Wicked Women

by Fay Weldon

  “You’re not listening to what I’m saying,” said the apparition. “I suppose you will have to start from the beginning and work it all out for yourself, like everyone else. I’m wasting my time. I am your future as well as your past, and available for inspection, but try telling any young woman that. They would far rather weep, and shriek, and squirm in the present.” And she vanished, the semi-circled outline of her meagre breasts fading last, and Carrie went back to sleep, or had never woken out of it.

  WEB CENTRAL

  THE GIRL, MANDY MILLER, aged twenty-three, had made an appointment to see Josie Toothpad, the well-known literary guru, at 11 a.m. But already it was six minutes past, and Mandy’s face had not yet flashed up on Josie’s screen. Six minutes late: six minutes’ worth of ungratefulness, adding to the burden of Josie’s day.

  Mandy was privileged; Josie did not normally see aspiring writers: her time was considered better spent writing haikus. But the Authors’ Guild saw promise in the girl, whose writing profile peaked at lyricism and fell to a disastrous trough around compromise, in a decade where such profiles usually ran as straight and flat as the heart trace of someone newly dead. So Josie had been generous.

  Josie filled in the waiting minutes playing solitaire. She hadn’t done that for ages. Click, click: cards flying, red and black slicing the screen. Then the familiar melancholy settled in, that stuffy sadness which so often accompanies any obsessional activity and in particular solitaire—so much chance, so little skill. Josie adjusted the dial of her drip feed as Dr. Owen her personal physician had so often asked her not, increasing the flow of uppers as opposed to downers. But now she just felt edgy. She stopped playing and put her drip feed back to normal. But the edginess wouldn’t go away: it was moving into anxiety, foreboding. Josie turned up the voltage of the muscle contractors, the ones designed to keep her limbs viable and strong, but for once the tingling sensation didn’t please her, but irritated. She turned the voltage down again. Personal monitors on the banks of screens around the room showed a steady, profound green. She should be in a state of tranquillity, but was not. The gap between what she felt and what the screen said she felt was unusually wide.

  Josie punched in a query to Zelda, her personal therapist, and Zelda’s sweet, reassuring face appeared instantly on the main screen and softly asked Josie to profile her current emotions, choosing four appropriate adjectives from the available selection. None applied. Josie felt bored and closed Zelda, but Zelda wouldn’t be closed. Zelda just blanked out and reappeared before even a mouse had time to click. Zelda said, “I’ve been waiting for a call from you, Josie. It’s your birthday, and it’s your right and your privilege to consult me, as you come to terms with the downside of being 132 today.”

  The pause between the one, the three and the two were minute but discernible. It was crass of Web Central, Josie thought, to thus remind Heaven-on-Earthers that Zelda was a machine. And Zelda had got it wrong: Josie’s birthday was six days past. What’s more, Zelda once closed had not stayed closed, which could only mean Zelda was now operated directly from Nex Control. Since last week’s acquisition of Web Central’s main shareholding, Nex Control could over-ride the Web Central computer. Which meant, Josie supposed, Nex Control could break into a transmission any time they liked, as an aircraft captain would choose to break into the sound track of a film you were watching, with warnings of turbulence. An archaic image, which almost made Josie laugh, for who went anywhere, physically, anymore? Space was in your head: vast quantities of it, as much as you wanted. You travelled the universe freely through the voices in your mind.

  There was something wrong with the transmission: Zelda’s whole face flickered so that her smile looked like a smirk. Then Zelda blanked out mid-sentence.

  At the time of the takeover Nex Control had promised there’d be no changes in management style. Promises, promises. Josie remembered enough about pre-Web life to know that the State was never to be trusted: States dealt in lies, as Nietzsche had pointed out; they spoke in all tongues of good and evil, and in the end what was Nex Control but another State, gobbling up smaller territories, grabbing up Web Central, asset stripping.

  When in doubt, keep your head down, don’t make waves. Josie completed her mood profile, punching in “tranquil, reflective, industrious, confident.” Central records were kept. Web Central had been created by a consensus of newly young idealists; their computer’s mission, to keep Web Heaven non-political, pacific and angst-free for its subscribers. But that had been fifty years ago: language could have changed, the very words now have a different meaning.

