Beggars and Choosers

by Nancy Kress

  “He’ll call, him, for help,” the other man said.

  “Shut up,” Abby said. “You know nobody can’t use them terminals but Hubbley and Carlos and O’Dealian, and they’re all dead, them.”

  “But, Abby—”

  “Shut up, you!” She was thinking hard. I couldn’t feel Joncey’s heart.

  A woman raced into the corridor. “Abby, what’s the matter, you? The submarine’s off the coast—” She stopped dead.

  The submarine. All of a sudden I saw how the underground revolution had evaded the GSEA for so long. A sub meant military help. There were agencies inside the government involved, or at least people within agencies. PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT. CLASSIFIED. DANGER.

  For a long moment I thought I was dead.

  “All right!” Abby said. “Give him to me and lock yourself in that there storage room, you!”

  “Don’t come close,” I said. I backed into the room with the canisters, still carrying Joncey. At the last minute I dumped him onto the floor and slammed the door. It could be locked from the inside, but I had no doubt she could override it. I held onto the urgency in the second woman’s voice, the panic: Abby, the submarine’s off the coast! Let the sub be ready to go. Let Abby want Joncey alive, safely tucked inside a medunit, more than she wanted me dead. Let the canisters all around me not contain deadly viruses, and let them not be able to be released by remote…

  I sat, heart pounding. The shapes in my mind were red and black and spiky, painful as cactuses.

  Nothing happened.

  Minutes dragged by.

  Finally a small section of the wall beside me brightened. It was a holoscreen, and I hadn’t even realized it. A dumb terminal. Abby’s face filled it. It was smeared with blood, twisted with hate.

  “Listen, Arlen, you. You’re going to die there, underground. I done sealed it off. And the terminals are frozen, them, all of them. In another hour the life support will cut out automatically. I could kill you now, me, but I want you to think about it first…You hear me? You’re dead, you—dead dead DEAD.” With each word her voice rose, until it was a shriek. She whipped her head from side to side, her hair seething and foaming, caked with blood. I knew Joncey was dead.

  Someone pulled her away from the screen, and it went blank.

  I edged open the door of the storage room. My wheelchair was so bent I could hardly wheel it along the corridors. My vision kept fading in and out, until I wasn’t sure what shapes were in front of me and what were in my head, except for the dark lattice. That was in my head. It stirred, and for the first time began to open, and every inch of its opening pushed against my mind like pain.

  I found Jimmy Hubbley. They had killed him clean, as near as I could tell. A bullet through the head. Francis Marion, I remembered, had died quietly in bed, of an infection.

  Campbell must have fought. His huge body blocked a corridor, bloody and torn, as if by repeated blows. He lay sprawled across the captured doctor. The doctor’s face looked both terrified and indignant; this was not supposed to be his war. His blood slid down the nanosmooth walls, which had been designed to shed stains.

  Two bodies lay on the terminal room floor, when I had finally opened enough doors to find it. A woman named Junie, and a man I’d never heard called anything but “Alligator.” They, too, had died clean, of bullets through the forehead. Abigail’s bid for power hadn’t been sadistic. She just wanted to control things. To be in charge. To know what was best for 175 million Americans, give or take a few million donkeys.

  I sat in front of the main terminal and said, “Terminal on.” It answered, “YES, SIR!”

  Francis Marion had believed in military discipline.

  It took me fifteen minutes to try everything Jonathan Markowitz had taught me. I spoke each step, or coded it in manually, not understanding what any of them meant. Even if Jonathan had explained, I wouldn’t have understood. And he had not explained. The shapes in my mind darted quickly, palpitating, sharp as talons.

  “READY FOR OUTSIDE TRANSMISSION, SIR!”

  I didn’t move.

  If Abigail had been telling the truth, I had thirty-seven minutes of life support left in the underground bunker.

  Huevos Verdes, off the Mexican coast, could be here in fifteen. But would they be? Miranda had not come for me before now.

  “SIR? READY FOR OUTSIDE TRANSMISSION, SIR!”

  The dark lattice in my mind was, finally, opening.

  It started to unfurl like an umbrella, or a rosebud. They have rosebuds now, genemod, that will unfurl completely in five minutes, with the right stimuli, for use in various ceremonies. They’re pretty to watch. The opaque diamond-shaped panes on the lattice lightened and widened, both at the same time. The lattice itself expanded, larger and larger, until it had opened completely.

  Inside was a ten-year-old boy, dirty and confident, his eyes bright.

  I hadn’t seen him, me, in decades. Not his sureness about what he wanted, his straight-line going after it. That boy had been his own man. He made his own decisions, undaunted by what the rest of the world said he should do. I hadn’t seen him since the day he arrived at Leisha Camden’s compound in New Mexico, and met his first Sleepless, and gave his mind to their superior ones. Not since I’d become the Lucid Dreamer, Not since I’d met Miranda.

  And here he was again, that solitary grinning boy, released from the stone lattice that had encased him. A bright glowing shape in my mind.

  “SIR? DO YOU WISH TO CANCEL TRANSMISSION, SIR?”

  There were thirty-one minutes left.

  “No,” I said, and spoke the emergency override code, the one I’d been urged to memorize carefully and not forget, as Drew Arlen common Liver might easily forget, in case of emergency.

  She herself answered. “Drew? Where are you?”

  I gave her the exact longitude and latitude, obtained from the terminal, and told her how to get the rescue force through the mucky pool. My voice was completely steady. “It’s an illegal underground lab. Part of the revolution that already released the duragem dissemblers. But you know all about that, don’t you?”

  Her eyes didn’t flicker. “Yes. I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you.”

  “I understand.” And I did. I hadn’t understood before, but I did now. Since Jimmy Hubbley. Since Abigail. Since Joncey. I said, “There’s a lot I have to tell you.”

  She said, “We’ll be there in twenty minutes. There are people already close by…just wait twenty minutes, Drew.”

  I nodded, watching her face on the screen. She didn’t smile at me; this was too important. I liked that. The shapes in my mind left no room for smiles. The crying boy, the people—all the people in the world—inside the dark lattice. Inside my mind, inside my unwilling responsibility.

  “Just twenty minutes,” Carmela Clemente-Rice said in her warm voice. “Meanwhile, tell us how the—” and then the screen went dead as Huevos Verdes picked up the signal, overrode it, and cut off my communication with the GSEA.

  Fourteen

  BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

  The morning the President declared martial law, him, was the same morning I found the dead genemod rabbit by the river. It was a week after we walked to Coganville and the government people came, them, to East Oleanta to blow up Eden. Only when Annie finally let me out of bed, I listened hard, me, to what everybody in the café said about the place that got blown up. Some people even hiked out, them, to look at it. And soon as they described it, I knew, me, that the government didn’t blow up the place my big-headed girl went underground. Not my Eden.

  And I was the only person in the world, me, that knew that.

  Still, I wanted, me, to go see for myself. I had to go.

  “Where you going, Billy?” Annie said, breathing hard. She’d just lugged in a bucket of river water for washing. The government techs fixed everything, them, but two days later stuff started to break again. That’s when a lot of people left East Oleanta on the gravrail, before it could break. The wo
men’s bath wasn’t working. Lizzie was right behind Annie, her, lugging another bucket. It broke my heart, nearly, with my own uselessness. The medunit said, it, that I wasn’t supposed to lift nothing.

  “Down to the café,” I lied.

  Annie pressed her lips together. “You don’t want, you, to go down to the café again. Where you really going, Billy? I don’t want you, me, taking no more walks in them woods. It’s too dangerous. You might fall again.”

  “I’m going to the café,” I said, and that was two lies.

  “Billy,” Annie said, and I knew from her bottom lip that she was going to say it again, “We could leave, us. Now. Before more duragem gets eat away on that train.”

  “I ain’t leaving East Oleanta, me,” I said. It scared me to tell her no. Each time it scared me, each and every single time. What if Annie left anyway, her, without me? My life would end. What if Annie took Lizzie and just left?

  But I had to stay, me. I had to. I was the only person who knew, me, that the government didn’t blow up Eden. Dr. Turner was the one that called the government to come to East Oleanta. Lizzie told me, her. Annie didn’t know. I had to stay and make sure Dr. Turner didn’t find that Eden still existed and call the government to come back and finish the job. I didn’t know, me, how I could stop Dr. Turner unless I killed her, and I didn’t think I could do that. Maybe I could. But I couldn’t go off, neither, and leave the dark-haired big-headed girl who’d deliberately let me know where Eden was in case I ever really needed it again. I owed that girl, me.

  Only it wasn’t only that.

  So I said to Annie, “Get off my back, woman. I’m going, me, down to the café, and I’m going alone!”

  Then I held my breath, me, the sick fear churning inside me.

  But Annie only sighed, her, and took off her parka and picked up a washrag. That was the wonderful thing about Annie. She knew there was things a person was just going to do, them, and she didn’t waste her breath arguing about it, unless of course the person was Lizzie. Actually, the next person I expected trouble from, me, was Lizzie. But Lizzie sat on the sofa with her library terminal, doing her everlasting studying, her, and glancing up at the door for Dr. Turner, ready to ask the doctor questions nineteen to the dozen.

  That was another reason for taking my walk now. Dr. Turner wasn’t around, her. For a change.

  I zipped my parka, me, and picked up the walking stick Lizzie brought me. It’s a good stick. I’d use it even if it wasn’t, because Lizzie brought it to me, but it is good. The right height and thickness. Lizzie’s got an eye, her. When she takes it off her library terminal and Dr. Turner.

  Annie said, more gentle, “You be careful, Billy Washington. We don’t want, us, anything to happen to you,” just like she knew I wasn’t going to the café after all, just like we didn’t have no bitter fights over leaving East Oleanta. And she put her arms around me. For a minute I held Annie Francy, me, against my chest, her head resting just under my chin, and closed my eyes.

  “You,” I said, which was stupid enough, but then it was all right because Annie smiled. I could feel her smiling, her, against my neck. So I said it again. “You.”

  “You yourself,” she said, pulling away. Her chocolate brown eyes had a tender look, them. I walked out that door like I was walking on sky. And I didn’t feel too weak, me, neither. My legs worked better than I expected. I got all the way, me, down to the river without my heart racing. Only my mind, it.

  Why wouldn’t I leave East Oleanta? Annie really wanted, her, to go someplace better for Lizzie. She was only staying for me.

  And why was I staying, me? Because a big-headed Sleepless girl, who was probably Miranda Sharifi herself, might need me. Me, Billy Washington, who couldn’t even help carry water or trap rabbits or move Y-energy heat cones to places where they was needed. It was funny when you thought about it. Miranda Sharifi, from Huevos Verdes and Eden, needing Billy Washington.

  Only it wasn’t funny.

  I poked the end of my stick, me, in the soft mud and leaned on it to ease my old fool’s body down the riverbank. I was kidding myself. The truth was, it was me that needed Eden. In my head anyway. And I didn’t really know why.

  I picked my way, me, over the rocks along the river. We’d got a thaw the last few days, and the river mud was thick as soup dotted with patches of snow. The sun was shining, it, and the water ran high, green and cold, rushing along like a gravrail. I saw something dark, me, lying in some snow, and I stumped along for a closer look.

  It was a rabbit. With long, clawed paws. It laid on its side, him, on the white snow, its guts torn out. Fox prints dotted the mud, them. The rabbit was reddish brown.

  Somebody climbed down the bank behind me. I poked my stick, me, into the rabbit and turned it over. The rabbit was brown.

  “Ugh,” Dr. Turner said. “What killed it?”

  “Fox.”

  “Well, why are you looking so funereal about it? Surely this must happen all the time out here in God’s country. Were you thinking we could eat it?”

  “No. Not this rabbit, him.”

  “Well, if you can get your mind off the local wildlife, I have news. The President’s declared martial law.”

  She sounded upset, her. I didn’t say nothing.

  “Congress has backed him up. Good old Article 1 Section 8. That big fuck-up on Wall Street yesterday, and enough state budgets have run out of money so they can’t afford to pay jurors, which means that even where there aren’t food riots the judiciary has stopped functioning in just enough states for ol’ Commander-in-Chief Bonny Profile to declare civil authority inadequate to—you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, do you, Billy? Do you know what martial law is?”

  “No, Dr. Turner.”

  “The President has put the army in control. To keep peace where there’s rioting. No matter what they have to do to keep it.”

