CAPACITY

Helen 2: 2240

Concealed as she was by darkness, the pale lights flickering across her face were the only clue to Helen’s presence in the shuttle. Judy 3 sat opposite, monitoring her for signs of stress, but so far she had detected nothing but an awed, breathless wonder. Helen smiled, and Judy felt the happiness rising from her, filling the interior of the insubstantial craft. They were dropping down by the seemingly endless diamond-studded black wall of the Shawl towards the blue-white swirl of the Earth below, and it was good to be alive. Even if that life was in the digital world.

Brilliant sunlight burst around them. They had now dropped beyond the lowermost edge of the Shawl; they could see it receding above them and begin to make out its shape.

Earlier, back in her room, Judy had unrolled a bolt of black-and-white chequered kimono silk and gathered it loosely around her shoulders, like a shawl. “This is what it looks like,” she had explained. “Imagine that the black squares are the sections of the Shawl. New sections are formed and added around the neck; the older sections are allowed to drop a little closer to Earth…”

Helen was looking up into the heavens, following the receding pattern of sections, unable to make out the overall shape of the Shawl. It was just too big.

But it was beautiful. The spun-glass bauble of the shuttle was filled with rose and gold from the bright sun. Helen jumped from her seat and, arms outstretched to catch the warmth, seemed to hang suspended in a golden halo, a vision of life, her hair plaited with flowers, rich light blooming on her white shift.

“I’m glad we took the shuttle!” she sang out. “We would have missed all this if we just stepped straight down to Earth.”

Judy smiled back. Emotional extremes were normal after Helen’s experience. Her moods would continue to swing back and forth for the next few weeks, as Judy sought to center her.

“To think I might have died without seeing this!” Helen said.

Judy said nothing. The atomic Helen had died fourteen years ago. Judy thought it significant that Helen hadn’t thought to ask about her “original” self’s death yet. She was still thinking in atomic ways. Example: insisting on catching a shuttle when a door could have been opened directly to Earth.

An orange glow was building around the transparent skin of the shuttle as they plunged down towards the narrow channel of water lying between England and France. There were plenty of leisure craft floating there; someone would take them on to the coastal town where Judy’s next client unwittingly slept.

“This place looks grim.” Helen gazed down the narrow street. A trail of damp, sandy footprints led back along the rubbery road to the grass-covered dunes. Behind them, the yellow catamaran that had brought them ashore now skimmed its way southwards, borne by the cold morning wind that cut through Helen’s shift’s warm-field, making her shiver.

“I thought you said there hasn’t been any poverty since the Transition,” Helen said through chattering teeth. She hugged her arms to her chest as she gazed at the bleak scene all around them.

“It depends on how you define poverty,” said Judy calmly. “No one goes hungry, but there are still people with fewer possessions than others.”

Judy’s white face turned to scan the street. Helen noticed that her black hair was knotted in a different style this morning. There were other subtle variations to her kimono, too. The sleeves were shorter, the obi sash not as wide. Nonetheless, she still had the same striking appearance: black lips and nails, white face and hands. Put next to Helen in her simple white shift and tanned skin, the contrast could not be more marked. The virgin and the nymph. It was no wonder that shadows moved in the windows of the apartment block, watching them.

“You’d think that they would have set a VNM loose on this place,” Helen murmured dismissively. “Converted these dumps into something more modern.”

“Different places, different times, different perspectives,” replied Judy. “Here they don’t pay as much attention to the exterior appearance. This street isn’t seen as shabby; it is valued for the fact that it isn’t constructed by Von Neumann Machines. This is a prime location. The people who live here are rich by whatever definition you care to apply. Remember what the atomic Judy told you back on the Shawl? There is as much of a shortage of raw materials for the VNMs to work on today as there was in your time. Everything already belongs to someone else.”

“But none of this is real,” said Helen. “Why not let everyone have what they want in this processing space?”

“Because that would make us less human,” said Judy. “That’s a basic tenet of the EA.”

“That sounds a bit-”

“Listen, that’s just the way it is. Remember, my ‘sister’-the atomic Judy-doesn’t inhabit the digital world. She has a different perspective. She believes in the stories of the Watcher and Eva Rye far more than I do. Hah! Eva Rye. The woman whom the Watcher studied in order to learn what it means to be human. I don’t think so. Eva is a metaphor. A training technique they use on us when we start with Social Care. The clue is in the name. Eva. EA. En-Vironment Agency? Get it? Now, come on. This way.”

