"No reason to take it so much to heart," the bearded man said, a slight smile on his thin, almost bloodless lips. "You seem to hate them for personal reasons, and that surprises me. I'd advise you to keep how you feel to yourself. If they have committed the grave crime you've charged them with—and attacking that guard was just as grave a crime—they will have to answer for their criminal behavior with their lives. Doesn't that satisfy you? To feel personal animosity toward a lawbreaker is inexcusable in a Monitor. It would be inexcusable in me."
"You are a fool!" the gaunt woman said, turning upon him with a gesture of angry defiance, her dark eyes flashing. "I am not obliged to take your advice, for my authority is superior to yours."
"You might do well to heed it," the young man said. "Your authority is not superior to the Supreme Council of Monitors in full, law-making session. And an Advisory Supervisor, even an Advisory Specialist, can strongly influence the voting."
"And why should you influence the Council in a manner unfavorable to me," the gaunt woman demanded. "Have I not always been your friend? Don't forget, it was I who elevated you to your high station. If you turn against me now you will regret it."
The young man inclined his head. "Perhaps. I do owe a great deal to you. But personal animosity can distort judgment, and further threaten our supremacy. I do not like it. We must act coolly and without bias."
"How can I act coolly when those two accused me of—" The gaunt woman hesitated and tightened her lips, a deep flush creeping up over her cheekbones. "On the travel strip they accused me of secretly harboring criminal impulses as monstrous as their own," she went on in a sudden, uncontrollable burst of rage. "They dared to affront my ears with outrageous and shameful insinuations. They said that I too had experienced the stirring and that I refused to face the truth about myself and that the repression of that baseness in me had made me cruel and vindictive. They said I was envious of what they did openly and without shame, in the full light of day."
"Was it really as bad as all that?" the Advisory Specialist asked, his voice not entirely lacking in sympathy. "Well, I can understand how you must have felt. But at least they only made love openly when the travel strip was deserted for many paces and when you were still in the distance. You told me so yourself."
"I could still see them. The security guard could see them as well."
"It might have been better if you had shut your eyes to what you saw. The rebellion is spreading rapidly and we encounter many such criminal transgressions daily, even on the travel strips. Those two were unusual in many ways, more daring than most of the others, willing to take greater risks. To defy a Monitor as they did, threatening her with physical violence and to leave the strip and take to the woods in a daring bid for freedom, skilfully eluding pursuit, displaying extraordinary intelligence, outwitting us at every turn. Surely you must realize that it has set a dangerous example which others may not be slow in following!"
"That is why they must be caught and brought to justice!" the gaunt woman cried, her fury making her tremble and congesting the whites of her eyes. "The death sentence must be imposed as quickly as possible. They must stand before the Supreme Council, stripped naked, exposed in all of their shame, and they must be forced to make a full confession. Oh, we shall not spare them. I will not spare them. I shall demand that right.