Her girl-friend, Edna, secreted pure metal instead of pigment and her skin and hair had a metallic sheen that was rather beautiful. In a strong light, Edna's skin and hair were almost luminous, like iridescent paint. There was the fellow that lived on the corner—Virginia never knew his name—who had a double knee and elbow. This made for physical instability.
There were others. Some were interesting from functional standpoints, some were interesting from banal standpoints. Others were just horrible and many were viciously dangerous. But many of them were her friends. Virginia had grown up without one iota of prejudice regarding the shape of a man's body, the color of his skin, or the nationality of his father. For in a life where few men were as simply mutated as to have a mere skin coloration, all of the former prejudices were so minor in the face of the acceptance of the more violent differences that to accept the latter meant complete disregard of the former.
This world contrasted sharply with Virginia's world. To see people walking freely in the streets, pursuing their normal life, was puzzling. Virginia, born in the glare of Alamogordo, under a culture that had devoted itself completely to one main idea or to the secondary or tertiary support of those who pursued that idea, this freedom was inexplicable.
In Virginia's world, there were two classes of people—those who worked directly on the problem of saving their world in one way or another and those who worked to support those who worked on the problem. Farmers produced so much, by law. Book dealers sold so many kinds of books, produced by printers and publishers who did exactly what was needed and no more. Entertainment and relaxation was far from spontaneous.
People did not collect at random and throw a party on the spur of the moment nor could one decide to go out and buy a magazine and read it instead of cleaning out the basement. Though it was admitted as such, it was an emergency dictatorship, with the Alamogordo Blow-up as main dictator. Regulation was the order of the years.
Earth One was, to Virginia, completely unregulated. Women walked along the streets idly, looking in windows and smiling at men. The sign "Bar" intrigued Virginia. She was no stranger to the potable qualities of alcohol, but the concept of an establishment directed at the sole idea of selling drinks had not occurred to her.
This—recall—was Virginia's first experience in living in a world not harassed by fear.
She paused at a window showing an assortment of dresses on well-made forms. In her world, Virginia was a good-looking woman and dressed as well as the next.
In contrast to a world where much time and energy was directed at luxury instead of the sheer, vicious necessity driven of hope and despair—in a world where the accolade of young womanhood is to be permitted her first trip to mother's beauty salon and thereafter make obeisance regularly—Virginia, a beauty in her own world, knew that here she was as conspicuous as a tall telephone pole in a snowbound prairie.