The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (89 page)

“Then I want the address of the attorney.”

The attorney, however, refused to tell Leisha where Alice was. “She doesn’t want to be found, Ms. Camden. She wanted a complete break.”

“Not from me,” Leisha said.

“Yes,” the attorney said, and something flickered behind his eyes, something she had last seen in Dave Hannaway’s face.

She flew to Austin before returning to Boston, making her a day late for classes. Kevin Baker saw her instantly, canceling a meeting with IBM. She told him what she needed, and he set his best
datanet people on it, without telling them why. Within two hours she had Alice’s address from the attorney’s electronic files. It was the first time, she realized, that she had ever
turned to one of the Sleepless for help, and it had been given instantly. Without trade.

Alice was in Pennsylvania. The next weekend Leisha rented a hovercar and driver – she had learned to drive, but only groundcars as yet – and went to High Ridge, in the Appalachian
Mountains.

It was an isolated hamlet, twenty-five miles from the nearest hospital. Alice lived with a man named Ed, a silent carpenter twenty years older than she, in a cabin in the woods. The cabin had
water and electricity but no news net. In the early spring light the earth was raw and bare, slashed with icy gullies. Alice and Ed apparently worked at nothing. Alice was eight months
pregnant.

“I didn’t want you here,” she said to Leisha. “So why are you?”

“Because you’re my sister.”

“God, look at you. Is that what they’re wearing at Harvard? Boots like that? When did you become fashionable, Leisha? You were always too busy being intellectual to care.”

“What’s this all about, Alice? Why here? What are you doing?”

“Living,” Alice said. “Away from dear Daddy, away from Chicago, away from drunken broken Susan – did you know she drinks? Just like Mom. He does that to people. But not
to me. I got out. I wonder if you ever will.”

“Got out? To
this
?”

“I’m happy,” Alice said angrily. “Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? Isn’t that the aim of your great Kenzo Yagai – happiness through
individual effort?”

Leisha thought of saying that Alice was making no efforts that she could see. She didn’t say it. A chicken ran through the yard of the cabin. Behind, the Appalachian Mountains rose in
layers of blue haze. Leisha thought what this place must have been like in winter: cut off from the world where people strived toward goals, learned, changed.

“I’m glad you’re happy, Alice.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m glad, too,” Alice said, almost defiantly. The next moment she abruptly hugged Leisha, fiercely, the huge hard mound of her belly crushed between them. Alice’s
hair smelled sweet, like fresh grass in sunlight.

“I’ll come see you again, Alice.”

“Don’t,” Alice said.

SLEEPLESS MUTIE BEGS FOR REVERSAL OF GENE TAMPERING
, screamed the headline in the Food Mart. “
PLEASE LET ME SLEEP LIKE REAL
PEOPLE
!”
CHILD PLEADS
.

Leisha typed in her credit number and pressed the news kiosk for a printout, although ordinarily she ignored the electronic tabloids. The headline went on circling the kiosk. A Food Mart
employee stopped stacking boxes on shelves and watched her. Bruce, Leisha’s bodyguard, watched the employee.

She was twenty-two, in her final year at Harvard Law, editor of the
Law Review
, ranked first in her class. The next three were Jonathan Cocchiara, Len Garter, and Martha Wentz. All
Sleepless.

In her apartment she skimmed the printout. Then she accessed the Groupnet run from Austin. The files had more news stories about the child, with comments from other Sleepless, but before she
could call them up Kevin Baker came online himself, on voice.

“Leisha. I’m glad you called. I was going to call you.”

“What’s the situation with this Stella Bevington, Kev? Has anybody checked it out?”

“Randy Davies. He’s from Chicago, but I don’t think you’ve met him; he’s still in high school. He’s in Park Ridge; Stella’s in Skokie. Her parents
wouldn’t talk to him – were pretty abusive, in fact – but he got to see Stella face-to-face anyway. It doesn’t look like an abuse case, just the usual stupidity: parents
wanted a genius child, scrimped and saved, and now they can’t handle that she is one. They scream at her to sleep, get emotionally abusive when she contradicts them, but so far no
violence.”

“Is the emotional abuse actionable?”

