Beggars and Choosers

by Nancy Kress

  After dark, the cold got sharp as pain. I could feel, me, the hollow place in my chest where the wind whistled through. It made a noise inside me that I could hear in my ears. The Y-lights made the tracks bright as day, but the cold was a dark thing, it, circling us like something rabid. My bones felt, them, like icicles, and just as like to snap.

  But we were almost there. No more than a mile left to go. And then there was the crack of a rifle, and young Scotty Flye fell over dead.

  In another minute they were on us, them. I recognized most of them, me, although I only had names to go with two of them: Clete Andrews and Ned Zalewski. Stomps. Ten or twelve of them, from East Oleanta and Pilotburg and Carter’s Falls, come in before the gravrail busted, and then stuck here. They whooped and hollered, them, like this was a game. They jumped Jack and Stan and Bob and I saw all three go down, even though Stan was a big man and Bob was a fighter, him. The stomps didn’t waste no more bullets, them. They had knives.

  I pushed the little black box on my belt.

  The tingle was there, it, and the shimmer. A stomp jumped me and I heard him hit solid metal. That’s what it sounded like. I could hear everything, me. Judy Farrell screamed and Jack Sawicki moaned. The stomp’s eyes under his ski mask got wide.

  “Shit! The old fart’s got a shield, him!”

  Three of them pounded on me. Only it wasn’t me, it was a thin hard layer an inch from me, like I was a turtle in an uncrackable shell. They couldn’t touch me, them, only push and pull the shell. Finally the first stomp yelled something with no words, him, and shoved the shell so hard I went over the edge of the track and down a little embankment, picking up snow like the snowmen Lizzie used to roll, her. Something in one knee cracked.

  By the time I staggered, me, back up to the gravrail track, the stomps were disappearing into the woods, dragging the travoises.

  Only Scotty was dead. The others were in bad shape, them, especially Stan and Jack. Stab wounds and broken heads and I couldn’t tell, me, what else. Nobody could walk. I staggered the last mile through the snow, me, afraid to carry one of the lights, feeling for the track every time I fell down. Some men from East Oleanta met me part way, them, just when I didn’t think I could go no further. They’d heard the rifle shot.

  They went out to get the others. Somebody, I don’t know who, carried me to Annie’s. He didn’t say nothing about me wearing a donkey personal shield. Or maybe it was turned off by then. I can’t remember, me. All I remember is me saying over and over again, “Don’t crush them, you! Don’t crush them, you!” There were six sandwiches in my jacket pocket. For Lizzie and Annie and Dr. Turner.

  Everything didn’t all go black, the way Annie said later. It went red, it, with flashes of light in my knee, so bright I thought they would kill me.

  But of course they didn’t. When the red went away it was the next day, and I laid, me, on Annie’s bed, with her asleep next to me. Lizzie was there, too, on the other side of Annie. Dr. Turner bent over me, doing something to my knee.

  I croaked, “Did they eat?”

  “For now,” Dr. Turner said. Her voice was grim. What she said next didn’t make no sense to me. “So much for community solidarity in the face of adversity.”

  I said, “I brought Annie and Lizzie food, me.” It seemed a miracle. Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it, me. I didn’t even think, then, that two sandwiches wouldn’t keep them long. It didn’t even occur to me. I must of been on some of them painkillers, me, that cloud your mind.

  Dr. Turner’s face changed. She looked startled, her, like what I said was some kind of good answer to what she said, although it wasn’t, because I didn’t even understand her big words. But I didn’t care, me. Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it, me.

  “Ah, Billy,” Dr. Turner said, her voice was low and sad, mournful, like somebody died. Or something. What?

  But that wasn’t my problem. I slept, me, and in all my dreams Lizzie and Annie smiled at me in a sunshine green and gold as summer on the mountain, where it turned out, I learned later, that Stan and Scotty and Jack and Dr. Turner’s something had all really died after all.

  Twelve

  DIANA COVINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

  After they brought Billy back to Annie Francy’s, his poor heart laboring like an antique factory and his hands shaking so much he couldn’t even turn off the personal shield, I realized what an ass I’d been not to call the GSEA earlier.

