Kiln People

by David Brin

  “What do you mean?” Lum asked.

  “I mean that you non-violent protestors have been up to your own skulduggery, I bet. Some flashy way to demonstrate your disapproval of Universal Kilns. Moralists can always justify going outside the law when it suits their sense of righteous timing.”

  Gadarene frowned sullenly at Pal. Lum said, “That’s different.”

  “Is it? Never mind. I’m not interested in canned rationalizations. Just tell me how far along your preparations have come.”

  “I don’t see why—”

  “Because you’re playing out of your league, gentlemen!” I cut in, a bit too loud for a respectful green. But I had caught Pal’s drift and it made sense. “Professionals are at work today, hatching a scheme that’s been long arranging. Right now it doesn’t matter if the secret mastermind is Universal Kilns, or some enemy of theirs. Whatever they’re planning to do in the next few hours, they’ve set you fellows up to take the blame.”

  “But maybe we can help, if you come clean,” Pallie offered. “Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed and schemed about striking a blow against UK. Tell us, right now, if you’ve done more than dream! Have you been up to something that could be used against you? Something that could pin you to a crime?”

  Both men glared at Pal and me — and sideways at each other. I could almost taste their mutual distrust. Their internal struggle for a way out.

  Gadarene spoke first; perhaps he was more accustomed to bitter confession.

  “We’ve … been digging a tunnel.”

  Lum stared at his longtime adversary. “You have? Well, imagine that.”

  He blinked a few times, then shrugged with a wry chuckle. “We’ve got one, too.”

  The triple domes of Universal Kilns HQ shimmered, set afire on their western flanks by a late afternoon sun. I couldn’t help thinking of three giant pearls, planted atop a busy anthill, since those grassy slopes sheltered an even larger industrial plant underground. But with its coat of greenery, the factory looked more like a college campus, placid and unthreatening, rimmed by a deceptively innocent-looking hedge.

  To modern citizens, the site was legendary, even Promethean. A cornucopia spilling forth treasures — hardly a cause of ire. But not everyone felt that way. Outside the main gate, beyond a screen of trees, lay a camping ground that was staked out years ago under the Open Dissent Act, when Aeneas Kaolin first moved his corporate headquarters here. Each maverick or radical group with a grievance had its own patch — a cluster of canopies and expando-vans — to marshal demonstrations.

  Why keep agitating over a cause that’s long-lost? Because cheap dittos make it easy … an irony that most radicals were much too sober to notice.

  ARTIFICIAL PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE

  So proclaimed the largest banner, identifying Lum’s community of tolerance zealots, though smaller signs marked passionate subsects, each with an agenda weirder than the next. I mean, sure, I’d rather not have to bow to Gadarene, just because I’m green. But I’m a frankie. For anyone else, isn’t it just a matter of taking turns? Sometimes grasshopper, sometimes ant. Even after my time at the Ephemerals, I still found it hard to grasp what kind of society these people had in mind.

  Still, they came from a tradition that had saved the world. The tolerance-and-inclusion reflex was strong for good reasons — because it took centuries of pain to acquire. Confused or not, these folk stood on high moral ground.

  Not far away, another sign broadcast shining holo letters, expressing a more clearcut demand:

  SHARE THE PATENTS!

  The “open source” movement wanted all of UK’s technologies and trade secrets released to the public, so every garage hobbyist might experiment with new dittoing techniques and wild golem variants, promising a burst of total creativity. Some envision an age when you’ll imprint your Soul Standing Wave into everything around you — your car, your toaster, the walls of your house. Hey, why not each other? To enthusiasts out there — eager, overeducated, and bored — every boundary of self and other was spurious. A small step from being several places at once to being everywhere, all of the time.

  Those techno-transcendentalists stayed away from yet another encampment where the denizens had a different complaint altogether — that the world already has too many people in it, without doubling or tripling Earth’s population each day with fresh swarms of temporary consumers. Wearing green robes of the Church of Gaia, they wanted humanity pared way down, not exponentiated. Dittos may not eat or excrete, but they use resources in other ways.

