Beggars In Spain

by Nancy Kress

  Joey didn’t move.

  “Go on, Joey,” Hawke said in his amused voice, and Joey went.

  Jordan faced his boss. “They’ll kill him if he stays here.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do, and so do you. You’ve encouraged so much hate for Sleepless…” He stopped. This was what We-Sleep meant, then. Not just hatred for Kevin Baker and Leisha Camden and Jennifer Sharifi, powerful smart people who could take care of themselves, who were economic opponents with all the best economic weapons on their side. But also hatred for Joey No-Name, who wouldn’t recognize an economic weapon if he tripped over it. Which he probably would.

  “Don’t think like that, Jordan,” Hawke said quietly. “Joey is an anomaly. A blip in the Sleepless statistics. He’s insignificant in the real war for justice.”

  “Not insignificant enough for you to ignore. If you really thought he was insignificant you’d send him away, to safety. They’ll kill him here, and you’ll let them, because that’s one more way to gain the thrill of a triumph over the Sleepless, isn’t it?”

  Hawke sat down on Jordan’s desk, with the expansive, easy movement Jordan had seen him make a hundred times before. A hundred, a thousand, counting all the times Hawke had haunted him in dreams. Hawke was settling in with his easy movements for a pleasant picking at Jordan’s reasoning, a pleasant demolishment of Jordan’s naive beliefs, an easy triumph over a mind that couldn’t begin to match Hawke’s.

  Not this time.

  Hawke said easily, “You’re overlooking a crucial point, Jordy. The basis for any individual dignity must be individual choice. Joey chooses to stay here. Every proponent of human dignity, from Kenzo Yagai back through Abraham Lincoln clear back to Euripides, has argued that individual choice must supersede community pressure. Why, Lincoln himself said—I know your wonderful Aunt Leisha could supply the whole quotation—on the subject of the danger to emancipated slaves—”

  Jordan said, “I quit.”

  Hawke smiled. “Now, Jordy, haven’t we been through this before? And with what results?”

  Jordan walked out. Hawke would let him, Jordan, be killed, too, in a different way. He had been doing just that, in fact, all along, and Jordan had never seen it. Or was this, too—this goading of Jordan through poor Jordy—was this, too, deliberate on Hawke’s part? Did Hawke want him to quit?

  There was no way to be sure.

  The noise of the plant rushed over him. On the north superscreen was framed an aerial shot of Sanctuary, wilderness surrounding the high-tech domes of Salamanca. “Military Buffs Have Long Enjoyed Devising Feasible Hypothetical Assaults on This Supposedly Impregnable—” Rat a-tat-tat. “Halooo-ooogin with My Baa-by—” Jordan walked out the side door. Joey outweighed him by 175 pounds; there was no way Jordan could get him away from the factory by force. Joey wasn’t persuadable, not by anyone but Hawke. Jordan couldn’t leave him here. How?

  In the security kiosk, Joey’s huge body slumped against the one wall not made of transparent plastic. Mayleen cut off the comlink to Hawke’s office; she must have heard the entire discussion between Jordan and Hawke. She avoided Jordan’s eyes, gazing down at the unconscious Joey.

  “I give him some of my great-gramama’s tea.”

  “Tea…”

  “We river rats know a lot you California boys don’t never guess,” Mayleen said wearily. “Git him out of here, Jordan. I done called Campbell. He’ll help you load Joey into your car, if Mr. Hawke don’t tell him different first. Move fast.”

  “Why, Mayleen? Why help a Sleepless?”

  Mayleen shrugged. Then her voice turned passionate. “Shit, look at him! Even my baby’s dirty diaper don’t smell like that. You think I need to fight that to get somewhere in this here world? He ain’t in my way, no matter if he don’t need to sleep or eat or even breathe.” Her tone changed yet again. “Poor beggar.”

  Jordan brought his car to the front gate. He, Mayleen, and the unsuspecting Campbell heaved Joey into it. Just before he drove away, Jordan stuck his head out the car window. “Mayleen?”

  “What?” She had turned prickly again. Her colorless hair straggled into her face, disordered by the effort of hauling Joey.

  “Come with me. You don’t believe any more that this is right.”

