Beggars in Spain (12 page)

Alight plane streaked overhead. Jennifer frowned: Leisha Camden, already. Jennifer was late.

Let Leisha wait. Or let Richard deal with her. Jennifer had not wanted Leisha here in the first place. Why should Sanctuary welcome a woman who worked against it at every turn? Even the Quran, in its quaint pre-globalnet simplicity, was explicit about traitors:
“Whosoever
commits aggression against you, you commit/him like as he has committed against you.”

The small plane with the Baker Enterprises logo disappeared into the trees.

Jennifer slipped into her car, her mind busy with the rest of the day ahead. Were it not for the solace and quiet of morning and afternoon prayer, she didn’t think she could face some of her days. “But you have no religious faith,” Richard had said, smiling, “you’re not even a believer.” Jennifer hadn’t tried to explain to him that religious belief was not the point. The will to believe created its own power, its own faith, and, ultimately, its own will. Through the practice of faith, whatever its specific rituals, one brought into existence the object of that faith. The believer became the Creator.

I believe,
Jennifer said each dawn and each noon, kneeling on the grass or the leaves or the snow,
in Sanctuary.

She shaded her eyes, trying to see exactly where Leisha’s plane had disappeared. It was being tracked, Jennifer assumed, by both the Langdon sensors and the antiaircraft lasers. She lifted her aircar, flying well under the Y-field dome.

What would her paternal great-grandmother, Najla Fatima Noor el-Dahar, have said about a faith such as hers? On the other hand, her maternal great-grandmother, whose granddaughter became an American movie star, had herself survived as an Irish immigrant turned Brooklyn cleaning lady and thus probably understood something about power and will.

Not that great-grandmothers, anybody’s great-grandmothers, mattered any longer. Nor grandfathers nor fathers. A new race had always been required to sacrifice its roots to its own survival. Zeus, Jennifer would guess, had mourned neither Cronus nor Rhea.

Sanctuary spread below her in the morning sun. In twenty-two years it had grown to nearly 300 square miles, occupying a fifth of Cattaraugus County, New York. Jennifer had acquired the Allegany Indian Reservation, immediately after the repeal of Congressional trust restrictions. She had paid a sum that made the Seneca tribe that sold it
comfortable in Manhattan, Paris, and Dallas. There hadn’t actually been very many Senecas left to sell; not all threatened groups, Jennifer well knew, had the adaptable skills of the Sleepless—skills such as buying land when the owners were initially reluctant to sell. Or acquiring antiaircraft lasers on the international arms market. Or, if those other groups did have these skills, they lacked the cause to make them focused and clean and holy. To call survival itself what it actually was: a holy war.
Jihad.

Allegany had been unique among Native American reservations in containing an entire non-Indian city, Salamanca, leased from the Senecas by city residents since 1892. Salamanca had been included in Jennifer’s purchase. The lessees all had received eviction notices, and after multiple court fights for which Salamanca residents had little money and Sanctuary had the donated services of the best Sleepless lawyers in the country, the city’s outdated buildings, gutted, had become the shells of Sanctuary’s high-tech city—research hospital, college, securities exchange, power and maintenance centers, and the most sophisticated telecommunications in existence, all surrounded by ecologically maintained woodland.

In the distance, beyond Sanctuary’s gates, Jennifer could see the daily line of trucks toiling up the mountain road, bringing in food, building materials, low-tech supplies—everything Sanctuary would rather import than produce, which included everything nonchallenging, nonprofitable, or nonessential. Not that Sanctuary was dependent on the daily trucks. It had enough of everything to run self-sufficiently for a year, if necessary. It wouldn’t be necessary. Sleepless controlled too many factories, distribution channels, agricultural research projects, commodity exchanges, and law offices on the Outside. Sanctuary had not ever been planned as a survivalist retreat; it was a fortified command center.

The airfield groundcar was already parked in front of the house Jennifer shared with her husband and two children at the edge of Argus City. The house was a geodesic dome, graceful and efficient, but not opulent. Build the security facilities first, Tony Indivino had argued
twenty-two years ago. Then build the technical and educational facilities, then the storage warehouses, and the individual dwellings last. Only now was Sanctuary getting around to new individual dwellings.

