Free Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress Page A

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 departmentat 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 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 gapedbeneath 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