His face loomed impossibly large, impossibly close. Other monitors had been killed in the past. They were essentially unstable, these technical workers. But a diagnosis was of small comfort now.
Then surprisingly his fingers left her throat. She gagged and coughed and the tears ran down her cheeks. He stood looking at her in a queer way. His voice was husky as he said, “Morrit, I think I could have gotten away with it. What happens when you hate somebody and can’t kill them? When you don’t want to kill them. When you even want to—” He forced her back against the wall once more and kissed her roughly.
She gasped and her cheeks flamed. She struck him across the mouth and slid away from him. “Mr. Lucas, I am taking this evidence immediately to the office of—”
She stopped and they both turned at the click of the door latch. Miss Glaydeen, Director of Monitors, walked in, her cheeks jiggling, her heavy steps rattling apparatus across the room on the zinc work table.
Her eyes had a look of mockery. She stopped three paces from Ellen Morrit and said, “I was going to send you the message, Morrit, but then I thought I’d come and take another look at you and see if I’d missed any hidden talent.”
“What do you mean?” Ellen Morrit asked.
“You are honored, my dear. The Director of Search, Captain Forrester, has just indicated to me his desire to conduct a personal rather than a mechanical search of you tonight. Very flattering. And don’t object. He has the right, you know.”
“But I—”
“Report to Room C, my dear. I believe the good Captain is already there, impatiently waiting.”
Miss Glaydeen smiled, turned on her heel and walked heavily out. The door slammed behind her.
Ellen Morrit had a feeling of nightmare. She took two steps closer to Peter Lucas and said, “Is — isn’t there any way to—”
“Not in the manual there isn’t,” he said. She was surprised to see that he had a troubled look.
The world had gone upside down. A man who should have killed her had kissed her instead. She had lied to her superiors. And now Captain Forrester planned some unknown and unthinkable thing. Her loyalties were torn and confused.
“You must want this badly,” she said, holding out the battery.
“Very badly,” he admitted. He coughed. “If you took the battery right to Uncle Evan maybe you could throw a smoke-screen over the whole thing.”
She realized that he was offering her the only out, an impossibly quixotic sacrifice of himself to save her humiliation.
She left the office with the battery in her hand. She went directly to Room C, opened the door quietly, shut it behind her.
Lucas waited for them to come for him. But they didn’t.
He found the strip of copper he wanted, walked slowly down to the locker room. He was late; most of the others had gone. The guard told him to hurry it up. He went through Search, dressed again with a slowness that infuriated the guard and walked slowly down the fenced corridor.
Only one other worker was with him. The guard was surly. Lucas turned and saw the girl coming across the grass to the corridor fence. He saw her hair, gold in the twilight.
“Get away from the fence, you!” the guard roared.
“I am a monitor,” the girl said firmly. Lucas recognized her voice, stared almost with disbelief at Morrit. It was the first time he had ever seen her in street clothes, seen her with the hair that fell to shoulders that were straight and perfect.
“Come here, guard!” she ordered.
The guard turned to them. “You two stand where you are.” He went to the fence.
Lucas looked at her and saw the new hardness of her face, a bitter curve of mouth, an angry look in her eyes.
“Guard,” she said, “you are to search the clothes of that tall one there. Lucas. An item was smuggled through Search.”
As the guard turned toward him, Lucas caught the pleading look in her eyes. He was thoroughly confused. She was trying to tell him something.
The other worker looked on without much interest. Lucas held his arms up and the guard went through every pocket with care. Lucas stopped breathing as he saw Morrit back away from the fence, saw the small object in her hand.
She swung her arm as though practicing. With narrowed eyes she watched the guard. The search over, the guard turned back toward Morrit. In the instant of his turning, she threw the battery over the high fence.
By the time the guard had turned completely, her arms were back at her sides.
Lucas saw it against the darkening sky. He took two quick steps to one side and it splatted into the palm of his hand. He dropped it into his pocket.
“Nothing on him, Miss,” the guard mumbled.
The other worker had seen the exchange. Lucas faced him tensely. He saw the fleeting grin, saw the other worker form the unspoken words, “Nice going!”
“Sorry to have troubled you,” Morrit said. She called to Lucas, “I will not be reporting tomorrow, Mr. Lucas.”
The words meant nothing to him; not until he had shut the door of the small white house behind him.
Morrit was not reporting. Under the stringent rules, no monitor could give up her position until the full five years had been served. To refuse to report would create the suspicion that the monitor had somehow become infected with the creative psychosis of the technical workers. And it was a free ticket to the little gray amphitheater where they wielded the electric scalpel.
Something had cracked Ellen Morrit. Something had made her betray the regime. And she would have to become a fugitive. He could not see her waiting for them to come and get her.
Thus her words became a message. She had said, “You are right, Peter, and I have been wrong. Maybe this battery will help you become free. If so, I will be in the dead city.”
And suddenly he knew there had been only one way for her to get the battery past Captain Arden Forrester. Acquiescence. A very high price to pay; and a very impetuous decision to make.
His smile was a grimace that pressed his lips back against his teeth. Lucas had made a convert to heresy, had added another prisoner to the world.
He ate slowly, stretched out on the bed. His hand touched the wall, and he sat up in sudden panic. The wax was cracked. At last they had found the hiding place.
He pulled the sliding panel down, reached inside. His hand touched the device. He took it out and inspected it. They had not removed it, had seen that it was an odd thing, too small to be dangerous — possibly a physical indication that the mind of Peter Lucas was failing. And it had been left behind as evidence.
He forced steadiness into his hands, unscrewed the battery frame, put the little battery in place, connected one wire to a terminal, the other to the copper strip.
They arrived at that moment: Arden Forrester and two of the guards. Forrester swaggered in, his thumbs tucked under his uniform belt.
“Mr. Lucas, I believe. And what toy do you have there, Mr. Lucas? An automatic toothbrush, no doubt. And where did you get the metal, Mr. Lucas?”
Peter Lucas grinned foolishly at Forrester. He made his mouth slack, shifted the device into his right hand, the battery case against the heel of his hand.
“We’d better go see Mr. Evan,” Forrester said. He winked broadly at Lucas. “A shame to take you out of that lab of yours where the decorations are so nice. So very, very nice.”
Lucas depressed the copper strip so that it made contact with the bare terminal. The tube glowed for a moment in the lead socket.
Forrester stood spare, firm and erect.
Lucas knew that the device had failed. And then he saw Forrester’s right hand. Slowly it lost form. It sagged, sluggishly, a pink wax hand held above a flame, the fingers merging.