by Greg Bear
himself.
"Surely you know why by now," Jane said, looking down
at the table, either nonplussed or getting angry. Now that she
had laid out her course, Letitia couldn't help but forge ahead.
"I don't. Not really. It's not because you're religious."
"Something like that," Donald said.
"No," Jane said, shaking her head firmly.
"Then why?"
"Your mother and I--"
"I am not just their mother," Jane said.
"Jane and I believe there is a certain plan in nature, a plan
we shouldn't interfere with. If we had gone along with most of
the others and tried to have PPCs--participated in the boy-girl
lotteries and signed up for the prebirth opportunity counseling--why,
we would have been interfering."
"Did you go to a hospital when we were born?"
"Yes," Jane said, still avoiding their faces.
"That's not natural," Letitia said. "Why not let nature
decide whether we'd be born alive or not?"
"We have never claimed to be consistent," Donald said.
"Donald," Jane said ominously.
"There are limits," Donald expanded, smiling placation.
"We believe those limits begin when people try to interfere
with the sex cells. You've had all that in school. You know
about the protests when the first PPCs were born. Your grandmother
was one of the protesters. Your mother and I are both
NGs; or course, our generation has a much higher percentage of
NGs."
"Now we're freaks," Letitia said.
"If by that you mean them aren't many teenage NGs, I
suppose that's right," Donald said, touching his wife's ann.
"But it could also mean you're special. Chosen."
"No," Letitia said. "Not chosen. You played dice with
both of us. We could have been DDs. Duds. Not just dingies,
but retards or spaz."
An uncomfortable quiet settled over the table. "Not likely,''
Donald said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Your
mother and I both have good genotypes. Your grandmother
insisted your mother marry a good genotype. There are no
developmentally disabled people in our families."
Letitia had been hemmed in. There was no way she could
see out of it, so she pushed back her chair and excused herself
from the table.
As she made her way up to her room, she heard arguing
below. Roald raced up the stairs behind her and gave her a dirty
look. "Why'd you have to bring all that up?" he asked. "It's
bad enough at school, we don't have to have it here."
She thought about the history the AC had shown her. Back
then, a family with their income wouldn't have been able to live
in a four-bedroom house. Back then, there had been half as
many people in the United States and Canada as there were
now. There had been more unemployment, much more economic
uncertainty, and far fewer automated jobs. The percentage of
people doing physical labor for a living--simple construction,
crop maintenance and harvesting, digging ditches and hard
work like that--had been ten times greater then than it was now.
Most of the people doing such labor today belonged to religious
sects or one of the Wendell Barry farming communes.
Back then, Roald and Letitia would have been considered
gifted children with a bright future.
She thought about the pictures and the feeling of the past,
and wondered if Reena hadn't been right.
She would be a perfect old woman.
Her mother came into her room while Letitia was putting up her hair. She stood in the door frame. It was obvious she had
been crying. Letitia watched her reflection in the mirror of her
grandmother's dressing table, willed to her four years before.
"Yes?" she asked softly, ageless bobby pins in her mouth.
'lt was more my idea than your father's," Jane said,
stepping closer, hands folded before her. "I mean, I am your
mother. We've never really talked about this."
"No," Letitia said.
"So why now?"
"Maybe I'm growing up."
"Yes." Jane looked at the soft and flickering pictures hung
on the walls, pastel scenes of improbable forests. "When I was pregnant with you, I was very afraid. I worried we'd made the
wrong decision, going against what everybody else seemed to
think and what everybody was advising or being advised. But I
carried you and felt you move.., and I knew you were ours,
and ours alone, and that we were responsible for you body and
soul. I was your mother, not the doctors."
Letitia looked up with mixed anger and frustration.., and
love.
"And now I see you. I think back to what I might have
felt, if I were your age again, in your position. I might be mad,
too. Roald hasn't had time to feel different yet; he's too young.
I just came up here to tell you; I know that what I did was right,
not for us, not for them"--she indicated the broad world beyond
the walls of the house--' 'but right for you. It will work out. It
really will." She put her hands on Letitia's shoulders. "They
aren't having an easy time either. You know that." She stopped
for a moment, then from behind her back revealed a book with
a soft brown cover. "I brought this to show you again. You
remember Great-Grandma? Her grandmother came all the way
from Ireland, along with her grandpa." Jane gave her the
album. Reluctantly, Letitia opened it up. There were real
photographs inside, on paper, ancient black and white and faded
color. Her great-grandmother did not much resemble Grandmother,
who had been big-boned, heavy-set. Great-grandmother
looked as if she had been skinny all her life. "You keep this,"
Jane said. "Think about it for a while."
