by Nancy Kress
Strangest of all was Alice’s Twin Group. Leisha had looked first shocked, then sad, then angry when she heard about the Twin Group. Alice volunteered there three days a week. The Group kept datafiles about twins who could communicate with each other across vast distances, who knew what each other was thinking, who felt pain when the other was in trouble. They also studied pairs of twins in preschool to see how they learned to differentiate themselves as separate people. This jumble of ESP, parapsychology, and scientific method bewildered Jordan, then seventeen. “Aunt Leisha says the statistics of coincidence can account for most of your ‘ESP.’ And I thought you and her weren’t even monozygotic twins!” “We’re not,” Alice said.
In the last two years Jordan had seen a lot of his aunt, without telling his mother. Leisha was a Sleepless, the economic enemy. She was also fair, generous, and idealistic. It troubled him.
So many things troubled him.
Touring the plant took over an hour. Jordan tried to see the place through Leisha’s eyes: people instead of cost-efficient robots, shouted arguments on the line, rock music blaring. Rejected parts from Receiving Inspection half-repacked in dirty cartons. Somebody’s gnawed-on sandwich kicked into a corner.
When Jordan finally led Leisha into Hawke’s office, Hawke rose from behind his massive, rough-hewn desk of Georgia pine. “Ms. Camden. An honor.”
“Mr. Hawke.”
She held out her hand. Hawke took it, and Jordan watched her slight recoil. People meeting Calvin Hawke for the first time usually recoiled; not until that second had Jordan realized how intently he’d wondered if Leisha would. It wasn’t Hawke’s huge size as much as his disconcerting physical sharpness: beaked nose, cheekbones like chisels, piercing black eyes, even the necklace of sharpened wolf’s teeth which had belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather, a mountain man who had married three Indian women and killed three hundred braves. Or so Hawke said. Would wolf’s teeth nearly two hundred years old, Jordan wondered, still be so sharp?
Hawke’s would.
Leisha smiled up at Hawke, nearly a foot taller despite her own height, and said, “Thank you for letting me come.” When Hawke said nothing, she added directly, “Why did you?”
He pretended she’d asked a different question. “You’re safe enough here. Even without your goons. There is no baseless hatred in my plants.”
Jordan thought of Mayleen, but said nothing. You didn’t contradict Hawke in public.
Leisha said coolly, “An interesting use of ‘baseless,’ Mr. Hawke. In the law we call a usage like that insinuating. But now that I am here, I’d like to ask some questions, if I may.”
“Of course,” Hawke said. He folded his enormous arms across his chest and leaned back against his desk, apparently all agreeable helpfulness. On the desk sat a comlink, a coffee mug with the Harvard logo, and a Cherokee ceremonial doll. None of them had been there this morning. Hawke, Jordan saw, had been assembling his stage set. The back of Jordan’s neck prickled.
Leisha said, “Your scooters are stripped-down models, with the simplest possible Y-cones and fewer options than any other model on the market.”
“That’s right,” Hawke said pleasantly.
“And their reliability is less than any other model. They need more replacement parts, sooner. In fact, nothing but the Y-cone deflector shield carries any kind of warranty, and of course the deflectors are under patent and aren’t subcontracted here.”
“You’ve done your homework,” Hawke said.
“The scooters can reach a maximum of only thirty miles per hour.”
“True.”
“They sell for 10 percent more than a comparable Schwinn or Ford or Sony.”
“Also true.”
“Yet you’ve captured 32 percent of the domestic market, you’ve opened three new plants in the last year, and you’ve filed a corporate return on assets of 28 percent when the industry average is barely 11 percent.”
Hawke smiled.
Leisha took a step toward him. She said intently, “Don’t go on doing it, Mr. Hawke. It’s a terrible mistake. Not for us—for you.”
Hawke said genially, “Are you threatening my plant, Ms. Camden?”
