Kiln People

by David Brin

  Gineen Wammaker steps forward in delectable person, her real flesh nearly as pale as one of her pleasure roxies. Only flashing green eyes give away her inner nature as a fierce businesswoman who demolishes competitors without mercy. She takes my facsimile hand in her real ones.

  “How good of you to send a gray so quickly, Mr. Morris. I know how busy you are, and how focused your profession requires you to be.”

  In other words, she forgives me, even though I really should have come in person. Still, Wammaker’s sarcasm is milder than usual. Something’s fishy, all right.

  “I hope the bonus I sent shows adequately my gratitude for your part in shutting down the pirate copying facility.”

  I haven’t seen any bonus. Maybe she wired it while I waited outside. Typical. Anything to keep you off-balance.

  “It’s a joy to be of service, Maestra.” I bow and she inclines her head slightly, letting golden locks spill over bare shoulders. We don’t fool each other a bit. Ironically, that’s a basis for respect.

  “But I grow inattentive. Let me introduce my associates. Vic Manuel Collins and Queen Irene.”

  The male is closer. We shake hands and I can tell his gaudy decorations mask the texture of a standard gray ditto. As for his title; “Vic” used to mean something. But the term has grown swank and overused among the idle rich, most of whom were never venture capitalists, or anything useful at all.

  Just one of the umber-colored females steps forward, acknowledging my presence but offering no smile, nor a hand to shake. “Queen” is another modern ambiguity. I’ll wait and see if my suspicions are verified.

  Gineen offers seats, plush and body-conforming. A candy-striped servdit — one-half scale — offers refreshments. Being gray, I can taste-sample a powdery Zairian truffle that explodes into aromatic dust at the back of my throat. A gift for Albert to remember when I inload. Still, Wammaker is showing off, being lavish with visiting dupies. Part of her appeal, I suppose.

  Sitting now, I can see past the shoulder of the umber rox who is jacked in, fixing her attention on a pict-screen. It shows a large room where still more red dittos come and go rapidly — all of them copies of the same basic person-image, though some are scaled way down to one-third size or less. At least a dozen hover around a single figure in the middle, hard to make out amid the throng. There’s a lot of machinery — kiln apparatus and life-support gear.

  “I asked you here, Mr. Morris, to discuss a little matter of technology and industrial espionage.”

  I turn back to Wammaker.

  “Maestra? I specialize in tracking people — both clay and flesh — mostly to uncover copyright violations and—”

  My host lifts a hand. “We suspect certain technological innovations have been hoarded. Significant breakthroughs, that could threaten to make copyright meaningless, are being monopolized clandestinely.”

  “I see. That sounds illegal.”

  “It most certainly would be. Technologies are most perilous when exploited in secret.”

  My thoughts churn. It may be illegal, but why tell me? I’m no cop or tech-sleuth.

  “Who do you suspect of hoarding?”

  “Universal Kilns Incorporated.”

  Blinking, I hardly know where to begin.

  “But … they pioneered the field of soulistics.”

  “I do know that, Mr. Morris.” Her smile is indulgent.

  “They also benefit most from an open and orderly market.”

  “Naturally. In fact, UK continues to engage in normal commercial research, coming up with gradual improvements in the copiers they sell. Technical details about these improvements can be kept confidential temporarily, till patents are filed. Even so, they have a legal duty to warn people if some major innovation threatens to fundamentally alter our culture, or economy, or world.”

  “Fundamentally alter”? Creepy words that make me curious as hell. And yet, one fact is paramount — I shouldn’t be holding this conversation.

  “That may be, Maestra. But right now I have to tell you—”

  The plaid-skinned male interrupts with a voice that’s rather deep for such a wiry frame.

  “We’ve been tracking leaked information from inside those shiny domes at UK. They’re up to something, possibly a big change in the way people make and operate golems.”

  Curiosity gets the better of me. “What sort of change?”

