Beggars In Spain

by Nancy Kress

  He smiled, almost whimsically. The tone was still in his voice. “Of course. That’s why I’m here. Record it if you like.”

  “Recording on.” To Richard she said, “Go on.”

  “Sanctuary altered the file patents. Again, both electronically and hard-copy. The dates were chosen carefully—all the hard-copy applications in Washington are stamped ‘Received,’ but none have reached the review stage of significant official signatures or fingerprints. That’s what Kevin was telling you, wasn’t he?”

  “He told me he didn’t think anybody could get into the federal system, not even his people.”

  “Ah, but he would be trying from the Outside alone.”

  “Do you have specifics? Names, dates, said in front of third parties as part of conversations that would have taken place even if you and Jennifer weren’t husband and wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have written proof?”

  Richard smiled slightly. “No. All hearsay.”

  Leisha burst out, “Why, Richard? Not Jennifer—but you? Why did you?”

  “Could anybody give a simple answer to a question like that? It’s a whole lifetime of decisions. To go to Sanctuary, to marry Jennifer, to have the kids—” He got up and walked over to the flowers. The way he fingered their hairy leaves made Leisha rise and follow him.

  “Then why tell me this now?”

  “Because this is the only way I have left to stop Jennifer.” He raised his eyes to Leisha, but she knew he didn’t see her. “For her sake. There’s no one in Sanctuary who can stop her anymore—hell, they encourage her, especially Cassie Blumenthal and Will Sandaleros. My kids…Criminal charges over the patents will at least scare off some of her Outside contacts. They’re scary people, Leisha, and I don’t want her dealing with them. I know that even with my testimony, unsupported hearsay, you don’t have much of a case, and probably the whole thing will get thrown out of court—do you think I’d be here if I thought she could be indicted for anything? I studied Wade v. Tremont and Jastrow v. United States very carefully and I want it on the record that I did. I just want Jenny stopped. My kids—the hatred for Sleepers they’re learning, the sense of entitlement to do anything—anything, Leisha—in the name of self-protection; it scares me. This isn’t what Tony intended!”

  Leisha and Richard had never, after the first time, been able to discuss what Tony Indivino had intended.

  Richard said, outwardly more calm, “Tony was wrong. I was wrong. You become different, walled away with only other Sleepless for decades. My kids—”

  “Different how?”

  But Richard only shook his head. “What happens now, Leisha? You turn this over to the U.S. Attorney and he brings charges? For theft and tampering with government records?”

  “No. For murder.”

  She watched him closely. His eyes widened and flared, and she would have bet her life, then, that he knew nothing about Timothy Herlinger’s death. But a week ago she would have bet her life that Richard knew nothing about stealing, either.

  “Murder?”

  “Timothy Herlinger died an hour ago. Under suspicious circumstances.”

  “And you think—”

  Her mind was ahead of his. She saw him catch up, and she took a step backward.

  He said slowly, “You’re going to charge Jennifer with murder. And make me testify against her. Because of what I’ve said here.”

  Somehow she got the word out. “Yes.”

  “Nobody at Sanctuary planned a murder!” When she didn’t answer he seized her wrist hard. “Leisha—nobody at Sanctuary…not even Jennifer…nobody…”

  His faltering was the worst thing yet. Richard was unsure that his wife was incapable of political murder. Leisha looked at him levelly. She had to hear it, all of it, because…because why? Because she did. Because she had to know.

  But there was no more of it to hear. Richard’s fist closed on the flower he held and he started to laugh. “Don’t!” she begged, but he went on laughing anyway, a braying heaving sound that went on and on, until Leisha opened the office door and told her secretary to call the District Attorney.

