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  Beggars and Choosers

  ( Sleepless - 2 )

  Nancy Kress

  Kress returns to the world of Beggars in Spain to tell a new tale in an America of the future, strangely altered by genetic modifications. Wracked by the results of irresponsible genetic research and nanotechnology and overburdened by a population of jobless drones, the whole world is on the edge of collapse. Who will save it? And for whom?

  Nominated for Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novel in 1995.

  Beggars and Choosers

  by Nancy Kress

  To Miriam Grace Monfredo and Mary Stanton without whose friendship in a bad time this book would not have been finished.

  Prologue

  2106

  The clanging of the priority-one override alarm ripped through the cavernous backstage dressing room. Drew Arlen, the only occupant, jerked his head toward the holo-terminal beside his dressing table. The screen registered his retina scan and Leisha Camden’s face appeared.

  “Drew! Have you heard?”

  The man in the powerchair, upper body fanatically muscled above his crippled legs, turned back to putting on his eye makeup. He leaned into the dressing table mirror. “Heard what?”

  “Did you see the six o’clock Times?”

  “Leisha, I go on stage in fifteen minutes. I haven’t listened to anything.” He heard the thickening in his own voice, and hoped she didn’t. Even after all this time. Even at just the sight of her holo.

  “Miranda and the Supers… Miranda… Drew, they’ve built an entire island. Off the coast of Mexico. Using nanotech and the atoms in seawater, and almost overnight!”

  “An island,” Drew repeated. He frowned into the mirror, rubbed at his makeup, applied more.

  “Not a floating construct. An actual island, that goes all the way down to the continental shelf. Did you know about this?”

  “Leisha, I have a concert in fifteen minutes…”

  “You did, didn’t you. You knew what Miranda was doing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Drew turned his powerchair to face Leisha’s golden hair, green eyes, genemod perfect skin. She looked thirty-five. She was ninety-eight years old.

  He said, “Why didn’t Miranda tell you?”

  Leisha’s expression quieted. “You’re right. It was Miranda’s place to tell me. And she didn’t. There’s a lot she doesn’t tell me, isn’t there, Drew?”

  A long moment passed before Drew said softly, “It isn’t easy being on the outside for a change, is it, Leisha?”

  She said, equally softly, “You’ve waited a long time to be able to say that to me, haven’t you, Drew?”

  He looked away. In the corner of the huge silent room something rustled: a mouse, or a defective ’bot.

  Leisha said, “Are they moving to this new island? All twenty-seven Supers?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one in the scientific community even knew nanotech had reached that capability.”

  “Nobody else’s nanotech has.”

  Leisha said, “They’re not going to let me on that island, are they? At all?”

  He listened to the complex undertones in her voice. Leisha’s generation of Sleepless, the first generation, could never hide their feelings. Unlike Miranda’s generation, who could hide anything.

  “No,” Drew said. “They’re not.”

  “They’ll shield the island with something that Terry Mwa-kambe invents, and you’ll be the only non-Super ever allowed to know what they’re doing there.”

  He didn’t answer. A technician stuck his head diffidently in the door. “Ten minutes, Mr. Arlen, sir.”

  “Yes. I’m coming.”

  “Huge crowd tonight, sir. All pumped up.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” The tech’s head disappeared.

  “Drew,” Leisha said, her voice splintering. “She’s as much a daughter to me as you were a son… what is Miranda planning out on that island?”

  “I don’t know,” Drew said, and it was both a lie and not a lie, in ways that Leisha could never understand. “Leisha, I have to be on stage in nine minutes.”

  “Yes,” Leisha said wearily. “I know. You’re the Lucid Dreamer.”

  Drew stared again at her holo-image: the lovely curve of cheek, the unaging Sleepless skin, the suspicion of water in the green eyes. She had been the most important person in his world, and in the larger public world. And now, although she didn’t know it yet, she was obsolete.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. I’m the Lucid Dreamer.”

