The Maid perused the menu and, changing the subject, said, “I’ll have my usual. A crust of bread-I’ll try a sourdough baguette crust for a change-”

“A sourdough baguette!” Monsieur echoed.

“-and, to dip it in, a bit of champagne.”

Monsieur shook his hand as if to cool it off. “I commend you, Garcon, for doing such a fine job of teaching the Maid to read the menu.”

“Madame La Scientiste permitted it,” Garcon said; he did not want trouble with his human masters, who could pull the plug on him at any time.

Monsieur waved a dismissive hand. “She’s much too detail-obsessed. She’d never survive on her own in Paris, much less at any royal court. Marq, however, will go far. Lack of scruples is fortune’s favorite grease. I certainly did not proceed from penury to being one of the wealthiest citizens in France by confusing ideals with scruples.”

“Has Monsieur decided on his order?” Garcon asked.

“Yes. You’re to instruct the Maid in more advanced texts so that she can read my poem, ‘On the Newtonian Philosophy,’ along with all my l ettres Philosophiques.Her reasoning is to become as equal as possible with my own. Not that anyone’s reason is likely to become so,” he added with his cocky smile.

“Your modesty is equaled only by your wit,” said the Maid, drawing from Monsieur a smirky laugh.

Garcon sadly shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I am unable to instruct anyone except in simple phrases. My literacy permits comprehension of nothing beyond menus. I’m honored by Monsieur’s desire to advance my station. But even when opportunity knocks, I and my kind, consigned forever to the lowest levels of society, cannot answer the door.”

“The lower classes ought to keep their place,” Voltaire assured him. “But I’ll make an exception in your case. You seem ambitious. Are you?”

Garcon glanced at the honey-haired cook. “Ambition is unsuited to one of my rank.”

“What would you be, then? If you could be anything you like?”

Garcon happened to know that the cook spent her three days a week off-Garcon himself worked seven days a week-in the corridors of the Louvre. “A mechguide at the Louvre,” he said. “One smart enough, and with sufficient leisure, to court a woman who barely knows I exist.”

Monsieur said grandly, “I’ll find a way to-how do they say it?”

“Download him,” the Maid volunteered.

“ Mon dieu!” Monsieur exclaimed. “Already she can read as well as you. But I will not have her wit exceed mine! That would be going too damned far, indeed!”

Marq puffed the packet into his nose and waited for the rush.

“That bad?” Nim signaled the Splashes amp; Sniffs mechmaid for another.

“Voltaire,” Marq grumbled. He reached the top of the stim lift, his mind getting sharper and somehow at the same time lazier. He had never quite worked out how that could be. “He’s supposed to be my creature, but half the time it’s like I’m his.”

“He’s a bunch of numbers.”

“Sure, but…Once I eavesdropped on his subconscious sentence-forming Agent, and he was framing a bunch of stuff about ‘will is soul’-self-image maintenance stuff, I think.”

“Philosophy, could be.”

“ Willhe’s got, for sure. So I’ve created a being with a soul?”

“Category error,” Nim said. “You’re abstracting ‘soul’ out of Agents. That’s like trying to go from atoms to cows in one jump.”

“That’s the kind of leap this sim makes.”

“You want to understand a cow, you don’t look for cow-atoms.”

“Right, you go for the ‘emergent property.’ Standard theory.”

“This sim is predictable, buddy. Remember that. You tailor him until he’s got no nonlinear elements you can’t contain.”

Marq nodded. “He’s…different. So powerful.”

“He got simmed for a reason, way back in the Dark Ages somewhere. Did you expect a doormat? One who wouldn’t give you a hard time? You represent authority-which he battled all his life.”

Marq ran fingers through his wavy hair. “Sure, if I find a nonlinear constellation I can’t abstract out-”

“-call it a will or a soul and delete it.” Nim slapped the table hard, making a woman nearby give them a startled glance.

Marq gave him a mocking, skeptical look. “The system isn’t completely predictable.”

“So you launch a pattern-sniffer. Back-trace on it. Stitch in sub-Agents, handcuff any personas you can’t fix. Hey, you invented those cognitive constraint algorithms. You’re the best.”

Marq nodded. And what if it’s like cutting into a brain in search of consciousness? He took a deep breath and exhaled toward the domed ceiling, where a mindless entertainment played, presumably for those conked off on stiff. “Anyway, it’s not just him.” Marq met Nim’s eyes. “I rigged Sybyl’s office. I eavesdrop on her meetings with Boker.”

Nim slapped him on the shoulder. “Good for you!”

Marq laughed. A buddy sticks with you, even if you’re having a stupid-storm. “That isn’t all.”

Nim leaned forward, boyishly curious.

“I think I went too far,” Marq said.

“You got caught!”

“No, no. You know how Sybyl is. She doesn’t suspect intrigue from enemies, much less friends.”

“Maneuvering isn’t her strong suit.”

“I’m not sure it’s mine, either,” Marq said.

“Ummm.” Nim gave him a shrewd look, eyes half-closed. “So…what else did you do?”

Marq sighed. “I updated Voltaire. Gave him cross-learning programs to flesh out his deep conflicts, help him reconcile them.”

Nim’s eyes widened. “Risky.”

“I wanted to see what a mind like that could do. When will I get another chance?”

“How do you feel about it, though?”

Marq chuffed Nim on the shoulder to hide his embarrassment.

“Kinda rotten. Sybyl and I both agreed not to do it.”

“Faith doesn’t need to be too smart.”

“I thought of that excuse, too.”

“What’s that guy Seldon think of all this?”

“We…haven’t told him.”

“Ah.”

“He wants it that way! Keeps his hands clean.”

Nim nodded. “Look buddy, deed’s done. How did the sim take it?”

“Jolted him. Big oscillations on the neural nets.”

“Okay now, though?”

“Seems so. I think he’s reintegrated.”

“Does your client know?”

“Yes. The Skeptics are all for it. I foresee no problem there.”

“You’re doing real research on this one,” Nim said. “Good for the field. Important.”

“So how come I feel like having maybe a dozen or so sniffs?” He jerked a thumb at the moron movie on the ceiling. “So that I’ll loll back and think that’s terrif stuff?”

“Now pay attention,” Voltaire said when the scientist at last answered his call. “Carefully.”

He cleared his throat, flung out his arms, and readied himself to declaim the brilliant arguments he’d detailed, all shaped in another lettre.

The scientist’s eyes were slits, his face pale. Voltaire was irked. “Don’t you want to hear?”

“Hangover.”

“You’ve discovered a single general theory explaining why the universe, so vast, is the only possible one, its forces all exact-and have no cure for hangover?”

“Not my area,” he said raggedly. “Ask a physicist.”

Voltaire clicked heels, then bowed in the Prussian way he’d learned at Frederick the Great’s court. (Though he had always muttered to himself, German puppets! as he did so.) “The doctrine of a soul depends on the idea of a fixed and immutable self. No evidence supports the notion of a stable ‘I,’ an essential ego-entity lying beyond each individual existence-”

“True,” said the scientist, “though odd, coming from you.”

“Don’t interrupt! Now, how can we explain the stubborn illusion of a fixed self or soul? Through five functions-themselves conceptual processes and not fixed elements. First, all beings possess physical, material qualities, which change so slowly that they appear to be fixed, but which are actually in constant material flux.”