Beggars and Choosers

by Nancy Kress

“Annie Francy! I been looking, me, all over the woods for you!”

  “Well, I been right here, me,” Annie said. She sat up. She’d been lying on her back in a little sort of hollow in the leaves, and when she sat up, her, I forgot that I was supposed to be mad. She’d been feeding, her. Her naked chocolate breasts bobbed, them, and her hair had a few leaves stuck in it, and I could see the edge of her ass where it pushed on the soft ground. My pipe swelled. I was next to her, me, in two jumps.

  But she pushed me away. I might of forgot, me, that I was mad, but Annie don’t ever forget when she is. “Not now, Billy. I mean it, you!”

  I stopped. It was hard. She tasted so sweet, her, it seemed like I couldn’t never get enough of her. Not in the year since we went down into Eden. Not in ten more years, not in hundred. My old pipe was stiff as a hunk of metal.

  Annie got up, her, real leisurely, dusting the leaves off her thighs and ass. She knew, her, how I was watching. There was even a little smile in her eyes. But she was still mad.

  “Billy—I still don’t want, me, for us to go to West Virginia. It ain’t going to help nobody.”

  I eased my pants a little, me. “Lizzie wants to go. She is going, her. With or without us.”

  Annie scowled. Her and Lizzie fight even more now, them, since Lizzie turned thirteen. Annie wants to keep Lizzie a little girl, is what I think, same as for a long time she wanted to keep me an old man, like old men used to be. Before. Annie didn’t never like change, her. That’s why she don’t want to go to West Virginia.

  “Lizzie really said that, her? That she’d go without me?”

  I nodded. Lizzie would, too. She would go, her, even if Vicki didn’t. There ain’t no stopping Lizzie these days. You’d of thought it’d be the old and the sick who’d be the most changed since Before, but the truth is, it’s the young. There ain’t no stopping none of them from doing nothing. Used to be a thirteen-year-old—or twelve, or ten—needed to be taken care of. Fed, nursed through sickness, protected from a rabid raccoon or a bad cut or spoiled food. No more. They don’t need us, them.

  Just like we don’t need the donkeys.

  Annie pulled on her dress, her, watching me watch, but without seeming to notice nothing. The dress was longer than the youngest women wear, even in the summer—Annie can’t change everything about herself, her, just ’cause there ain’t no more endless supplies of jacks or parkas or boots. Her dress was weaved out of some plant thing, not cotton, on the weaving ’bot, just two weeks ago. It didn’t have no color, like they don’t now. People like their clothes, them, to look natural, which don’t make sense because Annie’s dress had already started to get eaten by her breasts and hips and ass. There was tiny holes in interesting places. My pants was the same way. I ain’t going to wear no dress, me, like the younger men, even if it is easier for feeding. I ain’t no young man in my head, me, no matter what my body can do now.

  Annie Francy’s gorgeous ass disappeared under the drop of her dress.

  She tied on her sandals, left over from Before. They were nearly worn out, them. Shoes and boots was supposed to of been on the Council’s meeting tonight, until this other thing come up so fast and hard and there ain’t going to be no East Oleanta Council meeting tonight. Maybe never again, for all I knew, me.

  I held Annie’s hand, me, while we walked back to town. I remember when she wouldn’t never go into the woods, her. But now not even Annie’s afraid in the woods.

  In West Virginia—that’s something else.

  Annie’s hand felt smooth and strong. I rubbed my thumb, me, in a little circle over her palm. Annie Francy. Annie. Francy. She was scowling, her, her lips pressed tight together.

  “It ain’t right to let them vote in Council as young as twelve. It ain’t right.”

  I knew better, me, than to get into that again.

  “If it wasn’t for the kids’ votes, we wouldn’t be going, us, on this useless trip. And it is useless, Billy. What does a thirteen-year-old know, her, about adult voting? She’s still a baby, her, even if she don’t think so!”

  I didn’t say nothing. I ain’t no fool.

  We walked in silence, us. There was pine needles underfoot, and in the sunny places, daisies and Indian paintbrush. The woods was just as pretty, them, and smelled just as sweet, as if the world hadn’t of changed for good over a year ago by things too small, them, to even see.

