Beggars and Choosers (16 page)

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.
Everything
.
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 benefit. 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 population 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. Arlen, 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 defined in the Constitution,
as the best possible political arrangement in an imperfect world. Just
as Leisha Camden did before her. I’ve always been a great admirer of
Ms. Camden. But the Constitution 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, because 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. Arlen. 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 cooperation 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 interested.
He asked about everything I’d seen, and I described everything 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 cinammon? 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 unquestioned, 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 engineering.”

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 override
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. //
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 disappeared
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. Arlen!” 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. Arlen,” 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
justfine
,” 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?”