Sisters
by
Greg Bear

But you're the only one, Letitia." Reena
Cathcart
lay a light, slender hand on her shoulder with a
look of utmost sincerity. "You know none of the others can. I
mean..." She stopped, the slightest hint of awareness of her
faux pas dawning. "You're simply the only one who can play
the old--the older--woman."
Letitia Blakely looked down at the hall floor, eyes and face
hot, then circled her gaze up to the ceiling, trying to keep the
fresh tears from spilling over. Reena tossed her long black hair, perfect hazel eyes imploring. A few stragglers sauntered down
the clean and carpeted hall of the new school wing to their
classes. "We're late for first period," Letitia said. "Why the
old woman? Why didn't you come to me when there was some
other part to play?"
Reena was too smart not to know what she was doing.
Smart, but not terribly sensitive. "You're the type."
"You mean frowsy?"
Reena didn't react. She was intent on a yes answer, the
perfect solution to her problems.
"Or just dumpy?"
"You shouldn't be ashamed of how you look."
"I look frowsy and dump.,,'! I'm perfect for the old woman
in your lysing play, and you're the only one with the guts to ask
me.' '
"We'd like to give you a chance. You're such a loner, and
we want you to feel like you're part--"
"Bullmusk!" The moisture spilled over and Reena backed
away. "Leave me alone. Just leave me alone."
"No need to swear." Petulant, offended.
Letitia raised her hand as if to strike. Reena swung her hair
again defiantly and turned to walk away. Letitia leaned against
the the wall and wiped her eyes, trying to avoid damage to her
carefully applied makeup. The damage was already done,
however. She could feel the tear-tracks of her mother's mascara
and the smudged eyeshadow. With a sigh, she walked off to the
bathroom, not caring how late she was. She wanted to go home.
Coming into class fifteen minutes after the bell, Letitia was
surprised to find the students in self-ordered discussion, with no
sign of Mr. Brant. Several of Reena's drama group gave her
frosty looks as she took her seat.
"TB," Edna Corman said beneath her breath from across
the aisle.
"RC you," Letitia replied, head cocked to one side and
tone matching Edna' s precisely. She poked John Lockwood in the
shoulder. Lockwood didn't care much for socializing; he seldom
noticed the exchanges going on around him. "Where's Mr.
Brant?"
"Georgia Fischer blitzed and he took her to the counselors.
He told us to plug in and pursue."
"Oh." Georgia Fischer had transferred two months ago
from a superwhiz class in Oakland. She was brighter than most
but she blitzed about once every two weeks. "I may be fat and
ugly," Letitia said for Lockwood's ears only. "But I never
blitz."
"Nor I," Lockwood said. He was PPC, like Georgia, but
not a superwhiz. Letitia liked him, but not enough to feel
threatened by him. "Better pursue."
Letitia leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes to
concentrate. Her mod activated and projections danced in front
of her, then steadied. She had been cramming patient psych for
a week and was approaching threshold. The little Computer
Graphics nursie in whites and pillcap began discussing insanouts
of terminal patient care, which all seemed very TB to Letitia;
who died of disease now, anyway? She made her decision and
cut to the same CG nursie discussing the shock of RoR--replacement
and recovery. What she really wanted to study was
colony medicine, but how could she ever make it Out There?
Some PPCs had been designed by their parents to qualify
physically and mentally for space careers. Some had been
equipped with bichemistries, one of which became active in
Earth's gravity, the other in space. How could an NG compete
with that?

Of the seven hundred adolescents in her high school
training programs, Letitia Blakely was one of ten NGspossessors
of natural, unaltered genomes. Everyone else was the proud bearer
of juggled genes, PPCs or Pre-Planned Children, all lovely and
stable with just the proper amount of adipose tissue and just the
proper infusion of parental characteristics and chosen features to
be beautiful and different; tall, healthy, hair manageable, skin
unblemished, well-adjusted (except for the occasional blitzer)
with warm and sunny personalities. The old derogatory slang
for PPCs was RC--Recombined.

Letitia Brown, slightly overweight, skin pasty, hair frizzy,
bulbous-nosed and weak-chinned, one breast larger than the
other and already showing a droop pronounced enough to
grip a stylus--with painful menstrual periods and an absolute
indisposition to athletics--was the Sport. That's what they were
called. NG Sports. TBs-Throwbacks. Neanderthals.

All the beautiful PPCs risked a great deal if they showed
animosity toward the NGs. Her parents had the right to sue the
system if she was harassed to the detriment of her schooling.
This wasn't a private school where all parents paid astronomical
tuitions; this was an old-fashioned public school, with public
school programs and regulations. Teachers tended to nuke out
on raggers. And, she admitted to herself with a painful loop of
recrimination, she wasn't making it any easier for them.

Sure, she could join in, play the old woman--how much
realism she would contribute to their little drama, with her
genuine TB phys! She could be jolly and self-deprecating like
Helen Roberti, who wasn't all that bad-looking anyway--she
could pass if she straightened her hair. Or she could be quiet
and camouflaged like Bernie Thibhault.

The CG nursie exited from RoR care. Letitia had hardly
absorbed a thing. Realtime mod education was a bore, but she
hadn't yet qualified for experience training. She had only one
course of career study now--no alternates--and two aesthetic
programs, individual orchestra on Friday afternoon and LitVid
publishing on alternating weekends.

For pre-med, she was a washout, but she wouldn't admit
it. She was NG. Her brain took longer to mature; it wasn't as
finely wired.

She thought she was incredibly slow. She doubted whether
she would ever be successful as a doctor; she was squeamish,
and nobody, not even her fellow NGs, would want to be treated
by a doctor who grew pale at the sight of blood.
Letitia silently told nursie to start over again, and nursie
obliged.
Reena Cathcart, meanwhile, had dropped into her mod
with a vengeance. Her blissed expression told it all. The
realtime ed slid into her so smooth, so quick, it was pure joy.
No zits on her brain.
Mr. Brant returned ten minutes later with a pale and
bleary-eyed Georgia Fischer. She sat two seats behind Letitia
and over one aisle. She plugged in her mod dutifully and Brant
went to his console to bring up the multimedia and coordinate
the whole class. Edna Corman whispered something to her.
"Not a bad blitz, all in all," Georgia commented softly.
"How are you doing, Letitia?" the autocounselor asked.
The CG face projected in front of her with some slight wirehash,
which Letitia paid no attention to. CG ACs were the jams and
she didn't appreciate them even in pristine perfection.
"Poorly," she said.
"Really? Care to elaborate?"
"I want to talk to Dr. Rutger."
"Don't trust your friendly AC?"
"I'd like some clear space. I want to talk to Dr. Rutger."
"Dr. Rutger is busy, dear. Unlike your friendly AC,
humans can only be in one place at a time. I'd like to help if I
may."
"Then I want program sixteen."
"Done, Letitia." The projection wavered and the face
changed to a real-person simulation of Marian Tempesino, the
only CG AC Letitia felt comfortable with.
Tempesino had no wirehash, which indicated she was a seldom-used program, and that was just fine with Letitia.
"Sixteen here. Letitia? You're looking cut. More adjustment
jams?"
"I wanted to talk with Dr. Rutger but he's busy. So I'll
talk to you. And I want it on my record. I want out of school. I
want my parents to pull me and put me in a special NG
school."
Tempesino's face didn't wear any particular expression,
which was one of the reasons Letitia liked Program 16 AC.
"Why?"
"Because I'm a freak. My parents made me a freak and
I'd like to know why I shouldn't be with all the other freaks."
"You're a natural, not a freak."
"To look like any of the others---even to look like Reena
Cathcart--l'd have to spend the rest of my life in bioplasty. I
can't take it anymore. They asked me to play an old lady in one
of their dramas. The only part I'm fit for. An old lady."
"They tried to include you in."
"That hurt/" Letitia said, tears in her eyes.
Tempesino's image wavered a bit as the emotion registered
and a higher authority AC kicked in behind 16.
"I just want out. I want to be alone."
"Where would you like to go, Letitia?"
Letitia thought about it for a moment. "I'd like to go back
to when being ugly was normal."
"Fine, then. Let's simulate. Sixty years should do it.
Ready?"
She nodded and wiped away more mascara with the back
of her hand.
"Then let's go."
It was like a dream, somewhat fuzzier than plugging in a
mod. CG images compiled from thousands of miles of old films
and tapes and descriptive records made her feel as if she were flying back in time, back to a place she would have loved to call
home. Faces came to her--faces with ugly variations, growing
old prematurely, wearing glasses, even beautiful faces which
could have passed today--and the faces pulled away to become
attached to bodies. Bodies out of shape, in good condition,
overweight, sick and healthy, red-faced with high blood pressure:
the whole variable and disaster-prone population of humanity,
sixty years past. This was where Letitia felt she
belonged.

