Foundation Fear (13 page)

The icon flashing on Marq's board stopped just as he entered his office. That meant Sybyl
must have answered it in hers.

Marq bristled with suspicion. They had agreed not to talk to each other's re-creations
alone, though each had already given the other the required programming to do it. The Maid
never initiated communication, which meant the caller was Voltaire.

How dare Sybyl boot up without him! He stormed out of the office to let her and Voltaire
both know exactly what he thought of their conspiring behind his back. But in the corridor
he was besieged by cameras, journalists, and reporters. It was fifteen minutes before he
burst into Sybyl's office and, sure enough, caught her closeted cozily with Voltaire.
She'd reduced him from wall-sized to human scale.

“You broke our pact!” Marq shouted. “What are you doing? Trying to use his infatuation
with that schizophrenic to make him throw the debate?”

Sybyl, head buried in her hands, looked up. Her eyes glistened with tears. Marq felt
something in him roll over, but he chose to ignore it. She actually blew Voltaire a kiss
before freezing him.

“I must say, I never thought you'd sink to this.”

“To what?” Sybyl got her face back together and jutted out her jaw. “What's gotten into
your usual jaunty self?”

“What was that all about?”

When he heard, Marq marched back into his office and booted up Voltaire. Before the image
fully formed, color blocks phasing in, he shouted, “The answer is no!”

“I am sure you have an elaborate syllogism for me,” Voltaire said sardonically, unfreezing.

Marq had to admit that the sim handled the sudden lurches and disappearances in its
frame-space with aplomb. “Look, ” he said evenly, “I want the Rose of France wilting in
her armor the day of the debate. It will remind her of her inquisition, exactly. She'll
start babbling nonsense and reveal to the planet just how bankrupt Faith without Reason
is.”

Voltaire stamped his foot. “Merde alors! We disagree! Never mind me, but I insist you
delete the Maid's memory of her final hours so that her reasoning will not be compromised
-- as mine so often was -- by fear of reprisals.”

“Not possible. Boker wanted Faith, he gets all of it.”

“Nonsense! Also, I demand you let me visit her and that odd metis charmant curiosity
Gar�on in the cafe -- at will. I've never known beings like either of them before, and
they are the only society that I now have.”

What about me? Marq thought. Beneath the need to keep this sim in line, he admired the
skinny fellow. This was a powerful, impressive intellect, but more, the personality came
through bristling with power. Voltaire had lived in a rising age. Marq envied that, wanted
to be Voltaire's friend. What about me?

But what he said was, “I don't suppose it's occurred to you that the loser of the debate
will be consigned forever to oblivion.” Voltaire blinked, his face giving nothing away.
“You can't fool me,” Marq said. “I know you want more than just intellectual immortality. ”

“I do?”

“That, you already have. You've been re-created. ”

“I assure you, my definition of living is more than becoming a pattern of numbers.”

That bothered Marq, but he passed it over for the moment. “Remember, I can read your
mem-space. I happen to recall that once, when you were well advanced in years, unforced by
your father and of your own free will, you actually received Easter communion.”

“Ah, but I refused it at the end! All I wanted was to be left to die in peace!”

"Allow me to quote from your famous poem, 'The Lisbon Earthquake.' Part of the ancillary
memory-space:

'Sad is the present if no future state, No blissful retribution mortals wait, If fate's decrees the thinking being doom To lose existence in the silent tomb. '"

Voltaire wavered. “True, I said that -- and with what eloquence! But everyone who enjoys
life longs to extend it.”

“Your only chance at a 'future state' is to win the debate. It's against your own best
interest -- and we all know how fond you've always been of that! -- to delete the Maid's
memory of being burned alive.”

Voltaire scowled. Marq could see running indices on his side screen: Basis State
fluctuations well bounded -- but the envelope was growing, an orange cylinder fattening in
5-space, billowing out under pressure from the quick skittering tangles made; Emotion
Agents interchanging packets at high speed, indicating a cusp point approaching.

Marq stroked a pad. It was tempting to make the sim believe what Marq wanted ... but that
would be tricky. He would have to integrate the idea-cluster into the whole personality.
Self-synthesis worked much better. But it could only be nudged, not forced.

Voltaire's mood darkened, Marq saw, but the face -- stepped down into slowmo -- showed
only a pensive stare. It had taken Marq years to learn that people and sims alike could
mask their emotions quite well.

