People with disabilities -- Fiction; Science fiction
One of the checkers came in. Docchi recognized her vaguely; he'd seen
her around but that was all. He didn't know who she was nor what she
did. Unless he was mistaken her arms and legs were her own, a trifle
heavy but shapely enough. If there was anything about her that was
camouflaged with plastic tissue it was her face--the sullen glamour was
an exaggeration of nature and moreover her expression didn't change
at all as she came nearer. There must be something with her face that
couldn't be corrected surgically and so she'd overcompensated.
"We've got it all done," she said in a flat throaty voice. Glamour
there too, in about the same degree.
"What?" he said. "Oh yes, the check of the biologicals. All
identified?" He recalled her name, Maureen something or other.
"Everything that people claimed. There was some that no one knew what
it was. Useless I suppose, or worse. It ought to be destroyed."
That was a logical assumption any time save now. Medicine was precious
and had to be hoarded even if they didn't know what it was. "Save it,
Maureen. Sooner or later someone will be in for it."
"They've all been in. You don't know how they rushed here when they
learned the dispensary had been ransacked by the guards." She smiled
with faint disdain.
He was beginning to doubt whether her expression came out of the
cosmetic kit; it was applied with extraordinary skill if it had,
flexible enough to allow her to smile without seeming strained. But
if it actually was her face it was monotonous. How long could she
keep up the glamour? "Don't be condescending, Maureen. Of course they
were concerned. There are people who need those preparations to live
comfortably, some in order to live at all."
"I know," she said. "I've personally contacted all the regular
deficients."
She seemed to know more about it than he did. There was a fraternity of
the ailing and degrees of confraternity. Within the accidentals there
were special groups, allied by the common nature of their infirmity.
It was possible she belonged to some such group or knew someone who
did. The latter probably; there seemed to be nothing seriously wrong
with her. "What do you suppose happened? Why is there some left?" said
Docchi. "If everyone's been here all of it ought to be accounted for."
"They're always experimenting," said Maureen.
"Who?"
"Doctors," she said. "They try the latest ideas out on us and if we
survive they use it on normal people."
There was some truth in it--not much, but the bitterness was there
though Earth and all it stood for was far behind. "Don't blame them.
They've got to make improvements," he said in mild reproof.
"You don't know," said Maureen. "Anyway, what I was saying is that
there is some stuff we can't place. In each case it substitutes for one
or more substances that have been in use up to now. We don't know who
it's for."
It was more serious than he thought, if only in a negative sense. He
straightened up. "How many are missing biologicals?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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