"I can find out for myself, if I have to." He took a step toward Repetto, more a gesture of impatience than a threat; a cloud of tiny blue gnat-like creatures flew up from the grass, chirping loudly.
Repetto glanced at Zemansky; something electric passed between them. Maria was confused -- they were, unmistakably, lovers; she'd never noticed before. But perhaps the signals had passed through other channels, before, hidden from her. Only now --
Repetto said, "Their response is that the TVC rules are false -- because the system those rules describe would endure forever. They're rejecting everything we've told them, because it leads to what they think is an absurdity."
Durham scowled. "You're talking absurdities. They've had transfinite mathematics for thousands of years."
"As a formality, a tool -- an intermediate step in certain calculations. None of their models lead to infinite results. Most teams would never go so far as to try to communicate a model which did; that's why this response is one we've rarely seen before."
Durham was silent for a while, then he said firmly, "We need time to decide how to handle this. We'll go back, study the history of the infinite in Lambertian culture, find a way around the problem, then return."
Maria was distracted by something bright pulsing at the edge of her vision. She turned her head -- but whatever it was seemed to fly around her as fast as she tracked it. Then she realized it was the window on Elysium; she'd all but banished it from her attention, filling it in like a blind spot. She tried to focus on it, but had difficulty making sense of the image. She centered and enlarged it.
The golden towers of Permutation City were flowing past the apartment window. She cried out in astonishment, and put her hands up, trying to gesture to the others. The buildings weren't simply moving away; they were softening, melting, deforming. She fell to her knees, torn between a desire to return to her true body, to protect it -- and dread at what might happen if she did. She dug one hand into the Lambertian soil; it felt real, solid, trustworthy.
Durham grabbed her shoulder. "We're going back. Stay calm. It's only a view -- we're not part of the City."
She nodded and steeled herself, fighting every visceral instinct about the source of the danger, and the direction in which she should flee. The cloned apartment looked as solid as ever . . . and in any case, its demise could not, in itself, harm her. The body she had to defend was invisible: the model running at the far end of Durham's territory. She would be no safer pretending to be on Planet Lambert than she would pretending to be in the cloned apartment.
She returned.
The four of them stood by the window, speechless, as the City rapidly and silently . . . imploded. Buildings rushed by, abandoning their edges and details, converging on a central point. The outskirts followed, the fields and parks flowing in toward the golden sphere which was all that remained of the thousand towers. Rainforest passed in a viridian blur. Then the scene turned to blackness as the foothills crowded in, burying their viewpoint in a wall of rock.
Maria turned to Durham. "The people who were in there . . . ?"
"They'll all have left. Shocked but unharmed. Nobody was in there -- in the software -- any more than we were." He was shaken, but he seemed convinced.
"And what about the founders with adjoining territory?"
"I'll warn them. Everyone can come here, everyone can shift. We'll all be safe, here. The TVC grid is constantly growing; we can keep moving away, while we plan the next step."
Zemansky said firmly, "The TVC grid is decaying. The only way to be safe is to start again. Pack everything into a new Garden-of-Eden configuration, and launch Elysium again."
Repetto said, "If that's possible. If the infinite is still possible." Born into a universe without limits, without death, he seemed transfixed by the Lambertians' verdict.
A red glow appeared in the distance; it looked like a giant sphere of luminous rubble. As Maria watched, it brightened, then broke apart into a pattern of lights, linked by fine silver threads. A neon labyrinth. A fairground at night, from the air. The colors were wrong, but the shape was unmistakable: it was a software map of the City. The only thing missing was the highway, the data link to the hub.
Before Maria could say a word, the pattern continued to rearrange itself. Dazzling pinpricks of light appeared within a seemingly random subset of the processes, then moved together, clustering into a tightly linked core. Around them, a dimmer shell formed by the remaining software settled into a symmetrical configuration. The system looked closed, self-contained.
They watched it recede, in silence.
31
Peer turned and looked behind him. Kate had stopped dead in the middle of the walkway. All the energy seemed to drain out of her; she put her face in her hands, then sank to her knees.
She said flatly, "They've gone, haven't they? They must have discovered us . . . and now this is their punishment. They've left the City running . . . but they've deserted it."
"We don't know that."
She shook her head impatiently. "They will have made another version -- purged of contamination -- for their own use. And we'll never see them again." A trio of smartly dressed puppets approached, and walked straight through her, smiling and talking among themselves.
Peer walked over to her and sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. He'd already sent software probes hunting for any trace of the Elysians, without success -- but Kate had insisted on scouring a reconstruction of the City, on foot, as if their own eyes might magically reveal some sign of habitation that the software had missed.
He said gently, "There are a thousand other explanations. Someone might have . . . I don't know . . . created a new environment so astonishing that they've all gone off to explore it. Fashions sweep Elysium like plagues -- but this is their meeting place, their center of government, their one piece of solid ground. They'll be back."
Kate uncovered her face and gave him a pitying look. "What kind of fashion would tempt every Elysian out of the City, in a matter of seconds? And where did they hear about this great work of art which they had to rush off and experience? I monitor all the public networks; there was nothing special leading up to the exodus. But if they'd discovered us -- if they knew we were listening in -- then they wouldn't have used the public channels to announce the fact, would they?"
Peer couldn't see why not; if the Elysians had found them, they'd also know that he and Kate were powerless to influence the City -- let alone its inhabitants -- in any way. There was no reason to arrange a secret evacuation. He found it hard enough to believe that anyone would want to punish two harmless stowaways -- but it was harder still to accept that they'd been "exiled" without being dragged through an elaborate ritual of justice -- or at the very least, publicly lambasted for their crime, before being formally sentenced. The Elysians never missed the opportunity for a bit of theater; swift, silent retribution just didn't ring true.
He said, "If the data link to the hub was broken, unintentionally --"
Kate was scornful. "It would have been fixed by now."
"Perhaps. That depends on the nature of the problem." He hesitated. "Those four weeks I was missing . . . we still don't know if I was cut off from you by a fault in the software at our level -- or whether the problem was somewhere deeper. If there are faults appearing in the City itself, one of them might have severed the links to the rest of Elysium. And it might take some time for the problem to be pinned down; anything that's taken seven thousand years to reveal itself could turn out to be elusive."