Kevin tilted his head. “Maybe if you knotted the blouse at your waist and wore just the panties?”
“I don’t know…” she said uncertainly.
“Mmm. Maybe it would be better with a skirt.” He went across to yet another rack of clothes and began to flick through, pointedly ignoring the assistant, who was nervously trying to help him.
“I think Judy was angry, too,” Bairn suggested hesitantly.
“Of course she was. That is a chink in the ice maiden’s armor I have been exploiting for years. And, of course, Judy Three in particular has a lot more in common with me than she would ever admit.” He looked at himself in the mirror for a moment. “Sometime soon we might find out just how much in common…. No, not those shoes, you incompetent tart.” By now the assistant was visibly shaking with nerves. “The cream ones.”
“But Kevin, they pinch.”
“Don’t you want to look beautiful?” asked Kevin. He suddenly grinned. “You know, I bet they go to Zinman. That self-absorbed fool’s movements have been intertwined with mine for far too long.”
Bairn looked at Kevin, a puzzled expression crossing her face.
“Zinman? Why does that name sound familiar?”
Kevin waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.
“He used the Private Network quite extensively in the past. A self-important little man to whom I showed a little of his true nature. He rather despises me because of that.” Kevin gave a self-satisfied smile. “He realizes, deep inside, that I epitomize his ideals far better than he does.” He gazed at the ceiling for a moment, lost in thought, then waved a dismissive hand in Bairn’s direction.
“No, I was wrong. The skirt doesn’t suit you. Try that white knitted lambswool dress again—the one with the fern pattern.”
There was a moment’s silence as Bairn and the assistant looked at each other in horror.
Kevin shook his head, eyes closed. “She took it away, didn’t she? Did I say I’d finished with it?”
The assistant picked up a red skirt from a nearby hanger, and then a brown pair of pants, moving on autopilot. “Mr. Smith…” she stuttered, “I’m sorry. I thought…”
Kevin wasn’t even listening. “I hate incompetence.” He gazed directly at Bairn. “The stupid bitch shouldn’t be doing this job. Fashion is not a job for fools. There are plenty of others who would be pleased to have the opportunity. I shall have a word with Ms. Wright.”
“Kevin, don’t make a scene, please. I think the clothes look perfectly lovely.” Bairn gave the stricken assistant a look of desperate apology. “Hey, why don’t we try one of the coats now?”
“No,” Kevin snapped. “We won’t need one on the Shawl. What about the A-line skirt?”
“I think it’s a little plain…”
“I won’t know until I see it on you.”
While Bairn changed into the new skirt, Kevin quickly looked through the other garments on the rack, hangers clacking as he pulled them along, tutting in loud disapproval at the assistant’s choices.
“You know,” he said, “the more I think about it, the more obvious it is that Zinman will put Judy on our trail. I think that it will soon be time to make our move.”
Bairn was turning this way and that, looking at her reflection in the mirror.
“I don’t know. It’s just too dowdy.”
“No, it’s perfect. It’s also, you will note, one of the items that I chose. Yes, I will definitely report the assistant, along with a recommendation that she be dismissed.”
“Oh, Kevin. You don’t mean that,” Bairn cajoled. “You’re just being petty because she didn’t recognize you when you came in. Leave her alone. It’s an overreaction. It’s not fair that a life’s ambition is spoiled because you’ve had half an hour’s bad experience. It doesn’t balance.”
Kevin frowned. “But think how happy the person will be who gets her job instead. It will all even out, Bairn. The equation will balance at zero. I’ve told you this before: we effect local changes only. The net happiness in the universe remains constant.”
Bairn gazed pleadingly at him.
“What have I said?” Kevin asked gently. “Am I right?”
“I suppose so,” said Bairn, looking at the floor.
“Good.” He pulled out his console. “Right, I shall report her immediately. Now. I think we’ll just take the skirt and the blouse. I don’t care for the rest.”
“Couldn’t we take the plum dress?” asked Bairn. “I liked that one.”
