Beggars and Choosers

by Nancy Kress

  The ’bot floated through the French doors with a fresh pitcher of vodka scorpions. Katous scrambled away, his four ears quivering. His scramble brought him sideways against a bank of flowers, all of which tried to wrap themselves around him. One long flaccid petal settled softly over his eyes. Katous yelped and pulled loose, his eyes wild. He shot across the terrace.

  “Help!” he cried. “Help Katous!”

  On that side of the terrace I had planted moondust in shallow boxes between the palings, to make a low border that wouldn’t obstruct the view of the Bay. Katous’s frightened flight barreled him into the moondust’s sensor field. It released a cloud of sweet-smelling blue fibers, fine as milkweed. The dog breathed them in, and yelped again. The moondust cloud was momentarily translucent, a fragrant fog around those enormous terrified eyes. Katous ran in a ragged circle, then leaped blindly. He hurled between the wide-set palings and over the edge of the terrace.

  The sound of his body hitting the pavement below made Hudson turn its sensors.

  Stephanie and I ran to the railing. At our feet the moondust released another cloud of fibers. Katous lay smashed on the sidewalk six stories down.

  “Damn!” Stephanie cried. “That prototype cost a quarter million in R&D!”

  Hudson said, “There was an unregistered sound from the lower entranceway. Shall I alert security?”

  “What am I going to tell Norman? I promised to baby-sit the thing and keep it safe!”

  “Repeat. There was an unregistered sound from the lower entranceway. Shall I alert security?”

  “No, Hudson,” I said. “No action.” I looked at the mass of bloody pink fur. Sorrow and disgust swept through me: sorrow for Katous’s fear, disgust for Stephanie and myself.

  “Ah, well,” Stephanie said. Her perfect lips twitched. “Maybe the IQ did need enhancing. Can’t you just see the Liver tabloid headlines? DUMB DOG DIVES TO DEATH. PANICKED BY PENILE POSY.” She threw back her head and laughed, the red hair swinging in the breeze.

  Mercurial, David had once said of Stephanie. She has intriguingly mercurial moods.

  Personally, I’ve never found Liver tabloid headlines as funny as everyone else seems to. And I’d bet that neither “penile” nor “posy” was in the Liver vocabulary.

  Stephanie shrugged and turned away from the railing. “I guess Norman will just have to make another one. With the R&D already done, it probably won’t bankrupt them. Maybe they can even take a tax write-off. Did you hear that Jean-Claude rammed his write off through the IRS, for the embryos he and Lisa decided not to implant in a surrogate after all? He discarded them and wrote off the embryo storage for seven years as a business depreciation on the grounds that an heir was part of long-term strategic planning, and the IRS auditor actually allowed it. Nine fertilized embryos, all with expensive genemods. And then he and Lisa decide they don’t want kids after all.”

  I gazed at the throwaway pile of pink fur on the sidewalk, and then out at the wide blue Bay, and I made my decision. In that moment. As quickly and irrationally as that.

  Like most of the rest of my life.

  “Do you know Colin Kowalski?” I asked Stephanie.

  She thought briefly. She had eidetic recall. “Yes, I think so. Sarah Goldman introduced us at some theater a few years ago. Tall, with wavy brown hair? Minimal genemod, right? I don’t remember him as handsome. Why? Is he your replacement for David?”

  “No.”

  “Wait a minute—isn’t he with the GSEA?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I already mentioned,” Stephanie said stiffly, “that Norman’s company had a special beta-test permit for Katous?”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  Stephanie chewed on her flawless lower lip. “Actually, the permit is pending. Diana—”

  “Don’t worry, Stephanie. I’m not going to report your dead violation. I just thought you might know Colin. He’s giving an extravagant Fourth of July party. I could get you an invitation.” I was enjoying her discomfort.

  “I don’t think I’d be interested in a party hosted by a Purity Squad agent. They’re always so stuffy. Guys who wrap up genetic rigidity in the old red-white-and-blue and never see that the result looks like a national prick. Or a nightstick, beating down innovation in the name of fake patriotism. No thanks.”

  “You think the idealism is fake?”

  “Most patriotism is. Either that or Liver sentimentality. God, the only thing bearable about this country comes from genemod technology. Most Livers look like shit and behave worse—you yourself said you can’t stand to be around them.”

