Sisters

by Greg Bear

  students sat in the front row, below the stage level and about ten

  meters away from Letitia. She recognized Reena but not the

  other two; they did not share classes with her.

  "Did you know him?"

  "No, not very well," Reena said. "He was in ny class."

  "No ducks!" the third snorted.

  "Trish, keep it interior, please. Reena's had it rough."

  "He hadn't blitzed. He wasn't a superwhiz. Nobody expected

  it."

  "When was his incept?"

  "I don't know," Reena said. "We're all about the stone age, within a couple of months. We're all the same model year,

  same supplements. If it's something in the genotype, in the

  supplements. ·

  "I heard somebody say there had been five so far. I

  haven't heard anything," the third said.

  "I haven't either," said the second.

  "Not in our school," Reena said. "Except for the

  superwhizes. And none of them have died before now."

  Letitia stepped back in the darkness, hand on mouth. Had

  Lockwood actually died'?

  She thought for a mad moment of stepping out of the

  wings, going into the seats and telling the three she was sorry.

  The impulse faded fast. That would have been intruding.

  They weren't any older than she was, and they didn't

  sound much more mature. They sounded scared.

  In the morning, at the station room for pre-med secondary,

  Brant told them that John Lockwood had died the day before.

  "He had a heart attack," Brant said. Letitia intuited that was

  not the complete truth. A short eulogy was read, and special

  hours for psych counseling were arranged for those students

  who felt they might need it.

  The word "blitzing" was not mentioned by Brant, nor by

  any of the PPCs throughout that day. Letitia tried to research the

  subject but found precious few materials in the libraries accessed

  by her mod. She presumed she didn't know where to look; it

  was hard to believe that nobody knew what was happening.

  The dream came again, even stronger, the next night, and ---Letitia

  awoke out of it cold and shivering with excitement. She

  saw herself standing before a crowd, no single face visible, for

  she was in light and they were in darkness. She had felt, in the

  dream, an almost unbearable happiness, grief mixed with joy, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She loved and

  did not know what she loved--not the crowd, precisely, not a

  man, not a family member, not even herself.

  She sat up in her bed, hugging her knees, wondering if

  anybody else was awake. It seemed possible she had never been

  awake until now; every nerve was alive. Quietly, not wanting

  anybody else to intrude on this moment, she slipped out of bed

  and walked down the hall to her mother's sewing room. There,

  in a full-length cheval mirror, she looked at herself as if with

  new eyes.

  "Who are you?" she whispered. She lifted her cotton

  nightshirt and stared at her legs. Short calves, lumpy knees,

  thighs not bad--not fat, at any rate. Her arms were soft-looking,

  not muscular, but not particularly plump, a rosy vanilla

  color with strawberry blotches on her elbows where she leaned

  on them while reading in bed. She had Irish ancestors on her

  mother's side; that showed in her skin color, recessed cheekbones,

  broad face. On her father's side, Mexican and German;

  not much evidence in her of the Mexican. Her brother looked

  more swarthy. "We're mongrels," she said. "I look like a

  mongrel compared to PPC purebreds." But PPCs were not

  purebred; they were designed.

  She lifted her nightshirt higher still, pulling it over her

  head finally and standing naked. Shivering from the cold and

  from the memory of her dream, she forced herself to focus on

  all of her characteristics. Whenever she had seen herself naked

  in mirrors before, she had blurred her eyes at one feature,

  looked away from another, special-effecting her body into a

  more acceptable fantasy. Now she was in a mood to know

  herself for what she was.

  Broad hips, strong abdomen--plump, but strong. From her

  pre-med, she knew that meant she would probably have little

  trouble bearing children. "Brood mare," she said, but there was no critical sharpness in the words. To have children, she

  would have to attract men, and right now there seemed little

  chance of that. She did not have the "Attraction Peaks" so often

  discussed on the TV, or seen faddishly headlined on the LitVid

  mods; the culturally prescribed geometric curves allocated to so

  few naturally, and now available to so many by design. Does

  Your Child Have the Best Design for Success?

  Such a shocking triviality. She felt a righteous anger

  grow--another emotion she was not familiar with---and sucked

  it back into the excitement, not wanting to lose her mood. "I

  might never look at myself like this again," she whispered.

  Her breasts were moderate in size, the left larger than the

  fight and more drooping. She could indeed hold a stylus under

  her left breast, something a PPC female would not have to

  worry about for decades, if ever. Rib cage not really distinct;

  muscles not distinct; rounded, soft, gentle-looking, face curious,

  friendly, wide-eyed, skin blemished but not so badly it

  wouldn't recover on its own; feet long and toenails thick,

  heavily cuticle& She had never suffered from ingrown toenails.

