not available at the moment on any node."
Renie tried to keep her temper. This must be a Puppet-the simulation of bureaucratic small-mindedness was too perfect "All I know is that I was asked to deliver it to her Inner District node. Why she wants to make sure it has been directly uploaded is her affair. Unless you have contrary instructions, let me do my job."
"Why does the sender need hand-delivery when she's not accessing there?"
"I don't know! And you don't need to know either. Shall I go back, then, and you can tell Ms. Bundazi you refused to allow her a delivery?"
The functionary squinted as though he were searching a real human face for signs of duplicity or dangerous tendencies. Renie was glad to be shielded by the sim mask. Yeah, go ahead and try to read me, you officious bastard.
"Very well," he said at last. "You have twenty minutes." Which, Renie knew, was the absolute minimum access time-a deliberate bit of unpleasantness.
"What if there are return instructions? What if she's left a message dealing with this, and I need to take something else to somewhere in the District?" Renie suddenly wished this were a game and she could lift a laser gun and blast the Puppet to shards.
"Twenty minutes." He raised a short-fingered hand to stifle further protest. "Nineteen minutes, fifty . . . six seconds, now-and counting. If you need more, you'll have to reapply."
She began to move away, then turned back to the rat-faced man, occasioning a grunt of protest from the next supplicant, who had finally reached the Holy Land. "Are you a Puppet?" Renie demanded. Some of the others in line muttered in surprise. It was a very rude question, but one that law mandated must be answered.
The functionary squared his narrow shoulders, indignant "I am a Citizen. Do you want my number?"
Jesus Mercy. He was a real person after all. "No," she said. "Just curious."
She cursed herself for pushing things, but a woman could only take so much.
Unlike the careful mimicry of real life elsewhere in the Inner District, there was no illusion of passing through the gate: a few moments after her admission was confirmed Renie was simply deposited in Gateway Plaza, a huge and depressingly Neofascist mass of simulated stone, a flat expanse which appeared to be the size of a small country, surrounded by towering arches from which spoke-roads radiated into the distance in a deceptively straightforward-seeming way. It was an illusion, of course. A few minutes' walk down one would get you somewhere, but it wouldn't necessarily be anywhere you could see from the Plaza, and it wouldn't necessarily be a broad straight avenue, or even a street at all.
Despite its immense size, the Plaza was more crowded and more rambunctious than the waiting area beyond the Gateway. People here were inside, even if only temporarily, and it lent a certain air of purpose and pride to their movements. And if they had the leisure to travel through the Plaza at all, to imitate real life to that extent, they probably had good reason to feel proud: the lowest-level admittees like herself weren't given the time for anything but instantaneous travel to and from their destinations.
It was a place worth lingering in. The actual citizens of the Inner District, those who had the money and power to commandeer their own private space in this elite section of the net, did not have the same restraints on their sims as visitors. In the distance Renie could see a pair of naked men with incredibly bulging muscles who also both happened to be bright candy-apple red and thirty feet tall. She wondered what the upkeep on those must have been, just in taxes and connection costs alone-it was much costlier to move a nonstandard body through the simulations.
New rich, she decided.
On the few other occasions she had managed to get into Inner District-usually hacking in as a student netgirl, but twice as someone's legitimate guest-she had been delighted just to sightsee. Inner District was, of
Renie tried to keep her temper. This must be a Puppet-the simulation of bureaucratic small-mindedness was too perfect "All I know is that I was asked to deliver it to her Inner District node. Why she wants to make sure it has been directly uploaded is her affair. Unless you have contrary instructions, let me do my job."
"Why does the sender need hand-delivery when she's not accessing there?"
"I don't know! And you don't need to know either. Shall I go back, then, and you can tell Ms. Bundazi you refused to allow her a delivery?"
The functionary squinted as though he were searching a real human face for signs of duplicity or dangerous tendencies. Renie was glad to be shielded by the sim mask. Yeah, go ahead and try to read me, you officious bastard.
"Very well," he said at last. "You have twenty minutes." Which, Renie knew, was the absolute minimum access time-a deliberate bit of unpleasantness.
"What if there are return instructions? What if she's left a message dealing with this, and I need to take something else to somewhere in the District?" Renie suddenly wished this were a game and she could lift a laser gun and blast the Puppet to shards.
"Twenty minutes." He raised a short-fingered hand to stifle further protest. "Nineteen minutes, fifty . . . six seconds, now-and counting. If you need more, you'll have to reapply."
She began to move away, then turned back to the rat-faced man, occasioning a grunt of protest from the next supplicant, who had finally reached the Holy Land. "Are you a Puppet?" Renie demanded. Some of the others in line muttered in surprise. It was a very rude question, but one that law mandated must be answered.
The functionary squared his narrow shoulders, indignant "I am a Citizen. Do you want my number?"
Jesus Mercy. He was a real person after all. "No," she said. "Just curious."
She cursed herself for pushing things, but a woman could only take so much.
Unlike the careful mimicry of real life elsewhere in the Inner District, there was no illusion of passing through the gate: a few moments after her admission was confirmed Renie was simply deposited in Gateway Plaza, a huge and depressingly Neofascist mass of simulated stone, a flat expanse which appeared to be the size of a small country, surrounded by towering arches from which spoke-roads radiated into the distance in a deceptively straightforward-seeming way. It was an illusion, of course. A few minutes' walk down one would get you somewhere, but it wouldn't necessarily be anywhere you could see from the Plaza, and it wouldn't necessarily be a broad straight avenue, or even a street at all.
Despite its immense size, the Plaza was more crowded and more rambunctious than the waiting area beyond the Gateway. People here were inside, even if only temporarily, and it lent a certain air of purpose and pride to their movements. And if they had the leisure to travel through the Plaza at all, to imitate real life to that extent, they probably had good reason to feel proud: the lowest-level admittees like herself weren't given the time for anything but instantaneous travel to and from their destinations.
It was a place worth lingering in. The actual citizens of the Inner District, those who had the money and power to commandeer their own private space in this elite section of the net, did not have the same restraints on their sims as visitors. In the distance Renie could see a pair of naked men with incredibly bulging muscles who also both happened to be bright candy-apple red and thirty feet tall. She wondered what the upkeep on those must have been, just in taxes and connection costs alone-it was much costlier to move a nonstandard body through the simulations.
New rich, she decided.
On the few other occasions she had managed to get into Inner District-usually hacking in as a student netgirl, but twice as someone's legitimate guest-she had been delighted just to sightsee. Inner District was, of
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