Beggars and Choosers (9 page)

DIANA COVINGTON: KANSAS

One night in another lifetime Eugene, who came before Rex and after
Claude, asked me what the United States reminded me of. That was the
sort of question to which Gene was given: inviting metaphorical
grandiosity, which in turn invited his scorn. I replied that the United
States had always seemed to me like some powerful innocent beast,
lushly beautiful, with the cranial capacity of a narrow-headed deer.
Look how it stretches its sleek muscles in the sunlight. Look how it
bounds high. Look how it runs gracefully straight into the path of the
oncoming train. This answer had the virtue of being so inflatedly
grandiose that to object to it on those grounds became superfluous. It
was beside the point that the answer was also true.

Certainly from
my
gravrail I could see enough of the lush,
mangled carcass. We’d come over the Rockies at quarter speed so the
Liver passengers could enjoy the spectacular view. Purple mountain
majesties and all that. Nobody else even glanced out the window. I
stayed glued to it, savoring all the asinine superiority of genuine awe.

At Garden City, Kansas, I changed to a local, zipping through
gorgeous countryside at 250 miles an hour, crawling through crappy
little Liver towns at nothing an hour. “Why not justly to Washington?”
Colin Kowalski had said, incredulous. “You’re not supposed to be
pretending to be a Liver, after all.” I’d told him I wanted to see the
Liver towns whose integrity I was defending against potential
artificial genetic corruption. He hadn’t liked my answer any better
than Gene had.

Well, now I was seeing them. The mangled carcass.

Each town looked the same. Streets fanning out from the gravrail
station. Houses and apartment blocks, some pure foamcast and some
foamcast added onto older buildings of brick or even wood. The foamcast
colors were garish, pink and marigold and cobalt and a very popular
green like lobster guts. Aristocratic Liver leisure did not confer
aristocratic taste.

Each town boasted a communal cafe the size of an airplane hangar, a
warehouse for goods, various lodge buildings, a public bath, a hotel,
sports fields, and a deserted-looking school. Everything was plastered
with holosigns: Supervisor S. R. ElectMe Warehouse. Senator Frances Fay
FamilyMoney Cafe. And beyond the town, barely visible from the
gravrail, the Y-energy plant and shielded robofactories that kept it
all going. And, of course, the scooter track, inevitable as death.

Somewhere in Kansas a family climbed onto the train and plunked
themselves down on the seats across from me. Daddy, Mommy, three little
Livers, two with runny noses, everybody in need of a diet and gym.
Rolls of fat bounced under Mommy Liver’s bright yellow jacks. Her
glance brushed me, traveled on, reversed like radar.

“Hey,” I said.

She scowled and nudged her mate. He looked at me and didn’t scowl.
The cubs gazed silently, the boy—he was about twelve— with a look like
his daddy’s.

Colin had warned me against even trying to pass for a Liver; he said
there’d be no way I could fool Sleepless. I’d said I didn’t want to
fool Sleepless; I only wanted to blend into the local flora. He said I
couldn’t. Apparently he was right. Mommy Liver took one look at my
genemod-long legs, engineered face, and Anne Boleyn neck that cost my
father a little trust fund, and she knew. My poison-green jacks,
soda-can jewelry (very popular; you made it yourself), and shit-brown
contact lenses made not a bit of difference to her. Daddy & Son
weren’t so sure, but, then, they didn’t really care. Breast size, not
genescan, was on their mind.

“I’m Darla Jones, me,” I said cheerfully. I had a lock-pocket full
of various chips under various names, some of which the GSEA had
provided, some of which they knew nothing about. It’s a mistake to let
the agency provide all of your cover. The time might come when you want
cover from them. All of my identities were documented in federal
databases, looking as if they had long pasts, thanks to a talented
friend the GSEA also knew nothing about. “Going to Washington, me.”

“Arnie Shaw,” the man said eagerly. “The train, it break down yet?”

“Nah,” I said. “Probably will, though, it.”

“What can you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Keeps things interesting.”

“Arnie,” Mommy Liver said sharply, interrupting this mild
conversational excursion, “back here, us. There’s more seats.” She gave
me a look that would scorch plastisynth.

