BEGGARS & CHOOSERS
                                                     I
Copyright © 1994 by Nancy Kress

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,
or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Design by Lynn Newmark

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kress, Nancy.
    Beggars & Choosers / Nancy Kress.
         p.    cm.
  "A Tom Doherty Associates book."
  ISBN 0-312-85749-7 (hardcover)
  PS3561.R46B38        1994
  813'.54—dc20                                           94-21753
                                                            CIP

First edition: October 1994

Printed in the United States of America

0   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
To Miriam Grace Monfredo
    and Mary Stanton

without whose friendship in a bad time
this book would not have been finished.
                        Prologue
                               2106




T     he clanging of the priority-one override alarm ripped
      through the cavernous backstage dressing room. Drew
      Aden, the only occupant, jerked his head toward the holo-
terminal beside his dressing table. The screen registered his retina
scan and Leisha Camden's face appeared.
   "Drew! Have you heard?"
   The man in the powerchair, upper body fanatically muscled
above his crippled legs, turned back to putting on his eye makeup.
He leaned into the dressing table mirror. "Heard what?"
    "Did you see the six o'clock Times?"
    "Leisha, I go on stage in fifteen minutes. I haven't listened to
anything." He heard the thickening in his own voice, and hoped
she didn't. Even after all this time. Even at just the sight of her
holo.
    "Miranda and the Supers . . . Miranda . . . Drew, they've built
an entire island. Off the coast of Mexico. Using nanotech and the
atoms in seawater, and almost overnight!"
    "An island," Drew repeated. He frowned into the mirror,
rubbed at his makeup, applied more.
    "Not a floating construct. An actual island, that goes all the
way down to the continental shelf. Did you know about this?"
    "Leisha, I have a concert in fifteen minutes . . ."
    "You did, didn't you. You knew what Miranda was doing. Why
didn't you tell me?"
    Drew turned his powerchair to face Leisha's golden hair, green
eyes, genemod perfect skin. She looked thirty-five. She was ninety-
eight years old.
    He said, "Why didn't Miranda tell you?"
    Leisha's expression quieted. "You're right. It was Miranda's
place to tell me. And she didn't. There's a lot she doesn't tell me,
isn't there, Drew?"
    A long moment passed before Drew said softly, "It isn't easy
being on the outside for a change, is it, Leisha?"
    She said, equally softly, "You've waited a long time to be able
to say that to me, haven't you, Drew?"
    He looked away. In the corner of the huge silent room some-
thing rustled: a mouse, or a defective 'bot.
    Leisha said, "Are they moving to this new island? All twenty-
seven Supers?"
    "Yes."
    "No one in the scientific community even knew nanotech had
reached that capability."
    "Nobody else's nanotech has."
    Leisha said, "They're not going to let me on that island, are
they? At all?"
    He listened to the complex undertones in her voice. Leisha's
generation of Sleepless, the first generation, could never hide their
feelings. Unlike Miranda's generation, who could hide anything.
    "No," Drew said. "They're not."
    "They'll shield the island with something that Terry Mwa-
kambe invents, and you'll be the only non-Super ever allowed to
know what they're doing there."
    He didn't answer. A technician stuck his head diffidently in
the door. "Ten minutes, Mr. Arlen, sir."
    "Yes. I'm coming."
    "Huge crowd tonight, sir. All pumped up."
    "Yes. Thank you." The tech's head disappeared.
    "Drew," Leisha said, her voice splintering. "She's as much a
daughter to me as you were a son . . . what is Miranda planning
out on that island?"
    "I don't know," Drew said, and it was both a lie and not a lie,
in ways that Leisha could never understand. "Leisha, I have to be
on stage in nine minutes."
    "Yes," Leisha said wearily. "I know. You're the Lucid
Dreamer."
    Drew stared again at her holo-image: the lovely curve of cheek,
the unaging Sleepless skin, the suspicion of water in the green
eyes. She had been the most important person in his world, and
in the larger public world. And now, although she didn't know it
yet, she was obsolete.
    "Yes," he said. "That's right. I'm the Lucid Dreamer."
    The holostage blanked, and he went back to his makeup for
the stage.
                JULY 2 1 1 4
   Concern for man himself and his fate
 must always form the chief interest of all
 technical endeavors, concern for the great
 unsolved problems of the organization of
  labor and the distribution of goods—in
order that the creations of our mind shall be
  a blessing and not a curse to mankind.
     —Albert Einstein, address to California
        Institute of Technology, 1931
                             One
                   DIANA COVINGTON: SAN FRANCISCO




F   or some of us, of course, nothing would be enough. That
    sentence can be taken two ways, can't it? But I don't mean
    that having nothing would ever be satisfactory to us. It isn't
even satisfactory to Livers, no matter what pathetic claims they
lay to an "aristo life of leisure." Yes. Right. There isn't a
single one of us that doesn't know better. We donkeys could always
recognize seething dissatisfaction. We saw it daily in the mirror.
   My IQ wasn't boosted as high as Paul's.
   My parents couldn't afford all the genemods Aaron got.
   My company hasn't made it as big as Karen's.
   My skin isn't as small-pored as Gina's.
   My constituency is more demanding than Luke's. Do the blood-
sucking voters think I'm made of money?
   My dog is less cutting-edge genemod than Stephanie's dog.
    It was, in fact, Stephanie's dog that made me decide to change
my life. I know how that sounds. There's nothing about the start
of my service with the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency
that doesn't sound ridiculous. Why not start with Stephanie's dog?
It brings a certain satiric panache to the story. I could dine out
on it for months.
    If, of course, anyone were ever going to dine out again.
    Panache is such a perishable quality.
    Stephanie brought her dog to my apartment in the Bayview
Security Enclave on a Sunday morning in July. The day before,
I'd bought pots of new flowers from BioForms in Oakland and
they cascaded over the terrace railing, a riot of blues much more
varied than the colors of San Francisco Bay, six stories below.
Cobalt, robin's egg, aquamarine, azure, cyan, turquoise, cerulean.
I lay on my terrace chaise, eating anise cookies and studying my
flowers. The gene geniuses had shaped each blossom into a soft
fluttery tube with a domed end. The blossoms were quite long.
Essentially, my terrace frothed with flaccid, blue, vegetable
penises. David had moved out a week ago.
     "Diana," Stephanie said, through the Y-energy shield spanning
the space between my open French doors. "Knock knock."
     "How'd you get into the apartment?" I said, mildly annoyed.
I hadn't given Stephanie my security code. I didn't like her enough.
     "Your code's broken. It's on the police net. Thought you'd
like to know." Stephanie was a cop. Not with the district police,
which was rough and dirty work down among the Livers. Not our
Stephanie. She owned a company that furnished patrol 'bots for
enclave security. She designed the 'bots herself. Her firm, which
was spectacularly successful, held contracts with a sizable number
of San Francisco enclaves, although not with mine. Telling me my
code was on the 'bot net was her ungraceful way of needling me
because my enclave used a different police force.
     I lounged back on my chaise and reached for my drink. The
closest blue flowers yearned toward my hand.
     "You're giving them an erection," Stephanie said, walking
through the French doors. "Oh, anise cookies! Mind if I give one
to Katous?"
    The dog followed her from the cool dimness of my apartment
and stood blinking and sniffing in the bright sunshine. It was
clearly, aggressively, illegally genemod. The Genetic Standards
Enforcement Agency may allow fanciful tinkering with flowers,
but not with animal phyla higher than fish. The rules are very clear,
backed up by court cases whose harsh financial penalties make
them even clearer. No genemods that cause pain. No genemods
that create weaponry, in its broadest definition. No genemods that
"alter external appearance or basic internal functioning such that
a creature deviates significantly from other members of not only
its species but also its breed." A collie may pace and single-foot,
but it better still look like Lassie.
     And never, never, never any genemod that is inheritable. No-
body wants another fiasco like the Sleepless. Even my penile flow-
ers were sterile. And genemod human beings, we donkeys, were
all individually handcrafted, in vitro one-of-a-kind collector's
items. Such is order maintained in our orderly world. So saith
Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard J. Milano, writing the ma-
jority opinion for Linbeckerv. Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency.
Humanity must not be altered past recognition, lest we lose what
it means to be human. Two hands, one head, two eyes, two legs,
a functioning heart, the necessity to breathe and eat and shit, this
is humanity in perpetuity. We are the human beings.
    Or, in this case, the dogs. And yet here was Stephanie, theo-
retically an officer of the law, standing on my terrace flanked by
a prison-sentence GSEA violation in pink fur. Katous had four
adorable pink ears, identically cocked, aural Rockettes. It had an
adorable pink fur rabbit's tail. It had huge brown eyes, three times
the size of any dog's eyes Justice Milano would approve, giving it
a soulful, sorrowing look. It was so adorable and vulnerable-
looking I wanted to kick it.
    Which might have been the point. Although that, too, might
be construed as illegal. No modifications that cause pain.
    "I heard that David moved out," Stephanie said, crouching to
feed an anise cookie to the quivering pink fur. Oh so casual—just
a girl and her dog, my illegal genemod pet, I live on the edge like
this all the time, doncha know. I wondered if Stephanie knew that
"Katous" was Arabic for "cat." Of course she did.
    "David moved out," I agreed. "We came to the place where
the road forked."
    "And who's next on your road?"
    "Nobody." I sipped my drink without offering Stephanie one.
"I thought I'd live alone for a while."
    "Really." She touched an aquamarine flower; it wrapped its
soft tubular petal around her finger. Stephanie grinned. "Quel
dommage. What about that German software dealer you talked to
such a long time at Paul's party?"
    "What about your dog?" I said pointedly. "Isn't he pretty illegal
for a cop's pet?"
    "But so cute. Katous, say hello to Diana."
    "Hello," Katous said.
    Slowly I lowered my glass from my mouth.
    Dogs couldn't talk. The vocal equipment didn't allow it, the
law didn't allow it, the canine IQ didn't allow it. Yet Katous's
growled "hello" was perfectly clear. Katous could talk.
    Stephanie lounged against the French doors, enjoying the
effect of her bombshell. I would have given anything to be able
to ignore it, to go on with a neutral, uninterested conversation. I
could not manage that.
    "Katous," I said, "how old are you?"
    The dog gazed at me from enormous sorrowful eyes.
    "Where do you live, Katous?"
    No answer.
    "Are you genemod?"
    No answer.
    "Is Katous a dog?"
    Was there a shade of sad puzzlement in its brown eyes?
    "Katous, are you happy?"
    Stephanie said, "His vocabulary is only twenty-two words. Al-
though he understands more than that."
    "Katous, would you like a cookie? Cookie, Katous?"
    He wagged his ridiculous tail and pranced in place. There were
no claws on his toes. "Cookie! Please!"
    I held out a cookie, which was from the Proust's Madelines
franchise and were wonderful: crunchy, fragrant with anise, rich
with butter. Katous took it with toothless pink gums. "Thank you,
lady!"
    I looked at Stephanie. "He can't defend himself. And he's a
mental cripple, smart enough to talk but not smart enough to
understand his world. What's the point?"
    "What's the point of your spermatic flowers? God, they're
salacious. Did David give them to you? They're wonderful."
    "David didn't give them to me."
    "You bought them yourself? After he left, I would guess. A
replacement?"
    "A reminder of male fallibility."
    Stephanie laughed. She knew I was lying, of course. David was
never fallible in that department. Or any other. His leaving was
my fault. I am not an easy person to live with. I needle, pry, argue,
search compulsively for weaknesses to match my own. Worse, I
only admit this well after the fact. I looked away from Stephanie
and gazed through a gap in the flowers at San Francisco Bay, my
drink frosty in my hand.
    It is, I suppose, a serious flaw in my character that I can't stand
to be in the same room for ten minutes with people like Stephanie.
She's intelligent, successful, funny, daring. Men fall all over her,
 and not just for her genemod looks, red hair and violet eyes and
 legs a yard and a half long. Not even for her enhanced intelligence.
 No, she has the ultimate attraction for jaded males: no heart. She's
 a perpetual challenge, an infinite variety that custom doesn't stale
 because the tariff is always about to be revoked. She can't really
 be loved, and can't really be hurt, because she doesn't care. In-
 difference, coupled with those legs, is irresistible. Every man
 chinks he'll be different for her, but he never is. Her face launched
 a thousand ships? Big deal. There's always another fleet. If
 pheromone genemods weren't illegal, I'd swear Stephanie had
 them.
    Jealousy, David always said, corrodes the soul.
     I'd always answered that Stephanie was soulless. She was
 twenty-eight, seven years my junior, which meant seven years
 more advancement in the allowable technological evolution of
 Homo sapiens. They had been a fertile seven years. Her father was
 Harve Brunell, of Brunell Power. For his only daughter he had
 bought every genemod on the market, and some of that hadn't
 quite arrived there, legally. Stephanie Brunell represented the
 penultimate achievement of American science, power, and values.
     Right behind Katous.
     She plucked a penile blue flower and turned it idly in her
hands. She was making me choke on my curiosity about Katous.
"So it's really over with you and David. Incidentally, I glimpsed
him last night at Anna's water fete. From a great distance. He was
out on the lily pads."
     I asked casually, "Oh? With whom?"
     "Quite alone. And looking very handsome. I think he had his
hair replaced again. It's curly and blond now."
     I stretched and yawned. The muscles in my neck felt hard as
duragem chains. "Stephanie, if you want David, go after him. I
don't care."
    "Don't you? Do you mind if I send your rather primitive house
'bot for another pitcher? You seem to have drunk this whole one
without me. At least your 'bot works—the breakdown rate on the
cop 'bots has accelerated yet again. I'd think the parts franchises
were all owned by crooks, if they weren't owned by some of my
best friends. What's your 'bot's name?"
     "Hudson," I said, "another pitcher."
     It floated off. Katous watched it fearfully, backing into a corner
of the terrace. The dog's absurd tail brushed a hanging flower.
Immediately the flower wrapped itself around the tail, and Katous
yelped and jumped forward, quivering.
     I said, "A genemod dog with some self-awareness but afraid
of a flower? Isn't that a little cruel?"
     "It's supposed to be an ultra-pampered beastie. Actually, Ka-
tous is a beta-test prototype for the foreign market. Allowable
under the Special Exemption Act for Economic Recovery, Section
14-c. Non-Agricultural Domestic Animals for Export."
     "I thought the President hasn't signed the Special Exemption
Act." Congress had been wrangling over it for weeks. Economic
crisis, unfavorable balance of trade, strict GSEA controls, threat
to life as we know it. All the usual.
     "He'll sign it next week," Stephanie said. I wondered which
of her lovers had influence on the Hill. "We can't afford not to.
The genemod lobby gets more powerful every month. Think of
all those Chinese and EC and South American rich old ladies who
will just love a nauseatingly cute, helpless, unthreateningly sen-
tient, short-lived, very expensive lapdog with no teeth."
     "Short-lived? No teeth? GSEA breed specifications—"
     "Will be waived for export animals. Meanwhile I'm just beta-
testing for a friend. Ah, here's Hudson."
     The 'bot floated through the French doors with a fresh pitcher
of vodka scorpions. Katous scrambled away, his four ears quiv-
ering. His scramble brought him sideways against a bank of flow-
ers, all of which tried to wrap themselves around him. One long
flaccid petal settled softly over his eyes. Katous yelped and pulled
loose, his eyes wild. He shot across the terrace.
     "Help!" he cried. "Help Katous!"
     On that side of the terrace I had planted moondust in shallow
boxes between the palings, to make a low border that wouldn't
obstruct the view of the Bay. Katous's frightened flight barreled
him into the moondust's sensor field. It released a cloud of sweet-
smelling blue fibers, fine as milkweed. The dog breathed them in,
and yelped again. The moondust cloud was momentarily trans-
lucent, a fragrant fog around those enormous terrified eyes. Katous
ran in a ragged circle, then leaped blindly. He hurled between the
wide-set palings and over the edge of the terrace.
     The sound of his body hitting the pavement below made Hud-
son turn its sensors.
     Stephanie and I ran to the railing. At our feet the moondust
released another cloud of fibers. Katous lay smashed on the side-
walk six stories down.
    "Damn!" Stephanie cried. "That prototype cost a quarter
million in R&D!"
    Hudson said, "There was an unregistered sound from the lower
entranceway. Shall I alert security?"
    "What am I going to tell Norman? I promised to baby-sit the
thing and keep it safe!"
    "Repeat. There was an unregistered sound from the lower
entranceway. Shall I alert security?"
    "No, Hudson," I said. "No action." I looked at the mass of
bloody pink fur. Sorrow and disgust swept through me: sorrow
for Katous's fear, disgust for Stephanie and myself.
    "Ah, well," Stephanie said. Her perfect lips twitched. "Maybe
the IQ did need enhancing. Can't you just see the Liver tabloid
headlines? DUMB DOG DIVES TO DEATH. PANICKED BY PENILE
POSY." She threw back her head and laughed, the red hair swinging
in the breeze.
    Mercurial, David had once said of Stephanie. She has
intriguingly mercurial moods.
    Personally, I've never found Liver tabloid headlines as funny
as everyone else seems to. And I'd bet that neither "penile" nor
posy" was in the Liver vocabulary.
    Stephanie shrugged and turned away from the railing. "I guess
Norman will just have to make another one. With the R&D already
done, it probably won't bankrupt them. Maybe they can even take
a tax write-off. Did you hear that Jean-Claude rammed his write-
off through the IRS, for the embryos he and Lisa decided not to
implant in a surrogate after all? He discarded them and wrote off
the embryo storage for seven years as a business depreciation on
the grounds that an heir was part of long-term strategic planning,
and the IRS auditor actually allowed it. Nine fertilized embryos,
all with expensive genemods. And then he and Lisa decide they
don't want kids after all."
    I gazed at the throwaway pile of pink fur on the sidewalk, and
then out at the wide blue Bay, and I made my decision. In that
moment. As quickly and irrationally as that.
    Like most of the rest of my life.
    "Do you know Colin Kowalski?" I asked Stephanie.
    She thought briefly. She had eidetic recall. "Yes, I think so.
Sarah Goldman introduced us at some theater a few years ago.
Tall, with wavy brown hair? Minimal genemod, right? I don't
remember him as handsome. Why? Is he your replacement for
David?"
     "No."
    "Wait a minute—isn't he with the GSEA?"
    "Yes."
    "I think I already mentioned," Stephanie said stiffly, "that Nor-
man's company had a special beta-test permit for Katous?"
    "No. You didn't."
     Stephanie chewed on her flawless lower lip. Actually, the per-
mit is pending. Diana—"
    "Don't worry, Stephanie. I'm not going to report your dead
violation. I just thought you might know Colin. He's giving an
extravagant Fourth of July party. I could get you an invitation." I
was enjoying her discomfort.
    "I don't think I'd be interested in a party hosted by a Purity
Squad agent. They're always so stuffy. Guys who wrap up genetic
rigidity in the old red-white-and-blue and never see that the result
looks like a national prick. Or a nightstick, beating down inno-
vation in the name of fake patriotism. No thanks."
    "You think the idealism is fake?"
    "Most patriotism is. Either that or Liver sentimentality. God,
the only thing bearable about this country comes from genemod
technology. Most Livers look like shit and behave worse—you
yourself said you can't stand to be around them."
    I had said that, yes. There were a lot of people I couldn't stand
to be around.
    Stephanie was on a political roll, the kind that never made it
to campaign holovids. "Without the genemod brains in the security
enclaves, this would be a country of marching morons, incapable
of even basic survival. Personally, I think the best act of
'patriotism' would be a lethal genemod virus that wiped out
everybody but donkeys. Livers contribute nothing and drain off
everything."
    I said carefully, "Did I ever tell you that my mother was a
Liver? Who was killed fighting for the United States in the China
Conflict? She was a master sergeant."
    Actually, my mother had died when I was two; I barely re-
membered her. But Stephanie had the grace to look embarrassed.
"No. And you should have, before you let me give that tirade.
But it doesn't change anything. You're a donkey. You're genemod.
You do useful work."
    This last was either generous or bitchy. I have done a variety
of work, none of it persistently useful. I have a theory about people
who end up with strings of short-term careers. It is, incidentally,
the same theory I have about people who end up with strings of
short-term lovers. With each one you inevitably hit a low point,
not only within the purported "love" affair or fresh occupation,
but also within yourself. This is because each new lover/job reveals
fresh internal inadequacy. With one you discover your capacity to
be lazy; with another, to be shrewish; with a third, to engage in
frenzied hungry ambition that appalls you with its pathetic
neediness. The sum of too many careers or too many lovers, then,
is the same: a composite of personal low points, a performance
scattergram sinking inevitably to the bottom right quadrant. All
your weaknesses stand revealed. What one lover or occupation
missed, the next one will draw forth.
    In the last ten years, I have worked in security, in entertain-
ment holovids, in county politics, in furniture manufacture fran-
chises (more than one), in 'bot law, in catering, in education, in
applied syncography, in sanitation. Nothing ventured, nothing
lost. And yet David, who was after Russell who was after Anthony
who was after Paul who was after Rex who was after Eugene who
was after Claude, never called me "mercurial." Which is certainly
indicative of something.
    I hadn't reacted to Stephanie's jibe, so she repeated it, smiling
solicitously. "You're a donkey, Diana. You do useful work."
    "I'm about to," I said.
    She poured herself another drink. "Will David be at this Colin
Kowalski's party?"
    "No. I'm sure not. But he'll be at Sarah's campaign fund-raiser
on Saturday. We both accepted weeks ago."
    "And are you going?"
    "I don't think so."
    "I understand. But if David and you are really finished with
each other—"
    "Go after him, Stephanie." I didn't look at her face. Since
David moved out, I'd lost seven pounds and three friends.
    So—say I joined the GSEA because I was jilted. Say I was
jealous. Say I was disgusted with Stephanie and everything she
represented. Say I was bored with my life at that extremely boring
moment. Say I was just looking for a new thrill. Say I was
impulsive.
     "I'm going to be out of town for a while," I said.
     "Oh? Where are you going?"
     "I'm not sure yet. It depends." I gave a last look over the
railing at the smashed, semi-sentient, pathetic and expensive dog.
The ultimate in American technology and values.
     Say I was a patriot.


The next morning I flew down to Colin Kowalski's office in a
government complex west of the city. From the air, buildings and
generous landing lots formed a geometric design, surrounded by
free-form swaths of bright trees bearing yellow flowers. I guessed
the trees were genemod to bloom all year. Trees and lawn stopped
abruptly at the perimeter of the Y-field security bubble. Outside
that charmed circle the land reverted to scrub, dotted by some
Livers holding a scooter race.
    From my aircar I could see the entire track, a glowing yellow
line of Y-energy about a meter wide and five twisting miles long.
A platform scooter shot out of the starting pod, straddled by a
figure in red jacks that, at its speed and my height, was no more
than a blur. I had been to scooter races. The scooter's gravs were
programmed to stay exactly six inches above the track. Y-cones
on the bottom of the platform determined the speed; the sharper
the tilt away from the energy track, the faster the thing could go,
and the harder it became to control. The driver was allowed only
a single handhold, plus a pommel around which he could wrap
one knee. It must be like riding sidesaddle at sixty miles per hour—
not that any Liver would ever have heard of a sidesaddle. Livers
don't read history. Or anything else.
    Spectators perched on flimsy benches along the scooter track.
They cheered and screamed. The driver was halfway through the
course when a second scooter shot out of the pod. My car had
been cleared by the government security field, which locked onto
my controls and guided me in. I twisted in my seat to keep the
scooter track in view. At this lower altitude I could see the first
driver more clearly. He increased the tilt of his scooter, even
though this part of the track was rough, snaking over rocks and
depressions and piles of cut brush. I wondered how he knew the
second scooter was gaining on him.
     I saw the first driver race toward a half-buried boulder. The
 yellow line of track snaked over it. The driver threw his weight
  toward center, trying to slow himself down. He'd waited too long.
 The scooter bucked, lost its orientation toward the track, and
       flipped. The driver was flung to the ground. His head hit the
                                                                  edge
of the boulder at over a mile a minute.
     A moment later the second scooter raced over the body, its
energy cones a perfect six inches above the crushed skull.
     My car descended below the treetops and landed between two
beds of bright genemod flowers.
     Colin Kowalski met me in the lobby, a severe neo-Wrightian
atrium in a depressing gray. "My God, Diana, you look pale. What
is it?"
     "Nothing," I said. Scooter deaths happen all the time. Nobody
tries to regulate scooter races, least of all the politicians who pay
for them in exchange for votes. What would be the point? Livers
choose that stupid death, just as they choose to take sunshine or
drink themselves to oblivion or waste their little lives destroying
the countryside marginally faster than the 'bots can clean it up.
Envirobots used to be able to keep up, when there was enough
money. Stephanie was right about one thing: I don't care what
Livers do. Why should I? Whatever my mother might have done
forty years ago, today Livers are politically and economically neg-
ligible. Ubiquitous, but negligible. It was just that I had never
seen a scooter death that close before. The crushed skull had
looked no more substantial than a flower.
     "You need fresh air," Colin said. "Let's go for a walk?"
     "A what?" I said, startled. I'd just had fresh air. What I wanted
was to sit down.
     "Didn't the doctor recommend easy walks? In your condition?"
Colin took my arm, and this time I knew better than to say My
what? The old training returns fast. Colin was afraid the building
wasn't secure.
     How could a government complex under a maximum-security
Y-field not be secure? The place would be multishielded, jammed,
swept constantly. There was only one group of people who could
even remotely be suspected of developing monitors so radically
undetectable—
    I was surprised at myself. My heart actually skipped a beat.
Apparently I could still feel an interest in something besides
myself.
    Colin walked me past a lovely meditation garden out to an
expanse of open lawn. We walked slowly, as befitted someone
with my condition, whatever it was.
    "Colin, darling, am I pregnant?"
    "You have Gravison's disease. Diagnosed just two weeks ago,
at the John C. Fremont Medical Enclave, from your repeated
complaints of dizziness."
    "There's no complaint files in my medical records."
    "There are now. Three complaints over the last four months.
One misdiagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Your medical problems
are one reason David Madison left you."
    Despite myself, I flinched at the sound of David's name. Some
locales are full of gleaming skyscrapers built on infertile, treach-
erously shifting ground. Japan, for instance. And then there are
places like the Garden of Eden—lush, warm, vibrant with color—
where only bitterness is built. Whose fault? The Garden dwellers,
obviously. They certainly couldn't claim deprived childhoods.
    Nothing is more bitter than to know you could have had Eden,
but turned it into Hiroshima. All by your two unaided selves.
    Colin and I walked a little farther. The weather under the
dome was mild and fresh smelling, without wind. Colin's hand on
my arm felt pleasant. Stephanie was wrong; he was handsome,
even if his looks weren't genemod. Thick brown hair, high cheek-
bones, a strong body. Too bad he was such a prig. Religious rev-
erence for one's own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual
turnoff. I could picture Colin inspecting his naked lovers for GSEA
violations. And then turning them in.
    I said, "You're rushing ahead, darling. Why the medical record
changes? I haven't even said I'm willing to play."
    "We need you, Diana. You couldn't have contacted me at a
better time. Washington has cut our funds again, a ten percent
drop from—"
    "Spare me the political lecture, Col. What do you need me
for?"
    He looked slightly offended. A prig. But of course his funds
had been cut. Everybody's funds had been cut. Washington is a
binary system; money can only go in and out. More was going out
 than was coming in. Lots more: supporting a nation of Livers was
 expensive when the U.S.A no longer held the only world patents
 for the cheap Y-energy that had made it possible in the first place.
 Plus, aging industrial machinery, long kept underrepaired, was
 breaking down at an accelerating rate. Even Stephanie, with all
 her money, had complained about that. The public sector must
 feel it even more. And deficit spending had been illegal for nearly
 a century. Didn't Colin think I knew all that?
     He said stiffly, "I didn't mean to lecture. I need you for sur-
 veillance. You're trained, you're clean, nobody will be tracking
 your moves electronically. And if they do come to anybody's at-
 tention, Gravison's disease is the perfect cover."
     This was true, as far as it went. I was "trained" because fifteen
years ago I'd taken part in an unrecorded training program so
secret its agents had never actually been used for anything. Or at
least I hadn't, but, then, I'd dropped out before the end. Claude
had come along. Or maybe it had been somebody else. Colin
Kowalski had also been in that program, which marked the start
of his government career. I was clean because nothing about the
program appeared in anybody's data banks, anywhere.
     But there was something Colin wasn't telling me, something
 slightly wrong in his manner. I said, "Who, specifically, is it that
 I won't come to the attention of?" but I think I already knew.
     "Sleepless. Neither Sanctuary nor that group on Huevos
Verdes. La Isla, I mean."
     Huevos Verdes. Green Eggs. I bent over and pretended to
adjust my sandal, to hide my grin. I'd never heard that Sleepless
had a sense of humor.
     I said, through rising excitement, "Why does Gravison's dis-
ease provide the perfect cover? What is Gravison's disease?"
     "A brain disorder. It causes extreme restlessness and agi-
tation."
     "And immediately you thought of me. Thank you, darling."
     He looked annoyed. "It often leads to aimless travel. Diana,
this isn't a joking matter. You're the last of the underground agents
who we're positive doesn't show up on any electronic record any-
where before Sanctuary cultured these so-called SuperSleepless
on their protected orbital. Well, it's not protected anymore. We've
got it crawling with GSEA personnel. The labs we dismantled
completely; Sanctuary will never pull those dangerous genemod
tricks again. And that treasonous Jennifer Sharifi and her revo-
lutionary cell will never get out of jail."
     Colin's words struck me as understatement: a peculiarly gray-
toned, governmental sort of understatement. What he'd called
Jennifer Sharifi's "dangerous genemod tricks" had been a terrorist
attempt to use lethal, altered viruses to hold five cities hostage.
This incredible, daring, insane terrorism had been an attempt to
coerce the United States into letting Sanctuary secede. The only
reason Sanctuary hadn't succeeded was that Jennifer Sharifi's
granddaughter Miranda, from God-knows-what twisted family pol-
itics, had betrayed the terrorists to the feds. This had all happened
thirteen years ago. Miranda Sharifi had been sixteen years old.
She and the other twenty-six children in on the betrayal had sup-
posedly been so genetically altered they don't even think like
human beings anymore. A different species.
     Exactly what the GSEA was supposed to prevent.
     Yet here the twenty-seven SuperSleepless were, walking
around alive, a fait accompli. And not even "here"—a few years
ago the Supers had all moved to an island they'd built off the coast
of Yucatan. That was the word: "built." One month it was inter-
national ocean, no "there" there, the next month there existed a
genuine island. It wasn't a floating construct, like the Artificial
Islands, but rock that went all the way down to the continental
shelf, which was not especially shallow at that point. Luckily. No-
body knew how the Sleepless had developed the nanotechnology
to do it. A lot of people passionately wanted to know. Nanotech-
nology was still in its infancy. Mostly, nanoscientists could take
things apart, but not build them. This was apparently not true on
La Isla.
     An island, says international law, which predates the existence
of people who can create one, is a natural feature. Unlike a ship
or an orbital, it doesn't fall under the Artificial Construct Tax
Reform Law of 2050, and it doesn't have to be chartered under
a national flag. It can be claimed by, or for, a given country, or
can be assigned to it as a protectorate by the UN. The twenty-
seven Supers plus hangers-on settled on their island, which was
shaped roughly like two interlocking ovals. The United States
claimed La Isla; the potential taxes on SuperSleepless corporate
businesses were enormous. However, the UN assigned the island
to Mexico, twenty miles away. The UN was collectively unhappy
with Americans, in one of those downward cycles of international
opinion. Mexico, which had been getting fucked over by the
United States regularly for several centuries, was happy to receive
whatever monies La Isla paid to leave the inhabitants strictly alone.
    The Supers built their compound under cover of the most
sophisticated energy fields in existence. Impenetrable. Apparently
the Supers, with their unimaginably boosted brainpower, weren't
geniuses at only genemodification; they included among their
number geniuses at everything. Y-energy. Electronics. Grav tech.
From their island, officially if unimaginatively named La Isla, they
have sold patents throughout a world market on which the U.S.
can offer only the same tired recycled products at inflated prices.
The U.S. has 120 million nonproductive Livers to support; La Isla
has none. I'd never before heard it called Huevos Verdes. Which
translated as "green eggs" but in Spanish slang meant "green tes-
ticles." Fertile and puissant balls. Did Colin know this?
    I stooped to pick a blade of very green, genemod grass. "Colin,
don't you think that if the Supers wanted Jennifer Sharifi and their
other grandparents out of prison, they'd get them out? Obviously
the successful counterrevolutionaries want the senior gang right
where you've got them."
    He looked even more annoyed. "Diana, the SuperSleepless
are not gods. They can't control everything. They're just human
beings."
    "I thought the GSEA says they're not."
    He ignored this. Or maybe not. "You told me yesterday you
believed in stopping illegal genemod experiments. Experiments
that could irrevocably change humanity as we know it."
    I pictured Katous lying smashed on the sidewalk, Stephanie
laughing above. Cookie! Please! I had indeed told Colin that I
believed in stopping genetic engineering, but not for reasons as
simple as his. It wasn't that I objected to irrevocable changes to
humanity; in fact, that frequently seemed to me like a good idea.
Humanity didn't strike me as so wonderful that it should be forever
beyond change. However, I had no faith in the kinds of alterations
that would be picked. I doubted the choosers, not the fact of
choice. We'd already gone far enough in the direction of Stephanie,
who considered sentient life-forms as disposable as toilet paper.
A dog today, expensive and nonproductive Livers tomorrow, who
the next day? I suspected Stephanie was capable of genocide, if
it served her purposes. I suspected many donkeys were. There
were times I'd thought it of myself, although not when I genuinely
thought. The nonthought appalled me. I doubted Colin could
understand all this.
     "That's right," I agreed. "I want to help stop illegal genemod
experiments."
     "And I want you to know that I know that under that flip
manner of yours, there's a serious and loyal American citizen."
     Oh, Colin. Not even boosted IQ let him see the world other
than binary. Acceptable/not acceptable. Good/bad. On/off. The
reality was so much more complicated. And not only that, he was
lying to me.
     I'm good at detecting lies. Far better than Colin at implying
them. He wasn't going to trust me with anything important in this
project, whatever it was. I was too hastily recruited, too flip, too
unreliable. That I had left my training before its completion was
de facto unreliability, disloyalty, unacceptability for anything im-
portant. That's the way government types think. Maybe they're
right.
    Whatever surveillance Colin gave me would be strictly backup,
triple redundancy. There was a theory for this in surveillance work:
cheap, limited, and out of control. It started as a robot-engineering
theory but pretty soon carried over into police work. If there are
a lot of investigators with limited tasks, they won't cohere into a
single premature viewpoint about what they're looking for. That
way, they might turn up something totally unexpected. Colin
wanted me for the equivalent of a wild card.
     I didn't mind. At least it would get me out of San Francisco.
    Colin said, "For the last two years the Supers have been en-
tering the United States, in ones and twos, heavily disguised both
cosmetically and electronically. They travel around to various Liver
towns or donkey enclaves, and then go home, to La Isla. We want
to know why."
    I murmured, "Maybe they have Gravison's disease."
    "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
    "I said, have you made any progress penetrating Huevos
Verdes?"
    "No," he said, but then he wouldn't have told me if they have.
The sexual innuendo he missed completely.
    "And who will I be keeping under surveillance?" The excite-
ment was a little bubble in my throat now, still surprising. It had
been a long time since anything had excited me. Except David, of
course, who had taken his sexy shoulders and verbal charm and
sense of superiority to hold in readiness for plunking down tem-
porarily in the middle of some other woman's life.
    He said, "You'll be following Miranda Sharifi."
    "Ah."
    "I have full ID information and kit for you in a locker at the
gravrail station. You'll pass as a Liver."
    This was a slight insult; Colin was implying my looks weren't
spectacular enough to absolutely mark them as genemod. I let it
pass.
    Colin said, "She's only made one trip off the island herself.
We think. When the next one happens, you go with her."
    "How will you be sure it's her? If they're using both cosmetic
and electronic disguises, she could have different features, hair,
even brain-scan projection all masking her own."
    "True. But their heads are slightly misshapen, slightly too big.
That's hard to disguise."
    I knew that, of course. Everybody did. Thirteen years ago,
when the Supers had first come down from Sanctuary, their big
heads had given rise to a lot of bad jokes. The actuality was that
their revved-up metabolism and altered brain chemistry had
caused other abnormalities, the human genemod being a very
complex thing. Supers are not, I remembered, an especially hand-
some people.
    I said, "Their heads aren't that big, Colin. In some lights it's
even hard to tell at all."
    "Also, their infrared body scans are on file. From the trial.
You can't move the position of your liver, or mask the digestive
rate in your duodenum."
    Which are both pretty generic anyway. Infrared scans aren't
even admissible in court as identity markers. They're too unreli-
able. Still, it was better than nothing.
    All of this was better than the nothing with David. The nothing
of Stephanie. The something of Katous. Thank you, lady.
    Colin said, "The trips off Huevos Verdes are increasing.
They're planning something. We need to find out what."
    "Si, senor," I said. He wasn't amused.
    We'd walked nearly to the perimeter of the security bubble.
Beyond its faint shimmer, a body pod had arrived for the dead
scooter racer. I could just see some Livers loading him into the
pod, at the very edge of my range of genemod-enhanced vision.
The Livers were crying. They got the body into the pod, and the
pod started down the track. After fifteen feet there was a sudden
grinding sound and the pod stopped. Livers pushed. The pod didn't
move. The funeral machinery, like so much other more important
machinery lately, had apparently broken down.
    The Livers stood staring at it, bewildered and helpless.
    I walked with Colin inside Building G-14 looking dizzy, as a
victim of Gravison's disease occasionally should.
                              Two
              BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA, NEW YORK




W        hen I found out, me, about the rabid raccoon, first thing
         I did was run straight down to the cafe to tell Annie
         Francy. I ran all the way, me. That ain't so easy no more.
 All I could think was maybe Lizzie was already safe, her, with
 Annie in the kitchen, maybe Lizzie wasn't in the woods. Maybe.
    "Run, old man! Run, old fuck!" a kid yelled from the alley
between the hotel and the warehouse. They stood there, the
stomps, when the weather was nice. The weather was nice. I forgot,
me, that they'd be there, or I'd of gone around the long way, by
the river. But this afternoon they was too lazy, them, or too splin-
tered, to chase me. I didn't tell them shit about the raccoon.
    At the servoentrance to the cafe, where only 'bots supposed
to go, I pounded, me, as hard as I could and the hell with who
heard. "Annie Francy! Let me in!"
    The bushes to my right rustled and I almost keeled over, me.
The coons come there for the stuff that drops off the delivery
'bots. But it was only a snake. "Annie! It's me—Billy! Let me in!"
    The low door swung open. I crawled through on hands and
knees. It was Lizzie, her, who figured out how to get the ser-
voentrance to open without no 'bot signal. Annie could no more
do that than grow leaves.
    They were both there. Annie was peeling apples and Lizzie
was tinkering with the 'bot that was supposed to peel apples. Which
ain't worked in a month. Not that Lizzie could fix it. She was
smart, her, but she was still only eleven years old.
    "Billy Washington!" Annie said. "You're shaking, you! What
happened ?"
     "Rabid raccoons," I gasped. My heart was going, it, like a
waterfall. "Four of them. Reported on the area monitor. By the
river, where Lizzie . . . Lizzie goes to play . . . "
     "Ssshhhh," Annie said. "SSShhhh, dear heart. Lizzie's here
now. She's safe, her."
     Annie put her arms around me where I sat panting on the
floor like some humping bear. Lizzie watched, her, with her big
black eyes wide and sparkly. She probably thought a rabid raccoon
was interesting. She ain't never seen one, her. I have.
     Annie was big and soft, a chocolate-colored woman with breasts
like pillows. She wouldn't tell me, her, how old she was, but of
course all I had to do was ask the terminals at the cafe or the hotel.
She was thirty-five. Lizzie didn't look nothing like her mother. She
was light-skinned and skinny, her, with reddish hair in tight braids.
She didn't have no hips or breasts yet. What she had was brains.
Annie worried about that a lot. She couldn't remember, her, a time
when we was just people, not Livers. I could remember, me. At
sixty-eight, you can remember a lot. I could remember, me, a time
when Annie might of been proud of Lizzie's brains.
     I could remember a time when being held by a woman like
Annie would of meant more than panting from a bad heart.
     "You all right, dear heart?" Annie said. She took her arms
away and right away I missed them. I'm an old fool, me. "Now
tell us again, real slow."
     I had my breath back. "Four rabid raccoons. The area monitor
was wailing like death. They must of come down, them, from the
mountains. The monitor showed them by the river, moving toward
town. The biowarnings was flashing deep red. Then the monitor
quit again and this time nothing couldn't get it started again. Jack
Sawicki kicked it, him, and so did I. Them coons could be any-
where."
     "Did the warden 'bot get sent to kill them, it, before the
monitor quit?"
     "The warden 'bot's broke too."
     "Shit." Annie made a face. "Next time I'm voting, me, against
Samuelson."
    "You think it'll make any difference? They're all alike. But
you keep Lizzie inside, you, until somebody does something about
them coons. Lizzie, you stay inside, you hear me?"
     Lizzie nodded. Then, being Lizzie, she argued. "But who,
 Billy?"
     "Who what?"
     "Who will do something about them raccoons? If the warden
 'hot's broke?"
     Nobody answered. Annie picked up her knife, her, and went
back to peeling apples. I settled myself more comfortable against
the wall. No chairs, of course—nobody's supposed to be in the
cafe kitchen except 'bots. Annie broke in, her, for the first time
last September. She didn't bother the 'bots while they prepared
food for the foodbelt. She just took a bit of sugar here, some
soysynth there, some of the fresh fruit from the servobin ship-
ments, and cooked up things. Delicious things—nobody could
cook like Annie. Fruit cobblers that made your mouth fill with
sweet water just to look at them. Meat loaf hot and spicy. Biscuits
like air.
     She added them, her, right onto the foodbelt cubbies going
out into the cafe, to be clicked off on people's meal chips. Fools
probably didn't even notice, them, how much better her dishes
tasted than the usual stuff going round and round on the belt day
and night. And of course with the holoterminal going full blast,
and the dance music playing all the time, nobody would of heard
her and Lizzie back here even if they was blowing up the whole
damn kitchen.
     Annie liked to cook, she said. Liked to keep busy. I sometimes
thought, me, that for somebody trying so hard to bring up Lizzie
to be a good Liver, Annie herself was more than a little bit donkey.
Of course I didn't say that, me, to Annie. I wanted to keep my
head.
     Annie started to hum, her, while she peeled apples. But Lizzie
don't give up on questions. She said again, "Who will do something
about them raccoons?"
     Annie frowned. "Maybe somebody'll come to fix the warden
'hot."
     Lizzie's big black eyes didn't blink. It's spooky, sometimes,
how she can stare so hard without never blinking. "Nobody came
to fix the peeler 'bot. Nobody came to fix the cleaner 'bot in the
cafe. You said yesterday, you, that you didn't think the donkeys
would send nobody even if the mainline soysynth 'bot broke."
    "Well, I didn't mean it, me," Annie said. She peeled faster.
"That breaks and nobody in this town eats!"
    "They could share, them. Share the food that people took off
the foodbelt before it broke."
    Annie and I looked at each other. Once I saw a town, me,
where a cafe broke down. Six people ended up killed. And that
was when the gravrail worked regular, so people could leave, them,
for another town in the district.
    "Yes, dear heart," Annie said. "People could share, them."
    "But you and Billy don't think they would, them."
    Annie didn't answer. She don't like to lie to Lizzie, her. I said,
"No, Lizzie. A lot of people wouldn't share, them."
    Lizzie turned her bright black eyes on me. "Why wouldn't they
share?"
    I said, " 'Cause people out of the habit of sharing, them. They
expect stuff now. They got a right to stuff—that's why they elect
politicians. The donkey politicians pay their taxes, them, and the
taxes are the cafes and warehouses and medunits and baths that
let Livers get on with serious living."
    Lizzie said, "But people shared more, them, when you was
young, Billy? They shared more then?"
    "Sometimes. Mostly they worked, them, for what they
wanted."
    "That's enough," Annie said sharply. "Don't you go filling her
head with what's past, Billy Washington. She's a Liver. Don't go
talking, you, like you was a donkey yourself! And you, Lizzie,
don't you talk about it no more."
    But nobody can't stop Lizzie when she's started. She's like a
gravrail. Like a gravrail used to be, before this last year. "School
says I'm lucky, me, to be a Liver. I get to live like an aristo while
the donkeys got to do all the work, them. Donkeys serve Livers,
Livers hold the power, us, by votes. But if we hold the power, us,
how come we can't get the cleaner 'bot and the peeler 'bot and
the warden 'bot fixed?"
    "Since when you been at school?" I joked, trying to derail
Lizzie, trying to keep Annie from getting madder. "I thought you
just played, you, down by the river with Susie Mastro and Carlena
Terrell. You're an agro Liver, you!"
    She looked at me, her, like I was a broken 'bot myself.
    Annie said shortly, "You are lucky, you to be a Liver. And you
say so if anybody asks you."
    "Like who?"
    "Anybody. You shouldn't go to school so much anyway. You
don't never see the other children, you, going so much. Do you
want to be a freak?" She scowled.
    Lizzie turned to me. "Billy, who's going to do something about
them rabid raccoons if nobody fixes the warden 'bot?"
     I glanced at Annie. I got to my feet, me, puffing. "I don't know,
Lizzie. Just stay inside, you, all right?"
    Lizzie said, "But what if one of them raccoons bites some-
body?"
    I had the sense, me, to stay quiet. Finally Annie said, "The
medunit still works."
    "But what if it breaks?"
    "It won't break."
    "But what if it does?"
    "It won't!"
    "How do you know?" Lizzie said, and I finally saw, me, that
this was some sort of private scooter race between mother and
daughter. I didn't understand it, me, but I could see Lizzie was
ahead. She said again, "How do you know, you, that the medunit
won't break too?"
    "Because if it did, Congresswoman Land would send some-
body, her, to fix it. The medunit is part of her taxes."
    "She didn't send nobody to fix the cleaning 'bot. Or the peeler
'bot. Or the—"
    "The medunit's different!" Annie snapped. She hacked at an
apple so hard that pulp flew off the table I stole for her from the
cafe.
    Lizzie said, "Why is the medunit so different?"
    "Because it just is! If the medunit breaks, people could die,
them. No politician is going to let Livers die. They'd never get
elected again!"
    Lizzie considered this. I thought, me, that the scooter race was
over, and I breathed more easy. Lately it seemed like they fought
all the time. Lizzie was growing up, her, and I hated it. It made
it harder to keep her safe.
    She said, "But people could die from rabid raccoons, too. So
how come you said District Supervisor Samuelson probably won't
send nobody to fix the warden 'bot, but Congresswoman Land
would send somebody to fix the medunit 'bot?"
     I laughed. I couldn't help it—she was so smart, her. Annie
scowled at me and right away I was sorry I laughed. Annie snapped,
"So maybe I was wrong, me! Maybe somebody'll fix the warden
'bot! Maybe I don't know nothing, me!"
     Lizzie said calmly, "Billy said too, him, that nobody would fix
it. Billy, how come you—"
     I said, "Because even donkeys don't got the money, them, that
they used to have to pay taxes with. And too much stuff gets broke
nowadays. They got to make choices, them, about what to fix."
     Lizzie said, "But why do the donkey politicians got less money
for taxes, them? And how come more stuff gets broke?"
     Annie flung her peeled apples into a belt dish and dumped
dough on them like it was mud.
     "Because other countries make cheap Y-energy now. Twenty
years ago we was the only ones, us, who could make it, and now
we're not. But the stuff breaking—"
     Annie burst out, "You believe them lies politicians say on the
grids? Land and Samuelson and Drinkwater? Pisswater! All lies,
every time one of them opens their mouth, them, it's lies—they
just want to get out of paying their rightful taxes! The taxes we
earned, us, with our votes! And I told you not to fill up the child's
head with them secondhand donkey lies, Billy Washington!"
     "Ain't lies," I said, but I hated having Annie mad at me worse
than I hated having her mad at Lizzie. It hurt my heart. Old fool.
     Lizzie saw it. She was like that, her: all pushing and pushing
one minute, all sweetness the next. She put her arms around me.
"It's all right, Billy. She ain't mad, her, at you. Nobody's mad at
you. We love you, us."
     I held her, me. It was like holding a bird—thin bones and
fluttery heart in your hand. She smelled of apples.
     My dead wife Rosie and me never wanted kids. I don't know,
me, what we was thinking.
     But all I said out loud was, "You don't go outside, you, until
them rabid raccoons are killed by somebody."
     Annie shot me a look. It took me a minute to figure out she
was afraid, her, that Lizzie was just going to start all over again:
killed by who, Billy? But Lizzie didn't start. She just said, sweet
as berries, "I won't, me. I'll stay inside."
     But now it was Annie who couldn't let it go. I don't understand
mothers, me. Annie said, "And you stay away from school for a
while, too, Lizzie. You ain't no donkey, you."
     Lizzie didn't answer.
     Annie only wanted what was best for Lizzie. I knew that, me.
Lizzie had to live in East Oleanta, join a lodge, go to scooter races,
hang around the cafe, choose her lovers here, have her babies
here. Annie wanted Lizzie to belong. Like an agro Liver, not some
weird fake-donkey freak nobody would want. Any mother would.
Annie might sneak, her, into the kitchen of the Congresswoman
Janet Carol Land Cafe to do some cooking, but she was still all
Liver, all the way through.
     And Lizzie wasn't.
     A long time ago, when I was in school myself, me, and the
country was different, I learned something. It's fuzzy now, but it
keeps hanging in my head. It was from before donkeys and Livers.
Before cafes and warehouses. Before politicians paid taxes to us,
instead of the other way around. It was from back when they were
still making Sleepless, and you could read about them in news-
papers. When there was newspapers. This thing was a word about
genemod, but it meant something that wasn't genemod. Was nat-
ural. Lizzie learns at school that donkeys are inferior, them, be-
cause donkeys have to be made genemod so they can be put to
work providing all the things Livers need. But this word wasn't
about the kind of natural that makes us Livers superior to donkeys.
It was about a different kind of natural, a kind that happens by
itself but makes you different from other natural Livers around
you. The word explained why Lizzie asked so many donkey ques-
tions, her, when she wasn't no donkey and didn't have no donkey
genemods, although the word was in her genes. How could that
be? Like I said, I was fuzzy, me, about the word, and about how
it worked. But I remembered it.
     The word was throwback.
     I watched Lizzie watch her mother put the apple dish on the
foodbelt. It went under the flash heater and out through the wall
into the cafe. Somebody would choose it, them, on their Senator
Mark Todd Ingalls meal chip. Annie went on to cooking something
else. Lizzie sat on the floor, her, with the pieces of the broken
peeler 'bot. When her mother wasn't looking she studied each
one, her, figuring out how it might go together, and when she
grinned at me, her black eyes sparkled and darted, shiny as stars.


That night we had a meeting, us, in the cafe, to talk about the
rabid raccoons. Forty people, not counting kids. Paulie Cenverno
actually seen one of the sick raccoons, hind legs twitching like it
was splintered, mouth foaming, down near the State Senator James
Richard Langton Scooter Track on the other side of town from
the river. Somebody said, them, that we should put chairs in a
circle to make a real meeting, but nobody did. At the other end
of the cafe the holoterminal played and the dance music blasted.
Nobody danced but the holos, life-sized smiling dolls made of
light, pretty enough to be donkeys. I don't like them, me. Never
did. You can see right through the edges.
    "Turn down that music so we can hear ourselves talk, us!"
Paulie bawled. People slouching at the tables near the foodbelt
didn't even look up, them. Probably all doing sunshine. Paulie
walked over, him, and turned down the noise.
    "Well," Jack Sawicki said, "what are we going to do, us, about
these sick coons?"
    Only a few people snickered, them, and they were the dumbest
ones. Like Annie said: somebody has to serve at meetings, even
if serving is donkey work. Jack is mayor, him. He can't help it.
East Oleanta ain't big enough to have a regular donkey mayor—
no donkeys live here and we don't want none. So we elected Jack,
us, and he does what he has to do.
    Somebody said, "Call County Legislator Drinkwater on the
official terminal."
    "Yeah, call Pisswater!"
    "District Supervisor Samuelson's got the warden franchise,
him."
    "Then call Samuelson!"
    "Yeah, and while you're at it, you, make another town protest
that the goddamn warehouse don't distribute, it, but once a week
now!" That was Celie Kane. I ain't never seen her not angry.
    "Yeah. Rutger's Corners, they still got distrib, them, twice a
week."
    "I had to wear these jacks two days in a row!"
    "I got sick, me, and missed a distrib, and we run out of toilet
paper!"
    Next election, District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson
was a squashed spider. But Jack Sawicki, he knew, him, how to
serve a meeting.
    "Okay, people, shut up now. This is about the sick coons,
not about warehouse distrib. I'm going, me, to just call up our
donkeys."
    He unlocked the official terminal. It sits way in the corner of
the cafe. Jack pulled his chair, him, right up close to it, so his belly
almost rested on his knees. A few stomps from the alley gang
swaggered into the cafe, carrying their wooden clubs. They
headed, them, for the foodbelt, laughing and smacking each other,
drunk on sunshine. Nobody told them to shut up. Nobody dared.
    "Terminal activate," Jack said. He didn't mind, him, talking
donkey in front of us. None of this fake shit about I don't carry out
orders I give them I'm an agro Liver, me. Jack was a good mayor.
    But I'm careful, me, not to tell him so.
    "Terminal activated," the terminal said. For the first time I
wondered what we'd do if the thing was as broke as Annie's apple-
peeler 'bot.
   Jack said, "Message for District Supervisor Aaron Simon Sam-
uelson, copy to County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater, copy
to State Senator James Richard Langton, copy to State Repre-
sentative Claire Amelia Forrester, copy to Congresswoman Janet
Carol Land." Jack licked his lips. "Priority Two."
    "One!" Celie Kane shouted. "Make it a one, you bastard!"
    "I can't, Celie," Jack said. He was patient, him. "One is for
disasters like attack or fire or flood at the Y-plant." That was
supposed to make us smile. A Y-plant can't catch fire, can't break
down no way with its donkey shields. Can't nothing get in, and
only energy can get out. But Celie Kane don't know how to smile,
her. Her daddy, old Doug Kane, is my best friend, but he can't
do nothing with her neither. Never could, not even when she was
a child.
    "This is a disaster, you shithead! One of them coons kills a kid
of mine, and I'll tear you apart myself, Jack Sawicki!"
    "Hey, stay together, Celie," Paulie Cenverno said. Somebody
muttered "Bitch." The door opened and Annie came in, her,
 holding Lizzie's hand. The stomps at the foodbelt were still shout-
 ing and shoving.
     The terminal said, "Please hold. Linking with District Super-
 visor Samuelson's mobile unit." A minute later the holo appeared,
 not life-sized like on the HT, but a tiny, eight-inch-high Samuelson
 seated at his desk and dressed in a blue uniform. He looked, him,
 about forty, but of course with donkey genemods you can't never
 tell. He had thick gray hair and big shoulders and crinkly blue
 eyes—handsome, like all of them. A few people shuffled their
 feet, them. If voters don't watch the donkey channels, then the
 only people they ever see not dressed in jacks are Samuelson's
 techs at the warehouse distrib twice a week. Once a week, now.
      Suddenly I wondered, me, if that was Samuelson. Maybe the
 holo was just a tape. Maybe the real Samuelson was someplace
 dressed up for a party, or in jacks—if donkeys ever wore jacks,
 them—or even naked, him, taking a shit. It was weird to think
 about.
     "Yes, Mayor Sawicki?" Samuelson said. "How can I serve you,
 sir?"
     "There's at least four rabid raccoons in East Oleanta, Super-
visor. Maybe more. The area monitor picked them up, it, before
it broke. We seen the coons, right in town. They're dangerous. I
told you, me, two weeks ago that the game warden 'bot broke."
     Samuelson said, "Game warden duties have been franchised
 to the Sellica Corporation. I notified them, sir, as soon as you
 notified me."
     But Jack wasn't taking any of that shit. Like I said, me, he was
a good mayor. "We don't care, us, who's supposed to do the job!
It's your responsibility that it gets done, Supervisor. That's why
we elected you, us."
     Samuelson didn't change expression. That's when I decided,
me, that he was a tape. "I'm sorry, mayor, you're quite right. It is
my responsibility. I'll take care of it right away, sir."
     "That's what you said two weeks ago. When the warden first
broke, it."
     "Yes, sir. Funding has been—yes, you're quite right, sir. I am
sorry. It won't be neglected again, sir."
     People nodded at each other: damn right. Behind me Paulie
Cenverno muttered, "Got to be firm, us, with donkeys. Remind
'em who pays the votes."
     Jack said, "Thank you, Supervisor. And one more thing—"
      "Hey!" a stomp screamed at the other end of the cafe, "The
 foodbelt stopped, it!"
      Dead silence fell.
      The holo of Samuelson said sharply, "What is it? What's the
problem?" For a minute he almost sounded, him, like a person.
      The stomp screamed again, "Fucking thing just stopped, it!
Ate my meal chip and stopped! The food cubbies don't open,
them!" He yanked at all the plasticlear cubby doors, and none
budged, but of course they don't never budge, them, unless you
put your chip in the slot. The stomp slammed on them with his
club, and that didn't help neither. Plasticlear don't break.
     Jack ran, him, across the cafe, his belly bouncing under his red
jacks. He stuck his own meal chip into the slot and pressed a
cubby button. The chip disappeared, it, and the cubby didn't open.
Jack ran back to the terminal.
      "It's broke, Supervisor. The goddamn foodbelt's broke, it—
eating chips and not giving out no food. You got to do something
real quick. This can't go no two weeks!"
      "Of course not, Mayor. As you know, the cafe isn't part of my
taxes—it's funded and maintained by Congresswoman Land. But
I'll notify her myself, immediately, and a technician will be there
from Albany within the hour. Nobody will starve within an hour,
Mayor Sawicki. Keep your constituents calm, sir."
      Celie Kane shrilled, "Fixed like the warden 'bot, you mean?
If my kids go hungry even a day, you mule bastard—"
      "Shut up," Paulie Cenverno told her, murderously low. Paulie
don't like to see donkeys abused to their faces. He says, him, that
they got feelings too.
      "Within one hour," Jack said. "Thank you for your help, Su-
pervisor. Dialogue over."
      "Dialogue over," Samuelson said. He smiled at us, him, the
same smile like on his election holos, chin up and crinkly eyes
bright. The holo pushed a button on his desk. The picture dis-
appeared. But something must of gone wrong because the voice
didn't disappear, it, only it sounded all different. Samuelson still,
but no Samuelson we never seen or heard campaigning, us:
"Christ—what next! These morons and imbeciles—I'm tempted
to just—oh!" The terminal yelped and went dead.
      A woman at a far table screamed. The stomp with the biggest
wooden club had grabbed her food, him, and was eating it. Jack
and Paulie and Norm Frazier charged over, them, and jumped the
kid. His buddies jumped back. Tables crashed over and people
started running. Somebody had just changed HT channels, and a
scooter race in Alabama roared by, life-size. I grabbed Annie and
Lizzie and shoved them to the door. "Get out! Get out!"
    Outside, the Y-lights made Main Street bright as day. I could
feel my heart banging but I didn't slow up, me. Angry people got
no sense. Anything could happen. I panted, me, alongside Annie,
she running with those big breasts bouncing, Lizzie running quick
and quiet as a deer.
    In Annie's apartment on Jay Street I collapsed, me, on a sofa.
It wasn't none too comfortable, not like sofas I remembered from
when I was young, the soft ones you kept around long enough to
take the shape of a person's body.
    But on the other hand, plastisynth don't never get vermin.
    Lizzie said, her eyes bright, "Do you think a donkey will come,
them, to fix the foodbelt in an hour?"
    I gasped, "Lizzie . . . hush, you."
    "But what if in an hour no donkey don't come to—"
    Annie said, "You be quiet, Lizzie, or you'll wish them donkeys
will come to fix you! Billy, you better stay here, you, for tonight.
No telling what them fools at the cafe might do."
    She brought me a blanket, one of those she'd embroidered,
her, with bright yarns from the warehouse. More embroideries
hung on the wall, woven with bits of pop can the young girls make
jewelry out of, with torn-up jacks, with any other bright thing
Annie could find. All the Jay Street apartments look alike. They
was all built at the same time about ten years ago, when some
senator came up from way behind and needed a big campaign
boost. Small rooms, foamcast walls, plastisynth furniture from a
warehouse distrib, but Annie's is one of the few that looks to me
like a home.
    Annie made Lizzie go to bed. Then she came, her, and sat on
a chair close by my sofa.
    "Billy—did you see, you, that woman in the cafe?"
    "What woman?" It was nice, her sitting so close.
    "The one standing, her, off by the back wall. Wearing green
jacks. She don't live, her, in East Oleanta."
     "So?" I snuggled under Annie's pretty blanket. We get trav-
elers sometimes, us, though not as many as we used to, now that
the gravrail don't work so regular. Meal chips are good anyplace
in the state, they come from United States senators, and it didn't
used to be hard to get an interstate exchange chip. Maybe it still
ain't. I don't travel much.
     "She looked different," Annie said.
     "Different how?"
     Annie pressed her lips tight together, thinking. Her lips were
dark and shiny as blackberries, them, the lower one so full that
pressing them together only made it look juicier. I had to look
away, me.
     She said slowly, "Different like a donkey."
     I sat up on the sofa. The blanket slid off. "You mean genemod?
I didn't see, me, nobody like that."
     "Well, she wasn't genemod pretty. Short, with squinchy fea-
tures and low eyebrows and a head a little too big. But she was a
donkey, her. I know it. Billy—you think she's a FBI spy?"
     "In East Oleanta? We ain't got no underground organizations,
us. All we got is rotten stomps that want to spoil life for the rest
of us."
     Annie kept on pressing her lips together. County Legislator
Thomas Scott Drinkwater runs our police franchise. He contracts,
him, with an outfit that has both 'bots and donkey officers. We
don't see them much. They don't keep the peace on the streets,
and they don't bother, them, about thefts because there's always
more in the warehouse. But when we have an assault, us, or a
murder, or a rape, they're there. Just last year Ed Jensen was gene-
fingered for killing the oldest Flagg girl when a lodge dance got
too rough. Jensen got took, him, up to Albany, for twenty-five-to-
life. On the other hand, nobody never stood trial for the bow-
shooting of Sam Taggart out in the woods two years ago. But I
think we had a different franchise, us, back then.
     FBI is a whole other thing. All them federal outfits are. They
don't come to Livers unless something donkey is threatened, and
once they come, them, they don't let go.
     "Well," Annie said stubbornly, "all I know, me, is that she was
a donkey. I can smell them."
     I didn't want to argue, me. But I didn't want her to worry,
 neither. "Annie—ain't no reason for FBI to be in East Oleanta.
 And donkeys don't have big heads and squinchy features, them—
 they don't let their kids get born that way."
     "Well, I hope you're right, you. We don't need no visiting
 donkeys in East Oleanta. Let them stay, them, in their places, and
 us in ours."
     I couldn't help it. I said, real soft, "Annie—you ever hear of
Eden?"
     She knew, her, that I didn't mean the Bible. Not in that voice.
 She snapped, "No. I never heard of it, me."
     "Yes, you did. I can tell, me, by your voice. You heard of
Eden."
     "And what if I did? It's garbage."
     I couldn't let it go, me. "Why's it garbage?"
     "Why? Billy—think, you. How could there be a place, even
in the mountains, that donkeys don't know about? Donkeys serve
everything, them, including mountains. They got aircars and planes
to see everything. Anyway, why would a place without donkeys
ever come to be? Who would do the work?"
     " 'Bots," I said.
     "Who would make the 'bots?"
     "Maybe us?"
     "Livers work? But why, in God's name? We don't got to work,
us—we got donkeys to do all that for us. We got a right to be
served by donkeys and their 'bots—we elect them! Why would
we want to go, us, to some place without public servants?"
     She was too young, her. Annie don't remember a time before
the voting came on HT and the franchises made cheap 'bots and
the Mission for Holy Living was all over the place, them, con-
tributing lots of money to all the churches and explaining about
the lilies of the field and the sacredness of joy and the favor of
God to Mary over Martha. Annie don't remember, her, all the
groups for all the kinds of democracy, each showing us how in a
democracy the common man was the real aristo and master of his
public servants. Schools for democracy. Irish-Americans for De-
mocracy. Hoosiers for Democracy. Blacks for Democracy. I don't
know, me. The 'bots took over the hard work, and we were happy,
us, to give it to them. The politicians started talking, them, about
bread and circuses, and calling voters "sir" and "ma'am" and build-
ing the cafes and warehouses and scooter tracks and lodge build-
ings. Annie don't remember, her. She likes to cook and sew and
she don't spend all her time at races and brainie parties and lodge
dances and lovers, like some, but she still ain't never held an ax
in her hand and swung it, or a hoe or a hatchet or a hammer. She
don't remember.
    And then suddenly I knew, me, what an old fool I really was,
and how wrong. Because I did swing heavy tools, me, on road
crews in Georgia, when I was just a few years older than Lizzie.
And when I wasn't being an ass I could remember, me, how my
back ached like it was going to break, and my skin blistered under
the sun, and the blackflies bit, them, on the open sores where
they'd bit before, and at night I was so tired and hurting, me, I'd
cry for my mother into my pillow, where the older men couldn't
hear me. That's the work we did, us, not some quiet clean assem-
bling of donkey 'bots. I remembered the fear of losing that lousy
job when there wasn't no Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Cafe,
no Senator Mark Todd Ingalls meal chip, no Senator Calvin Guy
Winthop Jay Street Apartment Block. The fear was like a knife
behind your eyes when the foreman come over, him, on a Friday
to say, "That's it, Washington. You through," and all you wanted
to do was take that knife out from behind your eyes and drive it
hard through his heart because now how you going to eat, pay the
rent, stay alive. I remembered, me, how it was, all in a second
after I opened my big mouth to Annie.
    "You're right," I said, not looking at her. "There ain't no Eden
for us. I should go home now, me."
    "Stay," Annie said kindly. "Please, Billy. In case there's trouble
at the cafe."
    Like anybody could break into a foamcast apartment. Or like
a broke-down old man could be any real help to her or Lizzie.
But I stayed.
    In the darkness I could hear, me, how Annie and Lizzie moved
in their bedrooms. Walking around, laying down, turning and
settling into sleep. Sometime in the night the temperature must
of dropped because I heard the Y-energy heater come on. I lis-
tened, me, to their breathing, a woman and a child, and pretty
soon I slept.
    But I dreamed about dangerous raccoons, sick and full of death.
                            Three
                      DREW ARLEN.- HUEVOS VERDES




I   never get used to the way other people don't see colors and
   shapes. No. That's not right. They see them. They just don't see
   them, in the mind, where it matters. Other people can't feel
colors and shapes. Can't become colors and shapes. Can't see
through the colors and shapes to the trueness of the world, as
I do, in the shapes it makes in my mind.
    That's not it either.
    Words are hard for me.
    I think words were hard even before the operation that made
me the Lucid Dreamer.
    But the pictures are clear.
    I can see myself as a dirty, dumb, hungry ten-year-old, traveling
alone halfway across the country to Leisha Camden, the most
famous Sleepless in the world. I can see her face as I ask her to
make me "be somebody, me." I can see her eyes when I boasted,
"Someday, me, I'm gonna own Sanctuary."
    Sanctuary, the orbital where all the Sleepless except Leisha
Camden and Kevin Baker had exiled themselves. My grandfather,
a dumb laborer, had died building Sanctuary. And I thought, in
my pathetic ten-year-old arrogance, that I could own it. I thought
that if I learned to talk like donkeys and Sleepless, learned to
behave like them, learned to think like them, I could have what
they had. Money. Power. Choices.
    When I picture that child now, the shapes in my mind are sharp
and small, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The
shapes are the pale lost gold of remembered summer twilight.
    Miranda Sharifi will inherit a controlling interest in Sanctuary
stock. When her parents, Sleepless, eventually die. If they ever
do. "What belongs to me belongs to you, Drew," Miranda said.
She has said it several times. Miranda, a SuperSleepless, often
explains things to me several times. She is very patient.
    But even with her explanations, I don't understand what Miri
and the Supers are doing at Huevos Verdes. I thought I did eight
years ago, when the island was created. But since then there have
been a lot more words. I can repeat the words, but I can't feel
their shapes. They're words without solid form: Auxotrophes.
Allosteric interactions. Nanotechnology. Photophosphorylation.
Law-son conversion formulas. Neo-Marxist assisted evolution.
Most of the time I just nod and smile.
    But I am the Lucid Dreamer. When I float onstage and put a
raucous Liver crowd into the Lucid Dreaming trance, and the music
and words and combination of shapes flow from my subconscious
through my Super-designed hardware, I touch their minds in
places they didn't know they had. They feel more deeply, exist
more blissfully, become more whole.
    For at least the length of the concert.
    And when the concert's over, my audience is subtly changed.
They might not realize it. The donkeys who pay for my perfor-
mances, considering them bread-and-circus occult trash for the
masses, don't realize it. Leisha doesn't realize it. But I know I've
controlled my audience, and changed them, and that I am the only
one in the world with that power. The only one.
    I try to remember that, when I am with Miranda.


