Changing Planes

Their children were now fifteen to seventeen years old and entirely sleepless. With puberty, they had fully entered into the state some observers described as altered consciousness, others as waking unconsciousness, and others as sleepwalking. The last word was particularly inappropriate. They were anything but asleep. Nor were they oblivious to their surroundings, as is the sleepwalker who wanders out into traffic or tries to scrub the damn’d spot from her hands. They were physically aware at all times. They were never not aware.

Bodily they were healthy. Because they were fed well and regularly, with food always available, they had no hunting or foraging skills. They walked about, ran aimlessly, sometimes swinging on the playsets furnished them or from tree branches in the park, scratching the dirt into pits and heaps and wrestling with one another. As they matured, these puppy fights had begun to lead to sex play and soon to copulation.

Two mothers and a father had committed suicide during the long captivity, and a father had died of a stroke. The forty remaining parents had kept up a round-the-clock watch for years, trying to restrain their children: twelve adolescent girls and ten adolescent boys, all awake all the time. The conditions of the experiment prevented the parents from locking any doors; they could not keep the young people from access to one another. The parents’ pleas for locks and contraceptives had been rejected by Dr. Mr. Prof. Uy Tug, who was convinced that the second generation of asomnics would fully vindicate his theory, as expounded in the unpublished manuscript ofAsom-nia: The Answer Is to Come.

When the compound was opened, four of the girls had had babies, which were being looked after by the grandparents. Three more of the girls were pregnant. One of the mothers had been raped by one of the asomnic boys and was also pregnant. She was permitted to abort the fetus.

There followed an obscure and shameful period in which the goverment disclaimed any responsibility for the experiment and left its subjects to fend for themselves. Some of the Super-smarts were exploited sexually and for pornographic purposes. One was killed by his mother, allegedly in self-defense; she served a brief term in prison. At last, under the rule of the new Forty-Fourth Supreme Pinnacular, all the surviving asomnics, including their infants, were taken to a reservation on a remote island in the vast Ru Mu River delta, where their descendants have remained ever since, wards of the nation of Hy Brisal.

The second generation failed to vindicate Uy Tug’s theory but proved the skill of the genetic engineers: they bred absolutely true. No descendant of the Supersmarts has been capable of sleep after the age of five.

There are now about fifty-five asomnics on Wake Island. The climate is very warm, and they go naked. Fruit, cheese, bread, and other foods that need no preparation are left on the shore by an army jetboat every second day. Except for these provisions, tossed ashore from the boat, a strict no-contact policy is maintained. No humanitarian or medical aid is permitted. Tourists, including those from other planes, are allowed on a neighboring islet, where they can catch glimpses of the asomnics from a blind through high-power telescopes. Teams of scientific observers are occasionally lowered from helicopters into two observation towers on the island itself. These towers, inaccessible to the asomnics, are equipped with infrared and other highly sophisticated viewing devices; the observers are hidden behind one-way glass. Pickets from the Save the Asomnic Babies Association are permitted to march and keep vigils on the south shore. From time to time these SABA activists make rescue attempts by boat, but the army jetboats and helicopters have always forestalled them.

The asomnics bask, walk, run, climb, swing, wrestle, groom themselves and one another, hold and suckle babies, and have sex. Males fight in sexual rivalry and often beat females who reject intercourse. All fight occasionally over food, and there have been a number of apparently causeless killings. Group rape is common, when males are excited by seeing others copulate. There are some indications of affectional bonding between mother and infant and between siblings. Otherwise there are no social relations. No teaching occurs, and there is no sign of individuals learning skills or customs by imitation.

Most of the females bear a child a year from the age of thirteen or fourteen on. Their maternal skills can only be innate, and the question of whether human beings have any innate skills has not yet been settled; in any case, most of the babies die. The mothers leave dead babies where they lie. After weaning, children fend for themselves; since an excess of food is always provided, a fair number of them survive to puberty.