Facial Justice (13 page)

for a small ordeal. She dreaded most what other people, who have no special reason to be ashamed of their faces, also dread--an unexpected, unsolicited glimpse of her reflection. It upset her fundamentally. She could not have reconciled herself to it even if she had wanted to. It was equally painful as a reminder of the self she had lost, the carefree, easygoing self, and of the self she had become. That self she hated; and though she had transferred some of her hatred to the Dictator, she had plenty left for herself. Instinctively she looked away and her glance fell on the cineraria standing on the window ledge. The flower had long since withered; was the plant alive or dead? Its leaves were brown and crinkled at the edges and it seemed to have no sap in it. The few plants that survived in the New State were liable to die at any minute, from delayed shock or radioactivity or undernourishment; and their reproductive power was even lower than that of human beings. Was she going to lose it, as she had lost the favor of the giver? At the thought of that her tears flowed and she felt happier; better to melt than to freeze or burn, as was her lot now. But as she wiped the tears from her showerproof cheeks the old feeling of bitterness came back. Once she had had no purpose in life and how happy she had been; now she was all purpose, and miserable with it. Hastily adjusting her veil, for which she needed now no visual aid, she set off for the meeting.

Chapter Eighteen

WHEN the dance was over, and Jael had dispatched her man, the conference was resumed. "Now what about this Sign?" the Chairman asked. "How do we know there is one? It may just be something the Dictator's put about. He's up to every kind of trick." "I think there is," said Jael. "Can you find out _what__ it is?" "I'll try." "Now the next item," said the Chairman. "Are there any other signs--signs of discontent--which we could work on?" After a pause, one of the men said, "Yes, there are." "What, for instance?" "Well, this stunt of criticizing the Dictator. It caught on, as you all know, because of the novelty. We all wanted to say what we thought about him. But now the joke's beginning to wear thin. It's not much fun saying what you are told to say, and laughing when you are told to laugh." "Most people think it is," objected someone. "I've heard the same jokes about him repeated scores of times, and I've heard people repeat them back to each other half a minute later." "Yes, the chatter of starlings. But now they're beginning to grow tired of it: they want to say something different, as 97 realized." "It must be something they can all say." "Yes, alas." "Has anyone any suggestions?" the Chairman asked. "Well," said one of the women; "how about having men's looks Betafied?" All the men present, including the Chairman, registered horror and dismay. To the women, and not least to Jael, their faces were almost unbearably expressive: it was as though, in the course of an ordinary conversation, some of the participants had begun to shout and scream. The little gathering was devastated by the male countenance, as by a tornado. The women didn't know which way to look, they felt they were being bludgeoned, blinded; even the men themselves were surprised at the violence of each other's facial reactions. When the little storm had spent itself, and the men's faces had resumed their wary, noncommittal, masculine look, one of them said: "I don't think you'd find much support for that." "Oh, don't you?" said a woman; "I should have thought you would. At any rate, then you couldn't give us the shock you gave us just now." "We don't all like that nasty natural look," another woman said. "We sometimes dream about it, not pleasantly, you know. If only you made up your faces sometimes--" "Or shaved better--" "Or didn't clear your throats--" "Or smoke in one's face--" "Besides it isn't _fair__," put in another woman. "And the regime is supposed to be based on fairness. Fairness to all, favor to none. I know that men don't envy each other's looks--why should they?" Involuntarily one of the men spat. "There you go--it's disgusting, and superstitious, too. I meant to say, I know you don't envy each other's looks, as we women are supposed to, according to that misogynist Dictator, but all the same it isn't fair that you should have your own faces, and we not. Besides, on aesthetic grounds, it's terrible for us to have to look at some of you. I know a woman who couldn't eat for days after she had seen a certain man, and through glass, mind you--" "Now then, now then, we mustn't quarrel, must we," said the Chairman. "But that's just what we want, to start people quarreling. If we can do outside what we've done in here--" "We shan't get anywhere if we're not unanimous," the Chairman said. "Unanimous? But that's just what we don't want to be--it's what we're up against--thinking alike, talking