Try a little humor, maybe. He thumbed back to pace and said, “If you give me a hard time,
fella, I'm going to give her that scurrilous poem you wrote about her.”

'“La Pucelle'? You wouldn't!”

“Wouldn't I! You'll be lucky if she ever speaks to you again.”

A canny smirk. “Monsieur forgets the Maid does not know how to read.”

“I'll see to it she learns. Or better yet, read it to her myself. Illiterate, sure, but
she damn sure isn't deaf!”

Voltaire glared, muttering, “Between Scylla and Charybdis ... ”

What was that mind plotting, sharp as a scalpel? He -- or it -- was integrating into this
digital world faster than any sim Marq had ever known. Once the debate was over, Marq
vowed to strip that mind down and study its cutting edges again, put its processor layouts
under the 'scope. And there was that odd memory from eight thousand years ago, too. Seldon
had been a bit odd about that ...

“I promise to produce la lettre if you will just let me see her once more. In return,
you'll vow never to so much as mention 'La Pucelle' to the Maid.”

“No funny business,” Marq warned. “I'll watch your every move.”

“As you wish.”

Marq returned Voltaire to the cafe, where Joan and Gar�on 213-ADM were waiting, running
their own introspections. He'd barely called them up when he was momentarily distracted by
a knock on his door -- Nim.

“Kaff?”

“Sure. ” Marq glanced back at the cafe sim. Let them visit a while. The more Voltaire
knew, the sharper he'd be later. “Got any of that senso-powder? Been a tough day.”

“Your orders,” said Gar�on 213-ADM with a flourish.

He was having difficulty following the arguments between the Maid and the Monsieur on
whether beings like himself possessed a soul. Monsieur seemed to believe that no one at
all had a soul -- which outraged the Maid. They argued with such heat they did not notice
the disappearance of the odd ghost presence who usually watched them, a “programmer” of
this space.

Now was Gar�on's chance to implore Monsieur to intervene on his behalf and ask his human
masters to give him a name. 213-ADM was just a mechfolk code: 2 identified his function,
mechwaiter; 13 placed him in this Sector, and. ADM stood for Aux Deux Magots. He was sure
he'd have a better chance of attracting the honey-haired short-order cook's attention if
he had a human name.

“Monsieur, Madame. Your orders, please.”

“What good is ordering?” Monsieur snapped. Patience, Gar�on observed, was not improved by
learning. “We cannot taste a thing!”

Gar�on gestured sympathetically with two of his four hands. He had no experience of human
senses except sight, sound, and rudimentary touch, those necessary to perform his job. He
would have given anything to taste, to feel; humans seemed to derive such pleasure from it.

The Maid perused the menu and, changing the subject, said, “I'll have my usual. A crust of
bread -- I'll try a sourdough baguette crust for a change -- ”

“A sourdough baguette!” Monsieur echoed.

“ -- and, to dip it in, a bit of champagne.”

Monsieur shook his hand as if to cool it off. “I commend you, Gar�on, for doing such a
fine job of teaching the Maid to read the menu.”

“Madame La Scientiste permitted it, ” Gar�on said; he did not want trouble with his human
masters, who could pull the plug on him at any time.

Monsieur waved a dismissive hand. “She's much too detail-obsessed. She'd never survive on
her own in Paris, much less at any royal court. Marq, however, will go far. Lack of
scruples is fortune's favorite grease. I certainly did not proceed from penury to being
one of the wealthiest citizens in France by confusing ideals with scruples.”

“Has Monsieur decided on his order?” Gar�on asked.

“Yes. You're to instruct the Maid in more advanced texts so that she can read my poem, 'On
the Newtonian Philosophy, ' along with all my Lettres Philosophiques. Her reasoning is to
become as equal as possible with my own. Not that anyone's reason is likely to become so,”
he added with his cocky smile.

“Your modesty is equaled only by your wit,” said the Maid, drawing from Monsieur a smirky
laugh.

Gar�on sadly shook his head. “I'm afraid that won't be possible. I am unable to instruct
anyone except in simple phrases. My literacy permits comprehension of nothing beyond
menus. I'm honored by Monsieur's desire to advance my station. But even when opportunity
knocks, I and my kind, consigned forever to the lowest levels of society, cannot answer
the door.”

“The lower classes ought to keep their place,” Voltaire assured him. “But I'll make an
exception in your case. You seem ambitious. Are you?”

Gar�on glanced at the honey-haired cook. “Ambition is unsuited to one of my rank.”