She led Helen up a cracked concrete path to a narrow doorway. The dimly lit hallway beyond was elegantly plain. A set of stone steps led up to the first floor. Helen followed Judy up the stairs and along a corridor, where Judy gave a loud knock on a wooden door near the end.

“No one home,” Helen said.

“He’ll be asleep,” said Judy. “The apartment’s Turing machine will be waking him up as we speak, telling him there is a member of Social Care at the door. He’ll take a few minutes to get washed and dressed. Maybe have a shave. Everyone likes to make a good impression with Social Care.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Helen said, noting Judy’s self-satisfied smile.

“I take pride in my work,” Judy said, “as do all members of Social Care.”

“But you like the power it gives you, don’t you?”

Judy turned her face to Helen’s, impassive black eyes lost in a white face locking on to hers.

“What makes you say that, Helen?”

“The way you’re behaving.”

“I believe I am acting in the appropriate manner for a member of Social Care.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Judy said nothing. There was something unsettling about her black-and-white figure, standing utterly motionless in the silent corridor. Something deliberately unsettling.

“It’s not that I blame you,” Helen said crisply. “I might feel the same if I lived like you do: experiencing the real world, not following the safe, comfortable lives of the majority.”

Judy measured a silence before answering. “Spare me the emotional tourism, Helen. People are whatever they choose to make themselves. Social Care is just here to point them in the right directions.”

Helen was taken completely by surprise at the anger that boiled up inside her. She hadn’t known…of course twelve hours out of the torture chamber would not be enough to effect any sort of cure. She was taken aback by the venom welling up inside her; she felt that she was standing to one side and listening to herself shouting at Judy.

“Don’t speak to me like that, you bitch.” She had pressed her face close to Judy’s. “I hate that attitude! I hate the way people like you do that!” The calm part of her was looking at that smooth white face, those black, black eyes. “You teachers and social workers who take on the suffering of their clients for your own. I’m the one who was locked up in a torture chamber! Me! Don’t make out that you have a better understanding than I do about the way the world works! You, you…virgin!”

She was spitting. Judy stared at her, tiny drops of Helen’s saliva rolling from her impassive white face, her black hair shimmering softly in the dim light. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, Helen’s anger vanished. Still Judy stared at her. And stared. And then, one hand reached into the opposite sleeve of her kimono. Down the hallway sounded the gentle click of a door closing, and Helen was abruptly, utterly deflated.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Helen,” Judy said, calmly pulling her hand free of her sleeve. “I do have a far better understanding than you of how the world works. Maybe, as you work with me, you will come to realize this.”

Helen opened her mouth in astonishment at Judy’s arrogance.

“Here,” Judy said, before Helen could speak. “Walk a klick in my shoes. Take this.”

She held out a tiny red pill. Before she could add anything else, the door to the apartment opened.

“Peter Onethirteen?” said Judy, turning smoothly to face the man who stood in the doorway.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said eagerly, holding out his hand. He glanced briefly at Helen, her hand to her mouth as she swallowed the red pills, but his gaze was immediately drawn back to Judy. Helen watched him, intrigued. Judy was right: people always did want to make a good impression with Social Care. She had a flash of embarrassed recognition as she remembered how she herself had acted in similar encounters in the past. Just like the tubby little man who was now inviting them into the hallway. There he went, wringing his hands together, leading them into the lounge, nervously pulling out a canister of real coffee and waving it vaguely in the air, offering to make them both a drink. And look at Judy, thought Helen. She’s using it; she’s relying on it, playing with the man. Helen felt nothing but scorn for him.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Peter Onethirteen. His hair had been allowed to recede, leaving just a little tuft at the front of his head, a fashion that Helen had never liked. He wore a transparent floating gown, his pale green pajamas clearly visible beneath it. He was almost fat, probably just at the upper limit of the EA’s acceptable parameters. No doubt his kitchen would be stocked with low-kilojoule supplies, his exercise routine just a little more vigorous than the average person’s.

“Are you sure you don’t want some coffee?” he was saying. “It’s very good, genuine Arabica.”

“No, thank you,” said Judy. “Peter Onethirteen, I would like you to cast your mind back fourteen years. You were a crew member of an Inner System ship back then, weren’t you?”

