“Next time, certainly.”

“It is hoped fervently that this lowly personage had perhaps been of small service to a most worthy and revered figure of our time…one who perhaps is overstressed?”

A steely edge to her voice put him on guard.

“Could madam get to the point?”

“Very well. Your wife? She is a complex lady.”

He tried to show nothing in his face. “And?”

“I wonder how your prospects in the High Council would fare if I revealed her true nature?”

Hari’s heart sank. This he had not anticipated.

“Blackmail, is it?”

“Such a crude word!”

“Such a crude act.”

Hari sat and listened to her intricate analysis of how Dors’ identity as a robot would undermine his candidacy. All quite true

“And you speak for knowledge, for science?” he said bitterly.

“I am acting in the best interests of my constituents,” she said blandly. “You are a mathist, a theorist. You would be the first academic to reign as First Minister in many decades. We do not think you will rule well. Your failure will cast shadows upon us meritocrats, one and all.”

Hari bristled. “Who says?”

“Our considered opinion. You are impractical. Unwilling to make hard decisions. All our psychers agree with that diagnosis.”

“Psychers?” Hari snorted derisively. Despite calling his theory psychohistory, he knew there was no good model of the individual human personality.

“ I would make a far better candidate, just for exampie.”

“Some candidate. You’re not even loyal to your kind.”

“There you have it! You’re unable to rise above your origins.”

“And the Empire has become the war of all against all.”

Science and mathematics was a high achievement of Imperial civilization, but to Hari’s mind, it had few heroes. Most good science came from bright minds at play. From men and women able to turn an elegant insight, to find beguiling tricks in arcane matters, deft architects of prevailing opinion. Play, even intellectual play, was fun, and that was good in its own right. But Hari’s heroes were those who stuck it out against hard opposition, drove toward daunting goals, accepting pain and failure and keeping on anyway. Perhaps, like his father, they were testing their own character, as much as they were being part of the suave scientific culture.

And which type was he?

Time to raise the stakes.

He stood, brushing aside the bowls with a clatter. “You’ll have my reply soon.”

He stepped on a cup going out and shattered it.

Voltaire shouted proudly, “I spent much of my career exiled for speaking Truth to Power. I’ll admit to some flaws in judgment, as when I fawned over Frederick the Great. Necessity shapes manners, I’ll remind you. I was courageous, yes-but snobbish, too.”

[THOUGH A MATHEMATICAL REPRESENTATION]

[YOU SHARE THE ANIMAL SPIRITS OF YOUR KIND]

[STILL]

“Of course!” Joan shouted in his defense.

[YOUR KIND ARE THE WORST OF ALL VIVIFORMS]

“Living things?” Joan frowned. “But they are of holy origin.”

[YOUR KIND IS A PERNICIOUS BLEND]

[A TERRIBLE MARRIAGE OF MECHANISM]

[WITH YOUR BEAST URGE TO EXPAND]

“You can see our inner structures as surely as we.” Voltaire swelled, popping with energies. “Probably better, I’ll venture. You must know that for us, consciousness reigns; it does not govern.”

[PRIMITIVE AND AWKWARD]

[TRUE]

[BUT NOT THE CAUSE OF YOUR SIN]

She and Voltaire were giants now, self-ballooned to stride across the simulated landscape. The alien fogs clung to their ankles. A proud way of showing their courage, perhaps, a bit full of self. Still, she was glad she had thought of it. These fogs held humanity in contempt. A show of force was useful, as she had found against the vile English several times.

Voltaire said, “I held Power in contempt, usually, yet I’ll admit I was everlastingly hungry for it, too.”

[THE SIGNATURE OF YOUR KIND]

“So I am a contradiction! Humanity is a rope stretched between paradoxes.”

[WE DO NOT FIND YOUR HUMANITY MORAL]

“But we-they-are!” Joan shouted down at the fog. Though thin compared with them, the fogs clung like glue and filled the valleys with cottony gum.

[YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR OWN HISTORY]

“We are of history! “ Voltaire boomed.

[THE RECORDS HERE IN THE MATHEMATICAL SPACES]

[ARE FALSE]

“One can never be sure of being read right, you know.”

Joan saw in Voltaire an anxiety barely concealed. Though their opponent used a voice cool and dispassionate, she too felt the insidious threat in its cast of words.

Voltaire went on, as if to please a king in court, “A bit of historical example. I once saw in a churchyard in England, there to hail the bright Newton, a headstone, thus:

of John McFarlane

Drown’d in the Water of Leith

So you see, there can be mistakes of translation.” He lifted his elaborate courtier’s hat and made a sweeping bow. The hat’s plumed feather danced in a fresh wind. Joan saw that he was distracting the fog while trying to subtly blow it away.

The fogs flashed orange lightning and swelled, enormous and purple. Thunderheads rose and towered above them.

Voltaire showed only an arch scorn. She had to admire his gait as he whirled and confronted the gargantuan purple cloud-mountain. She remembered how he had waxed on about his dramatic triumphs, his legions of acclaimed plays, his popularity at court. As if to show off for her, he curled a lip into a sneer and invented a poem for the moment:

“Big whorls have little whorls

Which feed on their velocity,

And little whorls have lesser whorls,

And so on to viscosity.”

The cloud hurled savage sheets of rain down upon them. Joan was instantly drenched and chilled to the bone. Voltaire’s glorious garb wilted. His face turned blue with cold.

“Enough!” he cried. “Pity the poor woman at least.”

“I need no pity!” Joan was genuinely outraged. “And you’ll not show weakness before the enemy legions.”

He managed a jaunty smile. “I defer to the general of my heart.”

[YOU LIVE ONLY AT OUR WILL]

“Pray, do not spare us out of pity then,” Joan said.

[YOU LIVE SOLELY BECAUSE ONE OF YOU]

[SHOWED MORAL SELF]

[TO ONE OF OUR LOWER FORMS]

Joan was puzzled. “Who?”

[YOU]

Beside her materialized Garcon 213-ADM.

“But this is surely a multiply-removed entity,” Voltaire snapped. “And a servant.”

Joan patted Garcon. “A simulation of a machine?”

[WE WERE ONCE OF MACHINE]

[AND HAVE COME HERE TO DWELL]

[IN NUMERICAL EMBODIMENT]

“From where?” Joan asked.

[ACROSS ALL THE TURNING SPIRAL DISK]

“For-”

[REMEMBER:]

[PUNISHMENT DETERS BY LENDING CREDENCE TO THREAT]

Voltaire asked, “So you said before. Taking the long view, eh? But what do you truly want now?”

[WE TOO DESCEND FROM VIVIFORMS NOW EXTINGUISHED]

[DO NOT IMAGINE WE ARE FREE OF THAT]

Joan felt a horrible suspicion. She whispered, “Do not provoke it so! It might-”

“I would know the truth. What do you want?”

[REVENGE]