Beggars and Choosers

by Nancy Kress

  “All right, let’s see Godel’s proof,” Dr. Turner said. “Did you access Sven Bjorklind’s variations?”

  “Course I did, me,” Lizzie said, with scorn. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was like a light, her. A sun. My Lizzie.

  By the next morning she was so sick she couldn’t move.

  It didn’t look like no sickness I ever saw, certainly not like the fever she’d had last August. Lizzie was shitting bad, her, with blood in it. Annie kept emptying the bucket and cleaning her up, but the apartment still smelled awful. And Lizzie couldn’t move her legs or head without it hurting her. Annie and me were up with her, us, all night. By dawn she wasn’t even crying no more, just laying there, her eyes open but not seeing nothing. I was scared, me. She just laid there.

  I said to Annie, “I’m going, me, to get Dr. Turner. She’s down at the café, her, watching the news about martial—”

  “I know, me, where she is!” Annie snapped, because she was so worried, her, about Lizzie, and so exhausted. “She’s been there all night, ain’t she? But Lizzie don’t need no donkey doctor, her. This time our medunit’s working.”

  I didn’t say, me, that donkeys invented the medunit. I was too scared myself. Lizzie groaned and shit in the bed.

  “You go ahead, you, and wake up Paulie. I’ll bring her as soon as she’s cleaned up.”

  Paulie Cenverno’s been mayor, him, since Jack Sawicki was killed. Paulie keeps the code to the clinic. I grabbed my stick, me, and set off as fast as I could go to Paulie’s apartment building.

  Outside was cold and gray but sweet-smelling, which somehow made me feel even scareder for Lizzie. Halfway down the street I met Dr. Turner. She looked, her, so tired and upset that her genemod face was almost plain.

  “Billy? What is it?” She grabbed my arm hard, her. “Your face…Lizzie? Is it Lizzie?”

  “She’s sick really bad, her. It got worse so fast…she’s going to die!” It just came out. I thought I’d faint, me. Lizzie…

  “Get Paulie to unlock the clinic. I’ll help Annie.” She was gone, her, running like I could of, once.

  Paulie got up right away, him. By the time we got to the clinic Annie and Dr. Turner were there. Dr. Turner carried Lizzie. Lizzie was crying, her. Her poor legs dangled like broke branches.

  It felt like hot coals burned in my stomach, I was so scared. No normal kid sickness should get that bad that fast.

  The clinic ain’t nothing but a locked foamcast shed, no windows, big enough to hold the medunit and four or five other people who might be standing around. Paulie said, “Put her there, her…right there…” Paulie didn’t really know nothing, him. He was as scared as we were.

  Dr. Turner laid Lizzie on the medunit couch, strapped her down, and slid the couch inside the unit. We could see Lizzie, us, through the plasticlear windows. The needles came out and went into Lizzie, but she didn’t cry out, her. It was like she didn’t feel nothing that was happening.

  A few minutes went by. Lizzie didn’t move, her. She looked almost asleep. Maybe the medunit gave her something, it, to sleep. Finally the medunit said, “This unit is inadequate to make a diagnosis. Viral configuration is not on file. Administering widespectrum anti-virals and secondary antibiotics…” There was more. Nobody never listens to a medunit, them. You just let it fix you.

  But Dr. Turner jumped like she was shot. She shoved Paulie aside, her, and talked at the medunit.

  “Additional information! What class is the viral configuration?”

  “You have exceeded this unit’s capabilities. This unit responds only manually to specific medical requests.”

  “Cheap politicians.” Dr. Turner spoke again, her, to the medunit and a panel opened on the side, where I never noticed no panel. Inside was a screen and keyboard. Dr. Turner typed hard, her. She studied the screen.

  “What is it?” Annie said. “What’s Lizzie got, her?” Annie’s voice was tiny and thin. It didn’t sound nothing like Annie.

  This time Dr. Turner didn’t have the chess-playing look. This time she looked, her, like my stomach felt. The bones in her cheeks stood out like somebody drew them on her skin.

  “Billy…did Lizzie touch the end of your walking stick? The end you poked the brown rabbit with?”

  I saw Lizzie, me, dancing around the apartment with my stick, riding it, waving it by one end, singing about them Godel’s proofs. Something inside my belly dropped, it, and I thought I was going to throw up.