  Mayleen’s face closed. Heat into ice. “No.”

  “But you see that—”

  “This is all I got for hope, Jordan. This. Here.”

  She went into the security kiosk and bent over her surveillance equipment. Jordan drove off, his captive, rescued Sleepless filling the back seat. Jordan didn’t look back at the We-Sleep factory. Not this time. This time, he wasn’t going back.

  14

  DURING THE THIRD WEEK OF THE TRIAL, while Richard Keller testified against his wife, activity in the press box became frantic. The holo-artists’ fingers flew; the color journalists whispered subvocal notes, the men’s Adam’s apples working soundlessly. On a few faces Leisha saw the small, cruel smiles of small, cruel people watching pain.

  Richard wore a dark suit over a black bodystretch. Leisha remembered all the light colors he’d programmed into posters and windows everywhere he’d ever lived. Sea colors, usually: green, blue, the subtle grays and creams of foam. Richard sat slumped forward in the witness box, palms flat on his knees, the courtroom light flat on skin stretched taut over broad features. His nails, she saw, were ragged, not really clean. Richard, whose passion was the sea.

  Hossack said, “When did you first realize your wife had stolen Dr. Walcott’s patents and filed them under the name of Sanctuary?”

  Instantly Sandaleros was on his feet. “Objection! It has been established as fact nowhere—nowhere!—that patents were stolen, or by whom!”

  “Sustained,” the judge said. He looked hard at Hossack. “You know better than that, Mr. Hossack.”

  “When, Mr. Keller, did your wife first tell you that Sanctuary had filed patents on research to enable Sleepers to become Sleepless?”

  Richard spoke in a monotone. “The morning of August 28.”

  “Six weeks after the actual filing date.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was your reaction?”

  “I asked her,” Richard said, his hands still flat on his knees, “who in Sanctuary had developed the patents.”

  “And what did she answer?”

  “She told me that we had taken them from Outside and had them back-filed in the United States Patent Office system.”

  “Objection! Hearsay!”

  “Overruled,” Deepford said.

  “She told you, in other words,” Hossack continued, “that she was responsible for both stealing and for invasion of United States datanets.”

  “Yes. She told me that.”

  “Did you question her on how this alleged theft had been accomplished?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell the court what she said.”

  This was what the press wanted; this was what the spectators jammed knee to thigh had come for. To hear the power of Sanctuary exposed from the inside, gutted by a Sleepless who was gutting himself to do it. Leisha could taste the tension. It had a coppery, salty taste, like blood.

  Richard said, “I explained to Leisha Camden once that I am not a datanet expert. I don’t know how it was accomplished. I didn’t ask. What little I do know is on record with the United States Department of Justice. If you want to hear it, play the recording. I will not repeat it.”

  Judge Deepford leaned sideways over the bench. “Mr. Keller, you are under oath. Answer the question.”

  “No,” Richard said.

  “If you don’t answer,” the judge said, not ungently, “I’ll place you in contempt.”

  Richard began to laugh. “Contempt? Place me in contempt?” He stopped laughing and raised his hands to the height of his shoulders, like a dazed boxer. His hands dropped. He let them dangle limply by his sides. No matter what was said to him, he sat unanswering, only smiling once in a whi
le and murmuring “Contempt,” until the judge declared an hour’s recess.

  When court reconvened, Deepford looked tired. Everyone but Will Sandaleros looked tired. Dismembering a man, Leisha thought numbly, was hard work.

  Will Sandaleros looked on fire.

  Hossack dangled a pendant by its gold chain in front of the witness. “Do you recognize this, Mr. Keller?”

  “Yes.” The skin on Richard’s face looked puffy, like old dough.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a micro-power controller keyed to Sanctuary’s Y-field.”

  The jury stared at the pendant in Hossack’s hand. A few leaned forward. One man slowly shook his head.

  The pendant was tear-shaped, of some smooth, opaque substance the green of fresh apples. According to the testimony of the surly garage attendant, he had found the thing near Dr. Herlinger’s scooter slot just moments after seeing a figure, masked and gloved, run out a side entrance. The shield on the entrance had been taken down: “So it don’t record my every little coming and going all day, you know?” the attendant said. Surveillance tape verified this testimony. Leisha hadn’t doubted it in the first place. Long experience had taught her to recognize a witness too uninterested in justice to care about perverting it.

