Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  Strukov said, “The neurotransmitter of dominance in the amygdalae is glutamate. It is an interesting amino acid. Subtle metabolic changes can turn glutamate into an excitotoxin that kills neurons in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain one uses in memory formation. Poor transport of glutamate can kill neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Overstimulation of glutamate production leads to many chronic diseases of degeneration.”

  Jennifer’s expression did not change. This was basic, common information. Strukov was overestimating her ignorance. Error? Or insult?

  Will said, “But any metabolic changes that created a toxin would be dealt with by the Cell Cleaner. It would destroy toxins as fast as they were created. And overproduction is the result of faulty DNA coding that would be corrected by the Cell Cleaner as soon as it was detected.”

  “True,” Strukov said. “This is why the diseases such as Huntington’s and ASL have disappeared themselves. Also the accidental poisoning. But the amygdala does more. Angelique, ça va.”

  The holomodel changed to a cluster of a dozen magnified cells, long axons and dendrites curling close to each other. Structures in and on the cell membranes glowed yellow and orange.

  “The yellow receptor sites are called AMPA receptors. The orange ones are NMDA receptors. AMPA receptors activate themselves in response to glutamate and cause the startle reaction.”

  Suddenly the cell holo disappeared. In its place a laser cannon appeared, swiveled, and fired directly at Will. A blast of noise deafened everybody. Gunnar reacted instantly, throwing a Y-shield around Will and Jennifer, drawing his own gun. The laser cannon was only a holo. Strukov threw back his head and bellowed his huge laugh.

  “Like that. You reacted with the fear: pulse, blood pressure, adrenaline rush, isn’t it? Your AMPA receptors lit up like the trees of Christmas.”

  “I don’t appreciate being made part of your demonstration,” Will said stiffly. Jennifer watched.

  “But it demonstrates the issue, yes? However, more exists here. The AMPA receptors that created your fear response clear themselves rapidly after the fear is finished. The neural reaction is temporary. You did not stay afraid after you realized that the cannon was not real. And your NMDA receptors did not activate themselves. Those receptors are different. What it is that activates them is a fear response of the high and prolonged stress. And then the NMDA receptors bond the experiences together. The neural pathways created in this fashion are permanent.”

  “What do you mean, ‘bond experiences together’?”

  “Watch. Angelique, ça va. This is real-time recording.”

  The laser cannon was replaced by a large transparent Y-energy cage outlined by thin black plastic struts. The cage held two white mice. At the far end, the shield collapsed and a cat wearing a bright red collar rushed in. The cat pounced on one of the mice, which let out an agonized squeal. The cat bit down. Blood spurted from the mouse, which screamed at such a high pitch that Jennifer’s ears hurt. With one paw the cat reached out and carelessly, almost nonchalantly, raked its extended claws across the back of the other mouse cowering in a transparent corner.

  “Now,” Strukov said. “A week later.”

  The same cage, with the same mouse. Its back showed fresh scars. The same cat entered, wearing the same bright red collar. The mouse immediately showed intense fear, both cowering and baring its teeth. Evidently a Y-energy shield invisibly divided the cage in two: the cat could not advance more than halfway toward the mouse, which continued to exhibit fear.

  “Three months later,” Strukov said. Same mouse, the scars further healed. A hand entered from the top of the cage, holding a bright red leather collar. Immediately the mouse exhibited intense fear.

  “Now, this is merely the Pavlov response, yes? The mouse associates the collar with the fear. This is the same as a man in the combat, who twenty-five years later hears a loud noise and throws himself flat on the ground. The experience of the loud noise and the deadly danger are bonded in his brain, and the amygdala is the place this happens. But now it becomes interesting. The mouse’s amygdalae have both been removed.”

  Same mouse. The cat entered. The mouse looked up, saw the cat, went back to sniffing aimlessly at its cage. It wandered toward the cat, which immediately pounced and killed it.

  Will said, “No amygdala, no fear.”

