The Chief Monitor stood up and walked to the window and stared out over
the sleeping city. The woman on the couch stirred drowsily and changed
her position on the couch, letting her sleeping garment fall open,
and revealing a long, white, sensuous body that many men had found
attractive, but never before a Chief Monitor.
"I'm cold, darling," she whispered. "Please come back and cover me up.
And I wish you would rub my back a little more. You have such strong
and beautiful hands--the hands of an artist."
The Chief Monitor did not turn. He continued to stare out across the
city and after a moment a tiny muscle in his jaw began to twitch.
"Is it really my hands you like," he said at last. "Or the way I kiss
you, or the words I speak? Or do you talk that way because you know I
am susceptible to flattery and it would be a very great blow to you if
I should decide that another woman would please me more?"
A slight pout appeared on the woman's face, but she did not appear to
be offended.
"How many women have you had, darling?" she asked, her voice
tantalizingly low-pitched, so that the Chief Monitor had to strain to
catch the words. "Do not be afraid to tell me. No man who can make love
with such perfect understanding of how to best please a woman could
have passed many nights alone. How many, darling? Fifty, one hundred?"
"You know better than that," the Chief Monitor said, still not turning.
"I have loved a dozen women perhaps ... no more."
The woman on the couch sighed. "Well, a dozen is not too bad for a man
who tells everyone that he has not loved at all. How long can you keep
up the deception, darling? You behave so impetuously at times. Almost
like one of those mad lovers in the old books. Who would think to look
at you that you could become so masterful in bed!"
The Chief Monitor turned abruptly, his eyes blazing with fury. "I
will not listen to such talk. I do not have to listen. Don't think
for a moment that I do not know that you secretly despise me. You are
two-faced, and there is a thinly-veiled mockery in everything you say,
even when you appear to be paying me a compliment!"
The woman sighed, changed her position again, and stretched out white
arms in the darkness. "Don't be silly, darling. That is not true at
all. Come here. Have I not always succeeded in convincing you that the
harsh things you say to me at times are completely untrue? Have you
ever held a more responsive woman in your arms. Tell me! Have you?"
"You are responsive only when it is to your advantage to convince me
that you are not as cold and cruel and calculating as I know you to be.
You are incapable of loving anyone. You tempt a man beyond endurance
and then turn completely cold. You have done that time and time again."
The woman arose from the couch, unfastened the hem of her sleeping
garment and let it fall to her feet. She stood completely naked before
him, her body gleaming white, her red lips slightly parted.
"Come here, and stop being a fool," she said. "I demand that you come."
The Chief Monitor shook his head and turned back to the window. In all
his life he had never felt quite so angry or experienced at the same
time so strong a stirring of desire.
He could not take his eyes from the woman's reflection in the window
pane, but he did not want to turn and go to her.
He was still staring when he saw it--a tiny red flare in the distance,
in the very heart of the sleeping city. It did not alarm him at first,
for there were many ways of explaining it, even though he had never
seen anything precisely like it before.
It did not alarm him until it grew swiftly larger and brighter and
another flickering red flame appeared on the outskirts of the city and
still another close to the first, and a darting streak of fire ran
along the roof of one of the nearer buildings and lit up most of the
sky.
Even then he might have managed to maintain almost complete mastery
over his nerves, if the flares had not been accompanied by a far-off
murmur, as if many voices had suddenly broken in upon the stillness
of the night and were shouting in anger or in overwhelming fright,
and converging toward some central point to join with other voices in
producing an even greater volume of sound.
"What is it?" the woman demanded. "What are you staring at? Does the
city at night fascinate you so that you forget that there are women
out there whom even your power could not seduce? They are asleep in
the arms of their lovers and might not find you as attractive as I do.
There are some women--"
The blasts cut her off in mid-speech, five, evenly spaced blasts that
shook the bed and rattled the windowpanes. The Chief Monitor's control
broke completely. He swung about and crossed the room without even
looking at the woman, who was staring in dismay at the red glare that
was creeping into the room from each of its three tall windows.
The tele-panel set in the wall hummed when the Chief Monitor clicked it
on, and a moment later the small screen lighted up and a face that he
had never seen before stared at him out of the radiance.
"Security Alert," came in a troubled voice. "There are fires and
explosions taking place all over the city. We do not yet know what is
causing them. An aerial attack is one possibility. Most of the fires
are in the vicinity of the mating centers. And people are assembling in
the streets. Most of them are armed and they are shouting threats."
The Chief Monitor clicked off the panel and the radiance dimmed and
vanished. He had an impulse to rush from the room and take steps which
would bring all of the Monitors together in emergency session. But he
forced himself to think calmly. He had to be sure first and two or
three minutes was not a very long time to wait.
He paced the floor for five full minutes, deciding that the more he
knew the more swift and certain would be his mastery of the situation
when he was in full possession of the facts. He completely ignored
the woman who lounged on the couch, the luscious curves of her body
deliberately exposed to his eyes.
It was necessary, he told himself, to know exactly what was
happening. He could not afford to blunder, for the slightest mistake
in a situation as unbelievable as this could destroy him. An armed
uprising? A rebellion of the non-love-privileged? Or a rebellion in
the mating centers? A rebellion of security guards? Who had launched
the aerial attack, if it was an aerial attack? Was it a revolt or a
counter-revolt? Perhaps a revolt had started somewhere in the city and
immediate steps had been taken by Security Alert to counter-attack from
the air.
No, no, that had to be ruled out. He had just been in communication
with Security Alert and if they had ordered a counter-attack they
could hardly have remained in ignorance of it. Unless the operator he
had talked to had not been as fully informed as the Alert's emergency
command.
It was just barely possible.
He had stopped pacing and was turning to click on the tele-panel again
when a blinding white glare filled the room, and a sheet of flame
wrapped itself around him, burning the flesh from his bones and causing
his face to shrivel and blacken until its lineaments dissolved in a
weaving spiral of fire.