  The green pendant swung gently in Hossack’s fingers.

  “Who owns this device, Mr. Keller?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Sanctuary pendants aren’t individualized in any way? With initials, or by color, or anything at all?”

  “No.”

  “How many exist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is that?” Hossack said.

  “I wasn’t in charge of their manufacture or distribution.”

  “Who was?”

  “My wife.”

  “You mean the defendant, Jennifer Sharifi.”

  “Yes.”

  Hossack let that hang there while he consulted his notes. My wife. What, Leisha could almost hear the jury think, does it take to make a husband condemn his wife? Her fingers tightened against each other.

  “Mr. Keller, you are a member of the Sanctuary Council. Why don’t you know how many of these pendants exist?”

  “Because I didn’t want to know.”

  If she had been Richard’s lawyer, Leisha thought, she would never have let him say that. But Richard had refused all counsel. She wondered suddenly if he had a pendant of his own. Did little Najla? Ricky?

  Hossack said, “Wasn’t the reason you didn’t want to know anything about the pendants because your wife’s other activities appalled you so much?”

  “Objection!” Sandaleros cried furiously. “Not only is Mr. Hossack feeding the witness prejudicial opinions, but—as I’ve repeatedly tried to point out—this entire line of evidence has not been tied directly to my client and is in fact irrelevant. Opposing counsel knows there are at least twenty other people with those pendants; he agreed to that stipulation. If Mr. Hossack thinks he can milk irrelevant circumstances for their thrill value—”

  “Your Honor,” Hossack said, “we’re establishing that the link between Sanctuary and the scooter tampering is an unequivocally clear one that—”

  “Objection! Do you think that even if that amulet could be shown to belong to a member of Sanctuary, that any Sleepless would be so stupid as to drop it? This is clearly a frame, and Ms. Sharifi—”

  “Objection!”

  “Counsel will approach the bench!”

  Sandaleros made a visible effort to control himself. Hossack sailed forward, all grave mass. Deepford leaned over the bench toward them, his face rigid with anger. But he was not as angry as Sandaleros when the two lawyers returned. Leisha closed her eyes.

  She knew now what to expect when Sandaleros cross-examined. She hadn’t been sure, before. Now she knew.

  It wasn’t long coming. “And so you are telling this court, Mr. Keller,” Will Sandaleros began with clear disbelief, “that your motive for betraying your wife by going to Leisha Camden—”

  “Move to strike,” Hossack said wearily. “‘Betrayal’ is clearly an inflammatory word.”

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  “So you are telling this court that your motive for revealing to Leisha Camden your wife’s alleged surveillance activities and alleged theft—your motive for this was concern for her under a law that had not protected your business from being ruined by prejudice on the part of Sleepers, had not protected your friend Anthony Indivino from being murdered by Sleepers, had not—”

  “Objection!” Hossack cried.

  “I’ll allow it,” Deepford said. His face sagged.

  “—had not protected your children from being dangerously menaced by a We-Sleep mob at Stars and Stripes Airport, had not protected your marine-research ship from being sunk by parties unknown but allegedly Sleepers—after all these failures of the law to protect you in these circumstances, your motive for turning in your wife was concern for her under the law?”

  “Yes,” Richard said hoarsely. “There was no other way to stop Jennifer. I told her—I begged her—I went to Leisha before I knew about Herlinger…I hadn’t…Leisha didn’t tell me—”

  Even Judge Deepford glanced away.

  Sandaleros repeated scathingly, “And your motives for exposing your wife to Ms. Camden were conjugal concern and good citizenship. Very commendable. Tell me, Mr. Keller, were you and Leisha Camden ever lovers?”

  “Objection!” Hossack all but screamed. “Irrelevant! Your Honor—”

  Deepford studied his gavel. Leisha, through her numbness, saw that he was going to allow the question. Out of a concern for fairness to the minority, the persecuted, the habitually discriminated against.

  “Overruled.”

