Foundation Fear (15 page)

Voltaire cackled with satisfaction. The cafe appeared, popping into luminous reality,
independent of his human masters' consent or knowledge.

Subroutine accomplished, a small voice assured him. He made the cafe disappear and
reappear three times more, to be sure that he had mastered the technique.

What fools these rulers were, to think that they could make the Great Voltaire a creature
of their will! But now came the real test, the intricate procedure that would bring forth
the Maid in all her womanly unfathomability -- which, however, he was determined to fathom.

He had mastered the intricate logics of this place, given the capacities the man-scientist
had given him. Did they think he was some animal, unable to apply blithe reason to their
labyrinths of logic? He had found his way, traced the winding electronic pathways, devised
the commands. Newton had been just as difficult, and he had encompassed that, had he not?

Now, the Maid. He did his digital dance, its logics, and --

She popped into the cafe.

“You scum, ” she said, lance drawn.

Not quite the greeting he'd expected. But then he saw the copy of 'La Pucelle' dangling on
the point of her lance.

“Cherie,” he cooed; whatever the offense, best to get in an apology early. “I can explain.”

“That's your whole problem, ” the Maid said. “You explain and explain and explain! Your
plays are more tedious than the sermons I was forced to listen to in the cemetery at St.
Ouen. Your railings against the sacred mysteries of the Church reveal a shallow, unfeeling
mind bereft of awe and wonder.”

“You mustn't take it personally, ” Voltaire pleaded. “It was directed at hypocritical
reverence for you -- and at the superstitions of religion. My friend, Thieriot -- he added
passages more profane and obscene than any I had written. He needed money. He made a
living reciting the poem in various salons. My poor virgin became an infamous whore, made
to say gross and intolerable things.”

The Maid did not lower her lance. Instead, she poked it several times against Voltaire's
satin waist-coated chest.

“Cherie, ” he said. “If you knew how much I paid for this vest.”

“You mean, how much Frederick paid -- that pitiful, promiscuous, profligate pervert of a
man.”

“Alliteration a bit heavy, ” Voltaire said, “but otherwise, a quite nicely turned phrase.”

His newly gained skills meant he could divest her of her lance at once, squash it. But he
preferred persuasiveness to force. He quoted, with some liberty, that pleasure-hating
Christian, Paul: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, thought as a child, behaved as a
child. But when I became a woman, I put away manly things.”

She blinked. He remembered how her inquisitors had claimed that her acceptance of the gift
of a fine cloak was incompatible with the divine origin of her voices. In a whisk of lithe
arms, Voltaire produced a Chantilly lace gown. Pop -- and a richly embroidered cloak.

“You mock me, ” the Maid said. But not before he saw a gleam of interest flare in her
coal-dark eyes.

“I long to see you as you are. ” He held out the gown and cloak. “Your spirit I have no
doubt is divine, but your natural form, like mine, is human; unlike mine, a woman's.”

“You think I could give up the freedom of a man for that?” She impaled the cloak and gown
on the tip of her lance.

“Not the freedom, ” Voltaire said. “Just the armor and clothes.”

She fell silent, pensively gazing into the distance. The crowd on the street went about
their business, walking by unconcerned. Obvious wallpaper, he thought; he would have to
correct that.

Perhaps a trick. She was partial to miracles. “Another little trick I've learned since we
last met. Voila. I can produce Gar�on.”

Gar�on popped in out of nowhere, all four of his hands free. The Maid -- who had indeed
once worked in a tavern, he recalled -- could not help it; she smiled. She also removed
the gown and cloak from the lance, tossed the lance aside, and caressed the clothes.

He could not resist the impulse to quote himself.

"For I am man and justly proud

In human weakness to have part;

Past mistresses have held my heart,

I'm happy still when thus aroused."

He fell to one knee before her. A grand gesture -- foolproof, in his experience.

Joan gaped, speechless.

