Beggars In Spain

by Nancy Kress

  If she turned around, Leisha knew, she would see a different kind of shimmer. Forty feet above the compound, air molecules were distorted with a new kind of energy field Terry was experimenting with. It would, he said, be the next breakthrough in applied physics. Kevin Baker was in negotiation with Samsung, IBM, and Konig-Rottsler for selective licensing of Terry’s patents.

  Leisha wriggled out of her boots and socks. This was mildly dangerous; she was beyond the area swept electronically clear of scorpions. But the rock, warm here even in the shade, felt pleasantly gritty under her bare feet. Suddenly she remembered studying her feet the morning of her sixty-seventh birthday. How odd—what a strange thing to remember. The memory actually pleased her; she had only just begun to realize how much, in eighty-three years, even a Sleepless forgot.

  The Supers remembered everything. Always.

  Leisha was waiting for Miri to explode out of the compound to accuse her. The explosion was already overdue; Miri must have been locked longer than usual in her lab. Or perhaps she was with Drew, home only a few days after his spring tour. If so they would be in his room; Miri’s didn’t have a bed.

  The kangaroo rat disappeared into his mound.

  “Leisha!”

  Leisha turned. A figure in green shorts was running furiously toward her from the compound, arms and legs pumping. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three—

  “Leisha! Why?”

  The Supers always finished things before you expected them to.

  “Because I choose to do it, Miri. Because I want to.”

  “Want to? Defend my grandmother against charges of treason? You, Leisha, who wrote the definitive book on Abraham Lincoln?”

  Leisha knew this wasn’t a non sequitur. She had begun, in the past three months, to learn a little about how the Supers thought. Not to the extent of following an entire complex string shape, woven from associations and reasoning and connections, glinting with shocks from lucid dreaming. And never to the extent of constructing one herself. Nor did Leisha want to construct one. That was not who she was. But she had become able to fill in the skipped links when this girl, more important to her than anyone had been since Alice, spoke to her. At least, Leisha could fill them in if Miri hadn’t skipped too many links. This time she hadn’t.

  “Sit down, Miri. I want to explain to you why I’m Jennifer’s counsel. I’ve been waiting out here for you to ask.”

  “I’ll stand!”

  “Sit,” Leisha said, and after a moment Miri sat. She pushed the dark hair off her forehead, sweaty after even such a short run, and dropped angrily onto Leisha’s rock without even a glance for scorpions.

  There were so many earthly things that Miri still didn’t know to look for.

  Leisha had rehearsed her words carefully. “Miri, your grandmother and I are both part of a specific American generation, the first generation of Sleepless. That generation had certain things in common with the one before, the one that created us. Both generations saw that it’s not possible to have both equality, which is just another name for what you call community solidarity, and individual excellence. When individuals are free to become anything at all, some will become geniuses and some will become resentful beggars. Some will benefit themselves and their communities, and others will benefit no one and just loot whatever they can. Equality disappears. You can’t have both equality and the freedom to pursue individual excellence.

  “So two generations chose inequality. My father chose it for me. Kenzo Yagai chose it for the American economy. A man called Calvin Hawke, whom you don’t know about—”

  “Yes, I do,” Miri said.

  Leisha smiled quietly. “Of course you do. Stupid comment. Well, Hawke picked the side of the born-unequal and tried to even up the equation a little, and excellence be damned. Of all of us, only Tony Indivino and your grandmother tried to create a community that put just as much value on its own solidarity—the ‘equality’ of those who were included as members—as on those members’ individual diverse achievements. Jennifer failed, because it can’t be done. The more Jennifer failed, the more fanatic she became about trying to do this thing, pushing the blame for all failures onto people who weren’t members of the community. Narrowing the definition more and more. Getting farther and farther away from any kind of balance at all. But I suspect you know even more about that than I do.”

  Leisha waited, but Miri said nothing.

  “But even while Jennifer got farther and farther away from her dream of community, that dream itself”—Tony’s dream—“was admirable. If impossible. It was an idealistic dream of uniting two great human needs, two great human longings. Can’t you forgive your grandmother on the basis of that initial dream?”

  “No,” Miri said, her face rigid, and Leisha remembered again how young she was. The young don’t forgive. Had Leisha ever forgiven her own mother?

  Miri said, “So that’s why you’re defending her? Because of what you see as her initial dream?”

  “Yes.”

  Miri stood. The rock had made tiny ridges on the backs of her legs, below her shorts. Her dark eyes bored into Leisha. “In narrowing her definitions of community, my grandmother killed my brother Tony.” She walked away.

  Leisha, after a moment of shock, scrambled to her feet and ran barefoot after her. “Miri! Wait!”

  Miri stopped, obedient, and turned. There were no tears on her face. Leisha sprinted forward, came down on a sharp rock, and hopped painfully. Miri helped her back to the rock where Leisha’s boots and socks lay limp in the heat.

  “Check them for scorpions before you put them on,” Miri ordered, “or they might—why are you smiling?”

  “Never mind. I never know what you do or don’t know. Miri—would you exclude me from your categories of defensible behavior? Or Drew? Or your father?”

  “No!”

  “But all of us have changed our minds over the decades about what is acceptable, or right, or even desirable. That’s the key, honey. That’s why I’m defending your grandmother.”

  “What’s the key?” Miri snapped.

  “Change. The unpredictable ways events can change people. And Miri, Sleepless live a long time. There’s a lot of time for a lot of events”—time piling up like dust—“and that means a lot of change. Even Sleepers can change. When Drew came to me, he was a beggar. Now he’s made a major contribution to the course of the world by the way he changed you Superbrights’ thinking. That’s the answer, Miri. You can’t call anyone indefensible, ever, because things change. Even your grandmother could change. Maybe especially your grandmother. Miri? Do you see what I mean?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Miri growled.

  Leisha sighed. Miri’s thinking about it would be so complex Leisha might not, if she saw the results in string-edifice hologram, even recognize her own argument.

  But when Miri had gone back to the house and Leisha had put her boots and socks back on, she sat on the flat rock looking out over the desert, her arms clasped around her knees.

  People change. Beggars can become artists. Productive lawyers can become despairing idlers, sulking like Achilles in his tent, sulking for decades, a world-class sulk—and then repass the bar and become lawyers again. Marine experts can become drifters. Sleep researchers can become failed wives, and then transform themselves back into brilliant researchers. Sleepers may not be able to become Sleepless—or could they? Just because Adam Walcott had failed 40 years ago, just because Susan Melling had said the thing was impossible, did that mean it would always be impossible? Susan had never known about the Superbrights.

  Tony, Leisha said silently, there are no permanent beggars in Spain. Or anywhere else. The beggar you give a dollar to today might change the world tomorrow. Or become father to the man who will. Or grandfather, or great-grandfather. There is no stable ecology of trade, as I thought once, when I was very young. There is no stable anything, much less stagnant anything, given enough time. And no nonproductive anything, either. Beggars are only gene
lines temporarily between communities.

  The kangaroo rat came back out of its burrow and sniffed at a primrose. Leisha had a clear view of the growth on its head. It wasn’t natural. The fur was a different color, and grew in longer tufts; the growth was too perfectly round; the kangaroo rat tilted it forward to touch the tufts to the primrose and paused. The growth was a sensor of some kind. The animal was genemod—here in this distant place, against all rules and expectations.

  Leisha tied her boot laces and stood. She suddenly felt wonderful, like the young girl her body still looked. Full of energy. Full of light.

  There was so much to do.

  She turned toward the compound and started to run.