Kiln People

by David Brin

  Clara explained it to me long ago — a basic military principle.

  Sometimes your only hope is to scream defiance, charge ahead; and hope for the best.

  Evidently. The tactic sure surprised my attacker, who leaped back, colliding with the hood of his car before trying to steady his aim. I howled, shoving my right foot to the floor, spurring the Volvo’s engine to an emergency-power roar.

  In that split instant, amid the glare of two converging sets of headlights, I knew several things at once.

  Good lord, it’s Aeneas Kaolin!

  And — he’s going to get his shot off before I reach him.

  And — no matter what weapon he’s got, I’ll still have the satisfaction of turning his sorry clay ass into pottery shards.

  That offered small comfort as a bolt of horrid lightning spewed from Kaolin’s gun, enveloping my car in fireworks. Pain followed right behind.

  Still, through the blinding coruscation I got to see the platinum ditto throw both arms up, venting a last-instant wail of spontaneous despair.

  PART II

  Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me unto dust again?

  —The Book of Job

  21

  Duplicity

  … on Wednesday, Tuesday’s first gray protests the unfairness of life …

  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. Econo
mic 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

  … in which Tuesday’s green gets yet another hue …

  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,” P
allie’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!”