Gar�on placed both his right hands over the site where humans are supposed to have a
heart. “Freedom such as yours, you offer? Monsieur, Mademoiselle, I appreciate your
kindness, but I fear I must refuse. I cannot accept such a privilege for myself alone,
while my fellows are doomed to toil in unsatisfying, dead-end jobs.”

“He has a noble soul!” the Maid exclaimed.

“Yes, but his brain leaves much to be desired. ” Voltaire sucked reflectively at his
teeth. “There has to be an underclass to do the dirty work of the elite. That is natural.
Creating mechfolk of limited intelligence is an ideal solution! Makes one wonder why, in
all their history, no one made such an obvious step ... ”

“With all respect, ” said Gar�on, “unless my meager understanding fails me, Monsieur and
Mademoiselle are themselves nothing more than beings of limited intelligence, created by
human masters to work for the elite.”

“What!” Voltaire's eyes widened.

“By what inherent right are you made more intelligent and privileged than I and others of
my class? Do you have a soul? Should you be entitled to equal rights with humans,
including the right to intermarry -- ”

The Maid made a face. “Disgusting thought.”

“ -- to vote, to have equal access to the most sophisticated programming available?”

“This machine man makes more sense than many dukes I've known, ” said the Maid,
thoughtfully furrowing her brow.

“I shall not have two peasants contradict me,” said Voltaire. “The rights of man are one
thing; the rights of the lower orders, another.”

Gar�on managed to exchange a look with the Maid. This instant -- before Monsieur, in a fit
of pique, extinguished both her and Gar�on from the screen, displacing them to a gray
holding space -- was retained in Gar�on's memory. Later, in his/its allowed interval for
interior maintenance, the delicious moment reran again and again.

Marq tuned Nim in on the interoffice screen. “Did it! From now on, he'll be able to say
anything he wants. I've deleted every scrape with authority he ever had.”

“Attaway, ” said Nim, grinning.

“Think I should delete run-ins with his father, too?”

“I'm not sure, ” Nim said. “What were they like?”

“Pretty hot. His father was a strict disciplinarian, sympathetic to the 'Jansenist' view.”

“What's that? A sports team?”

“I asked. He said, 'A Catholic version of a Protestant.' I don't think they were teams.
Something about sin being everywhere, pleasure's disgusting -- usual primitive religion,
Dark Ages stuff.”

Nim grinned. “Most stuffs only disgusting when it's done right.”

Marq laughed. “Too true. Still, maybe he first experienced the threat of censorship from
his old man.”

Nim paused to reflect. “You're worried about instabilities in the character-space, right?”

“Could happen.”

“But you want killer instinct, right?”

Marq nodded. “I can put in some editing algorithms to police instabilities.”

“Right. Not like you need him totally sane after the debate's over, or anything.”

“Might as well go for broke. Can't hurt.”

Marq frowned. “I wonder ... should we go through with this?”

“Hey, what choice we got? Junin Sector wants a trial of champions, we ship them one. Done
deal.”

“But if Imperial types come after us for illegal sims -- ”

“I like danger, passion, ” Nim said. “You always agree, too.”

“Yes, but -- why are we getting smarter tiktoks now? They're not that hard to make.”

“Old prohibitions wearing out, my friend. And it has come up, many times. Just got knocked
down, is all”

“By what?”

Nim shrugged. “Politics, social forces -- who knows? I mean, people feel edgy about
machines that think. Can't trust them.”

“What if you couldn't even tell they were machines?”

“Huh? That's crazy.”

“Maybe a really smart machine doesn't want any competition.”

“Smarter than good ol' Marq? Doesn't exist.”

“But they could ... eventually.”

“Never. Forget it. Let's get to work.”

Sybyl sat anxiously beside Monsieur Boker in the Great Coliseum. They were near the
Imperial Gardens and an air of importance seemed to hover over everything.

