Beggars and Choosers s-2

by Nancy Kress

  It didn’t seem fair, somehow. Miranda Sharifi had told us we were looking at the greatest medical breakthrough in two hundred years, and to most of us it looked like alchemy. THE PEOPLE MUST CONTROL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Yes, right. How do churls make decisions about wizardry we can’t understand?

  In the end, they rejected it.

  Two of the Nobel laureates wrote dissenting opinions, Barbara Poluikis and Martin Exford. They favored allowing beta testing on human volunteers, and didn’t rule out possible future licensing. They wanted the scientific knowledge. You could see, even through the formal wording of their brief, joint opinion, that they panted for it. I saw Miranda Sharifi watching them carefully.

  The majority opinon did everything but print copies of itself on the American flag. Safety of United States citizens, sacred trust, preservation of the identity of the human genome, blah blah blah. Everything, in fact, that had led me to join the GSEA the day Katous hurled himself off my balcony.

  At some deep level, I still believed the majority opinion was right. Unregulated biotech held the potential for incredible disaster. And nobody could really regulate Huevos Verdes biotech because nobody could really understand it. SuperSleepless intelligence and American patent protection combined to ensure that. And if you can’t regulate it, better to keep it out of the country entirely.

  Nonetheless, I left the courtroom profoundly depressed. And immediately learned that my ignorance about cellular biology was not my only, or worst, ignorance. I’d thought I was a cynic. But cynicism is like money: somebody else always has more of it than you do.

  I sat on the steps of the Science Court, my back to a Doric column the thickness of a small redwood. A light wind blew. Two men paused in the shelter of the column to light sunshine pipes; I’d noticed that Easterners like it smoked. In California, we preferred to drink it. The men were genemod handsome, dressed in the severe sleeveless black suits fashionable on the Hill. Both ignored me. Livers noticed instantly that I wasn’t one of them, but donkeys seldom looked past the jacks and soda-can jewelry. Sufficient grounds for dismissal.

  “So how long do you think?” one man said.

  “Three months to market, maybe. My guess is either Germany or Brazil.”

  “What if Huevos Verdes doesn’t do it?”

  “John, why wouldn’t they? There’s a fortune to be made, and that Sharifi woman is no fool. I’m going to be watching the investment trends very carefully.”

  “You know, I don’t even really care about the investment factor?” John’s voice was wistful. “I just want it for Jana and me and the girls. Jana’s had these growths on and off for years… what we’ve got now only restrains them so far.”

  The other man put a hand on John’s arm. “Watch Brazil. That’s my best guess. It’ll be quick, quicker than if we’d licensed it here. And without all the complications of every blighted Liver town clamoring for it for their medunit, at some undoable cost.”

  Pipes lighted, they left.

  I sat there, marveling at my own stupidity. Of course. Turn down the Cell Cleaner for American development, make huge political capital from your “protection” of Livers, save a staggering amount of credits from not offering it to your political constituency, and then buy the medical breakthrough for yourself and your loved ones overseas. Of course.

  The people must control science and technology.

  Maybe Dr. Lee Chang was right. Maybe the Cell Cleaner would run amok and kill them all. All but the Livers. Who would then rise up to establish a just and humane state.

  Yes. Right. Desdemona’s mommy and the other Livers I’d seen on the train controlling biotech that could eventually alter the human race into something else. The blind splicing genes, blindly. Right.

  Inertia, first cousin to depression, seized me. I sat there, getting colder, until the sky darkened and my ass hurt from the hard marble. The portico was long since deserted. Slowly, stiffly, I got my body to its feet — and had my first piece of luck in weeks.

  Miranda Sharifi walked down the wide steps, keeping to the shadows. The face wasn’t hers, and the brown jacks weren’t hers, and I had seen her and Leisha Camden climb into an aircar, which took off two hours ago, pursued by half of Washington. This Liver had pale skin and a large nose and short dirty-blonde hair. So why was I so sure this was Miranda? The big head, and the tip of red ribbon that I, zoom-lensed, saw peeking from her back hip pocket. Or maybe it was just that I needed it to be her, and the “Miranda” who took off with Leisha Camden to be a decoy.

