"I shall force them to reveal all of the monstrous details of their nights together in the dark: the criminal moments of unlawful love-making, her wantonness, his amorous abandonment to her every illicit whim. It is the woman who is always the most to blame. She has led him on and destroyed him, for no man can resist a woman skilled in all of the wiles and enticements of the harlot. Yes, yes, yes ... I will use that old, almost forgotten word. I have read the old books and I know what a harlot was and what a harlot did. I will fling the word in her face. Harlot and courtesan, strumpet and destroyer of men!"
"There is another word, a more ribald word, that you had best not say," the young man advised. "You must try to control yourself and exercise calm judgment when you make the charge. Otherwise the Council will accuse you of bias."
"Let them accuse me! I will speak my mind."
"I have advised and warned you," the young man said. "I can do no more. And I'm afraid you're forgetting that they must first be captured. Look at the glass. More para-guards are descending and the scanner beams are moving again. Another stretch of woodland is coming into view. Their capture may not be long delayed. There is consolation in that—it is an encouraging step forward. The pursuit has been resumed."
The gaunt woman swung about to face the glass, her eyes brightening, a rapacious eagerness in her stare.
In the depths of the brightly illumined glass the forest seemed elfin and remote, enveloped in a weaving interplay of light and shade. Five para-guards were descending slowly above a boulder-strewn stretch of forest floor, brightened here and there by red and yellow fungus growths and moss-covered logs that glowed with a faint phosphorescence in the shadowed hollows between the rocks.
One by one the para-guards reached the ground, threw off their cumbersome air-suspension equipment, and checked the firing mechanism of their hand-guns, their faces harsh and grimly purposeful in the downstreaming light. Two of them were equipped with portable scanners and as they moved the instruments about the scene shifted and another stretch of woodland filled the glass. A patch of open sky swept suddenly into view and across it a flying machine darted, looking, in the glass' miniature reproduction of the scene, not unlike an enormous, blue-black hornet.
"They must be taken alive," the gaunt woman breathed. "With success so near I would be a fool not to change my original orders. Even if they resist they must not be attacked with weapons. I will issue new orders immediately."
"I would advise you to give it careful thought," the young man said. "You will be risking the lives of five para-guards. The man is armed now and—"
"Be silent. I shall do as I please. The death of five guards would be a very cheap price to pay for the apprehension alive of such monstrous criminals."