Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  As soon as the packet hit ground, Livers ran toward it. Theresa didn’t wait. She flew south, back to Manhattan East, knowing she was a hypocrite. She didn’t believe Change syringes were good for people, but she was giving them to Livers for their children. She didn’t believe neuropharms could be the path to meaning, but the Sisters of Merciful Heaven felt that their lives were meaningful whereas she, Theresa, felt her life was shit. She believed that pain was a gift, a signpost to the soul, but she let herself be fed by ’bots and coddled by Jackson and protected by bio-weapon security systems, so that she didn’t have to fear too much pain.

  And all the while Cazie rode with her in the front seat of the car, scornful and concerned and impatient and loving and dangerous, saying Irony, Tessie. Don’t lose your irony.

  I never had any to lose. Tess thought, and opaqued the car’s windows so she didn’t have to see outside. So she could put her head in her hands and wonder what, if anything, could be left for her to try next.

  “You did what?” Jackson said. He spoke very slowly, as if his words were slippery and he had to keep a firm hold on them.

  “I gave them to a tribe of Livers,” Theresa said.

  “You gave all the rest of my Change syringes to a tribe of Livers? What tribe?”

  “I don’t know. Just a random tribe.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Jackson laced his fingers together tightly. “Why?”

  “Because they need them. Or their babies will get sick and die.”

  “But, Tessie, I needed them, too. For babies born to my patients…did you know they were the last syringes I had?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She had never seen her brother like this. So quiet. No, that wasn’t right, Jackson was usually quiet. But not like this.

  “Theresa. I need the tools of my trade to help people. I need syringes. And Miranda Sharifi isn’t providing any more…you know that. Every doctor in the country is running out of Change syringes. And can’t get any more. How am I supposed to help my newborn patients without the syringes?”

  “You can doctor them, Jackson.” She’d had time to think about this; she was calmer than when she’d first arrived home. A little calmer. “The people in our enclave have you. Those Liver babies out there don’t have anything. And I wanted—” She stopped.

  Jackson said, with a choking noise in his voice, “You wanted to give them something.”

  “I need to give somebody something!” Theresa cried.

  Jackson turned away, toward the window. He stood with his back to her, looking out at the park. Theresa took a step toward him, halted. “Don’t you see, Jackson?”

  “I see,” he said, which made her feel a little better, even though he didn’t turn around.

  “And you can help the people in our enclave, too,” Theresa said. “You can help them the way you went to school to learn to do. After all, you’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

  But this time Jackson didn’t answer her at all.

  I N T E R L U D E

  TRANSMISSION DATE: January 5, 2121

  TO: Selene Base, Moon

  VIA: AT&T Comlink Satellite 4, Holsat 643-K (China)

  MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted

  MESSAGE CLASS: No class. Not a legal transmission

  ORIGINATING GROUP: Not identified

  MESSAGE:

  You give us Change syringes so we become dependent on you non-humans. Then you withdraw the syringes so we’ll starve and sicken. What’s that but genocide? You think no one knows what you’re really doing. Not so, bitch. There are groups all over America that know what’s really going on. What your plan is. Weaken us, control us, and then attack. It won’t work. Some of us, undeluded by the fucking cowards that call themselves our government, will be waiting for you to come down from your hiding place. Sleepers are stronger than you think, and we value our God-given and Constitution-given freedoms. Too many Americans have died the past 350 years for us to let our freedoms go without a fight.

  Remember that.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT: None received

  Nine

  On December 31, Jackson sat in his apartment watching newsgrids he didn’t really want to see, and resisting the idea of going to Willoughby County on this last day of legal voter registration for the April special election.