  “Yes. She was playing, her…”

  Dr. Turner slumped, her, against the wall. Her voice was thick. “Not Eden. Eden didn’t engineer that rabbit. The other ones did, the illegal lab that released the dissembler…oh my sweet Jesus in hell…”

  “Don’t blaspheme, you,” Annie said, her, but there wasn’t no fire in it. Her eyes were big as Lizzie’s. Lizzie, who I saw was going to die.

  Paulie said, “Eden? What about Eden, it?” His face looked tight and small.

  Dr. Turner looked at me, her. Her eyes, all genemod violet and as unnatural as a brown snowshoe rabbit in a hard November, didn’t see me. I could tell, me. She saw something else, her, and her words didn’t make no sense. “A pink poodle. A pink poodle with four ears and hyperlarge eyes…”

  “What?” Paulie Cenverno said, bewildered. “What about a poodle?”

  “A pink poodle. Sentient. Disposable.”

  “Easy there, easy,” I said, because she was out of her head, maybe, and I just realized, me, that I was going to need her. Need her sensible. To carry Lizzie. No, Annie could do it. But Annie wasn’t in no shape to carry Lizzie. Paulie, then. But Paulie was already backing out of the clinic, him. There was something strange going on here, and he didn’t like it, and when Paulie don’t like something, him, he gets away from it. He ain’t no Mayor Jack Sawicki.

  Besides, I couldn’t think, me, of no way to keep Dr. Turner from following us, short of killing her, and I didn’t have no way to do that. Even if I could of made myself do it. And if Dr. Turner was carrying Lizzie, then Dr. Turner couldn’t fire no gun, her, when the door to Eden opened.

  Dr. Turner’s eyes cleared. She saw me again, her. And she nodded.

  I looked again through the medunit window. Lizzie was getting some kind of medicine patch, her, even though the unit said it wasn’t the right medicine. Probably the best it could do, it. It was only a fancy ’bot.

  The big-headed girl who had saved Doug Kane’s life and killed the rabid raccoon wasn’t no ’bot.

  I was going to do what I swore, me, I’d never do. I was going to take Dr. Turner with me to Eden.

  The sun was just coming up when we left town. I walked first, me, leaning on a different stick that Dr. Turner tore off a maple tree. She carried Lizzie, her, wrapped in blankets. Lizzie was still asleep from whatever the medunit gave her. Her skin looked like wax. Annie came last, her, stumbling through the woods, where Annie didn’t never go. I think she was crying, her. I couldn’t look, because it might be that hopeless kind of crying women do at the very end, and I couldn’t of stood it. It wasn’t the very end yet. We were going, us, to Eden.

  The sky turned all the colors of a pine-knot fire.

  I tried to lead them, me, where the snow wasn’t too deep. A few times I guessed wrong and fell into a hollow packed with snow, sinking up to my knees. But it was okay because only me fell. I stayed enough ahead, me, for that. Still, each time I fell, me, I could feel my heart go a little faster, and my bones ache a little more.

  The thaw we’d been having, it helped. A lot of snow had melted, especially in the sunny places. Without that thaw I don’t know, me, if we could of made it through the mountains.

  Lizzie moaned, her, but she didn’t wake up.

  “Just a…minute, Billy,” Dr. Turner said, after about an hour. She stopped in a sunny patch, her, and sank to her knees, Lizzie laid across her lap. I was surprised, me, that she’d kept going that long—Lizzie ain’t as light as she was even a year ago. Dr. Turner must be stronger than she looked,
her. Genemod.

  “We don’t have any extra minutes, us!” Annie cried, but Dr. Turner didn’t pay her no attention, not even to scowl at her. Maybe Dr. Turner was just too tired, her, to scowl. She’d been up all night, watching the newsgrids about the President’s martial law. But I think she knew, her, how scared to death Annie was.

  “How…much farther?”

  “Another hour,” I said, even though it was more. We weren’t making good time, us. “Can you make it?”

  “Of…course.” Dr. Turner stood up, her, struggling with Lizzie, who hung like a sack. For just a minute I thought, me, that I saw Annie put her hand on Dr. Turner’s arm, real gentle. But maybe Annie was just steadying herself.