  Vic Collins takes a wry expression on his garishly cross-shatched face. “Can you guess, Mr. Morris? What do you figure might transform the way folks use this modern convenience?”

  “I … can think of several possibilities, but—”

  “Please. Stretch yourself. Give us an example or two.”

  Our eyes meet and I wonder, What’s he up to?

  Some people are known for imprinting imaginative grays, capable of creative thinking. Is that what all this is about? A test of rapid reasoning, outside my organic brain? If so, I’m game.

  “Well … suppose people could somehow absorb each other’s memories. Instead of just imprinting and inloading between different versions of yourself, you’d be able to swap days, weeks, or even a lifetime of knowledge and experience with someone else. I guess it could wind up being like telepathy, allowing greater mutual understanding … the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us. It is an old dream that’s—”

  “—also quite impossible,” the dark red womandit cuts in. “Each human’s cerebral Standing Wave is unique, its hyperfractal complexity beyond all digital modeling. Only the same neural template that created a particular duplicate wave can later reabsorb that copy. A rox can only go home to its own rig.”

  Of course that’s common knowledge. Still, I’m disappointed. The dream of perfect human understanding is hard to give up.

  “Go on, please,” Gineen Wammaker urges in a soft voice. “Try again, Albert.”

  “Um. Well, for years folks have wished for a way to imprint at long range. To sit at home and copy your Standing Wave into a ditto blank that’s far away. Today, both bodies have to lie right next to each other, linked with giant cryo-cables. Something about noise-to-bandwidth ratios …”

  “Yes, that’s a common complaint,” Gineen muses. “Say you have urgent, hands-on business to do in Australia. Your quickest bet is to make a fresh ditto, pack it into an express mail rocket, and hope it splashes gently on target. Even the quickest round trip, returning the ditto’s skull packed in ice, can take all day. How much better if you could just transmit your standing wave over a photonic cable, imprint a blank that’s already on the scene, look around a bit, then zip the altered wave right back again!”

  “It sounds like teleportation. You could go anywhere — even the Moon — almost instantly … assuming you shipped some blanks there in advance. But is this really needed? We already have robotic telepresence over the Net—”

  Queen Irene laughs.

  “Telepresence! Using goggles to peer through a faraway set of tin-eyes? Manipulating a clanking machine to walk around for you? Even with full retinal and tactile feedback, that hardly qualifies as hands-on. And speed-of-light delays are frightful.”

  This “queen” and her sarcasm are starting to bug me.

  “Is that it? Has Universal Kilns achieved long-range imprinting? The airlines will hate it. And what’s left of the unions.”

  Hell, I can see aspects that I’d loathe, too. Maybe you could teleport anywhere in minutes. But cities would lose their individual charm. Instead of local experts and artisans holding sway, each town would wind up having the same waiters, janitors, hairdressers, and so on. The best of every skill and profession, duplicated a gazillion-fold and spread all over the world. No one else would have a job!

  (Envision some New York super private eye opening a branch office here, stocking it daily with flawless gray duplicates, raking in fat fees while he sits in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I’d have to go on the purple wage. Get some time-killing hobby. Or go back to school. Ack.)

  Obviously,
the maestra doesn’t fear competition.

  “If only that were the breakthrough at hand,” she comments wistfully. “Tele-dittoing would open up major business opportunities for me, globally. Alas, that’s not the innovation we’re talking about. Or not the most worrisome one. Do try again.”

  Damn, what a bitch. Riddles are just the sort of delicious torment Gineen Wammaker specializes in. Even knowing this, I’m tempted to keep showing off.

  But first there’s a matter of professional ethics to settle.

  “Look, I really think I ought to inform you that—”

  “Lifespan,” says Vic Collins.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What if a ditto body” — he gestures at his own — “could be made to last more than a day? Possibly much more.”

  Pause. Ponder it. This possibility hadn’t occurred to me.

  I choose words carefully. “The … whole basis of kilning — the reason it’s practical — is that a golembody carries all of its own energy, right from the start.”