Leisha Camden sat across the table from me and said, "Drew—
what are they doing at Huevos Verdes?"
    I sipped my coffee. On a plate were fresh genemod grapes and
berries, with small buttery cookies smelling of lemon and ginger.
There was fresh cream for the coffee. The library in Leisha's New
Mexico compound was airy and high-ceilinged, its light, earthy
colors echoing the New Mexico desert beyond the big windows.
Here and there among the monitors and bookshelves stood stark,
graceful sculptures by artists I didn't know. Some sort of delicate,
old-fashioned music played.
    I said, "What's that music?"
     "Claude de Courcy."
     "Never heard of him."
     "Her. A sixteenth-century composer for the lute." Leisha said
 this impatiently, which only showed how tense she was. Usually
 the shapes she made in my mind were all clean and hard-edged,
 rigid, glowing with iridescence.
     "Drew, you're not answering me. What are Miri and the Supers
 doing at Huevos Verdes?"
     "I've been answering you for eight years—I don't know."
     "I still don't believe you."
     I looked at her. Sometime in the last year she had cut her hair;
maybe a woman got tired of caring for her hair after 106 years.
She still looked thirty-five. Sleepless didn't age, and so far they
didn't die, except through accidents or murder. Their bodies re-
generated, an unexpected side effect of their bizarre genetic en-
gineering. And the first generation of Sleepless, unlike Miranda's,
hadn't been so complexly altered that physical appearance couldn't
be controlled. Leisha would be beautiful until she died.
     She had raised me. She had educated me, to the limits of my
intelligence, which might once have been normal but could never
compare to the genemod-boosted IQ of donkeys, let alone Sleep-
less. When I became crippled in a freak accident, at the age of
ten, Leisha had bought me my first powerchair. Leisha had loved
me when I was a child, and had declined to love me when I became
a man, and had given me to Miranda. Or Miranda to me.
     She put both palms flat on the table and leaned forward. I
recognized what was coming. Leisha was a lawyer. "Drew—you
never knew my father. He died when I was in law school. I adored
him. He was the most stubborn human being I ever met. Until I
met Miri, anyway."
    The spiky pain-shapes again. When Miri came down from Sanc-
tuary thirteen years ago, she came to Leisha Camden, the only
Sleepless not financially or ethically bound to Miri's horror of a
grandmother. Miri came to Leisha for help in starting a new life.
Just as I once had.
     Leisha said, "My father was stubborn, generous, convinced he
was always right. He had boundless energy. He was capable of
incredible discipline, manic reliance on will, complete obsessive-
ness when he wanted something. He was willing to bend any rules
that stood in his way, but he wasn't a tyrant. He was just implacable.
 Does that sound like anybody you know? Does that sound like
 Miri?"
     "Yes," I said. Where do they get all these words, Leisha and
 Miri and the rest of them? But these particular words fit. "It sounds
 like Miranda."
     "And another thing about my father," Leisha said, looking
directly at me. "He wore people out. He wore out two wives, one
daughter, four business partners, and, finally, his own heart. Just
wore them out. He was capable of destroying what he passionately
loved just by applying his own impossible standards toward im-
proving it."
     I put down my coffee cup. Leisha put her palms flat on the
table and leaned toward me.
     "Drew—I'm asking for the last time. What is Miri doing at
Huevos Verdes? You have to understand—I'm scared for her.
Miri's not like my father in one important way. She's not a loner.
She's desperate for a community, growing up the way she did on
Sanctuary, with Jennifer Sharifi for a grandmother . . . but that's
not the point. Or maybe it is. She yearns to belong the way only
an outsider can. And she doesn't. She knows that. She put her
grandmother and that gang in jail, and so the Sleepless have re-
jected her. She's so superior to the donkeys they can't accept her
on principle; she's too much of a threat. And the idea of her trying
to find common ground communicating with Livers is ludicrous.
There's no common language."
     I looked carefully away, out the window, at the desert. You
never see that clear crystalline light anywhere else. Like the air
itself, the light is both solid and yet completely transparent.
     Leisha says, "All Miri has, outside of you, is twenty-six other
SuperSleepless. That's it. Do you know what makes a revolution-
ary, Drew? Being an outsider looking in, coupled with the idealistic
desire to create the one true, just community, coupled with the
belief that you can. Idealists on the inside don't become revolu-
tionaries. They just become reformers. Like me. Reformers think
that things need a little improvement, but the basic structure is
sound. Revolutionaries think about wiping everything out and
starting all over. Miri's a revolutionary. A revolutionary with
Superintelligent followers, unimaginable technology, huge
amounts of money, and passionate ideals. Do you wonder that I'm
scared?
     "What are they doing in Huevos Verdes?"
     I couldn't meet Leisha's eyes. So many words pouring out of
her, so much argument, so many complicated definitions. The
shapes in my mind were dark, confused, angry, with dangerous
trailing cables hard as steel. But they weren't Leisha's shapes. They
were mine.
     "Drew," Leisha said, softly now, the outsider pleading with
me. "Please tell me what she's doing?"
     "I don't know," I lied.


Two days later I sat in a skimmer speeding over the open sea
toward Huevos Verdes. The sun on the Gulf of Mexico was blind-
ing. My driver, a freckled kid of about fourteen whom I'd never
seen before, was young enough to enjoy skimming water. He
edged the gravboat's nose downward to just touch the ocean, and
blue-white spray flew. The kid grinned. The second time he did
it, he suddenly turned his head to make sure I wasn't getting wet,
sitting in my powerchair in the back of the skimmer. Clearly he'd
forgotten I was there. Sudden guilt and the new angle changed
his face, and I recognized him. One of Kevin Baker's great-
grandchildren.
     "Not wet at all," I said, and the kid grinned again. A Sleepless,
of course. I could see that now in the shape of him in my mind:
compact and bright-colored and brisk-moving. Born owning the
world. And, of course, no security risk for Huevos Verdes.
     But with their defenses, Huevos Verdes wouldn't be risking
security even if passengers were being ferried by the director of
the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency.
     I had worked hard to understand the triple-shield security
around Huevos Verdes.
     The first shield, a translucent shimmer, rose from the sea a
quarter mile out from the island. Spherical, the shield extended
underwater, cutting through the rock of the island itself, an all-
enveloping egg. Terry Mwakambe, the Supers' strangest genius,
had invented the field. Nothing else like it existed anywhere in
the world. It scanned DNA, and nothing not recorded in the data
banks got through. Not dolphins, not navy frogmen, not seagulls,
not drifting algae. Nada.
     The second shield, a hundred yards beyond, stopped all non-
living matter not accompanied by DNA that was stored in the data
banks. No unmanned 'bot vessel carrying anything—sensors,
bombs, spores—passed this field. No matter how small. If there
wasn't a registered DNA code accompanying it, it didn't get
through. We skimmed through the shield's faint blue shimmer as
if through a soap bubble.
     The third shield, at the docks, was manually controlled and
visually monitored. The registered DNA had to be alive and talk-
ing. I don't know how they checked for a drugged state. Nothing
touched us, at least nothing I felt. The design was Terry
Mwakambe's. The monitoring was shared by everybody, in shifts.
The paranoia was Miri's. Unlike her grandmother, she didn't want
the Supers to secede permanently from the United States. But
like her grandmother, she'd nonetheless constructed a defended
refuge that government officials couldn't touch. A sanctuary.
She'd just done it better than Jennifer Sharifi had.
     "Permission to dock," the freckled kid said seriously. He gave
a little half-mocking salute and grinned. This was still an adventure
for him.
     "Hi, Jason," Christy Demetrios said. "Hello, Drew. Come on
in."
    Jason Reynolds. That was the kid's name. I remembered now.
Kevin's granddaughter Alexandra's son. Something about him
tugged at my memory, a nervous quick shape like a string of beads.
I couldn't remember.
    Jason docked the boat expertly—they all did everything ex-
pertly—and we went ashore, Jason with quick bounds and me in
my powerchair.
     A hundred feet of genemod greenery, flowers and bushes and
trees, all of it part of the project. Plants grew right to the water's
edge. When the sea threatened, a Y-shield switched on, capable
of protecting even the most fragile genemod rose from a hurricane.
Beyond the garden, the compound walls rose abruptly, thin as
paper, stronger than diamonds. Miri told me they were only a
dozen molecules thick, constructed by second-generation nano-
machines that had themselves been made from nanomachines. In
my mind I saw the walls' glossy whiteness, to which no dirt could
adhere, as hot dark red motion, thick and unstoppable as lava.
     Nothing here was stoppable.
     "Drew!" Miri ran to meet me, wearing white shorts and a loose
shirt, her masses of dark hair tied back with a red ribbon. She had
put on red lipstick. She still looked more like sixteen than twenty-
nine. She threw her arms around me in my chair, and I felt the
quick beating of her heart against my cheek. Super metabolism is
revved up a lot higher than ours. I kissed her.
    She murmured into my hair, "This time was too long. Four
months!"
    "It was a good tour, Miri."
    "I know. I watched sixteen performances on the grid, and the
performance stats look good."
    She nestled into my lap. Jason and Christy had discreetly van-
ished. We were alone in the bright, newly created garden. I stroked
Miri's hair, not wanting to hear just yet about performance stats.
    Miri said, "I love you."
    "I love you, too."
    I kissed her again, this time to keep from looking at her face.
It would be blinding, white hot with love. It always was, when she
saw me. Always. For thirteen years. He was capable of complete
obsessiveness, Leisha had said about her father. He just wore people
out.
    "I miss you so much when you're away, Drew."
    "I miss you, too." This was true.
    "I wish you could stay longer than a week."
    "Me, too." This was not true. But there were no words.
    She looked at me, then, a long moment. Something shifted
behind her eyes. Carefully, so as not to hurt my crippled legs, she
climbed off my lap, held out her hands, and smiled. "Come see
the lab work."
    I recognized this for what it was: Miri offering me the best
she had. The most valuable present in the world. The thing I
desperately wanted to be part of, even though I wouldn't under-
stand it, because not to be part of it was to be unimportant. In-
significant. She was offering me what I needed most.
    I couldn't do less.
    I pulled her back onto my lap, forced my hands to move over
her breasts. "Later. Can we be alone first. . . "
    Her face was the curving shape of joy, too bright to be any
color at all.
    Miri's bedroom, like every other bedroom at La Isla, was
spartan. Bed, dresser, terminal, an oval green rug made of some
soft material Sara Cerelli had invented. On the dresser was a
green
pottery vase of fragrant genemod flowers I didn't recognize. These
people, who could command all luxury, rarely indulged in any.
The only jewelry Miri ever wore was the ring I had given her, a
slim gold band set with rubies. I had never seen the other Sleepless
wear any jewelry at all. All their extravagances, Miri had told me
once, were mental. Even the light was ordinary: flat, without
shadows.
    I thought of the library in Leisha's New Mexico house.
    Miri unbuttoned her shirt. Her breasts looked the same as
they had at sixteen: full, milky, tipped with pale brown aureoles.
She pulled down her shorts. Her hips were full, her waist chunky.
Her pubic hair was bushy and wiry and the same black as the hair
on her head, where it was confined by a red ribbon. I reached up
and pulled the ribbon free.
    "Oh, Drew, I've missed you so much . . ."
    I hoisted myself from my powerchair to her narrow bed, and
then pulled her on top of me. Her breasts spread over my chest:
soft on hard. On tour or not, I exercised my upper body fanatically,
to make up for my crippled legs. Miri loved that. She liked to feel
my arms crush her against me. She liked my thrusts to be hard,
definite, even ramming. I tried to give her that, but this time I
stayed soft.
    She looked at me questioningly, brushing the wild black hair
back from her face. I didn't meet her eyes. She reached down and
took me in her hand, massaging gently.
    This had happened only a few times, all of them recent. Miri
massaged harder.
    "Drew . . ."
    "Give me a minute, love."
    She smiled uncertainly. I tried to concentrate, and then not to
concentrate.
    "Drew . . ."
    "Shhhh . . . just a minute."
    The gray shapes of failure snapped their teeth in my mind.
    I closed my eyes, pulled Miri closer, and thought of Leisha.
Leisha in the New Mexico twilight, a dim golden shape against
the sunset. Leisha singing me to sleep when I was ten years old.
Leisha running across the desert, slim and swift, tripping in a
kangaroo-rat hole and twisting her ankle. I had carried her back
to the compound, her body light and sweet in my eighteen-year-
old arms. Leisha at her sister's funeral, tears making her eyes
reflect all light, naked to sorrow. Leisha naked, as I had never seen
her . . .
    "AAhhhhhh," Miri crooned triumphantly.
    I rolled us both over, so that I was on top. Miri preferred it
that way. I thrust hard, then harder. She liked it really rough.
Eventually I felt her shudder under me, and I let myself go.
    Afterward, I lay still, my eyes closed, Miri curled against me
with her head on my shoulder. For a brief piercing moment I
remembered how love was between us a decade ago, in the be-
ginning, when just the touch of her hand could turn me shivery
and hot. I tried not to think, not to feel any shapes at all.
    But making a void in the mind is impossible. I suddenly re-
membered the thing that had tugged at my mind about Jason
Reynolds, Kevin Baker's great-grandson. Last year, the kid had
nearly drowned. He had taken a skimmer out on the Gulf straight
into Hurricane Julio. Huevos Verdes had found him only be-
cause Terry Mwakambe had developed some esoteric homing
devices, and Jason had been brought back from death only by
using on him some part of the project that hadn't even been
tested yet.
    When he revived, Jason admitted knowing the hurricane was
coming. He wasn't trying to commit suicide, he said earnestly.
Everyone believed him; Sleepless don't commit suicide. They're
too much in love with their own minds to end them. With all of
them hanging over his bed, his parents and Kevin and Leisha and
Miri and Christy and Terry, Jason had said in a small voice that
he hadn't known the sea would get quite that rough quite that
fast. He just wanted to feel the boat get pitched around a lot. He
just wanted to watch the huge, angry sky, and feel the rain lash
him. He, a Sleepless, just wanted to feel vulnerable.
    Miranda whispered, "Nobody ever makes me feel like you do,
Drew. Nobody."
    I kept my eyes closed, pretending to sleep.


In the late afternoon we went to the labs. Sara Cerelli and Jonathan
Markowitz were there, dressed in shorts, barefoot. One of the
requirements of the project was that at no stage did anything need
to be sterile.
     "Hello, Drew," Jon said. Sara nodded. Their concentration on
their work made closed, muddy shapes in my mind.
     A blob of living tissue sat in a shallow open tray on a lab bench,
connected to machines by slender tubes and even more slender
cables. Dozens of display screens ringed the rooms. Nothing on
any of them was comprehensible to me. The tissue in the tray was
flesh-colored, a light dun, but no particular form. It looked as if
it could change shape, oozing into something else. On my last
visit, Miri had told me it couldn't do that. No Sleepless are squeam-
ish. I'm not either, but the shapes that crawled in and out of my
mind as I looked at the thing were pale and speckled and smelled
of dampness, although diamond-precise on their edges. Like the
nanobuilt walls of Huevos Verdes.
     I said, stupidly, "It's alive."
    Jon smiled. "Oh, yes. But not sentient. At least not. . ." He
trailed off, and I knew he couldn't find the right words. It should
have made a bond between us. It didn't. Jon couldn't find the right
words because any words that he picked would be too easy, too
incomplete, for his ideas—and still too hard for me to follow. Miri
had told me that Jon, more than any of the others except Terry
Mwakambe, thought in mathematics. But it was the same with all
of them, even Miri: her speech was a quarter beat too slow. I had
caught myself talking like that only a month ago. It had been to
Kevin Baker's four-year-old great-grandson.
    Miri tried. "The tissue is a macro-level organic computer,
Drew, with limited organ-simulation programming, including ner-
vous, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal systems. We've added
Strethers self-monitoring feedback loops and submolecular, self-
reproducing, single-arm assemblers. It can . . . it can experience
programmed biological processes and report on them minutely.
But it has neither sentience nor volition."
     "Oh," I said.
    The thing moved a little in its tray. I looked away. Miri saw,
of course. She sees everything.
     She said quietly, "We're getting closer. That's what it means.
Ever since the breakthrough with the bacteriorhodopsin, we're
getting much closer."
    I made myself look at the thing again. Faint capillaries pulsed
below the surface. The pale, damp shapes in my mind crawled,
like maggots over rock.
     Miri said, "If we pour a nutrient mixture into the tray, Drew,
it can select and absorb what it needs and break it down for energy."
     "What kind of nutrient mixture?" I had learned enough on my
last visit to be able to ask this question.
     Miri made a face. "Glucose-protein, mostly. There's still a way
to go."
     "Have you solved the problem of getting nitrogen directly
from the air?" I had memorized this question. It made a tinny,
hollow shape in my mind. But Miri smiled her luminous smile.
     "Yes and no. We've engineered the microorganisms, but tissue
receptivity is still foundering on the Tollers-Hilbert factor, es-
pecially in the epidermal fibrils. And on the nitrogen receptor-
mediated endocytosis problem—no progress."
     "Oh," I said.
     "We'll solve it," Miri said, a quarter beat too slow. "It's just a
matter of designing the right enzymes."
     Sara said, "We call the thing Galwat." She and Jon laughed.
     Miri said quickly, "For Galatea, you know. And Erin Galway.
And John Gait, that fictional character who wanted to stop the
motor of the world. And, of course, Worthington's transference
equations . . . "
     "Of course," I said. I had never heard of Galatea or Erin Galway
or John Gait or Worthington.
    "Galatea's from a Greek myth. A sculptor—"
    "Let me see my performance stats now," I said. Sara and Jon
glanced at each other. I smiled and held out my hand to Miri. She
grasped it hard, and I felt hers tremble.
     (Quick, fluttery shapes filled my mind, fine as paper. A dozen
molecular levels thick. They settled on a rock, rough and hard
and old as the earth. The fluttering grew faster and faster, the fine
light paper grew red hot, and the rock shattered. At its heart was
frozen milky whiteness, pulsing with faint veins.)
    Miri said, "Don't you want to see Nikos' and Allen's latest
work on the Cell Cleaner? It's coming along much faster than this!
And Christy and Toshio have had a real breakthrough in error-
checking protein-assembler programming—"
    I said, "Let me see the performance stats now."
    She nodded once, twice, four times. "The stats look good,
Drew. But there's a funny jag in the data in the second movement
of your concert. Terry says you need to change direction there.
It's rather complicated."
     "Then you'll explain it to me," I said evenly.
     Her smile was dazzling. Again Sara and Jon glanced at each
other, and said nothing.


The first time Miri showed me how the Supers communicated
with each other, I couldn't believe it. It was thirteen years ago,
right after they came down from Sanctuary. She had led me into
a room with twenty-seven holostages on twenty-seven terminal
desks. Each had been programmed to "speak" a different language,
based on English but modified to the thought strings of its owner.
Miri, sixteen years old, had explained one of her own thought
strings to me.
     "Suppose you say a sentence to me. Any single sentence."
     "You have beautiful breasts."
     She blushed, a maroon mottling of her dark skin. She did have
beautiful breasts, and beautiful hair. They offset a little the big
head, knobby chin, awkward gait. She wasn't pretty, and she was
too intelligent not to know it. I wanted to make her feel pretty.
     She said, "Pick another sentence."
     "No. Use that sentence."
     She did. She spoke it to the computer, and the holostage began
to form a three-dimensional shape of words, images, and symbols
linked to each other by glowing green lines.
    "See, it brings out the associations my mind makes, based on
its store of past thought strings and on algorithms for the way I
think. From just a few words it extrapolates, and predicts, and
mirrors. The programming is called 'mind mirroring,' in fact. It
captures about ninety-seven percent of my thoughts about ninety-
two percent of the time, and then I can add the rest. And the best
part is—"
    "You think like this for every sentence? Every single sentence?"
Some of the associations were obvious: "breasts" linked to a nurs-
ing baby, for instance. But why was the baby linked to something
called "Hubble's constant," and why was the Sistine chapel in that
string? And a name I didn't recognize: Chidiock Tichbourne?
    "Yes," Miri said. "But the best part—"
    "You all think this way? All the Supers?"
    "Yes," she said quietly. "Although Terry and Jon and Ludie
think mostly in mathematics. They're younger than the rest of us,
you know—they represent the next cycle of IQ reengineering."
    I looked at the complex pattern of Miri's thoughts and reac-
tions. "You have beautiful breasts."
     I would never know what my words actually meant to her, in
all their layers. Not any of my words. Ever.
     "Does this scare you, Drew?"
     She looked levelly at me. I could feel her fear, and her reso-
lution. The moment was important. It grew and grew in my mind,
a looming white wall to which nothing could adhere, until I found
the right answer.
     "I think in shapes for every sentence."
     Her smile changed her whole face, opening and lighting it. I
had said the right thing. I looked at the glowing green complexity
of the holostage, a slowly turning three-dimensional globe jammed
with tiny images and equations and, most of all, words. So many
complicated words.
     "We're the same, then," Miri said joyfully. And I didn't correct
her.
     "The best part," Miri had burbled on, completely at ease now,
"is that after the extrapolated thought string forms and is adjusted
as necessary, the master program translates it into everybody else's
thought patterns and it appears that way on their holostage. On
all twenty-seven terminals simultaneously. So we can bypass words
and get the full ideas we're each thinking across to each other
more efficiently. Well, not the full ideas. There's always something
lost in translation, especially to Terry and Jon and Ludie. But it's
so much better than just speech, Drew. The way your concerts
are better than just unassisted daydreaming."
     Daydreaming. The only kind of dreaming SuperSleepless knew
anything about. Until me.
     When a Sleepless went into the lucid dreaming trance, the
result was different from when a Liver did. Or even a donkey.
Livers and donkeys can dream at night. They have that connection
with their unconscious, and I direct and intensify it in ways that
feel good to them: peaceful and stimulated both. While lucid
dreaming, they feel—sometimes for the first time in their lives—
whole. I take them farther along the road into their true selves,
deeper behind the waking veil. And I direct the dreams to the
sweetest of the many things waiting there.
    But Sleepless don't have night dreams. Their road to the un-
conscious has been genetically severed. When Sleepless go into a
lucid dreaming trance, Miri told me, they see "insights" they
wouldn't have seen before. They climb around their endless jungle
of words, and come out of the trance with intuitive solutions to
intellectual problems. Geniuses have often done that during sleep,
Miri said. She gave me examples of great scientists. I have for-
gotten the names.
    Looking at the complex verbal design on her holostage, I could
feel it in my mind. It made a shape like a featureless pale stone,
cool with regret. Miri would never see this shape in my mind.
Worse, she would never know she didn't see it. She thought,
because we both saw differently from donkeys, that we were alike.
    I had wanted to be part of what was happening at Huevos
Verdes. Already, even then, I could see that the project would
change the world. Anyone not an actor in the project could only
be acted on.
    "Yes, Miri," I said, smiling at her, "we're the same."


On a worktable in yet another lab, Miri spread out the performance
stats from my concert tour. The hard copy was for me; Supers
always analyzed directly from screens or holos. I wondered how
much had been left out or simplified for my benefit. Terry Mwa-
kambe, a small dark man with long wild hair, perched motionless
on the open windowsill. Behind him the ocean sparkled deep blue
in the waning light.
     "See, here," Miri said, "midway during your performance of
'The Eagle.' The attention-level measurements rose, and the at-
attitudinal changes right after the performance were pretty
dramatic in the direction of risk taking. But then the follow-up
stats show that by a week later, the subjects' attitudinal changes
had eroded more than they did for your other performance pieces.
And by a month later, almost all risk-taking changes have
disappeared."
     When I give a concert, they hook volunteer fans to machines
that measure their brain wave changes, breathing, pupil varia-
tions—a lot of things. Before and after the concert the volunteers
take virtual-reality tests to measure attitudes. The volunteers are
paid. They don't know what the tests are for, or who wants them.
Neither do the people who administer the tests. It's all done blind,
through one of Kevin Baker's many software subsidiaries, which
form an impenetrable legal tangle. The results are transmitted to
the master computer at Huevos Verdes. When the stats say so, I
change what and how I perform.
    I have stopped calling myself an artist.
    " 'The Eagle' just isn't working," Miri said. "Terry wants to
know if you can compose a different piece that draws on subcon-
scious risk-taking imagery. He wants it by your broadcast a week
from Sunday."
    "Maybe Terry should just write it for me."
    "You know none of us can do that." Then her eyes sharpened
and her mouth softened. "You're the Lucid Dreamer, Drew. None
of us can do what you do. If we seem to be . . . directing you too
much, it's only because the project requires it. The whole thing
would be impossible without you."
    I smiled at her. She looked so concerned, filled with so much
passion for her work. So resolute. Implacable, Leisha had said of
her father. Willing to bend anything that stood in his way.
    She said, "You do believe that we know how important you
are, Drew? Drew?"
    I said, "I know, Miri."
    Her face broke into shards of light, like swords in my mind.
"Then you'll compose the new piece?"
    "Risk taking," I said. "Presented as desirable, attractive, urgent.
Right. By a week from Sunday."
    "It's really necessary, Drew. We're still months away from a
prototype in the lab, but the country ..." She picked up another
set of hard copy. "Look. Gravtrain breakdowns up eight percent
over last month. Reports to the FCC of communications inter-
ruptions—up another three percent. Bankruptcies up five percent.
Food movement—this is crucial—performing sixteen percent
less efficiently. Industrial indicators falling at the same dismal
rate. Voter confidence in the basement. And the duragem situa-
tion—"
    For once her voice lost its quarter-beat-behind slowness. "Look
at these graphs, Drew! We can't even locate the origin of the
duragem breakdowns—there's no one epicenter. And when you
run the data through the Lawson conversion formulas—"
    "Yes," I said, to escape the Lawson conversion formulas. "I
believe you. It's bad out there and getting worse.'
    "Not just worse—apocalyptical."
    My mind fills with crimson fire and navy thunder, surrounding
a crystal rose behind an impenetrable shield. Miri grew up on
Sanctuary. Necessities and comforts were a given. All the time,
for everybody, without question or thought. Unlike me, Miranda
never saw a baby die of neglect, a wife beaten by a despairing and
drunk husband, a family existing on unflavored soysynth, a toilet
that didn't work for days. She didn't know these things were
survivable. How would she recognize an apocalypse?
    I don't say this aloud.
    Terry Mwakambe jumped down from the windowsill. He
hadn't said a single word the whole time we'd been in the room.
His thought strings, Miri said, consisted almost entirely of equa-
tions. But now he said, "Lunch?"
    I laughed. I couldn't help it. Lunch! The one tie between Terry
Mwakambe and Drew Aden: food. Surely even Terry and Miri
must see the joke, standing here in this room, this building, this
project. . . Lunch!
    Neither of them laughed. I felt the shape of their bewilder-
ment. It was a rain of tiny, tear-shaped droplets, falling on every-
thing, falling on the apocalypse in my mind, falling on me, light
and cold and smothering as snow.
                              Four
                        DIANA COVINGTON: KANSAS




O      ne night in another lifetime Eugene, who came before Rex
       and after Claude, asked me what the United States re-
       minded me of. That was the sort of question to which
Gene was given: inviting metaphorical grandiosity, which in turn
invited his scorn. I replied that the United States had always
seemed to me like some powerful innocent beast, lushly beautiful,
with the cranial capacity of a narrow-headed deer. Look how it
stretches its sleek muscles in the sunlight. Look how it bounds
high. Look how it runs gracefully straight into the path of the
oncoming train. This answer had the virtue of being so innatedly
grandiose that to object to it on those grounds became superfluous.
It was beside the point that the answer was also true.
    Certainly from my gravrail I could see enough of the lush,
mangled carcass. We'd come over the Rockies at quarter speed so
the Liver passengers could enjoy the spectacular view. Purple
mountain majesties and all that. Nobody else even glanced out
the window. I stayed glued to it, savoring all the asinine superiority
of genuine awe.
    At Garden City, Kansas, I changed to a local, zipping through
gorgeous countryside at 250 miles an hour, crawling through
crappy little Liver towns at nothing an hour. "Why not justly to
Washington?" Colin Kowalski had said, incredulous. "You're not
supposed to be pretending to be a Liver, after all." I'd told him I
wanted to see the Liver towns whose integrity I was defending
against potential artificial genetic corruption. He hadn't liked my
answer any better than Gene had.
    Well, now I was seeing them. The mangled carcass.
     Each town looked the same. Streets fanning out from the grav-
rail station. Houses and apartment blocks, some pure foamcast
and some foamcast added onto older buildings of brick or even
wood. The foamcast colors were garish, pink and marigold and
cobalt and a very popular green like lobster guts. Aristocratic Liver
leisure did not confer aristocratic taste.
     Each town boasted a communal cafe the size of an airplane
hangar, a warehouse for goods, various lodge buildings, a public
bath, a hotel, sports fields, and a deserted-looking school. Every-
thing was plastered with holosigns: Supervisor S. R. ElectMe
Warehouse. Senator Frances Fay FamilyMoney Cafe. And beyond
the town, barely visible from the gravrail, the Y-energy plant and
shielded robofactories that kept it all going. And, of course, the
scooter track, inevitable as death.
     Somewhere in Kansas a family climbed onto the train and
plunked themselves down on the seats across from me. Daddy,
Mommy, three little Livers, two with runny noses, everybody in
need of a diet and gym. Rolls of fat bounced under Mommy Liver's
bright yellow jacks. Her glance brushed me, traveled on, reversed
like radar.
     "Hey," I said.
     She scowled and nudged her mate. He looked at me and didn't
scowl. The cubs gazed silently, the boy—he was about twelve—
with a look like his daddy's.
     Colin had warned me against even trying to pass for a Liver;
he said there'd be no way I could fool Sleepless. I'd said I didn't
want to fool Sleepless; I only wanted to blend into the local flora.
He said I couldn't. Apparently he was right. Mommy Liver took
one look at my genemod-long legs, engineered face, and Anne
Boleyn neck that cost my father a little trust fund, and she knew.
My poison-green jacks, soda-can jewelry (very popular; you made
it yourself), and shit-brown contact lenses made not a bit of dif-
ference to her. Daddy & Son weren't so sure, but, then, they didn't
really care. Breast size, not genescan, was on their mind.
     "I'm Darla Jones, me," I said cheerfully. I had a lock-pocket
full of various chips under various names, some of which the GSEA
had provided, some of which they knew nothing about. It's a
mistake to let the agency provide all of your cover. The time might
come when you want cover from them. All of my identities were
documented in federal databases, looking as if they had long pasts,
 thanks to a talented friend the GSEA also knew nothing about.
 "Going to Washington, me."
     "Arnie Shaw," the man said eagerly. "The train, it break down
yet?"
     "Nah," I said. "Probably will, though, it."
     "What can you do?"
     "Nothing."
     "Keeps things interesting."
     "Arnie," Mommy Liver said sharply, interrupting this mild
conversational excursion, "back here, us. There's more seats." She
gave me a look that would scorch plastisynth.
     "Plenty of seats up here, Dee."
     "Arnie!"
     " 'Bye," I said. They walked away, the woman muttering under
her breath. Bitch. I should let the SuperSleepless turn her des-
cendants into four-armed tailless guard dogs. Or whatever they
had in mind. I leaned my head against the back of the seat and
closed my eyes. We slowed down for another Liver town.
     As soon as we left it, the littlest Shaw was back. A girl of about
five, she crept along the aisle like a kitten. She had a pert little
face and long dirty brown hair.
     "You got a pretty bracelet, you." She looked longingly at the
soda-can atrocity on my wrist, all curling jangles of some light-
weight alloy bendable as warm wax. Some besotted voter had sent
it and the matching earrings to David when he was running for
state senator. He'd kept it as a joke.
     I slipped the bracelet off my wrist. "You want it, you?"
    "Really?" Her face shone. She snatched the bracelet from my
outstretched fingers and scampered back down the aisle, blue shirt-
tail flapping. I grinned. Too bad kittens inevitably grow up into
cats.
    A minute later Mommy Liver loomed. "Keep your bracelet,
you. Desdemona, she got her own jewelry!"
    Desdemona. Where do they ever hear these names? Shake-
speare doesn't play at scooter tracks.
    The woman looked at me from very hard eyes. "Look, you
keep, you, to your kind, and we keep to ours. Better that way all
around. You understand, you?"
    "Yes, ma'am," I said, and popped out my lenses. My eyes are
 an intense, genemod violet. I gazed at her calmly, hands folded
 on my lap.
      She waddled away, muttering. I caught the words, "These
 people . . . "
     "If I find I can't pass for a Liver," I'd told Colin, "I'll pass for
 a semi-crazy donkey trying to pass for a Liver. I wouldn't be the
 first donkey to go native. You know, the working-class person
 pathetically trying to pass for an aristo. Hide in plain sight."
     Colin had shrugged. I'd thought he already regretted recruiting
me, but then I realized that he hoped my antics would draw at-
tention away from the real GSEA agents undoubtedly heading for
Washington. The Federal Forum for Science and Technology, pop-
ularly known as the Science Court, was hearing Market Request
no. 1892-A. What made this market request different from num-
bers 1 through 1891 was that it was being proposed by Huevos
Verdes Corporation. For the first time in ten years, the Super-
Sleepless were seeking government approval to market a patented
genemod invention in the United States. They didn't have a fish's
chance on the moon, of course, but it was still pretty interesting.
Why now? What were they after? And would any of the twenty-
seven show up personally at the Science Court hearing?
     And if anybody did, would I be able to keep him or her under
surveillance?
     I gazed out the train window, at the robo-tended fields. Wheat,
or maybe soy—I wasn't sure what either looked like, growing. In
ten minutes, Desdemona was back. Her face appeared slowly be-
tween my outstretched legs; she'd crawled along the floor, under
the seats, through the mud and spilled food and debris. Desde-
mona raised her little torso between my knees, balancing herself
with one sticky hand on my seat. The other hand shot out and
closed on my bracelet.
     I unfastened it and gave it to her again. The front of her blue
jacks was filthy. "No cleaning 'bot on this train?"
     She clutched the bracelet and grinned. "It died, him."
     I laughed. The next minute the gravrail broke down.
     I was thrown to the floor, where I swayed on hands and knees,
waiting to die. Under me machinery shrieked. The train shuddered
to a stop but didn't tip over.
     "Damn!" Desdemona's father shouted. "Not again!"
     "Can we get some ice cream, us?" a child whined. "We're
stopped now!"
     "Third time this week! Fucking donkey train!"
     "We never get no ice cream!"
     Apparently the trains didn't tip over. Apparently I wasn't going
to die. Apparently this shrieking machinery was routine. I followed
everyone else off the train.
     Into another world.
    A fever wind blew across the miles of prairie: warm, whisper-
ing, intoxicating. I was staggered by the size of the sky. Endless
bright blue sky above, endless bright golden fields below. And all
of it caressed by that blood-warm wind, impregnated with sunlight,
gravid with fragrance. I, a city lover to equal Sir Christoper Wren,
had had no idea. No holo had ever prepared me. I resisted the
mad idea to kick off my shoes and dig my toes into the dark earth.
     Instead I followed the grumbling Livers along the tracks to the
front of the train. They gathered around the holoprojection of an
engineer, even though I could hear his canned speech being broad-
cast inside each car. The holo "stood" on the grass, looking au-
thoritative and large. The franchise owner was a friend of mine;
he believed that seven-foot-high swarthy-skinned males were the
ideal projection to promote order.
    "There is no need to be alarmed. This is a temporary mal-
function. Please return to the comfort and safety of your car, and
in a few moments complimentary food and drinks will be served.
A repair technician is on the way from the railroad franchise. There
is no need to be alarmed—"
    Desdemona kicked the holo. Her foot passed through him and
she smirked, a pointless saucy smile of triumph. The holo looked
down at her. "Don't do that again, kid—you hear me, you?"
Desdemona's eyes widened and she flew behind her mother's
legs.
     "Don't be so scaredy, you—it's just interactive," Mommy Liver
snapped. "Let go, you, of my legs!"
     I winked at Desdemona, who stared at me sullenly and then
grinned, rattling our bracelet.
     "—to the comfort and safety of your car, and in a few moments
complimentary food—"
    More people approached the engine, all but two complaining
loudly. The first was an older woman: tall, plain-faced, and angled
as a tesseract. She wore not jacks but a long tunic knitted of yarn
in subtle, muted shades of green, too uneven to be machine-made.
Her earrings were simple polished green stones. I had never before
seen a Liver with taste.
     The other anomaly was a short young man with silky red hair,
pale skin, and a head slightly too large for his body.
     The back of my neck tingled.
     Inside the cars, server 'bots emerged from their storage com-
partments and offered trays of freshly synthesized soy snacks,
various drinks, and sunshine in mild doses. "Compliments of State
Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes," it said over and over. "So nice
to have you aboard." This diversion took half an hour. Then every-
one went back outside and resumed complaining.
     "The kind of service you get these days—"
     "—vote next time, me, for somebody else—anybody else—"
     "—a temporary malfunction. Please return to the comfort and
safety of—"
     I walked over the scrub grass to the edge of the closest field.
The Sleepless-in-inadequate-disguise stood watching the crowd,
observing as pseudocasually as I was. So far he had taken no special
notice of me. The field was bounded by a low energy fence, pre-
sumably to keep the agrobots inside. They ambled slowly between
the rows of golden wheat, doing whatever it was they did. I stepped
over the fence and picked one up. It hummed softly, a dark sphere
with flexible tentacles. On the bottom a label said CANCO ROBOTS/
LOS ANGELES. CanCo had been in the Wall Street Journal On-Line
last week; they were in trouble. Their agrobots had suddenly begun
to break down all over the country. The franchise was going under.
    The warm wind whispered seductively through the sweet-
scented wheat.
    I sat on the ground, cross-legged, my back to the energy fence.
Around me adults settled into games of cards or dice. Children
raced around, screaming. A young couple brushed past me and
disappeared into the wheat, sex in their eyes. The older woman
sat by herself reading a book, an actual book. I couldn't imagine
where she'd gotten it. And the big-headed Sleepless, if that's what
he/she was, stretched out on the ground, closed his eyes, and
pretended to sleep. I grimaced. I've never liked self-serving irony.
Not in other people.
    After two hours, the server 'bots again brought out food and
drinks. "Compliments of State Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes.
So nice to have you aboard." How much soysynth did a Liver
gravrail carry? I had no idea.
    The sun threw long shadows. I sauntered to the woman read-
ing. "Good book?"
    She looked up at me, measuring. If Colin had sent me to the
Science Court in Washington, he probably had sent some legiti-
mate agents as well. And if Big Head was a Sleepless, he might
have his own personal tail. However, something in the reading
woman's face convinced me it wasn't her. She wasn't genemod,
but it wasn't that. You can find donkey families who refuse even
permitted genemods, and then go on existing very solidly cor-
porate but on the fringe socially. She wasn't that, either. She was
something else.
    "It's a novel," the woman said neutrally. "Jane Austen. Are
you surprised there are still Livers who can read? Or want to?"
    "Yes." I smiled conspiratorally, but she only gave me a level
stare and went back to her book. A renegade donkey didn't arouse
her contempt, or indignation, or fawning. I genuinely didn't in-
terest her. I felt unwitting respect.
    Apparently I didn't know as much about the variety of Livers
as I'd thought.
    The sunset ravished me. The sky turned lucid and vulnerable,
then streaked with subtle colors. The colors grew aggressive, fol-
lowed by wan and valedictory pastels. Then it grew cold and dark.
An entire love affair, empyrean, in thirty minutes. Claude-Eugene-
Rex-Paul-Anthony-Russell-David.
    No repair technician appeared. The prairie cooled rapidly; we
all climbed back onto the train, which turned on its lights and
heat. I wondered what would have happened if those systems—
or the server 'bots—had failed as well.
    Someone said, not loudly and to no one in particular, "My
meal chip, it came late from the capital last quarter."
    Pause. I sat up straighter; this was a new tone. Not complaint.
Something else.
    "My town got no more jacks. The warehouse donkey says,
him, that there's a national shortage."
    Pause.
    "We're going, us, on this train to get my old mother from
Missouri. Heat blower in her building broke and nobody else took
her in. She got no heat, her."
     Pause.
     Someone said, "Does anybody know, them, how far it is to
 the next town? Maybe we could walk, us."
     "We ain't supposed to walk, us! They supposed to fix our
fucking train!" Mommy Liver, exploding in rage and saliva.
     The quiet tone was over. "That's right! We're voters, us!"
     "My kids can't walk to no next town—"
     "What are you, a fucking donkey?"
     I saw the big-headed man gazing from face to face.
     The holo of the tall swarthy engineer appeared suddenly inside
the car, standing in the center aisle. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mor-
rison Gravrail apologizes once more for the delay in service. To
make your wait more enjoyable, we are privileged to present a
new entertainment production, one not yet released to the holo-
grids, compliments of Congressman Wade Keith Finley. Drew
Aden, the Lucid Dreamer, in his brand-new concert 'The Warrior.'
Please watch from the windows on the left side of the gravrail."
     Livers looked at one another; instantly happy babble replaced
rage. Evidently this was something new in breakdown diversions.
I calculated the cost of a portable holoprojector capable of holos
big enough to be seen from windows the length of a train, plus
the cost of an unreleased vid from the country's hottest Liver
entertainer. I compared the total to the cost of a competent repair
team. Something was very wrong here. I knew nothing about
Hollywood, but an unreleased concert from Drew Arlen must be
worth millions. Why was agravrail carrying it around as emergency
diversion to keep the natives from getting too restless?
     The big-headed man quietly watched his fellow travelers press
their faces to the left windows.
     A long rod snaked from the roof of the car behind ours, which
sat in the center of the train. The rod rose at an obtuse angle to
the ground and extended almost to the wheat field. Light fanned
from the end of the rod downward, forming a pyramid. Everyone
went "Ooooohhhhh!" Portable projectors never deliver the clarity
of a good stationary unit, but I didn't think this audience would
care. The holo of Drew Arlen appeared in the center of the pyr-
amid, and everyone went "Oooooohhhhhh" again.
     I slipped out of the train.
     In the dark and up close, the holo looked even stranger: a
fifteen-foot-high, fuzzy-edged man sitting in a powerchair, backed
by miles of unlit prairie. Above, cold stars glittered, immensely
high. I unfolded a plasticloth jacket from the pocket of my jacks.
     The holo said, "I'm Drew Aden. The Lucid Dreamer. Let your
dreams be true."
     I'd seen Aden perform live once, in San Francisco, when I'd
been slumming with friends. I was the only person in the Con-
gressman Paul Jennings Messura Concert Hall not affected. Nat-
ural hypnotic resistance, my doctor said. Your brain just doesn't
possess the necessary fine-tuned biochemistry. Do you dream at
night?
     I have never been able to recall a single one of my dreams.
     The pyramidal light around Aden changed somehow, flickered
oddly. Subliminal patterns. The patterns coalesced slowly into
intricate shapes and Aden's voice, low and intimate, began a
story.
     "Once there was a man of great hopes and no power. When
he was young, he wanted everything. He wanted strength, him,
that would make all other men respect him. He wanted sex, him,
that would make his bones melt with satisfaction. He wanted love.
He wanted excitement. He wanted, him, for every day to be filled
with challenges only he could meet. He wanted—"
     Oh, please. Talk about crudely tapping into basic desires. And
even some donkeys called this stomp an artist.
     The shapes were compelling, though. They slid past Aden's
powerchair, folding and unfolding, some seemingly clear and some
flickering at the very edge of conscious perception. I felt my blood
flow more strongly in my veins, that sudden surge of life you
sometimes get with spring, or sex, or challenge. I was not immune
to subliminals. These must have been wicked.
     I peered into the gravrail car. Livers stood motionless with
their faces pressed to the glass. Desdemona watched with her
mouth open, a small pink pocket. Even Mommy Liver's face hinted
at the young girl she must have been on some forgotten Liver
summer night decades ago.
     I turned back to Aden, still spinning his simple story. His
voice was musical. The story was a sort of pseudo-folk tale without
subtlety, without resonance, without detail, without irony, without
art. The words were merely the bare bones over which the graphics
shimmered, calling forth the real meaning from the watchers' hyp-
notized minds. I'd been told that each person experienced a Drew
Arlen concert differently, depending on the symbols freed and
brought forward from whatever powerful childhood experiences
stocked each mind. I'd been told that, but I hadn't believed it.
    I walked along the outside of the train, in the dark, scanning
the Liver faces behind the windows. Some were wet with tears.
Whatever they were experiencing, it looked more intense than
anything I had felt in the Sistine chapel, at Lewis Darren's King
Lear, during the San Francisco Philharmonic's Beethoven festival.
It looked more intense than sunshine, or even nervewash. As
intense as orgasm.
    Nobody regulated Lucid Dreaming. Arlen had a host of shoddy
imitators. They never lasted long. Whatever Drew Arlen was
doing, he was the only person in the whole world who knew how
to do it. Most donkeys ignored him: a manipulative con artist,
having as much to do with real art as those holos of the Virgin
Mary that suddenly "manifested" during religious festivals.
    ". . . leaving that home he loved," Aden's low, musical voice
said, "walking away alone, him, into a dark forest. . ."
    Nobody regulated Lucid Dreaming. And Drew Arlen, as the
whole world knew, was Miranda Sharifi's lover. He was the only
Sleeper who went in and out of Huevos Verdes at will. The GSEA
followed him constantly, of course, along with enough reporters
to fill a small town. It was only his concerts they didn't take
seriously.
    I walked back along the gravrail and climbed into my car. The
big-headed man was the only one not pressed to the windows. He
lay stretched out on a deserted seat, sleeping. Or pretending to
sleep. In order not to be hypnotized? In order to better observe
the effects of Aden's performance?
    The concert wore on. The warrior took the usual risks, won
the usual triumphs, exulted the usual exultations. Simplistic
power-trip ideation. When it ended, people turned to each other
with emotional hugs, laughing and crying, and then spilled out
onto the cold prairie toward the holo of Drew Arlen. It sat, fifteen
feet high, a handsome crippled man in a powerchair smiling gently
down on his disciples. The surrounding shapes had vanished, un-
less they were flickering subliminally, which was possible. A few
Livers stuck their hands into the holo, trying to touch what had
no substance. Desdemona danced inside the pyramid and laid her
head against the blanket over Aden's knees.
     Daddy Liver said abruptly, "I bet we could walk, us, to the
next town."
     "Well. . ." somebody said. Other voices chimed in.
     If we follow the track, us, and stay together—"
     "See if any of the roof lights are portable—"
     "Some people should stay, them, with the old people."
     The big-headed man watched carefully. That's the moment I
was sure. The entire gravrail breakdown in this techno-forsaken
place had been a setup, to gauge the effect of Aden's concert.
     How? By whom?
     No. Those weren't the right questions. The right question was:
What was the effect of Aden's concert?
     "You stay here, then, Eddie, with the old people. You, Cassie,
tell the people in the other cars. See who wants, them, to go with
us. Tasha—"
     It took them ten minutes of arguing to get organized. They
pried the roof lights off six cars; the lights were portable. People
who stayed gave extra jackets to people who left. The first group
was just starting down the rail when a light flashed in the sky. A
second later I could hear the plane.
     The Livers turned silent.
    The plane held a single gravrail technician, flanked by two
security 'bots, the no-fucking-around kind that both projected a
personal safety shield and carried weapons. The crowd watched
in silence. The tech's handsome, genemod face looked strained.
Techs are a strained group anyway: genemod for appearance, but
without the IQ and ability enhancements, which cost prospective
parents a lot more money. You find them repairing machinery,
running warehouse distribs, supervising nursing or child-care 'bots.
Techs certainly aren't Livers, but although they live in the enclaves,
they aren't exactly donkeys either. And they know it.
     "Ladies and gentlemen," the tech said unhappily, "Morrison
Gravrail, Incorporated, and Senator Cecilia Elizabeth Dawes apol-
ogize for the delay in repairing your train. Circumstances beyond
our control—"
     "And I'm a politician, me!" someone yelled bitterly.
     "Why do we vote, us, for you scum?"
     "Better tell the Senator she lost votes, her, on this here train!"
     "The service we deserve—"
     The tech walked resolutely toward the engine, eyes down,
paced by his 'bots. I caught the faint shimmer of a Y-energy field
as he passed. But a few of the Livers—six or seven—glanced down
the track, stretching away in the windy darkness, their eyes bright
with what I would have sworn was regret.
    It took the tech all of thirteen minutes to fix the gravrail.
Nobody molested him. He left in his plane, and the train started
up again. Livers played dice, grumbled, slept, tended their cranky
children. I walked through all the cars, searching for the big-
headed man. He had vanished while I was watching the Livers'
reaction to the donkey tech. We must have left him behind, on
the windy prairie, in the concealing dark.
                              Five
                   BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




E    very once in a while I need, me, to go off in the woods. I
     didn't used to tell nobody. But now when I go, two-three
     times a year, I tell Annie and she fixes me up some raw stuff
from the kitchen, apples and potatoes and soysynth that ain't been
made into dishes yet. I stay out there alone, me, for five or six
days, away from all of it: the cafe and holodancers and blasting
music and warehouse distribs and stomps with clubs and even the
Y-energy. I build fires, me. Some people ain't left East Oleanta
in twenty years except to go by gravrail to another town just like
it. The deep woods might as well be in China. I think they're
scared, them, of hearing themselves out there.
    I was supposed to leave for the woods the morning after the
cafe kitchen broke and we talked, us, to Supervisor Samuelson
on the official terminal. But I sure wasn't leaving Annie and
Lizzie without food, and I sure wasn't going no place, me, that
had rabid raccoons and a broken warden 'bot.
    Lizzie stood by my couch in her nightshirt, a bright pink blot
on my morning sleep. "Billy, you think, you, that kitchen is fixed
yet?"
     Annie came out from her bedroom, yawning, still in her
plasticloth nightdress. "Leave Billy alone, lizzie. You hungry,
you?"
    Lizzie nodded. I sat up, me, on the sofa, with one arm
shielding my eyes from the morning sun at the window. "Listen,
Annie. I been thinking, me. If they do get that kitchen fixed, we
should start taking all the food we can, us, and storing it here. In
case it breaks again. We can take right up to the meal chip limit
every day—Lizzie and you don't ever hardly do that and me
neither,
some days—and then raw stuff from the kitchen. Potatoes and
apples and stuff."
    Annie pressed her lips together. She ain't a morning person,
her. But it felt so good to be waking up at Annie's place that I
forgot that, me. She said, "The food would rot in just two-three
days. I don't want, me, to have a lot of half-rotten stuff around
here. It ain't clean."
    "Then we'll throw it out, us, and get some more." I spoke
gentle. Annie don't like things to be different than they've always
been.
    Lizzie said, "Billy, you think, you, that kitchen is fixed yet?"
    I said, "I don't know, sweetheart. Let's go look, us. Better get
dressed."
    Annie said, "She got to go, her, to the baths first. She stinks.
Me, too. You walk us, Billy?"
    "Sure." What good did she think an old wreck like me'd be
against rabid coons? But I'd of walked Annie past them demons
she believes in.
    Lizzie said, "Billy, you think, you, that kitchen is fixed yet?"
    There wasn't no raccoons near the baths. The men's bath was
empty except for Mr. Keller, who's so old I don't think even
he remembers if he's got a first name, and two little boys who
shouldn't of been there alone, them. But they were having them-
selves a wonderful splashing time. I liked watching them, me. They
cheered up the morning.
    Mr. Keller told me the cafe kitchen was fixed. I walked Annie
and Lizzie, sweet-clean as berries in the dew, to get our breakfast.
But the cafe was full, it, not just with Livers eating but of donkeys
making a holo of Congresswoman Janet Carol Land.
    It was her, all right. No tape. She stood in front of the foodbelt,
which offered the usual soysynth eggs, bacon, cereals, and breads,
plus some fresh genemod strawberries. I don't like genemod straw-
berries, me. They might keep for weeks, but they never taste like
them little wild sweet berries that grow on the hillsides in June.
    ". . . serving her people with the best she has, no matter the
need, no matter the hour, no matter the emergency," said a hand-
some donkey into a camera 'bot. "Janet Carol Land, on the spot
to serve East Oleanta—on the spot to serve you. A politician who
deserves those memorable words from the Bible: 'Well done, good
and faithful servant'!"
some days—and then raw stuff from the kitchen. Potatoes and
apples and stuff."
    Arnie pressed her lips together. She ain't a morning person,
her. But it felt so good to be waking up at Annie's place that I
forgot that, me. She said, "The food would rot in just two-three
days. I don't want, me, to have a lot of half-rotten stuff around
here. It ain't clean."
    "Then we'll throw it out, us, and get some more." I spoke
gentle. Annie don't like things to be different than they've always
been.
    Lizzie said, "Billy, you think, you, that kitchen is fixed yet?"
    I said, "I don't know, sweetheart. Let's go look, us. Better get
dressed."
    Annie said, "She got to go, her, to the baths first. She stinks.
Me, too. You walk us, Billy?"
    "Sure." What good did she think an old wreck like me'd be
against rabid coons? But I'd of walked Annie past them demons
she believes in.
    Lizzie said, "Billy, you think, you, that kitchen is fixed yet?"
    There wasn't no raccoons near the baths. The men's bath was
empty except for Mr. Keller, who's so old I don't think even
he remembers if he's got a first name, and two little boys who
shouldn't of been there alone, them. But they were having them-
selves a wonderful splashing time. I liked watching them, me. They
cheered up the morning.
    Mr. Keller told me the cafe kitchen was fixed. I walked Annie
and Lizzie, sweet-clean as berries in the dew, to get our breakfast.
But the cafe was full, it, not just with Livers eating but of donkeys
making a holo of Congresswoman Janet Carol Land.
    It was her, all right. No tape. She stood in front of the foodbelt,
which offered the usual soysynth eggs, bacon, cereals, and breads,
plus some fresh genemod strawberries. I don't like genemod straw-
berries, me. They might keep for weeks, but they never taste like
them little wild sweet berries that grow on the hillsides in June.
    ". . . serving her people with the best she has, no matter the
need, no matter the hour, no matter the emergency," said a hand-
some donkey into a camera 'bot. "Janet Carol Land, on the spot
to serve East Oleanta—on the spot to serve you. A politician who
deserves those memorable words from the Bible: 'Well done, good
and faithful servant'!"
     Land smiled. She was a looker, her, the way donkey women
are when they're not young: fine soft skin and pink lips and hair
in pretty silver waves. Too skinny, though. Not like Annie. Who
pressed her dark-berry lips together like she was going to squeeze
cider with them.
     Land said to the handsome man, "Thank you, Royce. As you
know, the cafe is the heart of any aristo town. That's why when
a cafe malfunctions, I move heaven and earth to get it operable
again. As these good citizens of East Oleanta can attest."
     "Let's talk to some of them," Royce said, showing all his teeth.
He and Land walked to a table where Jack Sawicki sat, him, looking'
cornered. "Mayor Sawicki, what do you think of the service
Congresswoman Land provided your town today?"
     Paulie Cenverno looked up, him, from where he ate at the
next table. With him was Celie Kane. Annie's lower lip trembled
itself into a half-grin, half-wince.
     Jack said miserably, "We're awful happy, us, that the foodbelt's
fixed, and we—"
     "When you fuckers gonna get them rabid raccoons killed?"
Celie demanded.
     Royce's face froze, it. "I don't think—"
     "You better think, you, and think hard about them coons, or
you and the Congresswoman gonna be thinking about new jobs!"
     "Cut," Royce said. "Don't worry, Janet, we'll edit it." His smile
looked like it was foamed onto his face, but I saw his eyes, me,
and I looked away. My fighting days are over, unless I have to
fight for Annie or Lizzie.
     Royce took the Congresswoman's elbow, him, and steered her
toward the door. Celie shrilled, "I mean it, me! It's been days now
and you guys done shit! 'Public servants!' You ain't nothing but—"
     "Celie," Jack and Paulie both said.
     Land broke free of Royce. She turned back, her, to Celie.
"Your concern for your town's safety is natural, ma'am. The war-
den 'bot and any sick wildlife are not in my jurisdiction—they fall
to District Supervisor Samuelson—but when I return to Albany
I'll do everything in my power to see that the problem is solved."
She looked straight into Celie's eyes, real steady, and it was Celie
who looked away first, her.
     Celie didn't say nothing. Land smiled, her, and turned to her
crew, think we're done here, Royce. I'll meet you outside." She
walked to the door, back straight, head high. And the only reason
I ever saw anything different was because of where I stood, me,
sideways to the door, between Annie and any trouble. Congress-
woman Land reached the door and she was a smiling pretty cock-
sure politician, her. Then she went through the door and she was
a woman with tired, tired eyes.
    I glanced at Annie to see if she saw. But she was clucking at
Celie Kane. Annie might of grinned, her, at Celie's balls, but deep
down inside Annie don't approve of sassing public servants. They
can't help being donkeys. I could almost hear her say it, me.
    Lizzie said in her clear young voice, "That Congresswoman
can't really help get the warden 'bot fixed in Albany, can she? She
was just pretending, her."
    "Oh hush," Annie said. "You never will learn, you, when to
keep your mouth quiet and when not."


