A Different Flesh (35 page)

“Sims were here,” the plump man shrugged. “We used them to do the work we didn't care to do for ourselves. We still do. Why not?”

The man's question grated on Dixon all over again, but he thought before he answered; the fellow was not a fool. “In the old days we needed them, I admit. I'm not saying what we did then was right—far from it—but it was understandable. It isn't anymore, not with machines to do sim-work, and do it better, faster, and cheaper than sims ever did.”

“You'd send them all to the preserves, then?”

“That would be the ideal solution,” Dixon said cautiously. Most of the people marching with him would have given the plump man a
yes
at once. Three big tracts of land—together they were as large as a fair-sized commonwealth—one in the Rockies, one on the plains, and one in the northwest woods, gave wild sims and their way of life a last stronghold in the FCA.

Trouble was, even a small band of wild sims needed a large territory on which to forage. There wasn't enough land to accommodate the subhumans who now lived in civilized country, even assuming they wanted to trade their lives for ones like those of their ancestors.

“And in this not-so-ideal world?” the plump man asked, his raised eyebrow telling Dixon he knew all the objections that had popped into the demonstrator's mind.

“As much freedom as they can handle,” Dixon said. He jerked his chin at the Hall of the Popular Assembly. “At least freedom from being made into lab animals just because they're too much like us.”

That eyebrow, damn it, climbed higher. “‘As much freedom as they can handle,'” the plump man echoed. “I can't imagine a more dangerous gift, for either the sims or the people who give it to them.” His eyes followed Dixon's stubborn chin to the portico of the Hall. Someone was handing the greencoat chief a rolled-up piece of paper. The fellow resumed, “I would say, for example, that our esteemed constabulary has just been granted all the freedom it can handle.”

“Yes,” Dixon said unhappily. He knew a writ when he saw one. Somebody on the committee had fouled up; the legal side was supposed to keep the greencoats off people's backs until the protest broke up by itself.

He turned to say that to the man who'd been walking with him. The fellow wasn't there anymore. Dixon spotted him walking purposefully down the street in the direction he'd been going before he fell in with the demonstration. From the plump man's perspective, that made good sense. Dixon was tempted to disappear himself.

The greencoat chief put a hailer to his mouth. The static that belched from it as he turned it on made everybody look his way who hadn't already. One of his assistants ceremoniously unrolled the writ.

“Uh-oh, trouble,” Melody Porter said from in front of Dixon. They'd been in a lot of the same classes at the Philadelphia Collegium since they were both freshmen—almost four years now, he thought, bemused. They'd been in a lot of demonstrations together, too. Melody was even more strongly committed to justice for sims than he was. She came by it honestly; she was the great-great-granddaughter of Henry Quick, the trapper who'd really founded the sim justice movement.

In an altogether different vein, Dixon thought marching behind her was one of the things that made protests worthwhile.

After a few more seconds of fumbling, the boss greencoat finally got the hailer working. His aide handed him the legal paper.
“Pro bono publico,”
he intoned, his amplified voice filling the square with formality. Dixon wondered how many horrors had been perpetrated “for the public good.”

“Pro bono publico,”
the greencoat repeated for the sake of the record and for the benefit of everyone this side of complete nerve-dead deafness. Then he got down to business: “A court has declared this rally a danger to public order. Those who do not disperse in the next five minutes will be liable to arrest.”

The blunt demand jerked the protesters out of their chant. People shouted back at the greencoat: “We're peaceable! Why aren't you?” “Can't stand to hear the truth, eh?” And a cry that started a new chant: “Justice for sims, and for people tool” Even so, Dixon noticed that the marchers' picket signs, which had been steady, began to jerk as if pelted by hailstones. People were having second thoughts. Few were leaving, though.

The officer with the hailer knew his job. He kept the pressure on, loudly announcing each minute as it went by. The greencoats shook themselves out into a skirmish line.

“Time's up,” the chief announced. The line moved forward. Dixon took off his spectacles and stuck them in the hip pocket of his breeches. Sometimes these affairs stayed polite, sometimes they didn't. The world turned blurry.

