The man’s legs were being blown off again as they left the reception room.
Mary considered the reflection in the mirrored wall. She sat on the floor and looked at different angles of herself: profile, full-face, full length, naked, clothed. Then she took up the magazine and studied it. She sighed.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall—” The words came haltingly to her mind and from her lips. She hadn’t read them, she recalled. Daddy had said them, quoted them as he put it. But they too were lines from a book—“who is the fairest of—”
A picture of Mother sat upon the dresser and Mary considered this now. Looked for a long time at the slender, feminine neck. The golden skin, smooth and without blemish, without wrinkles and without age. The dark brown eyes and the thin tapers of eyebrows, the long black lashes, set evenly, so that each half of the face corresponded precisely. The half-parted-mouth, a violet tint against the gold, the white, white teeth, even, sparkling.
Mother. Beautiful, Transformed Mother. And back again to the mirror.
“—of them all. …”
The image of a rather chubby girl, without lines of rhythm or grace, without perfection. Splotchy skin full of little holes, puffs in the cheeks, red eruptions on the forehead. Perspiration, shapeless hair flowing onto shapeless shoulders down a shapeless body. Like all of them, before the Transformation.
Did they all look like this, before? Did Mother, even?
Mary thought hard, trying to remember exactly what Daddy and Grandpa had said, why they said the Transformation was a bad thing, and why she believed and agreed with them so strongly. It made little sense, but they were right. They were right! And one day, she would understand completely.
Mrs. Cuberle slammed the door angrily and Mary jumped to her feet. She hadn’t forgotten about it. “The way you upset Dr. Hortel. He won’t even see me anymore, and these traumas are getting horrible. I’ll have to get that awful Dr. Wagoner.”
“Sorry—”
Mrs. Cuberle sat on the couch and crossed her legs carefully.
“What in the world were you doing on the floor?”
“Trying to sleep.”
“Now, I won’t hear of it! You’ve got to stop it! You know you’re not insane. Why should you want to do such a silly thing?”
“The books. And Daddy told me about it.”
“And you mustn’t read those terrible things.”
“Why—is there a law against them?”
“Well, no, but people tired of books when the tapes came in. You know that. The house is full of tapes; anything you want.”
Mary stuck out her lower lip.
“They’re no fun. All about the Wars and the colonizations.”
“And I suppose books are fun?”
“Yes. They are.”
“And that’s where you got this idiotic notion that you don’t want the Transformation, isn’t it? Of course it is. Well, we’ll see to that!”
Mrs. Cuberle rose quickly and took the books from the corner and from the closet and filled her arms with them. She looked everywhere in the room and gathered the old rotten volumes.
These she carried from the room and threw into the elevator. A button guided the doors shut.
“I thought you’d do that,” Mary said. “That’s why I hid most of the good ones. Where you’ll never find them.”
Mrs. Cuberle put a satin handkerchief to her eyes and began to weep.
“Just look at you. Look. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this!”
“Deserve what, Mother? What am I doing that’s so wrong?” Mary’s mind rippled in a confused stream.
“What!” Mrs. Cuberle screamed, “What! Do you think I want people to point to you and say I’m the mother of an idiot? That’s what they’ll say, you’ll see. Or,” she looked up hopefully, “have you changed your mind?”
“No.” The vague reasons, longing to be put into words.
“It doesn’t hurt. They just take off a little skin and put some on and give you pills and electronic treatments and things like that. It doesn’t take more than a week.”
“No.” The reason.
“Don’t you want to be beautiful, like other people—like me? Look at your friend Shala, she’s getting her Transformation next month. And she’s almost pretty now.”
“Mother, I don’t care—”
“If it’s the bones you’re worried about, well, that doesn’t hurt. They give you a shot and when you wake up, everything’s moulded right. Everything, to suit the personality.”
“I don’t care, I don’t care.”
“But why?”
“I like me the way I am.” Almost—almost exactly. But not quite. Part of it, however. Part of what Daddy and Grandpa meant.
“But you’re so ugly, dear! Like Dr. Hortel said. And Mr. Willmes, at the factory. He told some people he thought you were the ugliest girl he’d ever seen. Says he’ll be thankful when you have your Transformation. And what if he hears of all this, what’ll happen then?”
“Daddy said I was beautiful.”
“Well really, dear. You do have eyes.”
“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
