Conspirators of Gor Read Free Page B

defiance of haters and tyrants concerned to engineer a pathology congenial to their political ambitions.
    In any event, in my room, and apparently in those of Eve and Jane, Mrs. Rawlinson had discovered certain of these books, apparently, as I then thought, to her astonishment, embarrassment, dismay, and indignation. Certainly I had hidden the books, I had thought well, in a trunk, covered with clothing, had confessed to no one that I had read such things, and was terribly self-conscious at having done so. I was miserably embarrassed that this secret was discovered. What would Mrs. Rawlinson, my sisters, others, think of me?
    Worse, I could be publicly humiliated, disdained, ostracized, and summarily expelled from the sorority, with all the devastating social consequences which that might entail.
    A delicate and fragile world, carefully constructed and maintained with an eye to the future, might tumble about me.
    I was frightened.
    I was suddenly, for the first time in my life, vulnerable, at risk.
    I would be on the outside, alone, ignored and despised, the gates shut against me.
    How delighted would be Nora, and certain others of my sisters, at my downfall, my discomfiture!
    How rapidly and eagerly would this welcome news of my exposure be broadcast about the campus!
    I had come upon such books by accident, in a store dealing with old books. I was curious. I looked into one or more. I was startled. I could not believe, even from the first pages, the nature of what I read. I did not understand how the authors, Tarl Cabot, and others, might have dared to write what they did. Did they not know the formulas? Were they unaware of the political requirements imposed on contemporary literature? Were such so obscure, or difficult to discern? What an unexpected paradox, to put aside the rules, to deny orthodoxy, to speak so plainly, so simply and quietly, and naturally, of a culture so different from ours, and to speak of it not to denounce it, but to understand it, to speak of it from the inside, instead of disparaging it from the outside, from the alleged vantage point of some arrogant, unargued, unquestioned position or posture whose credentials were not only dubious but nonexistent. What of the simple test of life consequences? Is it obvious that an unnatural culture which produces vehemence, confusion, hysteria, sickness, treachery, hypocrisy, mass murder, and hatred is obviously superior to a culture compatible with nature, and her kinds and differences, a culture in which nature is recognized and celebrated, and enhanced by all the ennobling sophistications of civilization, rather than denied?
    In any event, if only to my dismay, and fear, the books spoke to me.
    Too, they spoke to me of secrets I had long concealed from myself. My life was boring and empty, and largely mapped out for me. I was on a road, cold, glittering, metallic, and arid, which I did not much care to follow. I did not know myself. Perhaps I was afraid to discover myself. What might I learn, what might I find? I did know that I was a scion of a series of species bred for thousands of generations for a world quite different from the one in which I found myself, a world less populated, greener, more open, more perilous perhaps, and certainly more beautiful. And I knew, too, that there were men and women, and that each had been bred beside the other, for countless generations, each in the light of the other, and I suspected, from my thoughts, my needs, and dreams, that they were not identical, but that each sex, so radically dimorphic, had its own wonderful nature, each nature complementary to the other. What of relationships, so pervasive amongst mammals? Had such things not been selected for? Was nature so hard to read? Did the consequences of denying her lead to happiness, or fulfillment? It did not seem so.
    But, still, I had been caught.
    Books had been found in my room.
    Mrs. Rawlinson had sternly summoned me, and Eve and Jane, before her. We were then