“…slipping down into the earth, oh it’s so bright up there and so dark here below and there is no breath holding holding not breathing dragged away from the light…” Peter was rambling. He opened his eyes and, with some surprise, seemed to see where he was. He was gasping for air.

“Okay, stop,” he panted. “Stop! I get it now.” He couldn’t catch his breath. Nor could Helen. She found that she was rubbing her face, rubbing her nose, clearing it of imaginary mud. She wanted to spit, to wash her mouth out.

Peter was hyperventilating. “I never saw it before,” he gulped. “That was the reality, wasn’t it? That’s what it was all about. That was what I was doing. All the time on the ship, and I never realized.”

He wouldn’t look at Helen. Instead, he gazed at Judy, looked at the floor, did anything but look at Helen.

“I never knew.”

“You never wanted to know.”

“I never did.” He looked around his apartment, studiously avoiding Helen. He looked at the pictures and sculptures that decorated his room. “All of this, art and comfort, I wrapped myself up in it. I never allowed myself to see what suffering was like. I retreated from the real world-”

And, for the first time that day, Judy really lost her temper. It was genuine, Helen was convinced. She could feel that anger, focused by the effect of the pill. Judy’s voice was so cold and disparaging that Helen cringed.

“The real world? You…you wanker. You’ve always lived in the real world, whether in the atomic world or in this processing space. Don’t try to dignify or excuse or explain what you helped create by saying that it is the real world!”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“Isn’t it? Do you really know that? Or has the great lie infiltrated you and you don’t know it yet?”

“What?”

“Okay, Peter. Break’s over. Let’s feel what it was like at the end.”

Judy stood up, turned to face Helen. “You’ll probably want to step into the next room for this part,” she said. Helen felt a wash of emotion from Judy that filled her with a mixture of horror and delight. She was going to take it all the way. Helen wasn’t so sure if that was part of Judy’s original plan; she was taking Peter’s comments personally. Helen walked from the room as Judy stared down at Peter, her black eyes glittering.

Peter’s bedroom was dominated by a huge picture window that looked out to sea. The Shawl hung high up in the blue sky, the sun lighting up one side in a harlequin pattern. How far up into the sky did it reach?

From next door she could hear low voices, she could feel the edge of a wave of emotion. She didn’t want to think about it. Instead, she thought about the Shawl. Judy had said that someday you would be able to walk along the Shawl all the way to the moon, to Mars, to Jupiter. Was that possible?

A message flashed up on her console. It was time to return to the lounge.

Peter was slumped on the sofa. Judy was examining one of the erotic sculptures that stood on a wall shelf: a woman sitting in the lap of a man, her legs wrapped around his back.

“Do you like this sort of thing, Helen?” she asked. Helen barely glanced at the sculpture, too busy staring at the man on the sofa.

“Will he be all right?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.”

Pity, thought Helen. Too late she remembered the red pill of MTPH, still in her system. Judy gave her a thoughtful look before directing her attention back towards him.

“So, Peter, we’ve almost finished. I’ve just got one more question. We know how the processing space was put into operation. What I want to know now is how the interface with the clients of the Private Network was to be made.”

His voice was a dull monotone. “Some of the clients had themselves loaded in there before the processing space was even launched. They were planning on taking a long holiday. The other ones would interface via secure directed pipes. The long-timers would leave that way too when they were finished.”

“That’s what we thought,” Judy said, glancing at Helen. “So that will be our lead to Kevin. Social Care will be performing a forensic on the impression made of the processing space before it totally collapsed. There will be some clues left as to who has been in there; VRep patterns are pretty good at retaining their integrity. One of them should give us a lead to the people who set that place up.”

Helen nodded. “Good,” she said.

Judy replaced the erotic sculpture on the shelf and moved calmly to the middle of the room. The violent emotion she had displayed earlier had completely evaporated.

“Well, Peter, I think we have finished here.”

The man looked up, a hopeful expression on his face.

“Is my punishment over?”

“That was not about punishment, Peter,” Judy said. “It was about empathy. And I don’t simply mean understanding Helen’s pain; that is something a five-year-old could have done. I’m talking about really trying to put yourself in another’s place. Once I’ve gone there will be no more little red pills. You will have to live the rest of your life without me to help you. What you need to learn about is the right way to think of your fellow human beings: as fellow human beings, not commodities. This was the first stage of that process.”

Peter gave a tired nod. “I see.”

Judy gazed at him for a moment. Then she spoke.

“Your punishment will begin tomorrow. Someone will call just after 9 A.M. I suggest you don’t eat anything for breakfast. Just stick to a glass of orange juice.”

Really, Judy,” Frances said, “did it ever occur to you that the time you devote to your manner of dress is just a displacement activity?”

The atomic Judy laughed as she pulled on a deep blue-green robe.

“All the time, Frances.” She smoothed the overlap across her front, hiding the robe’s white lining.

“All these robes”-the robot waved her golden arms to indicate the delicate garments that floated like well-dressed ghosts around Judy’s low bed-“are they really necessary?”

Judy played dumb. “Are clothes necessary at all, Frances? In the artificial climate of the Shawl there’s no reason why we can’t all go naked.”

She pulled on the next robe in the sequence of waka shobu: pale blue-green with a white lining. Petroleum colors shimmered across the material as it moved against the light.

“No reason at all,” Frances agreed. “Although there are always the erotic possibilities involved in the removal of clothing…”

Judy laughed again. “I have a robot lecturing me about sexual desire?”

Frances folded her arms. “You’re a virgin who appears to consider dressing in the mode of the young sweet-flag iris a satisfactory replacement for sexual stimulation.”

Judy gave a sweet smile. “Why Frances, I didn’t know you followed wafuku.”

“I’m a robot. I know everything about humans, from the mundane to the exotic. I know about eroticism and sexual power. Are you aware that those robes were once an instrument of female repression? A Heian noblewoman wearing the traditional garments would barely be able to move for the thickness of their materials. She would not have had the benefit of molecular fabrics.”

“Well, I do, and I think they look pretty.” Judy pulled on the third pale blue-green robe and twirled around. She smiled in delight at the pattern of colors, at the slowly building effect of her outfit. Frances watched her, her body language signaling mild frustration.

“You’re a virgin, Judy. You’ve never experienced the building anticipation and joy of divesting an awakening body of its wrapping.”

“You’re a robot, Frances. You get off by someone entering Mersenne primes on your push buttons.”