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, 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.”