Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

Jennifer Sharifi, dressed in a flowing white abbaya, stood in the conference room of Sharifi Labs. The other members of the project team called this “the command center,” but Jennifer disliked that name. The team was a community, not an army. Through the clear bordered floor panel, stars shown beneath her feet.

  However, Jennifer gazed not down but at a row of five holoscreens. The conference room had been transformed. Gone were the long curved table and eighteen chairs. Banks of computers and consoles filled the large space, with team members moving quietly among the machines. Jennifer herself remained motionless. Only her eyes moved, flickering from screen to screen, taking them all in, missing nothing.

  Screen one: the “tribal” camp in Oregon, on hidden-frequency monitor. Livers walked on the rocky Pacific beach in mid-afternoon fog, because these particular Livers always walked on this particular beach in mid-afternoon. Today, however, the heavy ugly Liver faces were clearly upset and frightened. The Livers huddled together ten feet from the surging ocean. Surrounding them, donkey reporters shouted questions. Robocams recorded.

  “The newsgrids have finally discovered one of the test sites?” Eric Hulden said, walking up beside her. “Slow enough, aren’t they?” Eric was one of the new ones, the few Sanctuary youngsters Jennifer and Will had added to the project in its later stages. Without stopping the back-and-forth flickering of her eyes, Jennifer smiled. Eric was tall, strong, perfect as all the Sleepless were perfect. More important, he was cold, with the coldness necessary to understand and control the world. Much colder than Will. Still, if Jennifer smiled directly at Eric, his eyes would deepen their genemod blue. He was ninety-six years her junior.

  But all that could wait, until the project was over.

  Screen two: newsgrids from Earth. The left side of the split screen ran the United Broadcast Network, the most reliable of the donkey channels. An announcer with the flashy genemod handsomeness of a Spanish grandee said, “In a major data-atoll coup on the Singapore Exchange, the stock of Brasilia-based Stanton Orbital Corporation rose to…” Nothing in the newscast mentioned a strange neuropharm altering Liver behavior. Nor did the flagging program on the right side of the screen, which constantly scanned the world’s major newsgrids in several languages. So far, the project’s luck was holding; Strukov’s virus had not mutated on its own.

  “The neuropharm is still just a local story in Oregon, then,” Eric said. “Donkey fools.”

  “Not completely local,” Jennifer said calmly. “Just underground.” She gestured toward the next two screens.

  Screen three: Jennifer’s chief scientist, Chad Manning, gave his six-times daily summary of the progress at Kelvin-Castner on replicating Strukov’s neuropharm. Kelvin-Castner was thoroughly monitored, in ways the stupid Sleepers would never detect. Chad received streams of data, which he analyzed and reduced to terms intelligible to Sleepless who weren’t microbiologists. Kelvin-Castner was proceeding slowly—far too slowly to do them any good.

  Screen four: the pirated monitoring of government progress. This was more problematic. The federal agencies were much better at security than corporations like Kelvin-Castner. Neither Jennifer nor her communications chief, Caroline Renleigh, was sure how complete their pirated information really was. But as far as Sanctuary could discover, the government labs at Bethesda, although they had “in protective custody” Livers infected by Strukov’s virus, hadn’t yet succeeded in replicating or countering it. And the FBI hadn’t succeeded in establishing any solid evidence about the La Solana bombing. As far as Sanctuary could discover.

  Miranda would have found out for sure.

  Immediately Jennifer destroyed the thought. The thought did not exist, and never had. Her eyes flickered among the five screens.

  Eric Hulden put a hand on her shoulder. “I came to tell you that Strukov linked. He wants to strike Brookhaven in an hour. Is that all right with you?”

  “Fine. Call in the entire team for the viewing.”

  “All right, Jennifer.” A part of her mind noticed how he said her name. Firmly, coldly. She liked it. But all that could wait.

  Screen five: empty. It was used for communications from Jennifer’s agents on Earth. They were Sleepers, informants against their own kind, highly paid and little trusted. Anything that Jennifer needed to know about came through here, instantly.

  As Eric walked away, the fifth screen brightened into a formless glow. Audio only. The encryption integrity code appeared along the bottom of the screen. The transmission came from one of her agents in the United States. “Ms. Sharifi, this is Sondra Schneider. We’ve located Elizabeth Francy.”

