CHAPTER 1

Teleman couldn't remember when he had first experienced the strange torment. The restlessness, the almost frightening desire to behave like some mad criminal, would come upon him at the most unexpected moments.

He'd find himself turning his head and staring wildly at the women who passed him on the travel strip. He'd watch them while they went striding on ahead of him toward the mating and child-rearing centers, never taking his eyes from them until they were swallowed up in the golden glow from the distant buildings.

It was incredible, and completely unlawful. It made no sense at all. He was an engineer and a construction worker, not a sex-privileged man. Theoretically all physical desire had been eliminated from his biogenetic heritage for four generations.

In the year 2061 only one man in fifty was supposed to feel the stirring. He had read about it in books, of course. But the scientific descriptions had never stirred him before, and neither had the sight of the passing women, swaying their hips in voluptuous abandonment as they went about their appointed tasks.

The very word "seductive" had been to him an intellectual concept solely. Emotionally it had awakened no response in him, no real understanding of how a man could be drawn from his work by enticements of the flesh that were as coldly meaningless as a row of numerals set down at random on a blank sheet of paper.

Meaningless once, but now.... NOW.... Another woman passed him, her eyes downcast, her tightly-sheathed breasts burgeoning despite their bound state, breaking through the restraining, semi-translucent fabric. Like great tropical blooms the breasts of the women seemed, ensnared by clinging vines which were parasitic and wholly pernicious, a new growth introduced by Man in a jungle of his own cruel planting.

How cruel it was to select one woman out of fifty and say to her alone: "You may mate and bear children." How cruel to compel the rest to conceal their charms and pretend to be completely sexless!

Teleman drew in his breath sharply. What was happening to him? Why should he feel angry and resentful when he knew that only one woman in fifty could be stirred by the sight of a man, or respond to a man's love-making? Had not all other women been made virtually sexless in their mental processes by selective mating and other gene-altering techniques?

Surely a woman without physical desire had no need to appear seductive or to flaunt her charms. And surely a man without physical desire would not care at all if a woman lacked a mating look, and was just a human being more fragile than himself with contours that were softer and more rounded.

Am I going mad? he wondered. In all the books there was no reference to the possibility of a change in non-sex-privileged men and women. It could hardly occur biologically. How could it, when all desire had been bred out of the non-sex-privileged for four generations?

To every man his appointed task, his niche in the social fabric. And to every woman. The sex-privileged were naturally in the minority. How could it have been otherwise, when there was so great a need for trained specialists in an advanced technological society? How could a reasonable and thoughtful man fly in the face of what history had confirmed time and time again?

Had not three great societies gone down in flaming ruin because Man had permitted his animal instincts to block the road to progress?

Another woman passed him and this time the stirring became almost uncontrollable. He had a wild desire to abandon all restraint, cross the strip to her side and plead with her for permission to take her into his arms and make passionate love to her. She was blonde and very beautiful, her hair a golden fleece spread fanwise across the dazzling whiteness of her shoulders. Her garments were free-flowing, all of her charms tantalizingly unconfined. The tips of her full breasts were clearly visible, pushing against the material of her tunic, and the other curving, secret places of her body were revealed in the play of light and shadow, the rippling of fabric. Her eyes were not downcast, but bold and fearless and she met his gaze searchingly and without embarrassment, as if she were greeting a sex-privileged man without shame in the mating center.

He knew at once that she was a sex-privileged woman. No modesty of attire had been imposed on her. Her lips were heavily rouged and her slender young body had the supple grace of one adept in the arts which can only be learned at Eros' shrine.

She returned his gaze steadily for an instant, with an unmistakable look of amorous invitation. Then, slowly, her eyes hardened and her lips curled in scorn and derision. His hesitation and the flush which had mounted to his cheekbones had quite transparently given him away. He was not one of the sex-privileged. She instantly lost all interest in him, and moved away from him with a slight shrug, as if the stern taboos erected by society did not in any way concern her.

A feeling of despair, of bitter hopelessness, made him groan inwardly and increase the length of his stride. Swiftly the moving travel strip continued to carry him toward the heart of the city, past suburban gardens bright with vermillion-petaled flowers and small artificial lakes which gleamed like gigantic garnets in the early morning sunlight.

It was difficult to wait patiently on the travel strip for the city to sweep close. Walking was not illegal and few energetic men and women could resist an impulse to exercise their legs and swing their arms before their technological duties compelled them to perform just one task well in a glass-enclosed activity cell.

One task well! He must never allow himself to forget how important that was. There would always be a constantly growing need for men and women conditioned by heredity and training to bend a machine to their will or secure the right answers to difficult problems in the research laboratories and industrial administration units. Without such specialists the entire fabric of twenty-first century civilization would be rent asunder. In fact—

Teleman began to tremble. A non-sex-privileged woman had brushed with outrageous brazenness against him and he had thrown out one arm in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. Off balance, he had gone stumbling past her, and now she was at his side, grasping him firmly by the elbow and helping him to his feet.

She was trembling also, and her breath was warm on his face. The dark wilderness of her hair was more intoxicatingly fragrant than he had ever dreamed a woman's hair could be. She was whispering strange words to him, her breath quickening.

"It is breaking down! Can't you feel it? Can't you tell? For five days and nights now I have wanted only one thing—to be embraced by a man. But no man free to choose a mate would look at me twice, because I am not supposed to feel as I do. If I should attempt to visit a mating center I would be condemned to death. The man, too, would be punished. To court me would be a crime—anti-social, monstrous."

