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ELECTRIC FOREST
by TANITH LEE
Nelson Doubleday, Inc. Garden City, New York
Copyright © 1979 by Tanith Lee All rights reserved
Published by arrangement with
DAW Books, Inc. 1301 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10019
Printed in the United States of America
to
Don and Elsie Wollheim
with affection and thanks
Contents
Pre-Screening: Christophine del Jan 1 i. Quarry and Hunter 3
2. Venus Rising 25
3. The Proving-Ground 45
4. Crossing the Line 73
5. Secundo 93
6. In the Forests of the Night 113 Post-Screening Sonogram 141
ELECTRIC FOREST
Pre-Sereening: Christophine del Jan (This Presentation is Classified)
The following document has been compiled from the data tapes, and prepared in narrative-descriptive form,
in order to throw an ultimate light upon what took place between 10-4-1 and 9-1-2 of the Third Quarter,
Blue and early Fall, Indigo.
Required reading can be, at this stage, irksome. I would ask, however, that you follow the manuscript on
your screen in strict sequence, resisting the impulse to anticipate. After all, the motivation of the subject is
the key element here, emotion and psychology providing clues to that motivation.
Nothing can be learned without some measure of risk, and, more vital still, of patience.
Additional material is naturally available via optocon and audio. But this, too, I would ask you to delay using
until the manuscript itself has been absorbed.
The screen is now at your disposal.
C.d.J.
 
1. Quarry and Hunter
i
Ugly stood alone before the processing machine.
The machine made certain types of cottene clothing, but Ugly never saw the syntho-cotton fed in at one
tube above, nor the crisp white garments snowing out from the other below. Neither did she witness the
actual metamorphosis that went on inside the machine in front of her. In the restricted space, three meters
by two, Ugly stood alone with the processing machine and ran her stubby hands, clumsily but effectively,
over the bank of green and red keys. It was simple to keep the machine functioning. The task should have
left her mind free to think of other things.
Unfortunately, Ugly had very little to think about.
Ugly's shift comprised three hours on alternate days—five days a Dek; that was each oneday, threeday,
fiveday, seven-day and nineday. Every fifth Dek was free. For this program of work, Ugly received two
hundred astrads each calendar month (four Deks), of which about one hundred and fifty went on
accommodation, food and essentials. Fifty astrads were nearly always left over to be spent on relaxation
and
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pleasure. Unfortunately, again, Ugly was not in an ideal position to spend them.
Ugly's name, of course, was not actually "Ugly." That tvas merely what most people—children,
workmates—called her. It was not even a particularly cruel name any more, simply blisteringly accurate.
No longer spoken in malice, it had lost some of its intrinsic offense—and gained some. Ugly herself had
never commented on the matter, either way, nor on her real and registered name, Magdala Cled.
On any planet of the Earth Conclave, fetal conception was the controlled result of selective, artificial
impregnation. This ensured that all children born were healthy. Occasionally, however, mistakes occurred in
the area of contraception, and a fetus was conceived biologically. Sometimes, such children were less than
perfect. It had happened that Magdala Cled was one of these.
Her mother was a licensed prostitute; no one had bothered to identify her father. Intent on trade, the
woman had forgone abortion until too late. She had subsequently dispelled her baby and dumped it, with the
required five hundred astrads, on the State. Magdala had grown up in a state childrens home.
A potential intelligence and interest had quickly submerged beneath regulation mechanical schooling that
gave no outlet for speculation or the asking of even the most basic questions. It submerged, too, beneath the
primitive malignancy of her fellow inmates, who (in their defense) were half-afraid of Magdala. For it was
a society of regular features and well-formed physiognomy, and monsters were rare.
"Ugly!" the children screamed, as they tore Magdala's hair out, tripped her, stuck into her small sharp
objects, pinched and kicked her. Almost as if, by constant assault, they could change her into something less
dreadful.
But Magdala Cled, re-named Ugly, only grew uglier.
Just under one and a half meters in adult height, a great engine seemed to have descended upon her,
squashing her
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downwards and sideways, and twisting her for good measure. Squat, square and irreparably leaning,
Magdala walked with a sort of part-lagging, part-hopping step. From her skew shoulders, arms hung like
afterthoughts, with spatulate afterthoughts of hands on them. And from her head, an afterthought of thin
 
murky hair, chopped off at the neck. The modeling of the skull itself did show some mocking promise.
