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Authors: Nancy Kress

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Beggars and Choosers (28 page)

BOOK: Beggars and Choosers
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She didn’t say nothing, her. Annie snorted. Lizzie put down her
terminal and edged in close to watch.

Annie said, “How we going to cook it, Billy? The Y-unit don’t get
hot enough for that.”

“I’ll cook it. Tonight, by the river. I can make an almost smokeless
fire, me. And I’ll roast the violet bulbs in the coals.” It made me
feel good to see how Annie looked at me then.

Lizzie said, “But if you—where are you going, Vicki?”

“To the cafe.”

I looked up. Blood smeared my hands. It felt good. “Why you going
there, Doctor? It ain’t safe for you.” The stomps still gather at the
cafe, them. The foodbelt’s empty but the HT works.

She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Billy. Nobody bothers me.
But there’s something going on down there, and I want to know what.”

“Hunger’s what,” Annie said. “And it don’t look any different at the
cafe than it does here. Can’t you leave those poor people alone, you?”

“I’m one of those ‘poor people,” as you put it,“ Dr. Turner said,
still smiling without nothing being funny. ”I’m just as hungry as they
are, Annie. Or you are. And I’m going to the cafe.“

“Huh,” Annie snorted. She didn’t believe, her, that Dr. Turner
wasn’t eating some donkey food somehow, and nobody could convince her
any different. With Annie, you never can.

I finished skinning the rabbit, me, and showed Annie and Lizzie how
to pound the acorns into flour. You have to cook a bit of ash with it,
to take away the bite. It was late afternoon, already dark. I wrapped
the rabbit meat in a pair of summer jacks, which pretty much kept the
smell inside unless you were a dog. I put a small Y-lighter in my
pocket, and set out for the river, me, to make a fire.

Only I didn’t go to the river.

More and more people were walking to the cafe. Not just stomps, but
regular people. In the winter dark they hurried, them, hunched over but
fast, like something was chasing every last one of them. Well,
something was chasing me, too. I sniffed hard to make sure nobody
really couldn’t smell the fresh rabbit meat, and then I walked into the
cafe.

Everybody was watching the Lucid Dreamer concert, “The Warrior.”

I had the feeling that people’d been watching all day, them. More
and more, coming and going but even the goers coming back for more. I
guess, me, that if your belly’s empty, it helps to have your mind feel
good. The concert was just ending when I come in, and people were
rubbing their eyes and crying and looking dazed, like you do after
lucid dreaming. But I saw right away that Dr. Turner was right, her.
Something else was going on here. Jack Sawicki stepped in front of the
holoterminal and turned it off. The Lucid Dreamer, in his powerchair,
with that smile that always feels like warm sunlight, disappeared.

“People of East Oleanta,” Jack said, and stopped. He must of
realized, him, that he sounded like some donkey politician. “Listen,
everybody. We’re in a river of shit here. But can do things, us, to
help ourselves!”

“Like what?” somebody said, but it wasn’t nasty. He really wanted to
know. I tried to see, me, who it was, but the crowd was too packed in.

“The food’s gone,” Jack said. “The gravrail don’t work. Nobody in
Albany answers, them, on the official terminal. But we got
us
.
It’s what—eight miles?—to Coganville. Maybe they got food, them.
They’re on a spur of the gravrail franchise, plus they’re a state line,
so they got two chances for trains to be running, them. Or maybe their
congressman or supervisor or somebody arranged for food to come in by
air, like ours, only it didn’t stop. They’re in a different
congressional district. We don’t
know
, us. But we could walk
there, some of us, and see. We could get help.”

“Eight miles over mountains in winter?” Celie Kane yelled. “You’re
as crazy as I always thought, Jack Sawicki! We got a crazy man, us, for
a mayor!”

But nobody yelled along with Celie. I stepped up onto a chair, me,
along the back wall, just to see this more clearly. The feeling you get
after a Lucid Dreamer concert still filled them. Or maybe not. Maybe
the concert had got down
inside
them, from watching it so
much. Anyway, they weren’t raging, them, about the donkey politicians
that got them into this mess, except for Celie and a few like her.
There’s always them people. But most of the faces I could see, me,
looked thoughtful, and people talked in low voices. Something moved
inside my belly that I didn’t never know was there.

“I’ll go, me,” Jack said. “We can follow the gravrail line.”

