Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  We walked over to Joe.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked.

  Joe smiled the peaceful, unflinching smile I remembered from our first meeting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said in a voice that almost vibrated with sincerity.

  I turned away.

  Larry, Quinn, Dawn, Shanice and I looked at each other.

  For a moment we were overwhelmed by the absurdity of this. Buying a human-model robot, even split five ways, was going to wipe out everyone’s savings other than possibly Larry’s. And for what? His memories were gone. His personality was a clean slate.

  I turned back, and held out my hand. “I’m Izzy,” I said. “We’re taking you home, Joe.”

  “Do you like board games?” Larry asked as we walked out of the store with him. “Actually, let me rephrase. You liked board games before. You liked them a lot. We’re going to teach you to play them again.”

  PERFECTION

  o what’s your position on tails, anyway?” Trivet asked.

  Secret rolled her eyes. “Seventy-eight-year-old female, natural causes, non-Ashari,” she read off the toe tag. “I don’t see why we have to autopsy the non-Ashari. What does it matter why they died? Whatever killed them, it’s not going to kill us.”

  Trivet helped to move the body out onto the table. “That’s not necessarily true,” she said. “I mean, this one was an immigrant.” She gestured at the slim, brown body, smooth and young-looking even at seventy-eight. “You’d never have known looking at her that she wasn’t born one of us.”

  Secret looked at the body skeptically. “I think you’d know.”

  “Well, of course you’d know, but not from looking at her.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s probably jury-rigged inside with nanotechnology. You can’t just give somebody good health, even if you fix their DNA; it’s something you have to be born with.”

  They started the autopsy. The woman had died of multiple organ failure—exactly the sort, Secret noted smugly, that would never happen to a born Ashari. Trivet conceded the point as they weighed the woman’s bloated liver. “So what’s your position on tails?” Trivet asked again, dumping the liver into the slop box. “You changed the subject.”

  Secret had changed the subject because she was sick to death of tails, but it was clear Trivet wasn’t going to be diverted. “I support the idea of tails so long as they are purely decorative,” Secret said. “None of this nonsense about prehensile tails; I think we should all have decorative furred tails like cats.”

  “Cat tails aren’t purely decorative; they help with balance.”

  “Granted, but cats can’t pick up a dropped scalpel, now, can they? Prehensile tails will decrease overall physical fitness; we won’t have to bend over as much or as often.”

  Trivet flushed slightly. She’d probably wanted a tail just to pick up dropped objects. Secret rather thought a prehensile tail would be handy, but these conversations always made her feel contrary. “I think the liver got her,” Trivet said, finally changing the subject.

  “She should have come in for repairs; more nanotech should have done the trick.” Secret fished the liver back out of the slop box and cut a slice out, putting it under the microscope. “Nah, forget it. It was nine-tenths nanotech already. Watch out; all that nanotech could make her mobile.”

  As if on cue, the woman’s arm swung out, the nerves and muscles stimulated by a confused nandroid. “Look out!” Trivet said, jumping back. Secret straightened just in time to get backhanded by the corpse. She shouted in surprise and pain, and found her nose pouring with blood. The woman’s arm dropped back down, unresponsive again.

  “Damn immigrants,” Secret gasped, dabbing at the blood with her sleeve. She pulled her hand back, wincing. “Trivet, get me something clean to soak this up with.”

  Trivet grabbed an unused apron and handed it to Secret. “That looks terrible,” she said. “I bet it’s broken. You should go up to Casualty and get it looked at.”

  “I can’t wait to fill out the injury forms,” Secret muttered. “Cause of injury: attacked by corpse.”

  “Go on upstairs,” Trivet said. “I can finish up without you—it was almost time for lunch, anyway.”

  Secret removed her blood-stained apron and took the lift up to Casualty, coming into the Emergency Room through the back. “May I help you?” the admitting nurse asked.

  “I work downstairs in Pathology,” Secret said. “I just got punched by a corpse.”