"They're beautiful," she said.

"They didn't think so. They jumped at the chance to be
sure their children were beautiful, smart, and healthy. It was a

time of transition, Letitia. Just like now."

"Everybody looks alike now."

"I don't think that's fair," the AC said. "There's a

considerable variety in the way people look today."

"Not my age."

"Especially your age. Look." The AC showed her dozens
of faces. Few looked alike, but all were handsome or lovely.
Some made Letitia ache just looking at them; faces she could
never be friends with, never love, because there was always
someone more beautiful and desirable than an NG.

"My parents should have lived back then. Why did they
make me a freak?"

"You're developmentally normal. You're not a freak."
"Sure. I'm a DNG. Dingy. That's what they call me."
"Don't you invite the abuse sometimes?"
"No!" This was getting her nowhere.

"Letitia, we all have to adjust. Not even today's world is
fair. Are you sure you're doing all you can to adjust?"

Letitia squirmed in her seat and said she wanted to leave.
"Just a moment,” the AC said. "We're not' done yet." She
knew that tone of voice. The ACs were allowed to get a little rough at times. They could make unruly students do grounds
duty or detain them after hours to work on assignments usually
given to computers. Letitia sighed and settled back. She hated
being lectured.

"Young woman, you're carrying a giant chip on your
shoulder."

"That's all the more computing capacity for me."
"Quiet, and listen. We're all allowed to criticize policy,
whoever makes it. Dignity of office and respect for superiors
has not survived very well into Century Twenty-one. People
have to earn respect. That goes for students, too. The average
student here has four major talents, each of them fitting into a
public planning policy which guarantees them a job incorporating
two or more of those talents. They aren't forced to accept
the jobs, and if their will falters, they may not keep those jobs.
But the public has tried to guarantee every one of us a quality
employment opportunity. That goes for you, as well. You're
DNG, but you also show as much intelligence and at least
as many developable talents as the PPCs. You are young,
and your maturation schedule is a natural one--but you are not
inferior or impaired, Letitia. That's more than can be said for
the offspring of some parents even more resistive than your
own. You at least were given prenatal care and nutrition
adjustment, and your parents let the biotechs correct your
allergies."

"So?"

"So for you, it's all a matter of will. If your will falters,

you won't be given any more consideration than a PPC. You'll
have to choose secondary or tertiary employment, or even..."

The AC paused. "Public support. Do you want that?"

"My grades are up. I'm doing fine."

"You are choosing career training not matching your
developable talents."
"I like medicine."
"You're squeamish."
Letitia shrugged.
"And you're hard to get along with."
"Just tell them to lay off. I’ll be civil.., but I don't want
them treating me like a freak. Edna Corman called me..." She
paused. That could get Edna Corman into a lot of trouble.
Among the students, TB was a casual epithet; to school authorities,
applied to an NO, it might be grounds for a blot on
Co,man's record. "Nothing. Not important.”
The AC switched to lower authority and Tempesino's face
took a different counseling track. "Fine. Adjustment on both
sides is necessary. Thank you for coming in, Letitia."
"Yeah. I still want to talk with Rutger."
"Request has been
noted. Please return to your class in
progress."

"Pay attention to your brother when he's talking," Jane
said. Roald was making a nuisance of himself by chattering
about the pre-flight training he was getting in primary. Letitia
made a polite comment or two, then lapsed back into contemplation
of the food before her. She didn't eat. Jane regarded her
from the corner of her eye and passed a bowl of sugared berries.
"What's eating you?"
"I'm doing the eating," Letitia said archly.
"Ha," Roald said. "Full load from this angle." He
grinned at her, his two front teeth missing. He looked hideous,
she thought. Any other family would have given him temporaries;
not hers.
"A little more respect from both of you," said Donald.
Her father took the bowl from Roald and scooped a modest
portion into his cup, then set it beside Letitia. "Big fifteen and big eight." That was his homily; behave big whether eight or
fifteen.
"Autocounselor today?" Jane asked. She knew Letitia
much too well.
"AC," Letitia affirmed.
"Did you go in?"
"Yes."
' 'And?"
"I'm not tuned."
"Which means?" Donald ask.
"It means she hisses and crackles," Roald said, mouth full
of berries, juice dripping down his chin. He cupped his hand
underneath and sucked it up noisily. Jane reached out and
finished the job with a napkin. "She complains," Roald finished.
"About what?"
Letitia shook her head and didn't answer.
The dessert was almost finished when Letitia slapped both
palms on the table. "Why did you do it?"
"Why did we do what?" he father asked, startled.
"Why are Roald and I normal? Why didn't you design
US?"
Jane and Donald glanced at each other quickly and turned
to Letitia. Roald regarded her with wide eyes, a bit shocked
himself.
"Surely you know why by now," Jane said, looking down
at the table, either nonplussed or getting angry. Now that she
had laid out her course, Letitia couldn't help but forge ahead.
"I don't. Not really. It's not because you're religious."
"Something like that," Donald said.
"No," Jane said, shaking her head firmly.
"Then why?"
"Your mother and I--"
"I am not just their mother," Jane said.
"Jane and I believe there is a certain plan in nature, a plan
we shouldn't interfere with. If we had gone along with most of
the others and tried to have PPCs--participated in the boy-girl
lotteries and signed up for the prebirth opportunity counseling--why,
we would have been interfering."
"Did you go to a hospital when we were born?"
"Yes," Jane said, still avoiding their faces.
"That's not natural," Letitia said. "Why not let nature
decide whether we'd be born alive or not?"
"We have never claimed to be consistent," Donald said.
"Donald," Jane said ominously.
"There are limits," Donald expanded, smiling placation.
"We believe those limits begin when people try to interfere
with the sex cells. You've had all that in school. You know
about the protests when the first PPCs were born. Your grandmother
was one of the protesters. Your mother and I are both
NGs; or course, our generation has a much higher percentage of
NGs."
"Now we're freaks," Letitia said.
"If by that you mean them aren't many teenage NGs, I
suppose that's right," Donald said, touching his wife's ann.
"But it could also mean you're special. Chosen."
"No," Letitia said. "Not chosen. You played dice with
both of us. We could have been DDs. Duds. Not just dingies,
but retards or spaz."
An uncomfortable quiet settled over the table. "Not likely,''
Donald said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Your
mother and I both have good genotypes. Your grandmother
insisted your mother marry a good genotype. There are no
developmentally disabled people in our families."
Letitia had been hemmed in. There was no way she could
see out of it, so she pushed back her chair and excused herself
from the table.