She could not stop tapping her nails -- her best full formal set -- on her knees. Among
the murmur of four hundred thousand other spectators in the vast bowl, she anxiously
awaited the appearance of the Maid and Voltaire on a gigantic screen.

Civilization, she thought, was a bit boring. Her time with the sims had opened her eyes to
the force, the heady electricity, of the dark past. They had fought wars, slaughtered each
other, all -- supposedly -- for ideas.

Now, swaddled in Empire, humanity was soft. Instead of bloody battles, satisfyingly final,
there were “fierce” trade wars, athletic head-buttings. And lately, a fashion for debates.

This collision of sims, touted everywhere on Trantor, would be watched by over twenty
billion households. And it was beamed to the entire Empire, wherever the creaky funnels of
the wormhole network went. The rude vigor of the prehistoric sims was undeniable; she felt
it herself, a quickening in her pulse.

The merest few interviews and glimpses of the sims had intrigued the 3D audience. Those
who brought up the age-old laws and prohibitions got shouted down. The air crackled with
the zest for the new. No one had anticipated that this debate would balloon into this.

This could spread. Within weeks, Junin could inflame all Trantor into a renaissance.

And she was going to take every scrap of credit for it that she could, of course.

She looked around at the president and other top-ranking executives of Artifice
Associates, all chattering away happily.

The president, to demonstrate neutrality, sat between Sybyl and Marq -- who had not spoken
to each other since the last meeting.

On Marq's far side his client, the Skeptics' representative, scanned the program; next to
him, Nim. Monsieur Boker gave Sybyl a nudge. “That can't be what I think it is, ” he said.

Sybyl followed his eyes to a distant row at the back where what looked like a mechman sat
quietly beside a human girl. Only licensed mech vendors and bookies were allowed in the
stadium. “Probably her servant,” Sybyl said. Minor infractions of the rules did not
disturb her as they did Monsieur Boker, who'd been especially testy since a 3D caster
leaked the news that Artifice Associates was representing both the Preservers and
Skeptics. Fortunately, the leak occurred too late for either party to do anything about it.

“Mechserves aren't allowed, ” Monsieur Boker observed.

“Maybe she's handicapped,” Sybyl said to placate him. “Needs help in getting around.”

“It won't understand what's going on anyway, ” said Marq, directing his remark to Monsieur
Boker. “They're truncated. Just a bunch of decision-making modules, really.”

“Precisely why it has no business here, ” replied Monsieur Boker.

Marq beeped the arm of his chair and ostentatiously placed a bet on Voltaire to win.

“He's never won a bet in his whole life, ” Sybyl told Monsieur Boker. “No head for the
math.”

“Is that so?” Marq shot back, leaning forward to address Sybyl directly for the first
time. “Why don't you put your money where your lovely mouth is?”

“I've got the probabilities on this one bracketed, ” she said primly.

“You couldn't solve the integral equation. ” Marq snorted derisively.

Her nostrils flared. “A thousand.”

“Mere tokenism,” Marq chided her, “considering what you're being paid for this project.”

“The same as you, ” said Sybyl.

“Will you two cut it out, ” Nim said.

“Tell you what,” said Marq. “I'll bet my entire salary for the project on Voltaire. You
bet yours on your anachronistic Maid.”

“Hey, ” Nim said. “Hey.”

The president deftly addressed Marq's client, the Skeptic. “It's this keen competitive
spirit that's made Artifice Associates the planet's leader in simulated intelligences. ”
Artfully he turned to the rival, Boker. “We try to -- ”

“You're on!” cried Sybyl.

Her dealings with the Maid had convinced her that the irrational must have a place in the
human equation, too. She remained convinced for about three quick eye-blinks, and then
began to doubt.

Voltaire loved audiences. And he had never appeared before one like this ocean of faces
lapping at his feet.

Although tall in his former life, he felt that only now, gazing down at the multitudes
from his hundred-meter height, had he achieved the stature he deserved. He patted his
powdered wig and fussed with the shiny satin ribbon at his throat. With a gracious
flourish of his hands, he made a deep bow to them, as if he'd already given the
performance of his life. The crowd murmured like an awakening beast.

