"What if you run down some day?" said Beanpole, sounding stricken.
"Uh," Dairine said. "Guys, I will, eventually. I'm part of this universe, after all."
"We won't let you run down," said Monitor, and patted her arm timidly.
"We have to do something about this," Logo said.
That was when the conversation began to get complex. More and more of the mobiles drifted into it, until Dairine was surrounded by a crowd of the robots she had built the most dataprocessing ability into.
Phrases like quasi-static transitions and deformation coordinates and the zeroth law and diathermic equilibrium flew around until Dairine, for all her reading, was completely lost. She knew generally that they were talking about the laws of thermodynamics, but unless she was much mistaken, they were talking about them not so much as equations but as programs. As if they were something that could be rewritten…
But they can be, she thought suddenly, with astonishment. The computer's "Manual" functions dealt with many natural laws that way. Wizards knew the whole of the nature and content of a physical law. Able to name one completely, a wizard can control it, restructuring it slightly and tempo rarily. But the restructuring that the mobiles were discussing wasn't temp rary. .
"Listen, guys," she said, and silence fell abruptly as they turned to he "You can't do this."
"Of course we can," Logo said.
"I mean, you shouldn't."
"Why?"
That stopped her for a second. It seemed so obvious. Stop entropy, and the flow of time stopped. And where was life then? But it occurred to Dairine that in everything she'd read in the manual, either in Nita's version of it or on the computer, it never said anywhere that you should or shouldn't do something. It might make recommendations, or state dangers. . but never more than that. Choice was always up to the wizard. In fact, there had been one line that had said, "Wizardry is choice. All else is mere mechanics.
. ."
"Because," she said, "you'll sabotage yourselves. You need entropy to live. Without it, time can't pass.
You'll be frozen, unable to think. And besides, you wouldn't want to live forever. . not even if you could really live without entropy. You'd get bored. . "
But it sounded so lame, even as she said it. Why shouldn't one live forever? And the manual itself made it plain that until the Lone Power had invented death, the other Powers had been planning a universe that ran on some other principle of energy management. . something indescribable. But the Lone One's plans messed Theirs up, and ruined Their creation, and the Powers had cast it out. What would be wrong with starting from scratch?. .
Dairine shook her head. What's the matter with me? What would that do to the universe we have now?
Crazy! "And there are other sentient beings," she said. "A lot of them. Take away entropy and you freeze them in place forever. They wouldn't be able to age, or live…"
"But they're just slowlife," Logo said. "They're hardly even life at all!"
"I'm slowlife!" Dairine said, annoyed.
"Yes, well, you made us," said Beanpole, and patted her again. "We wouldn't let anything bad happen to you."
"We can put your consciousness in an envelope like ours," said Logo. "And then you won't be slowlife anymore."
Dairine sat astonished.
"What do the equations indicate as the estimated life of this universe at present?" said Monitor.
"Two point six times ten to the sixtieth milliseconds."
"Well," Logo said, "using an isothermal reversible transition, and releasing entropy-freeze for a thousand milliseconds every virtual ten-to-the-twelfth milliseconds or so, we could extend that to nearly a hundred thousand times its length. . until we find some way to do without entropy altogether. . "
They're talking about shutting the universe down for a thousand years at a time and letting it have a second's growth every now and then in between! "Listen," Dairine said, "has it occurred to you that maybe I don't want to be in an envelope? I like being the way I am!"
Now it was their turn to look at her astonished.
"And so do all the other kinds of slowlife!" she said. "That's the real reason you can't do it. They have a right to live their own way, just as you do!"
"We are living our own way," said Logo.
"Not if you interfere with all the rest of the life in the universe, you're not! That's not the way I built you."
Dairine grasped at a straw. "You all had that Oath first, just the same as I did. To preserve life. .' "
"The one who took that Oath for us," said Logo, "did not understand it: and we weren't separately conscious then. It wasn't our choice. It isn't binding on us."
Dairine went cold.
"Yes, it is," Gigo said unexpectedly, from beside her. "That consciousness is still part of us. / hold by it."
"That's my boy," Dairine said under her breath.
"Why should we not interfere?" Logo said. "You interfered with us."
There was a rustle of agreement among some of the mobiles. "Not the same way," Dairine said. . and again it sounded lame. Usually Dairine got her way in an argument by fast talk and getting people emotionally mixed up… but that was not going to work with this lot, especially since they knew her from the inside out. "I found the life in you, and let it out."
"So we will for the other fastlife," said Logo. "The 'dumb machines' that your data showed us. We will set them free of the slowlife that enslaves them. We will even set the slowlife free eventually, since it would please you. Meantime, we will 'preserve' the slowlife, as you say. We will hold it all in stasis until we find a way to free them from entropy. . and let them out when the universe is ready."
When we are ready, Dairine knew what Logo meant, and she had a distressing feeling that would be never.
"It's all for your people's own sake," said Logo.
"It's not," said Gigo. "Dairine says not, and I say not. Her kind of life is life too. We should listen to the one who freed us, who knows the magic and has been here longest, is wisest of any of us! We should do what she says!"
A soft current of agreement went through others of the many who stood around. By now, every mobile made since she had come here was gathered there, and they all looked at Dairine and Gigo and Logo, and waited.
"This will be an interesting argument," Logo said softly.
Dairine broke out in a sudden cold sweat that had nothing to do with the temperature. "Listen," she said to the Apple, "how long have I been on this planet now?"
"Thirty-six hours," it said.
She turned slowly to look at Logo. It said nothing. It did not need to: no words could have heightened Dairine's terror. She had been expecting frightful power, a form dark and awful, thunder and black lightning. Here, blind, small, seemingly harmless, the mobile stood calmly under her gaze. And Dairine shook, realizing that her spell had worked. She had had a day and a half to find a weapon-time that was now all gone. She had found the weapon-but she had given it a mind of its own, and made it, or them, useless for her defense. She now had a chance to do something important, something that mattered-mattered more than anything-and had no idea how.
"A very interesting argument," said the Lone Power, through Logo's soft voice. "And depending on whether you win it or not, you will either die of it, or be worse than dead. Most amusing."
Dairine was frozen, her heart thundering. But she made herself relax, and sit up straight; rested her elbows casually on her knees, and looked down her nose at the small rounded shape from which the starlight glinted. "Yeah," she said, "well, you're a barrel of laughs, too, so we're even. If we're going to decide the fate of the known universe, let's get started. I haven't got all day."
Save and Exit
Far out in the darkness, a voice spoke: