Kiln People

by David Brin

  Kaolin considers, then nods.

  “Very well. Yosil, would you go on ahead to the lab? Mr. Morris and I will come along once you’ve been prepped.” ditMaharal doesn’t answer at first. His expression seems far away, gazing at the door where Ritu departed, minutes before.

  “Um, yes? Oh, all right. For the sake of the project. And the members of our team.”

  He clasps Kaolin’s elegant hand briefly and gives me a curt nod. When next we meet, his head will be under glass and under pressure.

  Now Maharal’s ghost departs toward the big atrium and the front door.

  I turn back to Kaolin.

  “Dr. M. mentioned having been fearful, on the run, as if someone might be hunting him.”

  “He also said the fear was unjustified,” Kaolin replies. “Yosil was recovering from that paranoia when he made the ditto.”

  “Unless he later had a relapse … which could help explain the fatal accident if Maharal felt compelled to flee something, or someone.” I thought for a moment. “In fact, the ditto never actually denied that anyone was after him. He only said the danger felt less frightening when he was made. Can you think of a reason—”

  “Why anyone might want to hurt Yosil? Well, in our business there are always dangers. Fanatics who think Universal Kilns is a front for the devil. Every now and then, some nut tries to unleash holy vengeance.” He snorts disdainfully. “Fortunately, there is a famous inverse relation between fanaticism and competence.”

  “That correlation is statistical,” I point out. Antisocial behavior is my field, after all. “There are exceptions. In a large, educated population, you’ll have at least a few genuine Puerters, McVeighs, and Kaufmanns — both diabolical and brainy — who prove competent enough to wreak …”

  My voice trails off, suddenly distracted. Kaolin answers, but my attention veers.

  Something’s wrong.

  I glance left, toward the grand hallway, following a trace — something troubling that teased the corner of one eye.

  What is it?

  The broad, arched corridor looks unchanged, still lined with ancient arms and trophies from historical conflicts. Yet something’s amiss.

  Think.

  I had been dividing my attention, the way I always do, real or rox. Maharal’s ditto just departed in that direction, heading for the atrium … where a right turn would take him out the front door for that final trip to Universal Kilns.

  Only he didn’t turn right. I think he turned left instead. It was only a glimpse, but I feel sure of it.

  Is he trying to see Ritu, one last time?

  No. She quit the library in the opposite direction, with her green companion. So where’s the ditto heading?

  On one level, it’s none of my business.

  The hell it isn’t.

  The magnate is explaining why he doesn’t worry about fanatics. It sounds like a canned speech. I interrupt.

  “Excuse me, Vic Kaolin. I have to check on something. I’ll be back in time to ride with you to the lab.”

  He looks surprised, perhaps miffed, as I turn to go. The marble floor squeaks under my cheap shoes as I hurry down the hall, sparing a moment to grab one more good look at the oldtime weapons and banners. Clara will kill me if I don’t memorize enough for a decent image tour.

  At the atrium, I glance right. The butler and his three copies look up, interrupting their conversation. (What could the duplicates possibly have to talk about? My selves almost never have anything to say to each other.)

  “Did you see ditMaharal come by here?”

  “Yessir. Just a moment ago.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  The butler points behind me, toward the rear of the mansion. “Is there anything I can do for—”

  I hurry in the direction indicated. It may be a dumb impulse to give chase like this, instead of quizzing Vic Kaolin while I have the chance. If Maharal were real, his detour wouldn’t bug me. I’d assume he went to the toilet. Take a pee before going on your last ride. Nothing more natural.

  But he isn’t natural. He’s a thing, with no bladder and with no rights, who’s been asked to walk into a room where agonizing interrogation and death await. Anyone might veer from that path. I know I have, on at least three occasions.

  Striding past the grand staircase, I duck into a minor hallway lined with cloakrooms and closets. Beyond a pair of double doors, dishes clatter amid a murmur of cooks. The gray might have dodged through there. But sensors in my left eye discern no vibration. The big swinging doors haven’t been touched for at least several minutes.

  Hurrying past the kitchen, I pick up a faint scent that most normal humans barely notice or else avoid. A sweat-sweet tang of ultimate redemption.

  The Recyclery.

  Most of us just put our expired dittos (or leftover parts) in a sealed bin on the street for weekly pickup. But businesses that deal in high volumes need their own rendering plants to compress and filter the remains. Down a short, windowless passage stood a door few dittos pass through twice. Did Maharal go that way, preferring a quick end in the vats over the agony of brain-sifting? He didn’t seem the kind to suicide over mere pain. Still, there are other possible reasons … like dying to keep a secret.

  Seeking alternatives, I turn left to look down a broader hallway. Ahead lies a glass-covered veranda, furnished in wicker, overlooking a lawn and private woods.

  A screen door is still hissing gradually shut, closing against a pneumatic damper. Deciding quickly, I hurry and push through, stepping onto a parquet balcony. To the left stands a big screened aviary filled with greenery and cooing sounds. Kaolin’s famed avocation is bird-raising, especially genetically enhanced racing doves.

  Not that way. To the right, steps lead down gardened slopes. Hurrying after my hunch, I’m rewarded soon by a soft noise. Footfalls, somewhere ahead.

  I can sympathize if Maharal’s ghost doesn’t want to go through the torment of image-sifting. If he’d rather stroll under a blue sky for his last hour or two. But I work for his heir and legal owner. Anyway, if villainy murdered his original, the culprits should be held accountable. I want whatever clues lie hidden in his ceramic skull.

  A flagstone path plunges past a wide meadow toward a grove of old trees. Sycamores and purple prunus, mostly. Nature’s nice, when you can afford it.

  There! I glimpse a moving figure. ditMaharal, all right. He leans forward, shoulders hunched, hurrying. It was just intuition before. Now I’m sure, the golem’s up to something.

  Only what? This trail swings by the brow of a low hill to overlook a row of small houses on the other side, lined up along a compact street, complete with sidewalks and front lawns — a quaint old suburban neighborhood, transplanted to Vic Aeneas Kaolin’s east forty acres. This must be where his domestic employees live. The richer you are, the more benefits you have to provide in order to keep real servants.

  Man, he sure is rich.

  No sign of Maharal. My immediate concern, did he plunge into the tract? He may vanish among the houses.

  I turn, scanning.

  There! Half-crouched behind a hedge, he’s trying to open a backyard gate.

  Better not spook him. Instead of charging ahead, I creep just inside the pocket forest, staying shadowed as I work my way closer.

  Only a few people are about, this time of day. An orange gardener mows someone’s lawn with a noisy machine. A woman hangs laundry from a clothesline, something I never used to see in the days before kilning, when time was so precious you never had enough. Now the air’s better and some folks find sun-drying worth a ditto’s hour.

  The woman’s skin is sunburned pink — a human shade. Huh. Well, maybe she enjoys the tactile feel of pinning up wet clothes in a breeze. Sends her dittos to do other things.

  Soft retro music flows from an open window at one end of the small neighborhood, clashing with two loud voices that rise in shrill argument from a house in the middle. The same one where Maharal’s hands fumble over the back gate
and finally seize the latch. Hinges squeak as he slips through — and I’m running, skidding down the forested slope, dodging trees and coming in so fast that I barely stop in time to avoid hitting the fence. Enzyme speedup warms my limbs, expending stored energy at four times rate. All right, so I’ll expire a bit earlier. Thems breaks.

  Maharal shut the gate after himself, so I must reach over like he did, feeling for the latch. Not the ideal way to perform a modern break-in. Normally I’d test for alarms and such. But this little neighborhood sits within Kaolin’s ultra-security cordon, so why bother? Besides, I’m in a hurry.

  The wood is frayed and pungent, the latch just a rusty hook. I slip into the backyard, observing crabgrass speckled with dog droppings … a worn baseball and glove … a few half-melted toy soldiers lying in the sun. Everything is homey and old-fashioned, down to the man and woman screaming in the stucco house.

  “I’m finished letting people walk all over me. You’ll pay, sadistic bastard!”