  “Mr. Keller,” Sandaleros said between clenched teeth; he was becoming, Leisha saw, the avenging angel, layer by layer, cell by cell. Gene by gene. The original Will Sandaleros was almost gone. “Were you and Leisha Camden, the woman to whom you exposed your wife’s alleged wrongdoing, ever lovers?”

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  “Since your marriage to Jennifer Sharifi?”

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  “WHEN?” KEVIN’S FACE WAS QUIET on the hotel comscreen.

  Leisha said carefully, “Before you and I started living together. Jennifer was obsessed with Tony’s memory, and Richard felt—it doesn’t matter, Kevin.” As soon as the words were out, she knew how stupid they were. It mattered profoundly. To the trial. To Richard. Perhaps—even, still—to Jennifer, although how could Leisha guess what mattered to Jennifer? She didn’t understand Jennifer. Obsession fell within Leisha’s comprehension; obsessive secrecy, the preference for dark and silent plotting rather than lighted battles, did not. “Jennifer knows. She knew at the time. Sometimes it almost seemed…as if she wanted me to reach out to Richard.”

  Kevin said, as if it were an answer, “I’m taking the Sanctuary oath.”

  It was a moment before Leisha answered. “Why?”

  “I can’t do business otherwise, Leisha. Baker Enterprises is too deeply meshed with Donald Pospula’s firm, with Aerodyne, with half a dozen other Sleepless companies. My losses would be enormous.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about real losses!”

  “Leisha, it isn’t a personal decision. Please try to see that. It’s purely financial—”

  “Is that the only thing that matters?”

  “Of course not. But Sanctuary isn’t asking for anything immoral, only for community solidarity based firmly on economic solidarity. That isn’t—”

  Leisha broke the comlink. She believed Kevin; his decision was purely economic, within boundaries he could construe as moral. Emotional obsession like Jennifer’s would never move him, never touch that smooth clear face, nor the smooth, clear brain beneath it. Obsessions like Jennifer’s—and like her own for the necessity of law.

  Days ago, she had asked herself what she had left to lose. Now, she knew
.

  Security encoded in secret pendants. Oaths of fealty. Planted evidence—because Will Sandaleros was right, no Sleepless would have ever left that pendant there. They were, all of them, too careful. But that fact would not be admissible in court. Generalities—even if profoundly true, even if crucial—never were.

  Leisha sat on the edge of the hotel bed. It dominated the room, that bed. She had assumed, on first checking in at Conewango, that that was because sex was so important to the business of hotels. Wrong assumption. Reasoning from parochial experience.

  It was sleep that was central. To everyone’s assumptions.

  It wasn’t that she expected the practice of law to be clean. No trial lawyer expected that, not after years of plea bargains and perjury and crooked cops and political deals and misapplied statutes and biased juries. But she had believed that the law itself, apart from its practice, was, if not clean, at least large. Large enough.

  She remembered the day she had realized that Yagaiist economics were not large enough. Their stress on individual excellence left out too many phenomena, too many people: those who had no excellence and never would. The beggars, who nonetheless had definite if obscure roles to play in the way the world ran. They were like parasites on a mammal that torment it to a scratching frenzy that draws blood, but whose eggs serve as food for other insects that feed yet others who fatten the birds that are prey for the rodents the tormented mammal eats. A bloody ecology of trade, replacing the linear Yagaiist contracts occurring in a vacuum. The ecology was large enough to take Sleepers and Sleepless, producers and beggars, the excellent and the mediocre and the seemingly worthless. And what kept the ecology functioning was the law.

  But if the law itself was not large enough?

  Not large enough to take in what a Sleepless would do, unprovable but clear as air? To take in what had happened between Richard and her. To take in not only what Jennifer had done, but why. Most of all, to take in that ineffable envy, as potent as genetic structure itself but not able to be spliced, altered, engineered out of existence. Envy for the powerful. The law had never been able to take that in. It had created endless civil rights legislation to correct prejudice against the biologically identifiable: Blacks. Women. Chicanos. The handicapped. But never before in the United States had the objects of envy and the objects of biological prejudice been the same group. And United States law was not large enough to take that in.