Jennifer adjusted the folds of her
abbaya,
took a deep breath, and entered her house.

Leisha stood by the southern glass wall of the living room, staring at the gold-framed holo portrait of Tony, who stared back from smiling, youthful eyes. Sunlight caught in Leisha’s blonde hair and blazed. When she heard Jennifer and turned, Leisha was backlit by the windows and Jennifer couldn’t see her expression.

The two women stared at each other.

“Jennifer.”

“Hello, Leisha.”

“You’re looking well.”

“As are you.”

“And Richard? How are he and the kids?”

“Fine, thank you,” Jennifer said.

There was a silence, prickly as heat.

Leisha said, “I think you know why I’m here.”

“Why, no, I don’t,” Jennifer said, although of course she did. Sanctuary monitored the movements of all Sleepless who remained outside, but none more than Leisha Camden and Kevin Baker.

Leisha made a brief, impatient noise. “Don’t be evasive with me, Jennifer. If we can’t agree on anything else, let’s at least agree to be honest.”

She never changed, Jennifer thought. All that intelligence, all that experience, and yet she did not change. A triumph of naive idealism over both intelligence and experience.

The deliberately blind deserved not to see.

“All right, Leisha. We’ll be honest. You’re here to find out if yesterday’s attack on the We-Sleep textile factory in Atlanta originated in Sanctuary.”

Leisha stared before she exploded. “Good God, Jennifer, of course I’m not! Don’t you think I know you don’t fight that way? Especially not
against a low-tech operation grossing less than half a million annual?”

Jennifer muffled a smile; the pairing of objections, moral and economic, was pure Leisha. And of course Sanctuary hadn’t directed the attack. The We-Sleep people were insignificant. She said, “I’m relieved to hear your opinion of us has improved.”

Leisha waved her arm. Inadvertently, her hand brushed Tony’s holo; the image turned its head in her direction. “My opinion is irrelevant, as you’ve made clear enough. I’m here because Kevin gave me this.” She pulled hard-copy from her pocket and thrust it at Jennifer, who realized with a nasty jolt what it was.

She made her face impassive, realizing too late that impassivity would tell Leisha just as much as emotion. How had Leisha and Kevin gotten the hard-copy? Her mind ran over the possibilities, but she wasn’t a datanet expert. She would have to pull Will Rinaldi and Cassie Blumenthal off their other projects immediately to go over the entire net for gates and bubbles and geysers….

“Don’t bother,” Leisha said. “Kevin’s wizards didn’t get it off the Sanctuary net. This was mailed to me—to me directly—by one of your own.”

That was even worse. Someone inside Sanctuary, someone who secretly sided with the Sleeper-lovers, someone who was without the ability to recognize a war of survival…. Unless of course Leisha was lying. But Jennifer had never caught Leisha in a lie. It was part of Leisha’s pathetic, dangerous naivete to prefer unadjusted truth.

Leisha crumpled the paper in her hand and threw it across the living room. “How could you divide us further like this, Jennifer? Set up a separate Sleepless Council in secret, with membership limited to those who take this so-called oath of solidarity; ‘I vow to hold the interests of Sanctuary above all other loyalties, personal, political, and economic, and to pledge, to its survival and so to my own, my life, fortune, and sacred honor.’ Good God—what an unholy alliance of religious fanaticism and the Declaration of Independence! But you always did have a tin ear!”

Jennifer gazed at her impassively. “You are being stupid.” It was the
worst epithet either of them had. “Only you and Kevin and your handful of soft-minded doves don’t see that this is a war of survival. War demands clearly drawn lines, especially for strategic information. We can’t afford voting privileges for the fifth column.”

Leisha’s eyes narrowed. “This is
not
a war. A war is attack and response. If we don’t counterattack, if we go on being productive and law-abiding citizens, eventually we’ll win assimilation by sheer economic power—like every other newly-franchised group. But not if we split into factions like this! You used to know that, Jenny!”

