Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  A woman gasped. One of the bride’s ladies. At the sound, the others—waiting women, pages, royal guards—turned and saw me.

  The guards and pages had all been warned. I could picture the word running around court, loose as green-apple stools: Magic clothes, he will wear them for the procession. If you wish to keep your post, you must be able to see . . . They all pretended, except the foreign women, who had, of course, not been told. Their black eyes all widened in surprise. But they were women; they said nothing.

  The men did. Guards, pages, the viceroy himself, all could not help showing the first shock on their faces, as Prince Jasper, second in line for the throne, stood before them naked. And all then covered their shock and murmured words of praise for the clothes I was not wearing: extraordinary, beautiful, unsurpassed. And from one inventive guard, who had undoubtedly spent time thinking up the compliment, He outshines the bride.

  I walked up to my brother’s betrothed and offered her my arm. She took it, her face stony. I understood. To walk to her betrothal on the arm of a naked man . . . but I would make it all up to her later. After Florian’s courtiers were exposed as liars and fools, and Florian himself disgraced as a weakling served by lairs and fools. I would make it up to her when her red-lipped, green-nailed body was mine.

  My manhood had come erect.

  Well, so much the better. Let them see what a real man looked like, as he replaced the puny softling who was their crown prince. I held my shoulders back and my spine straight, and we started the processional walk from the cathedral and into the sunlight.

  Gasps. Exclamations. Lies.

  “Look at Prince Jasper—”

  “Where did he get such robes?”

  “Never have I seen—”

  “The colors . . . the sash . . . the lightness . . .”

  The lies.

  We reached the dais. Florian looked stunned, my father displeased. I bowed. “Your Royal Highness my brother, I present your bride.”

  She moved from my arm and curtsied, very low, her ripe breasts bobbing. No one noticed. All eyes were still on me. Florian said, choking, “Brother . . .”

  But before he could finish his condemnation—for Florian, as I had always known, would never pretend to see what he has not—another voice spoke loudly.

  “But—the prince has no clothes on! He is naked!”

  Everyone looked around. It was a child, the very youngest of the pages, standing in his velvets beside the dais. His golden curls shone in the sunlight, and his innocent face was turned upward to me.

  Too innocent a face. Too blank, too vacant-eyed, the mouth a little agape . . .

  “I told you!” someone hissed to my right. “Not fit to be a page, no matter whose son he is! An idiot child . . .” Other hands reached out, grabbed the little boy, led him away. He turned to look over his shoulder at me, his white, empty face as innocent as an infant’s. And as unfit as an infant to serve a king.

  I felt as if I had been kicked in the chest. My manhood abruptly wilted.

  Finally Florian spoke. “A wonderful robe, my brother. No one has ever seen such clothing. You outshine us easily, and we are grateful for the trouble you have taken to array yourself so wonderfully to honor our beautiful bride.”

  There was a long exhalation from the crowd, a sigh of relief. The prince was not angry at having been outshone. Florian the generous-spirited, Florian the mild.

  I looked down at my body. To my eyes it looked naked as the day I was born. Frantically I tried to pinch folds of my tunic between my fingers. I could feel nothing.

  Florian continued graciously. “I confess we did not expect such honor from you. It is a wonderful surprise. On this most happy day, we are humbled to be reminded that things may not always be as they seem.”

  And what in all of damned hell did he mean by that? Had he somehow divined my scheme . . . had the two rogues told him? Was the whole court in on it, pretending to see clothing where there was none? Or was I indeed wearing a wonderful magic robe that only the honest could see . . . and I could not? Was I or was I not naked?

  I had to pretend I was not. I had to sit naked on the dais while the king blessed this union. I had to dine naked in the Great Hall. I had to dance naked, my manhood flopping like limp turkey wattle, and see people glancing at me covertly: in displeasure, in amazement, in amusement. Was the displeasure because I was obscene, or because I had tried to upstage the bride? Was the amazement at my wonderful magic clothes, or at my effrontery? Was the amusement because I had failed to outshine the bride, or because I was flaccid, a prince dancing naked in front of his whole court, for the endless hours of the celebration?

