CAPACITY a-2

by Tony Ballantyne

  The piece of plastic had been lying on the floor since they had entered the room. It was only now that Helen noticed her name was written on the top of it. She picked it up and began to read.

  “What message?” Judy asked.

  Kevin smiled broadly. “That somewhere out there was something incredibly strange. Something new, powerful, dangerous! But where? I didn’t know where Gateway lay. Remember, I was there by chance, a passenger in David Schummel’s private processing space. Now I was traveling back to Earth, a stowaway on the hypership. I needed to get a message out to myself, but how? When that ship arrived, all hell would break loose. Who knew what the Watcher would do? Say nothing, I suppose, like it usually does. So I lay low and made plans. I managed to catch a Schrödinger box, you know, just for myself. I fixed one in position by a camera, left part of myself looking at it all the time we were traveling home.

  “And then we made it back to Earth, and that robot came on board and everything changed.”

  “What robot?” Judy asked.

  “Chris, it called itself. I’ve never seen anything so advanced. It didn’t register on any of the ship’s senses but one. You could see it, and that was it. It came on the ship to assess what had happened; I guess the Watcher wasn’t taking any chances coming on board, what with all the other AIs committing suicide. Chris looked everywhere and took everything: David Schummel’s processing space, my Schrödinger box. Even David Schummel himself. It almost caught me…”

  Helen gasped. She passed the piece of plastic across to Bairn. Kevin noticed what she had done and smiled.

  He continued speaking. “But now I have found David Schummel again. Or rather, the atomic Judy has found him for me. And now, maybe, I can find a route back to Gateway.”

  Judy’s console chimed. She tilted her head and listened.

  “I don’t think so, Kevin. We’ve got you. We just needed to keep you fixed in place long enough to trap you. You can’t commit suicide now.”

  “No need,” Helen said in a low voice, leaping across the room and seizing him by the head. She had hold of Kevin’s skull and was banging it against the floor. Somebody grabbed her and pulled her backwards. Kevin was laughing

  “Leave me alone, Judy. I need to kill the fucker.” But it wasn’t Judy.

  “I can’t let you do it, Helen,” Bairn whispered. Judy stood in the middle of the room, looking at them both with interest.

  “Why won’t you help me, you black-and-white bitch?” Helen growled.

  Kevin had got up and was walking around the room, seemingly oblivious to Helen and Bairn wrestling in the middle of the floor. He started banging at the grey walls. “Clever,” he was saying. “I’m trapped. But can you stop me from doing this?”

  He concentrated. Judy merely smiled.

  “Evidently you can,” he said.

  “We’ve been stopping people from committing suicide for centuries,” Judy said. “It’s one of Social Care’s first priorities.”

  Helen flung Bairn free. She dived at Kevin and pressed her fingers against his neck.

  “Helen, no!” Judy leapt forward. This time it was she who pulled Helen’s hand free from Kevin’s neck. But it was a distraction; Helen’s other hand slid something sharp and white into his wrist.

  “Ouch!” Kevin said. “You are persistent, Helen. I’ve always known that.” Bairn pulled Helen’s hand away. The sharp piece of plastic she had taken from her console spun across the room. Kevin glared at her and rubbed his wrist.

  “Thank goodness for that,” Judy gasped. “We need him alive, Helen. Killing would be a kindness to him. It’s what he wants.”

  “Pity,” Helen said.

  Kevin waved his wounded hand as it erupted in grey powder. His body froze, his veins turned grey.

  “Venumbs,” explained Helen. “Just a couple of them in a scratch on the end of the plastic knife. They only act on red blood cells.”

  Kevin tried to scream. Too late. He was gone, burst like the head of a toadstool, grey powder drifting to the floor.

  “Let’s hope none of us has open wounds,” Helen said mildly.

  For the second time, Judy 3 lost her temper while on the job. “You stupid bitch! What have you done?”

  “You could have stopped me if you hadn’t been so busy just watching,” Helen replied calmly.