  Her family line showed little evidence of tendency to

  cancer--correctible now, but still distressing--or heart disease

  or any of the other diseases of melting pot cultures, of mobile

  populations and changing habits. She saw a strong body in the

  mirror, one that would serve her well.

  And she also saw that with a little makeup, she could

  easily play an older woman. Some shadow under the eyes, lines

  to highlight what would in thirty or forty years be jowls, laugh

  lines...

  But she did not look old now.

  Letitia walked back to her room, treading carefully on the

  carpet. In the room, she asked the lights to turn on, lay down on

  the bed, pulled the photo album Jane had given her from the top

  of her nightstand and gingerly turned the delicate black paper pages. She stared at her great-grandmother's face, and then at

  the picture of her grandmother as a little girl.

  Individual orchestra was taught by three instructors in one

  of the older drama classrooms behind the auditorium. It was a

  popular aesthetic; the school's music boxes were better than

  most home units, and the instructors were very popular. All

  were PPCs.

  After a half hour of group, each student could retire to box

  keyboard, order up spheres of countersound to avoid cacophony, and practice.

  Today, she practiced for less than half an hour. Then,

  tongue between her lips, she stared into empty space over the

  keyboard. "Countersound off, please," she ordered, and stood

  up from the black bench. Mr. Teague, the senior instructor,

  asked if she were done for the day.

  "I have to run an errand," she said.

&n
bsp; "Practice your polyrhythms," he advised.

  She left the classroom and walked around to the auditorium's

  stage entrance. She knew Reena's drmna group would be

  meeting there.

  The auditorium was dark, the stage lighted by a few

  catwalk spots. The drama group sat in a circle of chairs in one

  illuminated corner of the stage, reading lines aloud from old

  paper scripts. Hands folded, she walked toward the group. Rick

  Fayette, a quiet senior with short back hair, spotted her first but

  said nothing, glancing at Reena. Reena stopped reading her

  lines, turned, and stared at Letitia. Edna Corman saw her last

  and shook her head, as if this were the last straw.

  "Hello," Letitia said.

  "What are you doing here?" There was more wonder than

  disdain in Reena's voice.

  "I thought you might still..." She shook her head.

  "Probably not. But I thought you might still be able to use

  me."

  "Really," Edna Corman said.

  Reena put her script down and stood. "Why'd you change

  your mind?"

  "I thought I wouldn't mind being an old lady," Reena

  said. "It's just not that big a deal. I brought a picture of my

  great-grandmother." She took a plastic wallet from her pocket and

  opened it to a copy she had made from the photo in the album.

  "You could make me up like this. Like my great-grandmother."

  Reena took the wallet. "You look like her," she said.

  "Yeah. Kind of."

  "Look at this," Reena said, holding the picture out to the

  others. They gathered around and passed the wallet from hand

  to hand, staring in wonder. Even Edna Corman glanced at it

  briefly. "She actually looks like her great-grandmother."

  Rick Fayette whistled with wonder. "You," he said, "will

  make a really great old lady."

  Rutger called her into his office abruptly a week later. She

  sat quietly before his desk. "You've joined the drama class after

  all," he said. She nodded.

  "Any reason why?"

  There was no simple way to express it. "Because of what

  you told me," she said.

  "No friction?"

  "It's going okay."

  "Very good. They gave you another role to play?"

  "No. l'm the old lady. They'll use makeup on me."

  "You don't object to that?"

  "I don't think so."

  Rutger seemed to want to find something wrong, but he

  couldn't. With a faintly suspicious smile, he thanked her for her time. "Come back and see me whenever you want," he said.

  "Tell me how it goes."

  The group met each Friday, an hour later than her individual

  orchestra. Letitia made arrangements for home keyboard

  hookup and practice. After a reading and a half hour of

  questions, she obtained the permission of the drama group

  advisor, a spinsterish non-PPC seldom seen in the hallways,

  Miss Darcy. Miss Darcy seemed old-fashioned and addressed

  all of her students as either "Mister" or "Miss," but she knew

  drama and stagecraft. She was the oldest of the six NG teachers

  in the school.

  Reena stayed with Letitia during the audition and made a

  strong case for her late admittance, saying that the casting of

  Rick Fayette as an older woman was not going well. Fayette

  was equally eager to be rid of the part; he had another

  nonconflicting role, and the thought of playing two characters

  in this production worried him.

  Fayette confessed his appreciation at their second Friday

  meeting. He introduced her to an elfishly handsome, large-eyed,

  slender group member, Frank Leroux. Leroux was much

  too shy to go on stage, Fayette said, but he would be doing their

  makeup. "He's pretty amazing."

  Letitia stood nervously while Leroux examined her. "You've

  really got a face," he said softly. "May I touch you, to see

  where your contours are?"

  Letitia giggled and abruptly sobered, embarrassed. "Okay,"

  she said. "You're going to draw lines and make shadows?"

