Facial Justice (6 page)

Chapter Ten

MUCH more vividly than Joab had, Judith brought back the outside world. Jael enjoyed gossiping with her. Cain was their first subject--Cain who had incited Judith to Betafication. They had been married while Jael was in the Hospital: "And, my dear, you can't think how he's changed for the beta! You hadn't heard that one? Well, it's fairly new. A bit obvious, perhaps, but then it's beta to be obvious." "It's beta to be obvious," Jael repeated. "Yes, and he's so improved you'd hardly know him from any other nice, good-natured man. He used to fly into rages and have fits of sulks. I had to be so careful with him, and humor him and try to placate him--and then he would apologize to me. Such scenes we had!--and all because I was a Gamma. He liked me but not my face. Now he likes both, and takes both for granted, and never gets into a rage. Why, sometimes I hardly know he's in the room--he might be anybody's husband, and what more can you say?" "Isn't it a bit dull?" asked Jael. "Gracious Dictator, no! Sometimes I wish he was, well... more ardent--as he used to be, oddly enough, in my Gamma days--but that was partly his nastv temper--you know the way men are, or if you don't, you will! I verily believe, when they make love, it's because of what they don't see in us, not what they do! They're taking it out on us for not being their ideal! I'll teach you to be a Gamma girl! But when you _are__ their ideal"--Judith shrugged her shoulders--"then they don't bother any more." Did a sigh escape her? At any rate she changed the subject. "Clytemnestra 98 is going to have a baby--isn't it wonderful? One takes it for granted that one's friends are sterile. Good old Clytie! Let's hope it won't be born dead, as they so often are, or turn out to be a monster! Are you sterile, Jael? I am, or was, when I was last examined. Of course, it doesn't really matter much. Cain doesn't mind. Men aren't put off, or women either, most of them! Think how they used to go in for contraceptives in the bad old days! It seems so funny now, when some people would give their eyes to have a child! I shouldn't want the bother of having one. State-born babies are best, don't you think? The State can regulate the supply to meet the demand. You don't want a baby, do you, Jael?" "Do you know," said Jael, who hadn't spoken for some time, "I rather think I do." "Well, it's legal, of course, and some people actually think the better of you, but it's liable to raise the quotum of personality to danger-point. What is yours now? Have they told you?" "Seventeen and a half per cent, I think." "That's all the self one is allowed?" "Yes, but I don't think anyone takes the tests very seriously." "A child would be bound to lead to hypertrophy of the personality." "Why?" asked Jael. "Surely a child would draw some of it off?" "It might, but mothers and fathers can't help being self-important. They preen themselves on having done what most people can't do.... Any family tends to be A. S., it's self-defensive. Even the D. D. has said so. Parents, yes, but not family life." "All the same," said Jael, "I think I'd like to risk it." "Is there... is there anyone?" asked Judith. How should she answer that question? How did she answer it to herself? "I... I don't quite know," she answered, strictly truthful. "That means there is." Judith took a good look at her friend, opened her mouth to say something but thought better of it. "You're looking well, you know," was what she said. "Oh, am I?" Jael's face brightened. "I haven't seen myself. They don't let us have looking glasses. Everybody here except me is Beta, and Betas don't need mirrors. I thought I should have a frightful scar, but I can't feel one." Experimentally she ran her finger down her cheek. "There isn't one," said Judith. "They've certainly made a good job of your face. These plastic surgeons..." "You would have recognized me, wouldn't you?" asked Jael anxiously. As Joab had, Judith hesitated a little before answering. "Well, I was a bit bewildered at first, seeing such rows of women! But yes, of course, you'll always be the same old Jael." Jael turned her face restlessly on the pillow. "Do you know, I'm a bit disappointed." "Disappointed?" "Disappointed at not having a scar. I made myself one once, do you remember, a tiny one, but that seems to have gone, too." "Why on earth should vou want a scar?" "Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because it would make me feel more real--more myself, I mean." "But why do you want to feel more yourself? It's just what we're supposed not to feel. I don't feel half as much myself as I did when I was Gamma." "I know, but somehow I do want to. And, Judith--" "Yes?" "Come a bit nearer, I don't want the others to hear." Judith pulled her chair closer to Jael's bed. Jael whispered, "I shouldn't have been ashamed of it, the scar I mean. I think I got it in a good cause. I suppose it would have spoiled my looks--I'd have been Gamma or even Gamma minus and