“Then who?” Vicki said. “Miranda Sharifi?”
“But why? Why would the Supers do it?”
“I don’t know.”
The car shuddered. Jackson looked down at Lizzie pounding angrily at the inside of the rain-streaked windows. Looked at an Annie only slightly restored to tolerance for new situations, and then only for as long as the neuropharm in the patch lasted. Looked at the baby acting like a small Theresa, with Theresa’s timidity and pervasive fear of anything new, anything risky, any departure from what she’d always done.
Such as electing a Liver to political office.
Vicki demanded. “Who, Jackson? Who’s capable of doing this, at multiple sites? And how?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. But it had to be Miranda, nobody else had such advanced neurobiology… but it couldn’t be Miranda. She didn’t make people less capable!
Did she?
It had to Miranda. It couldn’t be Miranda.
A whole population of Theresas.
“I don’t… know.”
Twelve
Lizzie clutched Dirk close, and tried to pretend it was for the baby’s sake. She had never seen anything like this. Dr. Aranow had taken them into Manhattan East Enclave, just flown through the Y-shield like it didn’t exist and landed on the roof of his apartment block. Only it wasn’t an apartment block that Lizzie, growing up in the Liver town of East Oleanta and on the road ever since, would have recognized. She didn’t recognize the roof as a roof. It was beautiful. Bright green genemod grass, beds of delicate flowers, benches and strange statues and stranger ’bots she itched to take apart. But she wouldn’t take them apart. She wouldn’t even touch them. She wasn’t smart enough. She was just a dumb Liver who had fucked up: lost the election and failed her tribe and somehow brought harm she didn’t understand to her baby.
“This way,” Dr. Aranow said, leading them across the roof that wasn’t. The air was warm and cloudless.
“ ‘Oh what is so rare as a day in June,’ ” Vicki said, which didn’t make sense because this was April. Vicki wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look as confused as Lizzie felt. Well, of course, Vicki had once lived this way. How could she have left it to come live in East Oleanta? Lizzie felt obscurely ashamed; she never imagined Vicki had left this. Lizzie remembered the times she’s lectured Vicki about the world, and the memory made Lizzie writhe. She didn’t know enough to lecture donkeys. She didn’t know anything at all.
And yesterday, she’d known everything. Just yesterday.
Dr. Aranow had taken Annie back to the camp. Now he led Lizzie, Dirk, and Vicki into an elevator which said. “Hello, Dr. Aranow.”
“Hello. My apartment, please. Is my sister home?”
“Yes,” the elevator said. “Ms. Aranow is home.” It stopped, and the door opened directly into the most wonderful room Lizzie had ever seen. Long and narrow, with smooth white walls, floors of shining silver-gray stone dotted with carpets, a perfect little table with roses on it—only they weren’t exactly roses, they had odd silver-gray leaves and a bewitching smell—and a painting lit by an unseen source. Lizzie didn’t know what to make of the painting. Two naked women feeding on the grass, and two men dressed in stiff old-fashioned nonconsumable clothes. The men must not be hungry.
“The original Manet, of course,” Vicki said, but Dr. Aranow didn’t answer. He strode ahead, and when they followed, Lizzie realized that the wonderful white room with the roses had been only a hallway.
Inside the apartment was another hallway, and then a real room. It stopped her cold. A Y-shield made up one wall, looking down on a green, green park. The other walls shimmered with subtly shifting grays and whites—programmed screens, they had to be. Was the park a program, too? The chairs were white and soft, the tables all polished, there were strange plants inside the tables… and a girl, sitting on a hard wooden chair and eating food by mouth from some kind of ’bot with a flat top like another shining table.
“Theresa,” Dr. Aranow said, and even in Lizzie’s chagrined absorption in her surroundings—she knew nothing, nothing at all!—Lizzie could hear the careful gentleness in his voice. “Theresa, don’t be alarmed, I’ve just brought some people here for a business meeting.”
The girl shrank back in her chair. No older than Lizzie herself, she looked frightened and uneasy… about Lizzie and Vicki? That didn’t make sense. The girl had a cloud of silvery-blond hair and was very skinny, dressed in a strange loose flowered dress that Lizzie would have sworn looked consumable. How could that be? The dress had no holes.
“This is Vicki Turner,” Dr. Aranow said, “and Lizzie Francy, and Lizzie’s son Dirk. This is my sister, Theresa Aranow.”
Theresa didn’t answer. Lizzie thought she trembled and breathed faster. This was a donkey, and yet unlike Vicki, unlike the reporters, unlike the donkey girls who had liked fucking Shockey when he was a candidate, Theresa looked… looked…
Theresa looked like Shockey and Annie and Billy looked now.
A glance passed between Vicki and Dr. Aranow, something Lizzie couldn’t interpret, and Vicki said softly, “Ms. Aranow, would you like to see the baby?”
Theresa’s weird fear seemed to fade a little. “Oh, a baby… yes… please…”
Dr. Aranow took Dirk from Lizzie—fortunately, he was asleep now—and laid him in Theresa’s arms. Theresa looked at him with total delight, and then, to Lizzie’s amazement, started to cry. No sobbing, just pale lightless tears rolling down her pale cheeks.
“Could I… Jackson, could… I hold him while you have your meeting?”
“Of course,” Vicki said, and Lizzie felt a minute of resentment. Dirk was her baby, this girl, this donkey Theresa who lived surrounded by everything and now wanted Lizzie’s baby, too—Theresa hadn’t even asked Lizzie if she could hold Dirk. And from her looks, Theresa was a weakling. She wouldn’t last three minutes using her wits to keep a whole tribe supplied with datadipped goods.
“We’ll be right there in the dining room, Theresa,” Jackson said, and took both Vicki’s and Lizzie’s arms.
The dining room wasn’t a feeding ground, but a table with twelve tall chairs, motionless serving ’bots, and still more huge, strange-looking plants that must be genemod. One wall cascaded with water—not programming, real water. The polished table was bare. Lizzie’s stomach suddenly growled.
She said, and it came out angry for some reason, “Don’t you even have a feeding ground?”
“Yes,” Dr. Aranow said distractedly, “but we’d better… are you hungry? Jones, breakfast for three, please. Whatever Theresa was having.”
“Certainly, Dr. Aranow,” the room said.
“Caroline, on, please.”
Lizzie didn’t see any terminal, but a different voice said, “Yes, Dr. Aranow.”
Vicki said, “You have a Caroline VIII personal system. I’m impressed.”
“Caroline, call Thurmond Rogers at Kelvin-Castner. Tell him it’s a priority call.”
“Yes, Dr. Aranow.”
He turned to Vicki. “Thurmond is an old friend. We graduated together from medical school. He’s a staff researcher at Kelvin-Castner Pharmaceuticals, his department’s fair-haired wonder. He’ll help us.”
“Help us do what?” Vicki said, but Lizzie didn’t hear the answer. In the other room, Dirk cried. Lizzie rushed back to him. Theresa held the baby helplessly, rocking him and crooning, while Dirk wailed in fear and tried to squirm off her lap.