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-”
“ AndI 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 reporters. 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 cafe -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.”
“ Youronly 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!”