Nancy Kress - Beggars and Choosers

She got up, her, and walked away.

She was half right. I didn’t understand, me, all of it, but I understood some. I thought of Annie not wanting, her, to leave East Oleanta, not even to get Miranda Sharifi free. We got it good here, Billy. There ain’t nothing to be afraid of here…

Vicki came back. “I’m sorry, Billy. I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just. . .”

“What?” I said, me, as gentle as I could.

“It’s just that I’m afraid. For Lizzie. For all of us.”

“I know.” I did know, me. That much I knew.

“Do you remember what you said, Billy, that day that Miranda injected us with the syringes, and she and Drew Arlen were arguing about who should control technology?”

I don’t remember that day, me, real clear. It was the most important day in my entire life, the day that gave me Annie and Lizzie and my body back, but I don’t remember it real clear. My chest hurt, and Lizzie was sick, and too much was happening. But I remember, me, Drew Aden’s hard face, may he rot in Annie’s hell. He testified against her at her trial, and sent his own woman to jail. And I remember the tears in Miranda’s eyes. Who should control technology…

“You said it only matters who can . Out of the mouths of the untutored, Billy. And you know what? We can’t. Not the syringed Livers or the syringed donkeys in their shielded enclaves. And without some pretty sophisticated technology of our own, any really determined technological attack by the government or by this demented purist underground could wipe us out. And will.”

I didn’t know, me, what to say. Part of me wanted to hole up with Annie and Lizzie — and Vicki, too — forever in East Oleanta. But I couldn’t, me. We had to get Miranda Sharifi free, us. I didn’t know how, me, but we had to. She set us free, her.

“Maybe,” I said, slow, “there ain’t no underground stirring up fighting. Maybe this is just a … a getting-used-to period, and after a while Livers and donkeys will go back, them, to helping each other live.”

Vicki laughed, her. It was an ugly sound. “May God bless the beasts and children,” she said, which didn’t make no sense. We weren’t neither.

“Oh, yes, we are,” Vicki said. “Both.”

The next week we left, us, to walk to Oak Mountain Maximum Security Federal Prison in West Virginia.

We weren’t the only ones, us. It wasn’t the East Oleanta Council’s original idea. They got it, them, off a man walking south in one of the slow steady lines of people moving along the old gravrail tracks. Feeding in the afternoons in pastures and fields. Leaving the grass torn up to lie in the sweet summer mud. Deciding together where the latrines should be. Making chains of daisies to wear around their necks, until the daisies get slowly fed on and disappear, the same as cloth does from the weaving ’bot. Vicki says, her, that eventually we’ll all just go naked all the time. I say, me, not while Annie Francy’s got breath in her beautiful body.

Our second day on the road I talked, me, to another old man come along the tracks clear down from someplace near Canada. His grandsons were with him, carrying portable terminals, the way the young ones all do, them. They were moving south before the weather gets cold again. The old man’s name was Dean, him. He told me that Before he had soft, rotted bones, him, so bad he couldn’t even of sat in a chair without nearly crying. The syringes came to his town in an airdrop, them, at night, the way a lot of towns got them. He said they never even heard the plane. I didn’t ask him, me, how he even knew it was a plane.

Instead, I asked him if he knew, him, what the government donkeys were doing about all the Livers on the road moving toward Oak Mountain.

Dean spat. “Who cares? I ain’t seen no donkeys, me, and I better not. They’re abominations.”

“They’re what?”

“Abominations. Unnatural. I been talking, me, to some Livers from New York City. They set me straight, them. The donkeys ain’t no part of the United States.”

I looked at him, me.

“It’s true. The United States is for Livers . That’s what President Washington and President Lincoln and all them other heroes meant, them, for it to be. A government for the people, by the people. And the real people, the natural people, is us.”

“But donkeys—”

“Ain’t natural. Ain’t people.”

“You can’t—”

“We got the Will and we got the Idea. We can clean up the country, us. Rid it of abominations.”

I said, “Miranda Sharifi’s not a Liver.”

“You mean you believe, you, that the syringes come from Huevos Verdes? Because of that lying broadcast? Them syringes come, them, from God!”

I looked at him.

“What’s the matter, you an abomination lover, you? You harboring one of them donkeys?”

I raised my head, me, real slow.

“ ’Cause a few donkey lovers tried, them, to join up with decent Livers. We know how to deal with those kind here, us!”

“Thanks for the information,” I said.

All the way back to Vicki, I breathed funny, me. I could feel my chest pound almost the way it used to, Before. But Vicki was all right, her. She sat on a half-busted chair by the gravrail, in the shade of some old empty building, brooding. The people from East Oleanta went around her doing what they always do, them, paying her no attention. They were used to her.

“Vicki,” I said, “you got to be careful, you. Don’t go away from us East Oleanta people. Keep your sun hat on, you. A big sun hat. There’s people going south, them, that want to kill donkeys!”

She looked up, her, cross. “Of course there are. What do you suppose I’ve been telling you for days and days?”

“But this ain’t some big-word argument about the government, it, this is you —”

“Oh, Billy.”

“Oh Billy what? Are you listening, you, to what I’m saying?”

“I’m listening. I’ll be careful.” She looked ready to cry, her. Or shout.

“Good. We care, us, what happens to you.”

“Just not to the government,” she said, and went back to staring, her, at nothing.

We walked the tracks, us, for days. At places in the mountains it was pretty narrow, but we weren’t none of us in any particular hurry. More and more Livers joined us, them. At night people sat around Y-cones or campfires, them, talking, or knitting. Annie liked teaching people to knit. She did it a lot, her. People wandered, them, into the woods to feed or to use the latrines we dug every night. There was ponds and streams for water. It didn’t matter if the water wasn’t too clean, it, or even if it was close to the latrines. The Cell Cleaner took care of any germs that might of got into us. We wouldn’t need no medunit, us, ever again.

The young ones carried their terminals, them. The older ones carried little tents, mostly made from plasticloth tarps. The tents were light, they didn’t tear, and they didn’t get dirty. They didn’t even get that mildewed smell, them, that I remember from tents when I was a boy, me. I remember, me, a lot more than I used to. I kind of miss the mildewy smell.

When it rained, we put up the tents, us, and waited it out. We weren’t in no hurry. Getting there would take as long as it took.

But Annie was right. Nobody had no plan, them. Miranda Sharifi, who gave us back our lives, sat there in Oak Mountain, and nobody had the foggiest idea, them, how we were supposed to get her out.

I never saw, me, other donkeys beside Vicki, who laid pretty low. A few times strangers gave her dirty looks, them, but me and Ben Radisson and Carl Jones from East Oleanta sort of stood up, us, near her, and there wasn’t no trouble. Some other people didn’t even seem to realize, them, that Vicki was a donkey. Since the syringes, a lot more women got bodies, them, almost good enough to be genemod. Almost. I told Vicki, me, to keep her sun hat pulled low enough to shade them violet genemod eyes.