  I had said that, yes. There were a lot of people I couldn’t stand to be around.

  Stephanie was on a political roll, the kind that never made it to campaign holovids. “Without the genemod brains in the security enclaves, this would be a country of marching morons, incapable of even basic survival. Personally, I think the best act of ‘patriotism’ would be a lethal genemod virus that wiped out everybody but donkeys. Livers contribute nothing and drain off everything.”

  I said carefully, “Did I ever tell you that my mother was a Liver? Who was killed fighting for the United States in the China Conflict? She was a master sergeant.”

  Actually, my mother had died when I was two; I barely remembered her. But Stephanie had the grace to look embarrassed. “No. And you should have, before you let me give that tirade. But it doesn’t change anything. You’re a donkey. You’re genemod. You do useful work.”

  This last was either generous or bitchy. I have done a variety of work, none of it persistently useful. I have a theory about people who end up with strings of short-term careers. It is, incidentally, the same theory I have about people who end up with strings of short-term lovers. With each one you inevitably hit a low point, not only within the purported “love” affair or fresh occupation, but also within yourself. This is because each new lover/job reveals fresh internal inadequacy. With one you discover your capacity to be lazy; with another, to be shrewish; with a third, to engage in frenzied hungry ambition that appalls you with its pathetic neediness. The sum of too many careers or too many lovers, then, is the same: a composite of personal low points, a performance scattergram sinking inevitably to the bottom right quadrant. All your weaknesses stand revealed. What one lover or occupation missed, the next one will draw forth.

  In the last ten years, I have worked in security, in entertainment holovids, in county politics, in furniture manufacture franchises (more than one), in ’bot law, in catering, in education, in applied syncography, in sanitation. Nothing ventured, nothing lost. And yet David, who was after Russell who was after Anthony who was after Paul who was after Rex who was after Eugene who was after Claude, never called me “mercurial.” Which is certainly indicative of something.

  I hadn’t reacted to Stephanie’s jibe, so she repeated it, smiling solicitously. “You’re a donkey, Diana. You do useful work.”

  “I’m about to,” I said.

  She poured herself another drink. “Will David be at this Colin Kowalski’s party?”

  “No. I’m sure not. But he’ll be at Sarah’s campaign fund-raiser on Saturday. We both accepted weeks ago.”

  “And are you going?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I understand. But if David and you are really finished with each other—”

  “Go after him, Stephanie.” I didn’t look at her face. Since David moved out, I’d lost seven pounds and three friends.

  So—say I joined the GSEA because I was jilted. Say I was jealous. Say I was disgusted with Stephanie and everything she represented. Say I was bored with my life at that extremely boring moment. Say I was just looking for a new thrill. Say I was impulsive.

  “I’m going to be out of town for a while,” I said.

  “Oh? Where are you going?”

  “I’m not sure yet. It depends.” I gave a last look over the railing at the smashed, semi-sentient, pathetic and expensive dog. The ultimate in American t
echnology and values.

  Say I was a patriot.

  The next morning I flew down to Colin Kowalski’s office in a government complex west of the city. From the air, buildings and generous landing lots formed a geometric design, surrounded by free-form swaths of bright trees bearing yellow flowers. I guessed the trees were genemod to bloom all year. Trees and lawn stopped abruptly at the perimeter of the Y-field security bubble. Outside that charmed circle the land reverted to scrub, dotted by some Livers holding a scooter race.

  From my aircar I could see the entire track, a glowing yellow line of Y-energy about a meter wide and five twisting miles long. A platform scooter shot out of the starting pod, straddled by a figure in red jacks that, at its speed and my height, was no more than a blur. I had been to scooter races. The scooter’s gravs were programmed to stay exactly six inches above the track. Y-cones on the bottom of the platform determined the speed; the sharper the tilt away from the energy track, the faster the thing could go, and the harder it became to control. The driver was allowed only a single handhold, plus a pommel around which he could wrap one knee. It must be like riding sidesaddle at sixty miles per hour—not that any Liver would ever have heard of a sidesaddle. Livers don’t read history. Or anything else.

