Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

  “Yes, Dr. Aranow.”

  He turned to Vicki. “Thurmond is an old friend. We graduated together from medical school. He’s a staff researcher at Kelvin-Castner Pharmaceuticals, his department’s fair-haired wonder. He’ll help us.”

  “Help us do what?” Vicki said, but Lizzie didn’t hear the answer. In the other room, Dirk cried. Lizzie rushed back to him. Theresa held the baby helplessly, rocking him and crooning, while Dirk wailed in fear and tried to squirm off her lap.

  Lizzie took him. All at once she felt better about Theresa. Dirk buried his face in his mother’s shoulder and clung to her. Lizzie said, “Don’t feel bad. It’s just because he doesn’t know you.”

  “Is he…is he shy with…strangers?”

  “Not until this morning!”

  The two girls looked at each other. Lizzie saw suddenly how they must look: Theresa genemod beautiful and elegant in her pretty dress, Lizzie with mud and wet leaves clinging to her dirty jacks, in her hair, smeared across her baby’s face. But Theresa was the one who was afraid. Lizzie pulled a twig out of Dirk’s hair.

  “Something happened this morning,” she said impulsively to Theresa. “Dr. Aranow said there might have been a neuropharm released into our feeding ground. It made everybody scared of anything new. Even of voting for Shockey! And we worked so hard! Damn it to fucking hell!”

  Theresa cringed. But she said, “Scared of anything new? You mean, like…like me?”

  So that was what was wrong with this girl. She’d breathed a neuropharm like the one Annie and Billy and Dirk had breathed. But…Dr. Aranow said he didn’t know what the neuropharm was, it was something no Sleepers could invent, so how could Theresa have…

  “I have to go back,” she said abruptly. “Dr. Aranow’s calling a research place.” She carried Dirk back to the dining room.

  The table held dishes of mouth food, although Lizzie hadn’t seen a ’bot go past. Strawberries, huge and succulent, bread with fruit and nuts baked on top, fluffy scrambled eggs; Lizzie hadn’t had an egg since last summer. Her mouth filled with sweet water. The next second, she forgot the food.

  A section of the programmed wall had deepened into a holostage recess. Lizzie had never seen such technology. A man as old as Dr. Aranow, with a handsome face and bright chestnut hair, said, “It sounds incredible, Jackson.”

  “I know, Thurmond, I know. But believe me, I knew these people before, the behavioral change is both radical and sudden—”

  “How could you know Livers that well? They’re not patients, are they? Aren’t they Changed?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t matter how I know them. I’m telling you, the change appears neuropharmaceutical, it does not wear off after inhalation stops, and it is not accompanied by gastrointestinal distress or blackout. You want to see this, Thurmond. And I need you to see it.”

  The holo drummed its fingers on a desktop. “All right. I’ll sell it to Castner—if I can. Bring two specimens in, the baby and an adult.”

  Specimens?

  “When?” Dr. Aranow said.

  “Well, I can’t…oh, hell, this afternoon. You’re sure, Jackson, that the behavioral effect doesn’t wear off when inhalation ceases? Without that, it’s not worth my time to—”

  “I’m sure. This could be valuable to you, Thurmond.”

  “Do you want to draw up a percentage contract, if the commercial possibilities pay out? Our standard split—”

  “That can wait. We’ll be there in a few hours. Alert your security system. Me and three Livers who—”

  “Three?”

  “The baby’s mother has to come, and she didn’t breathe in the neuropharm, so there’ll be two adults.”

  “All right. Make ’em take a bath first.”

  Jackson glanced sideways at Vicki. This Thurmond Rogers—this stupid fucking donkey who thought Livers didn’t even wash—said sharply, “Are they there with you now, Jackson? In your house?”

  Vicki stepped in front of the holostage. She held a strawberry daintily in upraised fingers. Her jacks were as muddy as Lizzie’s, and older. Her genemod violet eyes gleamed. “Yes, Thurmond, we’re here now. But it’s all right, we deloused.”

  Thurmond said. “Who are you?”

  Vicki smiled sweetly and nibbled on her strawberry. “You don’t remember me, Thurmond? At Cazie Sanders’s garden party? Last year?”