“On reflection,” said Kevin, “it didn’t suit you. Now, let’s go.”
They walked from the dressing room into the store beyond. The assistant was rehanging the plum dress, trying not to splash it with tears.
The fashion for nationalism had made a brief resurgence after the Transition. It was fading now, but it held on strongly in countries such as France. Helen and Judy 3 ate in a café that loudly proclaimed its past. Sardines grillées and frites, salade verte and vin blanc. Digital dishes savored by digital mouths. The food tasted just as good, but then again maybe that was all part of the program in the processing space. How would they tell the difference? It was not as if they could step outside and try the atomic version.
There were rooms upstairs for customers who wished to change after lunch, and on realizing that Judy intended to, Helen had followed her upstairs to do the same.
They emerged from the café into a dull grey afternoon. Helen had plaited roses into her hair, red blooms heavy with scent, the petals falling like drops of blood when she shook her head. The cruel pale thorns on the long mahogany stalks were tangled in her blond hair. Her arms and long legs had lost some of their tan so that now they complemented rather than contrasted with her habitual white shift. Judy was still a black-and-white woman, though her style had subtly changed. The sleeves of her kimono seemed shorter; her hair was knotted in a different way.
“Okay,” Helen said. “Where will we find this Zinman?”
“In another processing space,” Judy said, brushing a stray strand of black hair back into place with a white finger. The strand seemed to move as if guided by magnets. “I should warn you, the space we are about to travel to is disturbing. The inhabitants have made it that way deliberately.”
“Why?”
“Because they like to think that they are individuals,” Judy had a note of irritation in her voice. “They call the place Penumbra.”
“Penumbra,” Helen repeated. “Okay. How do we get there?”
“We just call up a door in the air.”
She muttered something for her console to hear. A stone archway appeared directly before them in the street.
“Gothic,” Judy said. “How imaginative.”
Helen’s movement in stepping through the arch seemed to cause ripples in the reality beyond: flickering shapes expanding from where she placed her foot on the insubstantial soil of Penumbra. The landscape was an Impressionist painting of the French countryside from which she had just stepped, but rendered in darker colors and shot through with red and gold. Nothing here was quite at rest: everything was locked in perpetual motion. Dappled trees danced a slow hula amongst hills that literally rose and fell in slow waves; dirty brown farmhouses rode the dull green swell.
“Are those people down there?” Helen asked, staring at an amorphous mass nearby. One moment it resembled a low forested hill, the next, an orgiastic tangle of bodies, heads bobbing back and forth, flesh flowing into flesh.
Judy said nothing. Here in Penumbra Judy’s immobility was in stark contrast to the constant movement of the landscape. Her black eyes flicked towards Helen’s shift. “Watch yourself, Helen.”
Helen looked down at her dress. The patterns of the landscape were drawing themselves across the material. Something brushed the skin of her upper thigh, something cold and prickly…grass. She realized that the landscape wasn’t drawing itself on her shift. It was infecting it.
“What do I do?” she whispered.
“Tell it t
o stop,” Judy said crisply.
“Stop that!” Helen snapped. Instantly the shift returned to thin cotton, but now of a darker cream color.
“Good,” Judy said, nodding her head slightly, the white curve of her neck showing. “Good work, Helen. Now listen. Every object in this processing space has a public handle to it. Everyone owns everything here, including each other.”
Helen cocked her head at Judy. You don’t like that, do you? It takes away a little of your power.
Judy was watching a huge yellow hand that rose over the horizon, reaching for them.
“Zinman,” she said. “How pretentious. All we need do is step to meet him.”
The world flickered, and they were somewhere else.
“Ah, you must be Judy. The black-and-white woman.”
An elongated giant of a man was looking down at them. Taller than the dilapidated buildings that surrounded the square in which they now stood, he was drawing back his long, long arm from the distant hill where Helen and Judy had just been standing.
