The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

The blond, drying his ears, laughed. But Hannaway stood still, and into his eyes came an expression that made Leisha back away. He pushed past her and stormed out.

  “Nice going, Camden,” the blond said. “He deserved that.”

  “But I meant it,” Leisha said. “I will help him study.”

  The blond lowered his towel and stared. “You did, didn’t you? You meant it.”

  “Yes! Why does everybody keep questioning that?”

  “Well,” the boy said, “I don’t. You can help me if I get into trouble.” Suddenly he smiled. “But I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m just as good at anything as you are, Leisha Camden.”

  She studied him. “You’re not one of us. Not Sleepless.”

  “Don’t have to be. I know what I can do. Do, be, create, trade.”

  She said, delighted, “You’re a Yagaiist!”

  “Of course.” He held out his hand. “Stewart Sutter. How about a fishburger in the Yard?”

  “Great,” Leisha said. They walked out together, talking excitedly. When people stared at her, she tried not to notice. She was here. At Harvard. With space ahead of her, time to learn, and with people like Stewart Sutter who accepted and challenged her.

  All the hours he was awake.

  She became totally absorbed in her classwork. Roger Camden drove up once, walking the campus with her, listening, smiling. He was more at home than Leisha would have expected: He knew Stewart Sutter’s father, Kate Addams’ grandfather. They talked about Harvard, business, Harvard, the Yagai Economics Institute, Harvard. “How’s Alice?” Leisha asked once, but Camden said that he didn’t know, she had moved out and did not want to see him. He made her an allowance through his attorney. While he said this, his face remained serene.

  Leisha went to the Homecoming Ball with Stewart, who was also majoring in pre-law but was two years ahead of Leisha. She took a weekend trip to Paris with Kate Addams and two other girlfriends, taking the Concorde III. She had a fight with Stewart over whether the metaphor of superconductivity could apply to Yagaiism, a stupid fight they both knew was stupid but had anyway, and afterward they became lovers. After the fumbling sexual explorations with Richard, Stewart was deft, experienced, smiling faintly as he taught her how to have an orgasm both by herself and with him. Leisha was dazzled. “It’s so joyful,” she said, and Stewart looked at her with a tenderness she knew was part disturbance but didn’t know why.

  At mid-semester she had the highest grades in the freshman class. She got every answer right on every single question on her mid-terms. She and Stewart went out for a beer to celebrate, and when they came back Leisha’s room had been destroyed. The computer was smashed, the data banks wiped, hardcopies and books smoldering in a metal wastebasket. Her clothes were ripped to pieces, her desk and bureau hacked apart. The only thing untouched, pristine, was the bed.

  Stewart said, “There’s no way this could have been done in silence. Everyone on the floor – hell, on the floor below – had to know. Someone will talk to the police.” No one did. Leisha sat on the edge of the bed, dazed, and looked at the remnants of her Homecoming gown. The next day Dave Hannaway gave her a long, wide smile.

  Camden flew east again, taut with rage. He rented her an apartment in Cambridge with E-lock security and a bodyguard named Toshio. After he left, Leisha fired the bodyguard but kept the apartment. It gave her and Stewart more privacy, which they used to endlessly discuss the situation. It was Leisha who argued that it was an aberration, an immaturity.

  “There have always been haters, Stewart. Hate Jews, hate Blacks, hate immigrants, hate Yagaiists who have more initiative and dignity than you do. I’m just the latest object of hatred. It’s not new, it’s not remarkable. It doesn’t mean any basic kind of schism between the Sleepless and Sleepers.”

  Stewart sat up in bed and reached for the sandwiches on the night stand. “Doesn’t it? Leisha, you’re a different kind of person entirely. More evolutionarily fit, not only to survive but to prevail. Those other ‘objects of hatred’ you cite except Yagaiists – they were all powerless in their societies. They occupied inferior positions. You, on the other hand – all three Sleepless in Harvard Law are on the Law Review. All of them. Kevin Baker, your oldest, has already founded a successful bio-interface software firm and is making money, a lot of it. Every Sleepless is making superb grades, none have psychological problems, all are healthy – and most of you aren’t even adults yet. How much hatred do you think you’re going to encounter once you hit the big-stakes world of finance and business and scarce endowed chairs and national politics?”