  “For what? I have the same deadline every week, ask anybody.”

  “Any excuse to leave here, going crazy with screaming kids—”

  “Talk about crazy—”

  That ill-advised riposte brings a shriek. Through a window I glimpse a matronly figure with orange hair and pale skin, hurling crockery at a cringing man. They look real; people seldom assign a domestic spat to dittos, saving that full passion for flesh that knows it will endure ten thousand bitter tomorrows, long enough to serve up vengeance for each hurt, real or imagined.

  I spot Maharal’s ghost, skulking past three small boys, aged maybe four to nine, who sit in the muggy shade of a dilapidated porch, as the screen door amplifies each miserable clatter and yell. I’m surprised some roving lawyerbot hasn’t been attracted by now, zeroing in to offer the kids a brochure on parental malpractice. ditMaharal puts a sly finger to his lips, and the eldest boy nods. He must know Maharal, or else the cloud of misery is too dense for speech as the gray hurries by, heading toward the little street. It’s the only way out, so I follow seconds later, imitating Maharal’s gestured plea for silence.

  The boys look more surprised, this time. The middle one starts to speak … then the eldest grabs his arm, using both hands to twist in opposite directions, raising cries of pain. Instantly, all three are embroiled in flying punches, emulating the violence indoors.

  My grays imprint Albert’s conscience, so I hesitate, wondering if I should intervene … Then I spot something both weird and reassuring about the two who are closest. They’re dittos! Despite a caucasian-beige coloration, the skin texture’s artificial. But why put kid-duplicates through a cruelly simulated summer afternoon? Surely the memories won’t be inloaded.

  Sounds perverted. Make a mental note to look into this later. But it gives me an excuse to leave, jogging down a narrow drive past someone’s cherished restoration of an old Pontiac. Why would a scientist’s ghost spend his last hours skulking through a servants’ enclave, rife with midget soap operas? My concentration is broken by gratitude for my own childhood as I hasten around the corner of a tall hedge, only to find -

  Maharal!

  The gray stands in front of me … smiling … aiming a weapon with a flared nozzle.

  No time to think. Suck a deep breath! Put your head down and charge!

  A roar fills my universe.

  What happens next depends on what he just shot me with -

  5

  Clay Station

  … or how Tuesday’s second gray begins a rough day …

  Damn.

  I’m always grumpy getting up off the warming tray … grabbing paper garments from a rack and slipping them over limbs still glowing with ignition enzymes, knowing I’m copy-for-a-day.

  Of course I remember doing this a thousand times. Still, it always feels like getting a long list of nasty chores, taking risks you’d never put your protobody through. I start this pseudolife filled with premonitions of a lesser death, dark and unmourned.

  Ugh. What put me in this mood? Could it be Ritu’s news? A reminder that real death still lurks for us all?

  Well, shrug it off! Life’s still the same as it was in the old days.

  Sometimes you’re the grasshopper.

  Sometimes an ant.

  I watched gray number one head off to meet Miss Maharal. He took the Vespa, with today’s greenie riding on the saddle behind him.

  That left one scooter for me to use alone. Seems fair. Number one gets to see Ritu and snoop around the affairs of a gazillionaire. Meanwhile, I must go visit the great witch of Studio Neo. At least I get to have my own transport. realAlbert turns away, shuffling out of the kiln room with nary a backward glance. Well, he needs to lie down. Rest the body. Keep it fit so we dupes can inload sometime tonight. I don’t feel snubbed. Much. If you’ve gotta be clay, it’s good to be gray. At least there are realistic pleasures to enjoy -

  — like swerving through traffic, surprising stolid yellow-striped truckers as I cut in front of them, always alert for the telltale buzz of my cop-detector and making sure not to inconvenience any real people. Aggravating dits can be sport, just so long as each violation stays below the five-point threshold programmed into the publicams lining every street. (The threshold where they drop privacy constraints and form a grand posse.) I once racked up eleven four-pointers in a day, without triggering a single fine!

