chemise. It’s in the wooden chest.”
“Get me my chemise,
“I don’t know yet.” Judy looked around her room and gave a regretful sigh. “I know we’re supposed to look forward, not back, but everything in this room is so beautiful. And then there’s the view.”
She crossed to the wide expanse of the window and looked down on the Earth spread out below her. France could be seen down there, partially obscured by cloud. The
“Will you still live in the Shawl?” Frances asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“I don’t know. I don’t fancy starting all over again at the top. I’ve been wondering about leaving Earth altogether. Heading out into the galaxy…I don’t want to spend my life just repeating the same old cycle.”
Frances was kneeling by the trunk, searching for the chemise among Judy’s collection of wafuku, her golden hands slipping easily through the materials of the precious garments.
“You don’t fancy living on Earth?” she asked.
“Definitely not,” Judy said, arms folded as she looked down at the blue-white swirl below. “I find it all rather vulgar: constant gravity, unrecycled air. The dirt…”
“I rather like it, myself,” the robot murmured. She finally located the chemise and gently removed it. “Hey!” she called, rubbing her fingers on the material. “This is raw silk. The genuine article. Very nice.”
“I know,” Judy said, slipping it on. Real silk, not some digital construct. She gave herself a final check in the viewing field, pleased with the effect. Black hair, white face, and what seemed on first appearance a plain white outfit; but as she moved, tantalizing glimpses of color would briefly show.
“Okay,” she said. “Time for us to make our presence felt.”
She slid open the bedroom door and stepped through into the lounge.
“How are we going to get down there?” asked Frances.
“Shuttle. We’re in a hurry.”
They looked at each other, not wanting to mention what Judy 11 had said. There was no sense in drawing the Watcher’s attention to themselves. They were to follow the path that would lead them to someone who had been to the edge of another galaxy. There they would find out more about why the Watcher had murdered Justinian Sibelius-if indeed it had. The idea almost defied belief. The idea that the Watcher was dedicated to protecting and nurturing life was as much a part of their society as the belief that illness should be treated and that children should be educated. But then, there was that little worm of doubt. Her sisters might not agree, but Judy believed in the story of Eva Rye. Judy 3 laughed at the idea. Physical people need physical proof, she had said. But the atomic Judy believed Eva Rye had actually, physically, met the Watcher all those years ago. So maybe it was possible. If the Watcher had committed murder, it was vital that it did not suspect they knew.
Frances maintained the pretense that all was normal. “Oh, not the shuttle,” she complained. “You said we could use the gliders.”
“Next time.” Judy gave a last look around her lounge. Low tables and tatami mats stood in the center, extending the Japanese theme she had adopted wholesale since moving here to the Shawl. “Now, should I wear shoes?” she wondered, looking at the white split-toed tabi on her feet. “We are going Earth-side, after all.”
Frances was fiddling with an ornament: a metal horse’s head that stood on a nearby chest.
“You can get some down there if you need them,” she said.
“I suppose so. Come on, let’s go.”
A black bundle tied up with ribbon lay by the wood-and-paper door, a yellow card and a red carnation tucked into the band. Judy picked them out and beamed.
“From the EA. Only five more days…Enjoy!” she read from the card. She touched the carnation to her lips, breathing in its scent. She wondered what awaited her outside this morning. Judy slid the flower into her hair, just beside the black rod of her console. Frances adjusted it for her as she untied the bundle and shook out the loose black cape it contained. She hung that around her shoulders.
“This should be good,” Judy said, then slid aside the door and looked out into her section of the Shawl. There was a fluttering as a robin came into the room, but Judy ignored it. She was too taken by what she could see outside, looking out into the space of the World Tree.
A great swirl of color and sound came bubbling up from below. She was gazing into a well of light and life, of paper banners hanging from the grey branches of the tree that filled the central space. The World Tree: a genetically modified beech that ran the 1.616-kilometer length of the section. In this place gravity had been set to run towards the roots of the tree, so that for Judy, living as she did towards the apparent top of this section, stepping from her apartment was like stepping out over a kilometer-deep drop. A white ramp led from Judy’s door to join the tangle of other white ramps that threaded their way through the silver-grey branches, and the section’s other inhabitants walked and rode those ramps, or flew between them on gliders and spider lines.
And this morning they had all chosen to dress in black and white, and they all wore a red carnation.
The laugh that had been building inside Judy bubbled out and she turned to Frances.
“Come on,” she shouted. “Join in!” But Frances was already changing the golden skin of her body to banded patterns of black and white. The buttons between her legs blossomed red like a flower.
The last days of a Shawl section were always a celebration. Today the EA had set people walking about their business at regular intervals, great loops of people moving along the ramps at a steady pace, forming zebra patterns as Judy looked down through the paper-hung branches of the World Tree. Pale blue light shone down from above as they skipped down the ramp to join one of the main loops that led to the intrasection paths. A gap opened up in the black-and-white lines of people as they approached.
“Hey, Judy!” called a man, waving. He wore a black one-piece suit and a white hat, a carnation tucked in the band. “Coming to the party at the treetop?”
“No time,” Judy called, waving back with both hands. “Why aren’t you wearing a kimono, Glenn?”
“Didn’t have one in a suitable color,” he called back, and then the crowd spun him down a different ramp.
There were calls from behind: “Wave! Wave!”
Judy and Frances turned to see people jumping in the air, arms outstretched, a wave of people heading their way; fluttering down through the air beside the human movement came a formation of paper streamers spelling out words in black and white:
FIVE MORE DAYS…
FROM THE ASHES…
CELEBRATE LIFE!
WE‘RE GOING DOWN IN STYLE
Judy turned to Frances, a beaming black smile across her white face.
“I love this place,” she said, sighing.
Judy lived in Section 49 of the twenty-sixth level of the Shawl. The last remaining sections of the twenty-fifth level had been released to their fiery ends in Earth’s atmosphere a few months before. The first few sections out of the twenty-sixth level were due to start falling in the next couple of days, and despite her upbringing, despite the constant reinforcement of the need for change proclaimed by Social Care, this thought filled Judy with sudden sadness.
Frances spoke: “What’s the matter with you?”
The robot was leaning against the transparent wall of the bubble that the section airlock had blown to transport them up to the forty-second level and the shuttle station. Her body, now turned back to smooth gold, was visible as a faint reflection, deep in the plastic of the bubble. Judy studied the ghost of her own reflection, half seen
