Beggars in Spain

She folded the tabloid very small and laid it carefully on the table. “Where?”

“Allegheny Mountains. In southern New York State. A lot of land. He’s putting in the roads now. In the spring, the first buildings.”

“Je

“Yes. She’s got the money to do it. Tony’s starting to get a following, Leisha.”

“I know.”

“Call him.”

“I will. Keep me informed about Stella.”

She worked until midnight at the Law Review, then until 4:00 A.M. preparing her classes. From four to five she handled legal matters for the Group. At 5:00 A.M. she called Tony, still in Chicago. He had finished high school, done one semester at Northwestern, and at Christmas vacation had finally exploded at his mother for forcing him to live as a Sleeper. The explosion, it seemed to Leisha, had never ended.

“Tony? Leisha.”

“The answers are yes, yes, no, and go to hell.”

Leisha gritted her teeth. “Fine. Now tell me the questions.”

“Are you really serious about the Sleepless withdrawing into their own self-sufficient society? Is Je

“I would never tell you to go to hell.”

“Hooray for you,” Tony said. After a moment he added, “I’m sorry. That sounds like one of them.”

“It’s wrong for us, Tony.”

“Thanks for not saying I couldn’t pull it off.”

She wondered if he could. “We’re not a separate species, Tony.”

“Tell that to the Sleepers.”

“You exaggerate. There are haters out there, there are always haters, but to give up…”

“We’re not giving up. Whatever we create can be freely traded: software, hardware, novels, information, theories, legal counsel. We can travel in and out. But we’ll have a safe place to return to. Without the leeches who think we owe them blood because we’re better than they are.”

“It isn’t a matter of owing.”

“Really?” Tony said. “Let’s have this out, Leisha. All the way. You’re a Yagaiist — what do you believe in?”

“Tony…”

“Do it,” Tony said, and in his voice she heard the fourteen-year-old she had been introduced to by Richard. Simultaneously, she saw her father’s face: not as he was now, since the bypass, but as he had been when she was a little girl, holding her on his lap to explain that she was special.

“I believe in voluntary trade that is mutually beneficial. That spiritual dignity comes from supporting one’s life through one’s own efforts, and from trading the results of those efforts in mutual cooperation throughout the society. That the symbol of this is the contract. And that we need each other for the fullest, most beneficial trade.”

“Fine,” Tony bit off. “Now what about the beggars in Spain?”

“The what?”

“You walk down a street in a poor country like Spain and you see a beggar. Do you give him a dollar?”

“Probably.”

“Why? He’s trading nothing with you. He has nothing to trade.”

“I know. Out of kindness. Compassion.”

“You see six beggars. Do you give them all a dollar?”

“Probably,” Leisha said.

“You would. You see a hundred beggars and you haven’t got Leisha Camden’s money. Do you give them each a dollar?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Leisha reached for patience. Few people could make her want to cut off a comlink; Tony was one of them. “Too draining on my own resources. My life has first claim on the resources I earn.”

“All right. Now consider this. At Biotech Institute — where you and I began, dear pseudo-sister — Dr. Melling has just yesterday—”

“Who?”

“Dr. Susan Melling. Oh, God, I completely forgot she used to be married to your father!”

“I lost track of her,” Leisha said. “I didn’t realize she’d gone back to research. Alice once said… never mind. What’s going on at Biotech?”

“Two crucial items, just released. Carla Dutcher has had first-month fetal genetic analysis. Sleeplessness is a dominant gene. The next generation of the Group won’t sleep either.”

“We all knew that,” Leisha said. Carla Dutcher was the world’s first pregnant Sleepless. Her husband was a Sleeper. “The whole world expected that.”

“But the press will have a field day with it anyway. Just watch. Muties Breed! New Race Set to Dominate Next Generation Of Children!”

Leisha didn’t deny it. “And the second item?”

“It’s sad, Leisha. We’ve just had our first death.”

Her stomach tightened. “Who?”

“Bernie Kuhn. Seattle.” She didn’t know him. “A car accident. It looks pretty straightforward; he lost control on a steep curve when his brakes failed. He had only been driving a few months. He was seventeen. But the significance here is that his parents have donated his brain and body to Biotech, in conjunction with the pathology department at the Chicago Medical School. They’re going to take him apart to get the first good look at what prolonged sleeplessness does to the body and brain.”

“They should,” Leisha said. “That poor kid. But what are you so afraid they’ll find?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. But whatever it is, if the haters can use it against us, they will.”

“You’re paranoid, Tony.”

“Impossible. The Sleepless have personalities calmer and more reality-oriented than the norm. Don’t you read the literature?”

“Tony—”

“What if you walk down that street in Spain and a hundred beggars each want a dollar and you say no and they have nothing to trade you but they’re so rotten with anger about what you have that they knock you down and grab it and then beat you out of sheer envy and despair?”

Leisha didn’t answer.

“Are you going to say that’s not a human scenario, Leisha? That it never happens?”

“It happens,” Leisha said evenly. “But not all that often.”

“Bullshit. Read more history. Read more newspapers. But the point is: What do you owe the beggars then? What does a good Yagaiist who believes in mutually beneficial contracts do with people who have nothing to trade and can only take?”

“You’re not—”

“What, Leisha? In the most objective terms you can manage, what do we owe the grasping and nonproductive needy?”

“What I said originally. Kindness. Compassion.”

“Even if they don’t trade it back? Why?”

“Because…” She stopped.

“Why? Why do law-abiding and productive human beings owe anything to those who neither produce very much nor abide by just laws? What philosophical or economic or spiritual justification is there for owing them anything? Be as honest as I know you are.”

Leisha put her head between her knees. The question gaped beneath her, but she didn’t try to evade it. “I don’t know. I just know we do.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer. After a moment, Tony did. The intellectual challenge was gone from his voice. He said, almost tenderly, “Come down in the spring and see the site for Sanctuary. The buildings will be going up then.”

“No,” Leisha said.

“I’d like you to.”

“No. Armed retreat is not the way.”

Tony said, “The beggars are getting nastier Leisha. As the Sleepless grow richer. And I don’t mean in money.”

“Tony—” she said, and stopped. She couldn’t think what to say.

“Don’t walk down too many streets armed with just the memory of Kenzo Yagai.”

In March, a bitterly cold March with wind whipping down the Charles River, Richard Keller came to Cambridge. Leisha had not seen him for three years. He didn’t send her word on the Groupnet that he was coming. She hurried up the walk to her townhouse, muffled to the eyes in a red wool scarf against the snowy cold, and he stood there blocking the doorway. Behind Leisha, her bodyguard tensed.