  Vicki’s tried right along, her, to explain the Cell Cleaner to me. And the nanomachinery. Lizzie seems, her, to understand it, but it still ain’t clear to me.

  It don’t have to be clear. All it has to do, it, is work. “Annie,” I said, just before we got to town, “you don’t know, you, that we can’t do nothing in West Virginia. Maybe somebody’s got a plan, them—one of the kids, even!—and by the time we get there—”

  She scowled. “Nobody’s got no plan.”

  “Well, maybe by the time we get there, us…you got to figure walking will take three, four weeks—”

  She turned on me. “Nobody will make no plan! Who knows, them, how to break into that prison and get that girl out? Donkeys? They put her there! That Drew Arlen, her own man? He put her there, too! Her own kind? They’d of done it by now, them, if they knew how! We can’t do nothing, Billy. And meantime, we could use the time and brains, us, on things we do need! Better weaving, and more of it! We still only got that one weaving ’bot the kids put together, and it’s slow, it. And the clothes keep getting eaten. And boots! We still ain’t settled, us, about getting boots, and winter will come eventually!”

  I gave it up, me. You can’t argue with Annie. She’s too right, her. Winter would come eventually and the weaving ’bot is only one ’bot for the whole town, which might be all right for summer clothes but winter is something different. And we ain’t settled the boots, us. Annie’s still feeding the world, even when there ain’t no cooking.

  Sometimes it’s kind of scary, knowing there ain’t nobody to take care of us but us. Sometimes it ain’t.

  Vicki met us, her, at the edge of town. Her dress was nearly as bad as Lizzie’s. I could see pretty near one whole breast, and—old fool that I am—damn if my pipe didn’t stir a little, it. But her face was too thin, and she looked unhappy, her, like she done for months now. She was the only one, her, in the whole town who looked so unhappy.

  “It’s coming apart, Billy. This time, it really is.”

  “What?” I said. I thought, me, she meant her dress. I really did. Old fool.

  “The country. The classes, For good this time. The gap between donkeys and Livers was always held together with baling wire and chewing gum, and now the last semblance is going.”

  I motioned Annie on, me, with a wave of my hand. She marched off, her, probably to find Lizzie. I sat down on a log and after a minute Vicki sat down too. She can’t help, her, being upset about the country. She’s a donkey. In East Oleanta that don’t matter, everybody left is used to her, but we still get news channels in the café. A few, anyway. Donkeys are having a hard time, them. It’s like when Livers found out we don’t need donkeys anymore, we got mad, us, that we’d ever needed them. Only that ain’t all of it. There’s been a lot of killing, and most donkeys are holed up, them, in their city enclaves. Some ain’t come out in damn near half a year.

  I looked, me, for something to make Vicki feel better. “There ain’t no police no more. To punish people who break the law, them, by attacking other people. If we got security ’bots back—”

  “Oh, Billy, it’s broader than that. There isn’t any law anymore. There’s just the town councils. And where people don’t feel like obeying those, there’s anarchy.”

  “I ain’t seen, me, nobody get hurt here.”

  “Not in East Oleanta, no. In East Oleanta the Huevos Verdes plan worked. People made the transition to small, local, cooperative government. To tell you the truth, I give Jack Sawicki, poor dead bastard, credit for that. He had everybody primed for self-responsibility. And other places have worked just as well. But they�
��ve killed off donkeys in Albany, they killed off each other in Carter’s Falls, they’ve had a rape fest and general lawless might-makes-right in Binghamton, and in other places they’ve had a witch hunt for ‘subhuman genemods’ worse than any the GSEA ever mounted. And where is the GSEA? Where is the FBI? Where is the Urban Housing Authority and the FCC and the Department of Health? The entire network of government has just vanished, while Washington walls itself off, issuing decrees to which the rest of the country pays not the slightest attention!”

  “We don’t need to, us.”

  “Precisely. As an entity, the United States no longer exists. It fragmented into classes with no common aims at all. Karl Marx was right.”

  “Who?” I didn’t know, me, nobody with that name.

  “Never mind.”

  “Vicki—” I had to hunt, me, for my words. “Can’t you…care less, you? Ain’t this enough? For the first time, we’re free, us. Like Miranda said, her, on her HT broadcast, we’re really free.”

