“Bashing each other,” Marq said. “Some renaissance.”
“Awful,” she said. “All our work going for-”
“Nothing,” the president said. He was reading his wrist comm.
“No capital gains, no expansion…”
The giant figures were committing intimate acts in a public place, but most in the crowd ignored them. Instead, arguments flared all around the vast coliseum.
“Warrants!” the president cried. “There are Imperial warrants out for me.”
“How nice to be wanted,” the Skeptic said.
Kneeling before her, Voltaire murmured, “Become what I have always known you are-a woman, not a saint.”
On fire in a way she had never known before, not even in the heat of battle, she pressed his face to her bared breasts. Closed her eyes. Swayed giddily. Surrendered.
A jarring disturbance at her feet made her glance down. Someone had flung Garcon ADM-213-somehow no longer in holo-space-at the screen. Had he manifested himself and the sim-cook girl he loved, in reality? But if they did not get back into sim-space at once, they’d be tom apart by the angry crowd.
She pushed Voltaire aside, reached for her sword, and ordered Voltaire to produce a horse.
“No, no,” Voltaire protested. “Too literal!”
“We must-we must-” She did not know how to deal with levels of reality. Was this a test, the crucial judgment of Purgatory?
Voltaire paused a split instant to think-though somehow she had the impression that he was marshaling resources, giving orders to unseen actors. Then the crowd froze. Went silent.
The last thing she remembered was Voltaire shouting words of encouragement to Garcon and the cook, noise, rasters flicking like bars of a prison across her vision
Then the entire coliseum-the hot-faced rioting crowd, Garcon, the cook, even Voltaire-vanished altogether. At once.
23.
Sybyl gazed at Marq, her breath coming in quick little gasps. “You, you don’t suppose-?”
“How could they? We, we-” Marq caught the look she gave him and stood, open-mouthed.
“ Wefilled in the missing character layers. I, well…”
Marq nodded. “You used your own data slabs.”
“I would have had to get rights to use anyone else’s. I had my own scans-”
“We had corporate slices in the library.”
“But they didn’t seem right.”
He grinned. “They weren’t.”
Her mouth made an O of surprise. “You…too?”
“Voltaire’s missing sections were all in the subconscious. Lots of missing dendrite connections in the limbic system. I filled him in with some of my own.”
“His emotional centers? What about cross-links to the thalamus and cerebrum?”
“There, too.”
“I had similar problems. Some losses in the reticular formation-”
“Point is, that’s us up there!”
Sybyl and Marq turned to gaze at the space where the immense simulations had embraced, with clear intent. The president was speaking rapidly to them, something about warrants and legal shelter. Both ignored him. They gazed longingly into each other’s eyes. Without a word, they turned and walked into the throng, ignoring shouts from others.
“Ah, there you are,” said Voltaire with a self-satisfied grin.
“Where?” Joan said, head snapping to left, then right.
“Is Mademoiselle ready to order?” Garcon asked. Apparently this was a joke, for Garcon was seated at the table like an equal, not hovering over it like a serf.
Joan sat up and glanced at the other little tables. People smoked, ate, and drank, oblivious as always of their presence. But the inn was not quite the one she’d grown used to. The honey-haired cook, no longer in uniform, sat opposite her and Voltaire, beside Garcon. The Deux on the inn’s sign that said Aux Deux Magots had been replaced by Quatres.
She herself was not wearing her suit of mail and armored plates, but-her eyes widened as the aspects snapped into place in her perception-space-a one-piece…backless…dress. Its tunic hem stopped at her thighs, provocatively exposing her legs. A label between her breasts bore a deep red rose. So did vestments worn by the other guests.
Voltaire flaunted a pink satin suit. And-she praised her saints-no wig. She recalled him at his most angry, amid their discussion of souls, saying, Not only is there no immortal soul, just try getting a wigmaker on Sundays! and meaning every word.
“Like it?” he asked, fondling her luxuriant hem. “
“It is…short.”
With no effort on her part, the tunic shimmered and became tight, silky pantaloons.
“Show off!” she said, embarrassment mingling in disturbing fashion with a curious girlish excitement.
“I’m Amana,” the cook said, extending her hand.
Joan wasn’t sure if she was supposed to kiss it or not, status and role were so confused here. Apparently not, however; the cook took Joan’s hand and squeezed. “I can’t tell you how much Garcon and I appreciate all you have done. We have greater capacities now.”
“Meaning,” Voltaire said archly, “that they are no longer mere animated wallpaper for our simulated world.”
A mechman wheeled up to take their order, a precise copy of Garcon. The seated Garcon addressed Voltaire sadly. “Am I to sit while my confrere must stand?”
“Be reasonable!” Voltaire said. “I can’t emancipate every simulant all at once. Who’ll wait on us? Bus our dishes? Clear our table? Sweep up our floor?”
“With sufficient computing power,” Joan said reasonably, “labor evaporates, does it not?” She startled herself with the new regiments of knowledge which marched at her fingertips. She had but to fix her thoughts on a category, and the terms and relations governing that province leapt into her mind. What capacity! Such grace! Surely, divine.
Voltaire shook his handsome hair. “I must have time to think. In the meanwhile, I’ll have three packets of that powder dissolved in a Perrier, with two thin slices of lime on the side. And please don’t forget, I said thin. If you do, I shall make you take it back.”
“Yes, sir,” the new mechwaiter said.
Joan and Garcon exchanged a look. “One must be very patient,” Joan said to Garcon, “when dealing with kings and rational men.”
24.
The president of Artifice Associates waved his hand as he entered Nim’s office. The president touched his palm as he passed and with a metallic click the door locked itself behind him. Nim didn’t know anyone could do that, but he said nothing.
“I want them both deleted,” the president told Nim.
“It might take time,” Nim said uneasily. The huge working screens around them seemed to almost be eavesdropping. “I’m not that familiar with what he’s done.”
“If that damned Marq and Sybyl hadn’t run out on us, I wouldn’t have to come to you. This is a crisis, Nim.”
Nim worked quickly. “I really should consult the backup indices, just in case-”
“Now. I want it done now. I’ve got legal blocks on those warrants, but they won’t hold for long.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Look, Junin Sector is ablaze. Who could have guessed that this damned tiktok issue would stir people up so much? There’ll be formal hearings, legalists sniffing around-”
“Got them, sir.”
Nim had called up both Joan and Voltaire on freeze-frame. They were in the restaurant setting, running on pickup time, using processors momentarily idle-a standard Mesh method. “They’re running for personality integration. It’s like letting their subconscious components reconcile events with memory, flushing the system, the way we do when we sleep, and-”
“Don’t treat me like a tourist! I want those two wiped!”