Nancy Kress: Beggars and Choosers

And never, never, never any genemod that is inheritable. Nobody wants another fiasco like the Sleepless. Even my penile flowers were sterile. And genemod human beings, we donkeys, were all individually handcrafted, in vitro one-of-a-kind collector’s items. Such is order maintained in our orderly world. So saith Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard J. Milano, writing the majority opinion for Linbeckerv. Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency . Humanity must not be altered past recognition, lest we lose what it means to be human. Two hands, one head, two eyes, two legs, a functioning heart, the necessity to breathe and eat and shit, this is humanity in perpetuity. We are the human beings.

Or, in this case, the dogs. And yet here was Stephanie, theoretically an officer of the law, standing on my terrace flanked by a prison-sentence GSEA violation in pink fur. Katous had four adorable pink ears, identically cocked, aural Rockettes. It had an adorable pink fur rabbit’s tail. It had huge brown eyes, three times the size of any dog’s eyes Justice Milano would approve, giving it a soulful, sorrowing look. It was so adorable and vulnerable-looking I wanted to kick it.

Which might have been the point. Although that, too, might be construed as illegal. No modifications that cause pain.

“I heard that David moved out,” Stephanie said, crouching to feed an anise cookie to the quivering pink fur. Oh so casual — just a girl and her dog, my illegal genemod pet, I live on the edge like this all the time, doncha know. I wondered if Stephanie knew that “Katous” was Arabic for “cat.” Of course she did.

“David moved out,” I agreed. “We came to the place where the road forked.”

“And who’s next on your road?”

“Nobody.” I sipped my drink without offering Stephanie one. “I thought I’d live alone for a while.”

“Really.” She touched an aquamarine flower; it wrapped its soft tubular petal around her finger. Stephanie grinned. “ Quel dom-mage . What about that German software dealer you talked to such a long time at Paul’s party?”

“What about your dog?” I said pointedly. “Isn’t he pretty illegal for a cop’s pet?”

“But so cute. Katous, say hello to Diana.”

“Hello,” Katous said.

Slowly I lowered my glass from my mouth.

Dogs couldn’t talk. The vocal equipment didn’t allow it, the law didn’t allow it, the canine IQ didn’t allow it. Yet Katous’s growled “hello” was perfectly clear. Katous could talk.

Stephanie lounged against the French doors, enjoying the effect of her bombshell. I would have given anything to be able to ignore it, to go on with a neutral, uninterested conversation. I could not manage that.

“Katous,” I said, “how old are you?”

The dog gazed at me from enormous sorrowful eyes.

“Where do you live, Katous?”

No answer.

“Are you genemod?”

No answer.

“Is Katous a dog?”

Was there a shade of sad puzzlement in its brown eyes?

“Katous, are you happy?”

Stephanie said, “His vocabulary is only twenty-two words. Although he understands more than that.”

“Katous, would you like a cookie? Cookie, Katous?”

He wagged his ridiculous tail and pranced in place. There were no claws on his toes. “Cookie! Please!”

I held out a cookie, which was from the Proust’s Madelines franchise and were wonderful: crunchy, fragrant with anise, rich with butter. Katous took it with toothless pink gums. “Thank you, lady!”

I looked at Stephanie. “He can’t defend himself. And he’s a mental cripple, smart enough to talk but not smart enough to understand his world. What’s the point?”

“What’s the point of your spermatic flowers? God, they’re salacious. Did David give them to you? They’re wonderful.”

“David didn’t give them to me.”

“You bought them yourself? After he left, I would guess. A replacement?”

“A reminder of male fallibility.”

Stephanie laughed. She knew I was lying, of course. David was never fallible in that department. Or any other. His leaving was my fault. I am not an easy person to live with. I needle, pry, argue, search compulsively for weaknesses to match my own. Worse, I only admit this well after the fact. I looked away from Stephanie and gazed through a gap in the flowers at San Francisco Bay, my drink frosty in my hand.

It is, I suppose, a serious flaw in my character that I can’t stand to be in the same room for ten minutes with people like Stephanie. She’s intelligent, successful, funny, daring. Men fall all over her, and not just for her genemod looks, red hair and violet eyes and legs a yard and a half long. Not even for her enhanced intelligence. Xo, she has the ultimate attraction for jaded males: no heart. She’s a perpetual challenge, an infinite variety that custom doesn’t stale because the tariff is always about to be revoked. She can’t really be loved, and can’t really be hurt, because she doesn’t care. Indifference, coupled with those legs, is irresistible. Every man chinks he’ll be different for her, but he never is. Her face launched a thousand ships? Big deal. There’s always another fleet. If pher-omone genemods weren’t illegal, I’d swear Stephanie had them.

Jealousy, David always said, corrodes the soul.

I’d always answered that Stephanie was soulless. She was twenty-eight, seven years my junior, which meant seven years more advancement in the allowable technological evolution of Homo sapiens . They had been a fertile seven years. Her father was Harve Brunell, of Brunell Power. For his only daughter he had bought every genemod on the market, and some of that hadn’t quite arrived there, legally. Stephanie Brunell represented the penultimate achievement of American science, power, and values.

Right behind Katous.

She plucked a penile blue flower and turned it idly in her hands. She was making me choke on my curiosity about Katous. “So it’s really over with you and David. Incidentally, I glimpsed him last night at Anna’s water fete. From a great distance. He was out on the lily pads.”

I asked casually, “Oh? With whom?”

“Quite alone. And looking very handsome. I think he had his hair replaced again. It’s curly and blond now.”

I stretched and yawned. The muscles in my neck felt hard as duragem chains. “Stephanie, if you want David, go after him. / don’t care.”

“Don’t you? Do you mind if I send your rather primitive house ’bot for another pitcher? You seem to have drunk this whole one without me. At least your ’bot works — the breakdown rate on the cop ’bots has accelerated yet again . I’d think the parts franchises were all owned by crooks, if they weren’t owned by some of my best friends. What’s your ’bot’s name?”

“Hudson,” I said, “another pitcher.”

It floated off. Katous watched it fearfully, backing into a corner of the terrace. The dog’s absurd tail brushed a hanging flower.

Immediately the flower wrapped itself around the tail, and Katous yelped and jumped forward, quivering.

I said, “A genemod dog with some self-awareness but afraid of a flower? Isn’t that a little cruel?”

“It’s supposed to be an ultra-pampered beastie. Actually, Katous is a beta-test prototype for the foreign market. Allowable under the Special Exemption Act for Economic Recovery, Section 14-c. Non-Agricultural Domestic Animals for Export.”

“I thought the President hasn’t signed the Special Exemption Act.” Congress had been wrangling over it for weeks. Economic crisis, unfavorable balance of trade, strict GSEA controls, threat to life as we know it. All the usual.

“He’ll sign it next week,” Stephanie said. I wondered which of her lovers had influence on the Hill. “We can’t afford not to. The genemod lobby gets more powerful every month. Think of all those Chinese and EC and South American rich old ladies who will just love a nauseatingly cute, helpless, unthreateningly sentient, short-lived, very expensive lapdog with no teeth.”