"Shut up!" growled Stevens, slinging her over his shoulder.
And that was that.
Dr. Alfreed awoke to realize that he had committed a serious breach of experimental technique. It had been a mistake not to observe the screen during the process of rehabilitation, and it had been a grievous mistake not to check on the patient's reactions. He cursed softly to himself when he saw clearly enough to be sure that neither patient nor nurse were anywhere in the room.
Alfreed was a thoughtful man; he realized that, in the old days, someone would have gotten hell for a blunder of this nature and scope. In the old days technical superiors would have fired the responsible party for the incompetency when revealed, so Alfreed was thankful that these were not the old days. But further than that he did not think. Perhaps, therefore, he was the truly responsible party for what was to happen to his snug little world of file numbers, ventilated houses, air-conditioned clinics, amiable objectives and pneumatically complacent nurses.
He wasn't spectacularly worried, having no technical superiors to whom to answer. But he had failed in a social duty. Enough of his careful conditioning had remained to remind him of that.
"Oh, Hell!" he swore softly, thinking of the consequences.
He reached over to his hyper-typer, banged out a full report of the affair and shot it into a tube system, one of whose many mouths gaped from a nearby wall. This, too, was routine. If anything worked to correct his mistakes this would. Section headquarters all over the city would be semi-automatically notified, bulletins flashed to rural districts. Within half an hour millions of citizens would be informed—not alarmed—by the quick-changing public information screens.
And with a sense of duty well done he retired to his quarters on the same floor and stared for a while at a forbidden bottle of wine. Then he got drunk.
Clark Stevens carried Markett Travenor as far as the elevator door. Glancing back at the prostrate form of the man he had hit in the jaw his eyes narrowed. Something of cold reason was coming back. Then, suddenly, he became aware—but acutely—of the girl he was carrying in his arms. "Ah," he said. Abruptly he shifted one of his hands a trifle; the girl shivered and giggled.
Slowly awareness returned to Stevens. Then he let her drop to the floor. She looked at him again, quizzically, like a trusting child. This man, she thought, is masculine. But not with the familiar air of equality to which I am accustomed—but overbearingly male. A sort of aura covered his body—she sensed something brutish, irresponsible, uncivilized. Everything he did confirmed this idea: