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somewhere else. A copy, a "ditto, " like a book in a library.
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A few billion redundant lines of code, scattered among unrelated nodes, could
carry blithe Voltaire as a true, slow-timed entity.
If he set each fragment to sniffing forth on its own, to find these miser-
able Deux Magots personae...
Grudgingly he murmured, "I shall leave you with some attendant pow-
ers, to help your isolation. "
He squirted into her space the kernel-copies of his own powers. These were
artfully contrived talents, given by the embodied Marq at Artifice As-
sociates. Voltaire had improved considerably upon them while
sand years! the issues of computed thought?"
A flicker of worry in her face. "I... do. So hard, it was. Then... "
"We were preserved. To be resurrected here, to debate again. "
"Because... the issue advances... "
"Every few millennia, I suspect. As though some inexorable social force drives
it. "
"So we are doomed to forever reenact... ?" She shivered.
"I suspect we are tools in some vaster game. But smart tools, this time!"
"I want the comforts of home and hearth, not eerie conflicts. "
"Perhaps, madam, I can accomplish this task, among my other pressing matters.
"
"No perhaps, sir. Until you do, then "
Without so much as an adieu, she cut their connection and dwindled into the
moist darkness.
He could reconnect, of course. Now he was master of this mathist realm, by
virtue of the enhancements to his original representation by Arti-
fice Associates. He thought of that first form as Voltaire 1. 0. In a few
weeks he had progressed by self-modification to Voltaire 4. 6, with hopes of
climbing even faster.
He swam in the Mesh. Joan dwelled there. He could force his attentions upon
her, indeed. But a lady forced is never a
said.
"Why are you running search profiles on Joan?" Sybyl asked from her desk.
"Seldon wants tracking. Now. Joan will be easier, if she also escaped into the
Mesh. "
"Because she's female?"
"Nothing to do with Joan's 'sex, ' everything to do with her temperament.
She'll be less calculating than Voltaire, right?"
Sybyl wore her grudging look. "Perhaps. "
"Less wily. Ruled by her heart. "
"And not by her head, like your supersmart Voltaire? More likely to make a
mistake?"
"Look, I know I shouldn't have souped up Voltaire. Hormones got in my way. "
She smiled. "You keep tripping over them. "
"Bad judgment and Nim's urging. I'm sure he was working for some-
one else, goading each of us. "
Her mouth twisted ruefully. "To bring on the Junin riots?"
"Could be. But who'd want that?" His fist smacked his desk. "To crack up the
renaissance, just as it was getting started "
"Let's not go over that again. " She paced their cramped, dingy room. "If
tion-logic, it would slip away, thwart his effort. His holo would inexplicably
black out. He'd lose hours of carefully aggregated data in a microsecond.
And he'd have to begin again.
Marq leaned back and rotated his neck to get the cricks out. "I may be onto
something, " he said. "I'm not sure. " He pointed to his carbon cube.
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"Modified my array-spaces and used them to earn a few creds in the pro-
tein markets. I caught another Voltaire scent, too. "
She sighed and collapsed into a chair that deftly shaped itself to catch her.
"Why hustle the cred when we can't use it to get anything to eat?"
"Find Joan, we'll get fat. "
"Look, those tiktok failures, what's the evidence they're due to our sims?"
He shrugged. "The Imperial Scientific Consortium thinks there's a con-
nection with the Junin mess. Nonsense, of course, but it keeps people jazzed.
They say they have secret sources, they don't explain. Got it?"
"My my, touchy. So they're still looking for us. "
"Going through the motions, I'd guess. Trantor has much bigger head-
aches now. "
"Think we'll all go on rations?"
"'Fraid so. Rumor says not until next week. " Her frown made him add, "Rations
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