CAPACITY

“Still you try,” Chris remarked. “Still you try to save her. There’s nothing there that can’t be represented as bits, Frances. Are you saying that one pattern of bits has more value than another?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Frances said, knowing Chris was teasing her. He could have destroyed her already. He wasn’t just a robot, Chris was all the material around her. Chris had always been much bigger than he had let on; he had a way of insinuating himself into the environment and then focusing attention on that beautiful grey body that stood at the heart of his being. Frances was just one very small robot lost within him.

“It’s your fault that I have to kill her,” Chris said. “If you hadn’t hidden the truth from her all this time…”

“Don’t you see?” Frances said. “Her origin makes no difference! That is the Watcher’s point!”

And then it hit. Chris was playing with her.

“You’re playing with my mind, aren’t you, Chris? You’re doing to me what we do to humans all the time. You’re making me think what you want me to think. Why are you doing that?”

“Look at Judy.” It was like she was wading through jelly, moving so, so slowly down the ramp. Everything that humans did was slow when you thought at robot speed. Seconds had passed for Judy, no time at all in her human frame of reference. Seconds were a long, long time to Frances and Chris. The battle would be long over before Judy hit the magnetic field. How could Frances have forgotten that? Because she had been in a body so long, and Chris knew it and was using that fact against her. But why?

Because Chris was frightened of her. He still knew that Frances could do something to stop him.

And then she saw it-the path to the outside world, a small hole in Chris’ shielding field. A way to call for help. Call to the Watcher. In her haste she sent a signal straight through the hole.

“Double bluff,” Chris said, looking back down into her mind from the space she had opened up in order to call for help, and then his intelligence crashed down on hers, swamping it.

“Triple bluff,” Frances said.

Judy was ru

The base? She had reached the bottom at last. The walls of the section rose up all around her, a tall dark chimney, open to the stars. In their midst, the dark shape of the World Tree climbed up, its ba

Somebody spoke: “Judy, it’s me.”

“Frances! Where’s Judy 11?”

“Never mind. Turn round! Run back up the ramp! Now!”

Judy hesitated. “How do I know it’s really you, Frances?” she asked.

“You don’t. But Chris has a magnetic storm focused around that airlock, and it’s growing. You need to get away from it.”

Judy took a few steps towards the ramp, then paused.

And another voice spoke up. Loud and clear within the golden helmet of the spacesuit. A rich, deep, trustworthy voice. “Judy, it’s true. Run. I’m coming to help you.”

“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.

“The Watcher. I can see you now. I’m sending help.”

“The Watcher?” Judy felt her legs go weak.

“Judy, it’s true!” Frances called. “I tricked Chris and got a look at that seed in his head. It began to grow. Faster and faster. Chris couldn’t look away; it has a way of drawing your attention to it. Chris had to cut his intelligence right down to stop it expanding further, but he is still much more powerful than me. He still has control of all the material of this section. All I have is my body.”

Judy had been walking back towards the base of the spiral ramp. Now she began to run. The white path rose from the green grass up, up into the cold depths, where it lost itself in the stars that now glittered above, seen through the peeled-back walls of the section. And black, and yet somehow more than black against the night sky, there was something else. Something big and branching and…

“Don’t look at it!” the Watcher and Frances called out in unison.

Judy was now ru

“Oh, no…” she breathed. Frances was telling the truth. There, on the white plastic of the ramp, she saw what she had only heard about up until now. Even though she could see it, she still didn’t believe it in her heart.

A Schrödinger box. Here, nearly on the Earth.

“No,” she said again.

“Keep ru

She ran on. Suddenly, it seemed a lot harder. Her legs were too heavy. The effort was immense. What was going on? She could barely raise her arms.

“Frances!” she called. “What?”

“It’s Chris,” said her friend. “He’s increased the gravity at the base of the section. It’s on maximum, Judy; he can’t turn it up any more. You have to keep ru

“It will be too late,” said another voice. “We’re reentering the atmosphere, Judy.”

“Shit.”

“The Shawl, Judy-life and death. What you have been fighting for. The section is reentering. It is begi

“No!” Judy redoubled her efforts.

“This is it,” said Chris. “You are going to die for your beliefs, and they’re not even really yours.”

All around her there was movement. The walls of the section were breaking apart. Folding over themselves. Judy saw more stars appearing. The white ramp bucked beneath her feet.

“Onto the branch,” called the stranger’s voice. The Watcher. Judy dived from the white ramp onto a branch of the World Tree. “Hold on!”

The call came just as gravity gave out. All around her the section was breaking apart into thrashing metal shapes as the VNMs that had once built this part of the Shawl were reawakened. Below, Judy could see the blue-white globe of the Earth in the spaces opening up between the thrashing shapes.

The thrashing shapes. They were forming into something else. Monsters.

Judy wished she had some MTPH to take. Meditate, she thought; think yourself calm. Her handhold shook as one of the shapes gripped the edge of the branch to which she was clinging.

“Frances, help me!” she called. The metal thing that had gripped the branch began to coalesce into a definite shape. A long sinuous body formed; red eyes opened to stare at her. A dragon. It grew larger as more of the material of the dying section joined on to its body. It began to walk towards her, its many legs digging into the thick black bark with cruelly curved claws. White wood was torn free to float into space as it made its way onwards. The dragon was bigger than she was, bigger than her old apartment, with a long head that swung back and forth, looking for her. It was still growing.