Beggars and Choosers (22 page)

Hubbley squinted at me. He rubbed the lump on the side of his neck.
“Y’all never heard of Francis Marion, Mr. Arlen? Really? An educated
man like you? He was a hero, maybe the biggest hero this here country
ever had. Y’all really never heard of him, sir?”

I shook my head. It didn’t hurt. I realized then that my leg had
been set. I was on painkillers. A doctor must have seen me, or at least
a medunit.

“Now I don’t want to make y’all feel bad,” Hubbley said earnestly.
His long bony face radiated regret. “Y’all’s our guest, and it ain’t
right to make a guest feel bad about his ignorance. Especially
ignorance he cain’t help. It’s the school system, a sorry disgrace for
a democracy, that’s entirely to blame here.
Entirely
. So
don’t you fret, sir, about ignorance that just ain’t your fault.”

He had killed Leisha. He had killed the GSEA agents. He had
kidnapped me. And he sat there concerned about my feeling bad over not
knowing who Francis Marion was.

For the first time, I realized I might be dealing with a madman.

“Francis Marion was a great hero of the American Revolution, son.
The enemy called him the ‘Swamp Fox.” He’d hide in the swamps of South
Carolina and Georgia and just swoop down on them British, hit ’em when
they was least expectin‘ it, and then melt back into the swamp.
Couldn’t never catch him. He was fightin’ for freedom and justice, and
he was usin‘ nature to help him. Not hinder.“

I had his speech now.

Once Leisha and I had spent a whole night watching ancient movies
about a civil rights movement. Not civil rights for Sleepless but a
movement before that—a hundred years earlier?—about blacks or women. Or
maybe Asians. I was never too good at history. But I had to do a paper
for one of the schools Leisha kept trying to get me through. I don’t
remember the history, but I remember that Leisha searched for old
movies adapted for decent technology because she thought I wouldn’t
read through the assigned books. She was right, and I resented that. I
was sixteen years old. But I liked the movies. I sat in my powerchair,
pleased because it was 3:00 A.M. and I wasn’t sleepy, I was keeping up
with Leisha. I still thought, at sixteen, that I could.

All night we watched sheriffs in groundcars busting up places where
voters registered in person—this was even before computers. We watched
old women sit at the backs of buses. We watched black Livers denied
seats in cafes, even though they had meal chips. They all talked like
James Francis Marion Hubbley. Or, rather, he talked like them. His
speech was a deliberate creation, a reenactment of an earlier time:
history as far back as it was electronically available. Maybe he
thought they talked like that in the American Revolution. Maybe he knew
better. Either way, it was disciplined and deliberate.

He was an artist.

Hubbley said, “Marion was puny, and none too firm in his education,
and bad-tempered, and given to black moods. His knees were made wrong,
right from the day his mother bore him. The British burned his
plantation, his men deserted him whenever they got a hankerin‘ after
their families, and his own commanding officer, Major General Nathanael
Greene, wasn’t none too fond of him. But none of that slowed down
Francis Marion. He did his duty by his country, his duty as he saw it,
whether all hail busted out or not.”

I said, forcing the words out, “And what are you imagining is
your
duty by your country?”

Hubbley’s eyes gleamed. “I said y’all was sharp, son, and you are.
Y’all got it right off. We’re doin‘ our same duty as the Swamp Fox,
which is to fight off foreign oppressors.”

“And this time the foreign oppressors are anybody genemod.”

“Y’all got that right, Mr. Arlen. Livers are the true people of this
country, just like Marion’s army was. They had the will to decide for
themselves what kind of country they wanted to live in, and we got the
will to decide for ourselves, too. We got the will, and we got the idea
of what this glorious nation ought to look like, even if it don’t look
like it right now. We. Livers. And y’all don’t believe it, hail, just
look at the mess the donkeys made of this great country. Debt to
foreign nations, entanglin‘ alliances that sap us dry, the
infrastructure crumblin’ in our faces, the technology misused. Just
like the British misused the cannons and guns of their day.”

My hip began to throb, distantly. The painkiller wasn’t quite strong
enough. I had heard all this before. It was nothing more than
anti-research hatred, dressed up as patriotism. They had gotten Leisha
after all, the haters. I couldn’t stand to look at Hubbley, and I
turned my head away.

