Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  The whole house was full of light. Light bounded off the lake, streamed across the high white ceilings, puddled on the shining wooden floors. She and Alice moved continually through light, and sometimes Leisha would stop and tip back her head and let it flow over her face. She could feel it, like water.

  The best light, of course, was in the conservatory. That’s where Daddy liked to be when he was home from making money. Daddy potted plants and watered trees, humming, and Leisha and Alice ran between the wooden tables of flowers with their wonderful earthy smells, running from the dark side of the conservatory where the big purple flowers grew to the sunshine side with sprays of yellow flowers, running back and forth, in and out of the light. “Growth,” Daddy said to her, “flowers all fulfilling their promise. Alice, be careful! You almost knocked over that orchid!” Alice, obedient, would stop running for a while. Daddy never told Leisha to stop running.

  After a while the light would go away. Alice and Leisha would have their baths, and then Alice would get quiet, or cranky. She wouldn’t play nice with Leisha, even when Leisha let her choose the game or even have all the best dolls. Then Nanny would take Alice to “bed,” and Leisha would talk with Daddy some more until Daddy said he had to work in his study with the papers that made money. Leisha always felt a moment of regret that he had to go do that, but the moment never lasted very long because Mamselle would arrive and start Leisha’s lessons, which she liked. Learning things was so interesting! She could already sing twenty songs and write all the letters in the alphabet and count to fifty. And by the time lessons were done, the light had come back, and it was time for breakfast.

  Breakfast was the only time Leisha didn’t like. Daddy had gone to the office, and Leisha and Alice had breakfast with Mommy in the big dining room. Mommy sat in a red robe, which Leisha liked, and she didn’t smell funny or talk funny the way she would later in the day, but still breakfast wasn’t fun. Mommy always started with The Question.

  “Alice, sweetheart, how did you sleep?”

  “Fine, Mommy.”

  “Did you have any nice dreams?”

  For a long time Alice said no. Then one day she said, “I dreamed about a horse. I was riding him.” Mommy clapped her hands and kissed Alice and gave her an extra sticky bun. After that Alice always had a dream to tell Mommy.

  Once Leisha said, “I had a dream, too. I dreamed light was coming in the window and it wrapped all around me like a blanket and then it kissed me on my eyes.”

  Mommy put down her coffee cup so hard that coffee sloshed out of it. “Don’t lie to me, Leisha. You did not have a dream.”

  “Yes, I did,” Leisha said.

  “Only children who sleep can have dreams. Don’t lie to me. You did not have a dream.”

  “Yes I did! I did!” Leisha shouted. She could see it, almost: The light streaming in the window and wrapping around her like a golden blanket.

  “I will not tolerate a child who is a liar! Do you hear me, Leisha—I won’t tolerate it!”

  “You’re a liar!” Leisha shouted, knowing the words weren’t true, hating herself because they weren’t true but hating Mommy more and that was wrong, too, and there sat Alice stiff and frozen with her eyes wide, Alice was scared and it was Leisha’s fault.

  Mommy called sharply, “Nanny! Nanny! Take Leisha to her room at once. She can’t sit with civilized people if she can’t refrain from telling lies!”

  Leisha started to cry. Nanny carried her out of the room. Leisha hadn’t even had her breakfast. But she didn’t care about that; all she could see while she cried was Alice’s eyes, scared like that, reflecting broken bits of light.

  But Leisha didn’t cry long. Nanny read her a story, and then played Data Jump with her, and then Alice came up and Nanny drove them both into Chicago to the zoo where there were wonderful animals to see, animals Leisha could not have dreamed—nor Alice either. And by the time they came back Mommy had gone to her room and Leisha knew that she would stay there with the glasses of funny-smelling stuff the rest of the day and Leisha would not have to see her.

  But that night, she went to her mother’s room.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she told Mamselle. Mamselle said, “Do you need any help?” maybe because Alice still needed help in the bathroom. But Leisha didn’t, and she thanked Mamselle. Then she sat on the toilet for a minute even though nothing came, so that what she had told Mamselle wouldn’t be a lie.

