Facial Justice (5 page)

Chapter Eight

JAEL was in too much pain to think, but between the bouts she dimly wondered whether the darkness meant she had been blinded. Or could it be the bodies pressing on her, crushing her face, where the pain was worst, and nearly stifling her? When she tried to move, the pains increased, when she lay still she was being suffocated-- "I'll get you out of this," she heard a voice say. But did it speak to her? And how could she be rescued? she asked herself, before she fainted. Then, later, was she stationary or was she moving? Was she on the earth or in the sky? Was she awake or dreaming? The pain seemed to have retreated to some distance from her; she knew it was there, she could almost touch it, a dull, red circle around her, but she could not feel it. The voice said, "We shan't be long now." Not long? Not long? She had forgotten about time; there was nothing, where she was, to count the minutes by. Could they last forever! He seemed to be bending over her, she did not merely feel him as a presence that his voice had conjured up, she could see him; it was as though the gleams and flashes that came from him, sometimes uniting into a general radiance, had given her back her sight. That nodding plume! Of course he wasn't really wearing armor: it was the gold and silver the Inspectors had about them, the badges of their rank, which caught the light and shone reflected in his eyes. All the light there was seemed to come from him. "Why am I so comfortable?" she asked him stupidly. "Because I've seen to that. Now don't be anxious; I've got you where I want you!" "But Where's that?" "Don't ask. It's the way that we Inspectors travel. You oughtn't to be here, really." "Shall I have to pay a fine?" "You're paying it now." Had he kissed her? She thought she felt the touch of his lips on hers, but she wasn't sure: what had happened and was happening and might happen all seemed to run together. Of course she had had an accident.... But it was so strange to be alone with him. Joab excepted, she hadn't been alone with anybody much. Any kind of pairing off was discouraged: even married couples weren't supposed to segregate themselves, unless they had to. "Do I look very awful?" she asked. "I know my face is bleeding." "No, you look sweet." "Shall I have a frightful scar? I gave myself one once, you know, a little one, but I ought not to tell you that. Perhaps this is a punishment." "Well, you won't be a Failed Alpha now, if that's a consolation." Jael's heart turned over. "What shall I be?" "I don't know, but a lot lower in the beauty scale." It was like a sentence passed on her. For a moment Jael felt the pure sense of loss, unalloyed by any more bearable emotion, that only comes in dreams. She almost wished that the encircling ring of pain would close in on her and crush her. Miserably she murmured: "But you won't like me, then." "I shall like you more than ever." "Why?" she asked, trying to overcome disbelief. "Because you'll be more yourself," he told her tenderly. "I liked the little scar, why not the big one? I shall call you scarface." She became aware of an exquisite sensation that surely must be motion, a gliding like the flight of a swallow. Presently she asked, "What has happened to the others?" "The others?" he repeated. "I don't know what has happened to the others. Someone will have been detailed to look after them, I expect." "Were many hurt?" "Oh, quite a few." "Worse than... worse than me?" "Much worse. Some of them are dead." "But how did you--?" "Spot you, were you going to say? Well, I'd been keeping an eye on you." "But why?" "Perhaps just to collect a fine. You slipped up once before, you may remember." Jael did remember. "How kind of you," she said. "Oh, not at all. That's what we're for, among other things." "What other things?" "That would be telling." "But shouldn't you be looking after someone else?" "Yes, all the Jaels are my province." "I thought so," Jael said. "To you I'm only a human unit, am I? Do you really distinguish between us?" "I'm not supposed to, but I can do what I like." "Do what you like?" said Jael aghast. It sounded blasphemous to her. "But doesn't the Dictator--?" "Darling Dictator." "Ah, even you say that. Darling Dictator," repeated Jael devoutly. "But doesn't he mind if you--" "Use my discretion? No, that's what we're for." "I don't feel I ought to--" "Monopolize me? That's for me to say. Now just relax." Luxuriously she stretched her limbs. How could the sky be like a bed? How could it yield to her and yet support her? How could the act of living be so effortless? How