“Jim! What—”
But his stretcher rolls on past. A cop moves in beside me. “Who are you, miss?”
“I live here! He’s… where’s my sister?”
Donna isn’t inside. She’s already gone to work. The cop tells me they’ve sent for her, she’s on her way, she’s safe.
“Jim…”
“The medic says he’ll be all right. Just roughed up some. Now you tell me, miss. Is anything missing?”
I look around Donna’s apartment. Drawers have been pulled out, furniture turned over, the bed flung apart. I pretend to study the mess, but I already know. Everything’s still here except five blue plastic cards, and the next time I try to find Bent on the Subnet, it’ll be gone.
Arrowgene must not’ve been a small underground lab after all. It must’ve been part of a bigger organization, with terminal-trace programs. With enforcers. With the idea of protecting their truckers and scientists and anonymity.
“Miss?”
There was no way I could fight that sort of organization. Nobody could, not even the government, or the FBI would have shut it down by now. Nobody with enough power and information… except maybe one other organization.
“Miss, I asked you if you notice anything missing.”
“No,” I say. “Everything here is just the way it always was.”
Tony Indivino was already living in Sanctuary when he visited us last spring. We didn’t know that then. We didn’t care, then.
Sanctuary is nearly completed by the time I arrive there. It’s huge, half of a rural New York State county circled by a Y-field. Most of the Sleepless in the United States are moving inside, where they feel safe. They trade with the rest of the world, information and inventions and money deals I don’t understand. Mostly they trade data, but you can also find a few tangible Sleepless products on the Net. The ones on the Subnet are fakes.
I stand at the front gate of Sanctuary in a crowd of tourists who’ve gotten off bus after bus. They mutter and glare.
“Walling themselves in, and us out.”
“They better stay the fuck in there if they know what’s good for them.”
“A monument to genemod narcissism.”
I look at the man who says that. He looks genemod himself, handsome and well dressed, but apparently not a Sleepless. And just as resentful as the rest of the haters who still spent their good money to travel here to a place full of people they’re jealous of. Go figure.
On the front of the gate is a big screen with the Sleepless, Inc. logo on it: an open eye. Some kids throw rocks at it, big ones, but the screen doesn’t waver. Protected by a Y-field. It says quietly, over and over, “To leave a message for Sanctuary, Incorporated, or for any individual inside, please speak clearly into one of the five recorders below. Thank you. To leave a message for Sanctuary, Incorporated—”
People are lined up to leave messages, mostly nasty. I can guess how this works. A smart system sorts through the messages, flagging them by key word, choosing the ones that actually get delivered. If any do. People with real business with Sanctuary don’t use this channel.
Except that I have real business with Sanctuary.
When it’s my turn, I speak quietly, so the jerks behind me can’t hear.
“This is a message for Tony Indivino, from Carol Benson. You came to our house in Forager County, Pennsylvania, last March to warn us about the genemod dogs my Daddy bought on the Subnet. They were Sleepless embryos implanted in a mongrel bitch, bought from a company called Arrowgene. You were right about the dogs, and now I need to talk with you. Just for a minute. Please see me.” And then, after I could get the words up my throat, “My baby sister was killed by one of those sleepless dogs.”
I wait. Nothing happens. The man in line behind me finally says, “I think it’s my turn now.” When he repeats it, I step aside.
How long does the smart program take? And what if Tony Indivino isn’t inside Sanctuary? He must leave sometime; he came to us.
Five minutes later the large screen flashes a different icon: my name. It says, “Will Ms. Carol Benson please step into the elevator.” And there it is, a sudden dimple in the gate like a small elevator, complete with wood-paneled walls. Before the surprised people around me can react, I dart inside. The “door” closes. I touch it, and the walls, too; they’re pure force field, with holos of wooden paneling. The whole thing doesn’t move at all. It just “opens” on the other side, into a real room with white foamcast walls, clean-lined white sofas, and a wall screen which says, “Please wait, Ms. Benson, a few minutes longer.”
I want to try the door at the far end of the room, to see if it’s real. To see if it’s locked. To see if I can really go into Sanctuary, where sleepers aren’t allowed. But I don’t dare. I’m a beggar here.
The door opens and a woman walks in, alone. Tall, with long black hair, dressed in jeans and sweater. She is more beautiful, and more exotic, for real than on vid.
“Ms. Benson, I’m Jennifer Sharifi, Tony Indivino’s associate. Tony cannot come himself. Please tell me what happened with the sleepless dogs.”
She’s nothing like Tony Indivino. He was friendly. She’s cold, like some queen talking to a grubby peasant. But there’s a weird nervousness to her, too. She keeps pushing back that long black hair, even when it’s not in her face. I don’t like her. But I need her.
I say, “My father ordered the embryos on the Subnet, from Arrowgene. The dogs were engineered to not—”
“I know all that,” Jennifer Sharifi interrupts. “Tony told me about his visit to you. What happened subsequently?”
Does she remember everything “Tony” ever told her? Maybe she does. She’s genemod for every ability possible. Suddenly I remember a story Mama read to Donna and me when we were small. “Sleeping Beauty.” Fairy-blessed at her christening with beauty, intelligence, grace, talent, fortune…
“How did your sister die?” Jennifer Sharifi asks, and pushes back her long hair. “Did a Sleepless dog kill her?”
“Yes. No. Not deliberately. Precious—she was two—was bothering the dog while it ate, and it just cuffed her and she fell and she hit the ground at an angle where her neck…” I can’t finish.
“Had the dogs been acting out of character before that?”
“Yes. My sister—my other sister—couldn’t get them trained right. She said they were more like cats. They just didn’t… want to be trained.”
She was silent so long I finally said, “Ms. Sharifi, I came here to—”
“Biological systems are very complex,” she says. “And species are not identical in their neural inheritance, even when structures seem completely analogous. A dog is not a human being, and sleeplessness doesn’t affect both equally.”
“I already know that!” I snap. It’s what Tony Indivino said last March, in easier words. “Tell me now what killed my sister! If you know!”
“We know,” she says, precisely. But her hand goes again to her long dark hair. “We keep track of all research worldwide on sleeplessness, even that not yet published on the Net. A Danish institute is doing work on canine sleeplessness. The key is dreaming.”
“Dreaming?” I don’t expect this.
“Yes. Let me try to explain it in terms you can understand.” She thinks a minute, and I see she doesn’t know how she sounds. Or else she doesn’t care.
“One facet of the human brain is its ability to imagine different realities. Today I don’t have a cake. I picture the cake I want, and tomorrow I construct it. Or a house, or a concerto, or a city. That’s one way the brain uses its ability to imagine alternate realities. Another way is to think up fantasies that never will or could be, like stories about magic. Another way is through dreaming, asleep at night. Are you following me?”