As she made her way up to her room, she heard arguing
below. Roald raced up the stairs behind her and gave her a dirty
look. "Why'd you have to bring all that up?" he asked. "It's
bad enough at school, we don't have to have it here."
She thought about the history the AC had shown her. Back
then, a family with their income wouldn't have been able to live
in a four-bedroom house. Back then, there had been half as
many people in the United States and Canada as there were
now. There had been more unemployment, much more economic
uncertainty, and far fewer automated jobs. The percentage of
people doing physical labor for a living--simple construction,
crop maintenance and harvesting, digging ditches and hard
work like that--had been ten times greater then than it was now.
Most of the people doing such labor today belonged to religious
sects or one of the Wendell Barry farming communes.
Back then, Roald and Letitia would have been considered
gifted children with a bright future.
She thought about the pictures and the feeling of the past,
and wondered if Reena hadn't been right.
She would be a perfect old woman.
Her mother came into her room while Letitia was putting up her hair. She stood in the door frame. It was obvious she had
been crying. Letitia watched her reflection in the mirror of her
grandmother's dressing table, willed to her four years before.
"Yes?" she asked softly, ageless bobby pins in her mouth.
'lt was more my idea than your father's," Jane said,
stepping closer, hands folded before her. "I mean, I am your
mother. We've never really talked about this."
"No," Letitia said.
"So why now?"
"Maybe I'm growing up."
"Yes." Jane looked at the soft and flickering pictures hung
on the walls, pastel scenes of improbable forests. "When I was pregnant with you, I was very afraid. I worried we'd made the
wrong decision, going against what everybody else seemed to
think and what everybody was advising or being advised. But I
carried you and felt you move.., and I knew you were ours,
and ours alone, and that we were responsible for you body and
soul. I was your mother, not the doctors."
Letitia looked up with mixed anger and frustration.., and
love.
"And now I see you. I think back to what I might have
felt, if I were your age again, in your position. I might be mad,
too. Roald hasn't had time to feel different yet; he's too young.
I just came up here to tell you; I know that what I did was right,
not for us, not for them"--she indicated the broad world beyond
the walls of the house--' 'but right for you. It will work out. It
really will." She put her hands on Letitia's shoulders. "They
aren't having an easy time either. You know that." She stopped
for a moment, then from behind her back revealed a book with
a soft brown cover. "I brought this to show you again. You
remember Great-Grandma? Her grandmother came all the way
from Ireland, along with her grandpa." Jane gave her the
album. Reluctantly, Letitia opened it up. There were real
photographs inside, on paper, ancient black and white and faded
color. Her great-grandmother did not much resemble Grandmother,
who had been big-boned, heavy-set. Great-grandmother
looked as if she had been skinny all her life. "You keep this,"
Jane said. "Think about it for a while."
The morning came with planned rain. Letitia took the
half-empty metro to school, looking at the terraced and gardened
and occasionally neglected landscape of the extended suburbs
through raindrop-smeared glass. She came onto the school
grounds and went to one of the older buildings in the school,
where there was a little-used old-fashioned lavatory. This sometimes
served as her sanctuary. She stood in a white stall and breathed deeply for a few minutes, then went to a sink and
washed her hands as if conducting some ritual. Slowly, reluctantly,
she looked at herself in the cracked mirror. A janitorial worker
went about its duties, leaving behind the fresh, steamy smell of
clean fixtures.
The early part of the day was a numb time. Letitia began to
fear her own distance from feeling, from the people around her.
She might at any minute step into the old lavatory and simply
fade from the present, find herself sixty years back...
And what would she really think of that?
In her third period class she received a note requesting that
she appear in Rutger's counseling office as soon as was convenient.
That was shorthand for immediately; she gathered up her
mods and caught Reena's unreadable glance as she walked past.
Rutger was a handsome man of forty-three (the years were
registered on his desk life clock, an affectation of some of the
older PPCs) with a broad smile and a garish taste in clothes. He
was head of the counseling department and generally well-liked
in the school. He shook her hand as she entered the counseling
office and offered her a chair. "Now. You wanted to talk to
me?"
"I guess," Letitia said.
"Problems?" His voice was a pleasant baritone; he was
probably a fairly good singer. That had been a popular trait in
the early days of PPCs.
"The ACs say it's my attitude."
"And what about it?"
"I... am ugly. I am the ugliest girl.., the only girl in this
school who is ugly."
Rutger nodded. "I don't think you're ugly, but which is
worse, being unique or being ugly?" Letitia lifted the corner of
one lip in snide acknowledgment of the funny.
"Everybody's unique now," she said.
"That's what we teach. Do you believe it?"
"No," she said. "Everybody's the same. I'm..." She
shook her head. She resented Rutger prying up the pavement
over her emotions. "I'm TB. I wouldn't mind being a PPC, but
I'm not."
"I think it's a minor problem," Rutger said quickly. He
hadn't even sat down; obviously he was not going to give her
much time.
"It doesn't feel minor," she said, anger poking through
the cracks he had made.
"Oh, no. Being young often means that minor problems
feel major. You feel envy and don't like yourself, at least not
the way you look. Well, looks can be helped by diet, or at the
very least by time. If I'm any judge, you'll look fine when
you're older. And I am something of a judge. As for the way
the others feel about you... I was a freak once."
Letitia looked up at him.
"Certainly. Bona fide. Much more of a freak than you.
There are ten NGs like yourself in this school now. When I was
your age, I was the only PPC in my school. There was still
suspicion and even riots. Some PPCs were killed in one school
when parents stormed the grounds."
Letitia stared.
"The other kids hated me. I wasn't bad-looking, but they
knew. They had parents who told them PPCs were Frankenstein
monsters. Do you remember the Rifkin Society? They're still
around, but they're extreme fringies now. Just as well. They
thought I'd been grown in a test tube somewhere and hatched
out of an incubator. You've never experienced real hatred, I
suspect. I did."
"You were nice-looking," Letitia said. "you knew sone-body
would like you eventually, maybe even love you. But what about me? Because of what I am, the way I look, who will ever
want me? And will a PPC ever want to be with a Dingy?"
She knew these were hard questions and Rutger made no
pretense of answering them. "Say it all works out for the
worst," he said. "You end up a spinster and no one ever loves
you. You spend the rest of your days alone, Is that what you're
worded about?"
Her eyes widened. She had never quite thought those
things through. Now she really hurt.
"Everybody out there is choosing beauty for their kids.
They're choosing slender, athletic bodies and fine minds. You
have a fine mind, but you don't have an athletic body. Or so
you seem to be convinced; I have no record of you ever trying
out for athletics. So when you're out in the adult world, sure,
you'll look different. But why can't that be an advantage? You
may be surprised how hard we PPCs try to be different. And
how hard it is, since tastes vary so little in our parents. You
have that built in."
Letitia listened, but the layers of paving were closing
again. "Icing on the cake," she said.
Rutger regarded her with his shrewd blue eyes and shrugged.
"Come back in a month and talk to me," he said. "Until then,
I think autocounselors will do fine."

