Beggars and Choosers (29 page)

The mayor and two men helped, them, to load the two travoises with
everything we could from the food line. Jeanette Harloff wanted us to
stay the night in the hotel, but we all said no, us. The same thing was
in all our minds. Folks were sitting home hungry, them, in East
Oleanta: kids and wives and mothers and brothers and friends, with
their bellies rumbling and hurting and that pinched look around their
eyes. We’d rather walk back now, us, even after it got dark, than hear
those bellies and look at them faces in our minds. We stuffed food off
the belt into our mouths while we loaded the travoises, stuffed it into
our jackets and hats and gloves. We bulged like pregnant women, us. The
Coganville people watched in silence. A few left the cafe, them, their
eyes on the floor.

I wanted to say: We trusted our congresswoman, too, us. Once.

There was only so much food prepared for the line. The travoises
would hold more. When it ran out, we had to stop, us, and wait for the
kitchen ‘bots to make more. And all that whole time nobody except
Jeanette Harloff spoke to us. Nobody.

When we left, us, we carried huge amounts of food. Looking at it, I
knew it wouldn’t be huge when there was all the hungry people of East
Oleanta to feed. We’d be back tomorrow, or somebody else would. Nobody
said that to Jeanette Harloff. I couldn’t tell, me, if she knew.

The sky had that feel that says the most part of the day is over.
Stan Mendoza and Scotty Flye, the youngest and strongest, dragged the
travoises first, them. The runners were curved plasti-foam, smoother
than any wood could be. They slid easily over the snow. This time, at
least, we had the wind at our backs.

After half an hour Judy Farrell said, “We can’t even talk, us, to
the next town, with the terminal. We can talk to Albany, us, or to any
donkey politician, and we can get information easy, but we can’t talk
to the next town to tell them we’re out of food.”

Jim Swikehardt said, “We never asked to, us. More fun to just hop
the gravrail. Gives you something to do.”

“And keeps people separate, us,” Ben Radisson said, but not angry,
just like he never thought of it before. “We should have asked, us.”
After that, nobody said nothing.

After dark, the cold got sharp as pain. I could feel, me, the hollow
place in my chest where the wind whistled through. It made a noise
inside me that I could hear in my ears. The Y-lights made the tracks
bright as day, but the cold was a dark thing, it, circling us like
something rabid. My bones felt, them, like icicles, and just as like to
snap.

But we were almost there. No more than a mile left to go. And then
there was the crack of a rifle, and young Scotty Flye fell over dead.

In another minute they were on us, them. I recognized most of them,
me, although I only had names to go with two of them: Clete Andrews and
Ned Zalewski. Stomps. Ten or twelve of them, from East Oleanta and
Pilotburg and Carter’s Falls, come in before the gravrail busted, and
then stuck here. They whooped and hollered, them, like this was a game.
They jumped Jack and Stan and Bob and I saw all three go down, even
though Stan was a big man and Bob was a fighter, him. The stomps didn’t
waste no more bullets, them. They had knives.

I pushed the little black box on my belt.

The tingle was there, it, and the shimmer. A stomp jumped me and I
heard him hit solid metal. That’s what it sounded like. I could hear
everything, me. Judy Farrell screamed and Jack Sawicki moaned. The
stomp’s eyes under his ski mask got wide.

“Shit! The old fart’s got a shield, him!”

Three of them pounded on me. Only it wasn’t me, it was a thin hard
layer an inch from me, like I was a turtle in an uncrackable shell.
They couldn’t touch me, them, only push and pull the shell. Finally the
first stomp yelled something with no words, him, and shoved the shell
so hard I went over the edge of the track and down a little embankment,
picking up snow like the snowmen
Lizzie
used to roll, her.
Something in one knee cracked.

By the time I staggered, me, back up to the gravrail track, the
stomps were disappearing into the woods, dragging the travoises.

Only Scotty was dead. The others were in bad shape, them, especially
Stan and Jack. Stab wounds and broken heads and I couldn’t tell, me,
what else. Nobody could walk. I staggered the last mile through the
snow, me, afraid to carry one of the lights, feeling for the track
every time I fell down. Some men from East Oleanta met me part way,
them, just when I didn’t think I could go no further. They’d heard the
rifle shot.

