CAPACITY

At the front of the flier, slumped in a flight chair, Leslie sulked.

The baby was crawling across the soft carpet, arms and legs moving like a clockwork toy as he chased a striped ball. The viewing fields had been collapsed to normal proportions now that they had left the region of the storm. Justinian’s attention flicked back and forth between his son and the twisted shapes of the Minor Mountain region. Blue-grey rills and columns, crags and cliffs all formed a cracked and tilted pavement below the flier. Red crystals grew from the highest peak, another VNM project mysteriously abandoned before completion. The flier interrupted his thoughts.

“Sorry, Justinian, course corrections during the storm have added about five minutes to the journey. We’ll be pushing it to make your co

“Why?” said Justinian, relaxing in his flight chair. “According to my reckoning, we should still make the shuttle with ten minutes to spare.”

The ship did not answer straightaway. When it did, its voice sounded a little slow. “From what I understand, the shuttle launch has been brought forward.”

Justinian looked at Leslie, whose face immediately smudged over. Knowing the robot could still hear him, he spoke in deliberately calm tones.

“I’m sure they’ll hold for us. Radio ahead and let them know we’re coming.”

“They may not be able to wait,” the robot said, his face unsmudging. “The shuttle will obey the commands of the hypership.”

Justinian gri

The baby was pistoning back up the length of the flier now, heading towards Leslie, giggling as he chased the ball. Justinian rose easily from his seat and kicked the ball aft. The baby laughed as he turned to follow it.

“I don’t know how you can be so without conscience,” Leslie said accusingly. “You’re walking out on all of us, and you don’t give a damn.”

Justinian laughed easily. “Don’t even try to make me feel guilty, Leslie. You’ve done nothing so far but mislead me and put my child in danger. You’re damn right I don’t feel concerned about leaving.”

“What about Anya?” Leslie asked.

“That was a pretty low shot,” Justinian said icily.

“Well? Can you be sure there is no co

Justinian thought about the last time he had seen his wife, laid out on the sepal of a giant flower, high above the Devolian Plain: her long hair brushed out all around her, the simple white shift that she wore, the locket at her breast containing pictures of him and the baby. And the utterly lifeless look in her eyes. Her body was alive, but her intelligence had gone.

Justinian stared at the robot. “That’s beneath contempt,” he said, curling his lip. “You really thought that would work? I thought you could manipulate my actions better than that. All you’re doing is making me angrier.”

He chased after the giggling baby, picked him up and swooped him further down the flier where he placed him down on the rear section of the hatch, aiming him up the carpet.

“Okay, baby,” he said, “go!”

Laughing, the child began to crawl back toward the robot, who seemed to be standing very, very still. Justinian was concentrating on the baby; he was elated at the thought of leaving the planet. He was only dimly aware of the fact that robots and AIs had had nearly two centuries of learning how to manipulate humans. The nagging thought-that if Leslie had a

“What was that, ship?” he asked.

“What was what?” said the flier.

Justinian sounded puzzled. “It looked like something falling from the sky.”

There was a moment’s hesitation before the flier spoke. “I just did a ten-second replay. I couldn’t see anything, although I should remind you I am working with severely curtailed senses. My status as a Turing machine may also mean that patterns in the data that might be discernible to a full AI will not be apparent to me.”

Justinian was suddenly confused. He was trying to remember something, something that was just on the tip of his tongue.

“Do you want me to go back?” the flier asked.

“No. I’ve got a ship to catch,” Justinian said, but he sounded unsure.

“Sorry,” Leslie said, appearing at his side. “I shouldn’t have said that about Anya.”

Wordlessly, Justinian looked at the downcast robot.

“I wanted to say, too, that we’re near the Bottle. That could be what caused the illusion of something falling.”

Justinian headed to the other side of the flier.

“Not that you’d want to go down there. You haven’t got the time.”

Justinian felt a spasm of a

“There is an AI in the Bottle. It could still be active, for all we know. It’s probably best avoided, though.”

“Why?”

“I just think you should avoid it, that’s all. I wonder if it can see out? It might recognize you.”

A pause. The robot spoke on carelessly: “Not that it matters. We haven’t got the time to get down there anyway.”

“Yes, we have,” said Justinian. “The flier can always go faster. Ship, take us down to the Bottle. Now.”

Justinian never doubted the rumors that the EA could influence your actions without you knowing it; that all free will died when the AIs assumed power after the Transition. How could he doubt it, when he himself was part of that process, working as he did for Social Care? Still, he liked to retain the defining human belief that he was the master of his own destiny. So the gradually creeping realization that Leslie had manipulated him into making a detour during his spontaneous journey to catch the shuttle off planet came as a real blow to his ego. Here he was taking his child into further danger when he should be wasting no time in leaving this planet. What buttons had Leslie successfully pressed in order to persuade him to make this u

But maybe the landing wasn’t u

He should tell the flier to resume its course to the spaceport right away…and yet, and yet…He felt to do so would lose him face in front of the robot.

It was ridiculous. Even when he knew he was being manipulated, he couldn’t back down.

And now the flier was touching down and the rear hatchway was dropping open and red shards of light were dancing around the interior of the cabin.

Just for a moment, he was sure he saw his own face, projected onto the orange wall of the flier, formed in the patterns of the dancing red lights.

An idea occurred to him. He opened his travel bag and pulled out a thin packet. Quickly, he slipped it into his pocket.

The flier perched at an angle on a tilted slab in the Minor Mountain range. Even with its rear landing treads extended as far as they would go and the forward treads pulled in tight, the craft could still not be leveled. Justinian stumbled down the ramp towards the impossible red jewel of the Bottle. If you looked at it from the corner of your eye, the Bottle looked a little like a dome, roughly the size of the flier itself. If you looked at it straight on, your eye got lost in following the strange curves, and then the Bottle looked like nothing that could be described. Someone had once said it was like a Klein bottle given an extra twist, but that was a human perspective. In the absence of fully functioning AIs, no one had managed to expand further on that explanation.