“Your population dynamics, then. Surely those peculiarities—”
“We have a labor shortage, madam. We've had one since the very beginning, and quite frankly, it gets lonely here. There's only so much time you can spend talking to yourself, talking to the same few people over and over. Surely you don't begrudge us our children?”
“No. Certainly not. But your methods—”
Methods, yes. There had been developments in that area, to speed the population growth along. Conrad said, “You find it unseemly.”
“Well, it's . . . pragmatic I suppose,” the king answered uncertainly.
“Aye. That it is,” Conrad agreed without humor. “We were intended to find our own way in this place, our own solutions to our own problems, and I believe we're doing that. I don't feel the need for children of my own—not now, at any rate—but I do feel strongly about the right to have them. In the manner of my own choosing, thank you.”
“Indeed. Indeed. It isn't our place to judge. But you're one of Bascal's friends. I assume you are still. If something were wrong—I mean seriously wrong—would he tell you?”
“Hmm. I don't know,” Conrad answered honestly. “He might. If he thought I could help him with it, then definitely, yes. But I haven't heard anything. I haven't spoken with Bascal in, oh, I guess it must be four years by now. And even that was just pleasantries. I suppose that happens as you get older: the bonds of friendship maintain themselves with less and less reinforcement. Anyway, these days Bascal is a lot older than I am. He doesn't seek my opinion quite so often.”
The queen strode to the transparent wall, looking for a moment as if she might press her face against it, as Conrad had done a few minutes ago. Of course, she wasn't really here, and had no face to press. “Let's begin with your ecology,” she said reasonably. “Magnifier, please.”
But the wall's wellstone did not recognize her as a person, merely as data, and so ignored the command.
“Magnifier,” Conrad told it, pointing to the spot where the queen had been looking. “Fifty times zoom, contrast filtering and color enhancement.”
“Thank you,” Her Majesty said. “One forgets one isn't real.”
“Well,” Conrad said, “let's hope your reply isn't lost in the mail. If it gets through, then these experiences will reach the real Tamra and Bruno, and thus you are real enough for practical purposes. Let's hope the gods of data communication are on your side.”
Per command, a magnification circle appeared in the wall directly in front of Queen Tamra. From Conrad's angle, behind the queen, it showed the top of the forest surrounding Domesville, with a flock of startled starbirds flapping up out of it in that weird, almost vertical way they had, like malformed bubbles rising in a glass of beer.
“The ecology isn't natural,” Conrad conceded. “How could it be? It was installed, yes, and I don't think anyone has ever let it settle down. Why bother? We call it ‘evolutionary extrapolation,' and here it's considered an art form. We compute—rigorously—the sort of creatures the native ecology might have produced, given enough time, and the ones which pass a popular referendum are instantiated. Whole herds of them. Whole flocks and bevies and swarms. We color them as we please, but as I understand it the selective pressures on the first few generations are pretty strong. So their final appearance is a compromise between what we give them and what works in the wild. And if they die out altogether, we tweak them and print more. Hell, even the atmosphere would change without our constant intervention.”
Indeed, the line of atmosphere processing stations—gigantic print plates for a very primitive sort of fax—ran alongside the tuberail link from Domesville to Bupsville, and even from here you could see a fine mist rising out of them, oxygen and nitrogen liberated from a soil buffer somewhere and reacting coolly with the native gases.
“But we aren't dependent on the ecology, Sires, or on the atmosphere. We can breathe the native gases, and as I understand it, we can eat a much broader range of foodstuffs than you can. In this sense, we haven't been human for a century or more. And if our reproductive methods reflect this, well, so be it. Times change.”
“Fair enough,” the queen said, looking over her shoulder at Conrad. “But those aren't real fax machines down there.” She turned farther and pointed a finger at the chamber's service fax, where Conrad's mug of red tea had been produced. “That's not a real fax machine either. It produces only simple chemicals, yes? We've seen the reports. That device could never fax a living creature, nor even a good semblance of a dead one.”
Conrad fought down his irritation and struggled to be polite. “I'm not sure what you mean by ‘real,' Your Highness. It isn't a medical-grade fax machine, no. But so what? Do we need one here?”
“Perhaps,” she said seriously. “One never knows until the time has come, and by then of course it's too late. For all of that, you're looking rather decrepit yourself. You have a paunch, young man, and a touch of gray at your temples. If there are ‘medical-grade fax machines,' as you call them, when was the last time you visited one?”
I can't quite remember, Conrad thought but did not say. “Listen, Bruno. Tamra. Parents of my friend, of my king. We're building a world here. Not your world, and certainly not the world we'd've picked for ourselves, if the choice were ours to make. But the result, like the animals, is a blend of what we want and what works.”
“If it works,” Tamra said coolly.
Bruno looked at the magnifier, at the fax, at the ceiling and the floor and the walls, at the planetscape spreading out beneath the tower. “All right, lad. You children have made some clever adaptations. Wait, my apologies: I shouldn't call you children. Each of you carries more responsibility than most citizens of Sol will ever experience. But yes, I can see there's nothing foolish about your methods, whether I personally agree with them or not.”
You're damn right, Conrad thought. And oh my goodness, is that a touch of condescension in your tone? What he did say was, “Majesties, are you sufficiently reassured? I have work to do, and not enough copies to do it.”
In point of fact, he had no copies at all right now. Probably he should rectify that along with the slippage in his biological age. And make a damned backup, yes. Losing five-odd years of memory would be inconvenient at best. No, worse than that. There were some treasures in there—experiences that might never come again, no matter how long he lived.
Tamra said, “We are adequately reassured. For the time being, at least. Thank you for your time, Architect, and do say hi to Bascal for us when next you see him.”
And with that, quite suddenly, the two holograms vanished.
Conrad sighed, feeling self-conscious, feeling the scrutiny of his elders—his true elders—for the first time in many, many decades. Well, so be it. They did mean well, after all, and perhaps they had a point. About Conrad's appearance, if nothing else.
He glanced at the floor and said, “Elevator,” and obligingly, a disc of material separated from the floor and sank a few centimeters into it. A matching cylinder, so transparent he could barely see it, emerged from the ceiling, stopping just above the level of his head. He stepped under it, onto the recessed disc in the floor, and the cylinder lowered itself around him so that he was sealed in a sort of jar, and then the whole apparatus fell out beneath him.
He really should put a gravity laser in here sometime. He would have already, if the Gravittoir weren't making this whole structure obsolete anyway. Meanwhile, the elevator accelerated downward at half a gee, and his feet felt so tingly-light that it seemed they might slip out from under him at any moment. Not likely, given the impervium-toed traction shoes he normally wore on any construction site, and most other places besides. But it was unsettling nevertheless. Maybe he just needed more practice.