“I don’t think we want to move on it yet. Two of us will keep in close touch with Stella – she does have a modem, and she hasn’t told her parents about the net –
and Randy will drive out weekly.”

Leisha bit her lip. “A tabloid shitpiece said she’s seven years old.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe she shouldn’t be left there. I’m an Illinois resident, I can file an abuse grievance from here if Candy’s got too much in her briefcase . . .”
Seven years
old
.

“No. Let it sit awhile. Stella will probably be all right. You know that.”

She did. Nearly all of the Sleepless stayed “all right,” no matter how much opposition came from the stupid segment of society. And it was only the stupid segment, Leisha argued
– a small if vocal minority. Most people could, and would, adjust to the growing presence of the Sleepless, when it became clear that that presence included not only growing power but growing
benefits to the country as a whole.

Kevin Baker, now twenty-six, had made a fortune in microchips so revolutionary that artificial intelligence, once a debated dream, was yearly closer to reality. Carolyn Rizzolo had won the
Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play
Morning Light
. She was twenty-four. Jeremy Robinson had done significant work in superconductivity applications while still a graduate student at
Stanford. William Thaine,
Law Review
editor when Leisha first came to Harvard, was now in private practice. He had never lost a case. He was twenty-six, and the cases were becoming
important. His clients valued his ability more than his age.

But not everyone reacted that way.

Kevin Baker and Richard Keller had started the datanet that bound the Sleepless into a tight group, constantly aware of each other’s personal fights. Leisha Camden financed the legal
battles, the educational costs of Sleepless whose parents were unable to meet them, the support of children in emotionally bad situations. Rhonda Lavelier got herself licensed as a foster mother in
California, and whenever possible the Group maneuvered to have small Sleepless who were removed from their homes assigned to Rhonda. The Group now had three ABA lawyers; within the next year they
would gain four more, licensed to practice in five different states.

The one time they had not been able to remove an abused Sleepless child leCally, they kidnapped him.

Timmy DeMarzo, four years old. Leisha had been opposed to the action. She had argued the case morally and pragmatically – to her they were the same thing – thus: if they believed in
their society, in its fundamental laws and in their ability to belong to it as free-trading productive individuals, they must remain bound by the society’s contractual laws. The Sleepless
were, for the most part, Yagaiists. They should already know this. And if the FBI caught them, the courts and press would crucify them.

They were not caught.

Timmy DeMarzo – not even old enough to call for help on the datanet; they had learned of the situation through the automatic police-record scan Kevin maintained through his company –
was stolen from his own backyard in Wichita. He had lived the last year in an isolated trailer in North Dakota; no place was too isolated for a modem. He was cared for by a leCally irreproachable
foster mother who had lived there all her life. The foster mother was second cousin to a Sleepless, a broad cheerful woman with a much better brain than her appearance indicated. She was a
Yagaiist. No record of the child’s existence appeared in any data bank: not the IRS’s, not any school’s, not even the local grocery store’s computerized checkout slips. Food
specifically for the child was shipped in monthly on a truck owned by a Sleepless in State College, Pennsylvania. Ten of the Group knew about the kidnapping, out of the total 3,428 born in the
United States. Of that total, 2,691 were part of the Group via the net. Another 701 were as yet too young to use a modem. Only 36 Sleepless, for whatever reason, were not part of the Group.

The kidnapping had been arranged by Tony Indivino.

“It’s Tony I wanted to talk to you about,” Kevin said to Leisha. “He’s started again. This time he means it. He’s buying land.”

She folded the tabloid very small and laid it carefully on the table. “Where?”

“Allegheny Mountains. In southern New York State. A lot of land. He’s putting in the roads now. In the spring, the first buildings.”

“Jennifer Sharifi still financing it?” She was the American-born daughter of an Arab prince who had wanted a Sleepless child. The prince was dead, and Jennifer, dark-eyed and
multilingual, was richer than Leisha would one day be.

“Yes. He’s starting to get a following, Leisha.”

“I know.”

“Call him.”

“I will. Keep me informed about Stella.”

