Beggars and Choosers (12 page)

“Go get help, Mr. Washington. Your friend needs it.” She stopped,
her. “And please tell the townspeople… as little as you feel you can.”

“But, ma’am—”

“Uuuhhhmmmm,” Doug moaned, not like he was in pain, him, but like he
was dreaming.

I stumbled back to East Oleanta as fast as I could, me, puffing
until I thought we’d have two heart attacks for the medunit. Just
beyond the scooter track I met Jack Sawicki and Krystal Mandor, hot and
sweaty, them, straggling back to town. I told them, me, about old man
Kane’s collapse. They had to make me start over twice. Jack set off,
him, by the sun—he’s maybe the only other good woodsman East Oleanta’s
got. Krystal ran, her, for the med-unit and more help. I sat down, me,
to catch my breath. The sun was hot and blinding on the open field, the
lake sparkled down past town, and I couldn’t find no balance no place
in my mind.

Maybe I never did. Nothing ever looked the same to me after that day.

The medunit found Doug Kane easy enough, skimming above the brush on
its gravsensors, smelling me and Doug’s trail in the air. Four men
followed, them, and they carried Kane home. He breathed easy. That
night near everybody else in town gathered, us, in the cafe. There was
dancing and accusing and yelling and a party. Nobody had shot no
raccoons, but Eddie Rollins shot a deer and Ben Radisson shot Paulie
Cenverno. Paulie wasn’t hurt bad, him, just a graze on the arm, and the
medunit fixed him right up. I went to see Doug Kane, me.

He didn’t remember no girl in the woods. I asked him, me, while he
lay on his plastisynth sleeping platform, propped up on extra pillows
and covered with an embroidered blanket like the one Annie made for her
sofa. Doug loved the attention, him. I asked him, me, real careful, not
exactly saying there was a girl in the woods, just hinting around the
edges of what happened. But he didn’t remember nothing, him, after he
collapsed, and nobody who went to bring him home mentioned finding any
raccoon in a hard shell.

She must of just picked up the whole shell, her, safe as houses, and
just walked off with it.

The only person I told, me, was Annie, and I made sure
Lizzie
was nowhere near. Annie didn’t believe me, her. Not at first. Then she
did, but only because she remembered the big-headed girl in green jacks
in the cafe two nights before. This girl had a big head too, her, and
somehow to Annie that meant all the rest of my story was true. I told
Annie not to say nothing to nobody. And she never did, not even to me.
Said it gave her the willies, her, to think of some weird outcast
donkeys living in the woods with genemod machinery and calling it Eden.
Blasphemous, almost. Eden was in the Bible and no place else. Annie
didn’t want to think about it, her.

But I thought about it, me. A lot. It got so for a while I couldn’t
hardly think about nothing else. Then I got a grip on myself, me, and
went back to normal living. But the big-headed girl was still in my
thoughts.

We didn’t have no more trouble that whole summer and fall with rabid
raccoons. They all just disappeared, them, for good.

But machines kept breaking.

II

AUGUST 2114

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time
is the greatest innovator. —
Francis Bacon,
Of Innovations

DIANA COVINGTON: WASHINGTON

The first person I saw at Science Court, walking up the broad
shallow white stone steps that were supposed to evoke Socrates and
Aristotle, was Leisha Camden.

Paul, who came before Anthony and after Rex, and I used to enjoy
intellectual arguments. He enjoyed them because he won; I enjoyed them
because he won. This was, of course, before I understood how deeply
rooted, like a cancer, was my desire to lose. At the time the arguments
seemed amusing, even daring. The people Paul and I knew considered it
rather bad form to debate abstract questions. We donkeys, with our
genemod intelligence, were all so good at it—like showing off the fact
that you could walk. No one wished to appear ridiculous.
Much
better to publicly enjoy body surfing. Or gardening. Or even, God help
us, sensory deprivation tanks. Much better.

