Distress

'No. Live alone.'

He grimaced. 'But that's worse. That makes you twice as selfish.'

I laughed. 'Really? Do you want to explain why?'

'Because then you're not even trying!'

'What if trying is at other people's expense? What if I'm tired of hurting people, and I choose not to do that anymore?'

This simple idea seemed to confound him. He'd taken up Ds late in life; maybe they addled his brain more than they did for someone who'd developed a tolerance for the drug in adolescence.

I said, 'I honestly used to think I could make someone happy. And myself. But after six attempts, I think I've proved that I can't. So I'm taking the Hippocratic oath: Do no harm. What's wrong with that?'

Angelo gave me a dubious look. 'I can't exactly picture you living like a monk.'

'Make up your mind: first I'm being selfish, then I'm being pious. And I hope you're not impugning my masturbatory skills.'

'No, but there's one small problem with sexual fantasies: they make you want the real thing even more.'

I shrugged. 'I could always go neural asex.'

'Very funny.'

'Well, it's always there as a last resort.' I was already growing sick of the whole stupid ritual, but if I threw him out too soon there was the risk that he'd give Gina a less-than-satisfactory catharsis report. The details didn't matter, he'd be allowed to keep them to himself—but he had to be able to say with a straight face that we'd kept on baring our souls right into the small hours.

I said, 'You always claimed that you'd never get married. Monogamy was for the weak. Casual sex was more honest, and better for all concerned—'

Angelo laughed, but gritted his teeth. 'I was nineteen when I said that. How'd you like it if I dug up a few of your wonderful films from the same era ?'

'If you've got copies… name your price.' It seemed inconceivable, but I'd spent four years of my life—and thousands of dollars from assorted part-time jobs—making half a dozen terminally pretentious experimental dramas. My underwater butoh version of Waiting for Godot was perhaps the single worst creation of the digital video era.

Angelo stared at the carpet, suddenly pensive. 'I meant it, though. At the time. The whole idea of a family—' He shuddered. 'It sounded like being buried alive. I couldn't imagine anything worse.'

'So you grew up. Congratulations.'

He glared at me angrily. 'Don't be so fucking glib.'

'I'm sorry.' He didn't seem to be joking; I'd struck a nerve.

He said, 'No one grows up. That's one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don't want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don't try to tell me it's some kind of… glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It's not.'

I said uneasily, 'Has something happened? Between you and Lisa?'

He shook his head apologetically. 'No. Everything's fine. Life is wonderful. I love them all. But…' He looked away, his whole body visibly tensing. 'Only because I'd go insane if I didn't. Only because I have to make it work.'

'But you do. Make it work.'

'Yes!' He scowled, frustrated that I was missing the point. 'And it's not even that hard, anymore. It's pure habit. But… I used to think there'd be more. I used to think that if you changed from… valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you'd learned something new, understood something better. And it's not like that at all. I just value what I'm stuck with. That's it, that's the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can't escape.

'I do love Lisa, and I do love the girls… but there's no deeper reason than the fact that that's the best I can make of my life, now. I can't argue with a single thing I said when I was nineteen years old—because I don't know better now. I'm not wiser. That's what I resent: all the fucking pretentious lies we were fed about growth and maturity. No one ever came clean and admitted that 'love' and 'sacrifice' were just what you did to stay sane when you found yourself backed into a different kind of corner.'

I said, 'You really are full of shit. I hope you don't take Ds at parties.'

He looked stung for a moment, then he understood: I was promising to keep my mouth shut. I wasn't going to throw a word of this back at him when he was sober.

I walked him to the station just before midnight. There was a warm breeze blowing, and ten thousand stars.

'Good luck with Stateless.'

'Good luck with your debriefing.'

'Ah. I'll tell Gina…' He trailed off, frowning like an aphasic.

'You'll think of something.'

'Yeah.'

I watched the train until it disappeared, thinking: She did help me, after all. I actually forgot about both of us, for a while. And she'll survive. And I'll survive. And tomorrow, I'll be on a South Pacific island… trying to bluff my way through two weeks with Violet Mosala.

Backed into a different kind of corner.

What more could I have asked for?

PART TWO

9

The living, artificial island of Stateless was anchored to an unnamed guyot—a submerged, flat-topped, extinct volcano—in the middle of the South Pacific. At thirty-two degrees latitude, it lay outside the ocean resource zones of the Polynesian nations to the north, in uncontested international waters. (Laughable ambit claims by Antarctic squatters aside.) It sounded remote—but it was only four thousand kilometers from Sydney; a direct flight would have taken less than two hours.

I sat in the transit lounge in Phnom Penh, trying to unknot the muscles in the back of my neck. The air- conditioning was icy, but the humidity seemed to penetrate the building unchecked. I thought about wandering out into the city—which I'd never seen firsthand—but I only had forty minutes between flights, and it would probably have taken half that time to obtain the necessary visa.

I'd never understood why the Australian government was such a vehement supporter of the boycott against Stateless. For twenty-three years, successive Ministers of Foreign Affairs had ranted about its 'destabilizing influence on the region'—but in fact it had acted to relieve tensions considerably, by accepting more Greenhouse refugees than any nation on the planet. And it was true that the creators of Stateless had broken countless international laws, and used thousands of patented DNA sequences without permission… but a nation founded by invasion and mass-murder (acts demurely regretted in a treaty signed two hundred and fifty years later) could hardly claim to be on higher moral ground.

It was clear that Stateless was being ostracized for purely political reasons. But no one in power seemed to feel obliged to make those reasons explicit.