Kiln People

21 Duplicity

My first clear realization, as I awake, is not about the cramped tube where I find myself confined. I’ve been ambushed, snared, boxed, and crated so many times, I hardly notice anymore. No, my first thought is that I should not have been sleeping. I’m a ditto, after all. With just a ticking enzyme clock, I don’t have time for frivolities.

Then it comes rushing back -

I was hurrying along a ragged hedge in an old-fashioned suburban enclave, created for Aeneas Kaolin’s servants. Stepping over a bike, I wondered — where did Maharal’s ghost hurry off to? Why did the inventor’s final golem run off, instead of helping solve its maker’s killing?

I hastened around the hedge, only to find — ditMaharal! The gray stood there, smiling, aiming a weapon with a flared nozzle …

The memory’s distressing. Worse, I have a weird impression that more than a little time passed since. Hours. More than I can afford.

It’s a good thing I pay to give my ditto blanks phobia blocks, or I’d be having fits right now, pinned inside a narrow cylinder, pickled in a syrup of oily sustaino-fluid. All right, Albert … ditAlbert … quit banging the walls. You’ll never break out of here by force. Concentrate!

I remember hurrying to catch up with Maharal’s ghost, rounding the corner of a tall hedge, only to find my quarry had turned, pointing spray gun at my face. I plunged into a diving tackle, hoping fresh reflexes would prove quicker than his day-old body.

It must not have worked.

How long have I been out? I send a time query to my tracker pellet and the response is a sharp pain — someone must have ripped it from my brow. A throbbing hole gapes when I wriggle up a hand to poke the wound.

In countries with strict laws, pellet removal automatically kills the ditto. In PEZ, the old precautions faded till there’s just a cheap transponder and data chip. I can live without it. But my archie will have a hard time retrieving his lost property, which is why bad guys dig the pellets out.

Did they also think to remove the rest of my implants? I can’t tell if my auto-recorder is still running. For all I know, this subvocal narration may be futile, words vanishing into entropy, like my thoughts. But I can’t stop compulsively reciting. It’s built in to keep doing it till this pathetic clay brain dissolves.

Wait. Most sustaino-tanks come equipped with a little window, so owners can view their assets. All I see right now is blank metal, but there’s light coming from somewhere.

Behind me. Pressing both palms against the tank’s inner wall, I rotate slowly … and there it is. Beyond a thick sheet of glass, I see a room that resembles some mad scientist’s laboratory.

Mine isn’t the only preservation cylinder. Dozens lean haphazardly on rough, stony walls. Beyond, I see storage freezers for raw blanks, several imprinting units, and a large kiln for baking fresh duplicates. Every piece of equipment bears the same logo — a U followed by a K, each letter enclosed by its own circle. Side by side, they blend into something like the symbol for infinity. All over the world, it stands for quality. The genuine article. Kosher. The real McCoy.

Could I be inside the gleaming headquarters of Universal Kilns? Something about the stark rock wall says no. High-bandwidth superconducting cables lay haphazardly draped across cluttered work benches. Shabby dust layers show that no contract janitorial service sends striped golems to clean here. Wherever “here” is.

At a guess, I’d say the loyal Dr. Maharal was pilfering office supplies, and possibly a lot more, before his demise.

Beyond the normal run of dittoing equipment, several machines look unfamiliar, with the open-scaffold look of prototypes. One array of high-pressure tanks and nozzles had been hissing and fuming, obscured in multicolored fog till a few seconds ago, before reaching a climax and abruptly falling silent.

A horizontal panel swings back and clouds of vapor spill away from a naked figure, lying on a cushioned platform — with that fresh, doughy look that you always have when emerging from the kiln. The features are those of Yosil Maharal, resembling the corpse I saw at Kaolin Manor, though hairless and metallic gray, flushed with glimmering reddish undertones.

A sudden jerk and gasp; it starts to breathe, sucking air to feed the catalysis cells. Eyes snap open, dark, without pupils. They turn, as if sensing my gaze.

There is a coldness in their regard. Icy, with an agony. That is, if you can read anything in a ditto’s eyes.

Sitting up and swiveling to plant both feet on the floor, Maharal’s golem starts toward me. Limping. The same uneven gait I once attributed to some recent injury. But that was a different copy. It had to be. This ditto is new. Its uneven gait must have some other explanation. Habit, perhaps.

New? How could it be new? Maharal is dead! There’s no template to copy anymore. No soul to lay its impression into clay. Unless he happened to have a few imprinted spares, stored in a fridge. But the machine this creature just stepped out of doesn’t look like any fridge or kiln I ever saw.

Even before he speaks, I wonder — Am I looking at some kind of technological marvel? A breakthrough? Project Zoroaster?

Still naked, ditMaharal peers through the small window of my container, as if inspecting a valuable acquisition.

“You appear to be managing well enough.” The words enter via a small diaphragm, vibrating the greasy fluid within. “I hope you’re comfortable, Albert.”

How can I answer? I shrug helplessly.

“There is a speaking tube,” the gray golem explains. “Below the window.”

I glance down, groping, and find it. A flexible hose with a mask to fit over the nose and mouth. As soon as I strap it on, suction begins, flushing my throat with water, then air, provoking spasmodic coughing fits. Still, it’s a relief to start breathing again. How long has it been?

It also means the enzyme clock resumes ticking.

“So” — coughing again — “so your other gray took a spare out of the fridge and told you who I am before it expired. Big deal.”

The Maharal-duplicate grins.

“I did not need to be told. I am that same gray. The one who spoke to your archetype Tuesday morning. The one who stood by my own corpse at noon. The same ‘ghost’ who shot you Tuesday afternoon.”

How can that be? Then I remember the strange-looking machine. Looking again at the blotches that flicker under a complexion that rather glows as if new … I think I get it.

“Ditto-rejuvenation. Is that what it’s all about?” After a brief pause, I add, “And Universal Kilns wants to suppress your discovery in order to keep up sales.” ditMaharal’s smile hardens.

“A good guess. If only that were all. There would be disruptions. Economic ramifications. But nothing that society couldn’t handle.”

Thinking hard, I try to grasp what he’s implying.

Something more serious than economic disruption? “How … how long can a ditto go on acquiring new memories before it gets hard to inload?”

My captor nods.

“The answer depends on the original imprinting personality. But you are on the right track. With enough time, a golem’s soul-field starts to drift, transforming into something new.”

“A new person,” I murmur. “Plenty of folks may worry about that.” ditMaharal is watching me, as if evaluating my reactions. But evaluating for what?

Pondering my present state, I’m struck only by a calm acceptance.

“You’ve put something in the sustainofluid. A sedative?”

“A relaxing agent. We have tasks ahead of us, you and I. It won’t be helpful for you to get upset. You tend to get unpredictable when agitated.”

Huh. Clara says the very same thing about me. I’ll take it from her, but not from this clown. Sedative or no, I’ll get “agitated” whenever I darn well please.

“You talk as if we’ve done this before.”

“Oh yes. Not that you’d remember. The first time we met was long ago and not in this lab. All the other times … I disposed of the memories.”

How can I react to such news, except by staring? This implies I’m not the first Albert Morris that Maharal has ditnapped. He must have snared several other copies — some of those who mysteriously vanished over the years — and trashed them when he was done …

… when he was done doing what? The usual perversions don’t seem Maharal’s style.

I hazard a guess. “Experiments. You’ve been grabbing my dits and experimenting on them. But why? Why me?”

Maharal’s eyes are glassy. I can see my own gray face reflected in them.

“Many reasons. One is your profession. You regularly lose high-quality golems without worrying much about it. As long as your mission goes well — villains are caught and the client pays — you write off a few unexplained losses here and there as part of the job. You don’t even report them for insurance.”

“But—”

“Of course there’s more.”

He says it in such a way, one that’s both knowing and tired of repetition, as if he’s given me the same explanation many times before. It’s a notion I find chilling.

Silence stretches. Is he waiting? Testing me? Am I supposed to figure out something, just from evidence before my eyes?

The initial flush of kiln-baking has faded. He stands before me in standard gray tones, looking moderately fresh … but not entirely. Some of those under-the-skin blotches haven’t gone away. Whatever process he uses to restore élan vital must be uneven. Imperfect, like a film doyenne with her latest face-lift. Underneath are signs of irreversible wear and tear.

“There … must be a limit. A limit to the number of times you can refresh the cells.”

He nods.

“It has always been a mistake to seek salvation solely through continuity of the body. Even the ancients knew this, back when a human spirit had just one home.

“Even they knew — perpetuity is carried not by the body but by the soul.”

Despite a vatic tone, I could tell he meant this in a technological as well as a spiritual sense. “Carried by the soul … You mean from one body to another.” I blinked. “From a ditto to some body other than its original?”

It sinks in. “Then you’ve made another breakthrough. Something even bigger than extending a golem’s expiration deadline.”

“Go on,” he says.

I’m reluctant to speak the words.

“You … think you can go on indefinitely, without the real you.”

A smile spreads across the steel gray face, showing pleasure at my guess, like a teacher gazing at a favorite pupil. Yet there is chilling harshness in his golem grin.

“Reality is a matter of opinion.

“I am the true Yosil Maharal.”

22 Mime’s the Word

This is my first chance to recite a report since I barely escaped that mess at Universal Kilns.

Talking into an old-fashioned autoscribe feels like a poor use of precious time, especially when I’m on the run. How much more convenient it is for Albert’s special-model ditective grays — outfitted with fancy subvocal recorders and built-in compulsions to describe everything they see or think, in realtime present tense! But I’m just a utility green, even after getting several dye jobs. A cheap knockoff. If there’s to be an account of my miserable part in all this, I must do it the hard way.

Which brings up the prize question. An account for whom?

Not for realAlbert, my maker, who is surely dead. Or the cops, who would as soon dissect me as look at me. As for my gray brothers. Hell, it creeps me out just thinking about them.

So why bother reciting at all? Who will care?

I may be a frankie, but I can’t stop picturing Clara, away fighting her war in the desert, unaware that her real lover has been fried by a missile. She deserves the modern consolation — to hear about it from his ghost. That means me, since I’m the only ditto left. Even though I don’t really feel like Albert Morris at all.

So here it is, dear Clara. A ghost-written letter to help you get past the first stage of grief. Poor Albert had his faults, but at least he cared. And he had a job.

I was there when it happened — the “attack” on Universal Kilns, I mean. Standing on the factory floor not thirty yards away, staring in wonder as gray number two ran by, all blotchy and discolored from something horrid that was roiling his guts, preparing to burst. He sped on past, barely glancing at me, or at Pal’s little ferret-ditto on my shoulder, though we had just gone through Hades to sneak inside and rescue him!

Ignoring our shouts, he searched frantically, then found what he was looking for — a place to die without hurting anybody.

Well, anybody except that poor forklift driver, who never understood why a stranger suddenly wanted to burrow up his gloaca. And that was just the fellow’s first rude surprise. The giant ditworker let out a bellow, then began expanding to several times his former size, like a distended balloon … like some cartoon character blowing too hard on his own thumb. I thought the unlucky forklift was about to explode! Then we’d all be finished. Me for sure. Everyone in the factory. Universal Kilns. Maybe every ditto in the city?

(Imagine all the archies having to do everything for themselves! They’d know how, of course. But everyone is so used to being many — living several lives in parallel. Being limited to just one at a time would drive folks nuts.)

Lucky for us, the hapless forklift stopped expanding at the last moment. Like a surprised blowfish, he stared about with goggle eyes, as if thinking, This was never in my contract. Then the soul-glow extinguished. The clay body shuddered, hardened, and went still.

Man, what a way to go.

There followed a maelstrom of chaos and clamoring alarms. Production machinery shut down. Worker-golems dropped every routine task and the vast factory thronged with emergency teams, converging to contain the damage. I saw displays of reckless courage — or it would have been courage if the crews weren’t expendable duplicates. Even so, it took valor to approach the bloated carcass. Faint sprays jetted from the leaking, distended body. Any ditto who brushed even a droplet fell in writhing agony.

But most of the poison was checked, held inside the massive, quivering forklift. As it started to slump and dissolve from within, purple-striped cleaners arrived with long hoses, spraying the area with anti-prion foam.

Company officials followed. No real humans yet, but lots of busy scientific grays in white coats, then some bright blue policedits and a silver-gold Public Safety proctor. Finally, a platinum duplicate of the UK chief himself, Vic Aeneas Kaolin, strode upon the scene demanding answers.

“Come on,” Pallie’s little ferret-self said from my shoulder. “Let’s scram. You’re orange right now, but the big guy still may recognize your face.”

Despite that, I was tempted to stay and find out what just happened. Maybe help clear Albert’s name. Anyway, what awaited me out there in the world? Ten hours of futile head-scratching, listening to the whining recriminations of Gadarene and Lum till my clock ran out and it was my own turn to melt away?

The foam still flowed, bubbling, hissing, and spreading across the factory floor. Imprinted survival instincts feel like the real thing, and I joined other onlookers backing away from the stuff. “All right,” I sighed at last. “Let’s get out of here.”

I turned — only to face several burly security types, liveried in pale orange with blue bands. And triple-size ersatz muscles that they flexed menacingly.

“Please come with us,” one of them said with an augmented voice of authority, taking my arm in an adamant lock grip. Which I immediately took to be a good sign.

The “please” part, that is.

We were put inside a sealed van — one with plain metal sides that stayed opaque, no matter how hard we stared, which Palloid thought rather rude.

“They could at least give us a view before they start dicing up our brains,” groused the ferret with Pal’s face, ingratiating himself with the guards in his typical fashion. “Hey, up front! How about letting a fellow consult with his lawyer-program, eh? You want to be held personally liable when I slap a mega-lien on your whole company for ditnapping? Are you aware of the recent ruling in ditAddison vs. Hughes? It’s no longer an excuse for a golem to say he was ‘just following orders.’ Remember the Henchman Law. If you switch sides right now, you can help me sue your boss and go swimming in cash!”

Good old Pal, a charmer in whatever form he takes. Not that it mattered. Whether we were “under arrest” in a strictly legal sense was immaterial. As mere property — and possible participants in industrial sabotage — we weren’t going to inspire any UK employees to turn whistle-blower over our abused rights.

At least the driver left my armrest entertainment-flasher turned on, so I asked for news. The space in front of me ballooned with holonet bubbles, most of them dealing with a “failed fanatical terrorist attack” at UK. They weren’t very informative. Anyway, a short while later another item grabbed top billing as a banner globe erupted, crowding other holos aside.

At first I didn’t recognize the site of the blazing inferno. But news correlators soon added the address targeted by a clandestine murder rocket.

“Cripes,” Pallie muttered near my ear. “That’s tough, Albert.”

It was home. Or the place where this body of mine got imprinted with memories, before getting set loose into a long, regrettable day. Damn, they even burned the garden, I thought, watching flames consume the structure and everything inside.

In one sense, it seemed a mercy. Leading rumor-nets had already begun naming Albert Morris as a chief suspect in the UK attack. He’d be in a real jam if he still lived. Poor guy. It was predictable, I guess, so long as he kept trying to act as a romantic, old-fashioned crusader against evil. Sooner or later he was going to irritate someone much bigger and stronger and get in real trouble. Whoever did all this was being devastatingly thorough.

Trouble didn’t even begin to cover what I was in as the van pulled to a stop. The rear door started opening and Pal’s raggedy little ferretdit prepared to spring. But the guards were vigilant and quick. One snatched Palloid’s neck in a viselike grip. The other took me by an elbow, gently but with enough power to show how futile resistance would be.

We stepped out next to the unlit side portico of a big stone mansion, turning down a dim set of stairs partly hidden behind some truly outstanding chrysanthemums. I might have resisted the guard long enough to try and sniff the flowers, if I had a working nose. Ah well.

At the bottom, an open door led into a sort of lounge where half a dozen figures relaxed at tables and chairs, smoking, talking, and quaffing beverages. At first glance I thought they were real, since all wore varied shades of human-brown under durable cloth garments in rather old-fashioned styles. But an expert glance showed their fleshtones to be dye jobs. Their faces really gave them away — bearing familiar expressions of resigned ennui. These were dittos at the end of a long work day, waiting patiently to expire.

Two of them sat before expensive interface screens, talking to computer-generated AI avatars with faces similar to their own. One was a small, childlike golem, wearing scuffed denim. I couldn’t catch any of his words. But the other one, fashioned after a buxom woman with reddish hair, wearing ill-fitting matronly garb, spoke loudly enough to overhear as the guard pulled me along.

“… with the divorce coming up, there are going to be a lot of changes,” she told the onscreen face. “My part will get more complicated while stress-induced submotivations grow increasingly subtle. If we can’t have better day-to-day continuity, I wish we could at least be given better data on the original misery indices. Especially since I have to start each day almost from scratch. Fortunately, the situation was so chaotic that consistency isn’t much required, or even expected by the subject …”

Her voice was pure professionalism, the words unrelated to any concern of mine. Albert Morris clearly wasn’t the only skilled contract laborer hired for obscure projects by an eccentric trillionaire.

Our burly escorts took us to a door beyond the lounge/waiting room. A visible ray scanned their blue-striped foreheads and opened the portal, revealing a huge chamber divided by rows of heavy pillars to support the mansion overhead. We strode quickly through this concrete forest, glimpsing various laboratories on all sides. To my left, the equipment had to do with dittoing, as you’d expect — freezers, imprinting units, kilns, and such, plus a few I didn’t recognize. To my right lay the kind of gear involved in human biology and medicine — almost a miniature real people hospital, augmented with the latest brain scanner/analyzers.

That is, I guessed they were the latest. Albert is — or was — an interested amateur who studiously read articles about the brain psychopathology of evildoers. A fascination that I, as a frankie, do not seem to share.

The guards escorted us to another waiting area, outside a sealed doorway. Through a narrow window I glimpsed an individual pacing nervously, barking sharp questions at somebody out of sight. The interrogator’s skin was burnished-bright and expensive synthetic tendons bunched, almost like a man’s. Few could afford bodies like that one, let alone to use them in bulk quantities. It was the second high-class Kaolin-ditto I had seen in an hour. He kept glancing at a nearby wall where multiple bubble displays floated and jostled, ballooning outward in reaction to his gaze, showing events in many time zones.

I noticed that the UK factory was prominent in several bubbles, revealing that emergency teams still moved about, but with less frantic urgency than before, having apparently succeeded at limiting the prion attack. I’d wager that production might resume before dawn, in remote sections of the factory.

Another bubbleview gazed down on the smoldering ruins of a small house — Albert’s home, and probably his crematorium. Alas.

“Come away from there, please,” said one of my escorts, in a mild tone that implied a second warning would be less courteous. I left the window and joined Palloid, who lay on the slim mattress of a nearby hospital gurney. Pal’s little ferret-golem was licking some wounds it received during our brief battle gaining entrance to Universal Kilns.

As realPal expected, the tunnels laboriously dug by fanatic protestor groups — both Lum’s and Gadarene’s — had already been discovered by someone. Hidden mechanical guardians, vigilant and much longer lasting than clay, pounced when we came through. But clay is versatile. And those robo-wardens never faced a squadron of attacking mini-Pals! By the time I followed close behind, the battle was mostly over. I found one Palloid standing amid shards of its ditto-comrades and melted fragments of the mechanical guards. His refractive fur smoldered and most of the tiny combat beetles it had carried were gone. But enemy sentinels were gone and our path stood clear for a dash into the factory proper, searching for my gray brother, before he was duped into committing a crime.

As it turned out, our warning came too late. Still, the gray must have realized something independently. His last-minute dive into the foul belly of a forklift was courageous and resourceful. At least, I hoped the authorities would see it that way. If they were shown the whole story.

Waiting in the underground anteroom, Pal’s little golem soon piped up with a complaint.

“Hey! What does it take to get some meditcal attention around here? Anybody notice I’m damaged? How about a pretty nurse? Or a can of spackle and a putty knife?”

One guard stared at him, then muttered into a wrist mike. Soon an orange utility rox showed up, devoid of any features to show the sex of its original, and started applying varied sprays to Palloid’s wounds. I, too, had suffered a burn or two skirmishing near the tunnels, but did you see me whining?

Minutes passed. A lot of them. I realized it must be Wednesday already. Great. Maybe I should have spent yesterday at the beach, after all.

While we waited, a messenger-dit came hurrying downstairs from the mansion proper, jogging on long legs, bearing a small Teflon container. Palloid wrinkled his wet nose, sneezing in distaste. “Whatever he’s got in that box, it’s been disinfected about fifty different ways,” he commented. “Smells like a mix of alcohol, benzene, bacteena, and that foam stuff they were using back at UK.”

The messenger knocked, then entered. I heard platinum Kaolin grind out, “Finally!” — before we were left again to cool our heels, decaying with each passing minute. No sooner did the repair nurse finish patching Palloid than my little friend chirped again, demanding another favor.

“Hey, chum, how’s about giving me a reader, eh? Gotta stay productive, right? My rig recently joined a book club. He wants to catch up on Moby-Dit for their next meeting. I might as well cover some chapters while we’re sitting around.”

The nerve of the guy! Suppose he actually got to read a few pages. Did he actually expect to inload anything to realPal? Yeah sure, I thought. As if you and I are ever leaving this place.

To my surprise, the guard shrugged and went to a cabinet, pulled out a battered net-plaque, and tossed it onto the gurney near Palloid. Soon the little golem was pawing his way through an online fiction index, searching for the latest best-seller about a seagoing golem so huge that its energy cells would take decades to run down … a monsterdit imprinted with the tormented soul of a half-crazed savant who must then chase his dire creation as it runs amuck across the seven seas, smashing ships and denouncing its adamant pursuer for about a thousand pages. There’s been a rash of stories and films like that lately, featuring dittos in conflict with their archetype originals. I hear this one’s well written and full of arty existential angst. But Albert Morris never had a taste for high literature.

In fact, I was kind of surprised to learn that Pal had a weakness for that stuff. A book club, my ceramic ass! He was up to something.

“Come,” one of our guards said, answering some hidden signal. “You’re wanted now.”

“And it’s such an honor to be wanted,” Pal quipped, always ready with a feel-good remark. Dropping the plaque, he scampered to my shoulder and I strode through the now-open door of the conference room.

A solemn Kaolin-golem awaited us. “Sit,” he commanded. I plopped into the chair he indicated — more plush than anything needed by my inexpensive tush. “I am very busy,” the magnate’s duplicate enounced. “I’ll give you ten minutes to explain yourselves. Be exact.”

No threats or inducements. No warnings not to lie. Sophisticated neural-net programs would be listening, almost certainly. Although such systems aren’t intelligent (in any strict sense of the word), it takes concentration and luck to fool them. Albert had the skill, and I suppose that means I do, too. But sitting there, I lacked the inclination to try.

Anyway, the truth was entertaining enough. Pallie barged right in.

“I guess you could say it started on Monday, when two different groups of fanatics came to me, complaining that my friend here” — a ferret-paw waved at me — “was harassing them with late night visits …”

He proceeded to jabber the whole story, including our suspicion that someone was contriving to frame the hapless fanatics — Lum and Gadarene — along with realAlbert, setting them all up to take the blame for this evening’s sabotage at UK.

I couldn’t fault Palloid’s decision to cooperate and tell everything. The sooner investigators were steered onto the right track, the better — one way to clear Albert’s name, for whatever good that would do him. (I noticed that the little ferret artfully avoided naming his own rig. realPal was safe, for now.)

And yet, my clay brain roiled with misgivings. Kaolin himself wasn’t above suspicion. Sure, I couldn’t imagine why a trillionaire might sabotage his own company. But all sorts of twisty conspiracies can look plausible after a day like the one I just had. Wasn’t it right here, at Kaolin Manor, that Tuesday’s gray number one mysteriously vanished? Anyway, Kaolin was one of the few who possessed the means — both technical and financial — to pull off something so ornate and diabolical.

Foremost in my mind was this: Why aren’t any cops present? This questioning should be handled by professionals.

It implied that Kaolin had something to hide. Even at risk of thwarting the law.

He could be in real trouble for this, I thought, if even a single real person was harmed by tonight’s attack. True, the only people I saw getting damaged at UK were dittos … The thought hung there, unfinished and unsatisfying.

“Well, well,” our platinum host said after Pal’s ferret-dit finished its amazing recital about late night visitors, religious fanatics, civil rights nuts, and secret tunnels. The Vic shook his head. “That’s quite a tale.”

“Thanks!” Palloid panted, wagging his rearmost appendage at the compliment. I almost hit him.

“I would normally find your story preposterous, of course. A tissue of blatant fantasies and obvious distractions.” He paused. “On the other hand, it corresponds with additional information I received, a short time ago.”

He motioned for the messenger, who had been standing patiently in a corner, to come forward. The yellow golem used disposable gloves to reach into his box and remove a tiny cylinder — the smallest and simplest kind of unpowered audio archive — slipping it into a playback unit on Kaolin’s conference table. The sound that emerged wasn’t one that our grandparents would have called a voice — more like an undulating murmur of grunted clicks and half-tones. That turned into a warbling whine as the messenger dialed the playback unit to higher speed. And yet, I knew this language well. Every word came across perfectly clear.

I always hate getting up off the warming tray, grabbing paper garments from a rack … knowing I’m the copy-for-a-day …

Ugh. What got me in this mood? Maybe Ritu’s news about her father. A reminder that real death still lurks for all.

… Some days you’re a grasshopper. Some the ant.

Recognition went beyond hearing familiar rhythms and phrases. No, the very thoughts themselves struck me with a haunting sense of repetition. The person who had subvocalized this record began his parody of life just minutes before I started mine. Each of us commenced existence Tuesday morning thinking along similar lines, though I wasn’t equipped with a gray’s fancy features. Made of coarser stuff, I rapidly diverged across some strange boundary and soon realized I was a frankie. The first one Albert Morris ever made.

The fellow who recorded this diary was evidently more conventional. Another loyal Albert gray. Dedicated. A real pro. Clever enough to pierce the schemes of your regular, garden-variety evildoer.

But also predictable enough so that some truly devious mind could lay a fiendish trap.

… I’m in Studio Neo, passing classy establishments, offering services no one imagined before kiln tech appeared …

Wait a sec.

It’s the phone … Pal … Nell decides to pass the call on to my real self, but I listen in. He wants me to come over …

“See?” the little ferret-golem on my shoulder jeered. “I tried to warn you, Albert!”

“I keep telling you, I’m not Albert.” I grated.

We were both caught up in nervous irritation, listening to the super-rapid playback describe a fateful rendezvous.

Maestra’s executive assistant … She beckons me away from Wammaker’s.

“Our meeting concerns sensitive topics …”

We listened raptly as the “clients” — one claiming to be the maestra herself — explained their need for an untraceable investigator to nose around UK in a surreptitious yet legal manner, seeking clues to sequestered technologies. Just the sort of thing to tease Albert’s vanity and curiosity! I found it especially artful how each of his new employers made certain to act irritating or unpleasant in different ways. Knowing my archetype, he’d overcompensate, not letting dislike influence his decision. He’d persevere. Suffer the insufferable out of sheer obstinacy. (Call it “professionalism.”)

They were playing him like a fish.

Soon after came his adventure in the Rainbow Lounge, barely surviving a coincidental encounter with some golem-gladiators. An encounter that left him needing urgent repairs — conveniently provided by the drones of Queen Irene’s hive. The gray’s present-tense recitation made you want to stand and shout at the warbling voice, demanding that he wake up and notice how he was being used!

Well, in hindsight it’s easy to recognize a diabolical trick. (Would I have seen it under the same circumstances?)

But all sides made mistakes. The enemy — whoever pulled this convoluted caper — failed to notice gray Albert’s hidden realtime recorder, tucked amid the nest of high-density soulfibers in his larynx. Not even when they had him laid out, unconscious, using the pretext of “repairs” to install a vicious prion bomb. No doubt they checked for more sophisticated communication and tracking devices, but the tiny archiver used no power source, just tiny throat-flexings to scratch audio at minuscule bit rates. An old-fashioned but virtually undetectable record-keeping system … which is why Albert always installed it in his grays.

No wonder Kaolin’s messenger took such precautions against touching the tiny spool! Though disinfected, it had been recovered from a yucky, prion-poisoned slurry on the UK factory floor — the merged remnants of a hapless forklift and a doomed private ditective. The archive might still hold a few catalytic molecules lethal to beings like us, who lack true immune systems.

Still, it was one useful clue, sparkling amid the melted remains. Vital evidence. Perhaps enough to vindicate my late maker.

So why was Kaolin playing it back for us — for Palloid and me — instead of the police?

The high-pitched account soon took us to the best part of the gray’s day — skillfully evading the Omnipresent Urban Eye, fooling the legion of public and private cameras covering nearly every angle of the modern civic landscape. He’d have enjoyed that. But then, having obscured his path, he entered Universal Kilns.

Two items spit forth, a visitor’s badge and a map … I head for the down escalator … dropping into a huge anthill beneath the corporate domes, looking for signs that Kaolin is illegally withholding scientific breakthroughs …

All right, suppose UK solved how to transmit the Standing Wave across distances greater than a meter. Will there be clues a layman might recognize? … Might UK executives already “beam” themselves all over the planet?

Palloid and I shared a glance. “Wow,” the little golem muttered.

Could that be the breakthrough? Remote dittoing would shake up a way of life we’ve at last started getting used to, after all these rocky years.

