‘No, it’s the same worry I’ve had since you went into metabolic icebox. I still wish I knew why the simulation didn’t end when you were virtually dead.’
‘Virtually, yeah. You said it.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, maybe my vital signs looked okay in the real world.’
‘We both know that shouldn’t be possible.’
Gates thought for a second. ‘Prevezer’s geodesic dome is supposed to obtain all the information it needs about what we’re doing by intercepting the electrical signals from our brains. Instead of ending up in our bodies, those signals get transmitted to the computer and are decoded by Prev. That way, he can determine exactly how our bodies would have reacted if they’d been in this Simworld alongside our brains.’
‘That’s how it works, all right,’ agreed Dallas. ‘It means the simulated body can react differently from the real one, such as being able to survive experiences that would kill a real human body. Such as radiation or extreme cold.’
‘Then how about this? Maybe something’s gone wrong with the geodesic domes. Perhaps — don’t ask me why — the signals are going only one way. He’s able to keep the simulation going, but he can no longer intercept the signals being sent from our brains. Look, we’ve been in the Simworld for how long?’
Dallas glanced at his life-support computer. ‘Three hours and forty-five minutes.’
Gates shrugged. ‘He probably reckons we’re nowhere near ready to come out yet. My guess is that he’s just improvising.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Dallas.
‘What else could it be?’
Dallas shook his head. Gates’s explanation almost sounded convincing. There was just one problem with it and that was Prevezer himself. The character of the man was precise, systematic, painstaking, and mechanical, as befitted someone whose whole life was dedicated to mathematical principles and algorithmic procedures. The very idea of improvisation would have been anathema to a man like Prevezer. Dallas considered he would have been no more capable of doing something on the spur of the moment than he would have allowed something impossible — something contrary to the laws of physics — to exist inside one of his realistic and much vaunted Simworlds. Dallas said, ‘I don’t know. Nothing probably. We’d better move.’
VII
Simworld: Elapsed Time
3 Hours 57 Minutes
Because only the R&R area in the main facility was pressurized, they loaded the electric perimeter car with spare life-support packs. Dallas handed Gates a different EVA helmet, to take advantage of an ‘invisible’ chip that was concealed inside its crown: This relayed an encrypted security signal to the proximity detectors controlling doors inside the main facility. He had already fitted each helmet with a special infrared visor while Gates had been unconscious. He also gave him one of the electron-beam welding guns he had brought from the Mariner, the same kind of welding gun that Simou would need to use to carry out his simulated repair of the hole in the nose of the RLV.
‘Reckon I know how to use one of those,’ remarked Gates. ‘I’ve cut and crushed enough Moon rock in my time. UHT, or ultra-high-temperature, beam of electrons will cut a hole in just about anything. Makes it a pretty formidable weapon, too.’ He handled the gun as carefully as if it had been a small pistolshaped bomb. ‘I saw lots of guys at Artemis Seven use one of these to settle a score. In or out of an atmosphere, five hundred kilovolts is as near to a bloody ray-gun as you can get these days. So you might just explain why we’re unpacking these UHTs now, before we’ve even seen the containment room.’
‘I’m afraid I just don’t buy your theory about Prev. And if something has gone wrong in the real world, then it would make sense to be ready for something going wrong in this one.’
‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Gates. ‘It wasn’t much of a theory anyway. You sure you know how to use one of these?’
‘Only on paper,’ admitted Dallas.
‘Paper’s what it’ll make metal look like when it burns a hole in it. When we used these guns on Artemis you had to have another guy standing alongside you, just to help you watch out where the hell you were pointing the thing. Not only that but he had a safety switch to cut the power in an emergency. For all that, they’re surprisingly easy to use. You just point and squeeze the handle. Just try not to shoot it in here. The atmosphere will make it hard to be accurate.’
‘I think I can remember that,’ said Dallas.
Gates detached the short steel barrel from the UHT gun.
‘One more thing. Whatever you do, don’t take this off. A beam of hot electrons tends to generate X rays, even in a vacuum. This sleeve’ll shield you from those.’ He shrugged as he remembered the greater hazard of gamma rays in the reactor containment room. ‘Not that a few lousy X rays are going to concern a man like you.’ Gates sat down in the passenger seat of the electric car. ‘In the circumstances, you knowing how to use the gun on paper ’n’ all, I’d better ride shotgun. You drive.’
Dallas sat down and took hold of the steering wheel, an action that automatically started up the engine. He glanced at Gates. In his giant white glove, the UHT gun looked deceptively toylike. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Dallas depressed the accelerator pedal, and they started their counterclockwise journey around the first radial arc. Silently the little car gathered speed until they were moving at almost twelve miles per hour.
‘How big is this facility?’ asked Gates.
‘About three thousand square meters.’
‘Place gives me the creeps.’
‘Under the circumstances, I’m forced to agree with you.’
A short distance on, they drew to a halt in front of the airlock door, which, finding the encrypted chips in the two men’s helmets, lit up in expectation of their imminent egress. As they drove inside, some interior lights came on, prompting each man to press the buttons on his life-support system computer that would pressurize his EVA suit.
Gates felt a reassuring breath of air on his face and some pressure in his ears as the suits expanded to accommodate around four pounds per square inch. Even before the airlock had been pumped out and the exit door was open he had the short silver barrel of the UHT gun leveled at the brightly lit but airless corridor ahead of them. Each man heard the other breathe a sigh of relief as they saw that the corridor was empty.
‘I don’t know what I was expecting to see,’ admitted Gates.
‘That’s the problem. If something has gone wrong, it might be anything. One simulacrum of reality transfigured by another. Whatever happens now, we are ourselves and our circumstances and nothing else. How we intereact with that is the only reality that matters right now, even if it has been ruptured by something we don’t know about.’
Dallas depressed the accelerator pedal again and moved them into the second radial arc. It looked exactly like the radial arc they had left on the other side of the airlock door.
‘But maybe this is a good thing,’ he said. ‘When we rob the real blood bank it’ll mean we’re prepared for the unexpected. The trouble with a completely schematic plan like this one is that sometimes there’s not enough margin for error. And I’m afraid you need to make errors in order to discover just where those margins exist.’
Dallas thought this was nonsense, but he kept on talking in an effort to try and take his mind off the sound in his headset of Gates’s loud and rhythmic breathing. It was like something mechanical and served only to remind Dallas of how provisional and uncertain life really was. Hearing Gates breathe — almost as if he was inside Dallas’s own head — it was easy to imagine that at any second the sound might end forever.