They went out to get the others. Somebody, I don’t know who, carried
me to Annie’s. He didn’t say nothing about me wearing a donkey personal
shield. Or maybe it was turned off by then. I can’t remember, me. All I
remember is me saying over and over again, “Don’t crush them, you!
Don’t crush them, you!” There were six sandwiches in my jacket pocket.
For Lizzie and Annie and Dr. Turner.

Everything didn’t all go black, the way Annie said later. It went
red, it, with flashes of light in my knee, so bright I thought they
would kill me.

But of course they didn’t. When the red went away it was the next
day, and I laid, me, on Annie’s bed, with her asleep next to me. Lizzie
was there, too, on the other side of Annie. Dr. Turner bent over me,
doing something to my knee.

I croaked, “Did they eat?”

“For now,” Dr. Turner said. Her voice was grim. What she said next
didn’t make no sense to me. “So much for community solidarity in the
face of adversity.”

I said, “I brought Annie and Lizzie food, me.” It seemed a miracle.
Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it, me. I didn’t even
think, then, that two sandwiches wouldn’t keep them long. It didn’t
even occur to me. I must of been on some of them painkillers, me, that
cloud your mind.

Dr. Turner’s face changed. She looked startled, her, like what I
said was some kind of good answer to what she said, although it wasn’t,
because I didn’t even understand her big words. But I didn’t care, me.
Annie and
Lizzie
had something to eat. I did it, me.

“Ah, Billy,” Dr. Turner said, her voice was low and sad, mournful,
like somebody died. Or something. What?

But that wasn’t my problem. I slept, me, and in all my dreams
Lizzie
and Annie smiled at me in a sunshine green and gold as summer on the
mountain, where it turned out, I learned later, that Stan and Scotty
and Jack and Dr. Turner’s something had all really died after all.

DIANA COVINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

After they brought Billy back to Annie Francy’s, his poor heart
laboring like an antique factory and his hands shaking so much he
couldn’t even turn off the personal shield, I realized what an ass I’d
been not to call the GSEA earlier.

But it wasn’t Billy who made me realize this. It was—again, always—
Lizzie
.

I knew that Billy wasn’t badly hurt, and I suppose I should have
been more concerned about the other Livers, especially the three dead.
But the fact was, I wasn’t. I had changed my mind about Livers since I
came to East Oleanta, and Jack Sawicki in particular seemed a good man,
but there it was. I just didn’t really care that Liver stomps had
turned on other Liver non-stomps and destroyed them. We donkeys had
never expected anything else. The Livers were always a potentially
dangerous force, kept at bay only by sufficient bread and circuses, and
now the bread was running short and the big tops folded. Bastille time.

But I cared—against all odds—about Lizzie. Who was going hungry. If
I called the GSEA, they would come storming in and East Oleanta would
no longer be the Forgotten Country. With them would come food,
medicine, transport, all the things Livers had come to expect from the
labor of others. Which meant
Lizzie
and Annie would get fed.

On the other hand, Congresswoman Janet Carol Land might resume her
planeloads of food any minute. Or the gravrail might be fixed again.
That had happened many times already. And if it did, I would lose my
chance to cover myself with glory by handing over Miranda Sharifi,
lock, stock and illegal organic nanotech, to the GSEA. Also, the moment
I called the GSEA, Eden might very well pick up my signal, in which
case Ms. Sharifi might have been moved out before the GSEA even got
here.

While I wrestled with this three-horned dilemma of altruism, vanity,
and practicality,
Lizzie
blew the whole argument to
terrifying smithereens.

“Vicki, look at this.”

“What is it?”

“Just look.”

We sat on the plastisynth sofa in Annie’s apartment. In the bedroom
Annie moved around, tending Billy. The medunit had treated his cuts,
bruises, and heart rate, and he should probably have been sleeping,
which he probably couldn’t do with Annie fussing around him. I doubt he
minded. The bedroom door was closed. Lizzie held her terminal, frowning
at the screen. Billy’s pathetic squashed sandwiches had temporarily
returned the color to her thin cheeks. On the screen was a multicolor
holo.

“Very pretty. What is it?”

“A Lederer probability pattern.”

