Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  Dr. Aranow sat silent. Outside the car, the wind picked up, whipping the cold river into small frothy waves. A crow landed on a gray rock, cawing. Finally Dr. Aranow said gently, “Lizzie…You can’t get Change syringes through a warehouse. What few are left are not for sale, at any price. Every donkey organization in the country has been trying to reach Miranda Sharifi at Selene to beg for more…didn’t you know that? Selene never answers. Electing Billy Washington to district supervisor of Willoughby County won’t change that.”

  “Then we’ll get the old-fashioned ’bot medunits for the babies,” Lizzie said. Her arms tightened on Dirk. What if he hadn’t been Changed, what if she had to worry all the time about infections and bad water and worms…For the first time, Lizzie glimpsed what motherhood must have been like for her own mother. Why, Annie must have been afraid every single minute that something would happen to Lizzie! How could parents live like that, them? Lizzie shuddered.

  Dr. Aranow said, “I don’t think—”

  “Yes, you do,” Vicki interrupted, and her voice had changed yet again, to something Lizzie hadn’t heard in a long time. Vicki was talking to the doctor like she used to talk to Lizzie herself when she was a child, small and sick. “In fact, you probably think too much, Jackson. But this time—don’t. Just act. You’ll feel better if you do this one thing for the Livers. Without first worrying it to death. And it will cost you so little.”

  “Don’t try to bully me, Ms. Turner.”

  “I’m not. I’m only trying to present our case—Lizzie’s case—in all its aspects. You’re an aspect now. You didn’t ask to be, but you are. If you say no, that’s just as much a statement as if you’d said yes. There’s no fence to sit on here. The choices are yours. All I’m trying to do is articulate that.”

  Vicki’s eyes locked with Dr. Aranow’s. Lizzie wondered if Vicki was going to bring up Mrs. Aranow, or whatever her name was—the woman that Vicki said was the doctor’s ex-wife. She still owned him, Vicki said. Lizzie didn’t see how that could be—your family owned you, maybe, and your tribe, but not somebody who’d chosen to leave your tribe. Why, that would be like saying that Harvey could influence Lizzie’s decisions just because he was Dirk’s father! The world didn’t work like that. Still, if mentioning Mrs. Aranow would help the doctor choose against the donkeys…but maybe Lizzie better leave this to Vicki. Vicki was the donkey, after all. Although no one in the tribe would dream of holding it against her.

  Vicki said, in a different voice, “Don’t you ever wish, Jackson, that the class war had turned out differently? That both sides weren’t paying the price we are?”

  To Lizzie, the words made no sense. What price were the donkeys paying? Donkeys were public servants, they did the work of running things so the Livers could enjoy themselves—or, they used to do that. Now they had so much less work to do. Didn’t they like that? How had they paid any sort of price for not supplying warehouses and medunits and food lines and all the other things? It saved them money and work. Vicki wasn’t making sense.

  But Dr. Aranow was gazing straight ahead now, through the car window. Lizzie had the feeling he wasn’t seeing the river or the fields or the cold woods. He was seeing some other place, some other people besides her and Vicki. Who?

  “All right,” Dr. Aranow said. “On one condition. Not this car. I don’t want it spotted and traced and my system jammed with irate messages from people who used to be my friends. I’ll furnish you with an aircar leased to some nonexistent company in another state.”

  “Oh, thank you, Doctor!” Lizzie said. She leaned over and kissed Dr. Aranow on the cheek. Her motion pushed her breast into Dirk’s face, and sleepily he started to suck. When he discovered cloth between his mouth and her nipple, he whimpered and screwed up his face. Lizzie opened her shirt and gave him her breast.

  She’d done it. She’d managed to people-dip an aircar.

  She said, “And you’ll find out, you, about the other candidates? Please?”

  “Why not.” He didn’t sound as happy as Lizzie had hoped.

  “Cheer up, Jackson,” Vicki said. “Commitment only hurts while the first rope goes on.”

  “You’re quite a pastoral philosopher, aren’t you? Could part of this deal be that you just stop lecturing me?”

  “But you like it so much. Look at Cazie.”