A greencoat emerged out of the blur. He was carrying a club. His voice conversational, matter-of-fact, he asked Dixon, “You going to take off, kid?”

Before he answered, he heard Melody loudly say “No” to what had to be the same question. That killed the few shreds of hesitation he had left. “No,” he said, trying to sound as firm as Melody had.

The greencoat only shrugged. “I arrest you, then, for constituting a danger to public order.” Formal language done, he went on, “Come along quietly?”

“Sure.”

“All right, then. Put down your sign—you won't get an extra trash-strewing charge on account of it.” Dixon did. He put his spectacles back on. The greencoat waited till he was done, then gave him a light shove. “Over that way. Come on.” He sounded more bored than anything else, Dixon thought, a little resentfully. Justice for sims was too important to be handled as part of someone's routine.

Even with his spectacles, Dixon did not see what went wrong. Maybe a protester whacked a greencoat with a picket sign. Maybe a greencoat thought one was going to, and swung first. Maybe a greencoat swung first for the hell of it.

However it happened, it happened fast. What had been a civil process turned ugly all at once. Demonstrators swung at greencoats, and pushed them away when they tried to arrest them. Like the genie in the legend, once violence was out of the bottle, it did not want to go back in.

The greencoat who was urging Ken Dixon along suddenly pushed him in the back, hard. He went down to his knees. His carefully replaced spectacles flew off his nose. He heard a crunch as a greencoat running toward the brewing fight smashed them with his boot.

Melody screamed as she got the same treatment he just had. “Leave her alone!” he shouted. He tried to get to his feet to go help her.

A club exploded against the side of his head. He went down. He tried to get up again, but his legs didn't want to do what he told them. He had made it to all fours when a greencoat landed on him, knocking him down again.

“You're not going anywhere!” the greencoat bawled in his ear. It was
his
greencoat; he recognized the voice. He was irrationally pleased he was able to recognize anything.

The greencoat yanked his arms out from under him. His chin hit the pavement. The greencoat jerked his arms behind his back, clapped manacles on his wrists. He had thought the roaring pain in his head left him immune to other hurts. The bite of the manacles' metal teeth convinced him otherwise in a hurry.

“
Now
come on, you stinking sim-lover!” the greencoat shouted. He hauled Dixon to his feet, frog-marching him toward a constabulary motorcoach. Two more greencoats were waiting at the steps. They grabbed him, flung him inside.

He almost fell over somebody inside the motorcoach. A moment later, somebody almost fell over him. Crawling with his hands locked behind him was almost impossible. Because he had to, he managed to lurch his way up onto one of the motorcoach's hard, comfortless seats.

“Are you all right, Ken?” He hadn't even seen Melody on the seat in front of him. Concern in her voice, she went on, “You're bleeding.”

“I suppose so,” he said vaguely; he felt something warm and wet trickling down his cheek and jaw. He leaned his head against the bar-reinforced glass of the window. Then he looked at Melody again. Above one ear, blood matted her short, sandy hair. “So are you.”

“I know.” Despite the blow she'd taken, she still had her wits about her, and she was furious. “The bastard groped me, too, when he was wrestling with me to get the manacles on. I clawed him pretty good, I think, before he finally managed to.”

“Good for you.” Dixon leaned against the window again; talking and thinking hurt. Someone sat down beside him. He hardly noticed. He was watching the greencoats finish off the demonstration. Protesters outnumbered constables, but the contest was never in doubt. The demonstrators hesitated before they fought, and when they did it was by ones and twos. The greencoats did not hesitate at all, and worked together. A few demonstrators managed to flee; most were seized and hauled off to the motorcoaches.

“Maybe it's for the best,” Melody said. “This way our side of the message is sure to reach the television news tonight, along with Dr. Howard's rationalizations.”

“Maybe,” was all Dixon could manage. After a while, the greencoats slammed the motorcoach's doors shut. Its engine roared to life. It rattled through the streets of Philadelphia, toward the lockup.

