They moved away from the swimming coral, into a swarm of something like jellyfish: floppy hyperspheres waving wispy tendrils (each one of them more substantial than Paolo). Tiny jewel-like creatures darted among them. Paolo was just beginning to notice that nothing moved here like a solid object drifting through normal space; motion seemed to entail a shimmering deformation at the leading hypersurface, a visible process of disassembly and reconstruction.
Karpal led him on through the secret ocean. There were helical worms, coiled together in groups of indeterminate number—each single creature breaking up into a dozen or more wriggling slivers, and then recombining… although not always from the same parts. There were dazzling multicolored stemless flowers, intricate hypercones of 'gossamer-thin' fifteen-dimensional petals—each one a hypnotic fractal labyrinth of crevices and capillaries. There were clawed monstrosities, writhing knots of sharp insectile parts like an orgy of decapitated scorpions.
Paolo said, uncertainly, 'You could give people a glimpse of this in just three dimensions. Enough to make it clear that there's… life in here. This is going to shake them up badly, though.' Life-embedded in the accidental computations of Wang's Carpets, with no possibility of ever relating to the world outside. This was an affront to Carter-Zimmerman's whole philosophy: if nature had evolved 'organisms' as divorced from reality as the inhabitants of the most inward-looking polis, where was the privileged status of the physical universe, the clear distinction between reality and illusion? And after three hundred years of waiting for good news from the Diaspora, how would they respond to this back on Earth?
Karpal said, 'There's one more thing I have to show you '
He'd named the creatures squid, for obvious reasons. They were prodding each other with their tentacles in a way that looked thoroughly carnal. Karpal explained, 'There's no analogue of light here. We're viewing all this according to ad hoc rules which have nothing to do with the native physics. All the creatures here gather information about each other by contact alone-which is actually quite a rich means of exchanging data, with so many dimensions. What you're seeing is communication by touch.'
'Communication about what?'
'Just gossip, I expect. Social relationships.'
Paolo stared at the writhing mass of tentacles.
'You think they're conscious?'
Karpal, point-like, grinned broadly. 'They have a central control structure, with more connectivity than a citizen's brain, which correlates data gathered from the skin. I've mapped that organ, and I've started to analyze its function.'
He led Paolo into another scape, a representation of the data structures in the 'brain' of one of the squid. It was—mercifully—three-dimensional, and highly stylized, with translucent colored blocks to represent mental symbols, linked by broad lines indicating the major connections between them. Paolo had seen similar diagrams of citizens' minds; this was far less elaborate, but eerily familiar nonetheless.
Karpal said, 'Here's the sensory map of its surroundings. Full of other squid's bodies, and vague data on the last known positions of a few smaller creatures. But you'll see that the symbols activated by the physical presence of the other squid are linked to these' —he traced the connection with one finger— 'representations. Which are crude miniatures of this whole structure here.'
'This whole structure' was an assembly labeled with gestalt tags for memory retrieval, simple tropisms, short-term goals. The general business of being and doing.
'The squid has maps, not just of other squid's bodies, but their minds as well. Right or wrong, it certainly tries to know what the others are thinking about. And' —he pointed out another set of links, leading to another, less crude, miniature squid mind— 'it thinks about its own thoughts as well. I'd call that consciousness, wouldn't you?'
Paolo said weakly, 'You've kept all this to yourself? You came this far, without saying a word—?'
Karpal was chastened. 'I know it was selfish, but once I'd decoded the interactions of the tile patterns, I couldn't tear myself away long enough to start explaining it to anyone else. Arid I came to you first because I wanted your advice on the best way to break the news.'
Paolo laughed bitterly. 'The best way to break the news that first alien consciousness is hidden deep inside a biological computer? That everything the Diaspora was meant to prove to the rest of the Coalition has been turned on its head? The best way to explain to the citizens of Carter-Zimmerman that after a three-hundred-year journey, they might as well have stayed on Earth running simulations with as little resemblance to the physical universe as possible?'
Karpal took the outburst in good humor. 'I was thinking more along the lines of the best way to point out that if we hadn't traveled to Orpheus and studied Wang's Carpets, we'd never have had the chance to tell the solipsists of Ashton-Laval that all their elaborate invented lifeforms and exotic imaginary universes pale into insignificance compared to what's really out here—and which only the Carter-Zimmerman Diaspora could have found.'
Paolo and Elena stood together on the edge of Satellite Pinatubo, watching one of the scout probes aim its maser at a distant point in space. Paolo thought he saw a faint scatter of microwaves from the beam as it made its way out through Vegas halo of iron-rich dust. Elena's mind being diffracted all over the cosmos? Best not to think about that.
He said, 'When you meet the other versions of me who haven't experienced Orpheus, I hope you'll offer them mind grafts so they won't be jealous.'
She frowned. 'Ah. Will I or won't I? You should have asked me before I cloned myself. No need for your clones to be jealous, though. There'll be worlds far stranger than Orpheus.'
'I doubt it. You really think so?'
'I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe that.' Elena had no power to change the fate of the frozen clones of her previous self. But everyone had the right to emigrate.
Paolo took her hand. The beam had been aimed almost at Regulus, UV-hot and bright, but as he looked away, the cool yellow light of the sun caught his eye.
Vega C-Z was taking the news of the squid surprisingly well, so far. Karpal's way of putting it had cushioned the blow: it was only by traveling all this distance across the real, physical universe that they could have made such a discovery—and it was amazing how pragmatic even the most doctrinaire citizens had turned out to be. Before the launch, 'alien solipsists' would have been the most unpalatable idea imaginable, the most abhorrent thing the Diaspora could have stumbled upon—but now that they were here, and stuck with the fact of it, people were finding ways to view it in a better light. Orlando had even proclaimed, 'This will be the perfect hook for the marginal polises. 'Travel through real space to witness a truly alien virtual reality.' We can sell it as a synthesis of the two world views.'
Paolo still feared for Earth, though, where his Earth-self and others were waiting in hope of guidance. Would they take the message of Wang's Carpets to heart, and retreat into their own hermetic worlds, oblivious to physical reality? Lacerta could he survived, anything could be survived: all you had to do was bury yourself deep enough.
He said plaintively, 'Where are the aliens, Elena? The ones we can meet? The ones we can talk to? The ones we can learn from?'
'I don't know.' She laughed suddenly.
'What?'
'It just occurred to me. Maybe the squid are asking themselves exactly the same question.'
Yatima said, 'Swift they've seen firsthand. Though they might be surprised by some of the changes since they left.'