  "Much more than that," Leroux said.

  "He'll take a video of your face in motion," Fayette said.

  "Then he'll digitize it and sculpt a laserfoam mold--much

  better than sitting for a life mask. He made a life mask of me last year to turn me into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. No fun

  at all."

  "This way is much better," Leroux said, touching her skin

  delicately, poking under her cheeks and chin, pulling back her

  hair to feel her temples. "I can make two or three sculptures

  showing what your face and neck are like when they're in

  different positions. Then I can adjust the appliance molds for

  flex and give."

  "When he's done with you, you won't know yourself,"

  Fayette said.

  "Reena says you have a picture of your great-grandmother.

  May I see it?" Leroux asked. She gave him the wallet and he

  looked at the picture with squint-eyed intensity. "What a

  wonderful face," he said. "I never met my great-grandmother.

  My own grandmother looks about as old as my mother. They

  might be sisters."

  "When he's done with you," Fayette said, his enthusiasm

  becoming a bit tiresome, "you and your great-grandmother will

  look like sisters!"

  When she went home that evening, taking a late pay metro

  from the school, she wondered just exactly what she was doing.

  Throughout her high school years, she had cut herself off from

  most of her fellow students; the closest she came to friendship

  had been occasional banter while sitting at the mods with John

  Lockwood, waiting for instructors to arrive. Now she actually

  liked Fayette, and strange Leroux, whose hands were thin and

  pale and strong and slightly cold. Leroux was a PPC, but

  obviously his parents had different tastes; was he a superwhiz?

  Nobody had said so; perhaps it was a matter of honor among

  PPCs that they pretended not to care about their classifications.

  Reena was friendly and supportive, but still distant.

  As Letitia walked up the stairs, across the porch into the door of their home, setting her keyboard down by the closet,

  she saw the edge of a news broadcast in the living room.

  Nobody was watching; she surmised everybody was in the

  kitchen.

  From this angle, the announcer appeared translucent and

  blue, ghostly. As Letitia walked around to the premium angle,

  the announcer solidified, a virtual goddess of Oriental-negroid

  features with high cheekbones, straight golden hair and copper-bronze

  skin. Letitia didn't care what she looked like; what she

  was saying had attracted her attention.

  "--revelations made today that as many as one-fourth of

  all PPCs inceived between sixteen and seventeen years ago may

  be possessors of a defective chromosome sequence known as

  T56-WA 5659. Originally part of an intelligence enhancement

  macrobox used in ramping creativity and mathematical ability,

  T56-WA 5659 was refined and made a standard option in

  virtually all pm-planned children. The effects of this defective

  sequence are not yet known, but at least twenty children in our

  city have already
died. They all suffered frown initial symptoms

  similar to grand mai epilepsy. Nationwide casualties are as yet

  unknown. The Rifkin Society is charging government regulatory

  agencies with a wholesale coverup.

  "The Parental Pre-Natal Design Administration has advised

  parents of PPC children with this incept to immediately

  contact your medicals and design specialists for advice and

  treatment. Younger children may be eligible to receive whole-body

  retroviral therapy. For more detailed information, please

  refer to our LitVid on-line at this moment, and call--"

  Letitia turned and saw her mother watching with a kind of

  grim satisfaction. When she noticed her daughter's shocked

  expression, she suddenly appeared sad. "How unfortunate,"

  she said. "I wonder how far it will go."

  Letitia did not eat much dinner. Nor did she sleep more than a couple of hours that night. The weekend seemed to

  stretch on forever.

  Leroux compared the laserfoam sculptures to her face,

  turning her chin this way and that with gentle hands before the

  green room mirror. As Leroux worked to test the various molds

  on Letitia, humming softly to himself, the rest of the drama

  group rehearsed a scene that did not require her presence. When

  they were done, Reena walked into the green room and stood

  behind them, watching. Letitia smiled stiffly through the hastily

  applied sheets and mounds of skinlike plastic.

  "You're going to look great," Reena said.

  "I'm going to look old," Letitia said, trying for a joke.

  "I hope you aren't worried about that," Reena said.

  "Nobody cares, really. They all like you. Even Edna."

  "I'm not worried," Letitia said.

  Leroux pulled off the pieces and laid them carefully in a

  box. "Just about got it," he said. "I'm getting so good I could

  even make Reena look old if she'd let me."

  Letitia considered for a moment. The implication, rather

  than the meaning, was embarrassingly obvious. Reena blushed

  and stared angrily at Leroux. Leroux caught her stare, looked

  between them, and said, "Well, I could." Reena could not

  argue without sinking them all deeper. Letitia blinked, then

  decided to let them off this particular hook. "She wouldn't look

  like a grandmother, though. I'll be a much better old lady."