  “Give me a sandwich,” Leisha said. “Here’s my evidence you’re wrong: You yourself. Kenzo Yagai. Kate Addams. Professor Lane. My father. Every Sleeper who inhabits the world of fair trade, mutually beneficial contracts. And that’s most of you, or at least most of you who are worth considering. You believe that competition among the most capable leads to the most beneficial trades for everyone, strong and weak. Sleepless are making real and concrete contributions to society, in a lot of fields. That has to outweigh the discomfort we cause. We’re valuable to you. You know that.”

  Stewart brushed crumbs off the sheets. “Yes. I do. Yagaiists do.”

  “Yagaiists run the business and financial and academic worlds. Or they will. In a meritocracy, they should. You underestimate the majority of people, Stew. Ethics aren’t confined to the ones out front.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Stewart said. “Because, you know, I’m in love with you.”

  Leisha put down her sandwich.

  “Joy,” Stewart mumbled into her breasts, “you are joy.”

  When Leisha went home for Thanksgiving, she told Richard about Stewart. He listened tight-lipped.

  “A Sleeper.”

  “A person,” Leisha said. “A good, intelligent, achieving person!”

  “Do you know what your good intelligent achieving Sleepers have done, Leisha? Jeanine has been barred from Olympic skating. ‘Genetic alteration, analogous to steroid abuse to create an unsportsmanlike advantage.’ Chris Devereaux’s left Stanford. They trashed his laboratory, destroyed two years’ work in memory formation proteins. Kevin Baker’s software company is fighting a nasty advertising campaign, all underground of course, about kids using software designed by ‘non-human minds.’ Corruption, mental slavery, satanic influences: the whole bag of witch-hunt tricks. Wake up, Leisha!”

  They both heard his words. Moments dragged by. Richard stood like a boxer, forward on the balls of his feet, teeth clenched. Finally he said, very quietly, “Do you love him?”

  “Yes,” Leisha said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Your choice,” Richard said coldly. “What do you do while he’s asleep? Watch?”

  “You make it sound like a perversion!”

  Richard said nothing. Leisha drew a deep breath. She spoke rapidly but calmly, a controlled rush: “While Stewart is asleep I work. The same as you do. Richard – don’t do this. I didn’t mean to hurt you. And I don’t want to lose the group. I believe the Sleepers are the same species as we are – are you going to punish me for that? Are you going to add to the hatred? Are you going to tell me that I can’t belong to a wider world that includes all honest, worthwhile people whether they sleep or not? Are you going to tell me that the most important division is by genetics and not by economic spirituality? Are you going to force me into an artificial choice, ‘us’ or ‘them’?”

  Richard picked up a bracelet. Leisha recognized it: She had given it to him in the summer. His voice was quiet. “No. It’s not a choice.” He played with the gold links a minute, then looked up at her. “Not yet.”

  By spring break, Camden walked more slowly. He took medicine for his blood pressure, his heart. He and Susan, he told Leisha, were getting a divorce. “She changed, Leisha, after I married her. You saw that. She was independent and productive and happy, and then after a few years she stopped all that and became a shrew. A whining shrew.
” He shook his head in genuine bewilderment. “You saw the change.”

  Leisha had. A memory came to her: Susan leading her and Alice in “games” that were actually controlled cerebral-performance tests, Susan’s braids dancing around her sparkling eyes. Alice had loved Susan, then, as much as Leisha had.

  “Dad, I want Alice’s address.”

  “I told you up at Harvard, I don’t have it,” Camden said. He shifted in his chair, the impatient gesture of a body that never expected to wear out. In January Kenzo Yagai had died of pancreatic cancer; Camden had taken the news hard. “I make her allowance through an attorney. By her choice.”

  “Then I want the address of the attorney.”

  The attorney, however, refused to tell Leisha where Alice was. “She doesn’t want to be found, Ms. Camden. She wanted a complete break.”

  “Not from me,” Leisha said.