Little was said at dinner and less after. She went upstairs
and to bed at an early hour, feeling logy and hoping for escape.
Her father did his usual bed check an hour after she had put
on her pajamas and lain down. "Rolled tight?" he asked.
"Mmph," she replied.
"Sleep tighter," he said. Rituals and formulas. Her life
had been shaped by parents who were comfortable with nightly
rituals and formulas.
Almost immediately after sleep, or so it seemed, she came abruptly awake. She sat up in bed and realized where she was,
and who, and began to cry. She had had the strangest and most
beautiful dream, the finest ever without a dream mod. She
could not remember details now, try as she might, but waking
was almost more than she could bear.

In the first period class, Georgia Fischer blitzed yet again
and had to go to the infirmary. Letitia watched the others and
saw a stony general cover-up of feelings. Edna Corman excused
herself in second period and came back with red puffy eyes and
pink cheeks. The tension built through the rest of the day until
she wondered how anyone could concentrate. She did her own
studying without any conviction; she was still wrapped in the
dream, trying to decide what it meant.
In eighth period, she once again sat behind John Lockwood.
It was as if she had completed a cycle beginning in the morning
and ending with her last class. She looked at her watch
anxiously. Once again, they had Mr. Brant supervising. He
seemed distracted, as if he, too, had had a dream, and it hadn't
been as pleasant as hers.
Brant had them cut mods mid-period and begin a discussion
on what had been learned. These were the so-called
integrative moments when the media learning was fixed by
social interaction; Letitia found these periods a trial at the best
of times. The others discussed their economics, Reena Cathcart
as usual standing out in a class full of dominant personalities.
John Lockwood listened intently, a small smile on his face
as he presented a profile to Letitia. He seemed about to turn
around and talk to her. She placed her hand on the corner of
her console and lifted her finger to attract his attention.
He glanced at her hand, turned away, and with a shudder
looked at it again, staring this time, eyes widening. His mouth
began to work as if her hand was the most horrible thing he had ever seen. His chin quivered, then his shoulder, and
before Letitia could react he stood up and moaned. His legs
went liquid beneath him and he fell to the console, arms
hanging, then slid to the floor. On the floor, John Lockwood--who
had never done such a thing in his life--twisted and
groaned and shivered, locked in a violent blitz.

Brant pressed the class emergency button and came around

his desk. Before he could reach Lockwood, the boy became
still, eyes open, one hand letting go its tight grip on the leg of
his seat. Letitia could not move, watching his empty eyes; he
appeared so horribly limp.

Brant grabbed the boy by the shoulders, swearing steadily,

and dragged him outside the classroom. Letitia followed them
into the hall, wanting to help. Edna Corman and Reena Cathcart
stood beside her, faces blank. Other students followed, staying
well away from Brant and the boy.

Brant lowered John Lockwood to the concrete and began

pounding his chest and administering mouth-to-mouth. He pulled
a syringe from his coat pocket and uncapped it, shooting its full
contents into the boy's skin just below the sternum. Letitia
focused on the syringe, startled. Right in his pocket; not in the
first-aid kit.

The full class stood in the hallway, silent, in shock. The

medical arrived, Rutger following; it scooped John Lockwood
onto its gurney and swung around, lights flashing. "Have you

administered KVN?" the robot asked Brant.

"Yes. Five cc's. Direct to heart."

Room after room came out to watch, all the PPCs fixing

their eyes on the burdened medical as it rolled down the hall.
Edna Corman cried. Reena glanced at Letitia and turned away
as if ashamed.

"That's five," Rutger said, voice tired beyond grimness.

Brant looked at him, then at the class, and told them they were dismissed. Letitia hung back. Brant screwed up his face in grief
and anger. "Go! Get out of here!"
She ran. The last thing she heard Rutger say was, "More
this week than last."

Letitia sat in the empty white lavatory, wiping her eyes,
ashamed at her sniveling. She wanted to react like a grown-up--she
saw herself being calm, cool, offering help to whoever
might have needed it in the classroom--but the tears and
the shaking would not stop.
Mr. Brant had seemed angry, as if the entire classroom were
at fault. Not only was Mr. Brant adult, he was PPC.
So did she expect adults, especially adult PPCs, to behave
better?
Wasn't that what it was all about?
She stared at herself in the cracked mirror. "I should go
home, or go to the library and study," she said. Dignity and
decorum. Two girls walked into the lavatory, and her private
moment passed.
Letitia did not go to the library. Instead, she went to the
old concrete and steel auditorium, entering through the open
stage entrance, standing in darkness in the wings. Three female
students sat in the front row, below the stage level and about ten
meters away from Letitia. She recognized Reena but not the
other two; they did not share classes with her.
"Did you know him?"
"No, not very well," Reena said. "He was in ny class."
"No ducks!" the third snorted.
"Trish, keep it interior, please. Reena's had it rough."
"He hadn't blitzed. He wasn't a superwhiz. Nobody expected
it."
"When was his incept?"
"I don't know," Reena said. "We're all about the stone age, within a couple of months. We're all the same model year,
same supplements. If it's something in the genotype, in the
supplements. ·
"I heard somebody say there had been five so far. I
haven't heard anything," the third said.
"I haven't either," said the second.
"Not in our school," Reena said. "Except for the
superwhizes. And none of them have died before now."
Letitia stepped back in the darkness, hand on mouth. Had
Lockwood actually died'?
She thought for a mad moment of stepping out of the
wings, going into the seats and telling the three she was sorry.
The impulse faded fast. That would have been intruding.
They weren't any older than she was, and they didn't
sound much more mature. They sounded scared.

In the morning, at the station room for pre-med secondary,
Brant told them that John Lockwood had died the day before.
"He had a heart attack," Brant said. Letitia intuited that was
not the complete truth. A short eulogy was read, and special
hours for psych counseling were arranged for those students
who felt they might need it.
The word "blitzing" was not mentioned by Brant, nor by
any of the PPCs throughout that day. Letitia tried to research the
subject but found precious few materials in the libraries accessed
by her mod. She presumed she didn't know where to look; it
was hard to believe that nobody knew what was happening.