  “No remembered fear,” Strukov said. “The instinctive fear is still able to be induced, as for example throwing the mouse from a great height and monitoring its bioresponses on the way down. The fear of the falling is instinctive. But the remembered fear depends on the NMDA receptors in the amygdalae. They lay down a permanent neural pathway, the same as some drugs of the street, which in turn permanently alters the reaction. The organism cannot not feel the fear at the proper stimulus. Angelique, ça va.”

  The cluster of amygdala neurons reappeared. Now glowing lines connected various yellow and orange receptor sites.

  “In addition,” Strukov said, “I am able to make the process go the other way. With the correct viral modifications to trigger, injected into the blood or the cerebrospinal fluid, the natural excitatory transmitters such as glutamate—among many others—can be turned into the excitotoxins. Thus, the fear pathways can be created even without a prior experience. Of course, they are not memory-specific, since there has existed no memory. There is no input from the hippocampus. But the fear pathways are permanent, because they do not depend on the molecules remaining in the brain. The Cell Cleaner can come along two minutes after injection, but voilà! The NMDA pathways have already been forged.

  “Also, the metabolic process that changes the neural structure is marvelously complex, and so the variations possible are marvelously varied. I am able to create the permanent reactions for the fairly specific fears, if the basic instinctual response is genetically encoded. Angelique, ça va.”

  Another real-time recording; Jennifer could tell from the quality of the holo. An Arab teenage boy, not genemod for appearance: pimply, gangly, shuffling his feet. He sat in a small nondescript room, playing a game on a holo-terminal. Strukov entered the room and pressed a wall button. An entire wall dissolved, opening the room to a garden with an inviting stream and tall date palms. The boy turned ashen. His breathing raced and his chest rose and fell. In panic he whirled away from the garden and pushed his face against the opposite wall, trembling and moaning. “No no no no…”

  “The agoraphobia,” Strukov said.

  “Permanent?” Will asked.

  “Probably. Unless he undertakes either the intense personal behavior modification or the corrective pharmacology. Which his Cell Cleaner will of course destroy unless it renews itself constantly. One will need either another genemod virus or many, many patches each week.”

  “How hard would that be to create?”

  Strukov shrugged. “For whom? For the usual doctors? Impossible. For a good research facility of the medicine? Difficult, but not impossible. For your granddaughter Miranda Sharifi and her SuperSleepless? Who can tell? Angelique, ça va.”

  The display showed a young girl, eleven or twelve, not Arab, with uncombed hair and skinny arms. With her was a woman in her sixties, who sat placidly reading. The girl roamed restlessly around the room, touching the walls, windows, terminal, toys, but stopping to use nothing. Every few seconds she touched the woman, as if reassuring herself that the other was still there. Her face, ungenemod but pretty, crinkled in constant anxiety.

  “The fear of the abandonment,” Strukov said with satisfaction. “She cannot bear to be alone by herself. Watch.”

  The older woman rose from her chair, laid down her book, and said, “Nathalie, je vais à la cabinet de toilette.”

  “Non, non, Émilie—s’il vous plaît!”

  “Une minute, seulement, chérie.”

  “Non! Vous ne sortez pas!”

  The girl clutched desperately at Émilie. Gently the woman unwrapped her clinging arms. Nathalie threw her arms round Émilie’s legs, starting to cry. �
�milie detached herself and went into a bathroom, closing and locking the door. Nathalie burst into loud sobbing and curled into the fetal position on the floor. Jennifer glimpsed the girl’s face. It was a mask of anxiety and fear.

  After a few moments Émilie came out of the bathroom. Nathalie crawled over to her and again threw her arms around the older woman’s knees.

  Strukov said, “The fear of being alone.”

  Will said, “Does she have to be with this particular person?”

  “But no,” Strukov said, smiling. “She is exactly the same with anyone in the room. She is comfortable and free of the anxiety only when the room holds many people, and all appear prepared to stay for many hours. Then, and only then, the fear of the abandonment is eased. Angelique, ça va—but this one you have already seen, isn’t it? You have decided against this.”

