Foundation Fear (9 page)

The Rose Meets The Scalpel

COMPUTATIONAL REPRESENTATION -- ... it is clear that, except for occasional outbursts, the
taboos against advanced, artificial intelligences head throughout the Empire through the
great sweep of historical time. This uniformity of cultural opinion probably reflects
tragedies and traumas with artificial forms far back in pre-Empire ages. There are records
of early transgressions by self-aware programs, including those by “sims,” or
self-organizing simulations. Apparently the pre-ancients enjoyed recreating personalities
of their own past, perhaps for instruction or amusement or even research. None of these
are known to survive, but tales persist that they were once a high art.

Of darker implication are the narratives which hypothesize self-aware intelligences lodged
in bodies resembling human. While low-order mechanical forms are customarily allowed
throughout the Empire, these “tiktoks” constitute no competition with humans, since they
perform only simple and often disagreeable tasks ...

-- ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

Joan of Arc wakened inside an amber dream. Cool breezes caressed her, odd noises
reverberated. She heard before she saw --

-- and abruptly found herself sitting outdoors. She noted things one at a time, as though
some part of herself were counting them.

Soft air. Before her, a smooth round table.

Pressing against her, an unsettling white chair. Its seat, unlike those in her home
village of Domremy, was not hand-hewn of wood. Its smooth slickness lewdly aped her
contours. She reddened.

Strangers. One, two, three ... winking into being before her eyes.

They moved. Peculiar people. She could not tell Woman from man, except for those whose
pantaloons and tunics outlined their intimate parts. The spectacle was even more than
she'd seen in Chinon, at the lewd court of the Great and True King.

Talk. The strangers seemed oblivious of her, though she could hear them chattering in the
background as distinctly as she sometimes heard her voices. She listened only long enough
to conclude that what they said, having nothing to do with holiness or France, was clearly
not worth hearing.

Noise. From outside. An iron river of self-moving carriages muttered by. She felt surprise
at this -- then somehow the emotion evaporated.

A long view, telescoping in --

Pearly mists concealed distant ivory spires. Fog made them seem like melting churches.

What was this place?

A vision, perhaps related to her beloved voices. Could such apparitions be holy?

Surely the man at a nearby table was no angel. He was eating scrambled eggs -- through a
straw.

And the women -- unchaste, flagrant, gaudy cornucopias of hip and thigh and breast. Some
drank red wine from transparent goblets, different from any she'd seen at the royal court.

Others seemed to sup from floating clouds -- delicate, billowing mousse fogs. One mist,
reeking of beef with a tangy Loire sauce, passed near her. She breathed in -- and felt in
an instant that she had experienced a meal.

Was this heaven? Where appetites were satisfied without labor and toil?

But no. Surely the final reward was not so, so ... carnal. And perturbing. And
embarrassing.

The fire some sucked into their mouths from little reeds -- those alarmed her. A cloud of
smoke drifting her way flushed birds of panic from her breast -- although she could not
smell the smoke, nor did it burn her eyes or sear her throat.

The fire, the fire! she thought, heart fluttering in panic. What had ... ?

She saw a being made of breastplate coming at her with a tray of food and drink -- poison
from enemies, no doubt, the foes of France! she thought in churning fright -- she at once
reached for her sword.

“Be with you in a moment,” the breastplated thing said as it wheeled past her to another
table. “I've only got four hands. Do have patience.”

An inn, she thought. It was some kind of inn, though there appeared to be nowhere to
Jodge. And yes ... it came now ... she was supposed to meet someone ... a gentleman?

That one: the tall, skinny old man -- much older than Jacques Dars, her father -- the only
one besides herself attired normally.

Something about his dress recalled the foppish dandies at the Great and True King's court.
His hair curled tight, its whiteness set off by a lilac ribbon at his throat. He wore a
pair of mignonette ruffles with narrow edging, a long waistcoat of brown satin with
colored flowers, and sported red velvet breeches, white stockings, and chamois shoes.

A silly, vain aristocrat, she thought. A fop accustomed to carriages, who could not so
much as sit a horse, much less do holy battle.

But duty was a sacred obligation. If King Charles ordered her to advance, advance she
would.

She rose. Her suit of mail felt surprisingly light. She hardly sensed the belted-on
protective leather flaps in front and back, nor the two metal arm plates that left elbows
free to wield the sword. No one paid the least attention to the rustle of her mail or her
faint clank.

“Are you the gentleman I am to meet? Monsieur Arouet?”

“Don't call me that,” he snapped. “Arouet is my father's name -- the name of an
authoritarian prude, not mine. No one has called me that in years.”

