by Nancy Kress
“Hello,” the woman said. She was beautiful like Vicki was beautiful: genemod. Black, black hair, brown eyes, skin like clean snow. The fourth wall, Lizzie realized, was a Y-shield.
“You’re in Manhattan East Security Headquarters, Patterson Protect Corporation, legal franchisee. I’m Officer Foster. You’re Elizabeth Francy, and you were picked up for breaking and entering, criminal trespass. Would you like to tell me how you penetrated the enclave?”
Lizzie patted the outside of her pocket. The purple eyeball was gone, which meant Officer Foster already knew how she’d gotten in. Lizzie stared silently.
“Ms. Francy, you don’t seem to understand. Manhattan East is private property. Patterson Protect is fully authorized to deal with intra-enclave police matters. We also can involve the New York Police Department—if we choose to do so. Criminal trespass is a felony charge. And murder is a capital crime.” She held up Tish’s eyeball. “Patterson Protect can—and will—use truth drugs, as authorized under the law.”
“I didn’t murder anyone! And I need, me, to see someone in here. Dr. Jackson Aranow. To tell him something important!”
“Dr. Jackson Aranow,” the cop said, and sat silent. Lizzie guessed a system was speaking information into her ear mike. After a moment, she said, “Why do you—”
The door somewhere in the corridor behind her flung open. Running feet. A boy appeared, no more than fourteen, dressed in the same uniform, “INTERN” blazoned across the collar. His face showed excited shock. “Officer Foster! Come quick, the newsgrid—”
“Daniel,” the cop said tonelessly.
“—says that—”
“Daniel.”
“—somebody blew up Sanctuary with a nuclear bomb!”
Slowly Officer Foster rose. She followed the boy down the corridor, but not before Lizzie had seen her parade of successive expressions: shock, calculation, pleasure.
Blew up Sanctuary.
Lizzie leaped off the sleeping platform. Her legs didn’t falter; whatever neuropharm the security ’bot had used didn’t leave lingering effects. She ran her hands over the Y-shield that formed the fourth wall of the cell. No openings. No machinery on this side of the shield. No way out.
Blew up Sanctuary. Who? Why? With all the Sleepless inside? It might have been Miranda Sharifi, at war with her grandmother…but why now? Could it somehow be connected with the fear neuropharm?
None of it made any sense.
And Lizzie was tired of trying to figure it out. Tired, angry, scared. Of walking to New York to find Vicki and Dr. Aranow. Of being attacked by Livers and donkeys and ’bots. Of being threatened with arrest for murder. Even of datadipping. She was a mother. She belonged home with her baby. And as soon as she found Vicki, or Dr. Aranow, or anybody to turn this mess over to, that’s exactly where she was going.
“Hey!” Lizzie yelled, experimentally. No one answered. Officer Foster didn’t return.
Lizzie started in on the standard spoken codes, to see if she could get any sort of building system to respond to her. Nothing happened.
She settled in to wait.
An hour passed. Wasn’t anybody going to come back to question her? Wasn’t anybody left in New York? What if whoever blew up Sanctuary sent a bomb to Manhattan East…well, then she’d never know about it before she was dead. But what if somebody had set off the fear neuropharm here? Would the cops just go home and stay there, afraid of anything new, leaving Lizzie in her cell just to rot?
Everything in here was synthetic. Nothing was consumable.
But there had to be a ’bot to bring something to feed on. And water. And a place to piss…She spied the hole in the floor.
Another hour dragged by. Lizzie tried to think carefully, to plan. All right, if no one came and nothing happened by the time she counted to a hundred…all right, two hundred.
Time up.
“Uhhhuhhhhuhhh!” Lizzie shrieked. She grabbed a few nose hairs in her right nostril and yanked. It hurt tremendously. Immediately mucus flowed from her nose, her heart began to pound, and she could feel the color rise in her face. She yanked more nose hairs, tears streaming from her eyes and snot from her nose. Then she began to breathe in quick shallow pants, until she started to hyperventilate. She threw herself on the narrow foamcast floor.