“It’ll be drifted in bad,” Paulie Cenverno said. “No trains for two
weeks to blast the snow loose.”

“Take a Y-unit,” a woman’s voice said suddenly. “Turn it on high,
it, and melt what you can!”

“I’ll go, me,” Jim Swikehardt said.

“If you make a travois, you,” Krystal Mandor called, “you can bring
back more food.”

“If they got food, them, we could set up a regular schedule—”

People started to argue, them, but not to fight. Ten men walked up
near Jack, plus Judy Farrell, who’s six foot high, her, and can beat
Jack arm-wrestling.

I climbed down off my chair, me. One knee creaked. I shoved my way
through the crowd and stood next to Jack. “Me, too, Jack. I’m going.”

Somebody laughed, hard and nasty. It wasn’t Celie. But then they
stopped, all at once.

“Billy…”Jack said, his voice kind. But I didn’t let him finish. I
spoke real low and fast, me, so nobody could hear but Jack and,
standing next to him, Ben Radisson.

“You going to stop me, Jack? If you men go, you going to stop me
from walking along behind you? You going to knock me down, you, so’s I
can’t follow? Lizzie’s hungry. Annie don’t have nobody else but me. If
there ain’t enough food brought back from Coganville, you telling me
Lizzie and Annie, them, are going to get a fair share? With Dr. Turner
staying with us?”

Jack didn’t say nothing. Ben Radisson nodded, him, real slow,
looking right at me. He’s a good man. That’s why I let him hear.

The rabbit meat squished against my chest, inside my coat. Nobody
could smell it. Nobody could see the bulge, them, because it was after
all just a small piece of meat, a measly rabbit, pathetic as dirt.
Lizzie was hungry. Annie was a big woman. I was going, me, to
Coganville.

But I wasn’t going to tell Annie. She’d kill me, her, before I even
got the chance to save her.

==========

We started out, us, at first light, twelve people. More might scare
the people of Coganville. We didn’t want, us, what they needed for
themselves. Just the extra.

No, that ain’t true. We wanted, us, whatever we needed.

I got up from the sofa too quiet to wake Annie or Lizzie in the
bedrooms. But Dr. Turner, on her pile of blankets in the corner, she
heard me, damn her. A man can’t never have no privacy from donkeys.

“What is it, Billy? Where are you going?” she whispered.

“Not to no Eden,” I said. “Lay back down, damn it, and leave me
alone.”

“They’re going to another town for food, aren’t they?”

I remembered, me, that she’d said last night she was going down to
the cafe. But I didn’t see her there, me. But they know things,
donkeys. Somehow. You never know how much they know.

“Listen, Billy,” she said, real careful, but then she stopped like
she didn’t know what I should listen to. I pulled on three pairs of
socks before she got it.

“There’s a novel, written a long time ago—”

“A what?” I said, and then cursed myself, me. I shouldn’t never ask
her nothing, me. She can out-talk me every time.

“A story. About a small worldful of people who believed in sharing
everything in common. Until a famine struck, and people on a broken
train needed food from the nearby town. The passengers hadn’t eaten in
two days. But the townspeople didn’t have much food themselves, and
what they did have they wouldn’t share.” The whisper in the dark room
was flat, her.

I couldn’t help asking, me. I like stories. “What happened to the
people on the gravrail?”

“The gravrail got fixed in the nick of time.”

“Lucky them,” I said. Wasn’t nobody going to fix
our
gravrail or cafe kitchen. Not this time. Dr. Turner knew that, her.

“It was a fairy tale, Billy. Brave and inspiring and sweet, but a
fairy tale. You’re in a real United States. So take this with you.”

She didn’t say not to go, her. Instead she gave me a little black
box that she pushed onto my belt and it stuck there. I got a funny
flutter in my chest, me. I knew what it was, even though I never wore
one before, me, and never expected to. It was a personal energy shield.

“Touch it
here”
Dr. Turner said, “to activate. And the
same place to deactivate. It’ll withstand damn near any attack that
isn’t nuclear.”

Turned on, it didn’t feel like nothing. Just a little tingle, and
that might have been my imagination. But I could see a faint shimmer
around me.

“But, Billy, don’t lose it,” Dr. Turner said. “I need it. I might
need it badly.”

“Then why you giving it to me, you?” I flashed at her, but I already
knew, me. It was because of Lizzie. Everything was because of Lizzie.
Just like it should be.