  I groped in my pocket for the mid-range infrared sensor Colin Kowalski had given me and surreptitiously aimed it at her. It went off the scale. Miranda or no, this person had the revved metabolism of a SuperSleepless. And no GSEA agents in sight.

  Not, of course, that I would see them.

  But I refused to give in to negativity. Miranda was mine. I followed her to the gravrail station, pleased at how easily all my old training returned. We boarded a local train traveling north. We settled into a crowded, malodorous car with so many children it seemed the Livers must be breeding right there on the uncleaned floor.

  We stopped every twenty minutes or so at some benighted Liver town. I didn’t dare sleep; Miranda might get off someplace without me. What if the trip lasted days? By morning I had trained myself to nap between stops, my unconscious set like an edgy guard dog to nip me awake each time the train slowed and lurched. This produced very strange dreams. Once it was David I was following; he kept shedding his clothes as he danced away from me, an unreachable succubus. Once I dreamed I’d lost Miranda and the Science Court had me on trial for uselessness against the state. The worst was the dream in which I was injected with the Cell Cleaner and realized it was in fact chemically identical with the industrial-strength cleaner used by the household ’bot in my San Francisco enclave, and every cell in my body was painfully dissolving in bleach and ammonia. I woke gasping for air, my face distorted in the black glass of the window.

  After that I stayed awake. I watched Miranda Sharifi as the grav train, miraculously not malfunctioning, slid through the mountains of Pennsylvania and into New York State.

  Seven

  DREW ARLEN: SEATTLE

  There was a latticework in my head. I couldn’t make it go away. Its shape floated there all the time now, looking a little like the lattices that roses grow on. It was the dark purple color that objects take on in late twilight when it’s hard to see what color anything really is. Miri once told me that nothing “really” is any color — it was all a matter of “circumstantial reflected wave-lengths.” I didn’t understand what she meant. To me, colors are too important to be circumstantial.

  The lattice bent around and met itself to form a circle. I couldn’t see what was inside the circle, even though the lattice had diamond-shaped holes. Whatever was inside remained completely hidden.

  I didn’t know what this graphic was. It suggested nothing to me. I couldn’t will it to suggest anything, or to change form, or to go away. This hadn’t ever happened to me before. I was the Lucid Dreamer. The shapes that came from my deep unconscious were always meaningful, always universal, always malleable. I shaped them. I brought them outward, to the conscious world. They didn’t shape me. I was the Lucid Dreamer.

  I watched Miri’s final day in Science Court on hologrid in a hotel room in Seattle, where I was scheduled to give the revised “The Warrior” concert tomorrow afternoon. The robocams zoomed in close on Leisha and Sara as they climbed into their aircar on the Forum roof. Sara looked exactly like Miri. The holomask over her face, the wig, the red ribbon. She even walked like Miri. Leisha’s eyes had the pinched look that meant she was furious. Had she already discovered the switch? Or maybe that would come in the car. Leisha wouldn’t take it well. Nothing frustrated her more than being lied to, maybe because she was so truthful herself. I was glad I wasn’t there.

  Spiky red shapes, taut with anxiety, sped around the purple latticework that never went away.

  Sar
a/Miri closed the car door. The windows, of course, were opaqued. I turned off the newsgrid. It might be months before I saw Miri again. She could slip in and out of East Oleanta — she had, in fact, come to Washington from there — but Drew Arlen, the Lucid Dreamer in his state-of-the-art powerchair, followed everywhere by the GSEA, could not. And even if I went to Huevos Verdes, Nikos Demetrios or Toshio Ohmura or Terry Mwakambe might decide a shielded link with East Oleanta was too great a risk for just personal communication. I might not even talk with Miri for months.

  The spiky red shapes eased a little.

  I poured myself another scotch. That slowed down the anxiety-shapes sometimes. But I tried to be careful with the stuff. I did try. I could remember my old man, in the stinking Delta town where I grew up:

  Don’t you lip me, boy! You ain’t nothing, you, but a shit-bottomed baby!

  I ain’t no baby, me! I’m seven years old!

  You’re a shit-bottomed teatsucker, you, who ain’t never gonna own nothing, so shut up and hand me that beer.