But one night Paul and I, daring nonconformists right up to our
banal end, debated who should have the right to control radical new
technology. The government? The technocrats, mostly scientists and
engineers, who were the only ones who ever really understood it? The
free market? The people? It was not a good night. Paul wanted to win
more than usual. I, for reasons connected to a gold-eyed slut at a
party the night before, was not quite as eager as usual to lose. Things
got said, the kinds of embarrassing things that don’t go away. Tempers
ran high. My paternal grandfather’s teak desk required a new panel,
which never quite matched the others. Intellectual debate can be very
hard on furniture.

In a subtle way, I blame the Sleepless for Paul’s and my breakup.
Not directly, but a
desastre inoffensif
, like the final small
program that crashes an overloaded system. But, then, for the last
hundred years, what haven’t we blamed on the Sleepless?

They even caused the creation of the science courts: another
desastre
inoffensif
. A hundred years ago, nobody ever made a decision that
is was acceptable to engineer human embryos to be Sleepless. Genemod
companies just did it, the way they did all those other embryonic
genemods in the unregulated days before the GSEA. You want a kid who’s
seven feet tall, has purple hair, and is encoded with a predisposition
for musical ability? Here— you got yourself a basketball-playing punk
cellist. Mazel tov.

Then came the Sleepless. Rational, awake, smart. Too smart. And
long-lived, a bonus surprise—nobody knew at first that sleep interfered
with cell regeneration. Nobody liked it when they found out. Too many
Darwinian advantages piling up in one corner.

So, this being the United States and not some sixteenth-century
monarchy or twentieth-century totalitarian state, the government just
didn’t outlaw radical genetic modifications outright. Instead, they
talked them to death.

The Federal Forum for Science and Technology follows due process. A
jury composed of a panel of scientists, arguments and rebuttals,
cross-examination, final written opinion with provision for dissenting
opinions, the whole ROM. Science Court has no power. It can only
recommend, not make policy. Nobody on it can tell anybody to do or not
do anything about any thing.

But no Congress, president, or GSEA board has ever acted contrary to
a Science Court recommendation. Not once. Not ever.

So I had all the
force majeure
of the status quo on my
side that furniture-wrecking night when I declared that the government
should control human genetic modification. Paul wanted absolute control
by scientists (he was one). We both were right, as far as actual
practice. But of course practice didn’t matter; neither did theory,
really. What we’d really wanted was the fight.

Did Leisha Camden ever wreck furniture or put her fist through walls
or hurl antique wineglasses? Watching her walk into the white-columned
Forum building on Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought not. Washington in
August is hot; Leisha wore a sleeveless white suit. Her bright blonde
hair was cut in short, shining waves. She looked composed, beautiful,
cool. She reminded me, probably unfairly, of Stephanie Brunell. All
that was missing was the pink huge-eyed, doomed little dog.

==========

“Oyez, oyez,” the clerk called, as the technical panel filed in. And
then they get huffy when the press calls it “science court.” Washington
is Washington, even when it’s rising to its feet for Nobel laureates.

There were three of them this time, on an eight-person panel: heavy
artillery. Barbara Poluikis, chemical biology, a diminutive woman with
hyperalert eyes. Elias Maleck, medicine, who radiated worried
integrity. Martin Davis Exford, molecular physics, looking more like an
overage ballet dancer. Nobody, of course, in genetics. The United
States hasn’t won there in sixty years. The panelists had been agreed
to by the advocates for both sides. Panelists were presumed to be
impartial.

I sat in the press section, courtesy of credentials from Colin
Kowalski, credentials so badly faked that anybody who checked them
would have to conclude they’d been faked by me, the person
incapacitated by Gravison’s disease, and not by some competent agency.
There was a lot of press, live and robotic. Science Court goes out on
various donkey grids.

After the panel sat down, I stayed standing—very gauche— to scan the
spectators for Livers. There might have been one or two in the gallery;
the room was so big it was hard to tell. “Please sit down,” my seat
said to me in a reasonable voice, “others may have trouble seeing over
you.” That I could believe. In my bright purple jacks and
soda-can-and-plastic jewelry I was one of a kind in the press box.

