Short Fiction · The Beautiful People (2/2)

“Daddy said that real beauty is only skin deep. He said a lot of things like that and when I read the books I felt the same way. I guess I don’t want to look like everybody else, that’s all.” No, that’s not it. Not at all it.

“That man had too much to do with you. You’ll notice that he had his Transformation, though!”

“But he was sorry. He told me that if he had it to do over again, he’d never do it. He said for me to be stronger than he was.”

“Well, I won’t have it. You’re not going to get away with this, young lady. After all, I am your mother.”

A bulb flickered in the bathroom and Mrs. Cuberle walked uncertainly to the cabinet. She took out a little cardboard box.

“Time for lunch.”

Mary nodded. That was another thing the books talked about, which the tapes did not. Lunch seemed to be something special long ago, or at least different. The books talked of strange ways of putting a load of things into the mouth and chewing these things. Enjoying them. Strange and somehow wonderful.

“And you’d better get ready for work.”

“Yes, Mother.”

The office was quiet and without shadows. The walls gave off a steady luminescence, distributed the light evenly upon all the desks and tables. And it was neither hot nor cold.

Mary held the ruler firmly and allowed the pen to travel down the metal edge effortlessly. The new black lines were small and accurate. She tipped her head, compared the notes beside her to the plan she was working on. She noticed the beautiful people looking at her more furtively than before, and she wondered about this as she made her lines.

A tall man rose from his desk in the rear of the office and walked down the aisle to Mary’s table. He surveyed her work, allowing his eyes to travel cautiously from her face to the draft.

Mary looked around.

“Nice job,” said the man.

“Thank you, Mr. Willmes.”

“Dralich shouldn’t have anything to complain about. That crane should hold the whole damn city.”

“It’s very good alloy, sir.”

“Yeah. Say, kid, you got a minute?”

“Yes sir.”

“Let’s go into Mullinson’s office.”

The big handsome man led the way into a small cubbyhole of a room. He motioned to a chair and sat on the edge of one desk.

“Kid, I never was one to beat around the bush. Somebody called in little while ago, gave me some crazy story about you not wanting the Transformation.”

Mary said “Oh.” Daddy had said it would have to happen, some day. This must be what he meant.

“I would’ve told them they were way off the beam, but I wanted to talk to you first, get it straight.”

“Well, sir, it’s true. I don’t. I want to stay this way.”

The man looked at Mary and then coughed, embarrassedly.

“What the hell⁠—excuse me, kid, but⁠—I don’t exactly get it. You, uh, you saw the psychiatrist?”

“Yes sir. I’m not insane. Dr. Hortel can tell you.”

“I didn’t mean anything like that. Well⁠—” the man laughed nervously. “I don’t know what to say. You’re still a cub, but you do swell work. Lot of good results, lots of comments from the stations. But, Mr. Poole won’t like it.”

“I know. I know what you mean, Mr. Willmes. But nothing can change my mind. I want to stay this way and that’s all there is to it.”

“But⁠—you’ll get old before you’re half through life.”

Yes, she would. Old, like the Elders, wrinkled and brittle, unable to move right. Old. “It’s hard to make you understand. But I don’t see why it should make any difference.”

“Don’t go getting me wrong, now. It’s not me, but, you know, I don’t own Interplan. I just work here. Mr. Poole likes things running smooth and it’s my job to carry it out. And soon as everybody finds out, things wouldn’t run smooth. There’ll be a big stink. The dames will start asking questions and talk.”

“Will you accept my resignation, then, Mr. Willmes?”

“Sure you won’t change your mind?”

“No sir. I decided that a long time ago. And I’m sorry now that I told Mother or anyone else. No sir, I won’t change my mind.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Mary. You been doing awful swell work. Couple of years you could be centralled on one of the asteroids, the way you been working. But if you should change your mind, there’ll always be a job for you here.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No hard feelings?”

“No hard feelings.”

“Okay then. You’ve got till March. And between you and me, I hope by then you’ve decided the other way.”

Mary walked back down the aisle, past the rows of desks. Past the men and women. The handsome, model men and the beautiful, perfect women, perfect, all perfect, all looking alike. Looking exactly alike.

She sat down again and took up her ruler and pen.

Mary stepped into the elevator and descended several hundred feet. At the Second Level she pressed a button and the elevator stopped. The doors opened with another button and the doors to her Unit with still another.

Mrs. Cuberle sat on the floor by the TV, disconsolate and red-eyed. Her blond hair had come slightly askew and a few strands hung over her forehead. “You don’t need to tell me. No one will hire you.”

Mary sat beside her mother. “If you only hadn’t told Mr. Willmes in the first place⁠—”

“Well, I thought he could beat a little sense into you.”

