Capacity (8 page)

“For the moment.”

As Judy 3 and Helen were just slipping off to sleep in a virtual bedroom of a virtual apartment on the virtual Shawl, an AI at the EA had completed a trace back along the path of the processing space that had housed the Private Network’s torture chamber. Fourteen years ago the pod’s path had intersected that of a spaceship. A quick trawl through the database gave the name of the owner of the ship. It also revealed that the craft had carried library code for a type 2 VNM and sufficient raw materials for the pod’s construction. Someone on that ship could have made the processing space and set it free, silently sailing along so that illegally copied PCs could be beamed on board at a later date. A further search threw up the name of the one crew member who had the ability to construct such a processing space.

Fourteen years ago. Peter Onethirteen, the crew member identified by the search, probably thought he had got away with it. The EA AI took a certain grim pleasure in requesting Social Care operatives for interrogation duty. Judy 3 had flagged a request to be involved in the investigation, so a notification was duly sent to her.

When the EA’s message hit Judy 3’s inbox, it was nighttime in France. In just a few hours someone there would be getting a very rude awakening.

Justinian 2: 2223

Even from outside
the flier Justinian could hear the baby crying. So why couldn’t Leslie? He stormed up the rear ramp into the relative dimness of the cabin, blinking at the yellow and green blots that were suddenly swimming over his eyes.

“Leslie!” he called, “are you hiding from me?”

The anger in his voice set the baby screaming louder. Justinian took a deep breath as he made his way over to the cot, where his son stood gripping the bars, tears dripping down his cheeks. Justinian’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the comparative gloom of the flier’s interior; he couldn’t make out the robot.

“Hey, hey, baby boy!” Justinian picked up the baby and held him close, kissing the fine blond hair on his son’s warm little head. The cot collapsed and reformed itself into the shape of a flight chair.

“There, hey, baby boy. Shhh…” He cuddled his child closer, felt the hot little breaths on his neck as he rocked him slowly, struggling to hold his blazing white anger in check.

Leslie emerged from the door that led to the forward compartment.

“You’re back,” he said.

“You left my baby crying,” said Justinian, his voice cold, and the baby began crying again. Leslie involuntarily frosted over for a second, his skin increasing in fractality as he retreated from the real world.

“Get back here,” Justinian said in the sweetest tones he could muster. “Hey, shhh, baby boy!” He bounced the baby in his arms.

“I was only on the flight deck!”

“And why were you on the flight deck? I saw you on the ramp, listening, when the pod diverted from the script. You were hiding from me in there!”

“The baby had started to cry. I went through to get his blanket. He left it there earlier, remember? You were showing him the stars as the flier came in to land!”

Justinian glared at the robot. That could be true, he admitted to himself. The baby hadn’t been
that
upset when Justinian had stormed his way on board. If anything, it was the force of his own anger that had sent his son over the edge. Maybe he was overreacting. He didn’t like Leslie, and they both knew it, but maybe he should give the robot the benefit of the doubt.

Then he remembered his conversation with the AI pod outside on the mud slick. Still speaking calmly, as if humoring the child, he addressed the flier’s Turing machine. “Ship? I want you to take us back to the spaceport.”

“Okay, Justinian.”

The exit hatch slid smoothly up behind him.

“Justinian,” Leslie said, “you are aware that we’re not due to return to the spaceport for another two days?”

“Yes.”

The robot’s face was in soft focus, like the romantic lead in a twentieth-century movie. Even so, Justinian knew that Leslie was reading his thoughts through careful measurement of his heart rate and body language.

“Now, Justinian,” Leslie said, “you know that AIs are manipulative. The ones on this planet particularly so.”

“Present company included,” Justinian said, smiling sweetly.

Leslie sounded hurt. His blurred body language was defensive: legs together, arms crossed. For some reason his fingernails shone silver.

“Oh, Justinian. You can’t put me in the same category as those AI pods. I haven’t tried to commit suicide, have I?”

“Pity.”

“You don’t mean that,” Leslie said dismissively. “Look, why should you trust one of those pods more than you trust me? Leave now, and we might as well all just abandon the planet. The other colonists can’t stay here if they can’t trust their own intelligence. They are all relying on you to find the answer to what’s going on. I mean, how do we know that humans aren’t suddenly going to begin committing suicide, too?”

Justinian smiled sweetly again at the robot. He wasn’t going to disturb the baby by letting his temper get the better of him again.

