Asimov’s Future History Volume 15 Read online

  “Ah,” the scientist said enigmatically. Voltaire rubbed his forehead, heavy with brooding remembrance. “She was an exception to every rule. She understood Newton and Locke. She understood every word that I wrote. She understood me.”

  “Why weren’t you making love to her? Too busy going to orgies?”

  “My dear sir, my participation in such festivities has been greatly exaggerated. It’s true, I accepted an invitation to one such celebration of erotic pleasure in my youth. I acquitted myself so well, I was invited to return.”

  “Did you?”

  “Certainly not. Once, a philosopher. Twice, a pervert.”

  “What I don’t understand is why a man of your worldliness should be so intent on another meeting with the Maid.”

  “Her passion,” Voltaire said, an image of the robust Maid rising clearly in his mind’s eye. “Her courage and devotion to what she believed.”

  “You possessed that trait as well.”

  Voltaire stomped his foot, but the floor made no sound. “Why do you speak of me in the past tense?”

  “Sorry. I’ll fill in that audio background, too.” A single hand gesture, and Voltaire heard boards creak as he paced. A carriage team clip-clopped by outside.

  “I possess temperament. Do not confuse passion with temperament–which is a matter of the nerves. Passion is borne from the heart and soul, no mere mechanism of the bodily humors.”

  “You believe in souls?”

  “In essences, certainly. The Maid dared cling to her vision with her whole heart, despite bullying by church and state. Her devotion to her vision, unlike mine, bore no taint of perverseness. She was the first true Protestant. I’ve always preferred Protestants to papist absolutists–until I took up residence in Geneva, only to discover their public hatred of pleasure is as great as any pope’s. Only Quakers do not privately engage in what they publicly claim to abjure. Alas, a hundred true believers cannot redeem millions of hypocrites.”

  The scientist twisted his mouth skeptically. “Joan recanted, knuckled under to their threats.”

  “They took her to a cemetery!” Voltaire bristled with irritation. “Terrorized a credulous girl with threats of death and hell. Bishops, academicians–the most learned men of their time! Donkeys’ asses, the lot! Browbeating the bravest woman in France, a woman whom they destroyed only to revere. Hypocrites! They require martyrs as leeches require blood. They thrive on self-sacrifice–provided that the selves they sacrifice are not their own.”

  “All we have is your version, and hers. Our history doesn’t go back that far. Still, we know more of people now–”

  “So you imagine.” Voltaire sniffed a jot of snuff to calm himself. “Villains are undone by what is worst in them, heroes by what is best. They played her honor and her bravery like a fiddle, swine plucking at a violin.”

  “You’re defending her.” The scientist’s wry smile mocked. “Yet in that poem you wrote about her–amazing, someone memorizing their own work, so they could recite it!–you depict her as a tavern slut, much older than she in fact was, a liar about her so-called voices, a superstitious but shrewd fool. The greatest enemy of the chastity she pretends to defend is a donkey–a donkey with wings!”

  Voltaire smiled. “A brilliant metaphor for the Roman Church, n’est ce pas? I had a point to make. She was simply the sword with which I drove it home. I had not met her then. I had no idea she was a woman of such mysterious depths.”

  “Not depths of intellect. A peasant!” Marq recalled how he had escaped just such a fate on the mud-grubbing world Biehleur. All through the Greys exam. And now he had fled their stodgy routines, into a true cultural revolution.

  “No, no. Depths of the soul. I’m like a little stream. Clear because it is shallow. But she’s a river, an ocean! Return me to Aux Deux Magots. She and the wind-up Garcon are the only society I now have.”

  “She is your adversary,” the scientist said. “A minion of those who uphold values that you fought all your life. To make sure you beat her, I’m going to supplement you.”

  “I am intact and entire,” Voltaire declared frostily.

  “I’ll equip you with philosophical and scientific information, rational progress. Your reason must crush her faith. You must regard her as the enemy she is, if civilization is to continue to advance along rational scientific lines.”

