Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  “Theresa? Back home? What are you talking about?”

  Lizzie grinned. Jackson saw that she was bursting with excitement and self-congratulations. She looked a mess: bits of grass—very green, very genemod grass—in her hair, her face dirty, her screaming yellow jacks more rumpled than he thought plastic jacks could look. She was a vivid, youthful, disorderly smear in the pristine Kelvin-Castner work cubicle, and Jackson felt his spirits lift just looking at her.

  “I walked to Manhattan East Enclave to see you, because I have something important to tell you that I couldn’t open a link for—”

  “Then don’t say it here.”

  “Of course not,” Lizzie said scornfully. “Anyway, I got into Manhattan East all by myself, I’ll tell you how later, and then a security ’bot picked me up and took me to jail. I faked a medical emergency and forced the medunit to open up a link to your house, only you weren’t there, so I talked to Theresa, and she came down to jail and got me out—”

  “Theresa? How could she—”

  “I don’t know. She does something weird with her brain. Anyway, when Theresa got too scared I took her home and used your system to call Vicki, who it turned out was out looking for me. She brought me here, because she said you needed me. But I wanted to tell you first that the nursing ’bot says Theresa’s fine, and she’s asleep. And Dirk is fine, too—I called my mother.”

  Jackson felt dizzy. Lizzie—a Liver, scarcely more than a child—had walked two hundred miles to New York, dipped what was supposed to be an impenetrable energy shield, subverted the Patterson Protect security equipment, and sat there eager to pit herself against one of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies…The individual wasn’t really important for radical change?

  “Listen, Lizzie. I need you to write flagging programs for a list of key word combinations I’m going to give you, to search all Kelvin-Castner records. Copy everything flagged for me to look at later, with double-flagging clearly indicated.”

  Lizzie stared at him, looking puzzled. What he was asking her to do was something anyone basically familiar with systems could do. He spoke the next words very slowly and carefully, looking directly into her eyes, willing her to understand.

  “This is very important. I need you to do what you do best.”

  She got it. Jackson could tell from her smile. What she did best was datadip fast, confusing her tracks as she went, so that even the K-C systems experts who would be following everything she did would be constantly one move behind her. She’d find hidden data that matched his flagging combinations faster than they expected, and she’d copy it to her own crystal library faster than they’d believe possible. Especially than they’d believe possible by a dirty teenage Liver.

  And after she’d done it, Jackson would have sufficient cause for a subpoena duces tecum of private K-C documents.

  “Okay, Dr. Aranow,” Lizzie said cheerfully, and he would swear she looked so wide-eyed and dumb just to throw off the K-C observers. She was enjoying this, the little witch.

  Jackson wasn’t. He let Cazie lead him to the first of the K-C labs and introduce him to the junior lab tech (a status insult, of course) appointed to explain the research to the intrusive outsider. Jackson prepared to hear streams of irrelevant summaries, to examine ongoing irrelevant experiments, and to wonder behind what sealed doors the real work was going forward, in directions that would not do anything to make little Dirk less afraid of the trees outside his front door.

  Dip hard, Lizzie. Dip fast.

  By midnight, Jackson’s head ached. For hours he’d concentrated on the research he’d been shown, trying to discern behind it the shadowy outlines of what he wasn’t being shown. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t taken in sunlight. Brain and body couldn’t take any more.

  For the first time, he realized that Vicki hadn’t joined him.

  “This particular series of protein foldings looked promising at first,” said the senior researcher that Jackson had insisted replace the junior lab tech as his guide, “but as you can see from the model, the gangloid ionization—”

  “Where’s Victoria Turner? My assistant, who was supposed to show up here hours ago?”

  Dr. Keith Whitfield Closson, one of the leading microbiologists in the United States, looked at Jackson coldly. “I have no idea where your people are, Doctor.”

  “No. Sorry. Thank you for your time, Doctor, but I think we’d better resume in the morning. If you’d just point me in the direction of my quarters…”

  “You’ll need to call the building system for a holo guide,” Closson said, even more coldly. “Good night, Doctor.”

