Beggars and Choosers s-2

by Nancy Kress

“Because other countries make cheap Y-energy now. Twenty years ago we was the only ones, us, who could make it, and now we’re not. But the stuff breaking—”

  Annie burst out, “You believe them lies politicians say on the grids? Land and Samuelson and Drinkwater? Pisswater! All lies, every time one of them opens their mouth, them, it’s lies — they just want to get out of paying their rightful taxes! The taxes we earned, us, with our votes! And I told you not to fill up the child’s head with them secondhand donkey lies, Billy Washington!”

  “Ain’t lies,” I said, but I hated having Annie mad at me worse than I hated having her mad at Lizzie. It hurt my heart. Old fool.

  Lizzie saw it. She was like that, her: all pushing and pushing one minute, all sweetness the next. She put her arms around me. “It’s all right, Billy. She ain’t mad, her, at you. Nobody’s mad at you. We love you, us.”

  I held her, me. It was like holding a bird — thin bones and fluttery heart in your hand. She smelled of apples.

  My dead wife Rosie and me never wanted kids. I don’t know, me, what we was thinking.

  But all I said out loud was, “You don’t go outside, you, until them rabid raccoons are killed by somebody.”

  Annie shot me a look. It took me a minute to figure out she was afraid, her, that Lizzie was just going to start all over again:

  killed by who, Billy? But Lizzie didn’t start. She just said, sweet as berries, “I won’t, me. I’ll stay inside.”

  But now it was Annie who couldn’t let it go. I don’t understand mothers, me. Annie said, “And you stay away from school for a while, too, Lizzie. You ain’t no donkey, you.”

  Lizzie didn’t answer.

  Annie only wanted what was best for Lizzie. I knew that, me. Lizzie had to live in East Oleanta, join a lodge, go to scooter races, hang around the cafe, choose her lovers here, have her babies here. Annie wanted Lizzie to belong. Like an agro Liver, not some weird fake-donkey freak nobody would want. Any mother would. Annie might sneak, her, into the kitchen of the Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Cafe to do some cooking, but she was still all Liver, all the way through.

  And Lizzie wasn’t.

  A long time ago, when I was in school myself, me, and the country was different, I learned something. It’s fuzzy now, but it keeps hanging in my head. It was from before donkeys and Livers. Before cafes and warehouses. Before politicians paid taxes to us, instead of the other way around. It was from back when they were still making Sleepless, and you could read about them in newspapers. When there was newspapers. This thing was a word about genemod, but it meant something that wasn’t genemod. Was natural. Lizzie learns at school that donkeys are inferior, them, because donkeys have to be made genemod so they can be put to work providing all the things Livers need. But this word wasn’t about the kind of natural that makes us Livers superior to donkeys. It was about a different kind of natural, a kind that happens by itself but makes you different from other natural Livers around you. The word explained why Lizzie asked so many donkey questions, her, when she wasn’t no donkey and didn’t have no donkey genemods, although the word was in her genes. How could that be? Like I said, I was fuzzy, me, about the word, and about how it worked. But I remembered it.

  The word was throwback.

  I watched Lizzie watch her mother put the apple dish on the foodbelt. It went under the flash heater and out through the wall into the cafe. Somebody would choose it, them, on their Senator Mark Todd Ingalls meal chip. Annie went on to cooking something else. Lizzie sat on the floor, her, with the pieces of the broken peeler ’bot. When her mother wasn’t looking she studied each one, her, figuring out how it might go together, and when she grinned at me, her black eyes sparkled and darted, shiny as stars.

  That night we had a meeting, us, in the cafe, to talk about the rabid raccoons. Forty people, not counting kids. Paulie Cenverno actually seen one of the sick raccoons, hind legs twitching like it was splintered, mouth foaming, down near the State Senator James Richard Langton Scooter Track on the other side of town from the river. Somebody said, them, that we should put chairs in a circle to make a real meeting, but nobody did. At the other end of the cafe the holoterminal played and the dance music blasted. Nobody danced but the holos, life-sized smiling dolls made of light, pretty enough to be donkeys. I don’t like them, me. Never did. You can see right through the edges.

  “Turn down that music so we can hear ourselves talk, us!” Paulie bawled. People slouching at the tables near the foodbelt didn’t even look up, them. Probably all doing sunshine. Paulie walked over, him, and turned down the noise.

  “Well,” Jack Sawicki said, “what are we going to do, us, about these sick coons?”

  Only a few people snickered, them, and they were the dumbest ones. Like Annie said: somebody has to serve at meetings, even if serving is donkey work. Jack is mayor, him. He can’t help it. East Oleanta ain’t big enough to have a regular donkey mayor — no donkeys live here and we don’t want none. So we elected Jack, us, and he does what he has to do.

  Somebody said, “Call County Legislator Drinkwater on the official terminal.”

  “Yeah, call Pisswater!”

  “District Supervisor Samuelson’s got the warden franchise, him.”

  “Then call Samuelson!”

  “Yeah, and while you’re at it, you, make another town protest that the goddamn warehouse don’t distribute, it, but once a week now!” That was Celie Kane. I ain’t never seen her not angry.

  “Yeah. Rutger’s Corners, they still got distrib, them, twice a week.”

  “I had to wear these jacks two days in a row!”

  “I got sick, me, and missed a distrib, and we run out of toilet paper!”

  Next election, District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson was a squashed spider. But Jack Sawicki, he knew, him, how to serve a meeting.

  “Okay, people, shut up now. This is about the sick coons, not about warehouse distrib. I’m going, me, to just call up our donkeys.”

  He unlocked the official terminal. It sits way in the corner of the cafe. Jack pulled his chair, him, right up close to it, so his belly almost rested on his knees. A few stomps from the alley gang swaggered into the cafe, carrying their wooden clubs. They headed, them, for the foodbelt, laughing and smacking each other, drunk on sunshine. Nobody told them to shut up. Nobody dared.

  “Terminal activate,” Jack said. He didn’t mind, him, talking donkey in front of us. None of this fake shit about I don’t carry out orders I give them I’m an agro Liver, me. Jack was a good mayor.

  But I’m careful, me, not to tell him so.

  “Terminal activated,” the terminal said. For the first time I wondered what we’d do if the thing was as broke as Annie’s apple-peeler ’bot.

  Jack said, “Message for District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson, copy to County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater, copy to State Senator James Richard Langton, copy to State Representative Claire Amelia Forrester, copy to Congresswoman Janet Carol Land.” Jack licked his lips. “Priority Two.”

  “One!” Celie Kane shouted. “Make it a one, you bastard!”

  “I can’t, Celie,” Jack said. He was patient, him. “One is for disasters like attack or fire or flood at the Y-plant.” That was supposed to make us smile. A Y-plant can’t catch fire, can’t break down no way with its donkey shields. Can’t nothing get in, and only energy can get out. But Celie Kane don’t know how to smile, her. Her daddy, old Doug Kane, is my best friend, but he can’t do nothing with her neither. Never could, not even when she was a child.

  “This is a disater, you shithead! One of them coons kills a kid of mine, and I’ll tear you apart myself, Jack Sawicki!”

  “Hey, stay together, Celie,” Paulie Cenverno said. Somebody muttered “Bitch.” The door opened and Annie came in, her, holding Lizzie’s hand. The stomps at the foodbelt were still shouting and shoving.

  The terminal said, “Please hold. Linking with District Supervisor Samuelson’s mobile unit.” A minute later the holo ap
peared, not life-sized like on the HT, but a tiny, eight-inch-high Samuelson seated at his desk and dressed in a blue uniform. He looked, him, about forty, but of course with donkey genemods you can’t never tell. He had thick gray hair and big shoulders and crinkly blue eyes — handsome, like all of them. A few people shuffled their feet, them. If voters don’t watch the donkey channels, then the only people they ever see not dressed in jacks are Samuelson’s techs at the warehouse distrib twice a week. Once a week, now.

  Suddenly I wondered, me, if that was Samuelson. Maybe the holo was just a tape. Maybe the real Samuelson was someplace dressed up for a party, or in jacks — if donkeys ever wore jacks, them — or even naked, him, taking a shit. It was weird to think about.

  “Yes, Mayor Sawicki?” Samuelson said. “How can I serve you, sir?”

  “There’s at least four rabid raccoons in East Oleanta, Supervisor. Maybe more. The area monitor picked them up, it, before it broke. We seen the coons, right in town. They’re dangerous. I told you, me, two weeks ago that the game warden ’bot broke.”

  Samuelson said, “Game warden duties have been franchised to the Sellica Corporation. I notified them, sir, as soon as you notified me.”

  But Jack wasn’t taking any of that shit. Like I said, me, he was a good mayor. “We don’t care, us, who’s supposed to do the job! It’s your responsibility that it gets done, Supervisor. That’s why we elected you, us.”