  An American Liver town in early fall: trees blazed with color. Three ragged people stood close together on an empty nanopaved road. From their contorted faces and waving arms, they were arguing fiercely. One man shoved the other. The woman stalked away, shouting at them both over her shoulder, into a nearby woods. There was a close-up of her shocked face as two holosuited men grabbed her and forced her into a small aircar.

  “They called it ‘the bonding,’” Strukov said mockingly. “But you know that better than me, isn’t it? You yourself made the holo the peasants have watched. After they saw it, they injected themselves with the red syringes, and so they became bonded. Now then, this is three hours since the woman is carried away.”

  The abducted woman sat alone in a comfortable room. Abruptly she gasped, clutched her chest, and slid off her chair. Her eyes stared in death. The holo superimposed a robocam shot of the two men who had bonded with her, also dead.

  “An electrical event in the heart,” Strukov said. “A very clean mechanism, very elegant. I like this technique to control your peasants. Render them very dependent on each other and their actions can be only very limited, yes? A good design. But you do not choose this design. You tell me, leave this attempt, give me something different.”

  Will didn’t answer directly. “This whole range of fears you can induce permanently—the biochemistry dictates they’re all as pronounced as these two examples?”

  “But no. These NMDA receptors have been strongly activated. They have created the neural pathways of the great strength. It is possible to create the lesser effects.”

  Will said, “Is it possible for you to create them?”

  “But of course. Angelique, ça va.”

  The holostage switched to screen mode. Screen after screen of charts, equations, molecular diagrams, chemical formulas, tables of variables, and ion reaction schematics flashed past, as maliciously complex as the previous demonstrations had been simplistic.

  Strukov said, “Much of the work on the fear and the anxiety has concerned itself with the synapses, the neurotransmitters, and the receptor subtypes. I have concerned myself more with the processes of the cellular stress inside the nerve cells, where the neuropeptides form themselves. Here is where the chemical reactions originate and conclude. Each pyramidal neuron receives as many as a hundred thousand contacts from those neurons to which they connect. One therefore begins with models of the nerve transmission.

  “And with one other thing. There exist the peptides that form themselves only under the pathological conditions. It is possible to instigate a chain reaction of the complex amines, beginning inside a cell. Some amines in the chain are pathological; some are normal; some are the endogenous excitatory amino acids transformed into the excitotoxins. This chain, it has its beginning in the altered pathways of the amygdalae.

  “From there, it extends itself through the central nerve nucleus to the interiors of the cells in many other places—in the brain, in the muscles, in the glands and the organs. The chain ends in affecting many bioamines, including the acetylcholine—look at this chart, here—the norepinephrine, the CRF, the glutamate, the critical gamma C—many many amines.

  “Moreover, that chain will go on constantly, once begun by the triggering virus. And since the chain consists of the substances entirely created by the brain itself, the stupid Cell Cleaner does not attack them. It will destroy the virus, but by that time, it is too late. The chain has begun. And according to the stupid Cell Cleaner, the chain belongs there. According to the stupid Cell Cleaner, the chain is native.” Strukov laughed. “And so it is.”

  Will said, “And all human brains will respond the same way to the initiating virus?”

  Strukov shrugged. “Of course not. The people always differ in their response to anything that impacts the biogenic amines. Some will sicken. Some will respond too strongly. A few will not respond at all. But most will become what you have requested me to make them: inhibited, fearful of anything new, filled with the anxiety at any separation from the familiar. Like the babies with the stranger anxiety. In the essence, my chain reaction brings forward as primary a more primitive function of the brain, which human growth suppresses in favor of the more complex functions. I reverse that.”

  Strukov looked directly at Jennifer and smiled. “I will, in its finality, turn your target population into a nation of the fearful children.”