  Things may not always be as they seem.

  The new princess smiled at me once as I danced with her, that bold smile from a painted face. But her eyes followed Florian, who treated her with gentle courtesy. She seemed, in her wordless way, to be charmed by him. And for the first time her ladies unveiled, and they all had bright red lips and low-cut dresses and thick eyelids painted green or violet or gold. They all glanced boldly, challengingly, at men. It is apparently the way of their country.

  View the cloth from one angle and it is one color, view it from another and the color shifts . . .

  Sorrel and Telliano have disappeared. I had paid them off—and who else did so as well? Is the new princess from the same country as they, some unimaginable country where the magic arts are sewn into the fabric of the world? Or were Sorrel and Telliano doubly scoundrels, who . . . I can no longer tell the fabric of truth from the lining of lies, not even my own. My head is dizzy. The flutes play, and I whirl—am I naked?—in the dance, the betrothal celebration, which goes on for hours and hours, as if it will never, ever end.

  SLEEPING DOGS

  In the early twenty-first century, genetic engineering for such traits as appearance, intelligence, and health is well established. A Chicago biotech company has just developed a new “genemod” trait: sleeplessness. The nineteen beta-test babies don’t sleep at all, ever, thus gaining eight more hours in their waking days. In addition, the removal of sleep, with its concomitant need to dream, seems to result in dispositions that are more stable and adaptable than average.

  In Beggars in Spain, Roger Camden, billionaire, has his daughter Leisha engineered for sleeplessness. But when the embryo is implanted in Camden’s wife, a second naturally fertilized egg also takes root in the uterine wall. Leisha is born with a twin sister who has none of her genemod advantages.

  While the girls are maturing, a discovery changes both Leisha’s world and the country’s attitude toward sleeplessness. Sleepless tissue regenerates naturally. Leisha and her fellows, by now numbering in the thousands, may live indefinitely. It’s one advantage too many. A great many “norms” react with jealousy, fear, distaste, or anger that the evolutionary race has been rigged against them and their children. As the Sleepless grow up to be successful, rich, and powerful, the country polarizes, a situation made worse by the establishment by the Sleepless of Sanctuary, a defended enclave in New York State where they feel safe.

  The rest of the novel explores the implications of this split between the haves and the have-nots. The Sleepless, led by the widowed Jennifer Sharifi, move through more and more elaborate safety measures to ensure their own isolation, and practice genetic engineering of their own offspring. Sanctuary, now located on an orbital, decides to secede from the United States. Only Leisha and a few other holdouts, including her sister Alice, try to convince the world that there is still just one human species, not two.

  Beggars and Choosers opens a few years after Beggars in Spain. It follows three characters as they try to find ways to live in the tripartite society that the United States has become. Billy Washington is a poor and uneducated “norm,” nearing the end of a hard life, who has finally found a family to love. Diana Covington is a “have,” genemod for every attribute except sleeplessness, but aimless and disillusioned. Drew Arlen is an artist of unusual powers who is also the lover of
the Sleepless Miranda Sharifi, granddaughter of Jennifer Sharifi. Miranda plans to give the “beggars” of the country freedom and independence by forcibly altering the very biology of the human body. She does so, while Diana and the rest of the Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency try to stop her. The results, however, are not what anybody—including Miranda—expected. Only Billy sees the real answer to the novel’s central question, “Who should control radical new technology: scientists, the government, or the people it will affect?”

  Beggars Ride, the conclusion of the trilogy, occurs a generation later. The United States is more balkanized than ever. Most people live in nomadic, self-sufficient tribes that need nothing from anyone else, not even food, thanks to the biological alterations made available by the Sleepless, who have all left Earth. The genemod rich stay in their defended enclaves, increasingly purposeless. The country itself is on the verge of ceasing to exist as a political, cultural, or economic entity.

  But babies keep being born, and the supply of biology-altering drugs left by the Sleepless is running out.