  “Yesterday’s bloody conflict in San Francisco’s Bay Enclave may have lasted less than an hour,” said the handsome genemod journalist over holos of the attack, “but the aftermath continues. Enclave Police Chief Stephanie Brunell expressed both outrage and puzzlement at that attack, allegedly motivated by a search for Change syringes, by the terrorist group calling itself Livers For Control. Police investigation is concentrating on how both Y-shield and biodefense security systems could have been overridden by the underground group—”

  By datadipping, you dips, Jackson thought. But nobody wanted to believe that, because it meant you had to believe Livers were capable both of learning to manipulate sophisticated computer systems and of seizing power. And so much donkey effort—decades of effort—had gone into ensuring otherwise. Rotten educational software. Lavish handouts of material goods. Simple government-funded amusements that simply distracted. A political agenda that convinced those at the bottom that because they didn’t have to work, they were actually at the top. Jackson changed the channel.

  “—Year’s Eve celebration at the Mall Enclave in the nation’s capital. Warmed to a summery seventy-two degrees in deference to this season’s stunning bare-breasted evening gowns, the Mall itself has been transformed for the sight of this most lavish gala. President and Mrs. Garrison will divide their time between dancing at—” He changed the channel.

  “—of the match. International chess champion Vladimir Voitinuik, here pondering his fourth move against challenger Guillaume—” He changed the channel.

  “—heading rapidly toward the Florida coast where, unfortunately, a great many so-called Liver tribes have chosen to winter. Although Hurricane Kate occurs late in the tropical hurricane season, winds of up to a hundred thirty miles per hour…”

  Robocam of terrified Livers, many almost naked, trying to dig safety ditches with shovels, sticks, even pieces of metal from what looked like broken ’bots. A close-up of a child being blown away from its screaming mother—

  “Jackson?” Theresa said. He hadn’t heard her pad, barefoot, into the room. Quickly he offed the newsgrid.

  “Jackson, I need to ask you something.”

  “What, Theresa?” She looked terrible. She’d lost even more weight. Anorexia nervosa had all but disappeared since the Change—feeding directly, the body knew what it needed—but Jackson thought that Theresa, unChanged, was on the verge of it. Below the hem of her loose flowered dress he could see the long light outline of her tibiae, and above the neckline her clavicle stood out against the pale floaty mass of her dry hair like twigs against cloud. He despaired of what a proper workup would show. Deficiencies in bone density, white and red blood count, cerebrospinal transmitters, metabolic processes—nothing in balance. Cardiac, cortical, and even cellular-level stress clean off the scale. Plus biogenic amines the body produced only under pathological conditions—the kinds that signaled accelerated nerve-cell death and permanent changes in the neural architecture.

  “Tessie…you need to eat more. I’ve told you. You promised.”

  “I know. I will. But I get so wrapped up in my book…I do think it’s going better. Some of the paragraphs almost say what I feel. What Leisha feels. Felt. But now could you recommend a good program on Abraham Lincoln? Something not too hard, but clear about his life and politics?”

  “Abraham Lincoln? Why?” But the second after he said it, he knew.

  “Leisha Camden wrote a book about Lincoln. I think, from what Thomas told me, that it was considered important. And I know hardly anything about President Lincoln.”

  Theresa had never been interested in history—had never, in fact, gone past the primary-grades
software. Jackson said, “Why not just use the Camden book, then?”

  His sister blushed. “It’s not adapted. And when I had Thomas read it to me…well, I think I need something easier. Will you help me?”

  “Of course,” he said gently. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, “How is your book on Leisha going?”

  “Oh, you know.” She swiped vaguely at the air with one hand. “There’s always a gap between the book in your head and the one in the page.”

  It sounded like something Thomas had found for her in an indexed quotation program. She was fond of those. Did they give her the illusion of understanding? His heart ached with pity. “Try Clear and Present Software. Their hypertext explains things well. I don’t remember the exact title you need, but Thomas can find it for you.”

  “Thank you, Jackson.” She smiled at him, looking fragile as spun glass. “Thomas can find it. Clear and Here Software?”

  “Clear and Present.”

  He could see the knobby calcaneus in her bare heel, uncushioned by flesh, as she left the room.

  Jackson sat in front of the empty wall screen for several minutes. Syringe wars. Attacks on enclaves. Desperate Livers. Theresa. Abraham Lincoln. He remembered a speech of Lincoln’s, floating up from the mental flotsam of his own schooldays: The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

  Nobody believed that anymore. Nobody he knew.

