“But we will be.”
“Wait,” Leisha said. She was deeply troubled by the conversation. “I mean, yes, in many ways we’re better. But you quoted out of context, Tony. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say all men are created equal in ability. It’s talking about rights and power; it means that all are created equal under the law. We have no more right to a separate society or to being free of society’s restrictions than anyone else does. There’s no other way to freely trade one’s efforts, unless the same contractual rules apply to all.”
“Spoken like a true Yagaiist,” Richard said, squeezing her hand.
“That’s enough intellectual discussion for me,” Carol said, laughing. “We’ve been at this for hours. We’re at the beach, for Chrissake. Who wants to swim with me?”
“I do,” Jeanine said. “Come on, Jack.”
All of them rose, brushing sand off their suits, discarding sunglasses. Richard pulled Leisha to her feet. But just before they ran into the water, Tony put his skinny hand on her arm. “One more question, Leisha. Just to think about. If we achieve better than most other people, and if we trade with the Sleepers when it’s mutually beneficial, making no distinction there between the strong and the weak—what obligation do we have to those so weak they don’t have anything to trade with us? We’re already going to give more than we get; do we have to do it when we get nothing at all? Do we have to take care of their deformed and handicapped and sick and lazy and shiftless with the products of our work?”
“Do the Sleepers have to?” Leisha countered.
“Kenzo Yagai would say no. He’s a Sleeper.”
“He would say they would receive the benefits of contractual trade even if they aren’t direct parties to the contract. The whole world is better-fed and healthier because of Y-energy.”
“Come on!” Jeanine yelled. “Leisha, they’re ducking me! Jack, you stop that! Leisha, help me!”
Leisha laughed. Just before she grabbed for Jeanine, she caught the look on Richard’s face, and on Tony’s: Richard frankly lustful, Tony angry. At her. But why? What had she done, except argue in favor of dignity and trade?
Then Jack threw water on her, and Carol pushed Jack into the warm spray, and Richard was there with his arms around her, laughing.
When she got the water out of her eyes, Tony was gone.
Midnight. “Okay,” Carol said. “Who’s first?”
The six teenagers in the brambly clearing looked at each other. A Y-lamp, kept on low for atmosphere, cast weird shadows across their faces and over their bare legs. Around the clearing Roger Camden’s trees stood thick and dark, a wall between them and the closest of the estate’s outbuildings. It was very hot. August air hung heavy, sullen. They had voted against bringing an air-conditioned Y-field because this was a return to the primitive, the dangerous; let it be primitive.
Six pairs of eyes stared at the glass in Carol’s hand.
“Come on,” she said. “Who wants to drink up?” Her voice was jaunty, theatrically hard. “It was difficult enough to get this.”
“How did you get it?” said Richard, the group member—except for Tony—with the least influential family contacts, the least money. “In a drinkable form like that?”
“Jennifer got it,” Carol said, and five sets of eyes shifted to Jennifer Sharifi, who two weeks into her visit with Carol’s family was confusing them all. She was the American-born daughter of a Hollywood movie star and an Arab prince who had wanted to found a Sleepless dynasty. The movie star was an aging drug addict; the prince, who had taken his fortune out of oil and put it into Y-energy when Kenzo Yagai was still licensing his first patents, was dead. Jennifer Sharifi was richer than Leisha would someday be, and infinitely more sophisticated about procuring things. The glass held interleukin-1, an immune-system booster, one of many substances which as a side effect induced the brain to swift and deep sleep.
Leisha stared at the glass. A warm feeling crept through her lower belly, not unlike the feeling when she and Richard made love. She caught Jennifer watching her, and flushed.
Jennifer disturbed her. Not for the obvious reasons she disturbed Tony and Richard and Jack: the long black hair, the tall, slim body in shorts and halter. Jennifer didn’t laugh. Leisha had never met a Sleepless who didn’t laugh, nor one who said so little, with such deliberate casualness. Leisha found herself speculating on what Jennifer Sharifi wasn’t saying. It was an odd sensation to feel toward another Sleepless.
Tony said to Carol, “Give it to me!”
Carol handed him the glass. “Remember, you only need a little sip.”
Tony raised the glass to his mouth, stopped, and looked at them over the rim from his fierce eyes. He drank.
Carol took back the glass. They all watched Tony. Within a minute he lay on the rough ground; within two, his eyes closed in sleep.
It wasn’t like seeing parents sleep, siblings, friends. It was Tony. They looked away, avoided each other’s eyes. Leisha felt the warmth between her legs tug and tingle, faintly obscene. She didn’t look at Jennifer.
When it was Leisha’s turn, she drank slowly, then passed the glass to Richard. Her head turned heavy, as if it were being stuffed with damp rags. The trees at the edge of the clearing blurred. The portable lamp blurred, too. It wasn’t bright and clean anymore but squishy, blobby; if she touched it, it would smear. Then darkness swooped over her brain, taking it away: taking away her mind. “Daddy!” She tried to call, to clutch for him, but then the darkness obliterated her.
Afterward, they all had headaches. Dragging themselves back through the woods in the thin morning light was torture, compounded by an odd shame. They didn’t touch each other. Leisha walked as far away from Richard as she could.
Jennifer was the only one who spoke. “So now we know,” she said, and her voice held a strange satisfaction.
It was a whole day before the throbbing left the base of Leisha’s skull, or the nausea her stomach. She sat alone in her room, waiting for the misery to pass, and despite the heat, her whole body shivered.
There had not even been any dreams.
“I want you to come with me tonight,” Leisha said, for the tenth or twelfth time. “We both leave for college in just two days; this is the last chance. I really want you to meet Richard.”
Alice lay on her stomach across her bed. Her hair, brown and lusterless, fell around her face. She wore an expensive yellow jumpsuit, silk by Ann Patterson, which rucked up around her knees.
“Why? What do you care if I meet Richard or not?”
“Because you’re my sister,” Leisha said. She knew better than to say “my twin.” Nothing got Alice angry faster.
“I don’t want to.” The next moment Alice’s face changed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Leisha—I didn’t mean to sound so snotty. But…but I don’t want to.”
“It won’t be all of them. Just Richard. And just for an hour or so. Then you can come back here and pack for Northwestern.”
“I’m not going to Northwestern.”
Leisha stared at her.
Alice said, “I’m pregnant.”
Leisha sat on the bed. Alice rolled onto her back, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and laughed. Leisha’s ears closed against the sound. “Look at you,” Alice said. “You’d think it was you who was pregnant. But you never would be, would you, Leisha? Not until it was the proper time. Not you.”
“How?” Leisha said. “We both had our caps put in…”
“I had the cap removed,” Alice said.