Asimov’s Future History Volume 15 Read online

  But what enraged the Maid most of all and made her thrash and strain at her chains–until, fearing for her safety, La Sorcière freed her chafed ankles and wrists–was his illegally printed, scurrilous poem about her. Villainous verse!

  As soon as she was sure her voices had withdrawn, she waved a copy of’ La Puce/le’ at the sorceress, incensed that the chaste Saints Catherine or Margaret–who had momentarily vanished, but would surely return–might be forcibly exposed to its lewdness. Both saints had already reproached her for her silly, girlish speculations about how attractive Monsieur Arouet might be–what was she thinking?–if he removed his ridiculous wig and lilac ribbons.

  “How dare Monsieur Arouet represent me this way?” she railed, knowing full well that her stubborn refusal to call him Voltaire irked him no end. “He adds nine years to my age, dismisses my voices as outright lies. And slanders Baudricourt, who first enabled me to put before my king my vision for both him and France. A writer of preachy plays and irreverent slanders against the faithful, like Candide, he well may be–but that insufferable know-it–all calls himself a historian! If his other historical accounts are no more reliable than the one he gives of me, they and not my body deserve the fire.”

  The woman La Sorcière paled before this onslaught. These people–if people they were at all, here in a byzantine, cloudy Purgatory–backed away from the true ferocity of divine Purpose. Joan towered over the woman, with some relish.

  “Newton’s clockwork wisdom is an intriguing vision of Creation’s laws,” Joan thundered, “but Voltaire’s history is a work of his imagination!–made up of three parts bile, two spleen.”

  She raised her right arm in the same gesture she’d used to lead her soldiers and the knights of France into battle against the English king and his minions–of whom, she now saw clearly, Monsieur Arouet de Voltaire was one. A warrior femme inspiratrice with an intense aversion to the kill, she now vowed all-out war against this, this–she gasped in exasperation, “This nouveau riche bourgeois upstart darling of the aristocratic class, who’s never known real want or need, and thinks horses are bred with carriages behind them.”

  “Get him!” La Sorcière, ablaze with the Maid’s fire, raged. “That’s what we want!”

  “Where is he?” demanded the Maid. “Where is this shallow little pissoir stream?–that I may drown him in the depths of all I have suffered!”

  Oddly, La Sorcière seemed pleased by all this, as if it fit some design of her own.

  16.

  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 waistcoated 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 Garcon.”

  Garcon 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.

  Garcon 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 Garcon, “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.”

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

  17.

  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.”

  18.

  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 Baker 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.

  19.

  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 lik
e 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, “‘Tis 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.