Had he known, he would not have believed that such an event could take place and that his own very human qualities and the courage of the woman at his side would elevate them both to greatness.
In the world of the Monitors, the human factor was very precariously balanced. Certain basic human instincts had been repressed or denied. But they could not be repressed forever and the most basic impulse of all could not be repressed without building up tensions volcanic in intensity.
The instinct which could not be repressed could not even be discussed in the world of the Monitors. Its denial and repudiation was basic to the survival of that world. All reference to it in the old books had been stippled out, and when men and women talked of love they did not know that they were treading on dangerous ground in respect to that impulse, which was a woman's crowning glory.
Even Teleman, despite his historic role, did not know or suspect until he emerged from another corridor into a compartment so large that it must have filled two-thirds of the building's interior. He did not know until he was standing in the entranceway, staring through a pale blue radiance at tiers upon tiers of cribs encased in sterile glass. He did not know until he saw the babies.
Tiers upon tiers of cribs and in each crib a sleeping human infant.
And in a few cribs a crying and a reaching out of tiny hands for arms that were not there, the arms of the mothers.
In each crib a man or woman of the future, still in swaddling clothes, but beginning to become aware of the world that he or she would someday inherit.
A thousand tiny faces stared up into the blue-lit immensity above the sterile cots, some rosy-cheeked and smiling, and fully awake, but most sleeping soundly. There were thin and peaked faces as well as rosy ones, contented faces and hungry-looking faces, and faces that looked completely innocent and faces that resembled the countenances of little old men, worn by years of toil, and faces that asked questions and faces that were content to express neither anger nor fear nor high intelligence but wore a look of untroubled innocence.
Teleman was too shaken to do more than stare silently and it was Alicia who put what they both felt into words, her eyes shining with a bright, newly-experienced kind of tenderness.
"I've heard about them but I've never seen them before. How beautiful they are, even the very thin ones and the angry ones! All of the future is here. But there is something lacking also. I feel it—I know it to be so. We are told that they will grow to manhood and to womanhood lacking nothing, but I cannot believe that the Monitors do not lie about that.