Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  “—spiritual gift, the life and the way—”

  She couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t breathe…

  “—building on the work of the Change syringe I first gave you years ago when—”

  …couldn’t breathe and she was going to die, this time she would really die…

  “What’s the matter with the donkey, her?”

  “What’s wrong, you?”

  “Give her some room!”

  “She’s dying, her!”

  “People don’t die, them, you asshole! Holo’s done! Inject her!”

  “There ain’t nobody, them, to be in her group…”

  “Yes! The two new people, them! Cathy and Earl!”

  “Inject them, all three! Inject them!”

  The room spun crazily. It went black in a deep swooping wave, as if someone had jerked the far wall, and the wave rushed toward her in a minute it would take her…Put your head between your knees, Jackson’s voice said inside her head. Breathe deeply. Take a neuropharm…She doubled over. Two people pulled her upright, one on either side of her, her new bonded group…In the spinning room a syringe whirled into view, in somebody’s hand, bright red.

  “No!” Theresa screamed. “No…d-d-don’t…”

  “It’s all right, honey,” a woman’s voice said soothingly. Her coat was pulled off. “It don’t hurt. Just like another Change needle, you won’t hardly feel it, you. Mother Miranda says, her, that it just builds on the first Change…”

  The red syringe swam closer to her arm. The room whirled and the dark wave washed over her…dizzy faint she was going to throw up…At the last minute she pulled the words somewhere out of herself.

  “I’m…not…Changed!”

  And the blackness took her.

  Outside. She was lying on the ground outside, and it was cold. She wasn’t wearing her coat. She opened her eyes and the sunlight hurt them. People stood around her in groups, their ugly faces gazing down at her. In a group…Cathy and Earl and Theresa…She was bonded.

  “She’s coming back, her.”

  “Give her some room, damn it!”

  “Don’t give the bitch nothing, us.”

  “Theresa…you’re not bonded, you. We didn’t do it.” Josh, squatting beside her, not touching her. Theresa concentrated on her breathing. Sometimes the attacks came in twos, or even threes…The very thought made her heart race and her breath shorten.

  “I said, me, that we didn’t bond you.”

  Josh’s face was kind. How could that be, kindness from a Liver? He couldn’t understand what happened to her…not even Jackson understood. Theresa tried to breathe deeply.

  Patty said, “It must be true. What we heard, us. That even the enclaves don’t have no more Change syringes.” Her tone was slyly pleased.

  Theresa sat up. Home. She had to go home. Would they let her go home? What would they do to her? Tears filled her eyes.

  “Oh, God, she’s crying, her,” Patty said. “Let the bitch go.”

  Mike said, “No. Wait. She’s got a mobile. She knows entry codes we could use, us.”

  “She don’t know nothing, her—look at her! She ain’t even Changed!”

  “So? She’s got stuff in her head, she’s a donkey—”

  Josh leaned close to her. Theresa flinched. His breath was sweet and warm but somehow alien. He said, very low, “Get up, you, while they’re arguing. Get in your car and go.”

  She looked at him wildly. He nodded once, pulled her to her feet, and whispered something in her ear. Mike and Patty had started pushing each other, their faces contorted, their words coming out in spittle at the corners of their mouths. Theresa ran toward her car.

  “Stop her!” Mike called. “Stop, you!”

  Theresa lurched and fell. Her breath came hard, the ground shook and grasped…not again. Not another attack. She forced herself to her feet and looked back over her shoulder.

  Patty and Mike were trying to chase her, but every time they got a few yards from Josh they stopped, ran back, and tried to pull him along. Josh made himself heavy and limp as rags. And Mike and Patty couldn’t chase Theresa without him.

  She stumbled to the car and collapsed inside. “Door lock. Automatic…takeoff…Home coordinates.” The car lifted.

  Below, she saw Patty slug Josh.

  Theresa fell back against the seat, trying to control her breathing, trying to stop the world below from spinning into another of the sickening black waves. Home. She had to get home. She should never have left, should never have come out of the enclave, should never have thought she was strong enough or worthy enough to actually find out something about the light…She was just a defective overprivileged donkey…no, those people were wrong, that wasn’t the way, courting death to force you into community, no no no…Not like that. The answer wasn’t like that.