Under other circumstances, it could have been the skull of an aware and creative woman. The face might
have been poignant, though never pretty. But even that had not been possible for it. The flattened nose, the
left eyelid which lay permanently almost closed on the gray-white cheek, had seen to that. Only the mouth
was well-formed, though the teeth had broken long ago and been replaced by haphazard dental implants,
shabby as the fate which had necessitated them.
Certainly, Magdala, in the most absolute sense, merited her second name. It suited her; she would have
been the last to deny that.
Only inside her, never let out, the bewildered anger hid, the pain and fury. She hid them also from herself,
when she could, did ugly Magdala.
On Earth Conclave planet Indigo, cosmetic surgery cost more astrads than a processory operative could
save in seven years. Even the un-spendthrift Magdala. For there was not much call for such surgery, and
the fee compensated. Besides, Magdala had only to glimpse herself in a reflective surface to know she
would need more work upon herself than any physical human body could stand.
She was a hopeless case.
And if she thought about anything, as her stunted efficient fingers scrambled over the keys of her machine,
ugly Magdala thought of that. A formless and useless sort of thinking, more like an ache in her brain than a
thought. While sometimes superimposed upon the basic hopelessness, was a list of that day's familiar
miseries—the looks of
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ELECTRIC FOREST
strangers: pity and revulsion, the disgusted and desensitized looks of acquaintances (there were no friends).
And under it all, checked yet eternal, blazing anguish, howling.
At thirteen hours, Indigo noon, Magdala's shift finished. However, Magdala's relief was late, as her reliefs
always were. Magdala, unprotesting, stayed at her post, until another girl slipped into the three-by-two cell.
'Thanks, Ugly," said the girl, and it was obvious she used the epithet now only as identification, no hurt
consciously intended. "I guess I'm late again. Had to fix myself up." The girl was attractive, even in her
cottene overall. She edged past Magdala and pressed at the key bank with an inch of raspberry nail. Her
hair was the induced color of eighteen-carat gold, and she shook it contemptuously at the machine. "Three
hours of this. Jesus. Still, I may be on the display benches next Dek."
Magdala stood in the cell doorway, watching the girl. Magdala's smeared plasticine face was quite illegible.
The display benches had two-hour shifts only, and earned an extra fifty astrads per month, but, open to
inspection, they were manned solely by the most good looking men and women.
The golden girl yawned into a trap of raspberry nails.
"Go on, Ugly. Beat it. I'm expecting a bench supervisor by in a minute, and it's private/'
Ugly left the machine cell, and made her stumbling exit along the corridor. Other machine cells opened off
in the right-hand wall. On the left the lower extensions of solar generators thrummed. At the check point,
Magdala shed her overall into a disposal chute. Clad in her own shapeless utility garment, she sank in the
elevator and emerged presently in the ozonized city air.
It was Blue, the season that on Indigo preceded Fall. On the shaved sloping lawns of the city the amber
summer grass was turning the shade of wood-smoke; on the um-
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brella-formed trees along the sidewalks, the leaves hung like lapis lazuli. Above, the tall slender
blocks of steel and glazium rose into a sky which was also intensely blue, and warm with the zenith
sun of thirteen o'clock. A steady concerted vibration came from the city; the hum of solar
generators at work on the high roofs and sky-links overhead, the purr of unseen vehicular traffic
passing on the underground roadways. There was, too, the murmur of countless small
devices—automatic sprinklers and fans, vendors, clocks, the gem-bright advertisements on the
walls of occasional buildings, the faint regular throbbing of the live pavement at the sidewalk's
center, and of a thousand elevators, moving stairs, reversible windows, sliding doors.
There were not many people abroad here in the commercial area of the city, for the thirteen-hour
shift had checked out almost an hour before.
In the isolation, a handsome young man, passing on the slow outer section of the live pavement,
glided by Magdala. His hair was pale and silken, and he was listening to music through the small
silver discs resting lightly in his ears, but his eyes, wandering, alighted on the woman, and at once
flinched frantically into reaction. Once or twice Magdala had caught a comment from those who
were shocked by her appearance. "It's horrible. If I looked like her, I'd ask for work in one of the
out-city plants." And another: Tf I looked like that, I'd take enough analgens to see I didn't wake
up." Magdala was accustomed to it all, the looks, the words. She seemed not to register them.
Seemed not to.
Carried a short distance away, the pale-haired young man risked turning his head. Glazed in his
web of externally noiseless music, he stared at Magdala, disbelieving.
