Beggars and Choosers (41 page)

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 efficient, 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
nitrogen-fixing microorganisms.

Human tissue consists 96.6 percent of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen. The nanomachinery now in your cells has been programmed to
arrange these plus other less concentrated elements 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.

V

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

BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

Annie 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 Arlen, 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, cooperative
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 Coganville
last week.

“Don’t you get it, Billy? What Drew Arlen 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.”