  11

  THE FOAMSTONE CELL WAS FIVE PACES BY SIX. It held a built-in bed platform, two recyclable blankets, one pillow, a sink, a chair, and a toilet, but no window or terminal. Will Sandaleros, prisoner’s counsel, had protested the lack of a terminal; all but isolation cells had some sort of simple read-only terminal of unbreakable alloy, welded to the wall. His client was allowed access to newsgrids, to approved library items, and to the United States E-postal system. The county jailer ignored the protest; he wasn’t trusting any Sleepless with a terminal. Nor would he allow the prisoner communal exercise or dining, or visitors in the cell, even Sandaleros. Twenty years ago the same Cattaraugus County jailer, younger and harder, had lost a Sanctuary Sleepless to a prison killing. Not again. Not in his jail.

  Jennifer Sharifi told the lawyer to discontinue his protests.

  The first day, she carefully scrutinized the four corners of her cell. The southeast corner was assigned to prayer. By closing her eyes she could see the rising sun rather than the foamstone wall; within a few days she did not need to close her eyes. The sun was there, summoned by will and belief.

  The northeast corner held the sink. She washed completely twice a day, stepping out of her abbaya and washing that too, refusing the prison laundry and the prison garb. If the surveillance panel broadcast her daily nakedness, that was as irrelevant as the foamstone wall was to seeing the sun. Only what she did was relevant, not how subhumans viewed what she did. By their prurient viewing they had forfeited the humanity that would have allowed her to consider them.

  The remaining two corners were spanned by the cot. She left the bedding folded under it, day after day, untouched. The bed itself became her place of learning. She sat on the edge, straight-backed in her still-wet abbaya. When hard-copies she requested were given her, erratically and intermittently, she read them, permitting herself one reading only of each tabloid, each law book, each library printout. When there was nothing to read, she learned by thinking, creating detailed scenarios covering every contingency she could imagine. She thought of the contingencies of her legal situation. Of Walcott’s research. Of the future of Sanctuary. Of Leisha Camden’s choices. Of the economic underpinnings of each division, each organization, each significant personal or professional relationship within Sanctuary. Each contingency branched at several places; she learned them all until she could close her eyes and see the entire great structure, decision tree after decision tree branching and rebranching, dozens of them. As new data came to her from hard-copies or from Sandaleros, she mentally redrew every affected branch. For each decision point she assigned a text from the Quran or, if there were conflicting possible applications, more than one text. When she could see the enormous balanced whole spread out behind her closed lids, she opened her eyes and taught herself to see it in three dimensions within the cell, filling the space, palpable growing branches like the tree of life itself.

  “All she does is sit and stare,” the matron reported to the District Attorney. “Sometimes with her eyes open, sometimes closed. Hardly ever moves.”

  “Does it seem to you a state of catatonia that needs medical attention?”

  The matron shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. “How the hell would I know what one of them needs!”

  The District Attorney didn’t answer.

  Wednesdays and Sundays were visiting days, but the only visitor she would ever permit was Will Sandaleros, who came daily to the usually empty visiting gallery, where she sat separated from him by thick plastiglass under a ring of surveillance panels.

  “Jennifer, the grand jury returned an indictment against you.”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. There were no branches on her decision tree in which the grand jury did not indict her. “Have they set a trial date?”

  “December 8. Motion to reconsider bail was denied.” />
  “Yes,” Jennifer said. There had been no branches for bail, either. “Leisha Camden testified to the grand jury.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. The testimony has been released to counsel; I’m trying to get a hard-copy to you.”

  “There have been no hard-copies brought to me in two days.”

  “I’ll move again on that. The newsgrids are about the same; you don’t want to see them.”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said, “I do.” The newsgrid hysteria was necessary: not to her learning but to the strengthening of her prayer. “A reminder to believers,” the Quran said. “Sleepless Murder to Control World!” “First Money—Now Blood?” “Secret Sleepless Cartel Plots Overthrow of United States—Through Murder!” “Turncoat Sleepless to Reveal Death Total of Sanctuary Mafia.” “Local Gang Claims Fatal Beating of Teen: ‘He Was Sleepless.’”