  She closed her eyes. It shut out the spinning world, but it couldn’t shut out the thing scarier than that. The most terrifying thing she’d seen, in an afternoon of terror, inner and outer…Josh’s face, whispering a final sentence. Kind, regretful, horrifying. His words.

  “You ain’t ready, you. Least, not yet.”

  Theresa shuddered. She never would be ready, for that. Bound forever ten feet from two Livers, death if she left them…No. It was wrong. A dead end.

  But what was Miranda Sharifi doing?

  And what was Theresa going to do?

  She was again alone with her empty life.

  I N T E R L U D E

  TRANSMISSION DATE: December 1, 2120

  TO: Selene Base, Moon

  VIA: San Diego Ground Station, GEO Satellite C-988 (U.S.), Holsat IV (Egypt)

  MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted

  MESSAGE CLASS: Class B, Private Paid Transmission

  ORIGINATING GROUP: San Diego Parents’ Coalition

  MESSAGE:

  Dr. Miranda Sharifi and Associates—

  Knowing, as we do, that you firmly embody the principle that people are never more themselves than when they make choices for others, we approach you with a request. Your gift of Change syringes has transformed our lives. Thanks to your efforts, our children are healthier and stronger. But the supply of Change syringes in our enclave—as in the others—is dwindling. Soon it will be nonexistent. Children born after that must be vulnerable to disease, to accidental poisoning, to danger.

  Dr. Sharifi, please don’t permit this to happen. Our children are so precious to us. They are all of our futures. You have been so compassionate and benevolent to your fellow beings that we, the parents of San Diego Enclave, ask you to be so again. We ask for more Change syringes for the children as yet unborn to us. Let this be, from your deep knowledge of humanity, your first scientific goal. We ask not for ourselves, but for the children.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT: None received

  Five

  They had been flying over Africa for less than half an hour when the plane began to descend. Jennifer Sharifi gazed out the window. In the pink dawn the outlines of a city blurred, as if the buildings might or might not actually be there. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, she thought, and didn’t smile.

  “Atar,” Will Sandaleros said, and stretched as much as he could in the cramped confines of the four-seater Mitsu-Boeing. Two days ago Jennifer and he had come down from Sanctuary, their first time down in the four months since they’d returned from Earth to the Sleepless orbital. All signs of Miranda and the other Supers had been obliterated from Sanctuary. The friends convicted with Jennifer had also returned to Sanctuary, their shorter sentences long since finished: Caroline Renleigh and Paul Aleone and Cassie Blumenthal and the rest. Back to finish the fight for freedom.

  But only Jennifer and Will had made this trip down to the international shuttleport in Madeira. They had gone directly to the Machado Hotel, built and owned by Sanctuary through a complex series of blind holding companies, a luxury business hotel guaranteeing unbreakable security for orbital and Terran executives. For two days they had stayed
in their Y-shielded room while hotel staff—half Sleepless, half well-paid Norms—had determined the identity of all the agents, reporters, terrorists, and nuts inevitably trailing Jennifer Sharifi. Last night Jennifer and Will had left the Machado by an underground tunnel built along with the hotel, and so well shielded that only ten people in the world knew it existed. A car had taken them to the coast and the Mitsu-Boeing. Will, used to exercise, was restless after three days in vehicles and shielded rooms.

  Jennifer was never restless. She had learned to sit completely still and retreat into her thoughts for hours, for days. For months. Will would have to learn, too. It was a necessary discipline to gather everything inside and bring it to a single point, like sunlight focused by a motionless magnifying glass. A burning point.

  “They’ll be waiting?” she said over the back of the seat to the pilot. He nodded. His brown hair, gray eyes, stolid features, could have come from five different continents. He never spoke. Beside him the Sleepless bodyguard, Gunnar Gralnick, checked his weapons.

