Nancy Kress - Beggars and Choosers

The timing was good for me. I could make use of these tears.

I said, “There’s a message I have to get to Charleston. I can’t go myself because the GSEA is monitoring me remotely; I told you that. They’d know. And there’s nobody else I can trust. Annie wouldn’t do it, and Billy won’t leave Annie…”

She went on looking at me, not changing expression, her eyes swollen and her nose red.

“It’s about Miranda Sharifi,” I said. “ Lizzie , it’s unbelievably important. I need you to walk to Charleston, and I’ll time-encode in your terminal what you need to do after you arrive. In fact, I’ve already done that. I know this sounds mysterious, but it’s essential.” I put everything I had — or once had — into that last sentence. The donkey authority. The adult tone of command. The confidence that this girl loved me.

Lizzie went on gazing at me, expressionless.

I handed her the terminal. “You walk along the gravrail track until it branches at Ash Falls. Then you—”

“There’s no message about Miranda Sharifi,” Lizzie said.

“I just told you there was.” Donkey authority. Adult command.

“No. There’s nothing anybody can do about Miranda. You just want me out of here because you’re afraid that underground will attack tonight.”

“No. It’s not that. Why would you think—” you, who owe me so much , my tone said ” — that I don’t have resources you don’t understand? If I say there is a crucial message about Miranda, there is a crucial message about Miranda.”

Lizzie stared at me emptily, hopelessly.

“Lizzie—”

“He left me. Brad. For Maura Casey!”

It’s wrong to laugh at puppy love. For one thing, it’s not that different from what most adults do. I sat on the log next to her.

“He says … he says, him… that I’m too smart for my own good.”

“Livers always say that,” I said gently. “Brad just hasn’t caught on yet.”

“But I am smarter than he is, me.” She sounded like the child she still was. “ Lots smarter. He’s so stupid about so many things!”

I didn’t say, Then why do you want him; I recognized a hopeless arena for logic when I saw one. Instead I said, “Most people are going to look stupid to you, Lizzie . Starting with your mother. That’s just the way you are, and the way the world is going to be now. For you.”

She blew her nose on a leaf. “I hate it, me! I want people to understand me!”

“Well. Better get used to it.”

“He says, him, I try to control him! I don’t, me!”

Who should control the technology ? Paul’s voice said to me, lying in bed, pleased to be instructing the person he had just fucked.

Pleased to be on top. Lizzie probably did try to control Brad. Whoever can , Billy said.

“Lizzie … in Charleston…”

She jumped up. “I said I’m not going, me, and I’m not! I hope there is an attack tonight! I hope I die in it!” She ran off, crashing through the woods, crying.

I took after Lizzie at a dead run. At ten yards, I started gaining. She was fast, but I was more muscled, with longer legs. She was within a yard of my grasp. It was six hours before dark. I could tie her up and physically carry her as far from Oak Mountain, from danger, as I could get in six hours. If I had to, I’d knock her out to let me carry her.

My fingers brushed her back. She spurted forward and leaped over a pile of brush. I leaped, too, and my ankle twisted under me as I fell.

Pain lanced through my leg. I cried out. Lizzie didn’t even falter. Maybe she thought I was faking. I tried to call out to her, but a sudden wave of nausea — biological shock — took me. I turned my head just in time to vomit. Lizzie kept running, and disappeared among the trees. I heard her even after I couldn’t see her anymore. Then I couldn’t hear her either.

Slowly I sat up. My ankle throbbed, already swollen. I couldn’t tell if it was sprained or even fractured. If it was, Miranda’s nan-otech would fix it. But not instantly.

I felt cold, then sweaty. Don’t pass out , I told myself sternly. Not now, not here. Lizzie…

Even if I could find her again, I couldn’t carry her anywhere.

When the biologic shock passed, I limped back to camp. Every step was painful, and not just to my ankle. When I reached the outskirts of the camp, some Livers helped me get to my tent. By the time I got there, the pain was already muted. It was also dark. Lizzie wasn’t there, and neither was Annie nor Billy. Lizzie’s terminal and library crystal were gone from her tent.

I sat huddled in front of my tent, watching the sky. Tonight was cloudy, without stars or moon. The air smelled of rain. I shivered, and hoped I was wrong. Completely, spectacularly, om-nisciently wrong. About the underground nobody admitted actually existed, about their targets, about everything.

After all, what did I know?

# # *

“Free Miranda. Free Miranda. Free Miranda…”

The red-and-blue helix pulsed, overlaid by the red, white, and blue flag. WILL AND IDEA, no other legend. Whose will? What idea? Oak Mountain Prison sat dark and still under the rhythmical light.

“ Free Miranda. Free Miranda. Free Miranda…”

I still sat in front of my tent, nursing my ankle. Annie had wrapped it tightly in a strip of woven cloth, which my skin was probably consuming. I sat perhaps a quarter mile from the ten thousand chanters. Their chant carried to me clearly.

The sky’was dark, overcast. The summer air smelled of rain, of pine, of wildflowers. I realized for the first time that these scents were as strong as ever, whereas the stink of human bodies was muted in my altered olfactory nerves. Miranda Company knew their business.

The torches held by the chanters mixed with Y-energy cones: wavering primitive light and steady high tech. And above it, the red-and-blue glare. Broad stripes and bright stars.

The first plane came from Brad’s nameless mountain, flying without lights, a metallic glint visible only if you were looking for it. They didn’t need planes; they could have used long-distance artillery. Somebody wanted to record the action close up. I staggered to my feet, already crying. The plane came in over the top of the prison and swept low, buzzing the chanters. People screamed. It dropped a single impact bomb, which went off in the middle of the crowd. Barely enough to cause fifty deaths, even in that mass of bodies. They were playing.

People started to shove and push, screaming. Those fortunates on the edge of the crowd ran free, toward the distant wooded slopes. I could see figures behind them, distant but separate, stumble over each other. Miranda had left me with 20/20 vision.

A second plane, that I hadn’t seen in advance, flew over me from the opposite direction and disappeared over the prison walls. I didn’t hear the second bomb, which must have fallen on the other side of the walls. The explosion was drowned out by the screaming.

People started to trample each other.

Billy. Annie. Lizzie…

The first plane had wheeled and was returning from behind me. This time, I knew, it wouldn’t be to play. Too many people from the edges of the crowd were scrambling to safety. Would the bomb take out Oak Mountain itself? Of course. That’s where the chief abomination was. I didn’t know what kinds of shields the prison had, but if the attack was nuclear…

The holo above the prison changed for the last time:

I thought I saw Lizzie . Insane — it wasn’t possible to distinguish individuals at this distance. My mind merely wanted me to die in as much dramatic anguish as possible. And so I thought I saw Lizzie run forward, and be trampled by people panicked to escape what had been inevitable since the creation of the first genemod.