Capacity (24 page)

“So let’s get him.”

“It’s not that easy, Helen. Kevin is not a normal personality. When he’s cornered, he just commits suicide. We need to stop him from doing that.”

“Well, think of something.”

“We have. It’s an old process. If we can locate his consciousness in the processing space, we can affect it directly, heighten his sense of self-preservation. It’s what Social Care does, Helen. Preserves life.”

Helen felt as if her skull was made of glass. She tried to suppress her thoughts. Everyone present knew what she would do if ever she had Kevin trapped in a processing space.

Judy 3’s look made her feel angry.

“If I do catch him, wouldn’t you want to watch?” Helen asked. A wave of disapproval came from the Judys again. Helen had the impression it was still directed at Three. It began to fade as, one by one, the Judys flickered out of existence. Soon, only Judy 3 remained.

“Come on,” she said, looking chastened.

They stepped between virtual sections of the Shawl via white hexagons painted on the floor.

“Anyone who says the Shawl wasn’t designed to be principally a virtual construct hasn’t tried to traverse it in the atomic world,” said Judy. “It only works when you can do what
we’re
doing. All that messing about with transit bubbles is inelegant.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Helen said, still sullen. “Trying to get me chatting. Calm me down. Don’t talk to me about anything that isn’t to do with capturing Kevin.”

“Fine,” Judy said. They strode down a long, high corridor lined on both sides with low doors. A fine misty spray constantly rose from the floor to the ceiling, glowing eerily in the green light that suffused the tunnel.

“What is this place?” Helen asked, her face beaded with moisture. “What sort of person wants to live in this environment?”

“That’s nothing to do with capturing Kevin,” Judy replied, “so I won’t waste your time by giving you an answer.”

Helen could see how Judy was watching her from the corner of her eyes, the action giving the lie to her otherwise impassive expression.

“Just watching again, Judy?” she asked.

“It’s what I do. In Social Care we try not to judge. We let the clients judge themselves.”

“I call that moral cowardice. You’re so frightened of making a decision that you won’t even let a man close to you.”

“Maybe you’re right, Helen,” Judy said with a smile, and Helen silently cursed herself for being drawn into conversation.

They came to the end of the long corridor, and Helen walked quickly onto the hexagon painted on the floor there, eager to get away.

In atomic space the sections of the Shawl were all just over three kilometers apart. Here in the digital world there was no such thing as absolute distance. Helen stepped straight from green mist into a Mediterranean landscape: brilliant blue sky shining down over dazzling white buildings. She gasped at the beauty of the scene before her: whitewashed houses and apartments arranged around courtyards, narrow roads climbing between smooth, white walls linking the terraces that climbed up from the gentle blue sea that lay far below. Trailing plants and creepers cascaded down the various levels, brilliant red and orange flowers blooming around them in a riot of color, their heady perfume filling the air. The sound of bees and the smell of orange blossoms were carried on a cool breeze.

“This would be a nice place to live,” Judy said. She pulled an orange flower from a nearby creeper and tucked it into the fold of her obi, then began to descend a shady set of stone steps tucked into the space between two white buildings.

“Why are we here if there is no sign of Kevin?” Helen asked, trotting after her.

“We’re trying to triangulate on him. My sisters are stepping through the sections of the Shawl all around us, listening for him. We reckon he is in the space between us, in the area where the sections of the Shawl replicate.”

They rounded a corner and found themselves on a wide terrace directly overlooking the sea. The breeze was stronger here and they could see people on the terraces below flying kites. Blue and green dragons chased delicate pink birds—so many virtual people, all flying kites in a blue sky 22,000 kilometers above a virtual Earth. Helen had a sudden feeling of vertigo.

“What’s the matter?” Judy asked, picking up on Helen’s sensation, high as she was on little blue pills. “What’s the matter, Helen?”

Helen was suddenly dizzy, crouching down on the grey cobbles of the terrace as if she was afraid of falling into the sea below. She held one hand to her mouth.

