Permutation City

“Know? You mean, it is? You’ve had definite signs?”

“I’m not sure. But how… ?”

“Mine is. Bugged. So it makes sense that yours would be, too.”

Maria was bewildered. What was he going to do—announce that the Fraud Squad were watching him? If he came right out and said it, she didn’t think she could dissemble any longer. She’d have to confess that she already knew—and then she’d have to tell him everything Hayden had said.

Taking the pressure off completely. Ending the farce for good. She had no talent for these stupid games; the sooner they could both stop lying to each other, the better.

She said, “And who exactly do you think is doing it?”

Durham paused to think it over, as if he hadn’t seriously considered the question before. “Some corporate espionage unit? Some national security organization? There’s really no way of telling. I know very little about the intelligence community; your guess would be as good as mine.”

“Then why do you think they’re—?”

Durham said blithely, “If I was developing a computer, say, thirty orders of magnitude more powerful than any processor cluster in existence, don’t you think people like that might take an interest?”

Maria almost choked. “Ah. Yes.”

“But of course I’m not, and eventually they’ll convince themselves of that, and leave us both alone. So there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“Right.”

Durham grinned at her. “Presumably, they think that just because I’ve commissioned an Autoverse planet, there’s a chance that I might possess the means to actually run it. They’ve searched this place a couple of times; I don’t know what they expected to find. A little black box, sitting in a comer of one of the rooms? Hidden under a pot plant, quietly cracking military codes, raking in a fortune on the stock market—and simulating a universe or two on the side, just to keep from getting bored. Any five-year-old could tell them how ludicrous that is. Maybe they think I’ve found a way to shrink individual processors to the size of an atom. That would just about do it.”

So much for an end to the lying. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. All right. Maria forced the words out evenly: “And any five-year-old could tell you that if anyone searched your flat, it was the Fraud Squad.”

Durham was still giving nothing away. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I know they’re watching you. They’ve spoken to me. They’ve told me exactly what you’re doing.” Maria faced him squarely now. She was tense at the prospect of a confrontation, but she had nothing to be ashamed of; he was the one who’d set out to deceive her from the start.

He said, “Don’t you think the Fraud Squad would need to get a warrant, and search the flat in my presence?”

“Then maybe it hasn’t been searched at all. That’s not the point.”

He nodded slightly, as if conceding some minor breach of etiquette. “No, it’s not. You want to know why I lied to you.”

Maria said, “I know why. Please don’t treat me like an idiot.” Her bitterness surprised her, she’d had to conceal it for so long. “I was hardly going to agree to be your… accomplice—“

Durham raised one hand from the tabletop, a half conciliatory, half impatient gesture. Maria fell silent, more from astonishment at how calmly he seemed to be taking all this than any desire to give him a chance to defend himself.

He said, “I lied because I didn’t know if you’d believe the truth or not. I think you might have, but I couldn’t be sure. And I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry.”

“Of course I would have believed the truth! It would have made a lot more sense than the bullshit you fed me! But, yes, I can see why you couldn’t risk it.”

Durham still showed no sign of contrition. “Do you know what it is that I’m offering my backers? The ones who’ve been funding your work?”

“A sanctuary. A privately owned computer somewhere.”

“That’s almost true. Depending on what you take those words to mean.”

Maria laughed cynically. “Oh, yes? Which words do you have trouble with? ‘Privately owned’?”

“No. ‘Computer.’ And, ‘somewhere.’”

“Now you’re just being childish.” She reached out and picked up her notepad, slid her chair back and rose to her feet. Trying to think of a parting shot, it struck her that the most frustrating thing was that the bastard had paid her. He’d lied to her, he’d made her an accomplice—but he hadn’t actually swindled her.

Durham looked up at her calmly. He said, “I’ve committed no crime. My backers know exactly what they’re paying for. The Fraud Squad, like the intelligence agencies, are jumping to absurd conclusions. I’ve told them the whole truth. They’ve chosen not to believe me.”

Maria stood by the table, one hand on the back of the chair. “They said you refused to discuss the matter.”

“Well, that’s a lie. Although what I had to say certainly wasn’t what they wanted to hear.”

“What did you have to say?”

Durham gave her a searching look. “If I try to explain, will you listen? Will you sit down and listen, to the end?”

“I might.”

“Because if you don’t want to hear the whole story, you might as well leave right now. Not every Copy took me up on the offer—but the only ones who went to the police were the ones who refused to hear me out.”

Maria said, exasperated, “What do you care what I think, now? You’ve extracted all the Autoverse technobabble from me you could possibly need. And I know nothing more about your scam than the police do; they’ll have no reason to ask me to testify against you, if all I can say in court is ‘Detective Hayden told me this, Detective Hayden told me that.’ So why don’t you quit while you’re ahead?”

Durham said simply, “Because you don’t understand anything. And I owe you an explanation.”

Maria looked toward the door, but she didn’t take her hand off the back of the chair. The work had been an end in itself—but she was still curious to know precisely what Durham had intended to do with the fruits of her labor.

She said, “How was I going to spend the afternoon, anyway? Modeling the survival of Autobacterium hydrophila in sea spray?” She sat. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Durham said, “Almost six years ago—loosely speaking—a man I know made a Copy of himself. When the Copy woke up, it panicked, and tried to bale out. But the original had sabotaged the software; baling out was impossible.”

“That’s illegal.”

“I know.”

“So who was this man?”

“His name was Paul Durham.”

“You? You were the original?”

“Oh, no. I was the Copy.”

16 (Toy man, picture it) JUNE 2045

Paul felt a hand gripping his forearm. He tried to shake it off, but his arm barely moved, and a terrible aching started up in his shoulder. He opened his eyes, then closed them again in pain. He tried again. On the fifth or sixth attempt, he managed to see a face through washed-out brightness and tears.