Facial Justice (2 page)

Chapter Two

THE glass door swung ponderously to and fro sending out gusts of warm, conditioned air, and Jael was alone. Still crying and hardly knowing what she did, she began to descend the steps. The sharp breath of the spring twilight revived her--the rounded, pinkish buildings smiled at her. The peacefulness of what she saw stole into her, calming her agitation. Her mind was still topsy-turvy--she felt herself already Beta, but knew that she was still Alpha--but the confusion of the two realities did not hurt her as it had. Timidly, experimentally, she raised her finger to her face and touched the little scar. Her skin, her own dear skin, not that nasty, cracked-up substitute, "Win Skin," that the Betas wore, with its ready-made, waterproof, weatherproof make-up. "Be Beta and you won't have to beautify!" ran the slogan on the hoardings. But she enjoyed making up; she expressed herself that way; tiny variations of color to suit different occasions, different moods. To have to look always aggressively healthy, as the Betas did ("Betas are buxom"), even when you were feeling very much the reverse! To faint without changing color--to die, even, what a horrible thought! She wandered on, whither her footsteps led her, along the uneven roads, along the weedy pavements, and at every step she began to feel lighter, as though she had avoided some tremendous danger. At the back of her mind a sense of guilt persisted but was held in check by the spontaneous joy that surged up in her body. How precious it was to be still herself! And not hidden away behind a Win Skin, easy to put on, all but impossible to take off! Cases had been known where the mask had to be taken off because the flesh suppurated beneath it. People had got terrible skin diseases and one or two had died. As a rule, however, the transformation was perfectly successful, and nearly all the converts, as they were called, rejoiced in their Betahood. Security made the Betas smug. They were disapproving to the Failed Alphas and condescending to the Gammas. In fact they had the makings of a caste apart. But there was a flaw in the solidarity of the Betas, a line of demarcation, for the born Betas looked down on the converts, and called them skinflints, safety skins, skintights, skin-deeps, and other opprobrious names. All three grades had catch phrases of their own which they used among themselves to distinguish them from the others. Jael had learned some of them in preparation for her Betahood. "It was all beautiful and beta," for instance, as a term of praise. Gamma would say, "How gloriously gamma!" The Failed Alphas were more chary of using their language. Overheard by lower grades, such expressions as "How absolutely alpha" sometimes produced raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders. The Failed Alphas were not exactly Ishmaels, but they existed on sufferance, and they knew it. Pondering these things, trying to readjust herself to her old ambiguous status, which in her mind she had relinquished, Jael wandered on. Here was a knot of people gathered at the curb, Betas most of them with just a sprinkling of Gammas. (Anyone, even a child, could classify a newcomer at sight.) Jael was naturally sociable; she wanted to join the throng, but hesitated because a Failed Alpha sometimes got a frosty reception. However, curiosity overcame her. They were planting a tree! They were actually planting a tree! This explained the excitement. Two workmen, wearing the unadorned sackcloth of their laboring hours, were holding it tenderly, this strange brown spidery creature of roots, trunk, twigs, and branches; while two more were digging the grave which was inexplicably to give it life. What was it? Where had it come from? Only the Dictator and his Executive, that anonymous band of the Elect, could say. The event must have been advertised on the radio, but when? It suited the Dictator's puckish humor to spring these surprises; all the same, Jael felt the twinge of guilt that every citizen felt when they had failed to inform themselves of the latest procla-mation. Perhaps while she was talking to Judith... Now the crucial moment had come; the act of faith was being performed; the tree was being lowered into the ground. The onlookers craned their necks and those behind, including Ju-dith, shifted their positions to get a better view. The faces of the workmen holding the tree became transfigured; the mys-tical ecstasy that animated them began to spread to the crowd. A deep hush fell and Jael could hear the soft sound of falling earth as it was shoveled back onto the roots of the tree. Long sighing breaths escaped from the spectators. There followed much patting of earth and then--was such a sacrilege really justifiable?--the workmen, still with their intent, closed faces, trampled the place down with their heavy boots. Next, one of them detached himself and fetched a watering can, and with incredible nonchalance directed a shower of water on the base of the tree. The last drops fell; all four men drew away; a shiver of relaxation went through the crowd. Many of them turned and exchanged with their near neighbors smiles of an almost imbecile happiness and delight. Jael, too, essayed a timid smile, but it seemed to her that the responses she re-ceived lacked warmth. Lights were coming out along the streets. For the first time she felt the chill of the March twilight creeping through her sackcloth. To the mixed feelings of the past hours--the alternating resignation, apprehension, elation, guilt--was added a new one: loneliness. She looked about for a class-companion in whom she could confide as easily as the Betas confided in theirs--no introduction needed, just a basic similarity of feature. But there was