Tony Ballantyne - CAPACITY

“You still haven’t told me what you want me for,” she said. “I don’t believe that you are keeping me here for nothing.”

But Chris ignored her. He prowled across the room, grey crystal muscles sliding smoothly under his skin. He placed a hand against a wall, and the smooth surface seemed to come loose. He was doing something to it-changing its composition, the code from his fingers calling VNMs to life in the very building material. Ten thin tentacles, all longer than Judy, pulled themselves free of the wall. They whipped back and forth, then wrapped themselves into a ball. Chris threw the package through the paper of the bedroom door, leaving a star-shaped hole hanging raggedly there.

“Got you, Frances,” he said.

He turned back to Judy. “Why do I want you? Because you understand people. You can read them and shape them. Stop working for Social Care and start working for the new order.”

Judy’s face was at its most impassive.

“Why should I do that? Your new world is everything that I despise.”

“That’s only because the Watcher has written your personality for you. Judy, you don’t know who you really are. The Watcher has tried to engineer personalities through Social Care for two hundred years. It has taken the next step with you. Your brain has been programmed directly from birth.”

Judy reeled. “I don’t believe you.”

“Join me and you will. You don’t realize it yet, but you share something else in common with Justinian.”

“What?”

The robot stared at her, making no reply.

She stared back. “And if I don’t choose to help you?”

“Then I will kill you.”

There was no choice. Judy absently folded her arms as if she was wearing her kimono. She looked down and noticed what she had done and gave a half smile. An idea occurred to her.

“Permit me to dress.”

Chris looked at her for a moment, his head tilted. “Yes,” he said, “you may dress. I understand that you see some sort of gallows humor in the action.”

Judy said nothing, just walked to her chest and opened the heavy lacquered lid. The kimono she wanted was at the bottom of the pile, folded in scented paper. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled it out and carefully unwrapped it. A kimono in pure white. She wondered if Chris would get the reference.

Tenderly, Judy pulled the kimono over her underclothes, adjusted the long sleeves, then pulled out the wide white obi from the bottom of the pile. She wrapped it around her waist, tying it in a careful knot, and then secured it with the obi cord. Smiling, she pulled up the neck band so that it fell back and away from her neck. She turned and faced Chris.

“Well?” the robot asked. “Will you join me?”

Judy resumed her habitual passive expression. “Yes,” she said. “I will join you.”

Chris stared at her. “No,” he said, “you’re lying, just to save yourself.”

Chris was right. How could she lie to a robot that could, for all intents and purposes, read her mind? Without hesitation, Judy ran. The door to the central section of the Shawl was made of paper. She dived straight through it. Something smacked on the back of her hand as she did so. She landed on the branch outside, rolled to a standing position, and then froze in horror.

She had been expecting help. She had been expecting other people, someone, anyone who would see her distress and come and save her. Someone who could call for Social Care or the Watcher.

There was no one. The central section was deserted. The branches of the World Tree were bare, the only movement the limp swaying of the black banners and streamers that hung all around. Drained of life, the scene took on an eerie aspect: a ghost forest. The air was cold, the section was closed down and the residual heat was leaking away into space. Judy stood completely fazed. What was going on? She turned back to look at the entrance to her apartment, and a voice called out to her.

“Run!”

It was her own voice. Enough to break the spell. White robes flapping, Judy ran for her life.

“Judy, it’s me-Judy 11. Run downwards. Run for the exit.”

Judy ran along the branch, conscious of the huge drop on either side of her. It was a kilometer to the bottom, and there was nobody to catch her if she fell.

“Where?”

“Don’t talk,” Judy 11 called. “Save your breath for running. Chris isn’t going to explain everything to you before you die. If it wasn’t for Frances, you’d be dead already.”

Judy reached the grey spiral ramp that wound down to the bottom of the tree and to the airlock, her only possible route to safety. She charged down it, her feet grazed by the abrasive gripping surface, never moving as fast as she would like. Constantly having to run in a curve…

Judy 11’s voice rose above the sound of her feet, of her frantic gasping breath. “We’ve all been tricked. Chris stuck a security net in your apartment, good enough to fool the Watcher. He kept your lounge in stasis for two days, had you and Frances sleeping in slow time while that same security net had something leave your apartment, something Judy-shaped enough to fool Social Care. Chris wanted his privacy while he had his conversation with you. No one knows we’re here!”

Judy ran on and on. She had developed a stitch. Her long white sleeves trailed behind her, flapping in the wind.

“The section has been released. It has already begun to fall…”

“ Judy, dive !”

The voice this time was Frances’. Judy dived and rolled, and something ricocheted off the ramp behind her. She looked up, back up the vertiginous wall of the Shawl interior, to the doorway of her apartment. Tentacles writhed up there, and for just a moment, the blue skeleton of a robot was visible before it was snatched backwards. Frances!

“Don’t look back. Just run!” Judy 11 called.

Judy rolled back onto her feet and resumed running. Down and down, round and round. Past the long white banners with their gaily printed messages, past the empty doorways of other apartments.

“Chris has some sort of nano-virus infecting this section,” Judy 11 called. “He’s taken control of nearly all of the materials in here. Frances can’t work on them; she can’t get them to reproduce for her own benefit. Chris has total control: he’s blocking signals to the outside world. Get to the airlock, Judy. Get me through, and I can call for help.”

“I’m trying,” Judy gasped, still running, her feet sore, stitch aching. “Where…you…come…from?”

“Frances,” said Judy 11. “I was hiding in her all along, where else? Oh, shit.”

There was a screeching, tearing noise, and a sudden breeze. Something gold dropped towards Judy.

“What?” Judy called, looking around. Something glinted on the back of her hand. Something metal, a flat speaker-that was how Judy 11 was speaking to her-fired by Frances. The breeze suddenly became a wind. The wind was increasing; it began to howl…

“…d…w…” Judy 11 called, the tiny voice from the speaker lost in the gale. Up above, Judy could see the material of the section folding apart, puckering and sliding over itself. Chris was rearranging its structure, opening it to space. The atmosphere was exploding away.

“Damn,” Judy said to herself. “He’s won. He’s got me.” She couldn’t believe it, that she would die here. Then the grey material of the ramp itself was breaking up, running over her feet, forming around her body, making…

“A spacesuit!” Judy 11 said in her ear. “Yes! Just like the one Kevin used. It’s the same code! Only applied to materials in atomic space. That’s neat. Atomic or digital, the code works in both worlds.”

The gold shape was still dropping towards Judy. She gave a laugh as she recognized it, then it dropped onto her, enfolded her, reshaped itself.