Well, of course it was. It’s been a while since my school days. To
save face, I said authoritatively, “Some variable has a seventy-eight
percent chance of significantly preceding some other variable in
chronological time.”

“Yes,”
Lizzie
said, almost inaudibly.

“So what are the variables?”

Instead of answering,
Lizzie
said, “You remember that
apple peeler ‘bot I used to play with, when I was a kid?”

Two months ago. But compared to the intellectual leaps she’d made
since, last summer probably did feel like lost childhood to her.

“I remember,” I said, careful not to smile.

“It first broke in June. I remember because the apples then were Kia
Beauties.”

Genemod apples ripened on a staggered schedule, to create seasonal
variety. “So?” I said.

“And the gravrail broke down before that. In April, I think. And a
couple of toilets before that.”

I didn’t get it. “And so… ?”

Lizzie wrinkled her small face. “But the first things to break down
in East Oleanta were way back over a year ago. In the spring of 2113.”

And I got it. My throat went dry. “In spring, 2113? Lots of things
breaking, Lizzie, or just a few? Such as might happen from normal wear
combined with reduced maintenance?”

“Lots of things. Too many things.”

“Lizzie,” I said slowly, “are those two variables in your Lederer
pattern the East Oleanta breakdowns, as you personally remember them,
and the newsgrid mentions from the crystal library of any similar
breakdown patterns elsewhere?”

“Yes. They are, them. I wanted, me…” She broke off, aware of how her
language had reverted. She went on staring at the screen. She knew what
she was looking at. “It started here, Vicki, didn’t it? That duragem
dissembler got released here first. Because it got made at Eden. We
were a test place. And that means that whoever runs Eden…” Again she
trailed off.

Huevos Verdes ran Eden. Miranda Sharifi ran Eden. And so my decision
was made for me, as simply as that. The duragem dissembler could not be
part of any save-Diana-through-a-personal-success-finally-strategy. It
was too concretely, urgently, majorly malevolent. I had no right to sit
around playing semi-amateur agent when I suspected that somewhere in
these very same mountains that were torturing us with winter was a
Huevos Verdes franchise, dispensing molecular destruction. Every decent
feeling required that I tell my disdainful bosses, despite their
disdain, what I knew.

Everybody has her own definition of decency.

“Vicki,” Lizzie whispered, “what are we going to do, us?”

“We’re going to give up,” I said.

==========

I made the call from a secluded place down by the river, away from
Annie’s suspicious eyes. I had forbidden Lizzie to follow me, but of
course she did anyway. The air was cold but the sun shone. I wriggled
my butt into a depression in the snow on the riverbank and cut the
transmitter from my leg.

It was an implant, of course: that was the only way to be positive
it couldn’t be stolen from me, except by people who knew what they were
doing. After the GSEA had it installed, I’d gone to some people I knew
and had detached and taken out the automatic homing-signal part of it,
which of course was there. You needed professionals for that. You
didn’t need professionals to remove the transmitter itself for use.
That could be done with a little knowledge, a local anaesthetic, and a
keen-edged knife, and in a pinch you could do without either the
anaesthetic or the keen edge.

I didn’t have to. I slid the implant from under the skin of my
thigh, sealed the small incision, and wiped the blood off the
transmitter wrapping. I unsealed it. Lizzie’s black eyes were enormous
in her thin face.

I said, “I told you not to come. Are you going to faint now?”

“Blood don’t make me faint!”

“Good.” The transmitter was a flat black wafer on my palm.
Lizzie
regarded it with interest.

“That uses Malkovitch wave transformers, doesn’t it?” And then, in a
different voice, “You’re going to call the government to come help us.”

“Yes.”

“You could have called before. Any time.”

“Yes.”

The black eyes stayed steady. “Then why didn’t you?”

“The situation wasn’t desperate enough.”

Lizzie considered this. But she was a child, still, under the
frightening intelligence and the borrowed language and the
pseudo-technical sophistication I had taught her. And she had been
through a terrifying two weeks. Abruptly she pounded on my knees, soft
ineffectual blows from cold mittened hands. “You could of got us help
before! And Billy wouldn’t of got hurt and Mr. Sawicki wouldn’t of died
and I wouldn’t of had to be so very very very hungry! You could of! You
could of!”