  “Stored as super molecules in a clay-colloidal substrate. Yes, go on.”

  “So there’s no need to imitate the complexity of real life. Ingestion, digestion, circulation, metabolism, waste removal, and all that. Science is centuries away from duplicating what evolution took a billion years to create — the subtle repair systems, the redundancy and durability of genuine organic …”

  “Nothing like that is required for longer duration,” answers Collins. “Just a way to recharge the supermolecules in each pseudocell, restoring enough energy for another day … then another, and so on.”

  Reluctantly, I nod. Clara said that military dittos come packed with fuel implants, letting a few versions last several days. But that’s still living off storage. Recharging would be quite another matter. A breakthrough, all right.

  “How many times … how long can a ditto … ?”

  “Be renewed? Well, it depends on wear and tear. As you say, even high-priced blanks have little self-repair capability. Entropy grinds down the unwary. But the chief short-term problem — how to keep a roxbody going one more day at a time — may be solved.”

  “A dubious solution,” mutters the umber-colored Queen Irene. “Long-lasting dittos could diverge from their human prototype, making it harder to inload memories. Goals may wander. They might even start caring more about their own survival than how to serve the continuity being that created them.”

  I blink, confused by her terminology. Continuity being?

  Glancing left, I see her identical sisdit, who remains jacked into a remote terminal, staring at a flatvid screen. Portrayed there, I glimpse over a dozen interchangeable workers, all the same unique crimson shade, swarming around a huge, pale figure, like worker bees jostling around -

  Ah. I get it. Queen Irene. Pallie told me about this, taking dittoing to its next logical stage. Still, witnessing it makes me shudder.

  “There could be other repercussions,” Vic Collins adds. “The whole social contract may be upended, if our suspicions are correct.”

  “That’s what we want you to investigate, Mr. Morris,” Gineen Wammaker concludes.

  “Are you proposing industrial espionage?” I ask warily.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “We don’t seek to steal any technologies, only to verify their existence. That much is perfectly legal. With confirmation, we can then sue Universal Kilns under one of the transparency laws. For hoarding, if nothing else.”

  I stare at her. This is preposterous, on about a dozen levels.

  “You honor me with your trust, Maestra. But as I told you, tech-sleuthing is just a sideline for me. There are real experts.”

  “Whom we find less suitable than you.”

  I’ll bet. What you’re asking skirts a razor’s edge away from illegal. An expert would know how to keep on the safe side of that border. I might make one mistake and wind up in hock to UK, paying off a criminal-tort lien till the next ice age.

  Fortunately, there’s an easy way out of this.

  “I am flattered, Maestra. But the biggest reason I can’t take this assignment is a possible conflict of interest. You see, even as we speak, another gray of mine is at Universal Kilns, consulting about another matter.”

  Expecting disappointment or anger, I see only amusement in Wammaker’s eyes. “We’re already aware of this. There were newscams and other spy-eyes all over the Teller Building this morning, remember? I saw Ritu Maharal pick you up in a UK limo. Putting that together with public reports of her father’s untimely death, I find it simple to imagine what your other gray is discussing, right now at Kaolin Mansion.”

  At Kaolin Mansion? I thought gray number one was going to UK headquarters. These people know more about my business than I do!

  “ditto Morris, there’s a way to insulate you and your rig from legal jeopardy for conflict of interest. Nowadays, it’s possible for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing, if you get what I mean.”

  Unfortunately, I think I do.

  There goes my hope of an afterlife.

  “It’s really quite simple,” says Vic Collins. “All we have to do is—”

  He stops, interrupted as a phone rings.

  It’s my phone, chattering an urgent rhythm.

  The maestra looks miffed, and rightly so. Nell knows I’m in a meeting. If my house computer thinks the call is so damn important, she ought to wake Archie.

  I grunt an apology, flipping the wrist plate over one ear.

  “Yes?”

  “Albert? It’s Ritu Maharal. I — I can’t see you. Don’t you have vid?”

