Facial Justice Read Free

I wish I had been born Beta! And I wish I hadn't run into you here, Judith! I shouldn't have, if we hadn't both kept the dear Dictator's command to be a quarter of an hour early for every appointment! And he only gave it out last week! Oh, how miserable I am, how miserable I am!" Wringing her hands she swayed to and fro. Judith looked at her friend in concern and pity, then took a quick decision. "Go back now," she said, "and I'll explain to your Bureau that you aren't well enough to be put down. Then you can think it over quietly. I'll come in tomorrow and you'll have a good laugh when you see me Beta. The operation's hardly more than having a tooth crowned. Good-by, Jael 97. Kind thoughts of the Dictator."
    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