  She looked at me. I ain’t never seen, me, before or since, such a bleak look. “Free to do what, Billy?”

  “Well…live.”

  “Look at this.” She held out a piece of metal, her. It was twisted and melted.

  “So? Duragem. The dissembler got it. But the dissemblers are clocked out, them. And the kids are figuring out all new ways to build stuff without no metals that—”

  “This wasn’t duragem. And it wasn’t attacked by a genemod organism. It was melted by a U-614.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A weapon. A very devastating, powerful, government weapon. That was only supposed to be released in case of foreign attack. I found this last week near Coganville. It had been used to blast an isolated summer cottage where, I suspect, there’d been some donkeys hiding months ago. Not even the bodies are there now. Not even the building is there.”

  I looked at her, me. I didn’t know she’d walked, her, to Coganville last week.

  “Don’t you get it, Billy? What Drew Arlen hinted at during Miranda Sharifi’s trial is true. He didn’t say it outright, and I’ll bet that’s because somebody decided it was prejudicial to national security. ‘National security’! For that you need a real nation!”

  I still didn’t get it, me. Vicki looked at me, and she put her hand, her, on my arm.

  “Billy, somebody’s arming Livers with secret government weapons. Somebody’s engineering civil war. Do you really think all this violence isn’t being deliberately nursed? It’s probably the same bastards who released the duragem dissembler in the first place, still out there, trying to get all the donkeys wiped out. And maybe all the Sleepless, too, that aren’t holed up in Sanctuary. Somebody wants this country to continue coming apart, and they’ve got enough underground government support to do it. Civil war, Billy. This last nine months of bioengineered pastoral idyll is only a hiatus. And we people—struggling to create weaving ’bots and rejoicing in our liberation from all the old biological imperatives—are not going to stand a chance. Not without a strong government participation on our side, and I don’t see that happening.”

  “But, Vicki—”

  “Oh, why am I talking to you? You don’t understand the first thing I’m talking about!”

  She got up, her, and walked away.

  She was half right. I didn’t understand, me, all of it, but I understood some. I thought of Annie not wanting, her, to leave East Oleanta, not even to get Miranda Sharifi free. We got it good here, Billy. There ain’t nothing to be afraid of here…

  Vicki came back. “I’m sorry, Billy. I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just…”

  “What?” I said, me, as gentle as I could.

  “It’s just that I’m afraid. For Lizzie. For all of us.”

  “I know.” I did know, me. That much I knew.

  “Do you remember what you said, Billy, that day that Miranda injected us with the syringes, and she and Drew Arlen were arguing about who should control technology?”

  I don’t remember that day, me, real clear. It was the most important day in my entire life, the day that gave me Annie and Lizzie and my body back, but I don’t remember it real clear. My chest hurt, and Lizzie was sick, and too much was happening. But I remember, me, Drew Arlen’s hard face, may he rot in Annie’s hell. He testified against her at her trial, and sent his own woman to jail. And I remember the tears in Miranda’s eyes. Who should control technology…

  “You said it only matters who can. Out of the mouths of the untutored, Billy. And you know what? We can’t. Not the syringed Livers or the syringed donkeys in their shielded enclaves. And without some pretty sophisticated technology of our own, any really determined technological attack by the government or by this demented purist underground could wipe us out. And will.”

  I didn’t know, me, what to say. Part of me wanted to hole up with Annie and Lizzie—and Vicki, too—forever in East Oleanta. But I couldn’t, me. We had to get Miranda Sharifi free, us. I didn’t know how, me, but we had to. She set us free, her.

  “Maybe,” I said, slow, “there ain’t no underground stirring up fighting. Maybe this is just a…a getting-used-to period, and after a while Livers and donkeys will go back, them, to helping each other live.”

  Vicki laughed, her. It was an ugly sound. “May God bless the beasts and children,” she said, which didn’t make no sense. We weren’t neither.

  “Oh, yes, we are,” Vicki said. “Both.”

  The next week we left, us, to walk to Oak Mountain Maximum Security Federal Prison in West Virginia.