She said sharply, “Don’t call me that!” Just barely did she stop herself from glancing at Tony’s picture.

Leisha didn’t apologize.

More calmly, Jennifer added, “Assimilation doesn’t come with economic power alone. It’s won by political power, which we don’t have, and in a democracy never will have. There aren’t enough of us to form a significant voting bloc.
You
used to know
that.
”

“You’ve already set up the strongest covert lobby in Washington. You
buy
the votes you need. Political power flows from money, it always has; the concept of society is
about
money. Any values we want to change or advocate, we have to change or advocate within the framework of money. And we
are.
But how can we advocate a single trade ecology for Sleeper and Sleepless if you split us into warring factions?”

“We wouldn’t be split if you and yours could recognize a war when you saw one.”

“I recognize hatred when I see it. It’s in your stupid oath.”

They had reached an impasse, the same old impasse. Jennifer crossed the room to the bar. Her black hair floated behind her. “Would you like a drink, Leisha?”

“Jennifer…” Leisha said, and stopped. After a moment, with a visible effort, she went on. “If your Sanctuary Council becomes a reality…you’ll shut us out. Me and Kevin and Jean-Claude and Stella and the others. We won’t have a voting voice in statements to the media, we won’t be included in governance decisions, we won’t even be able to help with the new Sleepless kids because nobody who takes the
oath will be allowed to use Groupnet, only the Sanctuary net…. What’s next? A boycott on doing business with any of us?”

Jennifer didn’t answer, and Leisha said slowly, “Oh my God. You are. You are thinking of an economic boycott….”

“That would not be my decision. It would take the whole Sanctuary Council. I doubt they would vote such a boycott.”

“But you would.”

“I was never a Yagaiist, Leisha. I don’t believe in the predominance of individual excellence over the welfare of the community. Both are important.”

“This isn’t about Yagaiism and you know it. This is about control, Jennifer. You hate everything you can’t control—just like the worst of the Sleepers do. But you go farther than they do. You make control into something holy because
you
need holiness as well. This is all about what you, Jennifer Sharifi, need. Not what the community needs.”

Jennifer walked from the room, gripping her hands together to keep them from shaking. It was her own fault, of course, that any other person had enough power over her to cause them to shake. A fault, a weakness, that she had failed to root out. Her failure. In the hall her children barreled into her from their playroom.

“Mom! Come see what we built!”

Jennifer put one hand on each of their heads. There was a knot somewhere in Najla’s coarse hair. Ricky’s, darker than his older sister’s but finer, felt like cool silk. Jennifer’s hands steadied.

The children caught sight of the living room. “Aunt Leisha! Aunt Leisha’s here!” Their hair left Jennifer’s fingers. “Aunt Leisha, come see what we built on CAD!”

“Of course,” Jennifer heard Leisha’s voice say. “I want to. But let me just ask your mother one more thing.”

Jennifer didn’t turn around. If the traitor Inside had mailed Leisha notice of the oath of solidarity, what else had she been mailed?

But all Leisha said was, “Did Richard receive the subpoena for
Simpson
v.
Offshore Fishing?
”

“Yes. He did. He’s preparing his expert testimony now, in fact.”

“Good,” Leisha said bleakly.

Ricky looked from Leisha to his mother. His voice had lost some of its exuberance. “Mom…should I go get Dad? Aunt Leisha will want to see Dad…won’t she?”

Jennifer smiled at her son. She could feel the lavishness of her own smile, lush with relief. Offshore fishing rights: Almost she could pity Leisha. Her days were given to such triviality. “Yes, of course, Ricky,” she said, turning the lavish smile on Leisha, “go get your father. Your Aunt Leisha will want to visit with him. Of course she will.”

L
eisha,” said the receptionist in her law office, “This gentleman has been waiting to see you for three hours. He doesn’t have an appointment. I told him you might not even be back today, but he stayed anyway.”

The man stood, lurching a little with the stiffness of someone who has held muscles too long in one tense position. He was short and thin, oddly wispy, dressed in a rumpled brown suit that was neither cheap nor expensive. In one hand he held a folded kiosk tabloid.
Sleeper,
Leisha thought. She always knew.