  But it wasn’t Billy who made me realize this. It was—again, always—Lizzie.

  I knew that Billy wasn’t badly hurt, and I suppose I should have been more concerned about the other Livers, especially the three dead. But the fact was, I wasn’t. I had changed my mind about Livers since I came to East Oleanta, and Jack Sawicki in particular seemed a good man, but there it was. I just didn’t really care that Liver stomps had turned on other Liver non-stomps and destroyed them. We donkeys had never expected anything else. The Livers were always a potentially dangerous force, kept at bay only by sufficient bread and circuses, and now the bread was running short and the big tops folded. Bastille time.

  But I cared—against all odds—about Lizzie. Who was going hungry. If I called the GSEA, they would come storming in and East Oleanta would no longer be the Forgotten Country. With them would come food, medicine, transport, all the things Livers had come to expect from the labor of others. Which meant Lizzie and Annie would get fed.

  On the other hand, Congresswoman Janet Carol Land might resume her planeloads of food any minute. Or the gravrail might be fixed again. That had happened many times already. And if it did, I would lose my chance to cover myself with glory by handing over Miranda Sharifi, lock, stock and illegal organic nanotech, to the GSEA. Also, the moment I called the GSEA, Eden might very well pick up my signal, in which case Ms. Sharifi might have been moved out before the GSEA even got here.

  While I wrestled with this three-horned dilemma of altruism, vanity, and practicality, Lizzie blew the whole argument to terrifying smithereens.

  “Vicki, look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just look.”

  We sat on the plastisynth sofa in Annie’s apartment. In the bedroom Annie moved around, tending Billy. The medunit had treated his cuts, bruises, and heart rate, and he should probably have been sleeping, which he probably couldn’t do with Annie fussing around him. I doubt he minded. The bedroom door was closed. Lizzie held her terminal, frowning at the screen. Billy’s pathetic squashed sandwiches had temporarily returned the color to her thin cheeks. On the screen was a multicolor holo.

  “Very pretty. What is it?”

  “A Lederer probability pattern.”

  Well, of course it was. It’s been a while since my school days. To save face, I said authoritatively, “Some variable has a seventy-eight percent chance of significantly preceding some other variable in chronological time.”

  “Yes,” Lizzie said, almost inaudibly.

  “So what are the variables?”

  Instead of answering, Lizzie said, “You remember that apple peeler ’bot I used to play with, when I was a kid?”

  Two months ago. But compared to the intellectual leaps she’d made since, last summer probably did feel like lost childhood to her.

  “I remember,” I said, careful not to smile.

  “It first broke in June. I remember because the apples then were Kia Beauties.”

  Genemod apples ripened on a staggered schedule, to create seasonal variety. “So?” I said.

  “And the gravrail broke down before that. In April, I think. And a couple of toilets before that.”

  I didn’t get it. “And so…?”

  Lizzie wrinkled her small face. “But the first things to break down in East Oleanta were way back over a year ago. In the spring of 2113.”

  And I got it. My throat went dry. “In spring, 2113? Lots of things breaking, Lizzie, or just a few? Such as might happen from normal wear combined with reduced maintenance?”

 
“Lots of things. Too many things.”

  “Lizzie,” I said slowly, “are those two variables in your Lederer pattern the East Oleanta breakdowns, as you personally remember them, and the newsgrid mentions from the crystal library of any similar breakdown patterns elsewhere?”

  “Yes. They are, them. I wanted, me…” She broke off, aware of how her language had reverted. She went on staring at the screen. She knew what she was looking at. “It started here, Vicki, didn’t it? That duragem dissembler got released here first. Because it got made at Eden. We were a test place. And that means that whoever runs Eden…” Again she trailed off.

  Huevos Verdes ran Eden. Miranda Sharifi ran Eden.

  And so my decision was made for me, as simply as that. The duragem dissembler could not be part of any save-Diana-through-a-personal-success-finally strategy. It was too concretely, urgently, majorly malevolent. I had no right to sit around playing semi-amateur agent when I suspected that somewhere in these very same mountains that were torturing us with winter was a Huevos Verdes franchise, dispensing molecular destruction. Every decent feeling required that I tell my disdainful bosses, despite their disdain, what I knew.

