Facial Justice (11 page)

as good as told her so. She would never see him again, never. Darling Dictator! The little mirror was lying on the bed, face downward, close to her hand. She snatched it up, flung it on the floor, heard the crash but didn't see the splinters, and ran crying down the ward. The Sister called after her, "Ninety-seven, 97, you've forgotten something." "I don't care," she sobbed, but all the same she stopped. "Your flower! You left it by your bed." Dazed, Jael walked slowly back between the rows of beds. One or two of the patients stared at her curiously, as if she was someone they hadn't seen before, but most of them were too intent on their television sets to have noticed her private drama. Picking her way through the broken glass glittering by her bedside, she reached the cineraria. Someone had wrapped the flower pot in a swathe of paper, which somehow comforted her. Putting it under her arm, she felt she still had something left to face the world with. PART II  Chapter Sixteen THE CONSPIRATORS did not advertise the fact that they were such. They called themselves the Dancing Class. They met in a hollow in the ground, a mile or so from the town, and came not in a bunch but singly, with carefree looks as though to take an airing; and sometimes they would break off their deliberations and perform an impromptu ballet, which started idyllically but ended with a murder. They used no violence; sometimes their fluttering fingers hardly touched the victim; yet more than once he or she had fallen into a faint and taken some minutes to come around. The Assassin's Dance was Jael's idea; it would make killing easier, she said. But this time Jael was absent. "Shall we wait for her?" said one of the three men. "She's our secretary," said a woman, a Beta like the other two. "What does the Chairman think?" The Chairman, a man of medium height, with dark eyes, a sallow face and a broad jaw, answered: "Well, we don't keep any records. We agreed it was too risky. "What's the time?" "Ten minutes past eleven," someone said. "Let's give her another five minutes," said the Chairman. "She's not been late before. She's generally the first." "Well, the whole thing was her idea," observed one of the Betas. Without a trained eye, or unless one knew their voices, it was difficult to tell them apart. "No, that's not true," the other said. "We all thought of it together--I mean, at the same moment." "You shouldn't say that, even if it was so," one of the men remarked. "You're talking like a Beta. It's one of the things we've got to fight against--the Beta consciousness." "It's easier for you," the woman retorted. "You have your own faces." Compared with the women, the three men did look extraordinarily unalike, almost as if each belonged to a different species. "Never mind," the man said. "When we've done the job, we'll have every one of you looking absolutely Alpha." "When we've done the job," the woman said. "When we've done the job... We've been at it for six weeks, and we're no nearer now than when we started." "Order, order," said the Chairman. "I'm all in favor of it," the woman said. "I want it just as much as 97 does, though I don't throw my weight about like she does. How she loves the sound of her own voice!" "Now, now," the Chairman said. "This sort of talk won't get us anywhere." "What will get us anywhere?" one of the men said. "We're in the dark, we haven't a clue. When the meeting starts I'm going to move that we drop the whole confounded business." Both the women made sounds of violent protest, and one of them spluttered: "I knew that one of you was going to say that! It's all sex solidarity. You haven't been Betafied, that's why you have a soft spot for the Dictator--" "Darling Dictator," began someone. "And for goodness sake, man, don't say that." When the breeze had died down one of the men said: "After all, you weren't obliged to accept Betafication--it's only compulsory for Failed Alphas. You were just following the fashion, as most women do. And you can still be as ugly as you like--Gammas aren't interfered with, unless they want to be." "That's to come." "Well, it hasn't yet." "No... Are you really running out, Ehud 43? Traitor isn't a nice word, you know. Why did you bother to join, if--" "Well, for the principle of the thing--we did feel that standardization was going too far. And also because some of us, quite a lot of us in point of fact, don't really _like__ Beta women." "Thank you." "Don't take it personally. But all those cartoons, you know, about chaps finding themselves with the wrong women--" "You needn't be coarse." "They're in all the papers. 