The dream came again, even stronger, the next night, and ---Letitia
awoke out of it cold and shivering with excitement. She
saw herself standing before a crowd, no single face visible, for
she was in light and they were in darkness. She had felt, in the
dream, an almost unbearable happiness, grief mixed with joy, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She loved and
did not know what she loved--not the crowd, precisely, not a
man, not a family member, not even herself.
She sat up in her bed, hugging her knees, wondering if
anybody else was awake. It seemed possible she had never been
awake until now; every nerve was alive. Quietly, not wanting
anybody else to intrude on this moment, she slipped out of bed
and walked down the hall to her mother's sewing room. There,
in a full-length cheval mirror, she looked at herself as if with
new eyes.
"Who are you?" she whispered. She lifted her cotton
nightshirt and stared at her legs. Short calves, lumpy knees,
thighs not bad--not fat, at any rate. Her arms were soft-looking,
not muscular, but not particularly plump, a rosy vanilla
color with strawberry blotches on her elbows where she leaned
on them while reading in bed. She had Irish ancestors on her
mother's side; that showed in her skin color, recessed cheekbones,
broad face. On her father's side, Mexican and German;
not much evidence in her of the Mexican. Her brother looked
more swarthy. "We're mongrels," she said. "I look like a
mongrel compared to PPC purebreds." But PPCs were not
purebred; they were designed.
She lifted her nightshirt higher still, pulling it over her
head finally and standing naked. Shivering from the cold and
from the memory of her dream, she forced herself to focus on
all of her characteristics. Whenever she had seen herself naked
in mirrors before, she had blurred her eyes at one feature,
looked away from another, special-effecting her body into a
more acceptable fantasy. Now she was in a mood to know
herself for what she was.
Broad hips, strong abdomen--plump, but strong. From her
pre-med, she knew that meant she would probably have little
trouble bearing children. "Brood mare," she said, but there was no critical sharpness in the words. To have children, she
would have to attract men, and right now there seemed little
chance of that. She did not have the "Attraction Peaks" so often
discussed on the TV, or seen faddishly headlined on the LitVid
mods; the culturally prescribed geometric curves allocated to so
few naturally, and now available to so many by design. Does
Your Child Have the Best Design for Success?
Such a shocking triviality. She felt a righteous anger
grow--another emotion she was not familiar with---and sucked
it back into the excitement, not wanting to lose her mood. "I
might never look at myself like this again," she whispered.
Her breasts were moderate in size, the left larger than the
fight and more drooping. She could indeed hold a stylus under
her left breast, something a PPC female would not have to
worry about for decades, if ever. Rib cage not really distinct;
muscles not distinct; rounded, soft, gentle-looking, face curious,
friendly, wide-eyed, skin blemished but not so badly it
wouldn't recover on its own; feet long and toenails thick,
heavily cuticle& She had never suffered from ingrown toenails.
Her family line showed little evidence of tendency to
cancer--correctible now, but still distressing--or heart disease
or any of the other diseases of melting pot cultures, of mobile
populations and changing habits. She saw a strong body in the
mirror, one that would serve her well.
And she also saw that with a little makeup, she could
easily play an older woman. Some shadow under the eyes, lines
to highlight what would in thirty or forty years be jowls, laugh
lines...
But she did not look old now.
Letitia walked back to her room, treading carefully on the
carpet. In the room, she asked the lights to turn on, lay down on
the bed, pulled the photo album Jane had given her from the top
of her nightstand and gingerly turned the delicate black paper pages. She stared at her great-grandmother's face, and then at
the picture of her grandmother as a little girl.

Individual orchestra was taught by three instructors in one
of the older drama classrooms behind the auditorium. It was a
popular aesthetic; the school's music boxes were better than
most home units, and the instructors were very popular. All
were PPCs.
After a half hour of group, each student could retire to box
keyboard, order up spheres of countersound to avoid cacophony, and practice.
Today, she practiced for less than half an hour. Then,
tongue between her lips, she stared into empty space over the
keyboard. "Countersound off, please," she ordered, and stood
up from the black bench. Mr. Teague, the senior instructor,
asked if she were done for the day.
"I have to run an errand," she said.
"Practice your polyrhythms," he advised.
She left the classroom and walked around to the auditorium's
stage entrance. She knew Reena's drmna group would be
meeting there.
The auditorium was dark, the stage lighted by a few
catwalk spots. The drama group sat in a circle of chairs in one
illuminated corner of the stage, reading lines aloud from old
paper scripts. Hands folded, she walked toward the group. Rick
Fayette, a quiet senior with short back hair, spotted her first but
said nothing, glancing at Reena. Reena stopped reading her
lines, turned, and stared at Letitia. Edna Corman saw her last
and shook her head, as if this were the last straw.
"Hello," Letitia said.
"What are you doing here?" There was more wonder than
disdain in Reena's voice.
"I thought you might still..." She shook her head.
"Probably not. But I thought you might still be able to use
me."
"Really," Edna Corman said.
Reena put her script down and stood. "Why'd you change
your mind?"
"I thought I wouldn't mind being an old lady," Reena
said. "It's just not that big a deal. I brought a picture of my
great-grandmother." She took a plastic wallet from her pocket and
opened it to a copy she had made from the photo in the album.
"You could make me up like this. Like my great-grandmother."
Reena took the wallet. "You look like her," she said.
"Yeah. Kind of."
"Look at this," Reena said, holding the picture out to the
others. They gathered around and passed the wallet from hand
to hand, staring in wonder. Even Edna Corman glanced at it
briefly. "She actually looks like her great-grandmother."
Rick Fayette whistled with wonder. "You," he said, "will
make a really great old lady."

Rutger called her into his office abruptly a week later. She
sat quietly before his desk. "You've joined the drama class after
all," he said. She nodded.
"Any reason why?"
There was no simple way to express it. "Because of what
you told me," she said.
"No friction?"
"It's going okay."
"Very good. They gave you another role to play?"
"No. l'm the old lady. They'll use makeup on me."
"You don't object to that?"
"I don't think so."
Rutger seemed to want to find something wrong, but he
couldn't. With a faintly suspicious smile, he thanked her for her time. "Come back and see me whenever you want," he said.
"Tell me how it goes."

The group met each Friday, an hour later than her individual
orchestra. Letitia made arrangements for home keyboard
hookup and practice. After a reading and a half hour of
questions, she obtained the permission of the drama group
advisor, a spinsterish non-PPC seldom seen in the hallways,
Miss Darcy. Miss Darcy seemed old-fashioned and addressed
all of her students as either "Mister" or "Miss," but she knew
drama and stagecraft. She was the oldest of the six NG teachers
in the school.

Reena stayed with Letitia during the audition and made a
strong case for her late admittance, saying that the casting of
Rick Fayette as an older woman was not going well. Fayette
was equally eager to be rid of the part; he had another
nonconflicting role, and the thought of playing two characters
in this production worried him.

Fayette confessed his appreciation at their second Friday
meeting. He introduced her to an elfishly handsome, large-eyed,
slender group member, Frank Leroux. Leroux was much
too shy to go on stage, Fayette said, but he would be doing their
makeup. "He's pretty amazing."

Letitia stood nervously while Leroux examined her. "You've
really got a face," he said softly. "May I touch you, to see
where your contours are?"

Letitia giggled and abruptly sobered, embarrassed. "Okay,"

she said. "You're going to draw lines and make shadows?"
"Much more than that," Leroux said.