  The holostage blanked, and he went back to his makeup for the stage.

  I

  JULY 2114

  Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods — in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.

  —Albert Einstein, address to California Institute of Technology, 1931

  One

  DIANA COVINGTON : SAN FRANCISCO

  For some of us, of course, nothing would be enough. That sentence can be taken two ways, can’t it? But I don’t mean that having nothing would ever be satisfactory to us. It isn’t even satisfactory to Livers, no matter what pathetic claims they lay to an “aristo life of leisure.” Yes. Right. There isn’t a single one of us that doesn’t know better. We donkeys could always recognize seething dissatisfaction. We saw it daily in the mirror.

  My IQ wasn’t boosted as high as Paul’s.

  My parents couldn’t afford all the genemods Aaron got.

  My company hasn’t made it as big as Karen’s.

  My skin isn’t as small-pored as Gina’s.

  My constituency is more demanding than Luke’s. Do the bloodsucking voters think I’m made of money?

  My dog is less cutting-edge genemod than Stephanie’s dog.

  It was, in fact, Stephanie’s dog that made me decide to change my life. I know how that sounds. There’s nothing about the start of my service with the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency that doesn’t sound ridiculous. Why not start with Stephanie’s dog? It brings a certain satiric panache to the story. I could dine out on it for months.

  If, of course, anyone were ever going to dine out again.

  Panache is such a perishable quality.

  Stephanie brought her dog to my apartment in the Bayview Security Enclave on a Sunday morning in July. The day before, I’d bought pots of new flowers from BioForms in Oakland and they cascaded over the terrace railing, a riot of blues much more varied than the colors of San Francisco Bay , six stories below.

  Cobalt, robin’s egg, aquamarine, azure, cyan, turquoise, cerulean. I lay on my terrace chaise, eating anise cookies and studying my flowers. The gene geniuses had shaped each blossom into a soft fluttery tube with a domed end. The blossoms were quite long. Essentially, my terrace frothed with flaccid, blue, vegetable pe-nises. David had moved out a week ago.

  “Diana,” Stephanie said, through the Y-energy shield spanning the space between my open French doors. “Knock knock.”

  “How’d you get into the apartment?” I said, mildly annoyed. I hadn’t given Stephanie my security code. I didn’t like her enough.

  “Your code’s broken. It’s on the police net. Thought you’d like to know.” Stephanie was a cop. Not with the district police, which was rough and dirty work down among the Livers. Not our Stephanie. She owned a company that furnished patrol ’bots for enclave security. She designed the ’bots herself. Her firm, which was spectacularly successful, held contracts with a sizable number of San Francisco enclaves, although not with mine. Telling me my code was on the ’bot net was her ungraceful way of
needling me because my enclave used a different police force.

  I lounged back on my chaise and reached for my drink. The closest blue flowers yearned toward my hand.

  “You’re giving them an erection,” Stephanie said, walking through the French doors. “Oh, anise cookies! Mind if I give one to Katous?”

  The dog followed her from the cool dimness of my apartment and stood blinking and sniffing in the bright sunshine. It was clearly, aggressively, illegally genemod. The Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency may allow fanciful tinkering with flowers, but not with animal phyla higher than fish. The rules are very clear, backed up by court cases whose harsh financial penalties make them even clearer. No genemods that cause pain. No genemods that create weaponry, in its broadest definition. No genemods that “alter external appearance or basic internal functioning such that a creature deviates significantly from other members of not only its species but also its breed.” A collie may pace and single-foot, but it better still look like Lassie.

  And never, never, never any genemod that is inheritable. Nobody wants another fiasco like the Sleepless. Even my penile flowers were sterile. And genemod human beings, we donkeys, were all individually handcrafted, in vitro one-of-a-kind collector’s items. Such is order maintained in our orderly world. So saith Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard J. Milano, writing the majority opinion for Linbeckerv. Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency. Humanity must not be altered past recognition, lest we lose what it means to be human. Two hands, one head, two eyes, two legs, a functioning heart, the necessity to breathe and eat and shit, this is humanity in perpetuity. We are the human beings.

