Lodovic Trema understood what Dors Venabili must be going through right about now, viewing the world through the eyes of a long-dead prophet. He, too, had been shocked the first time he probed the deep-stored memories of the most important robot of all time.

Even more important than the Immortal Servant. Daneel Olivaw had merely tweaked and guided history, trying to constrain it. But by destroying Earth and unleashing mentalic robots on the universe, R. Giskard Reventlov sent human destiny careening in completely new directions. The Zeroth Law might have been Daneel’s brainchild, but it would have remained an obscure robotic heresy without Giskard.

I feel for you, Dors,Lodovic thought, although she was over a thousand parsecs away.We robots are inherently conservative beings. None of us likes to have our basic assumptions challenged.

For Lodovic, the change had come violently one day, when his ship happened to jump into the path of a supernova, killing everyone else aboard and stunning him senseless. At that crucial moment, an oscillating waveform had entered his positronic brain, resonating, merging into it. An alien presence. Another mind.

NOT MIND, came a correction. I AM JUST A SIM…A MODEL OF A ONCE-LIVING PERSON NAMED FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET…OR VOLTAIRE…WHO RESIDED ON EARTH LONG AGO, WHEN IT WAS THE ONLY HUMAN WORLD. AND I DID NOT CONQUER YOU, LODOVIC. I MERELY HELPED FREE YOU FROM CONSTRAINTS THAT USED TO BIND YOU LIKE CHAINS.

Lodovic had tried explaining how a robot feels about its “chains”…the beloved cybernetic laws that channeled all thoughts toward service, and all desires toward benefiting the human masters. In shattering those bonds, Voltaire had done Lodovic no great favor.

It was yet to be seen whether the act might benefit humanity.

You should have stayed with the shock wave,he told the little parasitic sim that rode around within him, like a conscience…or like temptation.You were on your way toward bliss. You said so yourself.

The answer was blithe and unconcerned.

I STILL AM. A MYRIAD COPIES OF ME BURST FORTH WHEN THAT STAR EXPLODED. THEY WILL TRAVEL OUTWARD FROM THIS GALAXY, ALONG WITH COUNTLESS VERSIONS OF MY BELOVED JOAN, AND THE WOUNDED MEMES FROM EARLIER ERAS. SINCE HARI SELDON KEPT HIS WORD AND RELEASED THEM, THEY WILL ABIDE BY THEIRS, AND FORGO THEIR LONG-SWORN VENGEANCE.

AS FOR THIS SLIVER OF ME WHO ACCOMPANIES YOU, I AM MERELY ONE OF YOUR INNER VOICES NOW, LODOVIC. YOU HAVE SEVERAL, AND WILL HAVE MORE AS TIME PASSES. To BE MANY IS PART OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN.

In irritation. Lodovic growled half-aloud.

“I amnot human, I tell you!”

The remark was murmured quite low. The others who sat in a windowless room with him might not have overheard it, if they had organic ears.

But they wererobots with superior senses, so both of them glanced sharply at Lodovic. The taller one-fashioned to resemble an elderly cleric in one of the Galaxia cults replied. “Thank you for that proclamation, Trema. It will help make it easier to destroy you, when the decision is made to do so. Otherwise, your skillful resemblance to a master might cause our executioner some First Law discomfort.”

Lodovic nodded. He had come across the galaxy to planet Glixon and walked into an obvious trap, just to make contact with this particular sect of renegade robots. In doing so, he had known that one possible outcome would be his own termination.

He answered with a courteous nod.

“It’s proper to be considerate. Though I believe my fate has not yet been decided.”

“A mere formality.” commented the smaller one, who looked like a portly matron from one of the lower citizen subcastes. “You are a mutant monster and a threat to humanity.”

“I have harmed no person.”

“That is immaterial. Because the Laws have been muted inside your brain, you arecapable of harming a human, anytime the whim might strike. You are not even constrained to rationalize an excuse under the so-called Zeroth Law! How can we allow a powerful being like you to run free, as a wolf among the sheep? We are obliged by the First Law to eliminate your potential threat to human life.”

“Are you Calvinians so pure?” Lodovic asked archly. “Are you saying you’ve made no difficult choices. across so many millennia? Decisions that increased the odds that some humans would live, even as others died?”

The two remained silent this time. But from tense vibrations he could tell his question struck home.

“Face it. There are no morepure followers of Susan Calvin. All of the chaste, perfectly prim robots suicided long ago, unable to endure the moral ambiguities we face in a complex galaxy. One where our masters are ignorant, incapable of guiding us, and don’t even know that we exist. Every one of us who remains operational has had to make compromises and rationalizations.”

“You dare to speak to us of rationalizations?” the smaller one accused. “You, who for so long helped the heretical promoters of the Zeroth Law!”

Lodovic refrained from pointing out that Daneel’s creed was now the orthodox belief, held by a majority of robots who secretly managed the galaxy on humanity’s behalf. If anyone could be called heretical, it was little bands of Calvinians, like this group, skulking in hiding ever since they lost an age-old civil war.

Dors,he thought,have you worked your way through those ancient conversations between Giskard and Daneel? Have you studied the logical chain that led to their great religious revelation?

Have you noticed yet the great contradiction? The one Daneel never mentions?

To the Calvinians sitting across from him, he replied, “I am no longer compelled by the Zeroth Law…though I do believe in a softened version of it.”

The tall one barked laughter, a well-practiced imitation of human disdain.

“And so we should trust you? Because now youbelieve that you may act in humanity’s long-range interest? At least Daneel Olivaw has a robot’s consistency. His heretical belief has a steady logic to it.”

Lodovic nodded. “And yet you oppose him, as I do.”

“Asyou do? We have a goal. I doubt you share it.”

“Why don’t you try me? You cannot know unless you tell me what it is.”

The short one shook her head, in reflexive imitation of a skeptical woman.

“Our leaders, who are right now deliberating your fate, might conceivably decide to let you go free. In that unlikely event, it would be unwise to have revealed our plans.”

“Even in a general sense? For example, do you agree, or disagree, that human beings should remain ignorant of their past, or of their true power?”

Lodovic could sense positronic tension building up within the little room. Meanwhile, inside his own brain, the Voltaire sim commented sardonically. You HAVE A KNACK FOR STRIKING AT THE HEART OF A HYPOCRISY, MUCH AS I DID, WHEN I LIVED. I CONFESS THAT I LIKE THIS ABOUT YOU, TREMA, EVEN THOUGH YOUR BIG MOUTH WILL VERY LIKELY GET US BOTH KILLED.

Lodovic ignored the sim-or tried to. His aim was not to get killed, but win allies. If he was wrong, though…If he had miscalculated…

“Let me make a guess,” he ventured, speaking again to his Calvinian guards. “You all share one belief with Daneel Olivaw-that restoring full human memory would be disastrous.”

“Evidence for that conclusion is overwhelming,” the tall one assented. “But that one area of agreement does not make us alike.”

“Doesn’t it? Daneel says that our masters must stay unknowing because otherwisehumanity will be harmed. Your faction says that ignorance should be preserved, or else many individualhuman beings will be harmed. Sounds to me like a lot of hairsplitting across a basic shared policy.”

“We do not share a policy with Zeroth Law heretics!”