  Spectators perched on flimsy benches along the scooter track. They cheered and screamed. The driver was halfway through the course when a second scooter shot out of the pod. My car had been cleared by the government security field, which locked onto my controls and guided me in. I twisted in my seat to keep the scooter track in view. At this lower altitude I could see the first driver more clearly. He increased the tilt of his scooter, even though this part of the track was rough, snaking over rocks and repressions and piles of cut brush. I wondered how he knew the second scooter was gaining on him.

  I saw the first driver race toward a half-buried boulder. The yellow line of track snaked over it. The driver threw his weight toward center, trying to slow himself down. He’d waited too long. The scooter bucked, lost its orientation toward the track, and flipped. The driver was flung to the ground. His head hit the edge of the boulder at over a mile a minute.

  A moment later the second scooter raced over the body, its energy cones a perfect six inches above the crushed skull.

  My car descended below the treetops and landed between two beds of bright genemod flowers.

  Colin Kowalski met me in the lobby, a severe neo-Wrightian atrium in a depressing gray. “My God, Diana, you look pale. What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. Scooter deaths happen all the time. Nobody tries to regulate scooter races, least of all the politicians who pay for them in exchange for votes. What would be the point? Livers choose that stupid death, just as they choose to take sunshine or drink themselves to oblivion or waste their little lives destroying the countryside marginally faster than the ’bots can clean it up. Envirobots used to be able to keep up, when there was enough money. Stephanie was right about one thing: I don’t care what Livers do. Why should I? Whatever my mother might have done forty years ago, today Livers are politically and economically negligible. Ubiquitous, but negligible. It was just that I had never seen a scooter death that close before. The crushed skull had looked no more substantial than a flower.

  “You need fresh air,” Colin said. “Let’s go for a walk?”

  “A what?” I said, startled. I’d just had fresh air. What I wanted was to sit down.

  “Didn’t the doctor recommend easy walks? In your condition?” Colin took my arm, and this time I knew better than to say My what? The old training returns fast. Colin was afraid the building wasn’t secure.

  How could a government complex under a maximum-security Y-field not be secure? The place would be multishielded, jammed, swept constantly. There was only one group of people who could even remotely be suspected of developing monitors so radically undetectable—

  I was surprised at myself. My heart actually skipped a beat. Apparently I could still feel an interest in something besides myself.

  Colin walked me past a lovely meditation garden out to an expanse of open lawn. We walked slowly, as befitted someone with my condition, whatever it was.

  “Colin, darling, am I pregnant?”

  “You have Gravison’s disease. Diagnosed just two weeks ago, at the John C. Frémont Medical Enclave, from your repeated complaints of dizziness.”

  “There’s no complaint files in my medical records.”

  “There are now. Three complaints over the last four months. One misdiagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Your medical problems are one reason David Madison left you.”

  Despite myself, I flinched at the sound of David’s name. Some locales are full of gleaming skyscrapers built on infertile, treacherously shifting ground. Japan, for instance. And then there are places like the Garden of Eden—lush, warm, vibrant with color—where only bitterness is built. Whose fault? The Garden dwellers, obviously. They certainly couldn’t claim deprived childhoods.

  Nothing is more bitter than to know you could have had Eden, but turned it into Hiroshima. All by your two unaided selves.

  Colin and I walked a little farther. The weather under the dome was mild and fresh smelling, without wind. Colin’s hand on my arm felt pleasant. Stephanie was wrong; he was handsome, even if his looks weren’t genemod. Thick brown hair, high cheekbones, a strong body. Too bad he was such a prig. Religious reverence for one’s own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff. I could picture Colin inspecting his naked lovers for GSEA violations. And then turning them in.

  I said, “You’re rushing ahead, darling. Why the medical record changes? I haven’t even said I’m willing to play.”

  “We need you, Diana. You couldn’t have contacted me at a better time. Washington has cut our funds again, a ten percent drop from—”

  “Spare me the political lecture, Col. What do you need me for?”

  He looked slightly offended. A prig. But of course his funds had been cut. Everybody’s funds had been cut. Washington is a binary system; money can only go in and out. More was going out than was coming in. Lots more: supporting a nation of Livers was expensive when the U.S.A. no longer held the only world patents for the cheap Y-energy that had made it possible in the first place. Plus, aging industrial machinery, long kept underrepaired, was breaking down at an accelerating rate. Even Stephanie, with all her money, had complained about that. The public sector must feel it even more. And deficit spending had been illegal for nearly a century. Didn’t Colin think I knew all that?

