Beggars and Choosers s-2

by Nancy Kress

  A Liver messiah in East Texas had proclaimed this the Time of the End. He was quoting Revelations on the four horsemen, with a twist: The horseman of war must be loosed by the Livers. Now. When the state security squad tried to arrest him, he and his followers blew away thirty-three people with illegal Mexican weapons. The governor, said the newsgrid with concern, was virtually certain to fail reelection.

  In Kansas, a soysynth factory owned by the D’Angelo franchise was ripped apart by hoarders, who carried off the treated and untreated soy. They also wrecked three million dollars of robotic machinery.

  The lieutenant-governor of South Dakota was somehow knifed to death in his sleep, within a protected enclave.

  Livers in San Diego broke into the world-famous zoo there, killed a lion and two elehippos, and ate them, following a report that animals could not get the new plague.

  The northeast had been hit by early winter. Small towns were isolated without gravrails, starving without food. People starved. Small towns like East Oleanta.

  Where was Miranda? And what was she waiting for? Unless something had gone wrong in the last steps of the project. Unless the GSEA had discovered Eden, traced it back from the carefully disseminated rumors in the little isolated Liver towns.

  Unless there was even more that she, and Huevos Verdes, hadn’t told me.

  For the first time, I wondered if she wasn’t coming for me at all.

  “The greatness of the Constitution is in its Will to the common people,” Jimmy Hubbley said, his pale eyes bright.

  “The greatness of the Constitution is in its checks and balances,” Leisha had always said. Leisha. Who. Was. Dead.

  The dark lattice in my mind was furled tight as an umbrella, impenetrable, a thin sharp line that cut me inside.

  Where were the checks and balances on Huevos Verdes?

  “Take me around the compound again,” I said to Peg.

  She was slumped in a chair in commons, watching a scooter race someplace in California. A part of California without plague. “I don’t want, me, to take you again. You seen everything you’re gonna see.”

  “Fine. I’ll go alone.” I wheeled the chair away from her. I didn’t dare exercise my upper body, not even after she’d locked me in at night. I couldn’t see the surveillance monitors but I knew they had to be there. I settled for furtively hoisting myself a few inches above the arms of my chair several times a day, lifting my useless legs, careful to choose different locations each day.

  “Wait, you.” Peg sighed and heaved herself up. Roughly she shoved the chair forward.

  A white corridor with the featureless doors locked.

  Another white corridor with the featureless doors locked.

  And another white corridor with the featureless doors locked.

  The landing stage, guarded by Campbell, who was asleep but not very. Another white corridor with…

  A piece of Abby’s wedding dress lay snagged on a rough spot in the wall.

  “Damn!” Peg said, with more energy than I’d ever heard her say anything. “That bitch can’t keep nothing tidy, her! This stupid stuffs everywhere!” She snatched it up savagely and tore the small oblong into even smaller pieces. Her face was a mottled, angry red. There were tears in her eyes.

  Why was there a rough place on a nanosmooth wall to snag a piece of dropped lace?

  “Stupid bitch!” Peg said. Her voice caught.

  “Why, Peg,” I said. “You’re jealous.”

  “You shut up, you!”

  Through the zoom portion of my corneas, the rough place on the wall had an added-on look. Not a mistake in the nanopro-gramming, but a bump built later, with another clocked nanoas-sembler, manually. Why?

  To snag an oblong of lace?

  Every oblong was different. The lace had been programmed that way. To make a unique pattern on an old-fashioned wedding gown.

  To make a code.

  Peg had recovered herself. Blank-faced once more, but with red eyes, she shoved the torn bit of lace in the pocket of her hideously unbecoming turquoise jacks. Her mouth twitched in pain. No sympathetic shapes slid through my mind. Peg didn’t know what pain was. Peg hadn’t seen Leisha die, mud caked on her thin yellow shirt, two small red dots on her forehead.

  “Let’s go, you,” she said impatiently, as if I were the one who’d delayed her.

  A code. The bits of lace were a code, in a place where every word, every action, every chance encounter was monitored. And everyone was encouraged to be “tidy” and pick up litter, because Brigadier General Francis Marion had been the tidiest son-of-a-bitch to ever attack the British army.