  Everybody has her own definition of decency.

  “Vicki,” Lizzie whispered, “what are we going to do, us?”

  “We’re going to give up,” I said.

  I made the call from a secluded place down by the river, away from Annie’s suspicious eyes. I had forbidden Lizzie to follow me, but of course she did anyway. The air was cold but the sun shone. I wriggled my butt into a depression in the snow on the riverbank and cut the transmitter from my leg.

  It was an implant, of course: that was the only way to be positive it couldn’t be stolen from me, except by people who knew what they were doing. After the GSEA had it installed, I’d gone to some people I knew and had detached and taken out the automatic homing-signal part of it, which of course was there. You needed professionals for that. You didn’t need professionals to remove the transmitter itself for use. That could be done with a little knowledge, a local anesthetic, and a keen-edged knife, and in a pinch you could do without either the anesthetic or the keen edge.

  I didn’t have to. I slid the implant from under the skin of my thigh, sealed the small incision, and wiped the blood off the transmitter wrapping. I unsealed it. Lizzie’s black eyes were enormous in her thin face.

  I said, “I told you not to come. Are you going to faint now?”

  “Blood don’t make me faint!”

  “Good.” The transmitter was a flat black wafer on my palm. Lizzie regarded it with interest.

  “That uses Malkovitch wave transformers, doesn’t it?” And then, in a different voice, “You’re going to call the government to come help us.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have called before. Any time.”

  “Yes.”

  The black eyes stayed steady. “Then why didn’t you?”

  “The situation wasn’t desperate enough.”

  Lizzie considered this. But she was a child, still, under the frightening intelligence and the borrowed language and the pseudo-technical sophistication I had taught her. And she had been through a terrifying two weeks. Abruptly she pounded on my knees, soft ineffectual blows from cold mittened hands. “You could of got us help before! And Billy wouldn’t of got hurt and Mr. Sawicki wouldn’t of died and I wouldn’t of had to be so very very very hungry! You could of! You could of!”

  I activated the transmitter by touch code and said clearly, “Special Agent Diana Covington, 6084 slash A, to Colin Kowalski, 83 slash H. Emergency One priority: sixteen forty-two. Repeat, sixteen forty-two. Send large task force.”

  “I’m so hungry,” Lizzie sobbed against my knees.

  I put the transmitter in my pocket and pulled her onto my lap. She buried her head in my neck; her nose felt cold. I looked at the river choked with ice, at the blood from the wrapper on the dirty snow, at the uncharacteristically blue sky. It would take the GSEA maybe a few hours to arrive from New York. But the SuperSleepless, at their hidden Eden, were already here. And of course there was no way they would not have picked up my message. They picked up everything. Or so I had been told.

  I held Lizzie and made pointless maternal noises. Her cold nose dribbled into my neck.

  “Lizzie, did I ever tell you about a dog I saw once? A genemod pink dog that should never have existed, poor thing?”

  But she only went on sobbing, cold and hungry and betrayed. It was actually just as well. The story about Stephanie Brunell’s dog seemed, at this point, lame even to me, something I had once believed in, probably still did, but could no longer clearly recall.

  Like so much else.

  The GSEA showed up within the hour, which I have to admit impressed me. First came the planes, then the aircars, and by nightfall, the gravrail was up, roaring into East Oleanta with a complement of thirty calm-eyed agents, some techs, and a lot of food. Government types work best on a full stomach. The techs went around town repairing things. The GSEA commandeered the Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Café, threw a Y-shield around the half of it farthest from the techs stocking the foodbelt, and ordered everybody else to stay out, which the good citizens were happy to do because food was being dispensed from the ruins of the warehouse. God knows how they were cooking it. Maybe they were eating soysynth raw.

  “Ms. Covington? I’m Charlotte Prescott. I’m in temporary command here, until the arrival of Colin Kowalski from the West Coast. Come with me, please.”

