“You know I’ve been searching for this genemod for nearly four years; well, in the first two I was still exploring the problem. But I don’t think I would have found the solution at all if I hadn’t learned to do something else. It’s called lucid dreaming.”
She had their complete, formidable attention.
“It sounds like something Sleepers do, and a Sleeper led me to it. Through Joan Lucas. But we can do lucid dreaming, too, and although I don’t have any brain-scan data yet, I think we might do it differently from Sleepers. Or even from Norms.” Miri explained about Joan’s call, about Drew Arlen, about seeing her own research string in the lucid dream and reaching up to change it.
“It’s as if strings are one kind of thinking, one that effectively unites associative and linear thought, and lucid dreaming is some other kind. It uses…stories. Pulling from the unconscious, maybe, the way Sleeper dreams are supposed to do. But Sleepers don’t have string edifices to put together with the stories. They can’t—I don’t know!—maybe they can’t shape the lucid dreaming as well because they don’t have such coherent shapes to work with in the first place. Or maybe they can shape the dream, but without the visualized complexity of strings, the shaping only operates on an emotional level.” Miri shrugged. Who could say how Sleepers’ minds worked?
“Anyway, lucid dreaming is like…being reborn. Into a world with more dimensions than this one. And I want you to all try it.”
From the pocket of her shorts Miri pulled the program cartridge of her favorite of Drew’s performances, the second. Recording the entire series of six had been no challenge for Tony’s programs, no matter what the newsgrids claimed.
Terry Mwakambe had thrown one of his impenetrable security fields around Raoul’s lab before the meeting began. Miri inserted her cartridge into Raoul’s holoterminal. She turned her back to the miniature stage; she didn’t want to fall asleep herself, not this time. She wanted to watch the others.
One by one their eyes glazed, although they didn’t close. Drew Arlen’s musical voice licked at their eyelids, reciting words, suggesting ideas. The Supers dreamed.
When it was over, they awoke almost simultaneously. They laughed, and cried, and talked excitedly about their dreams—all but Terry, the most genetically modified, the most different. He sat slumped in a corner, his head bent so that all Miri could see was hair.
Somewhere in the middle of the laughing and exclaiming, Miri’s synthetic enzyme stimulated sufficient production of three different, interdependent brain chemicals to change the subtle, genetically-coded composition of cerebrospinal fluids.
Terry stood. His thin body and large head were held very still. He looked at all of them from eyes that neither blinked nor twitched.
He said, “I know how to remove the last Sharifi Labs failsafes. And I know what’s behind them.”
24
On New Year’s day Leisha walked along the creek, under the cottonwoods. A light snow glistened on the ground. She looked up to see Jordan, coatless, puffing toward her. The lines and wrinkles on his sun-battered face—he was sixty-seven—were pulled taut as wires.
“Leisha! Sanctuary has seceded from the United States!”
“Yes,” Leisha said, without surprise. She had decided shortly after Alice’s funeral that this must be Jennifer’s intent. It fit. It occurred to her that she and Kevin Baker were probably the only two people in the country who were not surprised. Or maybe Kevin was surprised. She had not talked to him since Alice’s funeral.
Leisha bent to pick up a stone: it was almost a perfect oval, polished by patient wind and ancient water. Under her fingers the stone felt icy. “Yes,” she said to Jordan. “I know.”
“Well, aren’t you coming in to watch the grids?”
“Don’t we always?” Leisha said, and at her tone, Jordan stared.
Sanctuary made its declaration at 8:00 A.M. January 1, 2092. The statement, released simultaneously to the country’s five most important newsgrids, the president, and the Congress of the United States, none of whom were fully functional at that hour on New Year’s Day, was not negotiable:
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident to the examining eye: That all men are not created equal. That all are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that none are guaranteed these at the expense of others’ freedom, others’ labor, or others’ pursuit of their own happiness. That governments instituted among men to secure these rights derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That a government which both fails to protect the rights of a people and to secure their consent has become destructive of those ends and it is the right of that people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
This should not be undertaken for light and trivial causes, but when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to deprive a people of what is rightfully theirs, it is their duty to throw off such a government. The history of the present government of the United States is such a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.
The United States has effectively denied to Sanctuary representation in any legislature or lawmaking body, due to widespread and ignorant hatred by Sleepers of the Sleepless.
The United States has levied ruinous taxes on Sanctuary, thus bringing about de facto taxation without representation, and thus also taking by the threat of force the fruits of the labor of Sanctuary’s citizens.
In return for such taxes, the United States has provided no protection, social benefits, legal representation, or trade advantages to Sanctuary. No citizen of Sanctuary uses federal or state roads, schools, libraries, hospitals, courts, police protection, fire protection, Dole benefits, public entertainment designed to gain voting representation, or any other governmental service. Such citizens of Sanctuary as attend graduate institutions in the United States fully pay their own fees and expenses, waiving public charity.
The United States has erected trade barriers against the business establishments of Sanctuary in the form of unequal taxes and trade quotas, forcing Sanctuary to trade with foreign powers or else to trade on terms which harass our people and eat out their substance.
The United States has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers on Sanctuary itself, so that we are deprived of the basic judicial right to trial by a jury of our peers.
Finally, the United States has used against Sanctuary the threat of military force if Sanctuary should not comply with all these unjust and immoral conditions, in effect abdicating true government on Sanctuary and waging war against us.
We therefore, the representatives of Sanctuary, in General Council assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the people of Sanctuary, solemnly publish and declare that this orbital colony is, and of right ought to be, a free and independent state; that we are absolved of all allegiance to the United States of America, and that all political connection between them and the United States is and ought to be dissolved. As a free and independent state, Sanctuary possesses the power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts which independent states have a right to do. We of Sanctuary further declare that our first act as an independent state is to throw off the yoke of foreign tribute in the form of ruinous and unequal Quarterly Estimated Corporate taxes unfairly levied January 15 of this year 2092, followed by other such taxes as the United States may try to impose to our ruin and detriment April 15 of this year.