Not genemod for IQ, clearly. Jackson mumbled, “No, I’m not, me.”
Shockey had recognized him. He pulled the girl back toward himself. “Just a gawker, him, Alexandra. Come gawk instead at me.”
She giggled. “In this position?” But she kissed him. Shockey kept his eyes open and glared at Jackson: Go away.
He did, wondering if Alexandra was a thrill seeker, a political distraction, a professional bribe, or an attempt at scandal. Jackson hadn’t seen any robocams. Still… hadn’t Vicki Turner warned Shockey? Some of his constituents wouldn’t be pleased to see their Liver candidate, the antidote to donkey corruption, rolling around in the concupiscent mud with a donkey who looked like Alexandra.
Jackson turned, cupped his hands, and yelled. “Shockey! Company coming, you! Sharon and the baby!” Maybe that would do it.
At the camp, only two reporters roamed around. One was interviewing Scott Morrison, a buddy of Shockey’s. “We’re going to win this here election, us. And next year we’ll take the goddamn presidency!”
“I see you’re wearing a gold chain,” the reporter said smoothly. “A contribution from Citizens For Serrano, perhaps?”
“It’s an heirloom,” Morrison said solemnly. “From my great-grandmother, her. She was a flat-screen actress.”
“And the scooter beside you?” The robocam whirred; the reporter didn’t bother to hide his sneer.
“Also left over from Great-grandmama.”
What had happened to Vicki?
A group of Livers whom Jackson had never seen before slouched sulkily outside the plastic-tented feeding ground. Travel-stained, dirty. The tribe got a few such groups each week. Coming from beyond Willoughby County, they’d seen the fuss on the newsgrids. Some groups looked thoughtfully interested. Some were contemptuous of Livers willing to soil themselves with the donkey work of politics. Some had just heard about the scooters and jewelry and wine from the “non-candidate-affiliated citizen groups for Serrano.” Already one scooter had been stolen. Tribe members stuck together now in clumps, which was why all of them were within filming distance of the feeding ground. Except, of course, the candidate, who was enjoying the benefits of fame on his back in the woods.
Where the hell was Vicki?
Annie bustled out of the building, with Dirk in her arms. She saw Jackson, scowled ferociously, and then remembered she wasn’t supposed to know him. Immediately she looked disdainfully away, like a fastidious duchess ignoring a dead fish. Her gaze landed on another party of slumming donkey kids, sneering from the safe shadow of a flashy aircar. Two of the kids carried inhalers. The second reporter was interviewing them; fortunately, Jackson was too far away to hear the conversation.
And then another car landed, and Cazie leaped out with the new TenTech chief engineer.
Jackson turned his back. Purposefully he strode toward the building and ducked inside.
What was she doing here? Since the meeting a few months ago about TenTech’s political connections, of which Jackson had understood about half, he’d had Caroline, his personal system, do some research. TenTech had a diversified portfolio, but much of it Caroline couldn’t trace through legal deebees, even with Jackson’s access codes. Jackson had never paid much attention to TenTech. His father had done that until he died, then his father’s attorney had managed most of it while Jackson was in medical school; when he’d married Cazie, she had gradually taken over, and Jackson had been glad to let her. Where was TenTech’s money, and why was so much of it seemingly connected to the state of Pennsylvania, when TenTech was incorporated in New York? Cazie seemed to have a lot of personal friends in various Pennsylvania corporations and government agencies. Jackson had finally, without telling Cazie, hired an independent accountant, who had yet to report back to him. Maybe Cazie had detected the accountant’s inquiries.
Or maybe she came just to look for him.
He cracked the door, peering from dimness into sunlight. Cazie stood talking with Billy Washington. Lizzie’s stepfather. At least it was Billy, the sanest person in the tribe. Cazie couldn’t follow Jackson into the camp building; Vicki had insisted that no outsiders, under any circumstances, be allowed inside. She’d installed a primitive scanning system; if anyone not carrying a sensitized chip tried to pass the door, an alarm sounded. It was a simple system to fool, but so far no one had bothered. Jackson fingered the chip in his pocket.
Cazie’s dark curls gleamed in the spring sunshine. Her high white boots and severe black suit looked fresh and trim. Gesturing at Billy, she flung up on arm, and her full right breast lifted, trembled, fell.
What was she doing here? What was he doing here? Through the cracked door, Jackson saw Shockey stroll in from the woods. The donkey beauty wasn’t with him. Sharon stormed toward Shockey across the withered grass, her face furious. Annie yelled at a reporter. Billy left Cazie, started toward Annie, and was waylaid by a sneering slummer who ventured away from his aircar long enough to thrust his inhaler under Billy’s nose. Billy reeled. Scott Morrison lunged at the donkey kid, tackling him. Both robocams zoomed in on the fight. The candidate jumped another donkey teenager, and Sharon screamed. Annie, still carrying Dirk, rushed to Billy, now smiling emptily. Dirk began to wail. Sharon went on screaming. Cazie threw back her head and laughed, an ugly sound that somehow carried over the other din. She mouthed something at the TenTech engineer, and Jackson read the words on her lips: “The American political process in action.”
He closed the battered building door.
All of them were fools. Jackson had been a little surprised to find that so many Livers stuck doggedly to voting for Shockey, even as they accepted bribes from the other side. Shockey would clearly win the election. But in the long run, he was afraid, it would make no difference whatsoever. Shockey would win not because Livers were in the power ascendancy, but because the donkeys had taken this campaign only half seriously. They’d used the carrot but not the stick, spreading around their baubles and assuming the problem was solved. When, on election day, they learned it wasn’t, they would retire the carrots. Liver camps were unprotected, untechnological, unarmed. The next Liver candidate for any public office would lose. Jackson was assisting at an historical fluke, an unrepeatable improbability for which he was risking all status with his own people. Which made him the biggest fool of all.
Somewhere in the building, someone was weeping.
He made his way through the gloom, past the decrepit communal furniture, through the maze of makeshift walls of boards, upended sofas, broken shelving, strung homespun curtains. The sobbing grew louder. He passed the tribe’s weaving ’bot, patiently turning out yards of ugly dun cloth from whatever raw organic materials were dumped into the hopper. The ’bot hummed softly. Behind them, in the farthest of the ramshackle cubicles against a windowless wall, Jackson found them.
A boy, facing away from Jackson, bent over almost double. The boy’s back was thin and, through the holes in the clothing, deeply freckled. Vicki stood beside the boy, one arm around his skinny shoulders, almost holding him up. When the two turned, Jackson saw that the boy huddled over a baby in his arms.
Vicki said somberly, “I was just coming to look for you.”
Jackson reached for the baby. He saw immediately that it was dying, probably of some mutated microorganism that had already destroyed the immune system. The infant’s mouth was patchy with candidiasis. Its skin was mottled with subcutaneous hematomas. The wasted little cheeks stretched tightly over the small skull. Jackson heard the baby’s lungs labor to keep breathing. On its neck stuck two patches, blue and yellow: broad-spectrum antibiotics and antivirals. Vicki always carried them. They wouldn’t help; it was far too late.