We both turned to stare at ditKaolin. His reaction gave nothing away, but what about the first time he heard those words, just minutes ago? Did that platinum complexion flush with anger and dismay?

A vibration below … giant machines mix organic clay, threading it with fibers tuned to vibrate rhythms of a plucked soul … molding dolls that walk and talk … and we take it all for granted …

Damn. Something’s bugging me. Think … how could Universal Kilns conceal anything huge and ground-breaking?

Yes, evil thrives on secrecy. It’s what drives Albert on. Expose villainy. Find truth. But is that what I’m doing now?

“Finally,” I muttered, as the gray started asking the right questions. In fairness, he did express doubts earlier. But that made the transcription even more frustrating, listening as he forged ahead, despite all misgivings.

Maybe the gray was defective, like me — a poor-quality copy made by an exhausted original. Not Albert at his best. On the other hand, he had been manipulated by experts. Maybe we never had a chance.

Some kind of gnat dodges a swat, darting toward my face. I use a surge-energy burst to grab … crumpling it in my hand.

The mini-Pal dug his claws into my pseudoflesh.

“Dammit, Albert. I spent good money on them tiny drones.” He glared those ferret eyes, as if the gray’s obstinacy were somehow my fault. I might have reacted, sweeping him off my shoulder. But the recording was approaching its deadly climax.

It makes sense … They’d maximize damage by delaying ignition … either with a timer or by setting it to go off when I pass a second security scan …

“Stop!” I cry -

From that point, the recitation turned into a rapid, jerky groan, much harder to make out, like words grunted by a hurried runner, or someone trying to concentrate on a desperate task.

Trying to save a lot more than his own measly life.

I spy a version of myself bearing a weasel-golem … Looks like today’s green found something better to do than clean toilets. Good for you, Green …

That made me feel a bit ashamed, for sardonic things I thought about this gray. Could I have tried harder to save him? Might realAl be alive now, if we succeeded?

Regret seemed pointless, with my own clock rapidly ticking out. Why was Kaolin playing this tape for us? To taunt our failure?

The poor forklift writhes … can’t blame him, but it drives me deeper, holding my breath … being consumed …

Am I deep enough? Will the huge clay body contain -

The recital ended in a harsh squeal.

Palloid and I turned once again to watch the stolid, almost-human features of ditAeneas Kaolin, who regarded us for a long time while one of his hands trembled slightly. Finally, he spoke in a low voice that sounded more fatigued than a middle-aged golem ought to feel.

“So. Would you two like a chance to find the perverts who did all this?”

Pal’s ditto and I shared a stare of blank surprise.

“You mean,” I asked. “You mean you want to hire us?”

What, exactly, did Kaolin expect us to accomplish in the ten hours (or less) that we had left?

23 Glazed Buns

The desert is a lot brighter than they portray in holocinema. Some say the glare can even penetrate your skull and affect the pineal gland — that deeply buried “third eye” oldtime mystics used to call a direct link to the soul. Searing light is said to reveal hidden truths. Or else make you delirious enough to find cosmic meaning in stark simplicity. No wonder deserts are the traditional abode of wild-eyed ascetics, seeking the face of God.

I wouldn’t mind running into an ascetic, right about now.

I’d ask to borrow his phone.

Is this thing working? I spent the last couple of hours messing with a tiny, muscle-powered sound archiver, testing it by reciting an account of what happened last night. First I had to dig it out of the gray golem I had stored in back of my wrecked Volvo. A gruesome chore, but the ditto was spoiled anyway, along with every bit of electronics in the car, when that platinum Kaolin fired a strange weapon at us on the road.

A subvocal archiver doesn’t need electricity — one reason I install them in my grays, scribing microscopic spirals onto a cylinder of neutral-density dolomite. I can’t recite in high-speed grunt code, like I do when I’m clay. Still, the little unit should pick up ambient sound, like a spoken voice, while wedged under the skin behind my jaw. Small twitches can provide power. Ritu will think it’s a nervous tic, after all we’ve been through.

She left our cave — a sheltered cleft amid boulders — to drink from a little canyon pool we found. Even dittos need water out here, unless you want to be baked into dinnerware. It gives me an excuse for my own trips to the pool. I’m real, after all. The mark of Adam is on me, covered by makeup and clothing.

Why keep feigning artificiality? As a kindness. Ritu’s golem hasn’t much chance of getting home to inload. As if her rig would want these memories. I, on the other hand, face pretty good odds of getting out of here. Wait till nightfall, then hoof west by moonlight till I reach a road, a house, or some eco group’s webcam. Anything to shout an SOS into. Civilization is simply too big to miss nowadays, and a healthy organic body can endure lots, if you don’t do anything stupid.

Suppose I do reach a phone. Should I use it? Right now my enemy — Vic Kaolin? — must think I’m dead. True-dead from that missile strike against my home. And now all my dittos too. A lot of effort to deny Albert Morris any continuity. Reappearing would only draw attention again.

I need information first. A plan.

And better keep away from the cops, too. Till I can prove I was set up. A little extra suffering — a cross-desert march avoiding cameras all the way — could be worthwhile if it lets me sneak into town undetected.

Am I up to it? Oh, I’ve withstood a thousand injuries that would’ve finished any of my ancestors — from incinerations to smotherings to decapitations. I’ve died more times than I can count. But a modern person never does any of that in organic form! The real body is for exercise, not anguish.

My tough old twentieth-century grandpa threw his body — his only life — off a bridge one time at the end of an elastic band. He suffered unbelievable torment in primitive dental offices. He traveled every day on highways without guidebeams, trusting his entire existence to the uncertain driving skills of total strangers whipping past him in crude vehicles fueled by liquid explosives.

Grampa might’ve shrugged at this challenge, walking all the way from a desert ravine to the city, without complaint. I’ll probably whimper when a pebble gets in my shoe. Still, I’m determined to try. Tonight, after Ritu’s golem passes on to where hopeless golems go.

I’ll keep her company till then.

She’s coming back, so no more reciting. Anything else that gets recorded will have to be picked up from conversation.

“Albert, you’re back. Did you salvage anything from the car?”

“Not much. Everything’s fried, my forensic gear, radio, and locators … I figure nobody knows we’re here.”

“Do you have any idea how we got here?”

“A wild guess. That weapon ditKaolin fired, it killed every bit of electronics and must have been meant to scramble imprinted clay.”

“Then why are we still walking about?”

“That old Volvo has more metal than most cars today. We were better sheltered than the poor gray stored in back. Also, I surprised Kaolin by charging right at him, spoiling his aim. That may be why we only blacked out.”

“But after! How did we get to the bottom of this gully, surrounded by miles of cactus and scrub. Where’s the road?”

“Good question. This time I spotted something at the wreck we didn’t notice before, a puddle near the driver’s door.”

“Puddle?”

“Golem slurry. Remains of our would-be assassin, I guess.”

“I … still can’t believe it’s Aeneas. Why would he want us dead?”

“I’m curious about that too. But here’s the interesting part, Ritu. The puddle looked too small — about half-sized!”

“Half … he must have been torn in two when you smashed into him. But how did the remnants get way out here?”

“My guess? Though ripped apart by the collision, Kaolin must have dragged what was left of himself to the car, climbing to my half-open window. We were knocked out, inside. The engine was running but the doors and the windows frozen. He couldn’t squeeze through to finish us with his bare hands. So—”

“So he reached in to grab your side-stick controller … the throttle and steering lever … piloting us offroad, across open desert, with his half-body dangling all the way.”

“He had to get us under cover, so we wouldn’t be spotted and rescued. Somewhere surrounded by hot country no ditto can cross by day. We’d be trapped if we did waken. Then, his mission accomplished, ditKaolin ended his torment by dropping off and melting.”

“But what’s to stop us from walking out after dusk? Oh. Right. Expiration. What time on Tuesday were you imprinted, Albert?”

“Um … earlier than you, I expect. Kaolin had reason to think we can’t last beyond midnight. He saw us both at your house, remember?”

“Are you sure that was the same Aeneas-copy who shot us?”

“Does it matter?”

“Perhaps. If this one was made up to look like him.”

“Possible. But those anatomically correct platinums are expensive and hard to manufacture in secret. Put it this way, Ritu. If you had a working phone, is Kaolin the first guy you’d call?”

“I … guess not. Still, if we had some idea why—”

“I bet it connects with all the other weird stuff that happened yesterday. Your father’s fatal ‘accident’ not far from here. The disappearance of his ghost at Kaolin Manor, along with one of my grays. Kaolin may have thought Maharal’s ghost and my gray were in cahoots.”

“In what?”

“Then there was the attack on UK. Another of my dittos was involved somehow, according to the scandal channel. Sounds like something set up to discredit me.”

“So everything’s about you? Is that a bit solipsistic?”

“There’s nothing solipsistic about my house getting blown up, Ritu.”

“Oh, right. Your archie. Your real … I forgot.”

“Never mind.”

“How can I? You’re a ghost now. Terrible. And I got you into all this.”

“You had no way of knowing—”

“Still, I wish there were something I could do.”

“Forget it. Anyway, we can’t settle a mystery, stuck here in the desert.”

“And that bothers you, Albert. Beyond knowing your life’s ended. Beyond the injustice, I sense frustration — wishing to solve one more riddle.”

“Well, I am a detective. Learning the truth—”

“It drives you, even now?”

“Especially now.”

“Then … I envy you.”

“Me! Your rig lives on. She’s in no apparent danger. Kaolin seemed a lot more interested in—”

“No, Albert. What I envy is your passion. The focus, purpose. I’ve admired it for some time.”

“I don’t know if it’s so—”

“Really. I imagine it adds a special sting to dying — to being a ghost — never knowing why it happened.”

“Never is a strong word. I can hope.”

“There you go, Albert! Optimistic, even after death. Hoping some plane or satellite will notice that SOS of shredded seat fabric you laid out on the sand. At least it would let you tell everything to the next detective.”

“Something like that.”

“Even now that the sun is going down, with no rescue copters in sight?”

“A character flaw, I guess.”

“A splendid one. I wish I had it.”

“You’ll continue, Ritu.”

“Yes, tomorrow there’ll be a Ritu Maharal and no Albert Morris. I know I should be more sensitive saying it—”

“That’s all right.”

“Can I tell you something, Albert? A secret?”

“Well, Ritu, confiding in me may not be the best—”

“The truth is — I always had trouble with dittos. Mine often head off in ways I don’t expect. I didn’t want to make this one.”

“Sorry.”

“And now, to face death out in the desert. Even if it’s just one of us who—”

“Can we discuss something other than imminent extinction, Ritu?”

“Sorry, Albert. I keep compulsively returning to the same insensitive topic. What would you like to talk about?”

“How about the work your father was doing, before he died.”

“Albert … your contract excludes you from enquiring into that subject.”

“That was then.”

“I see your point. Anyway, who could you tell? All right. For years Aeneas Kaolin nagged Father to work on one of the hardest questions in soulistics — the non-homologous imprinting problem.”

“The what?”

“Transferring a golem’s Standing Wave — its remembrance and experience — into a repository other than the human original who made it.”

“You mean dumping a day’s memory into somebody else?”

“Don’t laugh. It’s been done. Take a hundred pairs of identical twins. Five or so can swap partial memories by exchanging dittos. Most get brutal headaches and disorientation, but a few can do perfect inloads! By using golem intermediaries to share all their life memories, the siblings become, in effect, one person with two organic bodies, two real lifespans plus all the parallel copies they want.”

“I heard of that. I thought it was a fluke.”

“No one’s eager for publicity. The potential for disruption—”

“Your father was trying to make it possible between non-twins? People who aren’t related? Egad.”

“Don’t be too surprised. The notion’s been around since dittoing began, inspiring countless bad novels and movieds.”

“There are so many, by amateurs and metastudios. I don’t try to keep up.”

“That’s because you’ve got work. A real job. But the arts are all some people have.”

“Um, Ritu? What does this have to do with—”

“Bear with me. Did you see the parasensie called Twisted? It was a big phenom, a few years ago.”

“Someone made me sit through most of it.”

“Remember how the villains went around snatching the dittos of important scientists and officials—”

“Because they had a way to inload memories into a computer. Cute notion for a spy thriller, if impossible. Transistor versus neuron. Math versus metaphor. Didn’t someone prove the two worlds can never meet?”

“Bevvisov and Leow showed we’re analog beings. Physical, not software bits and bytes. But souls can still be copied, like anything else.”

“Didn’t your father study under Bevvisov?”

“Their team first imprinted a Standing Wave into a doll at Kaolin Klaynamation. And yes, the plot gimmick in Twisted was dumb. A computer the size of Florida couldn’t absorb a human soul.”

“I don’t think every story about other-inloading involves computers.”

“True. In some dramas they ditnap a golem and dump its memories into a volunteer, to extract secrets. Sometimes the inloaded personality takes over! A scary notion that can really get to an audience. But seriously, what might actually happen if we learn to swap memories between people, erasing the boundary between human souls?”

Subvocal note to self. Watching Ritu speak, I realize — she’s making light conversation, but her speech rhythms indicate high degrees of stress, carried realistically in the gray. The topic concerns her deeply.

If only I had some of my analytical gear while this is going on!

“Well, Ritu. If people could swap memories, men and women wouldn’t be such enigmas to each other anymore. We’d understand the opposite sex.”

“Hm. That could have drawbacks. Think how the sexual tension contributes to the spice of … oh!”

“What is it?”

“Albert, look at the horizon!”

“Sunset, yah. Pretty.”

“I forgot how special this time of day is, in the desert.”

“Some of that orange radiance comes from SWETAP. I guess we’re going to have to get used to drinking water that glows … Hey, are you getting cold? We could generate heat by walking. It’s safe now.”

“To what purpose? You were made before sunset yesterday, remember? Better save what little élan you have left. Unless you can think of something better to do with it.”

“Well …”

“Let’s sit close and share heat.”

“All right. Is that better? Um … you seemed to be saying that all these bad movieds had something to do with your father’s final project.”

“In a sense. Holo-story plots always focus on the most stupid ways that technology can be abused. But Father had to consider every scenario. Other-inloading has serious moral implications. And yet—”

“Yes?”

“For some reason, I felt that my father already knew a lot about the subject. More than he was letting on.”

“Go on, Ritu.”

“Are you sure you want me to? Does it matter, with the end rushing closer every minute? One more thing I always found creepy about dittoing. The ticking clock — far better to find some distraction before the final melting away.”

“Distraction. Okay. How would you like to spend the remaining time, Ritu?”

“I … well … What’s your personal philosophy about banging pots?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Clay play. Kneading slip. Do I have to spell it out, Albert?”

“Oh … dittosex. Ritu, you surprise me.”

“Because I’m being forward? Unladylike? We don’t have time to be demure, Albert. Or do you follow some neocelibate creed?”

“No, but—”

“Most of the men I know — and lots of women — subscribed to Playdit or Claymate Monthly in their tweens, getting that plain-wrapped package once a week containing an imprinted ‘expert.’ Even when they’re older—”

“Ritu, I have a steady girlfriend.”

“Yes, I read your profile. A warrior. Impressive. Have you exchanged total vows, or partial?”

“Clara’s no prude. We reserve true-true contact for each other—”

“That’s sweet. And prudent. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Dittosex. Yeah, well. A lot depends on whether you inload.”

“Which neither of us seems likely to do tonight.”

“I see your point.”

“About distraction. I mean, what’s the point of inhibition when the world will end in an hour or so. Whatever life can be salvaged—”

“All right! I concede the point. Come here already.”

“… ”

“… ”

“Oh my.”

“… What?”

“Albert, you spend extra on your grays!”

“You do, too.”

“UK offers supertactile enhancement on employee discount — that’s nice …”

“Yeah. Let’s—”

“Uh, wait, there’s a rock under me … There. Better. Now, give me your weight. Feel good, Albert. Forget everything.”

“All right. It’s so …”

“… so real. Almost as if …”

“… as if … Ah … ch-phlwef!”

“What was that? Did you just … sneeze?”

“I thought you did. I mean the dust …”

“You did! You’re real, dammit! I can tell!”

“Ritu, let me explain—”

“Get off, you bastard.”

“Sure. But … what’s this dye rubbing off your neck?”

“Shut up.”

“And the contacts in your eyes have slipped. I thought your texture was too perfect. You’re real, too!”

“I thought you were dead. A ghost, about to melt away. I was trying to console you.”

“I was consoling you! What was all that talk about needing distraction?”

“I was talking about you, idiot.”

“It sounded like you were talking about yourself.”

“A likely excuse.”

“Hey! Do you think I’d have touched you if I knew? I said, Clara and I—”

“Damn you.”

“For what? We both lied, okay? I’ll tell you my reason for coming disguised, if you tell me yours. Deal?”

“Go to hell!”

“Aren’t you glad I wasn’t in my house when that missile hit? You’d rather I were dead?”

“Of course not. It’s just—”

“I could have started walking hours ago. I stayed to—”

“Take advantage!”

“Ritu, each of us thought — aw, what’s the point?”

“Damn right!”

“…”

“…”

“What?”

“… What?”

“Did you just mutter something?”

“No! That is …”

“Yes?”

“I only said it was … real nice … while it lasted.”

“Yeah … it was. Oh, now what are you laughing at?”

“I was just picturing us, lying here afterward, feeling pleased having ‘consoled’ each other … then waiting for the other one to start melting. Then waiting some more …”

“Heh. That is kind of funny. It’s kind of too bad we found out so soon.”

“Yes. But, Albert?”

“Yes, Ritu?”

“I really am glad you’re alive.”

“Thanks. That’s sweet to say.”

“So, now what?”

“Now? I guess we start walking. Get a plastic jug from the car, fill it from the pool, and head west.”

“Back to town. Are you sure you don’t mean southeast?”

“Southeast?”

“To my father’s cabin.”

“Urraca Mesa. I don’t know, Ritu. I’m in big trouble back home.”

“And you have lots to figure out before trying to solve it. The cabin is private, with shielded net-links. You could send out feelers, find out what’s going on before you emerge to confront Aeneas … or whoever’s behind all this.”

“I see your point. Can we make it there on foot?”

“There’s one way to find out.”

“Well …”

“And we’ll pass near the battle range. Was that why you came in person, instead of sending a ditto?”

“Am I that obvious, Ritu?”

“I’m realistic enough to tell — and be envious — when someone is in love.”

“Well, Clara and I … we’re both shy about commitment. But—”

“All right, then. Let’s make your soldier-lass our goal. It’s getting dark, but the moon is up and I’ve got a light-amplifier in my left eye.”

“Me too.”

“We can do it at a jog. Our ancestors crossed this desert long ago. Anything they could do, we can do, right?”

“If you say so, Ritu. In my experience, people can talk themselves into just about anything.”

24 Psycho-Ceramic

I never imagined that being a mad scientist’s experimental guinea pig could be so interesting.

It’s been about ten hours since my protein clock starting running down, triggering the salmon reflex … that familiar urge to swim or run or fly back home, overcoming any obstacle to spill memories from this mini-life into the copious storage of a real human brain. But that nagging reflex soon fell away. Every golem-reflex that was pressed into my pseudoflesh, back at the factory, has been worn down by a physical and spiritual pummeling.

“You’ll get used to the renewal treatments,” ditMaharal explained after putting me through torments of steam, hot jets, and tingling rays, leaving torso and limbs all puffy, quivering like those first moments when you slide out of the kiln.

“It only hurts the first few times,” he said.

“How often can you do this, before—”

“Before inevitable wear and tear makes it futile? Clay is still far less enduring than flesh. This prototype apparatus has done up to thirty renewals. My old team at Universal may have pushed that higher by now. If Aeneas hasn’t terminated the project — which seems rather likely at this point.”

Thirty renewals, I pondered.

Thirty times the normal ditto span. A pittance next to the many tens of thousands of days you feel entitled to in a modern, multibranched life. But with fresh élan surging through my clay body, I answered Maharal frankly.

“You’d have my thanks, if this weren’t just your way of extending my captivity.”

“Oh come, now. Where there’s continuity, there is hope. Just think of it — thirty days, to hope and scheme for escape!”

“Maybe. But you say I’ve been here before. Ditnapped and experimented on. Did any of those other Alberts escape?”

“As a matter of fact, three found clever ways to get away. One was stopped by my dogs, just outside. Another melted crossing the desert. And one actually made it to a phone! But you had already zeroed out the poor ditto’s credit code, after it was missing for a week. My robotic hunter caught up before it managed to format a message through one of the free-nets.”

“I’ll be sure and leave the codes active much longer in the future.”

“Always the optimist!” Maharal laughed. “I told you about those others in order to show the futility of escape. I fixed the security flaws you exploited those times.”

“I’ll have to come up with something original, then.”

“I also know how you think, Albert. I’ve studied you for years.”

“Yeah? Then why am I here, ditYosil? Something about me bugs the hell out of you. Something you need, is that it?”

He looked at me, trapped immobile in his stony laboratory-catacomb, and I swear his golem eyes seemed to glint with a look that lay somewhere between avarice and fear. “I am getting close,” he says. “Very close.”

“You had better be,” I answered. “Even restorative technology can’t keep you going forever without a real body. I hold the key, don’t I? Some kind of secret that will solve your problem. But I’ll wear out too, in a matter of days.

“You’re in a race against time.

“Then there’s Aeneas Kaolin. He was awfully anxious to see you taken to the lab for dissection, Tuesday morning. Why? Does he suspect you’ve stolen equipment and set up your own clandestine lab, using it to cheat death?”

Maharal’s tense expression turned haughty.

“You are clever, as usual, Albert,” he replied. “But always there’s something missing from your sharp guesswork. You never quite catch onto the truth, even when I lay it all in front of you.”

How do you answer when a body says something like that to you? When another person claims to know what you will do even better than you do? Because he remembers many past episodes like this one, tense encounters that you don’t recall?

Having no answer, I lapsed silent. Renewal had given me some time, so I bided it.

He pulled a switch and the containment vessel quickly flushed clear of sustaino-fluid, then split open. While my body still quivered, regaining full levels of catalysis, he slipped powered manacles over my wrists and ankles. Using a controller, he used them to force me, marionettelike, onto a machine that looked like a souped-up imprinting unit. Round a corner of the apparatus, I glimpsed a pair of legs, colored bright crimson. A ditto blank. Rather small.

“You want me to make a copy?” I asked. “Let me warn you, ditYosil—”

“Just Yosil. I told you, I am Maharal, now.”

“Yeah right, ditYosil. It’s obvious you want to make dit-to-dit copying work. How else can you survive past the thirtieth renewal? But honestly, what kind of a solution is that? The second-order copy always has a flawed soul-imprint. And it gets worse when you copy that one. Errors magnify. By the third transfer, you’re lucky if it can even walk or talk.”

“So they say.”

“So they say? Listen, half of my work involves catching copyright violators who ditnap the golems of movied stars and courtesans and such, in order to sell bootleg knockoffs. Force-imprint counterfeiting may work for sex toys, if the customer has low standards, but it’s no solution to your problem, Yosil.”

“We’ll see about that. Now please try to relax and cooperate.”

“Why should I? It’s hard to make a really good imprint from a resisting subject. I can make things more difficult for you.”

“True. But consider. The better the copy, the more it will share your abilities, your drives, and especially your low opinion of me!” Maharal chuckled. “A quality copy will be your ally in trying to defeat me.”

I pondered.

“Those other Alberts you captured … they must have tried it both ways.”

“True. Only when the copy was poor, I just tried again. And again, till you chose to cooperate. Then we made real progress.”

“Your idea of progress doesn’t sound like mine.”

“Perhaps. Or maybe you can’t grasp the long-range benefits of my program, though I tried to explain on other occasions. In any event, your problem now is a pragmatic one, Albert. Shackled, there’s little that just one of you can do. Two of you might accomplish more. The logic is inescapable.”

“Damn you.”

He shrugged. “Think about it for a while, Albert. I have plenty of ditto blanks to experiment with.”

Maharal’s gray departed, leaving me there to ponder, frustrated because he clearly must have had the same conversation many times before, with other me’s, learning through experience which arguments worked.

Man, I wish I’d been more careful to track my missing dittos over the years! I simply assumed that a high rate of loss was unavoidable in this line of work. As long as each case went well, some casualties seemed worthwhile. It’s not quite as hard core an attitude as Clara has — sending herselves again and again to gladiatorial battlefields for the sake of PEZ and country, with scant likelihood they’ll return unscathed. Even so, I vowed to try harder in the future.

If I ever get out of here.

If I get another chance.

Well, all right. I gave in to Yosil’s logic. Concentrating during imprint would ensure my brotherdit emerges from the kiln filled with loathing for all mad scientists.

And I turned out to be right about that.

As if it would make any difference.

Well now, for the record, this isn’t the first time I remember doing a ditto-to-ditto transfer.

Come on, everybody tries it. Most people are unhappy with the product, which often emerges as a pitifully shallow caricature. It can be painful to watch, like seeing a version of yourself that’s drunk, stoned, or damaged beyond medical help. Back in college, some of the guys used to make frankies for laughs. But I never got into that kind of stuff.

Partly because my second-order dits never showed overt signs of degradation. No tremors or apparent memory gaps. No comic reeling or slurring. Boring! I might as well make all my copies directly. It felt more comfortable that way. Anyway, why violate the UK warranty? They can repossess your kiln.

I always knew I was a good copier. A small fraction of folks are gifted that way. I was even part of a research study when I was younger. So? It makes no practical difference. What’s the point in dit-to-dit transfer, even if you do it well?

Besides, it feels odd. Not at all like inloading. To lie on the original side of the machine in clay form, especially when the soul-sifter starts probing through you with tendrils that are better tuned to scanning neurons. The tetragramatron has to work harder to grasp the Standing Wave, delicately plucking all the chords of your inner symphony, borrowing and amplifying every note in order to start an identical resonant melody playing in another instrument, nearby.

Funny thing. This time I definitely felt something like an echo coming from the new ditto — still a lifeless lump on its warming tray. The sensation of déjà vu that our grandparents used to find so eerie — that we now call a “ripple in the Standing Wave” — swarmed over me then like a chilly breath. A whirling-ghostly wind. A feeling of intimate familiarity with myself that I did not like at all.

Was this part of the experiment? Part of what Maharal was trying to achieve?

“Two centuries ago, William James coined the term ‘stream of consciousness,’ ” Maharal commented happily, while he twiddled dials. “James was referring to the way each of us invests our sense of identity in an illusion. The illusion of continuity — like perceiving a single river, flowing from one source to the sea.

“Even dittotech didn’t change this romantic delusion. It only added multiple side branches and tributaries to the river, all of them still flowing back into a single soul, an entity that each person arrogantly chooses to call me.

“But a river is nothing in itself! It’s amorphous. A mirage. An ever-changing churn of individual tumbling molecules and moments. Even ancient mystics knew that stepping twice into a stream, from exactly the same spot, will immerse you in completely different ‘rivers.’ Into different liquids that were peed into the flow by different elephants, at different places and times upstream.”

“You make philosophy so refreshingly earthy,” I muttered, lying there helpless under his monologue.

“Thanks. In fact, that particular metaphor was yours. Another Albert Morris golem expressed it, years ago. Which goes to prove my point, dear fellow. The Standing Wave is something much more than just continuity of memory. It has to be! There must be some kind of connection to a higher — or a lower — level.”

I knew his game. Maharal was trying to distract me, so my anger wouldn’t interfere with the imprinting process. Yet his voice conveyed something sincere. He cared about the crap he was uttering.

Anyway, the weird sensations had me wanting some distraction from those strangely powerful resonant echoes. Though my head was clamped between the sifter probes, I turned my eyes to meet Maharal’s.

“You’re talking about God, right?”

“Well … yes. In a manner of speaking.”

“Isn’t that just a bit odd, Professor? You’ve spent your life encroaching on the province of religion, helping make it practical for anyone to duplicate the soul-field, like a cheap photograph. There’s hardly anyone the old church conservatives hate more than you.”

“I’m not talking about religion,” he answered with a biting tone. “All that I and others have done, by introducing this technology, is take another step in a long campaign, pushing back a confused muddle of contradictory superstitions in order to let in more light. First Galileo and Copernicus battled to free astronomy from priests who declared the entire cosmos off limits to human understanding. Then Newton, Boltzmann, and Einstein liberated physics. For a while, religions claimed that life was too mysterious for anyone but the Creator Himself to understand — till we analyzed the genome and commenced designing new species in the lab. Today, most babies get some kind of optimizing gene therapy, before or after conception, and nobody objects.”

“Why would they?” I asked, momentarily puzzled. “Never mind. Let me guess. You’re about to extend this historical trend to consciousness—”

“And the human soul, yes. It was the last bulwark of twentieth-century religion. Let science explain nature’s laws, from quasars down to quarks! From geology to biology! So what? Those laws were mere recipes and background scenery, concocted long ago by a creator who cares far more about matters of the spirit! That’s what they said.

“Only then Jefty Annonas found the soul’s vibrating essence, weighed it, measured it—”

“Some still resent her choice of terminology,” I pointed out. “They claim there’s a true soul, beyond the Standing Wave. Intangible—”

“—and ineffable, yes. Something mortals can never detect, that can never be reduced to interacting laws and forces.” Maharal barked a laugh. “And so the fighting retreat continues. Each time science advances, a new bastion forms … anew line, defining some remnant territory to be kept forever holy, mystical, and vague. Safe from profane hands. Until the next scientific advance, that is.”