  “Jackson—what’s going on here? She’s a donkey, why is—”

  “There’ll be five of us coming to Kelvin-Castner,” Vicki said. “I’m the baby’s nanny. See you later, Thurmond.” She moved away.

  Thurmond said, “Jackson…”

  “Noon, then,” Dr. Aranow said hastily. “Thanks, Thurmond. Caroline, that’s all.”

  The holostage went dark. Lizzie watched Dr. Aranow and Vicki watch each other. Shifting Dirk to other shoulder—he was getting heavy—Lizzie waited for Vicki to yell at Dr. Aranow for letting Thurmond Rogers call them “specimens,” or for Dr. Aranow to yell at Vicki for fucking up his phone call. But instead all Dr. Aranow said was, “You met Thurmond Rogers with Cazie?”

  “No,” Vicki said, “I never saw him before in my life. But now he’ll surf his brains, wondering where that garden party was.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I don’t,” Vicki said. “You really don’t know how this is played, do you, Jackson?”

  “I didn’t think we were playing.”

  “Well, certainly not about the neuropharm. Who’s our adult specimen, by the way? Lizzie, don’t just stand there glaring and drooling. If you’re hungry, have some strawberries. Genemod and exquisite.”

  Lizzie wanted to say no—how come Vicki was still bossing everybody else around, even in Dr. Aranow’s house? But she was too hungry. Sullenly she sat in one of the beautiful carved chairs, Dirk clinging to her shoulder, and helped herself to everything she could reach.

  Dr. Aranow said, “We’ll fly back to camp and get Shockey.”

  “Why Shockey?” Vicki said. “Billy breathed in the neuropharm, too, and he’d be much more cooperative. Or even Annie.”

  “No. Billy’s too old. And I already put a patch on Annie, changing the original conditions. Thurmond won’t consider them ideal subjects. Also, Shockey’s behavioral changes seemed the most pronounced…it has to involve the amygdalae.”

  “The what?” Lizzie said, to remind them she was there. Dirk fretted and she shifted him on her lap to feed him a strawberry.

  Dr. Aranow said, “It’s a part of the brain that affects fear and anxiety about—what’s wrong with Dirk?”

  Dirk screamed on Lizzie’s lap. He pushed with his small feet and drew his chubby arms in toward his body. His face contorted. He twisted in her arms, trying to get down, trying frantically to escape. In his wailing was the note of pure animal fear as Lizzie held out to him something new in his experience, something he’d never seen before: a ripe red perfect strawberry.

  “He’s asleep,” Vicki said. “Come on, Lizzie.”

  “Come on where?” She didn’t want to leave Dirk. He lay on Dr. Aranow’s living room floor on a soft multicolored blanket Vicki had taken off one of the white sofas. Dirk had screamed and thrashed so much Dr. Aranow had finally put a little patch on his neck. Just to make Dirk sleep, he said. Lizzie sat in the sofa, which had fitted itself around her rump in a comfortable way, and scowled at Vicki. Dr. Aranow hadn’t wanted to go alone to get Shockey. Lizzie didn’t know what Vicki had said to him to make him agree, or why Vicki wanted to stay behind, or how Lizzie was going to cope for the rest of her life with a child terrified of a strawberry. She was exhausted.

  “I want to talk to Theresa,” Vicki said. “And don’t you want to dip the systems here? Aranow has a Caroline VIII.”

  A Caroline VIII. Lizzie had only heard about them. Suddenly she wanted to be in that system more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She could dip that system. She could understand that system. Unlike everything else that had suddenly erupted in her life.

  �
�Dirk’s fine, the patch will last for hours. Come on. Lizzie. Let’s establish a beachhead.”

  Lizzie didn’t know what a beachhead was, and didn’t ask. But she followed Vicki as far as the dining room, within earshot of Dirk. Mouth food still covered the table.

  “Jackson’s system will be voice-cued,” Vicki said, and Lizzie laughed and reached for a plate.

  “Do you really expect that to stop me?”

  “Apparently not. See you later. I’m going to look for Theresa.”

  Lizzie ate hungrily. Everything tasted so good! Even the dishes were beautiful, made of some thin material edged with gold. And the glasses. And the silverware. After Lizzie had eaten all she could hold, she glanced furtively around. Quickly she slipped a silver teaspoon into the pocket of her jacks.

