They heard only the sobbing for a moment and then the voice of the
woman rang out in the stillness. There was pain and bitterness in her
voice, and frustration, and a terrible unhappiness.
"He is my child!" she cried. "I know he is my child! You took him away
from me, and put about his neck a chain and a metal tag bearing only
two letters and a serial number. Cold, cruel letters engraved on metal!
"A serial number only, to mark him forever as lost and abandoned, a
child who will grow to manhood knowing nothing of a mother's love, a
mother's selfless devotion.
"You have cheated us and denied us the right to think of ourselves as
the mothers of men. You have denied us the great and wonderful joy of
looking upon the face of a sleeping child and knowing that the child
has need of us. We cannot take our own flesh into our arms and cradle
the tiny, precious new life that love has brought into the world and
feel, because every mother is proud in a wholly wonderful way, that we
have been privileged beyond all other women."
"We cannot suckle and nourish that life with the sweet flowing of a
mother's milk. We can never know the tenderness and joy of feeling that
the love which we bestow can never be wasted, that it is a gift given
freely and without stint, and that all we ask in return is to feel the
tug of tiny hands at our breasts and the moving about of a small body
in gentle, contented drowsiness."
"You have cheated us in another way. You have made even love's
beginning seem ugly, by stripping it of all tenderness, all romantic
glamour. You have set us apart from the rest of society, you have
veiled what we do, looking upon it as a necessary evil, and you have
turned your faces from the mating centers in shame, as if loving were a
crime and an abomination.
"You have made it a crime in the eyes of society. The
non-love-privileged who would be as we are you look upon as the most
depraved of criminals. When they have the courage to rebel openly
you track them down unmercifully, as our ancestors tracked down and
destroyed the wild beasts of the jungle. Some of them behave like
beasts, because they have never known love and in them there is also a
burning hatred, an anger that is primitive and cruel. But others are
men and women of dignity and strength, who give themselves to each
other in tenderness, and who know how love can transform the world
about them, and everything that is in the world, until the whole of
life shines with undying splendor. They can never--"
The accusing voice of the woman was drowned out abruptly by the
metallic rasp of an entrance panel opening and closing and another
voice so filled with rage that it rose almost instantly to a scream.
"What are you doing here? Who gave you permission to come here? Did
you bribe a guard by the lewd display of your charms, or a promise to
sleep with him? All of these infants belong to us now, for we are the
guardians of the future. _Now_ did I say? They have always belonged
to us, even when they were still in the wombs of women such as you,
women who perform a necessary but hardly to be admired function in our
society.
"You are nothing but wantons and evil temptresses, skilled in all the
arts of the harlot, and the men whom you seduce with your charms are no
better than jungle savages. How dared you come here? You have no right
to look upon a single one of these infants, for they have ceased to be
attached to the primitive matrix out of which they have emerged, and we
will teach them all that they need to know."
"You will teach them to be as you are!" the kneeling woman cried, a
reckless defiance in her voice. "You will do your best to teach them to
be harsh and merciless, vindictive and consumed with envy. You will not
wholly succeed, for some of them will not surrender their birthright,
and will discover for themselves that life without love is too harsh a
burden to be endured. They will never know a mother's love, but even
without that love a few will have the strength to resist the harshness
and the hate that comes from never having experienced a moment of
tenderness and affection in childhood."
There was a moment of silence, followed by the sound of a sharply
administered slap, and a cry of rage so sharpened by the boiling up of
all that was cruel and vindictive in the woman who had been forced to
listen to words that had stung her to the quick that it resembled the
cry of an animal.
It was Alicia who came to the kneeling woman's rescue, darting so
swiftly across the enormous room that she was gripping the enraged
woman by the arm and twisting her about before the shock and pain of
the blow vanished from the eyes of her accuser.
From the opposite side of the room the two women had resembled
shadow-enveloped phantoms, their features barely distinguishable, their
identities masked by distance. It was as if Alicia had emerged from one
room into another, the first filled with light and the other enshrouded
in darkness.
