“What are you saying?” Leisha demanded. “That you can only be close to someone if they’re in trouble and need you? That you can only be a sister if I was in some kind of pain, open sores running? Is that the bond between you Sleepers? ‘Protect me while I’m unconscious, I’m just as crippled as you are’?”
“No,” Alice said. “I’m saying that you could be a sister only if you were in some kind of pain.”
Leisha stared at her. “You’re stupid, Alice.”
Alice said calmly, “I know that. Compared to you, I am. I know that.”
Leisha jerked her head angrily. She felt ashamed of what she had just said, and yet it was true, and they both knew it was true, and anger still lay in her like a dark void, formless and hot. It was the formless part that was the worst. Without shape, there could be no action; without action, the anger went on burning her, choking her.
Alice said, “When I was twelve Susan gave me a dress for our birthday. You were away somewhere, on one of those overnight field trips your fancy progressive school did all the time. The dress was silk, pale blue, with antique lace—very beautiful. I was thrilled, not only because it was beautiful but because Susan had gotten it for me and gotten software for you. The dress was mine. Was, I thought, me.” In the gathering gloom Leisha could barely make out her broad, plain features. “The first time I wore it a boy said, ‘Stole your sister’s dress, Alice? Snitched it while she was sleeping?’ Then he laughed like crazy, the way they always did.
“I threw the dress away. I didn’t even explain to Susan, although I think she would have understood. Whatever was yours was yours, and whatever wasn’t yours was yours, too. That’s the way Daddy set it up. The way he hard-wired it into our genes.”
“You, too?” Leisha said. “You’re no different from the other envious beggars?”
Alice stood up from the rug. She did it slowly, leisurely, brushing dust off the back of her wrinkled skirt, smoothing the print fabric. Then she walked over and hit Leisha in the mouth.
“Now do you see me as real?” Alice asked quietly.
Leisha put her hand to her mouth. She felt blood. The phone rang, Camden’s unlisted personal line. Alice walked over, picked it up, listened, and held it calmly out to Leisha. “It’s for you.”
Numb, Leisha took it.
“Leisha? This is Kevin. Listen, something’s happened. Stella Bevington called me, on the phone, not Groupnet; I think her parents took away her modem. I picked up the phone and she screamed, ‘This is Stella! They’re hitting me, he’s drunk—’ and then the line went dead. Randy’s gone to Sanctuary—hell, they’ve all gone. You’re closest to her, she’s still in Skokie. You better get there fast. Have you got bodyguards you trust?”
“Yes,” Leisha said, although she hadn’t. The anger, finally, took form. “I can handle it.”
“I don’t know how you’ll get her out of there,” Kevin said. “They’ll recognize you, they know she called somebody, they might even have knocked her out…”
“I’ll handle it,” Leisha said.
“Handle what?” Alice said.
Leisha faced her. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she said, “What your people do. To one of ours. A seven-year-old kid who’s getting beaten by her parents because she’s Sleepless—because she’s better than you are—” She ran down the stairs and out to the rental car she had driven from the airport.
Alice ran right down with her. “Not your car, Leisha. They can trace a rental car just like that. My car.”
Leisha screamed, “If you think you’re—”
Alice yanked open the door of her battered Toyota, a model so old the Y-energy cones weren’t even concealed but hung like drooping jowls on either side. She shoved Leisha into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and rammed herself behind the wheel. Her hands were steady. “Where?”
Blackness swooped over Leisha. She put her head down, as far between her knees as the cramped Toyota would allow. It had been two—no, three—days since she had eaten. Not since the night before the bar exams. The faintness receded, swept over her again as soon as she raised her head.
She told Alice the address in Skokie.
“Stay way in the back,” Alice said. “And there’s a scarf in the glove compartment—put it on. Low, to hide as much of your face as possible.”
Alice had stopped the car along Highway 42. Leisha said, “This isn’t—”
“It’s a quick-guard place. We have to look like we have some protection, Leisha. We don’t need to tell him anything. I’ll hurry.”
She was out in three minutes with a huge man in a cheap dark suit. He squeezed into the front seat beside Alice and said nothing at all. Alice did not introduce him.
The house was small, a little shabby, with lights on downstairs, none upstairs. The first stars shone in the north, away from Chicago. Alice said to the guard, “Get out of the car and stand here by the car door—no, more in the light—and don’t do anything unless I’m attacked in some way.” The man nodded. Alice started up the walk. Leisha scrambled out of the back seat and caught her sister two-thirds of the way to the plastic front door.
“Alice, what the hell are you doing? I have to—”
“Keep your voice down,” Alice said, glancing at the guard. “Leisha, think. You’ll be recognized. Here, near Chicago, with a Sleepless daughter—these people have looked at your picture in magazines for years. They’ve watched long-range holovids of you. They know you. They know you’re going to be a lawyer. Me they’ve never seen. I’m nobody.”
“Alice—”
“For Chrissake, get back in the car!” Alice hissed, and pounded on the front door.
Leisha drew off the walk, into the shadow of a willow tree. A man opened the door. His face was completely blank.
Alice said, “Child Protection Agency. We got a call from a little girl, this number. Let me in.”
“There’s no little girl here.”
“This is an emergency, priority one,” Alice said. “Child Protection Act 186. Let me in!”
The man, still blank-faced, glanced at the huge figure by the car. “You got a search warrant?”
“I don’t need one in a priority-one child emergency. If you don’t let me in, you’re going to have legal snarls like you never bargained for.”
Leisha clamped her lips together. No one would believe that, it was legal gobbledygook… Her lip throbbed where Alice had hit it.
The man stood aside to let Alice enter.
The guard started forward. Leisha hesitated, then let him. He entered with Alice.
Leisha waited, alone, in the dark.
In three minutes they were out, the guard carrying a child. Alice’s broad face gleamed pale in the porch light. Leisha sprang forward, opened the car door, and helped the guard ease the child inside. The guard was frowning, a slow puzzled frown shot with wariness.
Alice said, “Here. This is an extra hundred dollars. To get back to the city by yourself.”
“Hey…” the guard said, but he took the money. He stood looking after them as Alice pulled away.