Beggars In Spain

by Nancy Kress

  “Then I want the address of the attorney.”

  The attorney, a quenched-looking man named John Jaworski, refused to tell Leisha where Alice was. “She doesn’t want to be found, Ms. Camden. She wanted a complete break.”

  “Not from me,” Leisha said.

  “Yes,” Jaworski said, and something flickered in his eyes, something she had last seen in Dave Hannaway’s face.

  She flew to Austin before returning to Boston, making her a day late for classes. Kevin Baker saw her instantly, canceling a meeting with IBM. She told him what she needed, and he set his best datanet people on it, without telling them why. Within two hours she had Alice’s address from Jaworski’s electronic files. It was the first time, she realized, that she had ever turned to one of the Sleepless for help, and it had been given instantly. Without trade.

  Alice was in Pennsylvania. The next weekend Leisha rented a hovercar and driver—she had learned to drive, but only groundcars as yet—and went to High Ridge, in the Appalachian Mountains.

  It was an isolated hamlet, twenty-five miles from the nearest hospital. Alice lived with a man named Ed, a silent carpenter twenty years older than she, in a cabin in the woods. The cabin had water and electricity but no news net. In the early spring light the earth was raw and bare, slashed with icy gullies. Alice and Ed apparently worked at nothing. Alice was eight months pregnant.

  “I didn’t want you here,” she said to Leisha. “So why are you?”

  “Because you’re my sister.”

  “God, look at you. Is that what they’re wearing at Harvard? Boots like that? When did you become fashionable, Leisha? You were always too busy being intellectual to care.”

  “What’s this all about, Alice? Why here? What are you doing?”

  “Living,” Alice said. “Away from dear Daddy, away from Chicago, away from drunken, broken Susan—did you know she drinks? Just like Mom. He does that to people. But not to me. I got out. I wonder if you ever will.”

  “Got out? To this?”

  “I’m happy,” Alice said angrily. “Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? Isn’t that the aim of your great Kenzo Yagai—happiness through individual effort?”

  Leisha thought of saying that Alice was making no efforts that she could see. She didn’t say it. A chicken ran through the yard of the cabin. Behind, the mountains rose in layer upon layer of blue haze. Leisha thought what this place must have been like in winter, cut off from the world where people strived toward goals, learned, changed.

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Alice.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m glad, too,” Alice said, almost defiantly. The next moment she abruptly hugged Leisha, fiercely, the huge, hard mound of her belly crushed between them. Alice’s hair smelled sweet, like fresh grass in sunlight.

  “I’ll come see you again, Alice.”

  “Don’t,” Alice said.

  6

  “SLEEPLESS MUTIE BEGS FOR REVERSAL of Gene Tampering,” screamed the headline in the Food Mart. “‘Please Let Me Sleep Like Real People!’ Child Pleads.”

  Leisha typed in her credit number and pressed the news kiosk for a printout, although ordinarily she ignored the electronic tabloids. The headline went on circling the kiosk. A Food Mart employee stopped stacking boxes on shelves and watched her. Bruce, Leisha’s bodyguard, watched the employee.

  She was twenty-two, in her final year at Harvard Law, editor of the Law Review, clearly first in her graduating class. The closest three contenders were Jonathan Cocchiara, Len Carter, and Martha Wentz. All Sleepless.

  In her apartment she skimmed the printout. Then she accessed the Groupnet run from Austin. The files had more news stories about the child, with comments from other Sleepless, but before she could call them up Kevin Baker came on-line himself, on voice.

  “Leisha. I’m glad you called. I was going to call you.”

  “What’s the situation with this Stella Bevington, Kev? Has anybody checked it out?”

  “Randy Davies. He’s from Chicago but I don’t think you’ve met him; he’s still in high school. He’s in Park Ridge, Stella’s in Skokie. Her parents wouldn’t talk to him—they were pretty abusive, in fact—but he got to see Stella face-to-face anyway. It doesn’t look like an abuse case, just the usual stupidity: parents wanted a genius child, scrimped and saved, and now they can’t handle that she is one. They scream at her to sleep, get emotionally abusive when she contradicts them, but so far no violence.”

  “Is the emotional abuse actionable?”

  “I don’t think we want to move on it yet. Two of us will keep in close touch with Stella—she does have a modem, and she hasn’t told her parents about the net—and Randy will drive out weekly.”

  Leisha bit her lip. “A tabloid shitpiece said she’s seven years old.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe she shouldn’t be left there. I’m an Illinois resident, I can file an abuse grievance from here if Candy’s got too much in her briefcase…” Seven years old.