The sounds from the TV grew louder. Mrs. Cuberle changed channels and finally turned it off.

“What did you do today, Mother?” Mary smiled.

“Do? What can I do, now? Nobody will even come over! I told you what would happen.”

“Mother!”

“They say you should be in the Circuses.”

Mary went into another room. Mrs. Cuberle followed. “How are we going to live? Where does the money come from now? Just because you’re stubborn on this crazy idea. Crazy crazy crazy! Can I support both of us? They’ll be firing me, next!”

“Why is this happening?”

“Because of you, that’s why. Nobody else on this planet has ever refused the Transformation. But you turn it down. You want to be ugly!”

Mary put her arms about her mother’s shoulders. “I wish I could explain, I’ve tried so hard to. It isn’t that I want to bother anyone, or that Daddy wanted me to. I just don’t want the Transformation.”

Mrs. Cuberle reached into the pockets of her blouse and got a purple pill. She swallowed the pill. When the letter dropped from the chute, Mrs. Cuberle ran to snatch it up. She read it once, silently, then smiled.

“Oh, I was afraid they wouldn’t answer. But we’ll see about this now!”

She gave the letter to Mary.

In re. your letter of Dec. 3 36. We have carefully examined your complaint and consider that it requires stringent measures. Quite frankly, the possibility of such a complaint has never occurred to this Dept. and we therefore cannot make positive directives at the moment.

However, due to the unusual qualities of the matter, we have arranged an audience at Centraldome, Eighth Level, Sixteenth Unit, Jan. 3 37, 23 sharp. Dr. Elph Hortel has been instructed to attend. You will bring the subject in question.

Mary let the paper flutter to the floor. She walked quietly to the elevator and set it for Level III. When the elevator stopped, she ran from it, crying, into her room.

She thought and remembered and tried to sort out and put together. Daddy had said it, Grandpa had, the books did. Yes, the books did.

She read until her eyes burned and her eyes burned until she could read no more. Then Mary went to sleep, softly and without realizing it, for the first time.

But the sleep was not peaceful.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the young-looking, well groomed man, “this problem does not resolve easily. Dr. Hortel here, testifies that Mary Cuberle is definitely not insane. Drs. Monagh, Prinn and Fedders all verify this judgment. Dr. Prinn asserts that the human organism is no longer so constructed as to create and sustain such an attitude through deliberate falsehood. Further, there is positively nothing in the structure of Mary Cuberle which might suggest difficulties in Transformation. There is evidence for all these statements. And yet we are faced with this refusal. What, may I ask, is to be done?”

Mary looked at a metal table.

“We have been in session far too long, holding up far too many other pressing contingencies. The trouble on Mercury, for example. We’ll have to straighten that out, somehow.”

Throughout the rows of beautiful people, the mumbling increased. Mrs. Cuberle sat nervously, tapping her shoe and running a comb through her hair.

“Mary Cuberle, you have been given innumerable chances to reconsider, you know.”

Mary said, “I know. But I don’t want to.”

The beautiful people looked at Mary and laughed. Some shook their heads.

The man threw up his hands. “Little girl, can you realize what an issue you have caused? The unrest, the wasted time? Do you fully understand what you have done? Intergalactic questions hang fire while you sit there saying the same thing over and over. Doesn’t the happiness of your Mother mean anything to you?”

A slender, supple woman in a back row cried, “We want action. Do something!”

The man in the high stool raised his hand. “None of that, now. We must conform, even though the question is out of the ordinary.” He leafed through a number of papers on his desk, leaned down and whispered into the ear of a strong blond man. Then he turned to Mary again. “Child, for the last time. Do you reconsider? Will you accept the Transformation?”

“No.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, then. I have here a petition, signed by two thousand individuals and representing all the Stations of Earth. They have been made aware of all the facts and have submitted the petition voluntarily. It’s all so unusual and I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to⁠—but the petition urges drastic measures.”

The mumbling rose.

“The petition urges that you shall, upon final refusal, be forced by law to accept the Transformation. And that an act of legislature shall make this universal and binding in the future.”

Mary’s eyes were open, wide. She stood and paused before speaking.

“Why?” she asked, loudly.

The man passed a hand through his hair.

Another voice from the crowd, “Seems to be a lot of questions unanswered here.”

And another, “Sign the petition, Senator!”

All the voices, “Sign it, sign it!”

“But why?” Mary began to cry. The voices stilled for a moment.

“Because⁠—Because⁠—”

“If you’d only tell me that. Tell me!”

“Why, it simply isn’t being done, that’s all. The greatest gift of all, and what if others should get the same idea? What would happen to us then, little girl? We’d be right back to the ugly, thin, fat, unhealthy-looking race we were ages ago! There can’t be any exceptions.”

“Maybe they didn’t consider themselves so ugly.”

