Asimov’s Future History Volume 15 Read online

  “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?”

  13.

  “Now pay attention,” Voltaire said when the scientist at last answered his call. “Carefully.”

  He cleared his throat, flung out his arms, and readied himself to declaim the brilliant arguments he’d detailed, all shaped in another lettre.

  The scientist’s eyes were slits, his face pale. Voltaire was irked. “Don’t you want to hear?”

  “Hangover.”

  “You’ve discovered a single general theory explaining why the universe, so vast, is the only possible one, its forces all exact–and have no cure for hangover?”

  “Not my area,” he said raggedly. “Ask a physicist.”

  Voltaire clicked heels, then bowed in the Prussian way he’d learned at Frederick the Great’s court. (Though he had always muttered to himself, German puppets! as he did so.) “The doctrine of a soul depends on the idea of a fixed and immutable self. No evidence supports the notion of a stable ‘I,’ an essential ego-entity lying beyond each individual existence–”

  “True,” said the scientist, “though odd, coming from you.”

  “Don’t interrupt! Now, how can we explain the stubborn illusion of a fixed self or soul? Through five functions–themselves conceptual processes and not fixed elements. First, all beings possess physical, material qualities, which change so slowly that they appear to be fixed, but which are actually in constant material flux.”

  “The soul’s supposed to outlast those.” The scientist pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

  “No interruptions. Second, there is the illusion of a fixed emotional makeup, when actually feelings–as even that rude playwright Shakespeare pointed outwax and wane as inconstantly as the moon. They, too, are in constant flux, though no doubt these motions, just like the moon’s, obey physical laws.”

  “Hey, wait. That stuff earlier, about the theory of the universe–did you know that back in those Dark Ages?”

  “I deduced it from the augmentations you gave me.”

  The man blinked, obviously impressed. “I... hadn’t anticipated...”

  Voltaire suppressed his irritation. Any audience, even one that insisted on participating, was better than none. Let him catch up with the implications of his own actions, in his own good time. “Third!–perception. The senses, upon examination, also turn out to be processes, in constant motion, not in the least fixed.”

  “The soul–”

  “Fourth!” Voltaire was determined to ignore banal interpolations. “Everyone has habits developed over the years. But these too are made up of constant flowing action. Despite the appearance of repetition, there’s nothing fixed or immutable here.”

  “The Grand Universal Theory–that’s what you accessed, right? How’d you crack the files? I didn’t give you–”

  “Finally!–the phenomenon of consciousness, the so-called soul itself. Believed by priests and fools–a redundancy, that–to be detachable from the four phenomena I’ve named. But consciousness itself exhibits characteristics of flowing motion, as with the other four. All five of these functions are constantly grouping and regrouping. The body is forever in flux, as is all else. Permanence is an illusion. Heraclitus was absolutely right. You cannot set foot into the same river twice. The hungover man I’m regarding now–pause but a second–is not the same hungover man I am regarding now. Everything is dissolution and decay–”

  The scientist coughed, groaned. “Damn right.”

  ‘‘–as well as growing, blossoming. Consciousness itself cannot be separated from its contents. We are pure deed. There is no doer. The dancer can’t be separated from the dance. Science after my time confirms this view. Looked at closely, the atom itself disappears. There is no atom, strictly speaking. There is only what the atom does. Function is everything. Ergo, there is no fixed, absolute entity commonly known as soul.”

  “Funny you should bring up the issue,” said the scientist, looking at Voltaire meaningfully.

  He waved away the point. “S
ince even rudimentary artificial intelligences such as Garcon exhibit all the functional characteristics I have named–even, so it would appear, consciousness–it is unreasonable to withhold from them rights that we enjoy, though allowing, naturally, for class differences. Since in this distant era farmers, shopkeepers, and wigmakers are granted privileges equal with those of dukes and earls, it is irrational to withhold such privileges from beings such as Garcon.”

  “If there’s no soul, there’s obviously no reincarnation of it either, right?”

  “My dear sir, to be born twice is no more odd than to be born once.”