“Zinman,” acknowledged Judy, folding her hands into her sleeves. Tall stone buildings of an Italianate design surrounded the litter-strewn square. Doors and windows yawned like entrances to railway tunnels. Rusting iron railings decorated the sills and lower windows. Greasy, slippery paper and rotting vegetable matter lay ankle deep around them, thrown from the surrounding windows; it drifted up against the walls. The sweet smell of decay filled the air.
Zinman was now crouching to bring his poisonous green gaze to bear on Helen.
“Can I do that?” Helen asked, looking at his arm still shrinking back to normal size.
“Of course you can,” Zinman said. “In Penumbra everyone is free to do as they please.”
Judy was looking hard at Helen. Helen ignored her.
“Ella! Ruby! Come and see!” called Zinman. “Helen is here, and she has an open mind.”
The litter scattered at the far side of the square stirred, and two brown shapes oozed out.
“Which one is Helen?” asked the taller of the two, walking forward. “Beautiful roses or monochrome bore?” Shaped like a naked woman, but half made and shiny, she was formed of chocolate. Helen could smell her richness, mixing with the sweet ether odor of the litter. She gazed at Helen and Judy with sightless eyes and gave a sigh of recognition. “Ah, yes, decadent rose. Because this is Judy, standing here.” The chocolate woman’s figure was distorted, as if she had half melted. No, not melted, Helen realized, as she looked at the smoothed-out shapes of the breasts. Licked away. Chocolate nipples sucked to nothing.
“Judy. I wouldn’t have believed that you would turn up here in exactly the same outfit. Are you always to be the black-and-white woman? You haven’t grown at all, have you? Do you remember me?”
“Of course I do, Ella,” Judy replied calmly. “And do you feel that you have grown since our meeting? I see Ruby still follows you everywhere.”
Helen looked at the second figure now, hiding behind the first. She might once have been a chocolate woman, but now she was nothing more than a formless lump.
“She can’t speak,” said Ella. “Her mouth was licked away.”
Zinman’s body was reshaping again.
“You know each other?” he said, looking eagerly at the two women as he became normal size.
“Oh, yes,” Ella said. “Judy tried to ‘cure’ me. She didn’t like my promiscuity.”
Zinman laughed. “Really, Judy?”
Judy ignored him. She spoke directly to the chocolate woman. “You’re emotionally stunted, Ella. You see sex as the only form of validation.”
Ella laughed. “What would you know about sex, Judy? You’re a virgin.”
Ella turned to Helen, melting her own chocolate lips as she licked them with a delicious chocolate tongue. “Do you think she thinks that way about you, too?”
Zinman leaned close to Helen. Green eyes on one side, the smell of chocolate on the other.
“Would you like to be a chocolate woman, Helen?” Zinman whispered. “Feel yourself melt inside?”
Helen looked to Judy for support. All she got was that impassive stare.
“But maybe not chocolate,” Zinman said, touching her forehead with fingers that were soft and warm. They tingled ever so slightly. “I like your hair,” he said. “I like the roses. So dark and bloody. And the thorns—so cruel. But why are they so restrained? Here, allow me.”
Helen gave a start as she felt the roses in her hair come to life, the thorns gently scratching her head as they shifted and stirred like the claws of an animal. Then they were reaching down amid a shower of falling rose petals, brushing her shoulders, rubbing against her breasts, encircling her waist. She gave a gasp and then slowly relaxed as she realized what Zinman had done.
“What a good idea,” she said. A reverse viewing field opened up before her, allowing her to see herself wrapped in a corset of rose thorns that grew down from her hair.
“And the last touch…” Zinman said, and Helen’s white shift disappeared. “Do you like it?” he asked.
“I do,” Helen said.
“Mmmm. This is your first visit to Penumbra, isn’t it?”
“Yes, this place didn’t exist in my time.”
“Ah! You’re an antique PC? I thought as much.” Zinman nodded wisely at Judy. “That explains the way she looks at you.”
They both looked at Judy, who continued to gaze patiently at Zinman. He reached out and gently adjusted one of the thorns that hung over Helen’s eyes.
