“Then…”
“Forgive me. I don’t mean to do this.”
Later, when she had come back to herself, she didn’t apologize again. But she said to Will, as they walked together under the curved arc of agricultural and technical panels that was the sky, “The fault is with the government regulations that force us into deceit no matter what we do. It’s just one more example of what we’ve said before. If we were not part of the United States…”
Will nodded.
They walked first to visit Miranda in the children’s dome, and then to Sharifi Labs, Special Enterprises Division, as important as Miranda and under the tightest private-property security anywhere under Sanctuary’s solid, productive sky.
Spring had come to the desert. Prickly pear bloomed with yellow flowers. Along the washes, cottonwoods glowed greenly. Sparrow hawks, solitary most of the winter, perched in twos. Leisha watched this flowering, so much more austere and rocky than along Lake Michigan, and wondered sardonically if the desert’s modesty was as much a draw for her as was its isolation. Here, nothing was genetically modified.
She stood in front of her work terminal, munching an apple and listening to the program recite the fourth chapter of her book on Thomas Paine. The room glowed with sunlight. Alice’s bed had been dragged to the window so she could see the flowers. Leisha hastily swallowed a bite of apple and addressed the terminal.
“Text change: ‘Paine rushing to Philadelphia’ to ‘Paine’s rushing to Philadelphia.’ ”
“Changed,” the terminal said.
Alice said, “Do you really think anyone still cares about those old rules for verbals?”
“I care,” Leisha said. “Alice, you haven’t touched your lunch.”
“I’m not hungry. And you don’t care about verbals; you’re just filling time. Listen, there’s a whole lot of commotion in the front of the house.”
“Hungry or not, you have to eat. You have to.” Alice was seventy-five but looked much older. Gone was the stocky figure that had plagued her all her life; now her skin stretched thin over bones revealed as delicate wirework. She had had another stroke, and after that she’d put away her terminal. Leisha, in desperation, had even suggested that Alice resume her work on twin parapsychology. Alice had smiled sadly—the twin work was the only thing they had never been able to really discuss—and had shaken her head. “No, dear. It’s too late. To convince you.”
But the stroke hadn’t impaired Alice’s love for her family. She grinned as the commotion from the front of the house exploded into the room.
“Drew!”
“I’m home, Grandma Alice! Hey, Leisha!”
Alice held out her arms hungrily, and Drew powered his chair to go into them. Unlike Alice’s grandchildren, with their own perfect health, Drew was never repulsed by the frozen left side of Alice’s face, the spittle at the left corner of her mouth, the slightly slurred speech. Alice hugged him tightly.
Leisha put down her apple—it lacked flavor anyway; whatever the agrogene combines had done this time was a step backward—and tensed on her toes, waiting. When Drew finally turned to her she said, “You’ve been kicked out of another school.”
Drew started his ingratiating grin, got a closer look at Leisha’s face, and stopped smiling. “Yes.”
“What for this time?”
“Not grades, Leisha. This time I studied.”
“Well, then?”
“Fighting.”
“Who’s hurt?”
He said sullenly, “A son of a bitch named Lou Bergin.”
“And I presume I’ll be hearing from Mr. Bergin’s lawyer.”
“He started it, Leisha. I just finished it.”
Leisha studied Drew. He was sixteen, and despite the powerchair—or because of it—he exercised fanatically, keeping his upper body superbly conditioned. She could well believe he was a lethal fighter. His adolescent features didn’t yet fit together: nose too big, chin too small, skin spotted by acne where it wasn’t still rounded by baby fat. Only his eyes were handsome, vivid green fringed by thick black lashes, with a concentrated gaze that could still make almost anyone think that Drew found him completely fascinating. Leisha was an exception. For the past two years there had been antagonism between them, periodically mitigated by clumsy attempts on his part to remember how much he owed her, and on hers to remember the engaging child he had been.
This was the fourth school that had expelled him. The first time, Leisha had been indulgent: He was a small crippled Liver, and the intellectual demands of a school full of donkey children, most genetically modified for intelligence and physical health, must have been over-whelming for him. The second time she had been less indulgent. Drew had failed every single subject, simply ceasing to go to class at all, spending solitary hours with his semiautomatic guitar or games terminal. No one had disturbed him. The school expected its students, most of whom would run the country someday, to be self-motivated.
Leisha sent him next to the most structured school she could find. Drew loved it immediately; he discovered the drama program. He was the star of his acting class. “I’ve found my destiny!” he said on a comlink call home. Leisha winced; Alice laughed. But four months later Drew was home, bitter and silent. He had failed to get a part in either Death of a Salesman or Morning Light. Alice asked gently, “Was it because they didn’t want a Willy Loman or Kelland Vie in a powerchair?” “It was donkey politics,” Drew spat. “And it always will be.”
Leisha then searched hard for a school with an untaxing academic program, a strong artistic one, a structured school day, and as high a percentage as possible of students from families without much political clout, impressive financial connections, or illustrious histories. She found one that seemed to qualify in Springfield, Massachusetts. Drew had seemed to like the school and Leisha had thought things were going well. Yet here he was again.
“Look at your face,” Drew said sullenly. “Why don’t you say it aloud? ‘Here’s Drew back again, fucked-up Drew who thinks he’s going to be somebody but can’t finish anything. What the shit should we do about poor little Liver Drew?’ ”
“What are we going to do?” Leisha said cruelly.
“Why don’t you just give up on me?”
Alice said, “Oh, no, Drew.”
“Not you, Grandma Alice. Her. Her that insists that people be wonderful or they don’t exist.”
Leisha said, “As opposed to thinking they’re wonderful just because they exist, but do nothing to fulfill their own existence?”
Alice rapped out, “That’s enough, you two!”
It wasn’t enough for Leisha. Drew’s goading had hurt parts of her she hadn’t known still existed. She said, “Now that you’re home, Drew, you’ll want to see Eric. He’s straightened himself out wonderfully and is making genuine progress with global atmospheric curves. Jordan is immensely proud of him.”
Drew’s green eyes blazed. Leisha turned her back. She was suddenly, sickeningly, ashamed of herself. She was seventy-five years old—an incredible fact in itself; she never felt seventy-five—and this boy was sixteen. Unmodified, a Sleeper, not even drawn from the donkey class…As she got older, she lost compassion. Why else was she shut away from the world in this New Mexico fortress, in retreat from a country she had once hoped to help improve for everyone? Youthful dreams.
Dreams which Drew didn’t even have.
Alice said wearily, “All right, Leisha. Drew, Eric asked me to give you a message.”
“What?” she heard Drew snarl. But it was a softened snarl; he could never stay angry at Alice. Not at Alice.