people would have avoided me on aesthetic grounds and perhaps informed against me, but when they saw me they couldn't help remembering--" Jael's voice grew still lower. "Yes?" "Well, what I did at Ely. It was the proudest moment of my life and I don't the least regret it--" "Jael!" "It wasn't the happiest moment--that... that came afterward, but I couldn't have had the one without the other." "I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said Judith, coldly. Jael heard the disapproval in her friend's voice, but she meant to have her say out. "Sometime, perhaps, I'll tell you. But you see, I led them, I made them look up, I made them see and feel what was above them. They hadn't seen, nor had I, until that day. Height! Height!" "Darling, you mustn't," Judith pleaded. "Please, please, don't say any more." "And then I went right up into it, I can't tell you how, but I did, and it was all I thought it would be, and much more. I can't tell you what it was like, because we haven't anything down here to measure it by or compare it with, not even words--" "Hush! darling, hush!" "No, because I must tell somebody, and who can I tell but you? Do you know, I can hardly bear the thought of getting well and creeping about, an insect with the other insects!" "I suppose I'm an insect," Judith said. "And I'm quite content to be one. Ever since I was Betafied--" "Oh, darling," cried Jael, suddenly all contrition. "We've never talked about that, not properly, never since we parted at the door of the Ministry, and you went in and I stayed outside. You wanted me to, do you remember? You thought it would be better for me to go on being a Failed Alpha. And I'm so glad you did. But have you changed your mind?" Judith looked at her friend hard and Jael tried to read her expression; but it was always difficult to tell with a Beta: their faces moved, of course, but only their eyes registered what they were thinking, "Well, perhaps I have," said Judith at last. "At the time it seemed different for you: you would have been going down and I was going up. Not up in the sense you meant just now, that sounded to me as if you were running a temperature. 'Height means fever,' we were always told." "Height means fever," repeated Jael automatically, and could have bitten her tongue with annoyance at the slip. "Ah, you remember it. Well, since I was Betafied I've felt a different creature. Being subnormal isn't as bad as being above normal, because it means that some people are sorry for you instead of env--well, you know. But most of them rather despise you and quite a number show it--in small ways, you know. Pushing in front of you, not answering when you speak, little slights and pinpricks. I know it's against the rules for anyone to be rude to a Gamma but in practice they often are, you have to take a back seat, literally a back seat when it comes to the Collective Photograph. Was my face red? I could hardly hold my head up sometimes, and, of course, it got worse, as more and more women went in for Betafication. We're so much in a majority now, we show the others up--" "We are?" interrupted Jael. "You mean, you are." Judith gave her a Beta's wooden look. "I was speaking for all of us. It isn't that we look down on the Gammas--you shouldn't look down or up, you should only look ahead, your own height--we just feel, if a Gamma comes along, that she's different. We don't despise them, but they embarrass us. We don't know what to say to them, any more than you know what to say to somebody who's ill--you have to choose your words, and put on a special voice--" "I hope you don't feel like that with me," said Jael. "Of course not. You're an old friend, and besides... You're not ill any longer--you'll be discharged soon, won't you?" "Tomorrow week. But I don't know what's going to happen to me. They don't tell you much here. I may be up for trial." "Oh, I should doubt it. Just a fine, perhaps, which you'll easily be able to pay, having been so long in hospital economizing." "You think so?" Jael said. "I don't altogether fancy coming out, a Failed Alpha and all that, and then the Ely affair on top of it. I'm not flattering myself, or trying to make myself out more important than I am; but the Dictator will have heard of what I did, for he hears of everything." "Oh yes, but the Dictator is merciful. Darling Dictator." "Darling Dictator," repeated Jael dubiously. "I'm sure he won't be hard on you.... But let me go back to what I was just saying about being Beta. It's like when your temperature goes back to normal after an illness--mine was never high like yours, but I was permanently subnormal, and tired, and felt there was something that made people fight shy of me, like bad breath or superfluous hair or something. I felt that they were making allowances for me--or trying not to make allowances.... But what I meant was, the sense of being apart. You couldn't react with the others, at least I couldn't--I had to make a kind of personal adjustment, before I thought and felt as they did, and it was very tiring and frustrating. Now I don't. When anything happens--well, like the episode at Ely--I automatically think and feel about it like everybody else. It's just like when you're dancing, you feel the rhythm going through you, and you _know__. You don't have to ask yourself, 'Am I doing it right?'