Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  “Go on, Jackson,” Vicki said softly. “Unveil the genemod family lavaliere.”

  He turned to her angrily—why did she always try to make things worse?—and immediately things were worse. Her naked body was dizzyingly beautiful. Smaller breasts than Cazie’s but higher, narrower waist, slim hips, and long legs…Her pubic hair was reddish-blonde, a pretty light fuzz, a veil over…

  “Oh, my,” Vicki said. “Your family got their money’s worth.” And then, a moment later in a different voice, “Come on, Jack. Laugh. It’s funny, don’t you even see that?”

  He laughed hollowly, trying to exaggerate the hollowness, trying for irony. He knew he failed.

  Lizzie was giving her pitch. “If you all register, you, between 11:15 and 11:50 tonight, like we told you, then no other donkeys can register themselves for the election. We got enough Livers to win. If we win, us, we can get the tax pool money and stock the warehouse at the county seat with whatever we need. You going to tell me, you, there ain’t stuff you need?”

  “Course there is,” said a small, scowling, elderly man. “And hell. I’d vote for you, Shockey. You been a mayor, you. ’Sides, I can remember when not all candidates was donkeys, them, long before you kids was even born. But what I want to know, me, is what price the donkeys going to make us pay for electing one of our own.”

  Shockey said. “Ain’t going to be no price.”

  “Ah, son, there’s always a price. They always make a price, them.”

  Shockey bristled. “Like what, Max? What could the donkeys do to us, them?”

  “What couldn’t they do, them? They got weapons, police, they can change the goddamn climate, I hear, me—at least a little ways. We’re better off, us, the way we are. We got everything we really need, and we don’t attract no attention.”

  “But that way things will never change, them!” Lizzie cried. “We’ll never get anyplace!”

  The old man said, “Just as well. You keep your eyes on the sky, you, you’re bound to stumble over the rocks.”

  “But—”

  “But they got donkeys with them,” another man said suddenly. “They ain’t just Livers, them, stumbling along with the rest of us.”

  Lizzie said, “Vicki and Dr. Aranow aren’t—” but Vicki interrupted her. Vicki looked right at the man.

  “That’s right. They have donkeys with them. I’m Victoria Turner, formerly with the GSEA. And this is Dr. Jackson Aranow, a physician, and owner of TenTech, a major corporation. Lizzie’s not fighting alone. Any paybacks the donkeys try for beating them in the election, Dr. Aranow and I have the resources to counter.”

  Jackson stared. The man said bluntly, “Why? Why you on Lizzie’s side, you?”

  “My side,” Shockey said, scowling.

  “Because,” Vicki said, “I believe in this country.” She reached over to the pile of Shockey’s discarded clothing and tore the red-white-and-blue rosette off the jacket shoulder. She held it out to the man: with overt sincerity, with cynical irony, with what Jackson finally perceived to be a protective camouflage over genuine belief. But Vicki didn’t believe this election could really succeed—she’d said as much. She must believe in some deeper political commitment, of which this was only a first necessary defeat.

  The man snorted. But he took the rosette. The older man, Max, grinned. Farla said abruptly, “All right, Shockey, tell us, you, what you gonna do if we elect you.”

  Someone in the crowd giggled. “Yeah, Shockey. Make a campaign speech, you.”

  “Well, I will, me! Now you Livers listen, you! Everybody!”

  “‘Let arms yield to the toga,’” Vicki murmured. “Jackson, get comfortable. The people speak.”

  It was dark before they left Farla’s tribe. The debate went on all afternoon and early evening, as much, Jackson suspected, out of relish for the fighting as desire for information. People shouted and insulted and threatened and blustered. They moved indoors after feeding, to the dark, warm den of battered chairs, sleeping cubicles created by makeshift partitions, craft projects and skinned rabbits, and an expensive terminal with a label from one of TenTech’s subsidiaries. Stolen? Vicki grinned at him. Y-cones kept the huge depressing place warm—were the cones some of the ones he’d sent Lizzie’s tribe from TenTech? Maybe Shockey, too, understood the value of voter bribery.

  At sunset, Dirk grew fussy. “He should be home,” Lizzie said finally. “Grandma Annie’s gonna get worried, her. Dr. Aranow, drive us home, please.”