Only when she gripped the enraged woman's arm and swung her about did
the gaunt face with its cavernous dark eyes and prominent cheekbones
cause her eyes to brighten with the shock of complete recognition and
the anger which that recognition aroused in her.
It was an anger that went far beyond the hot indignation which had sent
her darting across the room to the kneeling woman's rescue. It was an
anger impossible to control, an anger that flamed and shuddered in the
depth of her mind until she feared it would consume her.
Recognition came into the Monitor's eyes at almost the same instant,
and she tried quickly and desperately to free herself by jerking her
arm violently backwards. She had never before doubted her own strength,
and it was hard to believe that so frail-looking a woman could grip
her wrist with the bite of steel in her fingers. It was even hard to
completely believe in that frailness, for her own gaunt body with its
man's strength had made her a poor judge of the physical qualities of a
normally developed woman.
She seemed to realize suddenly that Alicia was not particularly frail
and had a strength now that she would not have possessed had she been
less enraged and less certain that she could do what the gaunt woman
feared most--strike her with such violence that she would drop to the
floor unconscious.
The blow, when it came, was quick and incisive. Alicia's
tightly-clenched fist caught the gaunt woman just below the ear and
made her sway dizzily. But she did not fall, and Alicia had to strike
her once more, on the point of the jaw, to win a complete victory.
The gaunt woman groaned and sank to the floor, a dull glaze
overspreading her pupils. Alicia let go of her wrist and took a swift
step backward, staring down at her slumped and unmoving body with a
look of startled disbelief on her face and a slight diminishment of her
anger.
Her anger flamed hotly again when she turned toward the woman by the
crib and saw the swelling red welt which the gaunt woman's brutal slap
had left on her right cheek.
The woman by the crib was no longer kneeling. She had gotten to her
feet and was looking at Alicia with a warm gratefulness in her eyes.
"You and this man," she said. "You had the courage to come here, too.
The others would come if the great longing to look upon our babies
which we all share could be strengthened by example and a greater
firmness of purpose. All, all would come. Is one of these babies yours?"
Her eyes had rested on Alicia's face for a moment, but now she was
looking at Teleman, who had moved quickly to Alicia's side.
Alicia turned in surprise, for she had completely forgotten that she
was not alone and would never be alone again. For the barest instant
she had forgotten, not realizing that a man's stride would hardly
permit a woman to outdistance him in the rapid crossing of a room.
"No," Teleman said to the woman by the crib. "We are not
love-privileged and are here for the first time. Many months will pass
before we are parents, I'm afraid."
The woman's eyes widened in stunned disbelief. "Not love-privileged.
Then why are you here?"
"We are fugitives," he said. "And if we are captured we will be
sentenced to death. Our presence here is known, and that woman--" he
gestured toward the slumped form on the floor--"was planning to take us
by surprise. She would have entered the compartment we were instructed
to occupy with armed guards and we would have had no chance at all to
save ourselves. We were not quite sure until now, but as she is here in
the center there can be no doubt as to the kind of surprise she had in
store for us."
The woman by the crib looked at Teleman for a long moment with a
growing bewilderment in her eyes. "But how did you get those garments
and that insignia? If you are not love-privileged--"
Alicia said: "If we were not in such danger we would tell you more, for
there is nothing we would not want you to know. A few words perhaps, we
can risk that. But if she begins to stir--"
"I'll see that she doesn't get up," Teleman said grimly. "She has
forfeited all right to be treated as a woman."
Alicia nodded and moved quickly to the other woman's side. She
whispered to her for a moment and the look of bewilderment vanished
from the dark-fringed eyes that a few moments before had been wet with
tears.
She turned abruptly, her shoulders held straight, her eyes shining in a
strange way. "My name is Leguria," she said. "I am known throughout the
center as one who holds her own life of small account, if in a moment
of crisis others can be persuaded not to draw back from a dangerous
undertaking. I will tell you something which you may not know. Not
only this center but all of the centers are seething with unrest. A
widespread revolt, a revolt that would sweep away all opposition, needs
but an added spark and total victory will be within our grasp. It can
come overnight, if just the right spark is applied."
