Schrödinger had developed equations that described how probability waves shifted and evolved, in the presence of other particles and forces. Parz closed his eyes. "I imagine space filled with probability, like blue ripples. If I had vision good enough, maybe I could see the waves in all their richness. But I can’t. It’s like looking through half-closed eyes; and all I can make out is the shadowy places where the peaks and troughs occur. And I say to myself — there, that’s where the electron is. But it isn’t; it’s just a crest of the wave… Where the wave function has its peaks is where I’m most likely to find my electron — but it’s not the only possibility."

"But the wave functions collapse on observation, of course," the Qax prompted.

"Yes." The link between quantum reality and the world of the senses — human senses — came when measurements were made. "I run my experiment and determine that the electron is, in fact, at this instant" — he stabbed the tabletop with a fingertip—"right there. Then the position wave function has collapsed — the probabilities have all gone to zero, except in the little region of space within which I’ve pinned down the electron. Of course, as soon as the measurement is over the wave functions start evolving again, spreading out around the electron’s recorded position." Parz frowned. "So by observing, I’ve actually changed the fundamental properties of the electron. It’s not possible to separate the observer from the observed… and you could argue that by observing I’ve actually evoked the existence of the electron itself.

"And there lies the mystery. The paradox. Schrödinger imagined a cat locked in a box with a single unstable nucleus. In a given period there is a fifty-fifty chance that the nucleus will decay. If it does, the cat will be killed by a robot mechanism. If it doesn’t, the cat is allowed to live.

"Now. Leave the box aside for its specified period, without looking inside. Tell me: is the cat alive or dead?"

The Qax said without hesitating, "There is no paradox. One can only give an answer in terms of probabilities, until the box is opened."

"Correct. Until the box is opened, the wave function of the box-cat system is not collapsed. The cat is neither alive nor dead; there is equal probability of either state.

"But Wigner took Schrödinger’s paradox further. Suppose the box was opened by a friend of Wigner’s, who saw whether the cat was alive or dead. The box, cat, and friend would now form a larger quantum system with a more complex wave function in which the state of the cat — and the friend — remained indefinite until observed by Wigner or someone else.

"Physicists of the time called this the paradox of Wigner’s Friend," Jasoft said. "It leads to an infinite regress, sometimes called a von Neumann catastrophe. The box-cat-friend system remains indefinite until observed, say by me. But then a new system is set up — box-cat-friend-me — which itself remains indefinite until observed by a third person, and so on."

The Qax pondered for a while. "So we have, in human eyes, the central paradox of existence, of quantum physics, as set out by this Wigner and his chatter of cats and friends."

"Yes." Jasoft consulted his slate. "Perhaps external reality is actually created by the act of observation. Without consciousness, Schrödinger wondered, Would the world have remained a play before empty benches, not existing for anybody, thus quite properly not existing?’ "

"Well, Jasoft. And what does this tell us about the mind-set of those who style themselves the Friends of Wigner?"

Parz shrugged. "I’m sorry, Governor. I’ve no hypothesis."

There was a lengthy silence then; Parz peered through the port of the flitter at the unblinking eye of the Spline.

Suddenly there was motion at the edge of Parz’s vision. He shifted in his seat to see better.

The Spline freighter was changing. A slit perhaps a hundred yards long had opened up in that toughened epidermis, an orifice that widened to reveal a red-black tunnel, inviting in an oddly obscene fashion.

"I need your advice and assistance, Ambassador," the Governor said. "You’ll be brought into the freighter."

Anticipation, eagerness, surged through Parz.

The flitter nudged forward. Parz strained against his seat restraints, willing the little vessel forward into the welcoming orifice of the Spline.

The flitter passed through miles, it seemed, of unlit, fleshy passages; vessels bulging with some blood-analogue pulsed, red, along the walls. Tiny, fleshy robots — antibody drones, the Governor called them — swirled around the flitter as it traveled. Parz felt claustrophobic, as if those bloodred walls might constrict around him; somehow he had expected this aspect of the Spline to be sanitized away by tiling and bright lights. Surely if this vessel were operated by humans such modifications would be made; no human could stand for long this absurd sensation of being swallowed, of passing along a huge digestive tract.

At last the flitter emerged from a wrinkled interface into a larger chamber — the belly of the Spline, Parz instantly labeled it. Light globes hovered throughout the interior, revealing the chamber to be perhaps a quarter mile wide; distant, pinkish walls were laced with veins.

Emerging from the bloody tunnel into this strawberry-pink space was, Parz thought, exactly like being born.

At the center of the chamber was a globe of some brownish fluid, itself a hundred yards wide. Inside the globe, rendered indistinct by the fluid, Parz could make out a cluster of machines; struts of metal emerged from the machine cluster and were fixed to the Spline’s stomach wall, so anchoring the globe. A meniscus of brownish scum surrounded the globe. The fluid seemed to be slowly boiling, so that the meniscus was divided into thousands, or millions, of hexagonal convection cells perhaps a handsbreadth across; Parz, entranced, was reminded of a pan of simmering soup.

At length he called: "Governor?"

"I am here."

The voice from the flitter’s translator box, of course, gave no clue to the location of the Governor; Parz found himself scanning the stomach chamber dimly. "Where are you? Are you somewhere in that sphere of fluid?"

The Qax laughed. "Where am I indeed? Which of us can ask that question with confidence? Yes, Ambassador; but I am not in the fluid, nor am I of the fluid itself."

"I don’t understand."

"Turbulence, Parz. Can you see the convection cells? There am I, if ‘I’ am anywhere. Do you understand now?"

Jasoft, stunned, stared upward.

The home planet of the Qax was a swamp.

A sea, much like the primeval ocean of Earth, covered the world from pole to pole. Submerged volcano mouths glowed like coals. The sea boiled: everywhere there was turbulence, convection cells like the ones Parz saw in the globe at the heart of the Spline.

"Parz, turbulence is an example of the universal self-organization of matter and energy," the Qax said. "In the ocean of my world the energy generated by the temperature difference between the vulcanism and the atmosphere is siphoned off, organized by the actions of turbulence into billions of convection cells.

"All known life is cellular in nature," the Governor went on. "We have no direct evidence, but we speculate that this must apply even to the Xeelee themselves. But there seems to be no rule about the form such cells can take."

Parz scratched his head and found himself laughing, but it was a laughter of wonder, like a child’s. "You’re telling me that those convection cells are the basis of your being?"

"To travel into space I have been forced to bring a section of the mother ocean with me, in this Spline craft; a small black hole at the center of the Spline sets up a gravity field to maintain the integrity of the globe, and heaters embedded at the core of the fluid simulate the vulcanism of the home sea."