Beggars and Choosers (19 page)

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We slept till morning, us. I woke up before Annie. The light was
pale gray, thin. For a long time I just sat, me, on the edge of the
bed, looking at Annie. I knew this was a one-time thing. I could feel
it, even before she fell asleep, in that little space of time when we
held each other afterwards. I could feel it, me, in her arms, and in
the set of her neck, and in her breathing. What I needed, me, was the
words to tell her that it was all right. That this was more than I
expected, me, although less than I dreamed. I wasn’t going to tell her
that part. You always dream more.

But Annie didn’t wake, her, and so instead I went to check on
Lizzie. She was sitting up, her, looking woozy. “Billy—I’m hungry, me.”

“That’s a good sign, Lizzie. What you want to eat, you?”

“Something hot. I’m cold, me. Something hot from the cafe.” Her
voice was whiny and she smelled awful but I didn’t care, me. I was too
glad to her her cold, when just yesterday she’d been burning up, her,
with fever. That donkey doctor really was as good as a medunit.

“Don’t go waking your mother, you. Just sit there until I get your
food. Where’s your meal chip, Lizzie?”

“I don’t know, me. I’m hungry.”

Annie must of taken Lizzie’s meal chip, her. I could get enough food
on mine. I don’t eat all that much anymore, me, and this morning I felt
I could live on air.

There wasn’t nobody in the cafe, them, except for Dr. Turner.

She sat eating her breakfast and watching a donkey channel on the
hologrid. She looked tired, her.

“Up early, you,” I said. I got myself a cup of coffee and a bun, and
Lizzie
some eggs and juice and milk and another bun. Annie or
I could reheat the eggs on the Y-energy unit, us. I sat down, me, next
to Dr. Turner, just to be sociable for a minute. Or maybe to think what
to say to Annie. Dr. Turner stared at the eggs like they was a
three-day-dead woodchuck.

“Can you actually eat those, Billy?”

“The eggs?”

:‘ ’Eggs.“ Soysynth stamped out and dyed, like all the rest of it.
Haven’t you ever tasted a real, natural egg?”

And the weird thing was, the minute she said that, her, I remembered
what a real egg tasted like. Fresh from the chicken, cooked by my
grandmama two minutes and served with strips of hot toast with real
butter. You dipped the toast into the egg and the yellow yolk coated
it, and then you ate them together, hot. All those years and at that
minute I remembered it, me, and not before. My mouth filled with sweet
water.

“Look at that,” Dr. Turner said, and I thought she still meant the
egg but she didn’t, her, she’d turned back to the hologrid. A handsome
donkey sat at a big wood desk, talking, like they always do. I didn’t
understand all the words:

“—if even a possibility of an escaped self-replicating dissembler…
not verified… duragem… government should put the facts before us…
emphasize restricted to certain molecular bonds and these are
nonorganic… very important distinction… duragem… GSEA… underground
facility… understaffed in current difficult economic climate… duragem…”

I said, “Sounds like the same old stuff to me.”

Dr. Turner made a sound, her, in the back of her throat, a sound so
strange and so unexpected I stopped eating, me, with my plastisynth
fork halfway to my mouth. I must have looked a moron. She made the
sound again, and then she laughed, her, and then she covered her face
with her hand, and then she laughed again. I ain’t never seen no donkey
behave like that before, me. Never.

“No, Billy—this isn’t the same old stuff. It’s definitely not. But
it might all too easily get to be the same new stuff, in which case we
should all worry.”

“About what?” I ate faster, me, to bring
Lizzie
her food
still hot. Lizzie was hungry, her. A good sign.

“What the hell is
this
shit?” a stomp kid asked, the
second he stepped through the cafe door. “Who’s playing this donkey
crap, them?” He saw Dr. Turner, him—and he looked away. I could of
sworn he didn’t want no part of her, which was so weird— stomps don’t
back off shoving nobody, them. I stopped eating, me, for the second
time and just stared. The stomp said loudly, “Channel 17,” and the
hologrid switched to some sports channel, but still the stomp didn’t
look at Dr. Turner. He got his food, him, off the belt and went to sit
at a far table in the corner.

Dr. Turner smiled a little. “I tangled with him two nights ago. He
got grabby. He doesn’t want it to happen again.”

“You
armed
, you?”

