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 mountain. 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 landmarks, 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 mountain. 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 somebody 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 tailoring, 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!”