  Except Lizzie Francy.

  He landed his car a couple hundred feet from the tribe building, remembering how, nearly two months ago, scruffy Liver young men had been all over it. Now, of course, one of those scruffy young men was supposedly a candidate for public office.

  Someone sauntered toward the car. Vicki Turner. Jackson rolled down the window. Cold winter air gusted in.

  “Dr. Jackson Aranow. What an honor. I would have expected you to be at a New Year’s Eve party somewhere. Have you come to share the final push toward democratic voter registration? Or to satisfy yourself that we actually went through with it, instead of just giving up in typical Liver fashion after our initial burst of ephemeral enthusiasm?”

  Jackson frowned, “I’m here to see how the project is going.”

  “Such non-evaluative language. Your med school psych professors would be proud of you. Actually, we’re on our way to try one more time with a particularly recalcitrant group of non-registrants. Perhaps you could give us a lift.”

  “Ms. Turner—I checked on your credit rating. It’s rotten, presumably as a result of your arrest by the GSEA and the subsequent…unpleasantness. But I don’t believe for a minute that you don’t have accounts stashed under other names in other places. Why not just buy your…your tribe an aircar?”

  “You’re wrong, Jackson. I don’t have money stashed anywhere. I spent it all.”

  “On what?”

  She didn’t answer, smiling at him faintly, and suddenly Jackson knew. On the Change Wars. Whatever part Vicki Turner had played in that struggle to convince Americans that the syringes were not a Sleepless plot to enslave Livers, to convince Americans to stop killing each other over radical changes in biology, to convince Americans to stop attacking Washington because, now, they could—whatever Vicki had done, it really had cost her all her credit. And she didn’t regret it.

  He blurted, “You make me feel ashamed.”

  For an instant, her face softened, and he saw something behind the brittle mask, something wistful and a little lonely. Then she smiled as before. “Then you can atone for your deep civic shame by giving us a surreptitious lift to these reluctant voters.”

  Jackson didn’t answer. In that instant of unwitting vulnerability, she had again reminded him of Cazie. And he had again reminded himself of a bumbling dolt.

  Lizzie and Shockey walked toward the car. Lizzie carried Dirk, well wrapped against the cold. Shockey wore screaming yellow jacks and a lime coat, with antique soda-can jewelry in his ears. On his right shoulder sat an odd lump. As he got closer, Jackson saw that it was a red, white, and blue flower, made of layers of plant-dyed rough-spun cloth wired together into a rosette.

  Vicki murmured, “…and they never even heard of Jacobins.” But the affectionate look she gave Lizzie was real.

  Shockey said, “Doctor. Coming along, you, for the last big push? You might learn something.”

  “True. Doctor,” Vicki said. “We are, after all, making startlingly new political history with our grass-roots movement toward democracy.”

  “Damn right,” Shockey said. The young man seemed to expand, raising the rosette on his broad shoulder another two inches. Hot air, Jackson thought.

  Lizzie almost danced with excitement. Her black hair stood out in more directions than Jackson imagined possible. “If we can get these people to agree to register tonight, Dr. Aranow, we’ll have ninety-three percent Liver participation. Four thousand four hundred eleven Liver voters in the county for the winter. Now, you said that Susannah Wells Livingston wasn’t a real candidate, just someone to run against Donald Thomas Serrano, and Serrano would get the vote of nearly every registered donkey. That’s four thousand eighty-two votes. Even if we can’t convince this tribe to register, we should still win.”

  “I should still win,” Shockey said.

  “All right—you should still win,” Lizzie said. Jackson saw that she was too elated to bother arguing with Shockey. “We’re going to do it!”

  Jackson glanced at Vicki. She nodded. “You tell them, Jackson. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

  “Lizzie…” Jackson said, and stopped. He hated to puncture her. How long had it been since he’d seen genuine enthusiasm, for anything constructive? “Lizzie, getting the edge in number of voter registrations won’t guarantee you a win. There’s three months before the actual April first election. In three months, Donald Serrano is going to do everything in his considerable power to convince your Liver voters to vote for him. And every single donkey politician is going to help him, including Sue Livingston. Because if you win, it will set a potentially devastating precedent for electing outsiders to government.”

