“Couple? I don’t understand.”
“Well, in my day most people who lived together were usually married. My wife’s name is Peggy, and we’ve been married for thirty-five years. But there were those who lived together before getting married, and some people considered that immoral. There was an even bigger stigma when people of the same sex lived together for romantic reasons, so they sometimes would claim that they were no more than roommates. You see, the term roommatesdidn’t suggest anything more than the sharing of living expenses. When I left, there was a big push for same-sex marriages, and, well…I was just wondering if you and Vin were married.”
“No, Ellis Rogers. There’s no such thing as marriage. My relationship with Vin is…unusual. People don’t live together anymore. Everyone has their own home. Two people never share the same living space—well, they do, but not permanently, you understand.”
“Why? Don’t people like each other? Fall in love, that sort of thing?”
“Certainly, but people also need time to be alone to work, to reflect, to think, to rest. We can always be with someone simply by opening a portal. Hollow World is like one big house where everyone has a private study or office separated by a single doorway. The rest is the shared space. Didn’t people in your day ever spend any time by themselves?”
Ellis thought about his garage. He’d spent more time in it than with Peggy. He also remembered some absurd statistic claiming that married couples actually spent no more than seventeen minutes a day with each other.
“People come together all the time. But with Vin and me, it’s…well…it’s complicated.”
Ellis knew he was missing something. Pax meant more than was said, but he couldn’t figure it out. Everything was hard to understand even when there was no pretense at diversion. Making guesses was almost useless. All he could do was draw on the past. There weren’t men and women anymore, but that didn’t mean relationships didn’t have the same dynamics. Maybe Pax was like one of those impressionable young girls who moved in with a prominent older man whom they saw as worldly. The way Pax spoke in such awe of Vin’s profession, maybe artists made the big bucks these days. Pax had certainly appeared subservient.
“Is this—” Ellis wanted to say his place, because Vin seemed like a man, and Ellis found it annoying to dance around the pronouns. “Is this Vin’s home?”
“We share it.”
“But it was originally Vin’s place, right? Vin took you in? That’s why you need permission to—”
“No—no, this is my home.” Pax chuckled. “Vin would never tolerate a vox like Alva.”
“Really? It’s huge.”
“There’s never been any restriction on size in Hollow World. That’s one of the benefits.”
“Well, it’s verynice.”
“Thank you.” Pax beamed. “Vin helped a lot, of course.”
“Oh—so he paid for a lot of it? Or do arbitrators make a lot of money?”
“Money? What’s money?”
“What’s money?”
“Alva?” Pax called. “Can you explain money, please?”
“ Money is an old English word that referred to anything used to represent a standardized object of agreed value that was traded for goods and services.”
Pax looked stumped. “Could you simplify that?”
“You want something someone else has, so you trade something you have for what they have. You understand that, right?”
“Not really.”
“This was before the Maker was invented. It made it easier for everyone to agree on relative values of things. Trading becomes a matter of math—so many of one thing equals so many of something else—understand? Historically shells, salt, metals, and paper promissory notes were used before digital currency was adopted in the twenty-first century. Of course, the whole monetary system was discontinued in the late twenty-third century with the advent of the Three Miracles, which is why you sound so dumb right now. Didn’t they teach you anything at Bingham?”
“Oh wait.” Pax thought a second. “Gold was once used, right? And silver? They made little round disks with them. I saw some at a museum once.”
Ellis nodded. “Coins.”
“Okay, yeah. Wow, being with you is making me wish I paid more attention to ancient history. Who could predict I would need to know all that stuff?” Pax’s head shook. “No, we don’t have money anymore.”
“You don’t have money?” A fly buzzed his pasta and Ellis waved it away, wondering if it, too, was part of the illusion, and if so, why it had been added. There was such a thing as taking realism too far. “How can you not have money? How do you get things you need?”
Ellis had hoped to pay for medicine, or surgery, or whatever he might end up needing with his grandmother’s earrings, but he began to doubt that would be possible. He was getting ahead of himself, he knew. There was no guarantee they could help him. The future might have eliminated death for them—for the genetically altered—but could they do anything for the sick? Was it possible that medicine was just as obsolete as money?
“I don’t—”
“Excuse me, Pax,” Alva interrupted.
“Alva, Ellis Rogers was speaking. You shouldn’t—”
“It’s an emergency.”
Pax looked worried. “Please tell me it’s not another murder.”
“It’s not. It’s a white code message.”
“White?” Pax appeared stunned. “What the core is a geomancer contacting me for?”
“Do you want to hear it or argue?”
“Play it.”
A new voice boomed over the open field that sounded just like Pax’s except with a more confident, more formal tone. “Pax. I directed my vox to contact you right away with this prerecorded message in the event that someone other than myself has stolen my identity and falsely entered my home. Please visit immediately and speak to my vox for more information. Abernathy will allow your portal. Two things you need to know: First, the thief who stole my identity is in my home at this very moment. Second, you should be careful, for this thief has already killed me. Geo-24.”
Chapter Six
Timing Is Everything
Technically this was Ellis’s second trip through a portal, but the first he was fully aware of. He asked to go with Pax, pretending it was because he was bored, and that he didn’t want to be left alone in the house with Vin. He also told himself he was interested in seeing more of the world and was curious about the message. All of that might have contributed—did contribute—and those were the answers Ellis would have given if anyone asked. But the real reason was strange, unlike him, and hard to imagine, especially given the circumstances. The fact was the trip sounded dangerous, and Pax didn’t strike him as a superhero. Ellis wasn’t a hero, either, but he had a pistol and the Y chromosome to use it.
Pax hesitated only a moment before nodding and taking out a small device. Ellis thought it might be a pocket watch, because it was gold and linked to a chain. Pax fussed with it for a few seconds; then a shimmering hole appeared.
Alva said, “ Pax, be careful!”
The trip was instantaneous, no different from passing through a normal door separating two rooms. Looking back the way they had come, Ellis could see the Big Sky country and the picnic table, empty except for their abandoned plates. The portal closed, winking out like televisions used to when they had vacuum tubes.