  I’m gonna own Sanctuary, me, someday.

  You! A stupid bayou rat! Laughter. Then, after thinking it over, the smack. Whap. Then more laughter.

  I downed the scotch in a single gulp. Leisha would have hated that. The comlink shrilled in two short bursts. Twice meant the caller wasn’t on the approved list but Kevin Baker’s comlink program had nonetheless decided it was somebody I might want to see. I didn’t know how it decided that. “Fuzzy logic,” Kevin said, which made no shapes in my mind.

  I think I would have talked to anybody just then. But I left off the visual.

  “Mr. Arlen? Are you there? This is Dr. Elias Maleck. I know it’s very late, but I’d like a few minutes of your time, please. It’s extremely urgent. I’d rather not leave a message.”

  He looked tired; it was three in the morning in Washington. I poured myself another scotch. “Visual on. I’m here, Dr. Maleck.”

  “Thank you. I want to say right away this is a shielded call, and it’s not being recorded. Nobody can hear it but us two.”

  I doubted that. Maleck didn’t understand what Terry Mwa-kambe or Toshio Ohmura could do. Even if Maleck’s Nobel had been in physics and not medicine, he wouldn’t have understood. Maleck was a big man, maybe sixty-five, not genemod for appearance. Thinning gray hair and tired brown eyes. His skin fell in jowls on either side of his face but his shoulders were square. I felt him as a series of solid navy cubes, unbreakable and clean. The cubes hovered in front of the unmoving lattice.

  “I’m not sure exactly where to begin, Mr. Aden.” He ran his hand through his hair and the navy cubes took on a reddish tinge. Maleck was very tense. I sipped my drink.

  “As you undoubtedly know by now, I voted against allowing further development of the Huevos Verdes patent claim in the Federal Forum for Science and Technology. The reasons for my vote are stated clearly in the majority opinion. But there are things that a public document can’t contain, things I want permission to inform you about.”

  “Why?”

  Maleck was blunt. “Because I — we — have no way to talk to Huevos Verdes. They accept messages but not two-way com-munication. You represent the only path by which I can convey information directly to Ms. Sharifi about genetic research.” The shapes in my mind rippled and twisted. I said, “How did you leave any messages for Huevos Verdes? How’d you get the access code to leave any messages?”

  “That’s part of what I want to tell you, Mr. Arlen. In five minutes two men will request access to your suite. They want to show you something approximately half an hour from Seattle by plane. The purpose of my call is to urge you to go with them.” He hesitated. “They’re from the government. GSEA.”

  “No.”

  “I understand, Mr. Arlen. That’s the purpose of my call — to tell you this isn’t a trap, or a kidnapping, or any of the other atrocities you and I both know the government is capable of. The GSEA agents will take you outside the city, keep you about an hour, and return you safely, without implants or truth drugs or anything else. I know these men personally — personally — and I’m willing to stake my entire professional reputation on this. I’m sure you’re recording my call on your end. Send copies to anyone you like before you so much as open your hotel door. You have my word you will return safe and unaltered. Please consider what that’s worth to me.”

  I considered. The man filled me with shapes I hadn’t felt in a long time: light, clean shapes, without any hidden agenda. Nothing like the shapes at Huevos Verdes.

  Of course, Maleck might be completely sincere and still be used.

  Somehow the glass of scotch, my fourth, was empty.

  Maleck said, “If you want to take extra time to call Huevos Verdes for instructions—”

  “No.” I lowered my voice. “No. I’ll go.”

  Maleck’s face changed, opened, growing years younger and hours less tired. (A light cleansing rain falling on the navy cubes.)

  “Thank you,” he said. “You won’t regret it. You have my word, Mr. Aden.”

  I would bet anything that he, an eminent donkey, had never seen any of my concerts.

  I cut off the link, sent off copies of the call to Leisha, to Kevin Baker, to a donkey friend I trusted in Wichita. The link shrilled. Once. Even before I answered it Nikos Demetrios appeared on visual. He wasted no words, him.

  “Don’t go with them, Drew.”

  There was another glass of scotch in my hand. It was half empty. “That was a shielded call, Nick. Private.”