“Which you seem anxious to provide. But then, why talk about religion—”

“Not religion, dear fellow. We spoke of communing with God.”

“Uh, the difference—”

“—should be clear enough! Though I always have a hard time explaining it to you.”

“Well … sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. I’m used to your obstinate slowness. Rare gifts don’t always correlate with intelligence.”

I felt a twang in the Standing Wave, now vibrating at full pitch between me and the new golem. One thing for sure. It was going to hate this guy just as much as I do.

“Go on,” I muttered. “About you and God.”

But he stopped there.

A small bell gave off a bing and I felt the soul-sifter release its invasive grip. The last tendrils slid out of my nose. All at once I was alone again inside my clay head, sagging heavily.

Machinery rumbled as the new golem slipped into a kiln for rapid baking. A short while later I glimpsed it standing up, taking those first, uncertain steps.

Dark red, like Texarkana soil. And small, like a child. It looked weak, too. Easier for Maharal to control. Even so, the professor’s tall gray ghost cautiously clamped a set of power-manacles over its wrists, even before the puffy afterglow faded.

Such precautions! I must have caused plenty of trouble on other occasions. That offered me a smidgen of consolation.

“We’ll be back soon,” ditYosil told me. “I want to expose this new ditto to a variety of controlled test experiences, then see how well the memories inload back to you.”

“Oh. Can’t wait.”

Usually, I avoid eye contact with fresh copies that I make. It’s uncomfortable and what’s the point? But this time, after all those eerie sensations I went through during imprinting, it seemed compulsory to meet the small one’s gaze. No window to a golem’s soul? Maybe not, but I felt something intense the moment his dark stare met mine. An affinity. I don’t have to wait for inloading to know what thoughts course through that maroon body.

Look for your chance, I urged silently.

My other self answered with a curt nod. Then, tugged by Maharal’s manacles, he turned and followed our master to another part of this iniquitous lair.

So I wait, lying here where they left me. Wondering and worrying about what my captor has in store for me.

Thirty days is beginning to sound like a very long time. I must find a way to settle this much sooner, whether or not God turns out to be one of Yosil Maharal’s personal buddies.

And yet, even if an opportunity presents itself, I must be careful what I do. For instance, what if he leaves a phone within easy reach? Would I summon the cops? In some situations, it’s enough for a victim to call for help and wait for professional blue-skin rescuers to arrive. Simple.

But not in this case.

Wracking my brain, I can’t see that Maharal has committed even a single felony. At least not to my knowledge. Just a long series of equipment thefts, ditnappings, copyright violations, and unlicensed experiments — the kind of stuff that gets settled nowadays with civil liens and automatic fines. The police don’t care very much about this particular kind of villain, not since Deregulation.

Not as much as I do!

As far as I’m concerned, some paltry fines won’t make up for any of this.

The real world has its rules, and I have mine.

Ditto-to-ditto, I’m going to make that crazy-evil dirtpile pay.

25 Impassioned Clay

To my utter surprise, Vic Aeneas Kaolin wanted to hire me as a ditective!

“So. Would you two like a chance to find the perverts who did all this?”

He said it waving at a nearby crowd of holo bubbles, jostling for our attention. Most of them showed the sabotage site at Universal Kilns, now swarming with multicolored repair-dittos, like a hive of busy ants struggling to restore the vast factory to profitable operation.

Other bubbles peered down at the smoldering ruins of a small suburban house.

The trillionaire’s offer left me speechless, though Pallie’s little weasel-golem took it with aplomb.

“Sure, we can solve this case for you. But we gotta charge quadruple Albert’s normal rate. Plus expenses … including a new house, to replace the one that just got blown up.”

How about getting Albert a new organic body, while we’re at it? I pondered caustically. Pal could be amazing sometimes, sweating over minor stuff while ignoring the big picture. Like the fact that Albert Morris no longer existed. So who was legally going to take this case? I had no more legitimate authority than a talking toaster.

Kaolin acted unperturbed. “Those terms are acceptable, but with a condition that payment shall depend entirely on results. And that Mr. Morris truly turns out to have been innocent, as the archive-recording seems to suggest.”

“Seems to suggest!” Palloid yelped. “You heard the story. That poor guy was duped! Hoodwinked, chiseled, set up, conned, fooled, frauded, framed, swindled—”

“Pal,” I tried to interrupt.

“—cozened, misled, tricked! A patsy. A fool, tool, doofus, dolt, blockhead, pawn—”

“That may be,” Kaolin cut him off with a hand gesture. “Or else the archive might have been contrived in advance. Pre-recorded in order to offer a plausible alibi.”

“That can be checked,” I pointed out. “Even buried in the gray’s throat, the recorder would have picked up ambient city noise from his surroundings. People talking. A truck’s engine on a nearby street. Muffled sounds, but under intense analysis they’ll correlate with actual events, recorded on nearby publicams.”

“So,” Kaolin conceded with a nod. “Not pre-recorded, then. But still perhaps a lie. The gray could have gone through all the motions, reciting as he went, while pretending not to be one of the conspirators. Feigning gullibility—”

“—naivete, credulousness, stupidity—”

“Shut up, Pal! I don’t” — I shook my head — “I don’t think any of this is really our business anymore. Shouldn’t you be handing this tape over to the police?” ditKaolin pursed his expressive, realistic lips. “My attorney says we’re right at the borderline, the cusp between civil and criminal law.”

Surprise provoked my bitter laugh. “A major act of industrial sabotage—”

“Without a single human victim.”

“Without a single … What in hell do you call that?”

I jabbed a finger at one of the news bubbles, showing an aerial view of my poor burned house. I mean Albert’s house. Whatever. Responding to my vehement attention, that bubble swelled in size, jostling others aside and magnifying. Our point of view zoomed toward several black investigator specialdits from the Violent Crimes Unit, who could be seen probing the wreckage. Top professionals, looking for body parts. And missile parts, no doubt.

“There is, as yet, no confirmed link between that tragedy and what happened at UK.”

Kaolin said it with such a straight face that I stared at him for several seconds.

“You will only get away with that line for a few hours at best, no matter how good your lawyers are. When the cops find my body … I mean Albert’s … and when testimony is taken from ditnesses and cameras inside UK, your insurance company will have no choice but to cooperate with the authorities. The police will know you found something small and important in the foamy mess after the prion attack. If you pretend you didn’t find anything, one of your contract employees will—”

“—will likely turn me in, hoping to cash a whistle-blower prize. Please, I’m no fool. I won’t try to keep the recording away from the cops. Not for very long, that is. But a short delay may prove helpful.”

“Helpful how?”

“I get it!” chirped Pal’s mini-ditto with obvious relish, its ferret grin widening. “You want the saboteurs to think they succeeded. Assuming they never knew about the graydit’s little recorder, they may think they’re safe. That gives us time to go after ’em!”

“Time?” I demanded. “What time? Are you all nuts? I was baked almost twenty hours ago! My clock is close to used up. I’ve barely got enough time left to take in dinner and a show. Whatever makes you think I can investigate a case under conditions like this, even if I wanted to?”

At which point Aeneas Kaolin smiled.

“Oh, I may be able to reset that ticking clock of yours.”

Less than thirty minutes later, I stepped out of the biggest apparatus the mogul had in his laboratory-basement. A hissing, steaming contraption that hammered, zapped, sprayed, and massaged me till I hurt all over … like that time Clara made me take an army calisthenics course in realflesh and skivvies. My moist clay pseudoskin fizzed disconcertingly with freshly injected élan. If I didn’t explode or melt in the next few minutes, I might take on the world.

“This gizmo of yours is gonna change a lot of things,” Pal commented from a perch nearby, licking the same puffy glow. ditKaolin answered, “It has drawbacks — like prohibitive cost — that may prevent commercial development. There were only two prototypes and … not all results have been satisfactory.”

“Now he tells me,” I grumbled. “No, please ignore that. Beggars can’t be choosers. Thanks for extending this so-called life.”

Looking down, I saw that a color change had been thrown in for free. My third in one day. Now I had the look of a high-quality gray. Well, well. Who says you can’t advance in life? There can be progress, even for a frankie.

“Where do you plan to go first?” the platinum trillionaire asked, clearly eager to get us on our way. Even though I’m not Albert Morris, I tried to picture what my maker, the professional private eye, would do at this point.

“Queen Irene’s place,” I decided. “Come on, Pal. We’re going to the Rainbow Lounge.”

Kaolin lent us a sturdy little car from the company fleet, no doubt carrying a transponder to track our movements and a sound tap as well. Palloid had to agree not to inload back into the original Pal, or even contact his archie. In fact, we were under orders not to tell anyone else about what we had learned in the mansion basement.

Whether or not those orders were exactly legal, I felt sure that Kaolin had some way to enforce them, or he’d never let us depart. Maybe it was my turn to carry a bomb. Something small, inserted while my body was renewed in that hissing experimental restoration machine? I had no immediate way to check it out … or any reason to, so long as our goals were the same.

Getting to the truth, right? That’s what we’re all interested in, right? Me and Kaolin. Only how could I tell?

Again and again, the same question popped into mind. Why me?

Why hire the crude green frankie of a private eye whose behavior must already appear deeply worrisome in Kaolin’s eyes? Even if Albert’s gray hadn’t been one of the conspirators, he was their unwitting dupe — as Pal so colorfully put it.

Either way, it seemed strange for the mogul to trust me.

Then again, who could he trust? Kaolin wasn’t kidding about the Henchman Law. When first introduced, it soon turned into the quickest way for a fellow to retire early — by tattling on his boss. Whistle-blower prizes grew bigger as one white-collar scam after another collapsed, feeding half of the resulting fines back into new rewards, enticing even more trusted lieutenants, minions, and right-hand men to blab away. To everyone’s surprise, a world filled with cameras proved to offer pretty good safety against retribution by most mobs. Many gangs and cabals destroyed themselves simply by trying to enforce silence on defectors.

The implacable logic of the Prisoner’s Dilemma triggered collapse of one conspiracy after another as informers became public heroes, accelerating the rush for publicity and treasure. For a time it looked as if perfidy had its back to the proverbial wall. Any criminal scheme with more than three members appeared doomed from the start.

Then dittotech arrived.

Nowadays, it’s possible once again to have a gang of ruthless accomplices, if all of them are you! Better still if you do find a few trustworthy allies to share the imprinting chores, since they may have skills you lack. But you’re still wise to keep the number of original members low. Three or four. Five, tops. Any more and you still have an excellent chance of being betrayed by some trusted aide. A guilty conscience can get plenty of lubrication if the rewards are also big.

Kaolin may have several thousand real employees, who make tens of thousands of proficient and hardworking dittos for him every day. But could he ask any of them to skate the fine edge of the law — as Pallie and I were about to do? The Vic’s choices were few. Either do it himself, by sending out his own copies, or hire someone with the right skills. Someone who’s already shown a willingness to skulk at the boundaries of legality, and yet with a reputation for keeping his word. Someone also highly motivated to dig quickly to the bottom of this mess.

Having listened to the archive-recording of that hapless gray, Kaolin must figure that I qualify on all counts. I sure wasn’t about to complicate matters by mentioning I’m a frankie. He might drop me in the nearest recycler!

Waiting for a driver to bring our loaner car, I resumed bugging Kaolin with questions.

“It would help if I had some idea why somebody wants to wreck your factory.”

“Why should concern you less than who,” he replied sternly.

“Come, sir. Understanding motives can be integral to catching bad guys. Do your competitors resent having to pay royalties on your patents? Do they envy your production efficiency? Could they be trying to knock UK down a notch?”

Kaolin barked a short laugh. “A publicly held firm is under too much scrutiny. And terrorism is risky — not the style of my smug counterparts at Fabrique Chelm or Hayakawa Shobo. Why use bombs when they can cause me far more aggravation with their lawyers?”

“Well, who do you consider desperate enough to use bombs?”

“You mean other than those pathetic fanatics ranting by my gate?” The platinum ditto shrugged. “I don’t bother counting my enemies, Mr. Morris. In fact, I would have retired by now, to one of my country estates, were it not for some rather urgent research interests that force me to remain nearby, within easy dit-imprinting range.” He sighed. “If you must demand an opinion from me, I can only hazard to guess that this gruesome act of sabotage must be the work of perverts.”

“Uh … perverts?” I blinked a couple of times in surprise. “When you used that word before, I didn’t think you meant literally.”

“Oh, but I do. It isn’t just religious nuts and tolerance fetishists who despise me. Surely you already know about this? I may have helped usher in the age of dittoing, but I’ve also long opposed ways the technology is misapplied. From the very beginning, I was appalled by some unsavory uses customers came up with.”

“Well, innovators often have an idealized view of what will emerge—”

“Do I strike you as a woolly-headed idealist?” Kaolin snapped, sharply. “I realize any new thing gets misused, especially when you share it with the masses. Take the way every new medium, from printing to cinema to the Internet, became a major conduit for pornography almost as soon as it was introduced. Or when lonely weirdos started using dittos for sex, muddying all the boundaries between fantasy, infidelity, and self-abuse.”

“Surely that didn’t surprise you.”

“Not the basic level. Anyone could see this technology would make casual sex between strangers safe again, after several generations of fear. It’s a natural pendulum swing, based on deeply embedded animal drives. Hell, the trend of using animated dolls began even before Bevvisov and Leow imprinted the first Standing Wave. I wasn’t thrilled to see ditto-swap clubs arise everywhere, but at least that seemed human.

“Only then came the ‘modification’ movement. Wave after wave of so-called innovations, exaggerations, deliberate mutilations …”

“Ah yes. You fought to prevent people from changing the blanks you sold them. But surely that’s a dead issue now.”

Kaolin conceded with a shrug. “Still, I’m sure the perverts recall how I fought them. And each year I contribute financial support to the Crudity Bill.”

“You mean the Prudity Bill,” Palloid muttered from a balustrade of the mansion’s service portico. “Do you really want to require that all dittos come out of the factory with their capacity for emotions suppressed?”

“Only feelings that promote violent or hostile behavior.”

“But that’s half the fun of being a golem! You can do stuff on the edge. Unleash the repressed inner demon—”

“Repression exists for good reasons,” Kaolin answered hotly. Palloid sure knew how to goad him. “Social, psychological, and evolutionary reasons. Every year, anthropologists track worrisome trends. People growing more hardened to outrageous levels of violence—”

“—in certain narrowly defined times and places. Like daydreaming about stuff you’d never do in person. There’s no conclusive evidence that it translates over to behavior in the real—”

“—becoming callused to mutilations of the human form—”

“—and experiencing firsthand what it feels like to be larger or smaller, crippled, or the opposite sex—”

“—inflicting suffering—”

“—experiencing it—”

“—desensitizing—”

“—gaining new empathy—”

“Enough!” I cried. For a brief time it had been enthralling to watch the platinum golem of a multi-trillionaire get sucked into a shouting match with a ferret-formed creature from dittotown. But Pal’s lack of anything like a sense of self-preservation can get unamusing rather quickly. We still existed on this guy’s sufferance.

“So you think this attack may have been in revenge for your consistent support of the Crudity Bill?” I asked. ditKaolin shrugged. “It passed in Farsiana-Indus, last year. That makes twenty-six countries, and the Argentines vote next month. Degenerates may see a worrisome trend, toward a time when our adjunct selves are actually calmer and better than we are—”

“—You mean sexless and boring—”

“—helping to elevate humanity instead of debasing us,” Kaolin finished, giving Palloid a scowl that declared the debate over. And my small friend took the hint this time. Or maybe it was the arrival of our car, delivered to the portico by a blank-faced yellow whose only personality trait was a soft melody that he kept humming while holding the driver-side door for me, then as he jogged away, hurrying to catch a jitney cab back to headquarters.

I adjusted the pilot seat and Platinum Kaolin gave me a portaphone with a secure comm number to call, if anything especially urgent came up. Otherwise, I was instructed to send a dictated report to his hi-pri box every three hours, for automatic summarization-transcription.

I was about to shut the door when Pal’s little weasel-ditto leaped from my shoulder onto Kaolin’s! The silvery golem flinched as Palloid squirmed around his neck. “Incredible texture,” crooned the miniature ditto. “So realistic. I been wondering …”

It seemed about to give Kaolin a big kiss. Then, without warning, Palloid whirled and sank its gleaming teeth into that shimmering neck, just above the collar line!

Twin wounds oozed a pasty grue.

“What the hell?” Pain and anger flushed as Kaolin swept a fist that Palloid dodged easily, vaulting through the car’s open window into my arms. Licking shiny-reflective gore off serrated jaws, he spat with distaste.

“Clay! Patooie. Okay, he’s fake, after all. Had to check, though. He could’ve been pretending to be phony.”

It was vintage Pal. Authority figures bring out the worst in him. I hurried to mollify our employer.

“Sorry about that, sir. Uh … Pal likes to be thorough. And that is an awfully realistic-looking body, you must admit.” ditKaolin fumed.

“What if I had been in disguise? That goddam thing could have maimed me! Besides, it’s none of your bloody business how I choose to present myself! I have a good mind to—”

He stopped abruptly, taking a deep breath. The lacerations ceased oozing after a couple of seconds, turning into hard ceramic crust. Between dittos, this was a trifle, after all.

“Oh, get out of here. Don’t bother me again unless you find something interesting.”

Pal responded cheerily, “Thanks for a lovely visit! Give my regards to your archety—”

I peeled out of there, cutting off Palloid’s clever remise. Passing through the front gate into city traffic, I cast a sharp, disapproving glare at my companion.

“What?” The ferret face grinned back at me. “Tell me you weren’t curious, looking at such a fancy-realistic golem! There are all those stories. About how nobody’s seen his archie in years.”

“Curiosity is one thing, Pal—”

“One thing? Hey, at this point it’s about the only reason I have to keep going. Know what I mean?”

I did, alas. Even though I had been granted an extension — double the lifespan I expected to have yesterday, when I stepped out of the kiln — a day is still only a day. To a frankie or a ghost.

What could I accomplish in that time? Maybe some justice. Or a little revenge on the villains who murdered poor Albert. Those can be satisfying accomplishments. But you can’t take them with you beyond the recycling tank.

Curiosity, on the other hand, has a timelessness that no deadline can erase. There are worse things for a man to live for, whether he’s born of woman or kiln. It can sustain you, whatever happens and no matter how low your fortunes sink.

“Anyway, Albert. Did you see the look on skinny’s face when I bit him?”

“Hell, yes, I saw it! You little—” I shook my head. The image of Kaolin’s vain countenance still surfed the foamy veneer of my Standing Wave. That expression of affronted shock was -

— hilarious.

I couldn’t help but guffaw. Laughter shook us both while I swerved the little cruiser through a yellow light, incurring another four-point infraction to put on our UK expense account. Mirth combined with the fizzing sense of renewal that still permeated my invigorated clay flesh. It left me feeling more alive than I had in, well, hours!

“All right, then,” I said at last, trying to concentrate on my driving. We were in Realtown and there might be children about. No time for inattention at the wheel.

“Come on, Pal. Let’s see what’s happening at Irene’s.”

What was happening was death.

A crowd milled near the entrance to the Rainbow Lounge. All sorts of garishly colored dittos — specialized and home-modified for pleasure or ritual combat — shifted and murmured in confusion, denied entry to their favorite hangout by ribbons of glare tape that shimmered to eye-hurting rhythms, sending keep away messages straight to the golem fibers threading their clay bodies.

A female-shaped red stood in the entryway. Wearing dark glasses. Explaining patiently as Palloid and I drew near.

“… Let me say again, I’m sorry, but you cannot enter. The club will soon be under new management. Till then, you must find another place to pursue your frantic pleasures.”

I looked her over. Exaggerated curves seemed to cry out slutty waitress, while recessed needles under the nails indicated a bouncer’s capacity to enforce order, whenever customers got rowdy. This had to be one of the worker drone members of Irene — the colony-being we heard described in grayAlbert’s recited diary. She matched the depiction, except for looking haggard and worn, obviously tottering on her last energy stores.

Some customers drifted off, hoping to find another dive open at this hour. One offering as much amusement. I saw grimness in their haste. Especially the dittos with spiky appendages for fighting or exaggerated sexual display. That kind is often made by addicts — experience junkies who need regular fixes of intense recent memories, the more extravagant or violent the better. If these dits fail to bring home the goods, their originals won’t take them back. Their chance of continuity-through-inloading depends on finding excitement elsewhere, anywhere.

Still, more customers kept arriving, milling about hopefully or trying to argue with the red bouncer. Would she stand there in the doorway till she melted? From the testimony of Albert’s luckless gray, I had an impression that Irene took inloading very seriously.

“Let’s try around back,” Palloid suggested from my shoulder. “According to the gray’s recording, that’s where this hive keeps its queen.”

Its queen. I’ve heard of such things, naturally. Still, it’s creepy. Hives and queens, man. Some say we’re all heading that way, eventually, by the inherent logic of dittotech.

Interesting times, all right.

“Okay,” I told my small comrade. “Let’s go back and have a look.”

26 Souls on Celluloid

Ritu and I were rather wrinkled and worn after a long night and a morning spent trekking across arid desert.

You might expect that our gray disguises would look much worse than “wrinkled.” But fortunately, the best brands of makeup don’t clog your natural pores. Instead of blocking perspiration they actually wick it away, maximizing the cooling effects of any passing wind. Dirt and salt crystals work their way outward. In fact, they say the material keeps you cooler and cleaner than exposed skin.

That’s fine, so long as you have plenty of water to drink. Which became a problem twice during our long hike south from the ravine where the Volvo had crashed. Each time our carry-jug ran low in the middle of some great expanse, with no civilization in sight, I wondered if the trek was such a good idea after all.

But despite the appearance of lonely desolation, today’s desert isn’t the same one our ancestors faced. Whenever we ran low on water, something always came up. Like when we came across an area dotted with abandoned squatters’ huts, more than a century old, perched on crude cement slabs with rusting steel roofs. One had ancient shag carpeting, so thick with dust that it sported a thriving shade ecosystem. The cabin’s clogged plumbing offered a cistern where we managed to refill the jug with scummy rainwater, unappetizing but welcome nonetheless. Another time, Ritu found a drip pool just inside a defunct mineshaft. I wasn’t happy about drinking the mineral-steeped brew, but modern chelating treatments should eliminate any toxins, if we made it to civilization promptly.

So, while our trek was an adventure — often miserably uncomfortable — it never became a matter of life-or-death. On several occasions we spotted the glint of a robotic weather station or the dun-colored housing of an ecowebcam. So calling for help was always an option if we got into serious trouble. We had good reasons not to call. It was a matter of choice. That made the journey bearable.

In fact, Ritu and I found enough spare energy to pass the time as we trudged along, continuing our conversation about recent dramas and parasensies we had seen. Like the classic cliché you see all the time — a duplicate claims to be the “real one,” accusing some imposter of taking over his normal life. On a higher plane, we had both seen Red Like Me, the docudrama about a woman whose permanent skin condition made her look unbrown — unreal to most people — so she couldn’t go anywhere without being treated as a golem. We all put up with being “mere property” much of the time, because it all evens out, right? But this heroine never got to take her turn as citizen/master. The story reminded me of Pal, stuck in his life-support chair, unable to experience the world fully except through dittos. The modern bargain isn’t always fair.

That’s how I learned why Ritu came on this trip in person, instead of sending a gray. It turns out she’s handicapped, too. She can’t make reliable copies. They often come out wrong.

All right, millions of folks can’t use kilns at all, suffering the disadvantage of just one, linear life. Bigots call them “soulless,” thinking it happens to those who lack a true Standing Wave to copy. The heritable deficit can make it hard to get a job or win a mate. Indeed, today’s heartless version of capital punishment severs a felon’s Bevvisov-nexus, preventing him from imprinting, trapping him forever in the confines of a single body.

Many tens of millions can animate only crude, shambling caricatures, able to mow the lawn or paint a fence — but no more than that.

Ritu’s problem is different. She imprints dittos of great subtlety and intelligence, but many are frankies, diverging radically. “When I was a teenager, they’d often come out of the kiln resentful, even hating me! Instead of helping to achieve my goals, some tried sabotaging them, or put me in embarrassing situations.

“Only in recent years did I reach a kind of equilibrium. Now, maybe half of my golems do what I want. The rest wander off, mostly harmlessly. Still, I always install strong transponder pellets, to make sure they behave.”

The awkward confession came after we’d been walking for hours, fatigue wearing away her reticent shell. I mumbled sympathetically, lacking the nerve to tell her that I never made frankies. (Till yesterday’s green sent that strange message, that is. And I’m still not sure I believe it.)

As for Ritu’s problem, my professional readings in psychopathology left room for one conclusion — the daughter of Yosil Maharal had deep psychological troubles that stay mute while she’s safely confined to her natural skin. But dittoing unleashes them with callous amplification. A classic case of suppressed self-hatred, I thought, then chided myself for diagnosing another person on slim evidence.

This explained why she accompanied me in person, Tuesday evening. It was clearly important to help investigate her father’s old desert lodge. To ensure it got done right, she must come the old-fashioned way.

A lot of our conversation — including this confession — was recorded on the little transcriber planted under the skin behind my ear. I felt bad about that, but saw no way to stop it. Maybe I’ll erase that part later, when I get a chance.

The Jesse Helms International Combat Range.

From a distance, it looks like a fairly typical military base in the desert — a green oasis dotted with swaying palms, tennis courts and resort-scale swimming pools. The barracks for quartering troops during wartime seem appropriately spartan — tree-shaded cabana-style residence bungalows in muted pastels, cloistered near cybersim stations, practice arenas, and zen contemplation gardens. Everything needed by soldiers seeking to hone their martial spirit.

In stark contrast to those stoical training grounds, brash hotels jut skyward near the main gate, serving journalists and fight aficionados who converge in person for each major battle. Killwire barriers keep out reporters and flitting hobbycams, so the warriors inside may concentrate without interruption. Preparing their souls for battle.

Far beyond the oasis, under a natural hillock surrounded by tire ruts, lay the underground bowels of the base — a support complex never viewed by millions of fans who dial in for each televised clash. Below reside all the special weapon fabricators and customized golem-presses required by a modern military. Another subterranean mound, several kilometers away, offers guest facilities to visiting armies who come several times a year to brave weeks of feverish struggle, beyond a range of hills — in the battleground proper.

“Well, it doesn’t look as if the war’s over,” Ritu commented as we took turns peering through a hand-held ocular, one of a few items salvaged from my ruined Volvo. Even standing on a crest five kilometers outside the boundary, you could tell; the grudge match between PEZ and Indonesia still ran hot. Hotel parking areas were full. And the far southern sky glittered with floatcams and relaysats.

Oh, something was going on, below that distant horde of buzzing voyeur-eyes, just behind an escarpment of granite cliffs. Sporadic rumbles — like angry thunder — kept spilling over that craggy barrier. On several occasions, powerful booms made the very air throb around Ritu and me. Those detonations escorted flashes of harsh light so brilliant that brief shadows danced across the sun-drenched terrain.

Something very close to hell was unfolding beyond the escarpment. A fiery maelstrom of death, more violent and merciless than our savage ancestors could have imagined … and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone alive in our crowded world who felt badly about it.

“So,” my companion asked. “How do we get in to see your soldier-girlfriend? Do we stroll up to the main gate and have her paged?”

I shook my head. If only it were that easy. All during our hard slog across the desert, this stage weighed heavily on my mind.

“I don’t think it’d be a good idea to attract attention.”

“No kidding. Last I heard, you were a suspect in a major crime.”

“And dead.”

“Oh yes, and dead. That could raise a stir when you present your retina for an ID scan. So then. Do you want me to do it? I can rent a room. Let us finally scrape off this makeup.” She gestured at the gray pseudoskin that covered both of us, looking rather weathered after many hours of sun and harsh wind. “I could take a hot bath while you call your friend.”

I shook my head. “Of course it’s up to you, Ritu. But I doubt you should reveal yourself, either. Even if the police aren’t after you, there’s still Aeneas Kaolin to consider.”

“If that was Aeneas who shot at us, on the highway. Seeing ain’t believing, Albert.”

“Hm. Will you bet your life it wasn’t him? Clearly, Kaolin and your father were engaged in something big. Something disturbing. All signs indicate they had a parting of ways. It may have led to your father’s death on the very same highway where we were ambushed—”

Ritu raised a hand. “You convinced me. We need a secure web port to find out what’s going on, before letting anyone know we survived.”

“And Clara’s just the one to arrange it.” I raised the ocular again. “Assuming we cross the next few kilometers and get her attention.”

“Any ideas how to do that?”

I pointed left, away from the main gate of the base, toward a ramshackle encampment that ran along the killwire fence, some distance beyond the glitzy hotels. Multicolored figures could be seen moving amid a lurid variety of tents, mobile homes, and makeshift arenas, giving the impression of an anarchist’s carnival.

“Down there. That’s where we go next.”

27 Shards of Heaven

Pal’s little ferret-ditto rode my shoulder as we retreated from the shuttered front entrance of the Rainbow Lounge, heading around back to find another way inside. A big security fence blocked the service alley, but I didn’t have to mess with it. The gate was ajar. It must have been left that way when a large van passed inside. We squeezed through, then sauntered past the vehicle, looking it over.