  Then she began on the house system, Jones. As she expected, it contained direct, laughably protected access to Jackson’s personal system. Amateurs. Everything about Jackson was open to Lizzie’s hearing.

  And everything about Theresa.

  Lizzie’s eyes sparkled. If Vicki couldn’t find Theresa, or couldn’t get her to talk, Lizzie could already know everything about Theresa from her personal system. Then, when Vicki said she hadn’t been able to learn thus-and-so, Lizzie could casually drop the information. She would actually know more about the situation than Vicki.

  Theresa’s personal system, Thomas, yielded up calendar files, medical files (had Theresa really been on all these medicines when she was a kid? and what were they?), credit accounts—Lizzie noted the numbers and access paths to those. Wall-programming selections, library requests, comlink calls (almost none—didn’t Theresa have any friends?). Orders to Jones, dress designs, didn’t she have a diary file? No, but there was a book she was speaking.

  Lizzie snorted. The donkey nets were awash with books. Of all the uses for a system, that seemed to her the dumbest. Who wanted to listen to stuff that never happened, or happened a long time ago and was all over? The present had too much stuff in it to absorb as it was. Lizzie quick-tasted the file, until she caught the words, “Change syringe.”

  She stopped tasting. “Thomas, read me that section.”

  The system said, “‘Leisha Camden never saw the Change syringes that Miranda made. Leisha was already dead. Everybody thinks Leisha would have liked the Change syringes, because she told Tony Indivino that she would give much money to poor beggars in Spain. Everybody thinks Leisha would like anything that gives poor beggars like Livers a way to get food. But I don’t think Leisha would like the Change syringes. She understood that people need food but they need other things more, like a meaning in life.’”

  Poor beggars like Livers? Lizzie had never begged for anything in her life! What she wanted she went out and got, or dipped off the Net. “Thomas, summarize file contents.”

  “This file is a book spoken by Theresa Aranow. She began the file on August 19, 2118. It is a life of Leisha Camden, 2008-2114, the twenty-first Sleepless genetically engineered in the United States. The book traces Leisha Camden’s entire life, starting with her birth in Chicago, Illinois, at the—”

  “Enough. File links?”

  “One. To newsgrid file 65. Restricted.”

  Restricted? A newsgrid file? But those were public to begin with. “Where is the file restricted to?”

  “To the printer in Theresa Aranow’s study.”

  It took Lizzie three minutes to dip the restriction. “Display on closest screen.”

  The dining room wall colors dissolved. In their place were pictures with writing under them—horrible pictures, one after another, each displayed for thirty seconds before it dissolved into the next. Lizzie couldn’t read the writing, but she recognized the pictures. She’d just never seen so many of them in one place.

  Babies with their bellies swollen and mottled. Babies with blood streaming from their eyes. Babies lying still, eyes glazed and scrawny arms limp. Babies shriveled as dried apples, their mouths open on swollen, toothless gums. UnChanged babies, unprotected against disease or starvation…so many unChanged babies.

  Lizzie stumbled back into the living room. Dirk lay asleep on the bright blanket, which—Lizzie now noticed—his chubby little legs were consuming. His rosy mouth made little sucking motions in his sleep.

  She went back to the dining room and looked at more pictures. UnChanged babies sick. UnChanged babies dying. UnChanged babies dead…all Liver babies. Lizzie closed her eyes. How many UnChanged babies were there in the United States? If she hadn’t had a syringe for Dirk…Why wasn’t anybody doing anything about this?

  And why did Theresa Aranow—rich, genemod, protected, safe—care about these Liver babies?

  Lizzie realized the answer to that one. Theresa’s fear of anything new. Her few friends. The mouth food. The blanket Dirk was consuming. Theresa herself was unChanged.

  But how could that be? Theresa was a donkey. And she was Lizzie’s age. There had been plenty of Change syringes even two years ago. Were there still plenty for donkeys? Maybe in some places. Lizzie didn’t really know. None of it made sense.

  The system said in Jones’s stiff voice, “Ms. Aranow, Dr. Aranow is in the elevator.” At the same time, Lizzie heard Vicki coming back to the dining room.

