Beggars and Choosers Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 ‘hot’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.
    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.
    Annie liked to cook, she said. Liked to keep busy. I sometimes
thought, me, that for somebody trying so hard to bring up
Lizzie
to be a good Liver, Annie herself was more than a little bit donkey. Of
course I didn’t say that, me, to Annie. I wanted to keep my head.
    Annie started to hum, her, while she peeled apples. But
Lizzie
don’t give up on questions. She said again, “
Who
will do
something about them raccoons?”
    Annie frowned. “Maybe somebody’ll come to fix the warden ‘bot.”
    Lizzie’s big black eyes didn’t blink. It’s spooky, sometimes, how
she can stare so hard without never blinking. “Nobody came to fix the
peeler ‘bot. Nobody came to fix the cleaner ’bot in the cafe. You said
yesterday, you, that you didn’t think the donkeys would send nobody
even if the mainline soysynth ‘bot broke.”
    “Well, I didn’t mean it, me,” Annie said. She peeled faster. “
That
breaks and nobody in this town eats!”
    “They could share, them. Share the food that people took off the
foodbelt before it broke.”
    Annie and I looked at each other. Once I saw a town, me, where a
cafe broke down. Six people ended up killed. And that was when the
gravrail worked regular, so people could leave, them, for another town
in the district.
    “Yes, dear heart,” Annie said. “People could share, them.”
    “But you and Billy don’t think they would, them.”
    Annie didn’t answer. She don’t like to lie to
Lizzie
, her.
I said, “No, Lizzie. A lot of people wouldn’t share, them.”
    Lizzie turned her bright black eyes on me. “Why wouldn’t they share?”
    I said, “ ‘Cause people out of the habit of sharing, them. They
expect stuff now. They got a right to stuff—that’s why they elect
politicians. The donkey politicians pay their taxes, them, and the
taxes are the cafes and warehouses and medunits and baths that let
Livers get on with serious living.”
    Lizzie said, “But people shared more, them, when you was young,
Billy? They shared more then?”
    “Sometimes. Mostly they worked, them, for what they wanted.”
    “That’s enough,” Annie said sharply. “Don’t you go filling her head
with what’s past, Billy Washington. She’s a Liver. Don’t go talking,
you, like you was a donkey yourself! And you,
Lizzie
, don’t
you talk about it no more.”
    But nobody can’t stop Lizzie when she’s started. She’s like a
gravrail. Like a gravrail used to be, before this last year. “School
says I’m lucky, me, to be a Liver. I get to live like an aristo while
the donkeys