Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  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, largeeyed, 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 Asian-negroid features with high cheekbones, straight golden hair and copperbronze 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 pre-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 from initial symptoms similar to grand mal 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 wholebody 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."

  "Of course," Leroux said, picking up his box and the sculptures. He walked to the door, a mad headsman. "Like your great-grandmother."

  For a long silent moment, Reena and Letitia faced each other alone in the green room. The old incandescent makeup lights glared around the cracked mirror, casting a pearly glow on the white walls behind them. "You're a good actress," Reena said. "It really doesn't matter what you look like."

  "Thank you."

  "Sometimes I wished I looked like somebody in my family," Reena said.

  Without thinking, Letitia said, "But you're beautiful." And she meant it. Reena was beautiful; with her Levantine darkness and long black hair, small sharp chin, large hazelcolored almond eyes and thin, ever-so-slightly bowed nose, she was simply lovely, with the kind of face and bearing and intelligence that two or three generations before would have moved her into entertainment, or pushed her into the social circles of the rich and famous. Behind the physical beauty was a sparkle of reserved wit, and something gentle. PPCs were healthier, felt better, and their minds, on the average, were more subtle, more balanced. Letitia did not feel inferior, however; not this time.

  Something magic touched them. The previous awkwardness, and her deft destruction of that awkwardness, had moved them into a period of charmed conversation. Neither could offend the other; without words, that was a given.

  "My parents are beautiful, too. I'm second generation," Reena said.

  "Why would you want to look any different?"

  "I don't, I suppose. I'm happy with the way I look. But I don't look much like my mother or my father. Oh, color, hair, eyes, that sort of thing . . . Still, my mother wasn't happy with her own face. She didn't get along well with my grandmother . . . She blamed her for not matching her face with her personality." Reena smiled. "It's all rather silly."

  "Some people are never happy," Letitia observed.

  Reena stepped forward and leaned over slightly to face

  Letitia's mirror image. "How do you feel, looking like your grandmother?"

  Letitia bit her lip. "Until you asked me to join, I don't think I ever knew." she told about her mother giving her the album, and looking at herself in the mirror—though s
he did not describe being naked—and comparing herself with the old pictures.

  "I think that's called an epiphany," Reena said. "It must have been nice. I'm glad I asked you, then, even if I was stupid."

  "Were you . . ." Letitia paused. The period of charm was fading, regrettably; she did not know whether this question would be taken as she meant it. "Did you ask me to give me a chance to stop being so silly and stand-offish?"

  "No," Reena said steadily. "I asked you because we needed an old lady."

  Looking at each other, they laughed suddenly, and the charmed moment was gone, replaced by something steadier and longer-lasting: friendship. Letitia took Reena's hand and pressed it. "Thank you," she said.

  "You're welcome." Then, with hardly a pause, Reena said, "At least you don't have to worry."

  Letitia stared up at her, mouth open, eyes searching.

  "Got to go home now," Reena said. She squeezed Letitia's shoulder with more than gentle strength, revealing a physical anger or jealousy that ran counter to all they had said and done thus far. She turned and walked through the green room door, leaving Letitia alone to pick off a few scraps of latex and adhesive.

  The disaster grew. Letitia listened to the news in her room late that night, whispers in her ear, projected ghosts of newscasters and doctors and scientists dancing before her eyes, telling her things she did not really understand, could only feel.

  A monster walked through her generation, but it would not touch her.

  Going to school on Monday, she saw students clustered in hallways before the bell, somber, talking in low voices, glancing at her as she passed. In her second period class, she learned from overheard conversation that Leroux had died during the weekend. "He was superwhiz," a tall, athletic girl told her neighbor. "They don't die, usually, they just blitz. But he died."

  Letitia retreated to the old lavatory at the beginning of lunch break, found it empty, but did not stare into the mirror. She knew what she looked like and accepted it.

  What she found difficult to accept was a new feeling inside her. The young Letitia was gone. She could not live on a battlefield and remain a child. She thought about slender, elfin Leroux, carrying her heads under his arms, touching her face with gentle, professional admiration. Strong, cool fingers. Her eyes filled but the tears would not fall, and she went to lunch empty, fearful, confused.

  She did not apply for counseling, however. This was something she had to face on her own.

  Nothing much happened the next few days. The rehearsals went smoothly in the evenings as the date of the play approached. She learned her lines easily enough. Her role had a sadness that matched her mood. On Wednesday evening, after rehearsal, she joined Reena and Fayette at a supermarket sandwich stand near the school. Letitia did not tell her parents she would be late; she felt the need to not be responsible to anybody but her immediate peers. Jane would be upset, she knew, but not for long; this was a necessity.

  Neither Reena nor Fayette mentioned the troubles directly. They were fairylike in their gaiety. They kidded Letitia about having to do without makeup now, and it seemed funny, despite their hidden grief. They ate sandwiches and drank fruit sodas and talked about what they would be when they grew up.

  "Things didn't used to be so easy," Fayette said. "Kids didn't have so many options. Schools weren't very efficient at training for the real world; they were academic."

  "Learning was slower," Letitia said.

  "So were the kids," Reena said, tossing off an irresponsible grin.

  "I resent that," Letitia said. Then, together, they all said, "I don't deny it, I just resent it!" Their laughter caught the attention of an older couple sitting in a corner. Even if the man and woman were not angry, Letitia wanted them to be, and she bowed her head down, giggling into her straw, snucking bubbles up her nose and choking. Reena made a disapproving face and Fayette covered his mouth, snorting with laughter.

