Beggars and Choosers (15 page)

The spiky red shapes eased a little.

I poured myself another scotch. That slowed down the anxiety-shapes
sometimes. But I tried to be careful with the stuff. I did try. I could
remember my old man, in the stinking Delta town where I grew up:

Don’t you lip me, boy! You ain’t nothing, you, but a
shit-bottomed baby!

I ain’t no baby, me! I’m seven years old!

You’re a shit-bottomed teatsucker, you, who ain’t never gonna
own nothing, so shut up and hand me that beer.

I’m gonna own Sanctuary, me, someday.

You! A stupid bayou rat
! Laughter. Then, after thinking it
over, the smack.
Whap
. Then more laughter.

I downed the scotch in a single gulp. Leisha would have hated that.
The comlink shrilled in two short bursts. Twice meant the caller wasn’t
on the approved list but Kevin Baker’s comlink program had nonetheless
decided it was somebody I might want to see. I didn’t know how it
decided that. “Fuzzy logic,” Kevin said, which made no shapes in my
mind.

I think I would have talked to anybody just then. But I left off the
visual.

“Mr. Arlen? Are you there? This is Dr. Elias Maleck. I know it’s
very late, but I’d like a few minutes of your time, please. It’s
extremely urgent. I’d rather not leave a message.”

He looked tired; it was three in the morning in Washington. I poured
myself another scotch. “Visual on. I’m here, Dr. Maleck.”

“Thank you. I want to say right away this is a shielded call, and
it’s not being recorded. Nobody can hear it but us two.”

I doubted that. Maleck didn’t understand what Terry Mwakambe or
Toshio Ohmura could do. Even if Maleck’s Nobel had been in physics and
not medicine, he wouldn’t have understood. Maleck was a big man, maybe
sixty-five, not genemod for appearance. Thinning gray hair and tired
brown eyes. His skin fell in jowls on either side of his face but his
shoulders were square. I felt him as a series of solid navy cubes,
unbreakable and clean. The cubes hovered in front of the unmoving
lattice.

“I’m not sure exactly where to begin, Mr. Aden.” He ran his hand
through his hair and the navy cubes took on a reddish tinge. Maleck was
very tense. I sipped my drink.

“As you undoubtedly know by now, I voted against allowing further
development of the Huevos Verdes patent claim in the Federal Forum for
Science and Technology. The reasons for my vote are stated clearly in
the majority opinion. But there are things that a public document can’t
contain, things I want permission to inform
you
about.”

“Why?”

Maleck was blunt. “Because I—we—have no way to talk to Huevos
Verdes. They accept messages but not two-way communication. You
represent the only path by which I can convey information directly to
Ms. Sharifi about genetic research.” The shapes in my mind rippled and
twisted. I said, “How did you leave any messages for Huevos Verdes?
How’d you get the access code to leave any messages?”

“That’s part of what I want to tell you, Mr. Arlen. In five minutes
two men will request access to your suite. They want to show you
something approximately half an hour from Seattle by plane. The purpose
of my call is to urge you to go with them.” He hesitated.“They’re from
the government. GSEA.”

“No.”

“I understand, Mr. Arlen. That’s the purpose of my call—to tell you
this isn’t a trap, or a kidnapping, or any of the other atrocities you
and I both know the government is capable of. The

GSEA agents will take you outside the city, keep you about an hour,
and return you safely, without implants or truth drugs or anything
else. I know these men personally—
personally
—and I’m willing
to stake my entire professional reputation on this. I’m sure you’re
recording my call on your end. Send copies to anyone you like before
you so much as open your hotel door. You have my word you will return
safe and unaltered. Please consider what that’s worth to me.“

I considered. The man filled me with shapes I hadn’t felt in a long
time: light, clean shapes, without any hidden agenda. Nothing like the
shapes at Huevos Verdes.

Of course, Maleck might be completely sincere and still be used.

Somehow the glass of scotch, my fourth, was empty.

Maleck said, “If you want to take extra time to call Huevos Verdes
for instructions—”

“
No
.” I lowered my voice. “No. I’ll go.”

Maleck’s face changed, opened, growing years younger and hours less
tired. (A light cleansing rain falling on the navy cubes.)

“
Thank you
,” he said. “You won’t regret it. You have my
word, Mr. Aden.”

I would bet anything that he, an eminent donkey, had never seen any
of my concerts.

