Foundations Fear Read online

Page 16

  The Maid laughed, lighthearted. “The Lord’s on the side of His Son, and the saints and martyrs, too. But that does not mean they escape failure and death. ”

  “She’s right,” La Sorcière said. “Even worlds and galaxies share man’s fate. ”

  “We of spirituality need you,” Monsieur Boker pleaded. “We have become too much like our machines. We hold nothing sacred except the smooth functioning of our parts. We know you will address the question with intensity, yet in simplicity and truth. That is all we ask. ”

  The Maid felt fatigued. She needed solitude, time to reflect. “I must consult with my voices. Will there be only one, or many questions that I must address?”

  “Just one. ”

  The inquisitors had been far more demanding. They asked many questions, dozens, sometimes the same ones, over and over again. Right answers at Poitiers proved wrong elsewhere. Deprived of food, drink, rest, intimidated by the enforced journey to the cemetery, exhausted by the tedious sermon they compelled her to hear, and wracked by terror of the fire, she could not withstand their interrogation.

  “Does the Archangel Michael have long hair?”

  “Is St. Margaret stout or lean?”

  “Are St. Catherine’s eyes brown or blue?”

  They trapped her into assigning to voices of the spirit attributions of the flesh. Then they perversely condemned her for confounding sacred spirit with corrupt flesh.

  All had been miasma. And in Purgatory, worse trials could ensue. She could not therefore be certain if this Boker would turn out to be friend or foe.

  “What is it?” she wanted to know. “This single question you want me to answer. ”

  “There is universal consensus that man-made intelligences have a kind of brain. The question we want you to answer is whether they have a soul. ”

  “Only the Almighty has the power to create a soul. ”

  Monsieur Boker smiled. “We Preservers couldn’t agree with you more. Artificial intelligences, unlike us, their creators, have no soul. They’re just machines. Mechanical contrivances with electronically programmed brains. Only man has a soul. ”

  “If you already know the answer to the question, why do you need me?”

  “To persuade! First the undecided of Junin Sector, then Trantor, then the Empire!”

  The Maid reflected. Her inquisitors had known the answers to the questions they plied her with, too. Monsieur Boker seemed sincere, but then so were those who pronounced her a witch. Monsieur Boker had told her the answer beforehand, one with which any sensible person would agree. Still, she could not be sure of his intentions. Not even the crucifix she asked the priest to hold aloft was proof against the oily smoke, the biting flames….

  “Well?” asked Monsieur Boker. “Will the Sacred Rose consent to be our champion?”

  “These people I must convince. Are they, too, descendants of Charles, the Great and True King, of the House of Valois?”

  5.

  When Marq strode into Splashes & Sniffs to meet his buddy and coworker Nim, he was surprised to find Nim already there. To judge from Nim’s dilated pupils, he’d been there most of the after­ noon.

  Marq said, “Hitting it hard? Something going on?”

  Nim shook his head. “Same old Marq, blunt as a fist. First, try the Swirlsnort. Doesn’t do a thing for your thirst—in fact, it will dry up your entire head—but you won’t care. ”

  Swirlsnort turned out to be a powdery concoction that tasted like nutmeg and bit as if he had swallowed an angry insect. Marq sniffed it slowly, one nostril at a time. He wanted to be relatively clear-headed when Nim updated him on office politics and funding. After that, he’d allow himself to get skyed.

  “You may not like this,” said Nim. “It concerns Sybyl. ”

  “Sybyl!” He laughed a bit uneasily. “How’d you know I—”

  “You told me. Last time we had a snort together, remember?”

  “Oh. ” The stuff made him babble. Worse, it made him forget he had.

  “Not exactly a state secret. ” Nim grinned.

  “That obvious?” He wanted to be certain Nim, who switched women as often as he changed his underwear, had no designs on Sybyl of his own. “What about her?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of juice waiting for whoever wins the big one at the coliseum. ”

  “No problem,” Marq said. “Me. ”

  Nim ran his hand through his strawberry blond hair. “I can’t decide if it’s your modesty or your ability to foresee the future that I like most about you. Your modesty. Must be that. ”

  Marq shrugged. “She’s good, I’ll admit. ”

  “But you’re better. ”

  “I’m luckier. They gave me Reason. Sybyl’s stuck with Faith. ”

  Nim gave him a bemused glance and inhaled deeply. “I wouldn’t underestimate Faith if I were you. It’s hooked to passion, and no one’s managed to get rid of either, yet. ”

  “Don’t have to. Passions eventually burn out. ”

  “But the light of reason burns eternally?”

  “If you regenerate brain cells, yes. ”

  Nim looked through his straw to see if anything was left and winked at Marq. “Then you don’t need a little advice. ”

  “What advice? I didn’t hear any advice. ”

  Nim clucked. “If your unregenerated brain cells contain a shred of common sense, you’ll stop cooperating with Sybyl to improve her simulation. Or better yet, you’ll keep pretending you’re cooper­ ating, so you get the benefit of anything she can show you. But what you’ll really start doing is looking for ways to do both her and her simulation in. People say it’s terrific. ”

  “I’ve seen it. ”

  “Some of it. Think she shows it all?”