  The nurse didn’t even crack a smile. “On-the-job injury?” she asked, and handed Secret a tablet. “Fill these out, please.”

  Secret sat down in the waiting area by the fountain to fill in the requested data. It was a busy day in Casualty, and most of the emergencies were worse than a broken nose. She ended up waiting for three hours, during which time she overheard no less than seven debates over the merits and drawbacks of tails. Three people endorsed them on aesthetic grounds, and three on functional grounds; a particularly irritating priest argued against them because they’d decrease physical fitness if people had to bend over less often, so Secret decided not to make that argument anymore. At least nobody was lobbying for non-prehensile tails yet.

  By the time Secret got in to see the doctor, her nose had swelled up like a giant pink mushroom. “They should have given you ice for this while you were waiting,” the doctor said. “You’re going to have to ice this and wait for the swelling to go down before I can fix it.”

  “Can’t you do anything else to bring the swelling down?” she asked.

  “Ice will do it faster than nanotech or medication,” he said. “Go home, ice it, and make an appointment for the day after tomorrow to see a plastic surgeon.”

  Secret touched her nose gingerly. “Is that really necessary?” Plastic surgeons were seen primarily by offworlders petitioning for naturalization, who wanted to look as if they were born Ashari. It had never occurred to Secret that she might have to go to one.

  “You won’t find anyone who’ll do a better job at putting your nose to rights,” the doctor said. “Since you have to wait a day, you might as well go to someone who specializes in this sort of thing.”

  This sort of thing. Secret suppressed a shudder and thanked the doctor.

  Secret normally rode her bicycle to and from work, but she walked it home today. The Huarvatat hospital was at the top of a hill, providing her with a lovely view of the sunset over Nuev Dia, as well as an easy ride home, but she didn’t want to risk a sudden stop that might jostle her nose. Back at her flat, she latched her gate, leaning her bike up against the fence. Yellow, her upstairs neighbor, was out watering her flowers. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “I got hit by a corpse.”

  “That’s a more interesting day at the office than I had.” Yellow put down the watering can to get a closer look, but Secret dodged and went inside, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Secret avoided looking at herself in the mirror until it was time to go to bed. After dinner, she iced her nose and read a book, since she didn’t feel like going out to socialize. Yellow’s reaction was likely to be common, and she didn’t feel like being a gruesome spectacle. But she could feel the swelling going down as she iced it, and wanted to see just how bad it looked now, so before she went to bed she went and took a look.

  It looked terrible. Her whole face seemed swollen, not just her nose, and even with the blood cleaned off it was clear the injury was recent. Worse, her nose had been smashed sideways, left with a weird bend in the middle, crooked like a paperclip. No wonder everyone had commented.

  Foreigners complained that all the Ashari looked alike, and to some extent this was true. Asha had been founded by Terrans who rejected the idea that it was morally wrong to alter the human gene code to improve the human species. The original Ashari had redesigned their children to fit both their physical and mental ideal. All Ashari were strong, healthy, and intelligent. All had good posture, a predisposition towards thinness, and a res
istance to any form of chemical addiction. And all were beautiful, with smooth, flawless light brown skin, symmetrical faces, and straight teeth. All had black hair, brown eyes, and small, straight noses.

  Except for Secret, now. Nobody would have any right to complain that she looked like everyone else—certainly nobody else in Nuev Dia had a crooked nose tonight. Secret went morosely to bed. The sooner she could get this fixed, the better.

  The plastic surgeon’s name was Flowerpot. Secret tried to avoid reading anything unfortunate into that name, though she had to wonder what kind of woman picked the name “Flowerpot” after her Naming rite as a teen, then decided to become a doctor.

  Secret’s appointment was for late morning. Flowerpot was affiliated with the Haurvatat hospital, but her office was in a separate clinic, and Secret found her way in uneasily. The clinic had clearly been set up to accommodate foreigners, with information posted up in a variety of languages in addition to Persian and Angelino. There was another woman in the waiting room, instantly recognizable as an immigrant. Secret carefully refrained from sitting in the seat furthest from the other woman—she didn’t want to look xenophobic. She picked a carefully neutral seat, not too far away but not too close, either.