That was what the hologo banner said, with angelic cherubs beckoning graciously. A great big dish transmitter on the vehicle’s roof looked handcrafted, rather ornate and much larger than you need for a satellite data link. As we sidled past, my skin tingled, a bit like the recent fizzing sensation of being renewed.

“A lot of energy in that van,” Palloid commented, arching his back, letting the fur bristle.

“Have you heard of these guys?” I asked, shivering till we got past.

“Some. Here and there.” Palloid’s voice was low and terse.

Chilly cryosteam shrouded thick, insulated cables, snaking between the van and the back door of the building, where kitschy organ music filled the dim interior. Warily, I stepped over the cables into a cavernous chamber where several dozen cloaked forms could be made out, swaying to dirgelike harmonies.

“What’re they doing?” Pal asked snidely. “Filming a new episode of Vincent Price Theater?”

I was keenly aware of what happened in this place, only yesterday, when these creatures managed to fool one of Albert’s best grays, tricking him into letting them plant a fiendish bomb in his gut. If they could manage that, a miserable frankie like me had better be careful. Under my skin-deep dye job, I was still humble green.

Adjusting to the light, I saw that all the robed forms wore the same distinctive reddish shade as the one who barred the front door to the Rainbow Lounge. All except a central figure lying on a raised dais, who looked so pale that I first assumed it must be an ivory ditto.

But no, the supine shape was a real person, with sparse patches of gray hair sticking out amid clusters of attached electrodes. Silky red cloth covered much of her heavy, flaccid form. Most people today strive to keep their organic bodies in good shape. (Getting enough of a tan to not be mistaken for a pleasure-golem!) But some folks have just one use for the body they were born in — to serve as a memory vessel, passing impressions from one day’s set of dittos to the next. Evidently, Irene had been on the cutting edge of this trend. No wonder she ran a popular emporium dedicated to fashionable excess!

And yet, from the requiem sounds reverberating all around, I had to guess that Irene’s life — large as it may have been — was finally coming to an end. Her chest rose and fell unevenly beneath the coverlet. Tubes dripped medicinal liquids while a nearby metabolic monitor beeped to a soft, erratic meter.

I saw no kiln. No rows of waiting ditto blanks. So, she wasn’t busy making ghosts, as some do when they know they’re dying — a final spate of autonomous duplicates to handle last-minute details … or to say all those things you never dared to utter while alive. Most of these Irene-copies looked rather elderly. They all might have been present when grayAlbert had his “repairs.”

Did Irene stop duplicating herself at the same time, or soon after? A very odd coincidence, if it was one.

Watching from the shadows, I saw one Irene standing aside from the corny threnody ceremony, conversing with a purple golem whose huge eyes and stylishly curved beak resembled those of a hawk.

“Horus,” Palloid muttered.

“Horace?”

“Horus!” He gestured at the visitor’s bright robe, covered with inscriptions and fancy embroidered figures. “Egyptian god of death and afterlife. Kinda pretentious, by my taste.”

Of course, I thought. Final Options. One of those outfits offering specialized assistance to the dead or dying. If there’s a hypothetical service anybody might want, you can find a million of the bored-unemployed eager to provide it.

I edged closer while hawkface explained items in a glossy brochure.

“… Here’s one of our more popular options. Full cryonic suspension! I have facilities to imbue your archetype’s organic body with the right combination of scientifically balanced stabilization agents, then begin reducing its temperature till we can deliver her to our main storage facility in Redlands, which has its own deep geothermal power supply, armored against anything short of a direct cometary impact! All your rig has to do is imprint a release—”

“Cryonic suspension doesn’t interest us,” replied the red golem, representing her hive. “It has been verified repeatedly that a frozen human brain can’t maintain a Standing Wave. It vanishes, never to return.”

“But there are memories, stored in nearly a quadrillion synapses and intracellular—”

“Memories aren’t homologous — not the same thing as who you are. Anyway, most of those memories can only be accessed by a functioning copy of the original Standing Wave.”

“Well, dittos can be frozen. Suppose one accompanies the original head into storage. Then someday, when technology has advanced sufficiently, some combination of—”

“Please,” the red Irene cut in. “We aren’t interested in science fiction. Let others pay high fees to serve as your experimental guinea pigs. We want a simple service, the reason we called your company.

“We choose the antenna.”

“The antenna.” The purple hawkman nodded. “I’m required by law to say the technique is unverified, with no confirmed successes, despite many claimed resonance detections—”

“We have reason to believe your past failures resulted from a lack of concentration, desire, focus. These we’ll provide, if you do your job as advertised.”

Horus straightened.

“The antenna, then. I still need a release. Please have your archetype put her life-imprint here.”

He pulled a heavy, flat rectangle out of the folds of his robe, tearing off a filmy plastic covering that released a dense, steamy cloud. The red ditto took the tablet gingerly in both hands by its edges, careful not to touch the moist surface.

“I’ll return in a few minutes. There are preparations to complete.” Horus spun away toward the van amid a flourish of glittering robes.

Palloid and I watched the red emissary pass through a crowd of her sisters, who parted with no apparent signal. She stepped up to the dais, holding the tablet high over the pale figure lying there. The original, pale-skinned Irene reacted by lifting one hand, then another. She’s conscious, I realized.

Gently, two dittos approached from opposite sides to restrain her.

Lower came the tablet, closer to that sallow face till her warm breath condensed droplets on the surface. She inhaled deeply, then the red ditto pressed the clay slab down, quickly and with enough force to warp it around realIrene’s head … holding it there a few seconds, till a near-perfect mask formed — mouth agape in a reflex gasp.

No breath was needed in the short time it took for the raw clay to transform before our eyes, rippling swiftly through several color spectra — including some hues that ancient hermits used to seek in far corners of the world, during the long dark era before soulistics. The mouth area, especially, seemed to flicker briefly with faint lightning.

Then the solid mask lifted away, leaving realIrene ashudder but unharmed.

“I always hate having to do that,” Palloid muttered. “Goddam lawyers.”

“Signatures can be forged, Pal. Same with fingerprints, cryptociphers, and retinal scans. But a soul-seal is unique.”

Irene now had a binding contract with Final Options, to spend the last moments of her organic life buying something else, something she considered more precious. Well, well. Here’s to the Big Deregulation. The state has no business getting in between you and your spiritual adviser, especially when it comes to that decisive choice — how to make your final exit.

Too bad poor Albert never had any say in the matter. Partly thanks to Irene, I bet.

Palloid swiveled and grew tense on my shoulder. I turned in time to notice a figure approach us from one side. It was another red ditto, looking a bit ragged like the others, but still formidable. “Mr. Morris.” She bowed her head slightly. “Is it you? Or another? Shall I introduce myself?”

“None of the above,” I answered, not caring if the cryptic answer confused her. “I know you, Irene. But I’m not the fellow you blew up last night.”

She answered with a resigned shrug. “When I saw you, just now, I couldn’t help but hope.”

“Hope? For what?”

“That the news reports somehow lied. I hoped you were the same ditto that left here yesterday.”

“What are you trying to pull? You know what happened to that gray. You murdered him. Blew him up inside Universal Kilns! Only his final act of heroism prevented your bomb from ruining the place.”

“Our bomb.” The red nodded resignedly. “So people will say. But honestly, we thought we were implanting a spy apparatus, tuned to sense and evaluate experimental soul-fields in the UK Research Division—”

“Oh, what a pile,” Palloid commented.

“No, truly! News of the sabotage attack on UK came as a complete surprise. It showed how fully we were used. Betrayed.”

“Right. Tell me about betrayal!”

Oblivious to sarcasm, she nodded. “Oh, I shall. We at once realized that an ally set us up to take the onus for this vicious attack, as part of a multilayered defense, to protect the true villain from retribution. Even if your gray’s obscuring tactics had been perfect — even if he masked his trail, cutting all direct links leading back to his employers — a crime of such magnitude would not go unsolved. Universal Kilns will spare no expense to find those responsible. So, after several layers of decoys are peeled back, we were positioned to take ultimate blame.

“Are you the first harbinger of penalization, ditto Morris?”

“Oh, I may be a harbinger all right, but I’m not Morris,” I muttered, so low she didn’t notice.

“We are a bit surprised to see you,” the red ditto conceded. “Instead of UK Security, or the police. Perhaps they follow soon? No matter. We’ll no longer be here. We are departing shortly, while still able to choose the manner of our going.”

I wasn’t swallowing it.

“You claim innocence about the prion bomb. What about the attack on realAlbert, slaughtering him in his home?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “The mastermind behind all of this — our common enemy, it seems — had to cover his own role after using us. That meant leaving no loose ends. He killed you a bit more swiftly than he killed me, but just as ruthlessly. In short order, you and I will both be no more.

“That is, on this plane of reality,” she added.

I glanced at the dais, which had been rolled much closer to the van. Hissing cryo-cables were being attached to a dense array of sifter tendrils, piled around the pale head of realIrene. “You’re committing some kind of fancy suicide. That’ll leave you unable to testify as a full person in a court of law. Are you sure you want to do that? Won’t it only benefit your former partner, who betrayed you? Shouldn’t you help catch and punish him?”

“Why? Revenge doesn’t matter. We were dying anyway … a matter of weeks, only. We took part in his scheme as a desperate gamble, hoping to stave off that fate. We trusted, gambled, and lost. But at least we still have some choice in the manner of our passing.”

Palloid snarled. “Revenge may not matter to you, but Albert was my friend. I want to get the bastard who did this.”

“And I’m sure we wish you luck,” the red sighed. “But this villain is a renowned master at evading accountability.”

“Was it that Vic Collins character the gray met?”

She nodded. “You already know him by another name.”

With a sinking feeling, I guessed.

“Beta.”

“Quite. He was unamused by your raid on his operation in the Teller Building, by the way. That cost him dearly. But the plan to use Albert Morris in this ploy had been brewing for some time.”

“And a deeper plan to use you.”

“Acknowledged. We saw the collaboration as a clever attempt at industrial espionage. A chance to pirate some first use of the hottest new dittotech, before it went through the cumbersome licensing process.”

“Hot new dittotech. You mean remote dittoing?” It was the cover story they had told the gray.

“Please. That interested Maestra Wammaker, but it’s a minor matter, mentioned only to throw off the scent. I suspect you already know what we were looking for.”

“Golem-renewal,” Palloid suggested. “A way to make ’em last. Can I guess why? Your archie’s memory is full, or nearly so.”

“Full?” I asked.

“Too many inloads, Albert. Irene here has been duplicating so heavily, taking full memory dumps from every ditto she makes, that she’s reached a limit most people only speculate about.” He asked the red. “Tell me, how many centuries have you lived in subjective time? A thousand years?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might. To science,” I answered. “To help others learn from your mistakes.” But I could already see the futility of any altruistic appeal. This person, no matter how old, wasn’t going to be moved by anything but her own good. “So you heard rumors about the renewal process and figured that giving your dits a longer span would—”

“—let you put off the inevitable, right?” Palloid rushed on. “And Beta’s part in the alliance must’ve felt logical, too. He sells cheap knockoffs of expensive pleasuredits. Renewal would let him extend the life of his stolen templates. Maybe even switch from sales to lucrative rentals!”

“That’s how he explained it to us. Beta seemed a natural ally to help steal this technology. I … we still can’t figure out what he hoped to gain by destroying Universal Kilns.”

“Well, he didn’t succeed!” Palloid snapped. “Thanks to Albert outsmarting him at the end.”

I wanted to snort. It seemed dubious how far the gray “outsmarted” anybody! But I kept it in. “Whatever Beta’s reason, I’m sure he’ll try again.”

Irene nodded. “Probably. But that will soon be of no concern to us.”

Past her shoulder, I saw that preparations were nearing completion. Chilly vapors flowed around the dais and massive high-sensitivity sifters focused around realIrene’s gray-haired skull. Her breathing was labored, but her eyes lay open and focused. Soft sounds gurgled and I wondered if she might be trying to speak … that is, if she even retained the ability. For so long, she had used other eyes and ears, hands and mouths, to interact with the world.

Horus was back, having changed into a new robe — a blue one with circular mandala motifs. He fussed over the big array of sifter tendrils while red Irene dittos arrayed themselves nearby, like petals of a flower. All of them now wore standard electrode mesh caps.

“Yeesh,” Palloid commented. “They’re gonna inload back into her all at once! I’d get such a headache, doing that.”

“She must be used to it,” I answered, turning for confirmation to the red we had been talking to. But she was gone! Without comment or salutation she had left to rejoin the others. I hurried after, grabbing her arm. “Wait a sec. I’ve got more questions.”

“And I have an appointment to keep,” she answered tersely. “Be quick.”

“What about Gineen Wammaker? Was she involved in the plot? Or was that someone else disguised as her?”

The red grinned.

“Oh, isn’t our modern era wondrous? I could never tell for sure, Mr. Morris. Not without doing a structural soul analysis. It sure looked and acted like the maestra, didn’t it? But now I must go—”

“Come on, you owe me!” I demanded. “At least tell me how to find Beta.”

She laughed. “You have got to be kidding. Good-bye, Mr. Morris.”

The red turned to go, then swiveled when I reached for her arm again. She glared. Needles protruded suddenly from blood-colored fingertips, glistening liquidly … with something much stronger than knockout oil, I suspected. Beyond her, I glimpsed the ceremonial event approaching its climax. Horus was murmuring some mumbo jumbo — about how every soul must eventually upload into the true Original, the source of all souls, way up there in the universe.

I had an inspiration. “Look, you’re still seeking some kind of immortality, isn’t that right, Irene? The attempt to steal renewal-tech from UK was a bust and cops will be here soon. So you’re planning to try something else. Blast your Standing Wave outta here. Pow. Straight into the ether, with all the force of a micro-fusion plant! Apply the neuro-electric surge of organic brain-death to multiply the punch. And use up all your dittos at the same time, like solid rockets, to help the spirit get launched. Am I right?”

“Something like that,” she said, backing up warily, toward where a final mesh cap waited, dangling near the dais. “There are raw rhythms out there in space, Mr. Morris. Astronomers detect subspectral similarities to a Soul Standing Wave, only crude, unformed. Like fresh golem clay. The first minds to successfully impose their waveforms might—”

“Might amplify unimaginably, becoming God! Yeah, I heard of that notion,” Palloid marveled, leaping off my shoulder and scampering forward, shouting. “This I gotta see!”

I hurried on, talking quickly. “But listen, Irene, didn’t all the old religions promise afterlife as a reward for virtue? You think technology can replace it. Fine. But what if you’re wrong? Did you ever consider that the old-timers might be at least partly right? What if some kind of karma or sin or guilt clings to you, like drag on a wing—”

“You are trying to plant doubts,” she hissed.

“They’re already planted, in the ditto standing before me!” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t add such thoughts to the purity of the hive. You could stay behind and help me. Make up for some of the harm you’ve done. Lift the burden a bit. Help the rest of the hive by remaining here and atoning—”

Something in what I said triggered a flare of violent emotion.

“No!”

She screamed a curse, swiping at me with her claws, then turning to speed toward the dais … only to brake hard when she saw a small, ferretlike form, standing upright amid the crowd of supine red forms. Between glittering teeth, Palloid clutched an electrode mesh cap. The last one. With its cable torn out.

The red ditto howled with such rending despair that I marveled at the implications.

I thought a “hive drone” would have low personal ego, like an ant. Or a worker bee. But Irene is exactly the opposite! Every part of her desperately wants continuity. A roaring, frantic ego was the source of Irene’s strength, and her downfall.

Horus looked upset by the disturbance. Some of the other reds were opening their eyes.

“Come on,” I urged the one still standing, who quivered as Palloid chewed the mesh cap to bits. Her dark eyes looked wild.

“Help me find Beta,” I implored. “It could tip the balance of karma—”

With a cry, she swiveled around — I had to leap back to avoid another swipe of glittering claws — then she spun farther and ran outside, darting over cables into the alley beyond. Soon we heard thumping noises.

“What the hell?” Horus shouted. “Hey, what are you doing? Get off my van!”

Chasing after her, the purple left his machinery running as a sharp whine began to rise, aimed at some impending crescendo. I drew closer, both to see what was happening outside and to have a look at realIrene … the organic woman who was lying there on the dais, eager to expire in just the right way, so that her Standing Wave might soar, heaven-bound.

How did the red ditto express it?

There are raw rhythms out there in space … similar to a Standing Wave … like fresh golem clay … The first minds to impose their waveforms -

Oh, man.

I stepped up to the dais. Outside, the desperate red ditto could be seen climbing on top of the van! Closely followed by Horus, whose robe flapped around bare legs in a rather undignified manner as he clutched after her. Meanwhile, intense energies flowed amid the nest of sparking tendrils that surrounded realIrene’s head.

“Mr. Morris—”

It was little more than a moist croak, barely audible above the nucleoelectric whine. Trying not to touch anything, I bent close to the dying woman. Her pale complexion was splotchy and pitted with small pimples. For once, I was glad not to be able to smell.

“Albert—”

This wasn’t a person I could like very much. Still, her suffering was genuine and she deserved pity, I suppose.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked, wondering when the machinery was timed to unleash all this pent-up force. It might not be safe to stand there.

“I … heard … what you said …”

“What, about karma and all that? Look, I’m no priest. How should I know—”

“No … you’re right …” She gasped for breath between words. “Behind the bar … unscrew the ketone cap … get the son of … son of a …”

Her eyelids fluttered.

“Better get outta there, buddy-boy,” Palloid urged. He was already standing in the doorway with sunshine on his back. I hurried off the dais to join him, glancing back in time to see an eruption of soft lightnings start to flash. Irene’s body convulsed. So did the surrounding cluster of red golems, in perfect synchrony. It wouldn’t be long now.

Retreating to the alley, we looked up at the other commotion, going on atop the van. Irene’s final ditto, the one who was about to be orphaned, clutched at the big antenna, sobbing quite realistically while Horus held her by an ankle. He, in turn, clung to the cargo rack, trying to drag her off.

“Let go!” he shouted angrily. “You’ll wreck it! Do you have any idea how long I saved to buy a franchise—”

Palloid leaped onto my shoulder as I stepped away, putting more distance between us and … whatever was about to happen.

Thunder seemed to boom within the back room of the Rainbow Lounge, like a pulsing of drums … or maybe a million giant bullfrogs with bad thyroid conditions. All right, comparisons fail me, but anyone born in this century would recognize the bass cadence of a hugely amplified Standing Wave. Perhaps a ponderous caricature, impressive but lacking subtlety. Or else a colossally augmented version of the real thing. Who could tell which?

Irene may be able to tell … in a few seconds.

Her final golem wailed on the roof of the van, fighting the tug of Horus in order to thrust her head in front of the antenna.

“Don’t leave me!” she moaned. “Don’t leave me behind!”

Palloid commented dryly, “I didn’t think worker ants were s’pozed to care so much about their individual selves.”

“I was just wondering the same thing,” I replied. “Maybe the hive metaphor isn’t right, after all. The human personality best suited to her way of life is all ego. She could never let go of even a small part of herself. I guess being large can be just as addictive as—”

Pal’s ditto interrupted, “Here it comes!”

We retreated down the alley till I felt the fence against my back, then stared as a sharp light spilled through the rear doors of the Rainbow Lounge, from the chamber where Irene and her copies lay.

The light seared, casting shadows even across daylit asphalt. Instinctively, I raised a hand for shade.

The struggle atop the van ended as Horus fell to the ground with a yelp. The very same moment, something surged along those superconducting cables. The final red ditto screamed, grappling the antenna desperately, causing the mounts to creak as that glittering surge enveloped the van. Spark-flecked aurorae covered both her and the dish … even as her weight bore on the delicate apparatus, causing it to groan -

A visible beam shot forth, blasting through the clay body, which shivered, quickly hardening and sloughing off chunks, then overturned into the delicate parabola, bearing it down, shearing the metal support bolts with staccato pops. I watched with Pal — and poor Horus howled — as the antenna turned … then toppled over the side of the van.

A soundless, blinding wave spread outward, like a radiant ripple of pure light. It washed over Pallie and me, driving tremors up my back. Both of my ears popped, loudly and painfully. Arcing static discharges followed the wavefront, blowing the back doors off the van and clouds of equipment into the street.

The transmission finished, not aimed toward the cosmos above, but into the floor of a gritty alley.

Horus slumped, moaning in despair till all was silent.

“You know, Gumby,” my small ferret-shaped friend muttered from his perch on my shoulder, when we were both finally able to stir from dazzled shock over the spectacle. “You know, this city is built on some rich layers of pure clay. It’s one reason Aeneas Kaolin built his first animation lab here, long ago. So it’s not too far-fetched to imagine—”

“Shut up, Pal.” I didn’t want to share whatever perverse notion had just occurred to him. Anyway, the smoke was clearing and I saw no sign of fire. Nobody would prevent us from going back inside the Rainbow Lounge.

“Come on,” I said, rubbing my jaw, which hurt below the ears. “Let’s see what parting gift Irene left for us.”

“Hm? What’re you talking about?”

I wasn’t sure. Had she said “ketone cap”? Or something about atonement?

Anyway, I tried not to think ill of Irene. Despite all she had done, it just didn’t seem right. Especially when we crept inside, passing both a barbecued ruin on the dais and surrounding supine heaps of smoldering brick statuary.

I had never seen anyone die quite so thoroughly before.

28 A China Syndrome

Yosil Maharal — or rather his gray ghost — appears to be quite proud of his private collection: starting with a unique hoard of cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals from ancient Mesopotamia, the muddy land where writing began more than four thousand years ago.

“This was the very first kind of magic that actually worked in a reliable and repeatable way,” he told me, holding up an object the shape and hue of a dinner roll, covered with shallow, overlapping wedge incisions. “At last, a kind of immortality could be achieved by anybody who learned the new trick of recording their words and thoughts and stories, by marking impressions in wet clay. The immortality of speaking across time and space, even long after your original body returned to dust.”

I may be no genius but I grasped his allusion. For he was just such a manifestation of continuity beyond death. A complex cluster of soul-impressions made in clay, speaking on after the original Yosil Maharal had his organic life snuffed out near a lonely culvert, under a desert highway. No wonder he felt a sense of kinship with the little tablets.

Maharal’s private collection also includes samples of ancient hand-wrought pottery, like several large amphorae — containers that held wine in a Roman bireme that sank two thousand years ago — recently recovered by explorerdits from the bottom of the Mediterranean. And nearby, in the same display case, lay a setting of rare blue porcelain dinnerware, once carried around the Horn of Africa in the belly of a clipper ship to grace the table of some rich merchant.

Even more precious to my host were several fist-sized human effigies, from an era much earlier than Rome or Babylon. A time before towns or literacy, when all our ancestors roamed roofless, in hunter-gatherer tribes. One by one, Yosil’s gray golem lovingly displayed about a dozen of these “Venus” figurines, molded out of Neolithic river mud, all of them featuring voluminous breasts and copious hips that tapered down from generous thighs to the daintiest of feet. With evident pride, he told me where each little statuette was found and how old it was. Lacking clear faces, most of them looked enigmatic. Anonymous. Mysterious. And prodigiously female.

“Back in the late twentieth century, a spirited postmodern cult organized itself around these effigies,” he lectured while tugging a chain around my neck, leading me from one display case to the next.

“Inspired by these tiny sculptures, a few hyperfeminist mystics deduced a delightfully satisfying ideological fantasy — that an Earth-Mother religion preceded every other spiritual belief system, all over the planet. This ubiquitous Neolithic creed must obviously have worshipped a goddess! One whose top traits were fecundity and serene maternal kindliness. That is, till gentle Gaia was toppled by violent bands of macho Jehovah-Zeus-Shiva followers, spurred by an abrupt wave of vile new technologies — metallurgy, agriculture, and literacy — that arrived with concurrent and destabilizing suddenness, all at once shaking the tranquil old ways and toppling the pastoral mother goddess.

“It follows that every crime and catastrophe of recorded history stems from that tragic upheaval.”

Maharal’s ghost chuckled, rolling one of the Venus figures affectionately in his hand. “Oh, the goddess theory was quite fabulous and creative. Though there is another, far simpler explanation for why these little figurines are found in so many Stone Age sites.

“Every human culture has devoted considerable creative effort to crafting exaggerated representations of the fertile female form … as erotic art. Or pornography, if you will. I think we can safely assume there were frustrated males back in caveman days, as there are today. They must have ‘worshipped’ these little Venus figures in ways that we’d find familiar. Rather less lofty than Gaia veneration, but no less human.

“What has changed, after all that time, is that today’s clay sex idols are far more realistic and satisfying.

“But therein lies a rub.”

Standing in chains, wearing a miniature body and forced to listen to this drivel, I could only wonder. Was he being intentionally offensive, in order to gauge my reaction? I mean, why should the great Professor Maharal care what I think? Anyway, I’m just a cheap quarter-sized reddish-orange golem, imprinted off the gray he captured at Kaolin Manor on Tuesday. What kind of intellectual conversation can he hope to have with the likes of me?

Well, I don’t feel mentally deficient. Ever since stepping from the kiln, I’ve checked and found no apparent memory gaps. I can’t do a differential equation in my head … but Albert himself was only able to manage that for about eight weeks, long ago, when he needed calculus to pass a college course. It took the hard, concentrated work of three ebonies to gain access to that painful beauty, then he flushed it away right after exams, making room amid a hundred billion neurons for more relevant memories.

See? I can even do irony.

All right, apparently I’m better at copy-to-copy imprinting than even I realized — something Yosil Maharal must have known for a long time. Maybe from back when I took part in that high school summer research project. Were my scores really so special? Has he been grabbing my copies to study ever since?

The thought makes me feel creepy. Worse — violated. Man, what a jerk.

He claims to have reasons. And yet, don’t all fanatics?

“Now here is my greatest treasure,” Yosil said, leading me to another exhibit. “It was given to me by the Honorary Son of Heaven himself, three years ago, in gratitude for my work at Sian.”

Before me, preserved inside a sealed glass case, stood the statue — life-size — of a man with the upright bearing of a soldier, staring straight ahead, ready for action. So detailed was the sculpted handiwork that it portrayed rivets holding together strips of leather armor. A mustache, goatee, and stark cheekbones embellished strong Asiatic features — touched off by hints of whimsy. The entire effigy was made of brown terracotta.

Naturally, I knew of Sian, one of the artistic gems of the world. It would be inconceivable for a private individual to own one of these statues — if there had not been so many of them. Thousands, reclaimed from half a dozen buried regiments, discovered across more than a century, each of the effigies modeled after a particular soldier who served Ch’in, the first emperor, who conquered and united all the lands of the East. The same Ch’in who first built the Great Wall and gave his name to China.

“You know about my recent work there,” ditYosil said — not a question but statement of fact. Naturally. He’s spoken to other Alberts, giving them the very same guided tour.

To what purpose? I wondered. Why explain all this, knowing the memories will be lost and that I must be told again, the next time he ditnaps another me to serve as an unwilling subject?

Unless that’s part of what he is trying to test …

“I’ve read a thing or two about your Sian work, in the journals,” I answered guardedly. “You claim to have found soul-traces in some of the clay statues.”

“Something like that.” ditYosil’s thin smile carried evident pride, recalling the worldwide sensation that his discovery provoked. “Some call the evidence ambiguous, though I think it’s clear enough to conclude that some kind of primitive imprinting process must have been at work. By what means? We still haven’t determined. A fluke, perhaps — or the work of some ancient prodigy — helping to explain the astonishing political events of that era, as well as the terrified awe that his contemporaries held for Ch’in.

“As a direct result of my findings, the present-day Son of Heaven finally agreed to open the colossal Ch’in tomb next year! Some deep mysteries may come to light, having slept for millennia.”

“Hm,” I answered, a bit incautiously. “Too bad you won’t be there to witness it.”

“Perhaps not. Or maybe I will. So many delicious contradictions come laden in that one sentence of yours, Albert.”

“Uh. What sentence was that?”

“You said ‘too bad,’ implying values. The word ‘you’ was directed at me, as a thinking being, the person who is holding you captive right now, right?”

“Uh … right.”

“Then there are the phrases ‘be there’ and ‘witness it.’ Oh, you said a mouthful, all right.”

“I don’t see—”

“We live at a special time,” ditMaharal expounded. “A time when religion and philosophy have become experimental sciences, subject to hands-on manipulation by engineers. Miracles become trademarked products, bottled and sold at discount. The direct descendants of men who used to chip flint spearheads by the riverbank are not only making life but redefining the very meaning of the word! And yet—”

He paused. I finally had to coax him.

“And yet?”

Maharal’s gray face twisted. “And yet there are obstacles! So many of the outstanding problems in soulistics seem to have no hope of being solved, due to the ineffable complexity of the Standing Wave.

“No computer can model it, Albert. Only the shortest and fattest superconducting cables can convey its subtle majesty, barely well enough to let you press an imprint upon a nearby receptacle of specially prepared clay. Mathematically, it’s a horror! Given all the odds, I’m astonished the process works at all.

“In fact, many of today’s deepest thinkers suggest that we should just be thankful and accept it as a gift, without understanding it, like intelligence, or music, or laughter.”

He shook his head, offering a good facsimile of a disdainful snort.

“But naturally, people on the street know nothing of this. Born with the cantankerous human spirit, they are never satisfied with a marvel — or with their vastly expanded lives. Not at all! They take it for granted, and keep demanding more.

“Make it possible for us to imprint distant golems, so we can teleport around the solar system! Give us telepathy, by letting us absorb each other’s memories! Never mind what the metamath equations say. We want more! We want to be more!

“And of course, people are right. Deep down, they sense the truth.”

“What truth do you mean, Doctor?” I asked.

“That human beings are about to become very much more! Though not in any of the ways they now imagine.”

With that cryptic remark, Maharal carefully put away the last of his dear collectibles — the cuneiform tablets and pottery shards. The ancient amphora vessels and China dinnerware. The enigmatic/erotic Venus statuettes and snow-glazed Dresden figurines. The parchment texts in Hebrew, Sanskrit, and the cryptic coded charts of medieval alchemy. Finally he gave an affectionate nod to the stalwart terracotta soldier, still standing watch with his flickering, barely detectable imbuement of soul. Maharal took obvious comfort from these treasures, as if they proved his work part of a time-honored tradition.

Then, yanking the chain around my neck, he forced me to stumble after him like a small child following a heartless giant, back into the laboratory filled with machines that hissed and whirred and sparked, making the air tingle in frightening ways. I had a hunch that some of the effects might be for show. Yosil had a flair for the dramatic. Unlike some “mad scientists,” he knew what he was and clearly relished the role.

A transparent soundproof partition divided the room. Beyond, I glimpsed the table where “I” became aware just an hour or so ago, still warm from the kiln. And nearby, strapped to another platform, lay a gray figure much taller than this body of mine. The self that I had been for several days. The one who provided a template for this narrating consciousness.

Poor gray. Left there to simmer and worry and scheme in vain. At least I had the distraction of an opponent.

“How did you manage to put all this together in secret?” I asked, gesturing around. The sheer amount of material — not to mention the expensive gizmos — would have been difficult to transport to this hidden underground lair (wherever it is) even in the old days of CIA plots and bad movieds about alien autopsies. To find it done today by a single person, somehow evading the all-seeing and all-shared public Eye of Accountability, showed that I was in the hands of a true genius. As if I didn’t know it already.

A genius who clearly resented me for some reason! Not only was he physically callous toward this body I wore, he kept oscillating between taciturn silence and bouts of sudden talkativeness, as if driven by some inner need to impress me. I recognized clear signs of a Smersh-Foxleitner inferiority complex … and wondered what possible good the diagnosis was going to do me.

Mostly, I kept looking for possible ways to escape, knowing that each of my earlier prisoner-incarnations must have done the very same thing. But all they accomplished with their efforts had been to turn Maharal hypercautious — so that now he only imprints experimental copies of me that are too weak to punch their way out of paper manacles.

Fettering me to a chair beneath a machine resembling a giant microscope, he aimed the huge lens at my little reddish-orange head.

“I have access to ample resources, quite near here,” Maharal said, answering my question — though unhelpfully. Fiddling with dials and muttering into a computerized votroller, he looked more focused on the task at hand than on me personally. But I knew better by now.

The man worried about me — a disquiet that ran deep. Anything I said could vex him.

“All right, so we ruled out teleportation and telepathy. Even so, you’ve made impressive breakthroughs, Doctor. Your process to extend a ditto’s pseudolifespan, for instance. Wow. Imagine if all golems could replenish their élan a week or two … it could really hurt the value of Universal Kilns stock, I bet. Is that why you had a falling out with Aeneas Kaolin?”

My remark drew a sharp look. Gray lips pressed together in a line, silent.

“Come on, Doc. Admit it. I could feel tension between you two, under all the feigned affection back at Kaolin Manor, when you showed up as a ghost to view your own corpse. The Vic seemed anxious to get his hands on that artificial brain of yours, and dice it to bits. Why? In order to learn more about all this?” I gestured at the big lab with its mysterious stolen equipment. “Or was he trying to hush you?”

Maharal’s grimace told me I hit home.

“Is that it? Did Aeneas Kaolin murder your real self?”

The police hadn’t found any signs of foul play at the desert crash site where realYosil Maharal had died. But in searching for clues, they only considered today’s technology. Aeneas Kaolin possessed tomorrow’s.

“As usual, you are thinking small, Mr. Morris. Like poor Aeneas.”

“Yeah? Then try explaining, Professor. Starting with why I’m here. All right, so I make great copies. How does that help you solve those great mysteries of soulistics?”

His eyes rolled upward and shoulders shrugged — an expression of fatigued contempt, exactly according to the Smersh-Foxleitner pattern. Maharal doesn’t just envy my ability. He actually fears me! So he must exaggerate the intellectual gulf between us and minimize my humanity.

Did my other selves notice this? They must have!

“You would not understand,” he muttered, returning to his preparations. I heard the crackle of high-power equipment, warming up with me sitting at the focus.

“I’m sure you said that to the other Alberts you captured. But tell me this, did you ever, even once, try to explain? Maybe offer me collaboration, instead of unwilling experimental torment? Science isn’t meant to be a lonely business, after all. Whatever your reasons for working in isolation—”

“—are my reasons. And they are more than sufficient to justify these means.” Maharal turned to regard me tiredly. “Now you’ll spout moral arguments, about how wrong it is to treat another thinking entity this way. Even though you showed no such regard for your own dittos! Never even bothering to investigate why so many went missing over the years.”

“But … I’m a private eye. That involves sending myselves into dangerous situations. Taking risks. I came to think of them—”

“—as disposable selves. Their loss to be regretted no more than our grandparents would lament the waste of an irritating day. Well, that’s your privilege. But then, don’t call me a monster if I take advantage.”

That gave me pause. “Have I called you a monster?”

Stone-faced. “Several times.”

I pondered this a moment.

“Well, then, I have to guess that your … procedure is gonna hurt. A lot.”

“Rather, I’m afraid. Sorry. But there is good news! I have reason to hope things will go much smoother this time.”

“Because you’ve improved your method?”

“In part. And because circumstances have changed. I expect your Standing Wave will be more malleable … more mobile … now that it’s no longer anchored to organic reality.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“What do you mean, no longer anchored?”

Maharal frowned, but I could tell the expression masked a layer of pleasure. Perhaps he wasn’t even aware how much he enjoyed telling me the news.

“I mean that you’re dead, Mr. Morris. Your original body was vaporized late Tuesday night, in a missile attack that destroyed your home.”

“A … what?”

“Yes, my poor fellow artifact. Like me, you are now — as they say — a ghost.”

29 Imitation of a Counterfeit Life

The interior of the Rainbow Lounge lay eerily empty.

Some holoflashers had been left on, illuminating the dance floor and the Grudge Pit with twisted images, like multidimensional Dalí landscapes roamed by erotic figures possessing far too many limbs. But without the intense background beat of CeramoPunk music, the flickering shapes were rather pathetic. This place demanded crowding — a hot press of several hundred brightly colored bodies, hyped to wear their standing waves exposed, ultrasensitive, like the prickly emotions of teenagers.

“I wonder who’s gonna take over the Rainbow,” Palloid mused. “Do you think Irene had heirs or left a will? Does it all go up for auction?”

“Why? Thinking of becoming a tavernkeeper?”

“It’s tempting.” He leaped from my shoulder onto the bar, a broad expanse of heavily lacquered teakwood. “But maybe I don’t have the personality for it.”

“You mean the patience, concentration, or tact,” I commented while poking around. The bar featured a dazzling array of tubes, faucets, bottles, and dispensers of intoxicants, euphorics, stimulants, levelers, speeders, slowers, uppers, downers, horizoners, myopics, stigmatics, zealotropics, hystericogens -

“Touché, Albert. Though Irene’s idea of tact was rather specialized. The kind used by pimps, bouncers, and cops. Screw ’em all.”

“Nihilist,” I muttered while scanning labels for a dizzying array of concoctions. My search wasn’t going to be easy. The varieties of abuse that you can put a clay body through never cease to amaze me, and almost certainly astonished the inventors of dittotech, back when people started fiddling with home modification kits. You can fine-tune a golem so it will react spectacularly to alcohol or acetone, electric or magnetic fields, sonic or radar stimulation, images or aromatics … not to mention a thousand specially designed pseudoparasites. In other words, you can pound, pluck, or molest the Standing Wave in countless ways that would be lethal to your real body, and transfer home vivid memories when the busy day is done.

No wonder there are experience addicts. By comparison, the opiate-alkaloid cocktails that sad folks used to inject in Grandpa’s day were like a dose of vitamins.

“Nihilist? You dare call me that? Who’s standing here, using up lifespan helping you, friend?”

“You call it help to squat up there, kibitzing? How about some assistance down here, behind the bar?”

He replied with a desultory snarl, but did leap to ground at the far end, sniffing as he scanned labels, grumbling audibly that I owed him for this. I wasn’t buying any of his act, of course. My friend’s personal addiction was to poke away at the world’s weirdness. After events of the last hour, he never seemed happier.

I hope he gets to inload all this, I thought, recalling the real Pal, imprisoned in his life-sustaining chair. He’d get a kick out of remembering old Horus, toppling onto his butt from the Final Options van. Pal might also help distract Clara from her grief by describing how we spent these haunted hours …

No, I shied away from thinking about her. Anyway, Clara would remember Albert with fondness. That beat most kinds of immortality that I’d heard of. A lot more immortality than this particular green frankie was going to get.

Anyway, who wants to live forever?

I kept marveling at the variety of substances stored behind the bar. Irene must’ve had real political clout, to get an environmental variance. There are more toxic brews here than in the late state of Delaware.

“Got it!” Palloid announced, punctuating his triumph with a smug somersault. I hurried over to his end of the bar where a series of large wooden pull levers stood — like those used to serve draft beer in a real people tavern. One of them bore a designation that said: Ketone Kocktail.

“Hm, could be. If she had said, ‘ketone tap.’ ”

“Are you sure she said ‘cap’?”

“Pretty sure.” I jiggled the pull lever, not eager to dispense any of the pressurized contents. My cheap green body — even renewed under artificial dyes of orange and gray — couldn’t endure most of the exotic mixtures offered for sale here.

“The cap—” Palloid began.

“I know. I’m checking it now.” The lever had a large decorative tip, like a tapered brass tube covering the end. I twisted one way, then the other. It gave a little, then no more. Even when I wrenched hard.

I was about to give up, then thought, Maybe it works in several successive directions, like a Chinese puzzle box.

I tried combinations of twists, pulls, and shoves, and began making some progress with the cap, confirming my guess. Gradually it worked outward along a complicated, grooved sleeve. A physical storage device, then, like the piezomechanical recorders that Albert always installed in his grays. More secure than anything electronic. Irene clearly grasped that the world of digital data is far too flighty to entrust with any real secrets. Safety-through-encryption is a bad joke. If you must keep something away from prying eyes, put it in hardwriting. Then hide the only copy in a box.

I hope this thing doesn’t require any sort of ID check, or involve disarming a self-destruct. When Irene told me about this cache with her final words, I assumed it was an act of deathbed contrition — or perhaps a little karmic insurance. But another explanation was possible. A trap. A petty act of vengeance for interfering with her last red ditto.

If I could sweat, I would have started right about then.

“Better step back, Pal,” I urged.

“Already done it, chum,” I heard him call from beyond the farthest end of the bar, over a dozen meters removed. “Other than that, I’m with you all the way.”

His wry expression of support almost made me chuckle. Almost.

I didn’t breathe through the last several twists and turns, operating on storage cells until …

… the brass cylinder came off at last, revealing a hollow interior with something crammed inside. Exhaling with relief, I tapped it on the bar.

A slim tube of plastic rolled out. Beta, said a paper tag, attached to the film with a clip.

“Cool!” Palloid yelped, leaping onto the bar again, using agile paw-hands to pry at other decorative caps. “I bet she had all kinds of stuff hidden away. Maybe Irene had a sideline, blackmailing politicians! She was in the business of catering to perversions and there’s still lots of depravities that can cost you votes, if people find out about ’em!”

“Right. Dream on.” As if Pallie cared about politics. “Just be careful,” I urged. It was my turn to retreat cautiously while he fiddled with one poison dispenser after another. Further warnings would be futile, so I left him there, happily risking his brief existence on a whim.

“I’ll be in Irene’s office,” I said.

We had passed it along the way, a sophisticated-looking data center offering surveillance views into every corner of the establishment. (I chuckled when I saw Palloid barely dodge a spray of some fuming liquid as he kept poking around, looking for more secret hiding places.) There were also some of those hookups the luckless grayAlbert mentioned in his recital-diary — plug-in units designed to let a ditto link directly (well, sort of) to computers. From everything I’ve read, the advantages are dubious. I’d much rather wear a chador.

Luckily, the office held some regular net-access consoles, too. Irene had left several turned on, indicating rushed departure. I might not have to mess with passwords and such. Hacking is such a retro and tedious chore.

Anyway, my first stop was a simple analog strip reader. The film tube fit perfectly. Are there any clues here to explain why someone arranged for that vicious attack against Universal Kilns? Or the much worse felony of real-killing Albert Morris?

As soon as I activated the strip reader, the first holofoto spilled into midair before me. So that’s what “Vic Collins” looked like. Tuesday’s hapless gray was right about this character. Plaid clothes over plaid skin … ouch!

Yet it made devilish sense. Some people hide their appearance by looking nondescript. Forgettable. But you can accomplish much the same thing by making it too painful and disgusting to look at you. Still, it was hard to see how this portrait could help answer any of the big questions.

Was Irene right about Vic Collins being a front persona of Beta, the notorious ditnapper?

I recalled that last encounter with one of Beta’s rapidly dissolving yellows, stuck in a disposal tube next to the Teller Building, slobbering cryptic remarks about betrayal and somebody called “Emmett.” Albert was already tired and distracted by then. And wary toward yet another of Beta’s notorious head games.

Sitting in Irene’s office, I saw little similarity between that yellowdit and the holo visage in front of me, a squarish face, rather snide, and cross-hatched with a blinding array of intersecting stripes. There were several dozen pictures in Irene’s secret archive, date-stamped, every time the conspirators rendezvoused in back of a limousine at some remote location — occasionally with a third party who looked like a cheap ivory of Gineen Wammaker. According to a notation, Collins used a static-disruptor to block sophisticated photo-optical recording devices. These snapshots on old-fashioned chemical emulsion were the best Irene could do as she kept a wary eye on her allies.

Not wary enough, though. Did Irene ever try tracking Collins through the publicam network? I wondered. The first step — following his trail back to the limo rental agency — seemed obvious.

Oh, Albert would have loved the challenge! Starting with these time-and-place fixes, he’d concentrate with all the intensity of a Vingean focus trance, backtracing the plaid Collins-dittos, eager to see what tricks they used to cover their trail, pouncing on any slipup.

I suppose I could have tried to do that, sitting there in Irene’s deserted office. But did I want to? Just because I inherit Albert’s memories, and some skills, that doesn’t mean I’m him! Anyway, that missile wrecked more than Al’s house. Nell contained all those specialized programs to help Morris follow people and dittos across the vast cityscape.

There are times I wish the citizens of PEZ were less laid back and freedom-loving. Elsewhere, folks put up with higher levels of regulation and supervision. Every golem made in Europe carries a real transponder, not a pathetic little pellet tag. Factory-registered to its owner, trackable by satellite from activation to dissolution. There are still ways to cheat, but a detective knows where to start.

On the other hand, I live here for a reason. Tyranny may have only taken a holiday. It could return, first in one corner of the world, then another. And democracy is no absolute guarantee. But in PEZ, the word “authority” has always been so suspect. They’d have to kill everybody first, then start over from scratch.

Turning the film cylinder, I flipped from one holo to the next as Irene and her collaborators met to discuss a stratagem for quasi-legal industrial espionage, or so she thought. But her allies had other plans — manipulating Irene for her resources and Albert Morris for his skills. And the fanatics, Gadarene and Lum, setting them up to take initial blame.

Having met those two, I knew that any first-rate investigator would soon grow suspicious. They just weren’t competent enough to sabotage Universal Kilns. And though Gadarene might have a motive to destroy UK, Lum wanted to “liberate slaves,” not destroy them. A smart cop would see them as patsies, framed to take the fault. Beta set up Irene to take the heat when that first level failed.

She realized all this when the news broke last night. A knock on the door could come within hours. Oh, she could have stayed and helped investigators peel away more layers. But Beta knew her too well. Revenge wouldn’t matter, only arranging with Final Options for a last stab at “immortality.”

So, I’m the one left to clean up after her … and after Albert, for that matter. And …

It seems I’m spending all my lifespan scrubbing toilets after all.

Actually, Irene did a good job getting close-ups of Beta with her little microcam — if it really was him. Perhaps my frankie brain viewed things differently, but I was more interested in examining the face than trying to track it from one publicam to another.

All right, I thought. Question number one: was “Vic Collins” really Beta, the infamous ditnapper and copyright thief? The red Irene ditto seemed sure. Maybe they had a long and profitable business relationship. And I could easily picture the pragmatic Gineen Wammaker deciding to stop fighting Beta, joining forces with him instead. Weren’t they all in approximately the same trade? Catering to perverse cravings?

I snap-enabled a link from the strip reader to Irene’s computer, getting quick response when I asked for some standard image-enhancement programs, then used them to zoom on Collins’s features. “Now ain’t that interesting,” I murmured.

Apparently, Collins used a completely different pattern of plaid design, each of the first five times he sent dits to meet Irene. But on the final three occasions, his skin motif remained the same. Which element is meaningful? I wondered. The earlier variation? Or the fact that he later stopped bothering to change patterns?

I didn’t have resources to do a mathematical-configuration analysis of the interlocking stripes — determining if some code lay embedded in the complex patterns. It would be just like Beta to wear cryptic clues on his very skin, daring foes to decipher them. Vic Kaolin did have the resources for such analysis, and I was supposedly working for him at the moment. I could have this evidence forwarded to the mogul in seconds, at a spoken command.

“Zoom in,” I said instead, letting the focus of my gaze control where — the plaid skin on the left cheek of the most recent image of “Vic Collins.”

I missed Nell. And especially all the wonderful automated tools she kept in her icy core, ready at Albert’s disposal. But with some cheap substitutes, fetched via the Internet, I got a pretty good close-up appraisal of the clay surface, which turned out to be finely molded, with supple, kiln-cured texture. Very high quality. Beta could afford fine bodies.

Hell, I knew that. This wasn’t significant or new. So? I’m not Albert Morris. What makes me think I can play private eye?

Before giving up, I decided to point the same tools at earlier images Irene took when Collins first started meeting her in back of limousines. Was it a hunch?

I stared, blinked, and stammered, “What the — ?”

The texture was entirely different! Coarser. And this time it featured a myriad tiny protrusions, like goosebumps, row after row, at least a thousand per linear centimeter. Pixel emitters, I realized. Like they weave into smart fabrics that change colors on command. Only these lay flush in normal-looking gray pseudoskin. The plaid pattern was created by these elements; some turned dark, others pale, combining to form an illusion of intersecting stripes.

So. Even if I used old publicam records to follow Collins back in time, say to the limo rental agency, I’d lose him anyway. There’d come some point, a bit earlier, when he’d vanish in a crowd at some carefully scouted blind spot. Tracing farther back, I’d never see a plaid person arrive because he shifted coloration instantly! I bet Collins even had inflatable prosthetics under the skin, to alter his facial contours just as quickly. No need for the quick-change dyes, putty, and cosmetics Albert used.

Oh, old Albert had been proud of his own ability to weave in and out of sight, wiping his trail clean. But Collins — or Beta — had him beat by a mile! It was enough to make me laugh or cry for poor Al, who used to fancy himself as Sherlock to Beta’s Moriarty. He was never in the same league.

All very impressive. But why did Beta stop using his quick-change trick, switching to dittos that were more luxurious but less sneaky? And why did he decide to hire an Albert Morris gray to do the old dodge-and-weave during the attack on UK, instead of handling it himself? I checked all the images again. The last three pictures of Collins were different, all right. You could even see it in his facial expression — a smirk that first seemed natural struck me as feigned in the later images.

If only the meetings were held here, at the Rainbow! Irene could have made full holo radar scans, recorded voice patterns, word rhythms, hand mannerisms … all the little habits that a man takes along when he copies himself into clay dolls. Cues nearly as individualized as the Standing Wave itself. Did Irene or Wammaker notice any difference? Were they clueless that something had changed?

That yellow who was melting in the recycling tube, next to the Teller Building … didn’t he claim that some kind of disaster had befallen Beta, even before Blane and I raided the place?

I glanced at a monitor showing the main floor of the Rainbow Lounge. Pal’s mini-golem was making a party of it, singing along with a raucous tune that played on the dance floor sound system while he kept poking into every conceivable niche and hiding place, adding to a collection of metal parts torn from various portions of the bar. Only a few small streams of noxious fluid appeared to be leaking onto the floor, so far. But at this rate he might demolish the whole place before his internal clock ran out.

The little mock ferret tapped another decorative cylinder on the bar, peering through it while crooning along to a catchy anthem that had been revered by nihilists long before any of us were born. Rocking back on his haunches, he bayed skyward -

“Life is a lemon and I want my money back!”

Hey, I can relate. In fact, I’ve felt that way for well over twenty-four hours. But even if I could somehow get a refund on this so-called life, whose account would I send it to?

Toggling a switch on the desk, I called down to the lounge. “Pal! You doing okay down there?”

The driving beat automatically faded as he swiveled around, grinning. “Just great, Gumby, old chum! I found some more secret stashes.” He held up a holopix tube like the one I had found. “My hunch was right! Irene had nailed herself a couple of local council officials to blackmail.”

“Anything juicy?”

“Naw. Local interest, mostly. I keep hoping for something on the President, or maybe the Protector in Chief. But all I found in the last one are pictures of kids. Family snaps, not kinkyporn.” Palloid shrugged. “What about you? Anything useful?”

Useful? I was about to answer no when another of those odd hunches tweaked an off-resonance in my mutated Standing Wave. I signaled Irene’s computer with some rapid eye-wink commands, calling up two images of Collins-Beta — one early and the other late — flicking back and forth between them. “I’m not sure, but I think …”

The image on the left showed Beta the chameleon, his gray golemskin studded with a myriad tiny pixel emitters tuned to combine into one of those eye-hurting plaid motifs, but capable of changing instantaneously to some wildly different pattern. The other face, on the right, looked similar at superficial scale. But zooming in close, you could see the tartan pattern was simply painted atop normal gray …

Wait a minute, I thought, noticing some abrasion marks on the most recent Collins golem, near its left cheek. Nothing unusual there. Clay scratches easily and cannot repair itself. You sometimes end a day pitted and cratered, like some moon. But these tiny scrapes glittered. Closer magnification revealed bits of gray surface coating, curling away from a different hue beneath, still metallic-looking, but shinier. Not quite silvery. More of an expensive-looking matte finish, like white gold.

Or else, maybe, platinum.

“Yeah?” Palloid shouted up at me. “What is it you think?”

I didn’t want to say more. Who knew what kind of listening devices Vic Aeneas Kaolin planted in me, when he kindly renewed my lease on pseudolife? Heck, I still lacked any clear picture of his underlying motive for sending me out “to find the truth.”

Choosing words carefully, I said, “Maybe it’s time you and I got out of here, Pal.”

“Yeah? And head where?”

I thought about that. We needed a special kind of help. The kind I never knew existed till yesterday, when I was just a few hours old.

30 Apeing Essence

Fortunately, there was a lot of traffic coming and going to the battle range, everything from big supply carryalls and triple-decker tour buses to jitneys and sportcycles. Air travel’s tightly restricted though, and the site is far enough from the city that sending a ditto all this way makes little sense. It would only have short time to loiter around before having to head back again.

True aficionados — and news reporters — are better off coming in person, which explains the row of fancy realfolk hotels, amusement centers, and casinos near the main gate, with their high observation towers gazing at the battleground proper. At night, musicians play impromptu arrangements to accompany the flash and bang effects rising over the escarpment.

Like I said, it’s a pretty typical military base. Bring the family!

We hitched a ride the final few klicks, flagging down a ramshackle mobile home with twelve wheels and a wheezing catalysis engine that reeked of illegal petrol conversion. The driver, a big fellow, dark brown with greasy locks, welcomed us aboard with a grunt.

“I’m not going all the way to the hotels,” he said. “I’ll be turnin’ offroad to the Candidates Camp.”

“We’re aimed there as well, sir,” I explained with a shallow bow, since he was real while I was pretending not to be. The driver eyed us up and down.

“You don’t have the look of soldier-aspirants. What kind of model are you, strategists?”

I nodded and the big fellow guffawed. “Some would-be generals, wandering around lost in the desert!” His deriding tone wasn’t unfriendly, though.

I now faced yet another problem. As soon as I stepped inside the big van, a small light started flashing in my left eye. For the first time in almost two days, my implant was picking up a useful carrier wave and asking permission to respond. Three tooth clicks and I could be investigating what happened to my burned-out home and why amateur criminalists linked me to a sabotage attempt at Universal Kilns. Above all, in just moments I could be talking to Clara!

But that little flash also signaled a poison. While passive, my implant wouldn’t give away my position. But the moment it latched in, others would know I still lived … and where to find me.

Ritu and I settled into a back seat while the driver chattered about the war, which had gone through several stunning reverses, a memorable match drawing attention from all over the globe. Soon he pulled off the main highway and down a rutted track leading toward the chaotic encampment I spied earlier.

The Candidates Camp is exactly what you’d expect in an age when war is sport and countless people dream of some way to stand out from the crowd. Amid plumes of trampled dust, you quickly sniff the acrid wafting odors of simmering clay emitted by scores of souped-up portakilns, fussed over by aficionados who bray proudly about their special modifications. Crowds gather each time one opens, to stare and criticize as a new monster steps forth, zingularly equipped in ways that could get you arrested or fined in the city. Gargoyles, ogres, and leviathans … spiked, fanged, or clawed … feral-eyed or dripping caustic poisons from their jaws … yet propelled by the ego and soul-stuff of some nerdy hobbyist, woman-born, preening and posing in the background, hoping to be “discovered” by the professionals, just beyond the fence — perhaps even winning a coveted place of glory on the honorable plains of battle.

Our driver grew more talkative as he maneuvered into a parking space at one end of the encampment. “I wasn’t gonna come out this time, especially after PEZ got off to such a bad start on Monday. Sure looked as if it was gonna be over quick. Good-bye icebergs and hello again water rationing! In fact, I gotta hand it to the Indonesians for coming up with those sneaky little minidit assassin-golems. They sure played havoc with our first-wave troops. But then came our counterattack on Moesta Heights! Did you ever see anything like it?”

“Wow,” I said ambiguously, eager only to get out as soon as he shut down the hissing engine.

“Yah, wow. Anyway, I suddenly realized — I got a perfect battle-mod to counter to those Indie minis! So I figured, come out and give a demo. With any luck, I’ll be in the arena soon, making a deal with the Dodecahedron by nightfall!”

“Well, we sure do wish you luck,” I mumbled while jiggling the doorknob.

He looked disappointed by my lack of interest. “I had a hunch you two were scouts for the army, but I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

“Scouts?” Ritu asked, clearly puzzled. “Why would the army have scouts outside the battle range?”

“Go on, get outta here,” the driver said, yanking a lever and releasing the door, spilling us into the hot afternoon.

“Thanks for the ride.” I jumped to ground and quickly headed south, past a cluster of Winnebagos where families gathered together under a striped canopy, chewing barbecued snacks next to a big holo screen showing recent combat updates. If I were a true fan, I’d stop to check the score and see what odds the touts offered. But I only really care about war during the finals, whenever Clara qualifies.

I think she likes that about me.

On one side stood house trailers fronted with fold-down booths selling everything from hand-woven lumnia rugs and wondrous cleaning formulas to aromatic funnel cakes. Beyond the usual Elvis Shrine, clusters of monster truck aficionados sweated under their beloved vehicles, preparing for a rally at a nearby offroad course. There were the usual types of real-life weirdos — clippies and stickies and nudies and people walking about shrouded in opaque anonymity chadors — but all of this was secondary. Fringe stuff to the real purpose of this offbeat festival.

I was looking for its core.

Ritu caught up and grabbed my arm, trying to match my rapid pace. “Scouts?” she asked a second time.

“Talent scouts, Miss Maharal. The reason for all of this.” I encompassed the chaotic encampment with a sweep of one arm. “Wannabes and Trytobes converge here to show off their homemade battle-dits in a makeshift coliseum, hoping the pros will be watching. If army guys see anything they like, they may summon the designer inside the fence. Perhaps make a deal.”

“Huh. Does that happen often?”

“Officially, it never happens at all,” I replied while turning and seeking my bearings. “Amateur ditviolence has been deemed an undesirable public vice, remember? It’s sin-taxed and reproved, like drug addiction. Remember how they yammered against it in school?”

“That doesn’t seem to be slowing it down any,” she murmured.

“No shit. It’s a free country. People do what they want. Still, the military can’t be seen officially encouraging the trend.”

“But unofficially?” One eyebrow arched.

We were passing an arcade where carnies touted all sorts of amusement games and joyrides, most of them mechanical and retro, designed to give a safe but scary thrill to trueflesh. Next door, a long tent sheltered stalls for bio-aficionados to exhibit home-geniformed life forms — the modern equivalent of prize bulls and pigs — amid a clamor of grunts, cackles, and braying cries. Lots of color and atmosphere, all the way down to the homey stench.