  “We’ve been working every day on—”

  “Truncated sim, is what you see. Nights, she inflates the whole pseudo-psyche. ”

  Marq frowned. He knew he was a bit light-headed around her, pheromones doing their job, but he had compensated for that. Hadn’t he? “She wouldn’t…”

  “She might. People upstairs got their eye on her. ”

  Marq felt a stab of jealousy in spite of himself, but he was careful not to show it. “Ummm. Thanks. ”

  Nim bowed his head with characteristic irony and said, “Even if you don’t need it, you’d be a fool to turn it down. ”

  “What, the juice, when I win?”

  “Not the juice, buggo. You think I missed noticing that I’m talking to ambition’s slave? My advice. ”

  Marq took a hefty double-nostril snort. “I’ll certainly bear it in mind. ”

  “This thing’s going to be big. You think it’s just a job for this Sector, but I tell you, people from all over Trantor will tune into the show. ”

  “All the better,” Marq said, though his stomach was feeling like he had suddenly gone into free fall. Living in a real cultural renaissance was risky. Maybe his hollow feeling was the stim, though.

  “I mean, Seldon and that guy who follows him around like a dog, Amaryl—you think they’ve booted this to you because it’s a snap?”

  Marq took a bit of the stim before answering. “No, it’s because I’m the best. ”

  “And you’re a long way down from them on the status ladder. You are, my friend, expendable. ”

  Marq nodded soberly. “I’ll certainly bear it in mind. ”

  Was he repeating himself? Must be the stim.

  Marq did not give Nim’s counsel any thought until two days later. He overheard someone in the executive lounge praising Sybyl’s work to Hastor, the leader of Artifice Associates. He skipped lunch and went back to his floor. As he passed Sybyl’s office on his way back to his own, his intention, he told himself, was to relay the compliment. But when he found her door unlocked, her office empty, an impulse seized him.

  Half an hour later, he ju
mped slightly when she said “Marq!” from the open doorway. Her hand smoothed her hair in what he took to be unconscious primping, betraying a desire to please. “Can I help you?”

  He’d just finished the software cross-matting to link her office, so that he’d be able to monitor her interviews with her client, Boker. She shared with Marq the substance of these interviews, as far as he knew.

  He reasoned that his suggestions as to how she should handle the sometimes difficult Boker would be improved if he were exposed to Boker directly. But that would compromise the client relationship, ordinarily a strict rule. This, though, was spe­ cial…

  He shrugged. “Just waiting for you. ”

  “I’ve gotten her much better structured. Her mood flutters are below zero point two. ”

  “Great. Can I see?”

  Did her smile seem warmer than usual? He was still wondering about that when he reached his own office, after an hour of intuning on Joan. Sybyl had certainly done good work. Thorough, intricately matted in with the ancient personality topography.

  All since yesterday? He thought not.

  Time to do a little sniffing around in simspace.

  6.

  Voltaire loomed—brows furrowed, scowling, hands on skinny hips. He rose from the richly embroidered chair in his study at Cirey, the chateau of his long-term mistress, the Marquise du Chatelet.

  The place he had called home for fifteen years depressed him, now that she was gone. And now the marquis, without the decency to wait until his wife’s body was cold, had informed him that he must leave.

  “Get me out of here!” Voltaire demanded of the scientist who fi­ nally answered his call. Scientist—a fresh word, one no doubt de­ rived from the Latin root, to know. But this fellow looked as though he knew little. “I want to go to the café. I need to see the Maid. ”

  The scientist leaned over the control board Voltaire was already beginning to resent, and smiled with transpar­ ent pleasure at his power. “I didn’t think she was your type. You showed a strong preference all your life—remember, I’ve scanned your memories, you have no secrets—for brainy women. Like your niece and the Madame du Chatelet. ”

  “So? Who truly can abide the company of stupid women? The only thing that can be said on their behalf is that they can be trus­ ted, as they’re too stupid to practice deceit. ”

  “Unlike Madame du Chatelet?”

  Voltaire drummed his fingers impatiently on the beautifully wrought walnut desk—a gift from Madame du Chatelet, he recalled. How had it gotten to this rude place? Could it indeed have been assembled from his memory alone? “True, she betrayed me. She paid dearly for it, too. ”

  The scientist arched a brow. “With that young officer, you mean? The one who made her pregnant?”

  “At forty-three, a married woman with three grown children has no business becoming pregnant!”

  “You hit the roof when she told you—understandable but not very enlightened. Yet you didn’t break off with her. You were with her throughout the birth. ”

  Voltaire fumed. Memory dark, memory flowing like black waters in a subterranean river. He’d worried himself sick about the birth, which had proved amazingly easy. Yet nine days later, the most extraordinary woman he had ever known was dead. Of childbed fever. No one—not even his niece and housekeeper and former paramour, Madame Denis, who took care of him thereafter—had ever been able to take her place. He had mourned her until, un-til—he approached the thought, veered away—till he died…

  He puffed out his cheeks and spat back rapidly, “She persuaded me that it would be unreasonable to break with a ‘woman of exceptional breeding and talent’ merely for exercising the same rights that I enjoyed. Especially since I hadn’t made love to her for months. The rights of man, she said, belonged to women, too—provided they were of the aristocracy. I allowed her gentle reasonableness to persuade me. ”

  “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 or­ gies?”

  “My dear sir, my participation in such festivities has been greatly exaggerated. It’s true, I accepted an invitation to one such celebra­ tion 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?”