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for the contradiction, and found it. “Most things that you provided for my education I didn’t ask for, because I didn’t know enough to ask and you as the adult did. But you’ve never offered the opportunity for me to meet any of the other sleepless mutants—”
    “Don’t use that word,” Camden said sharply.
    “—so you must either think it was not essential to my education or else you had another motive for not wanting me to meet them.”
    “Wrong,” Camden said. “There’s a third possibility. That I think meeting them is essential to your education, that I do want you to, but this issue provided a chance to further the education of your self-initiative by waiting for you to ask.”
    “All right,” Leisha said, a little defiantly; there seemed to be a lot ofdefiance between them lately, for no good reason. She squared her shoulders. Her new breasts thrust forward. “I’m asking. How many of the Sleepless are there, who are they, and where are they?”
    Camden said, “If you’re using that term—‘the Sleepless’—you’ve already done some reading on your own. So you probably know that there are 1,082 of you so far in the United States, more in foreign countries, most of them in major metropolitan areas. Seventy-nine are in Chicago, most of them still small children. Only nineteen anywhere are older than you.”
    Leisha didn’t deny reading any of this. Camden leaned forward in his study chair to peer at her. Leisha wondered if he needed glasses. His hair was completely gray now, sparse and stiff, like lonely broom straws. The Wall Street Journal listed him among the hundred richest men in America; Women’s Wear Daily pointed out that he was the only billionaire in the country who did not move in the society of international parties, charity balls, and social secretaries. Camden’s jet ferried him to business meetings around the world, to the chairmanship of the Yagai Economics Institute, and to very little else. Over the years he had grown richer, more reclusive, and more cerebral. Leisha felt a rush of her old affection.
    She threw herself sideways into a leather chair, her long slim legs dangling over the arm. Absently she scratched a mosquito bite on her thigh. “Well, then, I’d like to meet Richard Keller.” He lived in Chicago and was the beta-test Sleepless closest to her own age. He was seventeen.
    “Why ask me? Why not just go?”
    Leisha thought there was a note of impatience in his voice. He liked her to explore things first, then report on them to him later. Both parts were important.
    Leisha laughed. “You know what, Daddy? You’re predictable.”
    Camden laughed, too. In the middle of the laugh Susan came in. “He certainly is not. Roger, what about that meeting in Buenos Aires on Thursday? Is it on or off?” When he didn’t answer, her voice grew shriller. “Roger? I’m talking to you!”
    Leisha averted her eyes. Two years ago Susan had finally left genetic research to run Camden’s house and schedule; before that she had tried hard to do both. Since she had left Biotech, it seemed to Leisha, Susan had changed. Her voice was tighter. She was more insistent that Cook and the gardener follow her directions exactly, without deviation. Her blond braids had become stiff sculptured waves of platinum.
    “It’s on,” Roger said.
    “Well, thanks for at least answering. Am I going?”
    “If you like.”
    “I like.”
    Susan left the room. Leisha rose and stretched. Her long legs rose on tiptoe. It felt good to reach, to stretch, to feel sunlight from the wide windows wash over her face. She smiled at her father, and found him watching her with an unexpected expression.
    “Leisha—”
    “What?”
    “See Keller. But be careful.”
    “Of what?”
    But Camden wouldn’t answer.
     
    The voice on the phone had been noncommittal. “Leisha Camden? Yes, I know who you are. Three o’clock on Thursday?” The house was modest, a thirty-year-old colonial on a quiet suburban