  Leisha tiptoed down the hall. She went first into Alice’s room. A little light in a wall socket burned near the “crib.” There was no crib in Leisha’s room. Leisha looked at her sister through the bars. Alice lay on her side, with her eyes closed. The lids of the eyes fluttered quickly, like curtains blowing in the wind. Alice’s chin and neck looked loose.

  Leisha closed the door very carefully and went to her parents’ room.

  They didn’t “sleep” in a crib but in a huge enormous “bed,” with enough room between them for more people. Mommy’s eyelids weren’t fluttering; she lay on her back making a hrrr-hrrr sound through her nose. The funny smell was strong on her. Leisha backed away and tiptoed over to Daddy. He looked like Alice, except that his neck and chin looked even looser, folds of skin collapsed like the tent that had fallen down in the backyard. It scared Leisha to see him like that. Then Daddy’s eyes flew open so suddenly that Leisha screamed.

  Daddy rolled out of bed and picked her up, looking quickly at Mommy. But she didn’t move. Daddy was wearing only his underpants. He carried Leisha out into the hall, where Mamselle came rushing up saying, “Oh, sir, I’m sorry, she just said she was going to the bathroom—”

  “It’s all right,” Daddy said. “I’ll take her with me.”

  “No!” Leisha screamed, because. Daddy was only in his underpants and his neck had looked all funny and the room smelled bad because of Mommy. But Daddy carried her into the conservatory, set her down on a bench, wrapped himself in a piece of green plastic that was supposed to cover up plants, and sat down next to her.

  “Now, what happened, Leisha? What were you doing?”

  Leisha didn’t answer.

  “You were looking at people sleeping, weren’t you?” Daddy said, and because his voice was softer Leisha mumbled, “Yes.” She immediately felt better; it felt good not to lie.

  “You were looking at people sleeping because you don’t sleep and you were curious; weren’t you? Like Curious George in your book?”

  “Yes,” Leisha said. “I thought you said, you made money in your study all night!”

  Daddy smiled. “Not all night. Some of it. But then I sleep, although not very much.” He, took Leisha on his lap. “I don’t need much sleep, so I get a lot more done at night than most people. Different people need different amounts of sleep. And a few, a very few, are like you. You don’t need any.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re special. Better than other people. Before you were born, I had some doctors help make you that way.”

  “Why?”

  “So you could do anything you want to and make manifest your own individuality.”

  Leisha twisted in his arms to stare at him; the words meant nothing. Daddy reached over and touched a single flower growing on a tall potted tree. The flower had thick white petals like the cream he put in coffee, and the center was a light pink.

  “See, Leisha—this tree made this flower. Because it can. Only this tree can make this kind of wonderful flower. That plant hanging up there can’t, and those can’t either. Only this tree. Therefore the most important thing in the world for this tree to do is grow this flower. The flower is the tree’s individuality—that means just it, and nothing else—made manifest. Nothing else matters.”

  “I don’t understand, Daddy.”

  “You will. Someday.”

  “But I want to understand now,” Leisha said, and Daddy laughed with pure delight and hugged her. The hug felt good, but Leisha still wanted to understand.

  “When you make money
, is that your indiv . . . that thing?”

  “Yes,” Daddy said happily.

  “Then nobody else can make money? Like only that tree can make that flower?”

  “Nobody else can make it just the way I do.”

  “What do you do with the money?”

  “I buy things for you. This house, your dresses, Mamselle to teach you, the car to ride in.”

  “What does the tree do with the flower?”

  “Glories in it,” Daddy said, which made no sense. “Excellence is what counts, Leisha. Excellence supported by individual effort. And that’s all that counts.”

  “I’m cold, Daddy.”

  “Then I better bring you back to Mamselle.”

  Leisha didn’t move. She touched the flower with one finger. “I want to sleep, Daddy.”

  “No, you don’t, sweetheart. Sleep is just lost time, wasted life. It’s a little death.”