“Leslie,” he said in a sing-song voice, smiling as he did so, “the other people on this planet do not have their fifteen-month-old sons with them. The other people on this planet actually chose to come here.” His voice suddenly hardened. “Most importantly,
Leslie
, the other people on this planet do not have their images stored in primitive format in the abandoned memory spaces of half-insane AIs.”

The flier lifted effortlessly into the air. The red mud and turquoise water of the delta could be seen dropping away through the floor’s viewing fields. Leslie took a step forward, his fuzzy foot wading into an expanding picture of the river. A note of puzzlement crept into the robot’s voice.

“What do you mean?”

Justinian laughed sardonically. “You know what I mean. I saw you out there. I know you were listening in on the conversation.”

“Don’t be so sure,” the robot said quietly. “We are doing everything we can to restrict use of AIs on this mission. That’s why I’m so fuzzy.”

“Are you telling me you weren’t listening?”

The robot was silent. For a moment Justinian had the impression that the robot was telling the truth, but the conviction quickly gave way to suspicion that he was still being manipulated. Leslie was a robot. If his voice sounded convincing, it was because the robot had chosen to sound that way.

“I hate robots,” Justinian said. “You direct emotions and sidetrack conversations. Never mind whether you heard or not, just give me a straight answer. Why am I here?”

The robot answered without hesitation. “To find out why the AIs on this planet are failing to thrive.”

“You
know
that’s not what I meant. There must be hundreds, thousands of people better qualified than I am for this job. None of them has a baby to look after. Why pick me to come to this planet?”

Leslie moved forward, half blocking a viewing field. Down below, red mud was giving way to turquoise sea as the flier picked up speed.

“We’ve been over this before,” the robot said. “You have a lot of experience working with AIs and personality constructs, both at home and in the Enemy Domain. You’re good at what you do, Justinian—you must know that. And then there’s your wife, Anya; you have direct experience of the White Death. You have to admit, what happened to her is very similar to what happened to the AIs.”

“Similar, but not the same. We know that now!”

“You didn’t have to bring the baby with you.”

Justinian gave the robot a look of sheer contempt. “Leave my own child to be raised by someone else? What sort of a man do you think I am?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Like the EA would allow it anyway.”

“Look, Justinian, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m not
au fait
with child development. It’s not part of my brief.”

“Yeah. You’ve made that excuse before. So what is your brief, anyway? Why are you here, dressed up in your fractal skin?”

“To look after you. You know that.”

“Oh…just be quiet,” Justinian snapped. The robot had successfully changed the subject again. Leslie shut down the floor’s viewing fields and the turquoise sea vanished. The robot was a blur standing on the orange-carpeted floor of the flier. Where it could be seen, Leslie’s body was humanoid, right down to the smooth, grey shapes of muscles molded into his arms and legs. Sometimes, when the robot relaxed in the flight chairs of the lounge, Justinian had seen his skin revert to a smooth, grey semitransparent crystalline form that he assumed was its natural state. It was a fascinating sight: the dark shapes of machinery could almost be seen through the skin, tantalizing half glimpses of the power that drove Leslie. At the moment, though, the robot’s body was nothing but a grey haze.

“Useless,” Justinian muttered, half to himself. He felt a sudden twinge in his right arm and rubbed it absentmindedly. The baby was running his mouth around his fur-effect collar, biting and giggling as he did so. Justinian smiled at his son and spoke in happy tones. “Why is the naughty robot so disingenuous? Why is he? He is, isn’t he? He’s deliberately misunderstanding what I say! He is.”

The baby chuckled and went back to biting at the fur collar. Justinian pulled the collar away and blew a raspberry on his son’s fat little cheek. The material in his passive suit bunched up around his right arm as he did so.

“The naughty robot won’t tell us why we’re here, will he? He keeps changing the subject! Why has he put us in this danger?”

He turned back to face the robot.

“Listen, Leslie. You let me think that the EA chose me because of Anya and my work in the Enemy Domain. Now I find my picture stored in the boot space of an AI pod, millions of light years from Earth. How can that be? No tricks, no sidetracking. Just tell me.”

“All right,” the robot said, suddenly firming up before him. The baby turned to look at the dark grey crystal shape that stood in the room. Leslie was really quite beautiful when like this.

“This is what I think. The AI pod is about to commit suicide, for whatever reason. Maybe it wants to warn others about what has happened. What to do? It has access to vast libraries of data. Records of every human that has ever lived are stored inside it. It does a search for the human most likely to help it. Is it any wonder that it comes up with the same answer as the EA has? You!”

