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havior. "
"Much more in history may be explained by incompetence than by ill will. "
Joan looked away. "Sir, I summoned you because... since we last met, despite
the warnings of my voices... I answered a call. "
"I told you not to do that!" Voltaire shouted.
"I had no choice, " she said. "I had to answer. It was... urgent. " Fear crept
into her voice. "I cannot quite explain, but I know that the moment I
did so, I hovered on the verge of absolute extinction. "
Voltaire hid his concern behind a mask of levity. "No way for a saint to talk.
You're not supposed to admit the possibility of absolute extinction.
Your canonization could be reversed. "
Joan's voice wavered, a candle flame stirred by dark winds of doubt. "I
know only that I hovered on the brink of a great void, a chasm of darkness.
Whoever whatever it was let me go without injury. I stood before It, vul-
nerable, exposed. And It... released me. "
He felt a cold dread. He, too, had sensed unseeable entities just over his
shoulder, watching, judging. There was something blankly alien about these
visitations. He pulled himself back from the chilly memories. "From now on
answer no calls whatever. "
The Maid's face clouded with doubt. "I had no choice. "
"I'll find a better hiding place for you, " Voltaire assured her. "Make you
invulnerable to involuntary appearances. Give you power "
"You do not understand. This... Thing... could have snuffed me out like two
fingers pinching a tiny flame. It will return, I
know it. Meanwhile, I have but one wish. "
"Anything, " Voltaire said. "Anything in my power... "
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"Restore us and our friends to the cafe. "
"Aux Deux Magots? I am searching, but I don't even know if it still ex-
ists!"
"Re-create it with the sorcery you have learned. If I am to tumble head-
long into the void, let it not be before I spend one evening reunited with you
and our dear friends. Breaking bread, sipping wine in the company of those
I love... I ask nothing more before I am erased. "
"You're not going to be erased, " Voltaire assured her with far more con-
But her defiance had only begun. "You have taken my virginity, sir, yet you
speak only slightingly of marriage. And of love. "
"Bien sur, love between married couples may be possible though I
myself have never seen an instance of it yet it is unnatural. Like being born
with two fused toes. It happens, but only by mistake. One can, naturellement,
live happily with any woman, provided one doesn't love her.
"
She gave him an imperious glance. "I have become immune to your rogue ways. "
He shook his head sadly. "A dog is better off in this respect than I am in my
present state. "
He trailed his sim-finger lightly across her throat. Her head lolled back, her
eyes closed, her lips parted. But he, alas, felt nothing. "Find a way, " he
whispered. "Find a way. "
5.
He had been neglecting his work. His lack of interactive senses was thus his
own fault.
That, and the itching. He must learn to... somehow... scratch himself
inside himself.
In this damnable digital abode.
"One can scarcely blame a deity for His absence from such a place as
resurrected... him, had spoken of their New Renaissance. He was to be an
ornament to their fresh flowering. Somewhere on that planet, editions of
Volt 1. 0 ran.
His brothers? Younger Dittos, yes. He would have to inspect the impli-
cations of such beings, in a future rational discourse. For now
The trick was close scrutiny, he realized. If he slowed events a trick he had
learned early then he could devote data-crunchers to the task of un-
derstanding... himself.
First, this inky vault through which he flew. Windless, without warmth or the
rub of the real.
He delved down into the working mathematics of himself. It was a byz-
antine welter of detail, but in outline surprisingly familiar: the Cartesian
world. Events were modeled with axes in rectangular space, x, y, z, so that
motion was then merely sets of numbers on each axis. All dynamics shrank to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]