“You’re talking garbage, Ms. Camden,” Hawke said. Jordan saw that he was again in control of himself, his big body relaxed and powerful as he leaned against the desk. “But I’ll respond to your last statement anyway. I’ll tell you what matters. This—” he picked up the sheaf of letters behind him “—matters. Gratitude from people who did not have the dignity of work before, and because of We-Sleep have it now. This matters.”
“Dignity? Based on fraud and theft and murder?”
“The only theft I know of was committed by Sanctuary, stealing Walcott’s patents. At least, so I hear on the newsgrids.”
“Ah,” Leisha said. “Then let me tell you of one more theft, Mr. Hawke. Just so you understand. You stole something else, and you stole it from my sister Alice, and from my friend Susan Melling, and from every other Sleeper who believed there was a chance at the long life and increased powers that come with Sleeplessness. They believed that, for a little while. They hoped that, in those hours of the night when Sleepers lie awake and think about living and dying and not sleeping. You wonder how I know that. Let me tell you how I know. I know because Susan Melling is dying of an inoperable brain condition, and knows it, and wants desperately not to die. I know because my sister said to me during the trial—the trial you engineered for your own aggrandizement—she said, ‘The hardest thing I ever learned, Leisha, wasn’t to raise Jordan alone or earn a living or to accept that Daddy didn’t love me. The hardest thing I ever learned was that even if I blamed you, I was still going to have to do all those things. The hardest thing I learned was that there’s no way out.’ You held out the promise of a way out, Mr. Hawke, and then robbed Alice of it. Alice and Susan and every other Sleeper who doesn’t take hatred as a way out. You didn’t rob the haters. You robbed the others, the people who try to be too decent for hatred. That’s what you stole and who you stole it from.”
Hawke’s smile was stiff. There was a long silence. Finally he said mockingly, “Very pretty, Ms. Camden. You could easily find a job writing greeting cards.”
Leisha’s expression didn’t change. She turned to go, and in that single contemptuous movement Jordan suddenly saw how little she had expected from this meeting. She had not confronted Hawke expecting to change him, or to learn anything from him, or even to discharge her rage. Those were not the reasons she had come, or the reason she had needed Jordan to come with her.
No one stopped them as they left the factory. No one spoke until the plane skimmed over the dark fields sliced by the darker river. Jordan looked at his aunt. She didn’t know about Joey, didn’t know that Jordan had already left Hawke. “You came here for me. So I would see what Hawke is.”
Leisha took his hand. Her fingers were cold. “Yes, I came for you. That’s all there is, Jordan. You. And you and you and you and you and you. I thought there was something more, something larger, but I was wrong. One by one. That’s all there is.”
“Community,” Jennifer Sharifi said calmly to Najla and Ricky, “must always come first. That’s why Daddy won’t be coming home again. Daddy broke his solidarity with his community.”
The children looked at their shoes. They were afraid of her, Jennifer saw. That was not bad; fear was only the ancient word for respect.
Najla finally said in a small voice, “Why do we have to leave Sanctuary?”
“We aren’t leaving Sanctuary, Najla. Sanctuary goes with us. Wherever the community is, that’s Sanctuary. You’ll like the new place we’re taking Sanctuary. It’s safer for our people.”
Ricky raised his eyes to his mother. Richard’s eyes, in Richard’s face. “When will the orbital be ready for us?”
“Five years. We must plan it, construct it, pay for it.” Five years would be faster than an orbital had ever been constructed before, even given that they had purchased an existing shell from a Far East government that now would have to build itself another one.
Ricky said, “And we’ll never come back to Earth again?”
“Certainly you’ll come back to Earth,” Jennifer said. “On business, when you’re grown. Much of our business will still be here, among those few Sleepers who are not beggars or parasites. But we’ll conduct business from the orbital, and we’ll find ways to use genemods to build the strongest society ever known.”
Najla said doubtfully, “Is that legal?”
Jennifer rose, the folds of her abbaya falling around her sandals. The two children rose as well, Najla still looking doubtful, Ricky troubled. “It will be legal,” Jennifer said. “We’ll make it legal for you, and for all the children to come. Legal, and solid, and safe.”
“Mother—” Ricky said, and stopped.
“Yes, Ricky?”
He looked at her, and a shade passed over his small face. Whatever he had been going to say, he decided to keep it to himself. Jennifer bent and kissed him, kissed Najla, and turned to start toward the house. She would talk again to the children later, explaining to them in small doses they could absorb, making it all clear. Later. Right now there was so much else to do. To plan. To keep in control.
16
Susan Melling and Leisha Camden sat in lawn chairs on the roof of Susan’s house in the New Mexico desert and watched Jordan and Stella stroll toward a huge cottonwood beside the creek. Overhead the summer triangle, Vega and Altair and Deneb, shone faint beside a brilliant full moon. On the western horizon the last red faded from low clouds. Long darknesses moved over the desert toward the mountains, whose peaks still glowed with unseen sun. Susan shivered.
“I’ll get your sweater,” Leisha said.
“No, I’m fine,” Susan said.
“Shut up.”
Leisha climbed down the ladder from the roof, found the sweater in Susan’s cluttered study, and stopped a moment in the living room. All the polished skulls were gone. She climbed the ladder and put the sweater around Susan’s shoulders.
“Look at them,” Susan said, with pleasure. Just before the deeper darkness of the cottonwood, the silhouette that was Jordan blended with the shadow that was Stella. Leisha smiled; Susan’s eyes, at least, were still sharp.
The two women sat in silence. Finally Susan said, “Kevin called again.”
“No,” Leisha said simply.
The old woman shifted her slight, painful weight in her chair. “Don’t you believe in forgiveness, Leisha?”
“Yes. I do. But Kevin doesn’t know he’s done anything that requires it.”
“I take it he doesn’t know either that Richard is here with you.”
“I don’t know what he knows,” Leisha said indifferently. “Who can tell anymore?”
“Like you, for instance, couldn’t tell that Jennifer Sharifi was innocent of murder. And you won’t forgive yourself any more than you forgive Kevin.”
Leisha turned her head away. Moonlight ran up her cheek like a scalpel. From the cottonwood came low laughter. Leisha said suddenly, “I wish Alice were here.”
Susan smiled. The smile was strained; her painkillers needed to be increased again. “Maybe she’ll just show up again if you need her hard enough.”
“That’s not funny.”
“You don’t believe it happened, do you, Leisha? You don’t believe Alice had a paranormal perception about you.”
“I believe she believes it,” Leisha said carefully. Everything was different now between her and Alice, and the difference was too precious to risk. Alice was the only thing she’d gotten back from this year of cataclysmic loss. Alice and Susan, and Susan was dying.