none. Sadly, with bent head, she turned away; and as she did so there loomed up before her, coming she knew not whence, for he had certainly not been there a moment ago, the figure of an Inspector. His high shining boots, his white breeches, his golden helmet with its nodding plume, and above all the three B's embroidered on the breast of his white tunic, made him look godlike. He stood looking down at her. In silence Jael salaamed three times and waited for him to speak. "Alpha is--?" "Antisocial," replied Jael promptly, surprised and relieved at being asked such an easy question. "You're wrong," said the Inspector. "Think again." Jael stared up at him in dismay. But she took courage from the thought that he must be a kind man: the Inspectors were not obliged to give one a second chance. "Anarchic?" she ventured. The Inspector's smile broadened. "No good. Try again." Familiar as she was with them, every disparaging epithet beginning with A fled from Jael's mind. But the Inspector's smile had deepened, and she brought out, almost pertly: "Awful?" The Inspector shook his head and the plume dipped and flourished, making a half-circle above his handsome face. "Antiquated," he said. "Five shillings, please." Jael fumbled in her handbag and brought out her roll of shillings. Colored purple, the token money was held together like the bus tickets of an earlier day. They were not transferable and each was stamped with her identity number. "Why, you haven't used any!" exclaimed the Inspector admiringly. Sadly, Jael counted out five tickets, and tore them off. "I don't get much opportunity to," she said. "What, a pretty girl like you!" "Inspectors shouldn't talk to Delinquents," said Jael primly, but without much conviction. "No, it's you who mustn't talk to us," replied the Inspector in a lordly manner. "Name, please." "Jael 97." "Address?" "Tophet 518." "Now I know," said the Inspector, with satisfaction. "Now I know," he added in a conversational tone. "I was a Tophet man myself before I was elected. Nice place. Good radio reception. No excuse for this sort of thing." He shook his head reprovingly, making the plume dance. "I was out," said Jael. Gracious as the Inspector was, she could not feel at her ease talking to him. "But what about the loudspeakers?" "There didn't happen to be one where I was," said Jael feebly. She felt wretched. Among the many emotions of the evening exhilaration had been one, but it had worn off, leaving her empty and despondent: and she felt she could hardly bear this extra stroke of bad luck. But the law must be obeyed She handed her fine to the Inspector. But to her astonishment he waved it away. "Alpha is--?" Making a prodigious effort Jael remembered. "Antiquated." "Yes, but you're not," said the Inspector, "and don't forget it. Sweet thoughts of the Dictator." He saluted and strode off into the twilight, and the gleam from his uniform left a glow in Jael's heart long after he was gone.

Chapter Three

THE Dictator had ruled for fifteen years and was not unpopular. The Third World War had eliminated nine-tenths of the human race, and when the end came the twenty million survivors were living underground in the caverns they had excavated before and during the catastrophe. Nobody really believed that it was over, for there had been many false alarms. Deceived by these, reckless and enterprising persons had gone up to explore and not come back. The Governments of each cavern then prockimed that anyone making investigations on his own should be punished with death; the guards at the cavern entrances were doubled and redoubled. Any attempt to reconnoiter the upper element, it was given out, must have official sanction. (Telephonic communication existed between the various national caves and in some cases, though not in many, they were connected by corridors, heavily guarded. These corridors were hardly ever used and it cost a lot to keep them in repair, but such cave countries as possessed them were intensely proud of them.) Perhaps the guards at the entrances were corruptible; at any rate dauntless individuals did manage to slip out and a few of them got back, bearing news which, unobtrusively and judiciously circulated, eventually induced the Governments to send out exploration parties. They were in no hurry to do this because not only had a great many formalities to be gone through, innumerable forms filled out, and special and very expensive rayproof suits manufactured (the original explorers had gone in their ordinary clothes), but by far the greatest proportion of the various surviving people had no wish at all to regain the upper air, or go aloft, as it was called. They were conditioned to the ways of life below, and many had gone through such experiences on the earth's crust that the mere thought of them brought on a nervous seizure. These dissidents brought pressure to bear on their Governments to leave the upper air alone; their own air was plenty good enough, they said; it was sucked down from above and filtered and the temperature and the seasons never varied. Every day was exactly like the last, and this was what they liked. Indeed, the smallest variation in their routine, such as the substitution of a blue food tablet for a pink one (all food was taken in tablet form) had a disastrous effect on their nervous systems. "Daylight is dangerous," was one of the passwords of the cave dwellers; people wandering too near the mouths of their caves had been known to faint at the sight of a reflected sunbeam. Screens were put up to keep out the daylight, and all the cave dwellers lived by artificial light, except the guards, who were furnished with strong spectacles. When it became known, as it did almost simultaneously in all the underground countries, that the surface