The two sims separated. Matt lay back on the bed. The female—it was the one called Jane, Dr. Howard saw when she turned her face toward the monitor camera—stayed on hands and knees beside him. After a surprisingly short time, Matt's vigor returned. He got behind her and fell to again.

“Don't they ever quit?” a technician asked, pointing at the screen. A whole bank of monitors let the investigators at the Disease Research Center watch the sims they studied without disturbing them.

“What else do they have to do?” Howard asked. “They aren't likely to sit around reading books, you know.”

The technician laughed, but persisted. “This is the third time they've been at it today, and it's only”—he glanced at his pocket watch—“a little past two.”

Howard shrugged. “Weren't you ever a randy eighteen-year-old? That's what Matt is, or the equivalent. Sims age a little faster than we do, so he's probably about at his peak now at fourteen. And up until not so long ago he was deathly ill, so I dare say he's making up for lost time too.”

“Well, maybe,” the technician said. Howard walked down the row of television screens to check on some of the other sims at the DRC. The technician muttered under his breath, “No way I could have gone that hard, even when I was eighteen, especially if my girl was that ugly.”

Howard knew he was not supposed to hear, but turned back anyway. “Jane looks as good to Matt as the lead in
Vixens in Love
does to you.”

“That's
his
problem,” the technician retorted. Howard knew he had a picture of that particular blonde taped above his desk.

“I'm glad he has the urge back,” the doctor said. “It shows the effectiveness of the HIVI in returning him to good health.”

“Almost,” the technician reminded him. “What I'm glad of is that Jane already carries the AIDS virus too, because no matter how good Matt feels, he's still got the virus in him and he can still spread it, right?”

“Yes,” Howard said reluctantly. “That's the main draw-back to HIVI at the moment: it can let carriers go on transmitting AIDS, giving it to people who will pass it on in turn.”

“In some ways, you know, that strikes me as worse than no cure at all,” the technician said.

Howard wished the man would shut up and let him go away. He was putting his finger on just the problem that most worried the doctor. Luckily, it had not occurred to any of the reporters in Philadelphia, or a triumphant news conference might have turned embarrassing in a hurry.

Being who he was, though, Howard could not simply shove the comment aside. He paused to pick his words with care. “It depends. As far as checking the epidemic goes, I suppose you're right. But if my blood test had just come back positive, I'd scream bloody murder if somebody said I couldn't have HIVI.”

“I can't argue with you there,” the technician admitted, and the doctor took advantage of the moment of agreement to leave.

A fresh batch of calc printouts was on his desk: analyses of the effectiveness of a variant of HIVI at restoring the immune system and protecting T-cells. The variant wasn't as good as the basic drug. Howard made a note to assign writing up the new datum to somebody so it could get into print. Negative information was information too—now some other lab would not have to waste time checking this new subtype.

It wouldn't be the sort of publication a news conference accompanied, though.

Howard put his head in his hands. He wished he'd never called the bloody conference in the first place. That was exactly the word for it: dozens of people had been hurt in what turned into a riot outside the Hall of the Popular Assembly. Censor Bryan had called for an investigation of the way the constabulary handled it, and Censor Jennings had promptly vetoed the call. It was the worst falling-out the two chief executives had had in their term.

Howard did not care about that; politics meant nothing to him. He cared very much about hurt people, though. Had he known the protest outside would cause so many of them, he never would have gone to Philadelphia.

He sat up straight. No, that wasn't true. AIDS hurt more people than riots ever would. The only way to fight it was with research. Research took denaires, lots of them, and the best way to latch on to them was by shouting every piece of progress, even one as ambiguous as HIVI, to the housetops.

The intercom buzzed. He jumped, and was glad no one was with him to see it. “Mr. Tanaka is here to see you, sir,” his secretary said.

“Oh, yes, of course. Thank you, Doris. Send him in.” Howard ran fingers through his thick brown hair. Joseph Tanaka had no official standing, but he had been friends with Censor Jennings since they were at middle school together. “Jennings's eyes,” the papers called him these days.