'My darling Jezebel 908! Gracious Dictator, it's Jezebel 909! Hop out of bed, my girl, we've made a muddle and you've come to the wrong place.' " "It isn't our fault if there were more men murderers than women." "No, but as I said, it is confusing, and we don't altogether like it. Every man has his type, of course--" "I wouldn't know about that." "But the Beta type doesn't suit every man, if you understand me." "Perfectly." Another man said, "When they made the blueprints for the type, they consulted the psychiatrists, who got together a representative body of men, a panel of twelve it was, I think, a sort of cross section of masculine susceptibility, if you follow me--" "You're not hard to follow." "And watched their reactions." "And watched their reactions?" "You know what I mean, got some idea of their responses." "It sounds rather cold-blooded," said a woman, trying to wrinkle her nose, though Beta noses didn't wrinkle easily. "In some cases it was, but not in all, I can assure you. Then they made certain modifications in the prints designed to raise... to rouse... desire, and in the end the proofs were passed, with only three dissentients." "I didn't know that men agreed about such things," a woman said. "They are even more sheep-like than I thought." "In the old days, I'm told, when there were film stars, the men were _quite__ unanimous." "Yes, but presumably those women were all Alphas. Now those of us with claims to looks are policewomen and Misses. Uniforms suit men, they don't suit women." "Not all men would agree with you." "Now then, now then," the Chairman said. "The immediate question is: shall we wait for 97?" "She's probably arranging her veil." "Her veil?" "Yes, didn't you know she'd taken the veil?" "But-is it legal?" "There's no law against it. She's so ashamed of being a Beta that she can't bear the sight of herself, she says." "Since when has she worn it?" "Oh, not long. It's been growing on her." "The veil has?" "No, the habit." "Does she wear the veil indoors?" "I fancy so. In bed, probably. She'd like us all to wear it." "Does she think it makes her more attractive?" "I don't think she worries about that. She's so possessed by her idea of getting rid of the Dictator." "It will never be more than an idea, if you ask me." "I think," the Chairman said, "we'd better start now. I'm sure that 97 would wish us to. Let me see: you've all got the agenda?" "I've forgotten mine," one of the men said. "But I can share with 1313." "Then let's begin," the Chairman said. "The first item is to summarize the progress made so far." There was a long pause. The Chairman looked hopefully from face to face, but nobody spoke. "Are we any nearer to finding out who the Voice belongs to?" he asked. "The Dictator, presumably," someone said. "He might have a mouthpiece," said the Chairman. "That would only make our task more difficult." "I suppose so. He might be any of us three." "Except that his voice isn't like any of ours," said one of the men. "No, none of us has got a golden voice. Do any of you know someone with a voice like his?" They shook their heads. "Need it be anybody?" asked one of the women. "Many people say that it's a spirit. They say that only a spirit could know all the Dictator knows." The Chairman sighed. "If it's a spirit--The trouble is, you know, that except for ourselves, nobody _wants__ to know who the Dictator is. They've lost all curiosity. They take him for granted. I wouldn't mind betting that ninety-nine out of a hundred people think of him as a Voice." "A spirit, in fact." "Nothing as definite as that, something more like the wind when you can hear it." They listened to the wind moaning across the fen. One of the women shivered. "It does seem a hopeless business," she blurted out. "Now, now," the Chairman said. "We're still at item one, and we've got six on the agenda. Are we all agreed that we have no progress to report?" While he was looking interrogatively from face to face, the latecomer arrived. For some of those who saw her Jael needed, as she needs for us, an introduction. Indeed to us she is a greater stranger than she was to them; for since her hospital days her figure seems to have grown tighter and trimmer, her walk and all her movements more decided, and then, of course, there is the veil. Quite a short veil, hardly reaching farther down than the tip of her Beta nose; with a wide mesh and a few spots on it: not so much a disguise as a challenge to recognition. In any case, we shouldn't have recognized her, for what we can see of it is not Jael's face, or the face of anyone remotely like her: it is someone else's face, a face you wouldn't look at twice, certainly a face that no patient and delinquent would look at twice, for it is exactly like the faces of four-fifths of the other women: a face you take for granted. The remaining fifth, the Gammas, are plain, if not ugly, by comparison; one looks at them with tolerance, of course, but with the same kind of irritation one feels for people who have not made the best of themselves. One would have passed Jael in the street without noticing her, as one passes a lamp post or a letter box; they differ from each other, perhaps, in detail; but one knows them by their function, not by anything particular in their appearance. Some letter boxes and some lamp posts, from their