Beggars and Choosers

“And who will I be keeping under surveillance?” The excite-ment was a little bubble in my throat now, still surprising. It had been a long time since anything had excited me. Except David, of coure, who had taken his sexy shoulders and verbal charm and sense of superiority to hold in readiness for plunking down temporarily in the middle of some other woman’s life.

He said, “You’ll be following Miranda Sharifi.”

“Ah.”

“I have full ID information and kit for you in a locker at the gravrail station. You’ll pass as a Liver.”

This was a slight insult; Colin was implying my looks weren’t spectacular enough to absolutely mark them as genemod. I let it pass.

Colin said, “She’s only made one trip off the island herself. We think. When the next one happens, you go with her.”

“How will you be sure it’s her? If they’re using both cosmetic and electronic disguises, she could have different features, hair, even brain-scan projection all masking her own.”

“True. But their heads are slightly misshapen, slighty too big. That’s hard to disguise.”

I knew that, of course. Everybody did. Thirteen years ago, when the Supers had first come down from Sanctuary, their big heads had given rise to a lot of bad jokes. The actuality was that their revved-up metabolism and altered brain chemistry had caused other abnormalities, the human genemod being a very complex thing. Supers are not, I remembered, an especially handsome people.

I said, “Their heads aren’t that big, Colin. In some lights it’s even hard to tell at all.”

“Also, their infrared body scans are on file. From the trial. You can’t move the position of your liver, or mask the digestive rate in your duodenum.”

Which are both pretty generic anyway. Infrared scans aren’t even admissible in court as identity markers. They’re too unreliable. Still, it was better than nothing.

All of this was better than the nothing with David. The nothing of Stephanie. The something of Katous. Thank you, lady.

Colin said, “The trips off Huevos Verdes are increasing. They’re pla

“Si, senor,” I said. He wasn’t amused.

We’d walked nearly to the perimeter of the security bubble.

Beyond its faint shimmer, a body pod had arrived for the dead scooter racer. I could just see some Livers loading him into the pod, at the very edge of my range of genemod-enhanced vision. The Livers were crying. They got the body into the pod, and the pod started down the track. After fifteen feet there was a sudden grinding sound and the pod stopped. Livers pushed. The pod didn’t move. The funeral machinery, like so much other more important machinery lately, had apparently broken down.

The Livers stood staring at it, bewildered and helpless.

I walked with Colin inside Building G-14 looking dizzy, as a victim of Gravison’s disease occasionally should.

Two

When I found out, me, about the rabid raccoon, first thing I did was run straight down to the cafe to tell A

“Run, old man! Run, old fuck!” a kid yelled from the alley between the hotel and the warehouse. They stood there, the stomps, when the weather was nice. The weather was nice. I forgot, me, that they’d be there, or I’d of gone around the long way, by the river. But this afternoon they was too lazy, them, or too splintered, to chase me. I didn’t tell them shit about the raccoon.

At the servoentrance to the cafe, where only ’bots supposed to go, I pounded, me, as hard as I could and the hell with who heard. “A

The bushes to my right rustled and I almost keeled over, me. The coons come there for the stuff that drops off the delivery ’bots. But it was only a snake. “A

The low door swung open. I crawled through on hands and knees. It was Lizzie, her, who figured out how to get the servoentrance to open without no ’bot signal. A

They were both there. A

“Billy Washington!” A

“Rabid raccoons,” I gasped. My heart was going, it, like a waterfall. “Four of them. Reported on the area monitor. By the river, where Lizzie… Lizzie goes to play…”

“Ssshhhh,” A

A

A

I could remember a time when being held by a woman like A

“You all right, dear heart?” A

I had my breath back. “Four rabid raccoons. The area monitor was wailing like death. They must of come down, them, from the mountains. The monitor showed them by the river, moving toward town. The biowarnings was flashing deep red. Then the monitor quit again and this time nothing couldn’t get it started again. Jack Sawicki kicked it, him, and so did I. Them coons could be anywhere.”

“Did the warden ’bot get sent to kill them, it, before the monitor quit?”

“The warden ’bot’s broke too.”

“Shit.” A

“You think it’ll make any difference? They’re all alike. But you keep Lizzie inside, you, until somebody does something about them coons. Lizzie, you stay inside, you hear me?”

Lizzie nodded. Then, being Lizzie, she argued. “But who, Billy?”

“Who what?”

“Who will do something about them raccoons? If the warden ’bot’s broke?”

Nobody answered. A

She added them, her, right onto the foodbelt cubbies going out into the cafe, to be clicked off on people’s meal chips. Fools probably didn’t even notice, them, how much better her dishes tasted than the usual stuff going round and round on the belt day and night. And of course with the holoterminal going full blast, and the dance music playing all the time, nobody would of heard her and Lizzie back here even if they was blowing up the whole damn kitchen.