  The building led him to his room, a nondescript rectangle designed for comfort but not aesthetics. Bed, closet, bureau, chair, terminal. Jackson used the room terminal to call Lizzie.

  She sat alone in the same room as hours ago, a table by her elbow strewn with the remains of mouth food. Her hair stuck out all over her head, evidently pulled at in the throes of battle, and her black eyes gleamed. She didn’t look even remotely tired. Jackson suddenly felt old.

  “Lizzie, how are the flagging programs coming along?”

  “Fine.” She grinned. “I’m getting closer and closer to a really good flag. Oh, and Vicki said to tell you she’s on her way through Decon and will be there to talk to you soon.”

  “What took her so long?”

  “She’ll tell you herself. Sorry, Jackson, I have to get back to work.”

  It was the first time Lizzie had ever called him by his first name. Despite himself, Jackson smiled ruefully. Lizzie now considered them equals. How did he feel about that?

  He was too tired to feel anything about anything.

  But when he came out of the shower, dressed in complimentary pajamas of Kelvin-Castner green, Vicki sat on his lone complimentary K-C-green chair.

  “Hello, Jackson. I invited myself in.”

  “So I see.” Was his room monitored? Of course it was.

  Vicki looked even more exhausted than Jackson felt. Instead of the Liver jacks he’d always seen her in, she wore a pants and tunic of K-C post-Decon green. She said, “I’ve been to your house, that’s why I wasn’t here earlier. Don’t look so alarmed, Theresa’s fine. But I have a lot to tell you.”

  “Maybe not—”

  “—from across the room. Yes, you’re right, darling.”

  She got up from the chair, walked toward him, didn’t stop. Not until she’d pushed him back onto the bed and stretched full-length beside him did she stop. She put her mouth directly over his ear and whispered, “You could act as if you meant it, you know. Monitors.”

  Jackson put his arms around her. She was presumably trained for this kind of thing; he was not. He felt embarrassed, ridiculous, exhausted, and horny. Her body felt light and long in his arms, different from Cazie’s tiny voluptuousness. She smelled of Decon fluids and very clean female hair.

  She covered his ear with her mouth. “Lizzie left the tribe two weeks ago because she discovered high-intensity monitors there. She traced the data stream back to Sanctuary. They were responsible for the neuropharm. No, don’t react, Jackson. Stay amorous.”

  Sanctuary. Responsible for the neuropharm. Why? To keep power from shifting unpredictably to unpredictable Livers.

  “More,” Vicki breathed. “Something strange is going on at Brookhaven National Laboratories. An information shutdown. After Sanctuary blew, and Lizzie felt safe dipping again, she went into the government deebees. I’m guessing, but I think Sanctuary tried to extend the neuropharm to the enclaves before somebody blew them up. The newsgrids are assuming it was Selene, but if what Theresa said was true, Selene is empty and Jennifer Sharifi killed Miranda before Sanctuary was hit. So somebody else destroyed Sanctuary. No, don’t show any reaction, Jackson. Act natural.”

  Act natural. What the hell was that? Jackson didn’t know anymore. Selene is empty and Jennifer Sharifi killed Miranda and somebody else destroyed Sanctuary. His arms trembled. To still them, he pulled Vicki
closer and pressed his mouth against her neck. “And…and Theresa?”

  “Get comfortable, Jackson. It’s a complicated narrative. Something has happened to Theresa, and I don’t really understand what. Or how.”

  I N T E R L U D E

  TRANSMISSION DATE: May 20, 2121

  TO: Selene Base, Moon

  VIA: Denver Enclave Ground Station, GEO Satellite C-1663 (U.S.)

  MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted

  MESSAGE CLASS: Class D, Public Service Access, in accordance with Congressional Bill 4892-18, May 2118

  ORIGINATING GROUP: “the town of Crawford-Perez”

  MESSAGE:

  We counted, us, on you, Miranda Sharifi. You was supposed to save us, you. Now if s too late. Three babies are sick, them, already. And it’s your fault.

  Who are we supposed to look to now, us? Who?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT: None received

  Twenty-three

  Theresa awoke from a deep sleep to find herself back in her own bed, with no clear memory of getting there. Had Lizzie Francy brought her home, in a go-’bot? That must have been what happened.

