PAGE 7
Love Story
by
“Thanks, Jenny.” He picked up one of the car seats and walked back to the sedan. She stood motionless watching him. He fitted the seat in place and put the key in the lock. The starter ground away, but the motor did not turn over.
He glanced back at Jenny. She was smiling inscrutably, “You see, George, you have to stay with me.”
He got out of the car and moved toward her.
“I was afraid you were planning to desert me,” she went on, “so I took out the distributor cap while you were getting the firewood.”
He stood in front of her. Coldly he demanded, “Where did you put it, Jenny?”
She tilted her lips toward his. “Kiss and tell–maybe.”
“I haven’t time for games. Where is it?”
His fist shot out. Jenny sprawled on the ground at his feet. Again he saw the pain and the adoration in her face. But that couldn’t be right. She would hate him by this time.
He yanked her to her feet. Her lips were still bleeding and blood came now from a wound in her cheek. Yet she managed to smile again.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Jenny,” he told her. “But I have to have–“
“I love you, George. I never thought I’d want to give myself to a man. All the buying doesn’t make any difference, does it? Not really. And I never knew that before!”
With an unconscious movement, she kicked her train aside and he saw the distributor cap lying beneath it. He picked it up. She flung herself at him screaming. He felt the hammer beat of her heart; her fingers dug into his back like cat claws. Now it didn’t matter. He had the secret; he could go whenever he wanted to. Nonetheless he pushed her away–tenderly, and with regret. To surrender like this was no better than a capitulation to the compound. It was instinctively important to make her understand that. He knew that much, but his emotions were churned too close to fever pitch for him to reason out what else that implied.
He clipped her neatly on the jaw and put her unconscious body on the ground by the fire. He left the map with her so she could find her way out in the morning; he knew it was really a very short hike to a highway, where she would be picked up by a passing car or truck.
* * * * *
He drove out the way he had come in–at least he tried to remember. Four times he took a wrong turn and had to backtrack. It was, therefore, dawn before he reached the outskirts of Hollywood. In any other city he would not have been conspicuous–simply a man on his way to work; only women slept late. However, Hollywood was off-limits to every male. The city was not only the seat of the Directorate, but the manufacturing center for the cosmetics industry. And since that gave women her charm, it was a business no man worked at.
George had to have a disguise. He stopped on a residential street, where the people were still likely to be in their beds. He read names on mail boxes until he found a house where an unmarried woman lived. He had no way of knowing if she had a husband on approval with her, but the box was marked “Miss.” With any luck he might have got what he wanted without disturbing her, but the woman was a light sleeper and she caught him as he was putting on the dress. He was sorry he had to slug her, but she gave him no resistance. A spark of hope, a spark of long-forgotten youth glowed in her eyes; before she slid into unconsciousness.
Wearing the stolen dress, which fit him like a tent, and an enormous hat to hide his face, George parked his sedan near the Directorate and entered the building when it opened at eight. In room after room automatons demonstrated how to dress correctly; robot faces displayed the uses of cosmetics. There were displays of kitchen gadgets, appliances, and other heavy machinery for the home; recorded lectures on stock management and market control. Here women came from every part of the country for advice, help and guidance. Here the Top Directors met to plan business policy, to govern the nation, and to supervise the production of the compound. For only the Top Directors–less than a dozen women–actually knew the formula. Like their stockholdings, the secret was hereditary, passed from mother to daughter.