Jordan’s stomach tightened. Hawke was deliberately misinterpreting what Leisha had said, turning it from a plea into a threat so he could have a fight instead of a discussion. So this was why he’d let her visit a We-Sleep plant: he wanted the cheap thrill of a face-to-face confrontation. The dirt-poor leader of a national political movement going to the mat with the big-time Sleepless lawyer. Disappointment swept through Jordan; Hawke was bigger than that.
He needed Hawke to be bigger than that.
Leisha said, “Of course I’m not threatening you, Mr. Hawke, and you know it. I’m merely trying to point out that your We-Sleep Movement is dangerous to the country, and to yourselves. Don’t be so hypocritical as to pretend not to understand.”
Hawke went on smiling genially, but Jordan saw a tiny muscle in his neck, just above a yellowed wolf tooth, begin to beat rhythmically.
“I could hardly help understand, Ms. Camden. You’ve hammered on this one stone in the press for years now.”
“And I’ll go on hammering. Whatever drives Sleepers and Sleepless farther apart is ultimately no good for either of us. You have people buying your scooters not because they’re good, not because they’re cheap, not because they’re beautiful, but solely because they’re made by Sleepers, with profits going only to Sleepers. You—and all your followers in other industries—are splitting the country in two economically, Mr. Hawke, creating a dual economy based on hate. That’s dangerous for everyone!”
“But especially for the economic interests of Sleepless?” Hawke asked, apparently all disinterested interest. Jordan saw that he thought he’d gained ground by Leisha’s sudden emotion.
“No,” Leisha said wearily. “Come on, Mr. Hawke, you know better. Sleepless economic interests are based in the global economy, especially in finance and high-tech skills. You could manufacture every vehicle, building, and widget in America and not touch them.”
Them, Jordan thought. Not us. He tried to see if Hawke had noticed.
Hawke said silkily, “Then why are you here, Ms. Camden?”
“For the same reason I go to Sanctuary. To rail against stupidity.”
The tiny muscle in Hawke’s neck beat faster; Jordan saw that he hadn’t expected Leisha to bracket him with Sanctuary, the enemy. Hawke reached across his desk and pressed a buzzer. Leisha’s bodyguards tensed. Hawke tossed them a look of contempt: traitors to their own biological side. The office door opened and a young black woman entered, looking puzzled.
“Hawke? Coltrane say you’all want to see me?”
“Yes, Tina. Thank you. This lady is interested in our plant. Would you mind telling her a little about your job here?”
Tina turned obediently, and without recognition, to Leisha. “I work Station Nine,” she said. “Before that, I don’t have nothing. My family don’t have nothing. We walk to Dole, pick up the food, walk home, eat it. We wait to die.” She went on, telling a story familiar by now to Jordan, different only in Tina’s melodramatic approach to telling it. Which was undoubtedly why Hawke had had her waiting. Fed, sheltered, clothed cheaply by the Dole—and completely unable to compete beyond that economic level. Until Calvin Hawke and the We-Sleep Movement provided a job that paid wages, because the market for it had been wrested out of the national market on wholly uneconomic terms. “I buy only We-Sleep products, I get to sell my We-Sleep products,” Tina chanted fervently. “The only way we get any of the pie!”
Hawke said, “And if somebody in your community buys a different product because it’s cheaper or better…”
“That somebody ain’t in my community very long,” Tina said darkly. “We take care of our own.”
“Thank you, Tina,” Hawke said. Tina seemed to know this was dismissal; she left, but not before throwing Hawke the same look they all did. Jordan hoped that L
eisha recognized the look from legal clients she had kept from a different sort of prison. His stomach relaxed slightly.
Leisha said wryly to Hawke, “Quite a performance.”
“More than just a performance. The dignity of individual effort—an old Yagaiist tenet, isn’t it? Or can’t you allow yourself to recognize economic facts?”
“I recognize all the limitations of a free-market economy, Mr. Hawke. Supply and demand puts workers on the exact same footing as widgets, and people are not widgets. But you cannot create economic health by unionizing consumers the way you would unionize workers.”
“That’s just how I am creating economic health, Ms. Camden.”