  “Go ahead,” Jennifer said composedly, but she felt her chest lift. That little Liver had been surprisingly hard to find. After Sanctuary had caught her electronic stumbling across Sanctuary’s data beam from the Liver camp in Pennsylvania, the Francy girl had disappeared. Hard as it was to believe, one of the most debased class of Sleepers had apparently realized what she’d found. She knew that Sanctuary was connected somehow to the neuropharm that had infected her pathetic “tribe.” Elizabeth Francy had apparently also realized that if she opened a comlink through any satellite relay or ground station, Sanctuary would locate her. She’d been off the Net, out of visible surveillance, hidden somewhere in the barbarous countryside. Jennifer had hoped she were dead.

  “Elizabeth Francy is in custody of Manhattan East Enclave security,” Sondra Schneider said. “She apparently made her way to New York and through an enclave ground gate. A half hour before her arrest, the gate was opened by a donkey retina scan nowhere in our data banks. I can’t explain that. A ’bot from the enclave’s security franchise, Patterson Protect, classed her as suspicious, and moved to sedate and capture. Our Net-wide flagging program picked up the girl’s name from the routine police-net queries to other franchises.”

  Jennifer said swiftly, “How long ago?”

  “About ten minutes. They’ll give her a truth drug soon, if they haven’t already. But that’s off-Net, of course. We can’t access.”

  “Do we have an agent inside Patterson Protect?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  Jennifer considered. Lizzie Francy must have gone to Manhattan East in search of either Victoria Turner, her quasi-adopted mentor, or of Jackson Aranow. But why? To tell them what she’d discovered about Sanctuary’s monitoring her infected tribe, of course. If the local police franchise thought her worth truthing—and they would, of course, they’d want to know how a Liver had penetrated Manhattan East—Lizzie would tell them. She’d tell them, too, about Sanctuary. But would they believe her? The drawback to truth drugs was that if the subject believed that lies were truth, lies were what the drug elicited. Would the Sleepers believe that Elizabeth Francy was deluded?

  Perhaps not. Especially if Jackson Aranow supported the Liver girl’s assertions.

  Damn it, it was less than an hour until Strukov’s most important test!

  Jennifer stood very still, appalled at herself. She didn’t have such flashes of anger. They were unproductive, weakening. Jennifer Sharifi didn’t become angry. She became cold, and hence effective.

  The moment of anger had never happened.

  “Ms. Schneider,” she said calmly, “I’ll take care of this. Pull all of our agents out of Manhattan East, unobtrusively, during the next forty-five minutes. Make sure they understand that they must leave immediately. I’ll take care of the rest.” Strukov could go ahead with the Brookhaven test, but Jennifer would instruct him to change, the second target to Manhattan East. That would take care of the problem of Elizabeth Francy.

  “Understood,” Sondra Schneider said. The fifth screen blanked. Jennifer’s eyes flickered regularly among the other four.

  Livers on the Pacific beach, huddled in fear against donkey reporters…

  The UBN newsgrid and Net-grid flagging programs, both ignorant of the inhibiting neuropharm…

  Streams of data from Kelvin-Castner—data accumulating too slowly to unravel the tangled skeins
of Strukov’s molecules…

  Frustrated investigative reports from the FBI on the nuclear explosion at La Solana…

  Miranda’s cold face on screen five…

  Jennifer’s body jerked in shock. There was nothing on screen five. There had been nothing since Sondra Schneider blanked. Miranda was dead. Her image had never existed.

  “There you are,” Will Sandaleros said. “Jenny, look at this.”

  She looked at Will instead. His face was flushed with excitement. He held out to her a portable terminal, with a CAD model of a ’bot on it.

  “The Peruvian delivery drone. The bastards finally released the detailed design to us, which contractually they were supposed to do weeks ago. It’s somewhat interesting. It—”

  “I’ve already seen it,” Jennifer said. “Weeks ago.”

  “They showed it to you? The detailed version? And you didn’t tell me?”

