against the blackness of space beyond.
“I know I shouldn’t think this,” said Judy petulantly, “but I don’t want the section to fall.”
Frances reached out and took her hand. “No one ever said you shouldn’t feel regret, Judy. You know that.”
“I know,” Judy said. “I was assigned to a group of people just last week who were trying to form a protest group. They wanted to save the World Tree. And I thought: they have a point, don’t they? It’s a shame for it to die.”
“It is,” Frances agreed.
“Oh, I know,” Judy said quickly, “all things must pass. The circle of life, all that sort of thing. I understand that we can’t just keep taking from the Earth and not allowing anything to return. I agree with the Transition. We couldn’t have gone on as we were. Even so, when you come up against it, it all seems so harsh and cold- blooded.”
“It is, but so is life. On Earth, on the Shawl, in the processing spaces. After the Transition, the EA removed that illusion. Do you want people to go on hoarding goods to no end, establishing ideas founded on a permanence that is not feasible?”
“Of course not.” Judy looked down at the Earth beneath her feet. “Of course not. But every time I step out of my door and see the World Tree now, I imagine it falling towards the Earth, a cloud of VNMs expanding around it. It makes me feel regretful.”
“But Judy, that’s the way the Shawl works. New sections will grow at the top and begin their slow progress downwards. You know that.”
“You believe in permanence, Judy,” Frances said. “It’s part of your character. Look at your sisters: some people actively seek to be different from their personality constructs. Not you. Only your dress is different…”
“It’s the job,” Judy said. “You don’t like to think that it changes you.”
A widening dark line above them was the twenty-seventh level. The bubble in which they traveled, caught in the fields of the connecting filaments, rode a flexible path that threaded the successive layers of sections rising to the thirtieth level, where the closest shuttle station lay. Pastel lettering wrapped itself around the skin of the bubble as they entered Section 50 of the thirtieth level, listing the local environmental parameters.
Gravity: along direction of section height
Atmosphere: STP
Day: Earth latitude 20° north (locked)
General Description: park land along major section surface. Not just a shuttle station! Come and spend some time in the well-kept grounds that make up the rest of our section! Mown lawns, tended trees. Relax on foot or horseback. Explore secluded pathways on your own or with friends, old and new!
Judy glanced at the signs without really reading them. She had been here many times before; she liked this section almost as much as her own, and had even been offered a chance to relocate to it. She had refused. She saw little point in spending time getting to know a place that would also be gone in a few years’ time.
The bubble floated over the green land of the section. The shuttle stations were muted yellow crosses that merged into the rolling green hills and well kept woods.
Below, people rode horses amongst the green hills, 18,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.
Earlier that day Judy 3 had ridden a shuttle resembling a Christmas bauble from a virtual Shawl to the virtual Earth. Now here, in what the prejudiced still referred to as the “real world,” the atomic Judy followed Frances down a set of yellow steps into a lifting body that clung to the outside of the section wall.
“Looks like we’ve got this shuttle to ourselves,” the robot said, looking around the low interior of the craft.
“Isn’t this great?” Judy ran her hand over the back of a padded seat. The craft’s interior had been decorated in mid-twentieth-century U.S. military style: khaki walls hung with crash netting, metal chairs with black leather covers. Wooden crates with black stenciled lettering had been scattered around the floor to add to the effect.
“Hey, ship!” Judy called. “I like the look! Good effort.”
There was a pause, then a voice spoke.
“Hello there, Judy. Sorry, this ship is not equipped with a dedicated TM. It’s nothing more than an elevator used for ferrying down construction materials to those busy little Earth VNMs. I’ll be controlling the flight for the benefit of you two lovely ladies. Recognize my voice, Frances?”
“Hilary! How are you?”
“Working hard here at traffic control. Frances, I’ve been wanting to speak to you about your body. I’m increasingly of the opinion that pure thought is all very well, but, well, once my stint in here is finished, I’m seriously considering doing what you’ve done: putting myself in a body…”
“Oh, you should, Hilary. You’re nothing until you experience sensation as a mind apart. Let me tell you about-”
“Later, maybe,” Judy said. “Come on, we’ve got a job to do.”
The actual talk was just a politeness to Judy, anyway. The robots would still be continuing their conversation in machine space even as Hilary asked, “Would you like a view, ladies?”
“Yes, please,” Frances said. They strapped themselves into the padded seats just as Hilary opened a narrow slit for them at the front of the shuttle. Judy smiled; it was just as she imagined it would be sitting in an old aircraft, only here she was looking right out into space. Given the apparent gravity here on the shuttle, the view of the external wall of the Shawl section was a black field, dotted with shuttles of myriad sizes and shapes. The Earth was rising in a blue-and-white swirl that reflected in the sense pools that spread out before them. The black field seemed to drop away as the shuttle disengaged itself from the section and, almost imperceptibly, began its long fall towards the Earth.
“I wonder what’s in the crates,” Judy asked.
Frances looked towards them. “You know, I never even thought to look,” she said, an edge of puzzlement to her voice. “Now, that’s not right…”
“What is it?” Judy sensed the warning in the robot’s tone.
“Trouble,” Frances said. “I can’t see anything in the crates at all. I can’t even get the idea of them in my mind. There’s heavy-duty stealth stuff in there.”
The whole of the Shawl section was now visible beneath their feet. Judy felt a flutter of fear as her view of safety receded, leaving her trapped on this craft with the sinister emptiness in the crates before her.
“Hilary…” called Frances. There was no reply. Judy stood up and folded her arms, her hands tucked into her sleeves. She was thinking herself calm.
“Anything?” she asked eventually.
“Nothing. Hilary has been blocked. There is a bubble of nothingness around this craft. I don’t know who is flying it now.”
Judy placed a tiny blue pill on the tip of her tongue. There was a cracking noise and a slat on one of the wooden crates came loose. A silver-grey nail went skittering across the metal floor.
Frances’ voice was low. “I can see the crate moving, Judy, but I can’t see what’s emerging. You’ll have to describe it to me.”
Judy looked at the sleek grey shape that was unfolding itself from the crate, wooden slats and nails dropping to the ground around it.
“It’s a robot of some kind, I think, but like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” She was whispering, though she didn’t know why. “I don’t know what forms the integument, but it doesn’t seem like plastic or metal or…or anything. It’s folding itself together like origami, or maybe some sort of three-dimensional tangram, but the shapes that it is forming are complex. I don’t think I can quite follow them. It’s making itself into a humanoid. The head is strange, like a very handsome man but obviously still artificial-”
“It’s okay,” Frances said suddenly. “I can see it now. It just seemed to come into view then. I was right: it’s
