But that wasn't how it had happened. Over the weeks, it had all come pouring out between them: his family, her family, their resentment, his loneliness, her petty constraints, all those irritants that ulcerate a single person, but are soothed by two. Bizarrely, they had more in common than he could have ever expected. Real things, things that mattered.
The painfully simple local Net filtered human relations down to a single channel of printed words, leaving only a high-flown Platonic essence. Their relationship had grown into a classic, bloodless, spiritual romance in its most intense and dangerous sense. Human beings weren't meant to live such roles. It was the stuff of high drama because it could very easily drive you crazy.
He had waited on tenterhooks for her visit to the shipyard. It had taken a month instead of two weeks, but he'd expected as much. That was the way of Brunei.
"Hello, Maple Syrup."
Turner started violently and stood up. "Seria!"
She threw herself into his arms with a hard thump. He staggered back, hugging her. "No kissing," she said hastily. "Ugh, it's nasty."
He glanced down at the shipyard and hauled her quickly out of sight of the window. "How'd you get up here?"
"I sneaked up the stairs. They're not looking. I had to see you. The real you, not just words on a screen."
"This is crazy." He lifted her off the ground, squeezing her hard. "God, you feel wonderful."
"So do you. Ouch, my medals, be careful."
He set her back down. "We've got to do better than this. Look, where can I see you?"
She gripped his hands feverishly. "Finish the boat, Turner. Brooke wants it, his new toy. Maybe we can arrange something." She pulled his shirttail out and ran her hands over his midriff. Turner felt a rush of arousal so intense that his ears rang. He reached down and ran his hand up the back of her thigh. "Don't wrinkle my skirt!" she said, trembling. "I have to go on camera!"
Turner said, "This place is nowhere. It isn't right for you, you need fast cars and daiquiris and television and jet trips to the goddamn Bahamas."
"So romantic," she whispered hotly. "Like rock stars, Turner. Huge stacks of amps and mobs at the airport. Turner, if you could see what I'm wearing under this, you'd go crazy."
She turned her face away. "Stop trying to kiss me! You Westerners are weird. Mouths are for eating."
"You've got to get used to Western things, precious."
"You can't take me away, Turner. My people wouldn't let you."
"We'll think of something. Maybe Brooke can help."
"Even Brooke can't leave," she said. "All his money's here. If he tried, they would freeze his funds. He'd be penniless."
"Then I'll stay here," he said recklessly. "Sooner or later we'll have our chance."
"And give up all your money, Turner?"
He shrugged. "You know I don't want it."
She smiled sadly. "You tell me that now, but wait till you see your real world again."
"No, listen--"
Lights flashed on in the yard.
"I have to go, they'll miss me. Let go, let go." She pulled free of him with vast, tearing reluctance. Then she turned and ran.
In the days that followed, Turner worked obsessively, linking subroutines like data tinkertoys, learning as he went along, adding each day's progress to the master program. Once it was all done, and he had weeded out the redundance, it would be self-sustaining. The robots would take over, transforming information into boats. He would be through. And his slow days in Brunei would be history.
After his job, he'd vaguely planned to go to Tokyo, for a sentimental visit to Kyocera corporate headquarters. He'd been recruited through the Net; he'd never actually seen anyone from Kyocera in the flesh.
That was standard practice. Kyocera's true existence was as data, not as real estate. A modern multinational company was not its buildings or its stock. Its real essence was its ability to pop up on a screen, and to funnel that special information known as money through the global limbo of electronic banking.
He'd never given this a second thought. It was old hat. But filtering both work and love life through the screen had left him feeling Net-burned. He took to long morning walks through Brunei Town after marathon sessions at the screen, stretching cramped muscles and placing his feet with a dazed AML deliberation: TOGO = DMOVE (KNEE)+QPOSITION(FOOT).
He felt ghostlike in the abandoned streets; Brunei had no nightlife to speak of, and a similar lack of muggers and predators. Everybody was in everyone else's lap, doing each other's laundry, up at dawn to the shrieks of kampong roosters. People gossiped about you if you were a mugger. Pretty soon you'd have nightsoil duty and have to eat bruised mangos.
When the rain caught him, as it often did in the early morning, he would take shelter in the corner bus stations. The bus stops were built of tall glass tubes, aquaculture cylinders, murky green soups full of algae and fat, sluggish carp.
He would think about staying then, sheltered in Brunei forever, like a carp behind warm glass. Like one of those little bonsai trees in its cramped and cozy little pot, with people always watching over you, trimming you to fit. That was Brunei for you -- the whole East, really -- wonderful community, but people always underfoot and in your face....
But was the West any better? Old people locked away in bursting retirement homes... Soaring unemployment, with no one knowing when some robot or expert system would make him obsolete... People talking over televisions when they didn't know the face of the man next door....
Could he really give up the West, he wondered, abandon his family, ruin his career? It was the craziest sort of romantic gesture, he thought, because even if he was brave or stupid enough to break all the rules, she wouldn't. Seria would never escape her adat. Being royalty was worse than Triad.
A maze of plans spun through his head like an error-trapping loop, always coming up empty. He would sit dazedly and watch the fish circle in murky water, feeling like a derelict, and wondering if he was losing his mind.
Privy Councilor Brooke bought the boat. He showed up suddenly at the shipyard one afternoon, with his claque of followers. They'd brought a truckload of saplings in tubs of dirt. They began at once to load them aboard the greenhouse, clumping up and down the stepladders to the varnished deck.
Brooke oversaw the loading for a while, checking a deck plan from the pocket of his white silk jacket. Then he jerked his thumb at the glassed-in front of the data center. "Lets go upstairs for a little talk, Turner,"
Mercifully, Brooke had brought his hearing aid. They sat in two of the creaking, musty swivel chairs. "It's a good ship," Brooke said.
"Thanks."
"I knew it would be. It was my idea, you know."
Turner poured coffee. "It figures," he said.
Brooke cackled. "You think it's a crazy notion, don't you? Using robots to build tubs out of cheap glue and scrubwood. But your head's on backwards, boy. You engineers are all mystics. Always goosing God with some new Tower of Babel. Masters of nature, masters of space and time. Aim at the stars, and hit London."
Turner scowled. "Look, Tuan Councilor, I did my job. Nothing in the contract says I have to share your politics."
"No," Brooke said. "But the sultanate could use a man like you. You're a bricoleur, Chong. You can make do. You can retrofit. That's what bricolage is -- it's using the clutter and rubble to make something worth having. Brunei's too poor now to start over with fresh clean plans. We've got nothing but the junk the West conned us into buying, every last bloody Coke can and two-car garage. And now we have to live in the rubble, and make it a community. It's a tough job, bricolage. It takes a special kind of man, a special eye, to make the ruins bloom."