Up close, he seemed less ancient. She'd been mislead by his white hair, which she now saw
was false, powdered wig secured by the lilac ribbon under his chin.

“What should I call you then?” She suppressed terms of contempt for this dandy -- rough
words learned from comrades-in-arms, now borne by demons to her tongue's edge, but not
beyond.

“Poet, tragedian, historian.” He leaned forward and with a wicked wink whispered, “I style
myself Voltaire. Freethinker. Philosopher king.”

“Besides the King of Heaven and His son, I call but one man King. Charles VII of the House
of Valois. And I'll call you Arouet until my royal master bids me do otherwise.”

“My dear pucelle, your Charles is dead.”

“No!”

He glanced at the noiseless carriages propelled by invisible forces on the street. “Sit
down, sit down. Much else has passed, as well. Do help me get that droll waiter's
attention.”

“You know me?” Led by her voices, she had cast off her father's name to call herself La
Pucelle, the Chaste Maid.

“I know you very well. Not only did you live centuries before me, I wrote a play about
you. And I have curious memories of speaking with you before, in some shadowy spaces.” He
shook his head, frowning. “Besides my garments -- beautiful, n'est ce pas? -- you're the
only familiar thing about this place. You and the street, though I must say you're younger
than I thought, while the street ... hmmm ... seems wider yet older. They finally got
'round to paving it.”

“I, I cannot fathom -- ”

He pointed to a sign that bore the inn's name -- Aux Deux Magots. “Mademoiselle Lecouvreur
-- a famous actress, though equally known as my mistress.” He blinked. “You're blushing --
how sweet.”

“I know nothing of such things.” She added with more than a trace of pride, “I am a maid.”

He grimaced. “Why one would be proud of such an unnatural state, I can't imagine.”

“As I cannot imagine why you are so dressed.”

“My tailors will be mortally offended! But allow me to suggest that it is you, my dear
pucelle, who, in your insistence on dressing like a man, would deprive civilized society
of one of its most harmless pleasures.”

“An insistence I most dearly paid for,” she retorted, remembering how the bishops badgered
her about her male attire as relentlessly as they inquired after her divine voices.

As if in the absurd attire members of her sex were required to wear, she could have
defeated the English-loving duke at Orleans! Or led three thousand knights to victory at
Jargeau and Meung-sur-Loire, Beaugency and Patay, throughout that summer of glorious
conquests when, led by her voices, she could do no wrong.

She blinked back sudden tears. A rush of memory --

Defeat ... Then the bloodred darkness of lost battles had descended, muffling her voices,
while those of her English-loving enemies grew strong.

“No need to get testy,” Monsieur Arouet said, gently patting her knee plate. “Although I
personally find your attire repulsive, I would defend to the death your right to dress any
way you please. Or undress.” He eyed the near-transparent upper garment of a female inn
patron nearby.

“Sir -- ”

“Paris has not lost its appetite for finery after all. Pale fruit of the gods, don't you
agree?”

“No, I do not. There is no virtue greater than chastity in women -- or in men. Our Lord
was chaste, as are our saints and priests.”

“Priests chaste!” He rolled his eyes. “Pity you weren't at the school my father forced me
to attend as a boy. You could have so informed the Jesuits, who daily abused their
innocent charges.”

“I, I cannot believe -- ”

“And what of him?” Voltaire talked right over her, pointing at the four-handed creature on
wheels rolling toward them. “No doubt such a creature is chaste. Is it then virtuous, too?”

“Christianity, France itself, is founded on -- ”

“If chastity were practiced in France as much as it's preached, the race would be extinct.”

The wheeled creature braked by their table. Stamped on his chest was what appeared to be
his name: GAR‚ON 213-ADM. In a bass voice as clear as any man's, he said, “A costume
party, eh? I hope my delay will not make you late. Our mechfolk are having difficulties.”

It eyed the other tiktok bringing dishes forth -- a honey-haired blond in a hairnet,
approximately humanlike. A demon?

The Maid frowned. Its jerky glance, even though mechanical, recalled the way her jailers
had gawked at her. Humiliated, she had cast aside the women's garments that her
Inquisitors forced her to wear. Resuming manly attire, she'd scornfully put her jailers in
their place. It had been a fine moment.

The cook assumed a haughty look, but fussed with her hairnet and smiled at GAR‚ON 213-ADM
before averting her eyes. The import of this eluded Joan. She had accepted mechanicals in
this strange place, without questioning their meaning. Presumably this was some
intermediate station in the Lord's providential order. But it was puzzling.