"He'll take a video of your face in motion," Fayette said.
"Then he'll digitize it and sculpt a laserfoam mold--much
better than sitting for a life mask. He made a life mask of me last year to turn me into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. No fun
at all."
"This way is much better," Leroux said, touching her skin
delicately, poking under her cheeks and chin, pulling back her
hair to feel her temples. "I can make two or three sculptures
showing what your face and neck are like when they're in
different positions. Then I can adjust the appliance molds for
flex and give."
"When he's done with you, you won't know yourself,"
Fayette said.
"Reena says you have a picture of your great-grandmother.
May I see it?" Leroux asked. She gave him the wallet and he
looked at the picture with squint-eyed intensity. "What a
wonderful face," he said. "I never met my great-grandmother.
My own grandmother looks about as old as my mother. They
might be sisters."
"When he's done with you," Fayette said, his enthusiasm
becoming a bit tiresome, "you and your great-grandmother will
look like sisters!"

When she went home that evening, taking a late pay metro
from the school, she wondered just exactly what she was doing.
Throughout her high school years, she had cut herself off from
most of her fellow students; the closest she came to friendship
had been occasional banter while sitting at the mods with John
Lockwood, waiting for instructors to arrive. Now she actually
liked Fayette, and strange Leroux, whose hands were thin and
pale and strong and slightly cold. Leroux was a PPC, but
obviously his parents had different tastes; was he a superwhiz?
Nobody had said so; perhaps it was a matter of honor among
PPCs that they pretended not to care about their classifications.
Reena was friendly and supportive, but still distant.
As Letitia walked up the stairs, across the porch into the door of their home, setting her keyboard down by the closet,
she saw the edge of a news broadcast in the living room.
Nobody was watching; she surmised everybody was in the
kitchen.
From this angle, the announcer appeared translucent and
blue, ghostly. As Letitia walked around to the premium angle,
the announcer solidified, a virtual goddess of Oriental-negroid
features with high cheekbones, straight golden hair and copper-bronze
skin. Letitia didn't care what she looked like; what she
was saying had attracted her attention.
"--revelations made today that as many as one-fourth of
all PPCs inceived between sixteen and seventeen years ago may
be possessors of a defective chromosome sequence known as
T56-WA 5659. Originally part of an intelligence enhancement
macrobox used in ramping creativity and mathematical ability,
T56-WA 5659 was refined and made a standard option in
virtually all pm-planned children. The effects of this defective
sequence are not yet known, but at least twenty children in our
city have already died. They all suffered frown initial symptoms
similar to grand mai epilepsy. Nationwide casualties are as yet
unknown. The Rifkin Society is charging government regulatory
agencies with a wholesale coverup.
"The Parental Pre-Natal Design Administration has advised
parents of PPC children with this incept to immediately
contact your medicals and design specialists for advice and
treatment. Younger children may be eligible to receive whole-body
retroviral therapy. For more detailed information, please
refer to our LitVid on-line at this moment, and call--"
Letitia turned and saw her mother watching with a kind of
grim satisfaction. When she noticed her daughter's shocked
expression, she suddenly appeared sad. "How unfortunate,"
she said. "I wonder how far it will go."
Letitia did not eat much dinner. Nor did she sleep more than a couple of hours that night. The weekend seemed to
stretch on forever.

Leroux compared the laserfoam sculptures to her face,
turning her chin this way and that with gentle hands before the
green room mirror. As Leroux worked to test the various molds
on Letitia, humming softly to himself, the rest of the drama
group rehearsed a scene that did not require her presence. When
they were done, Reena walked into the green room and stood
behind them, watching. Letitia smiled stiffly through the hastily
applied sheets and mounds of skinlike plastic.
"You're going to look great," Reena said.
"I'm going to look old," Letitia said, trying for a joke.
"I hope you aren't worried about that," Reena said.
"Nobody cares, really. They all like you. Even Edna."
"I'm not worried," Letitia said.
Leroux pulled off the pieces and laid them carefully in a
box. "Just about got it," he said. "I'm getting so good I could
even make Reena look old if she'd let me."
Letitia considered for a moment. The implication, rather
than the meaning, was embarrassingly obvious. Reena blushed
and stared angrily at Leroux. Leroux caught her stare, looked
between them, and said, "Well, I could." Reena could not
argue without sinking them all deeper. Letitia blinked, then
decided to let them off this particular hook. "She wouldn't look
like a grandmother, though. I'll be a much better old lady."
"Of course," Leroux said, picking up his box and the
sculptures. He walked to the door, a mad headsman. "Like
your great-grandmother."
For a long silent moment, Reena and Letitia faced each
other alone in the green room. The old incandescent makeup
lights glared around the cracked mirror, casting a pearly glow on the white walls behind them. "You're a good actress,"
Reena said. "It really doesn't matter what you look like."
"Thank you."
"Sometimes I wished I looked like somebody in my
family," Reena said.
Without thinking, Letitia said, "But you're beautiful."
And she meant it. Reena was beautiful; with her Levantine
darkness and long black hair, small sharp chin, large hazel-colored
almond eyes and thin, ever-so-slightly bowed nose, she
was simply lovely, with the kind of face and bearing and
intelligence that two or three generations before would have
moved her into entertainment, or pushed her into the social
circles of the rich and famous. Behind the physical beauty was a
sparkle of reserved wit, and something gentle. PPCs were
healthier, felt better, and their minds, on the average, were
more subtle, more balanced. Letitia did not feel inferior, however;
not this time.
Something magic touched them. The previous awkwardness,
and her deft destruction of that awkwardness, had moved them
into a period of charmed conversation. Neither could offend the
other; without words, that was a given.
"My parents are beautiful, too. I'm second generation,"
Reena said.
"Why would you want to look any different?"
"I don't, I suppose. I'm happy with the way I look. But I
don't look much like my mother or my father. Oh, color, hair,
eyes, that sort of thing... Still, my mother wasn't happy
with her own face. She didn't get along well with my grandmother...
She blamed her for not matching her face with her
personality." Reena smiled. "It's all rather silly."
"Some people are never happy," Letitia observed.
Reena stepped forward and leaned over slightly to face

Letitia's mirror image. "How do you feel, looking like your
grandmother?"
Letitia bit her lip. "Until you asked me to join, I don't
think I ever knew." She told about her mother giving her the
album, and looking at herself in the mirror--though she did not
describe being naked--and comparing herself with the old pictures.
"I think that's called an epiphany," Reena said. "It must
have been nice. I'm glad I asked you, then, even if I was
stupid."
"Were you..." Letitia paused. The period of charm was
fading, regrettably; she did not know whether this question
would be taken as she meant it. "Did you ask me to give me a
chance to stop being so silly and stand-offish?"
"No," Reena said steadily. "I asked you because we
needed an old lady."
Looking at each other, they laughed suddenly, and the
charmed moment was gone, replaced by something steadier and
longer-lasting: friendship. Letitia took Reena's hand and pressed
it. "Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome." Then, with hardly a pause, Reena
said, "At least you don't have to worry."
Letitia stared up at her, mouth open slightly, eyes searching.
"Got to go home now," Reena said. She squeezed Letitia's
shoulder with more than gentle strength, revealing a physical
anger or jealousy that ran counter to all they had said and done
thus far. She turned and walked through the green room door,
leaving Letitia alone to pick off a few scraps of latex and
adhesive.

