolonged,
welled up in her throat and issued from her lips. It stopped once
abruptly and then went on and on, and only ceased when she seized a
metal chair and smashed the scanner-glass to fragments, and collapsed
in a heap at it base.
The forest was enveloped in weaving shafts of light. The light stabbed
downward, moved between the trees, cascaded across brightly gleaming
fungus growths and the boles of century-old trees and logs which forest
mold and weevil beetles had turned into vegetable skeletons.
The forest was clamorous with voices. Para-guards moved between the
trees, searching with flashlights that sent tunnels of radiance boring
into the depths of shadowed crevices and deep caves and even between
the tangled roots of titan oaks half-torn from their moorings by
freakish bolts of lightning.
A hundred feet from the edge of the forest a guard more venturesome
than his fellows descended into the depths of such a tangle, the bole
of the oak looming enormous above, and found himself in the strangest
of gnomelike dwellings, with winding corridors bathed in a pale blue
light and his raised voice echoing from every corridor. It was a house
of enchantment, a house underground and easy to people with all manner
of elfish creatures.
But the two fugitive lovers had not taken refuge there. The beam of the
guard's flashlight shone on emptiness and desolation and no trace of
hidden lovers.
There was no way of tracing them, of ferreting them out. Cunning could
not do it, or any kind of subterfuge. Voices offering Monitor truce,
Monitor pardon, beguiling and deceptive, could not flush the two lovers
from cover.
Where were they? No one knew, no one dared to boast that he thought
he knew, for para-guards and their more cautious commanders lived in
mortal fear of the Monitors, even though they served them dutifully
and claimed the rewards which were a security guard's due: the
right to creep at nightfall into the mating center compartment of
a sex-privileged woman and take her by force if she resisted his
advances.
There were a few para-guards who refused to conform to that pattern
of behavior, but their forbearance was not admired by the majority of
their fellows.
Through the dark the tracer beams moved, the flashlights flickered, but
no one knew what had become of the fugitive lovers. And the penalties
could be dire, for the Monitors did not readily forgive failure.
Everywhere the search continued, through every aisle of the forest, in
every recess between the rocks, in every hidden nook and cranny.
But not quite everywhere. Deep in the forest gloom a pool of still
black water mirrored the moonlight and in the pool two naked lovers
clung breast to breast, thigh to thigh, waiting in stillness for the
night to pass.
In the darkness of that strangest of nights the man whispered: "I never
thought we would spend our bridal night in this way. I never thought we
would leave our clothes on the bank, concealed and neatly folded, and
shiver the whole night through. But at least we are completely safe,
completely secure. The scanner beams are deflected when they pass too
close to water and the water itself absorbs some of the rays. If they
should find this pool by accident we will know what to do."
"Why are you telling me all this again, darling, when you have spoken
about it before?"
"It helps me to talk. Remember--if we hear footsteps we will move
closer to the bank and hide ourselves in the reeds. We will be safe as
long as we hold tightly to each other and stay here until the sun rises
again."
"Oh, darling, I love you so much, even when you worry needlessly about
me, and seem to feel that if we find ourselves in danger again I will
not know what to do. I will know exactly what to do. I will know
exactly what to do. Can't we talk about more important things?"
"Are all women like that, Alicia? I mean, do they get upset and angry
when a man is practical and puts first things first and does all that
he can to safeguard and protect them? I know so little about women,
because I have never before been in love, and all of the women I have
met--"
"Never mind the women you have met. All women in love are difficult at
times, my darling, and you must try to know exactly what to do. Can't
we talk about more important things?"
"Darling, I do love you. You must believe me."
"Kiss me then. Kiss me passionately. I have waited so long for this
moment, when we would be completely alone together in the night. But it
has come at a strange time. I am not even sure that I can respond now
as a woman should. The water is so cold."
"We can climb out on the bank if you wish. It will be taking a risk
that I should prefer not to take, for your life is more important to
me, more precious, than even that moment of complete fulfillment which
seems to lovers not minute-long but eternal. But if that alone will
please you...."
"Darling, what a way for a lover to talk! Do you no longer desire me?"
"You know better than that."
"Then prove it to me, now!"
He was the first to ascend the bank, drawing her up after him. They
stood for a moment at arm's length, hands clinging, each feasting on
the sight of the naked body of the other. The moonlight gleamed on
Alicia's white flesh, and shining droplets of water trembled on the
tips of her jutting breasts. Bending down, he clamped his lips to hers,
his tongue searching. She responded with ardor, and clung to him so
fiercely that they both toppled backwards on the soft grass of the bank.
Their love-making was so passionate that their lips remained
constantly joined, and all of the tender explorations which accompany
love were accomplished with the artful movements of hands that
clasped and unclasped and darted with an eagerness that could not be
restrained, to the most secret citadels of Aphrodite, and the pleasure
gardens of Eros enshrined.
When the pulsing warm moment came when two become one the night seemed
to hold its breath and only the woman's wild cry of ecstasy broke the
stillness of the sleeping forest.