The mumbling began anew.

“That isn’t the point,” cried the man. “You must conform!”

And the voices cried “Yes” loudly until the man took up a pen and signed the papers on his desk.

Cheers, applause, shouts.

Mrs. Cuberle patted Mary on the top of her head.

“There, now!” she said, happily, “Everything will be all right now. You’ll see, Mary.”

The Transformation Parlor Covered the entire Level, sprawling with its departments. It was always filled and there was nothing to sign and no money to pay and people were always waiting in line.

But today the people stood aside. And there were still more, looking in through doors, TV cameras placed throughout the tape machines in every corner. It was filled, but not bustling as usual.

Mary walked past the people, Mother and the men in back of her, following. She looked at the people. The people were beautiful, perfect, without a single flaw.

All the beautiful people. All the ugly people, staring out from bodies that were not theirs. Walking on legs that had been made for them, laughing with manufactured voices, gesturing with shaped and fashioned arms.

Mary walked slowly, despite the prodding. In her eyes, in her eyes, was a mounting confusion; a wide, wide wonderment.

The reason was becoming less vague; the fuzzed edges were falling away now. Through all the horrible months and all the horrible moments, the edges fell away. Now it was almost clear.

She looked down at her own body, then at the walls which reflected it. Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, all hers, made by no one, built by herself or someone she did not know. Uneven kneecaps, making two grinning cherubs when they bent, and the old familiar rubbing together of fat inner thighs. Fat, unshapely, unsystematic Mary. But Mary.

Of course. Of course! This was what Daddy meant, what Grandpa and the books meant. What they would know if they would read the books or hear the words, the good, reasonable words, the words that signified more, much more, than any of this.

The understanding heaped up with each step.

“Where are these people?” Mary asked half to herself. “What has happened to them and don’t they miss themselves, these manufactured things?”

She stopped, suddenly.

“Yes! That is the reason. They have all forgotten themselves!”

A curvacious woman stepped forward and took Mary’s hand. The woman’s skin was tinted dark. Chipped and sculptured bone into slender rhythmic lines, electrically created carriage, stance, made, turned out.

“All right, young lady. We will begin.”

They guided Mary to a large, curved leather seat.

From the top of a long silver pole a machine lowered itself. Tiny bulbs glowed to life and cells began to click. The people stared. Slowly a picture formed upon the screen in the machine. Bulbs directed at Mary, then redirected into the machine. Wheels turning, buttons ticking.

The picture was completed.

“Would you like to see it?”

Mary closed her eyes, tight.

“It’s really very nice.” The woman turned to the crowd. “Oh yes, there’s a great deal to be salvaged; you’d be surprised. A great deal. We’ll keep the nose and I don’t believe the elbows will have to be altered at all.”

Mrs. Cuberle looked at Mary and smiled. “Now, it isn’t so bad as you thought, is it?” she said.

The beautiful people looked. Cameras turned, tapes wound.

“You’ll have to excuse us now. Only the machines allowed.”

Only the machines.

The people filed out.

Mary saw the rooms in the mirror. Saw things in the rooms, the faces and bodies that had been left; the woman and the machines and the old young men standing about, adjusting, readying.

Then she looked at the picture in the screen.

And screamed.

A woman of medium height stared back at her. A woman with a curved body and thin legs; silver hair, pompadoured, cut short; full sensuous lips, small breasts, flat stomach, unblemished skin.

A strange, strange woman no one had ever seen before.

The nurse began to take Mary’s clothes off.

“Geoff,” the woman said, “come look at this, will you. Not one so bad in years. Amazing that we can keep anything at all.”

The handsome man put his hands in his pockets.

“Pretty bad, all right.”

“Be still, child, stop making those noises. You know perfectly well nothing is going to hurt.”

“But⁠—what will you do with me?”

“That was all explained to you.”

“No, no, with me, me!”

“Oh, you mean the castoffs. The usual. I don’t know exactly. Somebody takes care of it.”

“I want me!” Mary cried. “Not that!” She pointed at the screen.

Her chair was wheeled into a semi-dark room. She was naked now, and the men lifted her to a table. The surface was like glass, black, filmed. A big machine hung above.

Straps. Clamps pulling, stretching limbs apart. The screen with the picture brought in. The men and the woman, more women now. Dr. Hortel in a corner, sitting with his legs crossed, shaking his head.

Mary began to cry above the hum of the mechanical things.

“Shhh. My gracious, such a racket! Just think about your job waiting for you, and all the friends you’ll have and how nice everything will be. No more trouble now.”

The big machine hurtling downward.

“Where will I find me?” Mary screamed, “when it’s all over?”

A long needle slid into rough flesh and the beautiful people gathered around the table.

They turned on the big machine.