“You’re how long—seventy years—out of time to her?”
Helen nodded, surprised at the accuracy of his guess. He gave a modest shrug of his elongated body, black hair flopping over his eyes. “Nothing is more embarrassing than the attitudes of the past. It’s as if Judy has met her grandmother in a young woman’s body. The way you dress, the way you act; you’re an anachronism. You’re both the same age, yet you’re separated by seventy years.”
Helen didn’t need to ask Judy; she knew what Zinman was saying was the truth. Zinman knew it, too. He pushed home his point.
“You lived before the time of the Transition, Helen. People back then were more open to new ideas. They weren’t locked into that slavish devotion to Social Care that typifies Judy’s generation.”
Helen turned to Judy, waiting for her to say something. Ella came forward, smiling. “Why don’t we do something for you now, Judy?” she asked
Zinman and the two chocolate women surrounded her. Judy placed her hands on her knees and bent her head to concentrate. Zinman gave a laugh.
“Oh, Judy! You’re such a bore! Your pills don’t work in here; no emotion belongs to one person. Everything is shared, even that body of yours.”
He brushed the dark hair from his lurid green eyes. “Come, be like Helen. Join in. Tell me, how should we dress you? I know…in ice. Yes. Ella, Ruby, would you like to lend a hand…”
He laughed and snapped his fingers. Nothing happened.
“Don’t try your tricks with me, Zinman,” Judy said. Zinman wore a puzzled expression as he snapped his fingers again. “That doesn’t work. Now stop wasting my time. Tell me about Kevin.”
“Kevin? That poseur?” Zinman sounded thoughtful. “No, I don’t think I will. You see, although you have a hold on your form, I still control the context.”
There was a rippling and all of the pieces of litter in the courtyard folded over on themselves, folded over to become golden hands. They took hold of Ruby and Ella.
“Oh, Judy,” said Zinman, “your problem is that you live in a world of order, of right and wrong. Here the boundaries are blurred, if they even exist at all.”
“No one’s body is their own here,” Ella said, looking at Ruby, who was melting in the grip of those golden hands. “Do you understand what that means?”
“I think I do,” Helen breathed. The blank windows that surrounded the square stared down at her. Helen had the impression of them being filled by silent watchers.
> “I knew you would understand,” Zinman said. “Seventy years from the past and yet you understand the future. The EA claims that possessions will be abolished. A lie! How can it say that when, in the end, everyone belongs to the EA? Well, here nothing belongs to anyone.” He raised his eyebrows, and Helen felt something slip up between her legs, something slip deep inside her. “Feels nice, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Helen admitted.
“I could take your virtual body and mold it into something wonderful. Anyone could. Nothing in this world is immutable. Do you want to hear the big secret? The one she doesn’t want you to know?”
They both looked to Judy, gripped in golden hands.
“There is no reason why the atomic world should not be just as mutable as Penumbra. If the EA wanted to, it could arrange it. Harness the VNMs, set them free to convert all matter in the universe to nanotechs. Wipe out the gross form of the human body and let personality constructs roam free in the foam of a nanotech sea. Just like this.”
The buildings surrounding the courtyard melted away, leaving nothing but golden hands.
“This is the future, Helen,” Zinman said, and now he vanished. The thorn cage that encased Helen’s body became warm; it began to move, to enfold her completely. A voice spoke in her ear. “Imagine that, Helen. Your body there for anyone in this world to use?”
“You’re not paying attention to her, Zinman. That’s not Helen’s fantasy.”
The sound of Judy’s voice broke Helen’s trance. She looked around and saw the dark shape of her friend almost submerged by gripping hands.
“Judy?” Helen said. “I feel…”
Zinman was angry. “What do you know, Judy? What does a virgin know of the pleasure of sharing their body with another? You have divided the universe into yourself and everything else. Even your PC is inviolate.”
Helen frowned. That last sentence was meant for her to hear. Zinman had glanced across at her as he said it.
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