  Samuelson didn’t change expression. That’s when I decided, me, that he was a tape. “I’m sorry, mayor, you’re quite right. It is my responsibility. I’ll take care of it right away, sir.”

  “That’s what you said two weeks ago. When the warden first broke, it.”

  “Yes, sir. Funding has been — yes, you’re quite right, sir. I am sorry. It won’t be neglected again, sir.”

  People nodded at each other: damn right. Behind me Paulie Cenverno muttered, “Got to be firm, us, with donkeys. Remind ’em who pays the votes.”

  Jack said, “Thank you, Supervisor. And one more thing—”

  “Hey!” a stomp screamed at the other end of the cafe, “The foodbelt stopped, it!”

  Dead silence fell.

  The holo of Samuelson said sharply, “What is it? What’s the problem?” For a minute he almost sounded, him, like a person.

  The stomp screamed again, “Fucking thing just stopped, it! Ate my meal chip and stopped! The food cubbies don’t open, them!” He yanked at all the plasticlear cubby doors, and none budged, but of course they don’t never budge, them, unless you put your chip in the slot. The stomp slammed on them with his club, and that didn’t help neither. Plasticlear don’t break.

  Jack ran, him, across the cafe, his belly bouncing under his red jacks. He stuck his own meal chip into the slot and pressed a cubby button. The chip disappeared, it, and the cubby didn’t open. Jack ran back to the terminal.

  “It’s broke, Supervisor. The goddamn foodbelt’s broke, it — eating chips and not giving out no food. You got to do something real quick. This can’t go no two weeks!”

  “Of course not, Mayor. As you know, the cafe isn’t part of my taxes — it’s funded and maintained by Congresswoman Land. But I’ll notify her myself, immediately, and a technician will be there from Albany within the hour. Nobody will starve within an hour, Mayor Sawicki. Keep your constituents calm, sir.”

  Celie Kane shrilled, “Fixed like the warden ’bot, you mean? If my kids go hungry even a day, you mule bastard—”

  “Shut up,” Paulie Cenverno told her, murderously low. Paulie don’t like to see donkeys abused to their faces. He says, him, that they got feelings too.

  “Within one hour,” Jack said. “Thank you for your help, Supervisor. Dialogue over.”

  “Dialogue over,” Samuelson said. He smiled at us, him, the same smile like on his election holos, chin up and crinkly eyes bright. The holo pushed a button on his desk. The picture disappeared. But something must of gone wrong because the voice didn’t disappear, it, only it sounded all different. Samuelson still, but no Samuelson we never seen or heard campaigning, us: “Christ — what next! These morons and imbeciles — I’m tempted to just — oh!” The terminal yelped and went dead.

  A woman at a far table screamed. The stomp with the biggest wooden club had grabbed her food, him, and was eating it. Jack and Paulie and Norm Frazier charged over, them, and jumped the kid. His buddies jumped back. Tables crashed over and people started running. Somebody had just changed HT channels, and a scooter race in Alabama roared by, life-size. I grabbed Annie and Lizzie and shoved them to the door. “Get out! Get out!”

  Outside, the Y-lights made Main Street bright as day. I could feel my heart banging but I didn’t slow up, me. Angry people got no sense. Anything could happen. I panted, me, alongside Annie, she running with those big breasts bouncing, Lizzie running quick and quiet as a deer.

  In Annie’s apartment on Jay Street I collapsed, me, on a sofa. It wasn’t none too comfortable, not like sofas I remembered from when I was young, the soft ones you kept around long enough to take the shape of a person’s body.

  But on the other hand, plastisynth don’t never get vermin.

  Lizzie said, her eyes bright, “Do you think a donkey will come, them, to fix the foodbelt in an hour?”

  I gasped, “Lizzie… hush, you.”

  “But what if in an hour no donkey don’t come to—”

  Annie said, “You be quiet, Lizzie, or you’ll wish them donkeys will come to fix you! Billy, you better stay here, you, for tonight. No telling what them fools at the cafe might do.”

  She brought me a blanket, one of those she’d embroidered, her, with bright yarns from the warehouse. More embroideries hung on the wall, woven with bits of pop can the young girls make jewelry out of, with torn-up jacks, with any other bright thing Annie could find. All the Jay Street apartments look alike. They was all built at the same time about ten years ago, when some senator came up from way behind and needed a big campaign boost. Small rooms, foamcast walls, plastisynth furniture from a warehouse distrib, but Annie’s is one of the few that looks to me like a home.