“Only temporarily,” Leisha said. Abruptly she leaned forward. “Do you expect your consumers to stay away from better products forever on the basis of class hatred? Class hatred diminishes when prosperity lets people rise in class.”
“My people will never rise in class to equal Sleepless. And you know it. Yours is the Darwinian edge. So we capitalize on what we do have: sheer numbers.”
“But it doesn’t have to be a Darwinian struggle!”
Hawke stood. The muscle in his neck was still now; Jordan could see that Hawke felt he’d won. “Doesn’t it, Ms. Camden? Who made it so? The Sleepless control 28 percent of the economy now, despite the fact that you’re a tiny minority. The percentage is growing. You yourself are a stockholder, through the Aurora Holding Company, in the Samsung-Chrysler plant across the river.”
Jordan was jolted. He had not known that. For a second, suspicion flooded him, corrosive as acid. His aunt had asked to come here, asked to talk to Hawke…He looked again at Leisha. She was smiling. No, that wasn’t her motive. What was wrong with him? Would he spend his whole life uncertain about everything?
Leisha said, “There is nothing illegal in owning stock, Mr. Hawke. I do it for the most obvious of reasons: to turn a profit. A profit on the best possible goods and services that can be produced in fair competition, offered to anyone who wishes to buy. Anyone.”
“Very commendable,” Hawke said bitingly. “But of course, not everyone can buy.”
“Just so.”
“Then we agree on at least one thing: Some people are shut out of your wonderful Darwinian economy. Do you want them to take that meekly?”
Leisha said, “I want to open the doors and bring them in.”
“How, Ms. Camden? How do we compete on equal grounds with the Sleepless, or with mainstream companies funded in whole or in part by Sleepless financial genius?”
“Not with hatred creating two economies.”
“Then with what? Tell me.”
Before Leisha could answer, the door suddenly swung open and three men leaped into the room.
Leisha’s bodyguards immediately blocked her, guns drawn. But the men must have expected this: They brandished cameras, not guns, and began filming. Since all they could see was the phalanx of bodyguards, they filmed that. This bewildered the guards, who looked at one another sideways. Meanwhile Jordan, backed into a corner, was the only one who saw the sudden, slight, telltale brightening of an optic panel high on the wall, in a room widely touted as being without surveillance of any kind.
“Out,” the head bodyguard, or whatever he was called, said between his teeth. The film crew obligingly left. And no one but Jordan had seen Hawke’s camera.
Why? What did Hawke want with a clandestine still he could claim was taken by a legitimate film crew? And should Jordan tell his aunt that Hawke had it? Could it harm her?
Hawke was watching Jordan. Hawke nodded once, with such warmth in his eyes, such tender understanding of Jordan’s dilemma that Jordan was immediately reassured. Hawke meant no personal harm to Leisha. He didn’t operate that way. His goals were large ones, sweeping ones, right ones, but they took note of individuals, as no Sleepless except Leisha ever seemed to do. No matter what the history books said was necessary, Hawke did not break individual eggs to create his revolution.
Jordan relaxed.
Hawke said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Camden.”
Leisha looked at him bleakly. “No harm done, Mr. Hawke.” After a moment she added deliberately, “Is there?”
“No. Let me give you a memento of your visit.”
“A…”
“A memento.” From a closet—the bodyguards tensed all over again—Hawke wheeled a We-Sleep scooter. “Of course, it probably won’t go as fast, or far, or reliably as the one you already have. If you ever deign to use a scooter instead of a ground-or aircar, as over 50 percent of the population has to do.”
Leisha, Jordan saw, had finally lost her patience. She let her breath out between her teeth; it whistled fitfully. “No thank you, Mr. Hawke. I ride a Kessler-Eagle. A high-quality scooter made, I believe, at a factory owned by Native American Sleepers in New Mexico. They are trying very hard to market a superior product at a fair price, but of course they represent a minority without a built-in protected market. Hopi, I believe.”
Jordan didn’t dare look at Hawke’s face.
