The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin

by Lisa Yaszek

  They were just outside the Tunnel. Jeannie had put her knitting down; she was looking intently ahead, but as though she were listening rather than looking. In spite of his own arguments, Tom felt his fingers thudding on the dashboard. On the TV screen, Malenkovsky triumphantly moved a king.

  They had reached the Tunnel entrance. Jeannie was silent. She glanced at her watch, irrationally. Tom pressed the tranquillizer button and the drawer shot out, but Jeannie shook her head.

  “I hate this, Tom. I think it’s an absolutely lousy idea.”

  Her voice sounded almost savage, for Jeannie, and Tom felt a little shocked.

  “It’s the fairest thing,” he argued. “You know it perfectly well.”

  Jeannie’s mouth had set in a stubborn line. “I don’t care. There must be another way.”

  “This is the only fair way,” Tom said again. “We take our chances along with everybody else.”

  His own heart was pounding, now, and his hands felt cold. It was the feeling he always had on entering the Tunnel, and he had never decided whether it was dread or elation, or both. He was no longer bored. He glanced at the children on the back seat. David was watching television again and gnawing on a fingernail; the three little ones were still asleep, sitting up as they had been taught to do, hands folded properly in their laps. Three blind mice.

  The Tunnel was echoing and cold. White light slipped off the white tile walls that were clean and polished and air-tight. Wind rushed past, sounding as though the car were moving faster than it actually was. The Italian family was still behind them, following at a constant speed. Huge fans were set into the Tunnel ceiling; their roar reverberated over the roar of the giant invisible air-conditioning units, over the slow wind of the moving cars.

  Jeannie had put her head down on the seat back as though she were asleep. The cars stopped for an instant, started again. Tom wondered if Jeannie felt the same vivid thrill that he felt. Then he looked at the line of her mouth and saw the fear.

  The Tunnel was 8500 feet long. Each car took up seven feet, bumper to bumper. Allow five feet between cars. About seven hundred cars in the tunnel, then: more than three thousand people. It would take each car about fifteen minutes to go through. Their car was halfway through now.

  They were three-quarters of the way through. Automatic signal lights were flashing at them from the catwalk under the Tunnel roof. Tom’s foot moved to the gas pedal before he remembered the car was set on Automatic. It was an atavistic gesture: his hands and feet wanted a job to do. His body, for a minute, wanted to control the direction of its plunge. It was the way he always felt, in the Tunnel.

  They were almost through. His scalp felt as though tiny ants were running along the hairs. He moved his toes, feeling the scratch of sand on the nerves between them. He could see the far end of the Tunnel. Maybe two minutes more. A minute.

  They stopped again. A car, somewhere ahead, had swerved out of line to search for the right exit. Once out of the Tunnel it was legal to switch back to Manual drive, since it was necessary to pick the right exit out of ten, and all too easy to find yourself carried to the top level of Manhattan Unit before finding a place to turn off.

  Tom’s hand drummed at the wheel. The maverick ahead had edged back into line. They started movement again. They picked up speed. They were out of the Tunnel.

  Jeannie picked up her knitting and shook it, sharply. Then she dropped it as though it had bitten her fingers. A bell was clanging over their heads, not too loud, but clear. Just behind their rear bumper a gate swung smoothly into place.

  Jeannie turned to look back at the space behind them where the Italian family in the bright blue car, and others, had been. There were no cars there now. She turned back, to stare whitely through the windshield.

  Tom was figuring. Two minutes for the ceiling sprays to work. Then the seven hundred cars in the Tunnel would be hauled out and emptied. Ten minutes for that, say. He wondered how long it was supposed to take for the giant fans to blow the cyanide gas away.

  “Depopulation without Discrimination,” they called it at election time. Nobody would ever admit voting for it, but almost everybody did. Aloud, you had to rationalize: it was the fairest way to do a necessary thing. But in the unadmitted places of your mind you knew it was more than that. A gamble, the one unpredictable element in the long, dreary process of survival. A game. Russian Roulette. A game you played to win? Or, maybe, to lose? The answer didn’t matter, because the Tunnel was excitement. The only excitement left.

  Tom felt, suddenly, remarkably wide awake. He switched to Manual Drive and angled the round nose of the Topolino over to the Fourth Level exit.

  He began to whistle between his teeth. “Beach again next weekend, sweetie, huh?”

  Jeannie’s eyes were on his face. Defensively, he added, “Good for all of us, get out of the city, get a little fresh air once in a while.”

  He nudged her and pulled a pigtail gently, with affection.

  1961

  KIT REED

  The New You

  “NOW—the New You,” the ad said. It was a two-page spread in one of the glossier fashion magazines, and it was accompanied by a shadowed, grainy art photograph that hinted at the possibility of a miraculous transformation which hovered—so the ad said—at every woman’s fingertips.

  Raptly, Martha Merriam hunched forward, pulling at her violet-sprigged housedress so that it almost covered plump knees, and bent once more over the magazine. Raptly she contemplated the photograph, the list of promises framed in elegant italics, absently chewing a string of wiry, dun-colored hair.

