Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  Thurmond Rogers stared at Vicki with hatred.

  “Go now, Lizzie,” Vicki said. “It’s a short walk, and no one will stop you. There’s, a homer stuck inside the collar of your jacks; the people in the van will track you when you move out of sight of K-C monitors. Dr. Rogers will tell the building to open the door for you, and to let you back in. With a witness from the van accompanying you. Go now, honey.”

  Lizzie, her eyes still gleaming, picked up her terminal and her ugly purple backpack. She hugged the terminal tightly to her chest and walked out of link range. Vicki drew a deep breath and held it until a strange male face flashed onto the screen. In the middle of the night, the stranger looked crisp, combed, and calm. “Elizabeth Francy is with us outside, Ms. Covington. With the system. Sealing of her system to begin as soon as the Kelvin-Castner team appears, unless Kelvin-Castner prefers Dr. Seddley to examine the data.”

  “Rogers?” Vicki said.

  Thurmond Rogers’s hatred had not cooled. But he had himself under control. “No examination at this time. I’ll be at the east fire door immediately, accompanied by Kelvin-Castner security.”

  “Certainly,” the well-groomed male face said, and Jackson thought inanely of the anonymous guest system that had turned on the newsgrids for him. “Ms. Francy, accompanied by Agent Addison, is returning into the building.” Both halves of the split screen blanked.

  Jackson looked at Vicki. She was barefoot, and her hair was rumpled from sleep. Fine strands strayed across her left cheek. She looked young and defenseless. He said, “Who’s Agent Addison? And the other three people in the van?”

  “Bodyguards.”

  “How did you know to—”

  “That’s what I do,” Vicki said. “Or what I once did. Although of course I didn’t pay for all this. You did.”

  “How—”

  “Lizzie dipped all your personal account numbers long ago. But she’s an ethical little creature, in her own way. I’d swear she’s never used them.” Vicki smiled. “Can’t say the same for me, clearly.”

  Jackson put his hand on Vicki’s arm. Not a grip, but not a caress either. “What has Lizzie dipped?”

  “I won’t know until she tells us. Or until her terminal is unsealed. But I’m more interested in why she wanted to come into the bioshielded area to speak to us in person.”

  “Will the agent—bodyguard—whatever he is—stay with her through Decon?”

  “Like fused atoms.” Vicki spoke to the air. “And the agent carries subcutaneous continuous transmitters. Among other augments.”

  “So we wait,” Jackson said. “Until Lizzie’s through Decon.”

  “We wait,” Vicki said. “System, instruct a servebot to bring coffee.”

  “Certainly. And if there’s anything else Kelvin-Castner can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Vicki just smiled.

  It took an hour for Lizzie and Agent Addison to go through Decontamination. Jackson drank two cups of coffee and watched Vicki get ready to lob another grenade. By now he knew the signs. She drank her own coffee slowly, deliberately, and watched the newsgrids. Finally he said, “What specifically are you waiting to hear?”

  “Anything about Brookhaven.” Vicki spoke naturally, which meant she didn’t care if they were overheard. She shifted position on the waiting-room sofa, curling her legs under her.

  “Brookhaven National Laboratories? What about them?”

  “I don’t know. But Lizzie’s monitor program picked up an anomaly. The program scans transmissions from selected governmental agencies to flag marked differences in volume, frequency, priority, or encoding. Information from Brookhaven to nearly everyone else showed an anomaly.” Vicki uncurled her legs and crossed her knees.

  “An anomaly? Some significant changes?” Jackson said.

  “A significant lack of change. The same volume, frequency, priority, and encoding every day.”

  “You mean—”

  “The inhibition neuropharm has penetrated an enclave shield. And not just any enclave—a government laboratory that’s supposedly biosafe.” Vicki shifted her weight again. “Of course, Kelvin-Castner already knows this, I’m sure. Damn, I just can’t get comfortable.”

  She stood up from the sofa, stretched, yawned, and smiled at Jackson. For once, he saw what he was supposed to do. He said, “Come get comfortable with me.”

  She crossed the room to his chair and settled onto his lap. The screen droned out routine news at a volume, Jackson suddenly realized, slightly higher than normal. Vicki’s lips nuzzled his ear. She said softly, “I want to show you something,” and unbuttoned her shirt.