  Immediately Lizzie blanked the system—she didn’t know why. But Vicki shouldn’t see these pictures. Which was stupid because Vicki was her closest friend in the whole world, Lizzie owed Vicki everything, and besides Vicki kept up with news all the time and probably already knew all about it. But Vicki was still a donkey. Lizzie didn’t want her to see these pathetic, horrible unChanged Liver babies. Not in this rich donkey house.

  “I couldn’t find Theresa,” Vicki said crossly. “Or rather, I suspect I did find her, hidden away in a room on the upper floor, but I couldn’t dip the lock. Why didn’t you come with me? And what’s that noise?”

  “Dr. Aranow’s back.”

  “Alone? Where’s Shockey? Did you get the access codes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go greet the troops on the upholstered battlements.”

  “In a minute,” Lizzie said. “I just…just want a bit more bread.”

  “You metabolically versatile glutton,” Vicki said, and left the room.

  “Thomas,” Lizzie said softly, “personal message mode for Theresa Aranow. Urgent.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I saw the pictures of the Liver babies. You have to find Miranda Sharifi and make her give us some more Change syringes. You’re a donkey, you have all this money, you can get to Miranda, you, in ways we can’t, us…” Lizzie trailed off. How should she sign it? Why sign it at all? What the hell did she think she was doing, begging help from a donkey girl who was too much of a coward to leave her own apartment?

  “Thomas, cancel urgent personal message.”

  “Personal cancel code, please?”

  No time. Jackson and Vicki walked toward the doorway.

  “Thomas, close.” The wall blanked.

  “Let’s go, Lizzie,” Dr. Aranow said wearily. “This won’t be bad, I promise. Some behavioral recording, a brain scan, and then they’ll put you briefly to sleep for tissue samples. It won’t hurt.”

  “Where’s Shockey?”

  “In the car. He wouldn’t leave it, even with a tranq patch on. Get the baby and we’ll go.”

  “Are Billy and my mother all right?”

  “Yes. No. They’re the same as when you saw them.”

  Vicki said, “How did you get Shockey to come with you?”

  “Not easily. He cried.”

  Lizzie tried to picture Shockey crying. Big, rough, bold-eyed Shockey. “Didn’t anybody try to stop you?”

  “Yes. Sort of. Billy did, with a few others. But I just started acting very strange, and they all got even more frightened and backed away. I grabbed Shockey and tranqued him and dragged him along. Crying.” Dr. Aranow ran his hand through his hair. Lizzie hadn’t known a donkey could look so worn-out and…well, upset.


  Vicki said, more gently than Lizzie had ever heard her be with anyone beside Dirk or Lizzie herself, “You should sleep, Jackson.”

  He laughed shortly. “Oh, yes. That would solve everything. Come on, Lizzie, Thurmond Rogers is waiting.”

  Lizzie said, before she knew she was going to say anything, “Not until I have a bath. And Dirk, too.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Oh, yes, I can. And I will, me.”

  Vicki smiled at her. It took Lizzie a moment to figure out why. Vicki thought she was having a bath to give Dr. Aranow time for the sleep he needed. Fuck that. She wanted a bath before she faced Thurmond Rogers and his snooty corporation. She and Dirk both. Vicki could show up looking like a piece of the woods, but that was different. Vicki was a donkey.

  It seemed to Lizzie that she’d never before realized everything that meant.

  “All right, all right,” Dr. Aranow said. “Have a bath. Just be quick about it.”

  “I will,” Lizzie promised. She would, too. She was as worried about Annie and Billy as anyone. She would wash herself and Dirk as fast as she could.

  And maybe she could dip whatever parts of the system were on-line in the bathing room.

  I N T E R L U D E

  TRANSMISSION DATE: April 3, 2121

  TO: Selene Bose, Moon

  VIA: Chicago Ground Station #2, GEO Satellite 342 [Old Charter] (USA)

  MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted

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

  ORIGINATING GROUP: American Medical Association

  MESSAGE:

  An Open Letter to Miranda Sharifi—

  We, the physicians of the American Medical Association, would like to once more collectively request that, as a humanitarian act, you make available to the peoples of the world your proprietary medical substance, Cell Cleaner™. As doctors, all of us witness weekly the personal suffering and social disorder caused by the abrupt lack of this pharmaceutical. It is nothing short of tragic. The long-term consequences for our country—which is also yours—are the gravest possible.

  Please reconsider your decision to withhold the means of alleviating such great suffering.