  And she, Theresa Aranow, had gotten Lizzie out of jail.

  Theresa lay quietly, marveling. Her back ached, her skin itched, her bald head burned. All her muscles felt watery. Yet she had forced herself to leave the apartment, go to a jail, and free a strange girl she’d only seen once in her life. Despite her dread and doubts and anguish, which were no different than they’d ever been. Her brain was no different. Only, somehow, when she pretended to be Cazie Sanders, it was.

  Not pretended to be Cazie. Became Cazie. For a little while anyway, and in her own mind.

  Did that mean that if she could somehow change her brain, anybody could? Without more syringes from the Sleepless? Who no longer existed.

  The nursing ’bot floated to her bed. “Time for physical rehabilitation, Ms. Aranow. Would you like to eat first?”

  “Yes. No. Let me think, please.”

  Theresa stared at the ’bot. For six weeks she’d heard Jackson or Vicki give it instructions. She knew the words.

  “Do a brain scan, please. Print results.”

  The ’bot moved into position, extended four screens around her head, and whirred gently. Theresa lay still and thought about the night last autumn when Cazie had brought her friends around, those frightening, cold men wearing rags and bees and breathing from inhalers. When the printout issued from the ’bot, she laid it on her pink-flowered bedspread.

  “Now do another brain scan in exactly five minutes.”

  “It is not usual to do two scans so close together. Results don’t—”

  “Do it anyway. Please. Just this once, all right?”

  She was pleading with a ’bot. Cazie would never plead with a ’bot. Theresa closed her eyes and became Cazie. She was striding into the jail, insisting on taking Lizzie home…she was at the Manhattan East Airfield, arranging for a charter plane…she was facing Cazie—Cazie facing Cazie!—telling her to treat Jackson better, telling Cazie what a good person Jackson actually was, telling Cazie off—

  The nursing ’bot whirred.

  Theresa closed her eyes. When she was just Theresa again, she studied the two printouts, trying to compare them. She didn’t know what the diagrams meant, or the numbers, or the symbols along one side. Most of the words were too hard for her to read. But she could tell that all of those things differed from one paper to the other.

  So it was real.

  Her brain worked differently when she was being Cazie. When she was choosing for it to work differently. She could choose to change its chemistry, or electricity, or whatever things these scans measured. It was real.

  The nursing ’bot said pleasantly, “Time for physical rehabilitation, Ms. Aranow. Would you like to eat first?”

  “No. Deactivate. Please.”

  Theresa got out of bed. Her legs felt shaky, but she could stand. No time for a shower, though—she didn’t want to waste her strength. Even though she’d look like a scruffy beggar…

  She paused. A beggar. Someone with no power to command, no power to hide, no power to trade. No power to look scary with.

  She pulled off her nightdress and walked unsteadily to Jackson’s room. From his closet she took pants and a shirt, and used scissors to rip and cut them. From a pot of genemod flowers, big showy purple blooms that Cazie must have given him, Theresa took soil and rubbed it into Jackson’s clothes. The soil was probably genemod for all kinds of things, but it still dirtied the pants and shirt. They were too big for Theresa; she tied them on with string.

  When she looked at herself in the mirror, she wanted to cry. Bald burned head, sunken face, dirty ragged clothes, trembling and weak…No, not cry. Exult. This was her gift, and she was finally going to use it.

  “Follow me, please?” she told the nursing ’bot, relieved when it did.

  She managed to get to the roof, into the aircar, and all the way to the Hudson River camp without being Cazie. She was saving it. When the car had landed out of view of the Liver camp, she took a deep breath and began.

  “Ms. Aranow,” said the nursing ’bot on the seat beside her, “it really is time for physical rehabilitation. Would you like to eat first?” Theresa ignored it.

  She was a beggar, a beggar with the gift. The gift of needing these frightened people. The gift of needing to be fed, to be welcomed, to be taken in. She was hungry, and weak, and she needed them. She brought the gift of need, to save them.

