progress?

Another woman passed him and this time the stirring became almost uncontrollable. He had a wild desire to abandon all restraint, cross the strip to her side and plead with her for permission to take her into his arms and make passionate love to her. She was blonde and very beautiful, her hair a golden fleece spread fanwise across the dazzling whiteness of her shoulders. Her garments were free-flowing, all of her charms tantalizingly unconfined. The tips of her full breasts were clearly visible, pushing against the material of her tunic, and the other curving, secret places of her body were revealed in the play of light and shadow, the rippling of fabric. Her eyes were not downcast, but bold and fearless and she met his gaze searchingly and without embarrassment, as if she were greeting a sex-privileged man without shame in the mating center.

He knew at once that she was a sex-privileged woman. No modesty of attire had been imposed on her. Her lips were heavily rouged and her slender young body had the supple grace of one adept in the arts which can only be learned at Eros' shrine.

She returned his gaze steadily for an instant, with an unmistakable look of amorous invitation. Then, slowly, her eyes hardened and her lips curled in scorn and derision. His hesitation and the flush which had mounted to his cheekbones had quite transparently given him away. He was not one of the sex-privileged. She instantly lost all interest in him, and moved away from him with a slight shrug, as if the stern taboos erected by society did not in any way concern her.

A feeling of despair, of bitter hopelessness, made him groan inwardly and increase the length of his stride. Swiftly the moving travel strip continued to carry him toward the heart of the city, past suburban gardens bright with vermillion-petaled flowers and small artificial lakes which gleamed like gigantic garnets in the early morning sunlight.

It was difficult to wait patiently on the travel strip for the city to sweep close. Walking was not illegal and few energetic men and women could resist an impulse to exercise their legs and swing their arms before their technological duties compelled them to perform just one task well in a glass-enclosed activity cell.

One task well! He must never allow himself to forget how important that was. There would always be a constantly growing need for men and women conditioned by heredity and training to bend a machine to their will or secure the right answers to difficult 

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