above all could the pressure of time have been removed? She had the strangest feeling about Time; she seemed to be lost in it, almost without location; as if it was coming to meet her, instead of her going to meet it. "When shall we be there?" she asked. " 'There'?" "Well, we must be going somewhere." "Why?" "But isn't one always?" "Not necessarily," he said. "But we _are__ going somewhere, as a matter of fact." "Is it a nice place?" "If I can make it so." She detected the reservation in his voice. "Am I going to be punished?" "No more than you deserve, I hope." "Hasn't the D. D. told you?" "We only get general orders." Jael thought about this. "Have you ever seen him?" she asked, boldly. "Yes, once, when I was commissioned." "What is he like?" "Quite ordinary-looking. But we only see him in a mirror, so we're not quite sure if it's him." "A sort of portrait?" "Well, I suppose the reflection comes from somewhere." "Is he very angry with us for--" "For looking upward? Time will show." "But you are not?" "Officially I am, of course. But, as I said, I make distinctions." He had twice told her this. "When shall we be there?" she murmured. "Oh, any time. Now if you like... or, or later." "Please let it be later." Were they going forward or back, soaring, hovering, or sinking? Whatever the movement was it eased, as movement often does, the surface tension of her mind; and she wondered: Am I now where I wanted to be, when we were dancing round the tower, earthbound? Does it mean, because I no longer feel the aspiration I felt then, can't even conceive it, that it has been fulfilled in this element, wherever or whatever it is? But, except for the gleams and flashes, the darkness around her was absolute; none of her senses told her where she was. Nor did she want to know; for the first time in her life her physical whereabouts was a matter of indifference to her. Have I died? she thought. Yes, to myself I have, but my being is somehow linked to this other's. His arms are not about me; I can't define or delimit his nearness; I'm not even sure that he is touching me. All I have is his presence, but it's all I want to have. Suddenly she knew the pain was drawing nearer; she could feel it as well as see it; her head began to throb; the dampness on her cheek was running into her mouth--she could taste blood, and she recalled with a stab of terror what this would mean to her as a woman--a scarred lopsided woman whom people would turn away from just as they had once turned toward her. At a lower level than her vanity her whole conception of herself was shaken; in company or alone she must revise her habitual estimate of herself, prepare, as an old woman does, for being disregarded, for not counting, for being devalued, not worth her face value. In an access of terror she cried, "Can you see me?" "Why, yes," he said. "I can't see you, not properly." "Some little trouble with the optic nerve." "Then am I blind?" "Of course not." "But you can see me?" "What else do you suppose I'm looking at?" "I don't know. But do you like what you're looking at?" she almost shouted. "Yes, or else I shouldn't." "Do you mean that?" "Has all my behavior," he asked, "been quite inexplicable to you? Do you suppose I winkled you out of that damned coach by chance? I told you I've had my eye on you, ever since--" "Yes, but I'm not the same now," Jael cried. "How not the same?" "I'm--I'm disfigured. I'm cut, horribly cut. I know I am." Her voice sank; she could hardly bring herself to say the words: she was branding herself with her own shame, trying, by self-mortification, to forestall his criticism of her. "My face--" He laughed, and she was bitterly offended. "Well, what about your face?" he said. For a moment she was too deeply hurt to answer; then she said, "How can you ask?" "But it's _your__ face I like!" he protested. "After all, it's still your face--your dear face, if I may say so, and that's all I care about." At last she was convinced, but with the overwhelming happiness of that certitude the pain drew nearer and began to clutch at her. It reminded her of her body and her body reminded her of him--not simply as a presence, but as a man. Where was he? She stretched out her arms toward the void; they touched him and his arms encircled her. Their steady pressure added to the pain; made it excruciating but made it bliss. She closed her eyes against the darkness, feeling she could see better so, see in her own mind the picture that was denied her by the darkness. "We're nearly there," he said. She didn't know what he meant, but in this rapture of the night she swooned away.