  She wasn’t far enough away to prevent conversation. “Hello,” the immigrant greeted her. “What’s your name?”

  “Secret,” Secret said. Reluctantly she added, “What’s yours?”

  “Gloria,” the woman said, and blushed. “I haven’t had my Naming yet.” Gloria spoke Angelino clearly enough, though with a faint accent. “My naturalization has been approved, but I’m not very far into the process, you know?” She gestured at her blond hair, fair skin, pudgy frame. “You must just be here for your nose,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Secret said, a little relieved that the woman could tell. “I’m a natural-born Ashari.”

  Gloria nodded a little hesitantly, casting about for another topic of conversation. Secret could have chimed in with the question when Gloria asked it: “What’s your position on tails?”

  “What’s yours?” Secret said, finding herself actually curious to know, for once.

  “Well, Flowerpot—” Gloria gestured towards the closed door of the examination room, “—Flowerpot thinks it’s a good idea. Me, I’m not so sure. It would be even more surgery to fit in.”

  “But for everybody,” Secret said. “The rest of us would also have to come in for gene restructuring.”

  “True,” Gloria said, and smiled a little. Her teeth were crooked. “I guess in some ways it might be nice for all the Ashari to get an idea of how us immigrants feel.”

  “Do you want a tail?” Secret asked.

  “I suppose it could be convenient,” Gloria said. “I wouldn’t want a naked tail—that would look kind of silly. And if it had fur on it, we’d have to brush it, and that would take time. But I’ll happily go along with the consensus,” she added hastily. “I mean, I really admire the philosophy of the Ashari, the constant striving towards perfection. If in a few generations our descendents decide that the tails are a hindrance, we can get rid of them again.”

  “True,” Secret said.

  “So how do you feel about tails?” Gloria asked her again.

  “Honestly,” Secret said, “I’m just sick to death of hearing about them.”

  “Secret?” the receptionist called. “Flowerpot will see you now.”

  How Flowerpot felt about tails was no secret. The inside of the examination room was filled with artist’s renditions of their beauty and their advantages. Secret stared at the walls as the nurse did a preliminary check of her physical condition. “Is there any nanotech in your system that you’re aware of?” she asked.

  “I’m a Pathologist, so I carry purification nanotech,” Secret said. Purification nanotech didn’t really do much physically; they simply carried aspects of the various lesser gods throughout Secret’s system, preventing contamination from the corpses she worked with. “Other than that, just the standard.”

  The nurse checked her blood pressure and temperature, then did a quick check of the nanotech in her system, to be sure nothing was malfunctioning badly and no foreign invaders had wandered in. “Hmm,” the nurse said. “Well, you’ve picked up French somewhere.”

  “French?” Secret blinked at her.

  “It’s a language. Someone you’ve been in contact with must have just had French injected. It’s probably not enough to actually give you the language, but you might check in a week or two and see if you understand anything. Could be a bit of a free bonus.” Knowledge nanotech, which constructed information in the brain, usually cost a fair amount of money.

  “I don’t know what I’d do with French,” Secret said.

  “Well, no knowledge is wasted. Anyway. Other than that, you’re in fine shape, except for your nose. I’ll send Flowerpot in.”

  Flowerpot was an ideal specimen of Ashari humanity—slender, muscular, with pronounced cheekbones and large dark eyes. Secret distrusted her immediately. Flowerpot started off by looking at the scans done of the damage while Secret had been in Casualty. “What’s your take on tails?” Secret asked.

  “I think they’re a fine idea,” Flowerpot said, her head still bent over the scans.

  “Don’t you think it might decrease physical fitness, if people didn’t have to bend over to pick things up?” Secret asked.

  Flowerpot shrugged. “People can continue to exercise if they choose. Why should we enforce that?”