  Or, in this case, the dogs. And yet here was Stephanie, theoretically an officer of the law, standing on my terrace flanked by a prison-sentence GSEA violation in pink fur. Katous had four adorable pink ears, identically cocked, aural Rockettes. It had an adorable pink fur rabbit’s tail. It had huge brown eyes, three times the size of any dog’s eyes Justice Milano would approve, giving it a soulful, sorrowing look. It was so adorable and vulnerable-looking I wanted to kick it.

  Which might have been the point. Although that, too, might be construed as illegal. No modifications that cause pain.

  “I heard that David moved out,” Stephanie said, crouching to feed an anise cookie to the quivering pink fur. Oh so casual — just a girl and her dog, my illegal genemod pet, I live on the edge like this all the time, doncha know. I wondered if Stephanie knew that “Katous” was Arabic for “cat.” Of course she did.

  “David moved out,” I agreed. “We came to the place where the road forked.”

  “And who’s next on your road?”

  “Nobody.” I sipped my drink without offering Stephanie one. “I thought I’d live alone for a while.”

  “Really.” She touched an aquamarine flower; it wrapped its soft tubular petal around her finger. Stephanie grinned. “Quel dom-mage. What about that German software dealer you talked to such a long time at Paul’s party?”

  “What about your dog?” I said pointedly. “Isn’t he pretty illegal for a cop’s pet?”

  “But so cute. Katous, say hello to Diana.”

  “Hello,” Katous said.

  Slowly I lowered my glass from my mouth.

  Dogs couldn’t talk. The vocal equipment didn’t allow it, the law didn’t allow it, the canine IQ didn’t allow it. Yet Katous’s growled “hello” was perfectly clear. Katous could talk.

  Stephanie lounged against the French doors, enjoying the effect of her bombshell. I would have given anything to be able to ignore it, to go on with a neutral, uninterested conversation. I could not manage that.

  “Katous,” I said, “how old are you?”

  The dog gazed at me from enormous sorrowful eyes.

  “Where do you live, Katous?”

  No answer.

  “Are you genemod?”

  No answer.

  “Is Katous a dog?”

  Was there a shade of sad puzzlement in its brown eyes?

  “Katous, are you happy?”

  Stephanie said, “His vocabulary is only twenty-two words. Although he understands more than that.”

  “Katous, would you like a cookie? Cookie, Katous?”

  He wagged his ridiculous tail and pranced in place. There were no claws on his toes. “Cookie! Please!”

  I held out a cookie, which was from the Proust’s Madelines franchise and were wonderful: crunchy, fragrant with anise, rich with butter. Katous took it with toothless pink gums. “Thank you, lady!”

  I looked at Stephanie. “He can’t defend himself. And he’s a mental cripple, smart enough to talk but not smart enough to understand his world. What’s the point?”

  “What’s the point of your spermatic flowers? God, they’re salacious. Did David give them to you? They’re wonderful.”

  “David didn’t give them to me.”

  “You bought them yourself? After he left, I would guess. A replacement?”

  “A reminder of male fallibility.”

  Stephanie laughed. She knew I was lying, of course. David was never fallible in that department. Or any other. His leaving was my fault. I am not an easy person to live with. I needle, pry, argue, search compulsively for weaknesses to match my own. Worse, I only admit this well after the fact. I looked away from Stephanie and gazed through a gap in the flowers at San Francisco Bay, my drink frosty in my hand.

  It is, I suppose, a serious flaw in my character that I can’t stand to be in the same room for ten minutes with people like Stephanie. She’s intelligent, successful, funny, daring. Men fall all over her, and not just for her genemod looks, red hair and violet eyes and legs a yard and a half long. Not even for her enhanced intelligence. Xo, she has the ultimate attraction for jaded males: no heart. She’s a perpetual challenge, an infinite variety that custom doesn’t stale because the tariff is always about to be revoked. She can’t really be loved, and can’t really be hurt, because she doesn’t care. Indifference, coupled with those legs, is irresistible. Every man chinks he’ll be different for her, but he never is. Her face launched a thousand ships? Big deal. There’s always another fleet. If pher-omone genemods weren’t illegal, I’d swear Stephanie had them.