  How many people were involved? Abigail and Joncey, most certainly. Who did they have with them against Hubbley? Did they have anyone on the outside?

  I saw again the gray canister. PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY. CLASSIFIED. DANGER.

  “See,” Peg snarled when we got back to commons, “you seen everything, you! Now can we stay put?”

  “I get bored staying put,” I said. “Let’s do it again.” And I wheeled away my primitive chair, hearing her curse behind me.

  Three days later, three days of ceaseless wheeling, the door to Jimmy Hubbley’s private quarters opened and he and Abigail came out. When Abigail saw Peg, she lowered her eyes, smiled, and pretended to finish zipping the pants to her jacks.

  Peg was behind me, where I couldn’t see her face, but I could see her hands, large and rough on the handles of my chair. In the stiffening of her hands — controlled, habitual — I saw that she already knew about Abigail and Hubbley. Of course. Everyone would know; you couldn’t hide it in a place like this. Joncey must accept it. Maybe it advanced his and Abby’s plans for the counterrevolution. Maybe he thought Hubbley was just spreading his genes in the allowable natural way to strengthen the human genome. Maybe Hubbley even thought he was spreading Francis Marion’s, to every pretty soldier with a duty to Will and Idea.

  “Evenin’, Peg,” Hubbley said. She choked out some reply. Abigail smiled demurely. She made a shape in my mind: flowers with tiny, deadly teeth in their sunny yellow centers.

  “Evenin’, Major Hubbley,” Peg choked out. I didn’t even know he’d been promoted.

  But now I had him.

  At dinner the commons was full. Abigail sat with her friends, laughing, sewing on her white lace wedding dress. Her face was flushed and giddy. Above, in the world I now knew only from the HT, it turned November. Sixty-seven days underground, and Miranda had not come.

  Joncey stood with a group watching a pair of gamblers play Devil. The twelve-sided dice, made of some shiny metal, flashed as they were thrown overhead. Everyone shrieked and laughed. Peg sat slumped, blank-faced, in her chair, her rough hands slack on her knees. I’d asked her for paper and pen, which made her first suspicious and then disgusted.

  “What for? You got your library terminal, you.”

  “I want to write something.”

  “You can speak, you, to the terminal anything you want saved.”

  “I want to write it. On paper.”

  Her suspicion deepened. “You can write?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought Major Hubbley said, him, that you wasn’t no donkey, you.”

  “I’ve been to donkey schools. I can write. Can’t you read?”

  “Course I can read, me!”

  She probably could, at least a little. Liver children usually learned to read basic words, if not to write them. You needed to read names on packages at the warehouse, on street signs, on scooter bet sheets. I hoped to hell she could read.

  An unseen monitor watched me, of course. I bent over the paper Peg brought me, coarse pale sheets probably meant to wrap something in. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d written anything. I was never very good at it. The pen felt heavy in my hand.

  Drew, bold it like this.

  What for, Leisha? / can speak, me, to the terminal anything I want it to know.

  What if someday there aren’t any terminals?

&n
bsp; In your nose hairs! There will always be terminals, them!

  Slowly I printed A HISTERY OF THE SECUND AMERICAN REVALUTION.

  Three hours later, after much crumpling up and tearing of paper and fidgeting in my chair, I had three crossed-out pages. They described James Francis Marion Hubbley’s philosophy, activities, and goals. Hubbley himself strode across the room, looming over me. I wondered what had taken him so long.

  “Now, Mr. Arlen, sir, I’m glad as Sundays that y’all are interested enough in our revolution to write it down. But naturally I want to check what y’all are sayin,’ for accuracy. Y’all can understand that, son.”

  “Does that mean y’all think anybody’s going to actually see it?” I said, handing over the papers. But baiting him had no effect. His face, always bony, looked gaunt and drawn. The skin around the eyes bunched in thick ridges. He hardly glanced at my “histery.”

  “Hail, that’s fine, son. Only y’all need more on Colonel Marion. Inspiration is the heart of action, we always say down here.”

  “I haven’t ever heard any of you say that.”