  “No. Let it sit a while. Stella will probably be all right. You know that.”

  She did. Nearly all of the Sleepless stayed all right, no matter how much opposition came from the stupid segment of society. And it was only the stupid segment, Leisha argued, a small if vocal minority. Most people could, and would, adjust to the growing presence of the Sleepless, when it became clear that that presence included not only growing power but growing benefits to the country as a whole.

  Kevin Baker, now twenty-six, had made a fortune in microchips so revolutionary that Artificial Intelligence, once a debated dream, was yearly closer to reality. Carolyn Rizzolo had won the Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play Morning Light. She was twenty-four. Jeremy Robinson had done significant work in superconductivity applications while still a graduate student at Stanford. William Thaine, Law Review editor when Leisha first came to Harvard, was now in private practice. He had never lost a case. He was twenty-six, and the cases were becoming important. His clients valued his ability more than his age.

  But not everyone reacted that way.

  Kevin Baker and Richard Keller had started the datanet that bound the Sleepless into a tight group, constantly aware of each other’s personal fights. Leisha Camden financed the legal battles, the educational costs of Sleepless whose parents were unable to meet them, the support of children in emotionally bad situations. Rhonda Lavelier got herself licensed as a foster mother in California, and whenever possible the Group maneuvered to have young Sleepless who were removed from their homes assigned to Rhonda. The Group now had three licensed lawyers; within the next year it would gain four more, licensed to practice in five different states.

  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, 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 36 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-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 answer is 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?”

  “Tony—”

  “What if you walk down that street in Spain and a hundred beggars each want a dollar and you say no and they have nothing to trade you but they’re so rotten with anger about what you have that they knock you down and grab it and then beat you out of sheer envy and despair?”

  Leisha didn’t answer.

  “Are you going to say that’s not a human scenario, Leisha? That it never happens?”

  “It happens,” Leisha said evenly. “But not all that often.”

  “Bullshit. Read more history. Read more newspapers. But the point is: What do you owe the beggars then? What does good Yagaiist who believes in mutually beneficial contracts do with people who have nothing to trade and can only take?”

  “You’re not—”

  “What, Leisha? In the most objective terms you can manage, what do we owe the grasping and nonproductive needy?”

  “What I said originally. Kindness. Compassion.”

  “Even if they don’t trade it back? Why?”

  “Because…” She stopped.

  “Why? Why do law-abiding and productive human beings owe anything to those who neither produce very much nor abide by just laws? What philosophical or economic or spiritual justification is there for owing them anything? Be as honest as I know you are.”

  Leisha put her head between her knees. The question gaped beneath her, but she didn’t try to evade it. “I don’t know. I just know we do.”

  “W
hy?”

  She didn’t answer. After a moment, Tony did. The intellectual challenge was gone from his voice. He said, almost tenderly, “Come down in the spring and see the site for Sanctuary. The buildings will be going up then.”

  “No,” Leisha said.

  “I’d like you to.”

  “No. Armed retreat is not the way.”

  Tony said, “The beggars are getting nastier, Leisha. As the Sleepless grow richer. And I don’t mean in money.”

  “Tony—” she said, and stopped. She couldn’t think what to say.

  “Don’t walk down too many streets armed with just the memory of Kenzo Yagai.”

  IN MARCH, A BITTERLY COLD MARCH with wind whipping down the Charles River, Richard Keller came to Cambridge. Leisha had not seen him for three years. He didn’t send her word on the Groupnet that he was coming. She hurried up the walk to her townhouse, muffled to the eyes in a red wool scarf against the snowy cold, and he stood there blocking the doorway. Behind Leisha, her bodyguard tensed.

  “Richard! Bruce, it’s all right, this is an old friend.”

  “Hello, Leisha.”

  He was heavier, sturdier-looking, with a breadth of shoulder she didn’t recognize. But the face was Richard’s, older but unchanged: dark low brows, unruly dark hair. He had grown a beard.

  “You look beautiful,” he said.

  Inside, she handed him a cup of coffee. “Are you here on business?” From the Groupnet she knew that he had finished his master’s and had done outstanding work in marine biology in the Caribbean but had left that a year ago and disappeared from the net.

  “No. Pleasure.” He smiled suddenly, the old smile that opened up his dark face. “I almost forgot about that for a long time. Contentment, yes. We’re all good at the contentment that comes from sustained work. But pleasure? Whim? Caprice? When was the last time you did something silly, Leisha?”

  She smiled. “I ate cotton candy in the shower.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “To see if it would dissolve in gooey pink patterns.”