Two days later, two days of everybody staying inside, us, and no
warden 'bot tech from Albany, we made a hunting party. It took
hours of talk that went around and around in dizzies, but we made
it. Livers ain't supposed to have no guns, us. No warehouses stock
a District Supervisor Tara Eleanor Schmidt .22 rifle. No political
campaigns give away a Senator Jason Howard Adams shotgun or
a County Legislature Terry William Monaghan pistol. But we got
them, us.
     Paulie Cenverno dug up his granddaddy's shotgun, him, from
a plastisynth box behind the school. Plastisynth keeps out damn
near everything: dirt, damp, rust, bugs. Eddie Rollins and Jim
Swikehardt and old Doug Kane had their daddies' rifles, them.
Sue Rollins and her sister, Krystal Mandor, said they'd share a
family Matlin; I didn't see, me, how that could work. Two men I
didn't know had shotguns. Al Rauber had a pistol. Two of the
teenage stomps showed up, grinning, not armed. Just what we
needed, us. Altogether, we were twenty.
     "Let's split, us, into pairs, and set out in ten straight lines from
the cafe," Jack Sawicki said.
     "You sound like a goddamn donkey," Eddie Rollins said in
disgust. The stomps grinned.
    "You got a better idea, you?" Jack said. He held his rifle real
tight over his bulging green jacks.
    "We're Livers," Krystal Mandor said, "let us go where we want,
us."
    Jack said, "And what if somebody gets shot, them? You want
the police franchise down on us?"
    Eddie said, "I want to hunt raccoons, me, like an aristo. Don't
give me no orders, Jack."
    "Fine," Jack said. "Go ahead, you. I'm not saying another god-
damn word."
    After ten minutes of arguing we set off in pairs, us, in ten
straight lines.
    I walked with Doug Kane, Celie's father. Two old men, us,
slow and limping. But Doug still knew, him, how to walk quiet
in the woods. Off to my right I heard somebody whooping and
laughing. One of the stomps. After a while, the sound died away.
    The woods were cool and sweet-smelling, so thick overhead
that the floor wasn't much overgrown. We stepped, us, on pine
needles that sent up their clean smell. White birches, slim as Lizzie,
rustled. Under the trees moss grew dark green, and in the sunny
patches there was daisies and buttercups and black-eyed Susans.
A mourning dove called, the calmest sound in the whole world.
    "Pretty," Doug said, so quiet that a rabbit upwind didn't even
twitch its long ears.
    Toward noon, the trees got skimpier and the underbrush
thicker. I smelled blackberries somewheres, which made me think
of Annie. I figured, me, that we come at least six hard miles from
East Oleanta. All we seen was rabbits, a doe, and a mess of harmless
snakes. No coons. And any rabid coons out this far, killing them
wouldn't do the town no good anyway. It was time to turn back.
    "Gotta . . . sit down, me," Doug said.
    I looked at him, me, and my skin turned cold. He was pale as
the birch bark, his eyelids fluttering like two hummingbirds. He
dropped the rifle, him, and it went off—old fool had the safety
off. The bullet buried itself in a tree trunk. Doug clutched his
chest and fell over. I'd been so busy, me, enjoying air and flowers
and I ain't even seen he was having a heart attack.
    "Sit down! Sit down!" I eased him onto a patch of some kind
of ground cover, all shiny green leaves. Doug lay on his side, him,
 breathing hard: whoooo, whoooo. His right hand batted the air but
 I knew, me, that his eyes didn't see nothing. They were wild.
     "Lay quiet, Doug. Don't move, you! I'll go get help, me, I'll
make them bring the medunit. . . "
     Whoooo, whoooo, whoooo . . . then the breathing noises stopped.
     I thought: He's gone. But his bony old chest still rose and fell,
 just shallow and quiet now. His eyes glazed.
     "I'll bring the medunit!" I said again, turned, and nearly fell
myself, me. Staring at me from not ten feet away was a rabid coon.
     Once you seen a animal gone rabid, you don't never forget it.
I could see, me, the separate specks of foam around the coon's
mouth. Sunlight from between the trees sparkled on the specks
like they was glass. The coon bared its teeth, it, and hissed at me,
a sound like I never heard no coon make. Its hindquarters shook.
It was near the end.
     I raised Doug's rifle, me, knowing that if it come for me there
was no way I was going to be fast enough.
     The coon twitched and lunged. I jerked up the rifle, me, but
I never even got it to shoulder height. A beam of light shot out
from some place behind me, only it wasn't light but something
else like light. And the coon flipped over backwards, it, in mid-
lunge and crashed to the ground dead.
     I turned around, me, very slow. And if I seen one of Annie's
angels, I couldn't of been more surprised.
     A girl stood there, her, a short girl with a big head and dark
hair tied back with a red ribbon. She wore stupid clothes for the
woods: white shorts, thin white shirt, open sandals, just like we
didn't have no deer ticks or blackflies or snakes. The girl looked
at me somber. After a minute she said, "Are you all right?"
     "Y-yes, ma'am. But Doug Kane there—I think his heart. . ."
     She walked over to Doug, her, knelt, and felt his pulse. She
looked up at me. "I want you to do something, please. Drop this
on the dead raccoon, right on top of the body." She handed me
a smooth gray disk the size of a coin. I remember coins, me.
     She kept on looking at me, not even blinking, and so I did it.
I just turned my back, me, on her and Doug both, and did it.
Why? Annie asked me later, and I didn't have no answer. Maybe
it was the girl's eyes. Donkey, and not. No Janet Carol Land facing
no camera with well done good and faithful servant.
     The gray disk hit the coon's damp fur and stuck. It shimmered,
it, and in a second that coon was cased in a clear shell that went
right down to the ground and, it turned out, sliced through an
inch underground. Maybe Y-energy, maybe not. A leaf blew
against the shell and slid right off. I touched the shell. I don't
know, me, where I got the nerve. The shell was hard as foamcast.
     Made out of nothing.
     When I turned back the girl was putting something, her, in
her shorts pocket, and Doug's eyes were coming clear. He gasped,
him.
     "Don't move him yet," the girl said, still not smiling. She didn't
look like she smiled much. "Go get help. He'll be safe until you
get back."
     "Who are you, ma'am?" It came out squeaky. "What did you
do to him, you?"
     "I gave him some medicine. The same injection the medunit
would have given him. But he needs a stretcher to be carried back
to your town. Go get help, Mr. Washington."
     I took a step, me, right toward her. She stood up. She didn't
seem afraid, her—just went on looking at me with those eyes with
no smile. After seeing the coon, it came to me that she had a shell,
too. Not hard like the coon's, and maybe not away from her body
neither. Maybe close on it like a clear glove. But that was why
she was out in the woods in shorts and flimsy sandals, and why
she wasn't bit up, her, by no blackflies, and why she wasn't afraid
of me.
     I said, "You . . . you're from Eden, ain't you? It's really here
someplace, in these woods, it's really here ..."
     She got a funny expression on her face. I didn't know, me,
what it meant, and it came to me that I could better guess what
a rabid coon was thinking than what this girl was.
     "Go get help, Mr. Washington. Your friend needs it." She
stopped, her. "And please tell the townspeople . . . as little as you
feel you can."
     "But, ma'am—"
     "Uuuhhhmmmm," Doug moaned, not like he was in pain, him,
but like he was dreaming.
     I stumbled back to East Oleanta as fast as I could, me, puffing
until I thought we'd have two heart attacks for the medunit. Just
beyond the scooter track I met Jack Sawicki and Krystal Mandor,
 hot and sweaty, them, straggling back to town. I told them, me,
 about old man Kane's collapse. They had to make me start over
 twice. Jack set off, him, by the sun—he's maybe the only other
 good woodsman East Oleanta's got. Krystal ran, her, for the med-
 unit and more help. I sat down, me, to catch my breath. The sun
 was hot and blinding on the open field, the lake sparkled down
 past town, and I couldn't find no balance no place in my mind.
      Maybe I never did. Nothing ever looked the same to me after
 that day.
     The medunit found Doug Kane easy enough, skimming above
 the brush on its gravsensors, smelling me and Doug's trail in the
 air. Four men followed, them, and they carried Kane home. He
 breathed easy. That night near everybody else in town gathered,
 us, in the cafe. There was dancing and accusing and yelling and a
 party. Nobody had shot no raccoons, but Eddie Rollins shot a
 deer and Ben Radisson shot Paulie Cenverno. Paulie wasn't hurt
 bad, him, just a graze on the arm, and the medunit fixed him right
 up. I went to see Doug Kane, me.
     He didn't remember no girl in the woods. I asked him, me,
while he lay on his plastisynth sleeping platform, propped up on
extra pillows and covered with an embroidered blanket like the
one Annie made for her sofa. Doug loved the attention, him. I
asked him, me, real careful, not exactly saying there was a girl in
the woods, just hinting around the edges of what happened. But
he didn't remember nothing, him, after he collapsed, and nobody
who went to bring him home mentioned finding any raccoon in a
hard shell.
     She must of just picked up the whole shell, her, safe as houses,
and just walked off with it.
     The only person I told, me, was Annie, and I made sure lizzie
was nowhere near. Annie didn't believe me, her. Not at first. Then
she did, but only because she remembered the big-headed girl in
green jacks in the cafe two nights before. This girl had a big head
too, her, and somehow to Annie that meant all the rest of my
story was true. I told Annie not to say nothing to nobody. And
she never did, not even to me. Said it gave her the willies, her,
to think of some weird outcast donkeys living in the woods with
genemod machinery and calling it Eden. Blasphemous, almost.
Eden was in the Bible and no place else. Annie didn't want to
think about it, her.
    But I thought about it, me. A lot. It got so for a while I couldn't
hardly think about nothing else. Then I got a grip on myself, me,
and went back to normal living. But the big-headed girl was still
in my thoughts.
   We didn't have no more trouble that whole summer and fall
with rabid raccoons. They all just disappeared, them, for good.
    But machines kept breaking.
           AUGUST 2114
He that will not apply new remedies must
     expect new evils; for time is the
           greatest innovator. —
      Francis Bacon, Of Innovations
                                Six
                     DIANA COVINGTON: WASHINGTON




T     he first person I saw at Science Court, walking up the broad
      shallow white stone steps that were supposed to evoke Soc-
      rates and Aristotle, was Leisha Camden.
    Paul, who came before Anthony and after Rex, and I used to
enjoy intellectual arguments. He enjoyed them because he won;
I enjoyed them because he won. This was, of course, before I
understood how deeply rooted, like a cancer, was my desire to
lose. At the time the arguments seemed amusing, even daring.
The people Paul and I knew considered it rather bad form to
debate abstract questions. We donkeys, with our genemod intel-
ligence, were all so good at it—like showing off the fact that you
could walk. No one wished to appear ridiculous. Much better to
publicly enjoy body surfing. Or gardening. Or even, God help us,
sensory deprivation tanks. Much better.
    But one night Paul and I, daring nonconformists right up to
our banal end, debated who should have the right to control radical
new technology. The government? The technocrats, mostly sci-
entists and engineers, who were the only ones who ever really
understood it? The free market? The people? It was not a good
night. Paul wanted to win more than usual. I, for reasons connected
to a gold-eyed slut at a party the night before, was not quite as
eager as usual to lose. Things got said, the kinds of embarrassing
things that don't go away. Tempers ran high. My paternal grand-
father's teak desk required a new panel, which never quite matched
the others. Intellectual debate can be very hard on furniture.
    In a subtle way, I blame the Sleepless for Paul's and my
breakup. Not directly, but a desastre inoffensif, like the final small
program that crashes an overloaded system. But, then, for the last
hundred years, what haven't we blamed on the Sleepless?
    They even caused the creation of the science courts: another
desastre inoffensif. A hundred years ago, nobody ever made a de-
cision that is was acceptable to engineer human embryos to be
Sleepless. Genemod companies just did it, the way they did all
those other embryonic genemods in the unregulated days before
the GSEA. You want a kid who's seven feet tall, has purple hair,
and is encoded with a predisposition for musical ability? Here—
you got yourself a basketball-playing punk cellist. Mazel tov.
    Then came the Sleepless. Rational, awake, smart. Too smart.
And long-lived, a bonus surprise—nobody knew at first that sleep
interfered with cell regeneration. Nobody liked it when they found
out. Too many Darwinian advantages piling up in one corner.
    So, this being the United States and not some sixteenth-
century monarchy or twentieth-century totalitarian state, the
government just didn't outlaw radical genetic modifications out-
right. Instead, they talked them to death.
    The Federal Forum for Science and Technology follows due
process. A jury composed of a panel of scientists, arguments and
rebuttals, cross-examination, final written opinion with provision
for dissenting opinions, the whole ROM. Science Court has no
power. It can only recommend, not make policy. Nobody on it
can tell anybody to do or not do anything about any thing.
    But no Congress, president, or GSEA board has ever acted
contrary to a Science Court recommendation. Not once. Not ever.
    So I had all the force majeure of the status quo on my side that
furniture-wrecking night when I declared that the government
should control human genetic modification. Paul wanted absolute
control by scientists (he was one). We both were right, as far as
actual practice. But of course practice didn't matter; neither did
theory, really. What we'd really wanted was the fight.
    Did Leisha Camden ever wreck furniture or put her fist through
walls or hurl antique wineglasses? Watching her walk into the
white-columned Forum building on Pennsylvania Avenue, I
thought not. Washington in August is hot; Leisha wore a sleeveless
white suit. Her bright blonde hair was cut in short, shining waves.
She looked composed, beautiful, cool. She reminded me, probably
unfairly, of Stephanie Brunell. All that was missing was the pink
huge-eyed, doomed little dog.
"Oyez, oyez," the clerk called, as the technical panel filed in. And
then they get huffy when the press calls it "science court." Wash-
ington is Washington, even when it's rising to its feet for Nobel
laureates.
    There were three of them this time, on an eight-person panel:
heavy artillery. Barbara Poluikis, chemical biology, a diminutive
woman with hyperalert eyes. Elias Maleck, medicine, who radiated
worried integrity. Martin Davis Exford, molecular physics, looking
more like an overage ballet dancer. Nobody, of course, in genetics.
The United States hasn't won there in sixty years. The panelists
had been agreed to by the advocates for both sides. Panelists were
presumed to be impartial.
     I sat in the press section, courtesy of credentials from Colin
Kowalski, credentials so badly faked that anybody who checked
them would have to conclude they'd been faked by me, the person
incapacitated by Gravison's disease, and not by some competent
agency. There was a lot of press, live and robotic. Science Court
goes out on various donkey grids.
    After the panel sat down, I stayed standing—very gauche—
to scan the spectators for Livers. There might have been one or
two in the gallery; the room was so big it was hard to tell. "Please
sit down," my seat said to me in a reasonable voice, "others may
have trouble seeing over you." That I could believe. In my bright
purple jacks and soda-can-and-plastic jewelry I was one of a kind
in the press box.
    In the front of the chamber, behind a low antique-wood railing
and an invisible high-security Y-shield, sat the advocates, expert
testimony, panel, and VIPs. Leisha Camden sat next to amateur
advocate Miranda Sharifi, who had suddenly appeared in Wash-
ington from God-knows-where. Not from Huevos Verdes. For
days the press had been watching the island with the avidity of
moonbase residents monitoring dome leaks. So from what geo-
graphical forehead had Miranda Sharifi sprung, helmeted to do
battle for her corporation's product?
     She had refused a professional lawyer to argue her case. She'd
even refused Leisha Camden, which had caused much snickering
in the press bar. Apparently they felt a SuperSleepless was inad-
equate to convincingly present the technology her own people
had invented. I never ceased to be amazed at the stupidity of my
fellow IQ-enhanced donkeys.
    I studied Miranda carefully. Short, big-headed, low of brow.
Thick unruly black hair tied back with a red ribbon. Despite the
severe, expensive black suit, she looked like neither a Liver nor
a donkey. I saw her furtively wipe the palms of her hands on her
skirt; they must be damp. I'd seen pictures of the notorious Jen-
nifer Sharifi, and Miranda had inherited none of her grandmother's
coolness, height, or beauty. I wondered if she minded.
    "We're here today," began moderator Dr. Senta Yongers, a
grandmotherly type with the perfect teeth of a grid star, "to de-
termine the facts concerning Case 1892-A. I would like to remind
everyone in this chamber that the purpose of this inquiry is three-
fold. First, to identify agreed-upon facts concerning this scientific
claim, including but not limited to its nature, actions, and replicable
physical effects.
    "Second, to allow disagreements about this scientific claim to
be discussed, debated, and recorded for later study.
    "And third, to fulfill a joint request from the Congressional
Committee on New Technology, the Federal Drug Administra-
tion, and the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency to create a
recommendation for the further study, for the licensing within the
United States, or for the denial of Case 1892-A, which has already
been awarded patent status. Further study, I may remind you,
allows the patent's developers to solicit volunteers for beta testing
of the patent. Licensing is virtually equivalent to federal permission
to market." Yongers looked around the chamber gravely over the
tops of her glasses—a currently fashionable affectation for don-
keys with perfect vision—to emphasize the seriousness of this
possibility. This is important, folks—you could get Case 1892-A
dumped square in your laps. As if anybody here didn't already
realize that.
    I looked back at Miranda Sharifi, holding a thick printout
bound in black covers. It was clear to me that the Sleepless are a
different species from donkeys and Livers. I mention this only
because of the large number of people to whom it is, inexplicably,
not clear. Miranda undoubtedly understood everything in that
stupendously complex printout, which was, after all, in her own
field, and at least partly of her own devising. But she probably
also understood everything important in my field (all my purported
fields, pathetic kitchen gardens that they were). Plus everything
important in art history, in law, in early-childhood education, in
international economics, in paleolithic anthropology. To me, that
added up to a different species. Donkeys have brains fully adapted
to their needs, but then so did the stegosaurus. I was looking at
a multi-adapted mammal.
    Feeling spiny, I watched a grid journalist in front of me flick
a finger to direct his robocam to zoom in on the legend carved
across the chamber's impressive dome: THE PEOPLE MUST CON-
TROL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. A nice journalistic touch, that.
I approve of irony.
    "The chief advocate for Case 1892-A," continued Moderator
Yongers, "is Miranda Sharifi, of Huevos Verdes Corporation, the
patent holders. Chief opposition is Dr. Lee Chang, GSEA Senior
Geneticist and holder of the Geoffrey Sprague Morling Chair in
Genetics at Johns Hopkins. The following stipulations have al-
ready been agreed to by both sides—for details please consult the
furnished hard copy, the master screen at the front of the chamber,
or channel 1640FORURM on Govnet."
    The "furnished hard copy" was four hundred pages of cell
diagrams, equations, genenome tables, and chemical processes, all
with numerous journal citations. But in front was a one-page list
somebody had prepared for the press. I would bet my purple jacks
that its simplifications had been paid for in hours of screaming by
technical experts who didn't want their precious facts distorted
just so they could be understood. But here the simplified distor-
tions were, ready for the newsgrids. Washington is Washington.
    "Pre-agreed upon by both sides," read Moderator Yongers,
"are the following nine points:
    "One—Case 1892-A describes a nanodevice designed to be
injected into the human bloodstream. The device is made of ge-
netically modified self-replicating proteins in very complex struc-
tures. The process which creates these structures is proprietary,
belonging to Huevos Verdes Corporation. The device has been
named by its creators the 'Cell Cleaner.' This name is a registered
trademark, and must be indicated as such whenever used."
    Always good to have your commercial bases covered. I scanned
the faces of the Nobel laureates. They showed nothing.
    "Two—Under laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has
demonstrated the capacity to leave the bloodstream and travel
through human tissue, as do white blood cells. Under laboratory
conditions, the Cell Cleaner also has demonstrated the capacity
to penetrate a cell wall, as do viruses, with no damage to the cell."
    No problem there—even I knew that the FDA had already
licensed a batch of drugs that could do those things. I switched
my contact lenses to zoom and saw Miranda Sharifi's hand steal
into Leisha Camden's. Bad move—every grid journalist and on-
line watcher could see it, too. Didn't Miranda know any better
than to show signs of weakness to the enemy? How had she
brought down the entire pseudo-government of Sanctuary,
anyway?
    "Three—Under laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner oc-
cupies less than one percent of a typical cell's volume. Under
laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has demonstrated the ca-
pacity to be powered by chemicals naturally present in cells."
    Yongers paused and looked challengingly around the room; I
didn't know why. Did she expect any of us to challenge what eight
scientists had already stipulated? The Cell Cleaner could have been
powered by gerbils on treadmills for all any of us laymen could
prove. But only under laboratory conditions, of course.
    It was already clear where the opposition would attack.
    "Four—Under laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has
demonstrated the capacity to replicate at slightly slower than the
rate at which bacteria replicate—about twenty minutes per com-
plete division. Under laboratory conditions, this replication has
demonstrated the capacity to occur for several hours using only
those chemicals normally found in human tissue plus those chem-
icals contained in the fluid of the original injection. Under labo-
ratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has demonstrated the capacity
to stop replicating after several hours, and to then replicate only
to replace damaged units."
    Go forth and multiply, but only to a predetermined point. Too
bad the whole human race hadn't done that. The history of the
previous century—and the cataclysmically Malthusian one before
that—might have been entirely different. God forgot the "off"
switch. Huevos Verdes didn't.
    "Five—The Cell Cleaner contains a proprietary device referred
to in Case 1892-A as 'biomechanical nanocomputing technology.'
Under laboratory conditions, this technology has demonstrated
the capacity to identify seven cells of the same functional type
from a mass of cells of varying functional types, and to compare
the DNA from these seven cells to determine what constitutes
standard DNA coding for that type of cell. Furthermore, the Cell
Cleaner is said to be able to enter subsequent cells and compare
their DNA structure to its determined standard."
    If that was true—and there was no way the opposition would
have agreed to it if there were the slightest doubt—it was as-
tounding. No other biotech firm on Earth could do that. But I
noticed the careful wording: "is said to be able." Stipulations were
supposed to be demonstrated fact. Why were mere claims by
Huevos Verdes allowed in at this point? Unless they were nec-
essary prerequisites to something that had been demonstrated.
    "Six—Under laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has dem-
onstrated the capacity to destroy any cells whose DNA does not
match what it has determined to be standard coding."
    Bingo.
    Even the journalists looked excited. In Washington.
    "Seven—Under laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has
demonstrated the capacity to thus destroy each of the following
types of abberrant cells: cancerous growths, precancerous
dysphasia, deposits on arterial walls, viruses, infectious bacteria,
toxic elements and compounds, and cells whose DNA has been
altered by viral activity resulting in DNA splices. Furthermore, it
has been demonstrated that under laboratory conditions, such
dissembled cells can be handled by normal bodily-waste-removal
mechanisms."
    Cancer, arteriosclerosis, chicken pox, herpes, lead poisoning,
tourista, cystitis, and the common cold. All gone, dissembled and
washed away by your own team of customized internal cleaning
ladies. I felt a little dizzy.
    But what the hell could those "laboratory conditions" have
been like?
    The spectators buzzed loudly. Moderator Yongers glared at
us until the room quieted.
    "Eight—Under laboratory conditions, the Cell Cleaner has
demonstrated the capacity to avoid destroying certain bacterial
cells even though their 'genetic fingerprint' does not match the
host tissue's DNA. These cells include, but are not limited to,
bacteria normally found in the human digestive tract, vagina, and
upper respiratory tract. It is noted for the record that Huevos
 Verdes Corporation attributes this selectivity in dissembling non-
 standard DNA to 'preprogramming the protein nanocomputer to
 recognize symbiotic bacterial DNA.' "
     Kill off the harmful, spare the useful. Huevos Verdes was
offering the world's first immune-system enhancer with comput-
erized Darwinian morality. Or maybe Arthurian morality. Replace
'Might makes right' with 'Right makes life.' I suddenly pictured
legions of little Cell Cleaners in shining white armor, and I had
to grin. The journalist in the next seat shot me an edgy look.
     "Nine—No significant studies have been carried out concern-
ing the Cell Cleaner's performance or effects inside whole, living,
fully functional human beings."
     There it was: the inevitable spoiler. Without long-term studies
of its effects on real people, Huevos Verdes had no more chance
of marketing Case 1892-A than of marketing powdered unicorn
horn. Even if the Science Court permitted further study, I was
not going to have my own private Cell Cleaner anytime soon.
     I sat exploring how I felt about that.
     Another buzz swept over the audience: disappointment? Sat-
isfaction? Anger? It seemed to be all three.
     "The following points," Moderator Yongers said, raising her
voice, "are in dispute." The chamber quieted.
     "One—The Cell Cleaner will cause ho harm to healthy human
cells, tissues, or organs."
     She stopped. That was it—one point in dispute. But that point,
her face clearly said, was everything. Who wanted a cleaned, re-
paired, dead body?
     "The first opening argument will be presented by the oppo-
sition. Dr. Lee?"
     There was another printout to summarize Dr. Lee's points,
which was fortunate because he couldn't. Every sentence came
trailing clouds of evidence, qualifiers, and equations, all of which
he clearly considered glory. The technical panel listened closely,
taking notes. Everybody else consulted the printout. It summa-
rized his windy points:

   In dispute: "The Cell Cleaner will cause no harm to healthy
   human cells, tissues, or organs."
       In rebuttal: There is no way to assure that the Cell Cleaner
   will not cause harm to healthy cells, organs, or tissues.
    • Laboratory tests do not necessarily predict the effects of
      biosubstances on live, functional human beings. See CDC
      Hypertext File 68164.

    • No partial-being studies have included the effect of the Cell
      Cleaner on the brain. Brain chemisty can behave much dif-
      ferently from grosser body tissue. See CDC Hypertext File
      68732.

    • The long-term effects submitted cover only two years. Many
      biosubstances reveal erratic side effects only after longer
      time periods. See CDC Hypertext File 88812.

    • The list of so-called "pre-programmed symbiotic bacterial
      DNA" that the Cell Cleaner will not destroy may or may
      not be congruent with a complete list of useful foreign
      organisms in a living, functional human being. The human
      body includes some ten thousand billion billion protein
      parts interacting in intensely complex ways, including
      hundreds of thousands of different kinds of molecules, some
      only partially understood. The so-called "pre-programmed
      list" could leave out vital organisms which the Cell Cleaner
      would then destroy, possibly causing tremendous functional
      upset, including death.

    • Over time, the Cell Cleaner itself might develop replication
      problems. Since it introduces what is in essence competing
      DNA into the body, it displays the potential to become an
      artificially induced cancer. See CDC Hypertext
      File 4536.

    I wondered at the quirk in the printing program that had made
the word "cancer" darker than the rest.
    Dr. Lee took the entire rest of the morning for his opening
argument, which seemed shut pretty tight to me. At no point did
I question his sincerity. The argument seemed to go like this: The
Cell Cleaner couldn't be proved safe without a decade—at least—
of tests on real, whole human beings. (I decided not to look up
"partial-being studies." I didn't really want to know.) It was, how-
ever, inhumane to subject real human beings to such risks. There
was therefore no way to prove the Cell Cleaner safe. And if it was
unsafe, the potential for widespread disaster was spectacular.
Including, in the curious phrasing of the printout, "tremendous
functional upset, including death."
     Therefore, the opposition would recommend that the Cell
Cleaner not be licensed, not be approved for further study within
the United States, and be placed on the Banned List of the In-
ternational Genetic Modification Advisory Council.
      Apparently we had already left the fact-finding stage and were
well into the political-recommendation stage. Washington is Wash-
ington. Facts are political; politics is a fact.
      It was a quarter to twelve when Dr. Lee finished. Moderator
 Yongers leaned over her bench. "Ms. Sharifi, it's nearly time to
 break for lunch. Would you prefer to postpone your opening
 statement until this afternoon?"
      "No, Madame Moderator. I'll be brief." Why hadn't Leisha
 Camden told Miranda to leave off the red hair ribbon? It gave her
 an Alice-in-Wonderland youthfulness that was a liability. Her
 voice was calm and dispassionate.
       "The patent you are considering today is the greatest life-saving
  medical development since the discovery of antibiotics. Dr. Lee
  speaks of the dangers to the body if the Cell Cleaner
  nanomachinery fails, or is inaccurately programmed, or produces
  unknown side effects. He does not mention the people who will
  die premature or painful deaths without this innovation. You would
  rather keep one person from dying with the Cell Cleaner than
  have hundreds of thousands die without it. That is morally
  wrong.
        "You are morally wrong, all of you. The whole purpose of this
   so-called scientific Forum is to protect drug company profits at
   the expense of the sick and dying. You are moral Fascists, using
   the strength of government to harm those already weak and pow-
   erless, in order to keep them powerless and so keep yourselves
   in power. And I except none of you from these charges, not even
   the scientists, who conspire with profit and power and so deliver
    science to them.
         "With the Cell Cleaner, Huevos Verdes offers you life. Even
    though you do not deserve to live. But Huevos Verdes does not
    distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving when it
    offers a product. You do, every time your regulations stifle genetic
    or nanotech research, every time that lost research deprives some-
    one of life. You are killers, all of you. Political and economic
    mercenaries, no better at judging true science than the jungle
animals whose morality you emulate. Nonetheless, Huevos
Verdes Corporation offers you the Cell Cleaner, and I will prove
to you here its essential safety, even though I'm not sure any of
you has the capacity to understand the science I will explain."
    And Miranda Sharifi sat down.
    The panel looked stunned, as well they might. More interest-
ingly, Leisha Camden also looked stunned. Evidently this was not
what she'd expected to hear her protégée say. She whispered
frantically into Miranda's ear.
    "I have never heard such unprofessional bullshit!" Martin
Davis Exford, Nobel laureate in molecular physics, on his feet
behind the panelists' table. His powerful voice outshouted every-
one else. Maroon veins pulsed below the surface of his neck.
    "I deeply resent, Ms. Sharifi, your perversion of this Forum.
We're here to determine scientific fact, not indulge in ad hominem
attacks!"
    A journalist in fashionable yellow stripes yelled from the front
row of the press box, "Ms. Sharifi—are you trying to lose this
case?"
    Slowly I turned my head in his direction.
    "Hey, Miranda, look this way!" a Liver-channel reporter, his
robocam floating beside him. "Smile pretty!"
    "Order, please! Order!" Moderator Yongers, her glasses gone,
banging her metal water pitcher since she had no gavel because
of course this wasn't really a court.
    "Smile, Miranda!"
    "—an outrage to professional discourse and—"
    "Please sit down," said several seats, "others may have trouble
seeing over you. Please sit—"
    "I will have order in this Forum!"
    But the pandemonium grew. A man broke from the public
section and charged down the inclined aisle toward the Forum
floor.
    I had a clear view of his face. It twisted with the terrible rigidity
of hate, a rigidity that no amount of reason can relax and that
takes years to calcify. Miranda Sharifi's insults today hadn't created
that face. The man ran toward her, pulling something from his
jacket. Seventeen robocams and three security 'bots zoomed to-
ward him.
    He hit the invisible Y-energy shield in front of the participants'
 tables, and spread-eagled against it with an audible crack of skull
 or other bone. Dazed, the man slid down the shield exactly as
 down a brick wall. A security 'bot dragged him away.
     "—restore order to these proceedings now—"
     "A smile, Miranda! Just one smile!"
     "—unwarranted assumption of moral superiority, and con-
tempt for United States law, when in reality—"
     "—and it looks, newsgrid viewers, as if the fracas were delib-
erately created by Miranda Sharifi for hidden Huevos Verdes mo-
tives about which we can only—"
     Miranda Sharifi never moved.
     Eventually Moderator Yongers, having no real choice, recessed
for lunch.
     I pushed my way to the front of the chaotic Forum chamber,
trying to shadow Miranda Sharifi, which was of course impossible.
The Y-shield stood between us, and spectacularly built bodyguards
muscled her and Leisha Camden out a rear door. I caught sight
of them again on the roof, having knocked over four people to
get there. They climbed into an aircar. Several other cars followed
in close pursuit, but I was convinced it wasn't going to do any of
them—reporters, GSEA, FBI, rogue geneticists, whoever—any
good. They weren't going to learn any more than I had.
     What had I learned?
     The journalist in yellow stripes was right. Miranda Sharifi's
performance had just ensured that Case 1892-A was dead. She
had insulted not only the intellectual and technical competence
of eight scientists, but their characters as well. I had cursorily
researched three of those scientists, the Nobel laureates, and I
knew they were not venial sellouts but people of integrity. Miranda
must know that, too. So—why?
     Maybe, despite any research she'd done, she genuinely be-
lieved all Sleepers were corrupt. Her grandmother, a brilliant
woman, had believed it. But somehow I didn't think Miranda did.
     Maybe she believed the five non-laureate scientists, medioc-
rities with good political connections, would inevitably outvote
the impartial laureates. But if so, why alienate her three potential
allies? And why agree to seating the five mediocrities in the first
place? All panelists had been agreed upon by both sides.
     No. Miranda Sharifi wanted to lose this case. She wanted a
decision against the Cell Cleaner.
     But maybe I was being too anthropomorphic. Miranda Sharifi
 was, after all, completely different from me. Her mental processes
 were different, which included her motives. Maybe she'd alienated
 the panel to . . . what? To make it harder to obtain official approval
 for the patent. Maybe she only valued victory if it was hard won.
 Maybe making everything as difficult as possible was part of some
 Sleepless Code of Honor, built upon the fact that things came so
 easily to them. How the fuck would I know?
     All this ratiocination translated itself into self-disgust. Despite
the heat, it was a gorgeous day in Washington, one of those clear-
blue-sky-and-golden-light afternoons that seem to have blown in
from some more favored city. I walked along the mall, attracting
attention: the crazy donkey dressed like a gone-native Liver. Drug
dealers and lovers and gravboarding teenagers left me alone, which
was just as well. I was having one of those brief, sharp self-
questionings that leave you both enervated and embarrassed af-
terwards. What was I doing skulking around in these silly plastic
clothes, trying to manufacture some difficult personal
meaningfulness out of following around people who were clearly
my superiors?
     For the Sleepless were my superiors, and in more than intel-
ligence. In discipline, in sheer sweep of vision. In the enviable
certainty that accompanies purpose, even if I didn't know what
that purpose was, whereas all I had was an aimless, drifting alarm
about where my country was headed. An alarm set off by a semi-
sentient pink dog hurling over a terrace railing. When I thought
of that now, it sounded silly.
     I couldn't even define where I thought my country ought to
head. I could only impede, not propel, and I wasn't even sure
what I was impeding. It was sure as hell more than Case 1892-A.
     I didn't know what the Sleepless were trying to do. Nobody
knew. So what made me so damn sure I should be stopping them
from doing it?
    On the other hand, nothing I had done so far, or seemed likely
to do in the near future, had had the slightest effect on Miranda
Sharifi's plans. I had not reported on her to the GSEA, not kept
her under constant surveillance, not even reached a coherent con-
clusion about her in the private and unsought-after recesses of my
mind. I was completely irrelevant. So there was nothing for me
to regret, nothing to agonize over doing or not doing, nothing to
change. Zero, whatever you multiply or divide it by, is still zero.
   Somehow this failed to cheer me up.


The next four days were a letdown. People primed for scientific
theater—I include myself—instead received hours of incompre-
hensible graphs, tables, equations, explanations, and holomodels
of cells and enzymes and such. Much time was given to the tertiary
and quaternary structure of proteins. There was a spirited and
incomprehensible debate on Worthington's transference equa-
tions as applied to redundant RNA coding. I fell asleep during
this. I was not alone. Fewer people showed up each day. Of those
who did, only the scientists looked rapt.
    It didn't seem fair, somehow. Miranda Sharifi had told us we
were looking at the greatest medical breakthrough in two hundred
years, and to most of us it looked like alchemy. THE PEOPLE MUST
CONTROL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Yes, right. How do churls
make decisions about wizardry we can't understand?
    In the end, they rejected it.
    Two of the Nobel laureates wrote dissenting opinions, Barbara
Poluikis and Martin Exford. They favored allowing beta testing
on human volunteers, and didn't rule out possible future licensing.
They wanted the scientific knowledge. You could see, even
through the formal wording of their brief, joint opinion, that they
panted for it. I saw Miranda Sharifi watching them carefully.
    The majority opinion did everything but print copies of itself
on the American flag. Safety of United States citizens, sacred trust,
preservation of the identity of the human genome, blah blah blah.
Everything, in fact, that had led me to join the GSEA the day
Katous hurled himself off my balcony.
    At some deep level, I still believed the majority opinion was
right. Unregulated biotech held the potential for incredible dis-
aster. And nobody could really regulate Huevos Verdes biotech
because nobody could really understand it. SuperSleepless intel-
ligence and American patent protection combined to ensure that.
And if you can't regulate it, better to keep it out of the country
entirely.
    Nonetheless, I left the courtroom profoundly depressed. And
immediately learned that my ignorance about cellular biology was
 not my only, or worst, ignorance. I'd thought I was a cynic. But
 cynicism is like money: somebody else always has more of it than
 you do.
    I sat on the steps of the Science Court, my back to a Doric
column the thickness of a small redwood. A light wind blew. Two
men paused in the shelter of the column to light sunshine pipes;
I'd noticed that Easterners like it smoked. In California, we pre-
ferred to drink it. The men were genemod handsome, dressed in
the severe sleeveless black suits fashionable on the Hill. Both
ignored me. Livers noticed instantly that I wasn't one of them, but
donkeys seldom looked past the jacks and soda-can jewelry. Suf-
ficient grounds for dismissal.
    "So how long do you think?" one man said.
    "Three months to market, maybe. My guess is either Germany
or Brazil."
    "What if Huevos Verdes doesn't do it?"
    "John, why wouldn't they? There's a fortune to be made, and
that Sharifi woman is no fool. I'm going to be watching the in-
vestment trends very carefully."
    "You know, I don't even really care about the investment
factor?" John's voice was wistful. "I just want it for Jana and me
and the girls. Jana's had these growths on and off for years . . . what
we've got now only restrains them so far."
    The other man put a hand on John's arm. "Watch Brazil. That's
my best guess. It'll be quick, quicker than if we'd licensed it here.
And without all the complications of every blighted Liver town
clamoring for it for their medunit, at some undoable cost."
    Pipes lighted, they left.
    I sat there, marveling at my own stupidity. Of course. Turn
down the Cell Cleaner for American development, make huge
political capital from your "protection" of Livers, save a staggering
amount of credits from not offering it to your political constitu-
ency, and then buy the medical breakthrough for yourself and
your loved ones overseas. Of course.
    The people must control science and technology.
    Maybe Dr. Lee Chang was right. Maybe the Cell Cleaner would
run amok and kill them all. All but the Livers. Who would then
rise up to establish a just and humane state.
    Yes. Right. Desdemona's mommy and the other Livers I'd seen
on the train controlling biotech that could eventually alter the
human race into something else. The blind splicing genes, blindly.
Right.
     Inertia, first cousin to depression, seized me. I sat there, getting
colder, until the sky darkened and my ass hurt from the hard
marble. The portico was long since deserted. Slowly, stiffly, I got
my body to its feet—and had my first piece of luck in weeks.
     Miranda Sharifi walked down the wide steps, keeping to the
shadows. The face wasn't hers, and the brown jacks weren't hers,
and I had seen her and Leisha Camden climb into an aircar, which
took off two hours ago, pursued by half of Washington. This Liver
had pale skin and a large nose and short dirty-blonde hair. So why
was I so sure this was Miranda? The big head, and the tip of red
ribbon that I, zoomlensed, saw peeking from her back hip pocket.
Or maybe it was just that I needed it to be her, and the "Miranda"
who took off with Leisha Camden to be a decoy.
     I groped in my pocket for the mid-range infrared sensor Colin
Kowalski had given me and surreptitiously aimed it at her. It went
off the scale. Miranda or no, this person had the revved metabolism
of a SuperSleepless. And no GSEA agents in sight.
     Not, of course, that I would see them.
     But I refused to give in to negativity. Miranda was mine. I
followed her to the gravrail station, pleased at how easily all my
old training returned. We boarded a local train traveling north.
We settled into a crowded, malodorous car with so many children
it seemed the Livers must be breeding right there on the uncleaned
floor.
    We stopped every twenty minutes or so at some benighted
Liver town. I didn't dare sleep; Miranda might get off someplace
without me. What if the trip lasted days? By morning I had trained
myself to nap between stops, my unconscious set like an edgy
guard dog to nip me awake each time the train slowed and lurched.
This produced very strange dreams. Once it was David I was
following; he kept shedding his clothes as he danced away from
me, an unreachable succubus. Once I dreamed I'd lost Miranda
and the Science Court had me on trial for uselessness against the
state. The worst was the dream in which I was injected with the
Cell Cleaner and realized it was in fact chemically identical with
the industrial-strength cleaner used by the household 'bot in my
San Francisco enclave, and every cell in my body was painfully
dissolving in bleach and ammonia. I woke gasping for air, my face
distorted in the black glass of the window.
    After that I stayed awake. I watched Miranda Sharifi as the
grav train, miraculously not malfunctioning, slid through the
mountains of Pennsylvania and into New York State.
                           Seven
                        DREW ARLEN: SEATTLE




T     here was a latticework in my head. I couldn't make it go
      away. Its shape floated there all the time now, looking a
      little like the lattices that roses grow on. It was the dark
purple color that objects take on in late twilight when it's hard
to see what color anything really is. Miri once told me that
nothing "really" is any color—it was all a matter of
"circumstantial reflected wavelengths." I didn't understand
what she meant. To me, colors are too important to be
circumstantial.
    The lattice bent around and met itself to form a circle. I
couldn't see what was inside the circle, even though the lattice
had diamond-shaped holes. Whatever was inside remained com-
pletely hidden.
    I didn't know what this graphic was. It suggested nothing to
me. I couldn't will it to suggest anything, or to change form, or
to go away. This hadn't ever happened to me before. I was the
Lucid Dreamer. The shapes that came from my deep unconscious
were always meaningful, always universal, always malleable. I
shaped them. I brought them outward, to the conscious world.
They didn't shape me. I was the Lucid Dreamer.


I watched Miri's final day in Science Court on hologrid in a hotel
room in Seattle, where I was scheduled to give the revised "The
Warrior" concert tomorrow afternoon. The robocams zoomed in
close on Leisha and Sara as they climbed into their aircar on the
Forum roof. Sara looked exactly like Miri. The holomask over her
face, the wig, the red ribbon. She even walked like Miri. Leisha's
eyes had the pinched look that meant she was furious. Had she
already discovered the switch? Or maybe that would come in the
car. Leisha wouldn't take it well. Nothing frustrated her more than
being lied to, maybe because she was so truthful herself. I was
glad I wasn't there.
     Spiky red shapes, taut with anxiety, sped around the purple
latticework that never went away.
     Sara/Miri closed the car door. The windows, of course, were
opaqued. I turned off the newsgrid. It might be months before I
saw Miri again. She could slip in and out of East Oleanta—she
had, in fact, come to Washington from there—but Drew Aden,
the Lucid Dreamer in his state-of-the-art powerchair, followed
everywhere by the GSEA, could not. And even if I went to Huevos
Verdes, Nikos Demetrios or Toshio Ohmura or Terry Mwakambe
might decide a shielded link with East Oleanta was too great a risk
for just personal communication. I might not even talk with Miri
for months.
    The spiky red shapes eased a little.
    I poured myself another scotch. That slowed down the anxiety-
shapes sometimes. But I tried to be careful with the stuff. I did
try. I could remember my old man, in the stinking Delta town
where I grew up:
   Don't you lip me, boy! You ain't nothing, you, but a shit-bottomed
baby!
   I ain't no baby, me! I'm seven years old!
   You're a shit-bottomed teatsucker, you, who ain't never gonna own
nothing, so shut up and hand me that beer.
   I'm gonna own Sanctuary, me, someday.
    You! A stupid bayou rat! Laughter. Then, after thinking it over,
the smack. Whap. Then more laughter.
    I downed the scotch in a single gulp. Leisha would have hated
that. The comlink shrilled in two short bursts. Twice meant the
caller wasn't on the approved list but Kevin Baker's comlink pro-
gram had nonetheless decided it was somebody I might want to
see. I didn't know how it decided that. "Fuzzy logic," Kevin said,
which made no shapes in my mind.
    I think I would have talked to anybody just then. But I left
off the visual.
    "Mr. Aden? Are you there? This is Dr. Elias Maleck. I know
it's very late, but I'd like a few minutes of your time, please. It's
extremely urgent. I'd rather not leave a message."
He looked tired; it was three in the morning in Washington. I
poured myself another scotch. "Visual on. I'm here, Dr. Maleck."
"Thank you. I want to say right away this is a shielded call, and
it's not being recorded. Nobody can hear it but us two."
     I doubted that. Maleck didn't understand what Terry Mwa-
kambe or Toshio Ohmura could do. Even if Maleck's Nobel had
been in physics and not medicine, he wouldn't have understood.
Maleck was a big man, maybe sixty-five, not genemod for ap-
pearance. Thinning gray hair and tired brown eyes. His skin fell
in jowls on either side of his face but his shoulders were square.
I felt him as a series of solid navy cubes, unbreakable and clean.
The cubes hovered in front of the unmoving lattice.
     "I'm not sure exactly where to begin, Mr. Aden." He ran his
 hand through his hair and the navy cubes took on a reddish tinge.
 Maleck was very tense. I sipped my drink.
 "As you undoubtedly know by now, I voted against allowing
 further development of the Huevos Verdes patent claim in the
 Federal Forum for Science and Technology. The reasons for my
 vote are stated clearly in the majority opinion. But there are things
 that a public document can't contain, things I want permission to
 inform you about." "Why?"
 Maleck was blunt. "Because I—we—have no way to talk to
 Huevos Verdes. They accept messages but not two-way com-
 munication. You represent the only path by which I can convey
 information directly to Ms. Sharifi about genetic research." The
 shapes in my mind rippled and twisted. I said, "How did you
 leave any messages for Huevos Verdes? How'd you get the
 access code to leave any messages?"
  "That's part of what I want to tell you, Mr. Arlen. In five
  minutes two men will request access to your suite. They want to
  show you something approximately half an hour from Seattle by
  plane. The purpose of my call is to urge you to go with them."
  He hesitated. "They're from the government. GSEA." "No."
      "I understand, Mr. Arlen. That's the purpose of my call—to
  tell you this isn't a trap, or a kidnapping, or any of the other
  atrocities you and I both know the government is capable of. The
 GSEA agents will take you outside the city, keep you about an
 hour, and return you safely, without implants or truth drugs or
 anything else. I know these men personally—personally—and I'm
 willing to stake my entire professional reputation on this. I'm sure
 you're recording my call on your end. Send copies to anyone you
 like before you so much as open your hotel door. You have my
 word you will return safe and unaltered. Please consider what
 that's worth to me."
     I considered. The man filled me with shapes I hadn't felt in a
 long time: light, clean shapes, without any hidden agenda. Nothing
 like the shapes at Huevos Verdes.
     Of course, Maleck might be completely sincere and still be
 used.
     Somehow the glass of scotch, my fourth, was empty.
     Maleck said, "If you want to take extra time to call Huevos
Verdes for instructions—"
     "No." I lowered my voice. "No. I'll go."
     Maleck's face changed, opened, growing years younger and
hours less tired. (A light cleansing rain falling on the navy cubes.)
     "Thank you," he said. "You won't regret it. You have my word,
Mr. Aden."
     I would bet anything that he, an eminent donkey, had never
seen any of my concerts.
     I cut off the link, sent off copies of the call to Leisha, to Kevin
Baker, to a donkey friend I trusted in Wichita. The link shrilled.
Once. Even before I answered it Nikos Demetrios appeared on
visual. He wasted no words, him.
     "Don't go with them, Drew."
     There was another glass of scotch in my hand. It was half empty.
"That was a shielded call, Nick. Private."
     He ignored this. "It could be a trap, despite what Maleck says.
They could be using him. You should know that!"
    Impatience had crept into his voice, despite himself: the stupid
Sleeper had overlooked the obvious once again. I saw him as a
dark shape with a thousand shades of gray, undulating in subtle
patterns I would never understand.
    "Nick, suppose—just suppose—that I wanted, me, to talk to
somebody private, somebody who I don't want you listening to,
somebody who isn't, them, no part of Huevos Verdes? Somebody
else?"
     Nick stared. I heard then, me, how I was talking. Liver talk.
My glass was empty again. The hotel system said politely, "Excuse
me, sir. There are two men requesting access to your suite. Would
you like visuals?"
     "Nah," I said. "Send the men in, them."
     "Drew—" Nick began. I blanked him. It didn't work. Some
sort of SuperSleepless override. Wasn't there anything they
couldn't do, them?
     "Drew! Listen, you can't just—" I disconnected the terminal
from the Y-energy power unit.
     The GSEA agents didn't look like GSEA agents. I guess they
never do, them. Mid-forties. Donkey handsome. Donkey polite.
Probably donkey smart. But if they thought, them, in donkey
words, at least the words would come one at a time, not in bunches
and clusters and libraries of strings.
     Snow fell on the purple lattice, cool and blank.
     "You guys like a drink, you?"
     "Yes," one said, a little too fast. Going along with me. But he
felt, him, almost as solid, almost as clean, as Maleck. That confused
me. They were GSEA, them. How could they feel unhidden?
     "Changed my mind," I said. "Let's go now, us, wherever you're
taking me." I powered my chair toward the door. It hit the jamb,
it, and hurt my legs.
     But on the hotel roof, the cold sobered me. Some, anyway.
Cars landed, bringing home early party-goers; it was just a little
after midnight. Seattle was built on hills and the hotel was on top
of a big one. I could see way beyond the enclave: the dark waters
of Puget Sound to the west, Mount Rainier white in the moonlight.
Cold stars above, cold lights below. Liver neighborhoods at the
bases of the hills, except along the Sound, which was waterfront
land too good for Livers.
     The GSEA aircar, armored and shielded, took off to the east.
Pretty soon there were no more lights. Nobody spoke. I might
have slept, me. I hope not.
   Don't bother your Daddy, Drew. He's asleep.
   He's drunk, him.
   Drew!
    Drew! Nick said on the comlink. Huevos Verdes said. Miranda
Sharifi said. Drew, do this. Give this concert. Spread this subcon-
scious idea. Drew—
     The lattice curled in my mind, floating like swamp gas in the
 bayou where my Daddy finally drowned, him, dead drunk. Some
 kids found him, long after. They thought the thing in the water
 was a rotten log.
     "We're here, Mr. Aden. Please wake up."
     We had landed on a pad somewhere in wild, dark country,
dense and wooded, with huge outcroppings of rock that I slowly
realized were parts of mountains. My head pounded. One of the
agents turned on a portable Y-lamp and cut the car's lights. We
got out. I realized for the first time I didn't know their names.
     "Where are we?"
     "Cascade Range."
     "But where are we?"
     "Just another few minutes, Mr. Aden."
     They looked away while I pulled myself into my chair. It floated
on its gravunit six inches above a narrow dirt track that led from
the landing pad into thick woods. I followed the agents, who
carried the lamp. The blackness on either side of the track, under
the trees, was like a solid wall, except for rustlings and distant,
deep hoots. I smelled pine needles and leaf mold.
    The track ended at a low foamcast building hidden by trees,
a building too small to be important. No windows. An agent had
his retina scanned and spoke a code to the door and it opened.
The inside lit up. An elevator filled the interior, and that too had
retinal scanner and a code. We went underground.
    The elevator opened on a large laboratory crowded with equip-
ment, none of it running. The lights were low. A woman in a white
lab coat hurried through one of many side doors. "Is that him?"
     "Yes," an agent said, and I caught his quick involuntary glance
to see if the Lucid Dreamer minded not being recognized. I smiled.
    "Welcome, Mr. Aden," the woman said gravely. "I'm Dr.
Carmela Clemente-Rice. Thank you for coming."
    She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, even love-
lier than Leisha. Hair so black it looked blue, enormous eyes of
a clear navy, flawless skin. She looked about thirty but, of course,
might have been much older. Donkey genemods. She was
wreathed with the wispy shapes of sorrow.
    She held her hands lightly clasped in front of her. "You're
wondering why we brought you here. This isn't a GSEA instal-
lation, Mr. Aden. It's an outlaw gene facility we discovered and
captured. Setting up the law-enforcement operation took an entire
year. The trial of the scientists and technicians working here took
another year. They're all in prison now. Ordinarily the GSEA
would dismantle an outlaw lab completely, but there are reasons
we couldn't dismantle this one. As you'll see in a minute."
    She unclasped her hands and made a curious gesture, as if she
were pulling me toward her. Or pulling my mind toward her. The
navy-blue donkey eyes never left my face.
    "The . . . beasts working here were creating illegal genemods
for the underground market. One of the underground markets.
These facilities exist across the United States, Mr. Arlen, although
fortunately most of them aren't as successful as this one. The
GSEA expends a lot of money, time, manpower, and legal talent
putting them out of business. Follow me, please."
    Carmela Clemente-Rice led the way back through the same
side door. We followed. A long white corridor—how big was this
underground place?—was lined with doors. She led me through
the first one and stepped aside.
    There were two of them, male and female, both naked. They
had the dreamy, unfocused expressions of heavy users, but some-
how I knew they didn't exist on drugs. They just existed. Both of
them were masturbating with a dreamy nonurgency that matched
their expressions. The woman had one hand in the vagina between
her legs, the other in the one between her breasts. But her other
vaginas, between her eyes and on each paint, had also gone labile,
their tissues swollen and flushed. The man fondled both his gi-
gantic erect penis and his vagina, and I saw that he had pushed
what looked like a food utensil of some kind up one asshole.
    "For the sex trade," Carmela Clemente-Rice said quietly be-
hind me. "Underground genetic embryonic engineering. There's
no way we can undo it, no way we can raise their IQs, which are
about 60. All we can do is keep them comfortable, and out of the
market they were designed for."
    I powered my chair out of the room. "You're not showing me
anything I don't already know about, lady," I said, more harshly
than I intended. The sex slaves made bruised, painful shapes in
my mind. "This stuff has been around for years, long before
Huevos Verdes existed. Huevos Verdes doesn't quarrel with the
GSEA outlawing it and shutting it down. Nobody sane argues
in favor of this kind of genetic engineering."
    She didn't answer, just led me down the corridor to another
door.
    Four of them this time, in a much larger room, with the same
dreamy expressions. These weren't naked, although their clothes
were odd: jacks clumsily hand-sewn to fit around the extra limbs
and the deformities. One had eight arms, one four legs, another
three pairs of breasts. Judging from its body shape, the extra organs
on the fourth must have been internal. Pancreases, or livers, or
hearts? Could the genes be programmed to grow extra hearts?
    "For the transplant market," Carmela said. "But then, you
probably already knew about that, too?"
    I had, but didn't say so.
    "These are luckier," she continued. "We can remove the extra
limbs and return them to normal bodies. In fact, Jessie is scheduled
for surgery on Tuesday."
    I didn't ask her which one was Jessie. The scotch made nau-
seous burbles in my stomach.
    In the next room the two people looked normal. Dressed in
pajamas, they lay asleep on a bed covered with a pretty chintz
spread. Carmela didn't lower her voice.
    "They're not sleeping, Mr. Aden. They're drugged, heavily,
and will be for most of the rest of their lives. When they're not,
they're in intense and constant pain. It's caused by a tiny
genomod virus designed to stimulate nerve tissue to an unbearable
degree. The virus is injected and then replicates in the body—sort
of like the Huevos Verdes Cell Cleaner. The pain is
excruciating, but there's no actual tissue damage, so theoretically
it could continue for years. Decades. It was designed for the
international torture market, and there was supposed to be an
antidote to be administered. Or withheld. Unfortunately, the gene
engineers working here had gotten only as far as the
nanotorturer, not the antidote."
    One of the drugged pair—I saw now that it was a girl, barely
past puberty—stirred uneasily and moaned.
    "Dreaming," Carmela said briefly. "We don't know what. We
don't know who she is. Mexican maybe, kidnapped, or sold on
the black market."
    "If you think that the research at Huevos Verdes is anything
like—"
    "No, it's not. We know that. But the—"
     "Everything researched and created from nanotechnology at
Huevos Verdes is done with only the pubic benefit in mind. Every-
thing. Like the Cell Cleaner."
     "I believe that," Dr. Clemente-Rice said. She kept her voice
low and controlled; I could feel the effort that cost her. "The
Huevos Verdes applications are completely different. But the
basic science, the breakthroughs, are similar. Only Huevos Verdes
has gone much further, much faster. But others could close that
gap if they had, for instance, the Cell Cleaner to dismantle and
 study."
      I stared at the sleeping girl. Her eyelids were puckered. My
 mother's eyelids had done that, at the end of her life, when the
 bone cancer finally got her.
      I said, "I've seen enough."
      "One more, Mr. Arlen. Please. I wouldn't ask if it weren't so
 urgent."
      I turned my chair to study her. She was a series of sharp pale
 ovals in my mind, with the same clean truthfulness as Maleck and
 the GSEA agents. Probably they had all been picked for just that
 quality. Then I suddenly realized who Carmela reminded me of:
 Leisha Camden. A weird pain shot through me, like a very thin
 lance.
       I followed her through the last door in the corridor.
      There were no genomod people in this room. Three heavy-
  duty shields shimmered from floor to ceiling, the kind that can
  keep out anything not nuclear. Behind them grew tall grass.
       Carmela said softly, "You said that Huevos Verdes works only
  on genemods and nanotechs that are designed for the public ben-
  efit. So was this. It was commissioned by a Third World nation
  with terrible recurrent famines. The grass blades are edible. Unlike
  most plants, their cell walls are constructed not of cellulose but
  of an engineered substance that the human system can convert to
  monosaccharides. The grass is also amazingly hardy, fast-growing,
  self-seeding, and efficient in using nutrients from poor soils and
  water from arid ones. The engineers who developed it estimated
  that it could furnish six times the food of the most concentrated
  current farming."
        "Furnish food," I repeated, idiotically. "Food . . ."
        "We planted it in a controlled and shielded ecosphere of fifty
ecologically diverse acres," Carmela continued, her hands jammed
into the pockets of her lab coat, "and within three months it had
wiped out every other plant in the ecosphere. It's so well fitted
to thrive that it outcompeted everything else. Humans and some
mammals can digest it; other animals cannot. The other plant eaters
all starved, including so many larval insects that the insect popu-
lation disappeared. The amphibian, reptile, and bird populations
went with them, then the carnivorous mammals. Our computers
figure that, given the right wind conditions, this grass would take
about eighteen months to be the only thing left on Earth, give or
take a few huge trees with extensive root systems that weren't
quite done dying."
    The grass rustled softly behind its triple shield. I felt something
on my shoulders. Carmela's hands. She turned my chair to face
her, then immediately lifted her hands.
    "You see, Mr. Aden, we don't think Huevos Verdes is evil.
Not at all. We know Ms. Sharifi and her fellow SuperSleepless
believe not only in the good of their research but in the good of
the rest of us. We know she believes in the United States, as
denned in the Constitution, as the best possible political arrange-
ment in an imperfect world. Just as Leisha Camden did before her.
I've always been a great admirer of Ms. Camden. But the Con-
stitution works because it has so many checks and balances to
restrain power."
     She licked her lips. The gesture wasn't sexual; she was in such
deadly earnest that I could feel her whole body dry and tense with
strain.
    "Checks and balances to restrain power. Yes. But there are
no checks on Huevos Verdes. No restraints. No balances, be-
cause the rest of us simply can't do what SuperSleepless can do.
Unless they do it first. Then some of us could copy some of
the tech, maybe, and adapt it. Some of us like the people who
worked here."
    I said nothing. The deadly, food-rich grass rustled.
    "I can't tell what you're thinking, Mr. Aden. And I can't tell
you what to think. But I—we—just wanted you to see all sides
of the situation, with the hope you'll think about what you've seen,
and talk about it with Huevos Verdes. That's all. The agents will
take you back to Seattle now."
    I said, "What will happen to this grass?"
    "We'll destroy it with radiation. Tomorrow. Not so much as
a strand of DNA will be left, and none of the records, either. It
only existed this long so we could show it to Ms. Sharifi, or, failing
that, to you."
    She led me back to the elevator, and I watched her body, taut
with unhappiness and hope, walk gracefully between the narrow
white walls.
    Just before the elevator door opened I said to her, or maybe
to all three of them, "You can't stop technological progress. You
can slow it down, but it always comes anyway."
    Carmela Clemente-Rice said, "Only two nuclear bombs have
ever been dropped on Earth as an act of wartime aggression. The
science was there, but the applications were left unused. By co-
operation or restraint or fear or force—the applications were
stopped." She held out her hand. It was damp and clammy, but
something electric ran from her touch to mine. The navy-blue
eyes beseeched me.
    Just as if I held actual power over what Huevos Verdes did.
    "Good-bye, Mr. Arlen."
    "Good-bye, Dr. Clemente-Rice."
    The agents, good as their word, returned me to my hotel room
in Seattle. I sat down to wait to see who would arrive from Huevos
Verdes, and how long it would take.