Chapter Nine

THE screens had been taken away, and Jael was lying in a bed like all the other beds. The pattern of a hospital ward had not changed with the other changes; anyone from the not too distant past would have recognized it without having to rub his eyes. Indeed, the Dictator had said more than once that surviving humanity's living quarters should aspire more and more to the condition of "You are all delinquents, and all delinquents are invalids," as he had said. Except in the case of some infectious diseases, private wards were not allowed. One of the advantages of the New Dispensation was that people were not ill so often as they used to be. The hardships of war and underground life had killed off many of the weaklings; such as survived were hardier than their forebears. But the chief reason why the hospitals were never crowded was the lack of accidents. Accidents there were, for accidents will happen; but the occasions for them had been greatly reduced. For instance, since nearly everyone lived on the ground floor nobody could fall downstairs; as the hymn, frequently sung and quoted, said:  He that is down can fear no fall,  He that is low, no pride. Industrial accidents were few, partly because industries were few, and those there were involved the use of little machinery. The machines the Inspectors used--and some said they were mostly made of immaterial substances, by-products of thought--were constructed behind walls and gates with sentries mounting guard; the sight of them gave one goose flesh; but curiosity had reached such a low ebb, thanks to the daily dose of sedatives, that hardly anyone wondered what went on inside them, or would have understood it if they had. But the main reason why accidents were scarce was, of course, the scarcity of motor cars. Some maintained that the Dictator lagged behind public opinion; others that he was always a move ahead of it. His mind was very devious. In some quarters it was even said that he invented the jokes against himself which went the rounds, and that he designed the cartoons, some of them quite savage, that appeared in the papers; but no one really knew. It was generally thought that he believed in a doctrine of safety valves as a cure for unrest. He had his ear to the ground, he knew when discontent was brewing. The motor coaches were a safety valve, designed to allow the population to let off steam. But the pressure was still too high; the thirst for violence had not been slaked. Hence the accident; the accident had been a kind of purge. Jael's first visitor was her brother. He said, "Well, Jael, how are you?" "I'm all right," said Jael. "My face feels a bit stiff, though." She tried to smile. "It's bound to be," he said, "it's bound to be." He looked hard at her. "Am I very changed?" she asked with an effort. "You see, they don't give us looking glasses here... not until later. You would have recognized me, wouldn't you?" "I'm not sure I should have," said Joab with devastating truthfulness. "The nurse brought me in and when I saw your card and index number over the bed I recognized you at once. I don't look at people much." "I know, I know," said Jael, and tears came into her eyes. "But after all, I am your sister, and I thought--" "You think too much about appearances," said Joab, not unkindly. "About your own appearance, I mean. You look nice, you really do." At that she felt her face brightening. Oh, how stiff it was. "But it's what you feel that really matters." "How can I tell how I feel till I know how I look?" moaned Jael, and then seeing a shadow cross her brother's face she added, "Yes, I feel all right. It hurts me to move, though." "You were very foolish," broke out Joab, with the air of one who had wanted to say this for some time but had for reasons of delicacy refrained. "You might have been killed, and then where should I have been?" "You could easily have found another secretary," said Jael. "It isn't only that, and I'm surprised that you should say so--surprised and hurt. I'm as fond of you as one human unit can or ought to be of another. Believe me, I should miss you as well as your typing. You are necessary to me--more necessary than I am to you, I dare say. To lose you would quite upset the rhythm of my life. Can I say more than that?" "No, indeed," said Jael humbly, for it was perpetually being dinned into them that life consisted of a pattern and a rhythm which must not be disturbed. "I should have... I should have broken the chain. I've always been a weak link, I suppose; but what else can a Failed Alpha be? It's different for men, men Failed Alphas don't have the disabilities that we have; they aren't discriminated against, or hardly at all. That's where the Dictator shows his sex solidarity." "You mustn't say that, even in fun. Darling Dictator." "Darling Dictator," repeated Jael, halfheartedly. "Female human units" went on Joab, "are seventy-seven and one-half per cent more liable to personal vanity than we are." "I know men say that, but I don't believe it," said Jael, rebelliously. "Men may not be as vain as women are, but they're much more conceited." "Conceit is A. S., of course, but vanity is nine times more disruptive. Vanity is the incubator of Envy--" The word slipped out. Joab turned away and performed a token spit in the direction of the beds. To comply with the regulations Jael also screwed her mouth up, but the effort hurt her, and the spit was hardly audible. When they were face to face again, Joab said: "Anyhow you are safe, and that's the great thing. My present secretary, though a good Beta girl, is not efficient and shows distressing signs of--" "What?" asked Jael. "Of... of developing feelings for me which are utterly irrelevant and redundant. It happens in about fifty-one per cent of cases where a woman secretary is employed. Thank goodness you were never fond of me--" "Well, not in that way," Jael said. Joab looked shocked. "That is one reason why I shall be glad to have you back. If I have