“Medical assistance required,” the cell said. “Abnormal respiratory pattern. Blood pressure abruptly elevated by forty points over thirty, heart rate one-thirty, brain scan shows—”
A medunit floated through the Y-shield. It was a kind she’d never seen before, even back when Liver towns had medunits. A small arm with a patch shot out toward her: another tranq. Lizzie leaped onto the sleeping platform, grabbed the medunit, and yanked it up with her, upending it and hoping to hell that she was holding it so that no ’bot arms could reach her. And that the alarm it was undoubtedly sending to the building system had no people around to answer it.
“Open medical comlink!” she yelled at it, and recited Dr. Aranow’s AMA code, just as she’d dipped it from his personal system. God, it had to open! The thing was a medunit, wasn’t it? It had to be linked to official records.
“Official medical link open,” a female voice said calmly. “Recording. Go ahead. Dr. Aranow.”
“Link me with my home system!”
“This unit is not equipped to do that. You have opened an official medical link recording channel. Please proceed.”
“Fucking damn!” Lizzie yelled. What if the unit activated physical defenses? She started to reel off the security overrides she’d dipped on various government systems, all of them, hoping one would open the channel that she knew was possible, must be possible, even official donkey links always had back doors to allow the system to be used for something besides what it was designed for…
“Link opened,” the female voice said, and a moment later a male voice: “Yes, Dr. Aranow?”
Jones. Dr. Aranow’s house system. Lizzie took a deep breath to calm herself.
“Jones, please tell Dr. Aranow he has an emergency call from Lizzie Francy.” She continued to hold the medunit as far away from her body as she could, even though it had stopped trying to slap her with a tranq patch. “Ms. Lizzie Francy.”
“Dr. Aranow is not currently available. Would you like to record a message?”
“No! Don’t…I mean, I need him, me! Link with his personal system!”
“I’m sorry, this system cannot do that on outside orders. Would you like to record a message?”
She didn’t have a high-priority link, and this patch-pushing ’bot wouldn’t have the ability to create one. Now what?
“Please respond in the next fifteen seconds. Would you like to record a message?”
“No!” Lizzie said desperately. “Let me talk to the doctor’s sister!”
“Just a moment, please.”
And then a weak, frightened voice, “Hello?”
“Ms. Aranow!” Suddenly Lizzie couldn’t remember Jackson’s sister’s name. She could see her, slim and elegant in her flowered dress, holding Dirk in her arms, tears running down her pale terrified face. Lizzie could even remember the sister’s personal system’s name—“Thomas”—and, of course, all the access codes. But she couldn’t think of the donkey girl’s first name. “Ms. Aranow, this is Lizzie Francy, Dr. Aranow’s…friend. With the baby. I’m in jail in Manhattan East Enclave! Please tell Dr. Aranow and Vicki Turner right away to come get me, it’s an emergency!”
“In…jail? With…with the baby?” Ms. Aranow started to say.
The medunit suddenly started to push toward her, some sort of time-delayed follow-through, the ’bot arm again snaked out with a tranq patch…“Tell the doctor! Tell Vicki! Come get—”
The medunit bucked with a sudden urge of energy. The patch connected with Lizzie’s wrist. Immediately blackness took her; she didn’t even see the medunit float out of her grasp to hover beside her body, slumped half on the platform and half off.
Theresa lay trembling in her bed
. That Liver girl was in jail. With her baby.
She saw, as clearly as if she gazed at the walls of her study and not of her rose-pink bedroom, the newsgrid holos of Liver babies, crippled and crumpled and starving and dying…
No. She was being ridiculous. Lizzie’s baby wasn’t dying. That baby was Changed. But the little thing was in jail, in a cell someplace, and something had happened to its mother to cut off the comlink like that. Had somebody hurt Lizzie Francy? And the baby?
Theresa had never seen a jail. But she’d watched history holos, and movies. Jails in those were filthy, horrible cells that smelled bad and held dangerous people who hurt other people. But surely jails weren’t like that anymore? The cleaning ’bots wouldn’t let them stay filthy. But the rest…
She sat up against her pillows. The sores on her hands and body had closed up. She could eat, and talk, and even walk a little, with crutches. She’d had a floater, but Jackson had sent it back because, he said, using the floater didn’t help rebuild her muscles. Twice a day the nursing ’bot coached Theresa through the physical rehabilitation software. But getting up was an effort, and feeling her hairless head made her cry. Jackson had removed all mirrors from her rooms. Much of the time, Theresa lay in bed and spoke notes, hours of obsessive notes, to Thomas. About Leisha Camden. About the Sleepless. About Miranda Sharifi.
