"We came back because we had to, my dearest one, my beloved," the woman was murmuring. "And you carried me upstairs, just as you did on our bridal night. It all seems so unbelievable even now. We dared to be recklessly romantic, true lovers in the old, half-forgotten way—we dared to be true to ourselves. We had the courage, we dared."
"I know," the man whispered, his voice tender and exultant. "And when we refused to pass our first night together in a mating center. We soared to heights that had to be scaled again. We are too desperately, madly in love to accept a lesser glory. We had to be alone together in this simple, beautiful cottage in the woods. Only here can we pluck the uttermost rose of love, surrender ourselves one to the other in a secret place of our own choosing. Only here can we know how the poet felt when he wrote: 'Love is like a shining river, its banks flower-bright, with secret shrines and bowers which lovers alone may enter and become imperishably entwined. Love is a flowing, a radiance in the night.'"
"I'm glad that we came back last night," the woman murmured. "If we had waited we might have lost a little of our courage and any loss might have made us hesitate to defy the Monitors and risk everlasting disgrace. In a way, I feel like a woman who is not love-privileged, who has been denied the fulfillment of a woman's greatest need."
"A man's greatest need too, my darling," came in quick reply. "Remember that, always. No man can live without love and be creative in the highest sense. He cannot be bold and far-seeing and dare the stars. He needs the embrace of a woman, the undying love of a woman, a mutual sharing in all of love's secret delights or he will shrivel in his inmost being. He will become a mockery and a sham—a walking sepulchre filled with dry bones that rattle in every passing gust. He will become a tyrant and fool, venting his inner frustration and his rage on those weaker than himself—the helpless, the defenseless, the socially maladjusted who in many ways are often superior to himself."
The voices fell silent. But there were sounds in the darkness, a stirring, a moving about and to Teleman, still standing motionless, it was easy to imagine what was taking place in the room at the end of the hallway.
He did not wish to intrude. He would have struck down and perhaps attempted to kill anyone intruding on Alicia and himself, had the situation been reversed.
But now the need for immediate, drastic action forced him to thrust all such considerations aside. The man and woman in the room just beyond were sex-privileged and that fact alone had suggested a daring course of action which he had no right, if only for Alicia's sake, to postpone.
It was a scheme so audacious that the first move had to succeed and the second and the third. Each would be charged with danger, and the stakes would be survival or almost certain death.
The man making love in the room at the end of the hallway was for the moment defenseless, unaware that an intruder had entered his home and was listening to his every spoken word. If there was a weapon in the dwelling it was probably not within his reach. He would have to leap out of bed and cross the room to get his hands on it. It might even be in the room downstairs.
He appeared to be the kind of man Teleman would have been proud to number among his friends. The woman too was exceptional; warm-hearted and courageous. But Teleman could not risk appealing to them directly. Their sympathy and understanding might bridge all gulfs and lead to a lasting friendship. But he would still have to ask too much of them and expose them to too much danger. They would have to agree voluntarily to a plan which would place their own lives in jeopardy.