Tony Ballantyne - CAPACITY

Helen suddenly felt very small and alone . Though his tone was just the same as before, the warmth seemed to have completely drained from it.

“I know what a Strangler Fig is,” said Helen, her attempt at a casual tone tight and forced. She was suddenly very aware of the distance to the visitors’ center, of her nonfunctioning console.

Kevin held out his hand, a little white object on the palm.

“This is a seed from a hybrid venumb based on the Strangler Fig,” said Kevin. “I want you to swallow it.”

“Wh…why?”

“Because all self-replicating objects are valid forms of life and have a right to exist. You said as much yourself. This seed was built by the Sterkarm Company back in the mid-twenty-second century, just when the EA was bringing war to an end. This seed never had the chance to realize its potential. Here in the arboretum is the very place for it to finally do so.”

Helen kept backing away from Kevin. His big powerful body that had previously looked so sexy now seemed sinister and dangerous . He was standing right between her and the door. If she could just dodge around him, she could make a run for it; if she could just make it to the outside, she could send a distress call. She played for time.

“But if I swallow the seed it will kill me. Isn’t Social Care bothered about what happens to me?” She began to cautiously circle around him, ready to make a break for it.

He gave her a withering look. “There are many humans, Helen, but there is only one seed. Now, stand still. I’m hardly going to let you slip around me so you can get to the door, am I?”

Helen felt sick to her stomach. That was when she noticed movement in the corner of the cube. Someone was climbing up out of the stairs that led from the level below. With a huge wave of relief she saw who it was.

“Dr. Soames! Dr. Wu! Larry! Thank the Watcher!”

She ran towards them, oblivious to Kevin for the moment. Then she slowed to a halt as she saw their expressions. They were looking at her not as a person but as an object. A piece of meat. Food for the seed.

One strong hand grabbed her around the waist from behind, another moved across her face. She felt something being pushed into her mouth, a little sting of pain, and then she was released. She tumbled to the soft earth, damp grass staining her hands and knees.

“Five minutes,” said Dr. Wu, gazing down at her impassively. “Go watch the exit, Kevin.” Kevin nodded and withdrew.

Helen felt her jaw going numb. A sharp, shooting pain ran across her left shoulder. Desperation promoted inspiration. She began running across the grass to where the upper rim of the wall was lowest, pulling her console from around her waist and feeling along it, hand over hand, searching for the panic button . She squeezed it hard, morphing the memory plastic of the console into the shape of a flat disc.

Kevin realized what she was doing and sped after her. Too late. She skimmed the console upwards like a frisbee towards the wall. Watched as it rose higher and higher, then started to dip. Would it make it? A sudden, knifing pain ran down her left arm, locking it in position. She could no longer move it. Dr. Soames was already at her side, taking that arm, feeling it. She pulled away from him and started across the grass again. Then her legs went numb, too, and she fell over. The three doctors strolled across to where she lay. She tried to crawl away, and now she felt the same shooting pain in her right arm as the Strangler Fig seed sent tendrils down inside it, following her veins and arteries, dipping its little suckers into them to feed on her blood. She screamed and rolled onto her back as more tendrils ran down her spine, hardening as they descended, pulling her into a new shape.

The knowledge of what was happening to her made the pain all the worse. There was an exhibit card displayed back in the visitors’ center:

THE STRANGLER FIG originated in the rain forests of northeast Australia. Its seeds were deposited on the bark of a tree in the droppings of a bird or animal. From there they worked inwards to feed on the tree’s sap. Gradually the fig would grow tendrils that clung to the tree, working its way around it; each tendril dipping itself in to drink more sap until eventually a network of tendrils completely surrounded the tree, strangling it, killing it. The tree would die, leaving only the cage of the strangler fig still standing.

Now this venumb, this half biological, half mechanical device, was doing exactly the same to her. A venumb designed for use in a war that had never happened. Today it was finally being tested-on her. The pain was incredible. Where was Social Care? Couldn’t they hear her cries? Another spear of agony seared through her body, jerking her head back. She could see her console lying on the grass over there. It hadn’t made it over the wall. Someone’s feet moved into her view and she heard a voice.

“Look-the first protrusions from her skin. Is that metal or wood?”

Someone else knelt down by her.

“Metal, I think.”

“Don’t touch them,” cautioned a third voice urgently. “They may contain seeds, too. Secondary infection of any soldiers who came to the victim’s aid…”

Helen screamed again. A throbbing pain was building in intensity beneath her skull as the fig’s tendrils searched for a way in. There was an explosion of light…

Level One

A rich pool of green grass lapped the walls of the cube’s interior. It was as if someone had filled a tilted square bottle with green water. The process had not yet begun that would flush the cube’s inside clean and start the construction of floors and internal walls. A second plastic collar, set in the grass near the far wall, enclosed a set of steps leading down to the fully formed cube that lay immediately below ground, the first of a descending sequence of stealth rooms that extended obliquely deep into the earth . “Can we go to the level below?” Kevin asked. He gave her a significant look. “It should be more…private down there.”

Helen wordlessly took his hand and led him across the sunlit interior of the roofless cube to the plastic collar set in the earth.

The first room beneath the ground was a fully functioning stealth area; it wanted to maintain its integrity and that meant sealing the hatch to the surface. Rather than disable the room in any way, the arboretum had placed the plastic collar in position to stop the door to the outside world from closing totally. Helen made her way down clear plastic steps, her shoes squeaking on the nonslip surfaces. She felt a little thrill as Kevin’s body blocked out the light behind her. She wondered what he had in mind.

The steps led to a grey rubberized floor that sloped gently down towards one corner of the room .

“ Everything in the cube is at a slant ,” Helen said . “ Progressive leveling error in the initial parameters of the original VNMs .”

Kevin didn’t seem to be listening. He prowled around the room, tapping at the walls and feeling along the edges of the several raised platforms that filled the interior of the room .

“ Got it ,” Kevin said, tapping one of them, and Helen suddenly felt very small and alone .

“ Got what ?” she asked. Her mouth felt very dry . She had a sense of retreating from her real life up in the world above. Hemmed in by grey rubberized walls, by ancient machinery and hidden software, she suddenly felt stifled. She thought of the climb up the plastic stairs to the surface, of the long lines of poplars, the dappled collections of broadleaves awaiting autumn, the paper delicacy of the groves of Japanese maples that stretched between herself and the visitors’ center…