“Leisha Camden?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing any new clients. If you need a lawyer, you’ll need to ask elsewhere.”

“I think you’ll take this case,” the man said, surprising her. His voice was considerably less wispy than his appearance. “At any rate, you’ll want to know about it. Please give me ten minutes.” He opened the tabloid and held it out to her. On the front page was her picture with Calvin Hawke, over the headline, “Sleepless Worried Enough to Investigate We-Sleep Movement…. Have We Got Them on the Run?”

Now she knew why Hawke had permitted her to visit the scooter factory.

“It says this picture was taken this
morning
,” the man said. “My, my, my,” and Leisha knew he did not work in telecommunications.

“Come into my office, Mr….”

“Adam Walcott. Dr. Adam Walcott.”

“A medical doctor?”

He looked directly at her. His eyes were a pale, milky blue, like frosted glass. “Genetic researcher.”

The sun was setting over Lake Michigan. Leisha transluced the glass wall, sat down opposite Dr. Walcott, and waited.

Walcott twisted his legs, which were remarkably spindly, into pretzels around the legs of his chair. “I work for a private research firm, Ms. Camden. Samplice Biotechnical. We develop refinements on genetic modeling and alteration and offer these products to the bigger houses that do
in vitro
gene altering. We developed the Pastan procedure for preternaturally sharp hearing.”

Leisha nodded neutrally; preternaturally sharp hearing had always struck her as a terrible idea. The benefits of hearing a whisper six rooms away were outweighed by the pain of hearing shatter-rock three rooms away. P-hearing kids were fitted for sound-control implants at two months of age.

“Samplice gives its researchers a lot of leeway.” Walcott stopped to cough, a sound so thin and tentative that Leisha thought of ghosts coughing. “They say they hope we’ll stumble on something wonderful, but the truth is that the company is in a terrible state of disorganization and they just don’t know how to supervise scientists. About two years ago I asked for permission to work on some of the peptides associated with Sleeplessness.”

Leisha said wryly, “I wouldn’t think there was anything associated with Sleeplessness that hadn’t been researched already.”

Walcott seemed to find this funny; he gave a gasping chuckle, un-twisted his skinny legs from around the chair, and twisted them around each other. “Most people think not. But I was working with the peptides in adult Sleepless, and I was using some new approaches pioneered at L’Institut Technique de Lyons. By Gaspard-Thiereux. Do you know his work?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“You probably don’t know this new approach. It’s very new itself.” Walcott wound a hand through his hair and tugged; both hand and hair were insubstantial. “I should have started by asking how secure this office was.”

“Completely,” Leisha said. “Or you wouldn’t be in it.” But Walcott only nodded; apparently he was not one of those Sleepers offended by Sleepless security. Her estimation of him rose a little.

“To shorten this recital, what I think I’ve found is a way to create sleeplessness in adults who were born Sleepers.”

Leisha’s hands moved to pick up…what? Something. The hands stopped. She stared at them. “To…”

“Not all the problems are worked out yet.” Walcott launched into a complicated thesis of altered peptide manufacture, neuron synapses, and redundant information coding in DNA, none of which Leisha could follow. She sat quietly, while the universe took a different shape.

“Dr. Walcott…you’re sure?”

“About lysine transference redundancy?”

“
No
. About creating sleeplessness in Sleepers—”

Walcott ran his other hand through his hair. “No, of course we’re not sure. How could we be? We need controlled experiments, additional replications, not to mention funding for—”

“But in theory you can do it.”

“Oh,
theory
,” Walcott said, and even in her shock this seemed an odd dismissal for a scientist to make. Evidently Walcott was a pragmatist. “Yes, we can do it in theory.”

“With all the side effects? Including…longevity?”

“Well, that’s one of the things we don’t know. This is all very rough yet. But before we go any further, we need a lawyer.”

The sentence centered Leisha. Something was not right here. She found it. “Why are you here alone, Dr. Walcott? Surely any legal situation connected with this research is the responsibility of Samplice, and surely the firm has its own counsel.”

