“Tessie… you need to eat more. I’ve told you. You promised.”
“I know. I will. But I get so wrapped up in my book… I do think it’s going better. Some of the paragraphs almost say what I feel. What Leisha feels. Felt. But now could you recommend a good program on Abraham Lincoln? Something not too hard, but clear about his life and politics?”
“Abraham Lincoln? Why?” But the second after he said it, he knew.
“Leisha Camden wrote a book about Lincoln. I think, from what Thomas told me, that it was considered important. And I know hardly anything about President Lincoln.”
Theresa had never been interested in history—had never, in fact, gone past the primary-grades software. Jackson said, “Why not just use the Camden book, then?”
His sister blushed. “It’s not adapted. And when I had Thomas read it to me… well, I think I need something easier. Will you help me?”
“Of course,” he said gently. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, “How is your book on Leisha going?”
“Oh, you know.” She swiped vaguely at the air with one hand. “There’s always a gap between the book in your head and the one in the page.”
It sounded like something Thomas had found for her in an indexed quotation program. She was fond of those. Did they give her the illusion of understanding? His heart ached with pity. “Try Clear and Present Software. Their hypertext explains things well. I don’t remember the exact title you need, but Thomas can find it for you.”
“Thank you, Jackson.” She smiled at him, looking fragile as spun glass. “Thomas can find it. Clear and Here Software?”
“Clear and Present.”
He could see the knobby calcaneus in her bare heel, uncushioned by flesh, as she left the room.
Jackson sat in front of the empty wall screen for several minutes. Syringe wars. Attacks on enclaves. Desperate Livers. Theresa. Abraham Lincoln. He remembered a speech of Lincoln’s, floating up from the mental flotsam of his own schooldays: The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Nobody believed that anymore. Nobody he knew.
Except Lizzie Francy.
He landed his car a couple hundred feet from the tribe building, remembering how, nearly two months ago, scruffy Liver young men had been all over it. Now, of course, one of those scruffy young men was supposedly a candidate for public office.
Someone sauntered toward the car. Vicki Turner. Jackson rolled down the window. Cold winter air gusted in.
“Dr. Jackson Aranow. What an honor. I would have expected you to be at a New Year’s Eve party somewhere. Have you come to share the final push toward democratic voter registration? Or to satisfy yourself that we actually went through with it, instead of just giving up in typical Liver fashion after our initial burst of ephemeral enthusiasm?”
Jackson frowned, “I’m here to see how the project is going.”
“Such non-evaluative language. Your med school psych professors would be proud of you. Actually, we’re on our way to try one more time with a particularly recalcitrant group of non-registrants. Perhaps you could give us a lift.”
“Ms. Turner—I checked on your credit rating. It’s rotten, presumably as a result of your arrest by the GSEA and the subsequent… unpleasantness. But I don’t believe for a minute that you don’t have accounts stashed under other names in other places. Why not just buy your… your tribe an aircar?”
“You’re wrong, Jackson. I don’t have money stashed anywhere. I spent it all.”
“On what?”
She didn’t answer, smiling at him faintly, and suddenly Jackson knew. On the Change Wars. Whatever part Vicki Turner had played in that struggle to convince Americans that the syringes were not a Sleepless plot to enslave Livers, to convince Americans to stop killing each other over radical changes in biology, to convince Americans to stop attacking Washington because, now, they could—whatever Vicki had done, it really had cost her all her credit. And she didn’t regret it.
He blurted, “You make me feel ashamed.”
For an instant, her face softened, and he saw something behind the brittle mask, something wistful and a little lonely. Then she smiled as before. “Then you can atone for your deep civic shame by giving us a surreptitious lift to these reluctant voters.”
Jackson didn’t answer. In that instant of unwitting vulnerability, she had again reminded him of Cazie. And he had again reminded himself of a bumbling dolt.
Lizzie and Shockey walked toward the car. Lizzie carried Dirk, well wrapped against the cold. Shockey wore screaming yellow jacks and a lime coat, with antique soda-can jewelry in his ears. On his right shoulder sat an odd lump. As he got closer, Jackson saw that it was a red, white, and blue flower, made of layers of plant-dyed rough-spun cloth wired together into a rosette.
Vicki murmured, “…and they never even heard of Jacobins.” But the affectionate look she gave Lizzie was real.
Shockey said, “Doctor. Coming along, you, for the last big push? You might learn something.”
“True. Doctor,” Vicki said. “We are, after all, making startlingly new political history with our grass-roots movement toward democracy.”
“Damn right,” Shockey said. The young man seemed to expand, raising the rosette on his broad shoulder another two inches. Hot air, Jackson thought.
Lizzie almost danced with excitement. Her black hair stood out in more directions than Jackson imagined possible. “If we can get these people to agree to register tonight, Dr. Aranow, we’ll have ninety-three percent Liver participation. Four thousand four hundred eleven Liver voters in the county for the winter. Now, you said that Susannah Wells Livingston wasn’t a real candidate, just someone to run against Donald Thomas Serrano, and Serrano would get the vote of nearly every registered donkey. That’s four thousand eighty-two votes. Even if we can’t convince this tribe to register, we should still win.”
“I should still win,” Shockey said.
“All right—you should still win,” Lizzie said. Jackson saw that she was too elated to bother arguing with Shockey. “We’re going to do it!”
Jackson glanced at Vicki. She nodded. “You tell them, Jackson. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”
“Lizzie…” Jackson said, and stopped. He hated to puncture her. How long had it been since he’d seen genuine enthusiasm, for anything constructive? “Lizzie, getting the edge in number of voter registrations won’t guarantee you a win. There’s three months before the actual April first election. In three months, Donald Serrano is going to do everything in his considerable power to convince your Liver voters to vote for him. And every single donkey politician is going to help him, including Sue Livingston. Because if you win, it will set a potentially devastating precedent for electing outsiders to government.”
“We’re not outsiders, us!” Shockey flashed.
“To the donkey political establishment, you are. They do not want you and your kind making decisions that affect them and their kind. Not even the tiny peripheral decisions that a district supervisor gets to make. They want to keep you out. And they’ll try to do that by buying the votes of every legally registered voter in Willoughby County. With Y-cones and music systems and medunits and luxury foods and scooters, and every other material pleasure they can offer right now and you can only promise to try to obtain, maybe, in the future.”