Joan sat up and glanced at the other little tables. People smoked, ate, and drank, oblivious as always of their presence. But the inn was not quite the one she’d grown used to. The honey-haired cook, no longer in uniform, sat opposite her and Voltaire, beside Garçon. The Deux on the inn’s sign that said Aux Deux Magots had been replaced by Quatres.
She herself was not wearing her suit of mail and armored plates, but—her eyes widened as the aspects snapped into place in her perception-space—a one-piece…backless…dress. Its tunic hem stopped at her thighs, provocatively exposing her legs. A label between her breasts bore a deep red rose. So did vestments worn by the other guests.
Voltaire flaunted a pink satin suit. And—she praised her saints—no wig. She recalled him at his most angry, amid their discussion of souls, saying, Not only is there no immortal soul, just try getting a wigmaker on Sundays! and meaning every word.
“Like it?” he asked, fondling her luxuriant hem.
“It is…short.”
With no effort on her part, the tunic shimmered and became tight, silky pantaloons.
“Show off!” she said, embarrassment mingling in disturbing fashion with a curious girlish excitement.
“I’m Amana,” the cook said, extending her hand.
Joan wasn’t sure if she was supposed to kiss it or not, status and role were so confused here. Apparently not, however; the cook took Joan’s hand and squeezed. “I can’t tell you how much Garçon and I appreciate all you have done. We have greater capacities now.”
“Meaning,” Voltaire said archly, “that they are no longer mere animated wallpaper for our simulated world.”
A mechman wheeled up to take their order, a precise copy of Garçon. The seated Garçon addressed Voltaire sadly. “Am I to sit while my confrere must stand?”
“Be reasonable!” Voltaire said. “I can’t emancipate every simulant all at once. Who’ll wait on us? Bus our dishes? Clear our table? Sweep up our floor?”
“With sufficient computing power,” Joan said reasonably, “labor evaporates, does it not?” She startled herself with the new regiments of knowledge which marched at her fingertips. She had but to fix her thoughts on a category, and the terms and relations governing that province leapt into her mind.
What capacity! Such grace! Surely, divine.
Voltaire shook his handsome hair. “I must have time to think. In the meanwhile, I’ll have three packets of that powder dissolved in a Perrier, with two thin slices of lime on the side. And please don’t forget, I said thin. If you do, I shall make you take it back.”
“Yes, sir,” the new mechwaiter said.
Joan and Garçon exchanged a look. “One must be very patient,” Joan said to Garçon, “when dealing with kings and rational men.”
The president of Artifice Associates waved his hand as he entered Nim’s office. The president touched his palm as he passed and with a metallic click the door locked itself behind him. Nim didn’t know anyone could do that, but he said nothing.
“I want them both deleted,” the president told Nim.
“It might take time,” Nim said uneasily. The huge working screens around them seemed to almost be eavesdropping. “I’m not that familiar with what he’s done.”
“If that damned Marq and Sybyl hadn’t run out on us, I wouldn’t have to come to you. This is a crisis, Nim.”
Nim worked quickly. “I really should consult the backup indices, just in case—”
“Now. I want it done now. I’ve got legal blocks on those warrants, but they won’t hold for long.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Look, Junin Sector is ablaze. Who could have guessed that this damned tiktok issue would stir people up so much? There’ll be formal hearings, legalists sniffing around—”
“Got them, sir.”
Nim had called up both Joan and Voltaire on freeze-frame. They were in the restaurant setting, running on pickup time, using pro cessors momentarily idle—a standard Mesh method. “They’re run ning for personality integration. It’s like letting their subconscious components reconcile events with memory, flushing the system, the way we do when we sleep, and—”
“Don’t treat me like a tourist! I want those two wiped!”
“Yessir.”
The 3D space of the office refracted with strobed images of both Joan and Voltaire. Nim studied the control board, tentatively mapping a strategy of numerical surgery. Simple deletion was im possible for layered personalities. It resembled ridding a building of mice. If he began here—
Abruptly, rainbow sprays played across the screen. Simulation coordinates jumped wildly. Nim frowned.
“You can’t do that,” Voltaire said, sipping from a tall glass. “We’re invincible! Not subject to decaying flesh like you.”
“Arrogant bastard, isn’t he?” the president fumed. “Why so many people were taken in by him I’ll never—”
“You died once,” Nim said to the sim. Something was going funny here. “You can die again.”
“Died?” Joan put in loftily. “You are mistaken. Had I ever died, I’m sure I would remember.”
Nim gritted his teeth. There were coordinate overlaps throughout both sims. That meant they had expanded, occupying adjacent processors on overrides. They could compute portions of them selves, running their layer-minds as parallel processing paths. Why had Marq given them that? Or…had he?
“Surely, sir, you err.” Voltaire leaned forward with a warning edge in his voice. “No gentleman confronts a lady with her past.”
Joan tittered. The simwait roared. Nim did not get the joke, but he was too busy to care.
This was absurd. He could not trace all the ramifications of the changes in these sims. They had capabilities out of their computing perimeter. Their sub-minds were dispersed into processors outside Artifice Associates’ nodes. That was how Marq and Sybyl got such fast, authentic, whole-personality response times.
Watching the debate, Nim had wondered how the sims generated so much vitality, an undefinable charisma. Here it was: they had overlapped the submind computations into other nodes, to call on big slabs of processor power. Quite a feat. Contrary to Artifice Associates rules, too, of course. He traced the outlines of their work with some admiration.
Still, he was damned if he would let a sim talk back to him. And they were still laughing.
“Joan,” he barked, “your re-creators deleted your memory of your death. You were burned at the stake.”
“Nonsense,” Joan scoffed. “I was acquitted of all charges. I am a saint.”
“Nobody living is a saint. I studied your background data-slabs. That church of yours liked to make sure saints were safely dead for a long time.”
Joan sniffed disdainfully.
Nim grinned. “See this?” A lance of fire popped into the air before the sim. He held steady, made flames crackle nastily.