“Yes…” said Peter. Helen didn’t need the effect of the little red pill of MTPH to sense the fear that rose in the man. She could see it in his eyes, in the way his frame suddenly stiffened. He placed the coffee container on the kitchen counter and gave Judy a tight smile.

Judy’s face remained expressionless, her arms folded, hands tucked in the sleeves of her kimono. She withdrew one hand, brought her right forefinger to her mouth. A tiny spot of blue showed on her tongue as she licked the little MTPH pill from her finger. A little tick was pulsing just below Peter’s eye. Judy watched it for a moment and then she asked her question.

“What did the ship do?”

“The ship?” said Peter, looking at Judy’s hands as she returned them to the sleeves of her kimono. “We dealt in luxury goods: mainly permitted drugs, coffee, tea, whisky. A little refined heroin. We took them out from Earth to the space-based communities.”

“What about the Moon? Mars?”

Peter shook his head. “We didn’t like to get too deep into gravity wells. Too much time spent in traveling.”

“And restricted access points, too. Is that right, Peter?”

Peter shook his head, the tick pulsing away. He was looking flushed. He shrugged his way out of the floating gown. It hung in the air and-after a moment’s pause, and to Helen’s delight-it drifted slowly back towards the bedroom, maintaining its shape and form. Then Helen felt the wave of nauseating-panic that rolled out from him.

“We weren’t smuggling,” he was saying, waving his hands. “Everything on board the ship was strictly legal.” He nodded his head in affirmation, his stomach wobbling slightly. “Come on. They constantly measure the mass of every ship traveling through the Inner System and compare it with the registered manifest. There’s no way to fool the EA.”

“Precisely.” Judy gazed at him. “At 04.10.33 GMT, on the fourteenth of September 2226, the mass of your ship decreased by just under twelve kilograms.”

Peter blinked rapidly. “We were testing the reaction engines. They burn a lot of chemical fuel. I imagine we could easily have burned twelve kilograms’ worth.”

“You seem to have a very good memory. I’m sure I couldn’t remember what I was doing on the fourteenth of September, fourteen years ago. What was your job on the ship?”

“Systems,” Peter said, rubbing at the tick below his eye. “The ship’s Turing machine was old. The self-diagnostics weren’t all they should have been: they needed some backup.”

“A systems man, eh? Then you’d know what a type two VNM was.”

“Yes…” He was slowly collapsing as Judy gazed at him, Helen noted with contempt. He looked as if he was about to break down now and confess everything. This was the sort of man who had kept her imprisoned? He was pathetic.

Now Judy half closed her eyes. “So, given access to suitable raw materials and the library code, you’d be able to construct a type two VNM?”

“Yes…” Peter sat down, folding himself into a chair. He was mentally preparing to run up a white flag. Helen could see it.

“That’s what you did, wasn’t it? Formed a processing space out of a type two VNM and then released it into space. How many personality constructs were there aboard?”

Peter slumped forward, his head in his hands. Helen could almost see his thoughts. He had been found out, so now he was going to bargain.

“Look, it wasn’t me. I’m a PC myself. I was only created twelve years ago. You need to go and see the atomic Peter Onethirteen.”

Judy’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Oh someone will, Peter, but that’s not the point. Your personality construct is based on a personality that has operated beyond the acceptable parameters laid down by the EA after the Transition of 2171. The behavior patterns of the atomic Peter will be the same as yours. You need correction just as much as he does.”

Peter looked up at this, his eyes darting around the apartment, looking at the door, at Helen. Judy shifted just a little, drawing his attention back to herself. Back to her white skin, her black kimono. Back to the collar falling away from her neck, exposing the long white curve leading up from her smooth back to be lost beneath the elaborate black design of her hair. When she knew she had his full attention, Judy lowered her voice a little more.

“Now, Peter Onethirteen. Do you understand that you are about to begin corrective therapy as part of the Social Care contract?”

He crossed his arms and gazed at the floor, looking like a petulant child.

“There are three copies of me. Will they all be punished?”

Slowly Judy knelt down before him. Her black hair, so smooth and shiny, banded in shades of violet under the light like a blackbird’s wing. She reached out and took both of his hands in hers.

“This is not punishment, Peter,” she crooned. “That will be decided upon later by the EA. I’m neither qualified nor interested in deciding punishment. My talent lies in healing, and we begin the first step of that process today.”

Peter snatched his hands away. “Why should I be punished? I thought that this was supposed to be an enlightened society.”