  This startled the scientist. “But what’s reincarnated? What crosses over from one life to the next? If there’s no fixed, absolute self? No soul?”

  Voltaire made a note in the margin of his lettre. “If you memorize my poems–which for your own enlightenment I urge you do–do they lose anything you gain? If you light a candle from another candle’s flame, what crosses over? In a relay race, does one runner give up anything to the other? His position on the course, no more.” Voltaire paused for dramatic effect. “Well? What do you think?”

  The scientist clutched his stupefied head. “I think you’ll win the debate.”

  Voltaire decided now was the time to put forward his request. “But to assure my victory, I must compose an additional lettre, more technical, for types who equate verbal symbols with mere rhetoric, with empty words.”

  “Have at it,” said the scientist.

  “For that,” Voltaire said, “I will need your help.”

  “You got it.”

  Voltaire smiled with what he hoped was an appealing sincerity, since that was what he most certainly was not. “You must give me everything you know of simulation methods.”

  “What? Why?”

  “This will not merely spare you immense labor. It will enable me to write a technical lettre, aimed at converting specialists and experts to our point of view. Far more than those in Junin Sector. All Trantor, then all the Galaxy, must be converted–or else reactionaries shall rebound and crush your vaunted renaissance.”

  “You’ll never be able to follow the math–”

  “The Newtonian calculations I brought to France, I remind you. Give me the tools!”

  Clutching his temples, the scientist slumped forward over his control board with a moan. “Only if you promise not to call me for at least the next ten hours.”

  “Mais oui,” said Voltaire with an impish smile. “Monsieur requires time–how do you say it en Anglais?–to sleep it off.”

  14.

  Sybyl waited nervously for her turn on the agenda of the executive meeting of Artifice Associates. She sat opposite Marq, contributing nothing to the discussion, as colleagues and superiors discussed this aspect and that of the company’s operation. Her mind was elsewhere, but not so far gone as to fail to notice the curly hair on the back of Marq’s hands, and a single vein that pulsed–sensuous music–in his neck.

  As the president of Artifice Associates dismissed all those not directly involved in the Preserver-Skeptic Project, Sybyl assembled the notes she’d prepared to present her case. Of those present, she knew she could count only on Marq’s support. But she was confident that, with it, the others would go along with her proposal.

  The day before, she had told the Special Projects Committee, for the first time, the Maid had broken her reclusive pattern. She initiated contact, instead of waiting to be summoned, trailing her usual air of reluctance. She’d been deeply disturbed to learn from “Monsieur Arouet” that she must defeat him in what she called “the trial,” or else be consigned once again to oblivion.

  When Sybyl had acknowledged that that was probably true, the Maid became convinced that she was going to be cast again into “the fire.” Disoriented and confused, she begged Sybyl to allow her to retire, to consult her “voices.”

  Sybyl had furnished her with restful wallpaper backgrounds: forest, fields, tinkling streams.

  She probed for vestigial memories like those Marq had mentioned, of a debate 8,000 years ago. Joan did carry traces, just bits someone had overlooked in a previous erasing. Joan identified Faith with something called “robots.” Apparently these were mythical figures who would guide humanity; perhaps some deities?

  Several hours later, Joan had emerged from her interior landscape. She requested high-level reading skills, so that she might compete with her “inquisitor” on a more equal footing.

  “I explained to her that I couldn’t alter her programming without this committee’s consent.”

  “What about your client?” the president wanted to know.

  “Monsieur Boker found out–he wouldn’t tell me how; a press leak, I suspect–that Voltaire is to be her rival in the debate. Now he’s threatening to back out unless I give her additional data and skills.”

  “And... Seldon?”

  “He’s saying nothing. Just wants to be sure he’s not implicated.”

  “Does Boker know we’re handling Voltaire for the Skeptics as well as Joan for him?”

  Sybyl shook her head.

  “Thank the Cosmic for that,” said the executive of Special Projects.

  “Marq?” the president asked, eyebrows raised.

  Since Marq had once suggested the very course Sybyl now proposed, she assumed his accord. So she was stunned when he said, “I’m against it. Both sides want a verbal duel between intuitive faith and inductive/deductive reason. Update the Maid, and all we will succeed in doing is muddying the issue.”