The morning came with planned rain. Letitia took the
half-empty metro to school, looking at the terraced and gardened
and occasionally neglected landscape of the extended suburbs
through raindrop-smeared glass. She came onto the school
grounds and went to one of the older buildings in the school,
where there was a little-used old-fashioned lavatory. This sometimes
served as her sanctuary. She stood in a white stall and breathed deeply for a few minutes, then went to a sink and
washed her hands as if conducting some ritual. Slowly, reluctantly,
she looked at herself in the cracked mirror. A janitorial worker
went about its duties, leaving behind the fresh, steamy smell of
clean fixtures.
The early part of the day was a numb time. Letitia began to
fear her own distance from feeling, from the people around her.
She might at any minute step into the old lavatory and simply
fade from the present, find herself sixty years back...
And what would she really think of that?
In her third period class she received a note requesting that
she appear in Rutger's counseling office as soon as was convenient.
That was shorthand for immediately; she gathered up her
mods and caught Reena's unreadable glance as she walked past.
Rutger was a handsome man of forty-three (the years were
registered on his desk life clock, an affect
ation of some of the
older PPCs) with a broad smile and a garish taste in clothes. He
was head of the counseling department and generally well-liked
in the school. He shook her hand as she entered the counseling
office and offered her a chair. "Now. You wanted to talk to
me?"
"I guess," Letitia said.
"Problems?" His voice was a pleasant baritone; he was
probably a fairly good singer. That had been a popular trait in
the early days of PPCs.
"The ACs say it's my attitude."
"And what about it?"
"I... am ugly. I am the ugliest girl.., the only girl in this
school who is ugly."
Rutger nodded. "I don't think you're ugly, but which is
worse, being unique or being ugly?" Letitia lifted the corner of
one lip in snide acknowledgment of the funny.
"Everybody's unique now," she said.
"That's what we teach. Do you believe it?"
"No," she said. "Everybody's the same. I'm..." She
shook her head. She resented Rutger prying up the pavement
over her emotions. "I'm TB. I wouldn't mind being a PPC, but
I'm not."
"I think it's a minor problem," Rutger said quickly. He
hadn't even sat down; obviously he was not going to give her
much time.
"It doesn't feel minor," she said, anger poking through
the cracks he had made.
"Oh, no. Being young often means that minor problems
feel major. You feel envy and don't like yourself, at least not
the way you look. Well, looks can be helped by diet, or at the
very least by time. If I'm any judge, you'll look fine when
you're older. And I am something of a judge. As for the way
the others feel about you... I was a freak once."
Letitia looked up at him.
"Certainly. Bona fide. Much more of a freak than you.
There are ten NGs like yourself in this school now. When I was
your age, I was the only PPC in my school. There was still
suspicion and even riots. Some PPCs were killed in one school
when parents stormed the grounds."
Letitia stared.
"The other kids hated me. I wasn't bad-looking, but they
knew. They had parents who told them PPCs were Frankenstein
monsters. Do you remember the Rifkin Society? They're still
around, but they're extreme fringies now. Just as well. They
thought I'd been grown in a test tube somewhere and hatched
out of an incubator. You've never experienced real hatred, I
suspect. I did."
"You were nice-looking," Letitia said. "you knew sone-body
would like you eventually, maybe even love you. But what about me? Because of what I am, the way I look, who will ever
want me? And will a PPC ever want to be with a Dingy?"
She knew these were hard questions and Rutger made no
pretense of answering them. "Say it all works out for the
worst," he said. "You end up a spinster and no one ever loves
you. You spend the rest of your days alone, Is that what you're
worded about?"
Her eyes widened. She had never quite thought those
things through. Now she really hurt.
"Everybody out there is choosing beauty for their kids.
They're choosing slender, athletic bodies and fine minds. You
have a fine mind, but you don't have an athletic body. Or so
you seem to be convinced; I have no record of you ever trying
out for athletics. So when you're out in the adult world, sure,
you'll look different. But why can't that be an advantage? You
may be surprised how hard we PPCs try to be different. And
how hard it is, since tastes vary so little in our parents. You
have that built in."
Letitia listened, but the layers of paving were closing
again. "Icing on the cake," she said.
Rutger regarded her with his shrewd blue eyes and shrugged.
"Come back in a month and talk to me," he said. "Until then,
I think autocounselors will do fine."