  Bairn was sobbing. She knelt on the floor, rubbing her hands through the powder.

  “Don’t you see: you were his fallback?” Judy shrieked. “He knew what we were trying to do. You were his escape route! Why did you do it?”

  Bairn’s tears fell on grey powder and onto the plastic sheet that Kevin had deliberately left on the floor for Helen to find.

  It was an advertisement…

  The Atomic Judy 4: 2240

  « ^ »

  She just stands there and watches it happen.”

  The atomic Judy knelt on the floor, staring as Kevin’s death played over and over again in the viewing field. Frances stood by her shoulder, her attention divided between the digital world and the atomic. Outside the private shuttle, she could see the forty-ninth section of the Shawl sliding past. Such was their ship’s stealth capability, the section was not yet aware of their presence. Frances signaled to the docking station, requesting an approach.

  “What is the matter with her?” Judy murmured. “I questioned if it was right to allow Helen to accompany Judy 3, but I never expected this. She just stood there and watched it happen. Frances, answer me honestly-am I like Judy 3? Am I becoming a mere observer?”

  “A little,” Frances said. The robot stood at her left shoulder, her push buttons level with Judy’s face. Judy looked at them now in a different light since her vision on Earth. She had an urge to reach up and press them. Would that violate her own virginity? Was the act physical or mental? She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Strands of hair slipped out of place, dropping down before her eyes. The strange drug was still lingering inside her. Who had administered it to her? Chris? But why would he do that? Did it have anything to do with his presence on the hypership on its return from its ill-fated journey?

  “We’re about to dock,” Frances said. “Turn off that viewing field. We need to concentrate on the job in hand: David Schummel.”

  The robot widened the external viewing field until it filled the whole cabin. Looking up, Judy could see the tiers of Shawl sections hanging down towards her. It reminded her of the time she had stood in a river, the water cool at her feet, her body shaded by an old weeping willow that drooped all around her. Looking up through the branches that trailed down, enclosing her…

  She shook her head. Everything was a metaphor. When would the drug leave her system?

  The black wall of the section ahead of them was moving. Insects stepped out of its smooth expanse like the lizards from the Escher picture. They formed themselves into a tube-an odd sight, creatures that came from nothing returning to nothing.

  The nose of the shuttle worked its way into this tube and the air in the cabin began to cool to meet the temperature of the section beyond.

  “This will probably be the last time we do this,” Judy said. “My own section will be gone in a few days.”

  “There will be other sections,” Frances said.

  Judy rose to her feet. “Yes, but why should it be that way? You heard what Kevin said.”

  “Kevin is an expert at manipulating emotions.”

  “So am I,” said Judy darkly.

  Since their departure that morning, the World Tree had been draped in black and red ribbons. Red and orange petals drifted down from above, forming a thick carpet on the ground. The silver-mirrored entrance to the docking area was set in a shallow depression in the grass, and Judy and Frances found they had to wade through the drift of stuff that had settled there, kicking their way over the smooth lawn that formed the base of this section.

  “I should change in honor of the tree,” Judy said, looking down at her kimono.

  “Later.” Frances
craned her head upwards. As a bodiless AI, she had viewed this section from every possible angle. Even so, to walk out here onto the grass and see the silver-grey trunk of the World Tree, sliding up from the green lawn some 200 meters from where she stood, was to see a smooth grey wall rising to heaven. Frances had seen a cross section of the Shawl: in that picture the tree seemed thin and elongated compared to its surroundings. The upper apartments lining the section walls needed ramps and walkways to link them to the tree itself, but seen from here, looking up…

  Frances craned to see the long white banners spelling out messages in different languages trailing from the undersides of the branches. With her enhanced vision she could make out fireworks strapped to the tree, and she laughed at the sheer exuberance of the gesture. The tree was going to burn up as it reentered the atmosphere, but why stop there? Would Sukara and Lemuel and Cadence get the joke? She doubted it. Sometimes you had to become human-size to think human-size thoughts and realize how big the universe was in comparison. Only then could you measure yourself against it.

