Permutation City

don't seem to have any qualms about spending a year in Seoul, practicing your own useless artform at the Korean taxpayers' expense.'

'It's a private university.'

'Korean students' expense, then.'

'I never said there was anything wrong with you taking the job -- I just don't want to see you get screwed if this man turns out to be lying.'

'What could he possibly have to gain by lying?'

'I don't know -- but I still don't see what he has to gain if he's telling the truth.' He shrugged. 'But if you're happy, I'm happy. Maybe it'll all be okay. And I know, the way things are going, you can't afford to be picky.'

Picky? Maria started laughing. Discussing this on Aden's terms was ridiculous. Durham wasn't stringing her along, wasting her time; he was absolutely serious -- his notes proved that. Three hundred pages -- months of work. He'd taken the plan as far as he could, short of learning the intricacies of the Autoverse himself.

And maybe she still didn't understand his motives -- but maybe there was nothing to be 'understood.' When she'd been immersed in his notes, there'd been no mystery at all. On its own terms, Durham's plan was . . . natural, obvious. An end in itself, requiring no dreary explanation rooted in the world of academic glory and monetary gain.

Aden said, 'What's so funny?'

'Never mind.'

He shifted in the chair, and looked at her oddly. 'Well, at least you won't have to spend all your time in Seoul looking for work, now. That would have been a bore.'

'I'm not going to Seoul.'

'You're joking.'

She shook her head.

'What's the problem? You can do this job anywhere, can't you?'

'Probably. Yes. I just --'

Maria felt a twinge of uncertainty. He seemed genuinely hurt. He'd made it clear that he'd go without her, if he had to -- but that was understandable. Composer-in-residence was his perfect job -- and she had nothing to weigh against that, nothing to lose by accompanying him. He might have put his position more diplomatically, instead of making her feel like optional baggage -- but that was neither proof that he was trying to drive her away, nor an unforgivable crime in itself. He was tactless sometimes. She could live with that.

'What's wrong with you? You'd love it in Seoul. You know you would.'

She said, 'I'd love it too much. There'd be too many distractions. This project is going to be hard work, the hardest thing I've ever done, and if I can't give it all my attention, it's going to be impossible.' It had started as an ad lib excuse, but it was true. She had six months, if not to build a world, at least to sketch one; if she didn't eat, sleep and breathe it, it would never come together, it would never come to life.

Aden snorted. 'That's ludicrous! You don't even have to write a program that runs. You said yourself, as long as you make a reasonable effort, whatever you hand over will be good enough. What's Durham going to say? 'Sorry, but I don't think this slime mould would ever invent the wheel'?'

'Getting it right matters to me.'

Aden said nothing. Then, 'If you want to stay behind because of your mother, why can't you just say so?'

Maria was startled. 'Because it's not true.'

He stared at her angrily. 'You know, I was going to offer to stay here with you. But you didn't want to talk about it.'

Maria untangled that. 'That's what you came here to tell me? That if I planned to stay in Sydney because of Francesca, you'd turn down the job in Seoul?'

'Yes.' He said it as if it should have been obvious to her all along. 'She's dying. Do you think I'd walk off and leave you to cope with that alone? What kind of shit do you think I am?'

She's not dying; she's going to be scanned.

But she didn't say that. 'Francesca doesn't care if I go or stay. I offered to move in with her, but she doesn't want to be looked after by anyone. Let alone by me.'

'Then come to Seoul.'

'Why, exactly? So you won't feel bad about leaving me? That's what it all comes down to, isn't it? Your peace of mind.'

Aden thought about that for a while. Then he said, 'All right. Fuck you. Stay.'

He got to his feet and walked out of the room. Maria listened to him fumbling with his cycle, then opening the front door, slamming it closed.

She tidied up in the kitchen, checked the locks, switched off the lights. Then she went upstairs and lay on her bed, leaving the room in darkness, trying to picture the likely course of events over the next few weeks. Aden would phone before he left, trying to patch things up, but she could see how easy it would be, now, to break things off permanently. And now that it had reached that stage, it seemed like the obvious thing to do. She wasn't upset, or relieved -- just calm. It always made her feel that way: burning bridges, driving people away. Simplifying her life.

She'd left the terminal switched on after reading Durham's ROM; the screen was blank, and supposedly pure black, but as her eyes adapted to the dark she could see it glowing a faint gray. Every now and then there was a brief flash at a random point on the screen -- a pixel activated by background radiation, struck by a cosmic ray. She watched the flashes, like a slow rain falling on a window to another world, until she fell asleep.

11

(Remit not paucity)

JANUARY 2051

Malcolm Carter presented as a tall, solid, vigorous-looking man in late middle age -- and in fact he was fifty-eight, so his visitor's body might easily have been styled directly on his real one. Peer remembered seeing photographs of Carter in the early thirties, when he rose to prominence as one of the first architect-programmers to concentrate on the needs of Copies, rather than catering to the human visitors who used virtual environments merely for work or entertainment. Visitors had ended up hiring him too, though -- visitors like Kate who were on their way in. And Kate had moved in a similar orbit then, a young computer artist snatched out of obscurity in Oregon and adopted by the San Francisco glitterati at about the same time as Carter's own ascent from a small Arizona software house. Peer wasn't sure he would have recognized the man from those old magazine shots -- but then, nobody continued to look the way they'd looked in the thirties, if they could possibly help it.

Carter shook hands with Peer, and nodded at Kate; Peer wondered, curious but not really jealous, if they were greeting each other a little more warmly in a private detour from the version of the meeting he was seeing. They were standing in a spacious reception area, the walls and high ceiling decorated with a motif of tiered concentric circles moulded into the cream-colored plaster, the floor tiled in black-and-white diamonds. This was Carter's publicly listed VR address; anyone at all could call the number and 'come here.' The room spawned separate versions for separate callers, though; Peer and Kate had taken steps to arrive together, but there had been no risk of them accidentally bumping into one of Carter's -- or Durham's -- wealthy clients.