“N-n-no,” she said slowly, “n-not insufficient d-d-databases. M-more l-l-l-like—a s-space where another d-d-d-dimension of st-strings should g-g-go.”
“A th-third d-d-dimension of thought,” he said, with pleasure. “G-g-great. B-but—wh-wh-why? It all f-fits in t-t-two d-dimensions. S-s-s-simplicity of d-design is s-s-s-superiority of design.”
She heard the strings on that one: Occam’s razor, minimalism, program elegance, geometric theorems. She waved her hand, clumsily. None of them were physically very deft; they tended to avoid research that required handling many materials, and to spend time programming robowaldos when such handling couldn’t be avoided. “I d-d-ddon’t kn-know.”
Tony hugged her. No words were necessary between them, and that was a third language, an addition to the simplicity of words and the complexity of strings, and better than either.
Jennifer for once looked shaken.
“How could it happen?” Councilor Perrilleon said. He looked as white as Jennifer.
The doctor, a young woman still in recyclable steriles, shook her head. Blood stained the front of her smock. She had come right from the hospital delivery room to Jennifer, who had called an emergency Council session. The doctor looked close to tears. She had returned to Sanctuary only two months ago from the Earth medical training that was still mandatory, much thinner than when she had left.
Perrilleon said, “Have you filed the birth certificate yet?”
“No,” the doctor said. She was intelligent, Jennifer thought, as well as capable. The horror around the table did not lessen, but over it crept an almost imperceptible relaxation. There was no official transmission yet to Washington.
“Then we have a little time,” Jennifer said.
“If we weren’t still tied to the New York State and United States governments, we’d have more time,” Perrilleon said. “Filing birth certificates, receiving a security Dole number—” he snorted “—being entered in the tax rolls—”
“None of that counts just now,” Ricky said, a little impatiently.
“Yes, it does,” Perrilleon insisted. Jennifer saw his long face set into stubborn lines. He was seventy-two, just a few years younger than she, and had come from the United States in the first wave of settlement. He knew, had seen, how it was there—unlike the Sleepless born in Sanctuary—and he remembered. His votes had been useful to Jennifer’s goals for Sanctuary. She would miss him when his term ended.
“The question we have to face,” Najla said, “is what to do about this…baby. And we don’t have much time. If there’s an anomaly in the birth-certificate filing, some damned agency or other might get a search warrant.”
It was what they all dreaded—a legal reason for Sleepers to come to Sanctuary. For twenty-six years they had made sure no such legal reason existed, by scrupulously meeting every single bureaucratic requirement of both the United States and the New York State governments; Sanctuary, as the property of a corporation registered in New York State, fell under its legal jurisdiction. Sanctuary filed its legal motions there, licensed its lawyers and doctors, paid its taxes, and each year sent more of its lawyers to Harvard to learn how to keep “there” and “here” legally separate.
This new baby could shatter that separation.
Jennifer had regained her composure. She was still very pale, but her head with its crown of black hair was held high. “Let’s start by stating the facts. If this baby should die, its body would be shipped to New York for autopsy, as they all are.”
Perrilleon nodded. He already knew where she was going. His nod was support.
She went steadily on. “If that happens, the Sleepers might have a legal reason to enter Sanctuary. Charges of murder.”
No one mentioned that other travesty of a murder trial, thirty-five years ago. This one would be different. Sanctuary would be guilty.
“On the other hand,” Jennifer said in her clear voice, “it might be medically possible that the baby would appear to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or some other clearly unassailable cause. Or, if the baby lives, then we will have to raise it. Here, with our own. In its…condition, with all that implies.” She paused. “I think our choice is clear.”
“But how could it happen!” Councilor Kivenen burst out. She was very young, and inclined to be weepy. Jennifer wouldn’t miss her when her term ended.
Dr. Toliveri said, “We don’t know as much as we would like about genetic information transmission over time. There have only been two naturally-born generations of Sleepless…” His voice trailed off. It was obvious that in some way he blamed himself, Sanctuary’s Chief Geneticist. This was so clearly unfair that Jennifer felt anger. Raymond Toliveri was a superb geneticist, responsible for creating her precious Miranda… Already this baby was causing disruption and strife in the community.
But didn’t they always?
Councilor Kivenen said to the young doctor, “Tell us once more what happened.”
Her voice had steadied. “The delivery was normal. A nine-pound boy. He cried right away. The nurse wiped him off and took him to the McKelvey-Waller scanner for the neonatal brain scan. It takes about ten minutes. While he was lying there in the padded basket under the scanners, the baby, he…went to sleep.” There was a moment of silence. Finally Dr. Toliveri said, “RNA regression to the mean…we know so little in the area of redundant coding…”
Jennifer said crisply, “It’s not your fault, Doctor.” She let that sink in, so they could all see the guilt a Sleeper—even an infant Sleeper—could bring to blameless people. Then she started the debate.
The Council explored all possible legal scenarios: What if they filed a birth certificate but falsified it, checking the box for “Sleepless” rather than “Sleeper”? It might be eighty years before the child died of a premature old age and the government demanded an autopsy. But the child would have to take the mandatory New York State Board of Education tests at age seven. How much norm data did the beggars really have for those tests—enough to differentiate Sleepers from Sleepless? And there was the retina scan, virtually proof positive of sleep identity, although not for very small children… What if…
Over and over again Jennifer, with the help of Will and Perrilleon, dragged the argument back to the real issue: The good of the community versus the good of one who would be forever an outsider. Not only an outsider but also a point of disruption, a potential point of legal entry for foreign governments, a person who could never produce on the level of the rest of them, who would forever take more than he gave.
A beggar.
The vote was eight to six.
“I won’t be the one to do it,” the young doctor said suddenly. “I won’t.”
“You don’t have to be,” Jennifer said. “I am Chief Executive Officer; mine is the signature that would have been on a falsified birth certificate; I will do it. Are you sure, Dr. Toliveri, that the injection will create conditions indistinguishable from SIDS?”
Toliveri nodded. He looked very pale. Ricky looked down at the surface of the table. Councilor Kivenen stuck her fist in her mouth. The young doctor looked in pain.
But none of them protested aloud after the vote was taken. They were a community.
Later, afterward, Jennifer cried. Her tears humiliated her, hot scant tears like boiling salt. Will held her and she could feel his stiffness even as he patted her back. This wasn’t what he expected from her. It wasn’t what she expected, either.
But he tried. “Dearest one—there was no pain. The heart stopped immediately.”
“I know,” she said coldly.