  Jackson could see that the others were impressed by Lizzie’s ordering him around. He had become a campaign asset. Plus public transportation—without his aircar they would have faced a long cold walk over the mountains. No…without his aircar, they wouldn’t have stayed so late, or argued so hard. Vicki grinned at him.

  “I’m so excited,” Lizzie said in the car. “Just a few more hours! Dirk, hush, sweet baby. Hush, dear heart. A few more hours and four thousand four hundred eleven—at least!—Willoughby County Livers’ll register all at once!”

  Shockey said, “You’re sure, you, that all them bumpkins know the on-line procedure, them?”

  “Sam Bartlett and Tasha Herbert told all the tribes twice. Everybody knows what to do. It will work.”

  And, to Jackson’s faint surprise, it did. At 11:00 P.M., everyone except small sleeping children gathered around Lizzie’s terminal. She’d programmed a running tally sheet: WILLOUGHBY COUNTY VOTERS, divided into two columns: LIVERS and DONKEYS. The number under DONKEYS, in glowing three-dimensional Univers Gothic, remained constant. Every time the other tally added another hundred voters, an American flag flashed, music played, and a tiny figure pressed a ballot button on a tiny voting net. The entire display sent out holo streamers ending in simulated fireworks.

  Behind Jackson’s left shoulder, Vicki said, “Sort of a blend of New Year’s Eve, Scooter All-Stars, and Tammany Hall.”

  “Get ready, everybody!” Shockey said. “It’s 11:48!”

  Jackson watched the screen. Suddenly the LIVER number jumped, then jumped again, passing the DONKEY number. Flags flashed. People cheered, almost drowning out “Sometimes a Great Nation.” Annie Francy said, “Oh, my dear Lord.” The numbers jumped again, then again, and then came so fast that they looked animated, while projected holo fireworks exploded and all around him Livers screamed and hugged each other and jumped up and down.

  Midnight, LIVERS: 4,450. DONKEYS: 4,082.

  “We did it, us!” Shockey yelled.

  “Hooray for the next district supervisor of Willoughby County!”

  “Shock-ey! Shock-ey!”

  Shockey was lifted up by his feet and walked around the floor on his hands—some Liver triumphant ritual, Jackson assumed. All at once, he felt very tired. His mobile rang.

  “Jackson, answer me. Now.”

  Cazie. How had she heard about this so damn fast? It was only 12:06. Did she just happen to be monitoring obscure voter registrations, or did she have a flag program to alert her to unusual political ripples? Suddenly Jackson wanted to talk to her. He was going to enjoy this. He moved to a relatively quiet corner and stood facing the wall, holding the small screen so Cazie couldn’t see the room.

  “Cazie. What are you doing up so early?”

  “Where are you, Jackson?”

  “With friends. Why?”

  “Willoughby County, Pennsylvania, has just registered an additional four thousand four hundred fifty voters minutes before the registration deadline. They’re Livers. Plus, a petition was filed to run a third candidate for Ellie Lester’s vacant position as district supervisor.”

  Jackson said, “You mean Harold Winthrop Wayland’s position?”

  “He was senile; his granddaughter ran the office. To, I might add, TenTech’s considerable advantage. District supervisor, as you know, does more than stock warehouses, behind the scenes the office controls—no, you probably don’t know. But, Jackson, this is serious. Certain people anticipated something like this, that’s why I found out about it immed
iately. It can’t be allowed to become a trend. Livers in office. Jesus Fucking Christ.”

  “The voter registration was legal, wasn’t it?”

  Cazie ran her hand through her dark curls. “That’s the problem. It is legal. It’s too late to register more donkeys—and we can’t jig the program directly, the media will be all over this one. Just because it’s a story. I’ve called Sue Livingston and Don Serrano and their campaign programmers, and I think you should be at our meeting, too. If only because TenTech is potentially affected. Do you know how deeply we’re invested in county and state bonds, just to give one aspect of the situation?”

  “No,” Jackson said slowly, “I don’t.”

  “Well, I’ll brief you. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bring you in on the political side of the company at all, but this time—Jackson, you’ve just never realized how important the political side is. TenTech is political connections!”