  This little Turkmeni scooter doesn’t have as much power as the Vespa, but it’s agile and durable. Cheap, too. I make a note to order three more. Anyway, it’s risky having only two scoots on hand. What if I suddenly need to make an army, like happened last May? How will I rush a dozen red or purple copies of myself where they’re needed? By dinobus?

  Nell obediently jots down my note, but she won’t put through a buy order till realAlbert wakes. Neurons okay all big purchases. Clay can only suggest.

  Well, I’ll be Albert tomorrow. If I inload. If I make it home. Which shouldn’t be too problematic, I guess. Meetings with the maestra are wearing, but seldom fatal.

  Slowing down for a light now. Stopping. Taking a moment to glance west, toward Odeon Square. Fresh memories of last night’s desperate flight and narrow escape still perturb my Standing Wave, even if it was only a green who suffered so.

  I wonder who the waiter was. The one who helped me get away.

  Light’s changed. Go! Maestra hates it when you’re late.

  Studio Neo, just ahead. Charming place. It fills what used to be a huge windowless urban mall. Nowadays shopping is either a chore — you ask House to arrange deliveries — or else you do it for pleasure, strolling in person along tree-lined avenues like Realpeople Lane, where balmy venturi breezes flow all year round. Either way, it’s hard to picture why our parents did it in sunless grottos. A fluorescent-lit catacomb is no proper world for human beings.

  So now malls are set aside for the new servant class. Us clayfolk.

  Jitneys and scooters zip around the vast parking structure, conveying fresh dittos to clients all over town. And not just any dittos. Most bear specialized colors. Snow white for sensuality. Ebony for undiluted intellect. A particular scarlet that’s oblivious to pain … and another that experiences everything with fierce intensity. Few of these creatures return to their point of origin when the élan cells run down. Their rigs don’t expect them back for memory inloading.

  Most Neo customers do return the scooters, however. To reclaim the deposit.

  I park the Turkomen in a coded space set aside for folks like me — ditto intermediaries traveling on business, conveying important information between real people. Grays get priority, so the more luridly colored step aside as I enter the main arcade. Most do it reflexively, holding doors for me, almost as if I were human. But a few whites give way grudgingly, casting impertinent glares.

  Well, what do you expect from whites? Pleasure is partly a matter of ego. Their kind needs self-importance in order to function.

  Studio Neo occupies all four layers of the old mall, filling the grand atr
ium with a myriad holographic glows — an emporium of creative effort, illuminated by the garish logos of more than a hundred pushy production companies, each of them aspiring for pinnacle position in this anthill — a place up at the top the pyramid, where I’m heading right now.

  The hungriest and most ambitious producers station dittowares right next to the escalators, offering free samples.

  “Try me now and take home a special memory …” croons a pale form in a diaphanous gown, her figure enhanced in ways that real tissue couldn’t possibly support. “Then let us home-deliver. Your rig could enjoy me in person tomorrow!”

  Tomorrow, she will be sludge in a tank. But I don’t say it. Manners, inherited from simpler days of youth, make me say, “No, thanks” — wasting breath on a creature who couldn’t care less.

  “Had a rough day?” another one chants, this one exaggeratedly male, rippling in places where no natural man ever rippled — that is, outside the pages of a comic book. “Maybe your rig will inload you anyway, if you bribe him with something unique to remember. Try me and find out how good it gets!”

  Or how weird it gets. No way to tell, of course, what kind of flesh this creature’s soul-imprint came from, whether a courtesan or a gigolo. The most aggressive or compliant of each kind tend to be crossovers, overcompensating for their upbringings, with relish.

  This time I manage to pass without comment, riding the escalator to better precincts.

  Some of the second-story firms offer specialized golem blanks. Put your mind into a toothy reptile, or a dolphinlike form to go deep-diving. Or go partying in a body with made-to-order parts. Some have hands like Swiss Army knives. I sometimes buy accessories from a discreet technical boutique, choosing enhancements for dittos sent on dangerous assignments. Pal shops here too, experimenting with ever more outré golems. He’d prefer that all his memories come that way, and none from his ravaged fragment of a natural body.