context, stand out more than others; Jael would not have stood out, but now she does, by reason of her veil. Behind the veil her eyes, the only part of her face which she can call her own, gleam darkly with a fanatical fire; but they, too, are new eyes, they have lost their gentle, deprecating look, their sympathy and softness. They seem to be used for thinking with, not seeing; but what thoughts are going on behind them it would be hard to say. The others rose when she joined them, even the Chairman rose, a compliment seldom paid by members of a Committee to a latecomer. But Jael's dedicated look seemed to demand this sign of deference. When she was seated on the ground, the Chairman said: "Excuse us for beginning, 97. Time presses and some of us have other engagements--" "Other engagements?" repeated Jael. Her voice had altered, too; it was deeper, and no longer reflected the changes of her mood; it was hard, dry, and monotonous. "Yes," she said, her veil swinging a little as it brushed, so to speak (for each had the feeling that it had come very close to them), the faces of her fellow conspirators, "I suppose you have other engagements. I have only one." "You were a little late for it," said the Chairman, gently. "I was. I am sorry. I apologize," said Jael, all in one level breath. "But I was working for us and have found out something." "And may we know what it is?" the Chairman asked. "Of course," said Jael almost scornfully. "We pool our information, don't we? We have no secrets from each other, have we?" "And may we know the source?" the Chairman asked. Jael hesitated. Her complexion kept its color, for Betas could not blush; but at the roots of her hair above her veil a pinkish tinge began to spread. "It was Wainewright 913," she told them. "Dr. Wainewright." "The plastic surgeon who looked after you in hospital?" asked one of the women. "Yes." "The one who Betafied you?" "Yes." "The one you... er... said you didn't like?" "Yes." "I don't think 97's personal affairs are our concern," the Chairman interrupted. "But I have always understood," said one of the women, without looking directly at Jael, "that Dr. Wainewright was a particularly convinced supporter of the regime." "He is," said Jael. "Then how did you--" "I made him talk," said Jael. Her tone discouraged further comment and the Chairman, eyeing the agenda, said, "We had been discussing the first item, 97, when you came. You have it before you: to summarize our progress until now. We did not... er... find much progress to report. I mean, in our attempts to establish the identity, whereabouts, or even the existence of the... the Dictator. No, no, please don't darling him." (somebody was always slipping up.) "We had in fact almost decided that no progress whatever had been made. Now I will ask you, 97, to give us your report." Jael threw her head back, so that for a moment the veil swung clear of her eyes. "I can tell you this," she said. "The Dictator _does__ exist." For some time no one spoke. At last the Chairman said, in his rather courtly way: "I think it's time we had a dance, Jael. Will you be the assassin?" Chapter Seventeen ON leaving the hospital Jael had tried to resume her pre-accident life. Her work with Joab, and the various sedative entertainments and amusements that the New State offered: she threw herself into them, hoping to find an outlet for the feelings that were surging in her, feelings that made her strange to herself. Her instinctive resolve, on discovering that her outside had been altered, was to remain, inwardly, exactly her old self. She tried to reproduce the pattern and routine of her Failed Alpha days; to do things at the same time as she used to do them, think the same thoughts and say the same things. "I won't let myself be different," she kept telling herself, "I won't! To repeat herself became almost a religion with her; the smallest deviation from her remembered routine she tried to curb; she walked to and from work on the same side of the pavement, she even tried to make her footmarks tally. These efforts to recover her lost self were a great strain, for all the time, partly unknown to her, she was developing a new personality quite unlike her old one. Sometimes in her attempts to force herself into the old grooves she felt herself going physically rigid. Still, she persisted, imagining she was giving other people the same impression of the old Jael that she was giving herself, when one day Joab surprised her by saying: "Do you know what everyone's been telling me about you?" "No," said Jael, surprised again, for people seldom gossiped with her brother, and still more seldom did he retail what they said. "They've been saying how much you have changed." "Changed?" repeated Jael, and the word stabbed her as if it had been a charge of disloyalty or even treason. "I know my face has changed, I can't help that, but I thought that I myself--" "It's the change in you yourself that people notice," Joab said, "much more than the