“Unofficially?” I answered Ritu. “They watch, of course. Half the creativity in the world comes from bored amateurs, nowadays. Open source and fresh clay — that’s all folks need. The army’d be stupid to ignore it.”

“I was wondering how you planned to get from here into the base proper,” she gestured beyond the exhibits and shouting carnies and whirling fun rides to the killwire fence. “Now I get it. You’re looking for one of those scouts!”

We were close enough to the killwire to feel its soul-distorting currents along our spines. It had to be nearby … the centerpiece of this anarchic fairground. The reason for its being.

Just then I caught a glimpse of my goal, beyond a big, grimy tent with slobbery elephant seal noises coming from within. A long line of archies stood patiently outside, waiting their turn to enter. But whatever was going on inside — whether violent or massively erotic — I didn’t care, and Ritu quashed her curiosity in order to keep up. I hurried, stepping gingerly past the canvas pavilion with its commotion of loud, clammy grunts.

Looming on the other side of the filthy tent stood a spindly structure of horizontal planks and slanting cables, held up by a single tensegrity spire. Several hundred onlookers crowded the grandstand, setting its spiderweb array jiggling each time they stood to cheer or sat back down with a disappointed collective moan. Their broad posteriors, clad in soft fabrics, showed they were all realfolk, with arms and necks tanned stylishly brown in the desert sun.

Between their cheers and moans came other sounds — howls and bitter snarls echoing from the arena’s heart. Defiant insults, hurled by mouths designed for biting instead of speech. Frenzied impacts and moist tearings.

Some think we’re going decadent. That all the urban brawlers, the inload-junkies and pseudowars mean we’re becoming like Imperial Rome, with its bloody circuses. Immoral, unbalanced, and doomed to fall.

But unlike Rome, this isn’t foisted on us from above. A weak government even preaches moderation. No, it rises from below, just another branching of human enthusiasm, unleashed from old constraints.

So, are we decadent? Or going through a phase?

Is it barbarous when the “victims” come willingly and no lasting harm is done?

I honestly had no answer. Who could know?

The arena’s main entrance bore an archies-only symbol and a wary guardian — somebody’s pet monkey, perched on a stool, armed with a spray bottle of solvent non-toxic to trueflesh. Ritu and I could have slipped inside without harm, except possibly to our makeup. But I still had use for the pretense. So we walked by, seeking a place among the non-citizen onlookers who pressed under the grandstand, peering through a shuffling maze of archie feet. Many of the dittos were combatants, garishly hoofed, taloned, and armored, awaiting their own turns on the gladiatorial grounds.

It stank down there. Slobbering, grunting, and farting dense colored puffs from their hyped-up metabolisms, contestants exchanged good-natured jibes while swapping bets and opinions about each round of grotesque slaughter. But not everybody. One fellow was actually reading from a cheap web-plaque, through a pair of outsized spectacles perched on his tyrannosaur snout. When a trumpeted blare called him forth to the arena that ersatz dinosaur tossed his lit-plaque to the ground but gently plucked the eyeglasses between two pincers and slipped them onto one plank of the grandstand, between the feet of an archie who picked up the specs and pocketed them without a word.

Well, some people like to make the most of their time, whatever body they happen to be wearing.

Clara had told me about this place, though I never visited during any of my earlier trips from the city to watch her platoon in action. She didn’t think highly of the “innovations” that bright amateur designers concoct to show off next to the killwire fence.

“Most are too gaudy, based on legendary monsters or personal nightmares,” she said. “They may be fine for a scary movie, but no damned good in combat. A frightening leer won’t help much when the enemy has a particle beam weapon sighted between your horns.”

That’s my girl. Always ready with tender wisdom. I found myself actually breathless with anticipation, getting close to her at last. Beyond just missing Clara, I also knew she’d have insights about my predicament with Kaolin, Maharal, and Universal Kilns. Anyway, I wanted to reach her before word got through that I’d been killed in my home by a terror missile. Maybe she’s been too distracted to watch any news, I hoped. The last thing I wanted was for her to be worried or in mourning while she still had a job to do for team and country.

“Oh my,” Ritu Maharal commented while peering into the arena at a maelstrom of bellowing carnage transpiring within. “I never realized all this could be so—” She fell short, breathless, unable to find words.

I was peering, too. Not at the fight but the surroundings, seeking a particular entity. The object of my quest wouldn’t have fangs. It wouldn’t be an archie, either. Professionals have better things to do with realtime than attend this amateur exhibition in person.

“You never realized all this could all be so what?” I asked, making conversation absently. There were some big forklift-type dittos on the other side of the ring, assigned to haul away losers before their smoldering bodies could turn into slurry. But no. That was a lot of pseudoflesh to invest. I was betting on something more compact, economical.

“So exciting! I always felt a kind of aloof superiority toward this kind of thing. But you know, if I imprinted one of these combat dittos, I bet I’d actually stay interested in the same thing for a day … both of me, I mean.”

“Hm, great … unless your monstrous alter ego turned around and bit you in half,” I commented. Rita blanched but I continued to scan. The one I sought would need a good vantage point, yet shouldn’t be obvious to all the aficionados flocking round this place. What if they don’t send anybody? I worried. Maybe the professionals just use some hidden camera to keep an eye on -

Then I spotted the guy. I felt sure of it. A small figure, shambling about the edges of the arena, poking at each fallen warrior, reading their pellets with a narrow stick-probe. He looked like a chimp or gibbon. You see little fellows like him all over town, so common they almost fade into the background.

Of course, I thought, the tax collector.

“Come on,” I told Ritu, pulling at her when she tried to stay and watch the end of a bout. I swear, I almost left her right there, so anxious was I to move on. Fortunately, one contestant struck the other a fatal blow just then, sending its massive body crashing with a thud that set the whole amphitheater vibrating and the crowd frenetically cheering.

“Let’s go!” I shouted.

This time she came.

The ape grunted and spat when I called to him from behind the arena. He squatted on his haunches atop a wooden pillar, idly watching the next event.

“Go ’way,” he muttered, in a voice only a little more clear than a real chimp’s.

Naturally, I wasn’t the first to have figured out his guise. It must be a nuisance when amateurs come over and try to influence him with direct appeals.

“I need to talk to a member of the 442nd,” I said.

“Sure. You an’ every other fan, after the assault on Moesta Ridge. But sorry, no autographs till after the war, pal.”

“I’m no fan. This message is personal and urgent. She’ll want to hear it, believe me!”

The chimp spat again, brown slip with a touch of arsenic glaze. “And why should I believe you?”

Frustration boiled inside, but I kept my voice even.

“Because if Sergeant Clara Gonzales finds out that you kept me from getting through to her, she’ll grab you by the archie and give you a memory you’ll never get rid of.”

The ape blinked at me a couple of times.

“You do sound like you know Clara. Who are you?”

It was a dangerous moment. But what choice did I have?

I told him … and those dark eyes stared at me. “So, you’re the ghost of poor Albert the ditective, come all this way to bid her good-bye. Damn shame what happened to you, man! Getting torched by a hoodoo missile always hurts. I can’t imagine what it must’ve felt like in person.”

“Uh, right. I kind of hoped to reach Clara before she found out about it.”

The pseudochimp tsked and shook his head. “I wish you had, fellah. ’Cause you wasted your remaining span coming out here. The minute Clara heard the news, she took off!”

It was my turn to stare in surprise.

“She … went AWOL? In the middle of a war?”

“Not only that, she snatched a guv’ment copter and flew straight to the city. Our team commander’s in a funk over this, let me tell you!”

“I can’t believe it.” My legs felt weak and my heart beat hard.

“Yeah, ironic. She drops everything rushing to town, only to miss your ghost who rushed out to console her.”

The observer-scout leaped off his perch to land next to me and held out a hand. “I’m Gordon Chen, corporal in the 117th Support Company. We met once, I think, when you came down for last year’s playoffs.”

An image came to mind, of a rather tall half-Oriental fellow with perfect posture and a gentle smile … about the least simian-looking human being I ever saw. Yet he wore this body with ease. “Yeah,” I answered absently. “At a party after the Uzbek semi-final match. We talked about gardening.”

“Uh-huh. So it really is you.” His ditto-teeth looked formidable when he grinned. “Gautama! I often wondered how it must feel to be a ghost. Is it weird?” He shook his head. “Forget I asked. Is there’s anything I can do for you, Albert? Just ask.”

There was something he could do for me. But asking could wait a few seconds. Or minutes. I still had to let it all sink in. My disappointment at having missed Clara. Plus surprise that she could be so impulsive. But above all, one transfixing fact.

I always knew she cared for me. We’re great friends, good in bed. We make each other laugh.

But for her to pull a crazy stunt like this! Dropping everything to go sift the ashes of my house, hoping and praying that I wasn’t there when it blew up … Why, she must actually love me!

Over the course of the last two days I had learned that I was both a crime suspect and a target for assassins. I’d been ambushed, left for dead, then endured a harsh desert trek, and faced even more disappointing setbacks. Yet, despite all that, I suddenly found myself feeling rather … well … happy.

If I survive the efforts of my enemies, and don’t wind up a corpse or in jail, I’m going to have to talk to her. Rethink our reluctance to -

Just then, the ongoing background noise of grunting combat gave way to a loud sizzle, followed by a wet-heavy swatting sound. The crowd of ecstatic archies stood up all at once, roaring and setting the spiderweb grandstand jiggling as a spiky round object soared out of the arena in a high arc, dripping trails of gore behind it.

“Sherds!” Corporal Chen cried, leaping back with apelike agility. Ritu and I hurried after, barely dodging as a fanged and glowering head struck just meters away, rolling to a stop near my feet.

Rapid golem-dissolution was already setting in as smoke and slurry poured out both ears, staining the moist sand. The owner of this head better fetch it quick, if he wanted a complete inload. All those barbs and horns and stingers might be part of a hobbyist’s loving, homemade combat design, but I sure wasn’t bending over to touch the huge, snaggle-toothed thing!

And yet, even after what it had just been through, the head still clung to consciousness. Crocodillian eyes blinked for a few seconds, focusing briefly with an expression more disappointed than tragic. The jaw moved. Trying to speak. Against my better judgment, I bent closer.

“Wow …” the head whispered, while light still glinted in those feral eyes. “What … a … russshhh … !”

The chimpanzee soldier snorted, a sound tinged with grudging respect.

Stepping back, I turned to Clara’s comrade and asked, “Did you mean what you just said — about being willing to do something for us?”

“Sure, why not?” The ape-ditto shrugged. “Any buddy of Clara’s is a bud of mine.”

31 Golem Crazy

I stared at the gray ghost of Yosil Maharal, as the news gradually sank in

“A … missile attack?”

“That’s right. Little remains of your home — and your archie — but a smoking crater. So your only hope now is the same as mine. Successful completion of my experiment.”

I reacted with churning fear and dread, naturally. This cheap red body that I wore, though small, was equipped for a full range of emotion. And yet, I’ve stared death in the face so many times, and till now always managed to put off that final losing match. So why not hope? Maharal could be bluffing. Testing my reactions.

I kept a blank face, turning things around. Testing him.

“Continuity, Professor. That’s what it’s all about. Even with the new technology to refill élan cells, your clay body can’t be replenished more than a few times. You’ve got to emulate my copying ability in order to make soul-impressions from one ditto to the next, indefinitely. Without an organic brain to return to, it’s your only option.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“But something’s eluded you. Whatever I do — however I manage to make such good copies — the knack isn’t easily duplicated.”

“That’s right, Morris. I believe it has partly to do with your casual attitude toward the dittos that went missing over the years. An attitude you demonstrate even now. See how relaxed you are, on hearing that your real body was destroyed? Anyone else would be frantic.”

I felt anything but relaxed. In fact, I was pissed off! But other priorities ranked higher than going orbital and screaming at this fellow. All my other prisoner-selves would have diagnosed Smersh-Foxleitner syndrome by now. They’d decide to feign a lackadaisical attitude. Act unimpressed. Draw Maharal out.

Shall I stay with that approach? Or try a new tack in order to surprise him?

At the moment, shackled down, I saw no way to take advantage of surprise. Better save it for later.

“You see,” Maharal continued, warming to his subject, “we humans are all still deeply rooted in the animal response set … the desperate drive to continue organic existence. Inherited survival instinct played an important role in our evolution, but it can also be an anchor, pinning down the Standing Wave. It’s one reason why few people make truly first-rate ditto impressions, without affectual holes or memory gaps. They hold back, never letting their entire selves roll fully in the clay.”

“Hm. Cute metaphor,” I replied. “But there are millions of exceptions. In fact, lots of folks are far more careless with their golems than I am … or was. Experience junkies. Org-warriors. Janitors who make commercial throwaway units by the gross. And blue cops who will gladly jump in front of a train to save a cat. Then there are nihilists—”

That word made Yosil wince, his expression briefly pained. A deeply personal kind of pain. Something clicked as I put together some disjointed clues from what felt like only yesterday.

“Your daughter,” I guessed, stabbing at a hunch.

He nodded, an unsteady jerk. “Ritu might be called a nihilist, of a certain kind. Her dittos are … unpredictable. Disloyal. They don’t care. At another level I … don’t think she does, either.”

One could easily read guilt in his supple gray features. A hopeful track to follow. A new track, since none of my other captive-selves would have met Ritu. Might I use this tenuous personal connection in some way? If I could force Yosil to view me as more of a person …

But Maharal only shook his head. His expression hardened. “Let’s just say that no simple or single trait explains your ability, Morris. In fact, I consider it a rare combination, perhaps impossible to replicate in another person who remains enmeshed in his own complicated life. The local viewpoint — parochially limited and yet addictive — has long been recognized as an unseverable chain. An anchor, keeping the soul ensnared.”

“I don’t see—”

“Of course you don’t see. If you did, your mind would quail from the majestic beauty and terror of it all!”

“I—”

“Oh, it’s not your fault.” Having surged, his emotion drained away as quickly. “Each of us remains convinced that our own subjective viewpoint is more urgent than anyone else’s — indeed, even more valid than the objective matrix that underlies so-called reality. After all, the subjective view is a grand theater. Each of us gets to be hero of an ongoing drama. It’s why ideologies and bigotries survive against all evidence or logic.

“Oh, subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature’s champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet … and several times to our species nearly wiping itself out.”

I had a sudden recollection of first meeting this fellow — Maharal’s gray ghost — at UK on Tuesday, shortly before his original was found dead in a ruined car. That morning, ditYosil spoke of his archie in surprising terms, describing realYosil as a borderline paranoid, drifting in and out of dark fantasies. Later, he described nightmares about “technology gone mad … The same fear that Fermi and Oppenheimer felt when they watched the first mushroom cloud …”

It seemed easy enough to dismiss at the time. Intriguing, but also melodramatic. Now I wondered. Could father and daughter have different versions of the same underlying tendency? A penchant for unreliable copying? How ironic, then, if one of the founders of modern dittotech was unable to make golems he could depend on!

I started speculating exactly when Yosil Maharal made his great conceptual breakthrough. Last week? Monday? Just hours before his death, when he thought himself quite safe and alone? A growing suspicion made me feel creepy, all up and down my spine.

Meanwhile, the gray golem kept talking. “No, the value of egotistical self-importance cannot be denied, back when individual humans competed with each other and with nature to survive. Only now it’s a mixed blessing, fostering waves of social alienation. More fundamentally, it limits the range of plausibility wave functions that we’re willing to perceive, or to collapse into reified events that others can share and verify—”

Maharal paused. “But this is going over your head.”

“I guess you’re right, Doc.” I pondered for a moment. “Still, I think I read a popular article a while back … You’re talking about the Observer Effect, right?”

“Yes!” He took a step forward, enthusiasm briefly winning over his need for scorn. “Years ago, Bevvisov and I argued whether the newly discovered Standing Wave was a manifestation of quantum mechanics, or a completely separate phenomenon that happened to use similar transformation dynamics. Like most scientists of his generation, Bevvisov disliked using the word ‘soul’ in relation to anything that could be measured or palpably manifested in the physical world. Rather, he believed in a variant of the old Copenhagen quantum interpretation — that every event in the universe arises out of a vast sea of interacting probability amplitudes. Unreified potentialities that only take on tangible effect in the presence of an observer.”

“In other words, that ‘subjective viewpoint’ you were talking about.”

“Right again. Someone has to consciously notice the effect of an experiment or event, in order for the wave functions to collapse and for it to become real.”

“Hm.” I was struggling, but tried hard not to show it. “You mean like that cat inside a box, who’s both alive and dead at the same time, till they open the lid.”

“Very good, Albert! Yes. As in the life or death of Schrödinger’s cat, every decision state in the universe remains indeterminate till it’s reified through observation by a thinking being. Even if that being stands many light-years away, glancing at the sky and casually noting the existence of a new star. In so doing, he can be said to have helped create the star, collaboratively, with every other observer who noticed it. The subjective and the objective have a complex relationship, all right! More than anyone imagined.”

“I see, Doc. That is, I think I do. And yet … this has to do with the Standing Wave … how?”

Maharal was too excited to get exasperated. “Long ago, a renowned physicist, Roger Penrose, proposed that consciousness arises out of indeterminate quantum phenomena, acting at the level of tiny organelles that reside inside human brain cells. Some believe it’s one reason why no one ever succeeded at the old dream of creating genuine artificial intelligence in a computer. The deterministic logic of the most sophisticated digital system remains fundamentally limited, incapable of simulating, much less replicating, the deeply nested feedback loops and stochastic tonal modes of that hypercomplex system we call a soul-field …”

Oog. Now this was rapidly going way over my head. But I wanted to keep Maharal talking. In part because he might reveal something useful. And to delay things. Whatever he planned on doing to me next, with all of his mad scientist machinery, I knew by now that it was going to hurt.

A lot. Enough to make me lose my temper.

I really hate it when that happens.

“… So, each time a human Standing Wave is copied, there remains a deep level of continuing connection — ‘entanglement,’ to use an old-fashioned term from quantum mechanics — between the copy and its original template. Between a ditto and its organic original. Not at a level that anyone normally notices. No actual information gets exchanged while the golem is running around. Nevertheless, a coupling remains, clinging to the duplicate Standing Wave.”

“Is that what you mean by an anchor?” I prompted, seeing a connection at last.

“Yes. Those organelles Penrose spoke of do exist in brain cells. Only instead of quantum states, they entangle with a similar but entirely separate spectrum of soulistic modes. While dittoing, we amplify these myriad states, pressing the combined waveform into a nearby matrix. But even when that new matrix — a fresh golem — stands and walks away, its status as an observer continues to be entangled with the original’s.”

“Even if the golem never returns to inload?”

“Inloading involves retrieving memories, Morris. Now I’m talking about something deeper than memory. I’m talking about the sense in which each person is a sovereign observer who alters the universe — who makes the universe, by the very act of observing.”

Now I was lost again. “You mean each of us—”

“—some of us more than others, apparently,” Maharal snapped, and I could tell his anger was back. An envious hatred that I was only now starting to fathom. “Your personality appears more willing, at a deep level, to accept the tentative nature of the world — to deputize your subselves with their own, independent observer status—”

“—and therefore with complete standing waves,” I finished for him, struggling to keep a hand in the conversation.

“That’s right. At bottom, it has little to do with egotism, nihilism, detachment … or intelligence, obviously. Perhaps you simply have a greater willingness to trust yourself than most people do.”

He shrugged. “Even so, your talents were hampered. Limited. Severely constrained. Their only evident manifestation was a facility at making good copies, even though you should be capable of much more: When it came to moving beyond, into fresh territory, you remained as anchored as the rest of us.

“Then, less than a week ago, I stumbled onto what must be the answer. A remarkably simple, though brute-force approach to achieving the end I seek. Ironically, it is the same transforming event that our ancestors associated with release of the soul.”

He paused.

And I guessed. It wasn’t hard.

“You’re talking about death.”

Maharal’s smile broadened — eager, patronizing, and more than a little hateful.

“Very good, Albert! Indeed, the ancients were right in their dualist belief that a soul can be unlinked from the natural body after death. Only there is so much more to it than they could imagine—”

At that moment, while Maharal droned smugly on, my proper course of action seemed clear as day. I should hold back. Show only reticence and self-control. Continue drawing him out. There were more questions, things to discover. And yet …

I couldn’t help it. Anger erupted, taking over my small body with surprising force, straining at the shackles.

“You fired that missile! You murdered me, you son of a bitch, for the sake of your goddamned theories! You sick, sadistic monster. When I get loose from here—”

Yosil laughed.

“Ah. So, despite a lucid moment or two, the name-calling commences on schedule. You really are a tediously predictable person, Morris. Predictability that I plan to make good use of.”

And with that, ditMaharal turned back to his preparations — muttering commands into the votroller and flicking switches — while I lay fuming, torn between the gutter satisfaction of hating him and realizing that the reaction was exactly what he wanted.

Of course, below it all lurked curiosity — wondering where he planned to send me next.

32 Waryware

We abandoned the Universal Kilns car that Vic Aeneas Kaolin had given us, figuring it must be bugged.

What other arrangements did the tycoon make? That thought kept recurring as I flagged down an open pullcab outside the shuttered Rainbow Lounge. Hopping into the passenger seat, I asked the driver to take us down Fourth Street.

“And step on it!” my little ferretlike companion urged, panting with eagerness to be off. In a little pouch, Palloid carried some of the treasures he recovered while scrounging behind the bar, where the late Queen Irene had stashed some of her secrets. I think he was already scheming how to sell the material back to its “rightful owners,” for a “finder’s fee,” without having to call it blackmail.

Our cabbie shrugged, dislodging glossy shades from their perch on his forehead and dropping them over his eyes. This revealed a nifty set of little devil horns — probably an implanted compass/locator, cheap enough to supply even to disposable dittos.

“Hold on, gents,” he called. Grabbing both arms of the rickshaw yoke, he bore into the pavement with powerful kicks of big-thighed legs, like those of a muscular goat. Only after accelerating beyond thirty klicksper did he touch a switch engaging the little electric cruise motor, lifting his gleaming ceramic hooves off the ground.

“You got a specific destination in mind?” our Pan-like driver asked me over one shoulder. “Or is an eminent gray like you just visiting? Trawling for memories? Maybe you want a quickie view tour of our fair city?”

It took me a moment to recall that I had been retinted at Kaolin’s house, to a high-class “emissary” shade of gray. The driver apparently thought I was from out of town, traveling with a dittopet.

“I know all the historical and secret spots. Market arcades stocked with bootlegs you’ll never see back east. Alleys where the law never ventures and no cameras are allowed. Just pay a small vice tax and sign a waiver. Once you’re inside, anarchism-paradise!”

“Just keep going down Fourth,” I replied. “I’ll let you know when we get close.” I had a specific destination in mind all right, but wasn’t about to say it aloud. Not while we were probably under surveillance, both from outside and within.

He accepted this with a grunt and adjusted his visor, steering lazily with a finger on the tiller. Meanwhile, I took out the flip-phone I’d been given shortly after this body was restored to youthful vigor.

“Who’re you calling?” Palloid asked.

“Who do you think? Our employer, of course.” Just one number was on the autodialer.

“But I thought — then why did we abandon the car if—”

Those dark little eyes glittered. I could see Pal’s suspicious little mind working. “Okay, then. Be sure to give Aeneas my love.”

As a cheap green — dyed orange and then gray — I couldn’t roll my eyes expressively. So I just ignored him. The phone made old-fashioned clickety-beep noises as it hunted for a Kaolin authorized to answer. One of his shiny golems would do … or else possibly the real hermit-trillionaire, cowering behind layers of germproof glass in the tower of his manicured mansion. Failing that, a computer-avatar to either take a message or handle routine decisions, perhaps using a fine rendition of Kaolin’s own voice.

So I waited. You expect to wait when you’re clay. Despite the mayfly timetable, impatience is for those with real lifespan to lose.

Meanwhile, dittotown flowed past, with all of its extravagant fusion of griminess and brilliant color. Some of the older buildings, poorly maintained and no longer inspected, bore condemnation logos forbidding entry by real persons. Yet all around us thronged crowds, oblivious to the rickety surroundings — people built for a day of hard labor, yet far gaudier than their drab makers. The busy worker ants who keep civilization going — every hue and candy-striped combination — bustled in/out of nearby factories and workshops, bearing heavy loads, hurrying to confidential meetings or carrying rush orders on spindly legs.

Traffic snarled for a while, forcing us to wend around an open pit construction site, marked by a broad holo sign:

A glimmering animated display showed steady progress toward the day when clayfolk and other cargo would zip to every part of town via an extended network of airless tubes, shuttling to any address like so many self-targeted Internet packets, automatically and at hardly any cost. Jitney and brontolorry drivers complained that the completed portions of the project were already spoiling their most lucrative routes. Spates of sabotage occasionally delayed work, reminding folks of the old Luddite days, when unions fought pitched street battles against dittotech. One recent explosion even caused a nearby building to collapse, crushing more than four hundred golems and throwing glass fragments far enough to cut a real person three blocks away, requiring half a dozen stitches. It was a major scandal.

Despite social unrest though, Universal Kilns and the other ditto-makers lobbied hard for tube installation in every city. How better to ensure that customers will receive millions of fresh blanks quickly, helping them get the most out of each imprinted day? The less time a golem spends in transit, or stored in the fridge, the more clients feel they get their money’s worth. The more blanks they’ll order.

Below the cheery sign, cut-rate epsilon models labored, hauling out baskets of dirt on their speckled-green backs while others descended, bearing lengths of ceramic pipe built to withstand high pressures, deep underground. Epsilons don’t even get a full, imprinted personality — no soul-stuff and no salmon reflex — just a simple drive to labor on and on and on, till drawn by the call of a recycling tank.

Squinting at the scene one way, I glimpsed a science-fiction nightmare worse than Fritz Lang’s Metropolis — slaves and prols laboring for distant masters before toppling to an early death, preordained and unmourned. Squint another way, and it seemed marvelous! A world of free citizens, extending tiny portions of themselves — easily expendable bits — to take turns doing all the necessary drudgery, so everyone can spend their organic lifetimes playing or studying.

Which was true?

Both at the same time?

Should I care?

My own thoughts surprised me.

Is this what happens to a ditto’s brain when it lasts beyond a second day? I wondered. Does élan-replenishment make you all dreamy and philosophical? Was it triggered by the events I witnessed at Irene’s?

Or is it because I’m a frankie?

Come on, Kaolin. Answer your damn phone!

Actually, his delay gave me some cause for hope. Maybe Aeneas didn’t really care much about me and Palloid. Kaolin might be too busy to bother checking up on us.

Ah, but “busy” doesn’t mean what it used to. A rich man can keep imprinting enough fancy dittos to make any job manageable. So there had to be another reason.

We were a block past the pneumo-tube dig when the cabbie suddenly veered, emitting gouts of bitter cursing. I clenched the seat, bracing for collision, but traffic wasn’t at fault. No, the driver was fuming over faraway events that had nothing to do with his job.

“Idiots!” he cried. “Couldn’t you guess they’d be waiting for you around that hill? The Indies must’ve had it zeroed in from five different angles. Schmucks. PEZ should just give up this match and concede. Send our whole team onto the battlefield in their naked rig hides. We’ll be better off starting all over with new talent!”

A faint glimmer shone around the edges of his shades. So, the sun-glasses were also vids. Most are.

Still, I wasn’t paying to be hauled into a wreck by some sports-distracted coolie. One more unnecessary swerve and I just might slap a civil lien on him -

In whose name? Where would the money go? Poor old Albert had a sister in Georgia, but she owned five patents and didn’t need cash. Then I recalled — whatever remained of Al’s estate would go to Clara. Whatever the cops didn’t seize. Or Kaolin. It all depended on finding someone else to blame for the attack on Universal Kilns.

I had suspicions about that. But first there’d have to be more evidence.

“Hey, fan-boy!” Palloid shouted at the driver, who was still cursing as we dodged some peditstrians then barely missed getting squashed by a huge, eight-legged delivery van. “Forget the score, watch the road!”

The driver muttered something over his shoulder at my friend, who snarled in response, arching his long back and extending claws, as if preparing to leap. I was about to flip the phone shut and intervene when a voice abruptly buzzed in my ear.

“So, it’s you. I was wondering when you’d check in,” came the tycoon’s murmured voice. I couldn’t tell which Kaolin it was, though presumably the platinum who gave us our assignment. “What did you learn at Irene’s place?”

No apology for keeping me waiting. Well, that’s a trillionaire for you.

“Irene’s true-dead,” I replied. “She used one of those soul-antenna services and took all her dittos along with her to the Nirvianosphere, or the Valhallan Belts, or wherever.”

“I know. The cops just arrived there and I’ve got the scene in front of me. Incredible. What a psycho! Do you see what I mean, Morris? The world is filling up with perverts and dittoing only makes it worse. I sometimes wish we never—”

He stopped, then resumed. “Well, never mind that. Do you think Irene chose this moment to end it all because her conspiracy failed? Because they didn’t manage to wreck my factory?”

Kaolin did an impressive job of feigning confused innocence. I decided to play along.

“Irene was just another dupe, sir. She honestly thought she had hired Albert’s gray as a quasi-legal industrial spy.”

“You mean all that nonsense about looking for the secret of teleportation?”

I glanced back at the pneumo-tunnel construction project — an awful lot of investment that would lose much of its purpose if remote dittoing ever came true.