occasion to criticize your work you don't burst into tears." "When shall I be back?" Perversely, tears pricked Jael's eyelids; perhaps it was suggestion. "You were judged curable in thirty days. There are nine and a half days still to go. But, of course, there is also the question of punitive action--" Jael's heart missed a beat. "But what I did wasn't illegal," she said with spirit. "We were officially allowed to make the expedition." "I agree, it was a marginal action, not a true deviation, and as such would have been overlooked. But you were, I gather, also the ringleader in an act that _was__ illegal. Ringleader in the literal sense. You incited some weaker units to form a ring about that totem tower, that phallic emblem from the bad old days, and... and... look upward. Twenty-three people had to be treated for stiff neck afterward: twenty-three. The Dictator was merciful. That was their only punishment But you--you _seduced__ them." "I didn't," cried Jael indignantly. "I--" "You knew the rule: 'Look at your own height--there is nothing higher.' Why did you disobey?" "Because I felt like it." Joab was horrified. "But only Inspectors can do what they feel like. Except in the abstract, as a dimension, which scientists and others have to take into account--it sometimes comes into my own work, I regret to say--height must be regarded as inadmissible, if not nonexistent." "What will they do to me?" asked Jael, trembling. "No one knows yet. But the Dictator is merciful and I have put in a plea for you." "Thank you," said Jael, humbly. Joab, whose first experience this was of hospital visiting, found his stock of conversation drying up. He fidgeted and began to look about him. "That's rather a measly flower they've given you," he said, bending over the blue cineraria on Jael's bedside table. "It looks shop-soiled to me. They oughtn't to have fobbed you off with this." He put on his spectacles and his glance traveled round the ward, noting the blue plastic cinerarias that adorned each bedside table. "Look, they're as fresh as paint," he said, "and all of them the latest model, too, not a leaf nor a petal different, absolutely identical, all but this one, this seedy-looking thing. It isn't fair, whatever you may have done, Jael, that you should be florally underprivileged. The Dictator himself has said: 'A flower must never be a stigma.' I shall complain about it." He looked round for someone to complain to. "Oh, don't do that," cried Jael. "It does quite well for me. I'm used to it now--I shouldn't want another." "You ought to want another," Joab grumbled. "They wouldn't let you keep this one if it was prettier than the others. I shall certainly speak about it." "Please don't," cried Jael, getting more agitated and afraid that Joab would notice, though he didn't seem to. "We're only allowed seven complaints a week each, and I've used mine up," she lied. "You'll get me into trouble if you say anything." "All right," said Joab, unwillingly. "But I don't like to see you victimized, it's against the regulations and you must be suffering tortures from Bad E." He frowned portentously. "Am I allowed to kiss you?" "Ask the Sister," Jael said. The Sister happened to be passing by. She looked at Jael doubtfully. "No, better not. At this stage, any undue excitement--" "I shouldn't excite her," Joab protested. "I'm her brother." "A kiss inflames the ego," said the Sister. "We are trying to keep Jael's ego down, aren't we, Jael? Kisses are for later on." "Oh," said Joab, "of course, in that case!" He retreated, trying not to show relief at being let off an endearment that did not suit his temperament. "So long, my... my... my dear. Kind thoughts of the Dictator." "Kind thoughts of the Dictator," Jael repeated. Jael didn't know where the flower came from, but she had a shrewd suspicion, which sometimes swelled into certainty and sometimes dwindled to the feeblest hope. Coming around, it was the first thing she saw, but she didn't look at it specially; it was just another of the flowers that all the patients had. She didn't even ask its name. One day her neighbor in the next bed said to her, "That flower of yours looks rather droopy, Jael. Why don't you give it some water?" and they both laughed at the idea of watering a plastic flower. But just for fun Jael did; and to her astonishment the flower revived. Its recovery aroused no comment, for it still looked sicklier than its fellows; but Jael had seen the reawakening life in it, and marveled. How could it be alive? And yet it must be--the only flower in all the ward that was. Surreptitiously she tended it; under cover of darkness she caressed its leaves, and felt something pass from it to her. But how had she come by it? Who had given it to her? Only one person could have. "But don't you _know__ who sent it?" she would ask the Sister, in those early days. "No, dear, we don't. A man brought it, an ordinary human unit, Gamma or Gamma plus at most, he was--if you look at men that way." "But who _told__ him to bring it?" "Sheaves of forms came with it, all signed and countersigned. But not the original order; that's always given by word of mouth." If he had sent it, surely he would come himself? The memory of her flight with him made all other experiences savorless; she lived for their next meeting. But was it real or had she dreamed it? She couldn't be sure; all she could be sure of was the bliss that overtook her whenever she looked at the flower. The flower was a proof that it hadn't been a dream. "How did I get here?" she asked the Sister. "Did I come with the others?" "Well, not exactly. You came first, as a matter of fact." "You mean I had priority?" "Well, only in time. Someone has to be first. There is no other priority." "Of course not," Jael said. "And yet--" "You came a good half-hour before the others," volunteered the Sister. "You came before we heard about the accident." That must have been his doing... sooner or later he would come again. Her next visitor was Judith.