  “Vicki,” Lizzie said. But then the doctor smiled. It wasn’t a very sweet smile, but it was a smile. He wasn’t mad at Vicki for her nasty comment. Why not? Lizzie would never understand donkeys.

  But she didn’t have to. He’d promised to do it. Lizzie had won.

  Now all she had to do was convince Billy. But that would be easy—Billy had never denied her anything, not in her whole life.

  “No,” Billy said.

  “No? No?”

  “No, I won’t, me.”

  “But…but it’s for Dirk!”

  Billy didn’t answer. He and Lizzie sat on a fallen log in the November woods, their coats open to an afternoon that had suddenly turned warm. Billy loved the woods. Before the Change he was the only one in East Oleanta who used to go off into the woods by himself, just to be alone with trees. Now more people did, but Billy was still the only one who’d go in winter for days at a time. Or as many days anyway as Annie’d let him. And just when Annie got to grumbling and complaining about his absence—just at that very minute, it always seemed to Lizzie—Billy would come home again. Walking into camp with the strong walk he had since the Change, not the old-man shuffle from before. There’d be wet leaves stuck to Billy’s jacks, and twigs in his hair, and Annie would squeal when Billy hugged her because he hadn’t shaved in so long. But she’d hug back, hard and tight, before she started scolding and grumbling again.

  Lizzie had known that Billy would be in the woods, checking his rabbit traps, and she had followed his tracks in the mud. When Billy wanted to hide, nobody could track him, but his time he hadn’t bothered. Lizzie had left Dirk with Annie. Now she wished she’d brought the baby. Maybe Dirk would have changed Billy’s stubborn old mind.

  Billy was too old, him. That was the trouble. Even if the old people were healthy and strong since the Change, they were still old in their brains. They thought old. Lizzie made herself calm down to reason with Billy.

  “Why won’t you run for district supervisor, you? Don’t you see that it will help us get all the things we need, us, like more ’bots and medunits for any more babies and better boots? Don’t you see that?”

  “I see that, me.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you run for election? It will work, Billy!”

  “Not if I run, me.”

  Lizzie stared at him. The old man broke a branch off a dead maple and poked at the ground with it.

  “Lizzie, you see this dirt? It should be frozen, it, by this time in November.”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “Wait. The reason the ground ain’t frozen is ’cause we had us a mostly warm autumn. Nobody could predict that, them. It just happened. But we didn’t know it would happen, so we got all ready, us, for a hard winter. All the blankets and jacks we could scrounge, caulking the tribe house airtight, them cones you and Vicki got us from TenTech.”

  Lizzie waited. There was no use rushing Billy, him. He always did what she wanted, but it sometimes took him a long time to get there.

  “We prepared, us, for the hardships we could see coming, even if they didn’t come. Anything less is just stupid. Right, dear heart?”

  “Right,” Lizzie said. Billy’s stick continued to poke at the ground.

  “If you and Vicki do this donkey election, you got to see coming what you can, you, and prepare for it. Donkeys ain’t stupid, and they don’t play as fair as the weather. Where Livers be concerned, us, donkeys are always cold.”

  Not Vicki or Dr. Aranow, Lizzie wanted to say, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “If I run for district supervisor, me, we’ll lose. Nobody will vote for me, them. Not just no donkeys—no Livers
neither, outside our tribe. Just like they wouldn’t vote for you or Annie. We was the first ones who got Changed. Who tracked down Miranda Sharifi in her underground lab and demanded, us, that she help you when you was so sick. Who actually saw Miranda and talked to her.”

  “But those are all good things, them!”

  “Yes. But they all different things, them. Different from most folks. And most folks don’t like too much different. It makes them uneasy, them. Don’t you listen on the talk channels in the county, you?”