  “I thought TenTech was a corporation for manufacturing necessary goods.”

  Cazie sighed. “You would. Anyway, the meeting is at nine in the morning. My place.”

  Jackson said nothing. Behind him, the celebratory roar had muted to a happy babble. He felt someone’s eyes on him, turned, and saw Vicki three feet away, unabashedly listening.

  “Jack?” Cazie’s image said on the mobile’s small screen.

  Vicki said softly, “If you don’t tell her you helped us, she’ll probably never know.”

  “Jack? Are you still there?”

  Vicki said, “You can just go to work again for the other side, protecting TenTech’s political tentacles. And losing…what? Do you think you’d be losing anything, Jackson?”

  “Jack!”

  Jackson lifted the mobile. He angled the lens so that Cazie could see the tribe building, then Vicki, then himself. “I’m here, Cazie, at Willoughby. And, yes, tomorrow morning I’ll be at that meeting, to disentangle TenTech interests from voter results. But not to undo the voter results.”

  Cazie gasped. Jackson broke the link before she could speak and instructed the mobile to disregard all calls for the next six hours. He turned to Vicki. “But I want you to know that if I’m not a vote-tamperer, neither am I a political reformer. I’m a doctor.”

  She said, “The situation doesn’t require a doctor.”

  “And do you always just become whatever the situation requires? No personal choice?”

  “That’s right. I’m just a bunch of brain chemicals responding to stimuli.”

  He said, “You don’t believe that.”

  “No. I don’t. But do you?” she said, and walked away.

  Having had, he noticed, the last word.

  The Livers sat in rows now on scarred chairs, interrupting as Lizzie and Shockey and Billy Washington planned aloud. Jackson scanned the slouching bodies—misproportioned, ungraceful, uneducated, contentious, rude. Dressed—barely—in tasteless garish free-issue plastic and homespun rags. Shouting stupid suggestions at each other motivated by greed, or unrealistic expectations, or orneriness, or a complete ignorance of governmental structure.

  He left the political meeting and went home.

  II

  MARCH-APRIL 2121

  Affiliation requires boundaries; a “we” must be defined on some basis if there are to be any obligations to the “we”; and once there is a “we,” there will be a “they.”

  —James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, 1993

  Ten

  Jennifer sat at her desk in Sanctuary, drawing with a black calligraphy pen. It was amazing how relaxing she found this trivial art, using not a drawing program but actual ink, on paper. She allowed herself twenty minutes twice a day to draw whatever she chose, whatever came into her mind. A means of focusing your attention? Sanctuary’s communications chief Caroline Renleigh had said, which merely showed how little Caroline understood her. Jennifer’s attention did not need focusing. The drawing was a refreshing break in relentless attention.

  Her office, at the cylindrical orbital’s arbitrarily designated “south” end, shared dome space with the Sanctuary Council chamber. To the “north,” farms and living domes and labs and parks made a pleasant, orderly vista that curved gently into the sky. To the “south.” the office abutted the transparent, super-tough plastic sealing the orbital. Jennifer’s desk faced space.

  When she was younger, she had kept her console turned away from that blackness. In her office, at Council meetings, Jennifer had always faced Sanctuary, and its soft artificial sun. She had come, over the long years in prison on Earth, to understand that this was unallowable weakness. Now she placed her chair so that she always confronted space. Sometimes she faced a void, with stars too far for even Sleepless technology: the unreachable escape. Sometimes she faced Earth, oppressively filling the window, reminding her of why her people needed escape. Jennifer contemplated both views. For the discipline.

  She could take her people no farther from the enemy. The moon, yes—but Miranda had gone there, with her traitors. The genemod generation who were supposed to be the way around genetic regression to the mean, ensuring that the Sleepless continued to expand their superiority over Sleepers. And who instead had betrayed their creators and loving parents, sending them to prison for treason.

  Mars was colonized by several nations, but most ambitiously by the New Empire of China, powerful and dangerous. Sleepless there received a bullet in the back of the head.

