“There are a group of us here, Sleepless but also something more. Genemod construction. We’re called Superbrights, and I’m the oldest. There are 28 of us over the age of ten. We’re…different from the adults, and they have treated us differently. We’ve taken over Sanctuary, sent the location of all the biological weapons to your president, deactivated the Sanctuary defenses, and stopped the war for independence.”
“Oh dear God,” Jordan said. “Children.”
“If you receive this, it means we Superbrights are being held prisoner by my grandmother and the Sanctuary Council, but we don’t think that can last long. However, we won’t be able to stay here on Sanctuary. We have no real other place to go. I’ve researched you, Leisha Camden, and I’ve researched your ward Drew Arlen. The Lucid Dreamer. We Supers are all lucid dreamers. It’s become an important component of how we think.”
Leisha glanced at Drew. He stared intently at Miranda Sharifi, and at the look in his green eyes, Leisha glanced away.
“I don’t know what will happen next, or when,” Miranda continued. “Maybe Sanctuary will allow us a shuttle. Maybe your government will send for us, or a corporation you control can do that. Maybe some Superbrights, the younger ones, will stay here. But some of us, soon, will need a place to go away from Sanctuary, since we will have caused the arrest for conspiracy to treason of the entire Sanctuary Council. We need a place with security, a place with reasonable equipment we can modify further, and someone to help us with your legal and economic system. You were a lawyer, Ms. Camden. Can we come to you?”
Miranda paused. Leisha felt her eyes prickle.
“There will be with us, I think although I’m not sure, a few Normals. One will probably be my father, Richard Sharifi. I don’t think you can contact me directly to answer this broadcast, although I don’t know for sure what your capabilities are.”
“Not what theirs are,” Stella said, sounding dazed. Drew shot her an amused look.
“Thank you,” Miranda finished awkwardly. She shifted weight, one foot on top of the other, and suddenly looked even younger. “If…if Drew Arlen is with you when you receive this, and if you’re willing to let us Superbrights come to you, please ask him to stay. I’d like…I’d like to meet him.”
Suddenly Miranda smiled, a smile of such cynicism that Leisha was startled. This was no child after all. “You see,” Miranda said, “we come to you as beggars. Nothing to offer, nothing to trade. Just need.” She disappeared and a sudden three-dimensional graphic appeared on the screen, a complex globe made of strings of words looped and crossed and balanced, each word or phrase an idea that connected to the next, the whole thing color-coded in ways that emphasized the stresses and balances and trade-offs in meaning from concepts that opposed or reinforced or modified each other. The globe lingered, rotating slowly.
“What on earth is that?” Stella said.
Leisha got up and walked around the globe slightly faster than it rotated, studying it. Her knees felt shaky. “I think…I think it’s a philosophical argument.”
“Ahhhhhhhhh,” Drew said.
Leisha looked at the globe. Her eye snagged on a phrase in green in an outer layer: a house divided: Lincoln. Abruptly she sat down on the floor.
Stella took refuge in a flurry of domestic activity. “If there’s twenty-eight of them, and if they double up, we can open the west wing and move Richard and Ada to—”
“I won’t be here,” Richard said quietly.
“But Richard! Your son—” Stella broke off, looking embarrassed.
“That was another life.”
“But Richard—” Stella’s face began to redden. Richard slipped quietly from the room. The only one he looked at directly was Drew, who gazed steadily back.
Leisha saw none of this. She sat on the floor, studying Miranda’s string-globe until the broadcast ended and the hologram vanished. Then she looked up at the three left, Stella and Jordan and Drew. Stella took in a sharp breath.
“Leisha…your face…”
“Things change,” Leisha said, cross-legged and radiant on the floor. “There are second and third chances. And fourth and fifth.”
“Well, of course,” Stella said, puzzled. “Leisha, please get up!”
“Things do change,” Leisha repeated, like a little girl. “Not just changes in degree. Changes in kind. Even for us. After all. After all. After all.”
There were thirty-six of them, flown by government plane from Washington; the whole thing had taken much longer than anyone but Leisha, the ex-lawyer, had expected. Twenty-seven “Superbrights”: Miri, Nikos, Allen, Terry, Diane, Christy, Jonathan, Mark, Ludie, Joanna, Toshio, Peter, Sara, James, Raoul, Victoria, Anne, Marty, Bill, Audrey, Alex, Miguel, Brian, Rebecca, Cathy, Victor, and Jane. Such familiar names for such unfamiliar people. And with them there were four “Normal” Sleepless children: Joan, Sam, Hako, and Androula. There were five parents, looking for the most part tenser than their children. Among the parents was Ricky Sharifi.
His dark eyes were patient with pain and he moved hesitantly, as if unsure he had a right to walk on the Earth. When Leisha realized why this looked normal to her, she grimaced. Richard, who now looked younger than his son, had looked like that in the months after Jennifer’s trial.
Jennifer’s first trial. The Sanctuary Council members were all in prison in Washington.
“Is my father here?” Ricky asked Leisha quietly, the first afternoon.
“No. He…he left, Ricky.”
Ricky nodded, unsurprised. He looked as if he had expected this answer. Perhaps he had.
Miranda Sharifi—“Miri”—took the lead from the first. After the bustle of arrival, the equipment and suitcases and security nets and Stella’s elaborate rooming arrangements, Miri came with her father to Leisha’s study. “Thank you for letting us come here, Ms. Camden. We want to work out some form of rent as soon as our assets are unfrozen by your government.”
“Call me Leisha. And it’s your government, too. But no rent is necessary, Miri. We’re glad to have you here.”
Miri’s dark eyes studied her. They were strange eyes, Leisha thought, not for any physical attributes but because they seemed to see things no one else did. She was a little shocked to realize, despite the admiration she already had for Miri, that the girl’s eyes made her uncomfortable. How much did that unswerving gaze see about her? How much did that brain—enhanced, different, better—understand of Leisha’s private soul?
This must have been how Alice had once felt about Leisha. And Leisha had never known, never realized.
Miri smiled. The smile changed her whole face, opened and lighted it. “Thank you, Leisha. That’s very generous. More than that—I think you think of us as your community, and for that we really thank you. Community is an important concept to us. But we’d all prefer to pay you. We’re Yagaiists, you know.”
“I know,” Leisha said, wondering if among the things Miri’s better brain could better understand was irony. She was still sixteen years old.
“Is…is Drew Arlen still here? Or did he go back on tour?”
“He’s still here. He waited for you.”
Miri flushed. Oh, Leisha thought. Oh…
Leisha sent for Drew. He looked up at Miri from his powerchair, his handsome face openly interested, and held out his hand.