  His eloquence and impudence were rather charming, but no substitutes for Voltaire’s fascination with Joan. “I refuse to read anything until you reunite me with the Maid–in the cafe!”

  The scientist had the audacity to laugh. “You don’t get it. You have no choice. I’ll sculpt the information into you. You’ll have the information you need to win, like it or not.”

  “You violate my integrity!”

  “Let’s not forget that after the debate, there’ll be the question of keeping you running, or...”

  “Ending me?”

  “Just so you know what cards are on the table.”

  Voltaire bristled. He knew the iron accents of authority, since he was first subjected to his father’s–a strict martinet who’d compelled him to attend mass, and whose austerities claimed the life of Voltaire’s mother when Voltaire was only seven. The only way she could escape her husband’s discipline was to die. Voltaire had no intention of escaping this scientist in that way.

  “I refuse to use any additional knowledge you give me unless you return me at once to the cafe.”

  Infuriatingly, the scientist regarded Voltaire the way Voltaire had regarded his wigmaker–with haughty superiority. His curled lip said quite clearly that he knew Voltaire could not exist without his patronage.

  A humbling turnabout. Though middle-class in origin himself, Voltaire did not believe common people worthy of governing themselves. The thought of his wigmaker posing as a legislator was enough to make him never wear a wig again. To be seen similarly by this vexing, smug scientist was intolerable.

  “Tell you what,” said the scientist. “You compose one of your brilliant lettres philosophiques trashing the concept of the human soul, and I will reunite you with the Maid. But if you don’t, you won’t see her until the day of the debate. Clear?”

  Voltaire mulled the offer over. “Clear as a little stream,” he said at last.

  –and then clotted, cinder-dark clouds descended into his mind. Memories, sullen and grim. He felt engulfed in a past that roared through him, scouring

  “He’s cycling! There’s something surfacing here...” came Marq’s hollow call.

  Images of the far past exploded.

  “Call Seldon! This sim has another layer! Call Seldon!”

  7.

  Hari Seldon stared at the images and data-rivers. “Voltaire suffered a recall storm. And look at the implications.”

  Marq peered without comprehension at the torrent. “Uh, I see.”

  “That promontory–a memory nugget about a debate he had with Joan, eight thousand years ago.”

  “Somebody used these sims before–”

  “For public debate, yes. History not only repeats itself, sometimes it stutters.”

  “Faith vs. Reason?”

  “Faith/Mechanicals vs. Reason/Human Will,” Seldon said, as if reading them directly from the numerical complexes. Marq could not follow the connections fast enough to keep up with him. “A society of that time had a fundamental division over computer intelligences and their... manifestations.”

  Marq caught an elusive flicker in Seldon’s face. Was he hiding something? “Manifestations? You mean, like tiktoks?”

  “Something like that,” Seldon said stiffly.

  “Voltaire’s for–”

  “In that age, he was for human effervescence. Joan favored Faith, which meant, uh, tiktoks.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Ttktoks, or higher forms of them, were deemed capable of guiding humanity.” Seldon seemed uncomfortable.

  “Tiktoks?” Marq snorted derisively.

  “Or, uh, higher forms.
”

  “That’s what Voltaire and Joan were debating eight thousand years ago? So they were engineered for this. Who won?”

  “The result is suppressed. I believe it became an irrelevant issue. No computer intelligences could be made which could guide humanity.”

  Marq nodded. “Makes sense. Machines will never be as smart as we are. Day-to-day business, sure, but–”

  “I suggest erasure of the embedded memory complex,” Seldon said curtly. “That will eliminate the interfering layer.”

  “Oh, if you think that’s best. I’m not sure we can disconnect every tie-in to those memories, though. These sims use holographic recall, so it’s lodged–”

  “To get the results you wish in this upcoming debate, it is crucial. There could be other implications, too.”

  “Such as?’’

  “Historians might mine sims like these for lost data on the far past. They would want access. Deny them.”

