Nancy Kress: Beggars and Choosers

“I’m…”

“Aren’t you troubled?”

“I’m stunned .” She nodded again, apparently unsurprised. I said, “Aren’t you? But no, of course not. You expected this to happen.”

“Expected which to happen?” she said in that slow speech, and of course she was right. Too much had happened. I could be referring to any of it: the biological changes since Before, the attack by the Will and Idea underground, the rescue.

But what I said was, “The disintegration of my country.” I heard my own faint emphasis on “my” and was instantly ashamed: my country, not yours. This woman had saved my life, all our lives.

But not completely ashamed.

Miranda said, “Temporarily.”

“ Temporarily ? Don’t you know what you’ve done ?”

She went on gazing at me, without answering. I suddenly wondered what it would be like to encounter that gaze day after day, knowing she could figure out anything about you, while you could never understand the first thing she was thinking. Possibly not even if she told you.

All at once, I understood Drew Arlen, and why he had done what he had.

Miranda said — the perfect proof, although of course I didn’t think of that until much later — “Huevos Verdes didn’t extend that shield.”

I gaped at her.

“You thought they did. But we at Huevos Verdes agreed not to defend you against your own kind. We agreed it would be better to let you find your own way. If we do everything, you will just. . . resent. . .” It was the only time I ever felt she was genuinely at a loss for words.

“Then who extended the shield?”

“The Oak Mountain federal authorities. On direct order of the President, who’s down but not out.” She almost smiled, sadly. “The donkeys protected their own American citizens. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it, Vicki?”

“What I want to hear? But is it true ?”

“It’s true.”

I stared at her. Then I stood up and hobbled out of the cell. I didn’t even say good-bye. I didn’t know I was going. I limped so fast across the prison yard that I almost fell. I didn’t have to cross the whole yard; they were there, conferring in a huddle. They stopped when they saw me, stared stonily, waited. Two techies in blue uniforms, and a man and a woman in suits. Tall, genemod handsome. With heads of ordinary size. Donkeys.

Federal officials of the United States, protecting citizens under the high-tech shield of the laws and on the subterranean bedrock of the Constitution of the United States. “The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“The President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall so Commission all the Officers of the United States.”

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them… against domestic Violence.” Each of them . The donkeys glared at me, clearly unhappy that I was there.

I turned and limped back to Miranda’s cell. She didn’t seem surprised.

“Why did they let me into the prison? And where were they when I came in?”

“I asked them to let you in, and to let you bring your questions directly to me.”

She’d asked them. I said, “And why didn’t Huevos Verdes…” But she had already answered that. We agreed it would be better to let you find your own way .

I said quietly, “Like gods. Set above us.”

She said, “If you want to think of it that way.”

I went on gazing at her. Two eyes, two arms, a mouth, two legs, a body. But not human.

I said — made myself say — “Thank you.”

And she smiled. Her whole face changed, opened up, became planes of light. She looked like anyone else.

“Good luck to you, Vicki.”

I heard, To all of you . Miranda Sharifi would never need luck. When you controlled that much tech, including the tech of your own mind, luck became irrelevant. What happened was what you wanted to happen.

Or maybe not. She had loved Drew Aden.

“Thank you,” I said again, formally, inanely. I left the cell.

They would go back to Sanctuary, I suddenly knew. When they agreed the time was right they would, by some unimaginable technology that would look to us godlike, snatch Miranda out of Oak Mountain and return to their orbital in the sky. They should never have left Sanctuary. Whatever they wanted to do for us, down here, for whatever reasons, they could probably do just as well from Sanctuary. Where they would be safe. Where they belonged.

Not on Earth.

I realized, then, that in my preoccupation with the United States I had failed to ask Miranda about the rest of the world. But it didn’t matter. The answer was already clear. The SuperSleepless would supply the rest of the world with syringes, as soon as they had manufactured enough of them. Miranda would not make distinctions among nationalities — not in the face of the much greater distinction between all of us and the twenty-seven of them. And then the rest of the world, like the United States, would undergo the cataclysmic political changes that came from changing the very nature of the species. They would have no choice.

Nobody spoke to me as I made my way back through the barred doors and the automated doors and the biodetectors. That was all right with me; they didn’t have to speak. All they had to do was be there, officially there, upholding the laws, keeping law itself in existence. Even when the technology couldn’t be controlled, or even understood by most of us. The effort to include all of us humans in the law was what counted. The effort to understand the law, not just follow it. That might save us.

Maybe.

The doors all locked audibly behind me.

Outside it had started to rain. I hobbled through the drizzle, through the dark, toward the Y-lights of the camp. They shone brightly, but my ankle still ached and twice I almost stumbled. Nearly everyone was under cover. From one tent I heard crying, wailing for someone dead in the panic after the air attack. It started to rain harder. The earths beneath my feet, one whole and one temporarily smashed, started to turn to nourishing mud.

I had almost reached my tent when I saw them rushing toward me. Billy in the lead, waving a torch in the rain, his young-old face creased with relief. Annie, whom I didn’t like and probably never would. And Lizzie , leaping like a young gazelle, quickly overtaking and passing the other two, shouting and crying my name, so glad that I was here, that I was alive on Earth. My people.

It was enough.

Oh, Miranda… I’m sorry . I never intended… But I would try to stop you again.

And I don’t expect you to understand.