She touched the small, glittering insignia on her right breast, invisible from a distance, which indicated all too clearly her precise status as a specialized industrial worker. Instinctively Teleman glanced down at his own status insignia. On his right shoulder there gleamed a tiny silver bridge supported by hydraulic pillars, a miracle in miniature of engineering perfection.

For the first time the silver emblem seemed a badge of dishonor, an insult to his dignity as a man with the blood warm in his veins and a desperate need to love and be loved.

Her voice became cajoling. "To a sex-privileged man making love to me would be a crime. But you can look at me, touch me, hold me close if you wish. The Monitors have passed no laws to protect a woman like me or a man like you. Who would believe that we could desire each other in an intimate, physical way? Let us show them how mistaken they are! Let us make a mockery of their cruel laws here and now! Let us make love boldly as we have every right to do."

"No!" he heard himself protesting. Forcibly, almost brutally, he freed himself, untwining her clinging arms and turning his face aside to avoid the maddening thrust of her lips against his tightly clenched teeth.

"For five minutes I have been watching you!" she cried. "Listen to me. Don't be a fool. I know you feel as I do. You have followed and disrobed with your eyes every woman who passed you on the strip, and some of them were quite ugly, if you would like me to be completely honest about it. Perhaps you resent candor in a woman and prefer the lying sort. I don't particularly care, because I know that I am so desirable in your sight that you would like to take me into your arms and tell me how beautiful I am. To whisper it tenderly while you unloosen my gown and—"

"No! It would be a dark and terrible crime!" Hammers had started pounding in Teleman's temples and he could scarcely breathe.

"You fool, you fool!" she went on quickly, unbuckling the golden belt at her waist and throwing back her head. Her shimmering dark hair was a miracle of loveliness, the sunlight bright upon it. She stood very straight, her knees together, her full red lips slightly parted, morning-dew moist.

"Some of the women who passed were not beautiful at all. But others were radiant and when you stared at them your eyes lit up. In your eyes desire was a high-leaping flame. You were powerless to quench its bright splendor. You were tormented and afraid. But you did not really want the fire to dwindle and expire. I was watching you closely. I could not have been mistaken. There are some things no woman can be deceived about."

She moved close to him again. She caught his right earlobe between her lips, nibbled at it, whispered passionately into the chambered recess, "Fire! In your veins and in mine! In every breath we draw and when we breathe as one."

"No!" he cried, in desperate protest.

"Look at me," she pleaded. "Am I not beautiful? Make love to me now. Do not be afraid. There are no other pedestrians close to us at the moment. If they see us at all we will in nowise astonish them. The sex-privileged often embrace quickly and furtively on their way to the mating center, when distance turns them into small, barely distinguishable figures black against the sunrise. Everyone expects it of them, since they are naturally on fire with impatience."

"I have never seen—"

"At close range, no. But surely you have seen men and women acting strangely at a great distance, bobbing like tiny sails in a breeze when fortune favors them, and gives them as wide an expanse of empty travel strip to rejoice in as we now have at our disposal."

"There are at least five men and women coming toward us," he protested, but his throat was so dry the words were barely audible.

"Mere marionettes, dwarfed by distance. Think of them as such. What do they know of love's splendor? In all likelihood they are non-sex-privileged men and women, empty husks, hollow shells filled with ashes. We were like them once, but all that is changed now. Embrace me quickly and boldly. Hurry! Whisper sweet words to me. Call me your life and your bride. Lover, be bold. Lover be sweet and gentle and fierce and ardent. Can you not see that I am aflame with passion? Make haste, my darling, my dearest one. The opportunity may not come again."

He looked at her then, really saw her in all of her womanly completeness for the first time. She had loosened all of the constricting bands which had confined her charms from neck to ankle only a moment before, so that her attire was now as free-flowing as the garb that was worn in the mating centers and occasionally on the travel strip by sex-privileged women who were unusually bold and fearless.

He did not stare at her garb for long. In mute adoration, his temples throbbing, he let his gaze travel downward from her pale, beautiful face to her swelling bosom and perfectly formed hips and the enchanting whiteness of her sylph-slender thighs.

The twin mounds of her breasts were rose-tipped and tip-tilted and there was a tiny mole just above her navel which made the whiteness seem even more of a miracle, just as a tiny beauty-patch will often enhance the loveliness of a face designed by nature to drive a man to a frenzy of desire, amidst a carnival-bright shower of confetti and the strains of amorous music.

His temples swelled to bursting and there was a roaring in his ears and deep within his groin a trip-hammer had started up and was pounding faster and faster.

She moaned and swayed toward him. Then she was in his arms and he could no longer see even her full, red lips, moist and trembling and so hungry for kisses that he feared for an instant that he would not be permitted to breathe.

He spread his mouth over her lips to subdue their vehemence and her tongue rebelled and came through in darting defiance and with so fierce an ardor that his mouth seemed filled with weaving filaments of flame.

His hands moved up and down and across her back and he held her so tightly pressed to his finely muscled body and she pressed so passionately against him in return that it was hard to believe that human flesh could endure so close an embrace without dissolving into fiery motes swirling mindlessly about in the blazing heat of the sun.

But the ecstasy which came to them both in the same moment was not mindless and if there was a dissolving it was of a different nature entirely.