of the earth was now fit for human habitation, their Governments were faced by a problem more serious than any that had occurred during all the years of their subterranean existence. In each case mass observers reported that the people were divided roughly into two halves--those who wanted to go up and those who preferred to remain below. The second group was largely composed of the younger members of the community, who had been nourished on tales of the horrors of the Third World War and had been conditioned to a life of absolute routine Their whole beings, like their gastric juices, worked by the clock; any interference with their timetable had the effect of a grain of grit on a motor engine; they jammed and seized and let out horrid screams. The Governments, not unnaturally, took the side of the stay-at-homes; the younger generation was in all essentials their creation, their hold on it was complete, and their power depended on identifying them, selves with its interests. Emigration from the caves was for bidden by law under penalty of death. It need hardly be said that by this time scientists had devised ways of making people physically and mentally comfortable of which we, in these unenlightened days, know nothing. These inventions were rigorously applied and for a time there was no more talk, at least no more open talk, of going aloft. But in spite of everything, the longing for it, in many breasts, was not appeased, and in each country arose a leader round whom resistance gathered. These followed each other in quick succession to the grave but others took their places, and do what the authorities would they could not stop a constant leakage through the cave mouths and other bolt holes which sleepless ingenuity either made or discovered. Yet such was the force of organization that in many countries the revolts were stamped out altogether. But in a handful it lingered on and I needn't say that one of these was the English community, some two million souls living beneath the Weald of Kent. The leader who ultimately succeeded in getting the Israelites out of Egypt adopted a new policy and one which baffled the Government. He did not appear; he was a Voice. And such a strange voice, very clear, but over long words it stumbled, though generally it managed to get them out some how. The listeners-in (and everyone was a listener-in: tbe radio and television had largely usurped the place of conversation, and talking, though still taught, was an accomplishment many people dropped when they left school) were puzzled and so was the Government. A price, of course, was laid on the Voice's head, and the capture and immediate liquidation of its owner hourly expected; but hours turned into days and days into weeks and still it went on, preaching the doctrine of the Upper Air, in spite of all attempts to jam it. Needless to say, in caverns so extensive there were many corridors and passages that had escaped the vigilance of the Government Survey: patrols were constantly sent out to explore them, but always without success, until one day, in the middle of the day (though the term had not much meaning, for the divisions of time were purely arbitrary and had no bearing on the position of the sun) the culprit was discovered. He was standing in the Government Square, the place where proclamations were made, in full view, with his microphone, which looked so like a toy that everyone believed it was a mouth organ until he began to talk through it. Then the loudspeakers on all sides blared forth, completely drowning the sound of the speaker's own voice. It was the moment when people were eating their eleven-o'clock pastilles, which were colored violet and had an E engraved in them; the Square was crowded, but everyone, including the police, was so astonished that for several minutes no one lifted a finger to stop the flood of treason pouring out. Just as the speaker had reached the words "an ampler aether, a diviner air" a posse of policemen dashed forward and arrested him. He was a child of five years old. The laugh was against the Government. Even below ground laughter went on, though it was strongly discouraged by authority. People were allowed five minutes a day in which to laugh and get it over, like the interval for coughing which, in earlier days, was sometimes conceded to bronchial subjects at a concert. To encourage them in this, the radio told stories intended to raise a laugh, but these were not, judged by a past standard, really funny. They were either purely nonsensical--attempts to detach the microbe of humor from its context in daily life, jokes in tablet form, like food--or they were scientific howlers, such as saying the earth is flat, though in fact they were much more recondite than this, since the audience possessed a good deal of scientific knowledge, indeed it was almost the only knowledge they did possess. Fortunately for the Government, the infant traitor was apprehended only two minutes before the interval for compulsory indulgence in mirth was due; so the Government had some pretext for pretending that the guffaws which greeted the arrest were really a response to the official witticisms which almost immediately began to pour out. However, the thousands who were present at the scene knew better, and, since humor dies hard, during the remainder of the day and for several days to come the police had to report outbreaks of hysterical and pointless giggling, which only ceased after the strongest measures had been taken. As for the child, he was another problem. The first idea was that he should be publicly beheaded, on the very spot where he had been caught red-handed--in fact, the day and hour of the execution were fixed. But the mass observers reported that there was a strong