  Hormones surged in Jackson’s chest. But then he saw drawings on her chest.

  Vicki murmured, “Fewer monitors here, probably, than in your room. Even so, turn to the left. More. There.”

  Their bodies formed a closed triangle with the padded back of the chair. Vicki bent her head, and her hair screened the enclosed space from the ceiling. She unfastened more buttons.

  Her breasts were smooth and pale. Smaller breasts than Cazie’s, but firmer, with a sweet high lift. On the upper curve of each was a sketch in non-smearable ink, the kind used for indelible signing and dating of off-line lab records. Such pens lay all over Kelvin-Castner. Vicki must have drawn on herself after she came through Decon. Jackson peered at the sketches; there was barely enough light to decipher the inked lines. And Vicki’s scent, the fragrance of her skin and breath, clouded Jackson’s brain.

  Until he realized what he was looking at.

  Two crude sketches of brain-scan printouts. The one on the left breast was Theresa’s. Even drawn upside-down and rough, Jackson recognized it. He had looked at those particular graphs daily during Theresa’s illness, and frequently throughout the years before. They were the graphs of chronic cerebral overarousal, especially in the more primitive parts of the brain that controlled emotion. The limbic, hypothalamus, amygdalae, brain stem reticular formation, rostral ventral medulla—all overaroused.

  The ascending reticular-activating system—ARAS—which reacted to neural input from many other parts of the brain, showed especially frantic wave activity: low-amplitude, high-frequency, intense desynchronization. Alarm signals constantly traveled to Theresa’s cortex, which thus constantly thought of the world as an alarming place. This information in turn traveled back to the ARAS, which reacted with even more frantic electrochemical activity. Electrochemical danger signals alerting thoughts of danger that in turn alerted more electrochemical stress responses. The vicious circle, which Theresa had never let Jackson interrupt with neuropharms.

  The second set of rough graphs was entirely different. In fact, it was unlike any brain scan Jackson had ever seen. The ARAS and primitive graphs showed only normal arousal, the kind associated with steady, purposeful, realistic action. But the input from the cortex to the ARAS was intense. And parts of the brain showed a veritable electrical storm. These were in the brain sections associated with intense non-somatic activity: epileptic seizures, religious visions, imaginative delusions, certain kinds of creativity. Such graphs were most often seen in visionaries in locked wards: people who believed they were Jesus Christ or Napoleon or General Manheim. But to combine that pattern with the control and clarity of high-amplitude, low-frequency alpha waves, usually a product of intense concentration or biofeedback…

  “Whose is the second scan?”

  Vicki said, “Theresa’s.”

  “Impossible!”

  “No, it’s not. They’re both Theresa. One scanned before she put herself in a mental state to do something difficult for her, and one after. I don’t know exactly how she accomplishes it.”

  “I wish I could see the spinal segment readings!”

  “Well,” Vicki said acidly, “there’s only so much room on my breasts. Unlike some other people’s. So I memorized only the parts of the two printouts that looked most different from each other.”

  “But how could Tess—”

&n
bsp; “Lower your voice, Jackson. And look like you’re actually nuzzling me; we’re still on monitor. I said I don’t know how Theresa does it, but I do know what she told me she thinks she does. Theresa changes her brain scan by pretending to be Cazie.”

  Jackson was silent. Theresa. Pretending to be Cazie. And capable of inducing, at least temporarily, the kind of brain-activity pattern that belonged to another, entirely different temperament. Plus the activity of intense imaginative creativity bordering on the delusional. She must start with controlling her thoughts in the cortex, which changed the information feeding back into her autonomic nervous system…All experience of emotion, after all, was essentially a story that the brain created to make sense of the body’s physical reactions. Tess had found a way to reverse the process. She was telling herself some sort of story, telling it in her conscious brain, that was altering her more primitive physical reactions. Right down to the neurochemical level. She was controlling her physical world by sheer imagination and will.

  Jackson hadn’t known his sister at all.

