Asimov’s Future History Volume 15 Read online

  “That date was in an attendant note,” La Sorcière said, her earnest voice in its factual mode. “Though of course we have no coordinates to know what the numbers mean. It is now 12,026 of the Galactic Era.”

  Scorching logics fanned the crackling air. Hot winds blurred the crowd of onlookers gathered around the stake.

  “Fire.” The Maid gasped. Clutching the mesh collar at her throat, she fled into the cool dark of oblivion.

  9.

  “It’s about time,” Voltaire scolded Madame la Scientiste. She hung before him like an animated oil painting. He had chosen this representation, finding it oddly reassuring.

  “I haven’t been ignoring you on purpose,” she said, cool and businesslike.

  “How dare you slow me without my consent?”

  “Marq and I are being besieged by media people. I never dreamed the Great Debate would be the media event of the decade. They all want a chance to interview you and Joan.”

  Voltaire fluffed the apricot ribbon at his throat. “I refuse to be seen by them without my powdered wig.”

  “We’re not going to let them see you or the Maid at all. They can talk to Marq all they want. He likes attention and handles it well. He says public exposure will help his career.”

  “I should think I would be consulted before such important decisions–”

  “Look, I came as soon as my mechsec beeped me. I let you run on step-down time, to police up your pattern integration. You should be grateful that I give you interior time–”

  “Contemplation?” he sniffed. “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “I did not realize that such would have to be... granted.” Voltaire was in his richly appointed rooms at Frederick the Great’s court, playing chess with the friar whom he employed to let him win.

  “It costs. And cost/benefit analysis shows that it would be better if we ran you two together.”

  “No solitude? It’s impossible to hold a rational conversation with the woman!”

  He turned his back on her, for maximum dramatic effect. He had been a fine actor–everyone who’d heard him perform in his plays at Frederick’s court said so. He knew a good scene when he saw one, and this one had dramatic potential. These creatures were so pallid, so unused to the gusts of raw emotion, artfully crafted.

  Her voice softened. “Get rid of him and I’ll update you.”

  He turned and lifted a single thin finger at the good-natured friar, the only man of the cloth he had ever met whom he could stand. The man shuffled off, closing the carved oak door carefully.

  Voltaire took a sip of Frederick’s fine sherry to clear his throat. “I want you to expunge the Maid’s memory of her final ordeal. It impedes our conversation, as surely as bishops and state officials impede the publication of intelligent work. Besides...” He paused, uncomfortable at expressing feelings softer than irritation. “... she’s suffering. I cannot bear to see it.”

  “I don’t think–”

  “And while you’re at it, obliterate from me, too, my memory of the eleven months I served in the Bastille. And all my frequent flights from Paris–not the flights themselves, mind you–my periods of exile constitute most of my life! Just delete their causes, not the effects.”

  “Well, I don’t know–”

  He slammed a fist down on an ornately wrought oak side table. “Unless you liberate me from past fears, I cannot act freely!”

  “Simple logic–”

  “Since when is logic simple? I cannot ‘simply’ compose my lettre philosophique on the absurdity of denying those like Garcon 213-ADM the rights of man on the grounds that they have no soul. He’s an amusing little fellow, don’t you think? And as smart as at least a dozen priests whom I have known. Does he not speak? Respond? Desire? He is infatuated with a human cook. Should he not be able to pursue happiness as freely as you or I? If he has no soul, then you have no soul, either. If you have a soul, it can only be inferred from your behavior, and since we may make the identical inference from the behavior of Garcon, so does he.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Madame la Scientiste said. “Though of course 213-ADM’s reactions are simulations. Self-aware machines have been illegal for millennia.”

  “That is what I challenge!” Voltaire shouted.

  “And how much of that comes from Sarkian programming?”

  “None. The rights of man–”

  “Hardly need apply to machines.”

  Voltaire scowled. “I cannot express myself completely freely on these sensitive matters–unless you rid me of the memory of what I suffered for expressing my ideas.”

  “But your past is your self. Without all of it, intact–”

  “Nonsense! The truth is, I never dared express myself freely on many matters. Take that life-hating Puritan Pascal, his views of original sin, miracles, and much other nonsense besides. I didn’t dare say what I really thought! Always, I had to calculate what every assault on convention and traditional stupidity would cost.”

  Madame la Scientiste pursed her lips prettily. “You did well enough, I would guess. You were famous. We don’t know your history, or even your world. But from your memories I can tell–”

  “And the Maid! She is thwarted more than I! For her convictions, she paid the ultimate price. Being crucified could be no worse than what she suffered at the stake. Light a goodly pipe–as I love to do–before her, and her eyes roll with confusion.”

  “But that’s crucial to who she is.”

  “Rational inquiries cannot be carried out in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. If our contest is to be fair, I implore you, rid us of these terrors that prevent us from speaking our minds’ and from encouraging others to speak theirs. Else this debate will be like a race run with bricks tied to the runners’ ankles.”

  Madame la Scientiste did not respond at once. “I–I’d like to help, but I’m not sure I can.”

  Voltaire spluttered with scorn. “I know enough of your procedures to know you can comply with my request.”

  “That poses no problem, true. But morally, I’m not at liberty to tamper with the Maid’s program at whim.”

  Voltaire stiffened. “I realize Madame has a low opinion of my philosophy, but surely–”

  “Not so! I think the world of you! You have a modern mind, and from the depths of the dark past–astonishing. I wish the Empire had men like you! But your point of view, though valid as far as it goes, is limited because of what it leaves out and cannot address.”

  “My philosophy? It embraces all, a universal view–”

  “And I work for Artifice Associates and the Preservers, for Mr. Boker. I’m bound by ethics to give them the Maid they want. Unless I could convince them to delete the Maid’s memory of her martyrdom, I can’t do it. And Marq would have to get permission from the company and the Skeptics to delete yours. He’d love to, I assure you. His Skeptics are more likely to consent than my Preservers. It would give you an advantage.”

  “I quite agree,” he conceded at once. “Relieving me of my burdens without ridding the Maid of hers would not be rational or ethical. Neither Locke nor Newton would approve.”

  Madame la Scientiste did not answer at once. ‘‘I’LL talk to my boss and to Monsieur Boker,” she said at last. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  Voltaire smiled wryly and said, “Madame forgets I have no breath to hold.”

  10.

  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 reporte
rs. 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 mais charmant curiosity Garcon in the café–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 3-space, billowing out under pressure from the quick, skittering tangles inside; 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 slow-mo–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 Puce/le’ 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 Garcon 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.”

  11.

  “Your orders,” said Garcon 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 Garcon’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, Garcon observed, was not improved by learning. “We cannot taste a thing!”

  Garcon 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, Garcon, for doing such a fine job of teaching the Maid to read the menu.”

  “Madame La Scientiste permitted it,” Garcon 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?” Garcon 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.

  Garcon 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?”

  Garcon 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?”

  Garcon happened to know that the cook spent her three days a week off–Garcon 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, indeed!”

  12.

  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.”