“The story seemed plausible enough to deceive an Albert Morris gray. Why not her too? Anyway, by this morning Irene realized she’d been set up to take blame for the prion attack. So she chose to check out under her own terms.”

“Another patsy, then. Like you and Lum and Gadarene.” Kaolin snorted. “Did you find any leads to who’s behind it all?”

“Well, her two partners were a plaid ditto who called himself Vic Collins and another one who claimed to be a copy of the maestra, Gineen Wammaker.”

“Is that all? We already knew as much from the gray’s tape recording.”

I didn’t want to say more. Yet Kaolin was still my client … at least till I verified some things. I couldn’t legally or ethically lie to him.

“Vic Collins was a facade, of course. Irene thought he might really be Beta.”

“You mean the golemnapper and counterfeiter? Have you got any proof?” Kaolin’s voice grew a bit more excited. “This could be what I need to bring some real pressure to bear. Force the cops to take that bastard seriously as a real public threat, not just another d-commerce nuisance. We may be able to put him out of business for good!”

My reply was careful.

“I had a similar thought. I’ve been after Beta for three years. We’ve had harsh encounters.”

“Yes, I recall. Your narrow escape on Monday, followed by Tuesday morning’s raid on his Teller Building operation. There’s a lot of bad slip between the two of you.”

“Yes, in fact—”

I could see our destination up ahead. I had to make Kaolin feel comfortable enough not to watch my movements too closely for the next few minutes. Timing would be critical.

“That’s why I’m heading back toward the Teller Building right now.”

Toward. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It fit our present trajectory across dittotown, in case he was tracking.

“Going to look for more clues, eh? Great!” Kaolin said. I heard muffled voices in the background, demanding the platinum’s attention. “Call again when you learn more,” he told me, then broke the connection without salutation or formality.

Just in time, I noted with some relief.

“Stop here!” I told the cabbie, who was still dividing his attention unnervingly between the road, the war news, and bickering with Pal. How do guys like this keep their hack license? I wondered, tossing him a silver coin and hopping out. Fortunately, Palloid kept to his perch on my shoulder, rather than get into a fight. But it was a close call.

Temple of the Ephemerals, flashed the sign in front. Up granite steps I dashed, past all the forlorn dittos hanging about — wounded, damaged, or otherwise derelict, lacking any hope of being welcomed home for inloading. Most looked worn down, near dissolution. Yet I was by far the oldest! The only clay person present who had any direct memory of Tuesday’s sermon. Not that I was here to attend services.

Only a short queue of haggard copies stood waiting for emergency repair service, led by a lanky purple with half its left arm torn off. Fortunately, the same dark-haired volunteer was on duty, offering succor to the hopeless and downtrodden. Whatever psychological reason drew her to dedicate precious realtime helping those with little life worth saving, I felt glad of it.

“Yipes!” Palloid gasped a shaky squeak upon catching sight of the volunteer nurse. “It’s Alexie.”

“What? You know her?”

Pal’s mini-ditto answered in a low whisper, “Uh … we dated for a while. You don’t think she’ll recognize me, do you?”

I couldn’t help comparing two mental images. One of the real Pal — handsome, grizzled, and broad-shouldered, though missing his entire lower half and confined for life to a sustaino-chair — a picture that had little in common with the agile, grinning little weasel creature on my shoulder except when it came to stuff that really mattered, like memory, personality, and soul.

“Maybe not,” I answered, stepping past all the waiting dittos, heading for the front of the line. “If you keep your mouth shut.”

Several injured golems grumbled as I strode up to Alexie’s treatment station, with its unsanitary table surrounded by cheap barrels of golem-grout, ditspackle, and praydough. She glanced at me — and for the first time I noticed she was pretty, in a darkly severe, dedicated-looking way. She began to insist that I wait my turn, but stopped when I raised my shirt, turning to display a long scar of hardened cement on my back.

“Remember your handiwork, Doc? You sure did a great job with that nasty little eater that was chewing out my innards. I recall one of your colleagues said I wouldn’t last the day. You should collect on that bet.”

She blinked. “I remember you. But … but that was Tues—”

Alexie stopped, eyes widening. No dummy, she went silent as the implications sank in.

Smart, yeah. But then why did she go out with Pal?

Dropping my shirt, I asked, “Is there a place where we can talk in private?”

She gave a jerky nod and motioned for us to follow her upstairs.

Palloid kept uncharacteristically silent as Alexie scanned. She quickly discovered the tracker bugs that Kaolin installed, when he so kindly extended our pseudolives.

She also found the bombs.

Maybe just in time, I thought. Our employer expects us to report from the Teller Building. He may get upset to find out we’ve slipped the leash.

“What pig did this to you?” Alexie cursed, carefully dropping the bombs into a battered-looking containment canister. There are special circumstances when golems can be legally required to carry autodestructs, with triggers operated by radio control. But it’s pretty rare in PEZ. Naturally, Alexie’s group opposes the practice in principle. I refrained from telling her that our bombs were installed by the great slavemaster himself, Vic Kaolin. If she knew, she might go online at once to tell everyone in her community of activists.

I couldn’t allow that. Not yet.

Palloid needed a few repairs, too. While she worked on him, I gazed past her balcony at the stained glass window of the main church. The old Christian symbols had been replaced to show a circular rosette, like a flower whose petals all tapered outward before flaring abruptly at the very end, at right angles, to pointed tips. At first, I thought each figure might be a fish, tail thrust outward. Fish … for arti-fishial? Then I realized, they were square-headed whales — sperm whales, apparently — portrayed gathering together their huge brows in some meeting of cetacean minds.

What was the symbolism? Whales — long-lived, though perpetually endangered — seemed just the opposite of dittos, who faded fast but sprang forth daily in greater numbers, ever replenished by human ingenuity and desire.

It reminded me a bit of the mandala emblem worn by that technician-priest of Final Options, Inc., who presided over the attempted transcendence of Queen Irene. Though clearly different in detail, both groups were struggling with the same problem, how to reconcile soul-imprinting with abiding religious impulse. But who am I to judge?

Okay, I like these Ephemerals folks. Maybe I owe them a couple of favors. Still, I had to play things coy.

Alexie finished and declared us clean. Suddenly, I felt free for the first time since … well, since I met up with Pal and Lum and Gadarene under the shadows of an ancient skooterboard park, getting snared in all this dirty business.

“Now I can phone home!” Palloid exulted, forgetting his vow of silence. “Wait’ll I tell myself what I’ve seen! It’ll be a rush of an inload.”

Alexie tilted her head, eyes narrowing, perhaps recognizing something about Pal’s speech rhythm. I didn’t give her time to follow the thought.

“My pa — my little friend and I both need secure web access,” I said. “Do you have a couple of chadors we can use?”

After an uncertain pause, she nodded, then pointed to a coatrack. Two black, shapeless garments hung next to a desk. “They’ve been cleaned recently. No bugs.”

“That’ll do fine, thanks.” I started toward the coatrack.

“Just so you know,” she added, “I subscribe to Waryware Services, so don’t try to pull any scams or illegal stuff while using our access. Take that kind of crap elsewhere.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Alexie frowned. “Can I trust you both not to touch anything else up here, while I go back and help more patients?”

Palloid nodded vigorously. “We’ll repay this kindness,” I assured.

“Hm. Maybe you can explain to me sometime how it is that you’re still walking around, so long after you should be slurry.”

“Sometime. I will.”

She departed with a final dubious look. As her footsteps vanished downstairs, I gave Palloid a questioning glance. “All right!” he answered with a lithe shrug. “So maybe she’s better than I deserved. Shall we get on with it now? Kaolin won’t stay fooled for long.”

My little friend leaped onto the desk and I helped him slip under a chador, so the active hood covered him, adjusting to his strange body plan. I threw the other garment over my head and let its black drapery flow over my arms, down past my waist. From the outside, I now looked like some shrouded creature from those dark days, half a century ago, when a third of the countries on Earth forced women to veil their faces and forms under shapeless tents of muslin and gauze. A repressive move that backfired when the old, confining chador transformed into something completely liberating.

From within -

I was suddenly in another universe. The wonderful cosmos of VR, where data and illusion mix in profusions of color and synthetic depth. Sensors under the garment felt the positions of my arms, fingertips, and each puff of breath, reacting to every grunt from my simulated larynx. A few muttered commands, and within seconds I had three active globe-worlds set up.

The first one zoomed toward a smoldering ruin where my house … Albert’s house … had been. Freeware correlators swooped in from the surrounding webscape begging for permission to fetch data for me about this tragic event. A couple of the agents had good reputations, so I posed a few parameters and unleashed them. At the first curiosity layer, it wouldn’t cost a penny and there’d be no possibility of a backtrace. Nothing to distinguish me from millions of other net voyeurs. These were major news events, so my enquiries shouldn’t attract any attention till I probed close to bone.

My second bubble skimmed news reports about the sabotage attempt at Universal Kilns. I wanted the official police summary — especially to see if Albert was still a suspect. Also, any event like this one attracted all sorts of conspiracy theories and minority reports, offered by whistle-blower clubs, accountability hobbyists, solitary paranoiacs, autonomous whatif agents or wandering yesbut avatars. And if none of those were on the right track, I might post one of my own! Anonymous rumormongering is a venerable kind of mischief that has its own special place. realAlbert would be much better at this. And one of his ebonies would be better still.

Me? I’m just a green and a frankie. But I’m all that’s left.

While those two bubbles churned at the edges, fizzing with correlative foam, I made ready a third, more dangerous than the others.

The just-in-case cache, where Albert kept his backup files, in case anything happened to our house computer.

Suppose Nell detected the incoming missile … even bare seconds before it struck. According to programming, she would have dumped as much data as possible into the remote cache. That record might let me glimpse what my maker was doing — possibly even thinking — the very minutes that he died.

A big prize. But accessing it could be risky. Whoever sent that missile must’ve been surveilling the house, in order to be sure Albert was there when it struck. But how intense was the scrutiny? Did they simply prowl around outside with mini-cameras, keeping track of Al’s comings and goings? What if they managed to penetrate his privacy shields, say by floating a micro-spy inside the house? It happens now and then. Technology keeps changing and the cams keep getting smaller. Only fools count on their secrets staying safe forever.

Someone out there may know everything, including the location of the cache. Lurker software could be waiting to pounce on anyone who tries accessing it. A borrowed chador won’t mask me for long.

But what choice did I have? My only alternative was to head over to Pal’s place and get drunk together till this artificially extended pseudolife finally expired.

Well, feh to that! I typed with waggling fingertips and muttered some phrases under the chador’s sheltering drapery, hoping that Albert didn’t change passwords on me after learning he had made his first frankie.

Almost at once I found myself looking at a pretty good facsimile of Nell.

Experts claim there’s no such thing as true digital intelligence, and never will be. I guess they ought to know by now. It’s another of those “failed dreams” from TwenCen science fiction that never came true, like flying saucer aliens. Still, simulation has become a high art, and it doesn’t take much of an animated program to fool most folks with a well-made talking head … at least for a couple of turings.

Her face was originally modeled after a junior professor I had a brief thing for, back in college. Sexy without being overly distracting. A personification of efficiency without imagination. In addition to demanding and verifying the next-level password, the avatar scanned my face and sent a short-range probe to the pellet buried in my forehead.

Normally, that should be enough. But not this time.

“Dissonance. You appear to be Tuesday’s green, yet you wear gray dye and should have expired by now. Access to cache denied until a plausible explanation is given.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Here’s your explanation. Briefly, the research guys at Universal Kilns have discovered a way to extend ditto lifespan. That explains why I’m talking to you. The breakthrough appears to have triggered some kind of conflict between Vic Aeneas Kaolin and Dr. Yosil Maharal. It’s possible this led to Maharal’s murder. And the murder of Albert Morris.”

The animated face contorted — a caricature of doubt. I had to remind myself, this wasn’t the Nell I remembered. Only a phantom, a replica that had been stashed in some corner of the vast datasphere, operating in a patch of rented memory.

“Your explanation of the discrepancy in your lifespan is deemed plausible, given other information that was cached by Tuesday’s ebony before the explosion. However, a new dissonance must be resolved before I can give you access.”

“What new dissonance?”

Nell’s phantom did a good approximation of her disapproving frown, a familiar programmed nuance that I never cared for. It generally appeared at times when I was being particularly dense.

“There is no convincing evidence that Albert Morris was murdered.”

If I were real, I’d have coughed and sputtered. “No convincing — ? What kind of smoking gun do you need? Isn’t it murder when somebody blows you up in a bloody missile attack?”

I had to remind myself, this wasn’t a real or clay person to be argued with — or even a top-level AI. For a software-cache phantom, the shadow-Nell looked good. But it must be damaged, or caught in a semantic bind.

“The missile attack is irrelevant to the dissonant issue at hand — Albert Morris’s putative murder,” the face replied.

I stared, repeating a single dismaying word.

“Ir — irrelevant?”

The semantic bind must be severe. Damn. I might not be able to gain access at all. “How … could the murder weapon be irrelevant?”

“Organic citizen Albert Morris has been missing for just over a day. No trace of him has appeared on the Web, or on the Streetcam Network, or—”

“Well, of course not—”

“But the disappearance was expected. Moreover, it has no direct relation to the destruction of his home.”

Amazed, I could only let this sink in. Expected? No relation to the destruction?

As if compelled, I turned to gaze at the bubbleview that peered down upon the house on Sycamore Avenue. Several hovering voyeur-eyes and newscams contributed to a highly textured image that ballooned larger when I stared, offering a vivid overhead view of blackened timbers and collapsed masonry walls. The remnant chimney jutted like a defiant finger. The back porch, its wrought-iron balustrade curled into a corkscrew by recent heat, led to rose trellises that were reduced to charred stumps.

Police flickertape kept gawkers at bay — both realfolk and dittos who might try for souvenirs. I spotted several teams of ebony specialists inside the cordon, crouching with scanners and samplers, sifting for evidence. Other figures could be seen stepping amid the debris.

While I was busy speaking to the cache-phantom, those correlator agents that I hired had been busy gathering info about the missile attack, lining that bubble’s edges with summaries and flowcharts. I stabbed one reporting on the weapon that had done all this. The exact model type was unknown but clearly sophisticated, delivering lots of punch in a small package. That helped explain how it could be smuggled into dittotown and set up without detection. More impressive was the way it launched amid wild gyrations and a dense cloud of obscuring chaff, masking its point of origin as five semi-abandoned houses burned in its wake, erasing any clues to whoever planted the damned thing. Worse, a scarcity of publicams in the area made it extra hard for the cops establish a reverse-time shakeout. They might never pin down who planted it.

I wondered, in awe, Who would have access to such a weapon? And why use it on a measly local private eye?

The first half of my question had a ready answer. Oh, the police were keeping mum, but professional circumspection didn’t have any hold over thousands of amateur analysts and retired experts out there with time on their hands. After intensely poring over the available information, they reached a consensus.

It must have been military hardware. And not the normal variety used by our national teams in ritual battles, before mass audiences on the International Combat Range. Naturally, nations keep their best stuff hidden away, just-in-case. This had to be one of those nasty items, put on the shelf amid hopes that it would never be used.

This explained why so many ebonies were crawling over the site. They probably cared much more about the weapon than poor old Albert.

There were other anomalies. Opinions sputtered and fizzed at the bubble’s fringe.

This Morris guy was supposedly involved somehow in that attempt to sabotage Universal Kilns, Tuesday night. Obviously they took revenge on him …

Within just a couple of hours? Ridiculous! It took days or weeks to set up the missile carefully enough to obscure its emplacement from backtracing …

Right! Morris was obviously framed! The missile was meant to incinerate him so he couldn’t testify …

That could be. Still, there’s something fishy about all this. Why haven’t they found a body? …

What body? It was vaporized …

Blown to smithereens …

Oh yeah? Then where’s the organic residue? …

There’s plenty of DNA traces, identical to Morris’s profile …

That’s right, traces! Hell, if you blew up my house while I was away, you’d find lots of bits … skin cells, dandruff, hairs. Take the pillow on your bed — a tenth of its weight consists of stuff that flaked off your head after a thousand nights …

Ew, disgusting!

… so it’s no good just to say they found the guy’s DNA in the same house where he lived. To confirm death, show me differentiated tissue! Even if he was puréed, you’d find bits of bone, blood, intestinal cells …

That rocked me. Partly because I should have thought of it! Even as a green-frankie. After all, I still had Albert’s memories. His training.

What could this mean?

Probably I’d have reached the obvious conclusion in another second or two. But suddenly I was distracted by the sight of a single figure moving across the smoldering ruins, poking embers with a stick. Something about the slender physique drew me, and the globeworld responded by zooming closer.

Dressed in neutral dungarees, with hair bundled under a cap, it seemed at first to be a high-class ditto, especially with her face smeared gray by ash. But when an ebony bowed out of her way, I realized, she must be real. And her movements were those of an athlete.

A small identifier label popped up next to her as the camera view zoomed closer:

My emotions were stronger than expected, given the cheapness of the body I wore.

“Clara,” I murmured as her face came into focus, wearing a grim expression, one that combined grief and anger with extreme puzzlement.

“Final password accepted,” said a voice — Nell’s phantom, responding to the single word I had spoken.

“Access to cache allowed.”

I glanced to my right. Nell’s computerized image was gone, replaced by a list that scrolled down, showing a catalogue of contents. Nell’s simulated voice continued.

“The first item, by relevance, is one that you requested in your present golem form on Tuesday, at thirteen forty-five hours. You asked for a trace of the waiter-contractor who was fired from his job at Tour Vanadium restaurant. Despite being handicapped in this primitive form, I managed to complete the trace. The waiter’s name and life summary are given below. He has lodged a protest with the Labor Subcontractors Association, disclaiming any responsibility for the incident that led to his termination …”

Waiter? I wondered. Restaurant? Oh. I had forgotten about all that. A trivial matter now.

“There were other items in queue, just before the explosion,” Nell’s phantom continued. “Unanswered calls and messages from Malachai Montmorillin, Inspector Blane, Gineen Wammaker, Thomas Facks …”

It was a long list, and ironic. If only Albert had taken that call from Pal, trying to warn him about a plot involving Tuesday’s second gray — a plot to frame him with the attack on Universal Kilns — I might not even be here now. I might have spent the rest of my short span as a liberated frankie, detached from Albert’s concerns, juggling for kids on a street-corner or trying to find that clumsy waiter. Until at last I fell apart.

“I can also replay a recording of the final call your original made, to Ritu Maharal, arranging a joint trip to investigate her father’s cabin in the desert.”

What was that? A trip, together?

I trembled suddenly. A trip with Ritu Maharal … to the desert? Abruptly I saw a glimmer, an outline of what could have happened. How Albert might have departed in person, under the guise of a ditto!

If he did, was it because he suspected the house was under surveillance by assassins? If so, the ploy worked. He sure fooled everyone into believing his real self was still there. I had to absorb this stunning notion. There could be a flaw … but Albert might not be dead, after all!

Good news, right? It’d liberate me from a heavy burden — sole obligation to uncover the truth. For all I knew, right now Al and a dozen of his loyal copies were already hard on the trail of the villains, closing in with grim determination to avenge his incinerated garden.

And yet … the idea also brought with it a sense of letdown. For a while, I had actually felt important. As if this little sliver of existence somehow mattered on the grand scale of things. Justice seemed to depend on me. On what I chose to do.

Now?

Well, my duty’s clear. To report, of course. To describe everything I’ve learned and offer my services to my betters.

But it’s nowhere near as romantic as fighting on, alone.

I decided what to do while watching Clara poke through the ruins, apparently far more concerned with uncovering Albert’s fate than taking part in her war. If Al was alive, he hadn’t even bothered to contact her. Not even to let her know he was all right!

Maybe he preferred the company of the beautiful heiress, Ritu Maharal.

Bastard.

Sometimes you only see yourself clearly by standing on the outside. Or better yet, by becoming someone new.

All right, that brings me up to the present. My story’s done. I’ll submit one copy for the cache … in case there are any Alberts running around who care to listen.

And I’ll send an abbreviated report to Miss Ritu Maharal. She was Albert’s final employer, just before the missile attack, so I guess she deserves to be told that I think Aeneas Kaolin has gone murderously insane.

But I’m really doing it for Clara. She’s the reason why I stood here under this chador for ten extra minutes, rapid-reciting a first-person narration of everything I’ve seen and done for the last couple of days, leading all the way to this moment. Doing it despite entreaties from Pal’s little ferret-ditto, warning that each added second exposed us to danger. Either from Kaolin or some unknown enemy, maybe even worse.

Whatever. My report probably won’t matter. I’ve uncovered only a few pieces of the puzzle, after all. Far from enough to solve the case, for sure.

Maybe I just duplicated work that’s already been done by other, much better versions of “me.”

Hell, I don’t even know where I’ll go next … though I do have a few ideas.

Still, I can tell you one thing, Clara.

As long as this small patch of soul continues, I’ll remember you. Till the recycling tank finally claims me, I’ve got something … and someone … to live for.

33 Lasting Impressions

Wow.

This place is amazing.

I really must switch to realtime, in order to describe what I’m seeing right now.

Even so, can I begin to do it justice? Especially having to grunt into a tiny recorder-implant that I borrowed from a dead golem. An implant that may not even be functioning properly?

And yet, what can I do except try? Not many people get to witness this spectacle. Not without getting their brains wiped clear of the memory, right afterward.

An entire army stands at attention before me, divided by rank and specialty into squads, platoons, companies, and regiments. Casting long shadows in the dim light, row after row of sturdy figures extends into the distance. Neither living nor quite lifeless, silent in the chilly dry air of a deep subterranean cavern that must stretch for kilometers, each soldier abides sealed by a thin layer of gel-wrap to maintain freshness, awaiting an order that may never come — a command to turn on the lights and fire up nearby kilns, rousing a clay legion from its sleep.

Corporal Chen says they have a motto in this corps — Open, bake, serve … and protect.

That touch of whimsy — a note of self-deprecating humor — reassures me. A bit. I guess.

Oh, it’s not too much of a surprise. There have always been rumors of a secret stash — or more than one — where the nation’s real military power is kept, dormant but ever ready. Surely the generals and planners in the Dodecahedron know that twenty little reserve battalions, like Clara’s, won’t suffice if real war ever returns. Everyone assumes that those gladiator-entertainer units represent the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, but to see it now, with my own eyes …

“Come on,” says ditto-Chen, motioning for us to follow his apelike form. “This way to that secure dataport I promised.”

Ritu’s been wiping her face with a cleanser towel to remove ragged leftovers of gray makeup ever since we entered a tunnel leading deep under the vast military complex. Only now the towel hangs from a limp hand as she stares at endless ranks of golem-soldiery, standing watch in their filmy, shrink-wrap cocoons.

“Amazing. I can see why they would build such a facility here, under the surface base, so the warriors who train up there can readily imprint spare copies for this stockpile force. But I still don’t understand.” She waves at the rigid brigades standing before us. “Why do you need so many?”

With a shrug, Chen resigns himself to the role of tour guide.

“Because the other side may have made even more.” He takes a bowlegged step toward us. “Think about it, Miss. It’s cheap to dig holes. So is making an army of pre-imprinted dittos. You don’t have to spend anything on food or training. No insurance or pensions and very little maintenance. We have good intelligence that it’s been done in over a dozen other countries, some of them unfriendly. The Indies have their force in a big cave under Java. The Southern Han, the Guats, and the Gujarats all have mega-hordes tucked away underground. After all, who could resist the temptation? Imagine having available a military force bigger than the Prussians fielded at the Marne — one that can be mobilized and transported across the world within hours. With every trooper fully prepared, carrying the skills and experience of a battle-hardened veteran.”

“It’s scary as hell,” I answer.

Chen nods in agreement. “So we gotta have the same thing — a corps of defenders, ready to rise from the ground at a few hours’ notice. At one level, it’s simply a matter of outditting the enemy.”

“I mean the whole situation is scary. This kind of insane arms race—”

“Arms, legs, torsos … don’t quibble. Call it diterrence — making sure the other guy knows he’ll get hurt bad if he ever tries to throw us a first strike. The same logic worked for our ancestors, way back in the age of nukes, or we wouldn’t be here now talking.”

“Well, I think it stinks,” Ritu comments.

“Amen, Miss. But till the politicians finally get around to negotiating a treaty — one with real teeth for onsite inspections — what else can we do?”

It’s my turn to pose a question.

“What about the secrecy. How can it be maintained in this day and age? The Henchman Law …”

“… is designed to bring out whistle-blowers. True enough. Yet no insider’s tattled openly about this buried army. And the reason is simple, Albert. The Henchman Law is aimed against criminal activity. But don’t you think the brass in the Dodecahedron went over the legalities carefully? They never denied having a reserve defense force. There’s nothing heinous or illicit — no real people have been hurt in any way — so there’s no ‘whistle-blower’ reward. What good will it do anybody to reveal this place, then? All he’d get for the trouble is a lien slapped against his lifetime earnings, to help pay the cost of moving our golem corps to a new site.”

Chen looks at Ritu and me archly.

“And that holds for you two, by the way, in case you’re getting any self-righteous notions. We don’t mind private rumors. Go ahead and blab generalities and exaggerations to your friends, if you like. Just don’t put any pix or location details on the Net, or you could wind up deep in debt, making monthly payments to the Dodec. For life.”

The very moment that he said that, I was using the implant in my left eye to snap-record a scene. For private use, I rationalized.

Maybe I should erase it.

“Now,” Chen insists. “Let’s get you to that secure portal I promised.”

Still a bit numb from the corporal’s slanted threat, Ritu and I follow him silently past more rows of modern janissaries, silent as statues, most of them dyed in blur-pattern camouflage. Up close, you can see how big these combat-golems are! Half-again normal size, with much of the difference consisting of extra power cells, for strength, endurance, and to operate enhanced sensoria.

Though most of the figures are thick-limbed and broad-shouldered, I keep looking for Clara’s face. Surely she would have been asked to be among the templates, imbuing her skill and battle spirit into hundreds, maybe even thousands of these duplicates. I feel miffed that she never told me … at least not about the scale of all this!

Ritu continues pressing Chen as we walk.

“It seems to me there’s a danger beyond that of foreign adversaries. Isn’t this legion something of a temptation to those holding the keys? What if the Dodecs — or the President or even the Protector in Chief — ever decide that democracy is too damned inconvenient? Imagine a million fully equipped battle-golems spilling out of the ground like angry ants, capturing every city in a coup—”

“Wasn’t there a thriller about that exact scenario, a few years back? Good effects and lots of cool action, I recall. Hordes of ceramic monsters, marching about stiff-limbed, shouting in stilted voices, blasting everything in sight … except the hero, of course. Somehow they kept missing him!”

Laughing, Chen waves a long arm at the companies surrounding us. “But honestly, it’s pretty far-fetched. Because every one of these doughboys was imprinted by a licensed citizen reservist, strictly according to regulations. They have our memories and values. And it’s kind of hard to stage a coup when all your grunts are made from guys like me — and Clara — who happen to think democracy’s just fine.

“Also there are coded autodestructs, with the ciphers distributed to—”

Chen stops, shaking his head. “No, forget all the safeguards. If you can’t have faith in procedures and professionalism, then consider logic.”

“What logic is that, Corporal?”

Chen pats the plastic-sheathed flank of a nearby war-golem, perhaps one containing a duplicate of his own soul.

“The logic of expiration, Miss. Even augmented with extra fuel, a battledit like this one can’t last more than five days. A week, tops. I defy you to come up with a way to hold onto those captive cities, after that. No small group of conspirators could imprint enough replacements. And no large group could possibly keep such an undertaking secret nowadays.

“No, the purpose of this army is to absorb the first shock of an enemy surprise attack. After that, it’ll be up to the people to defend themselves and their civilization. Only they can provide enough fresh souls and raw courage to throw into an extended conflict.”

Chen shrugs. “But that was true way back in Grandpa’s day, and his grandpa before him.”

Ritu has no ready answer for this and I manage to keep silent. So Chen turns again to lead us rapidly past more regiments, one perfectly arrayed unit after another, till we lose count of their serried ranks, awed by the vast hall of mute guardians.

Ritu’s especially uncomfortable here. Edgy and distant, unlike the easy companionship of our trek across the desert together. Part of it may have to do with her own trouble in making dittos — never able to predict what will happen when she imprints. Sometimes everything goes normally — the Ritu-golem emerges enough like her to share the same ambitions and perform assigned chores, then return at day’s end for routine inloading. Other copies vanish mysteriously, only to send back cryptic taunting messages.

“Can you imagine what it’s like to be mocked by someone who knows every intimate thing you’ve ever done or thought?”

“Then why imprint at all?” I asked, during our long walk together across the wilderness.

“Don’t you see? I work at Universal Kilns! I grew up in the claynamation trade. It’s what I know. And to do business nowadays you have to copy. So I kiln a couple of golems each morning and hope for the best.

“Still, whenever it’s an urgent appointment — or something has to be done right — I try to handle it in person.”

Like this trip to investigate her father’s cabin — and the nearby site where he died. When I invited Ritu, she decided to invest a day of real lifespan. Only now we’ve been sidetracked for several, ever since that wretched “Kaolin” ambushed us on the highway. Stuck far from town, out of contact and only slowly nearing our goal. It must be frustrating for her …

… as it is for me. To come all this way and find Clara’s gone AWOL, having dashed off to poke at the ruins of my house while I’m stuck in the boonies. Dammit, I hope we reach that secure portal of Chen’s soon. I have got to find a way to get in touch -

At last!