It was Jonathan Markowitz, at five in the morning. I'd had three
hours' sleep. Jonathan was perfect. His tone was civil and inter-
ested. He asked about everything I'd seen, and I described every-
thing to him. He asked a lot of other questions: Did I experience
any temperature changes, no matter how slight, at any point in
the corridor? Did I ever smell anything like cinnamon? Did the
light have a greenish tinge? Did anyone ever touch me? He didn't
argue against anything Carmela Rice-Clemente had told me. He
treated me like a member of the team whose loyalty was unques-
tioned, but who might have been tampered with in ways I couldn't
understand. He was perfect.
    And all the while I could feel the shapes he made in my mind,
and the picture: a man lifting heavy rocks, the rocks mindless and
sullen gray.
      As Jonathan left, I said brutally, "They should have sent Nick.
 Not you. Nick doesn't bother to hide it."
     Jonathan looked at me steadily. For a minute he said nothing,
 and I wondered what impossibly complex and subtle strings
 formed in that Super brain. Then he smiled wearily. "I know. But
 Nick was busy."
      "When can I see Miranda? Has she left Washington yet for
 East Oleanta?"
      "I don't know, Drew," he said, and the shapes in my mind
exploded, spattering the lattice with red.
      "You don't know if she's left, or you don't know when I can
see her? Why not, Jon? Because I'm tainted now? Because you
don't know what Carmela Rice-Clemente might have done to me
when she put her palms on my shoulders, or when I shook her
hand? Or because you can't control what I'm really thinking about
the project?"
     Jonathan said quietly, "It was my impression you'd accepted
not seeing Miri. Without too much regret."
     That stopped me.
    Jonathan went on, "You have an important role, Drew. We
need you. We don't. . . The computer projects a steeply rising
curve in the general social breakdown, due to the unexpected
duragem situation. We have to accelerate the project. Kevorkel's
equations. Mitochondrial regression. DiLazial urban engineer-
ing."
     And that was how my anger ended. In a bunch of words from
SuperSleepless shorthand. I didn't understand the words, and
didn't understand how they went together, and didn't understand
why I was being told them. I couldn't answer, and so I stood there,
mute and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, while Jonathan quietly
left.
     Did he say words from his string because he thought they were
so basic that even the Liver Sleeper Drew, him, would understand?
Or did they just slip out because Jonathan was upset, too? Or did
he say them because he knew I wouldn't understand, and what
better way to put me in my place?
   I'm going to own Sanctuary, me, someday.
   You! A stupid bayou rat! Whap.
    I had to sleep. My concert was in less than five hours. I rolled
into bed, still in my clothes, and tried to sleep.
On the way to the Seattle KingDome, the aircar broke down.
     We had left the enclave and were above the Liver city, which
from the air looked like a lot of small Liver towns, organized in
blocks around cafes and warehouses and lodge buildings. The
Senator Gilbert Tory Bridewell KingDome was twenty years old;
somebody had told me it was named for some historical site. It
sat well outside the enclave, of course, a huge foamcast hemisphere
with a shielded landing pad that now we might not reach.
     The car bucked, back to front, and listed to the left. An ocean
liner rolling, a toxic dump swelling in sickly pink bubbles. My
stomach rose.
     "Jesus H. Christ," the driver said, and began punching in over-
ride codes. I didn't know how much he could actually do; aircars
are robomachinery. But maybe he did know about it. He was a
donkey.
     The car rolled, and I fell against the left door. My powerchair,
folded into traveling size, slammed against me. The car gave a
little buck and I thought I'm going to die.
     Warm blood-red shapes filled my mind. And the lattice
disappeared.
     "Christ Christ Christ," the driver said, punching frantically.
The car bucked again, then righted. I closed my eyes. The lattice
in my mind disappeared. It wasn't there.
     "Okay okay okay," the driver said in a different voice, and the
car limped down onto the landing pad.
     We sat there, safe, while figures rushed toward us from the
KingDome. And the lattice reappeared in my mind. It had dis-
appeared when I thought I was going to die, and now it was back,
still closed tightly around whatever was hidden inside.
     "It's the lousy gravunits," the driver said, in the same pleading
voice he'd said okay okay okay. He twisted in his seat to look directly
into my eyes. "They cut costs on materials. They cut costs on
robotesting. They cut costs on maintenance because those lousy
robounits break. The whole franchise's going under. Two crashes
in California last week, and the newsgrids paid to keep them quiet.
I'm never riding in one of these things again. You hear me? Never
again." All said in the same low, pleading voice.
    In my mind he was a crouching, black, squashed shape in
front of the purple lattice.
    "Mr. Aden!" a woman cried, throwing open the aircar
door. "Are y'all okay in there?" Her Southern accent was
thick. Sallie Edith Gardiner, freshman congresswoman from
Washington State, who was paying for this concert for
her Liver constituents. Why did a congresswoman from
Washington State sound like Mississippi?
    "Fine," I said. "No damage."
    "Well, it's just shockin', is what it is. Has it really come
to that? That we can't even make a decent aircar any more?
Do you want to postpone the concert a bit?"
    "No, no, I'm fine," I said. The accent wasn't Mississippi
after all; it was fake Mississippi. She was all flaking gilded
hoops in my mind. I thought suddenly of Carmela Clemente-
Rice, clean pale ovals.
    Why had the lattice in my mind disappeared when I
thought I was going to die?
    "Well, the truth is, Mr. Aden," Congresswoman Gardiner
said, chewing on her perfect bottom lip, "a tiny delay for
you might be a good idea anyway. There's a little problem
with the gravrail comin' in from South Seattle. And just a
tiny problem with the security 'bot system. We have techs
workin' on it now, naturally. So if you come this way we'll
go to a place you can wait . . . "
    "My system was installed onstage yesterday," I said, "if
you can't guarantee security for it—"
    "Oh, of course we can!" she cried, and I saw she was lying.
The aircar driver climbed out and leaned against the car,
muttering under his breath. His prayerful pleading had
finally turned to anger. I caught falling apart and fucking
societal breakdown and can't support so many fucking people
before Congresswoman Gardiner threw him a look that
would rot plastisynth. She hadn't asked if he was hurt. He
was a tech.
    "Your wonderful equipment will be just fine,"
Congresswoman Gardiner said. Fahn. "And we're all lookin'
forward so much to your performance. You come this way,
please."
    I powered my chair after her. She wouldn't watch the
performance. She'd leave after she introduced me and the
grid cameras had their fill of her. Donkeys always left then.
     But it didn't happen that way.
     I sat in my chair in an anteroom of the KingDome for two
hours. I might have slept. People came and went, all telling me
everything was fine. The lattice in my mind snaked in long slow
undulations. Finally the congresswoman came in.
     "Mr. Arlen, "I'm afraid we have an unpleasant complication.
There's been a just terrible accident."
     "An accident?"
     "A gravrail crashed comin' from Portland. There are . . . a
number of Livers dead. The crowd heard about it, and they're
upset. Naturally." Natchally. Her voice sounded upset, but her
eyes were resentful. The first big event she'd sponsored since her
election, and a lot of inconsiderate Livers had to go die and ruin
it. An unpleasant complication. I would have bet a quarter million
credits against her reelection.
     "We're goin' to go ahead with the concert anyway, unless you
object. I'm goin' to introduce you in about five minutes."
     "Try drawing out your vowels slightly less," I said. "It would
be at least a little more authentic."
     I had underestimated her. Her smile didn't waver. "Then five
minutes is all right with you?"
     "Whatever you say." The lattice in my head was shaking now,
as if in a high wind.
     They had built a floating gravplatform at one end of the arena,
with a wide catwalk to the upper room where I waited. The grav-
train had crashed; the aircar had faltered. I knew that gravdevices
didn't really manipulate gravity, but magnetism; I didn't under-
stand how. What were the odds of three magnetic devices failing
me in an evening? Jonathan Markowitz would know, to the twen-
tieth decimal.
     "—one of the premier artists of our times—" Congresswoman
Gardiner broadcast from the stage. Tahms.
     Of course, it might not have been the gravunit itself that failed
in the train. A gravrail might have hundreds of different moving
parts, thousands, for all I knew. What were they all made of?
     "—with deep gratitude for the opportunity to bring y'all the
Lucid Dreamer, I—"
     I. I. I. The donkeys' favorite word. In Huevos Verdes, at least
they said we. And meant more than just the SuperSleepless.
     Pale green grass rippled in front of the purple lattice. Grew
 over it, through it, around it. Took it over. Took over the world.
     I clasped my hands hard in front of me. I had to perform in
two minutes. I had to control the images in my mind. I was the
Lucid Dreamer.
     "—understandably grieved about the tragedy, but grief is one
of the emotions the Lucid Dreamer—"
     "What the fuck do you know about grief, you?" someone un-
seen screamed, so loud I jumped. Somebody in the audience had
a voice magnifier as powerful as my own sound system. From
where I sat I couldn't see the audience, only Congresswoman
Gardiner. But I heard a low rumble, almost like the Delta in flood.
     "—pleased to introduce—"
     "Get off, you bitch!" The same magnified voice.
     I powered my chair forward. Halfway across the catwalk the
congresswoman passed me, her head high, her lips smiling, her
eyes burning with anger. There was no applause.
     I powered my chair to the center of the floating platform and
put my lenses on zoom. The KingDome was only half full. People
stared at me, some sullen, some uncertain, some wide-eyed, but
nobody smiling. I hadn't ever faced anything like this. They were
balanced on an edge, right between an audience and a mob.
     "That a donkey chair you sit in, Arlen, you?" the magnified
voice shrieked, and I identified its owner when several people
turned to him. A man pushed him, hard; another glared; a third
moved protectively in front of the heckler and stared hard-eyed
at the platform. Somebody down front called faintly, unmagnified,
"The Lucid Dreamer ain't no donkey, him. You shut up!"
    I said, so softly that everyone had to quiet to hear, "I'm no
donkey, me."
    Another rumble went up from the audience, and in my mind
I saw water flooding the Delta where I was born, the water not
fast but relentless, unstoppable, rising as steeply as any Huevos
Verdes curve of social breakdown.
    "People are dead, them, in the lousy donkey trains nobody
bothers to keep up!" the magnified voice cried. "Dead!"
    "I know," I said, still softly, and the lattice stopped shaking as
my mind filled with slow, large shapes, moving with stately grace,
the color of wet earth. I pressed the button on my chair and the
concert machinery began to dim the stage lights.
    I was supposed to give "The Warrior," designed and redesigned
and redesigned again to encourage independent risk taking, action,
self-reliance. Stored in the concert machinery were also the tapes
and holos and subliminals for "Heaven," the most popular of my
concerts. It led people to a calm place inside their own minds, the
place all of us could reach as children, where the world is in perfect
balance and we with it, and the warm sunlight not only falls on
our skin but goes all the way through to the soul and draws us in
to blessed peace. It was a concert of reconciliation, of repose, of
acceptance. I could give that. In ten minutes the mob would be a
yielding pillow.
    I began "The Warrior."
    "Once there was a man of great hope and no power. When he
was young he wanted everything . . ."
    The words quieted them. But the words were the least of it,
were unimportant, really. The shapes were what counted, and the
way the shapes moved, and the corridors the shapes opened to
the hidden places in the mind, different for each person. And I
was the only one in the world who could program those shapes,
working off my own mind, whose neural pathways to the uncon-
scious had been opened by a freak illegal operation. I was the
Lucid Dreamer.
    "He wanted strength, him, that would make all other men
respect him."
    No one at Huevos Verdes could do this: seize the minds
and souls of eighty percent of the people. Lead them, if only
deeper into themselves. Shape them. No—give them their own
shapes.
    "Do you understand what it is you do to other people's minds?"
Miri had asked me in her slightly-too-slow speech, shortly after
we met. I had braced myself—even then—for equations and Law-
son conversion formulas and convoluted diagrams. But she had
surprised me. "You take people into the otherness."
    "The—"
    "Otherness. The reality under the reality. You pierce the world
of relativities, so that the mind glimpses that a truer absolute lies
behind the fragile structures of everyday life. Only glimpses it, of
course. That's all even science can really give us: a glimpse. But
you take people there who couldn't ever be scientists."
    I had stared at her, strangely frightened. This wasn't the Miri
I usually saw. She brushed her unruly hair away from her face,
 and I saw that her dark eyes looked soft and far away. "You really
 do that, Drew. For us Supers, as well as the Livers. You hold aside
 the veil for just a glimpse into what else we are."
     My fright deepened. She wasn't like this.
     "Of course," she added, "unlike science, lucid dreaming isn't
 under anybody's control. Not even yours. It lacks the cardinal
 quality of replicability."
     Miri saw my face, then, and realized her last words were a
mistake. She had ranked what I do second . . . again. But her stub-
born truthfulness wouldn't let her back down from what she did
in fact actually believe. Lucid dreaming lacked cardinal quality.
She looked away.
    We had never spoken of the otherness again.
    Now the Liver faces turned up to me, open. Old men with
deep lines and bent shoulders. Young men with jaws clenched
even as their eyes widened like the children they had so recently
been. Women with babies in their arms, the tiredness fading from
their faces when their lips curved faintly, dreaming. Ugly faces
and natural beauties and angry faces and grieving faces and the
bewildered faces of people who thought they'd been running their
lives and were just now discovering they weren't even on the
Board of Directors.
    "He wanted sex, him, that would make his bones melt with
satisfaction. He wanted love."
    Miri was probably already in the underground facility at East
Oleanta, and I was too cowardly to admit that I was glad. Well,
I'd admit it now. She was safer there than at Huevos Verdes, and
I didn't have to see her. Eden. The carefully programmed
subliminals on the cafe HTs throughout New York's Adirondack
Mountains called it "Eden." Not that the Livers knew what this
new Eden meant. I didn't either, not really. I knew what the
project was supposed to do—but not what it would ultimately
mean. I'd been too cowardly to admit my questions. Or admit
that even SuperSleepless confidence might not add up to
automatic Tightness.
    Pale, deadly grass waved in my mind.
    "Aaaaaaahhh," a man sighed, somewhere close enough that I
could hear him over the low music.
    "He wanted excitement, him."
    A man in the sixth or seventh row wasn't watching me. He
glanced around at everybody else's rapt face. He was first puzzled,
then uneasy. A natural immune to hypnosis—there were always
a few. Huevos Verdes had isolated the brain chemical necessary
to respond to lucid dreaming, only it wasn't a single brain chemical
but a combination of what Sara Cerelli called "necessary prereq-
uisite conditions," some of which depended on enzymes triggered
by other conditions . . . I didn't really understand. But I didn't
need to. I was the Lucid Dreamer.
     The unaffected man shuffled restlessly. Then settled down to
listen anyway. Afterwards, I knew, he wouldn't say much to his
friends. It was too uncomfortable, being left out.
     I knew all about that. My concerts counted on it.
     "He wanted every day to be filled with challenges only he
could meet."
     Miri loved me in a way I could never love her back. It burned,
that love, as hard as her intelligence. It was the love, not the
intelligence, that had made me never say to her directly, "Should
we go ahead with the project? What proof do we have that this
is the right thing to do?" She would tell me, of course, that proof
was impossible, and her explanation of why not would contain so
many things—equations and precedents and conditions—that I
wouldn't understand it.
     But that wasn't the real reason I'd never pushed my doubts.
The real reason was that she loved me in a way I could never love
her, and I had wanted Sanctuary since I was six years old and
discovered that my grandfather died building it, a grunt worker
before Livers were taken care of by a vote-hungry government.
That was why I had turned my mind, so much weaker than hers,
over to Huevos Verdes.
     But now there was the pale grass, growing over the lattices in
my mind, growing over the world.
     "He wanted—"
     He wanted to belong to himself again.
     The shapes slid around my chair; the subliminals nickered in
and out of my audience's consciousness. Their faces were com-
pletely unguarded now, oblivious to each other and even to me,
as the private doors of their minds swung briefly open. To the
desires and fearlessness and confidence that had been buried there
for decades, under the world that needed order and conformity
   and predictability to function. This was my best concert of "The
   Warrior" yet. I could feel it.
       At the end, almost an hour later, I raised my hands. I felt the
  usual outpouring of holy affection for all of them. "Like a pope
  or a lama?" Miri had asked, but it wasn't like that. "Like a brother,"
  I'd answered, and watched her dark eyes deepen with pain. Her
  own brother had been killed on Sanctuary. I'd known my answer
  would hurt her. That was a kind of power, too, and now I felt
  ashamed of it.
      But it was also the truth. In a moment, when the concert ended,
  these Livers would go back to being the same whining, complain-
  ing, ineffectual, ignorant people they'd been before. But for this
  instant before the concert ended, I did feel a brotherhood that
  had nothing to do with likeness.
      And they wouldn't go completely back to what they had been.
  Not completely. Huevos Verdes's computer programs had verified
  that.
      " . . . back to his kingdom."
     The music ended. The shapes stopped. The lights came up.
 Slowly the faces around me dissolved into themselves, first blink-
 ing wide-eyed, then laughing and crying and hugging. The applause
 started.
     I looked for the man with the voice magnifier. He wasn't
 standing in his same place in the crowd. But I didn't have to wait
 long to find him.
 "Let's go, us, to that gravtrain crash—it's only a half-mile away.
 There's still folks hurt there, them, more than there are med-
 units—I saw, me! And not enough blankets! We can help, us, to
 bring the injured here. . . . Us!" Us. Us. Us.
     There was confusion in the crowd. But a surprising number
of Livers followed the new leader, burning to do something. To
be heroes, which is the true hidden driver of the human mind.
Some people started organizing a hospital corner. Others left, but
from behind the now-opaqued shield that let me watch them with-
out being seen, I observed even the departing Livers donating
spare jackets and shirts and blankets for the aid of the wounded.
Congresswoman Sallie Edith Gardiner bustled over the catwalk
toward me.
    "Well, Mr. Arlen, that was just marvelous—" Mahvelous.
    "You didn't watch it."
    She wasn't listening. She stared at the activity in the King-
Dome. "What's all this now?"
    I said, "They're getting ready to help the survivors of the
gravrail crash."
    "Them? Help how?"
    I didn't answer. All of a sudden I was very tired. I'd had only
a few hours' sleep, and I'd spent the previous night viewing man-
made horrors.
    Like this woman.
    "Well, they can all just stop this nonsense right now!" Raht
now.
    She bustled away. I watched a little longer, then went to find
my driver—who had, of course, vowed to never drive an aircar
again. But that was before the gravrail crash showed that nothing
else was any better. Still, I'd find some way back to Seattle. And
to the airport. And to Huevos Verdes. And from there to East
Oleanta. There were things I had to ask Miranda, critical things,
things I should have asked a long time ago. And I was going to
say them. I, Drew Arlen. Who had been the Lucid Dreamer long
before I met Miranda Sharifi.
                            Eight
                   BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




T      he floor of the State Representative Anita Clara Taguchi
       Hotel was covered in leaves. It was late August—no leaves
       falling yet, them. That meant these leaves were left over
from last year, blowing into the hotel last October and November
and lying around ever since, without no 'bot to clean them out. I
hadn't been nowhere near the hotel, me, all those months. But I
was now.
     The funny thing was that for a few days I didn't even notice
the leaves, me. I didn't notice nothing. My head was a fog, it, and
I stumbled toward the hotel HT on its red counter and didn't see
nothing else. Lizzie was too sick.
     The HT turned on when I come near, like it'd been doing for
the past four days. "May I help you?"
     I put both hands, me, on the counter. Like that would help.
"I need the medunit, me. An emergency."
     "I'm sorry, sir, the County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater
Medical Unit is temporarily out of service. Albany has been no-
tified, and a technician will shortly—"
     "I don't want Albany, me! I want a medunit! My little girl's
sick bad!"
     "I'm sorry, sir, the County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater
Medical Unit is temporarily out of service. Albany has been—"
     "Then get me another medunit, you! It's an emergency! Lizzie's
coughing her guts up, her!"
     "I'm sorry, sir, there's no medunit immediately available,
due to the temporary inoperability of the Senator Walker Vance
Morehouse Magnetic Railway. As soon as the railway is repaired,
another medical unit can be rushed in from—"
     "The gravrail ain't inaccessible, it's busted!" I screamed at the
HT. I would of busted it with my bare hands if it'd helped. "Let
me talk to a human being!"
    "I'm sorry, your elected officials are temporarily unavailable.
If you wish to leave a message, please specify whether it's intended
for United States Senator Mard Todd Ingalls, United States Sen-
ator Walker Vance—"
     "Off! Turn the hell off!"
    Lizzie'd been sick, her, for three days. The gravrail had been
down for five. The medunit had been out for who knows how
long—nobody'd got sick, them, since Doug Kane's heart attack.
The politicians had been assholes as long as anybody could
remember.
    Lizzie was sick bad. Oh sweet Jesus Lizzie was sick bad.
    I squeezed my eyes shut, me, and my head swung down, and
when I opened my eyes what did I see? Leaves, that no cleaning
'bot had swept out in nearly a year, and that nobody else didn't
bother with neither. Dead leaves, brittle as my old bones.
    "There's a HT with override at the cafe," a voice said. "The
mayor can contact your county legislator directly."
    "You think, you, I ain't tried that? Do I look that stupid?" I
was relieved, me, to yell at somebody, I didn't care who. Then I
saw it was the donkey girl dressed like a Liver, the one who got
off the train a week ago. She was the only person, her, staying in
the State Representative Anita Clara Taguchi Hotel. Since the
gravrail breakdowns got worse, there ain't much traveling. Nobody
knew why this donkey was in East Oleanta, and nobody knew why
she dressed like a Liver. Some people didn't like it, them.
    I didn't have no time to talk to a crazy donkey. Lizzie was sick
bad. I shuffled back through the leaves to the door, only where
was I supposed to go, me? Without no medunit. . .
    "Wait," the donkey said. "I heard you, me. You said—"
    "Don't try to talk like no Liver when you ain't one! You hear
me, you!" I don't know where I got the anger to yell at her like
that. Yes, I do. Lizzie was sick bad, and the donkey was just there,
her.
    "You're quite right. No point in unnecessary subterfuge, is
there? My name is Victoria Turner."
     I didn't care, me, what her name was, although I remembered
 her telling somebody else it was Dark Jones. I'd left Lizzie gasping
 and clawing for breath, her little face hot as a bonfire. I broke into
 a run, me. The leaves under my boots whispered like ghosts.
     "Maybe I can help," the donkey said.
     "Go to hell!" I said, but then I stopped, me, and looked at
her. She was a donkey, after all. She must be here, her, for some-
thing, just like that other girl in the woods last summer, the one
that saved Doug Kane's life, must of been there for something. I
couldn't guess for what, but I wasn't no donkey. Still, sometimes
donkeys could do things, them, that you didn't expect.
     The girl stood. Her yellow jacks had a tear in them, like every-
body's since the warehouse just stopped opening up for distrib,
but they was clean. Jacks don't get dirty or creased—dirt don't
stick to them somehow, or it washes off easy. But the girl wasn't
really no girl, her. When I looked closer I saw she was a woman,
maybe as old as Annie. It was the genemod violet eyes and that
body that made me think, me, that she was a girl.
     I said, "How can you help?"
     "I won't know till I see the patient, will I?" she said, crisp and
no nonsense. That made sense, at least. I led her, me, to Annie's
apartment on Jay Street.
     Annie opened the door. I could hear Lizzie coughing, her, a
sound that pretty near tore my own guts out. Annie pushed her
big body out into the hall and pulled the door closed behind her.
     "Who's this? What are you bringing her here for, Billy Wash-
ington? You, get lost! We already seen, us, how much help you
donkeys are when everything's going wrong!"
     I never saw Annie so mad. Her lips pressed together like they'd
been mortared, and her ringers curled into claws like she was going
to rake this Victoria Turner across her genemod donkey face.
Victoria Turner looked at Annie coolly, her, and didn't step back
an inch.
     "He brought me because I may be able to help the sick child.
Are you her mother? Please step back so I can try."
    I stepped back, but then forward again because it hurt me,
Annie's face. It was furious and scared and exhausted. Annie hadn't
left Lizzie, her, to sleep or wash, not in two days. But Annie
was used to letting donkeys solve her problems, and that was on
her face too. Along with just the start of hope. Annie wanted
something to hit and something to trust, her, and I thought I was
both of those things, but here was this Victoria Turner and she
was better, her, for both.
Annie reached behind herself and opened the door. Lizzie lay on
the couch where I usually sleep. She was burning up, her, but
Annie tried to keep a blanket on her. Lizzie kept kicking it off.
There was water and food from the cafe, but Lizzie hadn't taken
any, her. She tossed and cried out, and sometimes her cries
didn't make no sense. She threw up just once, but she coughed all
the time, great racking coughs that tore my heart.
     Victoria Turner put her hand on Lizzie's forehead, and her
violet eyes widened. Lizzie didn't seem to know, her, that anybody
was there. She gave another cough, a small one, and started moan-
ing. I felt despair start in my bowels, the kind you feel when
there's no hope and you don't see how you can bear it. I hadn't
felt that kind of despair, me, since my wife Rosie died, twelve
years ago. I never thought I'd have to feel it again.
     Victoria Turner took a scarf out of her pocket and knelt by
 Lizzie. She didn't seem at all afraid, her. One of the thoughts I'd
 had in the night, God forgive me, was: Is this sickness catching?
 Could Annie get it, her, and die too? Annie . . .
     "Cough for me, sweetheart," Victoria Turner said. "Come on,
 cough into the scarf."
     In a few minutes, Lizzie did, her, though not because she was
 asked. Big slimy gobs of stuff from her tortured lungs, greenish
 gray. Victoria Turner caught it, her, in the scarf and looked at it
 closely. Me, I had to look away. That was Lizzie's lungs coming
 up, Lizzie's lungs rotting themselves away.
     "Excellent," Victoria Turner said, "green. It's bacterial. Now
 we know. You're in luck, Lizzie."
     Luck! I saw Annie curve her claws again, her, and I even saw
 what for: This donkey was enjoying this, her. It was some kind of
 exciting. Like a holovid story.
      "Bacterial is good," Victoria Turner said, looking up at me,
 "because the medication can be far less specific. You have to tailor
 antivirals, at least grossly. But wide-spectrum antibiotics are easy."
      Annie said roughly, "What's Lizzie got, her?"
      "I haven't the faintest idea. But this will almost surely take
  care of it." From another pocket she drew a flat piece of plastic,
  tore it open, and slapped a round blue patch on Lizzie's neck.
 "But you should force more water down her. You don't want to
 risk dehydration."
     Annie stared, her, at the blue patch on Lizzie's neck. It looked
 like the ones the medunit put on, but how did we really know,
 us, what was in it? We didn't really know nothing.
     Lizzie sighed and quieted. Nobody said nothing. After a few
 minutes, Lizzie was asleep.
     "Best thing for her," Victoria Turner said crisply. I saw again,
 me, that she liked this. "Not even Miranda Sharifi herself could
 equal the benefits of sleep."
     I remembered, me, hearing that name, but I couldn't think
 where.
     Annie was a different woman, her. She gazed at Lizzie, sleeping
peacefully, and at the patch, and Annie seemed to shrink and calm
down, both, like a sail collapsing. She looked at the floor, her.
"Thank you, doctor. I didn't realize, me."
     Dr. Turner looked surprised, her, then she smiled. Like some-
thing was funny. "You're welcome. And maybe in return you can
do something for me."
     Annie looked wary, her. Donkeys don't ask Livers to do favors,
them. Donkeys pay taxes to us; we give votes to them. But we
don't tell each other, us, more than we got to, and we don't ask
things of each other. That ain't the way it's done.
    But, then, donkey doctors don't go wandering around East
Oleanta dressed in torn yellow jacks neither. We ain't even seen
a doctor in East Oleanta, us, since a new plague broke out four
years ago and a doctor came from Albany to vaccinate everybody
with some new stuff the medunit didn't have.
    "I'm looking for someone," Dr. Turner said. "Someone I was
supposed to meet here, but we apparently got our data confused.
A woman, a girl really, about this tall, dark hair, a slightly large
head."
    I thought, me, of the girl in the woods, and quick tried to look
like I wasn't thinking of nothing at all. That girl came from Eden,
I was sure of it, me—and Eden don't got nothing to do with
donkeys. It's about Livers. Dr. Turner was watching close, her.
Annie shook her head, cool as ice, even though I knew she prob-
ably remembered that other girl, the big-headed one she said she
saw at the town meeting when Jack Sawicki called the district
supervisor about them rabid raccoons. Or maybe it was the
same
big-headed girl—I hadn't thought, me, about that before, me. How
many big-headed maybe-donkey girls did we have running around
the woods near East Oleanta? Why did we have any?
     Annie said, polite but not very, "How'd you miss your friend?
Don't she know, her, where you are?"
     "I fell asleep," Dr. Turner said, which explained nothing. She
said it funny, too. "I fell asleep on the gravrail. But I think she
might be around here someplace."
     "I never saw nobody like that, me," Annie said firmly.
     "How about you, Billy?" Dr. Turner said. She probably knew
my name, her, even before Annie said it. She'd been in East
Oleanta for a week, her, eating at the cafe, talking to whoever
would talk to her, which wasn't many.
     "I never saw nobody like that, me," I said. She stared at me
hard. She didn't believe me, her.
     "Then let me just ask something else. Does the name 'Eden'
mean anything to you?"
     A gust of wind could of blown me over.
     But Annie said cool as January, "It's in the Bible. Where Adam
and Eve lived, them."
     "Right," Dr. Turner said. "Before the Fall." She stood up and
stretched. Her body under the jacks was too skinny, at least by
me. A woman should have some softness on her bones.
    "I'll come back to look in on Lizzie tomorrow," Dr. Turner
said, and I saw, me, that Annie didn't want her to come back, and
then that Annie did. This was a doctor. Lizzie slept peaceful, her.
Even from by the door, she looked cooler to me.
    When the doctor left, Annie and I looked at each other, us.
Then Annie's face broke up. Just went from solid flesh creased
with worry to a mess of lines that didn't have nothing to do with
one another, and she started to cry, her. Before I even thought
about it I put my arms around her. Annie clung back, hard, and
at the feel of her soft breasts against my chest, I went a little crazy.
I didn't think, me. I just raised her face to mine and kissed her.
    And Annie Francy kissed me back.
    None of your grateful-daughter crap, neither. She cried and
pointed to Lizzie and kissed me with her soft berry lips and pushed
her breasts against me. Annie Francy. I kissed her back, my mind
not even working, it—the words only came later—and then it was
like we just met instead of knowing each other for years, instead
of me being sixty-eight and Annie thirty-five, instead of everything
breaking down and East Oleanta coming apart like it was. Annie
Francy kissed me like I was a young man, me—and I was. I ran
my hands, me, over her body, and I led her into the bedroom,
leaving Lizzie sleeping peaceful as an angel, and I closed the door.
Annie was laughing and weeping, the way I forgot, me, that women
can do, and she lay her big beautiful body on the bed with me
like I was thirty-five, too.
    Annie Francy.
    If that donkey doctor in yellow jacks had come back then and
asked me again where Eden was—if she'd of done that, I could
of told her, me. In this room. On this bed. With Annie Francy.
Here.


We slept till morning, us. I woke up before Annie. The light was
pale gray, thin. For a long time I just sat, me, on the edge of the
bed, looking at Annie. I knew this was a one-time thing. I could
feel it, even before she fell asleep, in that little space of time when
we held each other afterwards. I could feel it, me, in her arms,
and in the set of her neck, and in her breathing. What I needed,
me, was the words to tell her that it was all right. That this was
more than I expected, me, although less than I dreamed. I wasn't
going to tell her that part. You always dream more.
    But Annie didn't wake, her, and so instead I went to check
on Lizzie. She was sitting up, her, looking woozy. "Billy—I'm
hungry, me."
    "That's a good sign, Lizzie. What you want to eat, you?"
    "Something hot. I'm cold, me. Something hot from the cafe."
Her voice was whiny and she smelled awful but I didn't care, me.
I was too glad to her her cold, when just yesterday she'd been
burning up, her, with fever. That donkey doctor really was as good
as a medunit.
    "Don't go waking your mother, you. Just sit there until I get
your food. Where's your meal chip, Lizzie?"
    "I don't know, me. I'm hungry."
    Annie must of taken Lizzie's meal chip, her. I could get enough
food on mine. I don't eat all that much anymore, me, and this
morning I felt I could live on air.
    There wasn't nobody in the cafe, them, except for Dr. Turner.
She sat eating her breakfast and watching a donkey channel on
the hologrid. She looked tired, her.
    "Up early, you," I said. I got myself a cup of coffee and a bun,
and Lizzie some eggs and juice and milk and another bun. Annie
or I could reheat the eggs on the Y-energy unit, us. I sat down,
me, next to Dr. Turner, just to be sociable for a minute. Or maybe
to think what to say to Annie. Dr. Turner stared at the eggs like
they was a three-day-dead woodchuck.
    "Can you actually eat those, Billy?"
    "The eggs?"
    " 'Eggs.' Soysynth stamped out and dyed, like all the rest of
it. Haven't you ever tasted a real, natural egg?"
    And the weird thing was, the minute she said that, her, I
remembered what a real egg tasted like. Fresh from the chicken,
cooked by my grandmama two minutes and served with strips of
hot toast with real butter. You dipped the toast into the egg and
the yellow yolk coated it, and then you ate them together, hot.
All those years and at that minute I remembered it, me, and not
before. My mouth filled with sweet water.
    "Look at that," Dr. Turner said, and I thought she still meant
the egg but she didn't, her, she'd turned back to the hologrid. A
handsome donkey sat at a big wood desk, talking, like they always
do. I didn't understand all the words:
    "—if even a possibility of an escaped self-replicating dissem-
bler . . . not verified . . . duragem . . . government should put the
facts before us . . . emphasize restricted to certain molecular bonds
and these are nonorganic . . . very important distinction . . .
duragem . . . GSEA . . . underground facility . . . understaffed in
current difficult economic climate . . . duragem ..."
     I said, "Sounds like the same old stuff to me."
    Dr. Turner made a sound, her, in the back of her throat, a
sound so strange and so unexpected I stopped eating, me, with
my plastisynth fork halfway to my mouth. I must have looked a
moron. She made the sound again, and then she laughed, her, and
then she covered her face with her hand, and then she laughed
again. I ain't never seen no donkey behave like that before, me.
Never.
    "No, Billy—this isn't the same old stuff. It's definitely not.
But it might all too easily get to be the same new stuff, in which
case we should all worry."
     "About what?" I ate faster, me, to bring Lizzie her food still
hot. Lizzie was hungry, her. A good sign.
     "What the hell is this shit?" a stomp kid asked, the second he
stepped through the cafe door. "Who's playing this donkey crap,
them?" He saw Dr. Turner, him—and he looked away. I could
of sworn he didn't want no part of her, which was so weird—
stomps don't back off shoving nobody, them. I stopped eating,
me, for the second time and just stared. The stomp said loudly,
"Channel 17," and the hologrid switched to some sports channel,
but still the stomp didn't look at Dr. Turner. He got his food,
him, off the belt and went to sit at a far table in the corner.
     Dr. Turner smiled a little. "I tangled with him two nights ago.
He got grabby. He doesn't want it to happen again."
     "You armed, you?"
     "Not like you think. Come on, let's go see how Lizzie is doing
this morning."
    "She's doing just fine, her," I said, but Dr. Turner was already
standing up, and it was clear she was going with me. I couldn't
think of no reason she shouldn't, except that I still didn't know,
me, what words I was going to say to Annie about what happened
last night. A little cold lump was growing in me that maybe Annie
would think, her, that I shouldn't come around no more. Because
of being embarrassed—her or me or us. If that happened, I
wouldn't have no more reason to go on dragging around this old
body with its old-fool head.
    Lizzie was sitting up on the couch, her, playing with a doll.
"Mama went to get water to wash me," she said. "She said I can't
go to the baths yet, me. What did you bring me to eat, Billy?"
    "Eggs and bun and juice. Now don't you overdo, you."
    "Who's this?" The black eyes were bright again, them, but
Lizzie's face still looked thin and drawn. I got scared all over again,
me.
    "I'm Dr. Turner. But you can call me Vicki. I gave you some
medicine last night."
    Lizzie studied the situation, her. I could see that smart little
mind going. "You from Albany, you?"
    "No. San Francisco."
    "On the Pacific Ocean?"
    Dr. Turner looked surprised, her. "Yes. How do you know
where it is?"
     "Lizzie goes to school a lot," I said, fast in case Annie came in
and heard, "but her mother ain't crazy about that."
     "I worked, me, through all the high school software. It wasn't
hard."
     "Probably not," Dr. Turner said dryly. "And so now what?
College software? With the location of the Indian Ocean?"
     I said, "Her mama don't—"
     "There ain't no college software in East Oleanta," Lizzie said,
"but I already know, me, where the Indian Ocean is."
     "Her mama really don't—"
     "Can you get me some college software?" Lizzie said, her, soft
but not scared, just like it was an everyday thing to ask donkeys
for work they're supposed to do for our benefit. Or something.
Lately I wasn't so sure, me, that I knew who was studying and
working for who.
     "Maybe," Dr. Turner said. Her voice had changed, her, and
she looked at Lizzie real hard. "How are you feeling this morning?"
     "Better." But I could see Lizzie was tiring, her.
     I said, "You eat, and then lie down again. You been very sick,
you. If that medicine—" The door opened behind me and Annie
came in.
     I couldn't see her, me, but I could feel her. She was warm and
soft and big in my arms. Only that wasn't ever going to happen
again. Dr. Turner was watching, her, with that sharp donkey stare.
I fixed my face and turned around. "Morning, Annie. Let me help
you with them buckets."
     Annie looked at me, and then at Lizzie, and then at Dr. Turner.
I could see she didn't know, her, who to get stiff with first. She
chose Lizzie. "You eat that food and lie down, Lizzie. You been
sick.
     "I'm better now," Lizzie said, sulky.
     "She's better now, her," Annie said to Dr. Turner. "You can
leave." It wasn't like Annie to be so rude, her. She was the one
believed even donkeys have their place.
     "Not just yet," Dr. Turner said. "I'm going to talk to Lizzie
first."
     "This is my home!" Annie said, between pressed-together lips.
     I wanted to say to Dr. Turner, She ain't mad at you, her, she's
confused at me, but there ain't no way to say that to a donkey doctor
dressed in torn yellow jacks standing in a living room that ain't
 even yours and that you're afraid you're about to get tossed out
 of yourself for loving in the wrong way. No way to say that.
     Lizzie said, "Please let Vicki stay, Mama. Please. I feel better,
 me, when she's here."
     Annie set down the two buckets of water she carried. She
looked ready to explode, her. But then Dr. Turner said, "I do
need to examine her, Annie. To make sure the medication is the
right one. You know that if the medunit were working it would
check her every day and sometimes change the dosage. A live
doctor isn't any different."
     Annie looked ready to cry. But all she said was, "She got to
get washed first, her. Billy, bring this water into Lizzie's bedroom."
     Annie dragged up Lizzie and half carried her to the bedroom,
ignoring Lizzie's squawk: "I can walk, me!" I followed with the
water, set it down, and came back out. Dr. Turner had picked up
Lizzie's doll. It was plastisynth, from the warehouse, with black
curls and green eyes and a genemod face, but Annie had sewn it
jacks from a pair she ripped up, and Lizzie had made it soda-can
jewelry.
     "Annie doesn't want me here."
     "Well," I said, "we don't get many donkeys, us."
     "No, I imagine not."
    We stood in silence. I didn't have nothing to say to her, or
her to me. Except one thing. "Dr. Turner—"
    "Call me Vicki."
    I knew, me, that I wasn't going to do that. "What you watched,
you, on that donkey channel, the stuff you said wasn't more of
the same old government shit—what was it? What's happening?"
    She looked up from the doll, then, more sharp than before.
"What do you think it meant?"
    "I don't know, me. I don't know those words. It sounded like
just more worry over the economy, more excuses why the gov-
ernment can't get things working right, them."
    "This time it's not an excuse. Maybe. Do you know what a
dissembler is?"
    "No."
    "A molecule?"
    "No."
    "An atom?"
    "No."
     Dr. Turner shook Lizzie's doll. "This is made of atoms. Every-
thing is made of atoms. They're very tiny pieces of matter. Atoms
clump together into molecules like . . . like snow sticking together
into a snowball. Only there's all kinds of atoms, and they stick
together in different ways, so you get different kinds of matter.
Wood or skin or plastic."
     She looked at me hard, her, trying to see if I understood. I
nodded.
     "What holds molecules together are molecular bonds. Sort of
a . . . an electrical glue. Well, dissemblers take those bonds apart.
Different kinds of dissemblers take different kinds of molecular
bonds apart. Enzymes in your stomach, for instance, break the
bonds on food so you can digest it."
     I heard Lizzie laugh, her, behind the bedroom door. It was a
tired kind of laugh, and the worry about her started up in my gut
again. And in another few minutes Annie would come out. I didn't
know, me, what to say to Annie. But I knew what Dr. Turner was
saying was important—I could see it on her donkey face—and I
tried, me, to listen. To understand.
     "We can make dissemblers, and have for years. We use them
for all kinds of things: disposing of toxic waste, recycling, cleaning.
The dissemblers we make are pretty simple, and each one can
only break one kind of bond. They're made out of viruses,
mostly—that means they're genemod."
     "Could a . . . dissembler break bonds, it, that cause rabies?"
     "Rabies? No, that's a complex organic condition that—why do
you ask, Billy?" Her look was sharp again.
     "No reason."
     "No reason?"
     "No." I stared her down, me.
     "Anyway," she said, "the making of dissemblers is very care-
fully controlled by the GSEA. The Genetic Standards Enforce-
ment Agency. Naturally they have to control anything that can go
around dissembling things. But the GSEA is constantly ferreting
out and busting illegal genemod operations, run outside the law
for profit or even pure research, creating things without proper
controls. Including dissemblers. A lot of them are self-replicating,
that means they can reproduce themselves like small animals—"
     "Animals? Sex?" I could feel, me, the surprise on my face.
     She smiled. "No. Like . . . algae on a pond. But GSEA-
approved dissemblers have built-in clocking mechanisms for con-
trol. After a certain number of replications, they stop reproducing.
Illegal ones sometimes don't. Now there are rumors—still just
rumors—that an illegal replicator without a clocking mechanism is
loose. It attacks the molecular bonds of an alloy called duragem
that's used in many machines. Many machines. It—"
     I suddenly saw. "It's causing all these breakdowns, it. The
gravrail and the foodbelt and the warden 'bot and the medunit.
My God, some crazy donkey germ is breaking everything!"
     "Not exactly. Nobody knows yet. But maybe."
     "You people are doing it to us again!"
     She stared at me, her. I said, "You take everything, you, away
from us and call it aristo Living, and then you wreck the what's
left!"
    "Not me," she said, hard. "Not the government. The govern-
ment is what kept all of you alive after you became utterly un-
necessary to the economy. Rather than just eliminate seventy
percent of the population the way they did in Kenya and Chile.
Donkey genemod science could do that, too. But we didn't."
    The bedroom door opened and Lizzie came out, cleaned up,
leaning on Annie. Lizzie laid on the couch and said, "Tell me
something, Vicki."
    "Tell you what?" Dr. Turner said. She was still mad, her.
    "Anything. Anything I don't know, me. Anything new."
    Dr. Turner's expression changed again. For a second she almost
looked afraid, her. Annie said, "Can I see you a minute, Billy?"
    This was it, then. Annie was ready, her, to send me away. I
followed her into Lizzie's bedroom. She shut the door.
    "Billy, what we did, us, last night..." She didn't look at me.
I couldn't help her, me, even if I'd of wanted to. My throat was
too closed up. And I didn't want to.
    "Billy, I'm sorry. I behaved, me, like a fool. It just been too
long. I didn't mean to make you . . . I can't. . . Can we just go
back, us, to the way we was before? Friends? Partners, sort of,
but not. . ." She raised her beautiful chocolate eyes to me.
    I felt light, me, filled with light, like I might float off the floor.
She wasn't going to send me away. I could stay, me, with her and
Lizzie. Just like we were before.
    "Sure, Annie. I understand, me. We won't never talk about it
again."
     She let out a long sigh, her, like she'd been holding it in since
last night. Maybe she was. "Thank you, Billy. You're a good friend,
you."
    We went back out to Lizzie, who was listening hard to Dr.
Turner talk donkey talk. Here was more trouble.
    ". . . isn't like that, Lizzie. The basic principle of the computer
is binary, which just means 'two.' Tiny switches, too small to see,
with two positions: on and off. They make a code."
    "Like base two in math," Lizzie said eagerly, but underneath
her eagerness she was tired so deep, her, she could hardly keep
her eyes open.
    Annie said sharply, "She has to sleep now, her. Is the exam-
ination done, Doctor?"
    "Yes," Dr. Turner said, standing up. She looked bewildered,
her; I didn't see no reason why. "But I'll come back this afternoon."
    "Medunit don't see people twice a day," Annie said.
    "No," Dr. Turner said, still looking bewildered. She stared at
Lizzie, who was already asleep, her. "That's a remarkable child."
    "Bye, doctor," Annie said.
    Dr. Turner ignored her. She stood quiet, her, but tensed up
inside, like she was making some kind of important decision.
"Billy—listen to what I'm going to tell you. Stockpile whatever
you can from the food line here in this apartment. And if the
warehouse reopens, stockpile blankets and jacks and—oh—toilet
paper and soap and whatever else occurs to you. And buckets for
water—lots of buckets. Do it." She said it like nobody else but
her could of thought of all that. Like I couldn't of thought of it.
    Annie said, "Folks start stockpiling, them, there ain't going to
be enough for everybody else."
    Dr. Turner stared at Annie bleakly. "I know, Annie."
    "Ain't right."
    The doctor said softly, "A lot of things ain't right."
    "So you telling us, you, to make it more not right?"
    Dr. Turner didn't answer. I had the weird feeling, me, that she
didn't have an answer. A donkey without an answer.
    With a last look at Lizzie, Dr. Turner left. Annie said, "I don't
want her around here no more! She can just leave Lizzie alone!"
    I could of told Annie, me, that wasn't going to happen. Not
from the look in Lizzie's tired, sick eyes when the donkey doctor
was telling her about that computer code. This was what Lizzie'd
been looking for, her, all her life. Looking in the school software
that Dr. Turner talked down, and in the East Oleanta library when
we still had one, and in taking apart the apple peeler 'bot in the
Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Cafe kitchen. This. Somebody
who could tell her, them, what that smart little throwback mind
wanted to know. And Annie wasn't going to be able to stop it.
Annie didn't know that, her, but I did. Lizzie was already nearly
twelve years old, her, and ain't nobody been able to really stop
her from anything since she was eight.
    But I didn't say nothing, me, to Annie. Not then. Annie
watched Lizzie sleep with her whole heart in her eyes, and I
couldn't say nothing, because I was too busy, me, watching them
both.


That afternoon, though, I did hunt up Jack Sawicki, me, and ask
him for a terminal password. He gave it to me, him, without asking
too many questions. We go back a long way, Jack and me, and
besides he had his hands full. A technician actually arrived, her,
from Albany to fix the medunit. And there was supposed to be a
big all-lodge dance that night in the cafe. Three lodges combined,
them, to give the party. There was a dance jam, and betting games,
and some kind of bare-breasted beauty contest, and most of the
young people in town were going, which meant testing all the
security 'bots. Especially since the gravrail was running again, it,
and word of the dance might of traveled to other towns. Jack
didn't even ask, him, why I wanted the password.
     I walked, me, to the hotel. Dr. Turner wasn't around. It had
turned cool for August; maybe she went for another walk in the
woods, looking for Eden. She wasn't going to find it. I had looked,
me, and there wasn't nothing nowhere near where Doug Kane
had keeled over beside that rabid raccoon. No place that big-
headed girl could of come from.
     I said to the hotel HT, "Newsgrid mode. Password Thomas
Alva Edison." Jack don't want the whole town knowing the hotel
HT can go newsgrid; you'd have every Tom, Dick, and Harry in
here, them, who want to watch a different channel than the HT
at the cafe or the lodge houses.
     "Newsgrid mode," the HT said cheerfully. It's always cheerful,
it. "What channel, please?"
    "Some donkey channel."
    "What channel, please?"
    I tried different numbers, me, until I found a donkey newsgrid.
Then I sat and watched, me, for an hour, trying to remember the
words Dr. Turner explained. Molecular bonds. Dissemblers.
Alloy. Duragem. Only the newsgrid didn't use those words, it,
except for "duragem." Instead it used words like "proposed epi-
center" and "replication rate equations" and "Stoddard equations
for field failure curves" and "manual replacement efforts falling
behind incident rate." I watched anyway, me. After an hour I got
up and said, "Information mode."
    I went home, me, and got Lizzie's and Annie's meal chips.
When nobody in the cafe was near the foodbelt, I took everything
the chips would give me and put it all in a clean covered bucket
and carried it home. Lizzie was still asleep, her, holding her doll.
I went to the warehouse, which was opened again after a new
shipment came on the gravrail, and got two more buckets, three
blankets, and three sets of jacks on all our chips. Plus a new door
lock, flowerpots, and a suitcase. The tech there looked at me funny,
him, but didn't say nothing. I filled all the buckets with clean water,
one at a time, and lugged them, me up the stairs to Annie's apart-
ment. At the end my back ached and I was panting like the old
fool I was.
    But I didn't stop, me. I rested for ten minutes and then bor-
rowed Annie's broom. I took it down to the hotel. People were
carrying plasticloth banners into the cafe to decorate for the dance.
They laughed and joked, them; a young girl flashed her breasts.
Getting ready for tonight's contest. A few strangers checked them-
selves into the hotel on their New York State chips. They chat-
tered on about the dance. Dr. Turner was still gone, her.
    I took Annie's broom, me, and swept all the dead leaves out
of the hotel lobby, all the leaves left by the broken cleaning 'bot
that wasn't never going to get fixed now because it wasn't all that
important compared to other breakdowns, all the leaves that had
died, them, since last year, before all the breakdowns started and
the rabid coons first come to East Oleanta.
                              Nine
                          DREW ARLEN: FLORIDA




W         hen I left Seattle for Huevos Verdes, it was on a plane
          from Kevin Baker's corporate fleet. Kevin's reasons for
          not following the rest of the Sleepless to Sanctuary, unlike
Leisha's, were not idealistic. He was Sanctuary's financial liaison
with the rest of the planet. I figured that a Sleepless plane was
the least likely in the world to crash from duragem dissembler
damage. The plane would have been checked and rechecked com-
pulsively; the Sleepless do safety very well. "Because we've had
so little of it," Kevin said somberly when I phoned him and begged
the use of plane and pilot. I was not interested at that moment in
the social problems of the Sleepless. Kevin had never liked me,
and I'd never asked him for any favors before. But I did now. I
was going to force a showdown at Huevos Verdes, learn some
important answers. Maybe Kevin knew that. You never know how
much they know.
    The unceasing lattice, closed tight, swayed in my mind.
    "There's just one thing, Drew," Kevin said, and I thought I
saw the shades and shapes of apology flit across his face on the
vidscreen. Like all his generation of Sleepless, he looks a handsome
thirty-five. "Leisha insists on going with you."
    "How did Leisha even know I was going to Huevos Verdes?
As far as she knows, I'm on a concert tour!"
    "I don't know," Kevin said, which may or may not have been
true. Maybe Leisha had her own electronic spies in my hotel room,
or at the Seattle concert. Although it was hard to imagine she and
Kevin could do that without Huevos Verdes knowing. Maybe the
Supers did know, and tolerated Leisha's information system.
Maybe Leisha just knew me so well that she guessed what I was
feeling. Maybe she had some kind of probability program pre-
dicting what I would do, what any Norm would do. You never
know what they know.
    "And if I say no to Leisha?" I said.
    "Then no plane," Kevin said. He didn't meet my eyes. I saw
that he felt he owed her this, for old debts, things that had hap-
pened before I was born. I saw, too, that there was just the slightest
sign of puffiness along his jaw, the very beginning of a sag to his
handsomeness. He was 110 years old. Flat, low shapes slid through
my mind, the color of tarnished silver. Kevin was not going to
change his mind.
    Before Huevos Verdes, the plane went to Atlanta, to drop off
something very secret and very industrial, in which I was not
interested at all. Before that, it landed in Chicago to pick up Leisha.
There were no reporters. The GSEA agents must have been there,
of course, somewhere, but I didn't see them. Leisha climbed on
board with a lawyerly briefcase and a small green overnight case,
her golden hair blowing in the brisk wind off Lake Michigan. She
wore white pants, sandals, and a thin yellow shirt. I stared straight
ahead.
    "I have to go with you, Drew," Leisha said with no hint of
apology. This was her straight-forward, reasonable voice. It made
me feel like a kid again, being chided for flunking out of the
expensive donkey schools she'd sent me to. Schools no Liver could
have succeeded in—or so I'd told myself at the time. "I love
Miranda, too, you know. And I have to know what you and she
and the other Supers are up to. Because if it's what I think it is . . ."
    A hint of anger had crept into her voice. Leisha would feel
entitled to anger, just for being excluded from knowledge. I didn't
answer her.
    Miri once told me that there were only four important ques-
tions you could ask about any human being: How does he fill up
his time? How does he feel about how he fills up his time? What
does he love? How does he react to those he perceives as either
inferior or superior to him?
    "If you make people feel inferior, even unintentionally," she
had said, her dark eyes intense, "they will be uncomfortable around
you. In that situation, some people will attack. Some will ridicule,
to 'cut you down to size.' But some will admire, and learn from
you. If you make people feel superior, some will react by dis-
missing you. Some by wielding power—just because they can—
in greater or lesser ways. But some will be moved to protect and
help. All this is just as true of a junior lodge clique as of a group
of governments."
    I had wondered how she could possibly know anything about
junior lodge cliques. But, admiring her and wanting to learn, I
hadn't said anything.
    "I only want to protect you and Miranda, Drew," Leisha said,
"and to help any way I can."
    I looked out the plane window, at the sunlight reflected
blindingly on the metal wings, until the shapes behind my eyelids
blotted out the ones in my mind.


The plane, which had been so carefully checked for duragem-
dissembler contamination in Seattle, must have become contam-
inated in Atlanta. It went down over upcountry Georgia.
    It was the KingDome all over again, except that this pilot didn't
pray or curse or moan, and we were flying at twenty thousand
feet. The sky was a hazy blue, with clouds below that blocked any
view of the ground. The plane listed to the left, just slightly, and
I saw the flesh on the back of the pilot's neck change from light
brown to a mottled maroon. Leisha looked up from her briefcase.
Then the plane righted and I could feel my mind, which had
clenched into a tight hard shape like constipation, open again.
    But the next moment the plane lurched again, and began to
shudder. The pilot spoke to his console in low, urgent orders,
simultaneously punching in manual commands. The plane nose-
dived.
    The pilot pulled it up so hard I was thrown against Leisha. Her
bright hair filled my mouth. Her briefcase hurled forward, against
the back of the front seat. The briefcase said, "For maximum
utility, please hold this unit steady." A long, thin, thread spun
itself in my mind.
    Leisha grabbed the back of the front seat and pulled herself
off me. "Drew! Are you all right?"
    The plane dropped. The pilot stayed with it, issuing orders in
a monotonous voice controlled as machinery, manipulating the
manual. Leisha's briefcase said, "This unit is deactivating," in a
clear high voice like a trained soprano. Leisha's hand groped to
check my restraints. "Drew!"
    "I'm all right," I said, thinking, This is not all right. The thread
spun itself out, stretching tauter and tauter.
    We plunged through the clouds. There was a shrieking high
in the air, almost sounding above us, as if it were coming from
some entirely different machinery. Then the plane hit flat on its
belly on marshy ground. I felt the hit in my teeth, in my bones.
Leisha, thrown once more against me, said something very low, a
single word; it might have been "Daddy."
    The second the plane smashed into the ground, the sides lifted.
But it couldn't have been the same second, I thought later, because
nobody would design crash equipment that way. But it seemed
only a second until the sides lifted and the passenger restraints
sprang free. Leisha pushed me out of the plane, the same moment
I caught the acrid smell of smoke.
    I dropped on my belly into four inches of water covering
mucky ground. Leisha splashed down beside me, falling to her
knees. Without my powerchair I felt myself flailing, a desperate
fish, holding myself above water on my elbows. I crawled forward,
pulling myself with my upper arms through the muck and away
from the plane dragging my useless legs behind.
    Leisha staggered to her feet and tried to lift me. "No, run!" I
screamed, as if the smoke billowing out from the plane blocked
sound and not sight. "Not without you," she said. I could feel the
plane behind me, a bomb. I screamed, "I can go faster on my
own!" Maybe it was true.
    She kept on tugging at my body, though I was far too heavy
for her. The smoke thickened. I didn't hear the pilot climb out—
was he hurt? My left palm slipped in the mud and I fell face first
into it. Frantically I tried to get back up on my hands and drag
myself forward. "Run!" I screamed again at Leisha, who wouldn't
leave. Hopeless, hopeless. She wasn't strong enough to carry me,
and the plane was going to blow.
    The thread snapped. The lattice in my mind, as in Seattle,
disappeared.
    Someone ran toward Leisha from the other side of the plane.
The pilot? But it wasn't. The man tackled Leisha and she fell on
top of me. Once more my face was pushed into the mud. Then I
heard a faint pop. When I fought my eyes free of the mud, I
saw the air around the three of us shimmering. A force shield. Y-
energy. How strong was it? Could it withstand—
    The plane exploded in light and heat and blinding color.
    I fell back into the muck, pinned under Leisha. The world
rocked and I saw a tiny black water snake, terrified at the intrusions
into its swamp, dart forward and bite me on the cheek. The snake
started as a thin thread, then became a blur of close motion, and
then the world went black as its shiny scales and I didn't know if
the thread held or not.


He was a GSEA agent. When I came to, three of them stood
around me in a circle, like the ring of doctors around my bed
decades ago, when I was crippled. I lay on my back on a patch of
relatively dry, spongy ground at the edge of the shallow lake.
Leisha sat a little way off, her back against a custard-apple tree,
her head bent forward on her knees. Across the swamp, Kevin
Baker's plane burned, its smoke rising in billowy clouds.
    "Leisha?" I heard myself croak. My voice sounded as alien as
everything else. Only it wasn't alien at all. I recognized the heav-
iness of the muggy air, the whine of insects, the scummy pools
and waxy-white ghost orchids. And over everything, the gray drip-
ping beards of Spanish moss. I had been raised in upcountry Lou-
isiana. This was—had to be—Georgia, but much of the swampy
country is the same. It was I who had become the alien.
    "Ms. Camden will be all right in a moment," an agent answered.
"Probably just a concussion. There's help on the way. We're
GSEA, Mr. Aden. Lie still—your leg is broken."
    Again. But this time I felt no pain. There were no nerves left
to feel pain. I raised my chin slightly, feeling the pull in my stomach
muscles. My left leg lay bent at a sharp, unnatural angle. I lowered
my chin.
    The shapes slithering through my mind were gray and indistinct
on the outside, spiked within. They had a voice. Can't do anything
right, can you, boy? Who d'you think you are—some goddamn donkey?
    I said aloud, like a little boy, "A snake bit my cheek."
    A second man bent to squint at my face. It was covered with
mud. He said, not harshly, "There's a doctor on the way. We're
not going to move you until she gets here. Just lie still and don't
think."
     Don't think. Don't dream. But I was the Lucid Dreamer. I
 was. I had to be.
     Leisha's voice said thickly behind me, "Are we under arrest?
 On what charges?"
    "No, of course not, Ms. Camden. We're happy to be able to
assist you," said the man who had squinted at my cheek. The other
two agents stood blank-faced, although I saw one of them blink.
You can convey contempt with a blink. Leisha and I consorted
" with, assisted, Huevos Verdes. Gene manipulators. Destroyers of
the human genome.
     I saw Carmela Clemente-Rice standing beside the lattice in my
 mind, a clean cool shape, vibrating softly.
     "You are Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency," Leisha said.
 It wasn't a question. But she was a lawyer: she waited for an answer.
     "Yes, ma'am. Agent Thackeray."
     "Mr. Aden and I are grateful for your assistance. But by what
 right—"
     I never found out what legal point Leisha had been going to
 make.
     Men dressed in rags burst from behind trees, through tangled
 vines, from the mucky ground itself. One moment they weren't
 there, the next they were—that's how it felt. They hollered and
 shrieked and whooped. Agent Thackeray and his two
 contemptuous deputies didn't even have time to draw their guns.
 Lying flat on my back, I saw the ragged men foreshortened as they
 raised pistols and fired at what seemed like, but couldn't have been,
 point-blank range. Thackeray and the two agents went down, the
 bodies twitching. I heard somebody say, "Hail, yes, she's an
 abomination, that there's Leisha Camden," and a gun fired again:
 once, twice. The first time, Leisha screamed.
     I jerked my head toward her. She still sat with her back against
 the custard-apple tree, but now her upper body leaned forward,
 gracefully, as if she had fallen asleep. There were two red spots
 on her forehead, one below the other, the higher spot matting a
 strand of bright blonde hair that had somehow escaped the mud.
 I heard a long low moan and I thought "She's alive!"—the thought
 a desperate bright bubble—until I realized the moan was mine.
     The man who had said "Hail, yes" leaned over me. His breath
 blew in my face; it smelled of mint and tobacco. "Don't you worry
none, Mr. Arlen. We know you ain't no abomination against nature.
You're safe as houses."
     "Jimmy," a woman's voice said sharply, "Here they come!"
     "Well, Abigail, y'all are ready for 'em, ain't you?" Jimmy said
in a reasonable voice. I tried to crawl toward Leisha. She was dead.
     Leisha was dead.
     A plane droned overhead. The medical team. They could help
Leisha. But Leisha was dead. But Leisha was a Sleepless. Sleepless
didn't die. They lived, on and on, Kevin Baker was 110. Leisha
couldn't be dead—
    The woman called Abigail stepped off the high ground into
the swamp. She wore hip-high waders and tattered pants and shirt,
and she carried a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, ancient in
design but gleaming with spit and polish. The medical plane folded
its wings for a grav-powered landing. Abigail aimed, fired, and
blew it into a second torch in the swamp.
    "Okay," Jimmy said cheerfully. "That's it. Come on y'all, make
tracks, they'll be all over here in no time. Mr. Arlen, I'm sorry
this is going to be a rough ride for y'all, sir."
    "No! I can't leave Leisha!" I didn't know what I was saying. I
didn't know—
    "Sure you can," Jimmy said. "She ain't going to get no deader.
And you ain't none of her kind anyways. You're with James Francis
Marion Hubbley now. Campbell? Where you at? Carry him."
    "No! Leisha! Leisha!"
    "Have a little dignity, son. You ain't no child bawlin' after its
mama."
    A huge man, fully seven feet high, picked me up and swung
me over his shoulder. There was no pain in my leg but as soon as
my body struck his, red fire darted up my spine to my neck and
I screamed. The fire filled my mind, and the last view I ever had
of Leisha Camden was of her slumped gracefully against the
custard-apple tree, enveloped in the red fire of my mind, looking
as if she had just fallen quietly asleep.


