“What makes you say that, Helen?”

“The way you’re behaving.”

“I believe I am acting in the appropriate manner for a member of Social Care.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Judy said nothing. There was something unsettling about her black-and-white figure, standing utterly motionless in the silent corridor. Something deliberately unsettling.

“It’s not that I blame you,” Helen said crisply. “I might feel the same if I lived like you do: experiencing the real world, not following the safe, comfortable lives of the majority.”

Judy measured a silence before answering. “Spare me the emotional tourism, Helen. People are whatever they choose to make themselves. Social Care is just here to point them in the right directions.”

Helen was taken completely by surprise at the anger that boiled up inside her. She hadn’t known…of course twelve hours out of the torture chamber would not be enough to effect any sort of cure. She was taken aback by the venom welling up inside her; she felt that she was standing to one side and listening to herself shouting at Judy.

“Don’t speak to me like that, you bitch.” She had pressed her face close to Judy’s. “I hate that attitude! I hate the way people like you do that!” The calm part of her was looking at that smooth white face, those black, black eyes. “You teachers and social workers who take on the suffering of their clients for your own. I’m the one who was locked up in a torture chamber! Me! Don’t make out that you have a better understanding than I do about the way the world works! You, you…virgin!”

She was spitting. Judy stared at her, tiny drops of Helen’s saliva rolling from her impassive white face, her black hair shimmering softly in the dim light. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, Helen’s anger vanished. Still Judy stared at her. And stared. And then, one hand reached into the opposite sleeve of her kimono. Down the hallway sounded the gentle click of a door closing, and Helen was abruptly, utterly deflated.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Helen,” Judy said, calmly pulling her hand free of her sleeve. “I do have a far better understanding than you of how the world works. Maybe, as you work with me, you will come to realize this.”

Helen opened her mouth in astonishment at Judy’s arrogance.

“Here,” Judy said, before Helen could speak. “Walk a klick in my shoes. Take this.”

She held out a tiny red pill. Before she could add anything else, the door to the apartment opened.

“Peter Onethirteen?” said Judy, turning smoothly to face the man who stood in the doorway.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said eagerly, holding out his hand. He glanced briefly at Helen, her hand to her mouth as she swallowed the red pills, but his gaze was immediately drawn back to Judy. Helen watched him, intrigued. Judy was right: people always did want to make a good impression with Social Care. She had a flash of embarrassed recognition as she remembered how she herself had acted in similar encounters in the past. Just like the tubby little man who was now inviting them into the hallway. There he went, wringing his hands together, leading them into the lounge, nervously pulling out a canister of real coffee and waving it vaguely in the air, offering to make them both a drink. And look at Judy, thought Helen. She’s using it; she’s relying on it, playing with the man. Helen felt nothing but scorn for him.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Peter Onethirteen. His hair had been allowed to recede, leaving just a little tuft at the front of his head, a fashion that Helen had never liked. He wore a transparent floating gown, his pale green pajamas clearly visible beneath it. He was almost fat, probably just at the upper limit of the EA’s acceptable parameters. No doubt his kitchen would be stocked with low-kilojoule supplies, his exercise routine just a little more vigorous than the average person’s.

“Are you sure you don’t want some coffee?” he was saying. “It’s very good, genuine Arabica.”

“No, thank you,” said Judy. “Peter Onethirteen, I would like you to cast your mind back fourteen years. You were a crew member of an Inner System ship back then, weren’t you?”

“Yes…” said Peter. Helen didn’t need the effect of the little red pill of MTPH to sense the fear that rose in the man. She could see it in his eyes, in the way his frame suddenly stiffened. He placed the coffee container on the kitchen counter and gave Judy a tight smile.

Judy’s face remained expressionless, her arms folded, hands tucked in the sleeves of her kimono. She withdrew one hand, brought her right forefinger to her mouth. A tiny spot of blue showed on her tongue as she licked the little MTPH pill from her finger. A little tick was pulsing just below Peter’s eye. Judy watched it for a moment and then she asked her question.

“What did the ship do?”

“The ship?” said Peter, looking at Judy’s hands as she returned them to the sleeves of her kimono. “We dealt in luxury goods: mainly permitted drugs, coffee, tea, whisky. A little refined heroin. We took them out from Earth to the space-based communities.”

“What about the Moon? Mars?”

Peter shook his head. “We didn’t like to get too deep into gravity wells. Too much time spent in traveling.”

“And restricted access points, too. Is that right, Peter?”

Peter shook his head, the tick pulsing away. He was looking flushed. He shrugged his way out of the floating gown. It hung in the air and-after a moment’s pause, and to Helen’s delight-it drifted slowly back towards the bedroom, maintaining its shape and form. Then Helen felt the wave of nauseating-panic that rolled out from him.

“We weren’t smuggling,” he was saying, waving his hands. “Everything on board the ship was strictly legal.” He nodded his head in affirmation, his stomach wobbling slightly. “Come on. They constantly measure the mass of every ship traveling through the Inner System and compare it with the registered manifest. There’s no way to fool the EA.”

“Precisely.” Judy gazed at him. “At 04.10.33 GMT, on the fourteenth of September 2226, the mass of your ship decreased by just under twelve kilograms.”

Peter blinked rapidly. “We were testing the reaction engines. They burn a lot of chemical fuel. I imagine we could easily have burned twelve kilograms’ worth.”

“You seem to have a very good memory. I’m sure I couldn’t remember what I was doing on the fourteenth of September, fourteen years ago. What was your job on the ship?”

“Systems,” Peter said, rubbing at the tick below his eye. “The ship’s Turing machine was old. The self-diagnostics weren’t all they should have been: they needed some backup.”

“A systems man, eh? Then you’d know what a type two VNM was.”

“Yes…” He was slowly collapsing as Judy gazed at him, Helen noted with contempt. He looked as if he was about to break down now and confess everything. This was the sort of man who had kept her imprisoned? He was pathetic.

Now Judy half closed her eyes. “So, given access to suitable raw materials and the library code, you’d be able to construct a type two VNM?”

“Yes…” Peter sat down, folding himself into a chair. He was mentally preparing to run up a white flag. Helen could see it.

“That’s what you did, wasn’t it? Formed a processing space out of a type two VNM and then released it into space. How many personality constructs were there aboard?”

Peter slumped forward, his head in his hands. Helen could almost see his thoughts. He had been found out, so now he was going to bargain.

“Look, it wasn’t me. I’m a PC myself. I was only created twelve years ago. You need to go and see the atomic Peter Onethirteen.”

Judy’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Oh someone will, Peter, but that’s not the point. Your personality construct is based on a personality that has operated beyond the acceptable parameters laid down by the EA after the Transition of 2171. The behavior patterns of the atomic Peter will be the same as yours. You need correction just as much as he does.”