  “Yes, Dr. Turner.”

  She looked at me, her, sideways. I ain’t never been any good, me, at hiding things. “What is it, Billy? What’s wrong with that rabbit?”

  I said, slower than I meant, “It’s brown.”

  “So? We’ve seen lots of brown rabbits. Lizzie told me she even had a brown rabbit for a pet, last summer.”

  “It ain’t summer.”

  She went on, her, looking at me, and I saw she really didn’t understand. Sometimes donkeys don’t know the most simple things.

  “This here rabbit’s a snowshoe rabbit. It should of changed its coat, him, by now. Reddish brown in the summer, white in the winter, and here it is the start of November. It should have changed, him.”

  “Always, Billy?”

  “Always.”

  “Genemod.” Dr. Turner kneeled in the snow, her, and studied the rabbit hard. There wasn’t nothing to see, except that reddish brown coat. Almost the same color as the little hairs escaping from her hat onto the back of her neck where she kneeled down, her, in front of me. I could of killed her right then, me, bashed her neck with my stick, if I was the killing kind. And if I’d of thought, me, that it would of done anybody any good.

  “Billy—are you positive the coat shouldn’t still be brown?”

  I didn’t even answer, me.

  She sat back on her feet, thinking hard. Then she looked up at me, her, with the damnedest look I ever saw on anybody’s face. I didn’t have no idea, me, what it meant, except it reminded me of Jack Sawicki when he played chess. When he was alive, him, to play chess. People used to snicker, them, at Jack for liking chess. It wasn’t no game for a Liver.

  Then Dr. Turner smiled, her. She said, “‘Oh, my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!’” which didn’t even make no sense. “Billy, you have to take me to Eden.”

  I leaned on my stick. The end of it was mucky from poking at the rabbit. “There ain’t no Eden, Dr. Turner. The government blew it up, them.”

  “‘There is no rabbit,’” she said, smiling, her, in that same voice that didn’t make no sense. “Down the rabbit
hole, Billy. Off with their heads. You and I both know they didn’t blow it up. They missed.”

  I looked, me, again at the dead rabbit. The fox had done a job on it. “What makes you say, you, that they missed?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they did miss, and that there are things I need to know. And I’ve decided that the only way left to discover them is to go to Eden and ask. Nicely direct, don’t you think? Will you take me there?”

  I picked, me, a place in the river, and stared at it. Then I stared at it some more. I wasn’t going, me, to get into no argument with no donkey. There ain’t never any way to win those arguments. But I wasn’t going to take her to Eden, neither. She had called the government once, her, to blow up Eden, and she could do it again. She wasn’t going to learn nothing from me.

  After a few minutes Dr. Turner stood up, her, wiping mud off the knees of her jacks. Her voice was serious again. “All right, Billy. Not yet. But you will, I know, when something happens. And something will. The SuperSleepless aren’t releasing genemod rabbits that everyone can see are genemod rabbits for no reason at all. This is a message. Pretty soon the meaning will come clear, and then we’ll discuss this again.”

  “Ain’t nothing to discuss,” I said, me, and I meant it. Not with her. No matter how many genemod rabbits turned up.

  The sun was lower now, it, and the air was getting cold. And my walk was pretty much ruined anyway. I climbed the riverbank, me, taking my time. Dr. Turner knew better than to try and help me.

  Lizzie was dancing around the apartment, clean from a bath, waving her study terminal. “Godel’s proof!” she sang, her, like it was a song. “Godel’s proof, Billy!”

  She was as bad as Dr. Turner with her looking glasses and rabbit holes. Still, I was glad to see Lizzie so happy.

  “Look, Vicki, look what happens if you take this formula and just kind of sneak up on these numbers…”

  “Let me get my coat off, Mr. Godel,” Dr. Turner said, which didn’t make no more sense than her talk at the river. But she was smiling, her, at Lizzie.

  Lizzie couldn’t hardly stay still, her. Whatever she had on that library terminal must of been pretty exciting. She grabbed my stick, her, and started dancing around with it like it was a partner. Then she stuck it under her and rode it like a hobbyhorse. Then she raised it up over her head like a flag. I knew from all this, me, that Annie wasn’t home.