I woke in a small, windowless room with smooth walls. Too
smooth—not a nanodeviance from the smooth, the perpendicular,
the unblemished. I didn't realize at the time that I noticed this.
My mind filled with grief, welling up in spurts, geysers, rivers of
hot lava the color of the two spots on Leisha's forehead.
    She really was dead. She really was.
    I closed my eyes. The hot lava was still there. I beat on the
ground with my fists, and cursed my useless body. If I could have
moved to shield her, to put myself between her and the ragged
gunmen . . .
    Not even trained GSEA agents had been able to shield her.
Or themselves.
    I couldn't hold back my tears, which embarrassed me. The lava
had swamped the furled lattice in my mind, buried it, as it was
burying me. Leisha . . .
    "Now, y'all stop that, son. Keep a little dignity. Ain't no woman
sired by man worth that kind of carry in' on."
    The voice was kind. I opened my eyes, and hatred replaced
the hot lava. I was glad. Hatred was a better shape: sharp, and
cold, and very compact. That shape would not bury me. I looked
at the concerned face of James Francis Marion Hubbley looming
over me, and I let the cold compact shapes slide through me, and
I knew that I was going to stay alive, and stay alert, and stay in
control of myself, because otherwise I might not be able to kill
him. And I knew I was going to kill him. Even if that meant his
was the last face I ever saw.
    "That's better," Hubbley said genially, and sat down on a tree
stump, hands on his knees, nodding encouragingly.
    It really was a tree stump. The walls snapped into sharp focus,
then, and I knew what kind of place I was in. I had seen the same
kind of walls with Carmela Clemente-Rice, and at Huevos Verdes.
This was an underground bunker, dug out of the earth by the tiny
precise machines of nanotechnology, plastered over with alloy by
other tiny precise machines. Eating dirt and laying down a thin
layer of alloy were not hard, Miri had told me once. Any competent
nanoscientist could create nonorganic mechanisms to do that. Cor-
porations did it all the time, despite government regulations. It
was only organic-based replicating nanotechnology that was hard.
Anyone could dig a hole, but only Huevos Verdes could build an
island.
    But Hubbley didn't look like a scientist. He leaned forward
and smiled at me. His teeth were rotten. Wisps of graying hair
hung on either side of a long, bony face with deeply sunburned
 skin and pale blue eyes. An odd lump under the skin disfigured
 the right side of his neck. He might have been forty, or sixty. He
 wore cloth rags, not jacks, of a streaky dull brown, but his boots,
 whole and high, were almost certainly from some goods warehouse
 someplace. I had never seen him before, but I recognized him.
 He belonged to the backwater South.
     In most of the country, the donkey-run District Supervisor
 This Warehouse or Congressman That Cafe had forced out all
 independent businesses. Livers could get everything they needed
 for free, so why pay for it? But in the rural South, and sometimes
 in the West, you still found hardscrabble businesses, weedy motels
 and chicken farms and whorehouses, getting poorer and poorer
 over forty years but hanging on, because damn it the gov'mint
 don't have no business runnin' our lives, them. Such people didn't
 mind much being poor. They were used to being poor. It was
 better than being owned by the donkeys. They took handicrafts
 or chickens or beans or other services in trade. They disdained
 jacks and medunits and school software. And wherever these pa-
 thetic business held on, so did criminals like Hubbley. Stealing,
 too, was outside the gov'mint, and so a mark of pride.
     Hubbley and his band would rob warehouses, apartment
blocks, even gravrails, for what they absolutely needed. They
would hunt in the deep swamps, and fish, and maybe grow a little
of this and that. There would be a still someplace. Oh, I knew
Jimmy Hubbley, all right. I'd known him all my life, before Leisha
took me in. My daddy was a Jimmy Hubbley without the inde-
pendence to break free from the system he cursed until the day
free government whiskey—not even home-distilled—killed him.
     And this was the man that had killed Leisha Camden.
     The shapes of hatred have great energy, like robotic knives.
     I said, "This is an illegal genemod lab."
     Hubbley's face creased into a huge grin. "That's exactly right!
Y'all are sharp, boy. Only this is just a bitty little outstation, where
Abigail can see to her equipment and we can pick up supplies.
And this place ain't used by the gene abominators no more. Y'all
are visitin' the Francis Marion Freedom Outpost, Mr. Arlen. And
let me say we're honored to have y'all. We all seen all your con-
certs. You're a Liver, all right. Livin' with the donkeys and the
Sleepless ain't harmed you at all. But then that's the way with the
true blood, ain't it?"
     There was something wrong with his speech. I fumbled, then
got it. He didn't talk like a Liver—none of what Miri called "in-
tensifying reflexive pronouns"—but he didn't talk like a donkey,
either. There was something artificial about his sentences. And I'd
heard this kind of speech before, but I couldn't remember where.
     I said, to keep him talking, "The Francis Marion Freedom
Outpost? Who was Francis Marion?"
     Hubbley squinted at me. He rubbed the lump on the side of
his neck. "Y'all never heard of Francis Marion, Mr. Aden? Really?
An educated man like you? He was a hero, maybe the biggest
hero this here country ever had. Y'all really never heard of him,
sir?"
     I shook my head. It didn't hurt. I realized then that my leg
had been set. I was on painkillers. A doctor must have seen me,
or at least a medunit.
     "Now I don't want to make y'all feel bad," Hubbley said ear-
nestly. His long bony face radiated regret. "Yall's our guest, and
it ain't right to make a guest feel bad about his ignorance. Especially
ignorance he cain't help. It's the school system, a sorry disgrace
for a democracy, that's entirely to blame here. Entirely. So don't
you fret, sir, about ignorance that just ain't your fault."
     He had killed Leisha. He had killed the GSEA agents. He had
kidnapped me. And he sat there concerned about my feeling bad
over not knowing who Francis Marion was.
     For the first time, I realized I might be dealing with a madman.
     "Francis Marion was a great hero of the American Revolution,
son. The enemy called him the 'Swamp Fox.' He'd hide in the
swamps of South Carolina and Georgia and just swoop down on
them British, hit 'em when they was least expectin' it, and then
melt back into the swamp. Couldn't never catch him. He was
fightin' for freedom and justice, and he was usin' nature to help
him. Not hinder."
     I had his speech now.
     Once Leisha and I had spent a whole night watching ancient
movies about a civil rights movement. Not civil rights for Sleepless
but a movement before that—a hundred years earlier?—about
blacks or women. Or maybe Asians. I was never too good at
history. But I had to do a paper for one of the schools Leisha kept
trying to get me through. I don't remember the history, but I
remember that Leisha searched for old movies adapted for decent
 technology because she thought I wouldn't read through the as-
 signed books. She was right, and I resented that. I was sixteen
 years old. But I liked the movies. I sat in my powerchair, pleased
 because it was 3:00 A.M. and I wasn't sleepy, I was keeping up
 with Leisha. I still thought, at sixteen, that I could.
     All night we watched sheriffs in groundcars busting up places
where voters registered in person—this was even before com-
puters. We watched old women sit at the backs of buses. We
watched black Livers denied seats in cafes, even though they had
meal chips. They all talked like James Francis Marion Hubbley.
Or, rather, he talked like them. His speech was a deliberate cre-
ation, a reenactment of an earlier time: history as far back as it
was electronically available. Maybe he thought they talked like
that in the American Revolution. Maybe he knew better. Either
way, it was disciplined and deliberate.
     He was an artist.
     Hubbley said, "Marion was puny, and none too firm in his
education, and bad-tempered, and given to black moods. His knees
were made wrong, right from the day his mother bore him. The
British burned his plantation, his men deserted him whenever they
got a hankerin' after their families, and his own commandin' officer,
Major General Nathanael Greene, wasn't none too fond of him.
But none of that slowed down Francis Marion. He did his duty
by his country, his duty as he saw it, whether all hail busted out
or not."
     I said, forcing the words out, "And what are you imagining is
your duty by your country?"
    Hubbley's eyes gleamed. "I said y'all was sharp, son, and you
are. Y'all got it right off. We're doin' our same duty as the Swamp
Fox, which is to fight off foreign oppressors."
    "And this time the foreign oppressors are anybody genemod."
    "Y'all got that right, Mr. Arlen. Livers are the true people of
this country, just like Marion's army was. They had the will to
decide for themselves what kind of country they wanted to live
in, and we got the will to decide for ourselves, too. We got the
will, and we got the idea of what this glorious nation ought to
look like, even if it don't look like it right now. We. Livers. And
y'all don't believe it, hail, just look at the mess the donkeys made
of this great country. Debt to foreign nations, entanglin' alliances
that sap us dry, the infrastructure crumblin' in our faces, the
technology misused. Just like the British misused the cannons and
guns of their day."
    My hip began to throb, distantly. The painkiller wasn't quite
strong enough. I had heard all this before. It was nothing more
than anti-research hatred, dressed up as patriotism. They had got-
ten Leisha after all, the haters. I couldn't stand to look at Hubbley,
and I turned my head away.
     "Course," he said, "you cain't stop genetic engineering. And
nobody should stop it. We sure aren't, or we wouldn't have let go
this here duragem dissembler."
     I turned my head slowly to stare at him. He grinned. His pale
blue eyes gleamed in his sunburned face.
    "Don't look like that, son. I don't mean me personally, Jimmy
Hubbley. Or even this brigade. But y'all didn't think this duragem
dissembler got loose by accident, did you?"
    That's when I noticed the walls, nanotech perfect. And I saw
again Miri's printouts, unable to pinpoint a single source for the
dissembler leak.
    Hubbley said, serious again, "There's a lot of us. Y'all need a
lot of people to make a revolution. We got the will to decide what
kind of country we want to live in, and we got the idea. The
technology."                                 x
    I choked out, "What technology?"
    "All of it. Well, maybe not all. But a lot. Some nonorganic
nano, some low-level organic nano."
    "The duragem dissembler . . . How did you . . . "
    "Now, y'all will learn that in good time. For today, just know
that we did. And it's going to bring down the false government,
same as the Revolution brought down the British. We capture the
technology we need, like Marion captured guns right from the
enemy. Why, in 1781, right on the Santee River—"
    "But you killed the GSEA agents—"
    "Genemod," Hubbley said briefly. "Abominations against na-
ture. Hail, using nanotech to fight the good fight—that ain't no
different than using the cannon of General Marion's time. But to
use it on human beings—that's a whole different war, son. That
ain't right. People ain't things, and shouldn't be treated like things,
with their parts altered and retrofitted and realigned. They ain't
vehicles, nor factories, nor robots. The donkeys done been treating
people like things way too long in this country. Liver people."
    "But you can't just allow organic genetic engineering on mi-
croorganisms and expect that it won't happen on people, too. If
you allow one—"
    "Hail, no." Hubbley stood and flexed his legs. "It ain't the
same thing at all. It's all right to kill germs, ain't it? Even to kill
animals to eat? But it ain't all right to kill human beings. We make
that distinction just fine in our laws about killin', don't we? What
in hail thinks we cain't make them in our laws about genemod
engineering?"
    I said, before I knew I was going to, "You can't hide from the
GSEA!"
    Hubbley gazed at me mildly from those watery blue eyes.
"Huevos Verdes does, don't it?"
    "That's different. They're Supers—"
    "They ain't gods. Or even angels." He stretched his back. "Fact
is, Mr. Arlen, we been hidin' from the GSEA for nearly five years
now. Oh, not all of us. The enemy has killed quite a few good
soldiers so far. And we inflicted our casualties, too. But we're still
here. And the duragem dissembler's out there bringin' the whole
war to a hastier conclusion."
    "But you can't hide from Huevos Verdes!"
    "Well, that's tougher to call. But the fact is, I suspect we're
not. I suspect Huevos Verdes knows a whole lot more about us
than the GSEA. Stands to reason."
    Miranda had never said. Not to me. Jonathan had never said,
nor Christy, nor Nikos. Not to me. Not to me.
    "Up till now, we ain't been strong enough to take on Huevos
Verdes as well, so it's been a good thing they've kind of ignored
us. But it's all different now. Not even Huevos Verdes can stop
the way this government's losing control, now that the duragem
dissembler is beyond stopping."
    "But—"
    That's enough for now," Hubbley said, not unkindly. "We got
to get movin' now. Those agents' deaths'll cause all hail to bust
loose. The company ought to be just about ready to go, and y'all
are goin' with us. But don't y'all worry none, Mr. Arlen—they'll
be plenty of time for you and me to talk. I know all this is new
to you, because y'all did have a faulty education. And y'all been
spendin' time with Sleepless, who ain't even human no more. But
y'all will learn better. Cain't help it, once you see the real war up
close. And we owe you that. You been a real help to us."
     I only stared at him. A sickening flood of shapes swept to the
edge of my mind, a wave poised to flow over me, swamp me.
     "I've been—"
     "Well, of course," Hubbley said, in what felt like genuine
astonishment. "Didn't you already guess that? Your last concert,
'The Warrior,' has been leavin' people feelin' far more independent
and ready to fight with will and idea. Y'all done that, Mr. Arlen.
It probably warn't what y'all intended, but that's what's been hap-
penin'. Since y'all began giving 'The Warrior,' our recruitment's
up three hundred percent."
     I couldn't speak. A door opened and Campbell loomed over
me.
    "Hail," Hubbley said, "two months ago we even got a cell of
genemod scientists who joined us voluntarily, without no torture
or nothing. You been making all the difference in the world, son.
    "And now, we really got to move out. Campbell will carry you.
If that hip starts to hurtin' too much, y'all be sure to holler. We
got more painkillers, and where we're going, there's a doctor. We
sure don't want you to suffer, not with all the help you been givin'
us, Mr. Arlen, sir. You been on the right side. It just takes some
folk a little longer than others to know it.
    "Handle him careful, Campbell. . . there. Here we go."


Campbell carried me across the swamp for about two hours, as
near as I could tell. It's hard to be certain about the time because
I kept blacking out. He had slung me over his shoulder like a sack
of soy, but I could tell he was trying to be gentle. It didn't help.
We walked single file, about ten of us, led by Jimmy Hubbley.
Hubbley knew the swamps. His people sometimes walked on
narrow ridges of semi-firm land with mucky pools on either side,
the kind of quicksand that as a child I had seen swallow a man in
less than three minutes. Other times we sloshed through brackish
water alive with turtles and snakes. Everybody wore hip-high wad-
ers. They kept close to dense tangles of vines, under gray moss
dripping from trees. That wouldn't make any difference, of course,
as soon as the GSEA brought in a tracking 'bot, which does ten
 times better than the best hound at picking up pheromones, not
 only following their trail but analyzing their content. I expected
 to be back with the GSEA in two hours.
     Then I saw that the last person in line was the woman, Abigail,
who had blown up the rescue plane with a rocket launcher. She
had left that at the outstation. Instead she carried a curved, dull-
colored machine like a metal bow, holding it above her head,
parallel to the ground. I knew what it was: a Harrison Pheromone
Obliterator. It released molecules that homed in on any molecular
traces of humans and neutralized them. It was classified military
equipment, which I happened to know about only through Huevos
Verdes, and there was no way the Francis Marion Freedom Out-
post could have one. But they did.
     For the first time, I began to believe Jimmy Hubbley that his
movement was not made up of isolated fanatics.
     Abigail was pregnant. With her arms raised above her head, I
could clearly see the curve of her belly under her jacks, maybe
five months along. As she walked she hummed to herself, a happy
tuneless little song. Her thoughts looked miles and landscapes
away.
    The swamp got thicker and hotter. Branches scratched my face
where I hung, helpless, over Campbell's shoulder. Snakes as thick
as a man's wrist slithered into shallow pools. A log heaved up, slid
beneath black water, and disappeared in a row of hissing bubbles.
Alligator.
    I closed my eyes. The humid air was thick with the waxy-white
scent of ghost orchids, growing on the trunks of pop-ash trees.
They weren't parasites. They lived on air.
    Insects sang and stung, a constant cloud.
    "Well, here we are," Jimmy Hubbley said. "Mr. Arlen, sir, how
are y'all faring?"
    I didn't answer. Every time I looked at him, my mind filled
with the shapes of hatred, cold and rotating like knives. Leisha
was dead. Jimmy Hubbley had killed Leisha Camden. She was
dead. I was going to destroy him.
    He didn't seem to care that I didn't answer. We had halted
under an enormous bay tree hung with gray moss. Other trees
crowded close. An ancient fallen cypress had half crumbled into
pulp, covered with the sucking tendrils of a strangler fig. In the
murky half-light I saw a striped lizard scuttle down a vine. On the
 other side of the bay tree was a dark-green expanse of moss, soft
 and even as an enclave lawn. The place smelled heavily of jungle
 rot.
      "Now, son, this next part might look a little disconcertin' to
y'all. It's real important that y'all remember you're in no danger.
That, and to take a real deep breath, close your mouth, and hold
your nose. And I'll tell you what—I'll go first, just to reassure
y'all. In the ordinary way, Abby would go first, but this time I
will. At least in part out of deference to the bride."
      He grinned at Abigail, flashing his broken teeth. She smiled
 back and lowered her eyes, but a minute later I caught her shoot
 a hooded glance at one of the other men, hard and meaningful as
 a grenade. Jimmy Hubbley didn't see it. He gave a rebel yell and
 jumped into the expanse of moss.
      I gasped, which sent unexpected pain through my left side.
Jimmy sank immediately to his waist in black, jellylike muck that
lay beneath the moss. His only hope now was to stay absolutely
still and let Campbell pull him out. But instead he gave a jaunty
little wiggle of his upper shoulders, one hand holding his nose,
the other nonchalantly clamped to his side. He stayed motionless
for maybe ten seconds, and then something sucked him down into
the muck. His chest disappeared, and then his shoulders, and then
his head. The moss, lightly spattered with muck, closed over him.
      My heart hammered against my lungs.
      Abigail went next. She shoved her Harrison Pheromone
Obliterator into a plastisynth pouch and sealed it. Then she
jumped onto the moss and disappeared.
      "Hold your nose, you," Campbell said—the first words he had
 spoken.
      "Wait. Wait. I—"
      "Hold your nose, you." He threw me out over the muck.
      My left side screamed. My feet hit the moss first, but there
was no feeling there, had been no feeling there for decades. It
wasn't until I'd sunk to my waist that I felt the clammy muck,
sucking against me like feces, cool after the hot air. It smelled of
rot, of death. Black shapes flooded my mind and I struggled, even
while a part of me knew I must hold absolutely still, there was no
help unless I held absolutely still, Leisha . . . Somebody chuckled.
      Then something grabbed me from below, something incor-
 poreal but powerful, like a wind. It sucked me down. The muck
  rose above my shoulders, and then to my mouth. It covered my
  eyes, filling the world with the same fecal shapes as my mind. I
  went under.
      For the third time, as I expected death, the purple lattice
 disappeared.
      And then I was lying on the floor of an underground room,
 while gloved hands seized me and dragged my mucky body. Pain
 spasmed my left side. Someone wiped my face. The hands stripped
 my clothes from me and thrust me naked into a sonar shower, and
 the muck dropped from my head and clothing in dry, scaly flakes
 that were in turn sucked into a vacuum at the shower's floor.
 Someone slapped a medpatch on my spine, and the pain dis-
 appeared.
  "Y'all can have a real shower, too, if y'all want," Jimmy Hubbley
        said kindly. "Some folks need one. Or think they do." He
stood before me already dressed in clean jacks, not at all raggedy,
 indistinguishable from any other Liver except by his uncared-for
 teeth.
     Abigail emerged from the water shower, unselfconsciously
naked, drying her hair. Her pregnant belly waggled slightly from
side to side. A bell rang, high and sweet, and Campbell was sucked
down onto the landing stage, which I saw now extended only a
few feet under a low overhang. Two men immediately pulled
Campbell off the stage, wiping his eyes and nose. Campbell stood,
covered with the shiny muck, and lumbered into the sonar shower.
     "Take off them gloves, boys, and help Mr. Arlen, here. Joncey,
y'all just have to take your eyes off your lovely bride."
     One of the two men reddened slightly. Hubbley seemed to
think this was funny, breaking into a guffaw, but I felt in my mind
the shapes of Joncey's anger. He said nothing. Abigail went on
coolly drying her hair, her face expressionless. Joncey and the
other man seized me under the armpits, carried me between them
out of the sonar shower, and set me down in the middle of the
room. Joncey handed me a set of clean jacks.
     "What size boots you wear, you?" He was younger than Abi-
gail, with black hair and blue eyes, handsome in a rough way that
had nothing to do with genetic engineering.
     I said, "I'd like my own boots back." They were Italian leather.
Leisha had given them to me. "Put them in the sonar shower."
     "Better you wear our boots, you. What size?"
     "Ten and a half."
     He left the room. I dressed. The lattice was back in my head,
closed tight as one of Leisha's exotic flowers.
     She was really dead.
    Joncey returned, with a pair of boots and a wheelchair. It wasn't
even grav-powered; it had actual wheels that apparently you turned
by hand.
     "An antique," Jimmy Hubbley said. "Sorry, Mr. Arlen, sir, that
here thing is the best we can do on such short notice. But y'all
just give us a little time."
    He beamed at me, obviously expecting some surprise that this
underground bunker was well enough equipped that an unex-
pected crippled captive could be provided with a wheelchair. I
didn't react. A faint disappointment shimmered over his face.
    I had his shape, then. He wanted to be admired. James Francis
Marion Hubbley. And he didn't even know that at least two of
his followers, Abigail and Joncey, already resented him.
    How much?
    I would find out.
    Joncey and the other man lifted me into the wheelchair. I
pulled on the Liver boots. Dressed, seated instead of flopping on
the floor like a fish, I felt less hopeless. Leisha was dead. But I
was going to destroy the bastards who'd killed her.
    I studied the room. It was low, no more than six and a half
feet high; Campbell had to stoop. Corridors radiated off in five
directions. The walls were nanotech smooth. I knew from Miranda
that the weak point of any shielded underground bunker is the
entrance. That's what's most likely to be detected by GSEA ex-
perts. The lab in East Oleanta had an elaborate entrance shield
created by Terry Mwakambe; no chance the GSEA would get
through that. But these people were not Supers. They would have
no more advanced technology than the government did. I guessed,
however, that the swamp-pool entrance was a use of technology
that the government hadn't yet thought of, adapted by some crazy
scientist who'd grown up in swamp country, and that it was virtually
undetectable. So far.
    How far did the underground tunnel system extend? With
nanodiggers, additional construction could be going on even now,
miles from here, without much disturbance on the surface. Hub-
  bley had said his "revolution" had been in progress for over five
  years.
      And these people had loosed the duragem dissembler on the
 country. Without the GSEA ever figuring out that it was not
 Huevos Verdes.
      Or did the GSEA know that, and nonetheless leak to the press
 that the Supers were responsible? Because it was all right to blame
 Sleepless, but embarrassing to admit you couldn't catch a bunch
 of Livers with captured or renegade nanoscientists on their side.
      I didn't know. But I did know that in a war this advanced,
 these tunnels would contain terminals. Miri had made me mem-
 orize override codes for most standard programming. And even
 if the programming wasn't standard, Jonathan Markowitz had made
 me memorize, over and over, access tricks that would get through
 to Huevos Verdes. And Huevos Verdes monitored everything.
 There had to be a way to reach them. All I needed was a terminal.
      If Huevos Verdes monitored everything, wouldn't they know
 about the underground movement?
      They must know. I remembered Miranda bending over print-
outs at Huevos Verdes: "We can't locate the epicenter of the
duragem problem." But the Supers must have at least been aware
that the dissembler was being released by some nationwide, or-
ganized group. Their intelligence was too good not to know it.
      And Miranda hadn't told me.
      "Are you hungry, you?" Joncey said. He spoke to Abigail, now
dressed in green jacks, but Hubbley answered.
      "Hail, yes. Let's have at it, boys."
     He pushed my chair himself. I let him, passive, feeling the
shapes in my mind hard as carbon-fiber rods. We all went down
the left-hand tunnel, passing several closed doors. Eventually
everyone else went through one door, Hubbley and I through
another. A small white room was furnished with wood—not
plastisynth—table and chairs. On the wall hung a large holo
portrait of a big-nosed, dark-eyed soldier in some sort of antique
uniform.
     "Brigadier General Francis Marion himself," Hubbley said,
with satisfaction. "I always eat separate from the troops, Mr. Arlen.
It makes for better morale. Did y'all know, sir, that General Mar-
ion was a fanatic on cleanliness? God's own truth. He dry-shaved
any soldier who didn't appear neat and clean on parade, and he
himself drank vinegar and water every day of his life, pretty near,
for his health. Drink of the Roman soldiers. Did you know that,
sir?"
    "I didn't know that," I said. My hatred for him burned cold,
sleek shapes in my mind. The room held no terminal.
    "As early as 1775 one British general wrote, 'Our army will
be destroyed by damned driblets'—and Francis Marion was the
damndest driblet those poor redcoats ever saw. Just like this war
will be won by damned driblets, sir." Hubbley laughed, exposing
his brown teeth. His pale eyes crinkled. He never took them off
me.
    "Will and idea, son. We got them both. Will and idea. You
know what makes the Constitution so great?"
    "No," I said. A young boy entered, dressed in turquoise jacks,
his long hair tied back with a ribbon. He carried bowls of hot
stew. Hubbley paid him as much attention as a 'bot.
    "What makes the Constitution so great is it brought the com-
mon man into the decision-making process. It let us decide what
kind of country we want. Us, the common man. Our will, and our
idea."
    Leisha had always said that what made the Constitution so great
was its checks and balances.
    She was dead. She was really dead.
    "That's why, sir," Hubbley continued, "it's so all-fired neces-
sary that we take back this great country from the donkey masters
who would enslave us. By driblets, if necessary. Yes, by God, by
driblets." He attacked his stew with gusto.
    "In fact, preferably by driblets," I said. "You wouldn't like this
war nearly as much if you fought it aboveground, in the courts."
    I had expected to make him angry. Instead he laid down his
spoon and squinted thoughtfully.
    "Yes, I do believe y'all are right, Mr. Arlen. I do believe y'all
are right. We each have our God-given temperament, and mine
is for fighting in driblets. Just like General Marion. Now, that's a
real interesting insight." He went back to spooning stew.
    I tasted mine. Standard Liver soy base, but with chunks of real
meat added, gamy and a little tough. Squirrel? Rabbit? It had been
decades since I'd had to eat either.
    "Not that the Constitution don't have its own limits," Hubbley
continued. "Now y'all take Abigail and Joncey. They understand
exactly what those limits need to be. They're manipulatin' gene
combinations in the right way: through human procreation." He
dragged out the last two words, savoring each syllable. "Some of
Joncey's genes, some of Abby's, and the final shuffle in God's
hands. They respect the clear line in the Constitution between
what is God's and what is man's to manipulate."
     I needed to know everything I could about him, no matter
how nutty, because I didn't know yet what I would need to kill
him. "Where in the Constitution does it draw that line?"
    "Ah, son, don't they teach you nothin' in them fancy schools?
It oughtn't be allowed, no, it ought not. Why, right there in the
Preamble, it announces clear as daylight that 'We the People' are
writin' the thing 'in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common de-
fence,' and et cetera. What's a perfect union about letting donkeys
control the human genome? It just drives people farther apart.
What's Justice about not letting Joncey and Abby's babe start life
on an equal footin' with a donkey child? How does that make for
domestic tranquility? Hail, it makes for envy and resentment, that's
what it makes for. And what on God's green earth is the 'common
defence' if it ain't the defence of the common people, the Livers,
to have their kids count just as much as a genemod babe? Abby
and Joncey are fightin' for their own, just like natural parents
everywhere, and the Constitution gives 'em the right to do that
right there in its first sacred paragraph."
    I had never heard anyone use the word 'babe' before. He sat
there spooning his wretched stew, Jimmy Hubbley, as artificial
and as sincere as anyone I had ever met.
    Intellectual arguments confuse me. They always have. I felt
the helpless feeling rise in me, the one I'd always had arguing with
Leisha, with Miranda, with Jonathan and Terry and Christy. The
best I could answer, out of confusion and hatred, was, "What gives
you the right to decide what's right for 175 million people?"
    He squinted at me again. His apologetic voice returned. "Why,
son—ain't that what your Huevos Verdes was doin'?"
    I stared at him.
    "Sure it is. Only they cain't decide for common people, 'cause
they ain't. Clearly. Not like us. Not like him." He waved his spoon
at the portrait of Francis Marion. Stew dribbled off the spoon onto
the table.
      "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 I 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. Any-
body 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. Aden?
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. Aden, 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; appar-
 ently 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, in-
terested 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 pat-
terns 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 un-
derstand, 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 Aden. You're . . ."
     "Peg. Just behave, you." She stared at me with flat dislike.
     "Right," I said. "And what natural combination of genes pro-
duced 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.
     Peg shoved my chair against a table, brought me a bowl of
stew, and settled down to watch the scooter race. Her huge body
dwarfed the standard-issue plastisynth chair.
     I watched the race, while observing everything through the
zoom area of my corneas. Abby's lace was covered with a complex
design of small oblongs, no two the same, like snowflakes. She
snipped out an oblong and presented it, laughing, to Joncey. Three
men played cards; the one whose hand I could see held a pair of
kings. After a while I said to Peg, "Is this how you spend all your
days? Contributing to the revolution?"
     "Shut up, you."
     "I want to see more of the compound. Hubbley said I could
if you take me."
     "Say 'Colonel Hubbley,' you!"
     "Colonel Hubbley, then."
     She seized my chair hard enough to rattle my teeth and shoved
it along the nearest corridor. "Hey! Slow down!"
     She slowed to an insolent crawl. I didn't argue. I tried to
memorize everything.
     It wasn't easy. The tunnels all looked the same: featureless
white, nanoperfect, lined with dirt-resistant alloy and identical
white, unmarked doors. I tried to memorize tiny bits of dropped
food, boot scuffs. Once I saw a small oblong bit of lace half caught
under a door, and I knew Abigail must have come that way. Peg
pushed me like a 'bot, impassive and tireless. I was losing track
of what I'd tried to memorize.
     After three hours, we passed a cleaning 'bot, whirling up the
things I had used as markers.
     In the whole tour, I saw only two open doors. One was to a
common bath. The other was only opened for a moment, then
closed, allowing the fastest glimpse of high-security cannisters,
rows and rows of them. Duragem dissemblers? Or some other
nonhuman-genome destruction that Jimmy Hubbley thought
ought to be unleashed on his enemies?
     "What was that?" I said to Peg.
     "Shut up, you."
     An hour later, we returned to the commons area. Lunch was
still in progress. Peg shoved me to an empty table and plunked
another bowl of stew in front of me. I wasn't hungry.
     A few minutes later Jimmy Hubbley sat down with me. "Well,
son, I hope y'all are satisfied with your tour."
     "Oh, it was great," I said. "I saw all kinds of contributions to
the revolution."
     He laughed. "Oh, it's happenin', all right. But y'all ain't goin'
to provoke me into showing y'all before I'm ready. Time enough,
time enough."
     "Aren't you afraid your troops will get restless, doing nothing
like this? What did General Marion do with his men between
battles?" I put down my spoon; I hated him too much to even
pretend to eat in his presence. God, I wanted a drink.
     He seemed surprised. "Why, Mr. Arlen, sir, they don't ordi-
narily do nothin'. This here's Sunday, the Sabbath. Come tomor-
row, we go back to regular drill. General Marion knew the value
of a day for rest and recuperation of the human spirit."
     He looked around with satisfaction at the desultory gambling,
scooter watching, slumped figures probably on sunshine. Only
three faces in the whole damn room showed any real animation.
Joncey and Abigail, smiling at each other, Abby still sewing on
billowing patterned lace. And Peg.
     "Eat your stew, son," Hubbley said kindly. "Y'all will need
food to keep your strength up."
I left my spoon where it lay. "No," I said. "I won't." Of course he
didn't understand that. But Peg, with animal alertness, caught
something in my tone. She looked at me hard, before she went
back to watching Jimmy Hubbley, her sullen face transformed by
awe and respect and the hopeless, longing love of an ordinary
person for one clearly as far above her as a god.
           OCTOBER 2114
The test of our progress is not whether we
 add more to the abundance of those who
have much; it is whether we provide enough
       for those who have too little.
        —Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
         Second Inaugural Address
                              Ten
                    DIANA COVINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




T     he most remarkable thing about being in an off-line dump
      like East Oleanta was my realization that the GSEA didn't
      know where Miranda Sharifi was. They were a sophisticated
and determined agency, but apparently they didn't know where I
was either. I wasn't using any of the identities that Colin Kowalski
had issued me, and I had changed personae three times on the
way to East Oleanta. "Victoria Turner" had credentials with the
IRS, the state of Texas, the bank where her family trust was
stashed, educational software franchises, the National Health Care
Institute, grocery stores . . . My larcenous friend was good at what
he did. Good enough to convince Huevos Verdes . . . who knew?
But I felt confident the GSEA didn't.
    The second most remarkable thing was that I didn't call up the
GSEA and tell them where I was and what I suspected. I put this
down to hubris. I wanted to be able to say, "Here is Miranda
Sharifi, lattitude 43°45'l6" longitude 74°50'86", it's an illegal
genemod lab, go get her, boys," instead of saying, "Well, I think
she's here someplace nearby, possibly, although I have no proof."
If I were a regular agent, my silence would have been intolerable.
But I wasn't a regular agent. I wasn't a regular anything. And I
wanted, once in my ineffectual life, to succeed at something by
myself. I wanted that very badly.
     Of course, like the GSEA, I didn't exactly know where Miranda
was, either, although I suspected she was underground somewhere
in the wooded Adirondack Mountains near East Oleanta. But I
didn't have the faintest idea how to actually find her.
     Until Lizzie Francy.
I went back to see Lizzie Francy the same evening I first told her
about simple computer operations, the day after I'd put a medpatch
on her. I'd seen how Billy Washington changed color when I'd
asked about Eden. That old man was the worst liar I'd ever seen.
He knew something about Eden; he was hopelessly in love with
the much tougher and more conventional Annie; Lizzie could do
anything with him she chose. Poor Billy.
    Lizzie still sat on the spectacularly ugly plastisynth sofa, dressed
in a pink nightshirt, her hair in sixteen braids tied with pink ribbon.
Electronic parts lay scattered over her blanket. I viewed her around
Billy, who opened the door but didn't want to let me in.
    "Lizzie's asleep, her."
    "No, she isn't, Billy. She's right there."
    "Vicki!" Lizzie cried in her little-girl voice, and something
unexpected turned over in my chest. "You're here!"
    "She's sick, her, too sick for no company."
    "I'm fine, me," Lizzie said. "Let Vicki in, Billy. Pleeeaasse?"
    He did, unhappily. Annie wasn't around. I said, "What have
you got there, Lizzie?"
    "The apple peeler 'bot from the cafe kitchen," she said
promptly, and without guilt. Billy winced. "It broke and I took it
apart, me, to see if I can fix it."
    "And can you?"
    "No. Can you?" She looked at me with hungry brown eyes.
Billy left the apartment.
    "Probably not," I said. I'm not a 'bot tech. But let me see."
    "I'll show you, me."
    She did. She put together the pieces of the peeler 'bot, which
had a simple standard Kellor chip powered by Y-energy. I went
to school with Alison Kellor, who always professed a world-weary
disdain for the electronic empire she would inherit. Lizzie assem-
bled the 'bot in about two minutes and showed me how it wouldn't
work despite an active chip. "See this little teeny bit here, Vicki?
Where the peeler arm fits onto the 'bot? It's sort of melted, it."
    I said, "What do you think did that?"
    The big brown eyes looked at me. "I don't know, me."
    "I do." The destroyed joint was duragem. Had been duragem,
until attacked by the renegade replicating dissembler.
     "What melted it, Vicki?"
     I turned the 'bot over in my hands, looking for other duragem
joints. They were there, between the less durable but cheaper
nonmoving plastics. The others weren't "sort of melted, them."
But neither were a few of the duragem parts.
     "What melted it, Vicki? Vicki?" I felt a hand on my arm.
     Why hadn't the other duragem joints been attacked? Because
the dissembler was clocked. It had self-destructed after a certain
time, and had also stopped replicating after making a certain num-
ber of copies of itself. Much—maybe even most—nanotech had
this safety feature.
     Lizzie shook my arm. "What melted it, Vicki? What?"
     "A tiny little machine. Too small to see."
     "The duragem dissembler? The one I saw, me, on the newsgrid?"
     Then I did look up. "You watch the donkey newsgrids?"
     She gave me a long, serious look. I could see this was an
important decision for her: to trust me or not. Finally she said, as
if it were an answer, "I'm almost twelve, me. My mama, she still
thinks I'm six."
     "Ah," I said. "So how does a twelve-year-old see donkey news-
grids? They're never on at the cafe."
     "Nothing's on in the middle of the night. Some nights. I go
there, me, and watch."
     "You sneak out?"
     She nodded solemnly, sure that this admission would bring
down the world. She was right. I had never imagined a Liver kid
with that much ambition or curiosity or intelligence or guts. Lizzie
Francy was not supposed to exist. She was as much a wild card as
the duragem dissembler, and as unwelcome. To both Livers and
donkeys.
     And then I saw a way to use her difference.
     "Lizzie, how'd you like to make a bargain with me?"
     She looked wary.
     "If you tell me what I want to know, I'll help you learn as
much as I can about how machines work."
     Lizzie's face changed. She leapt on my words like the promising
little piranha she was.
     "You promised, you. Vicki, I heard you, me, and that was a
promise. You say you'll help me find out everything about how
machines work!"
    "I said, 'as much as I can.' Not everything."
    "But you promised, you."
    "Yes, yes, I promised. But in return you have to answer all
the questions I have."
    She considered this, her head cocked to one side, the sixteen
pink-tied braids all sticking out in different directions. She didn't
see any major trap. "All right."
    "Lizzie, have you ever heard of Eden?"
    "In the Bible?"
    "No. Here, near East Oleanta."
    Despite our agreement, she hesitated. I said, "You promised,
too."
    "I heard, me, Billy and Mama talking about it. Mama said Eden
don't never exist except in the Bible. Billy, he said he wasn't so
sure, him. He said maybe it was a place in the mountains or the
woods that donkeys don't know about, and Livers might work
there, them. They thought I was asleep."
    A place donkeys don't know about. Meaning, to East Oleanta,
government donkeys, practically the only kind a town like this
ever saw.
    "Does Billy ever go off alone into the woods? Without your
mama?"
    "Oh, yeah, he likes it, him. Mama wouldn't never go off in the
woods. She's too fat." Lizzie said this matter-of-factly; for some
reason I thought suddenly of Desdemona, seizing my soda-can
bracelet without guilt or evasion.
    "How often does he go? How long does he stay?"
    "Every couple of months, him. For five or six days. Only now
he's getting too old, him, Mama says."
    "Does that mean he won't go any more?"
    "No, he's going next week, him. He told her he got to, unless
something important breaks down and he's afraid, him, to leave
us alone. But we got the food." She pointed to the pathetic piles
of tasteless synthetic food rotting in buckets in the corners.
    "When next week?"
    "Tuesday."
    Lizzie knew everything. But more to the point—what did Billy
know? Did he know where Miranda Sharifi was?
    "What time does Billy leave when he goes to the woods?"
     "Real early in the morning. Vicki, how are you going to teach
 me, you, everything about machines? When do we start, us?"
     "Tomorrow."
     "Today."
     "You're still recovering. You had pneumonia, you know. Do
 you know what that is?"
     She shook her head. The silly pink ribbons bobbed. If this
were my kid, I'd tie up her braids with microfilaments.
    If this were my kid? Jesus.
    "Pneumonia is a disease caused by bacteria, which is itself a
tiny little living machine, which got destroyed in your body by
another tiny living machine engineered to do that. And that's
where we'll start tomorrow. If you have the right codes there are
programs you can access on the hotel terminal, where people
hardly ever go ..." For the first time it occurred to me that Annie
would object vigorously to this tutorial program. I might be ed-
ucating Lizzie in the middle of the night.
    "What codes?" Her eyes were bright and sharp as carbon-rod
needles.
    "I'll show you tomorrow."
    "I already reprogrammed, me, the servoentrance door at the
cafe to let me and Mama in. I can understand about the hotel
terminal. Just say, you, a little bit how . . ."
    "Good-bye, Lizzie."
    "Just say how—"
    "Good-bye."
    As I closed the door, she was once more taking apart the peeler
'bot.


In the next six weeks, Lizzie spent all her free time at the hotel
terminal, accessing education software in the vast donkey public
library system. She appeared at the hotel at odd times, in the early
morning with her hair wet from the baths, or at twilight, times I
suspected Annie thought she was playing with her friends Carlena
and Susie, a pair of dumb chirps. Lizzie disappeared just as ab-
ruptly, an outlaw running from the scene of the scholastic crime
to report for dinner or for church. I don't know if she accessed
in the middle of the night or not; I was, sensibly, asleep. She
learned at a frightening rate, once she had something substantial
to learn. I didn't control what she accessed, and I only commented
when she had questions. After the first day she zeroed in on
computer systems, both theory and applications.
     Within a week she showed me how she'd reprogrammed a still-
functional cleaning 'bot to dance, by combining, speeding up, and
sequencing its normal movements. The thing jigged around my
dismal hotel room as if it had a metallic seizure. Lizzie laughed so
hard she fell off the bed and lay helplessly shrieking on the floor,
her arms wrapped around her negligible middle, and again that
unwelcome something turned over, blood warm, in my chest.
     Within a month she had worked through the first two years
of the American Education Association-accredited secondary
school software for computer science.
     After six weeks she showed me, gleefully, how she'd broken
in to the Haller Corporation data banks. I peered over her shoul-
der, wondering if the Haller security software would trace the
intrusion to East Oleanta, where there should not have existed
anyone capable of data bank intrusion. Did the GSEA monitor
corporate break-ins?
     I was being paranoid. There must be a quarter million teenage
net busters snooping around in corporate data banks just to count
technological coup.
     But those kids were donkeys.
     "Lizzie," I said, "no more net busting. I'm sorry, honey, but
it's dangerous."
     She pressed her lips together, a suspicious little Annie. "Dan-
gerous how?"
     "They could trace you, come here, and arrest you. And send
you to jail."
     Her black eyes widened. She had some respect for authority,
or at least for power. A cowardly little Annie.
     "Promise," I said, relentless.
     "I promise, me!"
     "And I'll tell you what. Tomorrow I'll go to Albany on the
gravrail"—it was working again, briefly—"and buy you a handheld
computer and crystal library. It has far more on it than you can
access here. You won't believe what you'll learn to do." And a
free-held unit couldn't be traced. I could use the "Darla Jones"
account, which the high cost of a crystal library and compatible
unit would just about empty. Maybe I'd better go farther than
Albany to buy it. Maybe New York.
    Lizzie stared at me, for once speechless. Her pink mouth made
a little "O." Then she was hugging me, smelling of warehouse
distrib soap, her voice muffled against my neck.
    "Vicki. . . a crystal library . . . oh, Vicki. . ."
    For you. I didn't say more. I couldn't.
    Anthony, who came before Russell and after Paul, once told
me that there was no such thing as a maternal instinct, nor a
paternal one either. It was all intellectual propaganda designed to
urge humans toward a responsibility they didn't really want, but
couldn't admit not wanting. It was a PR tour de force without
genuine biological force.
    I used to love some very stupid men.


Three days after I brought Lizzie her crystal library, I was up by
4:00 A.M., ready to follow Billy yet again into the deep woods.
     This was my third trip in six weeks. Lizzie kept me informed,
per our bargain, of Billy's plans. She told me he used to go every
few months, but now he went far more often. Maybe he had even
made a few short trips Lizzie and I missed. Something was stepping
up his scouting schedule, and I hoped it would lead me to "Eden,"
careful hints about which were increasing on the local Liver chan-
nels. Broadcast from where? By whom? I'd bet anything they
weren't part of the regularly organized broadcasting from Albany.
     This morning it was snowing in a desultory, nonserious way,
even though it was only mid-October. In San Francisco, I hadn't
paid much attention to the "coming mini-ice age" stuff. In the
Adirondacks, however, there wasn't much choice. Everyone went
around bundled in winter jacks, which were surprisingly warm,
although no more tastefully dyed than summer jacks. Marigold,
crimson, electric blue, poison green. And for the conservative, a
dun the color of cow piles.
     Which was what Billy wore when he emerged from his apart-
ment building at 4:45 A.M. He carried a plasticloth sack. It was
still dark out. He walked toward the river, which flowed by the
edge of the village, only five or six blocks from what passed as
downtown. I followed him unseen while there were buildings for
cover. When there weren't, I let him get out of sight and then
followed his footprints in the light snow. After a mile the footsteps
stopped.
     I stood under a pine whose branches started ten feet up the
trunk, pondering my choices. From behind me Billy said quietly,
"You ain't gotten any better, you, in the woods. Not since your
first time."
     I turned. "How did you do that?"
     "Don't matter how I did it, me. The question is what you think
you're doing here."
     "Following you. Again."
     "Why?"
     He had never asked before. The other times I'd followed him,
he'd refused to talk to me at all. He looked unusually impressive,
standing there in the bleak landscape with his wrinkled face stern
and judgmental: a Liver Moses. I said, "Billy, where is Eden?"
     "That what you after, you? I don't know where it is, me, and
if I did I wouldn't take you there."
    This was promising; when someone has reasons not to do
something, he has at least conceived that it's possible to do it.
From possibility to agreement isn't nearly as large a leap as from
denial to possibility. "Why not?"
     "Why not what?"
     "Why wouldn't you take me to Eden if you knew where it
was?"
     "Because it ain't no donkey place, it."
     "Is it a Liver place?"
     But he seemed to realize he'd said too much. Deliberately he
put down his sack, brushed the snow off a fallen tree, and sat
down with the air of a man who wasn't going to move until I left.
I would have to prod him by offering more.
     "It's not a Liver place, either, is it, Billy? It's a Sleepless place.
You've seen a SuperSleepless from Huevos Verdes, or more than
one, in these woods. They have larger heads than normal, and
they talk like they're slowing down their speech, because they are.
They think so much faster and more complexly than we do—you
or me—that it's an effort for them to choose a few simple-enough
words for us to understand. You saw one, didn't you, Billy? A
man or a woman?"
     He stared at me, a wrinkled somber face against the gray and
white woods.
     "When was this, Billy? In the summer? Or longer ago than
 that?"
     He said, with transparent effort and equally transparent men-
 dacity, "I never saw nobody, me."
     I walked toward him and put my hand firmly on his shoulder.
"Yes, you did, you. When was it?"
     He stared at the snowy ground, angry but unwilling, or unable,
to show it.
     "Okay, Billy," I sighed. "If you won't tell me, you won't. And
you're right—I can't follow you unseen through the woods because
I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm already cold."
     Still he said nothing. I trudged back to town. Lizzie's computer
and crystal library wasn't all that Dark Jones had bought in New
York. The homing device I'd stuck on the back of his plastisynth
jacket, behind the shoulder and below the neck where he wouldn't
see it until he removed the jacket, registered as a motionless dot
on my handheld monitor. It stayed a motionless dot for over an
hour. Wasn't he cold?
    Russell, who came before David and after Anthony, had a
theory about body temperature. He said that we donkeys, who
are used to having instant adjustments in anything that happens
to distress us, have lost the ability to ignore slight fluctuations in
body temperatures. Constant environmental pampering had soft-
ened us. Russell saw this as a positive, because it made very easy
identification of the successful and the genetically highly tuned
(who naturally were one and the same). Watch a person pull on
a sweater for a one-degree temperature drop and you know you're
looking at a superior person. I lacked the strength of will to avoid
responding to this. Sort of a Princess and the Centigrade Pea, I
said, but whimsey was wasted on Russell. We parted shortly af-
terwards when I accused him of inventing even more artificial
social gradations than the ridiculous number that already existed,
and he accused me of being jealous of his superior genemod left-
brain logic. The last I heard, he was running for congressional
representative from San Diego, which has possibly the most mo-
notonous climate in the country.
    Maybe Billy Washington made a fire; the monitor wouldn't
show that. After an hour, as I sat in warmth in my East Oleanta
hotel room, the Billy-dot moved. He walked several more miles
over the course of the day, in easy stages, in various directions.
A man looking for something. At no point did the dot disappear,
which would have meant he'd disappeared behind a Y-energy
security shield. The same thing happened for three more days and
nights. Then he came home.
    Incredibly, he didn't confront me about the homer. Either he
never found it, even after he took his jacket off (hard to believe),
or he did but had no idea what it was and decided not to wonder.
Or—and this only occurred to me later—he saw it but thought
someone else had put it there, maybe while he was sleeping, and
wanted it left alone. Someone out in the woods. Someone he
wanted to please.
    Or maybe that wasn't it at all. What did I know about how a
Liver thought? What, in fact, did I know about how anybody
thought? Would somebody who had the ability to discern that
knowledge on short acquaintance have actually spent eighteen
months with Russell?


Two days after Billy's return from the woods, Annie said, "The
gravrail's broke again, it." She didn't say it to me. I sat in her
apartment, visiting Lizzie, but Annie had yet to acknowledge di-
rectly that I was there. She didn't look at my face, she didn't speak
to me, she maneuvered her considerable bulk around the space I
occupied as if it were an inexplicable and inconvenient black hole.
Probably Billy had let me in only because I'd brought a double
armful of food and warehouse goods, obtained on "Victoria Turn-
er's" chip, to contribute to the growing stockpiles along the walls.
The place smelled vaguely like a landfill where the waste-eating
microorganisms had fallen behind.
     "Where's it at?" Billy said. He meant the actual train, sitting
somewhere along its magnetic track.
     "Right here," Annie said. "About a quarter mile outside town,
that's what Celie Kane said, her. Some of them are mad enough
to burn it."
     Lizzie looked up with interest from the handheld terminal with
her precious crystal library. I hadn't witnessed Annie's reaction to
my gift, but Lizzie had told me about it. The only reason Lizzie
still owned the thing was that she'd threatened to run away on a
gravrail otherwise. She was twelve, she'd told her mother—a lot
of kids left home at twelve. I suppose Liver kids did, coming and
 going with their portable meal chips. That was when Annie had
 stopped speaking to me.
     Lizzie said, "Can trains burn, them?"
     "No," Billy said shortly. "And it's against the law to do hurt
 to them anyway."
     Lizzie digested this. "But if nobody can't come, them, from
 Albany on the train to punish people who break the law—"
     "They can come, them, on a plane, can't they?" Annie snapped.
 "Don't you be thinking about breaking no laws, young lady!"
     "I ain't thinking about it, me. Celie Kane is," Lizzie said rea-
 sonably. "Besides, ain't nobody going to come, them, to East
 Oleanta on a plane anymore from Albany. All those donkeys got
 bigger problems than us, them."
     "Out of the mouths of babes," I said, but naturally no one
 answered.
     Outside, in the hall, someone shouted. Feet ran past our door,
came back, pounded once. Billy and Annie looked at each other.
Then Billy opened the door a crack and stuck his head out. "What's
wrong?"
     "The warehouse ain't opened again, it! Second week in a row!
We're going smash that fucking building—I need another blanket
and some boots, me!"
     "Oh," Billy said, and shut the door.
     "Billy," I said carefully, "who else knows you have food and
warehouse goods hoarded here?"
     "Nobody but us four," he said, not meeting my eyes. He was
ashamed.
     "Don't tell anyone. No matter how much they say they need
this stuff."
     Billy looked helplessly at Annie. I knew he was on my side.
East Oleanta, I had discovered, had a healthy barter economy
existing side-by-side with the official donkey one. Skinned rabbits,
good roasted over an open fire, were traded for spectacularly
hideous handmade wall hangings or embroidered jacks. Nuts for
toys, sunshine for food. Services, everything from babysitting to
sex, for music decks or homemade wooden furniture from trees
in the forest. I could see Billy trading some of our stockpiled stuff,
but not risking it all by •letting anyone know we had it. Not when
there was a chance Lizzie might need it.
     Annie was another story. She would die for Lizzie, but she
had in her the sharing and fairness and unthinking conformity that
create a sense of community.
    I stretched. "I think I'll go witness the liberation of the District
Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson Goods Distribution Center."
    Annie gave a sour look without actually looking at me. Billy,
who knew that I was equipped with both a personal shield and
stun weaponry, nonetheless said unhappily, "Be careful." Lizzie
jumped up. "I'm going too, me!"
    "You shut up, child! You ain't going no place, you, that dan-
gerous!" Annie, of course. The broken gravrail temporarily in-
validated Lizzie's leverage: her threat to leave.
    Lizzie pressed her lips together so tightly they all but disap-
peared. I had never seen her do that before. She was still Annie's
child. "I am too going, me."
    "No, you're not," I said. "It's too dangerous. I'll tell you what
happens." Lizzie subsided, grumbling.
    Annie was not grateful.
    A small crowd, twenty or so, battered on the foamcast door
of the warehouse, using a sofa as battering ram. I knew this was
hopeless; if the Bastille had been made of foamcast, Marie An-
toinette would have gone on needing wigs. I lounged across
the street, leaning against a turquoise apartment building, and
watched.
    The door gave way.
    Twenty people gave a collective shout and rushed inside. Then
twenty people gave another shout, this one furious. I examined
the door hinges. They had been duragem, taken apart atom by
atom by dissemblers.
    "There's nothing in here!"
    "They cheated us, them!"
    "Fucking bastards—"
    I peered inside. The first small room held a counter and ter-
minal. A second door led to the depository, which was lined with
empty shelves, empty bins, empty overhead hooks where jacks
and vases and music chips and chairs and cleaning 'bots and hand
tools should go. I felt a chill prickle over me from neck to groin,
an actual frisson complexly made of fear and fascination. It was
true then. The economy, the political structure, the duragem crisis,
were acutally this bad. For the first time in over a hundred years,
since Kenzo Yagai invented cheap energy and remade the world,
 there really was not enough to go around. The politicians were
 conserving production for the cities, where larger numbers of
 voters resided, and writing off less populous or less easily reached
 areas with fewer votes. East Oleanta had been written off.
      No one was going to come to fix the gravrail.
      The crowd howled and cursed: "Fucking donkeys! Fuck them
 all, us!" I heard the sound of shelves ripping from the walls; maybe
 they'd had duragem bolts.
      I walked rapidly but calmly back outside. Twenty people is
 enough to be a mob. A stun gun only fires in one direction at a
 time, and a personal shield, although unbreachable, does not pre-
 vent its wearer from being held in one place without food or water.
      The hotel or Annie's? Whichever I chose, I might be there
 semipermanently.
      The hotel had a networked terminal I could use to call for
help, if I chose my moment well. Annie's apartment was on the
edge of town, which suddenly seemed safer than dead center. It
also had food, doors whose hinges were not duragem, and an
owner already hostile to me. And Lizzie.
      I walked quickly to Annie's.
      Halfway there, Billy rounded the corner of a building, carrying
a baseball bat. "Quick, doctor! Come this way, you!"
      I stopped cold. All my fear, which had been a kind of height-
ened excitement, vanished. "You came to protect me?"
      "This way!" He was breathing hard, and his old legs trembled.
I put a hand on his elbow to steady him.
      "Billy . . . lean against this wall. You came to protect me?"
     He grabbed my hand and pulled me down an alley, the same
one the stomps used for creative loitering when the weather had
been warm. I heard it, then—the shouts from the opposite end
of the street from the warehouse. More angry people, screaming
about donkey politicians.
     Billy led me through the alley, behind a few buildings, on our
hands and knees through what seemed to be a mini-junkyard of
scrapped scooters, chunks of plastisynth, mattresses, and other
large unlovely discards. At the back of the cafe he did something
to the servoentrance used by delivery 'bots; it opened. We crawled
into the automated kitchen, which was busily preparing soysynth
to look like everything else.
     "How—"
    "Lizzie," he gasped, "before she even . . . learned noth-
ing . . . from you," and even through his incipient heart attack I
heard his pride. He slid down the wall and concentrated on breath-
ing more slowly. His hectic color subsided.
    I looked around. In one corner was a second, smaller stockpile
of food, blankets, and necessities. My eyes prickled.
    "Billy .. ."
    He was still catching his breath. "Don't nobody know . . . about
this, so they won't think, them . . . to look for you here."
    Whereas they might have in Annie's apartment. People had
seen me with Lizzie. He wasn't protecting me; he was protecting
Lizzie from being associated with me.
    I said, "Will the whole town go Bastille now?"
    "Huh?"
    I said, "Will the whole town riot and smash things and look
for somebody to blame and hurt?"
    He seemed astounded by the idea. "Everybody? No, of course
not, them. What you hear now is just the hotheads that don't never
know, them, how to act when something's different. They'll calm
down, them. And the good people like Jack Sawicki, he'll get them
organized to seeing about getting useful things done."
    "Like what?"
    "Oh," he waved a hand vaguely. His breathing was almost
normal again. "Putting by blankets for anybody who really needs
one. Sharing stuff that ain't going to be coming in. We had a
shipment of soysynth, us, just last week—the kitchen won't run
out for a while, though there won't be no extras. Jack will make
sure, him, that people know that."
    Unless the kitchen broke, of course. Neither of us said it.
    I said quietly, "Billy, will they look for me at Annie's?"
    He looked at the opposite wall. "Might."
    "They'll see the stockpiled stuff."
    "Most of it's here. What you saw is mostly empty buckets,
them. Annie, she's putting them in the recycler now."
    I digested this. "You didn't trust me to know about this place.
You were hoping I'd leave before I had to know."
    He went on staring at the wall. Conveyer belts carried bowls
of soysynth "soup" toward the flash heater. I looked again at the
stockpile; it was smaller than I'd thought at first. And if the kitchen
did break, then of course it would be only a matter of time before
the homegrown mob remembered the untreated soysynth that
must be behind their foodbelt somewhere. Billy must have other
piles. In the woods? Maybe.
    "Will anybody bother you or Annie or Lizzie because I used
to be with you, even if I'm not now?"
    He shook his head. "Folks ain't like that."
    I doubted this. "Wouldn't it be better to bring Lizzie here?"
    His furrowed face turned stubborn. "Only if I have to, me.
Better I bring food and stuff out."
    "At least make her hide that terminal and crystal library I gave
her."
    He nodded and stood. His knees weren't trembling anymore.
He picked up his baseball bat and I hugged him, a long hard hug
that surprised him so much he actually staggered. Or maybe I
pushed him slightly.
    "Thank you, Billy."
    "You're welcome, Doctor Turner."
    He gave me the code to the servoentrance door, then crawled
cautiously out. I made a blanket nest on the floor and sat in it.
From my jacks I pulled out the handheld monitor. The homer I'd
fastened firmly inside his deepest pocket when he staggered off
balance showed Billy walking back to Annie's. He wouldn't go
anywhere else today, maybe for several days. When he did, I
wanted to know about it.
    Rex, who came before Paul and after Eugene, once told me
something interesting about organizations. There are essentially
only two types in the entire world, Rex had said. When people in
the first type of organization either don't follow the organization's
rules or otherwise become too great a pain in the ass, they can be
kicked out. After that they cease to be part of the organization.
These organizations include sports teams, corporations, private
schools, country clubs, religions, cooperative enclaves, marriages,
and the Stock Exchange.
    But when people in the second type of organization don't
follow the rules, they can't be kicked out because there isn't any
place to send them. No matter how useless or aggravating or
dangerous are the unwanted members, the organization is stuck
with them. These organizations include maximum-security pris-
ons, families with impossible nine-year-olds, nursing homes for
the terminally ill, and countries.
    Had I just seen my country kick out an unwanted and aggra-
vating town of voters who had been following the rules?
    Most donkeys were not cruel. But desperate people—and
most especially desperate politicians—had been known to act in
ways they might not usually act.
    I settled my back against the wall and watched the automated
kitchen turn soysynth into chocolate chip cookies.
                           Eleven
                    BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




T    he day after East Oleanta wrecked the warehouse, them,
     food started coming in by air. Like I told Dr. Turner, it
     wasn't all of us in East Oleanta. Only some stomps, plus the
people like Celie Kane who was always angry anyway, plus a few
good people who just couldn't take it no more, them, and went
temporary crazy. They all calmed down when the plane started
coming every day, without no warehouse goods but with plenty of
food. The tech who ran the delivery 'bots smiled wide, her, and
said, "Compliments of Congresswoman Janet Carol Land." But
she had three security 'bots with her, and a bluish shimmer that
Dr. Turner said was a military-strength personal shield.
    Dr. Turner moved, her, out of the space behind the kitchen
just an hour before the delivery 'bots started marching in. She
just barely didn't get caught, her. "All of Rome meets in the
Forum," she said, which didn't make no sense. She moved back
to the State Representative Anita Clara Taguchi Hotel.
    Then the women's shower in the baths broke. A security 'bot
broke. The streetlights broke, or something that controlled the
streetlights. We got a cold stretch of Arctic air, and the snow
wouldn't stop, it.
    "Damn snow," Jack Sawicki grumbled every time I saw him.
The same words, them, every time, like the snow was the problem.
Jack had lost weight. I think he didn't like being mayor no more.
    "It's the donkeys doing it to us," Celie Kane shrilled. "They're
using the fucking weather, them, to kill us all!"
    "Now, Celie," her father said, reasonable, "can't nobody con-
trol the weather."
    "How do you know what they can do, them? You're just a
dumb old man!" And Doug Kane went back to eating his soup,
staring at the holoterminal show of a Lucid Dreamer concert.
    At home, Lizzie said to me, "You know, Billy, Mr. Kane is
right. Nobody can control the weather. It's a chaotic system."
    I didn't know what that meant. Lizzie said a lot of things I
didn't know, me, since she'd been doing software every day with
Dr. Turner. She could even talk like a donkey now. But not around
her mother. Lizzie was too smart, her, for that. I heard her say to
Annie, "Nobody can't control the weather, them." And Annie,
counting sticky buns and soyburgers rotting in a corner of the
apartment, nodded without listening and said, "Bed time. Lizzie."
    "But I'm in the middle of—"
    "Bed time."
     In the middle of the night somebody pounded on the apart-
ment door.
     "B-B-Billy! Annie! L-L-Let me in!"
     I sat up on the sofa where I slept, me. For a minute I thought
I was dreaming. The room was dark as death.
     "L-Let m-m-me in!"
     Dr. Turner. I stumbled, me, off the sofa. The bedroom door
opened and Annie came out in her white nightdress, Lizzie stuck
behind her like a tail wind.
     "Don't you open that door, Billy Washington," Annie said.
"Don't you open it, you!"
     "It's Dr. Turner," I said. I couldn't stand up straight, me, so
fuddled with dreaming. I staggered and grabbed the corner of the
sofa. "She don't mean no harm, her."
     "Nobody comes in here! We won't understand none of it, us!"
    Then I saw she was fuddled with dreaming, too. I opened the
door.
    Dr. Turner stumbled in, her, carrying a suitcase but wearing
a nightdress, covered with snow. Her beautiful donkey face was
white and her teeth chattered. "L-L-Lock the d-door!"
    Annie demanded, "You got people hunting you, them?"
    "No. N-N-No . . . j-just let me g-g-get warm . . ."
    It hit me then. From the hotel to our apartment wasn't all that
far, even if it was freezing out. Dr. Turner shouldn't be that cold,
her. I grabbed her shoulders. "What happened at the hotel,
doctor?"
    "H-H-Heating unit qu-quit."
    "Heating unit can't quit, it," I said. I sounded like Doug Kane
trying to talk to Celie. "It's Y-energy."
    "N-N-Not the circulating equipment. It m-m-must have dura-
gem p-parts." She stood by our unit, rubbing her hands together,
her face still the same white-gray as all the snow piled in the streets.
    Lizzie said suddenly, "I hear screaming!"
    "Th-they're b-burning the hotel."
    "Burning it?" Annie said. "Foamcast don't burn!"
    Dr. Turner smiled, her, one of those twisted donkey smiles
that said Livers just now caught on to what donkeys already knew.
"They're trying anyway. I told them it won't eradicate the duragem
dissembler, and somebody will likely get hurt."
    "You told 'em," Annie said, one hand on her wide hip. "And
then you come here, you, with a mob following you—"
    "No one's following me. They're far too busy trying to con-
travene the laws of physics. And Annie, I'm freezing. Where else
would I go? The tech reprogrammed the entrance codes for the
kitchen, and anyway it's still full of delivery 'bots whenever that
unpredictable plane comes."
    Annie looked at her, and she looked at Annie, and I could
see, me, that there was something wrong with Dr. Turner's speech.
It wasn't no plea for help, even if the words said that. And it wasn't
trying to sound reasonable, either. Dr. Turner really was asking
Where else would I go? Can you tell me some other place I ain't men-
tioned? Only it wasn't Annie she was asking, her. It was me.
    And I wasn't about to tell her, me, that finally I knew. After
all my looking, I knew where Eden was.
    "You can stay here with us," Lizzie said, and her big brown
eyes looked at her mother. I felt my back muscles knot, them.
This was it, the big Armageddon between Annie and Dr. Turner.
Only it wasn't. Not yet. Maybe because Annie was afraid, her, of
whose side Lizzie would take.
    "All right," Annie said, "but only because I can't stand, me,
to see nobody freeze to death, or get tore apart by them damn
stomps. But I don't like it, me."
    Like anybody ever thought she did. I was careful, me, not to
meet nobody's eyes.
     Annie gave Dr. Turner a few blankets off the stockpile along
 the west wall. We had everything there, us, crowding out the space:
 blankets and jacks and chairs and ribbons and rotting food and I
 don't know what else. I wondered, me, if I should give Dr. Turner
 the sofa, but she spread her blankets in a nest on the floor, her,
 and I figured that she might be company but she was also thirty
 years younger than me. Or twenty, or forty—with donkeys you
 can't never really tell.
    We all got back to sleep, us, somehow, but the shouts outside
went on a long time. And in the morning the State Representative
Anita Clara Taguchi Hotel was wrecked. Still standing, because
Dr. Turner was right and foamcast don't burn, but the doors and
windows were tore off the hinges, and the furniture was all broke
up, and even the terminal was a twisted pile of junk in the street.
Jack Sawicki looked serious, him, about that. Now all he had to
talk to Albany on was the cafe terminal. Besides, them things are
expensive. State Representative Taguchi was going to be mad as
hell, her.
     Snow blew in the hotel windows and drifted on the floor, and
you'd of thought the place had been deserted for years, the way
it looked. It kind of twisted my chest to see it. We were losing
more and more, us.
     That afternoon the plane didn't come, it, and by dinner the
 next day the cafe was out of food.