“Not like you think. Come on, let’s go see how
Lizzie
is
doing this morning.”

“She’s doing just fine, her,” I said, but Dr. Turner was already
standing up, and it was clear she was going with me. I couldn’t think
of no reason she shouldn’t, except that I still didn’t know, me, what
words I was going to say to Annie about what happened last night. A
little cold lump was growing in me that maybe Annie would think, her,
that I shouldn’t come around no more. Because of being embarrassed—her
or me or us. If that happened, I wouldn’t have no more reason to go on
dragging around this old body with its old-fool head.

Lizzie
was sitting up on the couch, her, playing with a
doll. “Mama went to get water to wash me,” she said. “She said I can’t
go to the baths yet, me. What did you bring me to eat, Billy?”

“Eggs and bun and juice. Now don’t you overdo, you.”

“Who’s this?” The black eyes were bright again, them, but Lizzie’s
face still looked thin and drawn. I got scared all over again, me.

“I’m Dr. Turner. But you can call me Vicki. I gave you some medicine
last night.”

Lizzie studied the situation, her. I could see that smart little
mind going. “You from Albany, you?”

“No. San Francisco.”

“On the Pacific Ocean?”

Dr. Turner looked surprised, her. “Yes. How do you know where it is?”

“Lizzie goes to school a lot,” I said, fast in case Annie came in
and heard, “but her mother ain’t crazy about that.”

“I worked, me, through all the high school software. It wasn’t hard.”

“Probably not,” Dr. Turner said dryly. “And so now what? College
software? With the location of the Indian Ocean?”

I said, “Her mama don’t—”

“There ain’t no college software in East Oleanta,”
Lizzie
said, “but I already know, me, where the Indian Ocean is.”

“Her mama really don’t—”

“Can you get me some college software?”
Lizzie
said, her,
soft but not scared, just like it was an everyday thing to ask donkeys
for work they’re supposed to do for our benefit. Or something. Lately I
wasn’t so sure, me, that I knew who was studying and working for who.

“Maybe,” Dr. Turner said. Her voice had changed, her, and she looked
at
Lizzie
real hard. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better.” But I could see Lizzie was tiring, her.

I said, “You eat, and then lie down again. You been very sick, you.
If that medicine—” The door opened behind me and Annie came in.

I couldn’t see her, me, but I could
fed
her. She was warm
and soft and big in my arms. Only that wasn’t ever going to happen
again. Dr. Turner was watching, her, with that sharp donkey stare. I
fixed my face and turned around. “Morning, Annie. Let me help you with
them buckets.”

Annie looked at me, and then at
Lizzie
, and then at Dr.
Turner. I could see she didn’t know, her, who to get stiff with first.
She chose Lizzie. “You eat that food and lie down,
Lizzie
.
You been sick.

“I’m better now,” Lizzie said, sulky.

“She’s better now, her,” Annie said to Dr. Turner. “You can leave.”
It wasn’t like Annie to be so rude, her. She was the one believed even
donkeys have their place.

“Not just yet,” Dr. Turner said. “I’m going to talk to
Lizzie
first.”

“This is my home!” Annie said, between pressed-together lips.

I wanted to say to Dr. Turner,
She ain’t mad at you, her, she’s
confused at me
, but there ain’t no way to say that to a donkey
doctor dressed in torn yellow jacks standing in a living room that
ain’t even yours and that you’re afraid you’re about to get tossed out
of yourself for loving in the wrong way. No way to say that.

Lizzie said, “Please let Vicki stay, Mama. Please. I feel better,
me, when she’s here.”

Annie set down the two buckets of water she carried. She looked
ready to explode, her. But then Dr. Turner said, “I do need to examine
her, Annie. To make sure the medication is the right one. You know that
if the medunit were working it would check her every day and sometimes
change the dosage. A live doctor isn’t any different.”

Annie looked ready to cry. But all she said was, “She got to get
washed first, her. Billy, bring this water into Lizzie’s bedroom.”

Annie dragged up Lizzie and half carried her to the bedroom,
ignoring Lizzie’s squawk: “I can walk, me!” I followed with the water,
set it down, and came back out. Dr. Turner had picked up Lizzie’s doll.
It was plastisynth, from the warehouse, with black curls and green eyes
and a genemod face, but Annie had sewn it jacks from a pair she ripped
up, and
Lizzie
had made it soda-can jewelry.

