Грег Иган - Permutation City

Individuals were far from unthinking components, though. They were fully conscious in their own right; groups performed many roles, but they did not comprise "communal minds." The language of sounds, movements and scents used by individuals was far simpler than the group language of the dance, but it could still express most of the concepts which preliterate humans had dealt with: intentions, past experience, the lives of others.

And individual Lambertians spoke of individual death. They knew that they would die.

Maria searched the literature for some clue to the way they dealt with their mortality. Corpses were left where they dropped; there was no ritual to mark the event, and no evidence of anything like grief. There were no clear Lambertian analogs for any of the human emotions -- not even physical pain. When injured, they were acutely aware of the fact, and took steps to minimize damage to themselves -- but it was a matter of specific instinctive responses coming into play, rather than the widespread biochemical shifts involved in human mood changes. The Lambertian nervous system was "tighter" than a human's; there was no flooding of regions of the brain with large doses of endogenous stimulants or depressants -- everything was mediated within the enclosed synapses.

No grief. No pain. No happiness? Maria retreated from the question. The Lambertians possessed their own spectrum of thoughts and behavior; any attempt to render it in human terms would be as false as the colors of the Autoverse atoms themselves.

The more she learned, the more the role she'd played in bringing the Lambertians into existence seemed to recede into insignificance. Fine-tuning their single-celled ancestor had seemed like a matter of the utmost importance, at the time -- if only for the sake of persuading the skeptics that Autoverse life could flourish. Now -- although a few of her biochemical tricks had been conserved over three billions years of evolution -- it was hard to attribute any real significance to the choices she'd made. Even though the whole Lambertian biosphere might have been transformed beyond recognition if she'd selected a different shape for a single enzyme in A. hydrophila, she couldn't think of the Lambertians as being dependent on her actions. The decisions she'd made controlled what she was witnessing on her terminal, nothing more; had she made other choices, she would have seen another biosphere, another civilization -- but she could not believe that the Lambertians themselves would have failed to have lived the very same lives without her. Somehow, they still would have found a way to assemble themselves from the dust.

If that was true, though -- if the internal logic of their experience would have been enough to bring them into existence -- then there was no reason to believe that they would ever be forced to conclude that their universe required a creator.

She tried to reconcile this growing conviction with the Contact Group's optimism. They'd studied the Lambertians for thousands of years -- who was she to doubt their expertise? Then it occurred to her that Durham and his colleagues might have decided to feign satisfaction with the political restrictions imposed upon them, until they knew where she stood on the issue. Until she reached the same conclusions, independently? Durham might have guessed that she'd resist being pressured into taking their side; it would be far more diplomatic to leave her to form her own opinions -- even applying a little reverse psychology to aim her in the right direction.

Or was that sheer paranoia?

After five days of studying the Lambertians, tracing the history of their increasingly successful attempts to explain their world -- and five nights trying to convince herself that they'd soon give it all up and recognize their status as artificial life -- she could no longer hold the contradictions in her head.

She phoned Durham.

It was three in the morning, but he must have been out of the City; Standard Time set a rate, but no diurnal cycle, and behind him was a dazzling sunlit room.

She said bluntly, "I think I'd like to hear the truth now. Why did you wake me?"

He seemed unsurprised by the question, but he replied guardedly. "Why do you think?"

"You want my support for an early expedition to Planet Lambert. You want me to declare -- with all the dubious authority of the 'mother' of the Lambertians -- that there's no point waiting for them to invent the idea of us. Because we both know it's never going to happen. Not until they've seen us with their own eyes."

Durham said, "You're right about the Lambertians -- but forget the politics. I woke you because your territory adjoins the region where the Autoverse is run. I want you to let me use it to break through to Planet Lambert." He looked like a child, solemnly confessing some childish crime. "Access through the hub is strictly controlled, and visible to everyone. There's plenty of unused space in the sixth public wedge, so I could try to get in from there -- but again, it's potentially visible. Your territory is private."

Maria felt a surge of anger. She could scarcely believe that she'd ever swallowed the line about being woken to share in the glory of contact -- and being used by Durham was no great shock; it was just like old times -- but having been resurrected, not for her expertise, not for her status, but so he could dig a tunnel through her backyard . . .

She said bitterly, "Why do you need to break into the Autoverse? Is there a race going on that nobody's bothered to tell me about? Bored fucking immortals battling it out to make the first unauthorized contact with the Lambertians? Have you turned xenobiology into a new Olympian sport?"

"It's nothing like that."

"No? What, then? I'm dying to know." Maria tried to read his face, for what it was worth. He allowed himself to appear ashamed -- but he also looked grimly determined, as if he really did believe that he'd had no choice.

It hit her suddenly. "You think . . . there's some kind of risk to Elysium, from the Autoverse?"

"Yes."

"I see. So you woke me in time to share the danger? How thoughtful."

"Maria, I'm sorry. If there'd been another way, I would have let you sleep forever --"

She started laughing and shivering at the same time. Durham placed one palm flat against the screen; she was still angry with him, but she let him reach through the terminal from his daylit room and put his hand on hers.

She said, "Why do you have to act in secret? Can't you persuade the others to agree to stop running the Autoverse? They must realize that it wouldn't harm the Lambertians; it would launch them as surely as it launched Elysium. There's no question of genocide. All right, it would be a loss to the Autoverse scholars -- but how many of those can there be? What does Planet Lambert mean to the average Elysian? It's just one more kind of entertainment."

"I've already tried to shut it down. I'm authorized to set the running speed relative to Standard Time -- and to freeze the whole Autoverse, temporarily, if I see the need to stem the information flow, to let us catch up with rapid developments."

"So what happened? They made you restart it?"

"No. I never managed to freeze it. It can't be done anymore. The clock rate can't be slowed past a certain point; the software ignores the instructions. Nothing happens."

Maria felt a deep chill spread out from the base of her spine. "Ignores them how? That's impossible."

"It would be impossible if everything was working -- so, obviously, something's failed. The question is, at what level? I can't believe that the control software is suddenly revealing a hidden bug after all this time. If it's not responding the way it should, then the processors running it aren't behaving correctly. So either they've been damaged somehow . . . or the cellular automaton itself has changed. I think the JVC rules are being undermined -- or subsumed into something larger."