  In her more wistful, rebellious moments, Martha Merriam forgot her dumpy body and imagined herself the svelte, impeccable Marnie, taller by six inches and lighter by forty pounds. When a suaver, better-dressed woman cut her at a luncheon or her husband left her alone at parties she would retreat into dialogues with Marnie. Marnie knew just the right, devastating thing to say to chic, overconfident women, and Marnie was expert in all the wiles that keep a man at home. In the person of Marnie, Martha could pretend.

  “Watch the Old You Melt Away,” Martha read aloud, and as she mouthed the words for the second time Marnie strained inside her, waiting for release. Martha straightened imperceptibly, patting her doughy throat with a stubby hand, and as her eyes found the hooker—the price tag for the New You in small print in the lower right hand corner, longing consumed her, and Marnie took cover.

  “We could use a New You,” Marnie said.

  “But three thousand dollars.” Martha nibbled at the strand of hair.

  “You have those stocks,” Marnie prompted.

  “But those were Howard’s wedding present to me—part of his business.”

  “He won’t mind . . .” Marnie twisted and became one with the photograph.

  “But a hundred shares . . .” The hank of hair was sodden now, and Martha was chewing faster.

  “He won’t mind when he sees us,” Marnie said.

  And Martha, eyes aglow, got up and went to the telephone almost without realizing what she was doing, and got her broker on the line.

  The New You arrived as advertised two weeks later, and when it came, Martha was too excited to touch it, alone in the house as she was, with this impossibly beautiful future.

  In mid-afternoon, when she had looked at the coffin-shaped crate from every possible angle and smoothed the ruffled, splintered edges of wood, she nerved herself to pull the ripcord the company had provided—and let her future begin. She jumped back with a little squeak as the hard crate sides fell away to reveal a black and richly molded box. Trembling, she twiddled the gold-plated clasp with the rosebud emblem and opened the lid.

  For a moment, all she saw was an instruction booklet, centered on top of fold upon fold of purple tissue paper, but as she looked closer, she saw that the paper was massed to protect a mysterious, promising form which
lay beneath. IMPORTANT: READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING, the booklet warned. Distracted, she threw it aside, reflecting as she did so that the last time she had seen paper folded in this way was around long-stemmed American Beauties—a dozen of them, which Howard had sent her a dozen years before.

  The last piece of paper came away in her fingers, revealing the figure beneath, and Martha gasped. It was a long-stemmed American Beauty—everything she had hoped for. She recognized her own expression in its face, but it was a superb, glamorous version of her face, and at the same time it was Marnie, Helen, Cleopatra—more than she had dared anticipate. It was the new her. Quivering with impatience to get into it, she bent over it without another thought for the instruction book, and plunged her arms to the elbows in the rustling, rising swirl of purple tissue paper. The sudden aura of perfume, the movement of the paper, a sense of mounting excitement overcame her, and the last thing she remembered was clasping the figure’s silken hands in her own stubby fingers and holding them to her bosom as the two figures, new and old, tossed on a rushing purple sea. Then the moiling sheets of purple kaleidoscoped and engulfed her and she lost consciousness.

  She was awakened by a squashy thud. She lay in the midst of the purple tissue, stretching luxuriously, thinking that she ought to get up to see what the thud had been. She raised one knee, in the beginning of a movement to get to her feet, and then stopped, delighted by its golden sleekness. She stretched the leg she knew must be just beyond that perfect knee, and then hugged shoulders lithe and smooth as a jungle cat’s in a gradual awareness of what had happened. Then, remembering that the new her was quite naked and that Howard would be home any minute, she pulled herself together in one fluid glide of muscles and got to her feet. With the air of a queen, she lifted one foot delicately and stepped out of the box.

  She remembered the line from the advertisement “Watch the Old You Melt Away,” and she smiled languidly as she flowed away from the box. Yawning, she reached in the closet, picked up her old quilted wrapper and discarded it for the silk kimono Howard had brought her from Japan. It had fitted her ten years before, and then it had gotten too small. She looped the sash twice about her middle and then—still not too good to be an orderly housewife—she began folding the tissue paper that seemed to have exploded all over the room, and putting it in the box. As she came to the side where the old her had first touched the gold-plated rosebud, she swooped up a whole armful of tissue in a gesture of exuberance—and dropped it with a little scream. Her toe had hit something. Not wanting to look, she poked at the remaining pieces of paper with a gilded toenail. Her foot connected with something soft. She made herself look down, and stifled a moan.

  The old her had not melted away. It was still there, dowdy as ever in its violet-sprigged housedress. Its drab hair trailed like seaweed, and its hips seemed to spread where it lay, settling on the rug.

  “But you promised!” the new, sleek Martha yelped. With a sudden sinking feeling, she rooted around in the rest of the purple tissue until she found the cast-off instruction book.

  “Care must be exercised in effecting the transfer,” the book warned in urgent italics. Then it went on with a number of complicated, technical directions about transfer and grounding, which Martha didn’t understand. When she had grasped the new her’s hands she had plunged right into the transfer, without a thought for the body she was leaving behind. And it had to be dematerialized at the time of transfer, no later. It was pointless to send botched jobs back to the company, the booklet warned. The company would send them back. Apparently, the new Martha was stuck with the old her.

