Beggars and Choosers

The Cell Cleaner will destroy any cancerous cells engendered as a result of ultraviolet exposure. It will also, of course, destroy any toxic molecules absorbed from the soil, by rearranging their atoms into nontoxic forms.

Nanomachinery will keep your gastrointestinal system capable of operation, even when it is unused for long periods of time. Genemod enzymes are designed to eliminate, through allosteric interactions, any subjective feelings of hunger.

When food is available, you can eat, and store energy from oxidative phosphorylation. When food is not available, you can lie on the soil, in the sunlight, and store energy through photo-phosphorylation.

Now you understand.

You are now autotrophic.

You are now free.

V

Summer 2115

Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.

Twenty

A

“A

“Well, I been right here, me,” A

But she pushed me away. I might of forgot, me, that I was mad, but A

I stopped. It was hard. She tasted so sweet, her, it seemed like I couldn’t never get enough of her. Not in the year since we went down into Eden. Not in ten more years, not in hundred. My old pipe was stiff as a hunk of metal.

A

“Billy — I still don’t want, me, for us to go to West Virginia. It ain’t going to help nobody.”

I eased my pants a little, me. “Lizzie wants to go. She is going, her. With or without us.”

A

“Lizzie really said that, her? That she’d go without me?”

I nodded. Lizzie would, too. She would go, her, even if Vicki didn’t. There ain’t no stopping Lizzie these days. You’d of thought it’d be the old and the sick who’d be the most changed since Before, but the truth is, it’s the young. There ain’t no stopping none of them from doing nothing. Used to be a thirteen-year-old — or twelve, or ten — needed to be taken care of. Fed, nursed through sickness, protected from a rabid raccoon or a bad cut or spoiled food. No more. They don’t need us, them.

Just like we don’t need the donkeys.

A

A

She tied on her sandals, left over from Before. They were nearly worn out, them. Shoes and boots was supposed to of been on the Council’s meeting tonight, until this other thing come up so fast and hard and there ain’t going to be no East Oleanta Council meeting tonight. Maybe never again, for all I knew, me.

I held A

In West Virginia — that’s something else.

A

“It ain’t right to let them vote in Council as young as twelve. It ain’t right.”

I knew better, me, than to get into that again. “If it wasn’t for the kids’ votes, we wouldn’t be going, us, on this useless trip. And it is useless, Billy. What does a thirteen-year-old know, her, about adult voting? She’s still a baby, her, even if she don’t think so!”

I didn’t say nothing. I ain’t no fool.

We walked in silence, us. There was pine needles underfoot, and in the su

Vicki’s tried right along, her, to explain the Cell Cleaner to me. And the nanomachinery. Lizzie seems, her, to understand it, but it still ain’t clear to me.

It don’t have to be clear. All it has to do, it, is work. “A

She scowled. “Nobody’s got no plan.”

“Well, maybe by the time we get there, us … you got to figure walking will take three, four weeks—”

She turned on me. “Nobody will make no plan! Who knows, them, how to break into that prison and get that girl out? Donkeys? They put her there! That Drew Arlen, her own man? He put her there, too! Her own kind? They’d of done it by now, them, if they knew how! We can’t do nothing, Billy. And meantime, we could use the time and brains, us, on things we do need! Better weaving, and more of it! We still only got that one weaving ’bot the kids put together, and it’s slow, it. And the clothes keep getting eaten. And boots! We still ain’t settled, us, about getting boots, and winter will come eventually!”

I gave it up, me. You can’t argue with A

Sometimes it’s kind of scary, knowing there ain’t nobody to take care of us but us. Sometimes it ain’t.

Vicki met us, her, at the edge of town. Her dress was nearly as bad as Lizzie’s. I could see pretty near one whole breast, and — old fool that I am — damn if my pipe didn’t stir a little, it. But her face was too thin, and she looked unhappy, her, like she done for months now. She was the only one, her, in the whole town who looked so unhappy.