I cut off the link, sent off copies of the call to Leisha, to Kevin
Baker, to a donkey friend I trusted in Wichita. The link shrilled.
Once. Even before I answered it Nikos Demetrios appeared on visual. He
wasted no words, him.

“Don’t go with them, Drew.”

There was another glass of scotch in my hand. It was half empty.
“That was a shielded call, Nick. Private.”

He ignored this. “It could be a trap, despite what Maleck says. They
could be using him. You should know that!”

Impatience had crept into his voice, despite himself: the stupid
Sleeper had overlooked the obvious once again. I saw him as a dark
shape with a thousand shades of gray, undulating in subtle patterns I
would never understand.

“Nick, suppose—just suppose—that I wanted, me, to talk to somebody
private, somebody who I don’t want you listening to, somebody who
isn’t, them, no part of Huevos Verdes? Somebody
else
?”

Nick stared. I heard then, me, how I was talking. Liver talk. My
glass was empty again. The hotel system said politely, “Excuse me, sir.
There are two men requesting access to your suite. Would you like
visuals?”

“Nah,” I said. “Send the men in, them.”

“
Drew
—” Nick began. I blanked him. It didn’t work. Some
sort of SuperSleepless override. Wasn’t there anything they couldn’t
do, them?

“Drew! Listen, you can’t just—” I disconnected the terminal from the
Y-energy power unit.

The GSEA agents didn’t look like GSEA agents. I guess they never do,
them. Mid-forties. Donkey handsome. Donkey polite. Probably donkey
smart. But if they thought, them, in donkey words, at least the words
would come one at a time, not in bunches and clusters and libraries of
strings.

Snow fell on the purple lattice, cool and blank.

“You guys like a drink, you?”

“Yes,” one said, a little too fast. Going along with me. But he
felt, him, almost as solid, almost as clean, as Maleck. That confused
me. They were GSEA, them. How could they feel unhidden?

“Changed my mind,” I said. “Let’s go now, us, wherever you’re taking
me.” I powered my chair toward the door. It hit the jamb, it, and hurt
my legs.

But on the hotel roof, the cold sobered me. Some, anyway. Cars
landed, bringing home early party-goers; it was just a little after
midnight. Seattle was built on hills and the hotel was on top of a big
one. I could see way beyond the enclave: the dark waters of Puget Sound
to the west, Mount Rainier white in the moonlight. Cold stars above,
cold lights below. Liver neighborhoods at the bases of the hills,
except along the Sound, which was waterfront land too good for Livers.

The GSEA aircar, armored and shielded, took off to the east. Pretty
soon there were no more lights. Nobody spoke. I might have slept, me. I
hope not.

Don’t bother your Daddy, Drew. He’s asleep.

He’s drunk, him.

Drew!

Drew! Nick said on the comlink. Huevos Verdes said. Miranda Sharifi
said. Drew, do this. Give this concert. Spread this subconscious idea.
Drew—

The lattice curled in my mind, floating like swamp gas in the bayou
where my Daddy finally drowned, him, dead drunk. Some kids found him,
long after. They thought the thing in the water was a rotten log.

“We’re here, Mr. Arlen. Please wake up.”

We had landed on a pad somewhere in wild, dark country, dense and
wooded, with huge outcroppings of rock that I slowly realized were
parts of mountains. My head pounded. One of the agents turned on a
portable Y-lamp and cut the car’s lights. We got out. I realized for
the first time I didn’t know their names.

“Where are we?”

“Cascade Range.”

“But where
are
we?”

“Just another few minutes, Mr. Arlen.”

They looked away while I pulled myself into my chair. It floated on
its gravunit six inches above a narrow dirt track that led from the
landing pad into thick woods. I followed the agents, who carried the
lamp. The blackness on either side of the track, under the trees, was
like a solid wall, except for rustlings and distant, deep hoots. I
smelled pine needles and leaf mold.

The track ended at a low foamcast building hidden by trees, a
building too small to be important. No windows. An agent had his retina
scanned and spoke a code to the door and it opened. The inside lit up.
An elevator filled the interior, and that too had retinal scanner and a
code. We went underground.

The elevator opened on a large laboratory crowded with equipment,
none of it running. The lights were low. A woman in a white lab coat
hurried through one of many side doors. “Is that him?”