  The woods never seemed so big to me.

  After a while the ache just started to live in my bones, like some little animal. It chewed away, it, at my legs and knees and the shoulder of the arm holding my stick. And then it started to chew away near my heart.

  I couldn’t stop, me. Lizzie was dying.

  Now we climbed higher, us, up the wooded side of the mountain. The brush and trees got thicker, them. There wasn’t no sunny patches. I wasn’t taking them, me, the way Doug Kane and I had gone last fall—too much snow. This way was harder, and longer, but we’d get there.

  It took us nearly until noon. Dr. Turner made us stop and eat from the food Annie carried. It tasted like mud. Dr. Turner watched, her, to make sure I ate all my share. Lizzie couldn’t take nothing, her. She still didn’t move, not even her eyes. But she was still breathing. I melted a little clean snow, me, with Dr. Turner’s Y-energy lamp and poured it over Lizzie’s lips. They were blue.

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread…” Dr. Turner stared at Annie in disbelief. I thought she was going to say something sharp about who gave Livers their daily bread, like I’d heard others donkeys say. Donkeys ain’t religious, them. But she didn’t.

  “How much farther, Billy?”

  “Soon now.”

  “You’ve been saying ‘soon now’ for two hours!”

  “Soon. Now.”

  We started off again, us.

  When we headed back down the trail to the little creek, I thought, me, for a panicky minute that I was in the wrong place. It didn’t look the same. The trail was a slick of mud, it, and the creek ran fast but was clogged with ice chunks and fallen branches, which made it wider than I remembered. We slipped and slided, us, down the steep trail. Dr. Turner held Lizzie over her shoulder with one hand, the other clutching tree after tree to keep from falling. We waded careful, us, across the creek. There was a flat, mostly clear ledge of ground, with just one birch, and one oak with last year’s leaves rattling in the wind. They were my landmarks, them. We were there, and there wasn’t nothing there.

  Nothing to see. Nothing different. Creek, mud, rock shelf, the side of the mountain. Nothing.

  “Billy?” Annie said, so soft I hardly heard her, me. “Billy?”

  “What do we do now?” Dr. Turner said. She sank to the ground, her, trailing Lizzie in the mud, too tired to even notice.

  I looked around. Creek, mud, rock shelf, the side of the mountain. Nothing.

  Why would the SuperSleepless let in two muddy Livers, a turncoat donkey, and a dying child? Why should they, them?

  That was the minute I knew, me, what Annie meant when she talked about Hell.

  “Billy?”

  I sank down on a rock, me. My legs wouldn’t hold me up no more. The door had been right here. Creek, mud, rock shelf, the side of the mountain. Nothing.

  Dr. Turner shoved Lizzie onto her mother. Then she jumped up, her, and started screaming like some crazy thing, like somebody wild person who ain’t just carried a heavy child for hours and hours through the snow.

  “Miranda Sharifi! Do you hear me? There’s a dying child here, a victim of an illegal genemod virus transmittable by wildlife! Some illegal lab engineered it, some demented bastards who can wipe out entire communities in days, and probably want to! Do you hear me? It’s genemod, and it’s lethal! You people are responsible for this, you’re supposed to be the big experts on genemod tailoring, not us! You’re responsible, you Sleepless bastards, whether you made it or not, because you’re the only ones who can cure it! You’re the big brains we all kowtow to, you’re the ones we’re supposed to look up to—Miranda Sharifi! We need that Cell Cleaner that was trampled on in Washington! We need it now! You baited us with that, you bitch—you damn well owe it to us!”

  I couldn’t believe it, me. She sounded like Celie Kane screaming about donkeys. I whispered, “You can’t boss around a SuperSleepless, you!”

  She didn’t pay me no attention, her. I might of not even been there. “Miranda Sharifi! Do you hear me, you bitch? In the name of a common humanity…what the hell am I doing?”

  She stood looking dazed, her, like she wasn’t never going to move again. Then Dr. Turner started to cry.

  Dr. Turner. Started to cry.

  I didn’t know, me, what to do. It’s one thing when Annie cries, Annie’s a normal woman. But a donkey crying, sobbing and carrying on like she was the bottom of the apple bin, her, instead of the top…I didn’t know what to do. And even I had known, I couldn’t do it. The aching animal was gnawing, it, at my chest too bad, and not even for Lizzie could I of got my body up off the ground.

  “Please…” Dr. Turner whispered.

  And the door in the mountain opened. No, it didn’t open, it—that’s not how it works. There was a kind of hard shimmer, some kind of shield, and then the earth sort of vanished, mud and dead oak leaves and moss-covered rocks and everything, and there was a solid plasticlear square at our feet, only it wasn’t really plasticlear, about three feet by three feet. And then that vanished and there was stairs.

  Dr. Turner went down first, her, and reached up for Lizzie. Annie handed her down. Then Annie eased herself down the stairs. I went last, me, because even though my chest hurt so bad my eyesight squiggled, I wanted to see what happened after we were all under the square. It might be the last thing I ever saw, me, and I wanted to see it.

  What happened was the shimmer came again, it, and the plasticlear-that-wasn’t-plasticlear came back over my head. I reached up, me, and touched it. It was hard as diamonds. It tingled. On the other side dirt and rocks started to grow—they grew—and the dirt wasn’t loose but hard-packed, joined to all the other dirt. I could see, me, that in a few minutes there wouldn’t be no signs anything had happened, except maybe our footprints in the mud. But I wouldn’t bet, me, on any footprints being left.

  We stood, us, in a small room, all white and bright, with nothing in it. The walls were perfect—not a nick or a scratch or nothing. I never seen such walls, me. We stood there a long time, it seemed, though it probably wasn’t. I wrapped my arms across my chest, me, to keep the pain from gnawing straight through. Dr. Turner turned to me and her face changed. “Why, Billy…” And then a door opened where there hadn’t been no door, and she stood there, my big-headed dark-haired girl from the woods, not smiling, and I had just enough time, me, to see her before the animal in my chest reared back and sank its teeth into my heart and everything disappeared.

  Fifteen

  DIANA COVINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

  I had completely lost my composure, my rationality, and my common sense, and then the door to Eden opened. This bothered me. I stood there with a dying child and an old man whom I had—against all odds—come to love, at the threshold of the technological sanctum my entire government had been seeking for God knows how long, facing the single most powerful woman in the entire world—and I was bothered that it was my irrational class-based screaming that had caused the gates of Eden to swing wide. Only it wasn’t that, of course. I knew it wasn’t that. I wasn’t quite that many standard deviations along the irrationality curve. But the feeling persisted, because nothing was normal and when nothing’s normal, nothing seems any more abnormal than anything else. The measuring scales break down. Miranda Sharifi di
d that to things.

  Up close, she looked even plainer than she had in Washington. Big, slightly misshapen head, wild clouds of black hair, body too short and too heavy to be a donkey yet clearly not a Liver. She wore white pants and shirt, generic looking but not jacks, and her face was pale. The only spot of color was a red ribbon in her hair. I remembered what I’d thought on the steps of Science Court—that she was too old for hair ribbons—and I felt obscurely ashamed. It was difficult to keep my mind on serious subjects. We had too many of them. Or maybe it was just the nature of my mind.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I stood staring at the red hair ribbon.

  She was everything I was not.

  Annie fell to her knees. The hem of her muddy parka pooled ungracefully on the shining floor and her eyes turned upwards as if to an angel. Maybe that’s what she thought Miranda was.

  “Ma’am, you have to help us, you. My Lizzie’s dying, her, with some disease, Billy says she’s dying, Dr. Turner says it ain’t natural, this disease, it’s genemod, it…and Billy, he’s been so good to us, him, and he ain’t hardly even got nothing out of it—but Lizzie, my little girl—” She started to cry.

  At the words “Dr. Turner,” Miranda’s eyes moved to me for a moment, then back to Annie. It was like having a laser sweep over you. I felt she suddenly knew everything there was to know about me: my aliases, my supposedly secret and pathetically marginal GSEA affiliation, the entire history of my residences, pseudo-jobs, pseudo-loves. I felt naked, clear to the cellular level. I told myself to stop it immediately. She wasn’t a psychic; she was a human being, a woman with awesome technology behind her and a super-heightened brain and thoughts I would never have and would not understand if they were explained to me…

  This was how Livers felt about donkeys like me.