The disaster grew. Letitia listened to the news in her room
late that night, whispers in her ear, projected ghosts of newscasters
and doctors and scientists dancing before her eyes,
telling her things she did not really understand, could only feel.

A monster walked through her generation, but it would not
touch her.

Going to school on Monday, she saw students clustered in
hallways before the bell, somber, talking in low voices, glancing
at her as she passed. In her second period class, she learned
from overheard conversation that Leroux had died during the
weekend. "He was superwhiz," a tall, athletic girl told her
neighbor. "They don't die, usually, they just blitz. But he
died."

Letitia retreated to the old lavatory at the beginning of
lunch break, found it empty, but did not stare into the mirror.
She knew what she looked like and accepted it.

What she found difficult to accept was a new feeling inside
her. The young Letitia was gone. She could not live on a
battlefield and remain a child. She thought about slender, elfin
Leroux, carrying her heads under his arms, touching her face
with gentle, professional admiration. Strong, cool fingers. Her
eyes filled but the tears would not fall, and she went to lunch
empty, fearful, confused.

She did not apply for counseling, however. This was
something she had to face on her own.

Nothing much happened the next few days. The rehearsals
went smoothly in the evenings as the date of the play approached.
She learned her lines easily enough. Her role had a sadness that
matched her mood. On Wednesday evening, after rehearsal, she
joined Reena and Fayette at a supermarket sandwich stand near
the school. Letitia did not tell her parents she would be late; she
felt the need to not be responsible to anybody but her immediate
peers. Jane would be upset, she knew, but not for long; this was
a necessity.

Neither Reena nor Fayette mentioned the troubles directly.
They were fairylike in their gaiety. They kidded Letitia about having to do without makeup now, and it seemed funny, despite
their hidden grief. They ate sandwiches and drank fruit sodas
and talked about what they would be when they grew up.
"Things didn't used to be so easy," Fayette said. "Kids
didn't have so many options. Schools weren't very efficient at
training for the real world; they were academic."
"Learning was slower," Letitia said.
"So were the kids," Reena said, tossing off an irresponsible
grin.
"I resent that," Letitia said. Then, together, they all said,
"I don't deny it, I just resent it!" Their laughter caught the
attention of an older couple sitting in a corner. Even if the man
and woman were not angry, Letitia wanted them to be, and she
bowed her head down, giggling into her straw, snucking bubbles
up her nose and choking. Reena made a disapproving face and
Fayette covered his mouth, snorting with laughter.
"You could paste robber all over your face," Fayette
suggested.
"I'd look like Frankenstein's monster, not an old woman,''
Letitia said.
"So what's the difference?" Reena said.
"Really, you guys," Letitia said. "You're acting your
age."
"Don't have to act," Fayette said. "Just be."
"I wish we could act our age," Reena said.
Not once did they mention Leroux, but it was as if he sat
beside them the whole time, sharing their levity.
It was the closest thing to a wake they could have.

"Have you gone to see your designer, your medical?"
Letitia asked Reena behind the stage curtains. The lights were
off. Student stagehands moved muslin walls on dollies. Fresh
paint smells filled the air.

"No," Reena said. "I'm not worded. I have a different
incept."

"Really?"

She nodded. "It's okay. If there was any problem, I
wouldn't be here. Don't worry." And nothing nore was said.

The night of dress rehearsal came. Letitia put on her own
makeup, drawing pencil lines and applying color and shadow;
she had practiced and found herself reasonably adept at aging.
With her great-grandmother's photograph before her, she mimicked
the jowls she would have in her later years, drew laugh
lines around her lips, and completed the effect with a smelly old
gray wig dug out of a prop box.

The actors gathered for a prerehearsal inspection by Miss
Darcy. They seemed quite adult now, dressed in their period
costumes, tall and handsome. Letitia didn't mind standing out.
Being an old woman gave her special status.

"This time, just relax, do it smooth," said Miss Darcy.
"Everybody expects you to flub your lines, so you'll probably
do them all perfectly. We'll have an audience, but they're here
to forgive our mistakes, not laugh at them. This one," Miss

Darcy said, pausing, "is for Mr. Leroux."

They all nodded solemnly.

"Tomorrow, when we put on the first show, that's going to
be for you."

They took their places in the wings. Letitia stood behind
Reena, who would be first on stage. Reena shot her a quick
smile, nervous.

"How's your stomach?" she whispered.

"Where's the bag?" Letitia asked, pretending to gag
herself with a finger.

"TB," Reena accused lightly

"RC," Letitia replied. They shook hands firmly.

The curtain went up. The auditorium was half filled with
parents and friends and relatives. Letitia's parents were out
there. The darkness beyond the stage lights seemed so profound
it should have been filled with stars and nebulae. Would her
small voice reach that far?
The recorded music before the first act came to its quiet
end. Reena made a move to go on stage, then stopped. Letitia
nudged her. "Come on."
Reena pivoted to look at her, face cocked to one side, and
Letitia saw a large tear dripping from her left eye. Fascinated,
she watched the tear fall in slow motion down her cheek and
spot the satin of her gown.
"I'm sorry," Reena whispered, lips twitching. "I can't do
it now. Tell. Tell."
Horrified, Letitia reached out, tried to stop her from
falling, to lift her, paste and push her back into place, but Reena
was too heavy and she could not stop her descent, only slow it.
Reena's feet kicked out like a horse's, bruising Letitia's legs,
all in apparent silence, and her eyes were bright and empty and
wet, fluttering, showing the whites.
Letitia bent over her, hands raised, afraid to touch her,
afraid not to, unaware she was shrieking.
Fayette and Edna Corman stood behind her, equally helpless.
Reena lay still like a twisted doll, face upturned to the
flies, eyes moving slowly to Letitia, vibrating, becoming still.
"Not you!" Letitia screamed, and barely heard the commotion
in the audience. "Please, God, let it be me, not her!"
Fayette backed away and Miss Darcy came into the light,
grabbing Letitia's shoulders. She shook free.
"Not her," Letitia sobbed. The medicals arrived and
surrounded Reena, blocking her from the eyes of all around.
Miss Darcy firmly, almost brutally, pushed her students from the stage and herded then into the green room. Her face was
stiff as a mask, eyes stark in the paleness.

"We have to do something!" Letitia said, holding up her
hands, beseeching.

"Get control of yourself," Miss Darcy said sharply.

"Everything's being done that can be done."
Fayette said, "What about the play?"
Everyone stared at him.

"Sorry," he said, lip quivering. "I'm an idiot."

Jane, Donald, and Roald came to the green room and
Letitia hugged her mother fiercely, eyes shut tight, burying her
face in Jane's shoulder. They escorted her outside, where a few
students and parents still milled about in the early evening.
"We should go home," Jane said.

