“I guess maybe you do want them,” Sandaleros said. He was twenty-five years old and had grown up in Sanctuary from the age of four, his custody voluntarily signed over by parents who had not gotten what they expected in a genetically-altered child. After Harvard Law, Sandaleros had returned to Sanctuary to base his practice there, leaving only to consult with clients or appear in court. Even for that he did not like to leave. He barely remembered his parents, and not with affection. He had been Jennifer’s first choice for counsel.
“One thing more,” Sandaleros said. “I have a message from your children.”
Jennifer sat very straight. Each time, this was the hardest; this was why she disciplined herself day after night on the very edge of the hard metal cot, back straight, mind forced into calm planning. For this. “Go ahead.”
“Najla says to tell you she has finished the Physics Three software. Ricky says he found a new fish-migration pattern in the live data from the Gulf Stream, and is mapping it against his father’s work in the Global Directory.”
Ricky almost always found a way to include his father in his messages; Najla never did. They had been told that their father would testify against their mother in court. Jennifer had insisted that Sandaleros tell them. This was not a world in which Sleepless children could afford sheltered ignorance.
“Thank you,” Jennifer said composedly. “Now tell me our defense options.”
Later, after Sandaleros had gone, she sat for a long time on the edge of the cot, growing decision trees in the free spaces of her mind.
“Are you really going to do it?” Stella Bevington’s pretty face on the comlink was set and cold. “You’re really going to testify against one of us?”
“Stella,” Leisha said, “I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s wrong. And because—”
“It’s not wrong to take care of your own, even if it means breaking the law! You were the one who taught me that—you and Alice!”
“This isn’t the same,” Leisha said, as evenly as she could. Behind Stella’s head on the comlink screen were California genemod palms, long blue fronds bisected by silver. What was Stella doing in California? No outdoor link was ever adequately shielded. “Jennifer is hurting us. All of us, Sleepless and Sleeper alike—”
“Not me. She’s not hurting me; you’re doing that, by shattering the only family some of us have left. We’re not all as lucky as you, Leisha!”
“I—” Leisha began, but Stella had already broken the link and Leisha was staring at a blank screen.
Adam Walcott stood in the library of Leisha and Kevin’s penthouse, looking distractedly at the rows of law books, the framed holo of Kenzo Yagai, the sculpture hewn from virgin Luna rock by Mondi Rastell. The sculpture was an androgynous human figure in a soaring heroic pose, arms stretched upward, face illuminated by intelligence. Leisha watched Walcott stand on one foot, run his left hand through his hair, run his right hand through his hair, twitch his wispy shoulders, and lower his foot. Weird—there was no other word for him. Walcott was the weirdest client she’d ever had. She couldn’t even tell if he understood what she’d summoned him here to explain.
“Dr. Walcott, you understand that you can still fight the patent case against both Samplice and Sanctuary, simultaneously with the Sharifi murder case.” Her voice was steady on the words. Sometimes, in the forced isolation, of her apartment, she practiced saying them aloud: the Sharifi murder case.
“But you won’t be my lawyer,” he said irritably. “You’re just dropping the whole thing.”
Patiently Leisha started over again. He truly didn’t seem to understand. “I am in protective custody until the trial, Dr. Walcott. There have been serious threats against my life. Those aren’t my bodyguards you passed in the lobby and the elevator and on the roof—those are federal marshals. I’m in custody here instead of anywhere else because the security here is better than anywhere else. Almost. But I can’t represent your patent case in court, and I don’t consider it advisable for you to wait until I can. In your own best interests, you should get different counsel, and I’ve made a list for you to consider.”
She held out the hard-copy; Walcott made no move to take it. He stood on his other foot, and the intermittent strength returned to his voice. “It isn’t fair!”
“Isn’t…”
“Fair. For a man to work on a genetic revolution, put in his heart blood for a stinking petty company that couldn’t recognize genius if it tripped over it…I was promised, Ms. Camden! Promises were made!”
She was listening intently now, despite herself. The little man’s large intensity was somehow frightening. “What kind of promises, Doctor?”
“Recognition! Fame! The attention I deserve, that no one but Sleepless ever gets now!” He spread his arms wide and stood on tiptoe, his voice rising to a shriek. “I was promised!”
Abruptly he seemed aware that Leisha was studying him. He dropped his arms to his side and smiled at her, a smile of such obvious, sickly insincerity that she felt her neck prickle. It was difficult to imagine Director Lee of Samplice, a man too self-absorbed and insecure to recognize others’ dreams, ever making such promises. Something was wrong here. “Who promised you those things, Dr. Walcott?”
“Ah, well,” he said airily, not meeting her eyes, “you know how it is. You have youthful dreams. Life promises you. And the promise goes away.”
She said, more harshly than she intended, “Everybody discovers that, Dr. Walcott. About more worthy dreams than fame and attention.”
He didn’t seem to have heard her. He stood staring at the portrait of Yagai, and his left arm came up behind his head to thoughtfully rub his right ear.
Leisha said, “Get another lawyer, Dr. Walcott.”
“Yes,” he said, almost absently, “I will. Thank you. Goodbye. I’ll show myself out.”
Leisha sat on the library sofa for a long time, wondering why Walcott disturbed her so much. It wasn’t anything to do with this particular case; it was larger than that. Was it because she expected competence to be rational? That was the American myth: the competent man, suffused with both individualism and common sense, in control of himself and the material world. History didn’t bear that myth out; competent men frequently were out of control or irrational. Lincoln’s melancholy, Michelangelo’s outrageous temper, Newton’s megalomania. Her model had been Kenzo Yagai, but why shouldn’t Yagai have been an aberration? Why should she necessarily expect the same logical and disciplined behavior from Walcott? Or from Richard, who could summon the moral strength to stop his wife’s destructive and immoral behavior but who now spent his own days in protective custody sitting slumped in a corner, without the will to eat or wash or speak unless he was forced to do those things? Or from Jennifer, who used a brilliant strategic brain in the service of an obsessive need for control?
Or was it she, Leisha, who was not rational, by expecting that all these people would not do those things?
She got off the sofa and wandered through the apartment. All the terminals were off; there had come an hour, two days ago, when she could no longer bear the hysterical newsgrids. The windows were transluced to shut out the intermittent three-way scuffles between police and the two warring semipermanent groups of demonstrators below her window. KILL SLEEPLESS BEFORE THEY KILL US! shrilled the electronic signs of one side, answered by FORCE SANCTUARY TO SHARE PATENTS! THEY ARE NOT GODS! Occasionally the two groups, tired of fighting with police, fought with each other. The past two nights Kevin, coming home for dinner, had to run for the building between cordons of bodyguards, police, and screaming rioters, robot newsgrid holocams swooping to within inches of his face for close-ups.