Jennifer looked at each Council member in turn. Miri’s strings knotted themselves into horrible nets. To be helpless, dependent on others for everything, a drain on someone else’s time and resources without giving anything back…
A beggar.
She saw what the issue was, and her stomach lurched.
“I once knew a woman on Earth,” Jennifer said, “when I was a child. A friend’s mother. After my friend, the woman had another child, one with a profound neural disorder. As part of its so-called treatment, the mother was required to move its arms and legs in the rhythmic patterns of crawling, trying to impress those patterns on the brain and so stimulate brain development. She had to do this for an hour, six times every day. Between sessions, she fed the child, washed it, suctioned wastes from its colon, played prescribed tapes to stimulate its senses, bathed it, and talked to it nonstop for three half-hour sessions equally spaced around the clock. This woman had once played the piano professionally, but now she never touched it. When the child was four, its doctors added more to the treatments. Four times a day the mother was required to wheel the child around the yard for exactly fifteen minutes, encountering the same objects in the same order but under different weather conditions, again to build certain response patterns into the brain. My friend helped with all this, but after years of it, she hated to even go home. So did the woman’s husband, who eventually didn’t go home at all. Neither of them was there the day the mother shot both herself and her child.”
Jennifer paused. She picked up a paper. “The Council has a petition from Tabitha Selenski’s husband, to end her suffering. We must decide now.”
Councilor Letty Rubin, a young woman with angular features that could have been turned on a lathe, said passionately, “Tabitha can still smile, still respond a little. I visited her and she tried to smile at the sound of my voice! She has a right to her life, whatever it is now!”
Jennifer said, “My friend’s mother’s child could smile, too. The real question is, do we have the right to sacrifice someone else’s life to the care of hers?”
“It wouldn’t have to be a sacrifice of one life! If we divide up the caretaking, in for instance two-hour shifts, the burden would be spread among so many that nobody would really be sacrificed.”
Will Sandaleros said, “The principle would still be there. A claim on the strong by the weak because of weakness. A beggar’s claim, that says the fruits of a person’s labor belong to whoever can’t labor for himself. Or won’t. We don’t recognize that weakness has a moral claim on competency.”
Councilor Jamison, an engineer nearly as old as her grandmother whose only genemod was Sleeplessness, shook his head. He had a long, plain face with a sharp knobby chin. “This is a human life, Councilor Sandaleros. A member of our community. Doesn’t the community owe its members full support?”
Will said, “But what constitutes a member of a community? Is it automatic—once you have joined, you are included for good? That leads to institutional morbidity. Or does being a member of a community mean that you continue to actively support the community, and actively contribute to it? Would, for instance, your insurance company, Councilor Jamison, continue to include a subscriber in the client list if he stopped paying his premiums?”
Jamison was silent.
Letty Rubin cried, “But a community is not congruent with a business arrangement! It must mean more!”
Jennifer’s voice cut sharply across her last words. “What it should mean is that Tabitha Selenski shouldn’t want to be a burden on her community. She should have the principles and dignity to not want to continue so-called life as a beggar, which means she should have included the standard life-termination clause in her will. I have, Will has, you have, Letty. Since Tabitha didn’t, she’s abandoned the principles of this community and declared herself no longer a member.”
Ricky Sharifi said, “Self-preservation is an innate drive, Mother.”
Jennifer said, “Innate drives can be modified for the good of civilization. This happens all the time. Sexual fidelity, formal laws to settle disputes, incest taboos—what are they but modifications imposed by will for the good of all? The innate drives would be to kill for revenge or to fuck our brains out whenever the urge struck.”
Miri stared at her grandmother—never, never had she heard Jennifer use language like that. Her grandmother’s speech was always formal, almost pedantic. The next moment she saw that it had been deliberate, theatrical, and she felt a slight distaste, followed by renewed stomach churning. Her grandmother did not trust her arguments alone to convince the Council to kill Tabitha Selenski.
To kill.
Strings whirled in her head.
Jean-Michel Devore said nervously, “What are the Sleepless except modifications of innate drives?”
Jennifer smiled at him.
Najla Sharifi said, “The definition of a community is key here. I think we all agree on that. Our definition seems to involve certain traits—like Sleeplessness—certain abilities, and certain principles. Which of these are crucial? Which are optional?”
“A good place to start,” Will Sandaleros approved.
Jennifer said, “A member of the community must possess all three. The trait of Sleeplessness, the ability to contribute to the community rather than drain it, the principles to value the community’s profound good above his own immediate preferences. Anyone who does not possess these things is not only too different from us but an active danger.” She leaned forward, palms flat on the table. “Believe me, I know.”
There was a little silence.
Into the silence Hermione said quietly, “Anyone who thinks too differently from us is not really a member of our community.”
Miri’s head jerked up. She stared at her mother, who didn’t look back. All the strings in Miri’s head turned over once, slowly, inside out. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.
But her mother had meant anyone who thought differently about principles…
Words from two dozen languages weaved themselves into her strings: Harijan. Proscrit. Bui doi. Inquisición. Kristalnacht. Gulag.
“Ac-c-c-community d-d-d-d-” she couldn’t, in her emotion, get the damn words out, “d-divided on f-f-f-fundamentals w-w-will d-destroy itself.”
“Which is why we must not divide into the able and the parasitic,” Jennifer said swiftly.
“Th-th-that’s not whh-wh-wh-what I m-m-meant!”
They argued for five hours. Only Najla, her back aching from pregnancy, left, making over her proxy to her husband. In the end, the vote was nine to six: Tabitha Selenski must leave the community. She could, if her husband wished, be sent to Earth, among the beggars.
Miri had voted with the minority. So, to her surprise, had her father. The majority decision upset her, although of course she would abide by it. Sanctuary was owed her allegiance. But she felt confused and she wanted to discuss it all with Tony, as only they could, in the full depth and breadth of all the cross-references, tertiary associations, strings of meaning. Tony’s computer program was a success. The Supers now used it routinely for communication among themselves, exchanging massive programmed edifices of meaning without the everlasting barricades of speech. She hurried to Tony.
Outside the Council dome, her father stopped her. Ricky Keller had hollows under his eyes. It occurred to Miri that seeing him sit in Council beside his mother, most people would conclude that Jennifer was the younger. Each year Ricky’s manner became gentler. He said now, one hand on Miri’s shoulder, “I wish you had met my father, Miri.”