  We weren’t the only ones, us. It wasn’t the East Oleanta Council’s original idea. They got it, them, off a man walking south in one of the slow steady lines of people moving along the old gravrail tracks. Feeding in the afternoons in pastures and fields. Leaving the grass torn up to lie in the sweet summer mud. Deciding together where the latrines should be. Making chains of daisies to wear around their necks, until the daisies get slowly fed on and disappear, the same as cloth does from the weaving ’bot. Vicki says, her, that eventually we’ll all just go naked all the time. I say, me, not while Annie Francy’s got breath in her beautiful body.

  Our second day on the road I talked, me, to another old man come along the tracks clear down from someplace near Canada. His grandsons were with him, carrying portable terminals, the way the young ones all do, them. They were moving south before the weather gets cold again. The old man’s name was Dean, him. He told me that Before he had soft, rotted bones, him, so bad he couldn’t even of sat in a chair without nearly crying. The syringes came to his town in an airdrop, them, at night, the way a lot of towns got them. He said they never even heard the plane. I didn’t ask him, me, how he even knew it was a plane.

  Instead, I asked him if he knew, him, what the government donkeys were doing about all the Livers on the road moving toward Oak Mountain.

  Dean spat. “Who cares? I ain’t seen no donkeys, me, and I better not. They’re abominations.”

  “They’re what?”

  “Abominations. Unnatural. I been talking, me, to some Livers from New York City. They set me straight, them. The donkeys ain’t no part of the United States.”

  I looked at him, me.

  “It’s true. The United States is for Livers. That’s what President Washington and President Lincoln and all them other heroes meant, them, for it to be. A government for the people, by the people. And the real people, the natural people, is us.”

  “But donkeys—”

  “Ain’t natural. Ain’t people.”

  “You can’t—”

  “We got the Will and we got the Idea. We can clean up the country, us. Rid it of abominations.”

  I said, “Miranda Sharifi’s not a Liver.”

  “You mean you believe, you, that the syringes come from Huevos Verdes? Because of that lying broadcast? Them syringes come, them, from God!”

  I looked at him.

  “What’s the matter, you an abomination lover, you? You harborin
g one of them donkeys?”

  I raised my head, me, real slow.

  “’Cause a few donkey lovers tried, them, to join up with decent Livers. We know how to deal with those kind here, us!”

  “Thanks for the information,” I said.

  All the way back to Vicki, I breathed funny, me. I could feel my chest pound almost the way it used to, Before. But Vicki was all right, her. She sat on a half-busted chair by the gravrail, in the shade of some old empty building, brooding. The people from East Oleanta went around her doing what they always do, them, paying her no attention. They were used to her.

  “Vicki,” I said, “you got to be careful, you. Don’t go away from us East Oleanta people. Keep your sun hat on, you. A big sun hat. There’s people going south, them, that want to kill donkeys!”

  She looked up, her, cross. “Of course there are. What do you suppose I’ve been telling you for days and days?”

  “But this ain’t some big-word argument about the government, it, this is you—”

  “Oh, Billy.”

  “Oh Billy what? Are you listening, you, to what I’m saying?”

  “I’m listening. I’ll be careful.” She looked ready to cry, her. Or shout.

  “Good. We care, us, what happens to you.”

  “Just not to the government,” she said, and went back to staring, her, at nothing.

  We walked the tracks, us, for days. At places in the mountains it was pretty narrow, but we weren’t none of us in any particular hurry. More and more Livers joined us, them. At night people sat around Y-cones or campfires, them, talking, or knitting. Annie liked teaching people to knit. She did it a lot, her. People wandered, them, into the woods to feed or to use the latrines we dug every night. There was ponds and streams for water. It didn’t matter if the water wasn’t too clean, it, or even if it was close to the latrines. The Cell Cleaner took care of any germs that might of got into us. We wouldn’t need no medunit, us, ever again.

  The young ones carried their terminals, them. The older ones carried little tents, mostly made from plasticloth tarps. The tents were light, they didn’t tear, and they didn’t get dirty. They didn’t even get that mildewed smell, them, that I remember from tents when I was a boy, me. I remember, me, a lot more than I used to. I kind of miss the mildewy smell.