Nancy Kress - Beggars and Choosers

Drew, bold it like this.

What for, Leisha ? / can speak, me, to the terminal anything I want it to know .

What if someday there aren’t any terminals?

In your nose hairs! There will always be terminals, them!

Slowly I printed A HISTERY OF THE SECUND AMERICAN REVALUTION.

Three hours later, after much crumpling up and tearing of paper and fidgeting in my chair, I had three crossed-out pages. They described James Francis Marion Hubbley’s philosophy, activities, and goals. Hubbley himself strode across the room, looming over me. I wondered what had taken him so long.

“Now, Mr. Arlen, sir, I’m glad as Sundays that y’all are interested enough in our revolution to write it down. But naturally I want to check what y’all are sayin,’ for accuracy. Y’all can understand that, son.”

“Does that mean y’all think anybody’s going to actually see it?” I said, handing over the papers. But baiting him had no effect. His face, always bony, looked gaunt and drawn. The skin around the eyes bunched in thick ridges. He hardly glanced at my “histery.”

“Hail, that’s fine, son. Only y’all need more on Colonel Marion. Inspiration is the heart of action, we always say down here.”

“I haven’t ever heard any of you say that.”

“Ummm,” he said, not really listening. He gazed distractedly around the room. Abigail was still laughing brilliantly with her friends, sewing on her everlasting wedding gown; she’d been at it for three solid hours. She was now around seven months pregnant, and the white lace cascaded over the bulge of her belly. Joncey had disappeared. So had Campbell and the doctor. Peg, awake beside me, gazed at Hubbley as if at the sun. Something was happening, something I didn’t understand.

The shapes in my mind were tight and hard, as closed as the dusky lattice. I was running out of time.

Bracing my hands on the arms of the wheelchair, I lifted my torso inches off the seat. Then I shifted my weight to the left hand, until the chair — not anywhere as stable as a powerchair — toppled. I fell on top of Peg, who instantly had her hands around my throat, squeezing. I fought with myself not to respond. Every fiber in my arms screamed to slug her, but I kept myself still, eyes wide, choking to death. The room wavered, dimmed. It was eternity before Jimmy Hubbley pulled her off me.

“There now, Peg, let go, the man ain’t nghtin’, he just fell. . . Peg! Let go!”

She did, instantly. Air rushed back into my lungs, burning and painful as acid. I gasped and wheezed.

Hubbley stood restraining Peg, although she topped him by ten inches and was undoubtedly stronger than he. He kept one arm around her waist. With the other he hauled my chair upside down. Spectators had gathered.

“C’mon, y’all, this ain’t nothin’. Mr. Aden’s chair tipped — see how this metal thing is bent underneath here? Calm down, Peg. Shoot, he ain’t even armed. You hurt, Mr. Arlen, sir?”

“N-n-no.”

“Wail, these things happen. Starrett, lift Mr. Arlen into this here chair. Where’s Bobby? There you are. Bobby, this is your department, straighten out this metal so his wheelchair don’t tip again on him. That’s downright dangerous. Now, y’all, it’s gettin’ close to lights out, so just move on to your quarters.”

I was lifted into a commons chair. Bobby took a power brace from his pocket and straightened the metal strut on the underside of the chair in fifteen seconds. Lacking a power brace, it had taken me half an hour and every ounce of strength I possessed to bend it that afternoon.

Hubbley took his arm away from Peg, who shivered. He left the room. I picked up my “histery” and let Peg wheel me to bed and lock me in. She was rough, upset at herself for overreacting, wondering if anyone else had seen how desperately she had protected Jimmy Hubbley. She really didn’t know that everyone else saw, and mocked, her hopeless passion. Poor Peg. Stupid Peg. I was counting on her stupidity.

In my room I humped up the blanket on the pallet, trying to make it look as if I were underneath. This wasn’t easy; the blanket was thin. I left the wheelchair conspicuously empty, to my right, visible as soon as the door was partially open. I positioned myself behind the door, propped against the wall, my useless legs tucked under me.

How long would it take Peg to undress? Did she go through her pockets? Of course she did. She was a professional. But a stupid professional. And sick with passion.

Stupid and sick enough? If not, I was as dead as Leisha.

I was sitting in almost the same position Leisha had when she died. But Leisha had never known what hit her. I would know. The shapes in my mind were taut and swift, silver sharks circling the closed green lattice.

The note in Peg’s pocket was written with the same pencil as my histery — it might have been the only pencil in the entire bunker — but not on thick pale wrapping paper. It was written on a piece of lace from Abigail’s wedding gown, an oblong discarded oh-so-carelessly along a corridor, an oblong with fewer lacy perforations than normal and so room to scrawl, in a hand as different from my histery as I could make it. Of course, a handwriting expert would know the writing was the same person’s. But Peg was not a handwriting expert. Peg could barely read. Peg was stupid. Peg was sick with passion, and jealousy, and protectiveness for her crazy leader.

The note said: She is traitor. Plan with me. Arlens room safest . I had written it amidst all the crumpling and tearing and fidgeting of my histery, and it had not been hard to slip it into Peg’s pocket. Not for someone who had once picked the pocket of the governor of New Mexico, Leisha’s guest, because the governor was an important donkey and I was a sullen crippled teenager who had just been kicked out of the third school Leisha’s donkey money had tried to keep me in.

Leisha…

The silver sharks moved faster through my mind. Could Peg puzzle out the word “traitor”? Maybe I should have stayed with words of one syllable. Maybe she was more professional than lovesick, or less stupid than jealous. Maybe—

The lock glowed. The door opened. The second she was inside I slammed her in the face with the wheelchair, swinging it upward with every bit of strength in my augmented arm muscles. She fell back against the door, closing it. She was only stunned a moment, but I only needed a moment. I swung the chair again, this time aiming the arm rest, which I had bent out at an angle, directly into her stomach. If she had been a man I could have gone for her balls. Patiently I’d removed the padding on the armrest and worked the metal back and forth, sweat streaming down my face, until it broke off jagged, and then I replaced the armrest. This had taken days, finding the odd moments when I could plausibly bend over the armrest to hide my work from both the monitors and Peg. It took only seconds for the sharp jagged metal to pierce Peg’s abdomen and impale her.

She screamed, clutched the metal, and fell to her knees, stopped by the bulk of the chair. But she was strong; in a moment she had the jagged armrest out of her flesh. Blood streamed from her belly over the twisted metal of the chair, but not as much as I’d hoped. She turned toward me, and I knew that in all my concerts, all my work with subconscious shapes in the mind, I’d never created anything as savage as Peg’s face looked that moment.

But she was on her knees now, on my level. She was strong, and trained, and bigger than I was, but I was augmented, as her philosophy — Hubbley’s philosophy — could never let her be. And I was trained, too. We grappled, and I got both my hands around her neck and squeezed the fingers Leisha had paid to have strengthened. In case I would ever, in my bodily weakness, need them.