by Greg Bear
“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.
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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 right 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 cuticled. 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 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 half an 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 oiver the keyboard into empty space. “Countersound off, please,” she ordered, and rose 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.
“Practice your polyrhythms,” he advised.
She left the classroom and walked around to the auditorium’s stage entrance. She knew Reena’s drama group would be meeting there. The auditorium was dark, the stage illuminated by three catwalk spots. The drama group sat on a circle of chairs in one bright corner, reading lines aloud from tattered paper scripts.
Hands folded, Letitia walked toward the group. Rick Fayette, a quiet senior with short black 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 be able to use me.”
“Really,” Edna Corman said.
Reena put her script down. “Why’d you change your mind?”
“I realized I wouldn’t mind being an old lady,” Letitia said. “It’s not that big a deal. I brought a picture.” She took a plastic wallet from her pocket and opened it to a copy of the photo in the album. “You could make me up like this. Like Great-Grandmother.”
Reena leaned in and studied the copy. “You look like her,” she said.
“Kind of.”
“Look at this.” Reena held the picture out to the others. They passed the copy from hand to hand, staring in wonder. Even Edna Corman glanced at it briefly.
“She actually looks like her great-grandmother,” Reena said.
Rick Fayette whistled. “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?”
There was no simple way to express it. “Because of what you told me,” she said.
“No friction?”
“It’s going okay.”
“They gave you another role to play?”
“No. I’m the old lady. They’ll use makeup on me.”
“You don’t object?”
“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 role, and the thought of playing two characters in this production worried him. He confessed his appreciation at their second Friday meeting, and introduced her to an elfishly handsome group member, Frank Leroux. Leroux was much too shy to go on stage, Fayette said, but he would be doing makeup. “He’s pretty amazing.”
Letitia stood nervously while Leroux examined her. “You’ve got a face,” he said softly. “May I touch, 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 laser mold—much better than sitting for a life mask. He made a life mask of me last year for Halloween, to turn me into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. No fun at all.”
“This way is much eas
ier,” Leroux said, 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 Letitia went home that evening, taking a late 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 banter with John Lockwood while sitting at the mods, waiting for instructors to arrive. Now she actually liked Fayette, and strange Leroux, whose hands were thin and pale and strong and cool. Leroux was a PPC, but obviously his parents had different tastes; was he a superwhiz? Nobody had said so; 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 to their home, she opened the front door and set the keyboard down by the closet. In the living room, she spied the edge of a news broadcast. Nobody was watching TV; they were probably in the kitchen. From this angle the announcer appeared translucent and ghostly. As she walked around to the best angle, the announcer seemed to solidify. She was a goddess of Asian-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 caught her attention.
“—revelations made today that as many as one-fourth of all PPCs inceived between sixteen and seventeen years ago may possess a potentially defective gene sequence known as T56-WA 5659. Originally part of an intelligence macrobox to enhance mathematical ability, T56-WA 5659 has become a standard option in nearly all pre-planned children. The effects of this defective sequence are not yet known, but at least twenty children in our city have died after suffering from symptoms similar to grand mal epilepsy. Nationwide casualties are unknown. The Parental Pre-Natal Design Administration advises parents of PPC children with this option to immediately contact your doctors and design specialists for advice and treatment. Younger children may be eligible to receive whole body retroviral therapy. The Rifkin Society is charging government regulatory agencies with a wholesale cover-up. For more detailed information, please refer to our LitVid on-line and call—”
Letitia turned to see her mother in the dining room door, holding a bowl and watching the TV with grim satisfaction. When she noticed her daughter’s expression, she suddenly changed her expression to 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 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 so good I could even make Reena look old if she’d let me.”
Reena blushed and glared at Leroux. Leroux caught her glare and said, “Well, I could.”
Letitia decided to let them off this particular hook. “She’d look like an old movie star. I’ll be a better grandmother.”
“Of course,” Leroux said, picking up his box and the sculptures. He walked to the door, a mad headsman. “Just 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 glowed around the cracked mirror, casting a pearly light on the white walls.
“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 hazel-colored 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 charmed period. 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 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 grinned. “It’s all rather silly.”
“Some people are never happy,” Letitia observed.
Reena stepped toward the mirror and leaned to see Letitia’s reflection. “How does it 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 the family album, and examining herself in the mirror—though she did not mention being naked—and comparing herself with the old pictures.
Reena said, “It must have been nice. I’m glad I asked you, even if I was stupid.”
“Were you …” Letitia paused. The charm was fading, regrettably; she did not know whether her question would be taken as she meant it. “Did you ask me to give me a chance to stop being so silly?”
“No,” Reena said steadily. “I asked because we needed an old lady.”
Looking at each other, they suddenly laughed, and the charmed moment was 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,” Reena said. She squeezed Letitia’s shoulder with more than gentle strength, revealing an anger or envy that ran counter to all they had said and done thus far. Reena turned and walked through the green room door, leaving Letitia alone to pick at the last 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 dancin
g before her eyes, telling her things she did not really understand, could only feel. A monster was walking 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 that Leroux had died over the weekend. “He was superwhiz,” a tall, athletic girl told her neighbor. “They don’t die, they just blitz, usually. But he died.”
Letitia retreated to the old lavatory at the beginning of lunch break, found it empty, but did not look 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 touching her face with gentle, professional admiration—strong, cool fingers. She remembered the last time she saw him as he carried her sculpted heads under his arms. 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. Letitia 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 anyone 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.”