“Course,” he said, “you cain’t stop genetic engineering. And nobody
should stop it. We sure aren’t, or we wouldn’t have let go this here
duragem dissembler.”

I turned my head slowly to stare at him. He grinned. His pale blue
eyes gleamed in his sunburned face.

“Don’t look like that, son. I don’t mean me personally, Jimmy
Hubbley. Or even this brigade. But y’all didn’t think this duragem
dissembler got loose by accident, did you?”

That’s when I noticed the walls, nanotech perfect. And I saw again
Miri’s printouts, unable to pinpoint a single source for the dissembler
leak.

Hubbley said, serious again, “There’s a lot of us. Y’all need a lot
of people to make a revolution. We got the will to decide what kind of
country we want to live in, and we got the idea. The technology.”

I choked out, “What technology?”

“All of it. Well, maybe not all. But a lot. Some nonorganic nano,
some low-level organic nano.”

“The duragem dissembler… How did you…”

“Now, y’all will learn that in good time. For today, just know that
we did. And it’s going to bring down the false government, same as the
Revolution brought down the British. We capture the technology we need,
like Marion captured guns right from the enemy. Why, in 1781, right on
the Santee River—”

“But you killed the GSEA agents—”

“Genemod,” Hubbley said briefly. “Abominations against nature. Hail,
using nanotech to fight the good fight—that ain’t no different than
using the cannon of General Marion’s time. But to use it on human
beings—that’s a whole different war, son. That ain’t right. People
ain’t things, and shouldn’t be treated like things, with their parts
altered and retrofitted and realigned. They ain’t vehicles, nor
factories, nor robots. The donkeys done been treating people like
things way too long in this country. Liver people.”

“But you can’t just allow organic genetic engineering on
microorganisms and expect that it won’t happen on people, too. If you
allow one—”

“Hail, no.” Hubbley stood and flexed his legs. “It ain’t the same
thing at all. It’s all right to kill germs, ain’t it? Even to kill
animals to eat? But it ain’t all right to kill human beings. We make
that distinction just fine in our laws about killin‘, don’t we? What in
hail thinks we cain’t make them in our laws about genemod engineering?”

I said, before I knew I was going to, “You can’t hide from the GSEA!”

Hubbley gazed at me mildly from those watery blue eyes. “Huevos
Verdes does, don’t it?”

“That’s different. They’re Supers—”

“They ain’t gods. Or even angels.” He stretched his back. “Fact is,
Mr. Arlen, we been hidin‘ from the GSEA for nearly five years now. Oh,
not all of us. The enemy has killed quite a few good soldiers so far.
And we inflicted our casualties, too. But we’re still here. And the
duragem dissembler’s out there bringin’ the whole war to a hastier
conclusion.”

“But you can’t hide from Huevos Verdes!”

“Well, that’s tougher to call. But the fact is, I suspect we’re not.
I suspect Huevos Verdes knows a whole lot more about us than the GSEA.
Stands to reason.”

Miranda had never said. Not to me. Jonathan had never said, nor
Christy, nor Nikos. Not to me. Not to me.

“Up till now, we ain’t been strong enough to take on Huevos Verdes
as well, so it’s been a good thing they’ve kind of ignored us. But it’s
all different now. Not even Huevos Verdes can stop the way this
government’s losing control, now that the duragem dissembler is beyond
stopping.”

“But—”

That’s enough for now,“ Hubbley said, not unkindly. ”We got to get
movin‘ now. Those agents’ deaths’ll cause all hail to bust loose. The
company ought to be just about ready to go, and y’all are goin’ with
us. But don’t y’all worry none, Mr. Arlen—they’ll be plenty of time for
you and me to talk. I know all this is new to you, because y’all
did
have a faulty education. And y’all been spendin‘ time with Sleepless,
who ain’t even human no more. But y’all will learn better. Cain’t help
it, once you see the real war up close. And we owe you that. You been a
real help to us.“.

I only stared at him. A sickening flood of shapes swept to the edge
of my mind, a wave poised to flow over me, swamp me.

“I’ve been—”

“Well, of course,” Hubbley said, in what felt like genuine
astonishment. “Didn’t you already guess that? Your last concert, ”The
Warrior,“ has been leavin‘ people feelin’ far more independent and
ready to fight with will and idea. Y’all done that, Mr. Arlen. It
probably warn’t what y’all intended, but that’s what’s been happenin‘.
Since y’all began giving The Warrior,” our recruitment’s up three
hundred percent.“

I couldn’t speak. A door opened and Campbell loomed over me.

