That was it. The cast, Cell Cleaner, and the girl’s own body would do the rest.
“Lizzie…” Diana/Vicki said, reminding Jackson that she was there. Her voice broke. Jackson looked at her. He had no idea what the relationship between them was, but on the older woman’s face was naked fear and love. It gave him a little shock. Could the girl be her daughter… an ungenemod Liver? From before the Change? It didn’t seem likely.
“Lizzie, are you all right?”
“Of course she’s not all right, her arm’s broken,” Cazie said tartly, at the same moment that Jackson said with professional soothing, “Everything’s under control.” Diana/ Vicki swept them both a look of scorn.
“Lizzie, honey?”
Cazie said sarcastically, “ ‘Diana, honey’? You have some explaining to do here, both of you. Public records show you changed your name to ‘Victoria Turner.’ It doesn’t say what you’re doing trespassing in my factory.”
Vicki, who’d been kneeling beside the dreamy girl, stood up and faced Cazie. Vicki was taller, older, wilder-looking in her eaten Liver tunic and cropped, sleep-matted hair. Her jaw hardened, and Jackson had the sudden impression that she had faced challenges that he couldn’t imagine. There was a nasty lift to her eyes as she squared off with Cazie.
To Jackson, it looked like an even match.
“What I’m doing ‘trespassing in your factory,’ ” Vicki said distinctly, “is seeing that an entire tribe doesn’t freeze this winter. Not that I would expect that to concern you.”
“You have no idea what does or does not concern me,” Cazie said coolly. “What should concern you is felony charges. Breaking and entering, criminal trespass.”
“Oh. I’m terrified. Look, Cazie Sanders, how long is your kind going to—”
“ ‘My’ kind? Unlike you, I suppose?”
“—going to go on blind to what’s happening all around you? The easy answers are over. No more trade goods, colored beads and energy cones, in return for the votes that keep your kind in power.”
“Oh, my God, recycled Marxism,” Cazie said scornfully. “Seize the means of production, right? And you two are the advance army.”
“I don’t think—”
“That’s obvious. Who are you, anyway? Some renegade donkey gone native among the Livers to feed her own ego? A white goddess among the savages, hmmm? Pathetic.”
Vicki looked at Cazie a long time. Her face changed. Then she said quietly, “Who am I? I’m the person who led the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency to arrest Miranda Sharifi. And then led the citizen legal fight to free her.”
It was the first time Jackson had ever seen Cazie at a disadvantage. Her small vivid face registered shock, disbelief, reluctant acceptance. Something about Vicki Turner compelled belief—the way she stood with her feet braced wearily apart, as if she’d been resisting strong winds a long time. Or the way she stood guard over Lizzie, lying on the floor in a glowing stupor from Jackson’s painkillers. Or maybe just Vicki’s face, full of a complex regret. Not the expression Jackson would have expected.
Vicki said quietly, “We still need Y-energy. It’s the only thing we do need from you. And we’ll try to take it, and you’ll try to stop us, and a lot more lives will be lost in the process. Just as in the Change Wars. Lives that might have gone on, with the Cell Cleaner, for a hundred years. You have the weapons, the enclaves, the sophisticated electronic security systems you’ve never let Livers learn. But they are learning, Cazie Sanders. I didn’t datadip your system—Lizzie did. There are a lot of young Lizzies out there, learning more every day. And we have the numbers on our side. There are ten of us for every one of you.”
She had said it—every donkey’s nightmare. The fear that rested under the frantic parties and disdainful fashions and stupid time-wasting social competition: Don’t look behind you. They may be gaining on us. There are a lot more of them than us.
“And you know the worst part?” Vicki said, still in that quiet deadly voice. “You can’t even see it. Not from stupidity, God knows. From willful blindness, for which you are going to deserve exactly the price you end up paying.”
“Oh, God, spare me the melodramatic rhetoric,” Cazie said. She had recovered from the unexpectedness of Vicki’s attack. “The law is perfectly clear. And you’re in violation of it.”
To Jackson’s surprise, Vicki smiled. “Law only works if the majority agree to let it. Don’t you know that? No, of course you don’t. You’re a simple binary code. On for your own interest, off for everybody else. You could be dipped by a child. And you were.”
Cazie said angrily, “Ad hominem sophistry isn’t argument.”
“You’re not a hominem. You’re not even a synonym. You’re redundant code in the human information, and you’re already obsolete.”
The woman was playing. Standing there, laughing at his ex-wife, this ragged renegade was playing with Cazie, with the situation. How much self-assurance did it take to play like that? Or was it not self-assurance but self-righteousness? Suddenly Jackson wasn’t sure he could recognize the difference.
Cazie said, “Defiant words. Not power.” She keyed her mobile, and a security ’bot came to life. It lifted itself off the littered factory floor and sped toward them. A faint shimmer marked the edges of the energy bubble it threw over Vicki.
“You are intruding on TenTech private property,” the ’bot droned. “You are being held immobile until further instruction.”
Vicki went on smiling. Jackson saw Cazie’s face darken.
“You are intruding on TenTech private property. You are being held—”
“Shut it off,” Jackson said, before he knew he was going to. Both women looked at him; it was clear that, absorbed in their battle, they’d forgotten he was there. Cazie smiled and keyed her mobile; the ’bot stopped reciting.
“No,” Jackson said. “I meant—turn it off completely. We’re not arresting her.”
“Oh, yes, we are,” Cazie said.
Reaction welled up in Jackson, a gush of pure hormones he couldn’t label. Or didn’t want to. It poured out in a single sentence, which even as he said it, he knew didn’t mean what the words said: “You don’t run TenTech.”
She said. “That’s exactly what I do. Who else? You? You never even look at the financial dailies, let alone the operational data. Leave this to me, Jack. Stick to your medical knowledge.”
His obsolete medical knowledge, she meant. Baiting him again, but this time not affectionately, which meant she felt cornered. Cazie cornered. Suddenly he loved the idea.
“I’m not leaving this to you, Cazie. I’m overruling you. Turn off the security bubble.”
She keyed her mobile. The ’bot started to move toward the entrance. Vicki, encased in the shimmering hollow energy field as if in a translucent box, was carried along toward the factory doors.
“Cazie. Turn the ’bot off.”
“Bring that stuffed and trussed child, Jack. We’re leaving.”
“Turn it off. I own TenTech, not you.”
“We each own a third of TenTech,” she said evenly. The ’bot continued to move toward the door, encapsulating Vicki.
Jackson said, “I’m voting Theresa’s third.” And just like that, just that easily, he reached out and took the mobile from Cazie’s hand before she knew he would. Or could.
“Give me that back!”
“No,” he said, and gazed at her steadily, and saw the storm coming. Despite himself, his own blood surged. God, she was beautiful… the most desirable woman he’d ever seen. She grabbed for the mobile in his right hand. He gripped her upper arm with his left hand and held her off easily. Why hadn’t he ever thought about how much stronger he was than Cazie? He should have gotten physically assertive with her years ago. His penis stiffened.