  “Alice sleeps.”

  “Alice isn’t like you.”

  “Alice isn’t special?”

  “No. You are.”

  “Why didn’t you make Alice special, too?”

  “Alice made herself. I didn’t have a chance to make her special.”

  The whole thing was too hard. Leisha stopped stroking the flower and slipped off Daddy’s lap. He smiled at her. “My little questioner. When you grow up, you’ll find your own excellence, and it will be a new order, a specialness the world hasn’t ever seen before. You might even be like Kenzo Yagai. He made the Yagai generator that powers the world.”

  “Daddy, you look funny wrapped in the flower plastic.” Leisha laughed. Daddy did, too. But then she said, “When I grow up, I’ll make my specialness find a way to make Alice special, too,” and Daddy stopped laughing.

  He took her back to Mamselle, who taught her to write her name, which was so exciting she forgot about the puzzling talk with Daddy. There were six letters, all different, and together they were her name. Leisha wrote it over and over, laughing, and Mamselle laughed too. But later, in the morning, Leisha thought again about the talk with Daddy. She thought of it often, turning the unfamiliar words over and over in her mind like small hard stones, but the part she thought about most wasn’t a word. It was the frown on Daddy’s face when she told him she would use her specialness to make Alice special, too.

  Every week Dr. Melling came to see Leisha and Alice, sometimes alone, sometimes with other people. Leisha and Alice both liked Dr. Melling, who laughed a lot and whose eyes were bright and warm. Often Daddy was there, too. Dr. Melling played games with them, first with Alice and Leisha separately and then together. She took their pictures and weighed them. She made them lie down on a table and stuck little metal things to their temples, which sounded scary but wasn’t because there were so many machines to watch, all making interesting noises, while you were lying there. Dr. Melling was as good at answering questions as Daddy. Once Leisha said, “Is Dr. Melling a special person? Like Kenzo Yagai?” And Daddy laughed and glanced at Dr. Melling and said, “Oh, yes, indeed.”

  When Leisha was five she and Alice started school. Daddy’s driver took them every day into Chicago. They were in different rooms, which disappointed Leisha. The kids in Leisha’s room were all older. But from the first day she adored school, with its fascinating science equipment and electronic drawers full of math puzzlers and other children to find countries on the map with. In half a year she had been moved to yet a different room, where the kids were still older, but they were nonetheless nice to her. Leisha started to learn Japanese. She loved drawing the beautiful characters on thick white paper. “The Sauley School was a good choice,” Daddy said.

  But Alice didn’t like the Sauley School. She wanted to go to school on the same yellow bus as Cook’s daughter. She cried and threw her paints on the floor at the Sauley School. Then Mommy came out of her room—Leisha hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, although she knew Alice had—and threw some candlesticks from the mantlepiece on the floor. The candlesticks, which were china, broke. Leisha ran to pick up the pieces while Mommy and Daddy screamed at each other in the hall by the big staircase.

  “She’s my daughter, too! And I say she can go!”

  “You don’t have the right to say anything about it! A weepy drunk, the most rotten role model possible for both of them . . . and I thought I was getting a fine English aristocrat!”

  “You got what you paid for! Nothing! Not that you ever needed anything from me or anybody else!”

  “Stop it!” Leisha cried. “Stop it!” and there was silence in the hall. Leisha cut her fingers on the china; blood streamed onto the rug. Daddy rushed in and picked her up. “Stop it,” Leisha sobbed, and didn’t understand when Daddy said quietly, “You stop it, Leisha. Nothing they do should touch you at all. You have to be at least that strong.”

  Leisha buried her head in Daddy’s shoulder. Alice transferred to Carl Sandburg Elementary School, riding there on the yellow school bus with Cook’s daughter.

  A few weeks later Daddy told them that Mommy was going away for a few weeks to a hospital, to stop drinking so much. When Mommy came out, he said, she was going to live somewhere else for a while. She and Daddy were not happy. Leisha and Alice would stay with Daddy and they would visit Mommy sometimes. He told them this very carefully, finding the right words for truth. Truth was very important, Leisha already knew. Truth was being true to yourself, your specialness. Your individuality. An individual respected facts, and so always told the truth.

