Authors: M. John Harrison
Empty Space (42 page)
Later, in the hotel restaurant, she listened to a mid-level pharma executive telling his friends about a recent trip to Peru. Really, she thought, he was less entertaining them than issuing a
set of instructions. He had chosen a KLM flight, he was careful to emphasise, because it allowed him to do some diving en route: they might want to go more directly. When they arrived, there were
certain things they should on no account pay for. As for the ruins, well, the visibility had been bad, but ‘as their apology to us’ for not being able to provide the expected view,
the natives had cooked him and his girlfriend a special meal. ‘They didn’t charge us for that, obviously.’ Dr Alpert stared at him in open dislike until he noticed her, then
forced him to look away. His name, as far as she could tell, was Dominic. At forty, Dominic still sounded like an MBA undergraduate pretending to be his own father. He seemed like a throwback to
another age; so did his friends, with their Boden casual wear and pleasant, affirmative manners. So, she thought, did she. She always kept a pair of boots in the Citroën: she would spend a
day or two walking the Downs – to Corfe certainly, perhaps even as far the Purbeck Hills and Lulworth Cove. She would walk until she felt better. First she would separate Dominic the pharma
from his friends, take him upstairs, and fuck him carefully to a tearful overnight understanding of the life they all led now.
Acknowledgements
Tim Etchells contributed to the list of the assistant’s names at the end of Chapter 21. Paragraphs of Chapter 3 appeared in
Locus
as part of an essay. Thanks go,
as ever, to Sarah Cunningham for the use of her beautiful house; and to Cath and her family for their support.
Also by M. John Harrison:
The Committed Men
The Centauri Device
The Ice Monkey
Viriconium
Climbers
The Luck in the Head (with Ian Miller)
The Course of the Heart
Signs of Life
Travel Arrangements
Light
Nova Swing
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © M. John Harrison 2012
All rights reserved.
The right of M. John Harrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2012 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09633 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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