EIGHT
"The glass," Monitor 6Y9 murmured, aloud to herself. "I must go back and look at the glass again. I must see how the pursuit is progressing, the pursuit of the two worst criminals of all. When they spoke to me as they did on the travel trip a strange premonition came upon me. Those two are my real enemies, for there is in them a will to resist such as I have never encountered before. When I met them a voice seemed to whisper deep in my mind: 'It will be their lives or yours—and the security of all of the Monitors, and the Advisors and all of us who rule will hang in the balance until they are captured and brought to justice. There is in them a power, a defiance, so fierce and intractable that it could disrupt all of the binding energies of our world just as an atom can, by exploding, destroy all matter in its path. A single atom, and when two such atoms are joined...."
The gaunt woman stopped walking and looked up at the high white walls of the corridor she had been pacing, back and forth, like a caged tigress.
"No ... no ... no," she murmured. "I cannot go back and look at the scanner-glass until my mind has grown calmer, and my will has been strengthened, and I am more completely myself again. Perhaps the pursuit has failed and they can no longer be traced. Perhaps they have already been surrounded and have escaped from the trap by a stroke of blind luck, or because some strange destiny has set them apart from all others. Perhaps all of the para-guards are lying dead in the forest."
The gaunt woman drew herself up, a look of stern self-reproach coming into her eyes. "Enough of such fears and misgivings. They will be captured. I will find the strength to pursue them relentlessly, night and day, to pursue them until their will to resist has been shattered and they stand broken and defenseless before the Council. If I should need more strength than I possess—and I have great strength—I will draw upon the strength of our world. Wait, wait, let me think. It may help me now to look well upon that strength. The new bio-chemical techniques for changing the structure of the human body, altering its glandular functioning, eradicating the need for love—yes, that great, genius-inspired key, the solution perhaps to all of our problems.
"The experiment in Research Laboratory 79 H! A completely new kind of man—woman later if the experiment is successful, a man without any love impulses at all, but strong and robust, high-minded and socially dedicated. For three centuries we have tried to eradicate the love impulse by rigorously controlled selective mating of the least amorous, until we thought we had succeeded in creating a great and enduring society of completely non-amorous specialists. But we were tragically mistaken and everywhere the old, dangerous ugliness is weakening the very foundations of our world and threatening us all with destruction. And all because our best minds were not sufficiently genius-inspired.
"We knew a great deal about glandular therapy and had even employed it experimentally, in a cautiously limited way, to make the long-range results of selective mating more effective and permanent. But even there we were at fault. We did not proceed boldly enough. We drew back from gland surgery and from combining carefully controlled glandular injection therapy with the newest and most brilliant developments in surgery. We did not have the boldness of vision, the courage and foresight, to create a completely new kind of man—to alter the physical structure of the human body as it has never before been altered in the entire history of our race, except very occasionally by accident and disease.
"A new race of men! Why should we draw back from that, why should we hesitate now when our peril is so great, and we may all go down into everlasting night and darkness?"
The gaunt woman drew herself up. She seemed to draw strength from the vehemence of her own convictions, which she continued to express aloud to herself, as if she were herself a listener and needed to hear her own voice affirming what she knew to be true.
"The experiment in Laboratory 79 H! For six months now we have waited patiently to be told whether it is a success or a failure. We have waited long enough. The Council may condemn me if I go now and demand that the final test be made at once, in my presence. But I shall take that risk. I have the right to demand, I will make my authority felt. The subject has undergone six months of glandular therapy; four of surgery. They might prefer to postpone the final test for another week, but I am quite sure it will not endanger the subject if it is performed at once. I shall be the first to know!"