  "You could paste rubber all over your face," Fayette suggested.

  "I'd look like Frankenstein's monster, not an old woman," Letitia said.

  "So what's the difference?" Reena said.

  "Really, you guys," Letitia said. "You're acting your age."

  "Don't have to act," Fayette said. "Just be."

  "I wish we could act our age," Reena said.

  Not once did they mention Leroux, but it was as if he sat beside them the whole time, sharing their levity.

  It was the closest thing to a wake they could have.

  * * *

  "Have you gone to see your designer, your medical?" Letitia asked Reena behind the stage curtains. The lights were off. Student stagehands moved muslin walls on dollies. Fresh paint smells filled the air.

  "No," Reena said. "I'm not worried. I have a different incept."

  "Really?"

  She nodded. "It's okay. If there was any problem, I wouldn't be here. Don't worry." And nothing more was said.

  The night of dress rehearsal came. Letitia put on her own makeup, drawing pencil lines and applying color and shadow; she had practiced and found herself reasonably adept at aging. With her great-grandmother's photograph before her, she mimicked the jowls she would have in her later years, drew laugh lines around her lips, and completed the effect with a smelly old gray wig dug out of a prop box.

  The actors gathered for a prerehearsal inspection by Miss Darcy. They seemed quite adult now, dressed in their period costumes, tall and handsome. Letitia didn't mind standing out. Being an old woman gave her special status.

  "This time, just relax, do it smooth," said Miss Darcy. "Everybody expects you to flub your lines, so you'll probably do them all perfectly. We'll have an audience, but they're here to forgive our mistakes, not laugh at them. This one," Miss Darcy said, pausing, "is for Mr. Leroux."

  They all nodded solemnly.

  "Tomorrow, when we put on the first show, that's going to be for you."

  They took their places in the wings. Letitia stood behind Reena, who would be first on stage. Reena shot her a quick smile, nervous.

  "How's your stomach?" she whispered.

  "Where's the bag?" Letitia asked, pretending to gag herself with a finger.

  "TB," Reena accused lightly

  "RC," Letitia replied. They shook hands firmly.

  The curtain went up. The auditorium was half filled with parents and friends and relatives. Letitia' s parents were out there. The darkness beyond the stagelights seemed so profound it should have been filled with stars and nebulae. Would her small voice reach that far?

  The recorded music before the first act came to its quiet end. Reena made a move to go on stage, then stopped. Letitia nudged her. "Come on."

  Reena pivoted to look at her, face cocked to one side, and Letitia saw a large tear dripping from her left eye. Fascinated, she watched the tear fall in slow motion down her cheek and spot the satin of her gown.

  "I'm sorry," Reena whispered, lips twitching. "I can't do it now. Tell. Tell."

  Horrified, Letitia reached out, tried to stop her from falling, to lift her, paste and push her back into place, but Reena was too heavy and she could not stop her descent, only slow it. Reena's feet kicked out like a horse's, bruising Letitia's legs, all in apparent silence, and her eyes were bright and empty and wet, fluttering, showing the whites.

  Letitia bent over her, hands raised, afraid to touch her, afraid not to, unaware she was shrieking.

  Fayette and Edna Corman stood behind her, equally helpless.

  Reena lay still like a twisted doll, face upturned, eyes moving slowly to Letitia, vibrating, becoming still.

  "Not you!" Letitia screamed, and barely heard the commotion in the audience. "Please, God, let it be me, not her!"

  Fayette backed away and Miss Darcy came into the light, grabbing Letitia's shoulders. She shook free.

  "Not her," Letitia sobbed. The medicals arrived and surrounded Reena, blocking her from the eyes of all around. Miss Darcy firmly, almost brutally, pushed her students from the stage and herded them int
o the green room. Her face was stiff as a mask, eyes stark in the paleness.

  "We have to do something!" Letitia said, holding up her hands, beseeching.

  "Get control of yourself," Miss Darcy said sharply. "Everything's being done that can be done."

  Fayette said, "What about the play?"

  Everyone stared at him.

  "Sorry," he said, lip quivering. "I'm an idiot."

  Jane, Donald, and Roald came to the green room and Letitia hugged her mother fiercely, eyes shut tight, burying her face in Jane's shoulder. They escorted her outside, where a few students and parents still milled about in the early evening. "We should go home," Jane said.

  "We have to stay here and find out if she's all right." Letitia pushed away from Jane's arms and looked at the people. "They're so frightened. I know they are. She's frightened, too. 1 saw her. She told me—" Her voice hitched. "She told me—"

  "We'll stay for a little while," her father said. He walked off to talk to another man. They conversed for a while, the man shook his head, they parted. Roald stood away from them, hands stuffed into his pockets, dismayed, young, uncomfortable.

  "All right," Donald said a few minutes later. "We're not going to find out anything tonight. Let's go home."

  This time, she did not protest. Home, she locked herself in her bedroom. She did not need to know. She had seen it happen; anything else was self-delusion.

  Her father came to the door an hour later, rapped gently. Letitia came up from a troubled doze and got off the bed to let him in.

  "We're very sorry," he said.

  "Thanks," she murmured, returning to the bed. He sat beside her. She might have been eight or nine again; she looked around the room, at toys and books, knickknacks.

  "Your teacher, Miss Darcy, called. She said to tell you, Reena Cathcart died. She was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. Your mother and I have been watching the vids. A lot of children are very sick now. A lot have died." He touched her head, patted the crown gently. "I think you know now why we wanted a natural child. There were risks."