“Director Lee doesn’t know I’m here. I’m acting on my own. I need a lawyer in a personal capacity.”

Leisha picked up a paper magnet—that must have been what her fingers had been searching for, yes, why not—turned it on, turned it off, stroked it with her fingers. The transluced window glowed behind Walcott’s head. “Go on.”

“When I first realized where this line of research was heading, my assistant and I took it off-line. Completely. We kept no records in the company datanet, ran no simulations on anything except free-standing computers, wiped all programs each night, and took hard-copies—the only copies—of all progress home with us each night in portable safes, in duplicate. We told no one what we were doing, not even the director.”

“Why did you do that, Doctor?”

“Because Samplice is a public company, and 62 percent of the stock is divided between two mutual funds controlled by Sleepless.”

When he turned his head, the pale milky eyes seemed to absorb light.

“One of the mutual funds is offered by Canniston Fidelity; the other is traded from Sanctuary. Forgive me, Ms. Camden, for being so blunt, and even more for the reasoning behind the bluntness. But Director Lee is not a particularly admirable man. He has been indicted before—although not convicted—of misuse of funds. My assistant and I were afraid that if he was approached by anyone from Sanctuary to discontinue the research…or anything…in the beginning my assistant and I had only a glimmer. A wild enough glimmer that we weren’t sure we could interest any other reputable research company. To tell the truth, we’re still not. It’s still just theory. And Sanctuary could have offered so very much money to just cut the whole thing off….”

Leisha was careful to not answer.

“Well. Two months ago, something odd happened. We knew, of course, that the Samplice net probably wasn’t secure—what net is, realistically? That’s why we weren’t on it. But Timmy and I—Timmy is my assistant, Dr. Timothy Herlinger—didn’t realize that people scanned the nets not only for what was on it, but for what
wasn’t
. Apparently they do. Somebody outside the company must have been routinely matching
lists of employees with net files, because Timmy and I came into our lab one morning and there was a message on our terminal: ‘What the hell have you two guys been working on for two months?’”

Leisha said, “How do you know the message was from outside the company and not a snide hint of discovery from your director?”

“Because our director couldn’t discover a boil on his ass,” Walcott said, surprising her again. “Although that’s not the real reason. The message was signed ‘stockholder.’ But what really scared us, Timmy and me, was that it was on a free-standing computer. No telelinks of any kind. Not even electricity. It’s an IBM-Y, running directly off Y-energy cones. And the lab was locked.”

Something prickled in Leisha’s stomach. “Other keys?”

“Only Director Lee. Who was at a conference in Barbados.”

“He gave his key to someone. Or a duplicate of it. Or lost it. Or Dr. Herlinger did.”

Walcott shrugged. “Not Timmy. But let me go on with my story. We ignored the message. But we decided to put the work we had—by this time we were almost there—somewhere safe. So we destroyed all but a single copy, rented a safe-deposit box in the downtown branch of the First National Bank, and took just one key. At night we buried the key in my back yard, under a rose bush. An Endicott Perfection—triple roses blooming consecutively throughout your spring and fall garden.”

Leisha looked at Walcott as if he had lost his mind. He smiled faintly. “Didn’t you read pirate books as a child, Ms. Camden?”

“I never read much fiction.”

“Well. I suppose it sounds melodramatic, but we couldn’t think what else to do.” He ran his left hand again through the thinning hair, which had begun to look like tangled fringe. All at once his voice lost its confident strength, turning wispy and tired. “The key is still there, under the rose bush. I dug it up this morning. But the research papers are gone from the safe-deposit box. It’s empty.”

Leisha got up and walked to the window. Unthinking, she cleared the glass. Blood-red light low over Lake Michigan stained the water. In the east a crescent moon rode high.

“When did you discover this theft?”

“This morning. I dug up the key to go get the papers so Timmy and I could add something, and then we went to the bank. I told the bank officials the box was empty. They said there was nothing registered as in it. I told them I had personally put nine sheets of paper into the box.”

“You verified that on-line at the time of rental.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you get a hard-copy receipt?”

