They were tacked on every wall, full-color flat printouts of whatever holoscenes she selected from the newsgrids. In one, three abandoned Liver children huddled together, dead, in a snowbank, their frozen and well-fed faces smooth with Cell Cleaner health.
In another, a baby lay in its grieving Liver mother’s arms. The mother, who looked about fifteen, was clearly Changed. The baby’s face was ravaged by some disease; its skin had turned mottled and pulpy, and blood oozed from its closed eyes. The camera had caught the mother with one cupped palm upraised, empty of a Change syringe.
In a wide-angle shot from an aerial camera, a shimmering Y-shield enclosed a beautiful valley in the Ozarks. The entire valley. One rich donkey lived there, a former financier whom no one had seen since the Change, when he gave a press conference exulting that now he would never need to have contact with another human being again.
In a small printie on the far wall, four emaciated adults, elbows like chisels, ate meager bowls of mush and drank water under a cross wood-burned with the words THE DAILY BREAD HE MEANT FOR US. Malnutrition marked their bowed legs and thin hair. All four smiled beatifically at the camera, smiles with missing teeth and swollen gums.
A large printie behind the terminal stand showed Miranda Sharifi’s face, overlaid with a blue veil, three lilies, and an open prayer book. Beside it an equally large printie showed the same holo, overlaid with gravestones and coffins and black candles and implements of torture along with the words WHEN IMMORTALITY, BITCH?
The pictures went on. Two donkey children lying naked and laughing on the corpse of a slaughtered deer sliced open from breast to tail, body-feeding directly on the blood and flesh. Another diseased Liver child, in a French town where there had been no Change syringes for four years. An ad for Endorkiss, the colors glowing and seductive, in which three incredibly perfect donkey bodies ground-fed quietly, their faces blissful, nobody looking at anyone else and clearly not needing to.
Jackson had not seen the room. Theresa went there only when he wasn’t home, and she’d asked Jones, the house system, to admit no one but herself to this room. Of course, Jackson probably knew how to override that, but even if he could, maybe he wouldn’t. Jackson wouldn’t understand the room. He would think it was a medical problem, like what he called Theresa’s “neurochemical anguish.” He wouldn’t see that the room was necessary.
The system in front of Theresa was in screen mode, its flat energy “surface” divided in half vertically by a thick black line. Above the line was a quote in severe dark blue letters: “ ‘Even an animal can get lost in unfamiliar terrain, but only men and women can lose themselves.’ Christopher Caan-Agee, 2067.” Below was the last paragraph Theresa had written in her book on Leisha Camden:
Leisha had a friend. His name was Tony Indivino. Tony was much angrier than Leisha about a lot of things. It didn’t seem right to Tony that some people had so much money and others had so little. Leisha had never thought about that before Tony made her think. Leisha wrote later that Tony said to her, “What if you walk down a street in a poor country like Spain and you see a beggar? Do you give him a dollar? What if you see a hundred beggars, a thousand beggars, and you don’t have as much money as Leisha Camden? What do you do? What should you do?” Leisha didn’t know answers to Tony’s questions.
Theresa studied her paragraph. She said to her personal system, Thomas, “Put ‘important’ before ‘friend.’ ” It did, changing the “a” to “an.” Leisha studied her sentence again. Then she looked at the sentence above: Even an animal can get lost in unfamiliar terrain, but only men and women can lose themselves. She said, “Thomas, bring me the second quote in my list.”
Thomas brought up the words, reading them aloud in its rich male voice: “ ‘But man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence, like an angry ape plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.’ William Shakespeare, 1564-1616.”
“The next quote.”
“ ‘Man’s unhappiness comes, as I construe, of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite.’ Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881.”
Again Theresa read her own paragraph, with “important” inserted before “friend.” Then she listened again to Carlyle’s sentence.
Why was it so hard to write a book? She could see so clearly what she needed to say about Leisha Camden, could feel it so clearly. She could even talk about it, at least with Jackson. But when she sat down in front of the terminal, the words she spoke were stiff and cold and it would be better if she never tried to show the world at all why Leisha Camden mattered, why a life given to something as large as keeping Sleepless and Sleepers as one people mattered Even if Leisha had failed. Despite Leisha’s efforts, the Sleepless had gone to Sanctuary. The country had gone into a long bitter divide. Jennifer Sharifi had gone to prison. And Leisha had gone to her death in a Georgia swamp, murdered by Livers who despised Sleepless even more than Theresa despised herself.
But Leisha had at least tried. And so saved herself from what the rest of them had become. No, Theresa had to write this book about Leisha. She had to. But why was it so hard to find words as wonderful as Thomas brought back when she sent him out on a quote search?
Theresa rubbed tears from her cheeks and looked again at the printies around the walls… most ignorant… like an angry ape plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.
“Take a neuropharm,” Jackson would say. “I can custom order you one that—”
“Building security has been breached,” the house system said loudly from Theresa’s terminal. “This is not a drill, Ms. Aranow. Repeat, building security has been breached and this is not a drill. What would you like me to do?”
Breached? How could building security be breached? There were Y-shields, there were locks… What should she do? Jackson was gone somewhere with Cazie. Theresa didn’t know what to tell the system. It wasn’t supposed to be breachable.
She said, “Lock all the doors!”
“They are always locked, Ms. Aranow.”
Of course they were. Theresa thought wildly. “Show me the breach!”
Prose, hers and Carlyle’s, disappeared from the screen. It went holo and transmitted a wide-angle view of the building foyer. People—Livers!—pushed toward the elevator, which said, “I’m sorry—this elevator opens only for authorized residents and guests.” A man with a handheld terminal did something to it and the elevator door opened.
Theresa stood, knocking over her chair. Her heart thudded. Five Livers, four men and a woman, people with squat foreheads or knobbly chins or hairy ears or thick necks, dressed in old winter jackets. In her building. Their faces were focused and intent, and one had a mobile. Where had he gotten it? The Change Wars? But those were over years ago… weren’t they? What should she do?
“What… what should I do, Jones? Is there a standard security procedure?”
“A standard intruder-repellant sequence exists, in escalating stages. Shall I begin it? Or do you wish to speak to the unauthorized intruders first?”
“No! No… I… what do they want?”
“Shall I put front-door visual and audio through to Thomas?”
“No… yes. And start the intruder-repellent sequence!”
“All levels, on automatic?”