Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Some PPCs had been designed by their parents to qualify physically and mentally for space careers. Some had been equipped with bichemistries, one of which became active in Earth's gravity, the other in space. How could an NG compete with that?

  Of the seven hundred adolescents in her high school training programs, Letitia Blakely was one of ten NGs—possessors of natural, unaltered genomes. Everyone else was the proud bearer of juggled genes, PPCs or Pre-Planned Children, all lovely and stable with just the proper amount of adipose tissue and just the proper infusion of parental characteristics and chosen features to be beautiful and different; tall, healthy, hair manageable, skin unblemished, well-adjusted (except for the occasional blitzer) with warm and sunny personalities. The old derogatory slang for PPCs was RC—Recombined.

  Letitia, slightly overweight, skin pasty, hair frizzy, bulbous-nosed and weak-chinned, one breast larger than the other and already showing a droop pronounced enough to grip a stylus—with painful menstrual periods and an absolute indisposition to athletics—was the Sport. That's what they were called. NG Sports. TBs—Throwbacks. Neanderthals.

  All the beautiful PPCs risked a great deal if they showed animosity toward the NGs. Her parents had the right to sue the system if she was harassed to the detriment of her schooling. This wasn't a private school where all parents paid astronomical tuitions; this was an old-fashioned public school, with public school programs and regulations. Teachers tended to nuke out on raggers. And, she admitted to herself with a painful loop of recrimination, she wasn't making it any easier for them.

  Sure, she could join in, play the old woman—how much realism she would contribute to their little drama, with her genuine TB phys! She could be jolly and self-deprecating like Helen Roberti, who wasn't all that bad-looking anyway—she could pass if she straightened her hair. Or she could be quiet and camouflaged like Bernie Thibhault.

  The CG nursie exited from RoR care. Letitia had hardly absorbed a thing. Realtime mod education was a bore, but she hadn't yet qualified for experience training. She had only one course of career study now—no alternates—and two aesthetic programs, individual orchestra on Friday afternoon and LitVid publishing on alternating weekends.

  For pre-med, she was a washout, but she wouldn't admit it. She was NG. Her brain took longer to mature; it wasn't as finely wired.

  She thought she was incredibly slow. She doubted whether she would ever be successful as a doctor; she was squeamish, and nobody, not even her fellow NGs, would want to be treated by a doctor who grew pale at the sight of blood.

  Letitia silently told nursie to start over again, and nursie obliged.

  Reena Cathcart, meanwhile, had dropped into her mod with a vengeance. Her blissed expression told it all. The realtime ed slid into her so smooth, so quick, it was pure joy.

  No zits on her brain.

  Mr. Brant returned ten minutes later with a pale and bleary-eyed Georgia Fischer. She sat two seats behind Letitia and over one aisle. She plugged in her mod dutifully and Brant went to his console to bring up the multimedia and coordinate the whole class. Edna Corman whispered something to her.

  "Not a bad blitz, all in all," Georgia commented softly.

  "How are you doing, Letitia?" the autocounselor asked. The CG face projected in front of her with some slight wirehash, which Letitia paid no attention to. CG ACs were the jams and she didn't appreciate them even in pristine perfection.

  "Poorly," she said.

  "Really? Care to elaborate?"

  "I want to talk to Dr. Rutger."

  "Don't trust your friendly AC?"

  "I'd like some clear space. I want to talk to Dr. Rutger."

  "Dr. Rutger is busy, dear. Unlike your friendly AC, humans can only be in one place at a time. I'd like to help if I may."

  "Then I want program sixteen."

  "Done, Letitia." The projection wavered and the face changed to a real-person simulation of Marian Tempesino, the only CG AC Letitia felt comfortable with.

  Tempesino had no wirehash, which indicated she was a seldom-used program, and that was just fine with Letitia. "Sixteen here. Letitia? You're looking cut. More adjustment jams?"

  "I wanted to talk with Dr. Rutger but he's busy. So I'll talk to you. And I want it on my record. I want out of school. I want my parents to pull me and put me in a special NG school."

  Tempesino's face didn't wear any particular expression, which was one of the reasons Letitia liked Program 16 AC. "Why?"

  "Because I'm a freak. My parents made me a freak and I'd like to know why I shouldn't be with all the other freaks."

  "You're a natural, not a freak."

  "To look like any of the others even to look like Reena Cathcart—I'd have to spend the rest of my life in bioplasty. I can't take it anymore. They asked me to play an old lady in one of their dramas. The only part I'm fit for. An old lady."

  "They tried to include you in."

  "That hurt!" Letitia said, tears in her eyes.

  Tempesino's image wavered a bit as the emotion registered and a higher authority AC kicked in behind 16.

  "I just want out. I want to be alone."

  "Where would you like to go, Letitia?"

  Letitia thought about it for a moment. "I'd like to go back to when being ugly was normal."

  "Fine, then. Let's simulate. Sixty years should do it. Ready?"

  She nodded and wiped away more mascara with the back of her hand.

  "Then let's go."