Magdala did not use the live pavement. Even getting onto the slow outer strip proved difficult
because of her awkwardness. And people did not like to travel with her, would
wait till meters of the strip had gone by before they would step on in her wake. For this same reason
she avoided the sub-transport, the sensit theaters, and most public haunts.
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She walked a great deal, on lonely thoroughfares, in her agonized, lurching fashion.
Six blocks from the clothing processory, the sidewalks opened into arcades and apartment-stores.
These could be the most unnerving moments of Magdala's journey, as, head bowed, gaze carefully blind,
she fumbled through the periphery of the crowds. Sometimes people supposed her shortness to be that of a
child, stopped to guide her, and recoiled in alarm. But today the arcades were not crowded and there were
no incidents.
On the far side of the arcades lay an azure park where tame white or black doves fluttered about. Beyond
the park towered seven Accomat blocks, in the fifth of which Mag-dala lived.
The Accomat was one of the cheapest ways to exist. Each apartment had a single main area three by four
meters, with a bathroom cubicle half that size, and the normal accessories of food-dial, pay-dial and Tri-V
screen, and limited furniture which unfolded from the wall. The perimeter variety also had windows. The
inner did not, and here washed-air came through vents and second-hand daylight through refractors and
shafts. Magdala's Accomat did not have a window.
The door shot wide in response to the pressure of her thumb in the print-lock. Magdala moved into the
win-dowless, dim-lit, washed-air cell, just fractionally larger than the cell in which she worked. There was
small evidence of her personality in this chamber, and what evidence there was had been cunningly
concealed.
Now she did not hesitate, except for the constant physiological hesitation of her walk. She crossed to her
pay-dial.
 
In answer to her index print, figures rose on the miniature screen. Today was pay day. Two hundred
astrads had already been registered, and the rent, food bill and tax on her apartment deducted and claimed
by the Accomat computer. However, there was an impressive balance building up in her name at the
central city bank. The figures showed
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just over five thousand astrads. She had only to index print and dial that figure to receive the corresponding
check, which could then be cashed at any Bank Computer Station in the city. Instead, barely glancing at the
screen, Magdala dialled a check for ten astrads.
On pay days, once a month, Magdala bought a meal in the Accomat Cafeteria. Once a month, that was
thirteen times every year, Magdala slunk into the darkest corner booth of the bright and busy eating area,
and ate the fresh meat, fresh vegetables and fruit that the cafeteria could supply. The rest of the year, she
relied on her food-dial, which dispensed plastic containers of revitalized frozen stuffs, vitamin capsules and
various fluids.
To visit the cafeteria, despite the dark booth, was nevertheless an ordeal. Generally each restaurant served
the inhabitants of its own apartment block, who were permitted to exchange and cash their pay-dial checks
there, when ordering food. Most of the dwellers in the fifth block knew Magdala by sight, and scrupulously
avoided her. Sometimes, however, outsiders would come in to eat, and they might see Magdala for the first
time, registering the event explicitly.
The elevator sang gently as it flew like a bird up twenty stories.
Magdala stood in the elevator, her face its normal waxy blank. But even as her stomach tightened, aware
of the coming meal, her mouth dried with an automatic inner cringing. She felt fear constantly but seldom
revealed it, for she was used to being afraid, perpetually and instinctively tensed for the attitudes of the
people about her. She often wished, positively and with no hint of childishness, that she might become
invisible. Sometimes her fear rose to an extreme pitch. Otherwise, it merely breathed steadily within her,
like the continuous steady breathing of the city.
The elevator stopped. Its door slid aside.
Magdala pulled herself out into the luminous sunlit space beyond, and began her arduous progress to the
counter.
The two counter attendants leaned by the menu screen.
I
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One pointed Magdala out to the other. "Here's the cripple, like I said. She always comes in on processory
pay days." She caught the words with ease. Swiftly she selected from the menu screen and the attendant
tapped out her order to the mechanical kitchen. Magdala kept her eyes down. In this position, both lids
drooping, her eyes seemed almost acceptable. The second attendant had submitted her ten-as-trad check
and returned now with her change. He skimmed it across to her, not touching her hand.
She was twenty-six. Since her birth, no one had ever willingly touched her, beyond the impersonal doctors
at the state home and the children who had tortured her.
She took her tray and started toward the darkest booth. She was nearly there before she realized that
someone was already seated inside.
Magdala was briefly confused. Today, the cafeteria was two-thirds empty and nobody took this booth when
so many others, with access to the polarized sunny roof and glazium windows, were available. Then a new,
more startled confusion overtook the first, for the seated figure in the booth was the pale-haired young man
 

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