“Well, then, let’s begin,” she said. She knew the boy had never spoken to a Sleepless before. It was written all over him: the curiosity, the uneasiness, the furtive assessment. But no envy, in any of its virulent forms. That was the remarkable thing: its absence in this unremarkable boy.
He was better organized than he looked. “My mom says it used to be different than it was now. She says donkeys and even Livers hated Sleepless. How come?”
“How come you don’t?”
The question seemed to genuinely surprise him. He frowned, then looked at her with a sideways embarrassment that told Leisha, more clearly than words, how decent he was. “Well, I don’t mean to offend you or anything, but…why would I hate you? I mean, donkeys are the ones—Sleepless are really just sort of super-donkeys, aren’t they?—who have to do all the work. We Livers just get to enjoy the results. To live. You know,” he said, in a burst of ingenuous confiding, “I can never figure out why donkeys don’t see that and hate us.”
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, Mr. Cavanaugh. Are there any donkeys in your school?”
“Nah. They have their own schools.” He looked at Leisha as if she was supposed to know that, which of course she did. The United States was a three-tiered society now: the have-nots, who by the mysterious hedonistic opiate of the Philosophy of Genuine Living had become the recipients of the gift of leisure. Livers, eighty percent of the population, had shed the work ethic for a gaudy populous version of the older aristocratic ethic: the fortunate do not have to work. Above them—or below—were the donkeys, genetically-enhanced Sleepers who ran the economy and the political machinery, as dictated by, and in exchange for, the lordly votes of the new leisure class. Donkeys managed; their robots labored. Finally, the Sleepless, nearly all of whom were invisible in Sanctuary anyway, were disregarded by Livers, if not by donkeys. All of it, the entire trefoil organization—id, ego, and superego, some wit had labeled it sardonically—was underwritten by cheap, ubiquitous Y-energy, powering automated factories making possible a lavish Dole that traded bread and circuses for votes. The whole thing, Leisha thought, was peculiarly American, managing to combine democracy with materialism, mediocrity with enthusiasm, power with the illusion of control from below.
“Tell me, Mr. Cavanaugh, what do you and your friends do with all your free time?”
“Do?” He seemed startled.
“Yes. Do. Today, for instance. When you’re done recording this interview, what will you do?”
“Well…drop off the recording at school. The teacher will put it on the school newsgrid, I guess. If he wants to.”
“Is he a Liver or a donkey?”
“A Liver, of course,” he said, a little scornfully. Her stock, Leisha saw, was dropping rapidly. “Then I might work on reading till school’s out at noon—I can almost read, but not quite. It’s pretty useless, but my mom wants me to learn. Then there’s the scooter races at noon, I’m going with some friends—”
“Who pays for and organizes those?”
“Our local assemblyman, of course. Cathy Miller. She’s a donkey.”
“Of course.”
“Then some friends are having a brainie party, our congressman passed out some new stuff from Colorado or someplace, then there’s this virtual-reality holovid I want to do—”
“What’s that called?”
“Tamarra of the Martian Seas. Aren’t you going to see it? It’s agro.”
“Maybe I’ll catch it,” Leisha said. Feet, reporters, Tamarra of the Martian Seas. Moira, Alice’s daughter, had emigrated to a Martian colony. “You know there aren’t really any seas on Mars, don’t you?”
“That so?” he said, without interest. “Then some friends and I are going to play ball, then my girl and I are going to fuck. After that, if there’s time, I might join my parents at my mom’s lodge, because they’re having a dance. If there’s not time—Ms. Camden? Is something funny?”
“No,” Leisha gasped. “I’m sorry. No eighteenth-century aristo could have had a fuller social schedule.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an agro Liver,” the boy said modestly. “But I’m supposed to ask you questions. Now, is…no, wait…what’s this—foundation you run? What does it do?”
“It asks beggars why they’re beggars and provides funding for those who want to be something else.”
The boy looked bewildered.
“If, for instance,” Leisha said, “you wanted to become a donkey, the Susan Melling Foundation might help send you to school, finance augments for you, whatever was necessary.”
“Why would I ever want to do that?”
“Why indeed?” Leisha said. “But some people do.”
“Nobody I know,” the boy said decidedly. “Sounds a little wormy to me. One more question: Why do you do it? Run this foundation thing?”
“Because,” Leisha said with precision, “what the strong owe beggars is to ask each one why he is a beggar and act accordingly. Because community is the assumption, not the result, and only by giving nonproductiveness the same individuality as excellence, and acting accordingly, does one fulfill the obligation to the beggars in Spain.”
She saw that the boy had understood not one word of this. Nor did he ask. He stood, picked up his recording equipment with obvious relief—the day’s work over—and held out his hand. “Well, I guess that’s it. The teacher said four questions are enough. Thanks, Ms. Camden.”
She took his hand. Such a polite boy, so devoid of envy or hatred, so satisfied. So stupid. “Thank you, Mr. Cavanaugh. For answering my questions. Will you answer one more?”
“Sure.”
“If your teacher does put this interview on the student newsgrid, will anybody watch it?” He looked away; she saw he didn’t want to embarrass her with the answer. Such a polite boy. “Do you watch the newsgrids at all, Mr. Cavanaugh?”
Now he did meet her eyes, his young face shocked. “Of course! My whole family does! How else would my mom and dad know which donkeys would give us the most for our vote?”
“Ah,” Leisha said. “The American Constitution at work.”
“And next year’s the tricentennial year,” the boy said proudly; Livers were all patriots. “Well, thanks again.”
“Thank you,” Leisha said. Stella, stern at the doorway, ushered the boy out.
“Your comlink call is in two minutes, Leisha, and right now there’s a—”
“Stella—how many applications has the Foundation processed this quarter?”
“One hundred sixteen,” Stella said precisely. She kept all Foundation records, including financials.
“Down what percentage from last quarter?”
“Six percent.”
“And from last year-to-date?”
“Eight percent. You know that.” Leisha did; Stella would have more to occupy her if the Foundation were still running at the heady pace of its first years. She wouldn’t be trying to make secretarial and maternal duties fill up a first-rate brain, leaning on everybody else in the process. Stella must have guessed what Leisha was thinking. She said suddenly, “You could go back to law. Or write another book. Or start another corporation, if you’d even consider competing with the donkeys at what you do even better.”
“Sanctuary competes,” Leisha said mildly. “And the new economic order isn’t based on competition anyway, it’s based on quality living. A young man just told me so. Don’t badger me, Stella, it’s my birthday. What’s all that noise out there?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s a child out beyond the gate, screaming his head off to see you and nobody but you.”