“Hail,” Hubbley said, “two months ago we even got a cell of genemod
scientists who joined us voluntarily, without no torture or nothing.
You been making all the difference in the world, son.

“And now, we really got to move out. Campbell will carry you. If
that hip starts to hurtin‘ too much, y’all be sure to holler. We got
more painkillers, and where we’re going, there’s a doctor. We sure
don’t want you to suffer, not with all the help you been givin’ us, Mr.
Arlen, sir. You been on the right side. It just takes some folk a
little longer than others to know it.

“Handle him careful, Campbell… there. Here we go.”

==========

Campbell carried me across the swamp for about two hours, as near as
I could tell. It’s hard to be certain about the time because I kept
blacking out. He had slung me over his shoulder like a sack of soy, but
I could tell he was trying to be gentle. It didn’t help. We walked
single file, about ten of us, led by Jimmy Hubbley. Hubbley knew the
swamps. His people sometimes walked on narrow ridges of semi-firm land
with mucky pools on either side, the kind of quicksand that as a child
I had seen swallow a man in less than three minutes. Other times we
sloshed through brackish water alive with turtles and snakes. Everybody
wore hip-high waders. They kept close to dense tangles of vines, under
gray moss dripping from trees. That wouldn’t make any difference, of
course, as soon as the GSEA brought in a tracking ‘bot, which does ten
times better than the best hound at picking up pheromones, not only
following their trail but analyzing their content. I expected to be
back with the GSEA in two hours.

Then I saw that the last person in line was the woman, Abigail, who
had blown up the rescue plane with a rocket launcher. She had left that
at the outstation. Instead she carried a curved, dull-colored machine
like a metal bow, holding it above her head, parallel to the ground. I
knew what it was: a Harrison Pheromone Obliterator. It released
molecules that homed in on any molecular traces of humans and
neutralized them. It was classified military equipment, which I
happened to know about only through Huevos Verdes, and there was no way
the Francis Marion Freedom Outpost could have one. But they did.

For the first time, I began to believe Jimmy Hubbley that his
movement was not made up of isolated fanatics.

Abigail was pregnant. With her arms raised above her head, I could
clearly see the curve of her belly under her jacks, maybe five months
along. As she walked she hummed to herself, a happy tuneless little
song. Her thoughts looked miles and landscapes away.

The swamp got thicker and hotter. Branches scratched my face where I
hung, helpless, over Campbell’s shoulder. Snakes as thick as a man’s
wrist slithered into shallow pools. A log heaved up, slid beneath black
water, and disappeared in a row of hissing bubbles. Alligator.

I closed my eyes. The humid air was thick with the waxy-white scent
of ghost orchids, growing on the trunks of pop-ash trees. They weren’t
parasites. They lived on air.

Insects sang and stung, a constant cloud.

“Well, here we are,” Jimmy Hubbley said. “Mr. Arlen, sir, how are
y’all faring?”

I didn’t answer. Every time I looked at him, my mind filled with the
shapes of hatred, cold and rotating like knives. Leisha was dead. Jimmy
Hubbley had killed Leisha Camden. She was dead. I was going to destroy
him.

He didn’t seem to care that I didn’t answer. We had halted under an
enormous bay tree hung with gray moss. Other trees crowded close. An
ancient fallen cypress had half crumbled into pulp, covered with the
sucking tendrils of a strangler fig. In the murky half-light I saw a
striped lizard scuttle down a vine. On the other side of the bay tree
was a dark-green expanse of moss, soft and even as an enclave lawn. The
place smelled heavily of jungle rot.

“Now, son, this next part might look a little disconcertin‘ to
y’all. It’s real important that y’all remember you’re in no danger.
That, and to take a real deep breath, close your mouth, and hold your
nose. And I’ll tell you what—I’ll go first, just to reassure y’all. In
the ordinary way, Abby would go first, but this time I will. At least
in part out of deference to the bride.”

He grinned at Abigail, flashing his broken teeth. She smiled back
and lowered her eyes, but a minute later I caught her shoot a hooded
glance at one of the other men, hard and meaningful as a grenade. Jimmy
Hubbley didn’t see it. He gave a rebel yell and jumped into the expanse
of moss.