"Kate Wilhelm - Funeral" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"That one, the one with the blue eyes and straw-colored hair. Stand up, girl."

Carla didn't move, didn't realize she was being addressed until a Teacher pulled her from her seat.

"Don't hurt her! Turn around, girl. Raise your skirts, higher. Look at me, child. Look up, let me see your
face."

"She's too young for choosing," said the Teacher, examining Carla's bracelet. "Another year, Lady."

"A pity. She'll coarsen in a year's time. The fuzz is so soft right now, the flesh so tender. Oh, well.." She
moved away, flicking a red skirt about her thighs, her red-clad legs narrowing to tiny ankles, flashing
silver slippers with heels that were like icicles. She smelled. Carla didn't know any words to describe
how she smelled. She drank in the fragrance hungrily.

"Look at me, child. Look up, let me see your face.." The words sang through her mind over and over.
At night, falling asleep, she thought of the face, drawing it up from the deep black, trying to hold it in
focus: white skin, pink cheek ridges, silver eyelids, black lashes longer than she had known lashes could
be, silver-pink lips, three silver spots-one at the corner of her left eye, another at the corner of her
mouth, the third like a dimple in the satiny cheek. Silver hair that was loose, in waves about her face, that
rippled with life of its own when she moved. If only she had been allowed to touch the hair, to run her
finger over that cheek. The dream that began with the music of the Lady's laughter ended with the
nightmare of her other words: "She'll coarsen in a year's time.."

After that Carla had watched the changes take place on and within her body, and she understood what
the Lady had meant. Her once smooth legs began to develop hair; it grew under her arms, and, most
shameful, it sprouted as a dark, coarse bush under her belly. She wept. She tried to pull the hairs out,
but it hurt too much, and made her skin sore and raw. Then she started to bleed, and she lay down and
waited to die, and was happy that she would die. Instead, she was ordered to the infirmary and was
forced to attend a lecture on feminine hygiene. She watched in stony-faced silence while the Doctor
added the new information to her bracelet. The Doctor's face was smooth and pink, her eyebrows pale,
her lashes so colorless and stubby that they were almost invisible. On her chin was a brown mole with
two long hairs. She wore a straight blue-grey gown that hung from her shoulders to the floor. Her drab
hair was pulled back tightly from her face, fastened in a hard bun at the back of her neck. Carla hated
her. She hated the Teachers. Most of all she hated herself. She yearned for maturity.

Madam Westfall had written: "Maturity brings grace, beauty, wisdom, happiness. Immaturity means
ugliness, unfinished beings with potential only, wholly dependent upon and subservient to the mature
citizens."

There was a True-False quiz on the master screen in front of the classroom. Carla took her place
quickly and touch-typed her ID number on the small screen of her machine.

She scanned the questions, and saw that they were all simple declarative statements of truth. Her stylus
ran down the True column of her answer screen and it was done. She wondered why they were killing
time like this, what they were waiting for. Madam Westfall's death had thrown everything off schedule.

Paperlike brown skin, wrinkled and hard, with lines crossing lines, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, leaving
little islands of flesh, hardly enough to coat the bones. Cracked voice, incomprehensible: they took away
the music from the air. voices from the skies. erased pictures that move. boxes that sing and sob. Crazy
talk. And,. only one left that knows. Only one.