Helen was incensed. How dare this fat, pathetic little man expect the understanding of an enlightened society when it was he who had imprisoned her in that processing space? The words that leapt to her lips were stilled as she realized that Judy had turned to stare at her. She knew that Helen was about to lose her temper. She held Helen’s gaze, calming her. When Helen regained control of herself, Judy turned back to face Peter.

“Peter, the threat of punishment will be enough to prevent some individuals from following in your crimes. That’s part of the reason that you will be punished. Now, I want you to swallow this.”

She pulled her left hand from her sleeve and held it out towards him, the palm facing upwards. Helen could just make out a tiny red dot lying upon it. Was it maybe a deeper red than the pill that Judy had invited her to swallow earlier, outside the door?

“No,” Peter said, entranced by the little red pill. “You can’t make me.”

Helen looked on, breathless, wondering what would happen next. Judy knelt on the floor before Peter, her little feet pressing into her round bottom, back braced by the thick obi she wore around her waist, hair immaculate, the black rod of her console a horizontal line emerging from the complicated knot at the back. Helen was certain that all Judy did was stare into Peter’s eyes…

“Okay,” Peter said suddenly. Shivering, he reached out and pressed his finger onto the little red dot. “I’ll take it,” he said, and placed it in his mouth. He swallowed.

“Good,” Judy said. “Now, before there can be repentance there must be understanding. Before punishment there must also be understanding, for without understanding, all we have is vengeance. Let us begin.”

Peter gave a hesitant nod.

Judy said nothing. Helen moved around so she could see them both better. The pair seemed to be locked in a silent conversation, Judy’s impassive stare conveying something that caused Peter’s lower lip to begin trembling. There was a tension in the room: Helen could feel it filling the apartment; it tarnished the gilt of the antique picture frames that hung on the wall; it brushed on the rich fabric of the furniture coverings.

When it seemed like the tension could build no longer, Judy spoke at last. “Why were you working on the ship, Peter?”

“I told you. To help keep the TM working. There was no AI on that ship.”

“But why not?”

“You don’t have to have an AI on a ship, do you?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

There was a long pause. Peter was sweating.

“You know why we didn’t have an AI.”

Helen had guessed the answer.

“I want you to say it,” Judy said.

Peter rubbed his forehead with his pajama sleeve.

“Okay, sometimes we wanted to keep a lid on what we were doing. Competitive advantage. Nothing illegal.”

“But you were doing something illegal, weren’t you, Peter? You built the processing space in which those personality constructs were illegally imprisoned.”

“I thought they were in there of their own volition!”

Again, Judy didn’t speak, simply held Peter’s gaze, and Helen felt a little stirring inside her. The red pill that Judy had handed to her outside the door had heightened her senses, too. Judy was guiding him as to what to think and feel. Helen was catching the edge of it. It was powerful stuff. Peter cracked.

“Okay,” he said. “I guessed, but I didn’t want to know. I thought that by not being told directly, by allowing myself to believe there was maybe nothing wrong going on, I would somehow be absolved of any connection to the crime. That was wrong of me.”

Judy smiled. It looked sinister on her black-and-white face.

“Good, Peter, good. You see, I’m trying to get a picture of whether or not you are a user of the Private Network. I don’t think you are, you know. I think you were on that ship for other reasons. Go on, tell me. What were they?”

Peter waved his hand around his apartment.

“For this. I like nice things. That takes money.”

Judy frowned. “But everyone can have nice things, Peter. You know that.”

Peter shook his head. He was trembling now. Trembling with something that almost felt like righteousness.

“But these are the originals. There aren’t that many of them left. A copy isn’t good enough. That mirror on the wall, it’s an original Lebec.”

Judy looked at it. She looked back at Peter.

“But it isn’t, Peter. Remember where you are…”

He shook his head violently.

“You don’t understand, Judy. It may just be a shadow of the Lebec that was made in the atomic world, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that shadow Lebec is owned by Peter Onethirteen. Only he had the taste and the money to buy it.”

Helen was so engrossed in watching Peter’s suddenly animated face, she didn’t realize for a moment that Judy had turned to stare at her. When Helen did, she flinched, but Judy appeared not to notice.

“There you are, Helen,” she said calmly. “It always comes back to this: possession. Because possession disturbs the ideal of equality by making one object subordinate to another. Remember that.”