“Yes,” an agent said, and I caught his quick involuntary glance to
see if the Lucid Dreamer minded not being recognized. I smiled.

“Welcome, Mr. Arlen,” the woman said gravely. “I’m Dr. Carmela
Clemente-Rice. Thank you for coming.”

She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, even lovelier than
Leisha. Hair so black it looked blue, enormous eyes of a clear navy,
flawless skin. She looked about thirty but, of course, might have been
much older. Donkey genemods. She was wreathed with the wispy shapes of
sorrow.

She held her hands lightly clasped in front of her. “You’re
wondering why we brought you here. This isn’t a GSEA installation, Mr.
Arlen. It’s an outlaw gene facility we discovered and captured. Setting
up the law-enforcement operation took an entire year. The trial of the
scientists and technicians working here took another year. They’re all
in prison now. Ordinarily the GSEA would dismantle an outlaw lab
completely, but there are reasons we couldn’t dismantle this one. As
you’ll see in a minute.”

She unclasped her hands and made a curious gesture, as if she were
pulling me toward her. Or pulling my mind toward her. The navy-blue
donkey eyes never left my face.

“The… beasts working here were creating illegal genemods for the
underground market. One of the underground markets. These facilities
exist across the United States, Mr. Arlen, although fortunately most of
them aren’t as successful as this one. The GSEA expends a lot of money,
time, manpower, and legal talent putting them out of business. Follow
me, please.”

Carmela Clemente-Rice led the way back through the same side door.
We followed. A long white corridor—how big was this underground
place?—was lined with doors. She led me through the first one and
stepped aside.

There were two of them, male and female, both naked. They had the
dreamy, unfocused expressions of heavy users, but somehow I knew they
didn’t exist on drugs. They just existed. Both of them were
masturbating with a dreamy nonurgency that matched their expressions.
The woman had one hand in the vagina between her legs, the other in the
one between her breasts. But her other vaginas, between her eyes and on
each palm, had also gone labile, their tissues swollen and flushed. The
man fondled both his gigantic erect penis and his vagina, and I saw
that he had pushed what looked like a food utensil of some kind up one
asshole.

“For the sex trade,” Carmela Clemente-Rice said quietly behind me.
“Underground genetic embryonic engineering. There’s no way we can undo
it, no way we can raise their IQs, which are about 60. All we can do is
keep them comfortable, and out of the market they were designed for.”

I powered my chair out of the room. “You’re not showing me anything
I don’t already know about, lady,” I said, more harshly than I
intended. The sex slaves made bruised, painful shapes in my mind. “This
stuff has been around for years, long before Huevos Verdes existed.
Huevos Verdes doesn’t quarrel with the GSEA outlawing it and shutting
it down. Nobody sane argues in favor of this kind of genetic
engineering.”

She didn’t answer, just led me down the corridor to another door.

Four of them this time, in a much larger room, with the same dreamy
expressions. These weren’t naked, although their clothes were odd:
jacks clumsily hand-sewn to fit around the extra limbs and the
deformities. One had eight arms, one four legs, another three pairs of
breasts. Judging from its body shape, the extra organs on the fourth
must have been internal. Pancreases, or livers, or hearts? Could the
genes be programmed to grow extra hearts?

“For the transplant market,” Carmela said. “But then, you probably
already knew about that, too?”

I had, but didn’t say so.

“These are luckier,” she continued. “We can remove the extra limbs
and return them to normal bodies. In fact, Jessie is scheduled for
surgery on Tuesday.”

I didn’t ask her which one was Jessie. The scotch made nauseous
burbles in my stomach.

In the next room the two people looked normal. Dressed in pajamas,
they lay asleep on a bed covered with a pretty chintz spread. Carmela
didn’t lower her voice.

“They’re not sleeping, Mr. Arlen. They’re drugged, heavily, and will
be for most of the rest of their lives. When they’re not, they’re in
intense and constant pain. It’s caused by a tiny genomod virus designed
to stimulate nerve tissue to an unbearable degree. The virus is
injected and then replicates in the body—sort of like the Huevos Verdes
Cell Cleaner. The pain is excruciating, but there’s no actual tissue
damage, so theoretically it could continue for years. Decades. It was
designed for the international torture market, and there was supposed
to be an antidote to be administered. Or withheld. Unfortunately, the
gene engineers working here had gotten only as far as the nanotorturer,
not the antidote.”