Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper Page A

there's enough left over for you. Then I go to the area work station to check in each day so they will know I am still alive and my room occupied. Then to the area water station to punch in so they'll know I'm still alive and using water. To the required school for continuing education, which is a laugh, because there's nothing left to teach anyone that matters. There aren't any books; they take up too much room. There aren't any teachers. There's one technical university, and only the people who run things get to send their children there, so they can keep on running things."
    "You do that every day?"
    "Except the sabbath. On the sabbath I go to the required religious observance of my choice. We're very religious, hadn't you noticed. Ha. Ha. Ha."
    None of it was reasonable, so I thought he lied. One day I opened the door and stepped out. There were people everywhere, small people. I hadn't noticed the first time, but almost all of the people were small. Still, they filled up the moving corridors and stairs. All of them wore much the same sort of clothes, and it was hard to tell men from women. Some of them saw me looking out, and stopped to stare, muttering, the noise level rising like a disturbed hive. I was afraid the noise would bring some official to see what was going on. I went back in, hastily, and stayed inside after that.
    All this time the thing inside me kept flaming away as though it had to burn its way out. It wasn't pain, it wasn't that kind of burning, but there was such a dreadful urgency about it. I felt stretched thin. Like parchment stretched around a flame, trying to contain it, getting hotter and hotter all the time.
    Even though he had said there was no wine, Bill came home another time acting giggly and happy, as though he had been drinking. If there wasn't wine, there was something like it, because his face was flushed and the pupils of his eyes were tiny, like dots. He giggled at me, like a drunken baby, waving his finger, and took a box out of one of the hidden closets. The box had women's clothes in it, and he put them on. There were stockings like cobwebs, but full of holes, a silky black blouse, a red and black striped skirt, a slim underbodice without sleeves. Around his shoulders he wrapped a fleece, a sheepskin, with the wool out, as though it had been fur, then he staggered around on high-heeled red shoes. All the things were old and stained, like the clothes the aunts had given me to wear.
    I told him the things weren't very nice.
    "I know," he said. "Oh, I know. Women don't wear clothes like these anymore. We all dress alike. Men and women. Nothing silky anymore. Nothing lacy or soft. Just these," and he pinched up a handful of the trousers he had discarded, the harsh wrinkled fabric of them pulling up in mountain peaks beneath his fingers. "I brought the silky clothes back from a time-trip, a long time ago. When we went to take pictures of whales."
    I thought he would have liked living at Westfaire. My father wore soft things, velvets and satins. "Please take me home," I begged him. "You can go with me. There are many nice fabrics at home. You would love the gowns."
    "Beauty," he said to me, pushing me down on the couch and squatting on the floor in front of me like some great lady frog, the soiled silk lying in loose folds on his flat chest. "Listen to me. I am a member of a work crew. The work crew is assigned to make certain kinds of films, like the ones you've been watching. There are five of us. Alice Fremont is the travel technician. She takes us places to film things. Martin Duboise is the director. He tells the cameraman-Jaybee Veolante-what pictures to get. He usually talks to me about that also, because I write the scripts, the words, you know?"
    I knew he did. I had seen him at work, at a fold down place with a screen to show words and a thing to print paper.
    He said, "Janice Saintjohn is the researcher."
    I asked him what that was.
    "Researchers find things out. They learn