“Old prohibitions wearing out, my friend. And it has come up, many times. Just got knocked down, is all.”

“By what?”

Nim shrugged. “Politics, social forces-who knows? I mean, people feel edgy about machines that think. Can’t trust them.”

“What if you couldn’t even tell they were machines?”

“Huh? That’s crazy.”

“Maybe a really smart machine doesn’t want any competition.”

“Smarter than good ol’ Marq? Doesn’t exist.”

“But they could…eventually.”

“Never. Forget it. Let’s get to work.”

Sybyl sat anxiously beside Monsieur Boker in the Great Coliseum. They were near the Imperial Gardens and an air of importance seemed to hover over everything.

She could not stop tapping her nails-her best full formal set-on her knees. Among the murmur of four hundred thousand other spectators in the vast bowl, she anxiously awaited the appearance of the Maid and Voltaire on a gigantic screen.

Civilization, she thought, was a bit boring. Her time with the sims had opened her eyes to the force, the heady electricity, of the dark past. They had fought wars, slaughtered each other, all-supposedly-for ideas.

Now, swaddled in Empire, humanity was soft. Instead of bloody battles, satisfyingly final, there were “fierce” trade wars, athletic head-buttings. And lately, a fashion for debates.

This collision of sims, touted everywhere on Trantor, would be watched by over twenty billion households. And it was beamed to the entire Empire, wherever the creaky funnels of the wormhole network went. The rude vigor of the prehistoric sims was undeniable; she felt it herself, a quickening in her pulse.

The merest few interviews and glimpses of the sims had intrigued the 3D audience. Those who brought up the age-old laws and prohibitions got shouted down. The air crackled with the zest for the new. No one had anticipated that this debate would balloon into this.

This could spread. Within weeks, Junin could inflame all Trantor into a renaissance.

And she was going to take every scrap of credit for it that she could, of course.

She looked around at the president and other top-ranking executives of Artifice Associates, all chattering away happily.

The president, to demonstrate neutrality, sat between Sybyl and Marq-who had not spoken to each other since the last meeting.

On Marq’s far side his client, the Skeptics’ representative, scanned the program; next to him, Nim. Monsieur Boker gave Sybyl a nudge. “That can’t be what I think it is,” he said.

Sybyl followed his eyes to a distant row at the back where what looked like a mechman sat quietly beside a human girl. Only licensed mech vendors and bookies were allowed in the stadium.

“Probably her servant,” Sybyl said.

Minor infractions of the rules did not disturb her as they did Monsieur Boker, who’d been especially testy since a 3D caster leaked the news that Artifice Associates was representing both the Preservers and Skeptics. Fortunately, the leak occurred too late for either party to do anything about it.

“Mechserves aren’t allowed,” Monsieur Baker observed.

“Maybe she’s handicapped,” Sybyl said to placate him. “Needs help in getting around.”

“It won’t understand what’s going on anyway,” said Marq, directing his remark to Monsieur Boker. “They’re truncated. Just a bunch of decision-making modules, really.”

“Precisely why it has no business here,” replied Monsieur Boker.

Marq beeped the arm of his chair and ostentatiously placed a bet on Voltaire to win.

“He’s never won a bet in his whole life,” Sybyl told Monsieur Boker. “No head for the math.”

“Is that so?” Marq shot back, leaning forward to address Sybyl directly for the first time. “Why don’t you put your money where your lovely mouth is?”

“I’ve got the probabilities on this one bracketed,” she said primly.

“You couldn’t solve the integral equation.” Marq snorted derisively.

Her nostrils flared. “A thousand.”

“Mere tokenism,” Marq chided her, “considering what you’re being paid for this project.”

“The same as you,” said Sybyl.

“Will you two cut it out,” Nim said.

“Tell you what,” said Marq. “I’ll bet my entire salary for the project on Voltaire. You bet yours on your anachronistic Maid.”

“Hey,” Nim said. “Hey.”

The president deftly addressed Marq’s client, the Skeptic. “It’s this keen competitive spirit that’s made Artifice Associates the planet’s leader in simulated intelligences.” Artfully he turned to the rival, Boker. “We try to”

“You’re on!” cried Sybyl. Her dealings with the Maid had convinced her that the irrational must have a place in the human equation, too. She remained convinced for about three quick eye-blinks, and then began to doubt.

Voltaire loved audiences. And he had never appeared before one like this ocean of faces lapping at his feet.

Although tall in his former life, he felt that only now, gazing down at the multitudes from his hundred-meter height, had he achieved the stature he deserved. He patted his powdered wig and fussed with the shiny satin ribbon at his throat. With a gracious flourish of his hands, he made a deep bow to them, as if he’d already given the performance of his life. The crowd murmured like an awakening beast.

He glanced at the Maid, concealed from the audience behind a shimmering partition in the far corner of the screen. She folded her arms, pretending to be unimpressed.

Delay only excited the beast. He let the crowd cheer and stamp, ignoring boos and hisses from approximately half of those present.

At least half of humanity has always been fools,he reflected. This was his first exposure to the advanced denizens of this colossal Empire. Millennia had made no difference.

He was not one to prematurely cut off adulation he knew was his due. Here he stood for the epitome of the French intellectual tradition, now vanquished but for him.

He gazed again at Joan-who was, after all, the only other surviving member of their time, quite obviously the peak in human civilization. He whispered, “‘Tis our destiny to shine; theirs, to applaud.”

When the moderator finally pleaded for silence-a bit too soon; Voltaire would take that up with him later-Voltaire endured Joan’s introduction with what he hoped was a stoic smile. He elaborately insisted that Joan make her points first, only to have the moderator rather rudely tell him that here, they flipped a coin.

Voltaire won. He shrugged, then placed his hand over his heart. He began his recital in the declamatory style so dear to eighteenth-century Parisian hearts: no matter how defined the soul, like a deity, could not be shown to exist; its existence was inferred.

Truth of the inference lay beyond rational proof. Nor was there anything in Nature that required it.

And yet, Voltaire continued to pontificate, there was nothing more obvious in Nature than the work of an intelligence greater than man’s-which man is able, within limits, to decipher. That man can decode Nature’s secrets proved what the Church fathers and all the founders of the world’s great religions had always said: that man’s intelligence is a reflection of that same Divine Intelligence which authored Nature.

Were this not so, natural philosophers could not discern the laws behind Creation, either because there would be none, or because man would be so alien to them that he could not discern them. The very harmony between natural law, and our ability to discover it, strongly suggested that sages and priests of all persuasions are essentially correct!-in arguing that we are but the creatures of an Almighty Power, whose Power is reflected in us. And this reflection in us of that Power may be justly termed our universal, immortal, yet individual souls.