Monsieur Arouet reached out and touched the mechman's nearest arm, whose construction the
Maid could not help but admire. If such a creature could be made to sit a horse, in battle
it would be invincible. The possibilities ...

“Where are we?” Monsieur Arouet asked. “Or perhaps I should ask, when? I have friends in
high places -- ”

“And I in low,” the mechman said good-naturedly.

“ -- and I demand a full account of where we are, what's going on.”

The mechman shrugged with two of his free arms, while the two others set the table. “How
could a mechwait with intelligence programmed to suit his station, instruct monsieur, a
human being, in the veiled mysteries of simspace? Have monsieur and mademoiselle decided
on their order?”

“You have not yet brought us the menu,” said Monsieur Arouet.

The mechman pushed a button under the table. Two flat scrolls embedded in the table
shimmered, letters glowing. The Maid let out a small cry of delight -- then, in response
to Monsieur Arouet's censorious look, clapped her hand over her mouth. Her peasant manners
were a frequent source of embarrassment.

“Ingenious,” said Monsieur Arouet, switching the button on and off as he examined the
underside of the table. “How does it work?”

“I'm not programmed to know. You'll have to ask a mechlectrician about that.”

“A what?”

“With all due respect, Monsieur, my other customers are waiting. I am programmed to take
your order.”

“What will you have, my dear?” Monsieur Arouet asked her.

She looked down, embarrassed. “Order for me,” she said.

“Ah, yes. I quite forgot.”

“Forgot what?” asked the mechman.

“My companion is unlettered. She can't read. I might as well be, too, for all the good
this menu's doing me.”

So this obviously learned man could not fathom the Table of House. Joan found that
endearing, amid this blizzard of the bizarre.

The mechman explained and Voltaire interrupted.

“Cloud-food! Electronic cuisine?” He grimaced. “Just bring me the best you have for great
hunger and thirst. What can you recommend for abstinent virgins -- a plate of dirt,
perhaps? Chased with a glass of vinegar?”

“Bring me a slice of bread,” the Maid said with frosty dignity. “And a small bowl of wine
to dip it in.”

“Wine!” said Monsieur Arouet. “Your voices allow wine? Mais quelle scandale! If word got
out that you drink wine, what would the priests say of the shoddy example you're setting
for the future saints of France?”

He turned to the mechman. “Bring her a glass of water, small.” As GAR‚ON 213-ADM withdrew,
Monsieur Arouet called out, “And make sure the bread is a crust! Preferably moldy!”

Marq Hofti strode swiftly toward his Waldon Shaft office, his colleague and friend Sybyl
chattering beside him. She was always energetic, bristling with ideas. Only occasionally
did her energy seem tiresome.

The Artifice Associates offices loomed, weighty and impressive in the immense, high shaft.
A flutter-glider circled the protruding levels far above, banking among pretty green
clouds. Marq craned his neck upward and watched the glider catch an updraft of the city's
powerful air circulators. Atmospheric control even added the puff-ball vapors for variety.
He longed to be up there, swooping among their sticky flavors.

Instead, he was down here, donning his usual carapace of each-day's-a-challenge vigor. And
today was going to be unusual. Risky. And though the zest for it sang in his stride, his
grin, the fear of failure gave a leaden lining to his most buoyant plans.

If he failed today, at least he would not rumble from the sky, like a pilot who misjudged
the thermals in the shaft. Grimly, he entered his office.

“It makes me nervous,” Sybyl said, cutting into his mood.

“Umm. What?” He dumped his pack and sat at his ornate control board.

She sat beside him. The board filled half the office, making his desk look like a
cluttered afterthought. “The Sark sims. We've spent so much time on those resurrection
protocols, the slices and embeddings and all.”

“I had to fill in whole layers missing from the recordings. Synaptic webs from the
association cortex. Plenty of work.”

“I did, too. My Joan was missing chunks of the hippocampus.”

“Pretty tough?” The brain remembered things using constellations of agents from the
hippocampus. Then laid down long-term memory elsewhere, spattering pieces of it around the
cerebral cortex. Not nearly as clean and orderly as computer memory, which was one of the
major problems. Evolution was a kludge, mechanisms crammed in here and there, with little
attention to overall design. At building minds, the Lord was something of an amateur.

“Murder. I stayed to midnight for weeks.”

“Me too.”

“Did you ... use the library?”

He considered. Artifice Associates kept dense files of brain maps, all taken from
volunteers. There were menus for selecting mental agents -- subroutines which could carry
out the tasks which myriad synapses did in the brain. These were all neatly translated
into digital equivalents, saving great labor. But to use them meant running up big bills,
because each was copyrighted. “No. Got a private source.”

