Facial Justice Read Online Free Page B

ugly men. They also took pains to look their worst for the interrogation, refraining from shaving, and even from washing. The Government, who liked to grace their proceedings with a show of legality, were nonplussed, and after a mass execution of pretty gentlemen had been threatened, the whole inquiry was discreetly dropped. This was not the signal act of clemency that it was made out to be, for it had occurred to the Investigators that the child, having been brought up almost exclusively by women, was scarcely in a position to know any gentlemen, pretty or otherwise. He was not what was known contemptuously as an "F.C." or Family Child. Families were still permitted but they were very much frowned on, and the majority of children were brought up in crèches of a hundred, fifty of either sex, and cared for (if that be the word) by women chosen by lot for the purpose. Until the age of seven their entourage was exclusively feminine. The little traitor's provenance was soon discovered: he belonged to Kiddykot 81. The Government then began to set about the ten nurses or kiddy-kuddlers, as they were somewhat euphemistically called, but they displayed unexpected firmness. With the political sense that women sometimes have, they divined that the Government was embarrassed, if not actually on the run; one and all they declared that Kiddy (m) 19167 (for each child was allotted a number instead of a name) had never been out of their sight, and could never have been in contact with any pretty gentleman (a contact, indeed, they would have taken special pains to guard him from). To a woman they were loyal to the regime, they said; but if they had to put up with any more of this sort of thing they would strike. Striking was, of course, forbidden, but the idea, if not the fact, of it still existed, and the Government was alarmed. No member of the community would or could do any job, except the job that he or she was trained for; and at the thought of 200,000 children behaving exactly as they liked, without surveillance, the imaginations of the legislators boggled.... So not for the first time women played a decisive part in constitutional history. Then for a time things simmered down; but while the episode was still fresh in men's minds, the crisis boiled up again. Again the Voice was heard, high, piping, clear, not the same voice, it was generally agreed, but speaking the same message. Thrown into a panic, the Government immediately took repressive measures. This time neither pretty gentlemen nor kiddy-kuddlers were spared; their ranks were decimated, the victims being chosen by lot. The reign of terror recalled the worst moments of the War. By no means all the deaths were caused by Government action; the two parties inflicted wholesale massacres on each other, and many men with no particular political convictions took advantage of the general disorder to go about wounding and murdering. Still the voice fluted on; its demand for fresh air and sunlight could be beard above the rattle of machine guns and the volleys of firing squads. The Government retired to their most secret bombproof, gasproof, rayproof, germproof shelter, and there it was that they ordered the Slaughter of the Innocents which brought the dispensation to an end. For hardly had the shots rung out and the toddlers toppled over than the second child appeared. No shouts of laughter greeted him, only aghast faces and a horrified, despairing silence. He said nothing, but beckoned and slowly walked away; and by ones and twos people began to follow him until it seemed the whole crowd was on the move. Nobody tried to stop them as they passed down the long corridors, and when they came to the mouth of the cave the guards stood up and saluted them. So they went out into the daylight, about a million in all, half the populaton of the English underworld.
    Chapter Four
    ALTHOUGH it was summer by the calendar, many thousands perished of exposure as well as of starvation, for the effect