  “Marq!” Sybyl cried out.

  Heated discussion followed. Marq fired one objection after another at everyone who favored the idea. Except Sybyl, whose gaze he carefully avoided. When it became apparent no consensus would be reached, the president made the decision in Sybyl’s favor.

  Sybyl pressed her advantage. “I’d also like permission to delete from the Maid’s programming her memory of being burned alive at the stake. Her fear that she’ll be sentenced to a similar fate again makes it impossible for her to present the case for Faith as freely as she could if that memory didn’t darken her thoughts.”

  “I object,” Marq said. “Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability. The Maid who did not suffer martyrdom for her beliefs isn’t the Maid of prehistory at all.”

  Sybyl shot back, “But we don’t know that history! These sims are from the Dark Ages. Her trauma–”

  “To delete her memory of that experience would be like–well, think of some of the prehistory legends.” Marq spread his hands. “Even their religions! It would be like re-creating Christ–their ancient deity–without his crucifixion.”

  Sybyl glared at him, but Marq addressed the president, as if she did not exist. “Intact, that’s how our clients want–”

  “I’m willing to let Voltaire be deleted of all he suffered at the hands of authority, too,” she countered.

  “I’m not,” said Marq. “Voltaire without defiance of authority would not be Voltaire.”

  Sybyl let the other committee members argue the point, nonplused by the incomprehensible change in Marq. It all passed by like a dream. Finally, she accepted her superiors’ final decision–a compromise, because she had no choice. The Maid’s information bank would be updated, but she would not be allowed to forget her fiery death. Nor would Voltaire be allowed to forget the constant fear of reprisals from church and state, in that ancient, murky era.

  The president said, “I remind you that we’re skating on thin e-field here. Sims like this are taboo. Junin Sector elements offered us a big bonus to even attempt this–and we’ve succeeded. But we’re taking risks. Big ones.”

  As they left the conference room Sybyl whispered to Marq, “You’re up to something.”

  He looked distracted. “Research. Y’know, that’s when you’re working hard, but you don’t know where you’re going.”

  He walked on, obliviously, while she stood with her mouth open. How could she read this man?

  1
5.

  Unresponsive to the presence of Madame la Sorcière, the Maid sat upright in her cell, eyes closed. Warring voices pealed inside her head.

  The noise was like the din of battle, chaotic and fierce. But if she listened intently, refusing to allow her immortal spirit to be ripped from her mortal flesh–then, then, a divinely orchestrated polyphony would show her the rightful course.

  The Archangel Michael, and St. Catherine, and St. Margaret–from whose mouths her voices often spoke–were reacting fiercely to her involuntary mastery of Monsieur Arouet’s Complete Works. Particularly offensive to Michael was the Elements de Newton, whose philosophy Michael perceived to be incompatible with that of the Church–indeed, with his own existence.

  The Maid herself was not so sure. She found, to her surprise, a poetry and harmony in the equations that proved–as if proof were required–the unsurpassed reality of the Creator, whose physical laws might be fathomable but whose purposes were not.

  How she knew these beauties was rather mysterious. She saw into the calculus of force and motion, the whirl of worlds. Like the lords and ladies at court, inert matter made its divinely orchestrated gavotte. These things she sensed with her whole self, directly, as if penetrated by divine insight. Beauties arrived, out of pale air. How could she discount sublime perceptions?

  Such divine invasion must be holy. That it came to her as a flood of memory, skills, associations, only proved further that it was heaven sent. La Sorcière murmured something about computer files and sub-Agents, but those were incantations, not truths.

  Far more offensive to her than this new wisdom, far more, was that its author was an Englishman.

  “La Henriade,” she told Michael, citing another of Monsieur Arouet’s works, “is more repulsive than Les Elements. How dare Monsieur Arouet, who arrogantly calls himself by the false name Voltaire, maintain that in England reason is free, while in our own beloved France, it’s shackled to the dark imaginings of absolutist priests! Was it not Jesuit priests who first taught this inquisitor how to reason?”