alike, looking alike, being alike--we want to spread dissension--" "Perhaps," the Chairman said, "but don't spread it here. Here we want agreement. Now the proposition is, I understand, to... er... foment discontent in the regime by putting it about that men's faces should be Betafied. Am I right?" Jael nodded. "Those in favor?" The women put their hands up. "Those against?" Sheepishly, but with much determination, the Chairman and his two male associates raised their hands. "We are divided," the Chairman said, "but I have the casting vote. The proposition is not carried." The women looked as sulky as their straightened faces would allow, but the men's expressions of relief were so vivid that they seemed almost audible. "So much for our unanimity," Jael observed. "You couldn't hope for it on that issue," the Chairman said. "All we should do would be to throw the whole male sex, so to speak, into the arms of the Dictator." "He'd like that if he's what some people say he is," a woman remarked. "Well, doesn't it stick out a mile?" another said. "All this favoritism, like letting you keep your faces." At this the three men looked unbearably smug. "It doesn't follow," one of them said. "He just knows that men don't Bad Egg each other's looks, as women do." "Oh, do say envy," said Jael wearily. "I get so tired of this facetiousness. He treats us as if we were children. Some of us are, of course." "Speak for yourself," the man retorted. "I don't have to," Jael answered. "Everyone knows that most men don't grow up. Think of all the things you do to keep the child alive in you. Football, cricket, tennis... You're never happy until you've made mud larks of yourselves." "How can we help it, when there's mud all round us? I wonder what the world looked like when it was green? And anyhow you copy us. I've seen you looking pretty mud-stained, 97, when you came in from playing hockey." "I only played because hockey was compulsory for my age group," Jael said. "There was all that outcry, when the girls who couldn't get a game said it was unfair, and that those who played were privileged. I didn't think it a privilege, I can tell you--" "It was all in the interests of Good Egg," persisted the man. "Oh, say equality, and have done with it. We don't have to go through the motions, we're long past that." "Order, order," said the Chairman. "But the Secretary has raised a point which was actually Item 3 of the Agenda." He put on his spectacles. "To find a slogan which will express the opposite idea and ideal of fairness in a word or words that will be acceptable to the average delinquent." "I object to the term 'delinquent,'" one of the men said. "In fact I violently resent it. The fact that the Dictator has called us delinquents does not make us so. Is any one of us here a delinquent? I don't think so. It is an abuse of language. I move that the word be deleted from the agenda." The Chairman looked at Jael. "What do you say, 97?" Jael felt uncomfortable, and, as far as a Beta could, she showed it. "The word is common currency," she said defensively. "I don't think it has any derogatory meaning attached to it. The phrase 'old man,' which you men use among yourselves, is, I believe, a term of affection; it does not mean, or even suggest, that the person so addressed is old." "There is no moral smear," answered her critic, "attached to being old. We shall all be old one day, if the Dictator lets us be. I know that the phrase 'you old delinquent!' is sometimes used among friends without giving offense. But I still maintain that it's an abuse of language, and the Dictator, when he fastened it on us, intended it as a reproach, to make us all feel guilty and therefore readier to accept his abominable decrees. It helped the softening-up process by which, in one way or another, he has been undermining us as human beings all this time. Patients and delinquents! By making us feel we are delinquents he puts us automatically in the wrong, we can't stand up for ourselves, we have to do what he tells us. That's one of the things we are fighting against, this imputation of delinquency. We are no more delinquents than he is, and not half as much!" Jael was vexed with herself for allowing her thunder to be stolen from her by this upstart man. Men!