CAPACITY

“That got me thinking about Justinian. ‘And what’s he doing here?’ I asked. ‘Will he be staying on the ship?’ I knew the answer of course, but I was just stirring things up. I was asking just so that she would confirm what I already knew, so I could strengthen my disapproval. I regret that now. I really do. I think Mareka knew what I was doing, too. Her answer was toneless. ‘No, he’ll be going down to the planet,’ she said.

“Then she looked at me. She was an odd woman. You’d think that she was rather plain: she had this cool way of looking at you, appraising you, putting you in your place. Then she would suddenly smile and move just so, and you’d realize she had this long lithe body…” He smiled. “That was a long time ago. I was too old even then. Anyway, I pushed the point.

“ ‘Will Justinian be taking the baby with him?’ I asked.

“ ‘He will,’ Mareka said. ‘I have offered to look after it for him, but he insists that the baby stays with him.’

“ ‘Is that safe?’ I asked.

“ ‘I don’t know,’ Mareka said. ‘It’s not the choice that I would make.’ And then she paused. I don’t know. Later on, we actually became good friends, me and Mareka, but at that time we were still strangers. Even so, I realized that she wanted to tell me something.

“ ‘Go on,’ I said.

“She looked down at Emily, those little blue eyes staring back at her, and then she spoke again.

“ ‘I don’t think that it’s his choice to keep the baby with him,’ she murmured. I didn’t press it any further. If she wanted to tell me, she would. And she did, although when she spoke it was so softly I could barely hear her. ‘It’s that robot. It’s making his choices for him.’ ”

David sat back in his chair and fished the lemon slice out of his glass. He placed it on the floor.

“Did I say she was an expert in human-AI psychology? I did, didn’t I? I checked her profile later in the public records and discovered she was very highly respected. After she had said it, of course, it was obvious. I watched Justinian and the baby around the ship. That robot kept them apart from the rest of us and, to my eternal shame, we let it. Well, for most of the time, anyway. Some of us tried to tell him, but that robot had a way of warning us off. And I get the feeling it wasn’t just the robot. The pressure came from the ship’s AI, through the EA, to the very top. The Watcher. All of them. They all wanted Justinian and the baby to go down to that planet. And when Leslie couldn’t quite keep him in order, they cajoled and bullied and persuaded the rest of us to help. Even me.

“There was a time when Justinian tried to leave the planet, but I persuaded him to stay. As I said, I had this little vice back then. I thought it was secret, but SC knew. They had always known, even before they signed me up for the trip. I think they wanted to make sure that they had a way to buy my cooperation.

“Anyway, that’s how it was. We were on that ship for just two weeks. Two weeks to travel nearly three million light years. Two weeks with a chilled heart and waking dreams. Two weeks with the feeling that your thoughts weren’t quite keeping up with your body. You know, someone told me that the ship was flying at only point zero eight percent of the speed it could achieve. That it had to slow down to accommodate human minds. I can believe it. Thinking was…different on that ship.

“But I’m wandering off the point again. We arrived at Gateway eventually. That was exciting. I flew the first twenty humans down to the planet in the shuttle. That’s when I saw the hypership for the first time. But I’ve told you about that-we don’t need to go over it again. I saw Gateway. It was a pretty place. Blue and white, just like Earth, but the blue is milkier. It reminded me of being a boy again; something to do with that shade of blue, I think. That feeling of i

“We touched down, and Justinian left the shuttle. And that was the last I saw of him for three weeks.”

David drained the rest of his water.

“I’m sorry, could I have some more?”

“Of course,” Frances said. She looked down at Judy, still kneeling motionless before David, her kimono tucked under her knees. “How about you, Judy? Do you want something?”

Judy shook her head. David coughed and resumed his story.

“The mission was a failure from the start. I don’t think any one of us had realized how much humans have come to depend on AIs. It’s the human fantasy, isn’t it? We all think that we are strong enough to hack it on our own.

“Believe me, it’s just a fantasy. We ca

“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; we were terrified on that planet. Without AIs and Social Care, we felt lost, alone, abandoned. When we first saw the Schrödinger boxes dancing across the floor, we were scared. We awoke every morning patting at our bodies, wondering if we were going to find one of those BVBs wrapped around us-”

“How do we know this is real?” Judy said suddenly to Frances. “He certainly believes the truth of what he is saying, that’s obvious, but even so! It could be a trick. Chris could have set this up. How can we believe what Schummel is saying?” She eyed the old man. “I’m sorry, but you must understand.”

“She already knows,” Schummel said, hooking a thumb at the robot. “She can see it. She’ll have known ever since you came into the room.”

He fumbled at the buttons of his shirt: white plastic buttons, glittering in the light. He pulled open the front to reveal a pale, liver-spotted body. There was something wrapped around his chest, just above his purple nipples. Something black and unearthly. Something Judy and Frances had heard about, but had never actually expected to see.

The Black Velvet Band shone oddly in the light. Rays of red and blue and green light seemed to emerge from it at odd angles; they moved in all directions as Schummel shifted uncomfortably. The band seemed perfectly flat, its edge lost under the white flesh that bulged around it. Little white plastic stays had been inserted behind it to brace it in place.

“Can I touch it?” Judy asked.

“Yes,” he said, and Judy leaned forward and ran her finger across it.

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” she said.

“You learn to feel it,” Schummel said, “and then you learn to ignore it.”

Gazing at the alien artifact, Judy felt a chill. How far from its home had it traveled? Schummel had said three million light years, but what did that really mean? It was just a number.

“Why is it still there?” Frances asked. “Why didn’t Social Care cut you in two so they could remove it?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “My guess is that they wanted to see how it reacted to humans. Would it do anything else? I doubt it. You get a feel for something after you live with it for twenty years. This thing isn’t alive.”

Judy looked out of the window of Schummel’s lounge. Black space and white stars. Up above, the regular sections of the Shawl could be seen, a chequerboard pattern of black shapes ru

“Okay, David, let’s finish this off. I was told that the Watcher murdered Justinian. Is that true?”