Lizzie took him. All at once she felt better about Theresa. Dirk buried his face in his mother’s shoulder and clung to her. Lizzie said, “Don’t feel bad. It’s just because he doesn’t know you.”
“Is he… is he shy with… strangers?”
“Not until this morning!”
The two girls looked at each other. Lizzie saw suddenly how they must look: Theresa genemod beautiful and elegant in her pretty dress, Lizzie with mud and wet leaves clinging to her dirty jacks, in her hair, smeared across her baby’s face. But Theresa was the one who was afraid. Lizzie pulled a twig out of Dirk’s hair.
“Something happened this morning,” she said impulsively to Theresa. “Dr. Aranow said there might have been a neuropharm released into our feeding ground. It made everybody scared of anything new. Even of voting for Shockey! And we worked so hard! Damn it to fucking hell!”
Theresa cringed. But she said, “Scared of anything new? You mean, like… like me?”
So that was what was wrong with this girl. She’d breathed a neuropharm like the one Annie and Billy and Dirk had breathed. But… Dr. Aranow said he didn’t know what the neuropharm was, it was something no Sleepers could invent, so how could Theresa have…
“I have to go back,” she said abruptly. “Dr. Aranow’s calling a research place.” She carried Dirk back to the dining room.
The table held dishes of mouth food, although Lizzie hadn’t seen a ’bot go past. Strawberries, huge and succulent, bread with fruit and nuts baked on top, fluffy scrambled eggs; Lizzie hadn’t had an egg since last summer. Her mouth filled with sweet water. The next second, she forgot the food.
A section of the programmed wall had deepened into a holostage recess. Lizzie had never seen such technology. A man as old as Dr. Aranow, with a handsome face and bright chestnut hair, said, “It sounds incredible, Jackson.”
“I know, Thurmond, I know. But believe me, I knew these people before, the behavioral change is both radical and sudden—”
“How could you know Livers that well? They’re not patients, are they? Aren’t they Changed?”
“Yes. It doesn’t matter how I know them. I’m telling you, the change appears neuropharmaceutical, it does not wear off after inhalation stops, and it is not accompanied by gastrointestinal distress or blackout. You want to see this, Thurmond. And I need you to see it.”
The holo drummed its fingers on a desktop. “All right. I’ll sell it to Castner—if I can. Bring two specimens in, the baby and an adult.”
Specimens?
“When?” Dr. Aranow said.
“Well, I can’t… oh, hell, this afternoon. You’re sure, Jackson, that the behavioral effect doesn’t wear off when inhalation ceases? Without that, it’s not worth my time to—”
“I’m sure. This could be valuable to you, Thurmond.”
“Do you want to draw up a percentage contract, if the commercial possibilities pay out? Our standard split—”
“That can wait. We’ll be there in a few hours. Alert your security system. Me and three Livers who—”
“Three?”
“The baby’s mother has to come, and she didn’t breathe in the neuropharm, so there’ll be two adults.”
“All right. Make ’em take a bath first.”
Jackson glanced sideways at Vicki. This Thurmond Rogers—this stupid fucking donkey who thought Livers didn’t even wash—said sharply, “Are they there with you now, Jackson? In your house?”
Vicki stepped in front of the holostage. She held a strawberry daintily in upraised fingers. Her jacks were as muddy as Lizzie’s, and older. Her genemod violet eyes gleamed. “Yes, Thurmond, we’re here now. But it’s all right, we deloused.”
Thurmond said. “Who are you?”
Vicki smiled sweetly and nibbled on her strawberry. “You don’t remember me, Thurmond? At Cazie Sanders’s garden party? Last year?”
“Jackson—what’s going on here? She’s a donkey, why is—”
“There’ll be five of us coming to Kelvin-Castner,” Vicki said. “I’m the baby’s nanny. See you later, Thurmond.” She moved away.
Thurmond said, “Jackson…”
“Noon, then,” Dr. Aranow said hastily. “Thanks, Thurmond. Caroline, that’s all.”
The holostage went dark. Lizzie watched Dr. Aranow and Vicki watch each other. Shifting Dirk to other shoulder—he was getting heavy—Lizzie waited for Vicki to yell at Dr. Aranow for letting Thurmond Rogers call them “specimens,” or for Dr. Aranow to yell at Vicki for fucking up his phone call. But instead all Dr. Aranow said was, “You met Thurmond Rogers with Cazie?”
“No,” Vicki said, “I never saw him before in my life. But now he’ll surf his brains, wondering where that garden party was.”
“I doubt it.”
“I don’t,” Vicki said. “You really don’t know how this is played, do you, Jackson?”
“I didn’t think we were playing.”
“Well, certainly not about the neuropharm. Who’s our adult specimen, by the way? Lizzie, don’t just stand there glaring and drooling. If you’re hungry, have some strawberries. Genemod and exquisite.”
Lizzie wanted to say no—how come Vicki was still bossing everybody else around, even in Dr. Aranow’s house? But she was too hungry. Sullenly she sat in one of the beautiful carved chairs, Dirk clinging to her shoulder, and helped herself to everything she could reach.
Dr. Aranow said, “We’ll fly back to camp and get Shockey.”
“Why Shockey?” Vicki said. “Billy breathed in the neuropharm, too, and he’d be much more cooperative. Or even Annie.”
“No. Billy’s too old. And I already put a patch on Annie, changing the original conditions. Thurmond won’t consider them ideal subjects. Also, Shockey’s behavioral changes seemed the most pronounced… it has to involve the amygdalae.”
“The what?” Lizzie said, to remind them she was there. Dirk fretted and she shifted him on her lap to feed him a strawberry.
Dr. Aranow said, “It’s a part of the brain that affects fear and anxiety about—what’s wrong with Dirk?”
Dirk screamed on Lizzie’s lap. He pushed with his small feet and drew his chubby arms in toward his body. His face contorted. He twisted in her arms, trying to get down, trying frantically to escape. In his wailing was the note of pure animal fear as Lizzie held out to him something new in his experience, something he’d never seen before: a ripe red perfect strawberry.
“He’s asleep,” Vicki said. “Come on, Lizzie.”
“Come on where?” She didn’t want to leave Dirk. He lay on Dr. Aranow’s living room floor on a soft multicolored blanket Vicki had taken off one of the white sofas. Dirk had screamed and thrashed so much Dr. Aranow had finally put a little patch on his neck. Just to make Dirk sleep, he said. Lizzie sat in the sofa, which had fitted itself around her rump in a comfortable way, and scowled at Vicki. Dr. Aranow hadn’t wanted to go alone to get Shockey. Lizzie didn’t know what Vicki had said to him to make him agree, or why Vicki wanted to stay behind, or how Lizzie was going to cope for the rest of her life with a child terrified of a strawberry. She was exhausted.
“I want to talk to Theresa,” Vicki said. “And don’t you want to dip the systems here? Aranow has a Caroline VIII.”
A Caroline VIII. Lizzie had only heard about them. Suddenly she wanted to be in that system more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She could dip that system. She could understand that system. Unlike everything else that had suddenly erupted in her life.
“Dirk’s fine, the patch will last for hours. Come on. Lizzie. Let’s establish a beachhead.”
Lizzie didn’t know what a beachhead was, and didn’t ask. But she followed Vicki as far as the dining room, within earshot of Dirk. Mouth food still covered the table.