"I was standing in darkness at the end of the hallway when I heard you speaking. I would have gone back downstairs if your words had not given me so great a shock, for to intrude on your privacy at such a moment would have been the act of a man lost to all honor. But your words were strange beyond belief. I had never thought to hear such words from the lips of the sex-privileged.
"You were also in revolt. You had come here to escape from the tyranny of the Monitors, to experience again joys that would not be tolerated in the mating centers. To you love and romance were inseparable parts of one imperishable experience and without tenderness in love, without complete freedom of choice, love becomes a mockery. The deep, undying love of one man and one woman—that was something we too could understand.
"Her name is Alicia, and I love her more than my own life and I would give my life gladly to spare her suffering. As I stood in the hallway listening I thought: 'I cannot let her be taken captive. She will be condemned to death and I will die a thousand deaths before my own life is ended. Even if I am executed first, I will die a thousand deaths just knowing that she will die too, and I will be powerless to save her.'
"I came to a decision then, a decision that was forced upon me. I would take you both captive, bind you and make the Monitors believe that you had fought desperately to resist capture. I would overturn furniture, leave this room in wild disorder. Then you would not be accused of complicity and we would have at least a fighting chance of outwitting the Monitors. We would be safe not for a few hours or a few days, but long enough to make new plans for evading capture.
"We would take refuge in a mating center. We would put on your garments and wear your insignia and carry with us the identifying seals that cannot be counterfeited, for the scanning of seals is so accurate a process that a forged seal would be instantly detected."
She was looking at him steadily now, her breathing rapid and her lips slightly parted but all of the dread had vanished from her eyes. Her expression had softened, and there was a strange mistiness in the depth of her pupils, as if from some secret reservoir of strength she had drawn the will to listen and understand.
He thought he saw sympathy begin to grow in her eyes as he went on. "I did not want to resort to violence. But circumstances sometimes compel us to do hateful things to protect those we love. The choice was a hard one and I am not even sure I could have used violence against a man I would have been proud to call my friend if he had not mistaken me for a criminal intruder and left me no choice."
"No choice?" she whispered, "Yes, I believe you. But if he is hurt badly—"
For answer Teleman turned and went to the man on the floor and bent above him.
Teleman had felled the man with a powerful blow, but it had not been a blow to his skull and could not have resulted in a concussion. And he had not hit his head against the floor in falling. But in the back of Teleman's mind was the fear that the man might still have been hurt severely. That fear diminished the instant he felt the other's pulse and found that it was beating strongly and regularly. It diminished still further when the man stirred and opened his eyes and stared up at Teleman.