"We mustn't judge them by anthropomorphic standards; human technological landmarks simply aren't relevant. The Lambertians have deduced most of Autoverse chemistry and physics by observations of their natural world, supplemented by a very small number of controlled experiments. They've generated concepts equivalent to temperature and pressure, energy and entropy -- without fire, metallurgy or the wheel . . . let alone the steam engine. They've calculated the melting and boiling points of most of the elements -- without ever purifying them. Their lack of technology only makes their intellectual achievements all the more astounding. It's as if the ancient Greeks had written about the boiling point of nitrogen, or the Egyptians had predicted the chemical properties of chlorine."

Peer smiled to himself cynically; the founders always loved to hear Earth rate a mention -- and all the better if the references were to times long before they were born.

Repetto paused; he grew perceptibly taller and his youthful features became subtly more dignified, more mature. Most Elysians would see this as no more manipulative than a change in posture or tone of voice. He said solemnly, "Most of you will be aware of the resolution of the Town Meeting of January 5, 3052, forbidding contact with the Lambertians until they'd constructed their own computers and performed simulations -- experiments in artificial life -- as sophisticated as the Autoverse itself. That was judged to be the safest possible benchmark . . . but I believe it has turned out to be misconceived, and completely inappropriate.

"The Lambertians are looking for answers to questions about their origins. We know there are no answers to be discovered inside the Autoverse itself -- but I believe the Lambertians are intellectually equipped to comprehend the larger truth. We have a responsibility to make that truth known to them. I propose that this meeting overturns the resolution of 3052, and authorizes a team of Autoverse scholars to enter Planet Lambert and -- in a culturally sensitive manner -- inform the Lambertians of their history and context."

The buzz of discussion grew louder. Peer felt a vestigial twinge of interest, in spite of himself. In a universe without death or scarcity, politics took strange forms. Any one of the founders who disagreed with the way Planet Lambert was managed would be perfectly free to copy the whole Autoverse into their own territory, and to do as they wished with their own private version. In inverse proportion to the ease of such a move, any faction would have a rare chance here to demonstrate their "influence" and increase their "prestige" by persuading the meeting to retain the ban on contact with the Lambertians -- without provoking their opponents into cloning the Autoverse and pushing ahead regardless. Many of the first generation still chose to value these things, for their own sake.

Elaine Sanderson rose to her feet, resplendent in a light blue suit and a body which together proclaimed: 7972 to 2045 a.d., and proud of it (even if she only wore them on official occasions). Peer let himself time-trip for a second: in his late teens, David Hawthorne had seen the flesh-and-blood Sanderson on television, being sworn in as Attorney General of the United States of America -- a nation whose constituent particles at the time of that oath might well overlap with some portion of Elysium at this very instant.

Sanderson said, "Thank you, Mr. Repetto, for giving us your perspective on this important matter. It's unfortunate that so few of us take the time to keep ourselves up to date with the progress of the Lambertians. Although they have come all the way from single-celled lifeforms to their present, highly sophisticated state without our explicit intervention, ultimately they are in our care at every moment, and we all have a duty to treat that responsibility with the utmost seriousness.

"I can still recall some of the earliest plans we made for dealing with the Autoverse: to hide the details of life on Planet Lambert from ourselves, deliberately; to watch and wait, as if from afar, until the inhabitants sent probes to their system's other worlds; to arrive as 'explorers' in 'space ships,' struggling to learn the language and customs of these 'aliens' -- perhaps going so far as to extend the Autoverse to include an invisibly distant star, with a 'home world' from which we might travel. Slavish imitations of the hypothetical interstellar missions we'd left behind. Bizarre charades.

"Mercifully, we abandoned those childish ideas long ago. There will be no sham 'mission of discovery' -- and no lying to the Lambertians, or to ourselves.

"There is one quality of those early, laughable schemes which should still be kept in mind, though: we always intended to meet the Lambertians as equals. Visitors from a distant world who would stretch their vision of the universe -- but not subvert it, not swallow it whole. We would approach them as siblings, arguing our viewpoint -- not Gods, revealing divine truth.

"I ask the meeting to consider whether these two equally laudable aims, of honesty and humility, could not be reconciled. If the Lambertians are on the verge of a crisis in understanding their origins, what patronizing instinct compels us to rush in and provide them with an instant solution? Mr. Repetto tells us how they have already inferred the properties of the chemical elements -- elements which remain mysterious and invisible, manifesting themselves only in the elaborate phenomena of the natural world. Clearly, the Lambertians have a gift for uncovering hidden patterns, hidden explanations. How many more centuries can it be, then, before they guess the truth about their own cosmology?

"I propose that we delay contact until the hypothesis of our existence has arisen naturally amongst the Lambertians, and has been thoroughly explored. Until they have decided for themselves exactly what we might mean to them. Until they have debated, as we are debating right now, how best they might deal with us.

"If aliens had visited Earth the moment humans first looked up at the sky and suffered some crisis of understanding, they would have been hailed as Gods. If they'd arrived in the early twenty-first century -- when humans had been predicting their existence and pondering the logistics of contact, for decades -- they would have been accepted as equals; more experienced, more skilled, more knowledgeable, but ultimately nothing but an expected part of a well-behaved, well-understood universe.

"I believe that we should wait for the equivalent moment in Lambertian history: when the Lambertians are impatient for proof of our existence -- when our continued absence becomes far harder for them to explain than our arrival would be. Once they begin to suspect that we're eavesdropping on every conversation they hold about us, it would be dishonest to remain concealed. Until then, we owe them the opportunity to find as many answers as they can, without us."

Sanderson resumed her seat. Portions of the audience applauded demurely. Peer lazily mapped the response and correlated it with appearance; she seemed to have been a big hit with the third-generation mainstream -- but they had a reputation for gleefully faking everything.

Kate said, "Don't you wish you could join the discussion?" Half sarcasm, half self-pity.

Peer said cheerfully, "No -- but if you have strong views on the matter yourself, I suggest you copy the whole Autoverse, and make contact with the Lambertians personally -- or leave them in unspoilt ignorance. Whichever you prefer."

"You know I don't have room to do that."

"And you know that makes no difference. There's a copy of the original biosphere seed, the entire compressed description, in the central library. You could copy that, and freeze yourself until you finally have the room to unfold it. The whole thing's deterministic -- every Lambertian would flutter its little wings for you in exactly the same way as it did for the Elysians. Right up to the moment of contact."