Permutation City

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.'

'Do you have any hard evidence?'

'No. I've rerun the old validation experiments, the ones I ran during the launch, and they still work -- wherever I've tried them -- but I can't even instruct the processors running the Autoverse to diagnose themselves, let alone probe what's happening there at the lowest level. I don't even know if the problem is confined to the region, or if it's spreading out slowly . . . or if it's already happening everywhere, but the effects are too subtle to pick up. You know the only way to validate the rules is with special apparatus. So what do I do? Disassemble half the processors in Elysium, and build test chambers in their place? And even if I could prove that the rules were being broken, how would that help?'

'Who else knows about this?'

'Only Repetto and Zemansky. If it became public knowledge, I don't know what would happen.'

Maria was outraged. 'What gives you the right to keep this to yourselves? Some people might panic . . . but what are you afraid of? Riots? Looting? The more people who know about the problem, the more likely it is that someone will come up with a solution.'

'Perhaps. Or perhaps the mere fact that more people know would make things worse.'

Maria absorbed that in silence. The sunlight spilling through the terminal cast radial shadows around her; the room looked like a medieval woodcut of an alchemist discovering the philosopher's stone.

Durham said, 'Do you know why I chose the Autoverse in the first place -- instead of real-world physics?'

'Less computation. Easier to seed with life. My brilliant work with A. lamberti.'

'No nuclear processes. No explanation for the origins of the elements. I thought: In the unlikely event that the planet yielded intelligent life, they'd still only be able to make sense of themselves on our terms. It all seemed so remote and improbable, then. It never occurred to me that they might miss the laws that we know are laws, and circumvent the whole problem.'

'They haven't settled on any kind of theory, yet. They might still come up with a cellular automaton model -- complete with the need for a creator.'

'They might. But what if they don't?'

Maria's throat was dry. The numbing abstractions were losing their hypnotic power; she was beginning to feel all too real: too corporeal, too vulnerable. Good timing: finally embracing the illusion of possessing solid flesh and blood -- just as the foundations of this universe seemed ready to turn to quicksand.

She said, 'You tell me. I'm tired of guessing what's going on in your head.'

'We can't shut them down. I think that proves that they're already affecting Elysium. If they successfully explain their origins in a way which contradicts the Autoverse rules, then that may distort the JVC rules. Perhaps only in the region where the Autoverse is run -- or perhaps everywhere. And if the TVC rules are pulled out from under us --'

Maria baulked. 'That's . . . like claiming that a VR environment could alter the real-world laws of physics in