  Grunting with delight, Pal nudged my arm and pointed.

  A single figure could be seen pacing just outside the big encampment, picketing the picketers!

  SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS IS AN ADDICTIVE DISEASE, GET A LIFE! chided the placard carried by a creature with extremely long, shaggy arms and a head like a jackal’s. Perhaps the ditto’s appearance was some kind of arty, satirical statement. If so, I didn’t get it.

  Some people — most people — have way too much time on their hands, I thought.

  Once, years ago, this site swarmed with a more pragmatic and far angrier breed of protester. Labor unions, upset over a convulsed job market, stirred up Luddite movements across the globe. Riots surged. Factories burned. Golem-workers were lynched. Governments teetered …

  … till overnight, passions ebbed. How do you suppress a technology that lets people do all the things they want to do, all at the same time?

  As our van passed into the compound, I glimpsed a final placard, carried by a bearded man who beamed happily as he paced, even though everyone else seemed to avoid him, even with their eyes. His message — in a fine, flowing cursive calligraphy — was one I saw just an hour or two earlier:

  You all miss the point.

  There’s a next step a’coming …

  Gadarene’s bunch bivouacked to one side, separated from the other groups by a gulf of mutual hostility. Instead of sending cheap dittos to this site each day, his followers were real people. Every one of them.

  As we pulled up, a dozen or so men and women emerged from big trailers, accompanied by gaggles of youngsters. Their clothing had that look — colorful but inexpensive — evidently purchased on the purple welfare wage.

  I’ve met abstainers before, but never in such numbers. So I couldn’t help staring. Here were people who refused to copy themselves. Ever. It felt like gazing at creatures of another age, when fate cruelly forced all men to live cramped lives. Only these folks lived that way deliberately!

  On seeing Lum step from the van, members of the flock grumbled threateningly. But Gadarene silenced them with a curt headshake. Instead, he bid two strong youths to hoist Pal from the back. Others hauled the portakiln as we followed him into the biggest trailer.

  “I am still not sure I should show you this,” he groused. “It is the work of years.”

  Pal stifled a yawn. “Take your time. We’ve got days and days to decide.”

  Sarcasm can be effective. Still, I often wondered how my friend managed to live this long.

  “How do we know it isn’t already too late?” Lum asked.

  “Best guess, the enemy won’t act till nightfall,” I replied. “If it’s a bomb, they’ll want to maximize the flashy visual effects, while minimizing real human casualties.”

  “Why?”

  “Killing archies tends to really piss folks off,” Pal said. “Property crimes are different. Deregulated. Anyway, conspiracies tend to unravel when you get down to mass murder. Henchmen turn whistle-blower. No, they’ll wait till second shift, with only dittos at work, to produce lots of gaudy dismemberments without criminal culpability.

  “Which means there may still be time to act,” Pal concluded, “if you quit stalling and show us what you’ve got.”

  Gadarene still squirmed. “Why not ask Lum first? He’s got a tunnel, too.”

  “I’ll be using that one.” Pal nodded. “But Mr. Lum’s passage is too small for Albert here … I mean Frankie. Your tunnel h
as to be bigger, eh, Gadarene? Human size.”

  The big conservative shrugged, giving in at last.

  “We dug by hand. It took years.”

  “How did you evade seismic detection?” I asked.

  “With an active lining. Any sonic or ground wave that hits one side of the sheath is re-radiated on the other. We used a quadrupole grinder at the digging surface, canceling noise beyond a few meters.”

  “Clever,” I said. “And how close are you to breaking through?”

  Gadarene looked away, avoiding my eyes. He mumbled in a voice almost too low to hear, “We made it … a couple of years ago.”

  Pallie guffawed. “Well, that takes it! Such passion, digging like moles to reach the hated enemy. Then nothing! What happened? Lost your nerve?”

  If looks could kill … But Pal had already survived worse.

  “We couldn’t agree on which action would be … suitable.”

  I found myself kind of sympathizing. It’s one thing to labor with a vague/distant goal of punishing the wicked. It’s another to actually do it in ways that edify the world, attract public support, while keeping your precious realhide out of prison. The Gaia Liberation folks learned this the hard way, during their long war against the gene-techs.

  “Was that your problem, too?” I asked Lum.

  The mancie leader shook his head. “Our shaft took a twisty route, so we just broke through. Anyway, our aims are different. We aim to liberate slaves, not to sabotage their birthplace.”

  Pal shrugged. “Well, that explains why it’s happening right now. You both have leaks or spies. Or your digging was detected after all. Either way, someone knows. They’ll use your tunnel shafts to deflect blame for what’s about to happen. Last night’s charade — sending fake Morrisdits to visit you — was just frosting on the cake you’re being cooked in.”

  I didn’t add that Albert, my maker, appeared targeted for the worst baking of all.

  Unhappy silence reigned, till Lum spoke up.

  “I’m confused. Don’t you two hope to use our tunnels, to get inside and look for the missing gray?”

  “We do.”

  “But if the enemy already knows about the tunnels, won’t there be traps waiting for you?”

  Pal’s sanguine grin is the most infectious I know. He can really convince you that he knows what he’s doing. “Trust me,” he said, turning both palms up. “You’re in good hands.”

  His ditto radiated the same air of confident aplomb ten minutes later, as I stared down a narrow hole in the ground, contemplating how quickly my short existence could end in such a place.

  “Don’t sweat it, Frank,” the mini-golem said in a piping voice, perfectly imitating Pal’s blithe speech rhythms. “I’ll take point-position. Just follow my glossy butt.”

  The creature looked like an oversized ferret, with a stretched, semi-human head. But the strangest part was its fur, all glistening, with tiny bulges that moved all over the place, like it was infested with parasites or something.

  “What if there is a trap in there?”

  “Oh, I give odds there will be,” Little Pallie answered. “Let me worry about that. I’m ready for anything!”

  This, from someone whose dittos almost never made it home in one piece. I wished realPal were still present, so I could chew him out one last time. But he went over to the Emancipators’ camp with his portakiln, preparing to dispatch yet more hisselves down their twisty, specialized tunnel — one cleverly designed to resemble a network of harmless animal holes worming semi-randomly toward the giant industrial complex. Providence is kind to the half-mad, I guess. Pallie could happily dispatch a dozen or more kamikaze dittos, each of them thrilled to take part in a suicide mission. It was all good fun to him-and-them.

  If my body had been built for any decent pleasure, I would have turned around and sought it out, right then and there, leaving that place behind. Or maybe not.

  “Come on, Gumby,” the pseudoferret told me with a toothy grin. “Don’t go into a funk on me. Anyway, you’re committed now. Where else can you go in that color?”

  I glanced down at my arms, now dyed — like the rest of me — in a hue widely known as UK Orange. An in-house shade, trademarked by Aeneas Kaolin long ago. If this caper didn’t work, copyright violation would be the least of my worries.

  Well, at least I’m not green anymore.

  “Tally-ho!” squalled Pal’s diminutive ditto. “Nobody lives forever!”

  With that cheery motto, the Paldit squirmed around and dived into the hole.

  No, I thought in reply. Not forever. But a few more hours would be nice.

  I cross-checked the friction rollers on my wrists, elbows, hips, knees, and toes. Then I knelt to slip inside. Without looking back, I sensed the hulking, nervous figure of James Gadarene, hovering nearby, watching.

  Then something happened that actually moved me, in a strange way. I was already a couple of meters into the awful passage when I heard the big zealot utter some kind of benediction.

  Maybe I wasn’t supposed to hear it. Still, unless I’m mistaken, Gadarene actually asked his God to go with me.

  In all the time I’ve walked this Earth, it’s one of the nicest things I’ve heard anybody say.

  19

  Fakery’s Bakery

  … in which gray number two gets a second wind …

  Tuesday afternoon fades and a vast industrial complex prepares to change shifts. The entry/exit portal throngs with moving bipeds, all of them human in one fashion or another.