In the front of the chamber, behind a low antique-wood railing and
an invisible high-security Y-shield, sat the advocates, expert
testimony, panel, and VIPs. Leisha Camden sat next to amateur advocate
Miranda Sharifi, who had suddenly appeared in Washington from
God-knows-where. Not from Huevos Verdes. For days the press had been
watching the island with the avidity of moonbase residents monitoring
dome leaks. So from what geographical forehead had Miranda Sharifi
sprung, helmeted to do battle for her corporation’s product?

She had refused a professional lawyer to argue her case. She’d even
refused Leisha Camden, which had caused much snickering in the press
bar. Apparently they felt a SuperSleepless was inadequate to
convincingly present the technology her own people had invented. I
never ceased to be amazed at the stupidity of my fellow IQ-enhanced
donkeys.

I studied Miranda carefully. Short, big-headed, low of brow. Thick
unruly black hair tied back with a red ribbon. Despite the severe,
expensive black suit, she looked like neither a Liver nor a donkey. I
saw her furtively wipe the palms of her hands on her skirt; they must
be damp. I’d seen pictures of the notorious Jennifer Sharifi, and
Miranda had inherited none of her grandmother’s coolness, height, or
beauty. I wondered if she minded.

“We’re here today,” began moderator Dr. Senta Yongers, a
grandmotherly type with the perfect teeth of a grid star, “to determine
the facts concerning Case 1892-A. I would like to remind everyone in
this chamber that the purpose of this inquiry is threefold. First, to
identify agreed-upon facts concerning this scientific claim, including
but not limited to its nature, actions, and replicable physical effects.

“Second, to allow disagreements about this scientific claim to be
discussed, debated, and recorded for later study.

“And third, to fulfill a joint request from the Congressional
Committee on New Technology, the Federal Drug Administration, and the
Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency to create a recommendation for the
further study, for the licensing within the United States, or for the
denial of Case 1892-A, which has already been awarded patent status.
Further study, I may remind you, allows the patent’s developers to
solicit volunteers for beta testing of the patent. Licensing is
virtually equivalent to federal permission to market.” Yongers looked
around the chamber gravely over the tops of her glasses—a currently
fashionable affectation for donkeys with perfect vision—to emphasize
the seriousness of this possibility. This is important, folks—you could
get Case 1892-A dumped square in your laps. As if anybody here didn’t
already realize that.

I looked back at Miranda Sharifi, holding a thick printout bound in
black covers. It was clear to me that the Sleepless are a different
species from donkeys and Livers. I mention this only because of the
large number of people to whom it is, inexplicably, not clear. Miranda
undoubtedly understood everything in that stupendously complex
printout, which was, after all, in her own field, and at least partly
of her own devising. But she probably also understood everything
important in my field (all my purported fields, pathetic kitchen
gardens that they were). Plus everything important in art history, in
law, in early-childhood education, in international economics, in
paleolithic anthropology. To me, that added up to a different species.
Donkeys have brains fully adapted to their needs, but then so did the
stegosaurus. I was looking at a multi-adapted mammal.

Feeling spiny, I watched a grid journalist in front of me flick a
finger to direct his robocam to zoom in on the legend carved across the
chamber’s impressive dome: THE PEOPLE MUST CONTROL SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY. A nice journalistic touch, that. I approve of irony.

“The chief advocate for Case 1892-A,” continued Moderator Yongers,
“is Miranda Sharifi, of Huevos Verdes Corporation, the patent holders.
Chief opposition is Dr. Lee Chang, GSEA Senior Geneticist and holder of
the Geoffrey Sprague Morling Chair in Genetics at Johns Hopkins. The
following stipulations have already been agreed to by both sides—for
details please consult the furnished hard copy, the master screen at
the front of the chamber, or channel 1640FORURM on Govnet.”

The “furnished hard copy” was four hundred pages of cell diagrams,
equations, genenome tables, and chemical processes, all with numerous
journal citations. But in front was a one-page list somebody had
prepared for the press. I would bet my purple jacks that its
simplifications had been paid for in hours of screaming by technical
experts who didn’t want their precious facts distorted just so they
could be understood. But here the simplified distortions were, ready
for the newsgrids. Washington is Washington.