feeling against such a measure, not only among the articulate members of the population, but also among those who could only speak by signs. The Government, therefore, who paid some attention to whatever public opinion there was, proclaimed that by an act of extreme clemency the sentence would be commuted to one of imprisonment for life. Meanwhile, the child would be subjected to a searching interrogation. It was soon apparent that the child was not politically minded. He could not answer the simplest questions about the Constitution and in other ways was backward for his age. The Investigation Department decided, very reluctantly, that he must be someone else's mouthpiece. But whose? Every known form of truth-finding was applied (and by that time many more were known than we know now), from old-fashioned devices like making the child stand in the corner, or sending him supperless to bed, to ingenious tortures and truth-evacuating drugs. But to no purpose. All the child would say was "The pretty gentleman, he told me." Living so long below ground, and on exiguous though sustaining fare, had not improved the looks of the population; they were as a whole thin and scrawny, with bellies permanently distended by wind. But among them were quite a number to whom the epithet "pretty gentleman" could be applied; and these very naturally shook in their shoes. ( Indeed, it has been said by social historians that the prejudice against good looks which is to some extent the subject of my story dated from that day.) The suspects were rounded up and questioned; but the job was not as simple as that; many of them, seized by sudden modesty, maintained they were not pretty at all and would hate to be called so. "Prove it," they said, and, of course, it was very difficult to prove; they produced witnesses, aestheticians, art critics, and others, to swear they had no claims to good looks and were, in fact, particularly ugly men. They also took pains to look their worst for the interrogation, refraining from shaving, and even from washing. The Government, who liked to grace their proceedings with a show of legality, were nonplussed, and after a mass execution of pretty gentlemen had been threatened, the whole inquiry was discreetly dropped. This was not the signal act of clemency that it was made out to be, for it had occurred to the Investigators that the child, having been brought up almost exclusively by women, was scarcely in a position to know any gentlemen, pretty or otherwise. He was not what was known contemptuously as an "F.C." or Family Child. Families were still permitted but they were very much frowned on, and the majority of children were brought up in crèches of a hundred, fifty of either sex, and cared for (if that be the word) by women chosen by lot for the purpose. Until the age of seven their entourage was exclusively feminine. The little traitor's provenance was soon discovered: he belonged to Kiddykot 81. The Government then began to set about the ten nurses or kiddy-kuddlers, as they were somewhat euphemistically called, but they displayed unexpected firmness. With the political sense that women sometimes have, they divined that the Government was embarrassed, if not actually on the run; one and all they declared that Kiddy (m) 19167 (for each child was allotted a number instead of a name) had never been out of their sight, and could never have been in contact with any pretty gentleman (a contact, indeed, they would have taken special pains to guard him from). To a woman they were loyal to the regime, they said; but if they had to put up with any more of this sort of thing they would strike. Striking was, of course, forbidden, but the idea, if not the fact, of it still existed, and the Government was alarmed. No member of the community would or could do any job, except the job that he or she was trained for; and at the thought of 200,000 children behaving exactly as they liked, without surveillance, the imaginations of the legislators boggled.... So not for the first time women played a decisive part in constitutional history. Then for a time things simmered down; but while the episode was still fresh in men's minds, the crisis boiled up again. Again the Voice was heard, high, piping, clear, not the same voice, it was generally agreed, but speaking the same message. Thrown into a panic, the Government immediately took repressive measures. This time neither pretty gentlemen nor kiddy-kuddlers were spared; their ranks were decimated, the victims being chosen by lot. The reign of terror recalled the worst moments of the War. By no means all the deaths were caused by Government action; the two parties inflicted wholesale massacres on each other, and many men with no particular political convictions took advantage of the general disorder to go about wounding and murdering. Still the voice fluted on; its demand for fresh air and sunlight could be beard above the rattle of machine guns and the volleys of firing squads. The Government retired to their most secret bombproof, gasproof, rayproof, germproof shelter, and there it was that they ordered the Slaughter of the Innocents which brought the dispensation to an end. For hardly had the shots rung out and the toddlers toppled over than the second child appeared. No shouts of laughter greeted him, only aghast faces and a horrified, despairing silence. He said nothing, but beckoned and slowly walked away; and by ones and twos people began to follow him until it seemed the whole crowd was on the move. Nobody tried to stop them as they passed down the long corridors, and when they came to the mouth of the cave the guards stood up and saluted them. So they went out into the daylight, about a million in all, half the populaton of the English underworld.