She didn’t try to go down to them, or even to lower her altitude. Instead she powered down the window and dropped out the package of Change syringes. Sixteen of them, all that Jackson had had left in the house safe. The syringes were wrapped in nonconsumable flowered dress cloth. The cloth might tear when it landed, but nothing could shatter Miranda Sharifi’s Change syringes.
As soon as the packet hit ground, Livers ran toward it. Theresa didn’t wait. She flew south, back to Manhattan East, knowing she was a hypocrite. She didn’t believe Change syringes were good for people, but she was giving them to Livers for their children. She didn’t believe neuropharms could be the path to meaning, but the Sisters of Merciful Heaven felt that their lives were meaningful whereas she, Theresa, felt her life was shit. She believed that pain was a gift, a signpost to the soul, but she let herself be fed by ’bots and coddled by Jackson and protected by bio-weapon security systems, so that she didn’t have to fear too much pain.
And all the while Cazie rode with her in the front seat of the car, scornful and concerned and impatient and loving and dangerous, saying Irony, Tessie. Don’t lose your irony.
I never had any to lose. Tess thought, and opaqued the car’s windows so she didn’t have to see outside. So she could put her head in her hands and wonder what, if anything, could be left for her to try next.
“You did what?” Jackson said. He spoke very slowly, as if his words were slippery and he had to keep a firm hold on them.
“I gave them to a tribe of Livers,” Theresa said.
“You gave all the rest of my Change syringes to a tribe of Livers? What tribe?”
“I don’t know. Just a random tribe.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember.”
Jackson laced his fingers together tightly. “Why?”
“Because they need them. Or their babies will get sick and die.”
“But, Tessie, I needed them, too. For babies born to my patients… did you know they were the last syringes I had?”
“Yes,” she whispered. She had never seen her brother like this. So quiet. No, that wasn’t right, Jackson was usually quiet. But not like this.
“Theresa. I need the tools of my trade to help people. I need syringes. And Miranda Sharifi isn’t providing any more… you know that. Every doctor in the country is running out of Change syringes. And can’t get any more. How am I supposed to help my newborn patients without the syringes?”
“You can doctor them, Jackson.” She’d had time to think about this; she was calmer than when she’d first arrived home. A little calmer. “The people in our enclave have you. Those Liver babies out there don’t have anything. And I wanted—” She stopped.
Jackson said, with a choking noise in his voice, “You wanted to give them something.”
“I need to give somebody something!” Theresa cried.
Jackson turned away, toward the window. He stood with his back to her, looking out at the park. Theresa took a step toward him, halted. “Don’t you see, Jackson?”
“I see,” he said, which made her feel a little better, even though he didn’t turn around.
“And you can help the people in our enclave, too,” Theresa said. “You can help them the way you went to school to learn to do. After all, you’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
But this time Jackson didn’t answer her at all.
Interlude
TRANSMISSION DATE: January 5, 2121
TO: Selene Base, Moon
VIA: AT&T Comlink Satellite 4, Holsat 643-K (China)
MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted
MESSAGE CLASS: No class. Not a legal transmission
ORIGINATING GROUP: Not identified
MESSAGE:
You give us Change syringes so we become dependent on you non-humans. Then you withdraw the syringes so we’ll starve and sicken. What’s that but genocide? You think no one knows what you’re really doing. Not so, bitch. There are groups all over America that know what’s really going on. What your plan is. Weaken us, control us, and then attack. It won’t work. Some of us, undeluded by the fucking cowards that call themselves our government, will be waiting for you to come down from your hiding place. Sleepers are stronger than you think, and we value our God-given and Constitution-given freedoms. Too many Americans have died the past 350 years for us to let our freedoms go without a fight.
Remember that.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: None received
Nine
On December 31, Jackson sat in his apartment watching newsgrids he didn’t really want to see, and resisting the idea of going to Willoughby County on this last day of legal voter registration for the April special election.
“Yesterday’s bloody conflict in San Francisco’s Bay Enclave may have lasted less than an hour,” said the handsome genemod journalist over holos of the attack, “but the aftermath continues. Enclave Police Chief Stephanie Brunell expressed both outrage and puzzlement at that attack, allegedly motivated by a search for Change syringes, by the terrorist group calling itself Livers For Control. Police investigation is concentrating on how both Y-shield and biodefense security systems could have been overridden by the underground group—”
By datadipping, you dips, Jackson thought. But nobody wanted to believe that, because it meant you had to believe Livers were capable both of learning to manipulate sophisticated computer systems and of seizing power. And so much donkey effort—decades of effort—had gone into ensuring otherwise. Rotten educational software. Lavish handouts of material goods. Simple government-funded amusements that simply distracted. A political agenda that convinced those at the bottom that because they didn’t have to work, they were actually at the top. Jackson changed the channel.
“—Year’s Eve celebration at the Mall Enclave in the nation’s capital. Warmed to a summery seventy-two degrees in deference to this season’s stunning bare-breasted evening gowns, the Mall itself has been transformed for the sight of this most lavish gala. President and Mrs. Garrison will divide their time between dancing at—” He changed the channel.
“—of the match. International chess champion Vladimir Voitinuik, here pondering his fourth move against challenger Guillaume—” He changed the channel.
“—heading rapidly toward the Florida coast where, unfortunately, a great many so-called Liver tribes have chosen to winter. Although Hurricane Kate occurs late in the tropical hurricane season, winds of up to a hundred thirty miles per hour…”
Robocam of terrified Livers, many almost naked, trying to dig safety ditches with shovels, sticks, even pieces of metal from what looked like broken ’bots. A close-up of a child being blown away from its screaming mother—
“Jackson?” Theresa said. He hadn’t heard her pad, barefoot, into the room. Quickly he offed the newsgrid.
“Jackson, I need to ask you something.”
“What, Theresa?” She looked terrible. She’d lost even more weight. Anorexia nervosa had all but disappeared since the Change—feeding directly, the body knew what it needed—but Jackson thought that Theresa, unChanged, was on the verge of it. Below the hem of her loose flowered dress he could see the long light outline of her tibiae, and above the neckline her clavicle stood out against the pale floaty mass of her dry hair like twigs against cloud. He despaired of what a proper workup would show. Deficiencies in bone density, white and red blood count, cerebrospinal transmitters, metabolic processes—nothing in balance. Cardiac, cortical, and even cellular-level stress clean off the scale. Plus biogenic amines the body produced only under pathological conditions—the kinds that signaled accelerated nerve-cell death and permanent changes in the neural architecture.