No Charge for Alterations Page 2

to."

  The girl's face grew animated for the first time. "Well, sure! Why doyou think I want to go?"

  "And you don't love Deneb and your farm?"

  "I hate both of them!"

  "But you realize that we must have food. Doesn't it make you feelimportant to grow more food so we can increase our population?"

  "No! Why should I care? I want to go to Earth!"

  Dr. Kalmar shook his head regretfully. He pushed a button on his desk.It was connected to a gravity generator directly under the girl's chair.Four gravities suddenly pushed her down into it and a hypodermic needlejabbed her swiftly with a hypnotic drug. She slumped. He released thebutton and the artificial gravity abated, but she remained dazed andrelaxed.

  "You're not going to hurt her, are you, Doc?" Mr. Emery begged.

  "Certainly not. But I suppose you know Social Control's orders."

  They nodded, the husband gloomily, the wife with a single sharp jerk ofher head.

  "You go right ahead and do it," she said. "I'm sick of working myfingers to the bone while she primps and preens and talks all the timeabout going to Earth."

  "Come, Avis," Dr. Kalmar said in a low, commanding voice.

  She stood up, blank-faced, and followed him out to the Ego Alter room.He closed the door, sat her down in the insulated seat next to thecontrol console, put the wired plastic helmet on her and adjusted it tofit her skull snugly.

  Running his finger down the treatment sheet of her Social Control file,he set the dials according to its instructions. The psychic areas to bereduced were sex drive, competitiveness and imagination, while the areasof reproductive urge and cooperation were to be intensified. Heregulated the individual timers and sent the varying charge through herbrain.

  There was no reaction, no convulsion, no distortion of features. She satthere as if nothing had happened, but her personality had changed ascompletely as though she had been retrained from birth.

  Miss Dupont came in without knocking. She knew, of course, that anypatient in the Ego Alter room would be incapable of being disturbed.

  "Rephysical, Dr. Kalmar?" she asked.

  "I'm afraid so. Will you prepare her, please?"

  The nurse removed the girl's clothes. There was no resistance.

  "Such a lovely body," she said. "It's a shame."

  He shrugged. "Until we have enough people and farms and industries, MissDupont, we'll just have to get used to altering people to fit the needsof our society. I'm sure you understand that."

  "Yes, but it still seems a shame. Bodies like that don't grow on trees."

  He gently moved the girl into the Rephysical Chamber. "They grow in thismachine, though. As soon as we can afford it, which ought to be only afew hundred years from now, we can make any woman look like this, oreven better."

  "And don't forget the men," Miss Dupont said as he started themitogenetic generator. "We could use some Adonises around here."

  "We'll have them," he assured her.

  "Somebody will. None of us'll live that long."

  Working like a sculptor with a cathode in one hand and an anode in theother, Dr. Kalmar began reshaping the girl who stood fixedly in theboxlike chamber. The flesh fled from the cathode and chased after theanode as he broadened the fine nose, thickened the mobile lips, squaredthe slender jaw and drew out carefully the delicately arched orbitalridges.

  "I'll leave the curl in her hair," he said. "Every woman needs at leastone feature she can be proud of."

  "You're telling me," Miss Dupont replied.

  "Synthetic tissue, please."

  She drew out a tube with a variable nozzle and started working justahead of him. A spray of high-velocity cells shot through the girl'ssmooth skin at the neck, shoulders, breasts, hips and legs, formingshapeless lumps that he guided into cords and muscles. The slim figurequickly broadened, grew brawny and competent-looking, the body of awoman who could breed phenomenally while farming alongside her man.

  Dr. Kalmar racked up the instruments and helped Miss Dupont dress thegirl in coveralls and sandals. He felt the pride of craftsmanship whenhe found that the clothing supplied for her by Social Control exactlyfitted her. He injected an antidote to the hypnotic and gave her thestandard test for emotional response as her expressionless face clearedto placidity.

  "Do you know where you are, Avis?"

  "Yes. Ego Alter and Rephysical."

  "What have we done to you?"

  "Changed me to fit my environment."

  "Do you resent being changed?"

  "No." She paused and looked worried. "Who's taking care of the cropswhile I'm here?"

  "They can wait till you and your parents get back, Avis. Let's show themthe change, shall we?"

  "All right," she said. "I think they'll be proud of me. This is how theyalways wanted me to be."

  "And you?"

  "Oh, I feel much better. As if I don't have to try so hard."

  "I'm glad, Avis. Miss Dupont, better have a sedative ready when herfather sees her. I think he'll need it."

  "And her mother?" asked the nurse practically.

  "She'll probably want a drink to celebrate. Give her one."

  * * * * *

  Dr. Kalmar's prognosis was correct, only it didn't go far enough. Hisyoung assistant from Earth had come scooting out of his disquietinglylarge quarters and was jittering in the office when they entered.

  "Is _that_ the pretty girl who was waiting when we came in?" he yelpedin outrage. "What have you done to her?"

  Dr. Kalmar gave the sedative to him instead of Mr. Emery, who wasshocked, but had known in advance what to expect. Miss Dupont preparedanother sedative quickly, gave Mrs. Emery a celebration drink and movedthe family toward the door.

  "She looks fine, Doctor," the mother said happily. "Avis ought to be abig help around the house and farm from now on."

  "I'm sure she will," he said.

  "But she was so lovely!" wept Mr. Emery, though in a rapidly becalmingvoice as the sedative took effect.

  The door closed behind them.

  "You ought to be reported to the Medical Association back on Earth!" Dr.Hoyt said angrily. "Ruining a girl's looks like that!"

  Dr. Kalmar sighed. He had hoped to be able to put off this orientationlecture until the following day, when there wouldn't be so many patientsjamming his appointment book.

  "All right, let's get it over with. First, I was also trained on Earthand know how Ego Alter and Rephysical are used there: Ego Alter toremove psychic blocks so people can compete better, and Rephysical sothey'll be more attractive. Second, we're not under the jurisdiction ofEarth's Medical Association. Third, we'd damn well better not be,because our problems and solutions aren't the same at all."

  "You'd have been jailed for spoiling that girl's chances of a goodmarriage!"

  "I didn't," Dr. Kalmar said quietly. "I improved them."

  "You did nothing of the--" Dr. Hoyt stopped. "Improved? How?"

  "I keep telling you this is a frontier world and you keep acting as ifyou understand, but you don't. Look, a family is an economic liabilityon Earth; it consumes without producing. That's why girls have so muchtrouble finding husbands there. Out here it's different. A family is anasset--if every member in it is willing to work."

  "But a pretty girl like that can always get by."

  "No Denebian can afford to marry a pretty girl. It's too risky. Shecan't work as hard as we do and still take care of her looks. And he'dworry about her constantly, which would cut into his efficiency. Byhaving me make her a merely attractive girl in a wholesome, hearty way,Social Control guarantees more than just a marriage for her--itguarantees a contented married life."

  "Sweating away on a farm," Dr. Hoyt said.

  "Now that her anti-social strivings are gone, she'll realize that Denebneeds farmers instead of nightclub singers. She'll take pride in being agood worker, she'll raise as many children as she'll be capable ofbearing, and she'll have a good husband and a prosperous farm. Thatwouldn
't have satisfied her before. It will now. And she's better for itand so is Deneb."

  Dr. Hoyt shook his head. "It's all upside down."

  "You'll get used to it. Why not take today off and explore Denebia? Youneed a rest after all those months in space."

  "Maybe I will," said Dr. Hoyt vaguely, slightly anesthetized.

  "Good." Dr. Kalmar buzzed for Miss Dupont. "Send in the next