He glanced at the Maid, concealed from the audience behind a shimmering partition in the
far corner of the screen. She folded her arms, pretending to be unimpressed.

Delay only excited the beast. He let the crowd cheer and stamp, ignoring boos and hisses
from approximately half of those present.

At least half of humanity has always been fools, he reflected. This was his first exposure
to the advanced denizens of this colossal Empire. Millennia had made no difference.

He was not one to prematurely cut off adulation he knew was his due. Here he stood for the
epitome of the French intellectual tradition, now vanquished but for him.

He gazed again at Joan -- who was, after all, the only other surviving member of their
time, quite obviously the peak in human civilization. He whispered, “It's our destiny to
shine; theirs, to applaud.” When the moderator finally pleaded for silence -- a bit too
soon; Voltaire would take that up with him later -- Voltaire endured Joan's introduction
with what he hoped was a stoic smile. He elaborately insisted that Joan make her points
first, only to have the moderator rather rudely tell him that here, they flipped a coin.

Voltaire won. He shrugged, then placed his hand over his heart. He began his recital in
the declamatory style so dear to eighteenth-century Parisian hearts: no matter how defined
the soul, like a deity, could not be shown to exist; its existence was inferred.

Truth of the inference lay beyond rational proof. Nor was there anything in Nature that
required it.

And yet, Voltaire continued to pontificate, there was nothing more obvious in Nature than
the work of an intelligence greater than man's -- which man is able, within limits, to
decipher. That man can decode Nature's secrets proved what the Church fathers and all the
founders of the world's great religions had always said: that man's intelligence is a
reflection of that same Divine Intelligence which authored Nature. Were this not so,
natural philosophers could not discern the laws behind Creation, either because there
would be none, or because man would be so alien to them that he could not discern them.
The very harmony between natural law, and our ability to discover it, strongly suggested
that sages and priests of all persuasions are essentially correct! -- in arguing that we
are but the creatures of an Almighty Power, whose Power is reflected in us. And this
reflection in us of that Power may be justly termed our universal, immortal, yet
individual souls.

“You're praising priests!” the Maid exclaimed. She was swamped by the pandemonium that
broke out in the crowd.

“The operation of chance, ” Voltaire concluded, “in no way proves that Nature and Man --
who is part of Nature and as such a reflection of its Creator -- are somehow accidental.
Chance is one of the principles through which natural law works. That principle may
correspond with the traditional religious view that man is free to chart his own course.
But this freedom, even when apparently random, obeys statistical laws in a way that man
can comprehend.”

The crowd muttered, confused. They needed an aphorism, he saw, to firm them up. Very well.
“Uncertainty is certain, my friends. Certainty is uncertain.”

Still they did not quiet, to better hear his words. Very well, again.

He clenched both fists and belted out in a voice of surprising bass power, "Man is, like
Nature itself, free and determined both at once -- as religious sages have been telling us
for centuries though, to be sure, they use a different vocabulary, far less precise than
ours. Much mischief and misunderstanding between religion and science stem from that.

“I've been greatly misunderstood, ” Voltaire resumed. “I'd like to take this opportunity
to apologize for distortions resulting because all I said and wrote focused only on errors
of faith, not on its intuited truths. But I lived during an era in which errors of faith
were rife, while reason's voice had to fight to be heard. Now, the opposite appears to be
true. Reason mocks faith. Reason shouts while faith whispers. As the execution of France's
greatest and most faithful heroine proved -- ” a grand, sweeping gesture to Joan “ --
faith without reason is blind. But, as the superficiality and vanity of much of my life
and work prove, reason without faith is lame.”

Some who had booed and hissed now blinked, mouths agape -- and then cheered ... while, he
noticed, those who had applauded, now booed and hissed. Voltaire stole a look at the Maid.