  Jealousy, David always said, corrodes the soul.

  I’d always answered that Stephanie was soulless. She was twenty-eight, seven years my junior, which meant seven years more advancement in the allowable technological evolution of Homo sapiens. They had been a fertile seven years. Her father was Harve Brunell, of Brunell Power. For his only daughter he had bought every genemod on the market, and some of that hadn’t quite arrived there, legally. Stephanie Brunell represented the penultimate achievement of American science, power, and values.

  Right behind Katous.

  She plucked a penile blue flower and turned it idly in her hands. She was making me choke on my curiosity about Katous. “So it’s really over with you and David. Incidentally, I glimpsed him last night at Anna’s water fete. From a great distance. He was out on the lily pads.”

  I asked casually, “Oh? With whom?”

  “Quite alone. And looking very handsome. I think he had his hair replaced again. It’s curly and blond now.”

  I stretched and yawned. The muscles in my neck felt hard as duragem chains. “Stephanie, if you want David, go after him. / don’t care.”

  “Don’t you? Do you mind if I send your rather primitive house ’bot for another pitcher? You seem to have drunk this whole one without me. At least your ’bot works — the breakdown rate on the cop ’bots has accelerated yet again. I’d think the parts franchises were all owned by crooks, if they weren’t owned by some of my best friends. What’s your ’bot’s name?”

  “Hudson,” I said, “another pitcher.”

  It floated off. Katous watched it fearfully, backing into a corner of the terrace. The dog’s absurd tail brushed a hanging flower.

  Immediately the flower wrapped itself around the tail, and Katous yelped and jumped forward, quivering.
/>   I said, “A genemod dog with some self-awareness but afraid of a flower? Isn’t that a little cruel?”

  “It’s supposed to be an ultra-pampered beastie. Actually, Katous is a beta-test prototype for the foreign market. Allowable under the Special Exemption Act for Economic Recovery, Section 14-c. Non-Agricultural Domestic Animals for Export.”

  “I thought the President hasn’t signed the Special Exemption Act.” Congress had been wrangling over it for weeks. Economic crisis, unfavorable balance of trade, strict GSEA controls, threat to life as we know it. All the usual.

  “He’ll sign it next week,” Stephanie said. I wondered which of her lovers had influence on the Hill. “We can’t afford not to. The genemod lobby gets more powerful every month. Think of all those Chinese and EC and South American rich old ladies who will just love a nauseatingly cute, helpless, unthreateningly sentient, short-lived, very expensive lapdog with no teeth.”

  “Short-lived? No teeth? GSEA breed specifications—”

  “Will be waived for export animals. Meanwhile I’m just beta-testing for a friend. Ah, here’s Hudson.”

  The ’bot floated through the French doors with a fresh pitcher of vodka scorpions. Katous scrambled away, his four ears quivering. His scramble brought him sideways against a bank of flowers, all of which tried to wrap themselves around him. One long flaccid petal settled softly over his eyes. Katous yelped and pulled loose, his eyes wild. He shot across the terrace.

  “Help!” he cried. “Help Katous!”

  On that side of the terrace I had planted moondust in shallow boxes between the palings, to make a low border that wouldn’t obstruct the view of the Bay. Katous’s frightened flight barreled hirr into the moondust’s sensor field. It released a cloud of sweet-smelling blue fibers, fine as milkweed. The dog breathed them in, and yelped again. The moondust cloud was momentarily translucent, a fragrant fog around those enormous terrified eyes. Katous ran in a ragged circle, then leaped blindly. He hurled between the wide-set palings and over the edge of the terrace.