Donna stares. “What’s got into you, Carol Ann? You used to be so patient and helpful but—”
“I’m sick of being patient and helpful! I’m sick of dogs pooping and barking and chewing things up twenty-four hours a day!”
“—since you turned eighteen you just turned into a fucking bitch.”
Eighteen. I had a birthday last week. I forgot all about it. And so, until this very minute I’d bet, did everybody else. Except to tell me that it’s turned me into a bitch.
I shove Precious at Donna, so hard that Precious starts crying again. Donna looks at me with wide, hurt eyes, innocent as flowers. I hate her. I hate all of it, the dogs and the poorness and my birthday and everything else. Nothing works right, and all I want to do is get away from all of it. I stumble across the yard, so worked up I can’t see straight, and so I miss the aircar land. I don’t even know it’s there until Donna says soft, like it’s a prayer, “O fucking crazy hellfire god.”
I’ve never seen an aircar for real, only on vid. This one is small, built for two people. Maybe only one. The Y-energy cones on the sleek sides are painted a different shade of gray from the body. In our yard it looks like a bullet on a torn-up and rotted body. A man gets out, and Donna gasps. “Tony Indivino!”
It really is. Even I recognize him from vid. He’s medium height, a little stocky, not particularly good-looking. His family couldn’t afford any genemods except sleeplessness, according to the vid. He starts across the yard toward us, and Donna and I stand up. She thrusts Precious back at me and smoothes her skirt. Precious looks wide-eyed at the car that just dropped out of the sky, and all at once she stops fussing. There, that’s what we need: an aircar to land every five minutes to distract her from her aching teeth.
“Hello. May I please speak with David Benson?”
Donna smiles, and I see his reaction in his eyes. He doesn’t like reacting, but he reacts anyway. A Sleepless man is still a male.
“David Benson’s not here right this minute. I’m his daughter, Donna. Can I help you, Mr. Indivino?”
I say, “You’re here because of the dogs.”
“Carol Ann!” Donna says. “Where’re your manners?”
Tony Indivino hesitates, but only for a second. “That’s right. I want to talk to your father about the dogs.”
I push. “You want to buy one.”
He looks at me then, hard. His eyes are gray, with little flecks of brown in them. I say again, just so there’s no mistake. “You want to buy a dog. That’s the only reason my father talks about them to anybody.”
He finally smiles, amused. “Okay. Sure. I want to buy one.”
Donna cries, “But they aren’t even trained yet!”
She doesn’t have a glimmer. Tony Indivino needs a trained guard dog like he needs a third foot. The Sleepless must have all kinds of Y-shields, bodyguards, secret weapons to protect themselves. Nobody’s going to hurt Tony Indivino. He’ll buy this dog so his scientist buddies can take it apart in some lab, see how it’s different from other dogs. All I care is how much he’ll pay for it. Maybe I can get a grand out of him. He’s one of the “poor” Sleepless (yeah, right), but his girlfriend is supposed to be Jennifer Sharifi. The daughter of an Arab oil prince and an American holo star, she’s the richest woman in the entire world.
Maybe two grand. A bed for Precious, a terminal, some new clothes…
Donna says, “Well, I suppose you could buy the dog now and then come back for it later, after I done finish its guard training.” She likes this idea.
Indivino says, “How is the training going?”
“Fine,” I say, real fast. I’m not going to give him an excuse to pay less. I stare at Donna, who finally nods.
“Really?” Indivino says.
“Why wouldn’t the training go good?” Donna says.
His voice turns serious. “No specific reason that I know of. But that’s what I wanted to talk to your father about.”
“Then you can talk to me. Daddy’s gone for two-three days, hunting in the mountains,” I lie. “But I can repeat to him any information you like.”
He doesn’t even hesitate. Probably Sleepless are used to young people accepting responsibility, even better than the adults around them. The oldest Sleepless is only twenty-seven.
He says, “What I wanted to tell your father isn’t hard data. It’s more a principle, but a very important one. It’s this: advanced biologic systems are very complex. They’re past that critical point beyond which behavior is complicated but predictable, and into the realm where behavior becomes chaotic, and more sensitive to small differences in initial conditions. Do you know what that means?”
“No.” Donna says, and smiles.
“Sort of,” I say, because I had this in the high-school software. He simplifies it for me anyway.
“It means that genemod changes that worked one way in humans might not work the same way in dogs. Or they might work the same way in most dogs but not in your dogs. Or in some of your dogs but not in others from the same litter but with different genetic makeup, or different in vitro conditions, or different environmental conditions.”
Donna says, “But our dogs are sleepless just exactly like you sleepless humans are, Mr. Indivino. Come see!”
He looks at me. I say, “It means we should be careful.”
“Yes,” he says, “there isn’t that much research on canine sleeplessness to guide you.”
No applications to fund the FDA approval process, since no one has identified significant market opportunity. But, come to think of it, how had Tony Indivino heard of this particular market opportunity? Daddy isn’t advertising yet. He doesn’t have anything to advertise with: no terminal, no money. I feel a prickle on my spine, and Precious squirms in my arms. I put her down. She toddles toward the aircar.
Donna’s saying, “You’ve got to come choose your pup, Mr. Indivino. Wait till you see them, they’re so cute you—”
“How’d you hear about us?” I demand. “Who told you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Are you going to report Daddy to the law?” Amazingly, this only occurs to me now. Sleepless generally keep inside the law, the vids all say. Maybe there’s too many eyes on them not to.
“No, I’m not going to report to the law. I’m here only to warn you to be careful.”
“Why? What’s it to you if our business fails?” I almost say “like our others,” but I catch myself in time. I don’t want him feeling sorry for us.
“Your business is nothing to me personally,” he says coolly. “But we Sleepless like to keep an eye on genetic research. I’m sure you can see why. Even underground research. How we do that really isn’t your concern. I’m here only to tell you what I have. And maybe a little out of curiosity.”
Donna says brightly, “Then you’re curious to see the pups and choose your very own!”
She takes him by the hand and leads him away, toward the house. Precious is trying to climb the smooth, rounded side of the aircar, which of course she can’t do. In a minute she’ll be on her little ass in the dirt. I start toward her and leave Tony Indivino to Donna and the sleepless pups. It doesn’t matter which pup he picks, or if he ever actually comes back for it. It only matters that he pays before he leaves.
Which he does. Two and a half thousand dollars, and in certified preloaded credit chips, not just transfers. I hold the chips in my hand while Donna dances and cheers around the kitchen, setting the dogs to barking, and Precious stands up in her high chair and crows. It’s chaos. For once, I don’t care. This money is going to make all the difference in the world to us.