Richard picked up a bracelet. Leisha recognized it; she had given it to him in the summer. His voice was quiet. “No. It’s not a choice.” He played with the gold links a minute, then looked at her. “Not yet.”
By spring break, Camden walked more slowly. He took medicine for his blood pressure, his heart. He and Susan, he told Leisha, were getting a divorce. “She changed, Leisha, after I married her. You saw that. She was independent and productive and happy, and then after a few years she stopped all that and became a shrew. A whining shrew.” He shook his head in genuine bewilderment. “You saw the change.”
Leisha had. A memory came to her: Susan leading her and Alice in “games” that were actually controlled cerebral-performance tests Susan’s braids dancing around her sparkling eyes. Alice had loved Susan then, as much as Leisha had.
“Dad, I want Alice’s address.”
“I told you up at Harvard, I don’t have it,” Camden said. He shifted in his chair, the impatient gesture of a body that never expected to wear out. In January Kenzo Yagai had died of pancreatic cancer; Camden had taken the news hard. “I make her allowance through an attorney. By her choice.”
“Then I want the address of the attorney.”
The attorney, a quenched-looking man named John Jaworski, 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,” Jaworski said, and something flickered in 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 Jaworski’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 hover car and driver — she had learned to drive, but only ground cars 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 newsnet. 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 mountains rose in layer upon layer 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.
SIX
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, clearly first in her graduating class. The closest three contenders were Jonathan Cocchiara, Len Carter, 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 — they 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 a while. 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.