Anyway, Dr. Turner probably had another one, her. Donkeys don’t give
away nothing unless they already got another one for themselves.

“Thank you,” I said, rougher than I meant, me, but she didn’t seem
to mind.

The morning was cold and clear, with that kind of pink and gold
sunrise that turns clean snow to glory. There wasn’t no wind, thank
God. Wind would of bit deep. We tramped, us, along the gravrail track
to Coganville. Nobody talked much, them. Once Jim Swikehardt said,
“Pretty,” about the sunrise, but nobody answered.

At first the snow wasn’t too deep because the woods crowding the
tracks on either side held the snow from blowing. Later it did get
deep. Stan Mendoza and Bob Gleason carried Y-energy units, them, that
they’d ripped out of some building, and they aimed them at the worst
places and melted the snow. The units were heavy, them, and the men
puffed hard. It was slow going, part uphill, but we did it. I walked
last, me.

After two miles my heart pounded and my knees ached. I didn’t say
nothing, me, to the others. I was doing this for
Lizzie
.

About noon clouds blew in and a wind started. I lost track, me, of
how far we might of come. The wind blew straight at our faces. Stan and
Bob turned the heating units around, them, whenever they could, and
then we walked in warmer air that the wind whipped away as fast as it
could.

I got to thinking, me, stumbling through the snow. “Why couldn’t…
couldn’t…”

“You need to rest, Billy?” Jack said. I could see tiny ice crystals
on his nose hairs. “This too much for you?”

“No, I’m fine,” I said, never mind that it was a lie. But I had to
say, me, what I started. “Why couldn’t… the donkeys make lots of… lots
of little heat units for us all to… c-carry—”

“Easy, Billy.”

“—c-carry around in our gloves and b-boots and jackets… in the
winter? If Y-energy is really so… cheap?”

Nobody answered, them. We came to a big drift, and they turned the
heat units on it. It melted real slow. Finally we just slogged, us,
through what was left, snow to the waist, wetter and more sticky than
it would of been if we hadn’t tried to melt it. Jack stumbled, him.
Stan pulled him up. Judy Farrell turned her back to the wind to get a
moment’s rest, and her cheeks were the red-white that is going to hurt
like hell when it finally warms up.

Finally Jim Swikehardt said, real low, “Because we never
asked
,
us, for lots of tiny heaters, and they only give us enough of what we
ask for to keep our votes.” After that nobody said nothing.

I don’t know, me, what time it was when we got to Coganville. The
sun was completely hid behind clouds. It wasn’t twilight yet. The town
was quiet and peaceful, it, with nobody in the streets. Lights blazed
in all the windows. We walked, us, up the main street to the
Congressman Joseph Nicholls Capiello Cafe, and we could hear music. A
holosign flashed blue and purple on the roof: THANK YOU FOR ELECTING
DISTRICT SUPERVISOR HELEN ROSE TOWNS-END1. It was like the world here
was still normal, and only us was wrong.

But I didn’t believe that no more, me.

We went in to the cafe. It must of been too late for lunch, too
early for dinner, but the cafe was full of people. They were hanging
plastisynth banners and bows, them, for a scooter race betting night.
Tables were pushed around to make booths and a dance floor. The smell
of food from the belt hit us all the same time the warmth did, and I
swear I saw tears, me, in Stan Mendoza’s eyes.

Everybody got real quiet, them, when we came in.

Jack said, “Who’s the mayor here?”

“I am,” a woman said. “Jeanette Harloff.” She was about fifty, her,
skinny, with silver hair and big blue eyes. The kind of Liver who gets
kidded about having secret genemods, even though you know she don’t.
It’s just something people say, them. People can be damn stupid. But
maybe that’s why this woman was mayor, her. Nobody wouldn’t just let
her be one thing or the other.

Jack explained, him, who we were and what we wanted. Everybody in
the cafe listened. Somebody had turned the holoterminal off. You could
of heard a mouse walk.

Jeanette Harloff studied us, her, real careful. The big blue eyes
looked cold. But finally she said, “The main gravrail’s busted, it, but
we got a spur and it works. There’s another kitchen shipment coming in
tomorrow. And our congressman can really be trusted, him. We’ll always
have food, us. Take what you need.”

And Jack Sawicki looked down at the ground, him, like he was
ashamed. We all were, us. I don’t know of what. We were Liver citizens,
after all.

BOOK: Beggars and Choosers
9.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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