Permutation City

I’ve struggled to build is in ruins. All my certainties have evaporated. Do you know how that feels?”

Maria met his eyes and tried to understand, tried to gauge the depth of his weariness. Could she have persisted for as long as he had? Maybe the time came, for everyone, when there was no way forward, no other choice but death. Maybe the Lambertians were right, maybe “infinity” was meaningless… and “immortality” was a mirage no human should aspire to.

No human—

Maria turned on him angrily. “Do I know how it feels? However you want it to feel. Isn’t that what you told me? You have the power to choose exactly who you are. The old human shackles are gone. If you don’t want the weight of your past to crush you… then don’t let it! If you really want to die, I can’t stop you—but don’t tell me that you have no choice.”

For a moment Durham looked stricken, as if all she’d done was compound his despair, but then something in her tirade seemed to break through to him.

He said gently, “You really do need someone, don’t you, who knows the old world?”

“Yes.” Maria blinked back tears.

Durham’s expression froze abruptly, as if he’d decoupled from his body. Had he left her? Maria almost pulled free of his grip—but then his waxwork face became animated again.

He said, “I’ll come with you.”

“What—?”

He beamed at her, like an idiot, like a child. “I just made a few adjustments to my mental state. And I accept your invitation. Onward and upward.”

Maria was speechless, giddy with relief. She put her arms around him; he returned the embrace. He’d done that, for her? Reshaped himself, rebuilt himself…

There was no time to waste. She moved toward the control panel and hurried to prepare the launch. Durham looked on, still smiling; he seemed as entranced by the flickering display as if he’d never set eyes on it before.

Maria stopped dead. If he’d rebuilt himself, reinvented himself… then how much of the man she’d known remained? Had he granted himself transhuman resilience, and healed himself of his terminal despair… or had he died in silence, beyond her sight, and given birth to a companion for her, a software child who’d merely inherited its father’s memories?

Where was the line? Between self-transformation so great as to turn a longing for death into childlike wonder… and death itself, and the handing on of the joys and burdens he could no longer shoulder to someone new?

She searched his face for an answer, but she couldn’t read him.

She said, “You must tell me what you did. I need to understand.”

Durham promised her, “I will. In the next life.”

EPILOGUE (Remit not paucity) NOVEMBER 2052

Maria left three wreaths propped against the illusion mural at the end of the cul-de-sac. It was not the anniversary of any death, but she placed flowers there whenever the mood took her. She had no graves to decorate; both her parents had been cremated. Paul Durham, too.

She backed away from the wall slowly, and watched the crudely painted garden, with its Corinthian columns and its olive groves, almost come to life. As she reached the point where the perspective of the imaginary avenue merged with that of the road, someone called out, “Maria?”

She spun around. It was Stephen Chew, another member of the volunteer work team, with pneumatic jackhammer in tow on a small trolley. Maria greeted him, and picked up her shovel. The sewer main in Pyrmont Bridge Road had burst again.

Stephen admired the mural. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you could step right through?”

Maria didn’t reply. They set off down the road together in silence. After a moment, her eyes began to water from the stench.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Parts of this novel are adapted from a story called “Dust,” which was first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, July 1992.

Thanks to Deborah Beale, Charon Wood, Peter Robinson, David Pringle, Lee Montgomerie, Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams.