by David Brin
Through the frosted glass, I spied another shudder. This time a straightening, perhaps signaling resignation. I backed away several steps across the atrium, giving leeway to whatever might emerge.
I also eyed escape paths, just in case.
“What did you say?” Ritu shouted again from above. “I didn’t expect you for an hour. Can you wait?”
A silhouette crossed the closed half of the glazed double door. Tall, angular … and gray — it drew closer.
For an instant, I thought I had it! A furtive gray, in this house? Who else could it be but the ghost? Maharal’s ghost! The one that didn’t want to spend its last moments in a lab, being dissected for trace memories. It would be a shambling wraith by now, persisting by sheer will power, burning its final reserve of élan vital before melting away.
I readied to pounce, demanding answers. Like what happened to my own ditto! The one I sent to the mansion this morn -
— then blinked in surprise. The figure that emerged wasn’t Maharal’s ghost. Not even gray, strictly speaking.
A gleaming platinum stepped under the speckled light. The golem-sigil on its brow shone like a jewel.
“Vic Kaolin,” I said.
“Yes,” the ditto nodded, covering its agitation with pugnacity. “And who might you be? What business do you have in this house?”
Surprised, I raised a spackled eyebrow.
“Why, the job you hired me to do, sir.”
That wasn’t strictly true. I wanted to probe this ditto’s level of ignorance. His glossy expression froze, transforming rapidly from pugnacious to guarded.
“Ah … yes. Albert. It’s good to see you again.”
Despite its lame effort at a recovery, this was clearly a different ditKaolin than the one I met early this morning, as dawn broke over the shattered windows of the Teller Building. Nor did it share any recent memories with the one who phoned me at home around noon, hectoring me while I imprinted the ebony. This one didn’t remember me at all.
Well, in itself, that meant little. It could have been imprinted hours before all that. But then, why pretend to know me? Why not just admit ignorance? He could send a query to his rig. Get an update from the real Kaolin.
Here’s a life lesson — don’t embarrass the mighty. Let ’em save face. Always give them an out.
I pointed into the home office of Yosil Maharal. “Did you find anything useful?”
The guarded expression deepened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re here for the same reason I am, right? Looking for clues. Something to explain why your friend kept skipping town, evading the all-seeing World Eye for weeks at a stretch. And especially what he was doing last night, racing across the desert, careening over highway viaducts.”
Before he could answer, Ritu called down again.
“Albert? Who are you talking to?” ditKaolin’s dark eyes met mine. Following my adage, I gave him that out.
“I met a shiny new Aeneas, coming up the walk!” I shouted up the stairs. “We entered together.”
The platinum ditto nodded. Acknowledging a debt. He would have preferred going unnoticed, but my cover story would do.
“Oh Aeneas, I wish you wouldn’t hover so! I’m all right, really.” She sounded exasperated. “But as long as you’re here, would you show Albert around?”
“Of course, dear,” ditKaolin answered, gazing briefly upstairs. “Take your time.”
When he faced me again, there was no trace of agitation, or pugnacity. Only serene calm.
“What were we discussing?” he asked.
Crum! I thought. You’d think a rich bastard could order up ditto blanks that concentrate better.
Aloud, I prompted, “Clues, sir.”
“Ah, yes. Clues. I looked for some, but—” The platinum head shook, left and right. “Maybe a professional like you can do better.”
Despite everything, Kaolin is only guessing that I’m a ditective, I thought. Why doesn’t he just ask?
“After you.” I gestured politely, insisting he reenter the office ahead of me.
He turned, spoke a command, and light filled the room. So Maharal must have given voice authorization to his boss. Or else -
I felt another vague suspicion simmer in the part of my skull where I chain that crazy but creative beast, paranoia. Keeping the ditto in sight, never turning completely away from him, I looked over a display case while tapping cipher-code with my teeth.
Nell. Verify Kaolin sent this dit. Confirm it’s legit.
She acknowledged the work order, flashing in my left eye. But even with my priority as the real guy, this query could take time, leaving me wondering about a possibility.
Dr. Maharal had been an expert in duplication tech, and a gifted hobbyist at the arcane art of disguise. He also seemed blithe about mere inconveniences like the law. With his Universal Kilns access, he could borrow all sorts of templates … including possibly that of Aeneas Kaolin.
So, could this platinum be another Maharal ghost, masquerading as the Vic?
But that didn’t make sense. realMaharal’s corpse had been cold for nearly a day, but the platinum looked much newer. No way this could be Ritu’s daddit, in disguise.
Well, organic imagination doesn’t have to make sense, I recalled. Nor must paranoia be reasonable. It’s a beast who barks at nothing … till the day it’s right.
There was a simple way to verify the platinum’s identity. As a real person, I could turn and demand its pellet … at the cost of revealing my own costume ruse. I chose against it. Nell should answer soon, anyway. So I fixed my attention on Maharal’s home.
The office showed signs of recent amateur tampering. Table legs were shoved out of old carpet impressions. The contents of book and display cases had all shifted, disturbing dust layers as someone groped all over, perhaps looking for hidden panels.
I learned a lot just by glancing at the lasersheet folios. They were barely touched, so Kaolin must not have been looking for purloined data or software.
Then what?
And why was he trying to search all by himself? He has security people. He can hire forensic experts or even rent a downtime police unit.
At first I thought the problem might be Ritu, standing up to her boss and barring Kaolin access to her father’s home. That could explain today’s furtive entry — trying to search the place without alerting her — which implied some need to keep her in the dark.
Except that Ritu’s easygoing attitude just moments ago, giving us both leave to look around, didn’t fit the image of a rift between Kaolin and Maharal’s daughter. At least not an obvious one.
Glancing at the Vic, I saw he had regained his famed, sphinxlike composure. Dark eyes tracked me, perhaps still annoyed that I had found him here. Yet he appeared willing to make the best of things. Supervising an expert hireling at work, that was more his style.
There were pictures on the walls, both inside the office and in the hall beyond. A fraction showed Yosil posing with people I didn’t recognize — I used my archaic but serviceable eye-implant to take iris-snaps of some, for Nell to identify. But most of the framed images showed a younger Ritu at various events like graduation, a swimming competition, riding a horse, and so on.
Maybe I should have given the place a major workover — a chemsift for substances on the International Danger List would take just minutes with a good scanner. But whatever Maharal was up to, I suspected that it wouldn’t show in obvious ways.
An inertial transect might be more revealing. Strolling from room to room, I opened closets and cupboards, peering into each one long enough to freeze a complete perspective-set, transmitting each one to Nell, and then moving to the next. She wouldn’t need color, just multiple angles and position stamps, down to half a centimeter, using surveying principles George Washington would have understood. Any secret chambers or compartments should appear in the resulting geodesic.
Kaolin expressed approval. But again, if he wanted this kind of work done, w
hy not hire a whole survey team and do a thorough job?
Perhaps the matter was so sensitive, he could only trust his own duplicates.
If so, my presence must be cause for mixed feelings. I had stopped working for Kaolin when Yosil Maharal’s body was found crumpled in his car — when the case switched from suspected kidnapping of a valued employee to a daughter’s vague misgivings about murder.
I made a mental note to ask Ritu about her father’s relationship with the UK chief. If it was murder, I could imagine scenarios putting the Vic on a shortlist of suspects.
Take what happened to Maharal’s ghost — and my gray — a few hours ago. Might Kaolin have arranged for them both to vanish on his estate? Maybe the gray sniffed too close to some dire truth. Maybe the ghost had good reason to flee.
Soon the first-floor transect was complete. Nell’s preliminary analysis showed no secret chambers. At least nothing bigger than a breadslice. But she did cite one anomaly.
Two photographs were missing. They had been hanging near the bottom of the staircase when I first arrived. Now, my home computer reported they were gone! Their shadows still showed up by infrared, a bit cooler than the surrounding wall.
I turned in search of Vic Kaolin … and spotted him emerging from the lavatory. Plumbing sounds gurgled in the background. He just disposed of something by flushing it away! The platinum ditto looked back at me, a portrait of innocence, and I cursed under my breath.
If I had come as an ebony specialist, tuned and equipped for close forensic site analysis, I might have watched him with one eye literally in the back of my head. Now, there seemed little I could do about it. Quizzing Kaolin would only alienate him without explaining the photos.
Better to wait, I decided. Let him think I didn’t notice. Maybe ask Ritu about the pictures later.
I went out to my Volvo, opened the trunk, and fetched a thumper with seismic pickups. Lugging the equipment back up the steps, I planted detectors all around the house. In moments I would know if there were secret chambers underground. Unlikely, but worth checking out.
While waiting for the data to come in, I poked around the recycling unit out back, with its separate slots for metals, plastics, mulchable organics, and electronics. And clay. The bins should all have been empty, since Yosil Maharal spent the last few weeks away from home. But the telltales showed some mass in the golem-disposal unit. Enough for one full-size humanoid form.
I opened the access panel — only to witness a dim gray figure sag before the sudden onslaught of air, rapidly finishing its collapse to slurry.
Smell can be a powerful sense. From vapors wafting off the slumping mass, I could tell much. It died well before expiration … and no more than an hour ago. Acting quickly, I reached inside to grope through where the skull had been, feeling through dissolving fibrous matter till I snagged a small, hard object. The ID pellet. Later, in private, I might give it a quick scan and find out if this meant anything … or if a neighbor had simply deposited an excess ditto in the Maharal Dumpster to avoid recycling fees.
Wiping my hand on a towelette, I sauntered back to verify the seismic readings. Sure enough, they showed no hidden chambers. I don’t know why I bother. Maybe the romantic spirit in me keeps hoping for the catacombs of Treasure Island, something beyond the normal run of city-cam traces, chasing down copyright violators and dallying spouses. At least that was Clara’s diagnosis. Somewhere deep under Albert Morris lay the soul of Tom Sawyer.
My heart beat faster when I thought of her, and the direction I’d be driving in just a little while. Maybe, after a hard day’s work in the desert, after Ritu’s ditto expired, I might swing by the battle range and surprise -
That was when I sensed a change. Something missing. A presence, like a shadow, now gone.
The silent, lurking presence of ditAeneas Kaolin.
I looked for the limo and saw only blank space at the curb. The limo was gone.
Perhaps the golem left in order to avoid Ritu’s gray, who could be heard now puttering around downstairs. But that didn’t make any sense, did it?
Nothing did.
In moments, Ritu’s gray emerged from the house, carrying a small valise, and locked the door behind her. “I’m ready,” she announced in a somewhat aloof tone, though short of outright unfriendly. In her case, if any character trait clearly bridged the gap from original to copy, it was the sense of tension I had picked up earlier. An edgy guardedness that kept one at a distance while somehow augmenting her severe beauty.
I hurried to collect my thumpers and other hardware, throwing them into the trunk atop the portakiln. Soon we were heading southeast through a shrouding twilight. Toward the desert, where mysteries still prowl and nature can rip away all civilized masks, revealing the stark struggle life has always been.
18
Orange You Glad?
… as Frankie is red his rites …
It’s not that Pallie can’t make dittos. He’s actually quite gifted, with a flexible self-image that can propel almost any golem-shape, from quadruped to ornithrope to centipede. That rare ability to imprint non-human forms might have let him be an astronaut, ocean prospector, even a bus driver. But Pal’s dittos can’t deal with inaction, amplifying his core restlessness. A ditective should stay patient and focused — say during a long stakeout — but his copies can’t. With great intelligence and imagination, they’ll rationalize any excuse to transform inertia into motion.
It’s why he went in person that night, three years ago, to a rendezvous with treacherous men. Pal’s way of being cautious, I suppose.