  Jackson Aranow, a doctor totally unneeded by any patients, and his mentally fragile sister, Theresa, are preoccupied with personal concerns. But they get drawn into a struggle between Jennifer Sharifi, released from prison after serving twenty-seven years for treason, and her granddaughter Miranda Sharifi. The war includes engineered viruses that attack not the human body but the mind. At stake is Jennifer’s concept of “safety” for her people versus Miranda’s concept of “progress” for humanity. Neither Jackson nor Theresa possesses the ruthless certainty of the Sharifi women. Yet the Aranows are the ones who find the next tentative step for a country so changed that not even its most basic tenets any longer apply to daily life, and must be “engineered” anew from a new reality.

  —Nancy Kress

  “The new technologies will be dangerous as well as liberating. But in

  the long run, social constraints must bend to new technologies.”

  —Freeman Dyson

  “THIS IS GOING TO MAKE AL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD TO US,” DADDY says when the truck pulls into our yard. “All the difference in the world.”

  I pull my sweater tighter around me. Cool spring air comes in at my elbow, where the sweater has a hole. The truck, which is covered with mud from its trip up the mountain, bumps into a ditch in our driveway and then out of it again. Behind his glass window the driver makes a face like he’s cursing, but I can’t hear him. What I can hear is Precious crying in the house. We don’t have any more oatmeal left, and only a little milk. We surely need something to make all the difference in the world.

  “Closer, closer . . . hold it!” Daddy yells. The driver ignores him. He stops the truck where he chooses, and the back door springs open. In the pens our dogs are going crazy. I walk around the back of the truck and look in.

  Inside, there’s nothing to see except a metal cage, the kind everybody uses to ship dogs. In the cage a bitch lies on her side. She’s no special kind of dog, maybe some Lab, for sure some German shepherd, probably something else to give her that skinny tail. Her eyes are brown, soft as Precious’s. She’s very pregnant.

  “Don’t touch her, Carol Ann, stay off the truck, you don’t know her disposition,” Donna says, pushing me aside. There’s no point in listening to Donna; she doesn’t even listen to herself. She climbs into the truck she told me to stay out of and puts her hand into the cage, petting the bitch and crooning at it. “Hey there, sweetie, you old sweetie you, you’re going to be lucky for us yes you are . . .”

  Donna believes anything Daddy tells her.

  I go around to the front of the truck, which has big orange letters saying STANLEY EXPRESS, in time to see the Arrowgene scientist get out. He has to be the scientist; nobody would hire him to be a trucker. He’s the shortest man I’ve ever seen, slightly over five feet tall, and one of the skinniest, too. He’s all dressed up in a business suit with a formal vest and commpin. I don’t like his looks—he’s staring at Daddy like Daddy’s some kind of oaf—but I’m interested. You’d think genemod scientists would make their own kids taller. Or maybe he’s the first one in his family to be a scientist, and his parents were like us, regular people. That might explain why he’s so rude to Daddy.

  “. . . understand that there is no way you can reach us, ever, for technical support. So ask any questions you might have right now.”

  “I don’t have no questions,” Daddy says, which is true. He never has questions about anything, just goes ahead and gets all enthusiastic about it and sails on like a high cloud on a March day, sunny and blue-sky right up until the second the storm starts. And Donna’s the same way.

  “You’re sure you have no questions?” the scientist asks, and his voice curls over on itself.

  “No, sir,” Daddy says.

  “I have questions,” I say.

  The Arrowgene scientist looks at me like he’s surprised I’m old enough to talk, even though I’m as tall as he is. I’m seventeen but look a whole lot younger. Daddy says, “Carol Ann, I hear Precious crying. Shouldn’t you—”

  “It’s Donna’s turn,” I say, which is a laugh because Donna never tends to Precious, even though Donna’s two years older than I am and should do more work. It isn’t that Donna doesn’t love Precious, she just doesn’t hear the baby cry. Donna doesn’t hear anything she doesn’t want to hear. She’s like Daddy that way.

  I say, “What if the litter the bitch is carrying turns out not to be genemod for what you say, after all? If we can’t ever find you again for technical support, we can’t ever find you again to get our money back.”