  Jennifer gazed back. She had to fight showing her revulsion for the huge bearded giant completely absorbed in his own genius, completely at ease with its demonstration on his own people. Jennifer had always known that Sleepers had no loyalty to their own, no moral sense. They would do anything to each other, if enough money was involved. Nor were they capable of distinguishing between the prison term served by Jennifer, a penalty borne of the Sleepers’ fear of her and of her own sense of moral obligation to safeguard her own, and the prison term that would be served by this brilliant vermin if his brain tampering was discovered by Sleeper authorities. Strukov was a disease. She would use a disease to protect her people, if she had to. But she would not give a disease the moral courtesy of tradition.

  She stood, eyes meeting Strukov’s. “And you can deliver the triggering genemod virus by injection, without detection?”

  “I have said so,” Strukov said, amused, as the three Arabs rose angrily to their feet. “The vector contains sixteen different proteins, five of which never before have existed. All will be destroyed by the Cell Cleaner long before any scientific authorities can isolate and culture them.”

  Karim said to Will, “We had an agreement about who will speak at this meeting!”

  “Injection will not do for us,” Jennifer said to Strukov.

  He answered, smiling, “Your granddaughter remade the human body, and you will remake the human mind, isn’t it?”

  “What we do is not your concern,” Jennifer said, at the same moment that Beshir said hotly to Will, “Control your wife!”

  Strukov said, “Do you speak always in the first-person plural, Madame Sharifi? What delivery of the virus do you require? And on what schedule?”

  “Two different delivery modes. One developed and tested as soon as possible, the other to follow a month later.”

  “And those two modes of the delivery are…?”

  She told him.

  Six

  Jackson woke to the sure knowledge that someone was moving around his bedroom in the dark.

  A dream? No. The intruder was real. And not a ’bot. A dim human blur across the room, passing briefly in front of the semi-opaqued window. Theresa? She didn’t come into his room at night, and if she did, she’d turn on the light.

  He lay still, simulating the deep breathing of sleep, and considered his choices. He could call for building security, but not even the neuropharm option would take effect before the intruder shot Jackson at the sound of his voice. He could roll off the bed, keeping it between himself and the window, and try to reach the personal security shield in the bottom dresser drawer. Or was it in the second-bottom drawer? He pictured himself fumbling naked through his socks and underwear, groping for the thing while the intruder politely waited. Yes,
sure. He could lunge off the bed and try to tackle the intruder, counting on surprise to keep from getting shot.

  In the seconds it took him to decide, the intruder said, “Lights on,” and the room lit up. “Hello, Jackson darling,” Cazie said.

  She was naked, and covered with mud. It caked on her pubic muff, smeared across her full breasts, fell off in wet globs onto his white carpet. Immediately Jackson felt his penis stiffen. What if he’d made an idiot of himself by calling for security?

  “God damn it. Cazie, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “You’re going to like what I’m doing. Jack. We’re going to a party. I left it just to come and get you.”

  She moved closer to the bed, and he could see her green-flecked eyes. She was on something, and it was a hell of a lot stronger than Endorkiss. She caught his frown and held out the inhaler. “Want a whiff?”

  “No!”

  “Then let’s go to the party.” She yanked the blanket off Jackson’s bed. Mud from her hands smeared the non-consumable fabric. “Oh, look, you’re all ready! You always could get hard fast, Jack. I do like that. Come on, let’s go. They’re waiting.”

  He yanked the blanket back from her, feeling like a fool. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” she purred. She let go of the disputed blanket, threw herself on top of him, and kissed him ferociously.

  He couldn’t help himself. His arms went around her and his tongue shot into her open mouth. His cock felt ready to burst. Cazie laughed, her mouth still on his, and pushed him away. She was stronger than he remembered. Clumsily, still laughing, she rolled off the bed and started for the door.

  “Not here, Jack. Come on, you don’t want to miss the party.”

  “Cazie! Wait!” He heard her run lightly through the apartment and tell the front door to open. Jackson grabbed his pants and pulled them on. Barefoot and bare-chested, he ran after her, hoping they didn’t wake Theresa. Cazie had disappeared. Jackson yanked open the front door.