“All these people.” She gagged. “I never thought…All alive in a processing space and they still fly kites. We’re not even here, and this is what we do. I can’t follow the steps sometimes. People fly a kite, standing on a roof of a house in a section of the Shawl that floats high above the Earth that really only exists in a processing space that is located who-knows-where…”

Judy folded her arms into her sleeves and stared. “A mind is a mind, Helen,” she said calmly. “Just think of a tune. Written out in musical notation, recorded digitally, played on a flute, sung by a human; it’s still the same tune no matter how the medium changes. It’s the same with your thoughts. Your mind is your mind.”

Helen stretched her hands out on the warm cobbles before her, feeling their smoothness, connecting with something solid and real. Except of course they weren’t.

“My mind…”

“Even in your atomic form, your mind was always more than just a bunch of neurons. Well, why should your mind be any less valid just because it is written in a processing space rather than in flesh?”

The wind gusted. The crack of kites and the slap of the strings could be heard. Three golden children chased past them wearing nothing but pale blue ribbons in their long dark hair. They were gasping and squealing as they played a game of catch.

“Children?” Helen said. “There are still children, even in this place? Children, and kites and nice places to live…”

“And good food and drink…music and literature and art,” added Judy.

Helen reached up to her scalp and began to pick at the edge of the piece of plastic that she had formed over her hair, aping Judy’s appearance.

“I do all this, and yet it means nothing.” She pulled at the plastic, peeled it free of her head, and dropped it to the ground.

“Even you, Helen? I’m disappointed.”

Helen’s head snapped up at the sound of Kevin’s voice. He was standing in the middle of a white hexagon that had suddenly appeared on the cobblestones. Tall and good looking, with that lazy smile, appearing utterly relaxed. Without hesitating, Helen flung herself at him. He sidestepped her easily; tripped her so that she fell sprawling on the ground, banging her knees on the hard cobbles. She gave a yelp of pain. Kevin dropped down on her, pulling her arm back in a lock behind her.

“Bastard!” she yelled.

Kevin said nothing.

“Judy!” Helen called. “Help me!”

She twisted her head to see that Judy had merely folded her hands into the sleeves of her kimono and assumed her calm expression.

“Is that all you are going to do? Just watch?”

“Let her go, Kevin,” Judy said easily.

Kevin gave her arm a final twist. Helen felt a wrenching pain in her elbow and gave a yelp. And then she was free. Kevin moved away as she stood up, rubbing her arm, eyeing him balefully.

He smiled. “You’ve lost it, Helen,” he said.

“Lost what?”

“A sense of responsibility. I never expected you to give up so easily.” Kevin pulled two memory strips from his console and handed them, one each, to Judy and Helen.

“What is this?” Judy asked.

“Software code for a spacesuit. You’re going to need it where we’re going. Come on.”

He stepped onto the hexagon and vanished, leaving Helen examining the tiny, slippery strip of plastic between her fingers. Judy was already feeding hers into her console. She looked over at Helen.

“This could be dangerous,” she said calmly. “You don’t have to follow.”

Helen slid the plastic strip into her own console and glared at her.

“Oh yes I do,” she snarled. She stepped onto the hexagon and the Mediterranean terrace vanished.

She was in hard vacuum, floating in the nursery area of the Shawl. Judy appeared before her, striped like a zebra in a black-and-white spacesuit. Helen looked down at her suddenly naked body. Her own suit was transparent. She realized with some annoyance that her passive suit had disappeared. She now floated, apparently naked in the vacuum. Two black spacesuits floated before them, both utterly featureless. Their helmets were dark; no faces could be seen in them.

“Hi,” Kevin’s voice said. “One of these is me, and one is Bairn, my assistant. I thought I might keep my position slightly vague, just in case Helen can’t control herself.”

“I’m perfectly under control,” Helen said, breathing deeply.

“Of course you are. Now. Down to business. You’re trying to pin me down, Judy.”

“Of course. And you’re trying to kill me. Why are we wasting time?”

“I want to talk about David Schummel.”

There was a pause.

“David Schummel?” Judy said. “Who is David Schummel?”

“Ask the atomic Judy. Ask Judy 11. Have they been keeping you out of the loop, Judy? No, I don’t think so. I think you already know who David Schummel is.”

“All right. Why do you want to talk about
him
?”

Kevin laughed.

