Judy imposed her willtotally upon Saskia. She pushed the younger woman against the smooth wall of the corridor and held her there by the wrist as she gazed into her eyes. Saskia tugged halfheartedly at her, her thin body wriggling, but it was not a genuine attempt to escape; she was too much in awe of the power of Social Care, and Judy made her aware of that. She spoke in the voice; she overwhelmed Saskia, smashed through the young woman’s veneer of sophistication and scooped out her insecurities, throwing them to one side as she rummaged through her psyche for her core competence. Only when she had totally subdued Saskia did she let her go.
“Pull on your active suit,” she instructed.
They stripped in the corridor, Saskia’s body very pale under the lights, her ribs outlined in shadows. They were halfway through pulling on the rubbery suits when Miss Rose’s first scream sounded, thin and agonizing. As if in a dream, Saskia began to move up the corridor, half dressed.
“Stop,” said Judy. “We’ll be no good to her if we die of decompression.”
“Okay,” said Saskia. It was the logical thing to do. They both dressed themselves calmly as another human died in agony nearby.
“I’m sorry,” said Judy, as they finally shrugged their arms into the suits. “I had to do this to you, Saskia.”
“I understand,” said Saskia, pulling the hood of the blue suit over her head.
“You understand
They finished dressing as the air around them began to drift down the corridor. There was a popping sound as metal spiders pulled themselves free of the floor.
“Into Miss Rose’s room,” urged Judy.
“No, I’ll get a body bag first,” said Saskia. “Listen to her scream. We’ll never get her into a suit when she’s in that much pain.”
“Yes, good thinking.”
Saskia went to a nearby locker to get the body bag. Judy headed on to Miss Rose’s room. The door was covered in black-and-white stripes; a message formed in the center. DO NOT OPEN. CORRIDOR PRESSURE IS BELOW THAT OF THE ROOM BEYOND.
“Not for long,” said Judy. “Override. Let me in there.”
The door slid open. Judy pushed her way against the leaking air into Miss Rose’s room. The door slammed shut behind her. She was shocked at the state of the room itself, but even more shocked by the sight of Miss Rose. She lay on the bed, naked and bleeding at several points. Her arms, her thighs. Her vagina. She was screaming, writhing in agony. Her eyes looked at Judy, apparently without seeing her. Then she spoke, in a thin, bubbling voice.
“Get them out of me,” she gasped. “Get them out, get them out.” And then she gagged and began to scream again.
Something was moving inside her body, something was squirming in there. The pale, loose, liver-spotted skin over her stomach raised itself up for a moment and Judy saw the outline of a shape: a short squat body. A VNM. Inside her. Her arm moved and Judy saw a VNM holding the loose, wrinkled skin apart from inside as it pushed its way along the bone.
Judy gagged. The meta-intelligence cut in and she now saw Miss Rose as nothing more than a pattern of consciousnesses: one of them human, several machine. A symbiote was forming, rather elegant in its form. Certainly a more valid expression of resources than the failing system that was Miss Rose…
Then air pressure dropped, and the walls around her dissolved in a tangle of silver legs as the
Saskia was there within the expanding cloud. She had already had the good sense to link her active suit to Judy’s. The two suits locked on to each other’s signatures and moved closer, fighting through the explosion of air and thrashing silver legs and the detritus from Miss Rose’s room. Somehow they got the body bag around Miss Rose, somehow they clung together, and somehow they weathered the storm.
“Where are we?” wondered Saskia.
They stood on an iron plane, patterns of frost curling in tongues of ice around their feet, the circle of the access tube that had brought them there was irising closed by their feet. They were two tiny figures, one blue, one black-