  “Yes,” the attorney said, and something flickered behind his eyes, something she had last seen in Dave Hannaway’s face.

  She flew to Austin before returning to Boston, making her a day late for classes. Kevin Baker saw her instantly, canceling a meeting with IBM. She told him what she needed, and he set his best data-net people on it, without telling them why. Within two hours she had Alice’s address from the attorney’s electronic files. It was the first time, she realized, that she had ever turned to one of the Sleepless for help, and it had been given instantly. Without trade.

  Alice was in Pennsylvania. The next weekend Leisha rented a hovercar and driver – she had learned to drive, but only groundcars as yet – and went to High Ridge, in the Appalachian Mountains.

  It was an isolated hamlet, twenty-five miles from the nearest hospital. Alice lived with a man named Ed, a silent carpenter twenty years older than she, in a cabin in the woods. The cabin had water and electricity but no news net. In the early spring light the earth was raw and bare, slashed with icy gullies. Alice and Ed apparently worked at nothing. Alice was eight months pregnant.

  “I didn’t want you here,” she said to Leisha. “So why are you?”

  “Because you’re my sister.”

  “God, look at you. Is that what they’re wearing at Harvard? Boots like that? When did you become fashionable, Leisha? You were always too busy being intellectual to care.”

  “What’s this all about, Alice? Why here? What are you doing?”

  “Living,” Alice said. “Away from dear Daddy, away from Chicago, away from drunken broken Susan – did you know she drinks? Just like Mom. He does that to people. But not to me. I got out. I wonder if you ever will.”

  “Got out? To this?”

  “I’m happy,” Alice said angrily. “Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? Isn’t that the aim of your great Kenzo Yagai – happiness through individual effort?”

  Leisha thought of saying that Alice was making no efforts that she could see. She didn’t say it. A chicken ran through the yard of the cabin. Behind, the mountains rose in layers of blue haze. Leisha thought what this place must have been like in winter: cut off from the world where people strived towards goals, learned, changed.

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Alice.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m glad, too,” Alice said, almost defiantly. The next moment she abruptly hugged Leisha, fiercely, the huge hard mound of her belly crushed between them. Alice’s hair smelled sweet, like fresh grass in sunlight.

  “I’ll come see you again, Alice.”

  “Don’t,” Alice said.

  6

  SLEEPLESS MUTIE BEGS FOR REVERSAL OF GENE TAMPERING, screamed the headline in the Food Mart. “PLEASE LET ME SLEEP LIKE REAL PEOPLE!” CHILD PLEADS.

  Leisha typed in her credit number and pressed the news kiosk for a printout, although ordinarily she ignored the electronic tabloids. The headline went on circling the kiosk. A Food Mart employee stopped stacking boxes on shelves and watched her. Bruce, Leisha’s bodyguard, watched the employee.

  She was twenty-two, in her final year at Harvard Law, editor of the Law Review, ranked first in her class. The next three were Jonathan Cocchiara, Len Carter, and Martha Wentz. All Sleepless.

  In her apartment she skimmed the print-out. Then she accessed the Groupnet run from Austin. The files had more news stories about the child, with comments from other Sleepless, but before she could call them up Kevin Baker came on-line himself, on voice.

  “Leisha. I’m glad you called. I was going to call you.”

  “What’s the situation with this Stella Bevington, Kev? Has anybody checked it out?”

  “Randy Davies. He’s from Chicago but I don’t think you’ve met him, he’s still in high school. He’s in Park Ridge, Stella’s in Skokie. Her parents wouldn’t talk to him – were pretty abusive, in fact – but he got to see Stella face-to-face anyway. It doesn’t look like an abuse case, just the usual stupidity: parents wanted a genius child, scrimped and saved, and now they can’t handle that she is one. They scream at her to sleep, get emotionally abusive when she contradicts them, but so far no violence.”

  “Is the emotional abuse actionable?”

  “I don’t think we want to move on it yet. Two of us will keep in close touch with Stella – she does have a modem, and she hasn’t told her parents about the net – and Randy will drive out weekly.”