  Josie took off her helmet and at once felt less paranoic. She was both post-menopausal and pre-menstrual, that was the trouble. For a couple of days a month she suffered from both conditions. Today was one of the days. She knew too much and felt too much. She was an original Heaven-on-Earther. Sixty years ago a daily dose of Ecstasy 3, which reversed the ageing process and settled the body at around twenty-five years old, combined with good old-fashioned oestrogen, had become available to any female who could afford it. Josie could, and did. Ageing, for Heaven-on-Earthers, need no longer be a cause of death, but there were drawbacks: one’s personality remained cyclical.

  Still no sign of Mandy: 11:12 a.m. Another of Josie’s screens leapt into life. Traders were ingenious; they found ways of appearing on screen no matter what.

  “Just punch D O N U T: revo @ efil,” required the salesman. He was dressed like a butler, smiled like a fiend, and had a metronome—banned by Web Central as a hypnotic device, but perhaps Nex Control permitted them—ticking away in the background.

  “Only punch and you will see

  Something long denied and free

  Stuffed with honey, fruit and rum

  Down your food-chute swift will come.

  DONUT!”

  Some things never changed. Josie obediently punched up DONUT: revo @ efil. She’d been losing weight recently, but Dr. Owen didn’t seem worried. Her fingers looked just plain bony—but still pretty. She’d always liked her hands: loved their dextrous moving over keys, their flawless clicking of the mouse. If you liked yourself and loved being alive, what did your chronological age matter?

  Josie steered her chair to the window and opened the blinds; she had to put her drip feed on hold to get so far. Alone of her friends, Josie still liked daylight, and a view. Down below the Underclass swarmed: the unfortunates who lived on earth, not in the space in their heads. Hardly anyone over twenty-five, the whole lot HIV positive, doomed to death ten years or so after their first sexual contact. So much noise, and dirt, and squalor. The Underclass lived their short lives intensely: they were even said to write naive poetry, novels, plays. Well, why not? Shelley, Keats: short lives, great poetry—for a moment Josie almost envied the wretched of the earth. The Underclass lived unobserved and uncounted, unnoticed, unfrightened: they’d make way only for the armed Delivery Squads who attended to the physical needs of an Overclass which lived decorously, individual unit by individual unit, stacked one above the other. AIDS-free. They had Zelda to keep them healthy in mind; Dr. Owen, healthy in body. Josie’s friend from way back, Honour, had once said there was now political unrest in the Underclass: there was a growing sense that computer literacy—a capital offence for them—was a human right. That was absurd. The Underclass was too physical, too little given to logic, ever to cope happily with computers.

  “They touch one another so much,” said Josie aloud, and the sound bounced strangely off window and walls. She was accustomed to headphones. “All the time they fondle and embrace, push or hit or hug. Kiss and copulate. Flesh touches flesh.” There was no one to answer her. Josie remembered that eight decades or so back, she had actually given birth, had shared a living space with a man. They’d slept touching, side by side. It seemed a strange thing to have done, let alone enjoyed. Her son, one of a generation of men who had declined to take up the Heaven-on-Earth project, being reluctant to give up their masculinity, had died of old age on
e decade back. She did not want to think about that. She went back to the console, readjusted her medication and changed the colours on all the screens for the fun of it.

  Again Zelda’s face appeared unsummoned on the screen. “Josie,” she said, and her voice sounded cracked and strange, “I know you are troubled. Let’s talk about it, dear. Together we’ll work on it.”

  But Zelda’s lips and nostrils were blurring. She was hideous. Zelda dissolved and vanished in a scramble of snow. Josie pressed the alarm for the emergency technician. “Your fault has been automatically recorded,” the stand-by screen flashed. “Please do not block emergency lines, OK?” Josie clicked on OK, although it was far from okay. But what could you do? If you didn’t acknowledge OK, the screen pinged back at you interminably. She tried to click to No-Sound, but couldn’t. Was this what life was going to be like under Nex Control? It was intolerable. Perhaps 132 years of life was intolerable, full stop.