--she hated the whole tribe of them, from the Dictator downward--all except one, and him she mustn't even think of. "All right, all right," she said, "it was just a slip of the pen. With your approval, Mr. Chairman, we'll erase 'delinquents.' " The Chairman nodded. "Now," he said, "the proposition reads: To find a slogan expressing the opposite of the idea and ideal of fairness in a form of words which shall be acceptable to--?'" He looked about him with raised, questioning eyebrows. "The man in the street," suggested one of the male members of the Committee. "The man in the streetl" protested Jael. "What about the woman?" "The phrase is generally taken to include both men and women," said the Chairman. "I thought a woman of the street meant something different." The Chairman sighed. "Let us say, 'to normal men and women.' " "That might leave out some of us," said Jael. One of the men turned red, but the women, being unable to blush, kept their shame, if they felt it, to themselves. "I think that remark most uncalled for," the Chairman said severely. "If I did not know you as well as I do, Jael 97, I might think your interest in our cause had its origin in a private grievance." "You would be right," said Jael, "I've made no secret of it. The people who govern us--the Dictator's spies--took advantage of the fact that I was helpless to change my face to what they thought a better one. In doing so they changed my nature. Before, I was--" Jael stopped, acutely embarrassed. Her fellow conspirators tried to help her out. "A conformer." "A Failed Alpha." "A State slave." "A gentle creature, harboring no malice." "A popular girl, adored by everyone." "A sweet, nice person, with not a single political idea in her head." "Butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth." "She couldn't have said boo to a goose." "Everyone had a good word for her." "Stop! Stop!" cried Jael. "That's what you say I was, but what am I now?" All the other members of the Committee, who had been vying with each other to sing the former Jael's praises, suddenly found not a word to say. "The spearhead of revolt," said one of them, a woman, at last. But nobody added another word. Hating herself, Jael also hated them. Tears came to her eyes and trickled down her rainproof cheeks. She wept for her lost self, the self she knew, for she associated it with her old-time face; she wept for her present self, the self she did not know, for her new self was faceless: she did not know, and would not permit herself to know, what she looked like. She had denied herself that assurance of identity; sometimes she mentally groped for her own image, as someone might who has long been blind. From under her black veil the tears poured down, painful to see and not relieving her, for her sense of contact with her tears, their healing touch, to which, in part at any rate, they owe their power to lessen unhappi-ness, was not for her: she might almost have been another person crying. "Has anyone any suggestions," the Chairman said at length, "for an attractive-sounding synonym for unfairness?" "Opportunity," put in someone. "The party of unlimited opportunity." The Chairman shrugged his shoulders. "I don't like that much," he said. "Too clumsy." "Couldn't we bring in the idea of merit?" said another. "Or is merit now too blown upon?" "I don't think you'll get very far with merit," Jael said. "Merit has always been at a discount with the Dictator. Merit needs effort and we aren't supposed to make an effort. Let the worst man win." "I'm afraid you're right," the Chairman said. "Merit has been soft-pedaled for a long time, because it leads to Bad Egg--I beg your pardon, Jael, to envy. We mustn't be better at anything than our neighbors. Or if we are, and it sticks out a mile, we must remember that they are better at something else than we are--even if they aren't. The word may have dropped out of the language--it's ages since I saw or heard it used." "All the same," persisted the first speaker, "it hasn't been officially banned. One can still use it. The merit of fairness is that there's no merit in it,' or something like that." The men smiled like ogres, and even the women's faces broadened appreciably. "Can anyone think of something with 'merit' in it?" the Chairman asked, and again there was a smile, but no one spoke. "I'm afraid that all this suspiciousness of merit hasn't sharpened our wits," the Chairman said. "We're all afraid of seeming cleverer than our neighbors. Now let's forget all that, and try to think up something. If anybody has a bright idea, I for one won't grudge it to him--or her," he added as an afterthought. "We mustn't forget," he said, when no one spoke, "that we're all equal here." "Oh no, we aren't!" said Jael. "Not equal?" "No, isn't that what we're fighting for, the right not to be equal?" "I suppose it is, in theory," the Chairman rather testily admitted. "Ourside this circle, in our different walks of life, we are, of course, unequal. Nobody--nobody here that is--would deny that. But here--" "Even here, I take it," Jael said, "the best suggestion wins." "Perhaps," the Chairman said. "But so far we haven't had any suggestions with much merit in them." "The word keeps tripping us up," said somebody. "Try not to let it cloud your minds," the Chairman said. "Don't be afraid of being competitive. Don't hang back." "Doesn't merit speak for itself?" the man asked. "It used to," said the Chairman. "But nowadays it's silenced. That is one of the things that we complain of. Somebody must speak up for it." "Isn't that your job, Mr. Chairman? We