  Leisha bit her lip. “A tabloid shitpiece said she’s seven years old.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe she shouldn’t be left there. I’m an Illinois resident, I can file an abuse grievance from here if Candy’s got too much in her briefcase . . .” Seven years old.

  “No. Let it sit a while. Stella will probably be all right. You know that.”

  She did. Nearly all of the Sleepless stayed “all right,” no matter how much opposition came from the stupid segment of society. And it was only the stupid segment, Leisha argued – a small if vocal minority. Most people could, and would, adjust to the growing presence of the Sleepless, when it became clear that that presence included not only growing power but growing benefits to the country as a whole.

  Kevin Baker, now twenty-six, had made a fortune in micro-chips so revolutionary that Artificial Intelligence, once a debated dream, was yearly closer to reality. Carolyn Rizzolo had won the Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play Morning Light. She was twenty-four. Jeremy Robinson had done significant work in superconductivity applications while still a graduate student at Stanford. William Thaine, Law Review editor when Leisha first came to Harvard, was now in private practice. He had never lost a case. He was twenty-six, and the cases were becoming important. His clients valued his ability more than his age.

  But not everyone reacted that way.

  Kevin Baker and Richard Keller had started the datanet that bound the Sleepless into a tight group, constantly aware of each other’s personal fights. Leisha Camden financed the legal battles, the educational costs of Sleepless whose parents were unable to meet them, the support of children in emotionally bad situations. Rhonda Lavelier got herself licensed as a foster mother in California, and whenever possible the Group maneuvered to have small Sleepless who were removed from their homes assigned to Rhonda. The Group now had three ABA lawyers; within the next year they would gain four more, licensed to practice in five different states.

  The one time they had not been able to remove an abused Sleepless child legally, they kidnapped him.

  Timmy DeMarzo, four years old. Leisha had been opposed to the action. She had argued the case morally and pragmatically – to her they were the same thing – thus: If they believed in their society, in its fundamental laws and in their ability to belong to it as free-trading productive individuals, they must remain bound by the society’s contractual laws. The Sleepless were, for the most part, Yagaiists. They should already know this. And if the FBI caught them, the courts and press would crucify them.

  They were not caught.

  Timmy DeMarzo – not even old enough to call for help on the datanet, they ha
d learned of the situation through the automatic police-record scan Kevin maintained through his company – was stolen from his own backyard in Wichita. He had lived the last year in an isolated trailer in North Dakota; no place was too isolated for a modem. He was cared for by a legally irreproachable foster mother who had lived there all her life. The foster mother was second cousin to a Sleepless, a broad cheerful woman with a much better brain than her appearance indicated. She was a Yagaiist. No record of the child’s existence appeared in any data bank: not the IRS, not any school’s, not even the local grocery store’s computerized check-out slips. Food specifically for the child was shipped in monthly on a truck owned by a Sleepless in State College, Pennsylvania. Ten of the Group knew about the kidnapping, out of the total 3,428 born in the United States. Of that total, 2,691 were part of the Group via the net. Another 701 were as yet too young to use a modem. Only 36 Sleepless, for whatever reason, were not part of the Group.

  The kidnapping had been arranged by Tony Indivino.

  “It’s Tony I wanted to talk to you about,” Kevin said to Leisha. “He’s started again. This time he means it. He’s buying land.”

  She folded the tabloid very small and laid it carefully on the table. “Where?”

  “Allegheny Mountains. In southern New York State. A lot of land. He’s putting in the roads now. In the spring, the first buildings.”

  “Jennifer Sharifi still financing it?” She was the American-born daughter of an Arab prince who had wanted a Sleepless child. The prince was dead and Jennifer, dark-eyed and multilingual, was richer than Leisha would one day be.

  “Yes. He’s starting to get a following, Leisha.”

  “I know.”

  “Call him.”

  “I will. Keep me informed about Stella.”

  She worked until midnight at the Law Review, then until four a.m. preparing her classes. From four to five she handled legal matters for the Group. At five a.m. she called Tony, still in Chicago. He had finished high school, done one semester at Northwestern, and at Christmas vacation he had finally exploded at his mother for forcing him to live as a Sleeper. The explosion, it seemed to Leisha, had never ended.