--because the sense of what the rest are doing keeps you right. And well, too. As you know, before I was Betafied I used to have headaches and all sorts of things--I nearly had a gastric ulcer--and all because I was shirking something which I knew I ought to do. I didn't want to do it, when the time came, but I'm so thankful that I did." Judith stopped, a little breathless with the effort of saying so many intimate things in a voice too low to reach the others. She needn't really have worried, for the radio was still filling the ward with its competing voices. "Thank you for telling me," said Jael. "I know that there's a lot in what you say, and I often used to feel the same before... before... Ely and all that. But now I don't, I'm happier this way. It won't come between us, will it? I still feel toward you as I always felt--" "I'm glad in a way," Judith interrupted her, "but I'm not sure you ought to. You see, I'm just an ordinary human unit--Judith 903--there are thousands of us--and by singling me out you're putting Personal Pressure on me, and I don't know if I can take it. I haven't got the full Beta point of view yet, but what we have to aim at is undiscriminating friendliness that doesn't stress the personal. Cain's a Home Husband--" "A Home Husband?" "Yes, a Home Husband or a Halter Husband, as they sometimes call it. Didn't you know? I expect it was while you were still unconscious, but you ought to know, or you might get fined or something. There's been a new Edict." "Tell me about it," Jael said. "Oh, there are now two sorts of husbands--a Home or Halter Husband--the old kind, a man who lives in the same house with you--at too close quarters, many women think, and is more or less tied to you; and a Hygienic Husband, one who does the necessary services but isn't tied to the house. He lives in a Husband's Hostel and you need only see him by arrangement. It's much more civilized, don't you think? And it does away with all that jealousy business." "Can he have more than one wife?" Jael asked. "Oh yes, if he's good at husbandry. He has to pass a test--there have been quite a lot of jokes about it, but I don't suppose they take that sort of paper here. You see, being a husband is a vocation--most men aren't really suited for it." "But isn't being a wife a vocation, too?" "Oh yes, much more, but it's been proved statistically--your brother could tell you the figures--that most wives can do better, as wives, without having a husband around all the time. Husbands get in the way so and make scenes. And if they are away from home the wife is always asking why--we can't help it, it's our nature. But with a Hygienic Husband--" "Yes?" "Well, naturally he comes and goes and no questions are asked. It's working out very well. I shouldn't be surprised if in a few years there won't be any Halter Husbands left. And we shall be so much nearer to the Ego's Exit." "The Ego's Exit," repeated Jael, with distaste. "Well, the Beta Bandwagon is going that way, and isn't it what we all want--to be in on something? No fun in standing aside. The Common Wish for the Common Weal--that's the ideal we should set ourselves." "Does the Dictator really want that?" Judith opened her eyes in surprise. "Presumably he does, or he wouldn't have made the Edict. I know people say that he's an opportunist, that he doesn't initiate, he only follows, like a dog barking in front of a horse and cart; but I don't believe that. He has his head screwed on. But I didn't mean to lecture you, darling, I only meant to put you wise about what's been happening while you were laid aside, and to tell you it isn't so bad to be a Beta after all. Can you beta it? as they say. Or can you beta me to it? That's the latest." "There's one thing you haven't told me," Jael said. "What has happened about the Expeditions?" "The Expeditions?" Even for a Beta Judith's face looked wooden. "Yes, the motor-coach Expeditions." "Oh," said Judith, "we were told to forget about them, and I'd almost succeeded. You shouldn't really have reminded me. They've been suspended." Judith frowned. The frown came a shade late: you could tell a Beta by the time lag between thought and facial expression. "But we haven't heard the kst of them," she added, and after kissing Jael's still stiff face, she took her leave. Chapter Eleven "I THINK we'll throw that flower away, dear," the Sister said, "and give you a nice new one. The Visitor's coming this afternoon and we don't want to have her asking awkward questions, do we?" Jael's heart turned over. "Oh please don't!" she cried. "Please don't throw it away, I'm fond of it." "You can't be fond of such a shabby thing," the Sister said, "and if