The one time they had not been able to remove an abused Sleepless child legally, 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 back yard 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 legally 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 sleepless born in the United States. Of those, 2,691 were part of the Group via the net. An additional 701 were as yet too young to use a modem. Only thirty-six 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?” It had been six years since the interleukin-1 drinking in the woods, but the evening remained vivid to Leisha. So did Jennifer Sharifi.
“Yes. She’s got the money to do it. Tony’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 4:00 A.M. preparing her classes. From four to five she handled legal matters for the Group. At 5:00 A.M. she called Tony, still in Chicago. He had finished high school, done one semester at Northwestern, and at Christmas vacation 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 answers are 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 she had been introduced to by Richard. 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 from 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 comlink; 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 field day 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.”
“They should,” Leisha said. “That poor kid. But what are you so afraid they’ll find?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. But whatever it is, if the haters can use it against us, they will.”
“You’re paranoid, Tony.”
“Impossible. The Sleepless have personalities calmer and more reality-oriented than the norm. Don’t you read the literature?”