  He said stiffly, “I didn’t mean to lecture. I need you for surveillance. You’re trained, you’re clean, nobody will be tracking your moves electronically. And if they do come to anybody’s attention, Gravison’s disease is the perfect cover.”

  This was true, as far as it went. I was “trained” because fifteen years ago I’d taken part in an unrecorded training program so secret its agents had never actually been used for anything. Or at least I hadn’t, but, then, I’d dropped out before the end. Claude had come along. Or maybe it had been somebody else. Colin Kowalski had also been in that program, which marked the start of his government career. I was clean because nothing about the program appeared in anybody’s data banks, anywhere.

  But there was something Colin wasn’t telling me, something slightly wrong in his manner. I said, “Who, specifically, is it that I won’t come to the attention of?” but I think I already knew.

  “Sleepless. Neither Sanctuary nor that group on Huevos Verdes. La Isla, I mean.”

  Huevos Verdes. Green Eggs. I bent over and pretended to adjust my sandal, to hide my grin. I’d never heard that Sleepless had a sense of humor.

  I said, through rising excitement, “Why does Gravison’s disease provide the perfect cover? What is Gravison’s disease?”

  “A brain disorder. It causes extreme restlessness and agitation.”

  “And immediately you thought of me. Thank you, darling.”

  He looked annoyed. “It often le
ads to aimless travel. Diana, this isn’t a joking matter. You’re the last of the underground agents who we’re positive doesn’t show up on any electronic record anywhere before Sanctuary cultured these so-called SuperSleepless on their protected orbital. Well, it’s not protected anymore. We’ve got it crawling with GSEA personnel. The labs we dismantled completely; Sanctuary will never pull those dangerous genemod tricks again. And that treasonous Jennifer Sharifi and her revolutionary cell will never get out of jail.”

  Colin’s words struck me as understatement: a peculiarly gray-toned, governmental sort of understatement. What he’d called Jennifer Sharifi’s “dangerous genemod tricks” had been a terrorist attempt to use lethal, altered viruses to hold five cities hostage. This incredible, daring, insane terrorism had been an attempt to coerce the United States into letting Sanctuary secede. The only reason Sanctuary hadn’t succeeded was that Jennifer Sharifi’s granddaughter Miranda, from God-knows-what twisted family politics, had betrayed the terrorists to the feds. This had all happened thirteen years ago. Miranda Sharifi had been sixteen years old. She and the other twenty-six children in on the betrayal had supposedly been so genetically altered they don’t even think like human beings anymore. A different species.

  Exactly what the GSEA was supposed to prevent.

  Yet here the twenty-seven SuperSleepless were, walking around alive, a fait accompli. And not even “here”—a few years ago the Supers had all moved to an island they’d built off the coast of Yucatán. That was the word: “built.” One month it was international ocean, no “there” there, the next month there existed a genuine island. It wasn’t a floating construct, like the Artificial Islands, but rock that went all the way down to the continental shelf, which was not especially shallow at that point. Luckily. Nobody knew how the Sleepless had developed the nanotechnology to do it. A lot of people passionately wanted to know. Nanotechnology was still in its infancy. Mostly, nanoscientists could take things apart, but not build them. This was apparently not true on La Isla.

  An island, says international law, which predates the existence of people who can create one, is a natural feature. Unlike a ship or an orbital, it doesn’t fall under the Artificial Construct Tax Reform Law of 2050, and it doesn’t have to be chartered under a national flag. It can be claimed by, or for, a given country, or can be assigned to it as a protectorate by the UN. The twenty-seven Supers plus hangers-on settled on their island, which was shaped roughly like two interlocking ovals. The United States claimed La Isla; the potential taxes on SuperSleepless corporate businesses were enormous. However, the UN assigned the island to Mexico, twenty miles away. The UN was collectively unhappy with Americans, in one of those downward cycles of international opinion. Mexico, which had been getting fucked over by the United States regularly for several centuries, was happy to receive whatever monies La Isla paid to leave the inhabitants strictly alone.