“Shit! The old fart’s got a shield, him!”
Three of them pounded on me. Only it wasn’t me, it was a thin hard layer an inch from me, like I was a turtle in an uncrackable shell. They couldn’t touch me, them, only push and pull the shell. Finally the first stomp yelled something with no words, him, and shoved the shell so hard I went over the edge of the track and down a little embankment, picking up snow like the snowmen Lizzie used to roll, her. Something in one knee cracked.
By the time I staggered, me, back up to the gravrail track, the stomps were disappearing into the woods, dragging the travoises.
Only Scotty was dead. The others were in bad shape, them, especially Stan and Jack. Stab wounds and broken heads and I couldn’t tell, me, what else. Nobody could walk. I staggered the last mile through the snow, me, afraid to carry one of the lights, feeling for the track every time I fell down. Some men from East Oleanta met me part way, them, just when I didn’t think I could go no further. They’d heard the rifle shot.
They went out to get the others. Somebody, I don’t know who, carried me to Annie’s. He didn’t say nothing about me wearing a donkey personal shield. Or maybe it was turned off by then. I can’t remember, me. All I remember is me saying over and over again, “Don’t crush them, you! Don’t crush them, you!” There were six sandwiches in my jacket pocket. For Lizzie and Annie and Dr. Turner.
Everything didn’t all go black, the way Annie said later. It went red, it, with flashes of light in my knee, so bright I thought they would kill me.
But of course they didn’t. When the red went away it was the next day, and I laid, me, on Annie’s bed, with her asleep next to me. Lizzie was there, too, on the other side of Annie. Dr. Turner bent over me, doing something to my knee.
I croaked, “Did they eat?”
“For now,” Dr. Turner said. Her voice was grim. What she said next didn’t make no sense to me. “So much for community solidarity in the face of adversity.”
I said, “I brought Annie and Lizzie food, me.” It seemed a miracle. Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it, me. I didn’t even think, then, that two sandwiches wouldn’t keep them long. It didn’t even occur to me. I must of been on some of them painkillers, me, that cloud your mind.
Dr. Turner’s face changed. She looked startled, her, like what I said was some kind of good answer to what she said, although it wasn’t, because I didn’t even understand her big words. But I didn’t care, me. Annie and Lizzie had something to eat. I did it, me.
“Ah, Billy,” Dr. Turner said, her voice was low and sad, mournful, like somebody died. Or something. What?
But that wasn’t my problem. I slept, me, and in all my dreams Lizzie and Annie smiled at me in a sunshine green and gold as summer on the mountain, where it turned out, I learned later, that Stan and Scotty and Jack and Dr. Turner’s something had all really died after all.
Twelve
After they brought Billy back to Annie Francy’s, his poor heart laboring like an antique factory and his hands shaking so much he couldn’t even turn off the personal shield, I realized what an ass I’d been not to call the GSEA earlier.
But it wasn’t Billy who made me realize this. It was — again, always — Lizzie.
I knew that Billy wasn’t badly hurt, and I suppose I should have been more concerned about the other Livers, especially the three dead. But the fact was, I wasn’t. I had changed my mind about Livers since I came to East Oleanta, and Jack Sawicki in particular seemed a good man, but there it was. I just didn’t really care that Liver stomps had turned on other Liver non-stomps and destroyed them. We donkeys had never expected anything else. The Livers were always a potentially dangerous force, kept at bay only by sufficient bread and circuses, and now the bread was running short and the big tops folded. Bastille time.
But I cared — against all odds — about Lizzie. Who was going hungry. If I called the GSEA, they would come storming in and East Oleanta would no longer be the Forgotten Country. With them would come food, medicine, transport, all the things Livers had come to expect from the labor of others. Which meant Lizzie and Annie would get fed.
On the other hand, Congresswoman Janet Carol Land might resume her planeloads of food any minute. Or the gravrail might be fixed again. That had happened many times already. And if it did, I would lose my chance to cover myself with glory by handing over Miranda Sharifi, lock, stock and illegal organic nanotech, to the GSEA. Also, the moment I called the GSEA, Eden might very well pick up my signal, in which case Ms. Sharifi might have been moved out before the GSEA even got here.
While I wrestled with this three-horned dilemma of altruism, vanity, and practicality, Lizzie blew the whole argument to terrifying smithereens.
“Vicki, look at this.”
“What is it?”
“Just look.”
We sat on the plastisynth sofa in Annie’s apartment. In the bedroom Annie moved around, tending Billy. The medunit had treated his cuts, bruises, and heart rate, and he should probably have been sleeping, which he probably couldn’t do with Annie fussing around him. I doubt he minded. The bedroom door was closed. Lizzie held her terminal, frowning at the screen. Billy’s pathetic squashed sandwiches had temporarily returned the color to her thin cheeks. On the screen was a multicolor holo.
“Very pretty. What is it?”
“A Lederer probability pattern.”
Well, of course it was. It’s been a while since my school days. To save face, I said authoritatively, “Some variable has a seventy-eight percent chance of significantly preceding some other variable in chronological time.”
“Yes,” Lizzie said, almost inaudibly.
“So what are the variables?”
Instead of answering, Lizzie said, “You remember that apple peeler ’bot I used to play with, when I was a kid?”
Two months ago. But compared to the intellectual leaps she’d made since, last summer probably did feel like lost childhood to her.
“I remember,” I said, careful not to smile.
“It first broke in June. I remember because the apples then were Kia Beauties.”
Genemod apples ripened on a staggered schedule, to create seasonal variety. “So?” I said.
“And the gravrail broke down before that. In April, I think. And a couple of toilets before that.”
I didn’t get it. “And so … ?”
Lizzie wrinkled her small face. “But the first things to break down in East Oleanta were way back over a year ago. In the spring of 2113.”
And I got it. My throat went dry. “In spring, 2113? Lots of things breaking, Lizzie, or just a few? Such as might happen from normal wear combined with reduced maintenance?”
“Lots of things. Too many things.”
“Lizzie,” I said slowly, “are those two variables in your Lederer pattern the East Oleanta breakdowns, as you personally remember them, and the newsgrid mentions from the crystal library of any similar breakdown patterns elsewhere?”
“Yes. They are, them. I wanted, me…” She broke off, aware of how her language had reverted. She went on staring at the screen. She knew what she was looking at. “It started here, Vicki, didn’t it? That duragem dissembler got released here first. Because it got made at Eden. We were a test place. And that means that whoever runs Eden…” Again she trailed off.
Huevos Verdes ran Eden. Miranda Sharifi ran Eden. And so my decision was made for me, as simply as that. The duragem dissembler could not be part of any save-Diana-through-a-personal-success-^w^//3/ strategy. It was too concretely, urgently, majorly malevolent. I had no right to sit around playing semi-amateur agent when I suspected that somewhere in these very same mountains that were torturing us with winter was a Huevos Verdes franchise, dispensing molecular destruction. Every decent feeling required that I tell my disdainful bosses, despite their disdain, what I knew.