She spoke to her system now. “Thomas, have Jones place an emergency call to my brother at Kelvin-Castner!”
“Of course I will, Theresa.”
But it was Cazie, scowling and rumpled, who answered her call. “Tess? What’s wrong? Why the emergency call?”
“I need to speak to Jackson.”
“So you said. But why?” Cazie drummed her fingers on an unseen table. Her black hair needed combing, and there were smudges under her eyes. She looked distracted and upset. Theresa shrank back against her pillows.
“It’s…private.”
“Private? Are you all right?”
“Yes…I’m…yes. It’s about somebody else.”
Cazie’s gaze suddenly focused sharply. “Who else? Did a message come for Jackson? This isn’t about Sanctuary, is it?”
“Sanctuary? Why would Jackson get a message about Sanctuary?”
Cazie’s gaze veiled again. “Nothing. So who’s the message from?”
“What about Sanctuary?”
“Nothing, Tessie. Listen, I didn’t mean to snap at you, when you’re so sick. Go back to sleep, pet. Jackson’s in the middle of an important meeting here and I don’t want to interrupt him, but I’ll tell him you called. Unless there’s something important you want to tell me, so I can pass it on to him?”
Theresa looked into Cazie’s eyes. Cazie was lying to her. Theresa knew it—how? She didn’t know. Yes, she did. Theresa had pretended to be Cazie, and now she could tell when Cazie was pretending. A shift in her voice, a look in her golden eyes…Jackson was not in a meeting. Which meant Cazie was keeping Theresa away from Jackson. As well as away from something about Sanctuary. And Cazie had never liked Jackson’s helping that girl Lizzie and her baby…
“N-no,” she faltered. “Nothing…important. Just a message from…from Brett Carpenter. That man that Jackson plays tennis with. About a match.”
“But you said it was an ‘emergency.’”
“I…I guess I just wanted to talk to Jackson. I’m kind of lonely.”
Cazie’s face softened. “Of course you are, Tessie. I’ll have Jackson call you the minute this meeting is over. And I’ll come by tonight to see you. I promise.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“Now you rest like a good girl and get all better.” The link blanked.
“Thomas,” Theresa said. “Newsgrid flag, last twenty-four hours. Anything on Sanctuary.”
She didn’t need the flag. The screen lit up with current news, and Theresa watched the holo of Sanctuary blowing up, listened to the shocked newscaster, saw the simulation of the missile’s path, heard President Garrison’s angry denunciation of the nuclear terrorists who had not yet named themselves.
“Repeat,” Theresa said to Thomas, even though the word came out a choked whisper and the salt tears hurt her radiation-burned skin. The newsholo repeated.
So they were all dead. Miranda Sharifi—dead at La Solana, along with all the strange and inhuman Supers who had changed humanity into something different. Jennifer Sharifi—dead on Sanctuary, along with her brilliant, powerful people who controlled so much of the world’s money in ways Theresa had never understood. Leisha Camden—dead seven years ago in a Georgia swamp. All dead. All the people genemod for never having to sleep, all the people who, Jackson said, were once supposed to be the next step in evolution. All dead.
But Lizzie Francy and her baby were alive. In jail in Manhattan East Enclave. Tell the doctor! Tell Vicki! Come get—
Theresa couldn’t do it. She was too weak, too frightened.
Please tell Dr. Aranow and Vicki Turner right away to come get me, it’s an emergency!
She could do it if she became Cazie.
Theresa closed her eyes. The tears stopped. Jackson had no idea—nobody did—how often in the last month Theresa had become Cazie. Lying in bed, hurting even through the painkillers, struggling to push herself through the physical rehabilitation program, making herself think about the explosion at La Solana without panic and seizure—Theresa had practiced being Cazie. Being someone who was not afraid, who was able to decide what she had to do and then do it.
She became Cazie now.
