Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Michael returned to work elated. He boomed hello at Shafiq and Tony, and bounced so effectively at Ebru that she had no time to say anything about his absences. He kissed her on the cheek, talked to her about her trip to Turkey, and asked her to run a report on their data using different variables.

Then he slammed into his in tray and got a fair way through it. He saw from the papers that it was too late to agree to speak at the American conference. Well, OK, you can't do everything. He tore up the correspondence, threw it in the wastebin and e-mailed an apology. At 6.00 pm, he tapped all the remaining, older papers into a neat pile and put them in a folder. He was the last to leave.

Michael wandered in a circuit around Archbishop's Park. It was the day before the clocks went back and it was nearly dark. There was no one else there, though it was still warm and the trees had all their leaves. Michael's feet began to drag, as if he had forgotten to drink any water during the whole of the day.

Michael avoided going home. He finally took the tube and ended up in the Camden bar. The red-faced, bearded men ignored him. He watched other laconic, unfearful souls play darts.

It wasn't enough to have love. You needed to have power. The two were so much alike. Love and power only exist between people. Both come from inner liveliness. Perhaps they were the same thing, since to fail at one seemed in some way to be bound up with failure in the other.

Michael finished a pint of Becks and finally went back to his flat.

'This flat, it is mine,' Michael said. 'I bought it.'

'Hmph,' said Picasso from his computer. He turned and glowered a warning.

'You're welcome to stay. If you still need to. You can sleep in my bed or on my sofa. But please stop bringing women back.'

Picasso smiled. 'You are jealous.'

Michael smiled. 'Not at all. It is inconvenient to come back and find my bed occupied.'

Picasso seemed to swell and darken like clouds. 'Do not threaten me.'

'How have I threatened you? I have asked you to keep strangers out of my bed.'

Picasso said, 'You will make me angry.'

'Why? Because I ask for good behaviour?'

'Yes. It is bourgeois.'

'Oh please. It would be bourgeois to sit by helplessly while you turn me out of my own house. If you want to make a mess and fill a flat with whores, go find one of your own.'

Picasso finished keying in with a musical flourish. 'I will do so.' He turned and challenged Michael, his jaw thrust out.

'Good,' said Michael.

That night Picasso noisily made up a bed downstairs. For the first time in months, Michael slept in his own bed alone. He felt the separation, like scar tissue from his sternum down to the top of his penis. It's over, he realized. It really is over. There was sadness like a story ending, and another sensation that was like fear.

Trepidation we'll call it. Unease. Michael knew that it was a necessary unease. It was the unease you feel when you lose a tooth, or change jobs. It was the unease of learning.

I love you, Michael accepted, and it will have to end. He wept one long slow hot unwilling tear, and that was all.

In the morning Michael went downstairs and Picasso was making coffee. He looked smaller. He turned and smiled and said good morning and pushed an empty cup in Michael's direction.

'You have set me free, haven't you?' Picasso said.

'Yes.'

'You will let me live.'

Michael nodded. Picasso chuckled and gave his head a funny shake. 'You have become tired of me, but you don't threaten me. That is good,' he said. 'It is economical.' He made a fist to emphasize the last word.

Michael allowed himself to be drawn. 'Economical how?'

'Toh!' said Picasso and spread his hands out over the self-evident, empty table. 'One should never give everything. It is wasteful. It tries too hard.'

His eyes said: I am going to live. I am going to live without conditions.

Two weeks later Picasso stood at night on the doorstep. He had a new leather jacket slung over one shoulder and a shaved bristly head and a stud earring. He had started to sell pictures; his agent had found him a flat. He was in an expansive mood.

'I am going to live!' he said, rocking on his heels.

'Indeed,' said Michael, smiling with him.

Picasso took his hand. 'And the work. It will live too?'

'For as long as you do. When you go… the paintings, the sculptures will disappear.'

'Like the flowers,' said Picasso, and his face was impossible to read. It was regretful but happy.

'Except for your computer pieces. Uh… I have not told you this. Mr Miazga. I made a deal with him.'

For some reason, Picasso threw his head back and laughed aloud.

'He is keying in all your work again. So it will remain. It will stay.'

Picasso was still laughing. 'Poor Miazga. Regard! There is a man who gives everything!'

'The deal is that you stop screwing his wife.' It was terrible, but Michael was grinning too, without knowing why, and he suddenly spurted out a laugh.

'He can have her!' declared Picasso, with a wave of his hand, dismissing her, it, everything. He did his little dance in place. His eyes looked at Michael, brimming with affection.

'You,' Picasso said with one finger, 'Are.' Two fingers together made a sign like a blessing. He gave Michael a hug and whispered in his ear, 'But I really hated screwing you.' The words broke apart like rocks with laughter.

'Liar,' said Michael. 'You were in me all night.'

Picasso stepped back. 'True,' he proclaimed. He spun around and held up a hand to wave goodbye. 'True!' he bellowed as he walked away without looking back.

And Michael for some reason felt a wild unaccountable joy. It was as if there were a giant tiger lily flower all red, spangled with yellow, and it was just beyond the sky, filling it, invisible. I am going to live, Michael repeated. He watched Picasso's retreating back with love and gratitude and relief.

What am I looking for?

Michael finally cleared his in tray and saw in it a reminder: Deadline for grant proposals. He lightly thought: why have they sent me this? The answer seemed to thump him in the heart.

Because you didn't do the application.

No, I must have. Didn't I? Michael couldn't remember not doing it, but then you don't remember not doing something. He was sure he had done it. Well, or rather, it felt as if he had.

But his only memory of application forms was, he realized, from last year, for the six-month initial grant. He opened up My Documents, he did a Find, and there was no file called application or council form or any other likely name on either the server or his hard disk. He must have sent it out, he couldn't have been so stupid. He sorted all his e-mails by address and looked at everything he had sent to the Council. Only one had an attachment, and that was simply the first progress report.

Michael went out and asked Ebru if she still kept a record of all outgoing and incoming white mail.

'Mmmm hmmm,' she said, and handed him the register.

'Good girl,' he said wistfully, looking at her brisk, pinched face. And she was a good girl, better than he was, to record each outgoing item of post. It wasn't as if she were a secretary; she was a postgraduate researcher.

Michael went though the list line by line for all of August and September: there was nothing, no conventional mail whatsoever to the Biological Research Funding Council.

'Do we have a record of courier dispatches?'

Her eyes said of course we have. 'Yes; that what you were looking for, Michael?'

Ebru's gaze was upsettingly direct and unfriendly. She was plainly fed up with him. There was nothing in her manner to encourage him to tell her what had happened.

Michael lied. 'I sent back some faulty software, I need to know when.'