She nodded. “Me too.”

Was she trying to coax an admission from him? They had both had to go through scanning as
part of getting their Master Class ratings in the meritocracy. Marq had thriftily kept his
scan. Better than a back-alley brain map, for sure. He was no genius, but the basics of
Voltaire's underpinnings weren't the important part, after all. Exactly how the sim ran
the hindbrain functions -- basic maintenance, housekeeping circuitry -- certainly couldn't
matter, could it?

“Let's have a look at our creations, ” Marq said brightly, to get off the subject.

Sybyl shook her head. “Mine is stable. But look -- we don't really know what to expect.
These fully integrated Personalities are still isolated.”

“Nature of the beast.” Marq shrugged, playing the jaded pro. Now that his hands caressed
the board, though, a tingling excitement seized him.

“Let's do it today, ” she said, words rushing out.

“What? I -- I'd like to slap some more patches over the gaps, maybe install a rolling
buffer as insurance against character shifts, spy into -- ”

“Details! Look, these sims have been running on internals for weeks of sim-time,
self-integrating. Let's interact.”

Marq thought of the glider pilot, up there amid treacherous winds. He had never done
anything so risky; he wasn't the type. His kind of peril lay on the digital playing
fielcj. Here, he was master.

But he had not gotten this far by being foolish. Letting these simulations come into
contact with the present might induce hallucinations in them. fear, even panic.

“Just think! Talking to pre-antiquity”

He realized that he was the one feeling fear. Think like a pilot! he admonished himself.

“Would you want anyone else to do it?” Sybyl asked. He was keenly aware of the fleeting
warmth of her thigh as it accidentally brushed his.

“No one else could, ” he admitted.

“And it'll put us ahead of any competition.”

“That guy Seldon, he could've, got from those Sark 'New Renaissance' jokers well -- I
guess he needs to get some distance from a dicey proposition like this.”

“Political distance, ” she agreed. “Deniability.”

“He didn't seem that savvy to me -- politically. I mean.”

“Maybe he wants us to think that. How'd he charm Cleon?”

“Beats me. Not that I wouldn't want one of our guys running things. A mathist minister --
who'd imagine that?”

So Artifice Associates was out on its own here. With their Sark contacts, the company had
already displaced Digitfac and Axiom Alliance in the sale and design of holographic
intelligences. Competition was rough in several product lines, though. With a pipeline to
truly ancient Personalities, they could sweep the board clean. At the knife edge of
change, Marq thought happily. Danger and money, the two great aphrodisiacs.

He had spent yesterday eavesdropping on Voltaire and was sure Sybyl had done the same with
the Maid. Everything had gone well. “Face filters for us, though.”

“Don't trust yourself to not give away your feelings?” Sybyl gave him a womanly, throaty
chuckle. “Think you're too easy to read?”

“Am I?” Ball back in her court.

“Let's say your intentions are, at least.”

Her sly wink made his nostrils flare -- which reminded Marq of why he needed the filters.
He thumbed in an amiable expression he had carefully fashioned for dealing by phone with
clients. He had learned early in this business that the world was packed with irritable
people. Especially Trantor.

“Better put a body language refiner on, too,” she said flatly, all business now. That was
what never ceased to intrigue him: artful ambiguity.

She popped up her own filters, imported instantly from her board halfway across the
building. “Want a vocabulary box?”

He shrugged. “Anything they can't understand, we'll credit to language problems.”

“What is that stuff they speak?”

“Dead language, unknown parent world.” His hands were a blur, setting up the transition.

“It has a well, a liquid feel.”

“One thing.”

Sybyl's breasts swelled as she drew in her breath, held it, then slowly eased it out. “I
just hope my client doesn't find out about Seldon. The company's taking an awful chance,
not telling either one of them about the other.”

“So what?” He enjoyed giving a carefree shrug. A flutter-glide would petrify him, but
power games -- those he loved. Artifice Associates had taken major accounts from the two
deadly rivals in this whole affair.

“If both sides of the argument find out we're handling both accounts, they'll leave.
Refuse to pay beyond the retainer -- and you know how much we've overspent beyond that.”

“Leave?” His turn to chuckle. “Not if they want to win. We're the best.” Marq gave her his
cocky smile. “You and me, in case you were wondering, fust wait till you see this.”

He downed the lights, started the run, and leaned back in his clasp chair, legs stretched
out on the table before him. He wanted to impress her. That wasn't all he wanted. But
since her husband had been crushed in an accident, beyond repair by even the best medicos,
he'd decided to wait a decent interval before he made his move. What a team they would
make! Open a firm -- say, MarqSybyl, Limited -- skim off the best A2 customers, make a
name.