  Lizzie didn’t. She had too many more important, more interesting deebees to explore, without listening to the endless intertribe gossip and rumors and tiny plans on local comlinks. Somebody said, them, that a friend heard on a donkey channel in New York that some folks in Baltimore got a scooter track powered up and running…Then if you’re from Glen’s Falls, you, do you know my second cousin Pamela Cantrell, she’s oh five foot six with…We got a feeding ground, us, big enough for…

  “People talk, them,” Billy said. “And even with the Change, people don’t trust ideas and plans that feel too different from what they’re used to. Maybe because of the Change. We already had so much new, us. And here you come with another new idea, maybe a dangerous idea, if you get donkeys mad at you. If different-type folks like me are running for public servant, too—well, everybody’s gonna be so uneasy, them, they won’t vote for me.”

  “But—”

  “Besides,” Billy went on in his gentle voice, “we’re the family, us, who got Miranda arrested by the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency, even if we didn’t mean to and even if they let her go, them. Miranda Sharifi. No, Lizzie, dear heart, ain’t nobody gonna vote in a donkey election for me. Or Annie or you or Vicki. Nobody, them.”

  “Then who?” Lizzie cried. “Who would they vote for, them?”

  “Somebody that ain’t too unfamiliar.” Billy stood. “Somebody who used to be a mayor, maybe. Livers are used to a mayor, them, being sort of part of the government.”

  This was true. Lizzie considered. The mayors of the Liver towns—when there’d been settled towns—had always been Livers talking donkey. They’d been the ones to talk on the comlinks, back when each town only had one, before the Change Wars. The mayor had been laughed at and teased for working like a donkey when everybody else just enjoyed themselves, even though mayors then hadn’t worked as hard as everybody did now. Still, the mayor had been considered son of dumb to do it at all; a real aristo Liver didn’t serve—they were served. By donkeys. Or so everyone Lizzie knew had thought then.

  But a mayor was a familiar person to negotiate with donkeys. To report something broken, to present voter demands to newly elected public servants, to send for police or game wardens or techs when they’d been needed. Maybe Billy was right. Maybe Willoughby County Livers would be more likely to vote for somebody who used to be a mayor. But would a mayor agree to run for election?

  “You know any leftover mayors, Billy? Our tribe doesn’t have any, us.”

  Billy smiled down at Lizzie, still sitting on the log. “Yes, we do, us. Don’t you know? That’s what comes of dipping all your fancy data instead of talking to people.”

  A little flame warmed Lizzie. Billy was proud of her ability to datadip. Billy had always been proud of her, even when she’d been a little girl piecing together broken ’bots, trying to learn without any real system.

  “Who’s a mayor, Billy?”

  “Who was a mayor.”

  “Okay—who was a mayor, them?”

  “Shockey,” Billy said, and Lizzie felt her mouth open into a round “O.” Billy smiled. “Ain’t it surprising what people, them, turn up in what places? That’s the biggest thing the Change taught me, dear heart. The biggest thing. We just don’t ever know, us. Hardly nothing.”

  “It’s not at all surprising,” Vicki said. “Here, take Dirk, he wants to nurse.”

  Lizzie took the baby. The familiar warmth ran through her at just getting her arms around him. She scrunched into a sitting position against the foamcast wall of her cubicle and opened the shirt of her marigold jacks. Dirk’s hungry little mouth fastened onto her nipple like a heat-seeking missile. The thrill, half mommy and half sexy, ran through her body, from nipple to belly to crotch. Lizzie was still a little ashamed of that thrill—it didn’t seem right to get heated up from her own baby! But it happened every time, and she finally settled for just keeping the feeling to herself. But it increased her irritation with Vicki, sitting there beside Lizzie on Lizzie’s pallet, looking like she knew everything. Vicki had never birthed and nursed a baby.

  Lizzie said, “Well, I was surprised, and so was Billy. Shockey! He just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d been a mayor anyplace.”

  Vicki smiled. “What kind of person do you think goes into politics?”

  “Somebody like Jack Sawicki was. Interested in helping his village, and not caring if people made fun of him sometimes. Shockey gets mad if you tease him even a little, and I don’t think he ever wanted to help other people in his life.”

  Vicki said innocently, “Is that why you’re backing this daring political venture? Because you have a burning desire to help other tribes in Willoughby County?”

  “Of course I—” Lizzie began, and stopped. Vicki smiled again.