  Mommy, Daddy did not say but Leisha knew, did not respect facts.

  “I don’t want Mommy to go away,” Alice said. She started to cry. Leisha thought Daddy would pick Alice up, but he didn’t. He just stood there looking at them both.

  Leisha put her arms around Alice. “It’s all right, Alice. It’s all right! We’ll make it all right! I’ll play with you all the time we’re not in school so you don’t miss Mommy!”

  Alice clung to Leisha. Leisha turned her head so she didn’t have to see Daddy’s face.

  3

  Kenzo Yagai was coming to the United States to lecture. The title of his talk, which he would give in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, with a repeat in Washington as a special address to Congress, was “The Further Political Implications of Inexpensive Power.” Leisha Camden, eleven years old, was going to have a private introduction after the Chicago talk, arranged by her father.

  She had studied the theory of cold fusion at school, and her Global Studies teacher had traced the changes in the world resulting from Yagai’s patented, low-cost applications of what had, until him, been unworkable theory. The rising prosperity of the Third World, the last death throes of the old communist systems, the decline of the oil states, the renewed economic power of the United States. Her study group had written a news script, filmed with the school’s professional-quality equipment, about how a 1985 American family lived with expensive energy costs and a belief in tax-supported help, while a 2019 family lived with cheap energy and a belief in the contract as the basis of civilization. Parts of her own research puzzled Leisha.

  “Japan thinks Kenzo Yagai was a traitor to his own country,” she said to Daddy at supper.

  “No,” Camden said. “Some Japanese think that. Watch out for generalizations, Leisha. Yagai patented and marketed Y-energy first in the United States because here there were at least the dying embers of individual enterprise. Because of his invention, our entire country has slowly swung back toward an individual meritocracy, and Japan has slowly been forced to follow.”

  “Your father held that belief all along,” Susan said. “Eat your peas, Leisha.” Leisha ate her peas. Susan and Daddy had only been married less than a year; it still felt a little strange to have her there. But nice. Daddy said Susan was a valuable addition to their household: intelligent, motivated, and cheerful. Like Leisha herself.

  “Remember, Leisha,” Camden said, “a man’s worth to society and to himself doesn’t rest on what he thinks other people should d
o or be or feel, but on himself. On what he can actually do, and do well. People trade what they do well, and everyone benefits. The basic tool of civilization is the contract. Contracts are voluntary and mutually beneficial. As opposed to coercion, which is wrong.”

  “The strong have no right to take anything from the weak by force,” Susan said. “Alice, eat your peas, too, honey.”

  “Nor the weak to take anything by force from the strong,” Camden said. “That’s the basis of what you’ll hear Kenzo Yagai discuss tonight, Leisha.”

  Alice said, “I don’t like peas.”

  Camden said, “Your body does. They’re good for you.”

  Alice smiled. Leisha felt her heart lift; Alice didn’t smile much at dinner anymore. “My body doesn’t have a contract with the peas.”

  Camden said, a little impatiently, “Yes, it does. Your body benefits from them. Now eat.”

  Alice’s smile vanished. Leisha looked down at her plate. Suddenly she saw a way out. “No, Daddy look—Alice’s body benefits, but the peas don’t! It’s not a mutually beneficial consideration—so there’s no contract! Alice is right!”

  Camden let out a shout of laughter. To Susan he said, “Eleven years old . . . eleven.” Even Alice smiled, and Leisha waved her spoon triumphantly, light glinting off the bowl and dancing silver on the opposite wall.

  But even so, Alice did not want to go hear Kenzo Yagai. She was going to sleep over at her friend Julie’s house; they were going to curl their hair together. More surprisingly, Susan wasn’t coming either. She and Daddy looked at each other a little funny at the front door, Leisha thought, but Leisha was too excited to think about this. She was going to hear Kenzo Yagai.