Nancy Kress - Beggars and Choosers

“But—”

“Y’all need to examine your premises, son,” he said very gently. “Will and idea.” He went back to eating.

The boy returned, carrying two mugs. Still-brewed whiskey. I left mine untouched, but I made myself eat the stew. I might need my strength. Hatred shone in me like suns.

Hubbley talked more about Francis Marion. His courage, his military strategy, his ways of living off the land. “Why, he wrote to General Horatio Gates to send him supplies because ‘we are all poor Continentals without money.’ Poor Continentals! Ain’t that a great one? Poor Continentals! And so we are.” He drained his whiskey. So much for vinegar and water.

I choked out, “The GSEA will stop you. Or Huevos Verdes will.”

He grinned. “You know what the Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton of His Majesty’s army said about Francis Marion? But as for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him.”

I said, “Hubbley — you aren’t Francis Marion .”

Immediately he grew serious. “Well, of course not, son. Anybody can see that, so clear it don’t hardly need commentin’ on, does it, except by somebody crazy. Clear as day I’m not Francis Marion. I’m Jimmy Hubbley. What’s wrong with you, Mr. Arlen? You feelin’ all right?”

He leaned across the table, his bony face creased with concern.

I could feel my heart thud in my chest. He was impenetrable, as impenetrable as Huevos Verdes. After a moment he patted my arm.

“That’s all right, Mr. Arlen, sir, y’all just a little shocked by events is all. Y’all will be fine in the mornin’. It’s just real upsettin’, discoverin’ the truth after all this time of believin’ falsehoods. Perfectly natural. Now don’t you worry none; y’all be fine in the mornin’. You just sleep, and please excuse me, I got a council of war to attend to.”

He patted my arm again, smiled, and left. The boy wheeled my chair to a bedroom with a single bed, a chemical toilet, and a deadbolt on the door that could only be unlocked from the outside.

In the morning the doctor came to check me. He turned out to be the small man who had helped Joncey at the landing stage.

Joncey was with him. I saw that Joncey was guarding him; apparently the doctor was not here of his own Will and Idea. But he was allowed to roam the underground compound, which meant he probably knew where the terminals were.

“Leg looks good,” he said. “Any pain in your neck?”

“No.” Joncey leaned against the doorjamb, smiling. The smile deepened and I glimpsed Abigail pass by in the corridor. Joncey stepped away from the door. Giggles and a tussle.

I said, quickly and very low, “Doctor — I can get us out of here, if you can get me to a terminal. I know ways to call for help that will override anything they can possibly have—”

His small face wrinkled in alarm. Too late I realized that, of course, he was monitored. Hubbley’s people would overhear everything he heard or said.

Joncey came back and the doctor hurried off by his side, interested only in staying alive.

The lattice in my mind had circled tighter than ever, a huddled closed shape, hiding whatever was inside. Even the diamond patterns on its outer surface looked smaller. Angry, ineffective shapes flopped sluggishly around it, like beached fish.

Hubbley left me to my sour shapes until midmorning. When he opened my door he looked stern. “Mr. Arlen, sir, I understand y’all want to get to a terminal and set your friends at Huevos Verdes on us.”

I stared at him with open hatred, sitting in my antique wheelchair.

He sighed and sat on the edge of my cot, hands on his long knees, body bent earnestly forward. “It’s important that y’all understand , son. Contactin’ the enemy in wartime is treason. Now I know y’all ain’t a regular soldier, leastways not yet, y’all are more like a prisoner of war, but just the same—”

“You know Francis Marion never talked like that, don’t you?” I said brutally. “That kind of speech only dates from maybe a hundred fifty years ago, from movies. It’s phony. As phony as your whole war.”

He didn’t change expression. “Why, of course General Marion didn’t talk this way, Mr. Arlen. Y’all think I don’t know that? But it’s different from how my troops talk, it’s old-fashioned, and it ain’t neither donkey nor Liver. That’s enough. It don’t matter how truth gets expressed, long as it does.”

He gazed at me with kindly, patient eyes.

I said, “Let me wheel my chair around the compound. I’m not going to learn your truths locked in this room. Give me a guard, like the doctor has.”

Hubbley rubbed the lump on his neck. “Well — could do, I suppose. It ain’t like y’all are going to overpower anyone, sittin’ in that chair.”

The shapes in my mind abruptly changed. Dark red, shot with silver. Hubbley’s people didn’t do very deep background checks. He didn’t realize I’d trained my upper body with the best martial arts masters Leisha’s money could buy. She’d wanted to give me an outlet for my adolescent anger.

What else didn’t he know? Leisha, unable to alter my non-Sleepless DNA, had nonetheless done what she could for me. My eyes had implanted corneas with bifocal/zoom magnification; my arm muscles had been augmented. Probably these things counted as abominations, crimes against the common humanity in the Constitution.

I tried to look wistful. “Can I have Abigail for my guard?”

Hubbley laughed. “Won’t do y’all no good, son. Abby’s goin’ to marry Joncey in a couple of months. Give that baby a real daddy. Abby’s got a whole lot of lace around here someplace, for a weddin’ dress.”

I saw Abigail in her waders and torn shirt, firing a rocket launcher at the rescue plane. I couldn’t picture her in a wedding gown. Then it came to me that I couldn’t picture Miranda in one either.

Miranda. I had hardly thought of her since Leisha’s death.

“But I’ll tell you what,” Hubbley said, “seein’ as y’all are so starved for feminine company, I’ll assign a woman to guard you. But, Mr. Arlen, sir—”

“Yes?”

His eyes looked grayer, harder. “Keep in mind that this is a war, sir. And grateful as we are for the help your concerts gave us, y’all are expendable. Just keep that in mind.”

I didn’t answer. In another hour the door opened again and a woman entered. She was, must have been, Campbell’s twin. Nearly seven feet tall, nearly as muscled as he was. Her short shit-brown hair was plastered flat around a sullen face with Campbell’s heavy jaw.

“I’m the guard, me.” Her voice was high and bored.

“Hello. I’m Drew Arlen. You’re…”

“Peg. Just behave, you.” She stared at me with flat dislike.

“Right,” I said. “And what natural combination of genes produced you ?”

Her dislike didn’t deepen, didn’t waver. I saw her in my mind as a solid monolith, granite, like a headstone.

“Take me to whatever your cafe is, Peg.”

She grasped the wheelchair and pushed it roughly. Beneath her green jacks, her thigh muscles rippled. She outweighed me by maybe thirty pounds; her reach was longer; she was in superb shape.

I saw Leisha’s body, light and slim, slumped against the custard-apple tree, two red holes in her forehead.

The cafe was a large room where several tunnels converged. There were tables, chairs, a holoterminal of the simplest, receive-only kind. It showed a scooter race. No foodbelt, but several people were eating bowls of soystew. They stared frankly when Peg wheeled me in. At least half a dozen faces were openly hostile.

Abigail and Joncey sat at a far table. She was actually sewing panels of lace together — by hand. It was like watching someone make candles, or dig a hole with a shovel. Abigail glanced at me once, then ignored me.