CAPACITY

“She’s very tenacious, Kevin. I’m really coming to admire her.”

“That’s why we pick her for the traps. Big favorite with a certain sort of man.” He looked down at Calypso. “And a certain sort of woman,” he added.

“Fk ff,” Calypso murmured.

Kevin rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. “I don’t seem to be able to exit from this space at all.”

“We’ve got your measure now,” Judy 4 said.

“I didn’t think that was possible.” Kevin frowned.

Judy pulled a little blue pill from the sleeve of her kimono and swallowed it.

“It is possible,” she said, “if we isolate the space completely. Nothing gets in and out now. Not even me.”

Kevin shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, well. There is still one way out.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Watch me,” whispered Kevin. His smile froze as he slumped slowly to the ground.

Judy 4 stared at him for a moment, her white face motionless. Only the slight widening of her black eyes displayed the horror she felt.

“Wht? Wht s it?” Calypso said. She was gazing up from the floor where she lay. “Wht dd he do?”

Level Three, Variation A

“What’s the matter, Judy?”

Helen leaned close to Judy 3 and took hold of one of her white hands. For something that seemed to be barely there, the hand felt very warm.

“Judy, what is it?”

“He killed himself,” she whispered. “Overwrote the personality space he inhabited with null events.”

James spoke up from his corner in a whining voice. “So what? Let him die. Who cares?”

Judy 3 turned and gave him a sweet smile. “You should care, James. Now that Kevin has left this processing space, there is no reason for the Private Network to maintain it. Let’s just hope my atomic friends get an exit into here before we’re all wiped.”

Helen moved her lips, thinking aloud.

“Surely they will have a backup of this processing space? Couldn’t they just run that?”

Judy 3 had been gazing at her reflection in the mirrored walls of the isolation room. She turned and gave Helen a significant look.

“Ah, now you’ve hit on the crux of the matter, Helen.”

Level Four

Judy 11 stepped into the isolation room on Level Four and held her breath, expecting the worst. The scenarios on this level did not bear contemplating. To look at them awoke a boiling anger that slowly cooled into thoughts that left her feeling weak and ashamed.

In this room there was a table, a little tray of silver instruments at one side of it. A man was looking at the instruments thoughtfully. He turned as Judy appeared.

“Hello, Judy,” he said.

“Who are you?” Judy 11 asked. “Where’s Helen?”

“Never mind that,” said the man. “We need to talk, and quickly. I’ve been trying to get a message to your atomic self, undetected, for months now. This may be my last chance.”

Judy 11 laughed sardonically.

“You could have picked a better place. This processing space is going to be shut down at any moment, with all of us in it. I’m doing a last sweep for anyone who may be trapped in here, in the vain hope that we may be able to get them out in time.”

“Never mind that,” the man said again. “What I’ve got to say is far more important.”

“I doubt it,” Judy said.

The man took hold of Judy’s hands and gazed into her black eyes.

“Judy, listen to me. When word of this gets out, it could bring down Social Care, the EA, even the Watcher. It changes everything we’ve been led to believe. There’s been a murder.”

The edge to the man’s words touched something in Judy. He believed in what he was saying.

“Who has been murdered?” she asked crisply.

“That’s not the problem. The problem is the murderer. They’ve killed once; they’re going to kill again. The murderer has to be stopped, and I don’t think that that’s possible.”

Judy 11 was calm.

“Nothing is impossible. Who is the murderer?”

The man swallowed. He looked around the room, as if afraid of who might hear his words. When he spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper.

“The Watcher.”

Justinian 1: 2223

Only three weeks had elapsed since his arrival on Gateway, but Justinian was increasingly wondering why he was still there. At 5 A.M. subjective time his frustration was the only thing that could compete with his exhaustion. Standing at the rear of the flier, the exit ramp slowly dropping away into the early morning, he gave a half yawn, half sigh as he shifted the baby on his hip. His son pointed at the darkness revealed by the opening ramp and turned to face him.

“Bah buh bah,” said the baby earnestly. “Bah buh bah!” A stinking breeze twisted into the cabin through the widening gap, scattering grass seeds before it: a bad-breath yawn that matched Justinian’s.

As the ramp dropped further, the flier’s exterior lights came on, illuminating a long sloping finger of mud that slid down into black water. Justinian wiped his sticky eyes with one hand and set off down the exit ramp. Outside of the calming yellow glow of the cabin that had been his home for the past three weeks lay a psychedelic world. The flier’s lights cast garish highlights and shadows on the red mud; white light reflected off the dark mirror of the water. The whole became a jumble that jangled his tired mind. The green bean shape of the AI pod lay half buried about thirty meters away, white grass seeds blown all around it.

Halfway down the ramp, Justinian realized he was alone.

“Aren’t you coming, Leslie?” he said, turning to face the grey smudge of the robot who was watching from just inside the ship’s doorway.

The robot’s voice was apologetic. “Sorry. I can’t get a grip on the mud with these feet.”

A grey blur of movement was the robot’s arm pointing to its foot. It was difficult to make out anything for sure about Leslie through his fractal skin, the ten-centimeter region around the construct that could neither properly be described as robot, nor the rest of the world, either. Leslie claimed that it served as a cordon sanitaire; Justinian darkly suspected it was just another excuse for avoiding work.

“Fine,” he said sharply, walking quickly back up the ramp. “I’ll go alone. You stay and watch the baby.”

Justinian dumped his son into the robot’s arms, then slipped and slithered his way out onto the red mud, the bright light and dark red surroundings making him feel as if he was still dreaming. Iridescent patterns bent and warped as he placed his feet on the slick surface, splashing up reddish drops that slipped rapidly from the frictionless surface of his clothes. The rich organic stench in his nose matched the farting of his feet in the mud. Up till now Justinian had visited fourteen pods around the planet, and this one was in by far the most unpleasant location.

The AI pod rested in a little indentation in the bank. It seemed almost unchanged from its dormant state: a smooth fluorescent green kidney bean the size of Justinian, had he taken it into his head to curl up in the fetal position there in the stinking mud. Three Black Velvet Bands had wrapped themselves around its surface and a few Schrödinger boxes were scattered across the mud before it.

“Hello,” said the pod.

“Hello, I’m Justinian.”

“Hello, Justinian.” The pod’s voice was eager, like a child fascinated by the world. “Have you seen these little boxes? As soon as you take your eye off any of them, they jump to another position. But as long as you are looking at them, they stay put.”

“I’ve seen them,” said Justinian, fed up with the pod already. He had been conducting interviews all over the planet, asking the same questions over and over again, each time receiving exactly the same answers. It was getting tedious beyond belief. For this pod, of course, it was all new.