“What would you be, then? If you could be anything you like?”

Gar�on happened to know that the cook spent her three days a week off -- Gar�on himself
worked seven days a week -- in the corridors of the Louvre. “A mechguide at the Louvre,”
he said. “One smart enough, and with sufficient leisure, to court a woman who barely knows
I exist.”

Monsieur said grandly, “I'll find a way to -- how do they say it?”

“Download him,” the Maid volunteered.

“Mon dieu!” Monsieur exclaimed. “Already she can read as well as you. But I will not have
her wit exceed mine! That would be going too damned far, in-deed!”

Marq puffed the packet into his nose and waited for the rush.

“That bad?” Nim signaled the Splashes & Sniffs mechmaid for another.

“Voltaire, ” Marq grumbled. He reached the top of the stim lift, his mind getting sharper
and somehow at the same time lazier. He had never quite worked out how that could be.
“He's supposed to be my creature, but half the time it's like I'm his.”

“He's a bunch of numbers.”

“Sure, but ... Once I eavesdropped on his subconscious sentence-forming Agent, and he was
framing a bunch of stuff about 'will is soul' -- self-image maintenance stuff, I think.”

“Philosophy, could be.”

“Will he's got, for sure. So I've created a being with a soul?”

“Category error, ” Nim said. “You're abstracting 'soul' out of Agents. That's like trying
to go from atoms to cows in one jump.”

“That's the kind of leap this sim makes.”

“You want to understand a cow, you don't look for cow-atoms.”

“Right, you go for the 'emergent property.' Standard theory.”

“This sim is predictable, buddy. Remember that. You tailor him until he's got no nonlinear
elements you can't contain.”

Marq nodded. “He's ... different. So powerful.”

“He got simmed for a reason, way back in the Dark Ages somewhere. Did you expect a
doormat? One who wouldn't give you a hard time? You represent authority -- which he
battled all his life.”

Marq ran fingers through his wavy hair. “Sure, if I find a nonlinear constellation I can't
abstract out -- ”

“ -- call it a will or a soul and delete it. ” Nim slapped the table hard, making a woman
nearby give them a startled glance.

Marq gave him a mocking, skeptical look. “The system isn't completely predictable.”

“So you launch a pattern-sniffer. Back-trace on it. Stitch in sub-Agents, handcuff any
personas you can't fix. Hey, you invented those cognitive constraint algorithms. You're
the best.”

Marq nodded. And what if it's like cutting into a brain in search of consciousness? He
took a deep breath and exhaled toward the domed ceiling, where a mindless entertainment
played, presumably for those conked off on stiff. “Anyway, it's not just him. ” Marq met
Nim's eyes. “I rigged Sybyl's office. I eavesdrop on her meetings with Boker.”

Nim slapped him on the shoulder. “Good for you!”

Marq laughed. A buddy sticks with you, even if you're having a stupid-storm. “That isn't
all.”

Nim leaned forward, boyishly curious.

“I think I went too far,” Marq said.

“You got caught!”

“No, no. You know how Sybyl is. She doesn't suspect intrigue from enemies, much less
friends.”

“Maneuvering isn't her strong suit.”

“I'm not sure it's mine, either, ” Marq said.

“Ummm. ” Nim gave him a shrewd look, eyes half-closed. “So ... what else did you do?”

Marq sighed. “I updated Voltaire. Gave him cross-learning programs to flesh out his deep
conflicts, help him reconcile them.”

Nim's eyes widened. “Risky.”

“I wanted to see what a mind like that could do. When will I get another chance?”

“How do you feel about it, though?”

Marq chuffed Nim on the shoulder to hide his embarrassment.

“Kinda rotten. Sybyl and I both agreed not to do it.”

“Faith doesn't need to be too smart.”

“I thought of that excuse, too.”

“What's that guy Seldon think of all this?”

“We ... haven't told him.”

“Ah.”

“He wants it that way! Keeps his hands clean.”

Nim nodded. “Look buddy, deed's done. How did the sim take it?”

“Jolted him. Big oscillations on the neural nets.”

“Okay now, though?”

“Seems so. I think he's reintegrated.”

“Does your client know?”

“Yes. The Skeptics are all for it. I foresee no problem there.”

“You're doing real research on this one, ” Nim said. “Good for the field. Important.”

“So how come I feel like having maybe a dozen or so sniffs?” He jerked a thumb at the
moron movie on the ceiling. “So that I'll loll back and think that's terrif stuff?”