  He said haltingly, “I’ll want to replicate this…”

  “Of course. But not now.” Vicki rebuttoned her shirt, but she didn’t move away from him. Nestled on his lap, her breath warm against his neck, she said in a different voice, “I’m a little afraid of you, you know.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You don’t believe me. You think you’re the only one afraid of feeling very much. Well, fuck you.”

  Abruptly she stood. From her words, Jackson had expected her to look angry, but instead her face showed hurt and uncertainty. And at that moment, Jackson realized that this was the woman who could replace Cazie in his life.

  Immediately the realization filled him with terror. Another bitchy, bossy woman? Mocking him at every turn, struggling to control him, knowing what he was going to say before he said it…Vicki’s scent, somehow stronger now that she no longer sat so close to him, filled his nose and throat. She had left the bottom three buttons of her shirt unfastened. Deliberately? Of course. Resentment filled him at the manipulation.

  Vicki’s vulnerability lasted only a moment. Then she looked again like Victoria Turner, controlled and competent.

  Victoria Turner. Not Cazie. That was his confusion, not hers.

  It was Theresa who was Cazie.

  Jackson laughed aloud. He couldn’t help it; the whole critical, ludicrous situation suddenly struck him as unbearably funny. Or maybe just unbearable. Theresa. Brookhaven. The renegade neuropharm. Kelvin-Castner. Sanctuary. The world was blowing up, on both micro and macro levels, and he, Jackson, had chosen as his object of fear a woman who said she was just as afraid of him, except that he was too afraid to believe her, and she was too afraid to believe that he was too afraid…“Vicki—” he said tenderly.

  Their eyes met across the drab room, the newsgrids blaring. The moment pulled itself out like taffy, stretched and sweet.

  “Vicki…”

  “You have guests on their way in,” the system announced brightly. “Ms. Francy and Mr. Addison will arrive in ninety seconds. Shall I show them in?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. He welcomed the reprieve, at the same time that he was disappointed by it.

  “Certainly. And if there’s anything else Kelvin-Castner can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Addison was a tech, clearly chosen not only to be threatening but to look it. His head brushed the ceiling; his arms bulked twice Jackson’s in diameter. And probably augmented as well: muscles, vision, reaction time. He surveyed the room professionally. Beside him Lizzie looked like a very small, very scrubbed, very fearful doll dressed in Kelvin-Castner green disposables. She threw herself at Vicki and clung. Jackson expected to hear Vicki making maternal cluckings, but this was not happening.

  “Come on, Lizzie,” Vicki said, “reassemble yourself. You can’t tell me that the all-conquering datadipper gets tearful over a little deep lavage. You’ve gone deeper into government holes than Decon scrubbers just went into yours.”

  Lizzie laughed. Shaky, but still a laugh. Vicki’s bawdy tartness had braced Lizzie. Jackson would never understand women.

  “Now,” Vicki said, “sit down right there and tell us what you found. No, ignore the monitors. It’s fine if K-C knows that we know what we know. Do you want some coffee?”

  “Yes,” Lizzie said. She looked calmer. Her hair, with no time to pull at it since Decon, lay flat and clean against her scalp. Addison finished his survey of the room and took up a position between Lizzie and the open door of the alcove.

  Vicki said, “So what do we know?”

  Lizzie sipped her coffee and made a face. Jackson realized she wasn’t used to the real thing. He sat down across from her, watching quietly.

  “We know that Kelvin-Castner made a probability model for research on the fear neuropharm that…that Dirk has.” Lizzie’s voice faltered for only a moment. “I can’t understand most of it. But it looks like a program would furnish data to Dr. Aranow along a pre-set path. Some points on the flag had bolstered Lehman-Wagner equations for reliability…depending on what Dr. Aranow asked, the decision tree furnished consistent data. I think. What I could tell was that every branch of the tree ended in inconclusive equations.”

  Jackson said calmly, “How do you know the data wasn’t actual?”

  “The dates on most of the stuff was in the future.”

  “Projected experiments…”

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said flatly. “How would I know?” Jackson saw that he mustn’t argue with her; her confidence might deflate again as suddenly as it had ballooned.

  Vicki said smoothly, “None of us will know until the terminal is unsealed and you can examine the data directly, Jackson. But it certainly sounds like a tool for contract smashing, doesn’t it?”