“Plenty of seats up here, Dee.”

“Arnie!”

“ ‘Bye,” I said. They walked away, the woman muttering under her
breath. Bitch. I should let the SuperSleepless turn her descendants
into four-armed tailless guard dogs. Or whatever they had in mind. I
leaned my head against the back of the seat and closed my eyes. We
slowed down for another Liver town.

As soon as we left it, the littlest Shaw was back. A girl of about
five, she crept along the aisle like a kitten. She had a pert little
face and long dirty brown hair.

“You got a pretty bracelet, you.” She looked longingly at the
soda-can atrocity on my wrist, all curling jangles of some lightweight
alloy bendable as warm wax. Some besotted voter had sent it and the
matching earrings to David when he was running for state senator. He’d
kept it as a joke.

I slipped the bracelet off my wrist. “You want it, you?”

“Really?” Her face shone. She snatched the bracelet from my
outstretched fingers and scampered back down the aisle, blue shirt-tail
flapping. I grinned. Too bad kittens inevitably grow up into cats.

A minute later Mommy Liver loomed. “Keep your bracelet, you.
Desdemona, she got her own jewelry!”

Desdemona. Where do they ever hear these names? Shakespeare doesn’t
play at scooter tracks.

The woman looked at me from very hard eyes. “Look, you keep, you, to
your kind, and we keep to ours. Better that way all around. You
understand, you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and popped out my lenses. My eyes are an
intense, genemod violet. I gazed at her calmly, hands folded on my lap.

She waddled away, muttering. I caught the words, “These people…”

“If I find I can’t pass for a Liver,” I’d told Colin, “I’ll pass for
a semi-crazy donkey trying to pass for a Liver. I wouldn’t be the first
donkey to go native. You know, the working-class person pathetically
trying to pass for an aristo. Hide in plain sight.”

Colin had shrugged. I’d thought he already regretted recruiting me,
but then I realized that he hoped my antics would draw attention away
from the real GSEA agents undoubtedly heading for Washington. The
Federal Forum for Science and Technology, popularly known as the
Science Court, was hearing Market Request no. 1892-A. What made this
market request different from numbers 1 through 1891 was that it was
being proposed by Huevos Verdes Corporation. For the first time in ten
years, the Super-Sleepless were seeking government approval to market a
patented genemod invention in the United States. They didn’t have a
fish’s chance on the moon, of course, but it was still pretty
interesting. Why now? What were they after? And would any of the
twenty-seven show up personally at the Science Court hearing?

And if anybody did, would I be able to keep him or her under
surveillance?

I gazed out the train window, at the robo-tended fields. Wheat, or
maybe soy—I wasn’t sure what either looked like, growing. In ten
minutes, Desdemona was back. Her face appeared slowly between my
outstretched legs; she’d crawled along the floor, under the seats,
through the mud and spilled food and debris. Desdemona raised her
little torso between my knees, balancing herself with one sticky hand
on my seat. The other hand shot out and closed on my bracelet.

I unfastened it and gave it to her again. The front of her blue
jacks was filthy. “No cleaning ‘bot on this train?”

She clutched the bracelet and grinned. “It died, him.”

I laughed. The next minute the gravrail broke down.

I was thrown to the floor, where I swayed on hands and knees,
waiting to die. Under me machinery shrieked. The train shuddered to a
stop but didn’t tip over.

“Damn!” Desdemona’s father shouted. “Not again!”

“Can we get some ice cream, us?” a child whined. “We’re stopped now!”

“Third time this week! Fucking donkey train!”

“We never get no ice cream!”

Apparently the trains didn’t tip over. Apparently I wasn’t going to
die. Apparently this shrieking machinery was routine. I followed
everyone else off the train.

Into another world.

A fever wind blew across the miles of prairie: warm, whispering,
intoxicating. I was staggered by the size of the sky. Endless bright
blue sky above, endless bright golden fields below. And all of it
caressed by that blood-warm wind, impregnated with sunlight, gravid
with fragrance. I, a city lover to equal Sir Christoper Wren, had had
no idea. No holo had ever prepared me. I resisted the mad idea to kick
off my shoes and dig my toes into the dark earth.