So we had to lug his real self along with us in Lum’s van. Pal’s wheelchair slid in back as the mancie leader hopped into the pilot seat. Then, with a devilish grin, Lum offered me shotgun position — a blatant dig at Gadarene, who rumbled ominously. Wanting no trouble between the two reluctant allies, I stepped aside for the big conservative, adding a respectful bow. Anyway, I’d rather ride with Pal, wedged in back between the van’s hull and a battered portakiln.
The oven felt warm when I sat on it. Someone was cooking. Lacking a sense of smell, I couldn’t tell whom.
We set off, merging with traffic. The optically active cerametal hull sensed the direction of my gaze from millisecond to millisecond, automatically transforming a narrow patch from opaque to transparent wherever I happened to be looking, slewing this micro-window about to match my wandering cone of attention. Anyone standing outside the van might see four small dim circles jiggering about, like tiny manic spotlights, one for each occupant, revealing little to outsiders. But to each of us inside, the van appeared made of glass.
Lum caught a nav beam, which sensed four passengers — three of them real — and granted carpool priority, speeding us along. North, toward the hi-tech district, following my hunch about where to find trouble. Funny how Lum and Gadarene were ready to trust a frankie’s instincts. As if I knew what I was talking about.
Fluids dripped through IV tubing and diagnostic lights winked as I checked Pallie’s medconsole. The unit was pissed off at him for using stimulants, back when he showed off for us at the abandoned scooter park.
“Just like old times, eh?” he said, giving me a wink. “You, Clara, and me, tackling the forces of evil together. Brains, beauty, and physique.”
“Well, that describes Clara. What about you and me?”
He chuckled, flexing a sinewy forearm. “Oh, I wasn’t bad at muscle stuff. But mostly I provided color. Sadly lacking in the modern world.”
“Hey, aren’t I green?”
“Aye, and a lovely faux-viridian shade you are, Gumby. But that’s not what I mean.”
I knew exactly what he meant: the color our grandparents supposedly had, back in the zesty twentieth and early twenty-first, when people took risks every day that few moderns would think of facing with their precious trueflesh. It’s strange how much more priceless life can feel, when you have more of it to grasp.
Me? I had sixteen or so hours left. Not much time
for ambition or long-range plans. Might as well spend it all.
I turned to Gadarene, whose attention focused toward a World Eye portal on his lap. “Any luck tracing the gray?”
The big man scowled. “My people have put out a hue and cry. We’re offering top bids for a pix-trace, but the trail’s blank. Nothing since the gray was last seen, at Studio Neo.”
“There won’t be,” I said. “Albert knows how to vanish when he wants to.”
Gadarene flushed. “Then contact your rig. Have him recall the ditto!”
The organo-chauvinist leader appeared frantic. I didn’t want to provoke him. “Sir, we’ve gone over this. That gray is on autonomous mode. It won’t communicate with realAlbert, because that could constitute violation of contract. If the gray is being deceived by experts, they’ll take measures to ensure it stays deceived.”
“I bet the first thing they did to the gray was disable the recall feature in its pellet,” Pallie said, and I added, “They’ll put e-sniffers on Al’s house. Nell will catch on eventually, but it can work for a span. So we can’t contact Morris directly. If the conspirators notice, they may spook or change plans.”
Gadarene muttered, “I still can’t figure it out. What plans?”
“To make us look bad,” said Lum, dropping his normally sunny mien. “Both your group and mine. We’re being set up as patsies.
“I’ll bet Universal Kilns is behind this,” Lum continued. “If they can convince the world we’re terrorists, they may get a demarchy writ to eliminate the pickets and demonstrations. No more disclosure lawsuits and net harassment from groups opposing their immoral policies.”
“You mean they’d sabotage themselves, to blame us?”
“Why not? If the stunt generates public sympathy, all the better! It might even throw off those anti-monopoly bills that keep coming up, trying to reverse the Big Deregulation.”
Pal chuckled again.
“What’s so funny?” Gadarene snapped.
“Oh, I was just thinking about how innocent you both sound, right now. Are you practicing for the cameras?”