There's a place upriver, about a half mile from town, where deer
go, them. When we had a warden 'bot, it put out pellets for the
deer in the winter. The pellets had some kind of drug inside, so
the deer couldn't never breed, them, more than the woods can
feed. The warden wasn't never replaced, it, since before them
rabid raccoons in the summer. But the deer still come to the
clearing. They just do what they always did, them, because they
don't know no better.
     Or maybe they do, them. Here the river flowed fast enough
that it didn't freeze completely through unless the temperature
got down in the single numbers. The snow blew across the clearing,
it, and piled up against the wooded hill beyond, so plants were
easy to uncover. You could usually spot two or three deer without
waiting very long.
     When I went there, me, with Doug Kane's old rifle, somebody
 else had already got there first. The snow was bloody and a mangled
 carcass laid by the creek. Most of the meat was spoiled, it, by
 somebody too lazy or too stupid to butcher it right. Bastards didn't
 even bother to drag the carcass away from the water.
     I walked, me, a little ways more. It was snowing, but not hard.
The ground crunched under my feet and my breath smoked. My
back hurt and my knees ached and I didn't even try, me, to walk
without any noise. "Don't go alone, you," Annie'd said, but I didn't
want Annie to leave Lizzie by herself. And I sure as hell wasn't
going to take Dr. Turner. She'd moved in with us, her, and that
was probably good because donkeys got all kinds of things you
don't never suspect until you need them, like medicine for Lizzie
last summer. But Dr. Turner was a city woman, her, and she scared
away the game, crashing through the brush like an elephant or
dragon or one of them other old-time monsters. I needed to kill
something today. We needed the meat, us.
     In a week, all out stockpiled food had gotten eaten up. One
lousy week.
     No more came, by rail or air or gravsled, from Albany. People
tore into the cafe, them, to the kitchen where Annie used to cook
apple pudding for the foodbelt, but there wasn't nothing left there.
     I walked farther upstream. When I was a young boy, me, I
used to love being in the woods in winter. But then I wasn't scared
out of my skull. Then I wasn't an old fool with a back that hurts
and who can't see nothing in his mind but Lizzie's big dark eyes
looking hungry. I can't stand that, me. Never.
     Lizzie. Hungry . . .
     When I left town, the rifle under my coat, people were hurrying
to the cafe. Something was going on, I didn't know what. I didn't
want to know. I just wanted, me, to keep Lizzie from going hungry.
     I could only think, me, of two ways to do that. One was to
hunt for food in the woods. The other was to take Lizzie and
Annie to Eden. I'd found it, me, just before the gravrail quit this
last time. I found that big-headed girl in the woods, and I followed
her, me, and she let me follow her. I watched a door in the
mountain open up, where there couldn't be no door, and her go
inside, and the door close up again like it was never there in the
first place. But just before it closed, the Sleepless girl turned, her,
right toward me. "Don't bring anyone else here, Mr. Washington,
unless you absolutely must. We're not quite ready for you yet."
    Those were the scariest words, me, I ever heard.
    Ready for us for what?
    But I'd bring Lizzie and Annie there if I had to, me. If they
got too hungry. If there wasn't no other way for me to feed them.
    I came to a place where dogtooth violets used to grow, them,
back in June. I dropped to my knees. They sang out in pain, them,
but I didn't care. I dug up all the dogtooth violet bulbs I could
find and stuffed them into my pockets. You can roast them. My
jacks already held acorns, to pound into flour—wearying work,
it—and some hickory twigs to boil for salt.
    Then I settled down, me, on a rock, to wait. I held as quiet as
I could. My knees hurt like hell. I waited, me.
    A snowshoe rabbit came out of the brush, him, on the opposite
bank, like he was right at home. Casual, easy. A rabbit ain't much
food to use up a bullet. But I was cold enough, me, so I knew I'd
start shivering soon, and then I wouldn't never be able to hit
nothing.
    Bullet or rabbit? Old fool, make up your mind.
    I saw Lizzie's hungry eyes.
     Slowly, slowly, I raised the gun, me, and squeezed off the shot.
The rabbit never heard it. He flew up in the air and come down
again, clean. I waded across the creek and got him.
    One good thing—he fit under my coat, him. A deer wouldn't
of fit. I didn't want nobody hungry to see my rabbit, and I didn't
want to stay around, me, near where the gun fired. An old man
is just too easy to take things away from.
     But nobody tried, until Dr. Turner.
     "You're going to skin it?" she said, her voice going up at the
end. I could of laughed, me, at the look on her face, if anything
could of been funny.
     "You want to eat it, you, with the skin on?"
     She didn't say nothing, her. Annie snorted. Lizzie put down
her terminal and edged in close to watch.
     Annie said, "How we going to cook it, Billy? The Y-unit don't
get hot enough for that."
     "I'll cook it. Tonight, by the river. I can make an almost smoke-
less fire, me. And I'll roast the violet bulbs in the coals." It made
me feel good to see how Annie looked at me then.
     Lizzie said, "But if you—where are you going, Vicki?"
      "To the cafe."
      I looked up. Blood smeared my hands. It felt good. "Why you
 going there, Doctor? It ain't safe for you." The stomps still gather
 at the cafe, them. The foodbelt's empty but the HT works.
      She laughed. "Oh, don't worry about me, Billy. Nobody
 bothers me. But there's something going on down there, and I
 want to know what."
      "Hunger's what," Annie said. "And it don't look any different
 at the cafe than it does here. Can't you leave those poor people
 alone, you?"
      "I'm one of those 'poor people,' as you put it," Dr. Turner
 said, still smiling without nothing being funny. "I'm just as hungry
 as they are, Annie. Or you are. And I'm going to the cafe."
      "Huh," Annie snorted. She didn't believe, her, that Dr. Turner
wasn't eating some donkey food somehow, and nobody could
convince her any different. With Annie, you never can.
     I finished skinning the rabbit, me, and showed Annie and Lizzie
how to pound the acorns into flour. You have to cook a bit of ash
with it, to take away the bite. It was late afternoon, already dark.
I wrapped the rabbit meat in a pair of summer jacks, which pretty
much kept the smell inside unless you were a dog. I put a small
Y-lighter in my pocket, and set out for the river, me, to make a
fire.
     Only I didn't go to the river.
     More and more people were walking to the cafe. Not just
stomps, but regular people. In the winter dark they hurried, them,
hunched over but fast, like something was chasing every last one
of them. Well, something was chasing me, too. I sniffed hard to
make sure nobody really couldn't smell the fresh rabbit meat, and
then I walked into the cafe.
     Everybody was watching the Lucid Dreamer concert, "The
Warrior."
I had the feeling that people'd been watching all day, them. More
and more, coming and going but even the goers coming back
for more. I guess, me, that if your belly's empty, it helps to have
your mind feel good. The concert was just ending when I come
in, and people were rubbing their eyes and crying and looking
dazed, like you do after lucid dreaming. But I saw right away that
Dr. Turner was right, her. Something else was going on here.
Jack Sawicki stepped in front of the holoterminal and turned
it off. The Lucid Dreamer, in his powerchair, with that smile that
always feels like warm sunlight, disappeared.
     "People of East Oleanta," Jack said, and stopped. He must of
realized, him, that he sounded like some donkey politician. "Lis-
ten, everybody. We're in a river of shit here. But can do things,
us, to help ourselves!"
     "Like what?" somebody said, but it wasn't nasty. He really
wanted to know. I tried to see, me, who it was, but the crowd was
too packed in.
     "The food's gone," Jack said. "The gravrail don't work. Nobody
in Albany answers, them, on the official terminal. But we got us.
It's what—eight miles?—to Coganville. Maybe they got food,
them. They're on a spur of the gravrail franchise, plus they're a
state line, so they got two chances for trains to be running, them.
Or maybe their congressman or supervisor or somebody arranged
for food to come in by air, like ours, only it didn't stop. They're
in a different congressional district. We don't know, us. But we
could walk there, some of us, and see. We could get help."
     "Eight miles over mountains in winter?" Celie Kane yelled.
"You're as crazy as I always thought, Jack Sawicki! We got a crazy
man, us, for a mayor!"
     But nobody yelled along with Celie. I stepped up onto a chair,
me, along the back wall, just to see this more clearly. The feeling
you get after a Lucid Dreamer concert still filled them. Or maybe
not. Maybe the concert had got down inside them, from watching
it so much. Anyway, they weren't raging, them, about the donkey
politicians that got them into this mess, except for Celie and a few
like her. There's always them people. But most of the faces I could
see, me, looked thoughtful, and people talked in low voices. Some-
thing moved inside my belly that I didn't never know was there.
     "I'll go, me," Jack said. "We can follow the gravrail line."
     "It'll be drifted in bad," Paulie Cenverno said. "No trains for
two weeks to blast the snow loose."
     "Take a Y-unit," a woman's voice said suddenly. "Turn it on
high, it, and melt what you can!"
     "I'll go, me," Jim Swikehardt said.
     "If you make a travois, you," Krystal Mandor called, "you can
bring back more food."
     "If they got food, them, we could set up a regular sched-
ule—"
     People started to argue, them, but not to fight. Ten men walked
up near Jack, plus Judy Farrell, who's six foot high, her, and can
beat Jack arm-wrestling.
     I climbed down off my chair, me. One knee creaked. I shoved
my way through the crowd and stood next to Jack. "Me, too, Jack.
I'm going."
     Somebody laughed, hard and nasty. It wasn't Celie. But then
they stopped, all at once.
    "Billy . . ."Jack said, his voice kind. But I didn't let him finish.
I spoke real low and fast, me, so nobody could hear but Jack and,
standing next to him, Ben Radisson.
    "You going to stop me, Jack? If you men go, you going to
stop me from walking along behind you? You going to knock me
down, you, so's I can't follow? Lizzie's hungry. Annie don't have
nobody else but me. If there ain't enough food brought back from
Coganville, you telling me Lizzie and Annie, them, are going to
get a fair share? With Dr. Turner staying with us?"
    Jack didn't say nothing. Ben Radisson nodded, him, real slow,
looking right at me. He's a good man. That's why I let him hear.
    The rabbit meat squished against my chest, inside my coat.
Nobody could smell it. Nobody could see the bulge, them, because
it was after all just a small piece of meat, a measly rabbit, pathetic
as dirt. Lizzie was hungry. Annie was a big woman. I was going,
me, to Coganville.
    But I wasn't going to tell Annie. She'd kill me, her, before I
even got the chance to save her.


We started out, us, at first light, twelve people. More might scare
the people of Coganville. We didn't want, us, what they needed
for themselves. Just the extra.
    No, that ain't true. We wanted, us, whatever we needed.
    I got up from the sofa too quiet to wake Annie or Lizzie in
the bedrooms. But Dr. Turner, on her pile of blankets in the
corner, she heard me, damn her. A man can't never .have no privacy
from donkeys.
    "What is it, Billy? Where are you going?" she whispered.
    "Not to no Eden," I said. "Lay back down, damn it, and leave
me alone."
    "They're going to another town for food, aren't they?"
     I remembered, me, that she'd said last night she was going
down to the cafe. But I didn't see her there, me. But they know
things, donkeys. Somehow. You never know how much they
know.
     "Listen, Billy," she said, real careful, but then she stopped like
she didn't know what I should listen to. I pulled on three pairs of
socks before she got it.
    "There's a novel, written a long time ago—"
     "A what?" I said, and then cursed myself, me. I shouldn't never
ask her nothing, me. She can out-talk me every time.
    "A story. About a small worldful of people who believed in
sharing everything in common. Until a famine struck, and people
on a broken train needed food from the nearby town. The pas-
sengers hadn't eaten in two days. But the townspeople didn't have
much food themselves, and what they did have they wouldn't
share." The whisper in the dark room was flat, her.
    I couldn't help asking, me. I like stories. "What happened to
the people on the gravrail?"
    "The gravrail got fixed in the nick of time."
    "Lucky them," I said. Wasn't nobody going to fix our gravrail
or cafe kitchen. Not this time. Dr. Turner knew that, her.
    "It was a fairy tale, Billy. Brave and inspiring and sweet, but
a fairy tale. You're in a real United States. So take this with you."
    She didn't say not to go, her. Instead she gave me a little black
box that she pushed onto my belt and it stuck there. I got a funny
flutter in my chest, me. I knew what it was, even though I never
wore one before, me, and never expected to. It was a personal
energy shield.
    "Touch it here" Dr. Turner said, "to activate. And the same
place to deactivate. It'll withstand damn near any attack that isn't
nuclear."
    Turned on, it didn't feel like nothing. Just a little tingle, and
that might have been my imagination. But I could see a faint
shimmer around me.
    "But, Billy, don't lose it," Dr. Turner said. "I need it. I might
need it badly."
    "Then why you giving it to me, you?" I flashed at her, but I
already knew, me. It was because of Lizzie. Every thing was because
of Lizzie. Just like it should be.
    Anyway, Dr. Turner probably had another one, her. Donkeys
 don't give away nothing unless they already got another one
 for themselves.
       "Thank you," I said, rougher than I meant, me, but she
 didn't seem to mind.
      The morning was cold and clear, with that kind of pink
and gold sunrise that turns clean snow to glory. There wasn't
no wind, thank God. Wind would of bit deep. We tramped,
us, along the gravrail track to Coganville. Nobody talked
much, them. Once Jim Swikehardt said, "Pretty," about the
sunrise, but nobody answered.
       At first the snow wasn't too deep because the woods
 crowding the tracks on either side held the snow from
 blowing. Later it did get deep. Stan Mendoza and Bob
 Gleason carried Y-energy units, them, that they'd ripped out
 of some building, and they aimed them at the worst places
 and melted the snow. The units were heavy, them, and the
 men puffed hard. It was slow going, part uphill, but we did
 it. I walked last, me.
       After two miles my heart pounded and my knees
 ached. I didn't say nothing, me, to the others. I was doing
 this for Lizzie.
       About noon clouds blew in and a wind started. I lost
 track, me, of how far we might of come. The wind blew
 straight at our faces. Stan and Bob turned the heating units
 around, them, whenever they could, and then we walked in
 warmer air that the wind whipped away as fast as it could.
       I got to thinking, me, stumbling through the snow.
 "Why couldn't. . . couldn't. . ."
       "You need to rest, Billy?" Jack said. I could see tiny ice
 crystals on his nose hairs. "This too much for you?"
       "No, I'm fine," I said, never mind that it was a lie. But I
 had to say, me, what I started. "Why couldn't. . . the
 donkeys make lots of. . . lots of little heat units for us all to
 . . . c-carry—"
       "Easy, Billy."
       "—c-carry around in our gloves and b-boots and jackets
 . . . in the winter? If Y-energy is really so . . . cheap?"
      Nobody answered, them. We came to a big drift, and
they turned the heat units on it. It melted real slow. Finally
we just slogged, us, through what was left, snow to the waist,
wetter and more sticky than it would of been if we hadn't
tried to melt it. Jack stumbled, him. Stan pulled him up.
Judy Farrell turned her back to the wind to get a moment's
rest, and her cheeks were the
red-white that is going to hurt like hell when it finally warms up.
    Finally Jim Swikehardt said, real low, "Because we never asked,
us, for lots of tiny heaters, and they only give us enough of what
we ask for to keep our votes." After that nobody said nothing.
    I don't know, me, what time it was when we got to Coganville.
The sun was completely hid behind clouds. It wasn't twilight yet.
The town was quiet and peaceful, it, with nobody in the streets.
Lights blazed in all the windows. We walked, us, up the main street
to the Congressman Joseph Nicholls Capiello Cafe, and we could
hear music. A holosign flashed blue and purple on the roof: THANK
YOU FOR ELECTING DISTRICT SUPERVISOR HELEN ROSE TOWNS-
      It was like the world here was still normal, and only us was
END!
wrong.
     But I didn't believe that no more, me.
    We went in to the cafe. It must of been too late for lunch, too
early for dinner, but the cafe was full of people. They were hanging
plastisynth banners and bows, them, for a scooter race betting
night. Tables were pushed around to make booths and a dance
floor. The smell of food from the belt hit us all the same time the
warmth did, and I swear I saw tears, me, in Stan Mendoza's eyes.
    Everybody got real quiet, them, when we came in.
    Jack said, "Who's the mayor here?"
    "I am," a woman said. "Jeanette Harloff." She was about fifty,
her, skinny, with silver hair and big blue eyes. The kind of Liver
who gets kidded about having secret genemods, even though you
know she don't. It's just something people say, them. People can
be damn stupid. But maybe that's why this woman was mayor,
her. Nobody wouldn't just let her be one thing or the other.
    Jack explained, him, who we were and what we wanted. Every-
body in the cafe listened. Somebody had turned the holoterminal
off. You could of heard a mouse walk.
    Jeanette Harloff studied us, her, real careful. The big blue eyes
looked cold. But finally she said, "The main gravrail's busted, it,
but we got a spur and it works. There's another kitchen shipment
coming in tomorrow. And our congressman can really be trusted,
him. We'll always have food, us. Take what you need."
    And Jack Sawicki looked down at the ground, him, like he
was ashamed. We all were, us. I don't know of what. We were
Liver citizens, after all.
    The mayor and two men helped, them, to load the two travoises
with everything we could from the food line. Jeanette Harloff
wanted us to stay the night in the hotel, but we all said no, us.
The same thing was in all our minds. Folks were sitting home
hungry, them, in East Oleanta: kids and wives and mothers and
brothers and friends, with their bellies rumbling and hurting and
that pinched look around their eyes. We'd rather walk back now,
us, even after it got dark, than hear those bellies and look at them
faces in our minds. We stuffed food off the belt into our mouths
while we loaded the travoises, stuffed it into our jackets and hats
and gloves. We bulged like pregnant women, us. The Coganville
people watched in silence. A few left the cafe, them, their eyes
on the floor.
     I wanted to say: We trusted our congresswoman, too, us. Once.
     There was only so much food prepared for the line. The tra-
voises would hold more. When it ran out, we had to stop, us, and
wait for the kitchen 'bots to make more. And all that whole time
nobody except Jeanette Harloff spoke to us. Nobody.
    When we left, us, we carried huge amounts of food. Looking
at it, I knew it wouldn't be huge when there was all the hungry
people of East Oleanta to feed. We'd be back tomorrow, or some-
body else would. Nobody said that to Jeanette Harloff. I couldn't
tell, me, if she knew.
    The sky had that feel that says the most part of the day is over.
Stan Mendoza and Scotty Flye, the youngest and strongest,
dragged the travoises first, them. The runners were curved
plastifoam, smoother than any wood could be. They slid easily
over the snow. This time, at least, we had the wind at our backs.
    After half an hour Judy Farrell said, "We can't even talk, us,
to the next town, with the terminal. We can talk to Albany, us,
or to any donkey politician, and we can get information easy, but
we can't talk to the next town to tell them we're out of food."
    Jim Swikehardt said, "We never asked to, us. More fun to just
hop the gravrail. Gives you something to do."
    "And keeps people separate, us," Ben Radisson said, but not
angry, just like he never thought of it before. "We should have
asked, us." After that, nobody said nothing.
    After dark, the cold got sharp as pain. I could feel, me, the
hollow place in my chest where the wind whistled through. It
made a noise inside me that I could hear in my ears. The Y-lights
made the tracks bright as day, but the cold was a dark thing, it,
circling us like something rabid. My bones felt, them, like icicles,
and just as like to snap.
    But we were almost there. No more than a mile left to go.
And then there was the crack of a rifle, and young Scotty Flye fell
over dead.
    In another minute they were on us, them. I recognized most
of them, me, although I only had names to go with two of them:
Clete Andrews and Ned Zalewski. Stomps. Ten or twelve of them,
from East Oleanta and Pilotburg and Carter's Falls, come in before
the gravrail busted, and then stuck here. They whooped and hol-
lered, them, like this was a game. They jumped Jack and Stan and
Bob and I saw all three go down, even though Stan was a big man
and Bob was a fighter, him. The stomps didn't waste no more
bullets, them. They had knives.
    I pushed the little black box on my belt.
    The tingle was there, it, and the shimmer. A stomp jumped
me and I heard him hit solid metal. That's what it sounded like.
I could hear everything, me. Judy Farrell screamed and Jack
Sawicki moaned. The stomp's eyes under his ski mask got wide.
    "Shit! The old fart's got a shield, him!"
    Three of them pounded on me. Only it wasn't me, it was a
thin hard layer an inch from me, like I was a turtle in an uncrackable
shell. They couldn't touch me, them, only push and pull the shell.
Finally the first stomp yelled something with no words, him, and
shoved the shell so hard I went over the edge of the track and
down a little embankment, picking up snow like the snowmen
Lizzie used to roll, her. Something in one knee cracked.
    By the time I staggered, me, back up to the gravrail track, the
stomps were disappearing into the woods, dragging the travoises.
    Only Scotty was dead. The others were in bad shape, them,
especially Stan and Jack. Stab wounds and broken heads and I
couldn't tell, me, what else. Nobody could walk. I staggered the
last mile through the snow, me, afraid to carry one of the lights,
feeling for the track every time I fell down. Some men from East
Oleanta met me part way, them, just when I didn't think I could
go no further. They'd heard the rifle shot.
    They went out to get the others. Somebody, I don't know who,
carried me to Annie's. He didn't say nothing about me wearing a
donkey personal shield. Or maybe it was turned off by then. I
can't remember, me. All I remember is me saying over and over
 again, "Don't crush them, you! Don't crush them, you!" There
 were six sandwiches in my jacket pocket. For Lizzie and Annie
 and Dr. Turner.
     Everything didn't all go black, the way Annie said later. It went
red, it, with flashes of light in my knee, so bright I thought they
would kill me.
     But of course they didn't. When the red went away it was the
next day, and I laid, me, on Annie's bed, with her asleep next to
me. Lizzie was there, too, on the other side of Annie. Dr. Turner
bent over me, doing something to my knee.
     I croaked, "Did they eat?"
    "For now," Dr. Turner said. Her voice was grim. What she
said next didn't make no sense to me. "So much for community
solidarity in the face of adversity."
    I said, "I brought Annie and Lizzie food, me." It seemed a
miracle. Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it, me. I
didn't even think, then, that two sandwiches wouldn't keep them
long. It didn't even occur to me. I must of been on some of them
painkillers, me, that cloud your mind.
    Dr. Turner's face changed. She looked startled, her, like what
I said was some kind of good answer to what she said, although
it wasn't, because I didn't even understand her big words. But I
didn't care, me. Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it,
me.
    "Ah, Billy," Dr. Turner said, her voice was low and sad, mourn-
ful, like somebody died. Or something. What?
    But that wasn't my problem. I slept, me, and in all my dreams
Lizzie and Annie smiled at me in a sunshine green and gold as
summer on the mountain, where it turned out, I learned later,
that Stan and Scotty and Jack and Dr. Turner's something had all
really died after all.
                           Twelve
                    DIANA COVINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




A      fter they brought Billy back to Annie Francy's, his poor
       heart laboring like an antique factory and his hands shaking
       so much he couldn't even turn off the personal shield, I
realized what an ass I'd been not to call the GSEA earlier.
    But it wasn't Billy who made me realize this. It was—again,
always—Lizzie.
    I knew that Billy wasn't badly hurt, and I suppose I should
have been more concerned about the other Livers, especially the
three dead. But the fact was, I wasn't. I had changed my mind
about Livers since I came to East Oleanta, and Jack Sawicki in
particular seemed a good man, but there it was. I just didn't really
care that Liver stomps had turned on other Liver non-stomps and
destroyed them. We donkeys had never expected anything else.
The Livers were always a potentially dangerous force, kept at bay
only by sufficient bread and circuses, and now the bread was run-
ning short and the big tops folded. Bastille time.
    But I cared—against all odds—about Lizzie. Who was going
hungry. If I called the GSEA, they would come storming in and
East Oleanta would no longer be the Forgotten Country. With
them would come food, medicine, transport, all the things Livers
had come to expect from the labor of others. Which meant Lizzie
and Annie would get fed.
    On the other hand, Congresswoman Janet Carol Land might
resume her planeloads of food any minute. Or the gravrail might
be fixed again. That had happened many times already. And if it
did, I would lose my chance to cover myself with glory by handing
over Miranda Sharifi, lock, stock and illegal organic nanotech, to
the GSEA. Also, the moment I called the GSEA, Eden might very
well pick up my signal, in which case Ms. Sharifi might have been
moved out before the GSEA even got here.
     While I wrestled with this three-horned dilemma of altruism,
vanity, and practicality, Lizzie blew the whole argument to terri-
fying smithereens.
     "Vicki, look at this."
     "What is it?"
     "Just look."
    We sat on the plastisynth sofa in Annie's apartment. In the
bedroom Annie moved around, tending Billy. The medunit had
treated his cuts, bruises, and heart rate, and he should probably
have been sleeping, which he probably couldn't do with Annie
fussing around him. I doubt he minded. The bedroom door was
closed. Lizzie held her terminal, frowning at the screen. Billy's
pathetic squashed sandwiches had temporarily returned the color
to her thin cheeks. On the screen was a multicolor holo.
     "Very pretty. What is it?"
    "A Lederer probability pattern."
    Well, of course it was. It's been a while since my school days.
To save face, I said authoritatively, "Some variable has a seventy-
eight percent chance of significantly preceding some other variable
in chronological time."
    "Yes," Lizzie said, almost inaudibly.
    "So what are the variables?"
    Instead of answering, Lizzie said, "You remember that apple
peeler 'bot I used to play with, when I was a kid?"
    Two months ago. But compared to the intellectual leaps she'd
made since, last summer probably did feel like lost childhood to
her.
    "I remember," I said, careful not to smile.
    "It first broke in June. I remember because the apples then
were Kia Beauties."
    Genemod apples ripened on a staggered schedule, to create
seasonal variety. "So?" I said.
    "And the gravrail broke down before that. In April, I think.
And a couple of toilets before that."
    I didn't get it. "And so . . . ?"
     Lizzie wrinkled her small face. "But the first things to break
down in East Oleanta were way back over a year ago. In the spring
of 2113."
     And I got it. My throat went dry. "In spring, 2113? Lots of
things breaking, Lizzie, or just a few? Such as might happen from
normal wear combined with reduced maintenance?" "Lots of things.
Too many things."
      "Lizzie," I said slowly, "are those two variables in your Lederer
 pattern the East Oleanta breakdowns, as you personally remember
 them, and the newsgrid mentions from the crystal library of any
 similar breakdown patterns elsewhere?"
      "Yes. They are, them. I wanted, me . . ." She broke off, aware
  of how her language had reverted. She went on staring at the
  screen. She knew what she was looking at. "It started here, Vicki,
  didn't it? That duragem dissembler got released here first. Because
  it got made at Eden. We were a test place. And that means that
  whoever runs Eden . . ." Again she trailed off.
   Huevos Verdes ran Eden. Miranda Sharifi ran Eden. And so my
   decision was made for me, as simply as that. The duragem
   dissembler could not be part of any save-Diana-through-a-personal-
   success-finally strategy. It was too concretely, urgently, major
   malevolent. I had no right to sit around playing semi-amateur
   agent when I suspected that somewhere in these very same
   mountains that were torturing us with winter was a Huevos Verdes
   franchise, dispensing molecular destruction. Every decent feeling
   required that I tell my disdainful bosses, despite their
    disdain, what I knew.
        Everybody has her own definition of decency.
        "Vicki," Lizzie whispered, "what are we going to do, us?"
        "We're going to give up," I said.


   I made the call from a secluded place down by the river, away
   from Annie's suspicious eyes. I had forbidden Lizzie to follow me,
   but of course she did anyway. The air was cold but the sun shone.
   I wriggled my butt into a depression in the snow on the riverbank
   and cut the transmitter from my leg.
        It was an implant, of course: that was the only way to be positive
    it couldn't be stolen from me, except by people who knew what
    they were doing. After the GSEA had it installed, I'd gone to some
 people I knew and had detached and taken out the automatic
 homing-signal part of it, which of course was there. You needed
 professionals for that. You didn't need professionals to remove
 the transmitter itself for use. That could be done with a little
 knowledge, a local anesthetic, and a keen-edged knife, and in a
 pinch you could do without either the anesthetic or the keen edge.
     I didn't have to. I slid the implant from under the skin of my
 thigh, sealed the small incision, and wiped the blood off the trans-
 mitter wrapping. I unsealed it. Lizzie's black eyes were enormous
 in her thin face.
     I said, "I told you not to come. Are you going to faint now?"
     "Blood don't make me faint!"
     "Good." The transmitter was a flat black wafer on my palm.
 Lizzie regarded it with interest.
     "That uses Malkovitch wave transformers, doesn't it?" And
 then, in a different voice, "You're going to call the government
 to come help us."
     "Yes."
     "You could have called before. Any time."
     "Yes."
     The black eyes stayed steady. "Then why didn't you?"
     "The situation wasn't desperate enough."
     Lizzie considered this. But she was a child, still, under the
frightening intelligence and the borrowed language and the
pseudo-technical sophistication I had taught her. And she had been
through a terrifying two weeks. Abruptly she pounded on my
knees, soft ineffectual blows from cold mittened hands. "You
could of got us help before! And Billy wouldn't of got hurt and
Mr. Sawicki wouldn't of died and I wouldn't of had to be so very
very very hungry! You could of! You could of!"
     I activated the transmitter by touch code and said clearly, "Spe-
cial Agent Diana Covington, 6084 slash A, to Colin Kowalski, 83
slash H. Emergency One priority: sixteen forty-two. Repeat, six-
teen forty-two. Send large task force."
     "I'm so hungry" Lizzie sobbed against my knees.
    I put the transmitter in my pocket and pulled her onto my lap.
She buried her head in my neck; her nose felt cold. I looked at
the river choked with ice, at the blood from the wrapper on the
dirty snow, at the uncharacteristically blue sky. It would take
the GSEA maybe a few hours to arrive from New York. But the
SuperSleepless, at their hidden Eden, were already here. And of
course there was no way they would not have picked up my mes-
sage. They picked up everything. Or so I had been told.
    I held Lizzie and made pointless maternal noises. Her cold
nose dribbled into my neck.
    "Lizzie, did I ever tell you about a dog I saw once? A genemod
pink dog that should never have existed, poor thing?"
    But she only went on sobbing, cold and hungry and betrayed.
It was actually just as well. The story about Stephanie Brunell's
dog seemed, at this point, lame even to me, something I had once
believed in, probably still did, but could no longer clearly recall.
    Like so much else.


The GSEA showed up within the hour, which I have to admit
impressed me. First came the planes, then the aircars, and by
nightfall, the gravrail was up, roaring into East Oleanta with a
complement of thirty calm-eyed agents, some techs, and a lot of
food. Government types work best on a full stomach. The techs
went around town repairing things. The GSEA commandeered
the Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Cafe, threw a Y-shield
around the half of it farthest from the techs stocking the foodbelt,
and ordered everybody else to stay out, which the good citizens
were happy to do because food was being dispensed from the ruins
of the warehouse. God knows how they were cooking it. Maybe
they were eating soysynth raw.
    "Ms. Covington? I'm Charlotte Prescott. I'm in temporary
 command here, until the arrival of Colin Kowalski from the West
 Coast. Come with me, please."
     She was tall, flame-haired, absolutely beautiful. Expensive
 genes. She had the accent that goes with the monied Northeast,
 and eyes like the Petrified Forest. I went with her, but not without
 a patented little Diana-protest: spirited but essentially ineffectual.
     "I don't want to talk until I'm sure that two people are getting
 fed. Three actually. An old man and a little girl and the girl's
 mother . . . they might not be able to handle being part of that
 mob outside . . ." What was I saying? Annie Francy could handle
 being part of Custer's Last Stand, protesting all the while that the
 Indians weren't behaving properly.
     Charlotte Prescott said, "Lizzie Francy and Billy Washington
 are being seen to. The guard at the apartment will procure them
 food."
     And she had only been in East Oleanta ten minutes.
    Charlotte Prescott and I sat opposite each other in two
plastisynth cafe chairs and I told her everything I knew. That I had
followed Miranda Sharifi from Washington to East Oleanta, after
which she had disappeared. That I'd been searching the woods for
her. That some of the locals half believed there was a place in the
mountains they called Eden, probably a shielded underground
illegal genemod lab, and that I believed that was where Huevos
Verdes was releasing the duragem dissembler. That I'd followed
various locals into the woods in the hopes of discovering Eden,
but had never seen anything, and was now convinced nobody knew
where, or if, this mythical place existed.
    This last wasn't strictly true. I still suspected Billy Washington
knew something. But I wanted to tell that directly to Colin Ko-
walski, whom I halfway trusted, rather than to Charlotte Prescott,
whom I trusted not at all. She reminded me of Stephanie Brunell.
Billy was an ignorant and exasperating old man, but he was not a
pink dog with four ears and overly big eyes, and I was not going
to watch him go over any metaphorical terrace railing.
    Prescott said, "Why didn't you report your whereabouts, and
Miranda Sharifi's suspected whereabouts, as soon as you reached
East Oleanta? Or even en route?"
    "I was fairly sure that the SuperSleepless outpost would be
able to monitor any technology I used."
    This was a fair hit; not even the GSEA flattered itself that it
could outinvent Supers. Prescott showed no reaction.
    "You were in violation of every Agency procedure."
    "I'm not a regular agent. I run wild-card for Colin Kowalski,
under informant status. You wouldn't even know about me now
if he hadn't told you."
    Still no reaction. She had the ability, like some reptiles, to just
draw a nictitating membrane between herself and any blowing in-
sinuating sand. I saw this about her: her limitations, her rigidity
born of the automatic assumption of superiority. Yet I still couldn't
help feeling unworthy beside her, in a way I hadn't felt unworthy
in months. Me in my rumpled turquoise jacks and untrimmed
hair, she looking like something off a holovid ad for the Central
Park East Enclave. Even her fingernails were perfect, genemod
rose so they never had to be painted.
    The questions went on. I was as honest as I could be, except
for Billy. It didn't help my mood, which was middling lousy. I was
doing what I should, what I needed to do, what was right and
patriotic for my country three cheers and "Hail to the Chief." No,
I don't mean that cynicism—it was right. So why did I feel so
terrible?
    Colin Kowalski arrived about 9:00 P.M. I was still under house
arrest, or whatever, but Charlotte Prescott had apparently run out
of questions. The foodbelt was working, serving an insatiable line
of the hungry, who peered curiously at the Y-shield cramping
them into half their cafe but could see nothing because the outer
layer had been one-way opaqued.
    "Colin. I'm glad you're here."
    He was angry, not hiding it, but keeping it under control. I
gave him points for all three.
    "You should have contacted me in August, Diana. Maybe we
could have stopped release of the duragem dissembler sooner."
    "Can you stop it now?" I said, but he didn't answer. I wasn't
having any of that. I grabbed both his lapels—or what passes for
lapels in the new fall fashions—and said, slowly and with great
distinctness, "You've found something. Already. Colin, you have
to tell me what you've found so far. You have to. I got you all
this far, and besides there's no earthly reason not to tell me. You
know damn well you've got reporters all over every place out
there by now."
    He stepped back a pace and pulled his lapels free. Billy and
Doug Kane and Jack Sawicki and Annie and Krystal Mandor had
been all over each other constantly. I was a little shocked at how
quickly I'd forgotten the donkey intolerance for being touched.
    But I was not going to give up. Maybe it wouldn't be necessary
to involve Billy more than he already was by having taken me into
Annie's apartment for the last month. "What have your agents
found, Colin?"
    "Diana—"
    "What?"
    He told me, not because of my persistence but because there
really wasn't any reason not to. He even gave me the lattitude and
longitude, to the minutes and seconds. Proud of himself. And yet,
somehow, not. I listened harder.
    "Just what you suspected, Diana, an underground lab.
Shielded. We broke the shield half an hour ago, once we knew
the general area to look. The Supers had fled, but the duragem
dissembler originated there, all right. Bastards didn't even bother
to destroy the evidence. The dangerous recombinant and nanotech
stuff in that lab . . . "
    I had never seen words fail Colin Kowalski before. He didn't
sputter, or twitch. Instead his mouth just clamped shut on the last
word with a small audible pop! as if naming these words had hurt
his lip and he was protecting it. I felt sick inside. The dangerous
recombinant and nanotech stuff. . . "What else have they got cooked
up for us?"
    "Nothing that's going to get out," he said, and looked straight
at me. Too straight. I couldn't tell what the look meant.
    And then I could.
    "Colin, no, if you don't examine it all minutely—"
    The explosion rocked the cafe, even though we were probably
miles away and undoubtedly the GSEA had thrown a blast shield
around the area first. But a blast shield only contains flying debris,
and anyway nothing really muffles a nuclear blast. People at the
foodbelt screamed and clutched their bowls of soysynth soup and
soysnth steak. The holoterminal, which was in the food-line half
of the cafe and which someone had turned to the National Scooter
Championships, flickered momentarily.
    Colin said stiffly, "It was too dangerous to examine minutely.
Anything could have escaped from there. Anything they were
working on."
    I stood up unsteadily. There was no reason for the unsteadi-
ness. I kept my voice level. "Colin—was the lab really empty?
Did Miranda Sharifi and the other Supers really get out before
you got there? Before you blew it up, I wanted to say.
    "Yes, they were gone," Colin said, and met my eyes so steadily,
so guilessly, that I immediately knew he was lying.
    "Colin—"
    "Your service with the GSEA is terminated, Diana. We ap-
preciate your help. Six months' pay will be deposited to your credit
account, and a discreet and nonspecific letter of commendation
provided if you ever want one. You are, of course, constrained
from selling your story to the media in any form whatsoever.
Should you break this prohibition, you could be subject to severe
penalties up to and including imprisonment. Please accept the
Department's warmest thanks for your assistance."
   "Colin—"
   For just a second there was a flash of a real person on his face.
"You're done, Diana. It's over."
   But, of course, it wasn't.


I slipped through the general street pandemonium—reporters,
townspeople, agents, even the first sightseers on the newly fixed
gravrail—without notice. In my rumpled winter jacks, a scarf over
the bottom half of my face, my hair as dirty as everyone else's in
East Oleanta, I looked like just one more confused Liver. This
might have pleased me, if I had been capable of being pleased by
anything just then. Something was terribly wrong, wrong in my
head, and I didn't know what. I had gotten what I wanted: Huevos
Verdes was stopped from releasing destruction such as the
duragem dissembler. The country, unchanged economic problems
notwithstanding, now stood at least a chance of recovery, once
the clocking mechanism on all the released dissemblers ran through
its set number of replications. Twelve-year-old girls could eat; old
men would not have to trudge through the snow along disabled
rail tracks, attacked for food. I had gotten what I wanted.
     Something was very wrong.
     The guards were just leaving Annie's apartment. I passed them
in the hall. Neither one gave me a second glance. Billy lay on the
sofa, with Annie seated on a chair at his head, her lips pressed
together tightly enough to create a vacuum. Lizzie sat on the floor,
gnawing on something that was probably supposed to be a chicken
leg.
     "You. Get out," Annie said.
     I ignored her, drawing up a second chair beside Billy. It was
the same kind of plastisynth chair I'd sat in opposite Charlotte
Prescott of the perfect nails, the only kind of chair I'd ever sat on
in East Oleanta. Only this one was poison green. "Billy. You know
what happened?"
     He said, so quietly I had to lean forward to hear him, "I heard,
me. They blew up Eden."
     Annie said, "And how'd they know, them, there was anything
 to blow up? You told them, Dr, Turner! You brought them gov-
 ernment men to East Oleanta!"
     "And if I hadn't, you'd still all be starving," I snapped. Annie
 always brought out the worst in me. She never doubted herself.
     Annie subsided, fuming. Billy said, "It's really gone, it? They
 really blew it up?"
     "Yes." My throat felt thick. God knows why. "Billy, that's
 where they were making the duragem dissembler. The thing that
 was causing so many breakdowns. Of all kinds of machinery."
     He didn't answer for a long time. I thought he'd fallen asleep.
 His wrinkled eyelids were at half mast, and the sag of his jowls
 hurt my chest.
     Finally he said, almost in a whisper, "She saved old Doug
Kane's life, her . . . And they were going to save ours, too . . ."
     I said sharply, "How do you know that?"
    He answered simply, with a guileness so different from Colin
Kowalski's that English should have different words for it. "I don't
know, me. But I saw her. She was kind to us, her, even though
we ain't got no more in common with her than . . . than with
beetles. They knew things, them people. If you say she made the
duragem dissembler, well, then maybe she did, her. But it's
hard to believe. And even if they did make it, them, by mistake,
say . . ."
    "Yes? Yes, Billy?"
    "If Eden's all blown up, it, how we ever going to find out how
to unmake it?"
    "I don't know. But there were other dangerous
nanotechnology projects under way in . . . in Eden, Billy. Stuff
that if it had gotten loose, could have caused even more
destruction."
    He considered this. "But Doctor Turner—"
    I said wearily, "I'm not a doctor, Billy. I'm not anything."
    "If the government just goes around, them, blowing up all the
illegal Edens, then don't we lose the good things, us, as well as
the bad ones? There was them rabid raccoons—"
    I said impatiently, "You have to have controls of genetic and
nanotech research, Billy. Or any lunatic will go around inventing
things like dissemblers."
    "Seems to me some lunatic was" he said, more tartly than I'd
ever heard him. "And look what happened. The real scientists
can't invent no way to stop it, because they ain't allowed, them,
to do no experiments themselves!"
     No permitted antidotal research. It wasn't a new argument. I'd
heard it before. Never, however, from such a person, in such a
situation. Billy had glimpsed Eden, and he thought the gods there
were not only omnipotent but benevolent. Capable of antidotes
to the evil they themselves had caused. Maybe I had thought so
fleetingly, too, at the patent hearing for Miranda Sharifi's Cell
Cleaner. But SuperSleepless didn't make mistakes, at least not on
this order. If Huevos Verdes had released the duragem dissembler,
it must have been deliberate, in order to destroy the culture that
hated them. I couldn't imagine any other reason. And Huevos
Verdes had almost succeeded.
     "Go to sleep, Billy," I said, and rose to leave. But the old man
was disposed to talk.
     "I know, me, they weren't bad. That girl, the day she saved
Doug Kane's life . . . and now it's gone. Eden's really gone, it. I
ain't never going to go down that mountain trail, me, and splash
across that creek, me, and see that door in the hill open and go
inside with her . . ."
     He was maundering. Of course: The agents had given him a
truth drug. Whatever he had been asked, he'd answered. A talking
jag was one of the side effects when those Pharmaceuticals wore off.
     "Good-bye, Billy. Annie." I moved to the door.
     Lizzie heard something in my voice. She scuttled over to me,
"chicken bone" in her hand, all big eyes and thin hands. But already
she looked healthier. Children respond quickly to good food.
     "Vicki, we'll have our lesson in the morning? Vicki?"
     I looked at her, and suddenly I had the completely insane
sensation that I understood Miranda Sharifi.
     There exists a kind of desire I had never experienced, and
never expected to experience. I have read about it. I have even
seen it, in other people, although not many other people. It is
desire so piercing, so pointed, so specific, that there is no stopping
it, any more than you could stop a lance hurtled unerringly at your
belly. The lance propels your whole body forward, according to
the laws of physics. It changes the way your blood flows. You can
die from it.
     Mothers are said to feel that raw agony of longing to save their
infants from deadly harm. I have never been a mother.
Lovers are said to feel it for each other. I never loved like
that, despite shoddy imitations with Claude-Eugene-Rex-Paul-
Anthony-Russell-David. Artists and scientists are said to
feel it for their work. This last was true of Miranda Sharifi.
    What I had felt about Miranda Sharifi, ever since
Washington, had been envy. And I hadn't even known it.
    But not now. Looking at Lizzie, knowing I would leave
East Oleanta in the morning, seeing from the corner of my
eye the way Annie's bulk shifted in her chair as she watched
us, the lance changed the way my blood flowed and I put
both hands convulsively over my belly. "Sure, Lizzie," I
gasped, and Colin Kowalski was in my voice, guileless with
donkey superiority, lying like the pigs we are.


But sometime near dawn, five or six in the morning, I woke
abruptly from a blotchy sleep. Billy's voice filled my mind:
and now it's gone. Eden's really gone, it. I ain't never going to
go down that mountain trail, me, and splash across that creek,
me, and see that door in the hill open and go inside with her . .
.
    I crept out of my room in the hastily repaired hotel. A
new terminal sat on the counter, but that was far too risky.
I went down to the cafe. People were there, queuing at the
foodbelt, a donkey newsgrid playing animatedly on the
holoterminal. Liver channels almost never ran news. If East
Oleanta wanted to see itself on a grid, it would have to be a
donkey grid.
    I crouched in a corner, unobtrusively, and watched.
Eventually the explosion came on, the sensational tracking
of the duragem dissembler source that had so plagued the
country, close-ups of Charlotte Prescott and of Kenneth
Emile Koehler, GSEA director, in Washington. Then the
explosion again. I wanted to freeze-frame the HT, but didn't
dare. Instead, I listened carefully.
    A gravrail left at 7 A.M. By eight I was in Albany. There
was a public library terminal at the station, for the use of
Livers who were fuzzy about their destinations and wanted
to look up such vital information about them as the average
mean rainfall, location of public scooter tracks, or longitude
and lattitude. A sign said THE ANNA NAOMI COLDWELL
PUBLIC LIBRARY. Cobwebs draped
the sign. Few Livers were fuzzy about their destinations, or at least
about what they wanted to know about them.
    I slipped in one of the credit chips the GSEA didn't know I
had. Maybe didn't know. The terminal said, "Working. What town,
city, county, or state are you interested in?"
    "Collins County, New York." My voice was slightly unsteady.
    "Go ahead with your request, please."
    "Display a map of the whole county, with natural features and
political units."
    When the map appeared, I asked to have sections of it enlarged,
then enlarged again. The hypertext gave it to me. The map dis-
played lattitude and longitude.
    The explosion destroying the illegal lab had not been at the
base of a hill, nor anywhere near a creek.
    . . . and now it's gone. Eden's really gone, it. I ain't never going to
go down that mountain trail, me, and splash across that creek, me, and
see that door in the hill open, and go inside with her . . .
    I believed that the GSEA had destroyed an illegal genemod
lab. I believed that it was the lab that had released the duragem
dissemblers. But whatever, and whosever, that lab was, it wasn't
Billy Washington's Eden. Not the Eden at the base of a mountain
and beside a creek, the Eden that had permitted Billy to see its
door opening, the Eden of the big-headed savior of old men who
collapse in the woods. That Eden was still there.
    Which meant that whoever had released the duragem dissem-
bler, it hadn't been Huevos Verdes.
    So who had? And was Huevos Verdes with them or against
them?
    On the one hand, the duragem destruction had started in East
Oleanta, right around the corner from Eden. Coincidence? I
doubted it. And yet Miranda Sharifi had done nothing to stop the
dissembler release.
    On the other hand, if the Supers were interested in destruction,
why had one of them allowed Billy Washington to see the entrance
to their Adirondack outpost, and to walk away with that knowl-
edge? Why hadn't they killed him? And why had Miranda Sharifi
tried to gain legal clearance for the Cell Cleaner, a clear boon to
us ordinary mortals? The Sleepless already had that biological
protection, and they sure the hell didn't need the money.
    And what about the fact—Billy was right about this—that if
 some illegal lab did come up with something even worse than a
 duragem dissembler—a retrovirus that made us all zombies, say—
 only Huevos Verdes had the brainpower to design a counter-
 microorganism fast enough to prevent a whole country of am-
 bulatory idiots.
     But would they?
     Was Huevos Verdes my country's enemy, or its covert friend?
     These weren't the sort of questions a field agent was supposed
 to ask. A field agent was supposed to do what she was told and
 report any significant new developments up the chain of command.
 A field agent in my position should immediately call the GSEA.
 Again.
     But if I did that, the questions would never get answered.
Because Colin Kowalski already thought he knew the answer:
Bomb anything too unfamiliar.
    I must have stood, motionless, for fifteen minutes in front of
the Anna Naomi Coldwell Public Library. Livers rushed by, hur-
rying to make their trains. A cleaning 'bot ambled along, scrubbing
the floor. A sunshine dealer glanced at me, then away. A tech,
genemod handsome, spoke into his terminal as he strode the
platform.
    I have never felt so alone.
    I got back on the gravrail and returned to East Oleanta.
  OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2114
The personal is political, and the political
            is always personal.
           —American folk saying
                        Thirteen
                        DREW ARLEN-. FLORIDA




I   was underground with the Francis Marion Freedom Outpost
   for two months, throughout September and October. I
   wouldn't have believed it was possible to hide for days, weeks,
months, from the GSEA. The Outpost was a bunch of nuts; what
possible chance could they have of evading the government after
killing three GSEA agents, murdering Leisha Camden, and blow-
ing up an agency rescue plane? None. Nada. It wasn't possible.
That's what I would have believed.
     Nor did I believe it was possible to hide from Huevos Verdes.
Daily, hourly, I expected them to come for me.
    The shapes in my head were thin and fragile, like nervous
membranes. Vulnerable. Uncertain. These shapes swam around
the immobile green lattice like spooked fish. Sometimes they had
faces, or the sketches of faces, on the uncertain shapes. Sometimes
the faces were mine.


At 5:00 A.M. of my second day underground an alarm had sounded.
My heart had leapt: their defenses were breached. But it was
reveille.
   Peg slouched in, sullen. She wheeled me to a common bath,
dumped me in, pulled me out. I didn't reveal that I could easily
have done this for myself. She wheeled me to commons, jammed
with people hastily eating, so many people that some gulped their
food standing up. Then she pulled a piece of paper from her pocket
and thrust it at me angrily.
   "Here. Yours."
      It was a printout of a schedule, headed ARLEN, DREW, TEM-
 PORARY ASSIGNMENT COMPANY 5. "I'm assigned to Company 5.
 Is that your group, Peg?"
      She snorted in derision and wheeled me around so hard I nearly
tumbled out of the chair.
     Company 5 assembled in a huge barren underground room: a
parade ground. I didn't see Joncey, Abigail, or anyone else I rec-
ognized. For two hours twenty people did calisthenics. I did in-
tentionally feeble imitations in my chair. Peg grunted and sweated.
     Next came two hours of holo instruction on weapons—
propellant, laser, biological, grav—I was amazed Hubbley let me
see this, and then I wasn't. He didn't expect me to ever have
the chance to tell anyone.
     As the holo explained weapon charging, care, and use, the
twenty members of Company 5 practiced with the real thing. I
was ten feet away from wresting a gun from Peg and shooting her
dead. She didn't seem bothered by this, although I saw a few others
glance at me, hard-eyed. Probably Peg didn't object because these
were Hubbley's orders. Perhaps this was the way that Francis
Marion had converted his prisoners of war.
     Lunch, then more physical training, then a holo on living off
the land. Incredibly, it came from the Government Document
Office. I fell asleep.
     Peg kicked my chair. "Political Truth, you."
     She pushed me closer into the company, who sat on the floor
in a semicircle, facing the holostage. Everyone sat straight. I could
feel taut shapes grow tauter in my mind. The atmosphere prickled
and thickened. We were in for something more interesting than
the Government Document Office.
     Jimmy Hubbley came in and sat with the company. Nobody
addressed him. Another holo began.
     It had the deliberately grainy texture reserved for real-time
unedited filming. There's no way to alter any part of it without
destroying the whole thing. It's the same holo-creation technique
I use in my concerts, although my equipment compensates for the
graininess with deliberately softened edges, like a dream. But it's
important to people to see a real-life concert, not some patched
together and edited version afterwards. They need to know it's
really me.
     This holo had really happened.
    It showed the underground, including James Hubbley, cap-
turing the duragem dissembler in an outlaw lab. The captured
inventors were then forced to manufacture dissemblers in huge
quantities, which were stored in small canisters completely dis-
solvable once opened. None had been released until the canisters
had been stockpiled all over the United States. Then the clocked
dissembler had been released simultaneously everywhere, so no
source could be traced. I was looking at information the GSEA
would give its collective life to know.
    The original outlaw lab had been located in Upstate New York,
in the Adirondack Mountains, near a small town called East
Oleanta.
    I sat quietly, letting the shapes in my mind overwhelm me.
There was no use fighting them. Miranda had always said East
Oleanta had been chosen at random for the Huevos Verdes
project, picked by a computer-generated random program to
avoid the GSEA deductive-locale programs. That's what she had
told me.
    You're a necessary part of the project, Drew. A full member.
    "Okay," Jimmy Hubbley said, when the holo had finished,
"now who can tell me why we all see this here holo over and over
again like this, pretty near every damn day?"
    A young girl said fervently, "Because we share knowledge, us,
equally. Not like the donkeys."
    "That's fine, Ida." Hubbley smiled at her.
    A man said in a deep, upcountry voice, "We need, us, to know
the facts so's we can make good decisions about our country. The
idea of an America for real human Americans. The will to get us
there."
    "That's fine," Hubbley said. "Don't it sound fine, soldiers?"
    Someone said hesitantly, "But don't that mean, it, that we
should ask everybody in the whole country what they think? For
a vote?"
    There was a little stir in the room.
    "If they had all the knowledge we do, Bobby, then it sure
would mean that," Hubbley said earnestly. Light shone in his pale
eyes. "But they don't know all the things we do. They ain't had
the privilege of fightin' for freedom on the front lines. Specifically,
they ain't seen the holo of the captured lab. They don't know what
weapons we got on our side now. They might think this here
revolution is hopeless, not knowing that. But we know better. So
we got the obligation to decide for them, and to act in the best
will of all our fellow Americans."
    Heads nodded. I could see how special they felt, Ida and Bobby
and Peg, deciding so selflessly in the best interests of all Americans.
Just as Francis Marion had done.
    I heard Miranda's voice in my head: They can't possibly under-
stand the biological and societal consequences of the project, Drew, any
more than people of Kenzo Yagai's time could foresee the social conse-
quences of cheap ubiquitous energy. He had to go forward and develop
it on the basis of his best informed projections. And so do we. They
can't really understand until it happens.
    Because they were norms. Like Drew Aden.
    There was a long silence. People shifted from ham to ham or
sat preternaturally still. Eyes darted at each other, then away. I
could feel my own back straighten. All this tension was not over
some holo they had seen "pretty near every damn day."
    Hubbley said, "I said they don't know what we got, and I meant
they don't know what we got. But they're sure the hail going to
find out. Campbell, bring him in."
    Campbell entered from one of the many corridors, half drag-
ging a naked, handcuffed Liver. The man was a sorry sight, barely
five and a half feet to Campbell's seven and looking even shorter
as he futilely resisted being dragged. He was hunched over, his
bare heels scraping the floor. He didn't make a sound.
    Hubbley said, "Is the robocam ready?"
    Someone behind him said, "I just turned it on, Jimmy."
    "Good. Now, y'all know this film is the kind that cain't be
edited without self-destructin'. And you watchers out there, y'all
know it too. Son, look at me when I'm talkin'."
    The captive raised his head. He made no effort to cover his
genitals. I saw with a shock that his lack of height wasn't due to
bad Liver genes; he was a boy. Thirteen, maybe fourteen, and
genemod. It was there in the bright green eyes, the sharp hand-
some line of his jaw. But he wasn't donkey. He was a tech, those
offspring of borderline families who can't afford full genetic mod-
ification, including the expensive IQ boosters, but who aspire to
be more than Livers. They buy their children the appearance mods
only, and the kids grow up—early—to provide those services
halfway between robots and donkey brains. My roadies were techs.
At Huevos Verdes, you could argue, Kevin Baker's grandson
Jason, a Sleepless, was nonetheless a tech.
     The boy looked terrified.
     Hubbley said, not to the boy, "What did General Francis Mar-
 ion's young lieutenant call him?"
     Peg answered fervently, " 'An ugly, cross, knock-kneed, hook-
 nosed son of a bitch'!"
     "Y'all see, son," Hubbley explained kindly to the boy, "Gen-
eral Marion warn't genemod. He was just the way his Lord made
him. And he became the greatest hero this country ever had.
Curtis, what did General Marion say was his policy when he was
too outnumbered to attack the enemy directly?"
     A man to my left said promptly, " 'Yet I pushed them so hard
as in a great measure to break them up.' "
     "Absolutely right. 'Pushed them so hard as to break them up.'
And that's just what we're doin', you watchers out there. Pushin'
y'all. This here man is a captured enemy, a worker in a genemod
clinic. Parents take their innocent unborn babies to this place and
turn them into something that ain't human. Their own children. To
some of us this is damn near inconceivable."
    I wanted to say that in vitro genetic modification happened
before there was a 'babe,' that it was done to the fertilized egg in
artificial biostasis. But my tongue was stuck to the roof of my
mouth. The tech boy stared straight ahead, seeing nothing, like a
rabbit caught in bright lights.
    "Now, y'all might think that this boy is too young to be held
accountable for his actions. But he's fifteen years old. Junie, how
old was Francis Marion's nephew Gabriel Marion when he was
killed fightin' the enemy at Mount Pleasant Plantation?"
    "Fourteen," a female voice answered. From my chair, I couldn't
see her face.
    Hubbley's voice grew confidential. He leaned forward slightly,
"Y'all out there see, don't y'all? This is war. We mean it. We got
the Idea what kind of country we want to live in, and we got the
Will to get there. No matter what the personal cost. Earl, tell all
our watchers out there at the GSEA about Mrs. Rebecca Motte."
    A man dressed in purple jacks stood awkwardly, his arms dan-
gling loose at his side. "On May 11—"
    "May 10," Hubbley said, with a brief frown. He didn't want
any inaccuracies in his uneditable tape. Earl, rattled, took a deep
breath.
     "On May 10 General Marion and his men attacked Mount
Pleasant Plantation, them, 'cause the British had took it for a
headquarters. They made the lady and her kids move, her, into a
log cabin. Her name was Mrs. Rebecca Motte. The house was too
well fortified for direct attack, it, and so the general decided, him,
to shoot flaming arrows and set it on fire. But they didn't have no
good bow and arrows. Lighthorse Harry Lee, who was working
with General Marion, he went, him, to tell Mrs. Motte they had
to burn her house down. And she went into the cabin and come
out with beautiful bow and arrows, real donkey stuff. And she
said, her, about her house, 'If it were a palace, it should go.' " Earl
 sat down.
      Hubbley nodded. "Genuine sacrifice. A genuine patriot, Mrs.
 Rebecca Motte. You hear that, son?"
      The tech didn't appear to hear anything. Was he drugged?
      Leisha had always warned me against believing history's more
 colorful stories.
      "We cain't never stop resistin' all you enemies of America.
 And you watchers are the worst, just like traitors and spies is
 always the worst in any revolution. They pretend to be on one
 side while plottin' and workin' for the other. GSEA agents are all
 traitors, pretendin' to safeguard the purity of human beings while
 actually permittin' all kinds of abominations. And then handin'
 over this great country to those same abominations, the donkeys,
 just like we Livers didn't realize y'all would let us starve if you
 could. And in fact y'all are. Joncey, what did General Marion say
 in his speech to the men before they attacked Doyle at Lynche's
  Creek?"
      Joncey's voice, so much stronger and at ease than Earl's, re-
  cited, " 'But, my friends, if we shall be ruined for bravely resisting
  our tyrants, what will be done to us if we tamely lie down and
  submit to them?' "
       I turned around. The room was full of people, all the "revo-
  lutionaries" from other "companies." Staring at the young tech,
  I hadn't even heard them come in. Neither, I was convinced,
  had he.
       Hubbley said, "This here boy is a traitor. Workin' in a
  genemod clinic. He's goin' to die like a traitor, and y'all out
  there remember that he ain't the only one today, or
  tomorrow, or the day after that. Abby?"
       Abigail came out of the crowd. She carried a featureless
 gray canister, no bigger than her closed fist.
       "Abby," Hubbley said, "what did General Marion do
 with goods confiscated from the enemy?"
      She turned to speak directly to the robocam. "Every metal
 saw the brigade could find, them, they hammered into a
 sword."
      "That's exactly right. And this here—" he hoisted the
 canister high above his head "—is a saw. It ain't even been
 concocted in some illegal gene lab. This here comes straight
 from the biggest traitor of all: the so-called United States
 government." He turned the canister around. I saw stamped on
 it PROPERTY OF U. S. ARMY. CLASSIFIED. DANGER.
      I didn't believe it. Hubbley had painted the words on. I
didn't believe it, and I didn't even know as yet what the
canister held. This ragtag bag of so-called revolutionaries had
delusions, dreams, pathetic wishes . . . I didn't believe it.
      The lattice in my mind sighed, as if wind soughed
      through. "Okay, Abby," Hubbley said, "do it."
      Abby, her back to me, did something I couldn't see. The
shimmer of a heavy-duty Y-energy shield appeared around
the naked tech, a domed and floored hemisphere six feet in
diameter. The canister was inside the shimmer.
     The boy wasn't drugged after all. Immediately he started
screaming. The sound couldn't carry through the shield,
which was the kind nothing got through, not even air. The
boy beat his fists against the inside and screamed, his open
mouth a pink cave, his eyes round with terror. There was
faint down on his upper lip, like a fledgling bird, and
scarcely more on his groin.
     Jimmy Hubbley looked disgusted. "He lives causin' death
and then cain't even die like a man . . . do it, Abby."
     Whatever Abby did, I couldn't see. The canister glowed
briefly, then dissolved into a gray puddle.
     "This here is your metal saw you made to cut us up
with," Hubbley said, "but we made it a sword. Live by the
sword, die by the sword. Matthew 26:52. Y'all already know
what this stuff does.
But for them that don't—" he looked directly at me "—I'll repeat
it. This here's one of your own genemod abominations. It takes
apart cell walls, cells of livin' human beings. Like this."
    The boy had stopped beating against the shield. He was still
screaming, but his mouth was changing shape. He was dissolving.
It wasn't the same as when someone had acid poured on him—I
had seen that once, in the days before Leisha took me in. Acid
burns away the flesh. The boy's flesh wasn't burning, it was break-
ing up, like ice in springtime. Bits of skin fell to the dome floor,
exposing red flesh, and then bits of that fell. He went on screaming,
screaming, screaming. I felt my stomach heave, and the shapes in
my mind heaved, too, around the ever-closed lattice.
     It took the boy almost three minutes to die.
    Hubbley said, very softly, "General Marion ended his Lynche's
Creek speech this way: 'As God is my judge this day, that I would
die a thousand deaths, most gladly would I die them all, rather
than see my dear country in such a state of degradation and
wretchedness.' As God is my judge, watchers." His pale eyes in
their bony, sunburned face looked directly outward, filled with
light.
    Then everyone moved. The robocam must have been turned
off. The shapes in my mind were tarry, foul. I had done nothing
to save the boy. I hadn't even tried to speak up. I had not tried
to get myself on the uneditable tape, to provide the watchers some
clue about where this abomination was taking place . . . I had done
nothing.
    "That's a wrap," Jimmy Hubbley said, clearly pleased with
himself. "That's old-time movie talk, it means the filmin' is done.
Y'all are dismissed. And Mr. Aden, sir, I think Peg better take
y'all to your room. Y'all look a little peaked. If it ain't too great
an impertinence in me to tell you so."


It went on like that for weeks.
    Physical training, holos about the state of society (where were
they made?), political drill. It was the worst of being in school, all
over again. I kept finding small lace oblongs from Abigail's wed-
ding gown, and Peg never pushed my chair anywhere in spitting
distance of a terminal.
    There were no more executions.
    I badly wanted a drink. Hubbley said no. He allowed sunshine,
because it didn't dull reaction time. I wanted a drink, because it
dulled reaction time.
    Hubbley had allowed me a handheld dumb terminal, the kind
kids use for schoolwork, and a standard encyclopedia library. I
said to him once, because I couldn't bite back the words, "Francis
Marion discouraged the killing of prisoners. He even spirited a
Tory, Jeff Butler, out of his own camp when it looked like Marion's
men might butcher him."
    Hubbley laughed with delight and rubbed the lump on his
neck. "Damn, you been studyin', son, hail if you haven't! I'm damn
proud of you!"
    My teeth hurt from clenching them. "Hubbley—"
    "But it don't make no never mind, Mr. Aden, sir. No, it really
don't. General Marion showed compassion to Tories because they
were his own kind, his neighbors, living off the land same as he
did. He didn't show that same compassion to British soldiers, now,
did he? Donkeys ain't our kind. They ain't our neighbors in their
snooty enclaves. And they sure don't live like we do, deprived of
education and personal property and real power. No, donkeys are
the British, Mr. Arlen. Not Jeff Butler—but Captain James Lewis
of His Majesty's Forces, who was killed by a fourteen-year-old
patriot named Gwynn. That's natural law, son. Protect your own."
    "Marion didn't—"
    "You say 'General Marion,' you!" Peg yelled. She glanced at
Hubbley, like a dog hoping for a pat on the head. Hubbley smiled,
showing his broken teeth.
    These were the people who had loosened the duragem dis-
sembler on the country, wrecking civilization. These.
    And it was wrecked. The HT in commons received donkey
newsgrids. There was scarcely agravrail running a steady schedule,
especially outside the cities. Most technicians had been diverted
to major population areas, where the votes were. And the danger
of rioting. Security had been tripled at most enclaves. Few planes
flew, which meant the country was being run mostly by telecon-
ferencing, at a distance. Medunits malfunctioned regularly. They
didn't dispense wrong diagnoses; they just stopped diagnosing.
    A viral plague was spreading in southern California. Nobody
knew if it was a natural mutation, or bioengineered.
    A Liver messiah in East Texas had proclaimed this the Time
of the End. He was quoting Revelations on the four horsemen,
with a twist: The horseman of war must be loosed by the Livers.
Now. When the state security squad tried to arrest him, he and
his followers blew away thirty-three people with illegal Mexican
weapons. The governor, said the newsgrid with concern, was vir-
tually certain to fail reelection.
     In Kansas, a soysynth factory owned by the D'Angelo franchise
was ripped apart by hoarders, who carried off the treated and
untreated soy. They also wrecked three million dollars of robotic
machinery.
     The lieutenant-governor of South Dakota was somehow knifed
to death in his sleep, within a protected enclave.
     Livers in San Diego broke into the world-famous zoo there,
killed a lion and two elehippos, and ate them, following a report
that animals could not get the new plague.
     The northeast had been hit by early winter. Small towns were
isolated without gravrails, starving without food. People starved.
Small towns like East Oleanta.
     Where was Miranda? And what was she waiting for? Unless
something had gone wrong in the last steps of the project. Un-
less the GSEA had discovered Eden, traced it back from the care-
fully disseminated rumors in the little isolated Liver towns.
     Unless there was even more that she, and Huevos Verdes,
hadn't told me.
     For the first time, I wondered if she wasn't coming for me at
all.
     "The greatness of the Constitution is in its Will to the common
people," Jimmy Hubbley said, his pale eyes bright.
     "The greatness of the Constitution is in its checks and bal-
ances," Leisha had always said. Leisha. Who. Was. Dead.
     The dark lattice in my mind was furled tight as an umbrella,
impenetrable, a thin sharp line that cut me inside.
     Where were the checks and balances on Huevos Verdes?
     "Take me around the compound again," I said to Peg.
     She was slumped in a chair in commons, watching a scooter
race someplace in California. A part of California without plague.
"I don't want, me, to take you again. You seen everything you're
gonna see."
     "Fine. I'll go alone." I wheeled the chair away from her. I didn't
dare exercise my upper body, not even after she'd locked me in
at night. I couldn't see the surveillance monitors but I knew they
had to be there. I settled for furtively hoisting myself a few inches
above the arms of my chair several times a day, lifting my useless
legs, careful to choose different locations each day.
    "Wait, you." Peg sighed and heaved herself up. Roughly she
shoved the chair forward.
    A white corridor with the featureless doors locked.
    Another white corridor with the featureless doors locked.
    And another white corridor with the featureless doors locked.
    The landing stage, guarded by Campbell, who was asleep but
not very. Another white corridor with . . .
    A piece of Abby's wedding dress lay snagged on a rough spot
in the wall.
    "Damn!" Peg said, with more energy than I'd ever heard her
say anything. "That bitch can't keep nothing tidy, her! This stupid
stuffs everywhere!" She snatched it up savagely and tore the small
oblong into even smaller pieces. Her face was a mottled, angry
red. There were tears in her eyes.
    Why was there a rough place on a nanosmooth wall to snag a
piece of dropped lace?
    "Stupid bitch!" Peg said. Her voice caught.
    "Why, Peg," I said. "You're jealous."
    "You shut up, you!"
    Through the zoom portion of my corneas, the rough place on
the wall had an added-on look. Not a mistake in the
nanoprogramming, but a bump built later, with another clocked
nanoassembler, manually. Why?
    To snag an oblong of lace?
    Every oblong was different. The lace had been programmed
that way. To make a unique pattern on an old-fashioned wedding
gown.
    To make a code.
    Peg had recovered herself. Blank-faced once more, but with
red eyes, she shoved the torn bit of lace in the pocket of her
hideously unbecoming turquoise jacks. Her mouth twitched in
pain. No sympathetic shapes slid through my mind. Peg didn't
know what pain was. Peg hadn't seen Leisha die, mud caked on
her thin yellow shirt, two small red dots on her forehead.
    "Let's go, you," she said impatiently, as if I were the one who'd
delayed her.
     A code. The bits of lace were a code, in a place where every
word, every action, every chance encounter was monitored. And
everyone was encouraged to be "tidy" and pick up litter, because
Brigadier General Francis Marion had been the tidiest son-of-a-
bitch to ever attack the British army.
     How many people were involved? Abigail and Joncey, most
 certainly. Who did they have with them against Hubbley? Did
 they have anyone on the outside?
     I saw again the gray canister. PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY. CLAS-
SIFIED. DANGER.
     "See," Peg snarled when we got back to commons, "you seen
everything, you! Now can we stay put?"
     "I get bored staying put," I said. "Let's do it again." And I
wheeled away my primitive chair, hearing her curse behind me.
     Three days later, three days of ceaseless wheeling, the door
to Jimmy Hubbley's private quarters opened and he and Abigail
came out. When Abigail saw Peg, she lowered her eyes, smiled,
and pretended to finish zipping the pants to her jacks.
     Peg was behind me, where I couldn't see her face, but I could
see her hands, large and rough on the handles of my chair. In the
stiffening of her hands—controlled, habitual—I saw that she al-
ready knew about Abigail and Hubbley. Of course. Everyone
would know; you couldn't hide it in a place like this. Joncey must
accept it. Maybe it advanced his and Abby's plans for the coun-
terrevolution. Maybe he thought Hubbley was just spreading his
genes in the allowable natural way to strengthen the human ge-
nome. Maybe Hubbley even thought he was spreading Francis
Marion's, to every pretty soldier with a duty to Will and Idea.
     "Evenin', Peg," Hubbley said. She choked out some reply.
Abigail smiled demurely. She made a shape in my mind: flowers
with tiny, deadly teeth in their sunny yellow centers.
     "Evenin', Major Hubbley," Peg choked out. I didn't even know
he'd been promoted.
     But now I had him.