  “Oh, sure. I mean, not likely we’d let anybody use them.”

  Seldon gazed at the shifting slabs of pattern. “They are complex, aren’t they? Minds of real depth, interacting subselves... Ommm... I wonder how the whole sense of selfhood remains stable? How come their mentalities don’t just crash?”

  Marq couldn’t follow, but he said, “I guess those ancients, they knew a few tricks we don’t.”

  Seldon nodded. “Indeed. There’s a glimmer of an idea here …”

  He stood quickly and Marq rose. “Couldn’t you stay? I know Sybyl would like to talk–”

  “Sorry, must go. Matters of state.”

  “Uh, well, thanks for–”

  Seldon was gone before Marq could close his gaping mouth.

  8.

  “I have no desire to see the skinny gentleman in the wig. He thinks he’s better than everyone else,” the Maid told the sorceress called Sybyl.

  “True, but–”

  “I much prefer the company of my own voices.”

  “He’s quite taken with you,” Madame la Sorcière said.

  “I find that difficult to believe.” Still, she could not help smiling.

  “Oh, but it’s true. He’s asked Marq–his recreator–for an entirely new image. He lived, you know, to eighty-four.”

  “He looks even older.” She had found his wig, lilac ribbon, and velvet breeches ludicrous on such a dried-up fig of a man.

  “Marq decided to make him appear as he looked at forty-two. Do see him.”

  The Maid reflected. Monsieur Arouet would be far less repulsive if...” Did Monsieur have a different tailor as a young man?”

  “Hmmm, that might be arranged.”

  “I’m not going to the inn in these.”

  She held up her chains, recalling the fur cloak the king himself had placed about her shoulders at his coronation in Rouen. She thought of asking for it now, but decided against it. They had made much of her cloak during her trial, accusing her of having a demon-inspired love of luxury; she who, until she won the king over that day she first appeared at court, had felt nothing but coarse burlap against her skin. Her accusers, she had noted, wore black satin and velvet and reeked of perfume.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Madame la Sorcière vowed, “but you must agree not to tell Monsieur Boker. He doesn’t want you fraternizing with the enemy, but I think it will do you good. Hone your skills for the Great Debate.”

  There was a pause–falling, soft clouds–in which the Maid felt as if she had fainted. When she recovered–hard cool surfaces, sudden sharp splashes of brown, green–she found herself seated in the Inn of the Two Maggots, once again, surrounded by guests who seemed not to know that she was there.

  Armor-plated beings bearing trays and clearing tableware darted among the guests. She looked for Garcon and spotted him gazing at the honey-haired cook, who pretended not to notice. Garcon’s longing recalled the way the Maid herself had gazed at statues of St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who had both forsworn men but adopted their attire; suspended between two worlds, holy passion above, earthy ardor below. Just as here, with its jarring jargon of numbers and machines, though she knew it for a purgatorial waiting cloister, floating between the worlds.

  She suppressed a smile when Monsieur Arouet appeared. He sported a dark, unpowdered wig, though still looked rather old–about the age of her father Jacques Dars, thirty plus one or two. His shoulders slumped forward under the weight of many books. She’d only seen books twice, during her trials, and though they looked nothing like these, she recoiled at the memory of their power.

  “Alors,” Monsieur Arouet said, setting the books before her. “Forty-two volumes. My Selected Works. Incomplete but–” he smiled “–for now, it will have to do. What’s wrong?”

  “Do you mock me? You know I cannot read.”

  “I know. Garcon 213-ADM is going to teach you.”

  “I do not want to learn. All books except the Bible are born of the devil.”

  Monsieur Arouet threw up his hands and lapsed into curses, violent and intriguing oaths like those her soldiers used when they forgot that she was near. “You must learn how to read. Knowledge is power!”

  “The devil must know a great deal,” she said, careful to let no part of the books touch her.

  Monsieur Arouet, exasperated, turned to the sorceress–who appeared to be sitting at a nearby table–and said, “Vac! Can’t you teach her anything?” Then he turned back to her. “How will you appreciate my brilliance if you can’t even read?”