  “Ohh . . .” There was a little moan from the figure on the floor. And the old Martha sat up and looked dully around the room.

  “You—” the new Martha looked at it with growing hatred. “You leave me alone,” she said. She was about to lunge at it in a fit of irritation when there was a sound in the driveway. “Oh-oh. Howard.” Without another thought, she pushed the lumpy, unresisting old her into the hall closet, locked it and pocketed the key.

  Then, pulling the robe around her, she went to the door. “Howard, darling,” she began.

  He recognized her and he didn’t recognize her. He stood just inside the doorway with the look of a child who has just been given a soda fountain, listening as she explained (leaving out certain details—the sale of his stock, the matter of the old her) in vibrant, intimate tones.

  “Martha, darling,” he said at last, pulling her toward him.

  “Call me Marnie, dear. Hm?” she purred, and nestled against his chest.

  Of course the change involved a new wardrobe, and new things for Howard too, as Marnie had read in a dozen glamour magazines how important an accessory a well-dressed man could be. The Merriams were swept up in a round of parties and were admitted, for the first time, to the city’s most glittering homes. Howard’s business flourished and Marnie, surrounded by admirers, far more attractive than the most fashionable of her rivals, thrived. There were parties, meetings, theatre dates, luncheon engagements with a number of attractive men. And what with one thing and another, Marnie didn’t have much time for piddling around the house. The black box from the New You Company lay where she had left it, and the old her was still stacked—like an old vacuum cleaner, so far as she was concerned—unused, in the closet in the hall.

  In the second week of her new life, Marnie began to notice things. The tissue paper around the New You box was disarrayed, and the instruction book was gone. Once, when she had stepped out of the bedroom for a moment, she thought she saw a shadow moving in the hall. “Oh, it’s you,” Howard said with an ambiguous look, when she returned to their room. “For a minute I thought . . .” He sounded almost wistful.

  And there were crumbs—little trails of them—and empty food containers left in odd corners of the house.

  Disturbed by the dirt which had begun to collect, Marnie refused two luncheon dates and a cocktail invitation and spent one of her rare afternoons at home. In slippers and the quilted house coat she had discarded the first day of her transformation, she began to clean the house. She was outraged to find a damp trail leading from the kitchen to the hall closet. With a rug-cleaning preparation she began scrubbing at the hall carpet, and she straightened her back, indignant, when she reached a particularly sordid little mixture of liquid and crumbs, right at the closet door. Fumbling in her pocket, she brought out the key and applied herself to the lock.

  “You,” she said disgustedly. She had almost forgotten.

  “Yes—yes ma’am,” the old her said humbly, almost completely cowed. The dumpy, violet-sprigged Martha was sitting in one corner of the closet, a milk carton in one hand and a box of marshmallow cookies open in her lap.

  “Why can’t you just . . . Why can’t you . . .” Marnie snorted in disgust. There was chocolate at the corners of the creature’s mouth, and it had gained another five pounds.

  “A body has to live,” the old her said humbly, trying to wipe away the chocolate. “You forgot—I had a key to the closet too.”

  “If you’re going to be wandering around,” Marnie said, tapping one vermilion fingernail on a flawless tooth, “you might as well be of some use. Come on,” she said, pulling at the old her. “We’re going to clear out the old maid’s room. Move!”

  The old Martha came to its feet and shambled behind Marnie, making little sounds of obedience.

  The experiment was a flop. The creature ate constantly and had a number of (to Marnie) disgusting habits, and when Marnie invited some of Howard’s more attractive business contacts in for dinner, it refused to wear a maid’s cap and apron, and made a terrible mess of serving the soup. When she called it down at table, Howard protested mildly but Marnie was too engrossed in conversation with a Latin type who dealt in platinum to notice. Nor did she notice, in the days that followed, that Howard was putting on weight. She was slimmer even than she had been the first day of her new life, and she st
alked the house impatiently, nervous and well-groomed as a high-bred horse. Howard seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn, and Marnie laid it to the effect of having the Old Her around, flat-footed and quiet in its violet-sprigged dress. When she caught it feeding Howard fudge cake at the kitchen table the very day she found he could no longer button his tuxedo, she knew the Old Her had to go.

  She had a Dispose-All installed in her kitchen sink and began a quiet investigation into the properties of various poisons, in hopes of finding a permanent way of getting rid of it. But when she brought a supply of sharp-edged equipment into the house the violet-sprigged Martha seemed to sense what she was planning. It stood in front of her, wringing its hands humbly, until she noticed it.

  “Well?” Marnie said, perhaps more sharply than she had intended.

  “I—just wanted to say you can’t get rid of me that way,” it offered, almost apologetically.

  “What way?” Marnie asked, trying to cover, and then, with a little gesture of indifference, she raised one eyebrow. “Okay, smarty, why not?”

  “Killing’s against the law,” the creature said patiently.

  “This would hardly be killing,” Marnie said in her most biting tones. “It’s like giving your old clothes to the rag man or the Good Will, or burning them. Getting rid of old clothes has never been murder.”