I murmured, “Maybe they have Gravison’s disease.”
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, have you made any progress penetrating Huevos Verdes?”
“No,” he said, but then he wouldn’t have told me if they have. The sexual innuendo he missed completely.
“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 planning something. We need to find out what.”
“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 Annie Francy. I ran all the way, me. That ain’t so easy no more. All I could think was maybe Lizzie was already safe, her, with Annie in the kitchen, maybe Lizzie wasn’t in the woods. Maybe.
“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. “Annie Francy! Let me in!”
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. “Annie! It’s me — Billy! Let me in!”
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. Annie could no more do that than grow leaves.
They were both there. Annie was peeling apples and Lizzie was tinkering with the ’bot that was supposed to peel apples. Which ain’t worked in a month. Not that Lizzie could fix it. She was smart, her, but she was still only eleven years old.
“Billy Washington!” Annie said. “You’re shaking, you! What happened?”
“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,” Annie said. “SSShhhh, dear heart. Lizzie’s here now. She’s safe, her.”
Annie put her arms around me where I sat panting on the floor like some humping bear. Lizzie watched, her, with her big black eyes wide and sparkly. She probably thought a rabid raccoon was interesting. She ain’t never seen one, her. I have.
Annie was big and soft, a chocolate-colored woman with breasts like pillows. She wouldn’t tell me, her, how old she was, but of course all I had to do was ask the terminals at the cafe or the hotel. She was thirty-five. Lizzie didn’t look nothing like her mother. She was light-skinned and skinny, her, with reddish hair in tight braids. She didn’t have no hips or breasts yet. What she had was brains. Annie worried about that a lot. She couldn’t remember, her, a time when we was just people, not Livers. I could remember, me. At sixty-eight, you can remember a lot. I could remember, me, a time when Annie might of been proud of Lizzie’s brains.
I could remember a time when being held by a woman like Annie would of meant more than panting from a bad heart.
“You all right, dear heart?” Annie said. She took her arms away and right away I missed them. I’m an old fool, me. “Now tell us again, real slow.”
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.” Annie made a face. “Next time I’m voting, me, against Samuelson.”
“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. Annie picked up her knife, her, and went back to peeling apples. I settled myself more comfortable against the wall. No chairs, of course — nobody’s supposed to be in the cafe kitchen except ’bots. Annie broke in, her, for the first time last September. She didn’t bother the ’bots while they prepared food for the foodbelt. She just took a bit of sugar here, some soysynth there, some of the fresh fruit from the servobin shipments, and cooked up things. Delicious things — nobody could cook like Annie. Fruit cobblers that made your mouth fill with sweet water just to look at them. Meat loaf hot and spicy. Biscuits like air.