  The whole point of age was the acquisition of wisdom; she could impart it, in haiku form, or in advice to the likes of Mandy Miller. But if Mandy Miller didn’t turn up, what use was Josie Toothpad? A silly name, given to her by a computer. Anyway, she’d gone off haikus: recently she’d developed a liking for romantic verse. She wanted to be in love again. If she couldn’t be in love she’d rather be dead. Right back in the beginning, she’d never wanted to live to be more than thirty. She’d outstayed her welcome by one hundred and two years.

  How long since she’d ordered her doughnut? Six minutes? Delivery was meant to be within four. She’d complain, although that was a breach of good manners. The more reprehensible complaining was, the theory went, the more others would struggle to ensure no grounds for complaint existed. But Josie was allowed her eccentricities, as an original. “Your comment has been recorded,” said the screen. “Please be patient. OK?” Okay, she clicked, lying in her teeth.

  The Friendship Screen bleeped. It was Honour, her friend. These days Honour seldom called. Honour had got caught up in the Occult ’n’ Oracle network; Josie had denied the existence of the paranormal. Honour and Josie had quarrelled. Zelda had advised them against patching it up. The two friends, she said, had outworn each other. It happened to Heaven-on-Earthers as the birthdays mounted up. There was always Zelda, for companionship and consolation. Zelda never fretted; Zelda always knew.

  Honour looked lovely; about fourteen years old. Red hair tumbled round perfect features. Before you enrolled as a Heaven-on-Earther, you had cosmetic surgery to perfect any flaws blind Mother Nature had inflicted upon you. Not for the sake of attracting men—there weren’t many around these days anyway; most who started male had foetal micro-surgery and a dose of oestrogen three weeks into conception and ended up female, or roughly so—but for the sake of self-esteem, self-image. You had to be comfortable with yourself.

  Josie squealed and all but leapt up and down to see her friend. Her feet, oddly, had some difficulty reaching the ground. Josie thought, “But I’ve shrunk.” Nor was there much life in her legs, for all the voltage she’d put through her muscles over the years. She didn’t think she could get to the door. She just knew she didn’t want to stay in her chair, though the chair it was which wrapped her, soothed her, stroked her, made love to her, sung to her—all of a sudden Josie just wanted not to be in it, couldn’t bear to sit still a moment longer.

  “Josie, what am I going to do?” asked Honour. “All my screens are on the blink, and Zelda’s gone mad. She keeps giving me advice I haven’t asked for. And my doughnut hasn’t turned up.”

  “Mine either,” said Josie. “But I know who I am and I’m perfect.” It was their mantra from way back. “You look about twelve,” said Honour to Josie. “And I’m not much better. I guess what they’re saying is true.”

  “Go on, tell,” said Josie. “What are they saying?”

  “Nex Control upped our Ecstasy 3 last week and our age reversal is now irreversible,” said Honour. “We’re all growing younger exponentially. Give us another fifteen minutes and we’ll return to the womb and lapse into a coma; then we’ll drift into nothingness; we’ll be unconceived; we will not have existed. Funny thing is, I don’t mind one bit.”

  Josie thought for a bit.

  “Why would they do a thing like that?” asked Josie.

  Curiosity survived, when little else did. Josie felt her chest and it was flat, flat, flat. She wailed a thin high wail. But cut it short for politeness’ sake. Politeness lasted too.

  “To make space,” said Honour, “for themselves. The young want their turn too. The Underclass are tired of us.”

  Josie’s central screen leapt into life. A girl of about seven looked out at her. “Hi, everyone,” she said. “I’m ever so sorry. Honestly, I did my best. I called the technicians, but they were just toddlers and pooing all over the place—it was disgusting. So I told them to go away. What was I meant to do?”

  Her place was taken by an ugly young woman in her early twenties. “My name’s Mandy Miller,” she said. “I am the death you have all been expecting.”

  Josie realised Mandy Miller wasn’t ugly at all, merely human; that she, Josie, was so accustomed to seeing perfection on her screens, she’d forgotten what human was like. “Nex Control has tried to make it easy for you,” said Mandy Miller, “given you time to adjust. For DONUT read ‘don’t,’ reverse Revo Efil and get Life Over. Not perfect, but the best I could do. Nex Control is an Underclass organisation. Time now for the young to march along your Highway, arm in arm, in glory.”