  Titan belonged to the Japanese. They were spreading to the other moons of the solar system as well. More reasonable than the New Empire, they nonetheless had never taken well to ethnic outsiders. In one generation—or two, or three—they might turn against a Saturn- or Jupiter-orbit Sanctuary, just as the United States had turned against the original Sanctuary, on Earth. And then Jennifer’s great-great-grandchildren would have to dance the whole bloody dance again.

  No, she could take her people nowhere else but this orbital, this fragile haven of titanium and steel, built even before nanotechnology. Nor could she challenge Earth directly. She had tried that, and failed, and spent twenty-seven years in prison. When you had an enemy that hounded and reviled and murdered your people, an enemy that you could neither fight nor flee, then you must operate underground. Use cunning. Stealth. Turn the enemy’s own weakness against him, and arrange it so he never knew what robbed him of his effectiveness. There was no overt triumph that way, but Jennifer had learned that she could do without overt triumph. Provided that she gained what was most important: safety for her people. That was her responsibility.

  Responsibility, self-control, duty. The moral virtues, without which no accomplishment was possible, and no greatness. They had forgotten those virtues on Earth. Strukov, the classic mercenary, betrayed his own kind every time he engineered pathological viruses for money. The aristocrats of the New Empire of China settled Mars, but left their own poor to struggle in the genemod-virus hell that warring factions had made of West China. And the American donkeys, who kept Sanctuary legally and financially tethered to the United States for the huge taxes the orbital paid, had abandoned their own morals to pursue empty pleasures in the Y-sealed enclaves.

  That left space.

  Sanctuary orbital, the last bastion of responsibility to one’s own. Of responsibility, self-control, duty. Of a morality that was able to look beyond the pleasure of the moment, the individualistic needs of any one person, to the needs of the community. The rest of the world had forgotten that “community” had a biological base as well as a social one. A human being belonged not only to those communities he chose, professional and geographical, but to that into which he was born. His first obligation must be loyalty to the community that had nurtured him, or the entire chain of nurturing generations broke down. And that loyalty must be a choice, not a mindless dogma. That was, finally, what it meant to be fully human: not the pack loyalty of wolves, but that people could choose other than their pack—and choose not to. The moral choice.

  The Sleepers, dazzled by the technology that should be s
ervant and not master, had forgotten that kind of morality. Too bad for the Sleepers. They would destroy themselves. It was Jennifer’s task to make sure they were incapable of destroying Sanctuary first.

  She completed her ink drawing. An intricate geometric figure, the lines and angles as precise as if she’d used a protractor. She always drew geometric figures. But there were four minutes left in her drawing time. She started another figure at the bottom of the page.

  “Jennifer? Something here you should see.” Paul Aleone, Vice President of Finance for Sharifi Enterprises, stood in the doorway. Paul, like Caroline Renleigh, had been one of the twelve Sleepless behind the plan to force the United States to allow Sanctuary to secede. He, too, had been betrayed by his own grandchildren, had been convicted, had served ten years in Allendale Federal Prison. He could be trusted. Jennifer swiveled her chair to fully face him, and smiled.

  “Look,” Paul said, handing her a sheaf of printouts. Genemod handsome, he still moved with the lightness of a young man. But, then, he was only seventy. “Caroline’s newsgrid program flagged these among the Earth channels. The flag was ‘Billy Washington.’ He’s the Liver who—”

  “I remember who he was,” Jennifer said. Sanctuary always monitored the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency data banks, of course, along with most other governmental agencies. Billy Washington, his wife Annie Francy, and her child had been the first guinea pigs for Miranda’s biological experiments. Along with a donkey GSEA agent in such deep cover that not even Sanctuary had been able to find out who he or she was.

  Paul said, “The program also flagged ‘Lizzie Francy,’ Washington’s stepdaughter. She’s now seventeen. She and her so-called tribe are trying to elect a candidate to governmental office.”

  “A Liver candidate?” Jennifer scanned the printouts. Although they reflected the usual Sleeper sensationalism, she was able to discern the facts under the bombast. Livers in Willoughby County, Pennsylvania, had registered to vote—something Livers used to do faithfully, but did no longer since Miranda Sharifi had turned eighty percent of civilization back into nomads who followed neither game nor herds, but merely the sun. These Pennsylvania voters planned to elect their own candidate to county office in a special election April 1. A Liver candidate.