  “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “maybe you’re right. Maybe we should change.”

  “No,” Judy said, striding towards the spiral ramp that led up the World Tree, “there will be time for that later. Come on. David Schummel lives about halfway up the tree.”

  Frances picked up on her friend’s unspoken words. They were there, written in her brain, obvious to all.

  “I don’t think it is a coincidence that David Schummel lives here, Judy.”

  “Do you think that Kevin was really looking for him?”

  “I think so. Which means someone else was expecting you to go looking for him.”

  “Chris?”

  “I think so.”

  “And just forty-eight hours before my home dies. Do you think that’s significant?”

  Frances said nothing. She could read Judy’s fears clearly and she didn’t want to add to them. It was difficult to think otherwise, when it was written all around them. They were now walking past a long banner, black Gothic letters against the white fabric.

  Earth to Earth. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust

  David Schummel was eighty-two, but he looked older. His stomach bulged; the rest of his body was too thin, his legs seeming lost inside the baggy legs of his trousers, while his thin wrists were arthritic knots emerging from white cuffs. His pink scalp could be seen through thin white hair, and white stubble grew untidily on his gaunt face. He walked unsteadily, using handles fixed to the walls to support himself, as he led them through the hallway into his living area.

  Judy gazed at him in awe, and a treacherous thought began curling and uncurling in her mind. Look at him; he can’t walk. Gravity is killing him. The thought curled around itself for a moment or two, and then it was back. We’re in space, so why does he live at full gravity?

  The answer was obvious: because the Shawl was set to simulate full gravity.

  Ah, but why? But why?

  “Social Care?” David Schummel licked his lips as if tasting the words. “Social Care. Ah, yes. I remember you Judy-you used to come and play poker at the social center.” He gave a cackling laugh. “I never joined you. I never understood why anyone would be stupid enough to play a game of bluff against a member of SC.”

  Judy looked at him and wondered. Did she remember him? A grey-haired old man playing cards with the children and adults at the compulsory mixer sessions?

  There you are: there’s a reason for the Watcher. Ensuring that we all look after each other, learn about each other. That’s what the Watcher has done for us. Mixer sessions and parties, the old and the young together. No crime. No fear. No loneliness.

  Ah, said the treacherous thought, but since when did it become a debate? You always assumed that the Watcher was there for the good of humankind. So why do you now begin to doubt that?

  Because I’m doped up on MTPH. It’s having the old effect: schizophrenia. Multiple personalities are fighting to possess me.

  Look at David Schummel easing himself into that chair with his arthritic joints. Why? Why does he have to do that? I thought we’d cured arthritis. Why do we still have it here in the twenty-third century?

  Judy turned to Frances, but the robot’s big blue eyes were fixed on David Schummel. Not that that meant anything, of course, since that dome of a head just had eyes painted on. You never knew what Frances was looking at. Frances was actually watching her. Judy knew it.

  “I don’t remember you, Frances,” Schummel said. His eyes traveled down to the pubic buttons between her legs. “I’m sure I would have remembered you, if we had met.” He made a thin, wracking cough. “Now, what is it about this time? My new apartment again, I suppose. Well, I’m leaving. I’ve not got much choice, have I? Stay here and plunge to my death or start again at the top. Well, I’ll tell you this: I’ll make it around the cycle again, and maybe next time I’ll just stay here at the end. Let myself just drop and burn. That would be a good end.”

  Judy smiled weakly. The effect of the drug seemed to be increasing again; her thoughts were following their own paths.

  “A good end.” She smiled. “Yes, maybe that would be.” She forced herself to concentrate. “But that’s not what we’re here about.” With some difficulty, she resumed her impassive expression. “I want to ask you about Justinian Sibelius.”