  “But a lack of tails is one aspect of humanity that everyone has in common,” Secret said. “Even the non-Ashari. Though unmodified humans have a great deal of variety in skin tone and facial features and even in number of fingers, nobody has tails.”

  Flowerpot smiled, showing perfectly symmetrical white teeth. “We’re Ashari,” she said. “Since when have we limited ourselves to what nature deigned to give us?” She pulled on gloves. “I’m going to have the nurse give you some anaesthetic,” she said. “Then I’ll set your nose and inject some nanotech to put it exactly as it was before. Do you want it to look as it did before, or would you prefer a different nose shape?”

  “I liked it the way it was,” Secret said.

  “That’s fine. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “Flowerpot,” Secret said. “Don’t you stand to benefit an awful lot from a pro-tail consensus? As a plastic surgeon? You’re the one everyone will have to go to.”

  Flowerpot’s eyes narrowed.

  “Where did the suggestion come from initially, anyway?” Secret said. “Suddenly, everyone was discussing the idea. I don’t remember an elected official making the proposal. Was it the plastic surgeons who came up with the idea in the first place?”

  Flowerpot put down the scans. “How dare you impugn my professional ethics?” she said. “I will not treat someone who distrusts my motives. Get out of here!”

  *

  “She what?” Trivet said. They weren’t autopsying today, but running monthly statistics, compiling cause-of-death information for the Genetic Advisory Council. So far it looked like the cardiac failures were winning. Government resources had been devoted to improvements to the human heart for decades now, with no significant success in getting them to last longer.

  “She wouldn’t treat me.” Secret fingered her mangled nose glumly. The swelling had gone down, but had left her nose crooked and flat.

  “So what are you going to do?” Trivet asked.

  “Find another plastic surgeon, I guess,” Secret said. “Somebody who isn’t hung up on tails.”

  “My uncle’s best friend Rain is a plastic surgeon,” Trivet said. “I heard from my brother that Rain thinks tails are a dumb idea. His clinic is all the way over on the other side of Nuev Dia, though.”

  “I’ll ask around,” Secret said. Crossing Nuev Dia was a day-long project.

  Secret’s nose felt better tonight, at least, even if it still looked terrible, and she decided to go out for a social call. After dinner, s
he went over to her friend Path’s house, parking her bike next to ten others and knocking on the half-open door.

  “Secret!” Path greeted her. “What happened to your nose?”

  “I got hit by a corpse,” Secret said.

  Path ushered her inside. “When are you going to get it fixed?”

  Secret described her encounter with Flowerpot as she pulled her shoes off in the front hallway. She could hear other guests chatting in the next room, but when she walked in, all conversation ceased.

  “I got hit by a corpse,” Secret said. “I’m getting it fixed. You can stop staring at me like I’m some sort of unmodified offworlder, all right?”

  Everyone laughed nervously and returned to their conversation, their voices a little louder and a little higher than they’d been a moment ago. They all made an effort to treat Secret normally, but she found that everyone’s eyes continually strayed to her broken nose, and their conversation was a little too hearty and amiable. People kept sitting near her, but not next to her, as if they thought she would contaminate them. They treated her—Secret realized, near the end of the evening—much like she’d treated the immigrant woman that morning.

  Secret had had enough of this. On her way home, she went by Trivet’s flat, even though it was past polite hours to call on someone. “Where’s Rain’s clinic?” she asked. “I’m going there tomorrow.”

  *

  Nuev Dia was said by the Ashari to have been built “organically.” Secret had not understood precisely what this meant until she studied other cultures in college, and had looked at maps of Terran cities like Minneapolis or New York, with their straight, numbered streets, arterial roads, and central downtown hubs. No one had planned Nuev Dia; the earliest colonists had built their homes and businesses with faith that—with only minimal guidelines—the right sort of city would emerge. They’d also banned personal motorized vehicles. Beyond that restriction, Nuev Dia had simply been allowed to grow.