At dinner the commons was full. Abigail sat with her friends,
laughing, sewing on her white lace wedding dress. Her face was
flushed and giddy. Above, in the world I now knew only from the
 HT, it turned November. Sixty-seven days underground, and
 Miranda had not come.
   Joncey stood with a group watching a pair of gamblers
play Devil. The twelve-sided dice, made of some shiny
metal, flashed as they were thrown overhead. Everyone
shrieked and laughed. Peg sat slumped, blank-faced, in her
chair, her rough hands slack on her knees. I'd asked her for
paper and pen, which made her first suspicious and then
disgusted.
    "What for? You got your library terminal, you."
    "I want to write something."
    "You can speak, you, to the terminal anything you want
    saved."
    "I want to write it. On paper."
    Her suspicion deepened. "You can write?"
    "Yes."
    "I thought Major Hubbley said, him, that you wasn't no
donkey, you."
    "I've been to donkey schools. I can write. Can't you
    read?"
    "Course I can read, me!"
    She probably could, at least a little. Liver children
usually learned to read basic words, if not to write them.
You needed to read names on packages at the warehouse,
on street signs, on scooter bet sheets. I hoped to hell she
could read.
    An unseen monitor watched me, of course. I bent over
the paper Peg brought me, coarse pale sheets probably
meant to wrap something in. I couldn't remember the last
time I'd written anything. I was never very good at it. The
pen felt heavy in my hand.
   Drew, hold it like this.
    What for, Leisha? I 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 un-
derstand 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 etern-
ity before Jimmy Hubbley pulled her off me.
    "There now, Peg, let go, the man ain't fightin', 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. Aden, sir?"
     "N-n-no."
     "Wail, these things happen. Starrett, lift Mr. Aden 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 pro-
tected 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 my-
self 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 per-
forations 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 im-
portant 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 ab-
domen 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 strength-
 ened. In case I would ever, in my bodily weakness, need them.
      Peg struck at me viciously. Pain exploded in my head, a hot
 geyser, spraying the dark lattice. I hung on. Pain drowned us both,
 drowned everything.
      For the third time, the purple lattice disappeared. Then so did
 everything else.
     Slowly, slowly, I became aware that objects in the room had
shapes of their own, shapes outside my head. They were solid,
and sharp-edged, and real. My body had shapes: legs crumpled
under me, my head lying on top of the metal wheelchair, my balls
screaming with hurt. My hands had shape. They clenched, locked
into shape, around Peg's neck. Her face was purple, the tongue
poking out swollen between her lips. She was dead.
     It hurt to unclench my hands.
     I looked at her. I had never killed anybody before. I looked
at every inch of her. The note scrawled on lace was locked in her
rigid fingers.
     As quickly as I could I righted the wheelchair, stuck the pad-
ding back on the jagged armrest, and hauled my hurting body into
it. Peg had a gun in her jacks; I took that. I didn't know how
sophisticated the room's surveillance program was. Peg was pre-
sumably allowed to enter at will. Could the surveillance program
interpret what it recorded, making judgment calls about sounding
an alarm? Or did someone have to be actively watching? Was
someone actively watching?
     Francis Marion, Hubbley had told me, was meticulous about
pickets and sentries.
     I opened the door and wheeled myself into the corridor. The
wheels left a thin line of blood on the perfect nanobuilt floor.
There was nothing I could do about it.
     I had watched, through all the wheeled trips around the
bunker, who went in and out of which doors. I had listened, trying
to figure out who were the most trusted lieutenants, who seemed
smart enough for computer work. I had guessed which doors might
have terminals behind them.
    Nobody had come for me. It had been five minutes since I
left my room. Eight. Ten. No alarms had sounded. Something was
wrong.
    I came to a door I hoped held a terminal; it was of course
locked. I spoke the override tricks Jonathan and Miranda had
taught me, the tricks I didn't understand, and the lock glowed. I
opened the door.
    It was a storage room, full of more small metal canisters,
stacked to the ceiling. None of the canisters were labeled. There
were no terminals.
    Footsteps ran down the hall. Quickly I closed the door from
the inside. The footsteps ceased; the room was sound shielded. I
opened the door again a few inches. Now people were shouting
farther down the corridor.
    "Goddamn it, where is he, him? Goddamn it to hell!" Camp-
bell, whom I had never heard even speak. They were looking for
me. But the surveillance program should show clearly where I
was . . .
    Another voice, a woman's, low and deadly, said, "Try Abby's
room."
    "Abby! Fuck, she's in on it! Her and Joncey! They already got
the terminal room—"
    The voices disappeared. I closed the door. The shapes in my
mind suddenly ballooned, crowding out thought. I pushed them
down. This was it, then. It had started. They weren't looking for
me, they were looking for Hubbley. The revolution against the
revolution had started.
    I sat thinking as fast as I could. Leisha. If Leisha were
here—
    Leisha was no plotter. No killer. She'd believed in trusting the
eventual outcome of any clash between good and evil, in trusting
the basic similarities among human beings, in trusting their ability
to compromise and live together. Humans might need checks and
balances, but they didn't need imposed force, nor defensive iso-
lation, nor crushing retribution. Leisha, unlike Miranda, believed
in the rule of law. That's why she was dead.
    I opened the door the rest of the way and wheeled my chair,
bent as it was, into the corridor. The padding fell off the armrest.
I blocked the corridor, gun drawn, and waited for someone to
round the corner. Eventually someone did. It was Joncey. I shot
him in the groin.
    He screamed and fell against the wall. There was a lot more
blood than there had been with Peg. I raced my chair up to him
and pulled him across my lap, holding his wrists with one of my
augmented hands and the gun with the other. Another man
rounded the corner, Abigail waddling after him. Abigail made a
moaning sound, more like wind than people.
     "Oohhhhhhhh ............."
     "Don't come close or I'll kill him. He'll live, Abby, with med-
ical attention, if I let him have it soon. But if you don't do what
I ask, I'll kill him. Even if you draw a gun and shoot me, I'll kill
him first."
     The other man said, "Shoot the crippled bastard, you!"
     "No," Abby said. She'd regained control of herself immedi-
ately; her eyes darted like trapped rabbits, but she was in control.
She was a better natural leader than most, maybe better than
Hubbley. But I held Joncey in my arms, and she wasn't leader
enough for that sacrifice.
     "What do you want, Arlen?" She licked her lips, watching the
blood pour out of Joncey's groin. He'd fainted, and I shifted him
to free my other hand.
     "You're leaving, aren't you? The ones of you left alive. Did
you kill Hubbley?"
     She nodded. Her eyes never moved from Joncey. He was still
on my lap. The almost forgotten shapes of childhood prayer
whipped through my mind: Please don't let him die yet. I saw the
same shapes in Abigail's eyes.
     "Leave me here," I said. "Just that. Here, and alive. Somebody
will come eventually."
     "He'll call, him, for help," the other man said.
     "Shut up," Abby said. "You know nobody can't use them ter-
minals but Hubbley and Carlos and O'Dealian, and they're all
dead, them."
     "But, Abby—"
     "Shut up, you!" She was thinking hard. I couldn't feel Joncey's
heart.
     A woman raced into the corridor. "Abby, what's the matter,
you? The submarine's off the coast—" She stopped dead.
    The submarine. All of a sudden I saw how the underground
revolution had evaded the GSEA for so long. A sub meant military
help. There were agencies inside the government involved, or at
least people within agencies. PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT.
CLASSIFIED. DANGER.
     For a long moment I thought I was dead.
     "All right!" Abby said. "Give him to me and lock yourself in
 that there storage room, you!"
    "Don't come close," I said. I backed into the room with the
canisters, still carrying Joncey. At the last minute I dumped him
onto the floor and slammed the door. It could be locked from the
inside, but I had no doubt she could override it. I held onto the
urgency in the second woman's voice, the panic: Abby, the sub-
marine's off the coast! Let the sub be ready to go. Let Abby want
Joncey alive, safely tucked inside a medunit, more than she wanted
me dead. Let the canisters all around me not contain deadly viruses,
and let them not be able to be released by remote . . .
     I sat, heart pounding. The shapes in my mind were red and
black and spiky, painful as cactuses.
    Nothing happened.
    Minutes dragged by.
    Finally a small section of the wall beside me brightened. It was
a holoscreen, and I hadn't even realized it. A dumb terminal.
Abby's face filled it. It was smeared with blood, twisted with hate.
    "Listen, Arlen, you. You're going to die there, underground.
I done sealed it off. And the terminals are frozen, them, all of
them. In another hour the life support will cut out automatically.
I could kill you now, me, but I want you to think about it
first. . . You hear me? You're dead, you—dead dead DEAD."
With each word her voice rose, until it was a shriek. She whipped
her head from side to side, her hair seething and foaming, caked
with blood. I knew Joncey was dead.
    Someone pulled her away from the screen, and it went blank.
    I edged open the door of the storage room. My wheelchair
was so bent I could hardly wheel it along the corridors. My vision
kept fading in and out, until I wasn't sure what shapes were in
front of me and what were in my head, except for the dark lattice.
That was in my head. It stirred, and for the first time began to
open, and every inch of its opening pushed against my mind like
pain.
    I found Jimmy Hubbley. They had killed him clean, as near
as I could tell. A bullet through the head. Francis Marion, I re-
membered, had died quietly in bed, of an infection.
    Campbell must have fought. His huge body blocked a corridor,
bloody and torn, as if by repeated blows. He lay sprawled across
the captured doctor. The doctor's face looked both terrified and
indignant; this was not supposed to be his war. His blood slid
down the nanosmooth walls, which had been designed to shed
stains.
    Two bodies lay on the terminal room floor, when I had finally
opened enough doors to find it. A woman named Junie, and a
man I'd never heard called anything but "Alligator." They, too,
had died clean, of bullets through the forehead. Abigail's bid for
power hadn't been sadistic. She just wanted to control things. To
be in charge. To know what was best for 175 million Americans,
give or take a few million donkeys.
    I sat in front of the main terminal and said, "Terminal on." It
answered, "YES, SIR!"
    Francis Marion had believed in military discipline.
    It took me fifteen minutes to try everything Jonathan
Markowitz had taught me. I spoke each step, or coded it in
manually, not understanding what any of them meant. Even if
Jonathan had explained, I wouldn't have understood. And he had
not explained. The shapes in my mind darted quickly, palpitating,
sharp as talons.
   "READY FOR OUTSIDE TRANSMISSION, SIR!"
    I didn't move.
    If Abigail had been telling the truth, I had thirty-seven minutes
of life support left in the underground bunker.
    Huevos Verdes, off the Mexican coast, could be here in fifteen.
But would they be? Miranda had not come for me before now.
   "SIR? READY FOR OUTSIDE TRANSMISSION, SIR!"
    The dark lattice in my mind was, finally, opening.
    It started to unfurl like an umbrella, or a rosebud. They have
rosebuds now, genemod, that will unfurl completely in five min-
utes, with the right stimuli, for use in various ceremonies. They're
pretty to watch. The opaque diamond-shaped panes on the lattice
lightened and widened, both at the same time. The lattice itself
expanded, larger and larger, until it had opened completely.
    Inside was a ten-year-old boy, dirty and confident, his eyes
bright.
    I hadn't seen him, me, in decades. Not his sureness about what
he wanted, his straight-line going after it. That boy had been his
own man. He made his own decisions, undaunted by what the rest
of the world said he should do. I hadn't seen him since the day
he arrived at Leisha Camden's compound in New Mexico, and
met his first Sleepless, and gave his mind to their superior
ones. Not since I'd become the Lucid Dreamer, Not since
I'd met
Miranda.
     And here he was again, that solitary grinning boy,
released from the stone lattice that had encased him. A
bright glowing
shape in my mind.
     "SIR? DO YOU WISH TO CANCEL TRANSMISSION,
     SIR?" There were thirty-one minutes left.
 "No," I said, and spoke the emergency override code, the one
 I'd been urged to memorize carefully and not forget, as
 Drew Arlen common Liver might easily forget, in case of
 emergency. She herself answered. "Drew? Where are you?" I
 gave her the exact longitude and lattitude, obtained from the
 terminal, and told her how to get the rescue force through
 the mucky pool. My voice was completely steady. "It's an
 illegal underground lab. Part of the revolution that already
 released the duragem dissemblers. But you know all about
 that, don't you?" Her eyes didn't nicker. "Yes. I'm sorry we
 couldn't tell you." "I understand." And I did. I hadn't
 understood before, but I did now. Since Jimmy Hubbley.
 Since Abigail. Since Joncey. I said, "There's a lot I have to
 tell you."
       She said, "We'll be there in twenty minutes. There are
   people already close by . . . just wait twenty minutes,
   Drew."
       I nodded, watching her face on the screen. She didn't
   smile at me; this was too important. I liked that. The shapes
   in my mind left no room for smiles. The crying boy, the
   people—all the people in the world—inside the dark lattice.
   Inside my mind, inside my unwilling responsibility.
        "Just twenty minutes," Carmela Clemente-Rice said in
    her warm voice. "Meanwhile, tell us how the—" and then the
    screen went dead as Huevos Verdes picked up the signal,
    overrode it, and cut off my communication with the GSEA.
                        Fourteen
                   BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




T     he morning the President declared martial law, him, was the
      same morning I found the dead genemod rabbit by the river.
      It was a week after we walked to Coganville and the gov-
ernment people came, them, to East Oleanta to blow up Eden.
Only when Annie finally let me out of bed, I listened hard, me,
to what everybody in the cafe said about the place that got blown
up. Some people even hiked out, them, to look at it. And soon
as they described it, I knew, me, that the government didn't blow
up the place my big-headed girl went underground. Not my Eden.
    And I was the only person in the world, me, that knew that.
     Still, I wanted, me, to go see for myself. I had to go.
    "Where you going, Billy?" Annie said, breathing hard. She'd
just lugged in a bucket of river water for washing. The government
techs fixed everything, them, but two days later stuff started to
break again. That's when a lot of people left East Oleanta on the
gravrail, before it could break. The women's bath wasn't working.
Lizzie was right behind Annie, her, lugging another bucket. It
broke my heart, nearly, with my own uselessness. The medunit
said, it, that I wasn't supposed to lift nothing.
    "Down to the cafe," I lied.
    Annie pressed her lips together. "You don't want, you, to go
down to the cafe again. Where you really going, Billy? I don't
want you, me, taking no more walks in them woods. It's too
dangerous. You might fall again."
    "I'm going to the cafe," I said, and that was two lies.
    "Billy," Annie said, and I knew from her bottom lip that she
was going to say it again, "We could leave, us. Now. Before more
duragem gets eat away on that train."
    "I ain't leaving East Oleanta, me," I said. It scared me to tell
her no. Each time it scared me, each and every single time. What
if Annie left anyway, her, without me? My life would end.
What if Annie took Lizzie and just left?
    But I had to stay, me. I had to. I was the only person who
knew, me, that the government didn't blow up Eden. Dr. Turner
was the one that called the government to come to East Oleanta.
Lizzie told me, her. Annie didn't know. I had to stay and make
sure Dr. Turner didn't find that Eden still existed and call the
government to come back and finish the job. I didn't know, me,
how I could stop Dr. Turner unless I killed her, and I didn't think
I could do that. Maybe I could. But I couldn't go off, neither, and
leave the dark-haired big-headed girl who'd deliberately let me
know where Eden was in case I ever really needed it again. I owed
that girl, me.
    Only it wasn't only that.
    So I said to Annie, "Get off my back, woman. I'm going, me,
down to the cafe, and I'm going alone!"
    Then I held my breath, me, the sick fear churning inside me.
    But Annie only sighed, her, and took off her parka and picked
up a washrag. That was the wonderful thing about Annie. She
knew there was things a person was just going to do, them, and
she didn't waste her breath arguing about it, unless of course the
person was Lizzie. Actually, the next person I expected trouble
from, me, was Lizzie. But Lizzie sat on the sofa with her library
terminal, doing her everlasting studying, her, and glancing up at
the door for Dr. Turner, ready to ask the doctor questions nine-
teen to the dozen.
    That was another reason for taking my walk now. Dr. Turner
wasn't around, her. For a change.
    I zipped my parka, me, and picked up the walking stick Lizzie
brought me. It's a good stick. I'd use it even if it wasn't, because
Lizzie brought it to me, but it is good. The right height and thick-
ness. Lizzie's got an eye, her. When she takes it off her library
terminal and Dr. Turner.
    Annie said, more gentle, "You be careful, Billy Washington.
We don't want, us, anything to happen to you," just like she knew
I wasn't going to the cafe after all, just like we didn't have no
 bitter fights over leaving East Oleanta. And she put her arms
 around me. For a minute I held Annie Francy, me, against my
 chest, her head resting just under my chin, and closed my eyes.
     "You," I said, which was stupid enough, but then it was all
 right because Annie smiled. I could feel her smiling, her, against
 my neck. So I said it again. "You."
     "You yourself," she said, pulling away. Her chocolate brown
eyes had a tender look, them. I walked out that door like I was
walking on sky. And I didn't feel too weak, me, neither. My legs
worked better than I expected. I got all the way, me, down to the
river without my heart racing. Only my mind, it.
     Why wouldn't I leave East Oleanta? Annie really wanted, her,
 to go someplace better for Lizzie. She was only staying for me.
     And why was I staying, me? Because a big-headed Sleepless
girl, who was probably Miranda Sharifi herself, might need me.
Me, Billy Washington, who couldn't even help carry water or trap
rabbits or move Y-energy heat cones to places where they was
needed. It was funny when you thought about it. Miranda Sharifi,
from Huevos Verdes and Eden, needing Billy Washington.
     Only it wasn't funny.
     I poked the end of my stick, me, in the soft mud and leaned
on it to ease my old fool's body down the riverbank. I was kidding
myself. The truth was, it was me that needed Eden. In my head
anyway. And I didn't really know why.
     I picked my way, me, over the rocks along the river. We'd got
a thaw the last few days, and the river mud was thick as soup
dotted with patches of snow. The sun was shining, it, and the water
ran high, green and cold, rushing along like agravrail. I saw some-
thing dark, me, lying in some snow, and I stumped along for a
closer look.
     It was a rabbit. With long, clawed paws. It laid on its side, him,
on the white snow, its guts torn out. Fox prints dotted the mud,
them. The rabbit was reddish brown.
     Somebody climbed down the bank behind me. I poked my
stick, me, into the rabbit and turned it over. The rabbit was brown.
     "Ugh," Dr. Turner said. "What killed it?"
     "Fox."
     "Well, why are you looking so funereal about it? Surely this
must happen all the time out here in God's country. Were you
thinking we could eat it?"
     "No. Not this rabbit, him."
     "Well, if you can get your mind off the local wildlife, I have
news. The President's declared martial law."
     She sounded upset, her. I didn't say nothing.
     "Congress has backed him up. Good old Article 1 Section 8.
That big fuck-up on Wall Street yesterday, and enough state bud-
gets have run out of money so they can't afford to pay jurors,
which means that even where there aren't food riots the judiciary
has stopped functioning in just enough states for ol' Commander-
in-Chief Bonny Profile to declare civil authority inadequate to—
you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, do you, Billy?
Do you know what martial law is?"
     "No, Dr. Turner."
     "The President has put the army in control. To keep peace
where there's rioting. No matter what they have to do to keep
it."
     "Yes, Dr. Turner."
     She looked at me, her, sideways. I ain't never been any good,
me, at hiding things. "What is it, Billy? What's wrong with that
rabbit?"
     I said, slower than I meant, "It's brown."
     "So? We've seen lots of brown rabbits. Lizzie told me she even
had a brown rabbit for a pet, last summer."
     "It ain't summer."
     She went on, her, looking at me, and I saw she really didn't
understand. Sometimes donkeys don't know the most simple
things.
     "This here rabbit's a snowshoe rabbit. It should of changed its
 coat, him, by now. Reddish brown in the summer, white in the
 winter, and here it is the start of November. It should have
 changed, him."
     "Always, Billy?"
     "Always."
     "Genemod." Dr. Turner kneeled in the snow, her, and studied
 the rabbit hard. There wasn't nothing to see, except that reddish
 brown coat. Almost the same color as the little hairs escaping from
 her hat onto the back of her neck where she kneeled down, her,
 in front of me. I could of killed her right then, me, bashed her
 neck with my stick, if I was the killing kind. And if I'd of thought,
 me, that it would of done anybody any good.
     "Billy—are you positive the coat shouldn't still be brown?"
     I didn't even answer, me.
     She sat back on her feet, thinking hard. Then she looked up
at me, her, with the damnedest look I ever saw on anybody's face.
I didn't have no idea, me, what it meant, except it reminded me
of Jack Sawicki when he played chess. When he was alive, him,
to play chess. People used to snicker, them, at Jack for liking
chess. It wasn't no game for a Liver.
     Then Dr. Turner smiled, her. She said, " 'Oh, my ears and
whiskers, how late it's getting!' " which didn't even make no sense.
"Billy, you have to take me to Eden."
     I leaned on my stick. The end of it was mucky from poking
at the rabbit. "There ain't no Eden, Dr. Turner. The government
blew it up, them."
     " 'There is no rabbit,' " she said, smiling, her, in that same
voice that didn't make no sense. "Down the rabbit hole, Billy. Off
with their heads. You and I both know they didn't blow it up.
They missed."
     I looked, me, again at the dead rabbit. The fox had done a job
on it. "What makes you say, you, that they missed?"
     "It doesn't matter. What matters is that they did miss, and that
there are things I need to know. And I've decided that the only
way left to discover them is to go to Eden and ask. Nicely direct,
don't you think? Will you take me there?"
     I picked, me, a place in the river, and stared at it. Then I stared
at it some more. I wasn't going, me, to get into no argument with
no donkey. There ain't never any way to win those arguments.
But I wasn't going to take her to Eden, neither. She had called
the government once, her, to blow up Eden, and she could do it
again. She wasn't going to learn nothing from me.
     After a few minutes Dr. Turner stood up, her, wiping mud off
the knees of her jacks. Her voice was serious again. "All right,
Billy. Not yet. But you will, I know, when something happens.
And something will. The SuperSleepless aren't releasing genemod
rabbits that everyone can see are genemod rabbits for no reason
at all. This is a message. Pretty soon the meaning will come clear,
and then we'll discuss this again."
     "Ain't nothing to discuss," I said, me, and I meant it. Not with
her. No matter how many genemod rabbits turned up.
    The sun was lower now, it, and the air was getting cold. And
my walk was pretty much ruined anyway. I climbed the riverbank,
me, taking my time. Dr. Turner knew better than to try and help me.
    Lizzie was dancing around the apartment, clean from a bath,
waving her study terminal. "Godel's proof!" she sang, her, like it
was a song. "Godel's proof, Billy!"
    She was as bad as Dr. Turner with her looking glasses and
rabbit holes. Still, I was glad to see Lizzie so happy.
    "Look, Vicki, look what happens if you take this formula and
just kind of sneak up on these numbers ..."
    "Let me get my coat off, Mr. Godel," Dr. Turner said, which
didn't make no more sense than her talk at the river. But she was
smiling, her, at Lizzie.
    Lizzie couldn't hardly stay still, her. Whatever she had on that
library terminal must of been pretty exciting. She grabbed my
stick, her, and started dancing around with it like it was a partner.
Then she stuck it under her and rode it like a hobbyhorse. Then
she raised it up over her head like a flag. I knew from all this, me,
that Annie wasn't home.
    "All right, let's see Godel's proof," Dr. Turner said. "Did you
access Sven Bjorklind's variations?"
    "Course I did, me," Lizzie said, with scorn. I couldn't take my
eyes off her. She was like a light, her. A sun. My Lizzie.
    By the next morning she was so sick she couldn't move.


It didn't look like no sickness I ever saw, certainly not like the
fever she'd had last August. Lizzie was shitting bad, her, with blood
in it. Annie kept emptying the bucket and cleaning her up, but
the apartment still smelled awful. And Lizzie couldn't move her
legs or head without it hurting her. Annie and me were up with
her, us, all night. By dawn she wasn't even crying no more, just
laying there, her eyes open but not seeing nothing. I was scared,
me. She just laid there.
    I said to Annie, "I'm going, me, to get Dr. Turner. She's down
at the cafe, her, watching the news about martial—"
    "I know, me, where she is!" Annie snapped, because she was
so worried, her, about Lizzie, and so exhausted. "She's been there
all night, ain't she? But Lizzie don't need no donkey doctor, her.
This time our medunit's working."
     I didn't say, me, that donkeys invented the medunit. I was too
scared myself. Lizzie groaned and shit in the bed.
     "You go ahead, you, and wake up Paulie. I'll bring her as soon
as she's cleaned up."
     Paulie Cenverno's been mayor, him, since Jack Sawicki was
killed. Paulie keeps the code to the clinic. I grabbed my stick, me,
and set off as fast as I could go to Paulie's apartment building.
    Outside was cold and gray but sweet-smelling, which somehow
made me feel even scareder for Lizzie. Halfway down the street
I met Dr. Turner. She looked, her, so tired and upset that her
genemod face was almost plain.
     "Billy? What is it?" She grabbed my arm hard, her. "Your
face . . . Lizzie? Is it Lizzie?"
     "She's sick really bad, her. It got worse so fast. . . she's going
to die!" It just came out. I thought I'd faint, me. Lizzie. . .
     "Get Paulie to unlock the clinic. I'll help Annie." She was
gone, her, running like I could of, once.
    Paulie got up right away, him. By the time we got to the clinic
Annie and Dr. Turner were there. Dr. Turner carried Lizzie. Lizzie
was crying, her. Her poor legs dangled like broke branches.
     It felt like hot coals burned in my stomach, I was so scared.
No normal kid sickness should get that bad that fast.
    The clinic ain't nothing but a locked foamcast shed, no win-
dows, big enough to hold the medunit and four or five other people
who might be standing around. Paulie said, "Put her there, her . . .
right there . . ." Paulie didn't really know nothing, him. He was
as scared as we were.
    Dr. Turner laid Lizzie on the medunit couch, strapped her
down, and slid the couch inside the unit. We could see Lizzie, us,
through the plasticlear windows. The needles came out and went
into Lizzie, but she didn't cry out, her. It was like she didn't feel
nothing that was happening.
    A few minutes went by. Lizzie didn't move, her. She looked
almost asleep. Maybe the medunit gave her something, it, to sleep.
Finally the medunit said, "This unit is inadequate to make a di-
agnosis. Viral configuration is not on file. Administering wide-
spectrum antivirals and secondary antibiotics . . . " There was
more. Nobody never listens to a medunit, them. You just let it
fix you.
     But Dr. Turner jumped like she was shot. She shoved Paulie
aside, her, and talked at the medunit.
     "Additional information! What class is the viral configuration?"
     "You have exceeded this unit's capabilities. This unit responds
only manually to specific medical requests."
     "Cheap politicians." Dr. Turner spoke again, her, to the med-
unit and a panel opened on the side, where I never noticed no
panel. Inside was a screen and keyboard. Dr. Turner typed hard,
her. She studied the screen.
     "What is it?" Annie said. "What's Lizzie got, her?" Annie's
voice was tiny and thin. It didn't sound nothing like Annie.
    This time Dr. Turner didn't have the chess-playing look. This
time she looked, her, like my stomach felt. The bones in her cheeks
stood out like somebody drew them on her skin.
    "Billy . . . did Lizzie touch the end of your walking stick? The
end you poked the brown rabbit with?"
     I saw Lizzie, me, dancing around the apartment with my stick,
riding it, waving it by one end, singing about them Godel's proofs.
Something inside my belly dropped, it, and I thought I was going
to throw up.
     "Yes. She was playing, her . . ."
    Dr. Turner slumped, her, against the wall. Her voice was thick.
"Not Eden. Eden didn't engineer that rabbit. The other ones did,
the illegal lab that released the dissembler . . . oh my sweet Jesus
in hell. . ."
    "Don't blaspheme, you," Annie said, her, but there wasn't no
fire in it. Her eyes were big as Lizzie's. Lizzie, who I saw was going
to die.
     Paulie said, "Eden? What about Eden, it?" His face looked
tight and small.
    Dr. Turner looked at me, her. Her eyes, all genemod violet
and as unnatural as a brown snowshoe rabbit in a hard November,
didn't see me. I could tell, me. She saw something else, her, and
her words didn't make no sense. "A pink poodle. A pink poodle
with four ears and hyperlarge eyes . . . "
     "What?" Paulie Cenverno said, bewildered. "What about a
poodle?"
     "A pink poodle. Sentient. Disposable."
     "Easy there, easy," I said, because she was out of her head,
maybe, and I just realized, me, that I was going to need her. Need
her sensible. To carry Lizzie. No, Annie could do it. But Annie
wasn't in no shape to carry Lizzie. Paulie, then. But Paulie was
already backing out of the clinic, him. There was something strange
going on here, and he didn't like it, and when Paulie don't like
something, him, he gets away from it. He ain't no Mayor Jack
Sawicki.
    Besides, I couldn't think, me, of no way to keep Dr. Turner
from following us, short of killing her, and I didn't have no way
to do that. Even if I could of made myself do it. And if Dr. Turner
was carrying Lizzie, then Dr. Turner couldn't fire no gun, her,
when the door to Eden opened.
    Dr. Turner's eyes cleared. She saw me again, her. And she
nodded.
    I looked again through the medunit window. Lizzie was getting
some kind of medicine patch, her, even though the unit said it
wasn't the right medicine. Probably the best it could do, it. It was
only a fancy 'bot.
    The big-headed girl who had saved Doug Kane's life and killed
the rabid raccoon wasn't no 'bot.
    I was going to do what I swore, me, I'd never do. I was going
to take Dr. Turner with me to Eden.


The sun was just coming up when we left town. I walked first,
me, leaning on a different stick that Dr. Turner tore off a maple
tree. She carried Lizzie, her, wrapped in blankets. Lizzie was still
asleep from whatever the medunit gave her. Her skin looked like
wax. Annie came last, her, stumbling through the woods, where
Annie didn't never go. I think she was crying, her. I couldn't look,
because it might be that hopeless kind of crying women do at the
very end, and I couldn't of stood it. It wasn't the very end yet.
We were going, us, to Eden.
     The sky turned all the colors of a pine-knot fire.
     I tried to lead them, me, where the snow wasn't too deep. A
few times I guessed wrong and fell into a hollow packed with
snow, sinking up to my knees. But it was okay because only me
fell. I stayed enough ahead, me, for that. Still, each time I fell,
me, I could feel my heart go a little faster, and my bones ache a
little more.
     The thaw we'd been having, it helped. A lot of snow had
 melted, especially in the sunny places. Without that thaw I don't
 know, me, if we could of made it through the mountains.
    lizzie moaned, her, but she didn't wake up.
    "Just a . . . minute, Billy," Dr. Turner said, after about an hour.
She stopped in a sunny patch, her, and sank to her knees, lizzie
laid across her lap. I was surprised, me, that she'd kept going that
long—Lizzie ain't as light as she was even a year ago. Dr. Turner
must be stronger than she looked, her. Genemod.
    "We don't have any extra minutes, us!" Annie cried, but Dr.
Turner didn't pay her no attention, not even to scowl at her. Maybe
Dr. Turner was just too tired, her, to scowl. She'd been up all
night, watching the newsgrids about the President's martial law.
But I think she knew, her, how scared to death Annie was.
    "How . . . much farther?"
    "Another hour," I said, even though it was more. We weren't
making good time, us. "Can you make it?"
    "Of. . . course." Dr. Turner stood up, her, struggling with
Lizzie, who hung like a sack. For just a minute I thought, me, that
I saw Annie put her hand on Dr. Turner's arm, real gentle. But
maybe Annie was just steadying herself.
    The woods never seemed so big to me.
    After a while the ache just started to live in my bones, like
some little animal. It chewed away, it, at my legs and knees and
the shoulder of the arm holding my stick. And then it started to
chew away near my heart.
    I couldn't stop, me. Lizzie was dying.
    Now we climbed higher, us, up the wooded side of the moun-
tain. The brush and trees got thicker, them. There wasn't no sunny
patches. I wasn't taking them, me, the way Doug Kane and I had
gone last fall—too much snow. This way was harder, and longer,
but we'd get there.
    It took us nearly until noon. Dr. Turner made us stop and eat
from the food Annie carried. It tasted like mud. Dr. Turner
watched, her, to make sure I ate all my share. Lizzie couldn't take
nothing, her. She still didn't move, not even her eyes. But she
was still breathing. I melted a little clean snow, me, with Dr.
Turner's Y-energy lamp and poured it over Lizzie's lips. They
were blue.
    "Our Father, who art in Heaven, give us this day our daily
bread . . ." Dr. Turner stared at Annie in disbelief. I thought she
was going to say something sharp about who gave Livers their daily
bread, like I'd heard others donkeys say. Donkeys ain't religious,
them. But she didn't.
     "How much farther, Billy?"
     "Soon now."
     "You've been saying 'soon now' for two hours!"
     "Soon. Now."
     We started off again, us.
    When we headed back down the trail to the little creek, I
thought, me, for a panicky minute that I was in the wrong place.
It didn't look the same. The trail was a slick of mud, it, and the
creek ran fast but was clogged with ice chunks and fallen branches,
which made it wider than I remembered. We slipped and slided,
us, down the steep trail. Dr. Turner held Lizzie over her shoulder
with one hand, the other clutching tree after tree to keep from
falling. We waded careful, us, across the creek. There was a flat,
mostly clear ledge of ground, with just one birch, and one oak
with last year's leaves rattling in the wind. They were my land-
marks, them. We were there, and there wasn't nothing there.
     Nothing to see. Nothing different. Creek, mud, rock shelf,
the side of the mountain. Nothing.
     "Billy?" Annie said, so soft I hardly heard her, me. "Billy?"
     "What do we do now?" Dr. Turner said. She sank to the
ground, her, trailing Lizzie in the mud, too tired to even notice.
     I looked around. Creek, mud, rock shelf, the side of the moun-
tain. Nothing.
    Why would the SuperSleepless let in two muddy Livers, a
turncoat donkey, and a dying child? Why should they, them?
    That was the minute I knew, me, what Annie meant when she
talked about Hell.
    "Billy?"
    I sank down on a rock, me. My legs wouldn't hold me up no
more. The door had been right here. Creek, mud, rock shelf, the
side of the mountain. Nothing.
    Dr. Turner shoved Lizzie onto her mother. Then she jumped
up, her, and started screaming like some crazy thing, like some-
body wild person who ain't just carried a heavy child for hours
and hours through the snow.
    "Miranda Sharifi! Do you hear me? There's a dying child here,
a victim of an illegal genemod virus transmittable by wildlife! Some
illegal lab engineered it, some demented bastards who can wipe
out entire communities in days, and probably want to! Do you
hear me? It's genemod, and it's lethal! You people are responsible
for this, you're supposed to be the big experts on genemod tai-
loring, not us! You're responsible, you Sleepless bastards, whether
you made it or not, because you're the only ones who can cure
it! You're the big brains we all kowtow to, you're the ones we're
supposed to look up to—Miranda Sharifi! We need that Cell
Cleaner that was trampled on in Washington! We need it now!
You baited us with that, you bitch—you damn well owe it to us!"
    I couldn't believe it, me. She sounded like Celie Kane scream-
ing about donkeys. I whispered, "You can't boss around a
SuperSleepless, you!"
    She didn't pay me no attention, her. I might of not even been
there. "Miranda Sharifi! Do you hear me, you bitch? In the name
of a common humanity . . . what the hell am I doing?"
    She stood looking dazed, her, like she wasn't never going to
move again. Then Dr. Turner started to cry.
    Dr. Turner. Started to cry.
    I didn't know, me, what to do. It's one thing when Annie cries,
Annie's a normal woman. But a donkey crying, sobbing and car-
rying on like she was the bottom of the apple bin, her, instead of
the top . . . I didn't know what to do. And even I had known, I
couldn't do it. The aching animal was gnawing, it, at my chest too
bad, and not even for Lizzie could I of got my body up off the
ground.
    "Please . . ." Dr. Turner whispered.
    And the door in the mountain opened. No, it didn't open, it—
that's not how it works. There was a kind of hard shimmer, some
kind of shield, and then the earth sort of vanished, mud and dead
oak leaves and moss-covered rocks and everything, and there was
a solid plasticlear square at our feet, only it wasn't really plasticlear,
about three feet by three feet. And then that vanished and there
was stairs.
    Dr. Turner went down first, her, and reached up for Lizzie.
Annie handed her down. Then Annie eased herself down the stairs.
I went last, me, because even though my chest hurt so bad my
eyesight squiggled, I wanted to see what happened after we were
all under the square. It might be the last thing I ever saw, me,
and I wanted to see it.
     What happened was the shimmer came again, it, and the
plasticlear-that-wasn't-plasticlear came back over my head. I
reached up, me, and touched it. It was hard as diamonds. It tingled.
On the other side dirt and rocks started to grow—they grew—
and the dirt wasn't loose but hard-packed, joined to all the other
dirt. I could see, me, that in a few minutes there wouldn't be no
signs anything had happened, except maybe our footprints in the
mud. But I wouldn't bet, me, on any footprints being left.
    We stood, us, in a small room, all white and bright, with nothing
in it. The walls were perfect—not a nick or a scratch or nothing.
I never seen such walls, me. We stood there a long time, it seemed,
though it probably wasn't. I wrapped my arms across my chest,
me, to keep the pain from gnawing straight through. Dr. Turner
turned to me and her face changed. "Why, Billy ..." And then a
door opened where there hadn't been no door, and she stood
there, my big-headed dark-haired girl from the woods, not smiling,
and I had just enough time, me, to see her before the animal in
my chest reared back and sank its teeth into my heart and every-
thing disappeared.
                          Fifteen
                    DIANA COVINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




I   had completely lost my composure, my rationality, and my
   common sense, and then the door to Eden opened. This
   bothered me. I stood there with a dying child and an old man
whom I had—against all odds—come to love, at the threshold of
the technological sanctum my entire government had been seeking
for God knows how long, facing the single most powerful
woman in the entire world—and I was bothered that it was my
irrational class-based screaming that had caused the gates of Eden
to swing wide. Only it wasn't that, of course. I knew it wasn't that.
I wasn't quite that many standard deviations along the irrationality
curve. But the feeling persisted, because nothing was normal and
when nothing's normal, nothing seems any more abnormal than
anything else. The measuring scales break down. Miranda Sharifi
did that to things.
     Up close, she looked even plainer than she had in Washington.
Big, slightly misshapen head, wild clouds of black hair, body too
short and too heavy to be a donkey yet clearly not a Liver. She
wore white pants and shirt, generic looking but not jacks, and her
face was pale. The only spot of color was a red ribbon in her hair.
I remembered what I'd thought on the steps of Science Court—
that she was too old for hair ribbons—and I felt obscurely
ashamed. It was difficult to keep my mind on serious subjects. We
had too many of them. Or maybe it was just the nature of my
mind.
     I couldn't think of anything to say. I stood staring at the red
 hair ribbon.
     She was everything I was not.
     Annie fell to her knees. The hem of her muddy parka pooled
ungracefully on the shining floor and her eyes turned upwards as
if to an angel. Maybe that's what she thought Miranda was.
     "Ma'am, you have to help us, you. My Lizzie's dying, her, with
some disease, Billy says she's dying, Dr. Turner says it ain't natural,
this disease, it's genemod, it. . . and Billy, he's been so good to us,
him, and he ain't hardly even got nothing out of it—but Lizzie,
my little girl—" She started to cry.
    At the words "Dr. Turner," Miranda's eyes moved to me for
a moment, then back to Annie. It was like having a laser sweep
over you. I felt she suddenly knew everything there was to know
about me: my aliases, my supposedly secret and pathetically mar-
ginal GSEA affiliation, the entire history of my residences, pseudo-
jobs, pseudo-loves. I felt naked, clear to the cellular level. I told
myself to stop it immediately. She wasn't a psychic; she was a
human being, a woman with awesome technology behind her and
a super-heightened brain and thoughts I would never have and
would not understand if they were explained to me . . .
    This was how Livers felt about donkeys like me.
     Annie said, through her tears and still kneeling, "Please." Just
that word. In that place, it had a surprising dignity.
     A door appeared in the wall behind Miranda, a door that a
moment before had not existed even in outline, and a man stuck
his head through. "Miri, they're on the way—"
    "You go, Jon," she said. They were the first words she'd spo-
ken. Jon had the same misshapen head as Miranda but handsome
features, a bizarre and dissettling combination, like a manticore
with the face of a domestic collie. His mouth tightened.
    "Miri, you can't—"
    "That's already settled!" she snapped, and for the first time I
saw she was under tremendous tension. But then she turned to
him and uttered a few words I didn't catch, so rapidly did she
speak. Despite her speed, the words had the curious feel of being
separate, each a discreet communication rather than part of a gram-
matical flow . . . I was only guessing. Miranda wore a single ring,
a slim gold band set with rubies, on the ring finger of her left
hand.
  Jon withdrew, and the "door" disappeared. There was no sign
it had ever existed.
    Miranda put her hand on Annie's shoulder. The hand trembled.
"Don't cry. I can help them both, I think. Certainly your daughter."
But it was Billy she knelt next to first. She held a small box to
his heart and studied its miniature screen; she put the box against
his neck and studied the screen again; she fastened a medicine
patch on his neck. Watching, I was obscurely reassured. This was
known. She was treating Billy for his heart attack, if that was what
it was.
He started to breathe more easily, and moaned. Miranda turned
to Lizzie. From her pocket she drew a long, thin black syringe,
opaque. Very little medication is given by syringe rather than
patch. Something turned over in my chest.
    I said, "She's already had wide-spectrum antibiotic and anti-
viral from a K-model medunit. The unit said this was an unknown
virus, outside the configuration of any known tailored microorgan-
ism, you'd have to build it fresh if you can—"
    I was babbling. Miranda didn't look up. "This is the Cell
Cleaner, Dr. Turner. But I think you already guessed that." There
was something deliberate about her speech, as if the words were
chosen carefully, and yet she felt they were completely inadequate
to whatever she wanted to say. I hadn't noticed that in Washington,
where her speeches to the Science Court must have all been care-
fully prepared in advance. The slowness was in marked contrast
to the way she'd spoken to "Jon."
     Annie watched the needle disappear into Lizzie's neck. Annie
 was completely still, kneeling on the hem of her muddy parka,
 smearing dead leaves across the featureless white floor.
    The moment was surreal. Miranda hadn't even hesitated. I
 choked out, "Aren't you even going to explain it to them give
 them a choice ..."
     Miranda didn't answer. Instead she pulled a second syringe
 from her pocket and injected Billy.
     I thought crazily of all the fatty deposits in the arteries of his
 heart, all the lethal viral copies that can lie in wait for years in
 lymph nodes until the body weakens, all the toxic
 mismultiplications of normal DNA over the sixty-eight years of
 Billy's bone and flesh and blood . . . I couldn't speak.
     Miranda pulled out a third syringe and turned to Annie, who
 put out a warding-off hand. "No, ma'am, please, I ain't sick—"
     "You will be," Miranda said, "without this. Soon." She waited.
     Annie bowed her head. It looked to me like prayer, which
 suddenly enraged me for no reason I could understand. Miranda
 injected Annie.
     Then she turned to me.
      "How toxic is the mutated vir—"
     "Fatal. Within twenty-four hours. And easily transmitted. You
 will become infected."
     "How do you know? Did your people engineer and release
 the virus? Did you?"
     "No," she said, as calmly as if I'd asked her if it was raining.
 But a pulse beat in her throat, and she was taut as harpstrings,
 and as ready to vibrate at a touch. I just didn't know whose. I
 stared at the syringe in her hand: long, thin, black, the fluid hidden
 inside. What color was it? That fluid had already gone into Lizzie,
 into Billy, into Annie.
     I whispered, before I knew I was going to, "But I'm a donkey—"
     Miranda said, "I have already been injected myself. Months
ago. This is not an untested procedure."
     She had missed completely what I had meant. It lay outside
her range of vision. Apparently, then, some things did. I said,
"You're so—" without knowing how I was going to finish the
sentence.
     "We don't have much time. Lower your head, please, Dr.
Turner."
     I blurted out—this is to my everlasting shame, it was so inane,
and at such a moment—"I'm not really a licensed doctor!"
     For the first time, she smiled. "Neither am I, Diana."
     "Why don't we have much time? What's going to happen? I'm
not sick yet, you're going to alter my entire biochemistry, let me
at least think a moment—"
     A screen suddenly appeared on the wall. Even though this—
unlike the door—was certainly a normal technology, I nonetheless
jumped as if an angel had appeared with flaming sword. But the
angel was in front of me, staring at the screen as if in pain, and
the sword trembled in her hand, and I was going to die not because
I'd eaten of this particular genetically-engineered apple, but be-
cause I didn't.
     She didn't give me a choice. The screen showed a plane landing
where no plane should have been able to land, a folded thing
setting straight down like a rotorless coptor but far more precisely
than any coptor, on the same small flat patch of ground between
stream and mountain where I had screamed for Eden to open. The
same naked birch tree, shivering white. The same tattered oak. I
raised my head to stare at the four men climbing out of the un-
folded cylinder of the government plane, and Miranda pushed the
syringe into my neck. With her other hand on my shoulder, she
held me still while the fluid drained.
     She was very strong.
     Somehow, that one fact cleared my head, which just shows
how crazed was the whole situation. I said, almost as if we were
coconspirators, "They can't get in, can they? They couldn't even
find it before, they blew up the wrong installation. They must have
followed us here, Billy and Annie and Lizzie and me—oh, I'm
sorry, Miranda—"
    She wasn't listening. To my complete shock—it was the weird-
est thing that had happened yet, because after all, I'd known about
the Cell Cleaner, I'd seen her explain it in Washington—to my
utter shock, tears glittered in her eyes. She circled the fingers of
her right hand around her left. Covering the ring.
    A fifth man was helped out of the plane, and into a powerchair
someone else swiftly unfolded. I saw with yet another shock that
it was Drew Arlen, the Lucid Dreamer.
    He put his hand on the birch tree. I didn't know—and never
found out—if it was to steady himself, or if it was part of the entry
procedure, an activator or a skin-recognition system or just a fail-
safe of some unimaginable kind. Then he spoke a series of words,
very clear, in that famous voice. The door above our heads opened.
    Miranda made no effort to stop him, if she could have. Of
course she could have. There must have been shields, counter-
shields, something. They were SuperSleepless.
    The four GSEA agents came down the stairs as if this were a
root cellar in Kansas. They had drawn their guns, which filled me
with sudden contempt. Drew Arlen stayed outside.
    "Miranda Sharifi, you are under arrest for violations of the
Genetic Standards Act, Sections 12 through 34, which state—"
    She completely ignored them. She pushed past the four men
as if they weren't there, a sudden fire glowing around her that had
to be some sort of electrified personal shield. One of the agents
reached for her, cried out, and cradled his burned hand, his face
distorted by pain. The agent blocking the steps hesitated. I saw
him think for half a second about firing, and then change his mind.
I could almost see the report later: "Civilians were present, making
it inadvisable to—" Or maybe they realized that whoever officially
killed Miranda Sharifi was dead himself careerwise, forever, a
scapegoat. The agent moved off the steps.
     Miranda ascended them slowly, heavily, the tears sparkling in
her dark eyes. Three of the agents followed. After a stunned
moment I bolted after them.
     Drew Aden sat in the cold November woods in a powerchair.
Miranda faced him. A slight wind shook the oak tree, and the
dead leaves rattled. A few fell.
     "Why, Drew?"
     "Miri—you don't have the right to choose for 175 million
people. Not in a democracy. Not without any checks and balances.
Leisha said—"
     "Kenzo Yagai did. He chose. He created cheap energy, and
changed the world for the better."
     "You could have stopped the duragem dissembler. And didn't.
People died, Miranda!"
     "Not as many as if we had stopped it. Not in the long run."
     "That wasn't your reason! You just wanted control of the sit-
uation! You Supers, who don't ever have to die!"
     There was a noise behind me. I didn't turn around. What I
was looking at was more important than any noise. The questions
Drew and Miranda hurled at each other were the same public
question I had struggled with ever since I'd seen the Cell Cleaner
in Washington: Who should control radical technology? Only they
were making of it a private weapon, as lovers can make private
weapons of anything. Who should control technology . . .
    And—make no mistake—technology is Darwinian. It spreads.
It evolves. It adapts. The most dangerous wipes out the less fit.
    The GSEA had hoped to keep radical tech from falling into
the wrong hands. But Huevos Verdes was the right hands: the
hands that used nanotech to strengthen human beings, not destroy
them. That was what the GSEA could not admit. It wasn't their
place to judge, they claimed; they only carried out the law. Maybe
they were right.
    But somebody, somewhere, sometime, had to judge, or we'd
end up with pure Darwinian jungle, red in byte and assembler.
    Huevos Verdes had judged. And I, by not summoning the
GSEA a second time, along with them. And there was no clear
way to know whether either of us was right.
    All this I realized, with that peculiar clarity that comes in bodily
crisis, as I watched Drew Aden and Miranda Sharifi tear each
other apart in the cold woods.
     He said, "You don't have the right to carry out this project.
You never did. No more than Jimmy Hubbley—"
     She said, "It was supposed to be 'we,' not 'you-' You were part
of this."
    "Not any more."
    "Because you fell into the hands of some scientific crazies.
God, Drew, to equate Jimmy Hubbley with us—"
     "So you did know about him. And left me there all these
months."
     "No! We knew about the counterrevolution, but not specifi-
cally where you were—"
    "I don't believe you. You could have found me. You Supers
can do anything, can't you?"
    "You think I'm lying to you—"
    "Yes," Drew said. "I think you're lying."
     "But I'm not. Drew—" It was a cry of pure anguish. I couldn't
look at her face.
     "You could have stopped the duragem dissembler, too,
couldn't you? You knew it came from the underground. But you
let it encourage social breakdown because that prepared the way
better for the project. For your plans. Isn't that true, Miranda?"
    "Yes. We could have stopped the dissembler."
    "And you didn't tell me."
     "We were afraid—" She stopped.
     "Afraid of what? That I'd tell Leisha? The newsgrids? The
GSEA?"
     She said, more quietly, "Which is just what you did. The first
chance you got. We did look for you, Drew, but we're not omni-
potent. There was no way of knowing which bunker, where . . .
And meanwhile you did exactly what Jon and Nick and Christy
said you would—betray the project to the GSEA."
    "Because I started to think for myself. Again. Finally. And
that's not what Supers want, is it? You want to think for all of us,
and us to obey you, without question. Because you always know
best, don't you? God, Miranda, aren't you ever wrong?"
     "Yes," she said. "I was wrong about you."
     "That won't be a problem for you any longer."
     She cried, "You said you loved me!"
     "Not any more."
     They went on looking at each other. Drew's face I couldn't
read. Miranda's had turned stony, her tears gone. Her eyes were
lasers.
     She said, "I loved you. And you couldn't stand being inferior.
That's what your betrayal to the GSEA is really about. Jon was
right. You can't ever really understand. Anything."
     Drew didn't answer. The wind picked up, smelling of cold
water. More leaves blew off the oak. The birch tree shuddered.
There was more noise behind me. I didn't turn around.
     A GSEA agent said, "I arrest you, Miranda Sharifi, for viola-
tions of the—"
     She cried out, just as if the agent hadn't spoken, "I can't help
it that I know more and think better than you, Drew! I can't help
what I am!"
     He said, his voice unsteady but angry, the way men are
when they know they look weak, "Who should control the tech-
nology—"
     "Shit!" someone called. I turned. Billy sat dazed on the ground,
holding his chest. The noise had been him and Annie, pulling the
unconscious lizzie up from the underground bunker, which they
didn't understand and must have feared. Or maybe Annie had
pulled Lizzie up the steps, and the agent with the burned hand
had helped Billy. The agent stood there beside the old man, look-
ing dazed. But there was nothing dazed about Billy. He sat in the
frozen mud, an old man with a body about to be the most bio-
logically efficient machine on the planet, and I saw that he, too,
knew what he was looking at. Billy Washington, the Liver. His
wrinkled old-man's gaze moved from Drew to Miranda—the lat-
ter, I saw, with adoration—then back to Drew again, then to
Miranda. "Shit," he said again, and there were layers and layers
in his tone, unsortable.
     "You're fighting, you, about who should control this technol-
ogy—but don't you see, it don't matter who should control it,
them? It only matters who can?" And he put his gnarled, grateful,
hand on the crumpled sleeping form of Lizzie, lying in the mud,
her small face peaceful and cool and damp as her lethal fever broke.
                          Sixteen
                       DIANA COVINGTON: ALBANY




T     here was nothing to confiscate for evidence. More planes
      came, and Drew used the codes that made the door appear
      in the far wall of the bunker. I contrived to be present for
this. Security was chaotic, except for Miranda Sharifi, electro-
cuffed to the birch tree, whom agents watched as if they expected
an anti-grav heavenly ascension, tree and all. Maybe they did. But
Miranda allowed herself to be captured. And everybody under-
stood that's what happened: she allowed it.
    But nobody, including me, understood why.
    Behind the bunker door lay nothing. Even the sterile, fortifying
walls that had probably been there were self-consuming by the
same nanotechnology that had built them. There were only a series
of earth-packed tunnels and caves extending back into the moun-
tain, dangerous to explore without proper equipment because the
dirt walls crumbled and threatened to cave in. It was impossible
to tell how extensive the caves/tunnels were. It was impossible to
tell what had been nano-destroyed in them, or removed from
them before their collapse. Miri, they're on the way— Miri, you
can't—
    I looked for the slim black syringes that had injected the four
of us, but all I saw was smudges of melted black, like metallic
candle wax, on the floor at the bottom of the steps where Lizzie
and Billy had lain.


There was more. And it happened, incredibly, almost as an
afterthought.
     But first one of the agents arrested me. "Diana Arlene
Covington, you are under arrest for violations of the United
States Code, Title 18, Sections 1510, 2381, and 2383."
     Obstruction of criminal investigations. Assisting rebellion or
insurrection. Treason. I was, after all, supposed to be a GSEA
agent.
    Miranda watched me intently from her birch tree. Too intently.
Drew had gone into the plane. We awaited a second plane, either
for more space or more security. With a sudden feint that surprised
the agent, I ducked around him and sprinted toward Miranda.
     "Hey!"
    She had time to say to me only, "More in the syringe—" before
the outraged agent had me again and dragged me grimly into the
plane. His grip bruised my arms.
     I barely noticed. More in the syringe—
     The whole extent of the project, she had said to Drew Aden.
     So not just the Cell Cleaner, which was staggering enough.
Not just that. Something else.
     Some other biological technology: radical, unexpected.
Unimaginable.
     Something more.
    Huevos Verdes had not needed to set up this elaborate un-
derground lab to perfect or test the Cell Cleaner. They had already
done that, openly, before the Science Court hearing last fall.
    Huevos Verdes had expected to lose their case in front of the
Science Court. That had been clear at the time, to nearly every-
body. What had not been clear was why they were presenting the
case at all, given the foregone conclusion. It was because Miranda
wanted the moral reassurance that all legitimate paths for this
larger project were closed, before she completed her stroll down
illegitimate paths at East Oleanta.
    How much did the agent know? The GSEA top brass, of
course, would know everything. Arlen would have told them.
    This intellectual speculation lasted only a moment. It was re-
placed almost instantly with a freezing fear, the kind that doesn't
melt your bones but stiffens them, so it seems you won't ever
move, or breathe, again.
    Whatever bioengineering project Huevos Verdes had been
built for, the charade of the Science Court had been staged for,
Drew Arlen had performed concerts for, the duragem dissembler
had not been stopped for—whatever bioengineering project had
occupied all of the SuperSleepless's unfathomable energies—
whatever that bioengineering project was, I had been injected
with it. It was in my body. In me. Becoming me.
    You don't have the right to choose for 175 million people. Not in
a democracy. Not without any checks and balances—
    Kenzo Yagai did.
    I swayed against the metal bulkhead, then caught myself. My
fingers were faintly blue with cold. The nail on the middle finger
had broken. The flesh was smooth except for one tiny cut on the
index finger. Mud, now dried, made a long arc from wrist to nails.
My hand. Alien.
    I said aloud to Miranda, "What was it?"
    In my mind she turned her misshapen head to look at me.
Tears, which still didn't fall, brightened her eyes. She said, "Only
for your good."
    "By whose definition!"
    Her expression didn't change. "Mine."
    I went on staring at her. Then she dissolved, because of course
she was an illusion, born of shock. She wasn't really inside my
head. She couldn't ever be inside my head. It was way too small.
    The plane lifted, and I was transported to Albany to be ar-
raigned in a court of law.