  He’s amused, damn him. “That’s true, young lady. Your father and I have been all over this, however. And I assure you that the puppies will have exactly the genetic modifications you requested.”

  “Big? Strong? All male?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they won’t ever sleep? Ever?”

  “No more than Leisha Camden, Jennifer Sharifi, or Tony Indivino.”

  He’s named three of the most famous Sleepless people in the world, two rich girls and a loudmouth man. The vid reporters follow them around, bothering them. They’re all just a few years older than Donna, but they seem much older than that. The women are both beautiful and super-rich. The man, Tony Indivino, calls himself an activist, spouting about “discrimination borne of jealousy and fear” and the “self-assisted evolution of the human race.” He’s pretty obnoxious, but maybe he’s right. I don’t know. I never thought much about sleeplessness before, not until Daddy got this business idea that’s going to make all the difference to us.

  I say to the Arrowgene scientist, “The bitch you implanted the embryos into isn’t a purebred. Are the embryos?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Purebred puppies sell for more money.”

  “Easier to trace. Your father requested as much anonymity as possible.” He scowls. He doesn’t like being questioned.

  “If animals that don’t sleep are going to make such good profits, how come everybody doesn’t try to raise and market them?”

  He probably wouldn’t answer me at all—I’m just another stupid hick to him—except that just then Donna comes around from the back of the truck, leading the bitch on one of our old leashes. The scientist perks up. Donna looks like Mama looked, only maybe even prettier. I remember every line of Mama’s face. Of course I do; it wasn’t that long since she died. Precious isn’t even two. Donna shakes all that red hair, smiles, and walks up to us. The toxic midget scientist gets very sparkly.

  “No, young lady, it’s true that sleepless animals have not proved a market boon. Why should they? Why would you want a cow or chicken that doesn’t sleep, and just eats more from an increased metabolism without a correspondingly steeper increase in meat or milk? Of course, a few researchers went ahead anyway, intrigued to see if the complete elimination of sleep-inducing neurotransmitters had the same side effects in other vertebrates as in humans, which is to say—�
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  He goes on, talking directly to Donna, who’s beaming at him like he’s the most fascinating man in the world. She doesn’t understand a word. Daddy’s not listening, either, rocking back on his heels like he always does when he’s pleased about a new business, sure this one’ll make us rich. He’s already planned his slogan, underground of course since this is all illegal until the FDA approves: BENSON’S GENEMOD GUARD DOGS. THEY NEVER SLEEP, SO YOU CAN. In the house Precious is still wailing, and in their pens the two dogs left over from the previous, legal business (BENSON’S GENEMOD LAPDOGS. CUTER THAN HELL) are barking their heads off. They smell the new bitch.

  I go in to Precious. Our house is falling apart: paint peeling, floorboards saggy, water stains from the leaky roof Daddy never gets around to fixing. But at least it’s warm inside. Y-energy cones are much cheaper than food. Precious stands up in her crib, screaming, but the minute she sees me she stops and smiles, even though I know she’s hungry. She’s as sunny as Daddy and Donna, and as pretty. I’m the only plain one. I scoop Precious up in my arms and hug her tight, and she squeals and hugs me back. I sniff that baby smell at the back of her neck, and I wonder what’s left to eat that I can fix for her. There has to be something that Daddy didn’t give to the dogs because he felt sorry for them, genemod bluish big-eyed collies that nobody in their right mind would want in the same room with them. They don’t even look like real dogs.

  I find some rice in the back of a cupboard, and heat it with a sliced dried apple. While I feed Precious, I watch the Stanley Express truck drive away and disappear into the mountains.

  Donna names the bitch Leisha, after the rich Sleepless woman with the bright gold hair and green eyes. This makes no sense, but we all follow along and call the dog Leisha. She whelps in my bed in the middle of the night. I wake up Daddy and Donna. Daddy moves Leisha to the kitchen. Donna brings her own blankets to put under the panting dog, who has a hard time delivering.