  Jackson said, “It does.” A large cold rage was rising in him, quietly, like black, still water. Had Cazie known?

  Lizzie said, “The probability model was cross-referenced with a bunch of stuff about you, Dr. Aranow. A customized psych program.” Lizzie blushed.

  So Cazie had known.

  Jackson rose, but after he was on his feet, there was no place to go. Lizzie clearly wasn’t done. His cold black anger seeped higher.

  Vicki said, “Good work, Lizzie. But that’s not all, is it? Why did you want so badly to join us in the biosafe area?”

  Lizzie’s hand shook. The rest of her coffee spilled. “Vicki—”

  “No, say it. Here. Now. So everybody knows what K-C knows.”

  Lizzie’s head still shook, but her voice was steady. “There were other probability models in the deep data. Simpler ones, so I could understand them, me. They showed various probabilities of mutation of the original neuropharm. Or maybe not the original, it, maybe something it makes. That part was hard. But the models for different paths…the models…”

  “Give me the Tollers average,” Jackson said coldly. “The average probability was for direct transmission of the infection, wasn’t it? From person to person, through Nielson cells in bodily fluids. What was the Tollers probability?”

  Vicki said, her voice scaling upward in surprise, “You knew?”

  “I guessed. I hoped I guessed wrong. But this kind of delivery vector is notoriously unstable, mutates all the time…Lizzie. What’s the Tollers probability for mutation to an airborne form that could survive independently, outside either laboratory cultures or the human body?”

  “Point oh three percent.”

  Low. The designer—whichever the hell Sleepless it was—of the original vector—whatever the hell it was—had at least done everything he could to prevent uncontrollable, worldwide airborne infection. At least he had done that. “And for mutation to an independent form capable of direct human-to-human transmission?”

  Lizzie whispered, “Thirty-eight point seven percent.”

  Better than a one in three odds. So now, Jackson thought, they knew. The inhibition infection might end up passed f
rom person to person, through blood. Saliva. Semen. Urine? Maybe. Probably. A thirty-nine percent chance. To get that high a possibility, the lab samples must be mutating like crazy.

  Vicki said to Lizzie, “You were afraid you might get infected yourself, out there. Then you’d never be able to help Dirk. So you came into the bioshielded area with us.”

  Jackson said, “Even if the mutation has already happened—which isn’t likely—she wouldn’t have contracted it if she’d just stayed away from people. She’d have needed to come in direct contact with blood or have sex or—Lizzie, what is it?”

  Lizzie whispered, “Or touch eyeballs?”

  “Eyeballs?”

  “Dead ones, I mean, me. Oh, Dr. Aranow, I done touched…oh, God, what if I got it? Dirk! Dirk! Is there a test, what if I got it, me, what if I got it!”

  The girl was hysterical. Jackson remembered that Lizzie was eighteen years old, and had just come through horrors Jackson couldn’t imagine. Lizzie sobbed, and when Vicki led her down the hall and a door somewhere closed behind them, Jackson was glad for the sudden silence.

  It seemed a long time before Vicki returned, although it probably wasn’t. Her genemod violet eyes looked tired. It must be some god-awful early hour of the morning.

  “Lizzie’s asleep.”

  “Good,” Jackson said.

  Vicki stood three feet from him, not trying to touch. “So what happens now?”

  “Kelvin-Castner scraps the fake data tree and does the research for real.” Jackson looked at the silent screen. “You hear that, you bastards? Now you have a motive. It’s not just Livers who inhale some weird compound. They’ve got it at Brookhaven, don’t they? Shielded enclaves can get the infection. You can get it. Better find a reverser.”

  He waited, half expecting to see Thurmond Rogers or Alex Castner or even Cazie. The screen stayed blank.

  Vicki said, “So now we’re all on the same side, looking out for the same interests. How cozy.”

  “Right,” Jackson said bitterly.

  “Except,” Vicki continued, “you and I and Theresa know something the rest of the world doesn’t. Miranda Sharifi and the Sleepless can’t get us out of this one. This time, no miraculous syringes from Sanctuary or Eden or Selene. The Supers are all dead.”