  She was tall, flame-haired, absolutely beautiful. Expensive genes. She had the accent that goes with the monied Northeast, and eyes like the Petrified Forest. I went with her, but not without a patented little Diana-protest: spirited but essentially ineffectual.

  “I don’t want to talk until I’m sure that two people are getting fed. Three actually. An old man and a little girl and the girl’s mother…they might not be able to handle being part of that mob outside…” What was I saying? Annie Francy could handle being part of Custer’s Last Stand, protesting all the while that the Indians weren’t behaving properly.

  Charlotte Prescott said, “Lizzie Francy and Billy Washington are being seen to. The guard at the apartment will procure them food.”

  And she had only been in East Oleanta ten minutes.

  Charlotte Prescott and I sat opposite each other in two plastisynth café chairs and I told her everything I knew. That I had followed Miranda Sharifi from Washington to East Oleanta, after which she had disappeared. That I’d been searching the woods for her. That some of the locals half believed there was a place in the mountains they called Eden, probably a shielded underground illegal genemod lab, and that I believed that was where Huevos Verdes was releasing the duragem dissembler. That I’d followed various locals into the woods in the hopes of discovering Eden, but had never seen anything, and was now convinced nobody knew where, or if, this mythical place existed.

  This last wasn’t strictly true. I still suspected Billy Washington knew something. But I wanted to tell that directly to Colin Kowalski, whom I halfway trusted, rather than to Charlotte Prescott, whom I trusted not at all. She reminded me of Stephanie Brunell. Billy was an ignorant and exasperating old man, but he was not a pink dog with four ears and overly big eyes, and I was not going to watch him go over any metaphorical terrace railing.

  Prescott said, “Why didn’t you report your whereabouts, and Miranda Sharifi’s suspected whereabouts, as soon as you reached East Oleanta? Or even en route?”

  “I was fairly sure that the SuperSleepless outpost would be able to monitor any technology I used.”

  This was a fair hit; not even the GSEA flattered itself that it could outinvent Supers. Prescott showed no reaction.

  “You were in violation of every Agency procedure.”

  “I’m not a regular agent. I run wild-card for Colin Kowalski, under informant status. You wouldn’t even know about me now if he hadn’t told you.”

  Still no reaction
. She had the ability, like some reptiles, to just draw a nictitating membrane between herself and any blowing insinuating sand. I saw this about her: her limitations, her rigidity born of the automatic assumption of superiority. Yet I still couldn’t help feeling unworthy beside her, in a way I hadn’t felt unworthy in months. Me in my rumpled turquoise jacks and untrimmed hair, she looking like something off a holovid ad for the Central Park East Enclave. Even her fingernails were perfect, genemod rose so they never had to be painted.

  The questions went on. I was as honest as I could be, except for Billy. It didn’t help my mood, which was middling lousy. I was doing what I should, what I needed to do, what was right and patriotic for my country three cheers and “Hail to the Chief.” No, I don’t mean that cynicism—it was right. So why did I feel so terrible?

  Colin Kowalski arrived about 9:00 P.M. I was still under house arrest, or whatever, but Charlotte Prescott had apparently run out of questions. The foodbelt was working, serving an insatiable line of the hungry, who peered curiously at the Y-shield cramping them into half their café but could see nothing because the outer layer had been one-way opaqued.

  “Colin. I’m glad you’re here.”

  He was angry, not hiding it, but keeping it under control. I gave him points for all three.

  “You should have contacted me in August, Diana. Maybe we could have stopped release of the duragem dissembler sooner.”

  “Can you stop it now?” I said, but he didn’t answer. I wasn’t having any of that. I grabbed both his lapels—or what passes for lapels in the new fall fashions—and said, slowly and with great distinctness, “You’ve found something. Already. Colin, you have to tell me what you’ve found so far. You have to. I got you all this far, and besides there’s no earthly reason not to tell me. You know damn well you’ve got reporters all over every place out there by now.”

  He stepped back a pace and pulled his lapels free. Billy and Doug Kane and Jack Sawicki and Annie and Krystal Mandor had been all over each other constantly. I was a little shocked at how quickly I’d forgotten the donkey intolerance for being touched.