AS SHE CLIMBED INTO HER CAR, LEISHA SAID to Jordan, “I’m sorry for that last jab.”
“Don’t be,” Jordan said.
“Well, for your sake. I know you believe in what you’re doing here, Jordan—”
“Yes,” Jordan said quietly. “I do. Despite.”
“When you say that, you look like your mother.”
The same couldn’t be said for Leisha, Jordan thought, and he felt immediately disloyal. But it was true. Alice looked older than forty-three, Leisha much younger. The aging caused by gravity was in the fine-boned face; the aging caused by tissue decay was not. Shouldn’t she, then, look 21.5? Half the aging. She didn’t; she looked about thirty and, apparently, always would. A beautiful and tense thirty, the faint lines around her eyes more like delicate micro-circuitry than soft gullies.
Leisha said, “How is your mother?”
Jordan heard all the complexities in the question. He didn’t feel up to grappling with them. “Fine,” he said. And then, “Are you going from here to Sanctuary?”
Leisha, half in and half out of her car, lifted her face to his. “How did you know?”
“You have the look you get when you’re going to or coming from.”
She looked down; he shouldn’t have mentioned Sanctuary. She said, “Tell Hawke I won’t make a legal fuss over the wall camera. And don’t you agonize about not telling me, either. You’ve got enough contradictions to reconcile already, Jordy. But you know, I get tired of these overwhelming physical presences like your Mr. Hawke. All charisma and outsized ego, using the intensity of their beliefs to hit you like a fist. It’s wearing.”
She swung her long legs into the car. Jordan laughed, a sound that made Leisha glance at him, a slight question in her green eyes, but he just shook his head, kissed her, and closed the car door. As the car pulled away he straightened, not laughing. Charisma. Outsized egos. Overwhelming physical presences.
How was it possible, after all this time, that Leisha didn’t know she was one, too?
LEISHA LEANED HER HEAD AGAINST THE LEATHER SEAT of the Baker Enterprises corporate plane. She was the only passenger. Below her the Mississippi plain began to climb into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Leisha’s hand brushed the book on the seat beside her and she picked it up. It was a diversion from Calvin Hawke.
They had made the cover too garish. Abraham Lincoln, beardless, stood in black frock coat and top hat against the background of a burning city—Atlanta? Richmond?—grimacing horribly. Crimson and marigold flames licked at a purple sky. Crimson and marigold and fuchsia. Online, the colors would be even more lurid. In three-dimensional hologram, they would be practically fluorescent.
Leisha sighed. Lincoln had never stood in a burning city. At the time of her book’s events, he had been bearded. And the book itself was a careful scholarly study of Lincoln’s speeches in the light of Constitutional law, not the light of battle. Nothing in it grimaced. Nothing burned.
She ran her finger over the embossed name on the cover: Elizabeth Kaminsky.
“Why?” Alice had asked in her blunt way.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Leisha had said. “My law cases get too much notoriety as it is. I want the book to earn whatever scholarly attention it’s really worth rather than a—”
“I see that,” Alice retorted. “But why that pseudonym, of all choices?” Leisha hadn’t had an answer. A week later she thought of one, but by that time the stiff little visit was over and Leisha wasn’t in California to deliver it. Leisha almost phoned her, but it was 4:00 A.M. in Chicago, 2:00 A.M. in Morro Bay, and of course Alice and Beck would be asleep. And she and Alice seldom phoned each other anyway.
Because of something Lincoln said in 1864, Alice. Combined with the facts that I’m 43 years old, the same age our father was when we were born, and that no one, not even you, believes that I get tired of it all.
But the truth was, she probably wouldn’t have said that to Alice, not in Chicago nor in California. Somehow whatever she said to Alice turned faintly pompous. And whatever Alice said to her—like that mystic nonsense of the Twin Group—seemed to Leisha riddled with holes in both logic and evidence. They were like two people trying to communicate in a language foreign to both of them, reduced to nodding and smiling, the initial good will not quite enough to offset the strain.