The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  Leisha thought of her and Alice running through the conservatory, years ago, her and Alice, darting in and out of the sunlight. “It hasn’t been so bad growing up in this house.”

  “Leisha, you’re stupid. I don’t know how anyone so smart can be so stupid. Get out of my room! Get out!”

  “But Alice … a baby …”

  “Get out!” Alice shrieked. “Go to Harvard! Go be successful! Just get out!”

  Leisha jerked off the bed. “Gladly! You’re irrational, Alice! You don’t think ahead, you don’t plan a baby …” But she could never sustain anger. It dribbled away, leaving her mind empty. She looked at Alice, who suddenly put out her arms. Leisha went into them.

  “You’re the baby,” Alice said wonderingly. “You are. You’re so … I don’t know what. You’re a baby.”

  Leisha said nothing. Alice’s arms felt warm, felt whole, felt like two children running in and out of sunlight. “I’ll help you, Alice. If Daddy won’t.”

  Alice abruptly pushed her away. “I don’t need your help.”

  Alice stood. Leisha rubbed her empty arms, fingertips scraping across opposite elbows. Alice kicked the empty, open trunk in which she was supposed to pack for Northwestern, and then abruptly smiled, a smile that made Leisha look away. She braced herself for more abuse. But what Alice said, very softly, was, “Have a good time at Harvard.”

  5

  She loved it.

  From the first sight of Massachusetts Hall, older than the United States by a half century, Leisha felt something that had been missing in Chicago: Age. Roots. Tradition. She touched the bricks of Widener Library, the glass cases in the Peabody Museum, as if they were the grail. She had never been particularly sensitive to myth or drama; the anguish of Juliet seemed to her artificial, that of Willy Loman merely wasteful. Only King Arthur, struggling to create a better social order, had interested her. But now, walking under the huge autumn trees, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a force that could span generations, fortunes left to endow learning and achievement the benefactors would never see, individual effort spanning and shaping centuries to come. She stopped, and looked at the sky through the leaves, at the buildings solid with purpose. At such moments she thought of Camden, bending the will of an entire genetic research institute to create her in the image he wanted.

  Within a month, she had forgotten all such mega-musings.

  The workload was incredible, even for her. The Sauley School had encouraged individual exploration at her own pace; Harvard knew what it wanted from her, at its pace. In the last twenty years, under the academic leadership of a man who in his youth had watched Japanese economic domination with dismay, Harvard had become the controversial leader of a return to hard-edged learning of facts, theories, applications, problem-solving, intellectual efficiency. The school accepted one out of every two hundred applications from around the world. The daughter of England’s Prime Minister had flunked out her first year and been sent home.

  Leisha had a single room in a new dormitory, the dorm because she had spent so many years isolated in Chicago and was hungry for people, the single so she would not disturb anyone else when she worked all night. Her second day a boy from down the hall sauntered in and perched on the edge of her desk.

  “So you’re Leisha Camden.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sixteen years old.”

  “Almost seventeen.”

  “Going to out-perform us all, I understand, without even trying.”

  Leisha’s smile faded. The boy stared at her from under lowered downy brows. He was smiling, his eyes sharp. From Richard and Tony and the others Leisha had learned to recognize the anger that presented itself as contempt.

  “Yes,” Leisha said coolly, “I am.”

  “Are you sure? With your pretty little-girl hair and your mutant little-girl brain?”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Hannaway,” said another voice. A tall blond boy, so thin his ribs looked like ripples in brown sand, stood in jeans and bare feet, drying his wet hair. “Don’t you ever get tired of walking around being an asshole?”

  “Do you?” Hannaway said. He heaved himself off the desk and started toward the door. The blond moved out of his way. Leisha moved into it.

  “The reason I’m going to do better than you,” she said evenly, “is because I have certain advantages you don’t. Including sleeplessness. And then after I ‘out-perform’ you, I’ll be glad to help you study for your tests so that you can pass, too.”

  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 fish-burger 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 printout. 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.