Instead I followed the grumbling Livers along the tracks to the
front of the train. They gathered around the holoprojection of an
engineer, even though I could hear his canned speech being broadcast
inside each car. The holo “stood” on the grass, looking authoritative
and large. The franchise owner was a friend of mine; he believed that
seven-foot-high swarthy-skinned males were the ideal projection to
promote order.

“There is no need to be alarmed. This is a temporary malfunction.
Please return to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few
moments complimentary food and drinks will be served. A repair
technician is on the way from the railroad franchise. There is no need
to be alarmed—”

Desdemona kicked the holo. Her foot passed through him and she
smirked, a pointless saucy smile of triumph. The holo looked down at
her. “Don’t do that again, kid—you hear me, you?” Desdemona’s eyes
widened and she flew behind her mother’s legs.

“Don’t be so scaredy, you—it’s just interactive,” Mommy Liver
snapped. “Let go, you, of my legs!”

I winked at Desdemona, who stared at me sullenly and then grinned,
rattling our bracelet.

“—to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few moments
complimentary food—”

More people approached the engine, all but two complaining loudly.
The first was an older woman: tall, plain-faced, and angled as a
tesseract. She wore not jacks but a long tunic knitted of yarn in
subtle, muted shades of green, too uneven to be machine-made. Her
earrings were simple polished green stones. I had never before seen a
Liver with taste.

The other anomaly was a short young man with silky red hair, pale
skin, and a head slightly too large for his body.

The back of my neck tingled.

Inside the cars, server ‘bots emerged from their storage
compartments and offered trays of freshly synthesized soy snacks,
various drinks, and sunshine in mild doses. “Compliments of State
Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes,” it said over and over. “So nice to
have you aboard.” This diversion took half an hour. Then everyone went
back outside and resumed complaining.

“The kind of service you get these days—”

“—vote next time, me, for somebody else—
anybody
else—”

“—a temporary malfunction. Please return to the comfort and safety
of—”

I walked over the scrub grass to the edge of the closest field. The
Sleepless-in-inadequate-disguise stood watching the crowd, observing as
pseudocasually as I was. So far he had taken no special notice of me.
The field was bounded by a low energy fence, presumably to keep the
agrobots inside. They ambled slowly between the rows of golden wheat,
doing whatever it was they did. I stepped over the fence and picked one
up. It hummed softly, a dark sphere with flexible tentacles. On the
bottom a label said CANCO ROBOTS/ LOS ANGELES. CanCo had been in the
Wall
Street Journal On-Line
last week; they were in trouble. Their
agrobots had suddenly begun to break down all over the country. The
franchise was going under.

The warm wind whispered seductively through the sweet-scented wheat.

I sat on the ground, cross-legged, my back to the energy fence.
Around me adults settled into games of cards or dice. Children raced
around, screaming. A young couple brushed past me and disappeared into
the wheat, sex in their eyes. The older woman sat by herself reading a
book, an actual book. I couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten it. And the
big-headed Sleepless, if that’s what he/she was, stretched out on the
ground, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep. I grimaced. I’ve never
liked self-serving irony. Not in other people.

After two hours, the server ‘bots again brought out food and drinks.
“Compliments of State Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes.

So nice to have you aboard.“ How much soysynth did a Liver gravrail
carry? I had no idea.

The sun threw long shadows. I sauntered to the woman reading. “Good
book?”

She looked up at me, measuring. If Colin had sent me to the Science
Court in Washington, he probably had sent some legitimate agents as
well. And if Big Head was a Sleepless, he might have his own personal
tail. However, something in the reading woman’s face convinced me it
wasn’t her. She wasn’t genemod, but it wasn’t that. You can find donkey
families who refuse even permitted genemods, and then go on existing
very solidly corporate but on the fringe socially. She wasn’t that,
either. She was something else.

“It’s a novel,” the woman said neutrally. “Jane Austen. Are you
surprised there are still Livers who can read? Or want to?”

“Yes.” I smiled conspiratorially, but she only gave me a level stare
and went back to her book. A renegade donkey didn’t arouse her
contempt, or indignation, or fawning. I genuinely didn’t interest her.
I felt unwitting respect.