killed by who, Billy? But Lizzie didn’t start. She just said, sweet as berries, “I won’t, me. I’ll stay inside.”
But now it was Annie who couldn’t let it go. I don’t understand mothers, me. Annie said, “And you stay away from school for a while, too, Lizzie. You ain’t no donkey, you.”
Lizzie didn’t answer.
Annie only wanted what was best for Lizzie. I knew that, me. Lizzie had to live in East Oleanta, join a lodge, go to scooter races, hang around the cafe, choose her lovers here, have her babies here. Annie wanted Lizzie to belong. Like an agro Liver, not some weird fake-donkey freak nobody would want. Any mother would. Annie might sneak, her, into the kitchen of the Congresswoman Janet Carol Land Cafe to do some cooking, but she was still all Liver, all the way through.
And Lizzie wasn’t.
A long time ago, when I was in school myself, me, and the country was different, I learned something. It’s fuzzy now, but it keeps hanging in my head. It was from before donkeys and Livers. Before cafes and warehouses. Before politicians paid taxes to us, instead of the other way around. It was from back when they were still making Sleepless, and you could read about them in newspapers. When there was newspapers. This thing was a word about genemod, but it meant something that wasn’t genemod. Was natural. Lizzie learns at school that donkeys are inferior, them, because donkeys have to be made genemod so they can be put to work providing all the things Livers need. But this word wasn’t about the kind of natural that makes us Livers superior to donkeys. It was about a different kind of natural, a kind that happens by itself but makes you different from other natural Livers around you. The word explained why Lizzie asked so many donkey questions, her, when she wasn’t no donkey and didn’t have no donkey genemods, although the word was in her genes. How could that be? Like I said, I was fuzzy, me, about the word, and about how it worked. But I remembered it.
The word was throwback.
I watched Lizzie watch her mother put the apple dish on the foodbelt. It went under the flash heater and out through the wall into the cafe. Somebody would choose it, them, on their Senator Mark Todd Ingalls meal chip. Annie went on to cooking something else. Lizzie sat on the floor, her, with the pieces of the broken peeler ’bot. When her mother wasn’t looking she studied each one, her, figuring out how it might go together, and when she grinned at me, her black eyes sparkled and darted, shiny as stars.
That night we had a meeting, us, in the cafe, to talk about the rabid raccoons. Forty people, not counting kids. Paulie Cenverno actually seen one of the sick raccoons, hind legs twitching like it was splintered, mouth foaming, down near the State Senator James Richard Langton Scooter Track on the other side of town from the river. Somebody said, them, that we should put chairs in a circle to make a real meeting, but nobody did. At the other end of the cafe the holoterminal played and the dance music blasted. Nobody danced but the holos, life-sized smiling dolls made of light, pretty enough to be donkeys. I don’t like them, me. Never did. You can see right through the edges.
“Turn down that music so we can hear ourselves talk, us!” Paulie bawled. People slouching at the tables near the foodbelt didn’t even look up, them. Probably all doing sunshine. Paulie walked over, him, and turned down the noise.
“Well,” Jack Sawicki said, “what are we going to do, us, about these sick coons?”
Only a few people snickered, them, and they were the dumbest ones. Like Annie said: somebody has to serve at meetings, even if serving is donkey work. Jack is mayor, him. He can’t help it. East Oleanta ain’t big enough to have a regular donkey mayor — no donkeys live here and we don’t want none. So we elected Jack, us, and he does what he has to do.
Somebody said, “Call County Legislator Drinkwater on the official terminal.”
“Yeah, call Pisswater!”
“District Supervisor Samuelson’s got the warden franchise, him.”
“Then call Samuelson!”
“Yeah, and while you’re at it, you, make another town protest that the goddamn warehouse don’t distribute, it, but once a week now!” That was Celie Kane. I ain’t never seen her not angry.
“Yeah. Rutger’s Corners, they still got distrib, them, twice a week.”
“I had to wear these jacks two days in a row!”
“I got sick, me, and missed a distrib, and we run out of toilet paper!”
Next election, District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson was a squashed spider. But Jack Sawicki, he knew, him, how to serve a meeting.
“Okay, people, shut up now. This is about the sick coons, not about warehouse distrib. I’m going, me, to just call up our donkeys.”
He unlocked the official terminal. It sits way in the corner of the cafe. Jack pulled his chair, him, right up close to it, so his belly almost rested on his knees. A few stomps from the alley gang swaggered into the cafe, carrying their wooden clubs. They headed, them, for the foodbelt, laughing and smacking each other, drunk on sunshine. Nobody told them to shut up. Nobody dared.
“Terminal activate,” Jack said. He didn’t mind, him, talking donkey in front of us. None of this fake shit about I don’t carry out orders I give them I’m an agro Liver, me. Jack was a good mayor.
But I’m careful, me, not to tell him so.
“Terminal activated,” the terminal said. For the first time I wondered what we’d do if the thing was as broke as Annie’s apple-peeler ’bot.
Jack said, “Message for District Supervisor Aaron Simon Samuelson, copy to County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater, copy to State Senator James Richard Langton, copy to State Representative Claire Amelia Forrester, copy to Congresswoman Janet Carol Land.” Jack licked his lips. “Priority Two.”
“One!” Celie Kane shouted. “Make it a one, you bastard!”
“I can’t, Celie,” Jack said. He was patient, him. “One is for disasters like attack or fire or flood at the Y-plant.” That was supposed to make us smile. A Y-plant can’t catch fire, can’t break down no way with its donkey shields. Can’t nothing get in, and only energy can get out. But Celie Kane don’t know how to smile, her. Her daddy, old Doug Kane, is my best friend, but he can’t do nothing with her neither. Never could, not even when she was a child.
“This is a disater, you shithead! One of them coons kills a kid of mine, and I’ll tear you apart myself, Jack Sawicki!”
“Hey, stay together, Celie,” Paulie Cenverno said. Somebody muttered “Bitch.” The door opened and Annie came in, her, holding Lizzie’s hand. The stomps at the foodbelt were still shouting and shoving.
The terminal said, “Please hold. Linking with District Supervisor Samuelson’s mobile unit.” A minute later the holo appeared, not life-sized like on the HT, but a tiny, eight-inch-high Samuelson seated at his desk and dressed in a blue uniform. He looked, him, about forty, but of course with donkey genemods you can’t never tell. He had thick gray hair and big shoulders and crinkly blue eyes — handsome, like all of them. A few people shuffled their feet, them. If voters don’t watch the donkey channels, then the only people they ever see not dressed in jacks are Samuelson’s techs at the warehouse distrib twice a week. Once a week, now.
Suddenly I wondered, me, if that was Samuelson. Maybe the holo was just a tape. Maybe the real Samuelson was someplace dressed up for a party, or in jacks — if donkeys ever wore jacks, them — or even naked, him, taking a shit. It was weird to think about.
“Yes, Mayor Sawicki?” Samuelson said. “How can I serve you, sir?”
“There’s at least four rabid raccoons in East Oleanta, Supervisor. Maybe more. The area monitor picked them up, it, before it broke. We seen the coons, right in town. They’re dangerous. I told you, me, two weeks ago that the game warden ’bot broke.”