  In olden times, the whole population of a factory — thousands of workers — would swing into motion at the blowing of a whistle, half of them heading home, tired from eight or ten — or even twelve — hours work, while equal numbers shuffled in for their turn at the machines, transforming sweat and skill and irreplaceable human lifespan into the wealth of nations.

  Today’s flow is gentler. A few hundred archie employees, many of them wearing exercise clothes, chat amiably as they leave, heading for scooters and bikes, while a more numerous and colorful host of paper-clad dittos arrives by dinobuses, trooping in the opposite direction.

  Some elderly dittos are also departing, homeward bound to inload a day’s memories. But most stay, working on till it’s time to slip into the recycling vat — armies of bright orange drones, laboring with focus and without resentment, because some other self will enjoy fat wages and stock options. It can be kind of spooky if you stop and really think about it. No wonder I never had a factory job. Wrong personality for it. Way wrong.

  Even the golem entrance is decorated in eye-soothing tones, with sensoresonant music playing in the background as I wait in line to sign in. There’s also a faint vibration, coming through the bottoms of my feet. Somewhere lower down, beneath the grass-covered slopes, giant machines are mixing pre-energized clay, threading it with patented fibers tuned to vibrate at the ultra-complex rhythms of a plucked soul, then kneading and molding it all into dolls that will rise, walk, and talk like real people.

  Like me.

  Should this feel like coming home? My present, pre-animated body was made here, mere days ago, before being shipped to Albert’s storage cooler. If today’s snooping expedition takes me down to that factory realm, will I recognize my mother?

  Oh, quit it, Al.

  I’m me, whether gray or brown. Grasshopper or ant. The only practical difference is how polite I’ve got to be.

  That … and expendability. In a sense, I’m freer when I’m gray. I can take risks.

  Like the one I’m about to face in moments, when I try to sign in. Will UK security be as lax as the maestra predicts?

  I almost hope not. If I’m stopped — or even if the guards ask inconvenient questions — I’ll just turn around and leave! Apologize to Gineen and her pals. Send my half-fee home to Nell and spend the rest of my life doing … what? Forbidden by contract from inloading memories, or even seeing my rig again, I guess I’d find some other way to pass time. Maybe take in a play. Or
stand on a street corner entertaining parents and kids with sleight-of-hand tricks. I haven’t done that in a while.

  Or maybe I’ll visit Pal. Find out what he was so excited about this morning.

  All right, I admit it. I’d be disappointed to come so far, and just get turned away. My demilife is targeted now. I have a mission, a purpose, to help my clients find out if Universal Kilns is violating the disclosure law. That seems a worthwhile goal, and well paid.

  Approaching the entry kiosk, I find I’m actually nervous, hoping this will work.

  Honestly? It was fun for couple of hours — scurrying through outdoor and indoor crowds, ducking through cramped niches, doing quick dye jobs and rapid clothing changes, vanishing and reappearing to fool the omnipresent cameras. In fact, it was today’s highlight so far. Doing something you’re good at — what else can make you feel more genuinely human?

  All right, it’s my turn. Here goes.

  The big yellow golem on duty at the entry kiosk wears an expression of such ennui, I wonder if it’s feigned. Even a ditto tuned for vigilance can get bored, I guess. But maybe he’s been bribed. Wammaker and Collins never told me the details, hence my unease …

  A beam reaches out to stroke the pellet on my brow. The guard glances at me, then at a screen. His jaw twitches, opening a bit to subvocalize a brief comment, inaudible to me but not to the infrasonic pickup embedded in his throat.

  Two items spit from a slot in the kiosk, a small visitor’s badge and a slip of paper — a map featuring green arrows, suggesting where I should go. The arrows point up, toward the executive suites, where a different Albert Morris copy had an appointment, hours ago. That me never showed up, but the failure isn’t any of my business. My interests lie elsewhere.

  I mutter reflexive thanks to the guard — unneeded politeness that betrays both my upbringing and my age — then I head for the down escalator.