Justinian stared at Leslie, wondering. Maybe it was true. Maybe he was being hasty, wanting to leave the planet. The baby bit at his collar again, then began slobbering over his cheek. Justinian made to push his son away, but stopped as he felt something grip his right arm.

“Ow!” he said. “What on Earth?”

Leslie began to blur. The baby was trying to kiss his cheek, and Justinian’s right arm was caught in a tight grip as he tried to push his son away. The baby didn’t like being stopped; he struggled harder. Justinian set his son on the floor and, to the rising sound of crying, began to pull off the top of his passive suit.

“Oh shit…” he whispered, feeling a sweat break out on his forehead. There, on the biceps of his right arm, glistened a BVB.

The flier skimmed at Mach 7 over the sea. Inside it the baby was still crying, and Justinian felt like doing the same, such was his frustration. Leslie was trying to calm him down.

“It’s not a problem. Once this is over we’ll take you back to Earth to have your arm removed. They’ll have another one on in no time. In the meantime we’ll put a heat bandage around your biceps to keep it warm and stop it shrinking further in the cold.”

“I’m not walking around for two weeks with this
thing
on me.”

Justinian couldn’t take his eyes off the black velvet band. It was beautiful in its way: a cold, terrifying beauty in the way it had so gently formed on his arm,
underneath
the quilt of his passive suit. He had barely noticed it appearing. Not until he had moved his arm.

Leslie was probing the band with his fuzzy hand, silver fingernails flashing in the light.

“It’s not a problem, Justinian, honestly. What’s the worst that could happen? You go three weeks without an arm. I’ll tell you what: if that happens, I’ll take one of mine off, too, to keep you company.”

Justinian glared at the robot. “The worst thing that could happen? What if we wake up and find there’s one formed around the baby’s neck? What if it forms inside his body? There may be one in there already, wrapped around his little heart! He’s a growing child!”

Justinian scooped up the baby from the floor and held him close. He felt his son’s warm cheek against his own bare chest. The child’s tears were cold on Justinian’s flesh.

Leslie insinuated his way around the cabin, flight chairs sliding out of his way, until he was standing right before Justinian. His face lost some of its fuzziness; he wanted Justinian to register its sincere expression.

“Listen, there is no danger. I monitor you both constantly. If a BVB forms on the baby, we will leave this planet immediately so that it can be operated on. You have my word on that.”

“He shouldn’t have to be operated on! He shouldn’t have been put in this danger in the first place!”

Even the flight chairs seemed to feel Justinian’s anger; they were gliding across the floor, heading aft, leaving him with room to pace.

“I’ve had enough. I’m going home! Go and find someone else to be your counselor.”

Justinian stared at Leslie, breathing heavily. The robot spread his arms wide in apology.

“But Justinian, there
is
no one else.”

Justinian shook his head. “I don’t believe you. There are billions of humans in space. For goodness sake, there are trillions now, after the expansion of the Enemy Domain. There must be thousands of people out there who could do the job.”

The robot remained silent for a moment. His body flickered, becoming fuzzy orange; it seemed to fade into the pattern of the flier’s interior. Then, gradually, he resumed his natural grey, crystalline state.

“I don’t know, Justinian,” he said eventually. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know. If I had the choice, I would have sought help elsewhere, but I don’t. I was given my instructions by the EA, and it asked for you by name. It obviously thought you were important. Justinian, please. Stay.”

“No.” Justinian glared at the robot. “The baby and I are going home. Ship, how long to the spaceport?”

“Two hours, Justinian.”

“That’s two hours longer than I want to remain on this planet.”

The flier followed an elegant arc through the deepening blue of the morning, a needle stitching the brilliant white clouds. Below, the turquoise sea was darkening, becoming deeper blue as they headed away from the equatorial region. A yellow-striped survey platform floated a few meters above the slap and foam of the waves, its human crew struggling to continue with their task without the aid of the platform’s AI. High above, Justinian was feeding the baby. Their two flight chairs faced each other by a window; the others were still lurking aft. Justinian sat in one chair watching as his son tried to feed himself. The baby would scoop up the dinner, then turn the spoon upside down as he put it in his mouth. Orange shapes fell to form a loose scree at the out-turned bottom edge of his bib.

Leslie walked back from the flight deck and into the flier’s main section.