  Schummel’s arms and legs trembled constantly, and yet there was a strange sort of stillness around him. Judy sensed a mix of emotions: fear, elation, but mostly she sensed relief. He licked his lips, and a spot of drool formed at the corner of his mouth. Frances leaned forward and gently wiped it away.

  “Justinian Sibelius?” Schummel said. “So, the secret is finally out. I wonder what made them change their mind? I suppose whatever was in M32 must finally be catching up with us. The world really is coming to an end.”

  Judy knelt on the floor before him. She closed her eyes for a moment, grateful for the chance to be off her feet-she felt so dizzy-and then she took a deep breath and took both his hands. They felt dry and cold.

  “The world is coming to an end?” she said. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the fact that you are here suggests to me that they have finally found us. The Watcher must be getting ready to abandon this world before we all commit suicide. Or worse.”

  Judy pulled a little red pill from her sleeve. She handed it to him.

  “Here,” she said. “I’d like you to take this.”

  David took the pill without hesitation, then sat back on the chair. Judy slipped out another pill for herself. The reaction was automatic. Then she remembered the strange drug that was still at work within her system. She ground the blue pill to powder between her fingers.

  “Where shall I begin?” Schummel asked.

  “At the beginning. What were you doing on Gateway?”

  David Schummel closed his eyes as his thoughts traveled back through the years. When he began to speak, it was in a faint murmur that gradually grew louder as he gained confidence.

  “I suppose you’re too young to remember the day the EA revealed the existence of the Enemy Domain? It was, what, twenty, thirty years ago? Completely unexpected: a message broadcast simultaneously to every console. I can’t think of another time they ever did that. It was a serial feed, too. You had to start at the beginning of the story and work your way through to the end, every human in the Earth System experiencing the story at the same time. I think you had to have lived through it to have any idea of the emotions we experienced. They were incredible… To think how close we had come to total destruction.

  “The Enemy Domain! A hostile runaway region of self-replicating machines that had grown to the point that it could literally wipe us out. You saw the pictures on the feeds, that huge volume of hostile space, completely dwarfing ours. The Earth System was tiny, a blue-white pearl about to be cupped in the hands of a giant. All that machinery, all of that weaponry bent on our destruction, and we had been going about our daily li
ves unaware. Of course, the EA said we were never in any danger…but to see the pictures, you couldn’t bring yourself to believe it. I remember I just sat there, watching the scenes. Watching them, over and over again.

  “And then we heard about the clones. The Enemy had been growing humans, trillions of them, but it had never completed them. Trillions of half-grown humans were scattered on planets in a bubble two hundred light years across.”

  Schummel paused and looked at Judy. “How old are you? Late twenties?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  He nodded. “I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but I should tell you something else. When all this happened, I was in my early sixties. Social Care had done their best, but I still had this sense of dissatisfaction, this feeling that I wanted to do something useful with my life. When I heard the requests for volunteers to travel to the ED, to aid in the harmonization, well, it struck a chord in me. It took me a couple of weeks to pluck up the courage, but I volunteered. I had skills: I could pilot craft, solo, without AI or TM help. I thought that had to be useful. It turns out it was, but not for the reasons I thought.

  “There was only one way to volunteer, so I contacted Social Care, despite my misgivings.” A shadow crossed his face. “I should explain…I had a little habit back then that maybe wasn’t quite within socially acceptable parameters. Nothing actually wrong, you understand, but enough for me not to want them to know more than was necessary. Ah, why am I trying to hide it from you? It all came out after I returned from Gateway. You’ll have seen the records, of course. Still, I thought they were going to refuse me. They would have refused me, I’m convinced of it, if it hadn’t been for the fact that somebody wanted me. Social Care’s rejection was overruled, and I was accepted, but not for the ED. Not that I knew this at the time. Me, Mareka, Glenn, and Gwynnedd…and Justinian, all of us were being handpicked for the rescue mission to Gateway.”

  Schummel took a deep breath and looked up at Frances. “This could take some time. Could you get me a glass of water, please?”