  “Ummm,” he said, not really listening. He gazed distractedly around the room. Abigail was still laughing brilliantly with her friends, sewing on her everlasting wedding gown; she’d been at it for three solid hours. She was now around seven months pregnant, and the white lace cascaded over the bulge of her belly. Joncey had disappeared. So had Campbell and the doctor. Peg, awake beside me, gazed at Hubbley as if at the sun. Something was happening, something I didn’t understand.

  The shapes in my mind were tight and hard, as closed as the dusky lattice. I was running out of time.

  Bracing my hands on the arms of the wheelchair, I lifted my torso inches off the seat. Then I shifted my weight to the left hand, until the chair — not anywhere as stable as a powerchair — toppled. I fell on top of Peg, who instantly had her hands around my throat, squeezing. I fought with myself not to respond. Every fiber in my arms screamed to slug her, but I kept myself still, eyes wide, choking to death. The room wavered, dimmed. It was eternity before Jimmy Hubbley pulled her off me.

  “There now, Peg, let go, the man ain’t nghtin’, he just fell. . . Peg! Let go!”

  She did, instantly. Air rushed back into my lungs, burning and painful as acid. I gasped and wheezed.

  Hubbley stood restraining Peg, although she topped him by ten inches and was undoubtedly stronger than he. He kept one arm around her waist. With the other he hauled my chair upside down. Spectators had gathered.

  “C’mon, y’all, this ain’t nothin’. Mr. Aden’s chair tipped — see how this metal thing is bent underneath here? Calm down, Peg. Shoot, he ain’t even armed. You hurt, Mr. Arlen, sir?”

  “N-n-no.”

  “Wail, these things happen. Starrett, lift Mr. Arlen into this here chair. Where’s Bobby? There you are. Bobby, this is your department, straighten out this metal so his wheelchair don’t tip again on him. That’s downright dangerous. Now, y’all, it’s gettin’ close to lights out, so just move on to your quarters.”

  I was lifted into a commons chair. Bobby took a power brace from his pocket and straightened the metal strut on the underside of the chair in fifteen seconds. Lacking a power brace, it had taken me half an hour and every ounce of strength I possessed to bend it that afternoon.

  Hubbley took his arm away from Peg, who shivered. He left the room. I picked up my “histery” and let Peg wheel me to bed and lock me in. She was rough, upset at herself for overreacting, wondering if anyone else had seen how desperately she had protected Jimmy Hubbley. She really didn’t know that everyone else saw, and mocked, her hopeless passion. Poor Peg. Stupid Peg. I was counting on her stupidity.

  In my room I humped up the blanket on the pallet, trying to make it look as if I were underneath. This wasn’t easy; the blanket was thin. I left the wheelchair conspicuously empty, to my right, visible as soon as the door was partially open. I positioned myself behind the door, propped against the wall, my useless legs tucked under me.

  How long would it take Peg to undress? Did she go through her pockets? Of course she did. She was a professional. But a stupid professional. And sick with passion.

  Stupid and sick enough? If not, I was as dead as Leisha.

  I was sitting in almost the same position Leisha had when she died. But Leisha had never known what hit her. I would know. The shapes in my mind were taut and swift, silver sharks circling the closed green lattice.

  The note in Peg’s pocket was written with the same pencil as my histery — it might have been the only pencil in the entire bunker — but not on thick pale wrapping paper. It was written on a piece of lace from Abigail’s wedding gown, an oblong discarded oh-so-carelessly along a corridor, an oblong with fewer lacy perforations than normal and so room to scrawl, in a hand as different from my histery as I could make it. Of course, a handwriting expert would know the writing was the same person’s. But Peg was not a handwriting expert. Peg could barely read. Peg was stupid. Peg was sick with passion, and jealousy, and protectiveness for her crazy leader.

  The note said: She is traitor. Plan with me. Arlens room safest. I had written it amidst all the crumpling and tearing and fidgeting of my histery, and it had not been hard to slip it into Peg’s pocket. Not for someone who had once picked the pocket of the governor of New Mexico, Leisha’s guest, because the governor was an important donkey and I was a sullen crippled teenager who had just been kicked out of the third school Leisha’s donkey money had tried to keep me in.