  Pause a sec. But none of my other selves will answer, so I must.

  “This phone is a cheap strap-on. I’m just a gray, Ritu. Anyway, don’t you already have one of me—”

  “Where are you?” she demands. Something in her voice makes me sit up. It sounds like grief, giving way to rising panic.

  “Aeneas is waiting in the car, getting impatient. He expected you and my … father’s ditto to join him. But you both vanished!”

  “What do you mean, vanished? How could they …”

  Now I realize — she thinks I’m that gray! The confusion could be cleared up with a few words, but I don’t want to cue in Gineen, or her weird friends. So what can I say?

  Just in time, another voice cuts in, a bit groggy. It’s Archie, roused from his nap again.

  “Ritu? It’s me, Albert Morris. Are you saying that my gray is missing? And your father’s too?”

  I flip-shut the phone. My first priority must go to the clients here in front of me — even if I won’t be working for them in a minute or two.

  Silence reigns. Finally, Wammaker leans forward, her golden hair spilling past pale shoulders to her famed decolletage.

  “Well, Mr. Morris? About our offer. We need to know what you’re thinking.”

  I take a deep breath, knowing it will hasten the metabolism of my fast-draining pseudocells, bringing slightly closer an extinction that can only be forestalled by making it home tonight. Home, to rejoin my original with what I learn today. And yet, I already know Wammaker’s plan — a way that I might legally spy for her without conflict of interest. It requires that I — this gray doppelganger — sacrifice all hope of survival, for the good of more important beings.

  No, it’s even worse than that. What if I refuse? Can she let me leave, knowing that I might report this meeting to Vic Kaolin? Sure, I post a PI confidentiality bond for all customers. I’d never break a patron’s confidence. But the paranoid maestra could decide not to risk it, since UK can buy my bond for pocket change.

  To be safe, she’ll destroy this body of mine, content to pay Albert triple damages.

  And he’ll take the cash, too. Who bothers to avenge a dit?

  Wammaker and her guests watch me, awaiting an answer.

  Looking past them, I seek visual comfort in something green and growing — indoor plants that the maestra of Studio Neo has scattered casually about h
er meeting chamber, to give it a homey feel.

  “I think …”

  “Yes?”

  Her famous indecent smile pulls at something dark inside you. Inside even clay.

  Take another deep breath.

  “I think your ficus looks a bit dry. Have you tried giving it more water?”

  8

  Feats of Clay

  … Tuesday’s greenie finds his faith …

  Moonlight Beach is one of my favorite spots. I go there with Clara whenever the crowds let up, especially if we have tourism coupons that are about to expire.

  Of course, it’s set aside for archies. All the best beaches are. I’ve never been here as a green before … unless some of my missing dittos vanished the same way I did today. By throwing away all hope and playing hookey.

  Parking the scooter in a public rack, I hiked to the bluff edge for a look, hoping to find the place half-empty. That’s when rules relax, archies feel less territorial, and coloreds like me can safely visit.

  Tuesday’s a weekday. That used to make a difference, when I was a kid.

  But no such luck. People swarmed across every open area with blankets, umbrellas, and beach toys. I spied a few bright orange lifeguards, padding about with webbed arms and feet, puffing their massive air sacs while patrolling for danger. Everyone else was some shade of human-brown, from dark chocolate to pale as sand.

  If I set foot down there, I’d stand out like a sore thumb.

  Peering south past a distant fluttering marker, I saw the rocky spit that’s set aside for my own kind. A brightly tinted mob, crammed together at the point where rip tides and jagged outcrops make things dicey for real flesh. No lifeguards ventured down there, just a few yellow-striped cleaners, equipped with hooks to dispose of the unlucky. Anyway, who wants to waste beach time on an imitation? It’s hard enough getting a reservation to come in person.

  Suddenly, I felt resentful of all the rules … the waiting lists and tourism allotments … just to spend a little time at the shore. A century ago, you could do what you wished and go where you liked.