  Jennifer merely stared at him. Now his face, moments ago flushed from what he considered his triumph over the Peruvian contractors, paled at what he considered his betrayal by her. More and more, Will was absorbed by these petty power struggles. He got upset over them, he compromised his objectivity and his effectiveness. He lost sight of the project’s overwhelming, sacred mission.

  “Excuse me, Will, I have things to attend to. Strukov launches in less than an hour.”

  “You knew I wanted the drone design, that I’ve been badgering those sons of bitches—”

  “A Sleepless does not ‘badger,’ Will.” Jennifer saw Eric Hulden, across the room, watching them.

  “But you knew—”

  “Please excuse me.”

  Will’s hand tightened on his terminal. “All right, Jenny. But after today’s tests, you and I are going to have some personal discussion.”

  “Yes, Will. We are. But after the tests.” She walked gracefully away from him.

  The rest of the team arrived in the conference room in ones or twos. The mood was quiet, subdued. This was too important for hilarity, or for the kind of irresponsible heat that Will showed. This was the culmination of Jennifer’s life.

  She was finally going to make Sanctuary truly safe for Sleepless.

  They had been despised, persecuted, resented, harassed, and even killed (always, always, she remembered Tony Indivino) for over a hundred years. The Sleepers hated her people because Sleepless were smarter, calmer, more successful. Better. The next step in human evolution. So the losing species had tried to render the Sleepless impotent in the world. Only Jennifer Sharifi and Tony Indivino had seen coming that inevitable long-term warfare. Now only Jennifer was left to make her people safe against the enemy’s so much greater numbers.

  When all members of the project team had gathered, Jennifer moved among them, murmuring words of thanks, praise, encouragement. Strong, competent, cold people. The most effective and loyal in the solar system.

  Jennifer had chosen not to make any sort of speech. Let the event speak, eloquently, for itself. Evidently Strukov had made the same choice. Without preamble, the main wall screen brightened as the cam mounted on the Peruvians’ drone activated itself.

  Below their feet, through Sanctuary’s clear floor panel, Earth drifted into view.

  The drone flew low and leisurely over Long Island, New York. Slowly the dome of Brookhaven Enclave grew in the distance, dominating the new spring grass, abandoned roads, and wrecked Liver towns of Long Island. The drone angled upward and now Jennifer could see inside the enclave dome. Simple, gracefully proportioned buildings. Houses. Shopping complexes. Entertainment areas. Government buildings. And Brookhaven National Laboratories.

  Brookhaven was the ideal site for the first high-security test of Strukov’s virus. Small enough (as Taylor Air Force Base would not have been), isolated enough (as the Pentagon would not have been), secretive enough (as the Washington Mall Enclave would not have been). And because of the Brookhaven National Laboratories, shielded as completely as any government installation anywhere. If Strukov’s drone could penetrate Brookhaven’s Y-shields, it could penetrate anyone’s.

  Except the one that had shielded La Solana…Jennifer destroyed the thought.

  The drone flew through Brookhaven’s triple Y-shield as if it weren’t there. The drone burst into speed and zoomed to just under the top of the inner dome, and the picture disappeared.

  “It’s in,” Chad Manning breathed. “We’re in.”

  “Drone disintegrated,” Caroline Renleigh said. “Brookhaven is of course equipped for biological warfare. There have to be security systems signaling, tracking, aiming…How did the Peruvians even—”

  “Response signals might have been electronically delayed at their sources,” David O’Donnell reported from his security console.

  The screen brightened again. This time the picture was jumpy, distorted; Jennifer realized it represented microsecond intrusions into the Brookhaven security computers themselves, time-sharing the Brookhaven monitors in non-continuous bursts to better evade detection. There was no sound. The screen split. The top showed grim security specialists at banks of machinery. The bottom displayed data taken from the enclave computer.

  “They know they’ve been penetrated,” Will said, standing behind her. “They know there might be a biological agent…they’re sealing the labs…”

  “Too late,” Jennifer said, studying the data on the bottom half of the screen. “At least, for everybody not sealed in when it struck.”

  Will exulted, “We can afford to have a few escape infection. It isn’t like they’re going to be able to detect what hit them.” His mood had changed. If she turned around, she’d see Will excited, arms twitching and eyes shining. She didn’t turn around.