No names. Let's be fair.

Sybyl's voice trembled in the gloom. “To meet ancients ... ”

Down, down, down -- into the replicated world, its seamless blue complexity swelling
across the entire facing wall. Vibrotactile feedback from inductance dermotabs perfected
the illusion.

They swooped into a primitive city, barely one layer of buildings to cover the naked
ground. Some sort of crude village, pre-Empire. Streets whirled by, buildings turned in
artful projection. Even the crowds and clumped traffic below seemed authentic, a muddled
human jumble. Swiftly they careened into their foreground sim: a cafe on something called
the Boulevard St. Germain. Cloying smells, the muted grind of traffic outside, a rattle of
plates, the heady aroma of a souffle.

Marq zoomed them into the same timeframe as the recreated entities. A lean man loomed
across the wall. His eyes radiated intelligence, mouth tilted with sardonic mirth.

Sybyl whistled through her teeth. Eyes narrowing, she watched the re-creation's mouth, as
if to read its lips. Voltaire was interrogating the mechwaiter. Irritably, of course.

“High five-sense resolution, ” she said, appropriately awed. “I can't get mine that clear.
I still don't know how you do it.”

Marq thought, My Sark contacts. I know you have some, too.

“Hey,” she said. “What -- ” He grinned with glee as her mouth fell open and she stared at
the image of her Joan next to his Voltaire -- freeze-frame, data streams initialized but
not yet running interactively.

Her expression mingled admiration with fear. “We're not supposed to bring them on
together! -- not till they meet in the coliseum.”

“Who says? It's not in our contract!”

“Hastor will skewer us anyway.”

“Maybe -- if he finds out. Want me to section her off?”

Her mouth twisted prettily. “Of course not. What the hell, it's done. Activate.”

“I knew you'd go for it. We're the artists, we make the decisions.”

“Have we got the running capacity to make them realtime?”

He nodded. “It'll cost, but sure. And ... I've got a little proposition for you.”

“Uh-oh. ” Her brow arched. “Forbidden, no doubt.”

He waited, just to tantalize her. And to judge, from her reaction, how receptive she'd be
if he tried to change the nature of their long-standing platonic relationship. He had
tried, once before. Her rejection -- she was married on a decade contract, she gently
reminded him -- only made him desire her more. All that and faithful in marriage, too.
Enough to make the teeth grind -- which they had, frequently. Of course, they could be
replaced for less than the price of an hour with a good therapist.

Her body language now -- a slight pulling away -- told him she was still mourning her dead
husband. He was prepared to wait the customary year, but only if he had to.

“What say we give both of them massive files, far beyond Basis State,” he said quickly.
“Really give them solid knowledge of what Trantor's like, the Empire, everything.”

“Impossible.”

“No, just expensive.”

“So much!”

“So what? Just think about it. We know what these two Primordials represented, even if we
don't know what world they came from.”

“Their strata memories say 'Earth,' remember?”

Marq shrugged. “So? Dozens of primitive worlds called themselves that.”

“Oh, the way Primitives call themselves 'the People'?”

“Sure. The whole folk tale is wrong astrophysically, too. This legend of the original
planet is pretty clear on one point -- the world was mostly oceans. So why call it
'Earth'?”

She nodded. “Granted, they're deluded. And they have no solid databases about astronomy, I
checked that. But look at their Social Context readings. These two stood for concepts,
eternal ideas: Faith and Reason.”

Marq balled both fists in enthusiasm, a boyish gesture. “Right! On top of that we'll pump
in what we know today -- pseudonatural selection, psychophilosophy, gene destinies -- ”

“Boker will never go for it, ” Sybyl said. “It's precisely modern information the
Preservers of Our Father's Faith don't want. They want the historical Maid, pure and
uncontaminated by modern ideas. I'd have to program her to read -- ”

“A cinch.”

“ -- write, handle higher mathematics. Give me a break!”

“Do you object on ethical grounds? Or simply to avoid a few measly centuries of work?”

“Easy for you to say. Your Voltaire has an essentially modern mind. Whoever made him had
his own work, dozens of biographies. My Maid is as much myth as she is fact. Somebody
re-created her out of thin air.”

“Then your objection's based on laziness, not principle.”

“It's based on both.”

“Will you at least give it some thought?”

“I just did. The answer is no.”

Marq sighed. “No use arguing. You'll see, once we let them interact.”

Her mood seemed to swing from resistance to excitement; in her enthusiasm, she even
touched his leg, fingers lingering. He felt her affectionate tap just as they opened into
the simspace.