The columns of clay soldiery finally come to an end. We emerge from the silent host, only to pass under bigger shadows — row after row of towering autokilns, presently idle, but primed to fire up quickly and bake freshly unwrapped warriors in giant batches, stimulating their élan storage cells into vigorous activity, sending whole divisions to self-sacrifice and glory.

Corporate brand logos loom over us, embossed proudly on these mechanical behemoths. No symbol is more prominent than the circled U and circled K. Yet Ritu doesn’t seem proud, just nervous, rubbing her shoulders and arms, her eyes darting left and right. Her jaw is set and tense, as if walking is an exercise of pure willpower.

Now Chen leads us through a sliding gate into yet another vast chamber where innumerable suits of armor dangle on hooks from the tracked ceiling. A forest of duralite helmet-and-carapace combos, ready to slip over bodies still puffy from the oven. We have to sidle along a narrow avenue between tracks, our shoulders brushing metal livery and leggings, jostling sets of refractory coveralls into ghostly motion.

I can’t help feeling dwarfed, like we’re children, tiptoeing through a dressing room for giants. This chamber’s even more intimidating than the assembly of golem-soldiers. Maybe because there’s no soul here. That ditto-army was human, after all. Well, a kind of human. But this armory has the chill impersonality of gears and silicon. Empty, the suits remind me disquietingly of robots — deadly unaccountable, and free of anything like conscience.

Fortunately, we make good time. Minutes later, we’re on the other side, and I’m glad to be out of there!

No sooner do we emerge from the “dressing room” than Chen beckons me to join him at the rail of a balcony. “Albert, you’ve got to see this! You’ll find it interesting, if Clara’s been any kind of influence on you.”

Joining him at the rail, I find the terrace overlooks yet a third immense gallery, some distance below this one, containing the greatest hoard of weapons I ever saw. Everything from small arms to flame guns to personal helico/raptors can be seen arrayed in neat stacks and or piled on shelves — like a huge emporium of destruction. A central library of war.

Chen shakes his head, clearly wistful.

“They insist on keeping the best stuff down here, in reserve. Just-in-case, they say. But I sure wish we could use this gear topside, during some of our regular matches. Like against those Indies we’re fighting this week. Tough bastards. It’d be great if—”

The ditcorporal stops abruptly, arching his simian head to one side.

“Did you just hear something?”

For a second I’m sure he’s pulling my leg. This eerie place seems perfect for a haunting.

Only then … Yes, a faint murmur. I hear it now.

Scanning below, I finally glimpse figures moving down there amid a distant row of shelves. Some are jet black and others the color of steel, carrying instruments and clipboards, peering amid stacks of warehoused killing apparatus.

Chen whispers a curse. “Shards! They must be doing an audit! But why now?”

“I think I can guess.”

He looks at me with dark eyes under heavy, apelike ridges. Abruptly, comprehension dawns.

“The hoodoo missile! The one that fried your archie and your home. I figured it for another homemade job, like urban punks and criminals make in their basements. But the brass must suspect that it was stolen from here. Damn, I should have thought of that!”

What can I say? The possibility occurred to me a while ago. But I didn’t want to spook Chen when he’s being helpful.

“Why would anyone in the military would want me dead? I admit, Clara’s threatened to break my arm a few times …”

The joke goes flat. Chen’s ape-ditto writhes.

“We gotta get out of here. Right now!”

“But you promised to take us—”

“That was when I thought the place’d be empty! And before it occurred to me that military hardware might be involved. I’m sure not takin’ you straight into a team of tight-ass rule enforcers!” Chen grabs my arm. “Let’s get Miss Maharal and—”

The sentence falls flat as we both turn and stare.

Ritu had been right behind us.

Now she’s gone. The only vestige is a rustling commotion along one long row of hanging armor coveralls — a fading wavelet in a rippling sea of shrugging torsos and helmets that nod and bow politely in her wake.

34 Fishing Real

It can be hard to penetrate the mind of a genius.

That’s usually no cause for worry, since true brilliance has a well-known positive correlation with decency, much of the time — a fact the rest of us rely on, more than we ever know. The real world doesn’t roil with as many crazed artists, psychotic generals, dyspeptic writers, maniacal statesmen, insatiable tycoons, or mad scientists as you see in dramas.

Still, the exceptions give genius its public image as a mixed blessing — vivid, dramatic, somewhat crazy, and more than a little dangerous. It helps promote the romantic notion, popular among borderline types, that you must be outrageous to be gifted. Insufferable to be remembered. Arrogant to be taken seriously.

Yosil Maharal must have watched too many bad movieds while growing up, for he swallowed that cliché whole. Alone in his secret stronghold, without anyone to answer to — not even his real self — he can ham up the mad scientist role, to the hilt. Worse, he thinks something about me offers the key to a puzzle — his sole chance at eternal life.

Trapped in his laboratory, helplessly shackled down, I start to feel a well-known pull — the salmon reflex. A familiar call that most high-level golems feel at the end of a long day. The urge to hurry home for inloading, only now amplified many times by strange machinery.

I’ve always been able to shrug it off, when necessary. But this time the reflex is intense. An agonizing need, as I yank against the bonds holding me down, struggling heedless of any damage to my straining limbs. A million years of instinct tell me to protect the body I’m wearing. But the call is stronger. It says this body doesn’t matter any more than a cheap set of paper clothes. Memories are what count …

No. Not memories. Something more. It’s …

I don’t have a scientist’s terminology. All I know right now is craving. To return. To get back into my real brain.

A brain that no longer exists, according to ditYosil, who informed me a while ago that the real body of Albert Morris — the body my mother spilled into the world more than twelve thousand days ago — was blown to bits late Tuesday. Along with my house and garden. Along with my school report cards and Cub Scout uniform. Along with my athletic trophies and the master’s thesis I always meant to finish someday … and souvenirs from more than a hundred cases that I solved, helping to expose villains, sending the worst of them to therapy or jail.

Along with the bullet scar in my left shoulder that Clara used to stroke during lovemaking, sometimes adding toothmarks that would fade gradually from my resilient realflesh. Flesh that is no more. So I’m told.

I have no way to know if Maharal is telling the truth about this calamity. But why lie to a helpless prisoner?

Damn. I worked hard on that garden. The sweet-pit apricots would’ve ripened next week.

Good, I’m getting somewhere with this approach — distracting myself with useless internal chatter. It’s a way to fight back. But how long can I keep it up before the amplified homing reflex tears me apart?

Worse, the golem-Maharal is talking too. Jabbering on while he labors at his console. Maybe he does it for his nerves. Or as part of a devilish plot to harass mine.

“… so you see it all started decades before Jefty Annonas discovered the Standing Wave. Two fellows named Newberg and d’Aquili traced variations in human neural function, using primitive, turn-of-the-century imaging machines. They were especially interested in differences that appeared in the orientation area, at the top rear of the brain, during meditation and prayer.

“They discovered that spiritual adepts — from Buddhist monks to ecstatic evangelicals — all apparently learned how to quell activity in this special neural zone, whose function is to weave sensory data together, creating a feeling of where the self ends and the rest of the world begins.

“What these religious seekers were able to do was eliminate the perception of a boundary or separation between self and world. One effect — a presentiment of cosmic union or oneness with the universe — came accompanied by release of endorphins and other pleasure chemicals, reinforcing a desire to return to the same state again and again.

“In other words, prayer and meditation induced a physicochemical addiction to holiness and unity with God!

“Meanwhile, other investigators plumbed for the seat of consciousness, or the imaginary locus where we envision our essential selves to exist. Westerners tend to picture this locale centered behind the eyes, looking out through them, like a tiny homunculus-self riding around inside the head. But some non-Western tribes had a different image — believing that their true selves dwelled in the chest, near the beating heart. Experimenters found they could persuade individuals to shift this sense of locality, where self or soul resides. You could be trained to envision it outside your body. Riding some nearby object … even a doll made of clay!”

Amid this ongoing rant, the professor occasionally pauses to offer me a smile.

“Think of the excitement, Albert! At first, these clues came with no apparent connection. But soon, brave visionaries began realizing what they were onto! Pieces of a great puzzle. Then a gateway to a realm fully as vast as the grand universe of physics … and just as full of possibilities.”

Helplessly, I watch as he cranks a big dial up another notch. The machine above me gives a preliminary groan, then sends yet another jolt into my little red-orange head. I manage to choke back a moan, not wanting to give him any satisfaction. For distraction, I keep mumbling this running commentary … even though I have no recorder and the words are futile, vanishing into entropy as I think them.

That’s beside the point. I keep telling myself to find a habitual behavior and stick to it! Venerable advice for the helpless prisoner, offered long ago by a survivor of far worse torment than Maharal could ever dish out. Advice that helps me now as -

Another jolt impales my skull! My back arches in spasms. Writhing, I feel wracked by a need to return.

But return where? How? And why is he doing this to me?

Suddenly I notice something through the pane of glass dividing Yosil’s lab. On the other side I see grayAlbert. The ditto who was captured at the Kaolin Estate on Monday. The one who was brought here, replenished and then used as a template to make me.

Each time this body of mine wrenches, so does the gray!

Is Maharal doing the same thing to us both, simultaneously? I see no big machine like this one aimed at the gray.

That means something else is happening. That ditto is somehow feeling what I feel! We must be — agh!

That was a bad one. I bit down so hard I might have broken a tooth, if I were real.

Got to speak. Before the next jolt.

“Rem — em — emo—”

“What is that, Albert? Are you trying to say something?”

Yosil’s ditto hovers near, offering faux sympathy. “Come on, Albert. You can do it!”

“Remo — tuh … Re-mote! Y-you’re t-tryin-ing to do r-r-r—”

“Remote-imprinting?” My captor chuckles. “You always guess the same thing. No, old friend. It’s nothing as mundane as that old dream. What I’m trying to achieve is much more ambitious. Phase-synchronizing the pseudo-quantum soul states of two related but spatially separated standing waves. Exploiting the deep entanglement of your Shared Observer Unification Locus. Does that mean anything to you?”

Shivering. Jaws chattering.

“Sh-shar-shared observ—”

“We talked about this before. The fact that each person helps to make the universe happen by acting as an observer, collapsing the probability amplitudes and … oh, never mind. Let’s just say that all copies of a Standing Wave remain entangled with the original version. Even yours, Albert, though you give your golems remarkable leeway.

“I want to use the connection! Ironically, that requires severing the original link, the only way it can be severed … by eliminating the template prototype.”

“Y-you k-killed—”

“The original Albert Morris, using a stolen missile? Of course. Didn’t we already cover that?”

“Yourself. You killed yourself!”

This time, the gray golem before me winces.

“Yes, well … that, too. And it wasn’t easy, believe me. But I had reasons.”

“R-reasons … ?”

“Had to act fast, too. Before I realized fully what I was up to. Even so, I nearly got away from me, speeding along that desert highway.”

It’s getting harder to talk … even to grind out single words … especially each time another spasm strikes. The relentless pummeling of the machine, plucking the chords of my Standing Wave with a sharp twang … makes me cry out to escape … to rush back for inloading … to a home brain that no longer exists.

Uhn! That was bad. How much worse can it get?

All right, think! Suppose the real me is gone. What about the gray in the next room? Can I dump this soul back into him? Without inloading apparatus to connect us, he might as well be on the Moon.

Unless …

… unless Maharal expects something else to happen. Something — uhn! — unconventional.

Can it … can it be that I’m expected to send something … some essence of me … across the room and through that glass wall to my gray, without any thick cryo-cables or any of the normal inloading junk connecting us?

Before I can even begin to ask, I sense another jolt gathering strength, a big one, readying to strike.

Damn, this one’s gonna hurt …

35 Glazed and Confused

Damn. What was that?

Did I just imagine a wave of something, passing through me, like a hot wind?

I could be making it up. Strapped to a table, unable to move, sentenced to the worst fate possible.

Thinking.

Ever since Maharal made me imprint that little red-orange copy and left me here to stew, I’ve been trying to come up with a clever escape plan. Something all those other captive Alberts never tried before. Or, failing that, some way to get a message out to real-me. A warning about Yosil’s techno-horror show.

Yeah, I know. As if. But scheming, no matter how futile, helps pass the time.

Only now I’m getting surges of weird anxiety. Flickering almost-images, too brief to recall, like fragments of a dream. When I chase them using free association, all that comes to mind is a vast row of silent figures … like the statues of Easter Island. Or pieces on a giant chess-board.

Every few minutes, there’s another episode of wild, claustrophobic need. To leave this prison. To go home. To flee this stifling body I’m wearing and get back into the one that counts. One made of nearly immortal flesh.

And now, something like an ugly rumor whispers, There’s no me any longer to go home to anymore.

36 Kiln Street Blues

Dittotown? Sherds!

Departing the Temple of the Ephemerals, Palloid and I hurried down Fourth Avenue past dinobuses that bellowed and snorted, hauling in cheap factory laborers, round the clock. Truckbills and brontolorries grunted at each other, jostling to deliver their wares, while errand boys sprinted by on gangly legs, stepping over the bowed heads of stubby epsilons, who marched to underground workpits without a thought or care. Obsessive little dit-devils scurried about, sweeping up any debris or trash, keeping the street spotless. And striding imperiously amid all these disposables were lordly grays, ivories, and ebonies, carrying the most precious cargo of all — memories that real human beings may actually want to inload at day’s end.

Dittotown is part of modern life, so why did it feel so unfamiliar this time? Because of all I’ve learned as a frankie, at the ripe old age of almost two?

Ducking past the Teller Building, where Tuesday’s raid led poor Albert into troubles beyond his ability to cope, I hurried down a “shortcut” recommended by the little weasel-shaped fellow riding on my shoulder. Soon we left the commercial district with its bustling factories and offices, and plunged south into the backstreet area — a world of decaying structures, reckless whims, and short-term prospects.

The dittos that you’ll find in that area were sent on missions that have little to do with business or industry.

One flashing sign yelled E-VISCERAL! Touts stood outside, dyed in garish colors, beckoning passersby to enter for “the trip of your lives.” Through gutted walls I saw that a twenty-story building had been converted into one giant thrill ride … a wildly gyrating roller coaster without straps or safety backups, and with the added feature that many customers had guns — trading shots with those streaking past them in other cars. What fun.

Next came a row of mud-pimperies and d-brothels — with exaggerated holems of all kinds leering out of brightly curtained windows — for those who can’t afford to have their fantasies special-made and delivered to their door.

There followed some of the same soot-wracked battle lanes that I visited as a teen, still marked with flickertape risk warnings and cheap kiosks renting weapons to those who neglect to bring their own. Free head-collection, yammered one flasher-ad, as if any of these places would dare charge for the traditional service. Let Us Stage Your Gang Rumble! another yelled. Discounts for Birthday Parties!

You know. The usual ditritus. Embarrassing reminders of youth.

It was distracting for another reason. My skin had started shedding. The gray coating that had seemed so posh and high-class back at Kaolin Manor, when I got my renewal treatment for another day of life, was apparently no more than a cheap spray-on. Once it started peeling, the whole thing came away in strips, taking away the red-orange layer underneath. Rubbing away the itchy stuff, I found myself rapidly regaining this body’s original hue — utility green. Good for mowing the lawn and cleaning the bathroom. Not for playing detective.

“Turn left here, then right at the next intersection,” Palloid urged. His claws dug in. “But watch out for Capulets.”

“Watch out for what?”

I saw what he meant in a few minutes, rounding a corner, then stopping in surprise to stare down a street that had been expensively transformed since the last time I ventured this far into dittotown — an entire city block, meticulously rebuilt as a lost fragment of Renaissance Italy, from cobblestones all the way to a garish Brunelleschi fountain in the grand piazza, facing a romanesque church. Towering at both ends were two ornate fortress-mansions, their balconies festooned with the fluttering banners of competing noble houses. Multicolored bravos leaned from terraces to shout at those passing below, or swaggered on patrol, sporting flounces over gartered tights and bulging codpieces. Buxom females dragged around tents of ornate silken fabric, strolling past shopkeepers hawking tastefully archaic merchandise.

Such a lavishly expensive recreation seemed rather much for dittotown, where the whole thing might be wrecked the next time a nearby golemwar got out of hand, spilling bazookafire over the border. But I soon realized, risk was the very justification for its existence. The reason for its inditgenous population.

Shouting broke out near the fountain. One fellow in red and white stripes nudged another whose skin and clothes both featured polka-dot motifs … each the livery of a feuding house. Bright rapiers abruptly whistled, clanging like harsh bells, while a crowd gathered to cheer and wager in faux-Shakespearean lingo.

Ugh, I thought, getting it. One of them must be Romeo. I wonder if all members of the club take turns with the role, or if it’s a matter of seniority. Maybe they auction off the honor daily, to finance this place.

Unemployed and bored with cautious play-acting in the suburbs, these aficionados must get up early to send dittos here each crack of dawn, then spend all restless day at home, eagerly awaiting another headful of drama — whether dead or alive. Nothing they might legally experience in realflesh could match the vivid, alternate life they led here.

And I thought Irene was weird!

Easy, Albert, a part of me chided. You have a job and lots more. The real world has meaning to you. Others aren’t so lucky.

Oh yeah? answered another inner voice. Shut up, twit. I’m not Albert.

Several polka-dot bravos turned away from the duel to eye Palloid and me, as we passed under a nearby flowered colonnade. They glowered, hands drifting to pommels.

Must be Capulets, I realized, offering a quick, inoffensive bow and hurrying onward, with averted eyes.

Thanks, Pal. Some shortcut.

Some trend. I soon learned that whole sector of dittotown had been given over to simulations, whole stretches of abandoned buildings finding new life as imitation worlds. The next block had a Wild West theme, complete with sauntering gunslingers dyed in every shade of the Painted Desert. Another streetscape followed some glassy-metallic sci-fi scenario that I didn’t have time to figure out as we hustled by. The common touch was danger, of course. Oh sure, digital virtual reality offers an even wider range of weird locales, vividly rendered in the privacy of your own chador. But not even touchie attachments can make VR feel real. Not like this. No wonder the cyber realm is mostly for cyberfarts.

The next zone was the grandest of all, and most terrifying.

It spanned six whole blocks, with giant holo screens at both ends, fostering the illusion of an endless, sweeping cityscape. A cruel cityscape of dilapidated tenements and chilling familiarity. A world my parents used to describe to me. The Transition Perdition. That era of fear and war and rationing was nearly over by the time I was born, when the dittoboom began delivering its cornucopia, along with the purple wage. But mental scars from the Perdition still afflict my folks’ generation, even now.

Why? I wondered, while staring at the vast imitation. Why would anyone go to so much expense and care, trying to recreate a hell we so narrowly escaped? Even the air seemed hazy with something acrid that stung the eyes. “Smog,” I think it was called. Talk about verisimilitude.

“We’re almost there,” Palloid urged. “Third brownstone on the left. Then head upstairs.”

I followed his directions, taking the front steps of a run-down brick apartment building two at a time. The realistic lobby featured water dripping into a bucket and peeling, old-fashioned wallpaper. I’m sure I would have smelled urine, had I been equipped with full senses.

No one was out and about as I climbed three flights. But I heard noises behind closed doors — angry, eager, passionate, or violent sounds — even the yelling of children. Most of it is probably computer-generated, for realism, I thought. In order to make the place appear crowded to customers. Still, why would anyone want to experience such a life, even on a whim?

My companion pointed down a dingy hallway. “I rented one of these little flats a few months ago, to serve as a safehouse for special meetings. Best to have our rendezvous here, instead of my real home. Anyway, it’s closer.”

He aimed me to a door with the number 2-B spelled in flaking decals. I knocked.

“Enter!” a familiar voice shouted.

The knob turned under my hand — expensively machined metal parts, lavishly rusted to give a satisfying squeak. So did the hinges, as I pushed into a room decorated in Early Bachelor Shabby.

Several people stood when I entered, except of course the one I’d come to see. Pal’s life-support chair whirred as it rolled forward and lifted to two wheels, a modern techno-anomaly amid all this ersatz poverty.

“Gumby! I gave up on you — till I got that report of yours an hour ago. What an adventure! Fighting your way into Universal Kilns! A prion attack! Did you really see a Morris gray climb up the ass of a forklift?” He guffawed. “Then a face-off with Aeneas Kaolin. And I can’t wait to inload all that fun stuff at Irene’s!”

Pal’s burly hands reached for the ferretlike ditto, but Palloid suddenly went shy, backing around my neck to the other shoulder. “That can wait,” the littler version of my friend snapped. “First, why is Gadarene here, and who are these other guys?”

I had also recognized the golem-hating fundamentalist. His presence in dittotown was like the Pope coming to Gehenna. The poor fellow must be desperate and it showed on his real face.

A green stood opposite Gadarene and I figured it could only be Lum, the emancipation fanatic. This cheap clay visage bore only a passing resemblance to his wide-cheeked original, but it nodded with polite familiarity.

“So you made it out of UK, ditMorris! I was skeptical when Mr. Montmorillin urged us to hurry down here for a meeting. Naturally, I’d love to know how you got your extended lifespan. This could be a real boon to the oppressed!”

“Nice to see you, too,” I answered. “And explanations will come in due time. First, who is he?”

I pointed to Pal’s third guest. A golem dyed in mauve shades, with a risqué tan stripe spiraling around from the top of his head all the way down. The ditto’s chosen face was unfamiliar, but the smile gave me a sudden sense of worrisome familiarity.

“So we meet again, Morris,” the spiraled copy said, in a speech rhythm that scraped raw memories. “If our paths keep crossing, I’ll start to think you’re following me.”

“Yeah, right. And greetings to you too, Beta.” Much as I hated this guy, I sure needed to ask him some questions.

“I think it’s time we talk about Aeneas Kaolin.”

37 Ditrayal

I finally gave up trying to subvocalize in realtime. It was too exhausting, using that little jaw-powered recorder. My real body isn’t designed for it! Anyway, things got way too busy, right after Ritu abandoned us in that vast underground base, disappearing amid a great army of silent defender dolls.

At first, Corporal Chen and I could only stare in amazement. Where did she go? Why on earth would she leave us, especially in that spooky cavern of all places?

Chen was torn. He wanted to drag me out of there, now that he had seen auditors sniffing around, perhaps investigating who stole the missile that had “killed” me. On the other hand, the ditto-corporal couldn’t just abandon Ritu Maharal, letting a civilian — a real one — roam around the hidden base unescorted.

“Do you have any gear that can track residual body heat?” I asked in a low whisper, gesturing at the suits of battle armor hanging in neat rows that stretched forever. “Or something that’ll pick up metabolic byproducts?”

My apelike companion glowered.

“If I admit that, you could have a whistle to blow.”

“I might? Oh, yeah.” The golem army is supposed to shield us against other golem armies. It might be harder to justify stockpiling stuff that can hunt down real people. Only the police are supposed to have things like that, under lock and key.

I shrugged. “I guess we’ll just let Ritu wander around, then. If she gets lost, she can use one of those big machines to wake some soldier and ask directions. Did I mention she works for Universal Kilns?”

Chen growled. “Dammit! Okay. Follow me.”

He swiveled around and hurried, striding bowlegged toward one end of the vast dressing room.

Most of the helm-and-coverall suits were measured for outsized bodies like those we’d seen in the Hall of Guardians. How did this particular Corporal Chen hoped to fit in one? I soon got my answer. The last few dozen rows held an assortment of garments, in all sizes, featuring wildly varying numbers of limbs and appendages. Apparently, there were specialized combat-dittos we never saw on TV, even in major league wars.

“The suits with green and amber stripes are scout models,” he explained. “They have adaptive camouflage and full sensoria … including some that might serve our needs in tracking down … um … in finding and helping Miss Maharal.”

Chen was clearly nervous about this. His eyes darted and I could guess what he was thinking. It might have been simpler if Ritu kept her disguise on, as I did. But the makeup made her skin itch and she’d wiped it off.

“Could a real person use one of these?” I asked, fingering the sleeve of one armored uniform, hanging nearby.

“Could a — oh, I get you. If Ritu climbed into a suit and sealed up properly, she wouldn’t leave an organic residuals trail after that. Yeah. First thing I should check is whether she came this way.”

Chen grabbed a scout ensemble — much shorter than average, to roughly fit his simian dittobody — and began working the zippers. I stood behind, reaching out, as if to help …

… and seized him round the shoulders with my left arm, grabbing his head tightly with my right, bearing down hard.

I had a couple of things going in my favor — strong realhuman muscles and the element of surprise. But how many fractions of a second before his soldier training kicked in, erasing the advantage?

“Wha — ?” He dropped the garment and grabbed at my arms, crying out, trying to whirl, clutching for a hold.

Chen might be a pro, but I knew a thing or two about betrayal and murder. And his tax collector body wasn’t top-of-the-line. The neck snapped, just in time, as he yanked hard on my thumb, causing an incendiary eruption of pain.

“Ow!” I yelped, letting go and shaking the offended digit.

The golem slipped out of my arms and fell to the floor. Supine and paralyzed, he was still able to watch me curse and dance and suck my thumb.

I saw realization fill his eyes.

Chen knows I’m real. And that he hurt me.

Even as the light of consciousness began to fade, the ditto’s mouth moved, forming a single word, without air to give it voice.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

Then the active Standing Wave went flat. I could see it … almost feel it go away.

My next move was obvious. I still needed that secure web port Chen first promised, and he had just shown me how to get there safely, by wearing one of those “scout” ensembles. Its sensor array should help me detect and avoid those Dodecahedron auditors we spotted. And perhaps catch Ritu’s trail, if I was lucky.

Frankly, her disappearance wasn’t my biggest concern. As soon as I got properly zip-sealed and was sure of air, I bent over to pick up the clay figure at my feet. Poor ditChen. I’d like to say my aim was to get him to a freezer, and save the day’s mortal memories. But I just needed a place to stash the decaying clay out of sight, preferably an anonymous recycling bin.

Anyway, the real Corporal Chen wouldn’t benefit by downloading what had happened here today. The best favor I could do for him was erase his involvement.

All right, maybe that was rationalization. I had cut him down for one reason, above all. As soon as he donned a scout suit, he would have begun scanning for a real human … and would’ve found one standing right next to him. Damn inconvenient for me. I couldn’t allow it.

I think he understood, at the end.

There was no recycling bin nearby, so I pried out his dogtag pellet and stuffed the rest of him into a refuse can.

I’ll make it up to Chen, if I ever get out of this mess. Someday I’ll insist on buying him dinner. Though he’ll never have any idea why.

It took only a few minutes to get a feel for the scout gear and adjust the camouflage settings to background light levels. Like a squid or octopus, the light-sensitive skin rippled to match whatever lay on the other side of me. A blurry rendition, to be sure. Not true invisibility, but a much better version than you can buy nowadays at the Hobby Store. Good enough to fool most edge-and-movement pattern recognition systems — digital, organic, or clay.

Yup. Even after the Big Deregulation, the guvvies still manage to spend our tax dollars developing cool things.

With the sensors of my scout uniform set to maximum wariness, I set out for the site where Chen had spotted those auditors. Maybe I’d try to eavesdrop for a while and find out why they suspected that stolen military hardware was used in my assassination. Even more important, that secure net-access port must lie somewhere beyond the weapons hall.

I also hoped to find a snack machine. Surely real people came down here sometimes! Being organic is nice, but it has disadvantages. By that point, I was so hungry that even self-hypnosis couldn’t drive away the pangs anymore.

It made me thankful the scout uniform had sound dampers. My growling stomach seemed loud enough to wake the sleeping army next door!

Here’s to high technology.

38 I, Amphorum

Like a container — or several — spilling over at the rim, I fill up.

My only desire? To empty all these vessels that I am!

The urge to reunite … to recombine … to rejoin, overwhelms me.

But which me?

What me?

Why, when, and where me?

All the famed journalistic double-U questions, turning around to bite the reporter.

Double-U. Double-yous. Identical, yet different. For one of me knows things the other doesn’t.

One has seen clay jars from shipwrecks two thousand years old. Mother- or whore-goddess figures that were molded out of river mud twenty millennia ago. Wedgelike symbols, pressed by hand, way back when hands first learned to scribble thoughts …

One has seen all those things. The other me writhes, wondering where all these images are coming from. Not memories, but fresh, immanent, experience in the raw and actual.

I know what Maharal is doing. How could I not know?

Yet the aim of all this torment remains obscure. Has he gone mad? Do all dittos face the same fate when they become ghosts, cast adrift without the anchor of a soul-home?

Or is he exploring a new way for the Standing Wave to vibrate? Multifariously.

I do feel less like an individual actor. More like an entire cast. An arena.

I am a forum.

Ack! This isn’t at all like the familiar sensation of inloading we all know — passively absorbing memories as a soul-wave replica flows back to combine with the original. Instead, two waves seem to stand in parallel, gray and red but equal in status, both interfering and reinforcing, jostling toward mutual coherence …

And droning in the background, like a bad tour guide or a hated lecturer, the voice of ditYosil tells me, over and over again, that observers make the universe. Oh, he teases and taunts with every rising throb of the salmon reflex, urging me to “go home” to a self-base that longer exist.

“Answer me a riddle, Morris,” my tormentor asks.

“How can you be in two places at once, when you’re not anywhere at all?”