She turned back to face Peter.

“So, Peter, you operated beyond the law on those flights in order to get the money to acquire nice things. Is that the only reason?”

“No,” said Peter, “there was another reason, and you know it. I can feel the recognition in you. This pill is helping, isn’t it?” He seemed to be gaining confidence. He had found a confidante, a kindred spirit. “Yes, you feel it, too.” He nodded, pleased. “We both know what it’s like, knowing that you’re the best at something.”

Judy’s face remained impassive. Peter held her gaze.

“Don’t deny it, Judy. You know you’re the best at what you do, and you do what you do because you’re the best.”

“I don’t deny it, Peter.”

“Then you know what I mean.”

Helen shifted uneasily on the coffee table. She wasn’t sure what she had expected in the course of an MTPH session. Certainly not this. She sensed that something extra was being exchanged between Peter and Judy, something she was not part of. Peter seemed to be becoming more self-confident, and something told her he should not be. Judy was setting him up.

“Do you recognize this woman?” Judy said suddenly.

With a start, Helen realized that Judy was pointing at her.

“No,” Peter said.

“Her name is Helen. She was one of the commodity personalities you transferred into the processing space before launching it on its way across the solar system.”

Peter was examining Helen now, his expression one of morbid fascination. He rubbed a finger across his upper lip. He was sweating again.

“I never saw the personalities. I wasn’t that interested in what went on inside the PS. It’s not my sort of thing. Honestly.”

“I told you, I believe you.” Judy’s voice was a gentle monotone. Peter relaxed a little. “But in some ways,” continued Judy, “that makes your actions worse. I think your claim that you were uninterested is intended to imply that you were disinterested, and I don’t think that, as a human being, you can be allowed to make that claim.”

Silence.

“I don’t understand you,” said Peter.

“Yes, you do. Look at Helen. If I told you to, would you force her into your bedroom and then hold her down while she was raped repeatedly?”

Helen caught the edge of excitement that fluttered briefly inside him at the thought.

“You bastard!” she yelled, standing up and clenching her fist to strike at him. But then she hesitated. Judy was doing something to Peter, sending waves of emotion crashing down upon him, and Helen was feeling their reflection. Suddenly she saw herself as Judy was making Peter see her: as a real person, crying in pain and humiliation, biting her lip and wishing that it would just stop, and she could…

“No!” Peter shouted, dragging himself back to the real world.

“Yes,” Judy said calmly, “imagine this…”

The northern edge of the arboretum rose towards a dull grey moor. Purple heather rippled in a cold wind around the artificially crashed spaceship, its hull cracked open like an egg, a tangle of silver-grey venumbs spilling out from inside, and across the bleak landscape. Helen walked briskly along the wet grass, by the little stream into which a silver venumb dipped its branches. Despite the cold, she found she was sweating under her simple white shift. A single drop of sweat ran down between her breasts….

“Do you like that, Peter?” Judy asked, still kneeling before him.

“Why?” Peter said, on his guard.

“Don’t be so defensive. It’s natural to have at least some interest in what it feels like to inhabit the body of the opposite sex.”

…and Helen rubbed a sleeve across her forehead. The fuchsias she had wound so carefully into her hair like a crown were tickling her. The grass gave way to wide brown expanses of peat. A series of pale blue duckboards led across the cold mud towards the cracked spaceship. She walked across them, feeling them give slightly beneath her feet. The sweat dried cold on her face as she skipped from duckboard to duckboard. One of them slipped to the side and she tumbled forward. Her legs sank into the rich mud with a sucking sound.

“Shit!” The mud smelled; now she was filthy. She sank a little deeper, her white shift riding up around her waist on the black mire. Lightly, she pressed a hand on its surface. It was no use trying to push her way out; she would only force her arms down into the cold bog. She turned and tried to catch hold of the duckboards, but they were too far away. This was embarrassing. She was going to have to ask for help. She gave a sigh and reached for her console.

It wasn’t there.

“Are you all right, Peter?” Judy asked.

“Yes.” But he wasn’t. Helen could feel the sudden stab of panic that he had felt when he realized the console was missing. He was gasping for breath, one hand to his heart.

Judy lowered her head for a moment, pondering. She came to a decision.

“This isn’t one of the violent scenarios, you know, Peter. It is more of a…a connoisseur’s choice, you might say. They used to run…well, let us call them competitions, with the various PCs. Helen here was used in what you might call the first-division categories.”