  Leisha…

  The silver sharks moved faster through my mind. Could Peg puzzle out the word “traitor”? Maybe I should have stayed with words of one syllable. Maybe she was more professional than lovesick, or less stupid than jealous. Maybe—

  The lock glowed. The door opened. The second she was inside I slammed her in the face with the wheelchair, swinging it upward with every bit of strength in my augmented arm muscles. She fell back against the door, closing it. She was only stunned a moment, but I only needed a moment. I swung the chair again, this time aiming the arm rest, which I had bent out at an angle, directly into her stomach. If she had been a man I could have gone for her balls. Patiently I’d removed the padding on the armrest and worked the metal back and forth, sweat streaming down my face, until it broke off jagged, and then I replaced the armrest. This had taken days, finding the odd moments when I could plausibly bend over the armrest to hide my work from both the monitors and Peg. It took only seconds for the sharp jagged metal to pierce Peg’s abdomen and impale her.

  She screamed, clutched the metal, and fell to her knees, stopped by the bulk of the chair. But she was strong; in a moment she had the jagged armrest out of her flesh. Blood streamed from her belly over the twisted metal of the chair, but not as much as I’d hoped. She turned toward me, and I knew that in all my concerts, all my work with subconscious shapes in the mind, I’d never created anything as savage as Peg’s face looked that moment.

  But she was on her knees now, on my level. She was strong, and trained, and bigger than I was, but I was augmented, as her philosophy — Hubbley’s philosophy — could never let her be. And I was trained, too. We grappled, and I got both my hands around her neck and squeezed the fingers Leisha had paid to have strengthened. In case I would ever, in my bodily weakness, need them.

  Peg struck at me viciously. Pain exploded in my head, a hot geyser, spraying the dark lattice. I hung on. Pain drowned us both, drowned everything.

  For the third time, the purple lattice disappeared. Then so did everything else.

  Slowly, slowly, I became aware that objects in the room had shapes of their own, shapes outside my head. They were solid, and sharp-edged, and real. My body had shapes: legs crumpled under me, my head lying on top of the metal wheelchair, my balls screaming with hurt. My hands had shape. They clenched, locked into shape, around Peg’s neck. Her face was purple, the tongue poking out swollen between her lips. She was dead.

  It hurt to unclench my hands. />
  I looked at her. I had never killed anybody before. I looked at every inch of her. The note scrawled on lace was locked in her rigid fingers.

  As quickly as I could I righted the wheelchair, stuck the padding back on the jagged armrest, and hauled my hurting body into it. Peg had a gun in her jacks; I took that. I didn’t know how sophisticated the room’s surveillance program was. Peg was presumably allowed to enter at will. Could the surveillance program interpret what it recorded, making judgment calls about sounding an alarm? Or did someone have to be actively watching? Was someone actively watching?

  Francis Marion, Hubbley had told me, was meticulous about pickets and sentries.

  I opened the door and wheeled myself into the corridor. The wheels left a thin line of blood on the perfect nanobuilt floor. There was nothing I could do about it.

  I had watched, through all the wheeled trips around the bunker, who went in and out of which doors. I had listened, trying to figure out who were the most trusted lieutenants, who seemed smart enough for computer work. I had guessed which doors might have terminals behind them.

  Nobody had come for me. It had been five minutes since I left my room. Eight. Ten. No alarms had sounded. Something was wrong.

  I came to a door I hoped held a terminal; it was of course locked. I spoke the override tricks Jonathan and Miranda had taught me, the tricks I didn’t understand, and the lock glowed. I opened the door.

  It was a storage room, full of more small metal canisters, stacked to the ceiling. None of the canisters were labeled. There were no terminals.

  Footsteps ran down the hall. Quickly I closed the door from the inside. The footsteps ceased; the room was sound shielded. I opened the door again a few inches. Now people were shouting farther down the corridor.

  “Goddamn it, where is he, him? Goddamn it to hell!” Campbell, whom I had never heard even speak. They were looking for me. But the surveillance program should show clearly where I was…

  Another voice, a woman’s, low and deadly, said, “Try Abby’s room.”

  “Abby! Fuck, she’s in on it! Her and Joncey! They already got the terminal room—”