  Annie made Lizzie go to bed. Then she came, her, and sat on a chair close by my sofa.

  “Billy — did you see, you, that woman in the cafe?”

  “What woman?” It was nice, her sitting so close.

  “The one standing, her, off by the back wall. Wearing green jacks. She don’t live, her, in East Oleanta.”

  “So?” I snuggled under Annie’s pretty blanket. We get travelers sometimes, us, though not as many as we used to, now that the gravrail don’t work so regular. Meal chips are good anyplace in the state, they come from United States senators, and it didn’t used to be hard to get an interstate exchange chip. Maybe it still ain’t. I don’t travel much.

  “She looked different,” Annie said.

  “Different how?”

  Annie pressed her lips tight together, thinking. Her lips were dark and shiny as blackberries, them, the lower one so full that pressing them together only made it look juicier. I had to look away, me.

  She said slowly, “Different like a donkey.”

  I sat up on the sofa. The blanket slid off. “You mean genemod? I didn’t see, me, nobody like that.”

  “Well, she wasn’t genemod pretty. Short, with squinchy features and low eyebrows and a head a little too big. But she was a donkey, her. I know it. Billy — you think she’s a FBI spy?”

  “In East Oleanta? We ain’t got no underground organizations, us. All we got is rotten stomps that want to spoil ilfe for the rest of us.”

  Annie kept on pressing her lips together. County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater runs our police franchise. He contracts, him, with an outfit that has both ’bots and donkey officers. We don’t see them much. They don’t keep the peace on the streets, and they don’t bother, them, about thefts because there’s always more in the warehouse. But when we have an assault, us, or a murder, or a rape, they’re there. Just last year Ed Jensen was gene-finge
red for killing the oldest Flagg girl when a lodge dance got too rough. Jensen got took, him, up to Albany, for twenty-five-to-life. On the other hand, nobody never stood trial for the bow-shooting of Sam Taggart out in the woods two years ago. But I think we had a different franchise, us, back then.

  FBI is a whole other thing. All them federal outfits are. They don’t come to Livers unless something donkey is threatened, and once they come, them, they don’t let go.

  “Well,” Annie said stubbornly, “all I know, me, is that she was a donkey. I can smell them.”

  I didn’t want to argue, me. But I didn’t want her to worry, neither. “Annie — ain’t no reason for FBI to be in East Oleanta. And donkeys don’t have big heads and squinchy features, them — they don’t let their kids get born that way.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right, you. We don’t need no visiting donkeys in East Oleanta. Let them stay, them, in their places, and us in ours.”

  I couldn’t help it. I said, real soft, “Annie — you ever hear of Eden?”

  She knew, her, that I didn’t mean the Bible. Not in that voice. She snapped, “No. I never heard of it, me.”

  “Yes, you did. I can tell, me, by your voice. You heard of Eden.”

  “And what if 1 did? It’s garbage.”

  I couldn’t let it go, me. “Why’s it garbage?”

  “Why? Billy — think, you. How could there be a place, even in the mountains, that donkeys don’t know about? Donkeys serve everything, them, including mountains. They got aircars and planes to see everything. Anyway, why would a place without donkeys ever come to be? Who would do the work?”

  “ ’Bots,” I said.

  “Who would make the ’bots?”

  “Maybe us?”

  “Livers work? But why, in God’s name? We don’t got to work, us — we got donkeys to do all that for us. We got a right to be served by donkeys and their ’bots — we elect them! Why would we want to go, us, to some place without public servants?”

  She was too young, her. Annie don’t remember a time before the voting came on HT and the franchises made cheap ’bots and the Mission for Holy Living was all over the place, them, contributing lots of money to all the churches and explaining about the lilies of the field and the sacredness of joy and the favor of God to Mary over Martha. Annie don’t remember, her, all the groups for all the kinds of democracy, each showing us how in a democracy the common man was the real aristo and master of his public servants. Schools for democracy. Irish-Americans for Democracy. Hoosiers for Democracy. Blacks for Democracy. I don’t know, me. The ’bots took over the hard work, and we were happy, us, to give it to them. The politicians started talking, them, about bread and circuses, and calling voters “sir” and “ma’am” and building the cafes and warehouses and scooter tracks and lodge build-ings. Annie don’t remember, her. She likes to cook and sew and she don’t spend all her time at races and brainie parties and lodge dances and lovers, like some, but she still ain’t never held an ax in her hand and swung it, or a hoe or a hatchet or a hammer. She don’t remember.