“Because David Schummel holds the key to the destruction of the Watcher. I think that might be of interest to you, Judy.”

“Me? Why?”

“Oh, the atomic Judy will find that out. I’m sure she’ll tell you later.”

Helen was staring at the two dark suits. One of them was looking at her directly. Would that be Kevin, or would that be Bairn? If only she knew…

“Helen wants to kill you, you know.” Judy’s voice was matter-of-fact.

“Oh, I know.” Kevin laughed. “I’m surprised to hear you admit your failure to cure her.”

Helen felt a flash of anger. Her cheeks were hot with something almost like embarrassment to be read so easily. They were watching her, naked in her transparent suit.

“Kevin,” Judy said, “why don’t you unblank the suits? Stop playing games. Show Helen what you want her to see.”

“Stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here,” Helen shouted.

The two suits flickered and then became transparent. Everyone was looking at Helen. Judy, Kevin, and the other Helen.

“That’s
me
,” Helen said, gazing at the figure in the spacesuit that floated beside Kevin. It
was
her. A little older, a little plumper, and with her hair dyed black, but definitely her. “That’s me,” she repeated.

“I’m not you,” the other said, “not anymore. I’m Bairn.”

“You’re both from the same template,” Kevin said. “Training you is the ultimate challenge, Helen.”

Helen turned to Judy, who was watching her with cool interest.

“Still looking, Judy?” she asked bitterly.

Judy’s glittering eyes slid back towards Kevin. “Okay,” she said. “You’ve had your fun. Why do you want to talk about David Schummel?”

Helen couldn’t help gazing at Bairn. She could see crow’s feet forming around her eyes, see cellulite appearing on her thighs. She guessed the other was what—five, ten years older? Was that how long it would take to break her—Helen’s—spirit? Kevin was still watching her, she noticed. Enjoying the moment.

She gave a shudder. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. Recriminations could come later. For the moment, the best way to have revenge on him was to help Judy.

“You were asked a question,” she said, her voice very calm. “Tell us about David Schummel.”

Kevin smirked and turned to the figure floating by him. “You used to speak to me like that, Bairn, remember? Back when you could still get angry with me?”

“I remember, Kevin.”

Helen felt horror tinged with disgust. That was her, floating over there, spirit broken and enslaved to Kevin’s will. She wanted to lash out at something.

“Are you enjoying this, Judy?” she shouted.

Judy ignored Helen’s outburst. “You’re still wasting time, Kevin. What do you want?”

“I once had David Schummel, but the Watcher took him from me. Now that you have helped me to find him again, I want you to know what it is he represents.”

“We helped you to find him?” Helen said.

Kevin ignored her. “Do you know he carried a private processing space with him to Gateway?”

“What is Gateway?” Helen interrupted.

Judy waved a hand to silence her, but Kevin answered.

“One of the Watcher’s failed projects, Helen. Its Achilles heel. What is the Watcher, Helen, but an intelligence? On Gateway there exists something that destroys intelligence.”

“But why would anyone wish to destroy the Watcher?” Judy asked. “It is the guardian of humankind.”

“You don’t really believe that, Judy. It’s a cuckoo. Sheltering in our world, consuming our resources while it shapes its environment to its own end. And soon it will be pushing the other chicks from the nest. Look around, Judy. What do you see?”

“I see the Shawl.”

Black rectangles hanging in lines, perspective funneling their edges to an imaginary point somewhere in the clouds of the blue Earth below.

“You see the Shawl?” Kevin said. “This isn’t the real Shawl! This is a virtual construction! This exists only in processing spaces! The virtual Shawl is much bigger than the real one. It’s a message, a way of keeping us in check.”

“How?”

“How does any dictator keep its subjects in check? By fear, of course!”

Helen was fascinated, despite herself.

“Fear? Of what?”

“What are all humans frightened of? Dying. What am I
not
afraid of and have proved it time and again? Death. Fear of death holds humans in place. And yet, possessing virtual lives, we could live forever. The Watcher has made us all forget this. It has written birth and death throughout our universe and perpetuated the myth of a soul. That’s what makes you think that you are different than that Helen over there—Bairn.”