Little was said at dinner and less after. She went upstairs
and to bed at an early hour, feeling logy and hoping for escape.
Her father did his usual bed check an hour after she had put
on her pajamas and lain down. "Rolled tight?" he asked.
"Mmph," she replied.
"Sleep tighter," he said. Rituals and formulas. Her life
had been shaped by parents who were comfortable with nightly
rituals and formulas.
Almost immediately after sleep, or so it seemed, she came abruptly awake. She sat up in bed and realized where she was,
and who, and began to cry. She had had the strangest and most
beautiful dream, the finest ever without a dream mod. She
could not remember details now, try as she might, but waking
was almost more than she could bear.
In the first period class, Georgia Fischer blitzed yet again
and had to go to the infirmary. Letitia watched the others and
saw a stony general cover-up of feelings. Edna Corman excused
herself in second period and came back with red puffy eyes and
pink cheeks. The tension built through the rest of the day until
she wondered how anyone could concentrate. She did her own
studying without any conviction; she was still wrapped in the
dream, trying to decide what it meant.
In eighth period, she once again sat behind John Lockwood.
It was as if she had completed a cycle beginning in the morning
and ending with her last class. She looked at her watch
anxiously. Once again, they had Mr. Brant supervising. He
seemed distracted, as if he, too, had had a dream, and it hadn't
been as pleasant as hers.
Brant had them cut mods mid-period and begin a discussion
on what had been learned. These were the so-called
integrative moments when the media learning was fixed by
social interaction; Letitia found these periods a trial at the best
of times. The others discussed their economics, Reena Cathcart
as usual standing out in a class full of dominant personalities.
John Lockwood listened intently, a small smile on his face
as he presented a profile to Letitia. He seemed about to turn
around and talk to her. She placed her hand on the corner of
her console and lifted her finger to attract his attention.
He glanced at her hand, turned away, and with a shudder
looked at it again, staring this time, eyes widening. His mouth
began to work as if her hand was the most horrible thing he had ever seen. His chin quivered, then his shoulder, and
before Letitia could react he stood up and moaned. His legs
went liquid beneath him and he fell to the console, arms
hanging, then slid to the floor. On the floor, John Lockwood--who
had never done such a thing in his life--twisted and
groaned and shivered, locked in a violent blitz.
Brant pressed the class emergency button and came around
his desk. Before he could reach Lockwood, the boy became
still, eyes open, one hand letting go its tight grip on the leg of
his seat. Letitia could not move, watching his empty eyes; he
appeared so horribly limp.
Brant grabbed the boy by the shoulders, swearing steadily,
and dragged him outside the classroom. Letitia followed them
stood beside her, faces blank. Other students followed, staying
well away from Brant and the boy.
Brant lowered John Lockwood to the concrete and began
pounding his chest and administering mouth-to-mouth. He pulled
a syringe from his coat pocket and uncapped it, shooting its full
contents into the boy's skin just below the sternum. Letitia
focused on the syringe, startled. Right in his pocket; not in the
first-aid kit.
The full class stood in the hallway, silent, in shock. The
medical arrived, Rutger following; it scooped John Lockwood
onto its gurney and swung around, lights flashing. "Have you
administered KVN?" the robot asked Brant.
"Yes. Five cc's. Direct to heart."
Room after room came out to watch, all the PPCs fixing
their eyes on the burdened medical as it rolled down the hall.
Edna Corman cried. Reena glanced at Letitia and turned away
as if ashamed.
"That's five," Rutger said, voice tired beyond grimness.
Brant looked at him, then at the class, and told them they were dismissed. Letitia hung back. Brant screwed up his face in grief
and anger. "Go! Get out of here!"
She ran. The last thing she heard Rutger say was, "More
this week than last."
Letitia sat in the empty white lavatory, wiping her eyes,
ashamed at her sniveling. She wanted to react like a grown-up--she
saw herself being calm, cool, offering help to whoever
might have needed it in the classroom--but the tears and
the shaking would not stop.
Mr. Brant had seemed angry, as if the entire classroom were
at fault. Not only was Mr. Brant adult, he was PPC.
So did she expect adults, especially adult PPCs, to behave
better?
Wasn't that what it was all about?
She stared at herself in the cracked mirror. "I should go
home, or go to the library and study," she said. Dignity and
decorum. Two girls walked into the lavatory, and her private
moment passed.
Letitia did not go to the library. Instead, she went to the
old concrete and steel auditorium, entering through the open
stage entrance, standing in darkness in the wings. Three female
