Beggars and Choosers (10 page)

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, followed 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, Morrison
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 Arlen, 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 a gravrail 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 pyramid, 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 Arlen. The Lucid Dreamer. Let your dreams
be true.”

I’d seen Arlen perform live once, in San Francisco, when I’d been
slumming with friends. I was the only person in the Congressman Paul
Jennings Messura Concert Hall not affected. Natural 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 Arlen changed somehow, flickered oddly.
Subliminal patterns. The patterns coalesced slowly into intricate
shapes and Arlen’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 Arlen’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 Arlen, 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’ hypnotized 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 Darrell’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, unless 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 apologize 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.

BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

Every 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 themselves a wonderful splashing
time. I liked watching them, me. They cheered up the morning.