She worked until midnight at the
Law Review
, then until four a.m. preparing her classes. From four to five she handled legal matters for the Group. At five a.m. she called Tony, still in
Chicago. He had finished high school, done one semester at Northwestern, and at Christmas vacation he had finally exploded at his mother for forcing him to live as a Sleeper. The explosion, it
seemed to Leisha, had never ended.

“Tony? Leisha.”

“The answer is yes, yes, no, and go to hell.”

Leisha gritted her teeth. “Fine. Now tell me the questions.”

“Are you really serious about the Sleepless withdrawing into their own self-sufficient society? Is Jennifer Sharifi willing to finance a project the size of building a small city?
Don’t you think that’s a cheat of all that can be accomplished by patient integration of the Group into the mainstream? And what about the contradictions of living in an armed
restricted city and still trading with the Outside?”

“I would never tell
you
to go to hell.”

“Hooray for you,” Tony said. After a moment he added, “I’m sorry. That sounds like one of
them
.”

“It’s wrong for us, Tony.”

“Thanks for not saying I couldn’t pull it off.”

She wondered if he could. “We’re not a separate species, Tony.”

“Tell that to the Sleepers.”

“You exaggerate. There are haters out there, there are
always
haters, but to give up . . .”

“We’re not giving up. Whatever we create can be freely traded: software, hardware, novels, information, theories, legal counsel. We can travel in and out. But we’ll have a safe
place to return
to
. Without the leeches who think we owe them blood because we’re better than they are.”

“It isn’t a matter of owing.”

“Really?” Tony said. “Let’s have this out, Leisha. All the way. You’re a Yagaiist – what do you believe in?”

“Tony . . .”

“Do
it,
” Tony said, and in his voice she heard the fourteen-year-old Richard had introduced her to. Simultaneously, she saw her father’s face: not as he was now, since
the bypass, but as he had been when she was a little girl, holding her on his lap to explain that she was special.

“I believe in voluntary trade that is mutually beneficial. That spiritual dignity comes from supporting one’s life through one’s own efforts, and trading the results of those
efforts in mutual cooperation throughout the society. That the symbol of this is the contract. And that we need each other for the fullest, most beneficial trade.”

“Fine,” Tony bit off. “Now what about the beggars in Spain?”

“The what?”

“You walk down a street in a poor country like Spain and you see a beggar. Do you give him a dollar?”

“Probably.”

“Why? He’s trading nothing with you. He has nothing to trade.”

“I know. Out of kindness. Compassion.”

“You see six beggars. Do you give them all a dollar?”

“Probably,” Leisha said.

“You would. You see a hundred beggars and you haven’t got Leisha Camden’s money – do you give them each a dollar?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Leisha reached for patience. Few people could make her want to cut off a comm link; Tony was one of them. “Too draining on my own resources. My life has first claim on the resources I
earn.”

“All right. Now consider this. At Biotech Institute – where you and I began, dear pseudo sister – Dr. Melling has just yesterday – ”

“Who?”

“Dr. Susan Melling. Oh, God, I completely forgot – she used to be married to your father!”

“I lost track of her,” Leisha said. “I didn’t realize she’d gone back to research. Alice once said . . . never mind. What’s going on at Biotech?”

“Two crucial items, just released.Carla Dutcher has had first-month fetal genetic analysis. Sleeplessness is a dominant gene. The next generation of the Group won’t sleep,
either.”

“We all knew that,” Leisha said. Carla Dutcher was the world’s first pregnant Sleepless. Her husband was a Sleeper. “The whole world expected that.”

“But the press will have a windfall with it anyway. Just watch. ‘Muties Breed!’ ‘New Race Set to Dominate Next Generation of Children!’”

Leisha didn’t deny it. “And the second item?”

“It’s sad, Leisha. We’ve just had our first death.”

Her stomach tightened. “Who?”

“Bernie Kuhn. Seattle.” She didn’t know him. “A car accident. It looks pretty straightforward – he lost control on a steep curve when his brakes failed. He had only
been driving a few months. He was seventeen. But the significance here is that his parents have donated his brain and body to Biotech, in conjunction with the pathology department at the Chicago
Medical School. They’re going to take him apart to get the first good look at what prolonged sleeplessness does to the body and brain.”