"We have to stay here and find out if she's all right."
Letitia pushed away from Jane's arms and looked at the people.
"They're so frightened. I know they are. She's frightened, too.
! saw her. She told me--" Her voice hitched. "She told me--"

"We'll stay for a little while," her father said. He walked
off to talk to another man. They conversed for a while, the man
shook his head, they parted. Roald stood away from them,
hands stuffed into his pockets, dismayed, young, uncomfortable.

"All right," Donald said a few minutes later. "We're not
going to find out anything tonight. Let's go home."

This time, she did not protest. Home, she locked herself in
her bedroom. She did not need to know. She had seen it happen;
anything else was self-delusion.

Her father came to the door an hour later, rapped gently.
Letitia came up from a troubled doze and got off the bed to let
him in.

"We're very sorry," he said.

"Thanks," she murmured, returning to the bed. He sat beside her. She might have been eight or nine again; she looked
around the room, at toys and books, knickknacks.
"Your teacher, .Miss Darcy, called. She said to tell you,
Reena Cathcart died. She was dead by the time they got her to
the hospital. Your mother and I have been watching the vids. A
lot of children are very sick now. A lot have died." He touched
her head, patted the crown gently. "I think you know now why
we wanted a natural child. There were risks--"
"That's not [air," she said. "You didn't have us..." She
hiccupped. "The way you did, because you thought there
would be risks. You talk as if there's something wrong with
these.., people."
“Isn’t there?" Donald asked, eyes suddenly flinty. "They're
defective."
"They're my friends!" Letitia shouted.
"Please," Donald said, flinching.
She got to her knees on the bed, tears coming again.
"There's nothing wrong with them! They're people! They're
just sick, that's all."
"You're not making sense," Donald said.
"I talked to her," Letitia said. 'She must have known.
You can't just say there's something wrong with them. That
isn't enough."
"Their parents should have known," Donald pursued,
voice rising. "Letitia..."
"Leave me alone," she demanded. He stood up hastily,
con[used, and walked out, closing the door behind him. She lay
back on the bed, wondering what Reena had wanted her to say,
and to whom.
"I'll do it," she whispered.

In the morning, breakfast was silent. Roald ate his cereal
with caution, glancing at the others with wide, concerned eyes. Letitia ate little, pushed away from the table, said, "I'm
going to her funeral."
"We don't know--" Jane said.
"I' m going."

Letitia went to only one funeral: Reena's. With a puzzled
expression, she watched Reena's parents from across the grave,
wondering about them, comparing them to Jane and Donald.
She did not cry. She came home and wrote down the things she
had thought.
That school year was the worst. One hundred and twelve
students from the school died. Another two hundred became
very ill.
John Fayette died.
The drama class continued, but no plays were presented.
The school was quiet. Many students had been withdrawn from
classes; Letitia watched the hysteria mount, listened to rumors
that it was a plague, not a PPC error.
It was not a plague.
Across the nation, two million children became ill. One
million died.
Letitia read, without really absorbing the truth all at once,
that it was the worst disaster in the history of the United States.
Riots destroyed PPC centers. Women carrying PPC babies
demanded abortions. The Rifkin Society became a political
force of considerable influence.
Each day, after school, listening to the news, everything
about her existence seemed trivial. Their family was healthy.
They were growing up normally.
Edna Corman approached her in school at the end of one
day, two weeks before graduation. "Can we talk?" she asked.
"Someplace quiet."
"Sure," Letitia said. They had not become close friends, but she found Edna Corman tolerable. Letitia took her into the
old bathroom and they stood surrounded by the echoing white
tiles.
"You know, everybody, I mean the older people, they stare
at me, at us," Edna said. "Like we're going to fall over
any minute. It's really bad. I don't think I'm going to get
sick, but... It's like people are afraid to touch me."
"I know," Letitia said.
"Why is that?" Edna said, voice trembling.
"I don't know," Letitia said. Edna just stood before her,
hands limp.
"Was it our fault?" she asked.
"No. You know that."
'Please tell me."
"Tell you what'?"
"What we can do to make it right."
Letitia looked at her for a moment, and then extended her
arms, took her by the shoulders, drew her closer, and hugged
her. "Remember," she said.

Five days before graduation, Letitia asked Rutger if she
could give a speech at the ceremonies. Rutger sat behind his
desk, folded his hands, and said, "Why?"
"Because there are some things nobody's saying," Letitia
told him. "And they should be said. If nobody else will say
them, then..." She swallowed hard. "Maybe I can."
He regarded her dubiously for a moment. "You really
think there's something important that you can say?"
She faced him down. Nodded.
"Write the speech," he said. "Show it to me."
She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. He read it
carefully, shook his head--she thought at first in denial--and
then handed it back to her.

Waiting in the wings to go on stage, Letitia Blakely
listened to the low murmur of the young crowd in the auditorium.
She avoided the spot near the curtain.
Rutger acted as master of ceremonies. The proceedings
were somber, low-energy. She began to feel as if she were
making a terrible mistake. She was too young to say these
things; it would sound horribly awkward, even childish.
Rutger made his opening remarks, then introduced her and
motioned for her to come on stage. Letitia deliberately walked
through the spot near the curtain, paused briefly, closed her eyes
and took a deep breath, as if to infuse herself with whatever
remained there of Reena. She walked past Miss Darcy, who
seemed to glare at her.
Her throat seized. She rubbed her neck quickly, blinked at
the bright lights on the catwalk overhead, tried to see the faces
beyond the lights. They were just smudges in great darkness.
She glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw Miss Darcy
nodding, Go ahead.
"This has been a bad time for all of us," she began, voice
high and scratchy. She cleared her throat. "I've lost a lot a
friends, and so have you. Maybe you've lost sons and daughters.
I think, even from there, looking at me, you can tell I'm
not.., designed. I'm natural. I don't have to wonder whether I'll get sick and die. But I..." She cleared her throat again. It
wasn't getting easier. "I thought someone like me could tell
you something important.
"People have made mistakes, bad mistakes. But you are
not the mistakes. I mean.., they weren't mistaken to make
you. I can only dream about doing some of the things you'll do.
Some of you are made to live in space for a long tine, and I
can't do that. Some of you will think things-I can't, and go
places I won't.., travel to see the stars. We're different in a lot of ways, but I just thought it was important to tell you..."
She wasn't following the prepared speech. She couldn't.
"I love you. I don't care what the others say. We love you. You
are very important. Please don't forget that. And don't forget
what it costs us all."
The silence was complete. She felt like slinking away.
Instead, she straightened, thanked them, hearing not a word,
not a restless whisper, then bowed her head from the catwalk
glare and the interstellar darkness beyond.
Miss Darcy, stiff and formal, reached her arm out as Letitia
passed by. They shook hands firmly, and Letitia saw, for the
first time, that Miss Darcy looked upon her as an equal.
Letitia stood backstage while the ceremonies continued,
examining the old wood floor, the curtains, counterweights, and
flies, the catwalk.
It seemed very long ago, she had dreamed what she felt
now, this unspecified love, not for family, not for herself. Love
for something she could not have known back then; love for
children not her own, yet hers none the less. Brothers.
Sisters.
Family.

(ebook v1.1 Separated from short story anthology ‘Tangents’, page titles and #s removed, some paragraph formatting added , converted to rtf, quick spell check done)