Jennifer didn’t answer, and Leisha said slowly, “Oh my God. You are. You are thinking of an economic boycott…”
“That would not be my decision. It would take the whole Sanctuary Council. I doubt they would vote such a boycott.”
“But you would.”
“I was never a Yagaiist, Leisha. I don’t believe in the predominance of individual excellence over the welfare of the community. Both are important.”
“This isn’t about Yagaiism and you know it. This is about control, Jennifer. You hate everything you can’t control—just like the worst of the Sleepers do. But you go farther than they do. You make control into something holy because you need holiness as well. This is all about what you, Jennifer Sharifi, need. Not what the community needs.”
Jennifer walked from the room, gripping her hands together to keep them from shaking. It was her own fault, of course, that any other person had enough power over her to cause them to shake. A fault, a weakness, that she had failed to root out. Her failure. In the hall her children barreled into her from their playroom.
“Mom! Come see what we built!”
Jennifer put one hand on each of their heads. There was a knot somewhere in Najla’s coarse hair. Ricky’s, darker than his older sister’s but finer, felt like cool silk. Jennifer’s hands steadied.
The children caught sight of the living room. “Aunt Leisha! Aunt Leisha’s here!” Their hair left Jennifer’s fingers. “Aunt Leisha, come see what we built on CAD!”
“Of course,” Jennifer heard Leisha’s voice say. “I want to. But let me just ask your mother one more thing.”
Jennifer didn’t turn around. If the traitor Inside had mailed Leisha notice of the oath of solidarity, what else had she been mailed?
But all Leisha said was, “Did Richard receive the subpoena for Simpson v. Offshore Fishing?”
“Yes. He did. He’s preparing his expert testimony now, in fact.”
“Good,” Leisha said bleakly.
Ricky looked from Leisha to his mother. His voice had lost some of its exuberance. “Mom…should I go get Dad? Aunt Leisha will want to see Dad…won’t she?”
Jennifer smiled at her son. She could feel the lavishness of her own smile, lush with relief. Offshore fishing rights: Almost she could pity Leisha. Her days were given to such triviality. “Yes, of course, Ricky,” she said, turning the lavish smile on Leisha, “go get your father. Your Aunt Leisha will want to visit with him. Of course she will.”
9
“Leisha,” said the receptionist in her law office, “This gentleman has been waiting to see you for three hours. He doesn’t have an appointment. I told him you might not even be back today, but he stayed anyway.”
The man stood, lurching a little with the stiffness of someone who has held muscles too long in one tense position. He was short and thin, oddly wispy, dressed in a rumpled brown suit that was neither cheap nor expensive. In one hand he held a folded kiosk tabloid. Sleeper, Leisha thought. She always knew.
“Leisha Camden?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing any new clients. If you need a lawyer, you’ll need to ask elsewhere.”
“I think you’ll take this case,” the man said, surprising her. His voice was considerably less wispy than his appearance. “At any rate, you’ll want to know about it. Please give me ten minutes.” He opened the tabloid and held it out to her. On the front page was her picture with Calvin Hawke, over the headline, “Sleepless Worried Enough to Investigate We-Sleep Movement… Have We Got Them on the Run?”
Now she knew why Hawke had permitted her to visit the scooter factory.
“It says this picture was taken this morning,” the man said. “My, my, my,” and Leisha knew he did not work in telecommunications.
“Come into my office, Mr…”
“Adam Walcott. Dr. Adam Walcott.”
“A medical doctor?”
He looked directly at her. His eyes were a pale, milky blue, like frosted glass. “Genetic researcher.”
The sun was setting over Lake Michigan. Leisha transluced the glass wall, sat down opposite Dr. Walcott, and waited.
Walcott twisted his legs, which were remarkably spindly, into pretzels around the legs of his chair. “I work for a private research firm, Ms. Camden. Samplice Biotechnical. We develop refinements on genetic modeling and alteration and offer these products to the bigger houses that do in vitro gene altering. We developed the Pastan procedure for preternaturally sharp hearing.”
Leisha nodded neutrally; preternaturally sharp hearing had always struck her as a terrible idea. The benefits of hearing a whisper six rooms away were outweighed by the pain of hearing shatter-rock three rooms away. P-hearing kids were fitted for sound-control implants at two months of age.
“Samplice gives its researchers a lot of leeway.” Walcott stopped to cough, a sound so thin and tentative that Leisha thought of ghosts coughing. “They say they hope we’ll stumble on something wonderful, but the truth is that the company is in a terrible state of disorganization and they just don’t know how to supervise scientists. About two years ago I asked for permission to work on some of the peptides associated with Sleeplessness.”
Leisha said wryly, “I wouldn’t think there was anything associated with Sleeplessness that hadn’t been researched already.”
Walcott seemed to find this funny; he gave a gasping chuckle, un-twisted his skinny legs from around the chair, and twisted them around each other. “Most people think not. But I was working with the peptides in adult Sleepless, and I was using some new approaches pioneered at L’Institut Technique de Lyons. By Gaspard-Thiereux. Do you know his work?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“You probably don’t know this new approach. It’s very new itself.” Walcott wound a hand through his hair and tugged; both hand and hair were insubstantial. “I should have started by asking how secure this office was.”
“Completely,” Leisha said. “Or you wouldn’t be in it.” But Walcott only nodded; apparently he was not one of those Sleepers offended by Sleepless security. Her estimation of him rose a little.
“To shorten this recital, what I think I’ve found is a way to create sleeplessness in adults who were born Sleepers.”
Leisha’s hands moved to pick up…what? Something. The hands stopped. She stared at them. “To…”
“Not all the problems are worked out yet.” Walcott launched into a complicated thesis of altered peptide manufacture, neuron synapses, and redundant information coding in DNA, none of which Leisha could follow. She sat quietly, while the universe took a different shape.
“Dr. Walcott…you’re sure?”
“About lysine transference redundancy?”
“No. About creating sleeplessness in Sleepers—”
Walcott ran his other hand through his hair. “No, of course we’re not sure. How could we be? We need controlled experiments, additional replications, not to mention funding for—”
“But in theory you can do it.”
“Oh, theory,” Walcott said, and even in her shock this seemed an odd dismissal for a scientist to make. Evidently Walcott was a pragmatist. “Yes, we can do it in theory.”