Accelerando by Charles Stross Page A

do but wait for everyone to show up.
    For a moment, he feels old and desolate, as slow as an unassisted human mind. Agencies have been swapping in and out of his head for the past day, ever since he got back from Rome. He’s developed a butterfly attention span, irritable and unable to focus on anything while the information streams fight it out for control of his cortex, arguing about a solution to his predicament. Annette is putting up with his mood swings surprisingly calmly. He’s not sure why, but he glances her way fondly. Her obsessions run surprisingly deep, and she’s quite clearly using him for her own purposes. So why does he feel more comfortable around her than he did with Pam?
    She stretches and pushes her goggles up. “Oui?”
    â€œI was just thinking.” He smiles. “Three days and you haven’t told me what I should be doing with myself, yet.”
    She pulls a face. “Why would I do that?”
    â€œOh, no reason. I’m just not over—” He shrugs uncomfortably. There it is, an inexplicable absence in his life, but not one he feels he urgently needs to fill yet. Is this what a relationship between equals feels like? He’s not sure. Starting with the occlusive cocooning of his upbringing and continuing through all his adult relationships, he’s been effectively—voluntarily—dominated by his partners. Maybe the anti-submissive conditioning is working, after all. But if so, why the creative malaise? Why isn’t he coming up with original new ideas this week? Could it be that his peculiar brand of creativity is an outlet, that he needs the pressure of being lovingly enslaved to make him burst out into a great flowering of imaginative brilliance? Or could it be that he really is missing Pam?
    Annette stands up and walks over, slowly. He looks at her and feels lust and affection, and isn’t sure whether or not this is love. “When are they due?” she asks, leaning over him.
    â€œAny—” The doorbell chimes.
    â€œAh. I will get that.” She stalks away, opens the door.
    â€œYou!”
    Manfred’s head snaps round as if he’s on a leash. Her leash: But he wasn’t expecting her to come in person.
    â€œYes, me,” Annette says easily. “Come in. Be my guest.”
    Pam enters the apartment living room with flashing eyes, her tame lawyer in tow. “Well, look what the robot kitty dragged in,” she drawls, fixing Manfred with an expression that owes more to anger than to humor. It’s not like her, this blunt hostility, and he wonders where it came from.
    Manfred rises. For a moment he’s transfixed by the sight of his dominatrix wife, and his—mistress? conspirator? lover?—side by side. The contrast is marked: Annette’s expression of ironic amusement a foil for Pamela’s angry sincerity. Somewhere behind them stands a balding middle-aged man in a suit, carrying a folio: just the kind of diligent serf Pam might have turned him into, given time. Manfred musters up a smile. “Can I offer you some coffee?” he asks. “The party of the third part seems to be late.”
    â€œCoffee would be great, mine’s dark, no sugar,” twitters the lawyer. He puts his briefcase down on a side table and fiddles with his wearable until a light begins to blink from his spectacle frames. “I’m recording this, I’m sure you understand.”
    Annette sniffs and heads for the kitchen, which is charmingly manual but not very efficient; Pam is pretending she doesn’t exist. “Well, well, well.” She shakes her head. “I’d expected better of you than a French tart’s boudoir, Manny. And before the ink’s dry on the divorce—these days that’ll cost you, didn’t you think of that?”
    â€œI’m surprised you’re not in the hospital,” he says, changing the subject. “Is postnatal recovery outsourced these