  The plane landed on a dusty, unmarked landing field in the desert, Atar barely visible on the dawn horizon. The only building, a windowless foamcast rectangle curiously pristine and dustless under a Y-shield, might have existed anywhere in the world. The air was colder than Jennifer remembered, this close to the equator. But the sun wasn’t up yet. Later, the air would be hot.

  Three men awaited them, dressed in light Arab robes. Nonconsumable synthetics, Jennifer saw. They were all Changed. In Africa, you never knew. The men had swarthy, sunburned skins, but light eyes: two green, one blue. The one with blue eyes had red hair, neither genemod nor fashion augment. Berbers.

  “Welcome to Mauritania,” the oldest of the men said to Will, in nearly unaccented English. He did not glance at Jennifer. She had expected this. She said nothing. “I am Karim. This is Ali, and Beshir. Did you enjoy a good flight?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Will said.

  “No complications?”

  “We were not followed.”

  “We detected nothing at this end,” Karim said. “But it is best not to linger. Please follow me.”

  The pilot remained with the plane. The other six climbed into a large aircar. Will and Jennifer in the back seat with Gunnar between them. They flew low, traveling deeper into the Sahara, which grew more sunlit every minute. Rocks, scrub vegetation, an occasional oasis, its green stopping with the irrigation system as abruptly as if sheared with scissors. Then no vegetation: just rock and sand. They landed beside a small foamcast building whose domed shield was half-buried in drifting sand.

  The Arabs landed the car inside the dome, on hard-packed ground free of blowing sand. The building opened through retina scan. Jennifer noted. An underground German company had recently developed software to duplicate retina coding. The Berbers would need to update their security.

  The elevator spoke briefly in Arabic. Will gave no sign he did not understand the language. Jennifer understood Arabic although she, too, gave no sign. But of course the Berbers knew what languages she spoke or understood. They knew everything about all three of their Sleepless visitors, everything in any data bank anywhere. Which was never the information most crucial to have. Sleepers never understood that.

  Jennifer stood close to them, for the discipline, and made her hatred focus calmly, a controlled bum. For the discipline. The elevator—“The peace of Allah go with you”—might or might not be a piece of satirical programming. If satire, it was a weakness; satire indicated the ability to stand outside your own endeavors and mock them. If not satire, it indicated the strength of tradition.

  Mauritania had a lot of traditions. Proud Berber nomads. Islam. Colonial oppression. Collapse and drought and plague and warfare and brutality, like all of Africa but more so. Mauritania had been the last country in Africa to outlaw slavery, less than two hundred years ago. The slavery had persisted, joined by newer outlaws and newer genetic and technological slaves. Mauritania had no government left to speak of; what did exist was easily bought.

  The elevator stopped far underground. It opened directly into a conference room, all gleaming nanobuilt white walls and the fragrant smell of strong coffee. Doors led, presumably, to the labs and living quarters. On the gleaming teak table surrounded by comfortable chairs stood a silver coffee service. More chairs ringed the walls. A low side table held a holostage.

  Jennifer took a chair at the side of the room, sitting with downcast eyes. This had been the result of negotiation, carried on through Will. The Berbers, shrewd businessmen in their unforgiving environment for three millennia, had adapted easily to being brokers for the international underground. They were less willing to adapt to female entrepreneurs. Had Jennifer been any other woman in the world, she would not have been allowed in the room at all.

  Any other woman but one. Miranda, who had betrayed her people and made this interaction with Sleeper scum necessary in the first place.

  Will and the Berbers sat at the polished teak table. Gunnar remained standing, back to the wall, between Jennifer and the elevator, so that he could survey everything.

  “Coffee?” Karim asked.

  “Yes, please,” Will said. “Where is Dr. Strukov?”

  “He will join us in just a few minutes. We are a bit early.”

  The coffee looked dark, rich, bitter. Jennifer’s mouth watered. She made the saliva stop. The three Berbers drank leisurely, not talking, seemingly completely at ease. But even Karim stiffened slightly when a door opened and Serge Mikhailovich Strukov entered.

  The legendary Russian genius was huge, clearly genemod for size. His skin had the characteristic glowing health of the Changed. The syringes had, of course, been dropped in Ukraine as well as everywhere else on Earth, but how widely they were used wasn’t known; not only had Ukraine closed all its borders tight, but the weird antitechnology cults that had flourished there since the Limited Nuclear Wars had greatly slowed any use of the Net. What wasn’t on the Net couldn’t be dipped. Much of eastern Europe and western Asia was unknown even to Sanctuary.

  But not Strukov. He was known everywhere, seen nowhere.

  He had escaped from Ukraine at seventeen, ignorant of microbiology but, somehow, genemod for IQ. He never spoke of his parents, his background, his adolescence, or how he came to speak not only Russian but idiomatic Chinese and fluent, although accented, French. By twenty-two he had a Ph.D. in microbiology from the Centre d’Étude du Polymorphisme Humain in Paris. At thirty-one he won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on genetically modified excitotoxins in neural mitochondria. He never showed up in Stockholm to accept the prize. Three months later he walked out of his lab in Paris and disappeared.

  Over the next decade, odd reports of Strukov surfaced on the underground Net: hints that he was working for the Chinese, for Egypt, for Brazil, always on biological warfare, always on genemod projects that never quite surfaced on the world newsgrids. Or never quite went away. A microbiologist in the San Francisco Bay Enclave declared that he recognized Strukov’s hand in a nasty piece of genemod sent him from a doctor in the Chilean conflict: a deadly retrovirus that destroyed memory formation in the hippocampus. A week later the microbiologist drowned in the Bay.

  Strukov sat at the head of the table. Then, pointedly ignoring Will, he swiveled his chair to look directly at Jennifer. She didn’t raise her eyes to his, but he went on looking anyway: five seconds, ten. Fifteen seconds. She could feel the tension in the room shoot upward.

  Finally Strukov turned back to the men at the table. He was smiling faintly. “What is it that Sanctuary desires next of me?” His English carried a heavy Russian accent, but the sentence structure was not Russian. Mentally translated from French, Jennifer guessed.

  Will looked less composed than Strukov. “You’ve already been informed what we want.”

  “I wish to hear your words.”

  “We want,” Will said, a little too sharply, “for you to modify the genemod virus you’ve already developed. The trials we
received aren’t satisfactory.”

  “And why is it that Sanctuary, in possession of the most fine laboratories of the science in the solar system, yourself cannot modify this virus?”

  “There are reasons,” Will said, “that we prefer not to.”

  “I am able to guess. Sanctuary is run by the communal decision, isn’t it? And many of your people must be opposed to whatever it is you plan. Many more must be in ignorance of your plans. Also, your labs on Sanctuary are arranged for the genetic modifying of the embryos, and for the research into that area. You are not arranged for the creation and the delivery of the deadly viruses.”

  Will said nothing. Strukov threw back his head and laughed, a great open laugh that filled the room. Karim smiled. Jennifer Sharifi and Will Sandaleros had gone to prison for trying to hold five American cities ransom with a deadly genemod virus.

  Strukov said, “Twenty-eight years changes much, isn’t it? And not only in the microbiology. And yet, even so, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. You wish to try again this assault on the American government?”

  “No,” Will said. “But what we do with the virus is our business. Yours, as we initially agreed, is to deliver it.”

  “Piece of the cake,” Strukov said, clearly savoring the cliché. Karim laughed.

  “Maybe not.” Will said. “You don’t yet know everything our modification requires.”

  “Permit me, then, to show to you the modifications I already have created,” Strukov said. “Angelique, commencez. Le programme de démontrer.”

  “Oui,” said the system. The holostage came to life. A three-dimensional model of the human brain, in light gray, surrounded by a ghostly outline of skull. Two almond-shaped areas the size of a baby’s thumbnail, located just behind the ears, suddenly glowed red.

  “The right and left amygdalae,” Strukov said. “They rest themselves on the interior underside of the temporal lobes. Both amygdalae are in essentials identical. Angelique, ça va.”

  The left amygdala suddenly expanded, filling the whole deck and replacing the brain. It became a complicatedly elaborated tangle of neurons, densely packed, with input and output nerves branching outward.