  At least that was what Josie thought she heard. But how could she know? She only knew she was 132 because Zelda had said so, and perhaps Zelda had got the decimal point wrong and she was 13.2. Really, one knew very little about anything. Words had begun to make little sense; now there were only shapes and sounds. Josie was conscious of a divine brilliance all around, and of wanting to be in the shade; then there was a sudden welcoming dark at the end of a tunnel, and she travelled through it, quite suddenly, to warmth and peace, safety and silence.

  OF LOVE, PAIN AND GOOD CHEER

  PAINS

  A Story of Most Contemporary Women, 1972

  PAULA LIES AMAZED ON the bed, like some poor butterfly with a pin driven through its middle. Can these be the contractions which indicate the beginning of labour? Or perhaps of false labour, or perhaps indeed, being more like pains than contractions, indigestion from the curry fetched in that evening by her kind, thoughtful and radically minded husband from the local take-away curry-in-a-hurry house. Who knows?

  Paula, at the moment, feels she knows all too little. She does expect, however, soon to know more. The central heating has lately been repaired and there is a hole in the floor where the service engineers have carelessly removed a pipe. So Paula can now hear what is going on in the room below.

  More has been going on down there, Paula suspects, than ought to have been.

  At the moment her husband Deakey is opening the door to members of the local Women’s Liberation Group. Paula has had an upsetting day, as Deakey has told her at least eight times this evening, and, being eight and a half months pregnant, has sensibly agreed to miss the meeting and has taken to her bed.

  Outside, the moon rises.

  “We live in an odd part of London,” Paula and Deakey will explain at dinner parties. “Not exactly smart but it’s a solid Edwardian house, with good soil for rose growing. We like roses. Well, who doesn’t, but we especially like not those great modern, plastic-looking roses, but the little old-fashioned ones that smell. Yes, that kind of rose attracts greenfly, whitefly, aphids, slugs, and every invisible worm that ever flew in the night in the howling storm, but we think they do smell just wonderful.”

  Paula and Deakey like everything together, think everything together, change their views together, spray pests together, feel together, are together. We believe this, they say: we do that, we have found out the other. In and out of each other’s apron pockets for a full seven years.

  “Why shouldn’t a man w
ear an apron just like a woman!” cried Deakey only last night, home at seven as usual from the Civil Service, wielding the garlic crusher like a man, slavering the meat-free roast with garlic slime.

  “Careful the baby doesn’t come out smelling of garlic,” said a friend. There are usually friends about. Paula and Deakey are a very pleasant couple. Anyone would like them. Paula’s contraceptive loop fell out one night, which is why she is pregnant. Paula and Deakey are not perfect, which makes them the more endearing.

  The moon rises a little further and now shines in upon Paula. It is a full moon. Every full moon, regular as clockwork, Paula’s curse has come upon her; until eight months ago, that is; until the unplanned slipping of the loop and the consequent stoppage of blood. What is this? This rusty red stuff? Why now? Merely the body’s habit, thinks Paula, wriggling painfully on her contractual pin; what a wonderful thing the body is! It carries its own remembrances.

  Perhaps Deakey should be with his Paula at this moment of their joint life? When the moon shines and her body aches? No, thinks Paula. No need for that: Deakey is with me in spirit anyway and, besides, someone has to answer the door. If Paula lies quiet and still the pains will stop. The quieter she lies, the better she will hear. The rest she can imagine. Marta is arriving. Marta is always the last to come, snorting and jeering. Now they’ll all be sitting down in the familiar conspiratorial ring.

  “Male liberal,” Marta will be sneering at Deakey’s back as he goes to make coffee, and if she were black she would say, disparagingly, “White, white liberal!” and the others will be nodding their heads and appearing to agree, but thinking how nice to have a husband like Deakey; if only they had, instead of having to pacify their own, having to placate, lie, make coffee in advance, leave extra special dinners to warm up in the oven, if they want to be allowed out to attend. Well, a meeting such as this one is regarded as domestic treachery. Yes, it is treachery. Female complaints made public. All men do when they’re together, everyone knows, is drink, tell funny stories and contemplate exercising their rights: there is no treachery inherent in this. But women shouldn’t tell.