  He ignored this. “It could be a trap, despite what Maleck says. They could be using him. You should know that!”

  Impatience had crept into his voice, despite himself: the stupid Sleeper had overlooked the obvious once again. I saw him as a dark shape with a thousand shades of gray, undulating in subtle patterns I would never understand.

  “Nick, suppose — just suppose — that I wanted, me, to talk to somebody private, somebody who I don’t want you listening to, somebody who isn’t, them, no part of Huevos Verdes? Somebody else?”

  Nick stared. I heard then, me, how I was talking. Liver talk. My glass was empty again. The hotel system said politely, “Excuse me, sir. There are two men requesting access to your suite. Would you like visuals?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Send the men in, them.”

  “Drew—” Nick began. I blanked him. It didn’t work. Some sort of SuperSleepless override. Wasn’t there anything they couldn’t do, them?

  “Drew! Listen, you can’t just—” I disconnected the terminal from the Y-energy power unit.

  The GSEA agents didn’t look like GSEA agents. I guess they never do, them. Mid-forties. Donkey handsome. Donkey polite. Probably donkey smart. But if they thought, them, in donkey words, at least the words would come one at a time, not in bunches and clusters and libraries of strings.

  Snow fell on the purple lattice, cool and blank.

  “You guys like a drink, you?”

  “Yes,” one said, a little too fast. Going along with me. But he felt, him, almost as solid, almost as clean, as Maleck. That confused me. They were GSEA, them. How could they feel unhidden?

  “Changed my mind,” I said. “Let’s go now, us, wherever you’re taking me.” I powered my chair toward the door. It hit the jamb, it, and hurt my legs.

  But on the hotel roof, the cold sobered me. Some, anyway. Cars landed, bringing home early party-goers; it was just a little after midnight. Seattle was built on hills and the hotel was on top of a big one. I could see way beyond the enclave: the dark waters of Puget Sound to the west, Mount Rainier white in the moonlight. Cold stars above, cold lights below. Liver neighborhoods at the bases of the hills, except along the Sound, which was waterfront land too good for Livers.

  The GSEA aircar, armored and shielded, took off to the east. Pretty soon there were no more lights. Nobody spoke. I might have slept, me. I hope not.

  Don’t bother your Daddy, Drew. He’s asleep.

  He’s drunk, him.
<
br />   Drew!

  Drew! Nick said on the comlink. Huevos Verdes said. Miranda Sharifi said. Drew, do this. Give this concert. Spread this subconscious idea. Drew—

  The lattice curled in my mind, floating like swamp gas in the bayou where my Daddy finally drowned, him, dead drunk. Some kids found him, long after. They thought the thing in the water was a rotten log.

  “We’re here, Mr. Arlen. Please wake up.”

  We had landed on a pad somewhere in wild, dark country, dense and wooded, with huge outcroppings of rock that I slowly realized were parts of mountains. My head pounded. One of the agents turned on a portable Y-lamp and cut the car’s lights. We got out. I realized for the first time I didn’t know their names.

  “Where are we?”

  “Cascade Range.”

  “But where are we?”

  “Just another few minutes, Mr. Arlen.”

  They looked away while I pulled myself into my chair. It floated on its gravunit six inches above a narrow dirt track that led from the landing pad into thick woods. I followed the agents, who carried the lamp. The blackness on either side of the track, under the trees, was like a solid wall, except for rustlings and distant, deep hoots. I smelled pine needles and leaf mold.

  The track ended at a low foamcast building hidden by trees, a building too small to be important. No windows. An agent had his retina scanned and spoke a code to the door and it opened. The inside lit up. An elevator filled the interior, and that too had retinal scanner and a code. We went underground.

  The elevator opened on a large laboratory crowded with equipment, none of it running. The lights were low. A woman in a white lab coat hurried through one of many side doors. “Is that him?”

  “Yes,” an agent said, and I caught his quick involuntary glance to see if the Lucid Dreamer minded not being recognized. I smiled.

  “Welcome, Mr. Arlen,” the woman said gravely. “I’m Dr. Car-mela Clemente-Rice. Thank you for coming.”