  “Ms. Aranow, it really is—”

  She was a beggar, a beggar with the gift. The gift of needing these frightened people. The gift of needing to be fed, to be welcomed—

  “Ms. Aranow!”

  “Stay here for half an hour, and then follow-me.”

  She wasn’t Theresa, she was a beggar. A beggar with a gift. The gift of needing—

  The walk to the camp nearly finished her. The camp looked deserted, but the beggar knew better. She squatted outside, in full view of a window, and began to cry. “I’m so hungry, I’m so hungry…” And she was. Theresa was hungry, the beggar was hungry, Theresa was the beggar, with her gift.

  Eventually the door opened, and an old woman peered fearfully around its corner, hugging the door.

  “Please, ma’am, I’m not Changed, I haven’t eaten, I’m sick, I’m so hungry, don’t leave me here…”

  The woman’s fear was heavy on the air; the beggar could smell it. But her old face creased with compassion. The beggar saw that the old woman, in her long life, knew well what it meant to be hungry, and sick, and alone.

  Slowly the old woman crept around the door. And with her, the two people to whom she must be bonded, another elderly woman and a young girl whose heavy features resembled the second woman. One carried a bowl, another a blanket, a third a plastic cup. Ten feet from the beggar they stopped, breathing hard, taut with fear.

  “Please, please, I can’t move anymore…”

  Fear warred with memory. The old women, who remembered the unChanged days of hunger and sickness, briefly became the people they’d been then. And moved toward Theresa, the stranger in need.

  “Here, now, how come you’re not Changed, you? Eat this, go on…Look at her arms, Paula, they’re like sticks, them…”

  Plastic bowl and spoon. A mess of gluey food, looking like oatmeal but tasting of wild nuts, slightly bitter, incompletely masked by too sweet maple sugar. The beggar wolfed it all.

  “She’s starving, her…Paula, she can’t hardly move, we can’t leave her here, us…”

  From around the edge of the heavy door crept Josh and Mike and Patty, clinging to each other’s hands. Jomp. Feebly, the beggar raised her bald, scarred head. They didn’t recognize her. “Not Changed’ her? Jesus Christ—”

  “It’s starting to rain, she can’t stay, her, out here like that…”

  Mike picked her up. The beggar winced as her tender skin was hoisted into his arms. He carried her inside, the others trailing behind.

  A d
im, strange room, unfamiliar faces peering at her in fear…Her throat started to close and her heart to race. But she wasn’t Theresa. She was the beggar. The beggar with a gift. They needed her to need them.

  The unChanged child, the same child she’d seen before, in another life, watched her from behind her mother’s legs. So it was still alive. And older; the beggar could see now that it was a little boy. His nose streamed snot. His crippled left arm, shorter than the right, dangled from his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said to the circle of faces. A few shrank back, but the rest nodded and smiled. “Now will you let me give you something, because you helped me?”

  Immediate alarm. Something different, something new. The beggar wondered, deep in a part of the brain that was someone else, how all their brain scans changed with her words.

  “You can do this, accept this,” she said. “It’s just a ’bot. You’ve all seen ’bots, lots of times.”

  The door to the building had been left open. The nursing ’bot, following its instructions, followed the beggar. The unChanged child, who had not seen ’bots lots of times, began to cry.

  “It’s a medunit,” the beggar said desperately. Maybe if she spoke like them…“A medunit, it. Like we used to have, us. It can’t Change that baby, but it can give him medicine for his nose. It can fix his arm, it.” And, again, “You can do this.”

  “Do what, us?” Josh said. He was still the most intelligent, and the least afraid. The beggar spoke directly to him.

  “Do something new, Josh. You can do it, you, if it’s a good thing, and you really want to. I can teach you how, me.”

  She was going too fast. Josh paled and took a step backward. But she also saw the quick gleam of interest in his eyes, before it was lost in fear. He could do it. He could learn to make different brain chemistry by pretending to be a person who was different. Maybe not all of them could, but some could. Like Josh. And maybe that would be enough.

  A man was backing away from the nursing ’bot, dragging his two partners with him. “No, no, we’re fine, us. Take it away, you!”