Foundation's Fear by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-08T18:30:00+00:00

could force his attentions upon her, indeed. But a lady forced is never a lady won.

Very well. He would have to find the personae. Merde alors!

3.

Marq sat intently beneath his 3D holo, combing the trashy back alleys and byways of the Mesh.

He had been quite sure there was no more of Voltaire, except back in Seldon’s vault files. Or he had been, until today. He almost wished he hadn’t snagged the rivulet of talk that implied so much. “Still nothing more,” he said.

“Why are you running search profiles on Joan?” Sybyl asked from her desk.

“Seldon wants tracking. Now. Joan will be easier, if she also escaped into the Mesh.”

“Because she’s female?”

“Nothing to do with Joan’s ‘sex,’ everything to do with her temperament. She’ll be less calculating than Voltaire, right?”

Sybyl wore her grudging look. “Perhaps.”

“Less wily. Ruled by her heart.”

“And not by her head, like your supersmart Voltaire? More likely to make a mistake?”

“Look, I know I shouldn’t have souped up Voltaire. Hormones got in my way.”

She smiled. “You keep tripping over them.”

“Bad judgment--and Nim’s urging. I’m sure he was working for someone else, goading each of us.”

Her mouth twisted ruefully. “To bring on the Junin riots?”

“Could be. But who’d want that?” His fist smacked his desk. “To crack up the renaissance, just as it was getting started--”

“Let’s not go over that again.” She paced their cramped, dingy room. “If we can find those sims, we might get some leverage. We can’t keep hiding out forever.”

“Voltaire’s a lot quicker than Joan, with more resources. Self-programming, outright internal evolution--he’s got ‘em. And this guy’s creative, remember.”

“This is the genius we’re going to catch? Ha!”

Her taunt irked him. Several times he’d felt he was close, very close. Always, just as his ferrets found a thread of Voltaire’s distinctive configuration-logic, it would slip away, thwart his effort. His holo would inexplicably black out. He’d lose hours of carefully aggregated data in a microsecond. And he’d have to begin again.

Marq leaned back and rotated his neck to get the cricks out. “I may be onto something,” he said. “I’m not sure.” He pointed to his carbon cube. “Modified my array-spaces and used them to earn a few creds in the protein markets. I caught another Voltaire scent, too.”

She sighed and collapsed into a chair that deftly shaped itself to catch her. “Why hustle the cred when we can’t use it to get anything to eat?”

“Find Joan, we’ll get fat.”

“Look, those tiktok failures, what’s the evidence they’re due to our sims?”

He shrugged. “The Imperial Scientific Consortium thinks there’s a connection with the Junin mess. Nonsense, of course, but it keeps people jazzed. They say they have secret sources, they don’t explain. Got it?”

“My my, touchy. So they’re still looking for us.”

“Going through the motions, I’d guess. Trantor has much bigger headaches now.”

“Think we’ll all go on rations?”

“‘Fraid so. Rumor says not until next week.” Her frown made him add, “Rations are mostly a precaution. You and I can both afford to lose a little of this.”

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