  “Lizzie, honey, the people who go into politics are ninety-nine percent exactly like Shockey. They want personal gain, and they want power, and they want to make the world wag their way. Just as you want warehouse goods and power over tax money for yourself and your tribe. The only difference between—”

  “But I don’t want it for myself! I want it for Dirk and Billy and Mama and—”

  “Really? If Billy and Annie went south tomorrow, and if the ever-beneficent Jackson Aranow hand-delivered any goods you wanted to you, and also set up a credit account in Dirk’s citizenship number, would you just drop this kingmaker scheme entirely? Hmmmm?”

  Lizzie said nothing.

  “I didn’t think so. There’s nothing wrong with that, Lizzie—with looking out for your own self-interest. As long as that’s not all you’re looking out for. Someone I once knew told me—”

  Here we go again, Lizzie thought. She shifted Dirk, sucking greedily, to a more comfortable position.

  “—that there were five states that any human relationship could exist in. Any relationship—an international treaty conference, a marriage, a police department, whatever. Only five possible states. One, healthy negotiation from a basically allied position. Two, complete detachment, without any mutual-aid pacts or significant interaction. Three, dominance-and-dependence, like the Livers used to be with the donkeys. Four, covert struggle for dominance, without much outbreak of actual fighting. Or, five, actual war. As long as you try to stay within the election laws, you’re in a covert struggle for your own interests. Nothing wrong with that. But so is Shockey, only more crudely than most politicians. I’ll bet he was only mayor of his old town briefly, wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bet on it. As John Locke once pontificated—”

  “Isn’t there anything you don’t think you already know, you!”

  Vicki looked at her. Lizzie dropped her eyes to the baby, then raised them angrily to Vicki. Well, it was true. Vicki was always telling her things Like Vicki knew everything and Lizzie was some kind of datadumb…Liver.

  “Actually,” Vicki said quietly, “I hardly know anything, which is peculiarly startling when you consider that just a few years ago I thought I understood it all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lizzie muttered. Was she sorry? She didn’t know. Lately Vicki confused her, and she used to think Vicki was so wonderful…nothing was the same, it.

  “Don’t be sorry.” Vicki stood, stretching the kinks out of her legs. “Here’s looking at you, Karl Marx.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, dear heart. I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lizzie mumbled. She watched Vicki stroll out of Lizzie�
��s cubicle and disappear around the battered plastic upended table that formed one of its walls. Vicki didn’t look back, Lizzie hugged Dirk, wishing she hadn’t said that about Vicki knowing everything. Vicki’d been so good to Lizzie when Lizzie was just a kid, her. But…Vicki did act like she knew everything. Every idea that came up, every plan or…Why was Vicki like that? Because she was a donkey?

  Lizzie reached upward, trying not to disturb the baby, until her fingers groped at the top of her chest of drawers. She pulled down her terminal. “Library search.”

  “Ready,” the system said.

  “Three-sentence definitions of two things. First—‘Here’s looking at you.’ Second—‘Carl Marks.’”

  “‘Here’s looking at you,’ was a famous line from a pre-holo entertainment recording titled Casablanca. It was said as a drinking toast by the male lead to the female lead. In the 2090s the phrase enjoyed a renewed vogue as an ironic expression roughly meaning ‘I guess you won that contest.’

  “‘Karl Marx’ was a political theorist whose writings were used by many twentieth-century revolutionaries as a basis for rebellion. He advocated a socialism that included collective ownership of the means of production. The mechanism he foresaw for achieving this was class warfare.”

  “System off,” Lizzie said.

  “System off.”

  Class warfare. Was that what she, Lizzie, was asking for? Was that what Vicki really felt about Lizzie? And Billy and Annie and…Dirk?

  A sour taste filled Lizzie’s mouth. She swallowed, but it didn’t go away. She’d been going to ask Vicki to go with her to explain the plan to Shockey. Maybe now she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d just go alone, if that was the way Vicki felt.

  The baby had finished feeding and had fallen asleep again. Lizzie hugged him close and bent over to smell his sweet, clean baby smell. But even then the sour taste in her mouth and nose didn’t go away.