Permutation City

Sanderson said, 'Thank you, Mr. Repetto, for giving us your perspective on this important matter. It's unfortunate that so few of us take the time to keep ourselves up to date with the progress of the Lambertians. Although they have come all the way from single-celled lifeforms to their present, highly sophisticated state without our explicit intervention, ultimately they are in our care at every moment, and we all have a duty to treat that responsibility with the utmost seriousness.

'I can still recall some of the earliest plans we made for dealing with the Autoverse: to hide the details of life on Planet Lambert from ourselves, deliberately; to watch and wait, as if from afar, until the inhabitants sent probes to their system's other worlds; to arrive as 'explorers' in 'space ships,' struggling to learn the language and customs of these 'aliens' -- perhaps going so far as to extend the Autoverse to include an invisibly distant star, with a 'home world' from which we might travel. Slavish imitations of the hypothetical interstellar missions we'd left behind. Bizarre charades.

'Mercifully, we abandoned those childish ideas long ago. There will be no sham 'mission of discovery' -- and no lying to the Lambertians, or to ourselves.

'There is one quality of those early, laughable schemes which should still be kept in mind, though: we always intended to meet the Lambertians as equals. Visitors from a distant world who would stretch their vision of the universe -- but not subvert it, not swallow it whole. We would approach them as siblings, arguing our viewpoint -- not Gods, revealing divine truth.

'I ask the meeting to consider whether these two equally laudable aims, of honesty and humility, could not be reconciled. If the Lambertians are on the verge of a crisis in understanding their origins, what patronizing instinct compels us to rush in and provide them with an instant solution? Mr. Repetto tells us how they have already inferred the properties of the chemical elements -- elements which remain mysterious and invisible, manifesting themselves only in the elaborate phenomena of the natural world. Clearly, the Lambertians have a gift for uncovering hidden patterns, hidden explanations. How many more centuries can it be, then, before they guess the truth about their own cosmology?

'I propose that we delay contact until the hypothesis of our existence has arisen naturally amongst the Lambertians, and has been thoroughly explored. Until they have decided for themselves exactly what we might mean to them. Until they have debated, as we are debating right now, how best they might deal with us.

'If aliens had visited Earth the moment humans first looked up at the sky and suffered some crisis of understanding, they would have been hailed as Gods. If they'd arrived in the early twenty-first century -- when humans had been predicting their existence and pondering the logistics of contact, for decades -- they would have been accepted as equals; more experienced, more skilled, more knowledgeable, but ultimately nothing but an expected part of a well-behaved, well-understood universe.

'I believe that we should wait for the equivalent moment in Lambertian history: when the Lambertians are impatient for proof of our existence -- when our continued absence becomes far harder for them to explain than our arrival would be. Once they begin to suspect that we're eavesdropping on every conversation they hold about us, it would be dishonest to remain concealed. Until then, we owe them the opportunity to find as many answers as they can, without us.'

Sanderson resumed her seat. Portions of the audience applauded demurely. Peer lazily mapped the response and correlated it with appearance; she seemed to have been a big hit with the third-generation mainstream -- but they had a reputation for gleefully faking everything.

Kate said, 'Don't you wish you could join the discussion?' Half sarcasm, half self-pity.

Peer said cheerfully, 'No -- but if you have strong views on the matter yourself, I suggest you copy the whole Autoverse, and make contact with the Lambertians personally -- or leave them in unspoilt ignorance. Whichever you prefer.'

'You know I don't have room to do that.'

'And you know that makes no difference. There's a copy of the original biosphere seed, the entire compressed description, in the central library. You could copy that, and freeze yourself until you finally have the room to unfold it. The whole thing's deterministic -- every Lambertian would flutter its little wings for you in exactly the same way as it did for the Elysians. Right up to the moment of contact.'

'And you honestly believe that the City will grow that large? That after a billion years of Standard Time, they won't have trashed it and built something new?'

'I don't know. But there's always the alternative: you could launch a whole new TVC universe and make all the room you need. I'll come along, if you want me to.' He meant it; he'd follow her anywhere. She only had to say the word.

But she looked away. He ached to grant her happiness, but the choice was hers: if she wanted to believe that she was standing outside in the snow -- or rather, bricked into the walls -- watching the Elysians feast on Reality, there was nothing he could do to change that.

Three hundred and seven speakers followed; one hundred and sixty-two backed Repetto, one hundred and forty supported Sanderson. Five waffled on with no apparent agenda; a remarkably low proportion. Peer daydreamed about the sound of sandpaper on wood.

When the vote finally came -- one per original attendee, no last-minute clonings accepted -- Sanderson won by a ten percent margin. She took the stage and made a short speech thanking the voters for their decision. Peer suspected that many of the Elysians had quietly slipped out of their bodies and gone elsewhere, by now.

Dominic Repetto said a few words too, clearly disappointed, but gracious in defeat. It was Paul Durham -- presumably his mentor and sponsor -- who showed the slightly vacuous expression of a model-of-a-body with its facial muscles crudely decoupled from its model-of-a-brain. Durham -- with his strange history of brief episodes as a Copy in different permutations -- seemed to have never really caught up with the prelaunch state of the art, let alone the Elysian cutting edge; when he had something to hide, it was obvious. He was taking the decision badly.

Kate said coldly, 'That's it. You've fulfilled your civic duty. You can go now.'

Peer made his eyes big and brown. 'Come back to the workshop with me. We can make love in the wood dust. Or just sit around and talk. Be happy, for no reason. It wouldn't be so bad.'

Kate shook her head and faded away. Peer felt a pang of disappointment, but not for long.

There'd be other times.

25

Thomas crouched in the bathroom window frame, halfway out of Anna's flat. He knew that the edges of the brickwork would be sharper than razors, this time. He made his way across to the neighbor's window, repeating the familiar movements precisely, though his hands and forearms wept blood. Insects crawled from the wounds and swarmed along his arm, over his face, into his mouth. He gagged and retched but he didn't falter.

Down the drain pipe. From the alley below, he returned to the flat. Anna was by his side on the stairs. They danced again. Argued again. Struggled again.

'Think fast. Think fast.'

He knelt over her, one knee to either side, took her face in his hands, then closed his eyes. He brought her head forward, then slammed it back against the wall. Five times. Then he held his fingers near her nostrils, without opening his eyes. He felt no exhalation.

Thomas was in his Frankfurt apartment, a month after the murder, dreaming. Anna stood by the bed. He reached out from beneath the blankets into the darkness, eyes closed. She took his hand in hers. With her other