  “I guess maybe you do want them,” Sandaleros said. He was twenty-five years old and had grown up in Sanctuary from the age of four, his custody voluntarily signed over by parents who had not gotten what they expected in a genetically-altered child. After Harvard Law, Sandaleros had returned to Sanctuary to base his practice there, leaving only to consult with clients or appear in court. Even for that he did not like to leave. He barely remembered his parents, and not with affection. He had been Jennifer’s first choice for counsel.

  “One thing more,” Sandaleros said. “I have a message from your children.”

  Jennifer sat very straight. Each time, this was the hardest; this was why she disciplined herself day after night on the very edge of the hard metal cot, back straight, mind forced into calm planning. For this. “Go ahead.”

  “Najla says to tell you she has finished the Physics Three software. Ricky says he found a new fish-migration pattern in the live data from the Gulf Stream, and is mapping it against his father’s work in the Global Directory.”

  Ricky almost always found a way to include his father in his messages; Najla never did. They had been told that their father would testify against their mother in court. Jennifer had insisted that Sandaleros tell them. This was not a world in which Sleepless children could afford sheltered ignorance.

  “Thank you,” Jennifer said composedly. “Now tell me our defense options.”

  Later, after Sandaleros had gone, she sat for a long time on the edge of the cot, growing decision trees in the free spaces of her mind.

  “ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO DO IT?” Stella Bevington’s pretty face on the comlink was set and cold. “You’re really going to testify against one of us?”

  “Stella,” Leisha said, “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s wrong. And because—”

  “It’s not wrong to take care of your own, even if it means breaking the law! You were the one who taught me that—you and Alice!”

  “This isn’t the same,” Leisha said, as evenly as she could. Behind Stella’s head on the comlink screen were California genemod palms, long blue fronds bisected by silver. What was Stella doing in California? No outdoor link was ever adequately shielded. “Jennifer is hurting us. All of us, Sleepless and Sleeper alike—”

  “Not me. She’s not hurting me; you’re doing that, by shattering the only family some of us have left. We’re not all as lucky as you, Leisha!”

  “I—” Leisha began, but Stella had already broken the link and Leisha was staring at a blank screen.

  ADAM WALCOTT STOOD IN THE LIBRARY of Leisha and Kevin’s penthouse, looking distractedly at the rows of law books, the framed holo of Kenzo Yagai, the sculpture hewn from virgin Luna rock by Mondi Rastell. The sculpture was an androgynous human figure in a soaring heroic pose, arms stretched upward, face illuminated by intelligence. Leisha watched Walcott stand on one foot, run his left hand through his hair, run his right hand through his hair, twitch his wispy shoulders, and lower his foot. Weird—there was no other word for him. Walcott was the weirdest client she’d ever had. She couldn’t even tell if he understood what she’d summoned him here to explain.

  “Dr. Walcott, you understand that you can still fight the patent case against both Samplice and Sanctuary, simultaneously with the Sharifi murder case.” Her voice was steady on the words. Sometimes, in the forced isolation, of her apartment, she practiced saying them aloud: the Sharifi murder case.

  “But you won’t be my lawyer,” he said irritably. “You’re just dropping the whole thing.”

  Patiently Leisha started over again. He truly didn’t seem to understand. “I am in protective custody until the trial, Dr. Walcott. There have been serious threats against my life. Those aren’t my bodyguards you passed in the lobby and the elevator and on the roof—those are federal marshals. I’m in custody here instead of anywhere else because the security here is better than anywhere else. Almost. But I can’t represent your patent case in court, and I don’t consider it advisable for you to wait until I can. In your own best interests, you should get different counsel, and I’ve made a list for you to consider.”

  She held out the hard-copy; Walcott made no move to take it. He stood on his other foot, and the intermittent strength returned to his voice. “It isn’t fair!”

  “Isn’t…”

  “Fair. For a man to work on a genetic revolution, put in his heart blood for a stinking petty company that couldn’t recognize genius if it tripped over it…I was promised, Ms. Camden! Promises were made!”