  “We’re not outsiders, us!” Shockey flashed.

  “To the donkey political establishment, you are. They do not want you and your kind making decisions that affect them and their kind. Not even the tiny peripheral decisions that a district supervisor gets to make. They want to keep you out. And they’ll try to do that by buying the votes of every legally registered voter in Willoughby County. With Y-cones and music systems and medunits and luxury foods and scooters, and every other material pleasure they can offer right now and you can only promise to try to obtain, maybe, in the future.”

  Lizzie scowled over the sleeping baby. “And you think we’ll fall for that? Be bought like that?”

  Jackson said quietly, “You were bought like that for nearly a hundred years.”

  “But no more! We’re different now, us! Since the Change! We don’t need you no more!”

  “Which is why we want you to give us a ride now,” Vicki said. “Earn your keep. Jackson. Lizzie, Shockey, get in the car.”

  They did. Vicki gave him directions, and the four flew in silence for several minutes over rough country littered with the debris of winter. Wind-fallen branches, withered scrub, soggy dead leaves, dells of deep snow. Finally Jackson said, “Do you want me to land right by their…camp? Or shouldn’t they see a donkey associated with this Liver enterprise?”

  “No,” Lizzie said, surprising him. “You come, too. These particular people, they should see you.”

  The tribe, like so many, had passed the winter in an abandoned food-processing plant. Jackson guessed this one had once processed apples from the gone-wild orchards covering the low hills. No one came out to meet them. Lizzie, carrying the still sleeping Dirk, led the way around to the back of the building, where, under the usual plastic-tent feeding ground, lunch was in progress.

  Sixty or seventy Livers lay or sat naked on the churned-up ground, soaking in both nutrients and sun. For a second Jackson flashed
on Terry Amory’s party that Cazie had taken him to. But there was no danger of confusing the two. These Livers were—well, Jackson hated to admit it because it echoed the worst kind of dehumanizing bigotry—the Ellie Lester kind. But it was the truth. The Livers were repulsive.

  Hairy backs, sagging breasts, flabby bellies and thighs, graceless proportions, faces with features too squished together or too spread apart or not well matched to each other. It didn’t even matter that everyone’s Cell Cleaner skin was smooth and healthy and blemish-free. Since his internship had ended, Jackson had seen mostly perfect genemod bodies. Now he remembered how purely ugly most of humanity was in comparison.

  Vicki murmured by his ear, “Kind of a shock, isn’t it? Even for a physician. Welcome to homo sapiens. ‘The aristocrat among the animals,’ as Heinrich Heine remarked.”

  Lizzie said, without preamble, “We’re back, us, to talk to you some more about this here election. Janet, Arly, Bill, Farla—you listen, you.”

  “Do we got any choice, us?” said a flabby, grinning, naked middle-aged woman with buttocks like deflated balloons. “Lizzie, you hand me that there sweet baby.”

  Lizzie handed over Dirk and stripped off her clothes. Shockey and Vicki, with complete unself-consciousness, followed. Vicki grinned at Jackson. “When in Rome…”

  He wasn’t going to let her—let any of them—intimidate him. He stripped off his jacket and shirt.

  “Oooooh, nice,” the middle-aged woman said, and laughed at Jackson’s discomfiture. “But, Lizzie, tell us, you, why you brought this pair of donkeys, them, along with your so-called candidate.”

  “Ain’t nothing so-called about me, Farla,” Shockey said good-naturedly. “I’m the next Willoughby County district supervisor, me.”

  Farla grinned. “Sure you are.”

  Jackson was having trouble. He stood slowly unfastening his pants…as slowly as he could. Livers were used to communal feeding nudity. So were donkeys—but ground feeding, done in softly lit and perfumed private feeding rooms, was very often sexual. Here, young men like Shockey were relaxed naked. Comfortable. Flaccid. Jackson, for no good reason he could discover, had an erection.