  The printed data on the bottom half of the screen said:

  STATUS SUMMARY: OUTSIDE PENETRATION TYPE 7C

  BROOKHAVEN MECHANICALLY SEALED RF-765

  AIR SAMPLES TAKEN FOR ANALYSIS—PROGRAM 5B

  MEDICAL ALERT RECOMMENDED

  “Won’t do them any good,” Will said, chuckling.

  Jennifer kept her face immobile. Will tended to underestimate the enemy. There were some quite good people at Brookhaven, for Sleepers. Not as good as the Peruvians, but still competent. Sydney Goldsmith, Marianne Hansten, Ching Chung Wang, John Becker. Unlike the pathetic Liver test sites, the Brookhaven team would easily locate the unbreathed virus in their automatic air samples, even with its low concentration and short half-life. They would bond it with a radioactive marker and have lab animals breathe it in. The gas would enter the bloodstream and circulate for a few minutes before being both lost in the breath and destroyed by the Cell Cleaner.

  Before that happened, the parts of the brain most active at that particular time would receive the greatest blood supply. The marker would clearly pinpoint the amygdalae. Then the researchers would switch to both brain scans and cellular tests. They would launch a dogged examination of Strukov’s long and twisted skein of cerebral events.

  But long before the Brookhaven researchers could unravel that skein, they would no longer want to. The newness of the research would make them vaguely uneasy. It wasn’t familiar enough. Anxiety would fill them whenever they thought about the novelty of the situation. For a while they might fight the anxiety, but then it would grow. The Brookhaven researchers—and, eventually, all of the domed enclaves in the United States—would choose the known over the unknown. It would just feel too unsettling to mobilize for any new research effort.

  And then Jennifer Sharifi and the rest of the Sleepless really would be safe.

  Will was pouring champagne. Jennifer never drank—it made her feel in less than perfectly cold control—but this time she couldn’t stay outside the circle of her people. They’d done it. They were safe.

  She raised her glass. The room quieted. In her calm, low-pitched voice Jennifer said, “Thanks to the efforts of everyone in this room, we have finally won. The Sleepers have had their own biochemistry turned against them. In the next hour, drones will penetrate
the Pentagon, Washington Mall, Kennedy Spaceport, and Manhattan East enclaves. No Sleeper will die. But no one will ever be able to threaten us again, except in those ways we already understand and can counter. We will be in control, if only because there will never again be any unknown devils unleashed against us. Let us therefore drink to the devil we know.”

  Laughter. Drained glasses. And then Strukov’s face appeared on the main screen.

  “Ms. Sharifi. You and your people, without doubt, now celebrate the successful penetration of the Brookhaven. I, too, am pleased; I was very eager to see if we could accomplish this. But I cannot permit—”

  “Oh, my God!” David O’Donnell said from the security console. “Launch. Code sixteen A. Repeat, launch.”

  “—you to continue with this project. I, too, am a Sleeper, of course. And although I feel no loyalty to my own kind, I am, naturally, as self-protective as they. Or as you. So—”

  Brilliant light exploded under their feet, somewhere between the floor panel and the rotating planet thousands of miles below.

  “Sanctuary’s countermissile array destroyed,” said David O’Donnell. “Launching backup.”

  “—so no more of the Peruvian drones will fire themselves. And since we both know from the experience of La Solana that only the nuclear can destroy completely, I fear it is the nuclear I myself am forced to use. Do you know La Rochefoucauld on superiority? ‘Le vrai moyen d’être trompé…’”

  Safe, Jennifer thought numbly. I thought we were finally safe.

  “‘…c’est de se croire plus fin que les autres.’”

  “Countermissile array number two destroyed,” David O’Donnell choked out.

  Jennifer took a step forward. She thought for an uncontrolled moment that Strukov’s face on the wall screen had been replaced by Miranda’s.

  Sanctuary orbital exploded in a burst of brilliant lethal light.

  Twenty-one

  Lizzie woke in a small bare room, no more than eight feet by four feet, with windowless foamcast walls. Three walls. She sat up on the bed, which was only a platform jutting from the wall, and looked for the missing wall. A woman sat on a chair, facing her. Behind the woman, who wore a blue uniform, stretched a featureless corridor.