  She was listening intently now, despite herself. The little man’s large intensity was somehow frightening. “What kind of promises, Doctor?”

  “Recognition! Fame! The attention I deserve, that no one but Sleepless ever gets now!” He spread his arms wide and stood on tiptoe, his voice rising to a shriek. “I was promised!”

  Abruptly he seemed aware that Leisha was studying him. He dropped his arms to his side and smiled at her, a smile of such obvious, sickly insincerity that she felt her neck prickle. It was difficult to imagine Director Lee of Samplice, a man too self-absorbed and insecure to recognize others’ dreams, ever making such promises. Something was wrong here. “Who promised you those things, Dr. Walcott?”

  “Ah, well,” he said airily, not meeting her eyes, “you know how it is. You have youthful dreams. Life promises you. And the promise goes away.”

  She said, more harshly than she intended, “Everybody discovers that, Dr. Walcott. About more worthy dreams than fame and attention.”

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. He stood staring at the portrait of Yagai, and his left arm came up behind his head to thoughtfully rub his right ear.

  Leisha said, “Get another lawyer, Dr. Walcott.”

  “Yes,” he said, almost absently, “I will. Thank you. Goodbye. I’ll show myself out.”

  Leisha sat on the library sofa for a long time, wondering why Walcott disturbed her so much. It wasn’t anything to do with this particular case; it was larger than that. Was it because she expected competence to be rational? That was the American myth: the competent man, suffused with both individualism and common sense, in control of himself and the material world. History didn’t bear that myth out; competent men frequently were out of control or irrational. Lincoln’s melancholy, Michelangelo’s outrageous temper, Newton’s megalomania. Her model had been Kenzo Yagai, but why shouldn’t Yagai have been an aberration? Why should she necessarily expect the same logical and disciplined behavior from Walcott? Or from Richard, who could summon the moral strength to stop his wife’s destructive and immoral behavior but who now spent his own days in protective custody sitting slumped in a corner, without the will to eat or wash or speak unless he was forced to do those things? Or from Jennifer, who used a brilliant strategic brain in the service of an obsessive need for control?

  Or was it she, Leisha, who was not rational, by expecting that all these people would not do those things?

  She got off the sofa and wandered through the apartment. All the terminals were off; there had come an hour, two days ago, when she could no longer bear the hyster
ical newsgrids. The windows were transluced to shut out the intermittent three-way scuffles between police and the two warring semipermanent groups of demonstrators below her window. KILL SLEEPLESS BEFORE THEY KILL US! shrilled the electronic signs of one side, answered by FORCE SANCTUARY TO SHARE PATENTS! THEY ARE NOT GODS! Occasionally the two groups, tired of fighting with police, fought with each other. The past two nights Kevin, coming home for dinner, had to run for the building between cordons of bodyguards, police, and screaming rioters, robot newsgrid holocams swooping to within inches of his face for close-ups.

  Tonight he was late. Leisha found herself glancing at the clock, disliking the habit but unable to stop. This was the first time in her life she had found it hard to be alone. Or was it? Had she ever really been alone before? In the beginning there had been Daddy and Alice, then Richard and Carol and Jeanine and Tony…then, later, Stewart, and Richard again, and then Kevin. And always, always, there had been the law. To study, to question, to apply. The law made it possible for people of widely differing beliefs, abilities, and goals to live side by side in something more than barbarism. And Kevin had believed in his own version of that credo: that a social system was built not on the parochial limits of common culture nor the romantic ones of “the family” nor even on the contemporary manifest destiny of unlimited technological advance for all, but on the twin foundations of consensual legal and economic systems. Only in the presence of both could there be any social or personal security. Money and law. Kevin understood that, as Richard never had. It was the bond between them.

  Where was he?

  The terminal in the library chimed, the override code for personal calls. Leisha froze. The demonstrators, the We-Sleep fanatics, Sanctuary itself—there were so many enemies for someone like Kevin, even apart from his connection with her…She ran to the library.