chose you for your merit. Are you going to tell us that you haven't got any--that we're as good as you?" "What do you mean by good?" the Chairman retorted. "If you mean good at being a Chairman--" "The only good we recognize," said someone, "is getting the Dictator down. If you--" "You nominated me," the Chairman said. "I'm not mad about the assignment. If you want to appoint another Chairman, I'll resign at once." His tone showed that he meant it. "No, please," said Jael. "Don't let us make ourselves a laughingstock. I'm told it's difficult to find subjects for Five Minutes' Laughter. If they heard of us--" "Perhaps they have," said one of the men. He looked round at the muddy landscape, drew his overcoat about him and shivered slightly. "No one knows how the Dictator gets his information. A bird of the air--" "He's sometimes misinformed," said somebody. "How do you know?" "Well, he acts as if he was." "I don't believe it. He's always a move or two ahead of us." "Let's get back to the agenda," said the Chairman. "We want a slogan presenting the notion of unfairness as an ideal acceptable, or indeed inspiring, to the man in the street. If no suggestions are forthcoming, we must go on to the next item. I propose 'Careers for the Courageous.' " All the members of the Committee put on their thinking caps. The men scowled; the women looked perforce but mildly interested. "I doubt if the public are ready for it," one of the men said. "Courage is at a discount and careers are quite _démodé__. I doubt if many people would understand what you mean, and if they did they wouldn't approve. What use is courage, unless you have need of it? By eliminating danger the
Dictator has eliminated courage. It's about as much use now as the muscles of a dock hand would be to a stenographer." "You still need it for an illness," said the Chairman. "No, begging your pardon, you need endurance, not courage, for an illness. Passive courage, yes, but not the active, go-getting courage that you mean. The man in the street wouldn't thank you for courage, any more than he would thank you for inviting him to climb Mount Everest or go to the North Pole, if they still exist. And careers are finished--you might as well ask a man to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together, as make a career for himself. Our lives are laid out for us, from the incubator to the crematorium. Three world wars have drained our energy; the capacity for effort has gone out of us. We want to be directed; we want to stand in a queue." "Are you speaking for yourself?" the Chairman asked. "I imagine not, or you wouldn't be on this Committee. And if you're speaking for others, I think you are unduly pessimistic." "How about 'Advancement for the Able'?" someone suggested. "Too challenging. Why should you be abler than me? Ability is for the Inspectors, not for us. It's their prerogative." "Yes, but people like to think of themselves as abler than others. Men certainly do," a woman said. Perhaps, but even more they dislike thinking of others as abler than they are. You can't have the one without the other." "Oh, I don't know. Some men are quite conceited enough." The male members of the Committee darted angry glances at their opposite numbers of the female sex, who returned them with unshaken imperturbability. One of the advantages of being Beta was that you couldn't register a hit. "What about 'Advancement for the Ambitious'?" "You can't be ambitious on bromide." "The first thing we shall do when we get control is to stop that silly practice." "Yes, but meanwhile." " 'Advancement for the Adventurous' might do," someone put in. "Adventurousness isn't so personal as ambition. It doesn't involve other people taking a back seat. You might mind my ambition, but you couldn't object to my adventurousness. After all, we're allowed to bet." "Yes, but not on ourselves." "How about 'Bet on yourself? Doesn't that put it all in a nutshell? 'Back your fancy,' well, I fancy myself--we all fancy ourselves. Yes, why not have 'Bet on yourself?" the speaker repeated, warming to his idea. "There's no merit in a win by betting--if that's what we're afraid of. Why, in the old days--" "The Bad Old Days," put in somebody. "The Bad Old Days," the speaker repeated, "people made fortunes by betting, and no one minded, because they knew it was just luck. It hadn't been earned, it hadn't even been stolen--it was just luck. Bet on yourself!" "Are we agreed?" the Chairman asked. All signified assent. "Then let's have a dance on it." "Bet on yourself! Bet on yourself 1" they chanted, in undertones, though nobody could hear them. Into the air they flung themselves, disregarding each other, colliding with each other. Lacking teamwork, the ballet didn't go with a swing. "Bet on yourself! Bet on yourself!" Somebody slipped and fell; the whole pack set on him: the assassin's fingers closed about his throat, he died a ritual death.