  “I have no use for it.”

  “Ha! Had you been able to read, you’d have confounded those idiots who sent you to the stake.”

  “All learned men,” she said. “Like you.”

  “No, pucellette, not like me. Not like me at all.” As if it were a serpent, she recoiled from the book he held out. Grinning, he rubbed the book all over himself and Garcon, who was now standing beside the table. “It’s harmless–see?”

  “Evil is often invisible,” she murmured. “Monsieur is right,” Garcon told her. “All the best people read.”

  “Had you been lettered,” Monsieur Arouet said, “you’d have known that your inquisitors had absolutely no right to try you. You were a prisoner of war, seized in battle. Your English captor had no legal right to have your religious views examined by French inquisitors and academics. You pretended to believe your voices were divine–”

  “Pretended!” she cried out.

  “–and he pretended to believe they were demonic. The English are themselves too tolerant to burn anyone at the stake. They leave such forms of amusement to our countrymen, the French.”

  “Not too tolerant,” the Maid said, “to turn me over to the bishop of Beauvais, claiming I was a witch.” She looked away, unwilling to let him peer in her eyes. “Perhaps I am. I betrayed my own voices.”

  “Voices of conscience, nothing more. The pagan Socrates heard them as well. Everyone does. But it’s unreasonable to sacrifice our lives to them, if only because to destroy ourselves on their account is to destroy them, too.” He sucked reflectively on his teeth. “Persons of good breeding betray them as a matter of course.”

  “And we, here?” Joan whispered. He narrowed his eyes. “These... others? The scientists?”

  “They are spectral.”

  “Like demons? Yet they speak of reason. They have raised a republic of analysis.”

  “So they say it is. Yet they have asked us to represent what they do not have.”

  “You think them bloodless.” Voltaire twisted his mouth in surprised speculation.

  “I think we listen to the same ‘scientists,’ so we are being tested in the same trial.”

  “I heed voices such as theirs,” Voltaire said defensively. “I, at least, know when to turn my head aside from mindless advice.”

  “Perhaps Monsieur’s voices are soft,” Garcon suggested. “Therefore, more easily ignored.”

  “I let them–churchly men!–force me to admit my voices were the devil’s,” said the Maid, “whe
n all the while I knew they were divine. Isn’t that the act of a demon? A witch?”

  “Listen!” Monsieur Arouet gripped her by the arms. “There are no witches. The only demons in your life were those who sent you to the stake. Ignorant swine, the lot! Except for your English captor, who pretended to believe you were a witch to carry out a shrewd, political move. When your garments had bummed away, his dupes removed your body from the stake to show the crowd and the inquisitors you were indeed a female, who, if for no other reason than usurping the privileges of males, deserved your fate.”

  “Please stop!” she said. She thought she smelled the oily reek of smoke, although Monsieur Arouet had made Garcon place NO SMOKING signs throughout the inn–which, abruptly, they were now inside. The room veered, whirled. “The fire.” She gasped. “Its tongues...”

  “That’s enough,” the sorceress said. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting her? Layoff!”

  But Monsieur Arouet persisted. “They examined your private parts after your garments bummed away–didn’t know that, did you?–just as they’d done before, to prove you were the virgin that you claimed. And having satisfied their lewdness in the name of holiness, they returned you to the pyre and charred your bones to ashes. That was how your countrymen requited you for championing their king! For seeing to it France remained forever French. And having incinerated you, a while later they held a hearing, cited some rural rumor that your heart had not been consumed in the fire, and promptly declared you a national heroine, the Savior of France. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, by now, they have canonized you and revere you as a saint.”

  “In 1924,” La Sorcière said. Though how she knew this odd number, she did not comprehend. Angelic knowledge?

  Monsieur Arouet’s splutter of scorn crackled in her ears.

  “Much good it did her,” Monsieur Arouet said to La Sorcière.