Billy, Annie, Lizzie, and I were taken to the Jonas Salk United
States Research Hospital in Albany, a heavily shielded edifice
conspicuous for security 'bots. I was led down a different corridor.
I craned my neck to keep Lizzie's gurney in sight as long as I
could.
    In a windowless room Colin Kowalski waited for me, with a
man I recognized instantly. Kenneth Emile Koehler, director, Ge-
netic Standards Enforcement Agency. Colin said nothing. I saw
that he never would; he was too outranked, included only because
he had had the bad judgment to hire me, the wildcat agent who
could have led the GSEA to Miranda Sharifi before Drew Aden
did, and hence just as much an official quisling. But, of course,
for the other side. Colin was in disgrace. Aden was probably a
hero who had belatedly but righteously seen the light. I was under
  arrest for treason. One loser, one winner, one who doesn't know
  how to play the game.
      "All right, Diana," Kenneth Emile Koehler said: a bad begin-
  ning. I'd been reduced to a first name. Like a 'bot. "Tell us what
  happened."
      "Everything?"
      "From the beginning."
      The recorders were on. Drew Arlen had undoubtedly spilled
  his brain cells already. And I myself could think of no reason not to
  tell the truth: Something bioengineered had been injected into my
  veins. More in the syringe—
     But I didn't want to start there. I felt instead an overwhelming
desire to begin at the beginning, with Stephanie Brunell and her
illegal genemod pink poodle hurtling itself over my terrace railing. I
needed to tell it all, every last action and decision and intellectual
argument that had brought me from disgust at illegal
bioengineering to championing it. I wanted to explain clearly to
myself as well as to these men exactly what I had done, and why,
and what it meant, because that was the only way I would fully un-
derstand it myself.
       That was the moment I realized the GSEA had already gotten
   a truth drug into me. Which was, of course, a completely illegal
   violation of the Fifth Amendment, a fact too insignificant to even
   comment on. I didn't comment on it. Instead I gazed at Koehler
   and Kowalski and the others who had suddenly appeared and then,
   wrapped in the glow of absolute truth and in the tender and selfless
   desire to share it, I talked on and on and on.
                       Seventeen
                       DREW ARLEN.- WASHINGTON




T     here were human guards, robot guards, guard shields. But
      it was the human guards I noticed. Techs, mostly, although
      at least one was donkey. I noticed them because there were
so many. Miranda had more human guards than the entire pop-
ulation of Huevos Verdes, even including the Sleepless hangers-
on like Kevin Baker's grandchildren. She awaited her trial in a
different prison from her grandmother, whose treason conviction
was ancient history now. Jennifer probably had fewer guards.
    "Put your eye directly up to the 'scope, sir," one of them said.
He wore the drab blue prison uniform, cut like jacks but not jacks.
I let my retina be scanned. Huevos Verdes had passed this level
of identification ten years ago.
    "You, too, ma'am."
    Carmela Clemente-Rice stepped closer to the scope. When
she stepped back, I felt her hand on my shoulder, cool and re-
assuring. I felt her in my mind as a series of perfectly balanced
interlocking ovals.
    I felt the prison as hot blue confusion. Mine.
    "This way, please. Watch the steps, sir."
    They evidently didn't see too many powerchairs here. Inanely,
I wondered why. My chair skimmed down the steps.
    The warden's office showed no signs of security or surveillance,
which meant there was plenty of both. It was a large room, fur-
nished in the currently popular donkey style, simple straight-lined
tables of teak or rosewood combined with some fancy antique
chairs with cloth seats and carved arms. I didn't know what period
they were from.
     Miranda would have known.
    The warden didn't rise as Carmela and I were shown in.
 He was donkey to his blond hair roots. Tall, blue-eyed,
 heavily muscled, a genemod re-creation of a Viking chief by
 parents with more money than imagination. He spoke
 directly to Carmela, ignoring me.
     "I'm afraid, Dr. Clemente-Rice, that you are unable to see
the prisoner after all."
    Carmela's voice remained serene, with steel. "You're
mistaken, Mr. Castner. Mr. Arlen and I have clearance from
the Attorney General herself to see Ms. Sharifi. You've
received both terminal and hard copy notification. And I
have copies of the paperwork with me."
    "I already received this notification from Justice,
    doctor."
     Carmela's expression didn't change. She waited. The
warden leaned back in his antique chair, hands laced behind
his head, eyes hostile and amused. He waited, too.
    Carmela was better at it.
    Finally he repeated, "Neither of you can see the
prisoner, despite what Justice says."
    Carmela said nothing.
    Slowly his amused look vanished. She wasn't going to
either ask or beg. "You can't see the prisoner because the
prisoner doesn't choose to see you."
    I blurted, despite myself, "At all?"
    "At all, Mr. Arlen. She refuses to see either of you." He
leaned back in his chair even farther, unlacing his hands, his
blue eyes small in his handsome face.
    Maybe I should have expected it. I had not. I laid my
hands, palms flat, on his desk.
    "Tell her . . . tell her just that I . . . tell her . . . "
    "Drew," Carmela said softly.
    I pulled myself together. I hated that the smirking bastard
had seen me stammer. Supercilious donkey prick . . . In that
moment I hated him as much as I had hated Jimmy
Hubbley, as much as I had hated Peg, that poor ignorant
hopeless slob pathetically trying to measure up to Jimmy
Hubbley . . . can't help it that I know more and think better
than you do, Drew! I can't help what I am!
    I turned the powerchair abruptly and moved toward the
    door.
After a moment I felt Carmela follow me. Warden Castner's voice
stopped us both.
    "Ms. Sharifi did leave a package for you, Mr. Arlen."
    A package. A letter. A chance to write back, to explain to her
what I'd done and why I'd done it.
    I didn't want to open the package in front of Castner. But I
might need to make arrangements to answer her letter, now, here,
and the letter might have some clue to that. . . It had taken Car-
mela three weeks to get us this far. A direct favor from the At-
torney General. Besides, Castner had undoubtedly already read
whatever Miranda had to say. Hell, entire computer-expert se-
curity teams had undoubtedly analyzed her words for code, for
hidden nanotech, for symbolic meaning. I turned my back to Cast-
ner and ripped open the slightly padded envelope.
    What if she'd written words too hard for me to read—
    But there were no words. Only the ring I'd given her twelve
years ago, a slim gold band set with rubies. I stared at it until the
ring blurred and only its image filled my empty mind.
    "Is there an answer?" Castner said, his voice smooth. He'd
scented blood.
    "No," I said. "No answer." I went on looking at the ring.
   You said you loved me!
   Not any more.
    Carmela had her back to me, giving me the illusion of privacy.
Castner stared, smiling faintly.
    I put the ring in my pocket. We left the federal prison. Now
there were no shapes in my mind, nothing. The dark lattice, that
had dissolved in Jimmy Hubbley's underground bunker to show
me my own hemmed-in isolation, had never reappeared. I was no
longer sealed in by Huevos Verdes. But Miranda was gone. Leisha
was gone. Carmela was there, but I didn't feel her in my mind,
didn't even really see her.
    I was alone.
    We went back through the security system and out of the
prison, into the cold bright Washington sunlight.
                        Eighteen
                      DIANA COVINGTON: ALBANY




I   blinked and shut my eyes against the glare of a wall that seemed
   excessively white. For a moment I couldn't remember where I
   was, or who I was. This information returned. I sat up, too
quickly. Blood rushed from my head and the room swirled.
    "Are you all right?"
    A pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman, with a thick body and
deep lines from nose to mouth. Minimally genemod, if at all, but
not a Liver. She wore a security uniform. She was armed.
    I said, "What day is it?"
    "December tenth. You've been here thirty-four days." She
spoke to the wall. "Dr. Hewitt, Ms. Covington is back."
    Back. Where had I been? Never mind, I knew. I sat on a white
hospital bed in a white hospital room thick with medical and sur-
veillance equipment. Under the disposable white gown my arms
and legs and abdomen were covered with small clear globs of
blood-clotter. Somebody had been taking many many samples.
    "Lizzie? Billy? The Livers who came in with me, there were
three of them . . . "
    "Dr. Hewitt will be here in a minute."
    "Lizzie, the little girl, was sick, is she—"
    "Dr. Hewitt will be here in a minute."
    He was, with Kenneth Emile Koehler. Immediately my head
cleared.
    "All right, Dr. Hewitt. What did Huevos Verdes do to me?"
    My directness seemed expected. Why not? We'd spent thirty-
four days in intimate communion, none of which I could remem-
ber. He said, "They injected you with several different kinds of
nanotechnology. Some are built from bioengineered organisms,
primarily viruses. Some apparently are completely machines, cre-
ated one atom at a time, that have lodged in your cells. Most seem
self-replicating. Some, we guess, are clocked for replication. We
have everything under study, trying to determine the exact nature
of— "
    "What do the machines do? What's been changed in my body?"
    "We don't know yet."
    "You don't know?" I heard my own shrillness. I didn't care.
    "Not completely."
    "Lizzie Francy? Billy Washington? Lizzie was sick—"
    "A part of the injection you received is the Cell Cleaner mech-
anism, as you already know. But the rest..." A strange look
passed over Hewitt's face, resentful and yearning. I didn't want
to pursue this look. I was in a sudden frenzy, the kind that makes
you think you can't live through the next five minutes without
hearing information that you know you will reject in the five
minutes after that.
    "Doctor—what do you think this fucking injection will do?"
    His face closed. "We don't know."
    "But you must know something—"
    A 'bot rolled through the door. It was table-shaped, with an
unnecessary grille suggesting a smiling face. On its surface was a
covered tray. "Lunch for Room 612," the 'bot said pleasantly. I
smelled chicken, rice—the real thing, not soysynth, foods I hadn't
tasted for months. Suddenly I was ravenous.
    Everybody watched me eat. They watched with peculiar in-
tensity. I didn't care. Chicken juices trickled down my chin; rice
grains fell from my lips. My teeth tingled with the thick sweetness
of ripping meat. Fresh sweet peas, spiced applesauce. I was greedy
for food, consumed by what I was consuming. No amount could
be enough.
    When I had finished, I lay back on the pillows, curiously ex-
hausted. Hewitt and Koehler wore identical expressions, and I
couldn't read either of them. There was a long, pregnant silence—
pointlessly so, it seemed to me.
    I said, "So now what? When am I going to be arraigned?"
    "Not necessary," Koehler said. His face was still inscrutable.
"You're free to leave."
     My sudden exhaustion just as suddenly departed. This was not
how the system worked.
     "I'm under arrest for obstructing justice, conspiring to over-
throw—"
     "Charges have been dropped." Hewitt this time. It was as if
they'd switched roles. Or as if roles no longer mattered. I lay
there, thinking about this.
     I said slowly, "Let me have a newsholo."
     Koehler repeated Hewitt's line, tonelessly, "You're free to go."
     I swung my feet over the sides of the bed. The hospital gown
tented shapelessly around me. In big moments, small things mat-
ter: the world's way of keeping us petty. I demanded, "Where are
my clothes?" Just as if I wanted the muddy cheap jacks and parka
I'd worn to the hospital.
    There would be body monitors, of course. Subepidermal
homers, radioactive blood markers, who knew what else. I'd never
find them.
     A 'bot brought me my clothes. I put them on, not caring that
the men watched. The usual rules did not apply.
     "Lizzie? Billy?"
     "They left two days ago. The child is recovered."
     "Where did they go?"
     Koehler said, "We do not have that information." He was lying.
His information was closed to me. I was off the government net.
    I walked out of the room, expecting to be stopped in the
corridor, at the elevator, in the lobby. I walked out the front door.
There was absolutely nobody around: nobody crossing from the
parking lot, nobody hurrying in to visit a brother or wife or busi-
ness partner. A 'bot groomed the spring grass, which to my East
Oleanta eyes looked aggressively genemod green. The air was soft
and warm. Spring sunlight slanted over it, making long late-
afternoon shadows. A cherry tree bloomed with fragrant pink
flowers. My parka was far too heavy; I took it off and dropped it
on the sidewalk.
    I walked the length of the building, wondering what I was
going to do next. I was genuinely curious, in a detached way that
should have alerted me to how quietly and numbly crazed I actually
was. Reality could only interest me, not surprise me. Even the
interest was precarious. The next step would have been catatonia.
     I reached the corner of the building and turned it. A shuttle
bus sat there, compact, green as the engineered grass. The door
was open. I climbed in.
    The bus said, "Credit, please."
     My hands fumbled in the pocket of my jacks. There was a
credit chip there: not a Liver meal chip, but donkey credit. I pushed
it into the slot. The shuttle said, "Thank you."
     "What name is on that chip?"
     "You have exceeded this unit's language capacity. Destination,
please? Civic Plaza, Hotel Scheherazade, Ioto Hotel, Central
Gravrail Station, or Excelsior Square?"
     "Central Gravrail Station."
    The shuttle doors closed.
    There were people in the station, Livers dressed in bright jacks
and a few government donkeys; this was Albany, the state capital.
Everybody seemed in a hurry. I walked into the Governor John
Thomas Lividini Central Gravrail Cafe. Three men huddled at a
corner table, talking intently. The foodbelt had stopped. The holo-
grid showed a scooter race, and none of the men looked up when
I changed it to a donkey news channel.
     "—continues to spread in the midwestern and southern states.
Because the engineered virus can be carried by so many different
species of animals and birds, the Centers for Disease Control
recommend avoidance of all contact with wildlife. Since the plague
is also highly contagious among humans—"
     I switched channels.
     "—strict embargo on all physical trade, travelers, mail, or other
entrance of any object whatsoever into France from North Amer-
ica. As with other nations, French fear of contamination has led
to an hysteria that—"
     I switched channels.
     "—apparently ended. Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology have issued a statement that the duragem dissembler's
clocked nanomachanisms have not run their programmed course,
but rather have failed over time because of faulty understanding
of the complex scope of their construction. Department of En-
gineering Chairman Myron Aaron White spoke with us at his office
in the—"
     I switched channels.
     "—chronic food shortages. The situation, however, is expected
 to ease now that the so-called duragem dissembler crisis has
 slowed, apparently due to—"
     I watched for an hour. Famine was easing; famine was increas-
 ing. The engineered plague was spreading; the engineered plague
 had been checked. The rest of the world had been infected by
 American goods and travelers; the rest of the world showed only
 minor signs of either duragem contamination or the "wildlife
 plague." There was less breakdown from the duragem dissemblers;
 there was more breakdown in some areas, but scientists were close
 to a solution to the problem, which was actually difficult to un-
 derstand because of the advanced nature of the science, for which
 experts were on the verge of a major breakthrough. Albany was
 Albany.
     But not once was an underground organization of nanotech
 saboteurs mentioned. Not once was the overground organization
 of Huevos Verdes mentioned. The SuperSleepless might not have
 existed. Nor Miranda Sharifi.
     I walked over to the table of men in the corner. They looked
up, not smiling. I wore purple jacks and genemod eyes. I didn't
even feel to see if there was a personal shield on my belt. There
would be. Koehler wanted me alive; I was an expensive walking
laboratory.
     "You men know, you, where I can get to Eden?"
     Two faces remained hostile. On the third, the youngest, the
eyes flickered and the mouth softened at the corners. I spoke to
him.
     "I'm sick, me. I think I got it."
     "Harry—she's genemod, her," the oldest man said. Nothing
in his voice showed fear of infection.
     "She's sick," Harry said. His voice was older than his face.
     "You don't know who—"
     "You go to the sunshine machine by track twelve, you. A
woman's there with a necklace pounded like stars. She'll take you
to the Eden, her."
     "The" Eden. One of many. Prepared for in advance by Huevos
Verdes: technology, distribution, information dissemination, all of
it. And the Liver security, if you could call it that, consisted only
of Harry's companions' mild discouragement, which meant the
government wasn't interfering. I felt dizzy.
     On the long walk to track 12, I saw only fourteen people. Two
of them were donkey techs. I saw no trains leave the station. A
cleaning 'bot sat immobile where it had broken down, but there
were no soda cans, half-eaten sandwiches, genemod apple cores,
soysynth candy wrappers on the ground. Without them, the station
looked donkey, not Liver.
    A middle-aged woman sat patiently on the ground by the sun-
shine machine. She wore blue jacks and a soda-can necklace, each
soft metal lid bent and pounded into a crude star. I planted myself
in front of her. "I'm sick."
    She inspected me carefully. "No, you're not."
    "I want to go to Eden."
    "Tell Police Chief Randall if he wants, him, to shut us down,
to just do it. He don't need no donkeys pretending to be sick,
them, when you ain't." The woman said this mildly, without rancor.
    "Down the rabbit hole," I said. " 'Eat Me,' 'Drink Me.' " To
which she naturally did not respond at all.
    I walked to a gravrail monitor and asked it for information
about train departures. It was broken. I tried another. On the
fourth try, a working monitor answered me.
    Track 25 was in another section of the station. There was more
activity here, although not more garbage on the ground. Three
techs worked on a small train. I sat cross-legged on the ground,
not speaking to them, until they'd finished. They repaired only
this one train, then left, looking tired. Colin Kowalski and Kenneth
Koehler had known where I would go.
    I was the only passenger. The train was direct. It was just barely
the beginning of sunset when I stepped off onto the deserted main
street of East Oleanta.
    Annie's apartment on Jay Street was empty, the door ajar.
Nothing had been taken. Not the ugly garish wall hanging, not
the water buckets, not the plasticloth throw pillows, not Lizzie's
discarded doll. I went in and lay down on Lizzie's bed. After a
while I walked to the Cafe.
    Nobody was there, either. The foodbelt was stopped and
empty, the holoterminal off. The Cafe hadn't been trashed. It had
just been evacuated, like the rest of the town. The government
wanted everything extraneous cleared out for a while, which did
not include me. I was not extraneous. From their point of view,
I was one of the five most important people in the world: four
walking biological laboratories and their captured mad scientist. I
   had the run of the laboratory, and so probably did three of the
   others. I only had to wait for them to arrive.
        Before the light failed, I walked through the snow to the flat,
   stony riverbank where Billy had poked at the brown snowshoe
   rabbit with the stick Lizzie had given him. The rabbit was gone.
   I sat for a long time on the embankment, watching the cold water,
   until the sun set and the rock chilled my butt.
        I spent the night in Annie's apartment, on the sofa. The heat
  unit still worked. Although I woke often during the night, it was
  only for brief periods. It wasn't true insomnia. Each time, I listened
  carefully in the darkness. There was nothing to hear.
       Once, from some half-conscious impulse, I fingered my ears.
  The holes for my earrings had closed. I ran a finger over my thigh,
  searching for the scar from a childhood accident. The scar was
  gone.
       I spent the next morning watching the holoterminal. Bannock
 Falls, Ohio, had been wiped out by plague in twenty-four hours.
 Camera 'bots showed bodies dead where they'd fallen outside the
 Senator Ellen Piercy Devan Cafe, sprawled across each other in
 heavy winter jacks like fourteenth-century victims of bubonic
 plague.
      Jupiter, Texas, had rioted, blowing up their town with nanotech
 explosives that Livers should not, could not, have obtained. The
 townspeople promised to move on Austin if 450,000 cubits of
 food, apparently a biblical measure, was not delivered within
 twenty-four hours.
      The donkey enclave of Chevy Chase, Maryland, had imposed
 quarantine on itself: nobody in, nobody out.
      Most of Europe, South America, and Asia had imposed em-
bargoes on anything coming from North America, violations pun-
ishable by death. Half the countries claimed the embargoes were
working and their borders were clean; the other half claimed legal
vengeance for their failing infrastructures and dying people. Much
of Africa made both claims at once.
      Washington, D.C., outside of the Federal Protected Enclave,
was in flames. It was hard to know how much government re-
mained to answer claims of legal vengeance.
     Timonsville, Pennsylvania, had disappeared. The entire town
of twenty-three hundred people had just packed up and dispersed.
That was the closest any newsgrid came to hinting at vast changes
in where people went, or why, or what microorganisms they
carried with them in their diaspora.
    Nobody mentioned East Oleanta at all.
    In the afternoon it started to snow, even though the
temperature was just barely above freezing. I'd thought
about hiking into the mountains, looking for the place Billy
had led us to over a month ago, but the weather made that
impossible.
    All night I lay awake, listening to the silence.
    In the morning I took a shower at the Salvatore John
DeSanto Public Baths, which were mysteriously working
again. Then I returned to the cafe. East Oleanta was still
deserted. I sat on the edge of a chair, like an attentive
donkey schoolgirl, and watched the HT as my country
disintegrated into famine, pestilence, death, and war, and the
rest of the world mobilized its most advanced technology to
seal us within our own borders. If there was other news, the
newsgrids weren't reporting it. By 11:00 A.M. only three
channels still transmitted.
    At noon I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to sit by the
river. This urge struck me with the force of a religious
revelation. It was not arguable. I must go sit by the river.
    Once there, I took off my clothes, an act as
uncharacteristic and as unstoppable as public diarrhea. It
was forty degrees and sunny, but I had the feeling it
wouldn't have mattered if it were below zero. I had to take
off my clothes. I did, and stretched full length on an
expanse of exposed mud.
    I lay on my back in the sun-softened mud, shivering
violently, for maybe six or seven minutes. Stones poked into
my shoulder blades, the backs of my thighs, the small of my
back. The river mud smelled pungent. I was cold. I have
never been so uncomfortable in my life. I lay there, one
arm flung over my face to shield my eyes from the bright
noon sun, unwilling to move. Unable to move. And then it
was over, and, still shivering, I sat up and dressed again.
    It was over.
    Eat me, said the vials Alice found at the bottom of the
rabbit hole. Drink me.
    It had been two full days since I'd devoured the chicken
and rice and genuine new peas in the Albany government
hospital. I hadn't felt hungry: shock, anxiety, depression. All
those can arrest appetite. But the body needs fuel. Even
when hunger is absent,
glucose levels fall. There are hidden storages of starch in the liver
and muscles, but eventually these get used up. The blood needs
new sources of glucose to send to the body.
     Glucose is nothing but atoms. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen. Ar-
ranged one way in food. Arranged another way in mud and water
and air. Just as energy exists in one form in chemical bonds, and
another in sunlight.
     Y-energy rearranged the forms of energy so there would always
be a readily available, cheap supply.
     Nanotechnology rearranged atoms, which could be found
everywhere and anywhere.
     Under my clothes, I could feel the mud still caking the backs
of my thighs. I tried to remember what those openings were called
through which plants took in air, those minute orifices in the
epidermis of leaves and stems. The word wouldn't come. My mind
was watery.
     My body had fed.
    I walked carefully, setting my foot down cautiously on each
step, transferring my weight slowly from one foot to the other.
My arms hovered protectively six inches from my side, to catch
myself if I fell. I held my head stiffly. I made very slow progress
up the embankment, and it felt excruciating. It seemed to me I
had no choice. I moved as if I were something rare and fragile
that I myself were carrying, as if I shouldn't jar myself. Nothing
must happen to my body. I was the answer to the starving world.
    No. Huevos Verdes was the answer.
    Once that thought came, I could walk normally. I scrambled
up the hill to town. I was not the only one. By now there were
hundreds, thousands of us. Eden existed in a gravrail station in
Albany, beside the sunshine machine. The entire town of
Timonsville, Pennsylvania, had disappeared. Miranda Sharifi had
gone public with the Cell Cleaner, the most comprehensible part
of her project, over three months ago. And in the last month
Huevos Verdes could have stockpiled oceans of serum in forests
of slim black syringes. That's what they were doing all over the
country, in all those places the plague was not killing people. I was
not the only one. I had only been the first.
    Except for the Sleepless themselves.
    My body felt good, which is to say it felt like nothing at all.
It disappeared from my consciousness, as healthy and fed bodies
do. It was just there, ready to climb or run or work or make love,
without depending on the Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Cafe.
Without depending on CanCo Franchise agrobots on political
food distribution systems, on the FDA, on controlling the means
of production, on harvesters and combines and the banks you
owed them to, on forty acres and a mule, on the threshing floor,
on the serfs in the field, on the rains coming this year and the
locusts staying away, on Demeter and Indra and the Aztec corn
gods. Seven thousand years of civilization built on the need to
feed the people.
   More in the syringe.
    I could still eat normally—I had eaten chicken and rice and
peas in the Albany hospital. But I didn't have to. From now on,
my body could "eat" mud.
    I thought wildly of all the food I had consumed in my one
single life. Beef Wellington, the pastry flaky around succulent
medium-rare roast. Macaroons chewy with fresh-grated coconut.
Potatoes Anna, crisp and crunchy. Bittersweet Swiss chocolate.
Cassoulet. Alaskan crab as they did it at Fruits de la Mer in Seattle.
Deep-dish apple pie . . .
    My mouth watered. And then it stopped. A programmed bi-
ological counterresponse? I would probably never know.
    Biscuits dripping with butter. But I could still have them. Lamb
Gaston. Fresh arugula. If they were available. Strawberries in
cream. But would anybody grow or raise the ingredients without
a captive market?
    A sudden wave of dizziness overtook me. I must have been
in shock, or some kind of quiet hysteria. It was lightheadedness
at the sheer size of the thing, the audacity. Miranda Sharifi and
her twenty-six inhuman Supergeniuses, thinking in ways funda-
mentally different from ours, aided by technology they themselves
built so that each step ahead opened six more pathways, and
twenty-seven Superminds added to those branching possibili-
ties . . . Miranda Sharifi and Jonathan Markowitz and Terry
Mwakambe and the others whose names I didn't remember from
old newsgrids, whom I would never meet, who were not like us
and never had been, and yet who had seen what would happen to
a society they didn't belong to and had planned a countermeasure.
Planned, probably, for years, and carried out the unimaginably
complex plans that would change everything for everybody—
      And I had once thought that donkeys were perpetually dissat-
 isfied and never found anything to be enough.
      "How could she?" I said aloud, to nobody.
      Dazed, I wandered past the station. A train pulled in and Annie
and Billy and Lizzie stepped off the otherwise empty gravrail,
carrying bundles. Lizzie saw me, shrieked, and ran toward me. I
stood watching them, feeling lighter and lighter in the head, my
cranium swelling like a balloon. Lizzie hurtled herself into my
arms. She was taller, stronger, filled out, all in just a month. Billy's
face broke into a huge grin. He loped toward me like a man half
his age, Annie trailing.
     "Billy," I said. "Billy—"
     He went on grinning.
     "We're home now, us," Billy said. "We're all home."
     Annie sniffed. Lizzie squeezed me tight enough to crush ribs.
Under my jacks I felt mud flake off the skin of my thighs.
     "Hurry," Annie said. "I want to get to the cafe, me, before
the broadcast."
     "What broadcast?" I said.
     All three of them looked at me, shocked. Lizzie said, "The
broadcast, Vicki. From Huevos Verdes. The one all the Liver chan-
nels been talking about, them, for days. Everybody's going to watch
it!"
     "I've been watching only donkey channels." But if it were
coming from Huevos Verdes, they could use all channels at once,
Liver and donkey. They'd done it once before, thirteen years ago.
     "But, Vicki, it's the Huevos Verdes broadcast" Lizzie repeated.
     "I didn't know," I said, lamely.
     "Donkeys," Annie said. "They never know nothing, them."
                        Nineteen
       MIRANDA SHARIFI: TAPED BROADCAST FROM HUEVOS VERDES VIA
       SANCTUARY, SIMULTANEOUS ON ALL FCC NEWSGRID CHANNELS




T     his is Miranda Serena Sharifi, speaking to you on an unedited
      holo recorded six weeks ago. You will want to know what
      has been done to you.
    I am going to explain, as simply as I can. If the explanation is
not simple enough, please be patient. This broadcast will play over
and over again for weeks, on Channel 35. Perhaps parts of it will
become clearer as you hear it more than once. Or perhaps as more
technically trained people—donkeys—use the syringes we are
making available everywhere, some donkeys will explain to you
in easier words. Meanwhile, these are the simplest words I can
find for these concepts without losing scientific accuracy.
    Your body is made of cells. A cell, any cell, is basically a
complex of systems for transforming energy. So is an organism,
including a human being.
    Humans get their basic energy from plant food, either directly
or indirectly, through a process called oxidative phosphorylation.
Your bodies break down the bonds of carbon-containing mole-
cules, and a significant portion of the food's potential energy is
repackaged into the phosphate bonds of adenosine triphosphate
(ATP). When human cells need energy, they get it from ATP.
    Plants get their basic energy from sunlight. They use water
from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air to form glucose.
Glucose can then be repackaged as ATP. Most plants use chlo-
rophyll to carry on this photophosphorylation.
    Some bacteria, the halobacteria, can carry on both oxidative
phosphorylation and photophosphorylation. They can both ingest
nutrients and, under the right conditions, create ATP through a
photosynthetic mechanism. In other words, they can get basic
energy from either food or sunlight.
    The halobacteria don't use chlorophyll to do this. Instead, they
use retinal, the same pigment that responds to light in the human
eye. The retinal exists in conjunction with protein molecules in a
complex called bacteriorhodopsin.
    Your bodies have been modified to include a radically genet-
ically engineered from of bacteriorhodopsin.
    It exists under clear membranes which now exist at the ends
of tiny tubules projecting between the dead skin cells of your
outer epidermis. The modified bacteriorhodopsin is far more ef-
ficient, orders of magnitude more efficient, at capturing photons
than are any thylakoids found in nature.
    Additional tubules, with active transport capacity, also end in
a permeable membrane at the surface of your skin. These can
selectively absorb molecules of carbon, plus additional necessary
elements, directly from the soil or other organic material. The
absorbed molecules are acted upon by genemod enzymes, working
in conjunction with your human thylakoids, and with
nanomachinery replicating in your cells.
    This is not as foreign to you as it may sound. The human
embryo, when only a few cells old, develops an outer layer of cells
called the trophoblast. The trophoblast possesses the unusual
property of being able to digest or liquefy the tissues it comes in
contact with. This is how the embryo implants itself in the uterus
wall. Your reengineered skin can now liquefy and absorb other
kinds of matter.
    You have also been injected with genetically engineered ni-
trogen-fixing microorganisms.
    Human tissue consists 96.6 percent of carbon, hydrogen, ox-
ygen, and nitrogen. The nanomachinery now in your cells has been
programmed to arrange these plus other less concentrated ele-
ments into whatever molecules are needed. These processes are
all powered by sunlight, used far more efficiently than in nature.
The energy from sunlight is stored as ATP to be used when there
is no sunlight. Less than thirty minutes' naked exposure per
twenty-four-hour period is sufficient. A surplus can, as with food,
be stored as glycogen or fat.
    The Cell Cleaner will destroy any cancerous cells engendered
as a result of ultraviolet exposure. It will also, of course, destroy
any toxic molecules absorbed from the soil, by rearranging their
atoms into nontoxic forms.
    Nanomachinery will keep your gastrointestinal system capable
of operation, even when it is unused for long periods of time.
Genemod enzymes are designed to eliminate, through allosteric
interactions, any subjective feelings of hunger.
    When food is available, you can eat, and store energy from
oxidative phosphorylation. When food is not available, you can
lie on the soil, in the sunlight, and store energy through photo-
phosphorylation.
    Now you understand.
    You are now autotrophic.
    You are now free.




                                                                    I
            Summer 2115
Our defense is not in armaments, nor in
science, nor in going underground. Our
       defense is in law and order. —
Albert Einstein, in a letter to Ralph E. Lapp
                           Twenty
                    BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA




A      nnie was out in the deep woods when I finally found her,
       me, after looking for a couple hours. She didn't even tell
       me that she was going. More and more in the last year she's
independent like that, her. I was mad.
    "Annie Francy! I been looking, me, all over the woods for
you!"
    "Well, I been right here, me," Annie said. She sat up. She'd
been lying on her back in a little sort of hollow in the leaves,
and when she sat up, her, I forgot that I was supposed to be mad.
She'd been feeding, her. Her naked chocolate breasts bobbed,
them, and her hair had a few leaves stuck in it, and I could see
the edge of her ass where it pushed on the soft ground. My pipe
swelled. I was next to her, me, in two jumps.
    But she pushed me away. I might of forgot, me, that I was
mad, but Annie don't ever forget when she is. "Not now, Billy. I
mean it, you!"
    I stopped. It was hard. She tasted so sweet, her, it seemed like
I couldn't never get enough of her. Not in the year since we went
down into Eden. Not in ten more years, not in hundred. My old
pipe was stiff as a hunk of metal.
    Annie got up, her, real leisurely, dusting the leaves off her
thighs and ass. She knew, her, how I was watching. There was
even a little smile in her eyes. But she was still mad.
    "Billy—I still don't want, me, for us to go to West Virginia.
It ain't going to help nobody."
    I eased my pants a little, me. "Lizzie wants to go. She is going,
her. With or without us."
    Annie scowled. Her and Lizzie fight even more now, them,
since Lizzie turned thirteen. Annie wants to keep Lizzie a little
girl, is what I think, same as for a long time she wanted to keep
me an old man, like old men used to be. Before. Annie didn't
never like change, her. That's why she don't want to go to West
Virginia.
     "Lizzie really said that, her? That she'd go without me?"
    I nodded. Lizzie would, too. She would go, her, even if Vicki
didn't. There ain't no stopping Lizzie these days. You'd of thought
it'd be the old and the sick who'd be the most changed since
Before, but the truth is, it's the young. There ain't no stopping
none of them from doing nothing. Used to be a thirteen-year-
old—or twelve, or ten—needed to be taken care of. Fed, nursed
through sickness, protected from a rabid raccoon or a bad cut or
spoiled food. No more. They don't need us, them.
    Just like we don't need the donkeys.
    Annie pulled on her dress, her, watching me watch, but without
seeming to notice nothing. The dress was longer than the youngest
women wear, even in the summer—Annie can't change everything
about herself, her, just 'cause there ain't no more endless supplies
of jacks or parkas or boots. Her dress was weaved out of some
plant thing, not cotton, on the weaving 'bot, just two weeks ago.
It didn't have no color, like they don't now. People like their
clothes, them, to look natural, which don't make sense because
Annie's dress had already started to get eaten by her breasts and
hips and ass. There was tiny holes in interesting places. My pants
was the same way. I ain't going to wear no dress, me, like the
younger men, even if it is easier for feeding. I ain't no young man
in my head, me, no matter what my body can do now.
    Annie Francy's gorgeous ass disappeared under the drop of
her dress.
    She tied on her sandals, left over from Before. They were
nearly worn out, them. Shoes and boots was supposed to of been
on the Council's meeting tonight, until this other thing come up
so fast and hard and there ain't going to be no East Oleanta Council
meeting tonight. Maybe never again, for all I knew, me.
    I held Annie's hand, me, while we walked back to town. I
remember when she wouldn't never go into the woods, her. But
now not even Annie's afraid in the woods.
    In West Virginia—that's something else.
       Annie's hand felt smooth and strong. I rubbed my thumb, me,
  in a little circle over her palm. Annie Francy. Annie. Francy. She
  was scowling, her, her lips pressed tight together.
       "It ain't right to let them vote in Council as young as twelve.
  It ain't right."
 I knew better, me, than to get into that again. "If it wasn't for
 the kids' votes, we wouldn't be going, us, on this useless trip.
 And it is useless, Billy. What does a thirteen-year-old know,
 her, about adult voting? She's still a baby, her, even if she
 don't think so!"
      I didn't say nothing. I ain't no fool.
      We walked in silence, us. There was pine needles underfoot,
 and in the sunny places, daisies and Indian paintbrush. The woods
 was just as pretty, them, and smelled just as sweet, as if the world
 hadn't of changed for good over a year ago by things too small,
 them, to even see.
      Vicki's tried right along, her, to explain the Cell Cleaner to
 me. And the nanomachinery. Lizzie seems, her, to understand it,
 but it still ain't clear to me.
It don't have to be clear. All it has to do, it, is work. "Annie," I
said, just before we got to town, "you don't know, you, that we
can't do nothing in West Virginia. Maybe somebody's got a plan,
them—one of the kids, even!—and by the time we get there—
"
      She scowled. "Nobody's got no plan."
      "Well, maybe by the time we get there, us . . . you got to figure
walking will take three, four weeks—"
     She turned on me. "Nobody will make no plan! Who knows,
them, how to break into that prison and get that girl out? Donkeys?
They put her there! That Drew Aden, her own man? He put her
there, too! Her own kind? They'd of done it by now, them, if
they knew how! We can't do nothing, Billy. And meantime, we
could use the time and brains, us, on things we do need! Better
weaving, and more of it! We still only got that one weaving 'bot
the kids put together, and it's slow, it. And the clothes keep getting
eaten. And boots! We still ain't settled, us, about getting boots,
and winter will come eventually!"
     I gave it up, me. You can't argue with Annie. She's too right,
her. Winter would come eventually and the weaving 'bot is only
one 'bot for the whole town, which might be all right for summer
clothes but winter is something different. And we ain't settled the
boots, us. Annie's still feeding the world, even when there ain't
no cooking.
    Sometimes it's kind of scary, knowing there ain't nobody to
take care of us but us. Sometimes it ain't.


Vicki met us, her, at the edge of town. Her dress was nearly as
bad as Lizzie's. I could see pretty near one whole breast, and—
old fool that I am—damn if my pipe didn't stir a little, it. But her
face was too thin, and she looked unhappy, her, like she done for
months now. She was the only one, her, in the whole town who
looked so unhappy.
      "It's coming apart, Billy. This time, it really is."
      "What?" I said. I thought, me, she meant her dress. I really
did. Old fool.
      "The country. The classes, For good this time. The gap between
 donkeys and Livers was always held together with baling wire and
 chewing gum, and now the last semblance is going."
      I motioned Annie on, me, with a wave of my hand. She
 marched off, her, probably to find Lizzie. I sat down on a log and
 after a minute Vicki sat down too. She can't help, her, being upset
 about the country. She's a donkey. In East Oleanta that don't
 matter, everybody left is used to her, but we still get news channels
 in the cafe. A few, anyway. Donkeys are having a hard time, them.
 It's like when Livers found out we don't need donkeys anymore,
 we got mad, us, that we'd ever needed them. Only that ain't all
 of it. There's been a lot of killing, and most donkeys are holed
 up, them, in their city enclaves. Some ain't come out in damn near
 half a year.
       I looked, me, for something to make Vicki feel better. "There
  ain't no police no more. To punish people who break the law,
  them, by attacking other people. If we got security 'bots
  back—"
       "Oh, Billy, it's broader than that. There isn't any law anymore.
  There's just the town councils. And where people don't feel like
  obeying those, there's anarchy."
       "I ain't seen, me, nobody get hurt here."
       "Not in East Oleanta, no. In East Oleanta the Huevos Verdes
  plan worked. People made the transition to small, local, cooper-
  ative government. To tell you the truth, I give Jack Sawicki, poor
  dead bastard, credit for that. He had everybody primed for self-
  responsibility. And other places have worked just as well. But
  they've killed off donkeys in Albany, they killed off each other in
  Carter's Falls, they've had a rape fest and general lawless might-
  makes-right in Binghamton, and in other places they've had a witch
  hunt for "subhuman genemods" worse than any the GSEA ever
  mounted. And where is the GSEA? Where is the FBI? Where is
  the Urban Housing Authority and the FCC and the Department
  of Health? The entire network of government has just vanished,
  while Washington walls itself off, issuing decrees to which the rest
  of the country pays not the slightest attention!"
       "We don't need to, us."
      "Precisely. As an entity, the United States no longer exists. It
 fragmented into classes with no common aims at all. Karl Marx
 was right."
      "Who?" I didn't know, me, nobody with that name.
      "Never mind."
      "Vicki—" I had to hunt, me, for my words. "Can't you . . . care
 less, you? Ain't this enough? For the first time, we're free, us. Like
 Miranda said, her, on her HT broadcast, we're really free."
      She looked at me. I ain't never seen, me, before or since, such
 a bleak look. "Free to do what, Billy?"
      "Well. . . live."
      "Look at this." She held out a piece of metal, her. It was twisted
 and melted.
      "So? Duragem. The dissembler got it. But the dissemblers are
 clocked out, them. And the kids are figuring out all new ways to
 build stuff without no metals that—"
     "This wasn't duragem. And it wasn't attacked by a genemod
organism. It was melted by a U-614."
     "What's that?"
     "A weapon. A very devastating, powerful, government weapon.
That was only supposed to be released in case of foreign attack.
I found this last week near Coganville. It had been used to blast
an isolated summer cottage where, I suspect, there'd been some
donkeys hiding months ago. Not even the bodies are there now.
Not even the building is there."
     I looked at her, me. I didn't know she'd walked, her, to Co-
ganville last week. ,
     "Don't you get it, Billy? What Drew Aden hinted at during
 Miranda Sharifi's trial is true. He didn't say it outright, and I'll bet
 that's because somebody decided it was prejudicial to national
 security. 'National security'! For that you need a real nation!"
     I still didn't get it, me. Vicki looked at me, and she put her
 hand, her, on my arm.
     "Billy, somebody's arming Livers with secret government
weapons. Somebody's engineering civil war. Do you really think
all this violence isn't being deliberately nursed? It's probably the
same bastards who released the duragem dissembler in the first
place, still out there, trying to get all the donkeys wiped out. And
maybe all the Sleepless, too, that aren't holed up in Sanctuary.
Somebody wants this country to continue coming apart, and
they've got enough underground government support to do it.
Civil war, Billy. This last nine months of bioengineered pastoral
idyll is only a hiatus. And we people—struggling to create weaving
'bots and rejoicing in our liberation from all the old biological
imperatives—are not going to stand a chance. Not without a strong
government participation on our side, and I don't see that
happening."
     "But, Vicki—"
     "Oh, why am I talking to you? You don't understand the first
thing I'm talking about!"
     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 ar-
guing 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 Arlen'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 Coun-
cil'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 to-
gether 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 har-
boring 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 star-
ing, 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 wan-
dered, 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.
    Then we came, us, to some town with a HT in the cafe. Vicki
insisted, her, on watching one whole afternoon of donkey news-
grids. Lizzie sat with her. So did me and Ben and Carl, just to be
safe.
    That night, around our campfire, Vicki sat slumped over, her,
more depressed than before.
    There was her, me, Annie, Lizzie, and Brad. Brad was a kid,
him, who joined us a week ago. He spent a lot of time, him, bent
over a terminal close to Lizzie. Annie didn't like it, her. I didn't
like it neither. Lizzie's body was feeding on her dress faster than
mine or Annie's, the way the young bodies did, them. Her little
breasts were half hanging out, all rosy in the soft firelight. I could
see she didn't care, her. I could see Brad did. There wasn't a damn
thing Annie or I could do.
    Lizzie said, "The Carnegie-Mellon Enclave hasn't lowered its
shield once. Not once, in nine months. They have to be out of
food completely, which means they have to have used the
syringes."
    She didn't even talk, her, like us anymore. She talks like her
terminal.
    Annie said sharply, "So? Donkeys can use syringes. Miranda
said so, her. Just so long as they stay, them behind their shields,
and leave us alone."
    Vicki said sharply, "You didn't want them to leave you alone
when they were providing everything you needed. You were the
one, in fact, who had the most reverence for authority. 'Give us
this day our daily bread . . .' "
    "Don't blaspheme, you!"
     "Now, Annie," I said, "Vicki don't mean nothing, her. She
 just wants—"
     "She just wants you to stop apologizing for her, Billy," Vicki
said coldly. "I can apologize myself for my outworn caste." She
got up, her, and walked off into the darkness.
     "Can't you stop bothering her?" Lizzie said furiously to her
mother. "After all she's done for us!" She jumped up and followed
Vicki.
     Brad looked helplessly after her, him. He stood up, sat down,
half got up again. I took pity, me. "Don't do it, son. They're better
off, them, alone for a while."
     The boy looked at me gratefully, him, and went back to his
everlasting terminal.
     "Annie . . . " I said, as gently as I could.
     "Something's wrong with that woman, her. She's jumpy as a
cat."
    So was Annie. I didn't say so, me. Their jumpiness wasn't the
same kind. Annie was thinking, her, about Lizzie, just like she'd
always been. But Vicki was thinking, her, about a whole country.
Just like donkeys always did.
     And if they didn't, them, who would?
     I thought, me, about Livers not needing donkeys no more, and
donkeys hiding behind their shields from Livers. I thought about
all the fighting and killing we'd watched, us, that afternoon on the
newsgrids. I thought about the man who'd called donkeys "abom-
inations" and said the syringes was from God. The man who said
he'd got the Will and the Idea.
     I got up, me, to go look for Vicki and make sure she was all
right.
                     Twenty-one
                    VICTORIA TURNER: WEST VIRGINIA




T     hey don't understand. None of them. Livers are still Livers,
      despite the staggering everything that's happened, and
      there's a limit to what you can expect.
    I walked toward West Virginia wearing my new legal name
and my rapidly decaying dress, full of health and doom. Where
was Huevos Verdes in all this? Miranda Sharifi had been tried
under the most spectacular security known to man, and the press
from thirty-four countries had waited breathlessly for the Lance-
lotian high-tech rescue, the snatching from the legal fire, that had
never materialized. Miranda herself had said not one word
throughout the trial. Not one, not even on the stand, under oath.
She had, of course, been found in contempt, and the crowds of
Livers outside—syringed, all—had raised enough un-Liver-like
howls to compensate for the silence of ten sacrificial lambs. But
not for Huevos Verdes's silence. No rescue. No defense, to speak
of. Nada, unless you count syringes raining from the sky, pushing
up from the earth, appearing like alchemy out of the very stones
and fields and pavements of the country the Supers were utterly,
silently, invisibly transforming.
    Drew Aden had testified. He'd described the illegal Huevos
Verdes genemod experiments in East Oleanta, in Colorado, in
Florida. The last two labs were apparently only backup loca-
tions to East Oleanta and Huevos Verdes, but Jesus Christ, there
were only twenty-seven Supers. How in hell had they staffed four
locations?
    They weren't like us.
    That became clearer and clearer, as the trial progressed. It
became clear, too, that Arlen was like us: stumbling around in the
same swamp of good intentions, moral uncertainties, limited un-
derstanding, personal passions, and government restrictions about
what he could or could not say on the stand.
    "That information is classified," became his monotonous re-
sponse to Miranda Sharifi's defense attorney, who was surely the
most frustrated man on the planet. Arlen sat in his powerchair,
his aging Liver face expressionless. "Where were you, Mr. Arlen,
between August 28 and November 3?" "That information is class-
ified." "With whom did you discuss the alleged activities of Ms.
Sharifi in Upstate New York?" 'That information is classified."
"Please describe the events that led to your decision to notify the
GSEA about Huevos Verdes." "That information is classified."
    Just like wartime.
    But not my war. I had been declared a noncombatant, removed
lock and stock and retina print from any but the most public
databases, in perpetuity. Three times over the last year I had been
picked up, transported to Albany, and knocked out, while bio-
monitors gave up their secrets to scientists who, most probably,
had by now syringed themselves with the same thing. The results
of the biomonitoring were not shared with me. I was a government
outcast.
    So why did I even care that the United States, qua United
States, was on the verge of nonexistence, the first nationalistic
snuff job brought about by making government itself obsolete?
Why should I care?
    I don't know. But I did. Call me a fool. Call me a romantic.
Call me stubborn. Call me a deliberate, self-created anachronism.
    Call me a patriot.
    "Billy," I said as we trudged along the endless gravrail track
in the high rolling hills of Pennsylvania, "are you still an
American?"
    He gave me a Billy-look, which is to say intelligent without
the remotest glimmer of vocabular understanding. "Me? Yes."
    "Will you be an American if you are killed by some fanatic
last-ditch legalistic donkey defense at Oak Mountain?"
    He took a minute to sort this out. "Yes."
    "Will you still be an American if you're killed by some attack
by a purist Liver-government underground that thinks you've sold
out to the genetic enemy?"
"I ain't going, me, to be killed by no other Livers." "But if you
were, would you die an American?" He was losing patience. His
old eyes with the young energy roamed over our fellow
walkers, looking for Annie. "Yes."
    "Would you still be an American if there is no America, no
central government left and nobody to administer it if there were,
the Constitution forgotten, the donkeys wiped out by some fanatic
revolutionary underground, and Miranda Sharifi rotting in a prison
run exclusively by 'bots?"
    "Vicki, you think too much, you," Billy said. He turned his
concern on me, that agape concern off which I'd been living, out
of caste, for so long. It didn't help. "Think about whether we're
going to stay alive, us—that makes sense. But you can't take on
the whole damn country, you."
    "The human mind, Charles Lamb once remarked, can fall in
love with anything. Call me a patriot, Billy. Don't you still believe
in patriotism, Billy?"

    "Besides, I once saw a genemod dog fall to its death off a
balcony." But Billy suddenly spotted Annie. He smiled at me and
moved off to walk by his beloved, whose dress, despite her best
efforts, was being consumed by her big-breasted body. She looked
like a pastoral goddess, utterly unaware that the industrial revo-
lution has begun and the looms are clacking like gunfire.
    We reached Oak Mountain July 14, which only I found funny,
or even notable. There were already ten thousand people there,
by generous estimate. They ringed the flat land around the prison
and spread up the sides of the surrounding mountains. Brush had
been cleared for feeding for miles around, although the trees
remained for shade. No one was on solid food; there was little
shit. Tents in the wild colors of Before jacks dotted the grounds:
turquoise, marigold, crimson, kelly green. At night, there were
the usual campfires or Y-energy cones.
    World War I lost more soldiers to disease, the result of being
messed together in unsanitary conditions, than to guns. At the
siege of Dunmar, they had eaten the rats, and then each other.
During the Brazilian Action, the damage to the rain forest was
greater than the damage to the combatants as high tech destroyed
everything it touched. Never again, none of it.
    Did history still apply? Human history?
     Billy was right. I thought too much. Concentrate on staying
alive.
     "Put more dirt on your face," Lizzie said, peering at me crit-
ically. This seemed superfluous; everyone was constantly covered
in dirt, which had become acceptable. Dirt was clean. Dirt was
mother's milk. I suspected that Miranda and Company had altered
our olfactory sense with her magic brew. People did not seem to
smell bad to each other.
     "Put more leaves in your hair," Lizzie said, tipping her head
critically to study me. Her pretty face was creased with worry.
"There are some weird people here, Vicki. They don't understand
that donkeys can be human, too."
     Can be. On sufferance. If we join the Livers and give up the
institutions by which we controlled the world.
    Lizzie's lip quivered. "If anything happened to you . . ."
    "Nothing's going to happen to me," I said, not believing it for
half a minute. Too much already had. But I hugged her, this
daughter slipping rapidly away from both Annie and me, who
nonetheless fought over her just as if she weren't already a dif-
ferent species. Lizzie was almost completely naked now, her
"dress" reduced to a few courtesy rags. Unselfconsciously naked.
There were thirteen-year-olds in this camp who were just as unself-
consciously pregnant. No problem. Their bodies would take care
of it. They anticipated no danger in childbirth, had no fears about
supporting a baby, counted on plenty of people around all the
time to help care for these casual offspring. It was no big deal.
The pregnant children were serene.
    "Just be careful," Lizzie said.
    "You be careful," I retorted, but of course she only smiled at
this.
    That night the first holo appeared in the sky.


It appeared to be centered above the prison itself. Eighty feet up
and at least fifty feet tall—it was hard to judge from the ground—
it was clearly visible for miles. The laser lighting was intricate and
brilliant. It was around ten o'clock, dark enough even in summer
for the holo to dominate even a nearly full moon. It consisted of
a red-and-blue double helix bathed in a holy white light, like some
biological Caravaggio. Below it letters pulsed and flashed:
                  DEATH TO NON-HUMANS
                     WILL AND IDEA

People screamed. In a year, they had apparently forgotten how
ubiquitous political holes used to be.
    Death to non-humans. Cold seeped along my spine, starting in
the small of my back and traveling upwards.
    "Who's making that holo them?" a nearby man called indig-
nantly. There was a frenzied babble of answers: the government,
the food franchises nobody needed anymore, the military. The
donkeys, the donkeys, the donkeys . . .
    I didn't hear anyone say, "The underground, them." Did that
mean there were no members of it present, not even informers?
There must be informers; every war had them.
    Informers would have to fit in, which meant they'd have to be
syringed. Did that mean they, too, were non-humans? Who exactly
qualified as "non-human"?
    I saw Lizzie fighting through the crowd, felt her hands drawing
me back into our tent. If she was saying anything, it was lost in
the noise. I shrugged off her small insistent hands and stayed where
I was.
    The holo continued to flash. Then there was a general surge
forward, toward the prison. It didn't happen all at once; nobody
was in danger of being trampled. But people began to move around
tents and campfires toward the prison walls. By the garish pulsing
light I could see similar movements down the sides of the distant
wooded slopes. The Livers were moving to protect Miranda, their
chosen icon.
    "Anybody tries, them, to give death to her. . . "
    "She's as human, her, as anybody with fancy holos!"
    "Just let them try to get at her . . . "
    What on earth did they think they could actually do to help
her?
    Then the chanting started, first closest to the prison walls and
quickly spreading outward, drowning out the more random babble
of discussion and protest. By the time I reached the edge of the
shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, it was strong, rising from thousands
of throats: "Free Miranda. Free Miranda. Free Miranda . . ."
    Torches appeared. Within a half hour every human being in
miles stood packed by the prison walls, faces grim and yet exalted
in that way people get when they're intent on something outside
themselves. Firelight turned some of their homely Liver faces rosy;
others were striped red and blue from the flashing holo above us.
Free Miranda, Free Miranda, Free Miranda . . .
      There was no response at all from the silent gray walls.
      They kept it up for an hour, which was the same length of
 time the holo flashed its message of death to those like Miranda.
      And me.
      And the syringed Livers?
      When the holo finally disappeared, the chanting did, too, al-
 most as if cut off from above. People blinked and looked at each
 other, a little dazed. They might have been coming off a Drew
 Arlen lucid dreaming.
      Slowly, without haste, ten thousand people moved away from
 the prison, back to their tents, spreading out over miles. It took
 a long time. People moved slowly, subdued, talking softly or not
 at all. As far as I knew, nobody got pushed or hurt. Once, I would
 not have believed this possible.
      People sat up very late, huddled around common fires, talking.
      Brad said, "That holo didn't come from the prison."
      I'd never thought it did. But I wanted to hear his reasoning.
 "How do you know?"
      He smiled patiently, the newly fledged techie addressing his
 illiterate elder. The little prick. I had forgotten more tech than he
 had yet learned in his belated post-syringe love affair with actual
 knowledge. He was sixteen. Still, I had no real right to contempt.
 I hadn't noticed where the holo originated.
      "Laser holos have feeds," he said. "You know, those skinny
 little lines of radiation you can only see kind of sidewise, and only
 if you're looking—"
      "Peripheral vision. Yes, I know, Brad. Where were they com-
 ing from, if not the prison?"
      "Lizzie and me only studied about them last week." He put a
 proprietary hand on Lizzie's knee. Annie scowled.
      "Where were the feeds coming from, Brad?"
      "At first I hardly noticed them at all. Then I remembered
 the—"
      "From where, damn it!"
    Startled, he pointed. Horizontally, to the top of a not-very-
near mountain I couldn't name. I stared at the mountain, silhou-
etted in moonlight.
    "I don't see why you're yelling at me, you," Brad said, some-
where between a sulk and a sneer. I ignored him. I hoped Lizzie
was losing interest in him. He wasn't nearly as bright as she was.
    0 same new world.
    I stared at the dark nameless mountain. That's where they were,
then. The Will-and-Idea underground, which Drew Aden had
hinted at, and of which Billy had met a member weeks ago. But
that man had been syringed. Did that mean you could be syringed,
with all its changes to basic biological machinery, and still be
considered human by the underground? Or was the man being
used as an informer, who would be dealt with for his turncoat
treason once the war was over? Such things were not unknown in
history.
    This movement had loosed the duragem dissembler. They
were killing donkeys. They had successfully hidden Drew Arlen
for two months from Huevos Verdes. They armed their soldiers
with United States military weapons.
    It was dawn before I slept.


The next night, the holo was back, but changed.
   The double helix, red and blue in white light, was still there.
But this time the flashing letters read:

                     DON'T TREAD ON ME
                       WILL AND IDEA

    Don't tread on me? What pseudo-revolutionary group could
possibly have the demented idea that a bunch of pastoral dirt-
feeding chanters were treading on them? Or even interested in
them?
    I had a sudden insight. It wasn't only that Livers, due to using
the syringes, may or may not have become non-human. That
alone hadn't provoked the underground's hatred. The Liver's non-
interest had. Syringed people not only didn't pay the established
government much attention, most of them were equally uninter-
ested in its would-be replacements. They didn't need any replace-
ment, or thought they didn't. And for some people, being hated
is preferable to being irrelevant. Any action that provokes re-
sponse, no matter how irrational, is better than being irrelevant.
Even if the response is never enough.
    Another thing: These holos were not trying to convert anyone.
There were no broadcasts explaining why people should join the
underground. There were no simply worded leaflets. There were
no cell members furtively reaching out to the susceptible, per-
suading in hushed voices. The people projecting these holos
were not interested in recruitment. They were interested in self-
righteous violence.
    The Livers gazing upward at the sky responded to this second
holo exactly as they had the night before. Orderly, without con-
fusion, without any signal given, they began to move toward the
prison. There was no haste. Mothers took the time to wrap up
babies against the night chill, to finish breast-feeding, to arrange
who would stay with sleeping toddlers. Fires were banked. Knitters
did whatever they do at the end of a row of stitches. But within
ten minutes every adult in the camp had started to move, ten
thousand strong, toward the walls. They moved courteously
around the tents and temporary hearths of those camped hard by
the prison, careful not to step on anything. As soon as they were
shoulder-to-shoulder, they started to chant.
     "Free Miranda. Free Miranda. Free Miranda . . . "
     The holo pulsed for fifteen minutes, then changed:

                               LIBERTY OR DEATH
                                 WILL AND IDEA

The white light changed to an American flag, stars and bars su-
perimposed over the double helix.
     "Free Miranda. Free Miranda. Free Miranda . . . "
     Fifteen minutes later the holo words changed again:

                                      HOPE WILL
                                      AND IDEA

" F r e e M i r a n d a . F r e e M i r a n d a . F r e e M i r a n d a . . . " The American
flag became a rattlesnake, poised to strike. It looked so real that
a few children started to cry.
    Another fifteen minutes and the snake was replaced by the
original double helix and holy white light. This time we got three
lines:

                 DEATH TO ABOMINATIONS
                  POWER TO TRUE LIVERS
                     WILL AND IDEA

The double helix rotated slowly. I wondered how many of the
chanters even knew what it was.
    "Free Miranda . . ."
    At the end of an hour, it was over. It took another hour for
the huge crowd to quietly disperse, which it started to do the
moment the holo vanished.
    Back in my tent, I borrowed Lizzie's terminal, with its library
crystal. "Don't tread on me" was first used on flags in the Colonial
South, as relations with Great Britain deteriorated, and later
adopted as Revolutionary slogan in much of New England. "Lib-
erty or Death" appeared on flags in Virginia, following Patrick
Henry's exhortation to turn on the British masters. "Hope" was
the legend on the flag of the Colonial armed schooner Lee, the
first flag to also feature thirteen stars. I couldn't find a record
anywhere of "Will and Idea."
    These maniacs considered themselves colonists in their own
country, fighting to overthrow a donkey establishment that was
largely in passive hiding and, maybe, a syringed Liver population
that was essentially defenseless. Unless you count chanting as a
weapon.
    The government existed, in part, to defend its citizens against
this sort of demented civil insurrection. Did we have a government
left? Did we have a country left?
    The only official representative of that country in sight, Oak
Mountain Maximum Security Federal Prison, sat silent and dark.
Maybe it was even empty.
    I walked back toward the prison walls. This time I went right
up to them, borrowing a torch from some obliging camper who
asked mildly, without insistence, that I return it when I was done.
I walked along the prison walls, inspecting.
    A few graffiti, not very many. Few Livers could write. What
graffiti there was hadn't been written on the walls themselves,
which of course shimmered with a faint Y-energy shield. Instead
river boulders had been rolled laboriously against the shield, the
earth scraped raw from their passage. On the rocks was painted
FREEE MARANDA. WE R PEEPLUL TO. TAK DOWN THEEZ WALLZ.
    A pathetic scratching in one rock, a half-inch deep, where some
group had begun, symbolically at least, to tak down theez wallz.
    The prison door, facing the river, blank and impenetrable.
Thirty feet up the security screens, which may or may not have
been recording, were dark blank patches.
    Above the walls the shimmer, hard to see unless you used your
peripheral vision, extended outward a few feet, like eaves. I
couldn't imagine why.
    Towers loomed at each of the four corners. They had no win-
dows, or else windows holoed to look like they didn't exist.
    I walked back to my tent, returning the torch on the way.
Annie, Billy, Lizzie, and Brad had already disappeared into their
tents, two by two. Clouds were rolling in from the west. I sat
outside for a long time, wrapped in a plasticloth tarp, cold even
though it was at least seventy degrees out. The prison, too, sat
massive and silent, not even flying a holographic flag. Dead.


"Lizzie, I need you to do something for me. Something tremen-
dously important."
    She looked up at me. I'd found her deep in the woods, after
hours of patiently asking total strangers if they'd seen a thin black
girl with pink ribbons tying up her two braids. Lizzie sat on a fallen
log, which the backs of her thighs were probably eating. She'd
been crying. Brad, of course. I'd kill him. No, I wouldn't. There
was no other way for her to learn. Claude-Eugene-Rex-Paul-
Anthony-Russell-David.
    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
nanotech 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 ter-
minal 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,
omnisciently 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 rime 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 stag-
gered 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, stum-
ble 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:

                  THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
                THE IDEA OF HUMAN PURITY

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.
    I squeezed my eyes shut to die. And then opened them again.
    In time to see the nanosecond in which it happened.
    The shield around Oak Mountain glowed brighter than the
holo in the sky. One moment the prison was wrapped in silvery
light. The next the same silvery light shot out from the prison
walls over the crowd below, in grotesquely elongated eaves of
pure energy. The bomb, or whatever it was, hit the top of the
energy shield and detonated, or ricocheted, or was thrown back.
The plane exploded in a light that blinded me, but wasn't quite
nuclear. An instant later a second explosion: the other plane. Then
dead silence.
    People had stopped running, most of them. They looked up
at the opaque silver roof protecting them, the roof of manmade
high-tech radiation.
    I cried out and staggered forward. Immediately my ankle gave
way and I fell. I raised myself chest-high off the ground and stared
up. The "roof extended all the way to the lowest slopes of the
mountain. I couldn't see through it. But I heard the subsequent
explosions, artillery or radiation or something that must have been
directed from the top of the distant mountain.
    People were screaming again. But the shoving and trampling
had stopped. Huddled under this high-energy umbrella was the
safest place to be.
   I thought: Huevos Verdes protects their own.
     I lay back down on the ground, my cheek pressed against the
hard-packed dirt. It felt as if I had no bones; I literally couldn't
move. Small children could have trampled on me. Huevos Verdes
had protected their own, incidentally saving the lives of nine or
ten thousand Livers while wiping out some other unknown number
of Livers. That was who made the laws now: Huevos Verdes.
Twenty-seven Sleepless plus their eventual offspring, who did not
consider themselves part of my country. Or any other. Not don-
keys, not Livers, not the Constitution, which even to donkeys had
always been silent in the background but fundamental, like bed-
rock. No longer.
     Who was the statesman whose last, dying words concerned the
fate of the United States? Adams? Webster? I'd always thought it
was a stupid story. Shouldn't his last words have concerned his
wife or his will or the height of his pillow—something concrete
and personal? How grandiose to think oneself large enough to
match the fate of a whole country—and at such a moment! Pre-
tentious, inflated. Also silly—the man wasn't going to pass any
more laws or influence any more policy, he was dying. Silly.
     Now I understood. And it was still silly. But I understood.
     I think I have never felt such desolation.
     There was a final explosion that left my ear, the one not pressed
to the ground, completely deaf. I struggled to turn my head and
look up. The shield had disappeared, and so had the holo and the
entire top of the distant mountain. I had never even learned its
name.
     More screaming. Now, when it was all over. The Livers prob-
ably didn't realize that, might never even realize what had been
lost. Small bands of roaming, self-sufficient tribes, not needing
that quaint entity, "the United States," any more than Huevos
Verdes did. Livers.
     The first fleeing people ran past me, toward the dark hills. I
stumbled to my feet, or rather foot. If I didn't put my full weight
on the self-healing ankle, I could hop forward. After a few yards
I actually found a dropped torch. I extinguished it and leaned on
it like a cane. It wasn't quite long enough, but it would do.
     It was slow work being the only person moving toward the
prison. People had stopped shoving, and some kind or guilty souls
started to carry away the trampled dead. But a crowd that size
takes a long time to disperse. The noise from the crying and the
 shouting was overwhelming, especially after I started pressing my
 way through the narrow capillaries between people. My ankle
 throbbed.
     It was at least an hour before I reached the prison itself.
     I hobbled the length of the wall and turned the corner toward
the river. It was somehow astonishing to me that the water con-
tinued to flow and murmur, the rocks to sit in their usual dumb
fashion. For a second I saw not this river but another, with a dead
snowshoe rabbit beside it—which river did I hear murmur in the
darkness? There were no people left on this side of the walls, but
I thought I saw dead bodies on the ground. They were actually
shadows. Even after I realized this, they went on looking like
corpses. They went on looking like Lizzie, all of them, at different
moments. The pain had spread from my ankle to my whole leg.
I wasn't quite sane.
     When I reached the prison doors, I looked up at the blank
security screens, angled out from the wall much as the silvery
shield has been. I said to them, "I want to come in."
     Nothing happened.
     I said, louder—and even I heard the edge of hysteria in my
voice—"I'm coming in now. I am. Now. Coming in."
    The river murmured. The screens brightened slightly—or
maybe not. After a moment the door swung open.
    Just like Eden.
     I limped into a small antechamber. The door swung closed
behind me. A door opened on the far wall.
     I have been in prisons before, as part of my long-ago intelli-
gence training. I knew how they worked. First the computer-run
automated doors and biodetectors, all of which passed me through.
Then the second set of doors, which are not Y-energy but carbon-
alloy barred doors, run only manually because there are always
people who can crack any electronic system, including retina
prints. It's been done. The second set of doors are controlled by
human beings behind Y-energy screens, and if there are no human
beings, nobody gets in. Or out. Not without explosives as large
as the ones the Will and Idea people had already tried.
    I stood in front of the first barred door and peered through
the cloudy window to the guard station, a window constructed of
plasticlear and not Y-energy, because Y-energy, too, is vulnerable
to enough sophisticated electronics. There was a figure there.
Somehow Huevos Verdes must have brought in their own peo-
ple—when? How? And what had they done with the donkey prison
officials?
    The barred door opened.
    Then the next one.
    And the next.
    There was no one in the prison yard. Recreation and dining
halls on the right, administrative and gym on the left. I hobbled
toward the cellblocks, at the far end. A solitary small building sat
behind them. Solitary. The door opened when I pushed it.
    I half expected, when I reached her cell, to find it empty, a
rock rolled away from the tomb door. Playing with cultural
icons . . .
    But the SuperSleepless don't play. She was there, sitting on a
sleeping bunk she would never use, in a space ten by five, with a
lidless toilet and a single chair. Stacked on the chair were books,
actual bound hard copy printouts. They looked old. There was no
terminal. She looked up at me, not smiling.
    What do you say?
    "Miranda? Sharifi?"
    She nodded, just once, her slightly too large head. She wore
prison jacks, dull gray. There was no red ribbon in her dark hair.
    "They . . . your . . . the doors are open."
    She nodded again. "I know."
    "Are you . . . do you want to come out?" Even to myself I
sounded inane. There were no precedents.
    "In a minute. Sit down, Diana."
    "Vicki," I said. More inanity. "I go by Vicki now."
    "Yes." She still didn't smile. She spoke in the slightly hesitant
manner I remembered, as if speech were not her natural manner
of communication. Or maybe as if she were choosing her words
carefully, not from too few but from an unimaginable too many.
I moved the books off the chair and sat.
    She said the last thing I could have anticipated. "You're
troubled."
    "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 won-
dered 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 gen-
uinely 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 re-
dress 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 dis-
tinctions 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 con-
trolled, or even understood by most of us. The effort to include
all of us humans in the law was what counted. The effort to un-
derstand 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.
                 Twenty-two
                    DREW ARLEN: GSEA




O h, Miranda . . . I'm sorry. I never
  intended . . . But I would try to stop
  you again. And I don't expect you to
understand.