  It was like a dream, somewhat fuzzier than plugging in a mod. CG images compiled from thousands of miles of old films and tapes and descriptive records made her feel as if she were flying back in time, back to a place she would have loved to call home. Faces came to her—faces with ugly variations, growing old prematurely, wearing glasses, even beautiful faces which could have passed today—and the faces pulled away to become attached to bodies. Bodies out of shape, in good condition, overweight, sick and healthy, red-faced with high blood pressure: the whole variable and disaster-prone population of humanity, sixty years past. This was where Letitia felt she belonged.

  "They're beautiful," she said.

  "They didn't think so. They jumped at the chance to be sure their children were beautiful, smart, and healthy. It was a time of transition, Letitia. Just like now."

  "Everybody looks alike now."

  "I don't think that's fair," the AC said. "There's a considerable variety in the way people look today."

  "Not my age."

  "Especially your age. Look." The AC showed her dozens of faces. Few looked alike, but all were handsome or lovely. Some made Letitia ache; faces she could never be friends with, never love, because there was always someone more beautiful and desirable than an NG.

  "My parents should have lived back then. why did they make me a freak?"

  "You're developmentally normal. You're not a freak."

  "Sure. I'm a DNG. Dingy. That's what they call me."

  "Don't you invite the abuse sometimes?"

  "No!" This was getting her nowhere.

  "Letitia, we all have to adjust. Not even today's world is fair. Are you sure you're doing all you can to adjust?"

  Letitia squirmed in her seat and said she wanted to leave. "Just a moment," the AC said. "We're not done yet." she knew that tone of voice. The ACs were allowed to get a little rough at times. They could make unruly students do grounds duty or detain them after hours to work on assignments usually given to computers. Letitia sighed and settled back. She hated being lectured.

  "Young woman, you're carrying a giant chip on your shoulder."

  "That's all the more computing capacity for me."

  "Quiet, and listen. We're all allowed to criticize policy, whoever makes it. Dignity of office and respect for superiors has not survived very well into Century Twenty-one. People have to earn respect. That goes for students, too. The average student here has four major talents, each of them fitting into a public planning policy which guarantees them a job incorporating two or more of
those talents. They aren't forced to accept the jobs, and if their will falters, they may not keep those jobs. But the public has tried to guarantee every one of us a quality employment opportunity. That goes for you, as well. You're DNG, but you also show as much intelligence and at least as many developable talents as the PPCs. You are young, and your maturation schedule is a natural one—but you are not inferior or impaired, Letitia. That's more than can be said for the offspring of some parents even more resistive than your own. you at least were given prenatal care and nutrition adjustment, and your parents let the biotechs correct your allergies."

  "So?"

  "So for you, it's all a matter of will. If your will falters, you won't be given any more consideration than a PPC. You'll have to choose secondary or tertiary employment, or even . . ." The AC paused. "Public support. Do you want that?"

  "My grades are up. I'm doing fine."

  "You are choosing career training not matching your developable talents."

  "I like medicine."

  "You're squeamish."

  Letitia shrugged.

  "And you're hard to get along with."

  "Just tell them to lay off. I'll be civil . . .but I don't want them treating me like a freak. Edna Corman called me . . ." She paused. That could get Edna Corman into a lot of trouble. Among the students, TB was a casual epithet; to school authorities, applied to an NG, it might be grounds for a blot on Corman's record. "Nothing. Not important."

  The AC switched to lower authority and Tempesino's face took a different counseling track. "Fine. Adjustment on both sides is necessary. Thank you for coming in, Letitia."

  "Yeah. I still want to talk with Rutger."

  "Request has been noted. Please return to your class in progress."

  * * *

  "Pay attention to your brother when he's talking," Jane said. Roald was making a nuisance of himself by chattering about the preflight training he was getting in primary. Letitia made a polite comment or two, then lapsed back into contemplation of the food before her. She didn't eat. Jane regarded her from the corner of her eye and passed a bowl of sugared berries. "What's eating you?"

  "I'm doing the eating," Letitia said archly.

  "Ha," Roald said. "Full load from this angle." He grinned at her, his two front teeth missing. He looked hideous, she thought. Any other family would have given him temporaries; not hers.

  "A little more respect from both of you," said Donald. Her father took the bowl from Roald and scooped a modest portion into his cup, then set it beside Letitia. "Big fifteen and big eight." That was his homily; behave big whether eight or fifteen.

  "Autocounselor today?" Jane asked. She knew Letitia much too well.

  "AC," Letitia affirmed.

  "Did you go in?"

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "I'm not tuned."

  "Which means?" Donald ask.

  "It means she hisses and crackles," Roald said, mouth full of berries, juice dripping down his chin. He cupped his hand underneath and sucked it up noisily. Jane reached out and finished the job with a napkin. "She complains," Roald finished.

  "About what?"

  Letitia shook her head and didn't answer.

  The dessert was almost finished when Letitia slapped both palms on the table. "Why did you do it?"

  "Why did we do what?" he father asked, startled.

  "Why are Roald and I normal? Why didn't you design us?"

  Jane and Donald glanced at each other quickly and turned to Letitia. Roald regarded her with wide eyes, a bit shocked 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?"

  "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; of course, our generation has a much higher percentage of NGs."

  "Now we're freaks," Letitia said.

  "If by that you mean there aren't many teenage NGs, I suppose that's right," Donald said, touching his wife's arm. "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.

  "It 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. Roal
d 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.