“What?” Helen said. Judy waved at her, did something to calm her down.

“Oh, yes,” Judy continued, “Helen has a strong personality. To break it requires some skill. To break it without resorting to the stock properties-”

“The stock properties?” Helen said. There was rage inside her. She could feel Judy was pushing it down, somehow.

“Oh, yes, stock properties: rape, murder, mutilation. The products of a limited mind, an average intelligence. It takes some skill to bring about a mental breakdown without resort to the clichés.”

Helen snarled.

“Calm down please, Helen,” Judy said, mildly. “This is about Peter, not you.”

Her console was gone. She forced her hands into the mud, feeling for the belt around her waist that was her console’s usual form. It wasn’t there. The shock of its absence was so unsettling that she found herself panting, gasping out little breaths while her heart pounded. Keep calm. If she began to panic now, she would never stop. Concentrate on being calm. She could see the grey sky high above, feel the soft grip of the mud. She could move in it, slide her legs up and down, wriggle her body. She just couldn’t press down with her arms to force her way up. Newton’s Law: action and reaction. Everyone knew that if you were sinking in mud, you should relax. Don’t fight it, just relax and wait for the natural buoyancy of your body to float you up. But that was easily said when you were sitting safe on firm ground. Not so easy to imagine when you could feel yourself slipping deeper and deeper down. Feel the mud pressing up on your breasts, each precious breath filled with that rich earthy smell. Still, relax, lay your arms out on the mud and relax…

“I’m frightened,” Peter said. He was gasping for breath. He looked at Helen. “Helen, I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. Make her stop. I get the point. What you said was true, Judy. I can see that now. I never wanted to know what they did to them in the processing spaces.”

“To them? Don’t depersonalize it, Peter.”

“To Helen,” he cried. “I admit it. Just stop it now. Please.”

“Stop what?” Judy said.

“Stop making me feel what Helen must have felt when she drowned. I understand the lesson.”

“What lesson?”

“Of how awful it must be to die in that way.”

“That isn’t the lesson,” Judy said.

“It should be,” Helen whispered, eyes filling with cold hatred.

She couldn’t relax. She was sinking down, her legs slipping forward in slow motion as if she had slid on ice and was falling backwards, her arms flung wide. Her head rolled back, resting itself on the mud behind her like a pillow. She wondered if she could feel her legs rising up from the sucking earth. She was doing what she was supposed to, wasn’t she? Cold wind on her face. Now she was beginning to panic. Then she saw someone coming along the duckboards. A man in a red-and-white candy-striped jacket. He carried an umbrella in one hand.

“Help,” Helen called. “Over here! Help!” Her whole body was held in a soft, cold grip. Her left hand clenched cold mud, uselessly.

The man heard her cry and came towards her.

“I’m drowning,” sobbed Helen. “Use your console. Get help.”

The man stopped on the walkway, leaning on his umbrella, and looked down at her. When he spoke it was in a puzzled voice. His words chilled her fear and replaced it with a sudden pang of sadness so deep she felt like crying.

“Why should I?” he asked.

Peter gave a whimper. “That’s horrible.”

“How do you feel on hearing that?”

“Alone. Abandoned. That someone has so little humanity…Didn’t he understand how she felt?”

“All too well.”

Mud was forming a circle around Helen’s face. She was looking out into the world of life from a cold, sucking grave.

“Please!” she said. She was looking up at a tall man with brushed-back hair, and she could hear the sluggish rhythm of the mud as it sucked her down. The man placed the tip of the umbrella on her forehead, and a dribble of muddy water ran into her mouth. She coughed and spat, but more water ran into her mouth straightaway. She tried to say “No” and choked on yet more water. And then there was just pressure on her forehead as the umbrella tip pushed her down. She saw mud all around her, curling down towards her in a slow wave. She closed her mouth and felt mud slide over her nose. She took a last despairing breath and registered the man on the duckboards gazing at her, then the soft brown wave folded down over her, then that was it. Buried alive. Sinking deeper into the darkness. Her chest was starting to hurt. She so wanted to breathe…

“…slipping down into the earth, oh it’s so bright up there and so dark here below and there is no breath holding holding not breathing dragged away from the light…” Peter was rambling. He opened his eyes and, with some surprise, seemed to see where he was. He was gasping for air.