She did not look at Teleman alone, but let her gaze pass from his
strained and questioning eyes to the eyes of the woman who stood facing
her.
"You could be the spark," she went on, her voice calm but vibrant with
a deep undercurrent of strong emotion which gave her words a kind of
passionate eloquence. "Both of you. Your rebellion must have caused a
great deal of talk. I had not heard of it, but at times I keep very
much to myself, and events of great importance remain unknown to me for
days. Do you know who that Monitor is? She is the second most powerful
Monitor on Earth. She can be over-ruled by the Council and the Chief
Monitor but otherwise her power cannot be questioned by anyone.
"I do not know why she has pursued you so implacably. Perhaps you
provoked her beyond endurance, in some wholly accidental way. But the
reason does not matter. Only the fact that she has pursued you as few
others have been pursued--has singled you out and accused you of the
blackest of crimes.
"Don't you see? She has played right into our hands. She has provided
us with a weapon. Your flight is by now known to thousands, all that
you have endured at her hands. And you are not criminals. You have
only to talk freely, to bare your inmost thought, and all of the
love-privileged in this and the other centers will know what kind of
man and woman you are. You cannot hide dignity and courage, generosity
and quiet strength. A criminal is known by his words the moment he
opens his mouth. You have said but a few words to me, but they have
not been the words of a criminal. No one will believe her. They will
believe you. Even if you had remained silent I could have discovered
the truth about you, just by looking steadily into your eyes."
"But how can we talk openly to the men and women here?" Alicia asked.
"Every minute we remain here we are endangering our lives. We would
accept that risk gladly if our voices could pass beyond the walls of
this room and reach a hundred men and women, or even a handful. But in
a place as well-guarded as this how can our voices be heard?"
"They will be heard. And you will talk not to fifty or a hundred men
and women, but to all of the love-privileged. A third of the guards
here are on our side and will not hesitate to help us. I will speak
to the ones we can trust. The center is very large, and it would
take hours to make a complete search of every room, medical unit,
and storage vault. You will be well-concealed until we can set up a
transmitting instrument and make a few other necessary arrangements.
Your image will appear on a hundred screens, in every one of the mating
centers. A coded message will be sent to all of the centers, and
everywhere, when you are ready to speak, the recreational halls will
be crowded. In all of the halls there are screens, for there has never
been a ban on visual entertainment for the sex-privileged, and the
meetings will take place so quickly that the guards will be taken by
surprise and will not have time to interfere. When the Monitors become
aware of what is happening it will be too late. In every center there
will be guards we can depend on. I do not think that we will fail."
Leguria stopped speaking, and touched the red welt on her cheek. But
there was no bitterness in her eyes, only the stern and unyielding
look of a woman wholly dedicated to an undertaking that must not be
permitted to fail.
It was Teleman who voiced a doubt, but only because the tribute she had
paid him seemed too flattering.
"Even if they are convinced that I am not a criminal," he said, "will
that ignite the spark? I am just one lawbreaker among many, even though
I have antagonized a Monitor who wields unusual power. Many men and
women have been unjustly accused and condemned to death. Will just one
more act of injustice anger them so much that it will give them the
will and the strength to revolt?" He shook his head. "I would like to
think so, but I can't. It may anger them a great deal. But it will not
be enough by itself. You must appear with me on the screen and talk to
them as you talked just now. Tell them about the children who will grow
up cut off from all love and warmth and tenderness. Tell them about the
babies which they will never see. Then Alicia will talk to them too.
You are both very beautiful, and it is a mistake to ignore beauty or to
think of it as unimportant when you are making that kind of appeal.
"When I speak to them I will follow your advice. I will tell them the
simple truth. Then I will have something to add that will be certain to
carry weight. It will not be an untruth, for I will be looking ahead
into the future and I will be thinking of my son. I will speak to them
as a father."