Gradually Theresa’s breathing slowed. Her hands stopped trembling. More important, she could feel the difference in her head. Like a newsgrid changing channels, almost. Her brain felt different. Could that be? But it was how she felt.
Theresa swung her legs to the floor and reached for her crutches. The nursing ’bot floated to her bedside. “Do you need help, Ms. Aranow? Would you prefer a bedpan?”
“No. Deactivate,” Theresa said, and the part of her that was still Theresa—there was such a part, only if she thought too much about that she’d lose the part that wasn’t—heard the decisiveness in her tone. Cazie’s tone. In Theresa’s still-hoarse voice.
Don’t think about it.
She struggled out of her nightgown and into a dress. It hung on her thin body. Shoes, jacket. In the foyer she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror.
No. Oh, God, no…that bald head, her? Sunken eyes, burned scabbed skin stretched over the skull…her? The tears started again.
No. Cazie wouldn’t cry. Cazie would know it was only temporary, she was getting better, Jackson said so…Cazie would wear a hat. Theresa took one of Jackson’s and jammed it down over her ears.
“Manhattan East jail, look up the coordinates,” she told the go-’bot that the building had called for her; she tried to scowl like Cazie. She’d had to wait for the go-’bot for nearly fifteen minutes. But she’d stayed Cazie the whole time.
“Yes, Ms. Aranow,” the go-’bot said. Theresa opaqued the windows and closed her eyes, to avoid glimpsing herself in window reflections.
The go-’bot left her in front of a building near the enclave shield’s east wall. A few people hurrying by stopped on the sidewalk and stared at her. Theresa ignored them. Chin high, hands clasped tightly together, she told the retina scanner in the deserted atrium, “I’m Theresa Aranow. I’m here to see a…a prisoner. Lizzie Francy. Or whoever is in charge here.”
“You’re not registered as an attorney, Ms. Aranow,” the building said. “Or as a close relative of the prisoner.”
“No, I’m…can I talk to a human, please?”
“I’m sorry, we’re in an emergency state just now. All Patterson Protect personnel have been deployed elsewhere. Would you care to wait?”
An emergency state. Of course. The attack on Sanctuary…people must be afraid the next bomb could fall on New York. If she hadn’t opaqued the go-’bot window, she would probably have seen people streaming out of the enclave by air. No wonder her building
had taken so long to get her a go-’bot. And maybe the startled-looking people outside hadn’t been startled by her weird looks after all, but by their own fear. This bolstered her.
“I don’t want to wait,” she said. “I want to take Lizzie Francy out of here. What do I have to do for that?”
“Are you requesting Public Records?”
“Yes.” Was she? Why not?
“This is Public Records,” a different system said. “How may I help you?”
“I want…I want to take Lizzie Francy home. With me.”
“Francy, Elizabeth, citizen ID CLM-03-9645-957,” the system recited. “Apprehended 4:45 P.M. May 18, 2121, at 349 East 96th Street by Patterson Protect security ’bot serial number 45296, licensed to Manhattan East Enclave for official operation within the enclave dome. Placed under enclave detention. Patterson Protect franchise headquarters, 5:01 P.M., detaining personnel, Officer Karen Ellen Foster. Grounds filed for detention: breaking and entering, criminal trespass. Current legal status: enclave action only, NYPD not notified. Current detainee status: in custody, alert, no registered attorney.”
Theresa repeated stubbornly, because she didn’t know what else to do, “I want to take her home.”
“Detainee has not been placed under NYPD arrest. Patterson Protect does not have extended detention rights without NYPD notification. No notification has been filed for Francy, Elizabeth, citizen ID CLM-03-9645-957. However, arrested person does not have authorization to remain within Manhattan East Enclave unless she is under the recognizance of a registered resident.”
“She’s my…guest.” Was that good enough? Cazie would think it was good enough. Theresa said, more firmly, “My guest. Mine. Theresa Aranow.”
“Let the record read that in the absence of Patterson Protect notification of charges to NYPD, detainee Elizabeth Francy, citizen ID CLM-03-9645-957, has been released under the recognizance of Theresa Katherine Aranow, citizen ID CGC-02-8736-341. Thank you for your patronage of Patterson Protect.”