“Yes.” He passed it to her. Leisha examined it. “But then when the bank manager called up the electronic record, it showed that Dr. Adam Walcott had come back the next day and removed all the papers, and that Dr. Adam Walcott had signed a receipt to that effect. And Ms. Camden—they
had
that receipt.”

“With your signature.”

“Yes. But I never signed it! It’s a forgery!”

“No, it’ll be your handwriting,” Leisha said. “How many documents a month do you sign at Samplice, Doctor?”

“Dozens, I suppose.”

“Supplies requests, fund disbursements, routing slips. Do you read them all?”

“No, but—”

“Have any secretaries left recently?”

“Why…I suppose so. Director Lee has great trouble keeping support staff.” The wispy brows rushed together. “But the director had no idea what we were working on!”

“No, I’m sure he didn’t.” Leisha put both hands across her stomach. Long ago clients had stopped making her queasy. Any lawyer who practiced for twenty years got used to misfits, criminals, manipulators, heroes, charlatans, nut cases, victims, and shitballs. You put your belief in the law, not in the client.

But no lawyer had ever before had a client who could turn Sleepers into Sleepless.

She willed the queasiness away. “Go on, Doctor.”

“It’s not that anyone could duplicate our work,” Walcott said, still
in that faint, die-away voice. “For one thing, we didn’t get to put on the last, very critical equations, which Timmy and I are still working out. But all of the work is
ours
, and we want it back. Timmy gave up several chamber-music rehearsals to our efforts. And, of course, there will be medical prizes someday.”

Leisha gazed at Walcott’s face. An alteration in body chemistry that could transform the human race, and this wispy man seemed to see it primarily in terms of rose bushes, pirate games, prizes, and chamber music. She said, “You wanted a lawyer to tell you where you stood legally. Personally.”

“Yes. And to represent Timmy and me against the bank, or Samplice, if it comes to that.” Suddenly he looked at her with that disconcerting directness that he seemed able to summon but not maintain. “We came to you because you’re a Sleepless. And because you’re Leisha Camden. Everyone knows you don’t believe in separating the human race into two so-called species, and of course our work would end that sort of…this sort of…” He waved the tabloid picture of her and Calvin Hawke. “And, of course, theft is theft, even within a company.”

“Samplice didn’t steal your research, Dr. Walcott. Neither did the bank.”

“Then who…”

“I have no evidence. But I’d like to see both you and Dr. Herlinger here tomorrow at 8:00
A.M.
And in the meantime—this is important—don’t write anything down. Anywhere.”

“I understand.”

She said, not knowing she was going to speak until the words were out,
“Making Sleepers into Sleepless
…”

“Yes,” he said, “well.” And he turned away from her face to stare across her otherwise utilitarian office at the exotic flowers, riotous with color or pale as moonlight, planted under artificial light in their specially-built corner bed.

“They’re all legitimate,” Kevin said. He came into Leisha’s study from his own, hard-copy in hand. She looked up from her brief for
Simpson
v.
Offshore Fishing
. The flowers that Alice insisted on sending daily sat on her desk: sunflowers and daisies and genemod alumbines. The things never wilted before the next shipment arrived. Even in winter the apartment was filled with California blooms Leisha didn’t really like but couldn’t bring herself to throw away.

Lamplight glowed on Kevin’s glossy brown hair, strong smooth face. He looked younger than 47, younger in fact than Leisha, although he was four years older.
Blanker
, Alice had said to Leisha, but she had only said it once.

“All legitimate?”

“The whole file drawer,” he said. “Walcott was State University of New York at Potsdam and Deflores University, not distinguished but acceptable. Middling student. Two minor publications, clean police record, sits square with the IRS. Two teaching posts, two research, no official acrimony when he left either of them, so maybe he’s just a restless type. Herlinger is different. He’s only twenty-five, this is his first job. Berkeley and U.C. Irvine in biochemistry, graduated in the top five percent of his class, promising future. But just before his Ph.D. was granted he was arrested, tried, and convicted for gene-altering controlled substances. He got a suspended sentence, but that’s enough to make problematical a job anywhere better than Samplice. At least for a while. No tax problems, but then no income yet either to speak of.”