“Okay, stop,” he panted. “Stop! I get it now.” He couldn’t catch his breath. Nor could Helen. She found that she was rubbing her face, rubbing her nose, clearing it of imaginary mud. She wanted to spit, to wash her mouth out.

Peter was hyperventilating. “I never saw it before,” he gulped. “That was the reality, wasn’t it? That’s what it was all about. That was what I was doing. All the time on the ship, and I never realized.”

He wouldn’t look at Helen. Instead, he gazed at Judy, looked at the floor, did anything but look at Helen.

“I never knew.”

“You never wanted to know.”

“I never did.” He looked around his apartment, studiously avoiding Helen. He looked at the pictures and sculptures that decorated his room. “All of this, art and comfort, I wrapped myself up in it. I never allowed myself to see what suffering was like. I retreated from the real world-”

And, for the first time that day, Judy really lost her temper. It was genuine, Helen was convinced. She could feel that anger, focused by the effect of the pill. Judy’s voice was so cold and disparaging that Helen cringed.

“The real world? You…you wanker. You’ve always lived in the real world, whether in the atomic world or in this processing space. Don’t try to dignify or excuse or explain what you helped create by saying that it is the real world!”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“Isn’t it? Do you really know that? Or has the great lie infiltrated you and you don’t know it yet?”

“What?”

“Okay, Peter. Break’s over. Let’s feel what it was like at the end.”

Judy stood up, turned to face Helen. “You’ll probably want to step into the next room for this part,” she said. Helen felt a wash of emotion from Judy that filled her with a mixture of horror and delight. She was going to take it all the way. Helen wasn’t so sure if that was part of Judy’s original plan; she was taking Peter’s comments personally. Helen walked from the room as Judy stared down at Peter, her black eyes glittering.

Peter’s bedroom was dominated by a huge picture window that looked out to sea. The Shawl hung high up in the blue sky, the sun lighting up one side in a harlequin pattern. How far up into the sky did it reach?

From next door she could hear low voices, she could feel the edge of a wave of emotion. She didn’t want to think about it. Instead, she thought about the Shawl. Judy had said that someday you would be able to walk along the Shawl all the way to the moon, to Mars, to Jupiter. Was that possible?

A message flashed up on her console. It was time to return to the lounge.

Peter was slumped on the sofa. Judy was examining one of the erotic sculptures that stood on a wall shelf: a woman sitting in the lap of a man, her legs wrapped around his back.

“Do you like this sort of thing, Helen?” she asked. Helen barely glanced at the sculpture, too busy staring at the man on the sofa.

“Will he be all right?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.”

Pity, thought Helen. Too late she remembered the red pill of MTPH, still in her system. Judy gave her a thoughtful look before directing her attention back towards him.

“So, Peter, we’ve almost finished. I’ve just got one more question. We know how the processing space was put into operation. What I want to know now is how the interface with the clients of the Private Network was to be made.”

His voice was a dull monotone. “Some of the clients had themselves loaded in there before the processing space was even launched. They were planning on taking a long holiday. The other ones would interface via secure directed pipes. The long-timers would leave that way too when they were finished.”

“That’s what we thought,” Judy said, glancing at Helen. “So that will be our lead to Kevin. Social Care will be performing a forensic on the impression made of the processing space before it totally collapsed. There will be some clues left as to who has been in there; VRep patterns are pretty good at retaining their integrity. One of them should give us a lead to the people who set that place up.”

Helen nodded. “Good,” she said.

Judy replaced the erotic sculpture on the shelf and moved calmly to the middle of the room. The violent emotion she had displayed earlier had completely evaporated.

“Well, Peter, I think we have finished here.”

The man looked up, a hopeful expression on his face.

“Is my punishment over?”

“That was not about punishment, Peter,” Judy said. “It was about empathy. And I don’t simply mean understanding Helen’s pain; that is something a five-year-old could have done. I’m talking about really trying to put yourself in another’s place. Once I’ve gone there will be no more little red pills. You will have to live the rest of your life without me to help you. What you need to learn about is the right way to think of your fellow human beings: as fellow human beings, not commodities. This was the first stage of that process.”

Peter gave a tired nod. “I see.”

Judy gazed at him for a moment. Then she spoke.

“Your punishment will begin tomorrow. Someone will call just after 9 A.M. I suggest you don’t eat anything for breakfast. Just stick to a glass of orange juice.”