Permutation City

a crude sketch of the planet—which is what Durham’s asked me to provide—but they wouldn’t have a fraction of the memory needed to bring it to life. And even if they found a way around that, it could take a billion years of Autoverse time before the seed organism turned into anything more exciting than blue- green algae. Multiply that by a slow-down of a trillion… I think you get the picture.”

“Flat batteries?”

“Flat universe.”

Hayden said, “Still… if they don’t want to think too seriously about the prospect of ending up permanently trapped, they might not want to look too closely at any of this. Thanks to you, Durham will have a thick pile of impressive technical details that he can wave in their faces, convincing enough to take the edge off their fear of cabin fever. Maybe that’s all they want. The only part that matters, if everything goes smoothly, is the conventional VR—good enough to keep them amused for a couple of real-time centuries—and that checks out perfectly.”

Maria thought this sounded too glib by far, but she let it pass. “What about the hardware? How does that check out?”

“It doesn’t. There’ll never be any hardware. Durham will vanish long before he has to produce it.”

“Vanish with what? Money handed over with no questions asked—no safeguards, no guarantees?”

Hayden smiled knowingly. “Money handed over, mostly, for legitimate purposes. He’s commissioned a VR city. He’s commissioned an Autoverse planet. He’s entitled to take a percentage of the fees—there’s no crime in that, so long as it’s disclosed. For the first few months, everything he does will be scrupulously honest. Then at some point, he’ll ask his backers to pay for a consultants’ report—say, a study of suitably robust hardware configurations. Tenders will be called for. Some of them will be genuine—but the most attractive ones will be forged. Later, Durham will claim to have received the report, the “consultants” will be paid… and he’ll never be seen again.”

Maria said, “You’re guessing. You have no idea what his plans are.”

“We don’t know the specifics—but it will be something along those lines.”

Maria slumped back in her chair. “So, what now? What do I do? Call Durham and tell him the whole thing’s off?”

“Absolutely not! Keep working as if nothing had happened—but try to make contact with him more often. Find excuses to talk to him. See if you can gain his trust. See if you can get him to talk about his work. His clients. The refuge.”

Maria was indignant. “I don’t remember volunteering to be your informant.”

Hayden said coolly, “It’s up to you, but if you’re not willing to cooperate, that makes our job very difficult…”

“There’s a difference between cooperation and playing unpaid spy!”

Hayden almost smiled. “If you’re worried about money, you’ll have a far better chance of being paid if you help us to convict Durham.”

“Why? What am I meant to do—try suing him after he’s already gone bankrupt repaying the people he’s cheated?”

“You won’t have to sue him. The court is almost certain to award you compensation as one of the victims— especially if you’ve helped bring the case to trial. There’s a fund, revenue from fines. It doesn’t matter whether Durham can pay you himself.”

Maria digested that. The truth was, it still stank. What she wanted to do was cut her losses and walk away from the whole mess. Pretend it had never happened.

And then what? Go crawling back to Aden for money? There were still no jobs around; she couldn’t afford to write off three months’ work. A few thousand dollars wouldn’t get Francesca scanned—but the lack of it could force her to sell the house sooner than she wanted to.

She said, “What if I make him suspicious? If I suddenly start asking all these questions…”

“Just keep it natural. Anyone in your position would be curious; it’s a strange job he’s given you—he must expect questions. And I know you went along with what he told you at the start, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have given it more thought and decided that there are a few things that still puzzle you.”

Maria said, “All right, I’ll do it.” Had she ever had a choice? “But don’t expect him to tell me the truth. He’s already lied to me; he’s not going to change his story now.”

“Maybe not. But you might be surprised. He might be desperate to have someone to take into his confidence—someone to boast to. Or he might just drop a few oblique hints. Anything’s possible, as long as you keep talking to him.”

When Hayden had left, Maria sat in the living room, too agitated to do anything but run through the whole exchange again in her head. An hour before, she’d been exhausted, but triumphant; now she just felt weary and stupid. Keep working as if nothing had happened! The thought of tackling photo-synthesis in A. lamberti—for the sake, now, of ingratiating herself with the Fraud Squad—was so bizarre it made her giddy.

It was a pity Durham hadn’t been honest with her, and invited her in on the scam. If she’d known all along that she was meant to be helping to screw rich Copies out of their petty cash, at least the work would have had the real-world foundation she’d always felt was missing.

She finally went upstairs, without having eaten. Her connection to the JSN had been logged off automatically, but the message from Juno, locally generated, still hovered in the workspace. As she gestured to the terminal to switch itself off, she wondered if she should have asked Hayden: Is it you who’s been tapping my phone line?

14 (Remit not paucity) FEBRUARY 2051

Seated in his library, Thomas viewed the final report in his knowledge miner’s selection from the last real- time week of news. A journalist in a fur-lined coat appeared to address the camera, standing in light snow in front of the US Supreme Court building—although she was more likely to have been seated in a warm studio, watching a software puppet mime to her words.

“Today’s five-to-one majority decision means that the controversial Californian statute will remain in force. Authorities taking possession of computer storage media to check for simulations of the brain, body or personality of a suspected felon, dead or alive, are not violating the Fourth Amendment rights of either the next of kin or the owners of the computer hardware. Chief Justice Andrea Steiner stressed that the ruling does not affect the status of Copies themselves, one way or another. The software, she said, can be confiscated and examined—but it will not stand trial.”

The terminal blinked back to a menu. Thomas stretched his arms above his head, acutely conscious for a moment of the disparity between his frail appearance and the easy strength he felt in his limbs. He had become his young self again, after all. Become him in the flesh—whether or not he chose to face him in the mirror. But the thought led nowhere.

Thomas had been following the saga of the Californian legislation from the start. He hoped Sanderson and her colleagues knew what they were doing; if their efforts backfired, it could have unpleasant ramifications for Copies everywhere. Thomas’s own public opinion model had shrugged its stochastic shoulders and declared that the effects of the law could go either way, depending on the steps taken to follow through—and several other factors, most of which would be difficult to anticipate, or manipulate.

Clearly, the aim was to shock apathetic US voters into supporting human rights for Copies—lest the alternative be de facto kidnap, mind pillage, and possibly even execution, all without trial. The computer-literate would understand just how useless the law would be in practice—but they’d already been largely won over. The Unclear Family rated highest with the demographics least likely to grasp the technical realities—a storehouse of good will that had yet to be fully exploited. Thomas could see the