“Annie doesn’t want me here.”

“Well,” I said, “we don’t get many donkeys, us.”

“No, I imagine not.”

We stood in silence. I didn’t have nothing to say to her, or her to
me. Except one thing. “Dr. Turner—”

“Call me Vicki.”

I knew, me, that I wasn’t going to do that. “What you watched, you,
on that donkey channel, the stuff you said wasn’t more of the same old
government shit—what was it? What’s happening?”

She looked up from the doll, then, more sharp than before. “What do
you think it meant?”

“I don’t know, me. I don’t know those words. It sounded like just
more worry over the economy, more excuses why the government can’t get
things working right, them.”

“This time it’s not an excuse. Maybe. Do you know what a dissembler
is?”

“No.”

“A molecule?”

“No.”

“An atom?”

“No.”

Dr. Turner shook Lizzie’s doll. “This is made of atoms. Everything
is made of atoms. They’re very tiny pieces of matter. Atoms clump
together into molecules like… like snow sticking together into a
snowball. Only there’s all kinds of atoms, and they stick together in
different ways, so you get different kinds of matter. Wood or skin or
plastic.”

She looked at me hard, her, trying to see if I understood. I nodded.

“What holds molecules together are molecular bonds. Sort of a… an
electrical glue. Well, dissemblers take those bonds apart. Different
kinds of dissemblers take different kinds of molecular bonds apart.
Enzymes in your stomach, for instance, break the bonds on food so you
can digest it.”

I heard Lizzie laugh, her, behind the bedroom door. It was a tired
kind of laugh, and the worry about her started up in my gut again. And
in another few minutes Annie would come out. I didn’t know, me, what to
say to Annie. But I knew what Dr. Turner was saying was important—I
could see it on her donkey face—and I tried, me, to listen. To
understand.

“We can make dissemblers, and have for years. We use them for all
kinds of things: disposing of toxic waste, recycling, cleaning. The
dissemblers we make are pretty simple, and each one can only break one
kind of bond. They’re made out of viruses, mostly—that means they’re
genemod.”

“Could a… dissembler break bonds, it, that cause rabies?”

“Rabies? No, that’s a complex organic condition that—why do you ask,
Billy?” Her look was sharp again.

“No reason.”

“No reason?”

“No.” I stared her down, me.

“Anyway,” she said, “the making of dissemblers is very carefully
controlled by the GSEA. The Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency.
Naturally they have to control anything that can go around dissembling
things. But the GSEA is constantly ferreting out and busting illegal
genemod operations, run outside the law for profit or even pure
research, creating things without proper controls. Including
dissemblers. A lot of them are self-replicating, that means they can
reproduce themselves like small animals—”

“Animals? Sex?” I could feel, me, the surprise on my face.

She smiled. “No. Like… algae on a pond. But GSEA-

approved dissemblers have built-in clocking mechanisms for control.
After a certain number of replications, they stop reproducing. Illegal
ones sometimes don’t. Now there are rumors—still just rumors—that an
illegal replicator without a clocking mechanism is loose. It attacks
the molecular bonds of an alloy called duragem that’s used in many
machines.
Many
machines. It—“

I suddenly saw. “It’s causing all these breakdowns, it. The gravrail
and the foodbelt and the warden ‘bot and the medunit. My God, some
crazy donkey germ is breaking everything!”

“Not exactly. Nobody knows yet. But maybe.”

“You people are doing it to us again!”

She stared at me, her. I said, “You take everything, you, away from
us and call it aristo Living, and then you wreck the what’s left!”

“
Not
me,” she said, hard. “
Not
the government. The
government is what kept all of you alive after you became utterly
unnecessary to the economy. Rather than just eliminate seventy percent
of the population the way they did in Kenya and Chile. Donkey genemod
science could do that, too. But we didn’t.”

The bedroom door opened and Lizzie came out, cleaned up, leaning on
Annie. Lizzie laid on the couch and said, “Tell me something, Vicki.”

“Tell you what?” Dr. Turner said. She was still mad, her.

“Anything. Anything I don’t know, me. Anything new.”

Dr. Turner’s expression changed again. For a second she almost
looked afraid, her. Annie said, “Can I see you a minute, Billy?”