Distress

We ate in silence. I stared down at my plate, running through the rules, trying to decide where I'd gone wrong. Had I broken some taboo about money? We kept separate accounts, sharing the rent fifty-fifty— but we'd both helped each other out, many times, and given each other small luxuries. What should I have done? Gone ahead and made Distress—purely for the money—and only then asked if there was anything we could spend it on together that would make it worthwhile?

Maybe I'd made it sound as if I thought she expected to dictate the projects I chose—offending her by seeming to have failed to appreciate the independence she allowed me. My head spun. The truth was, I had no idea what she was thinking. It was all too hard, too slippery. And I couldn't imagine what I could say that might begin to put it right, without the risk of making everything far worse.

After a while, Gina said, "So where's the big conference being held?"

I opened my mouth, then realized I didn't have a clue. I picked up my notepad and quickly checked the briefing Sisyphus had prepared.

"Ah. On Stateless."

"Stateless?" She laughed. "You're a burnt-out case on biotech… so they're sending you to the world's largest engineered-coral island?"

"I'm only fleeing Evil biotech. Stateless is Good."

"Oh, really? Tell that to the governments who keep it embargoed. Are you sure you won't get thrown in prison when you come home?"

"I'm not going to trade with the wicked anarchists. I'm not even going to film them."

"Anarcho-syndicalists, get it right. Though they don't even call themselves that, do they?"

I said, "Who's 'they'? It depends who you ask."

"You should have had a segment on Stateless in Junk DNA. Embargoed or not, they're prospering—and all thanks to biotechnology. That would have balanced the talking corpse."

"But then I couldn't have called it Junk DNA, could I?"

"Exactly." She smiled. Whatever I'd done, I'd been forgiven. I felt my heart pounding, as if I'd been dragged back at the last moment from the edge of an abyss.

The dessert we chose tasted like cardboard and snow, but we obligingly filled out the tabletop questionnaires before leaving.

We headed north up George Street to Martin Place. There was a nightclub called the Sorting Room in the old Post Office building. They played Zimbabwean njari music, multi-layered, hypnotic, pounding but never metronomic, leaving splinters of rhythm in the brain like the marks of fingernails raked over flesh. Gina danced ecstatically, and the music was so loud that speech was, mercifully, almost impossible. In this wordless place I could do no wrong.

We left just after one. On the train back to Eastwood, we sat in a corner of the carriage, kissing like teenagers. I wondered how my parents' generation had ever driven their precious cars in such a state. (Badly, no doubt.) The trip home was ten minutes—almost too short. I wanted everything to unfold as slowly as possible. I wanted it to last for hours.

We stopped a dozen times, walking down from the station. We stood outside the front door for so long that the security system asked us if we'd lost our keys.

When we undressed and fell onto the bed together, and my vision lurched, I thought it was just a side-effect of passion. When my arms went numb, though, I realized what was happening.

I'd pushed myself too far with the melatonin blockers, depleting neurotransmitter reserves in the region of the hypothalamus where alertness was controlled. I'd borrowed too much time, and the plateau was crumbling.

Stricken, "I said, I don't believe this. I'm sorry."

"About what?" I still had an erection.

I forced myself to concentrate; I reached over and hit a button on the pharm. "Give me half an hour."

"No. Safety limits—"

"Fifteen minutes," I pleaded. "This is an emergency."

The pharm hesitated, consulting the security system. "There is no emergency. You're safe in bed, and the house is under no threat."

"You're gone. You're recycled."

Gina seemed more amused than disappointed. "See what happens when you transgress natural limits? I hope you're recording this for Junk DNA." Mockery only made her a thousand times more desirable—but I was already lapsing into microsleeps. I said dolefully, "Forgive me? Maybe… tomorrow, we could—"

"I don't think so. Tomorrow you'll be working till one a.m. And I'm not waiting up." She took me by the shoulders and rolled me onto my back, then knelt astride my stomach.

I made sounds of protest. She bent over and kissed me on the mouth, tenderly. "Come on. You don't really want to waste this rare opportunity, do you?" She reached down and stroked my cock; I could feel it respond to her touch, but it barely seemed to be a part of me anymore.

I murmured, "Ravisher. Necrophiliac." I wanted to make a long earnest speech about sex and communication, but Gina seemed intent on disproving my whole thesis before I could even begin. "Talk about Bad Timing."

She said, "Is that a yes or a no?"