Kiln People

by David Brin

  Palloid and I shared a glance. “Wow,” the little golem muttered.

  Could that be the breakthrough? Remote dittoing would shake up a way of life we’ve at last started getting used to, after all these rocky years.

  We both turned to stare at ditKaolin. His reaction gave nothing away, but what about the first time he heard those words, just minutes ago? Did that platinum complexion flush with anger and dismay?

  A vibration below … giant machines mix organic clay, threading it with fibers tuned to vibrate rhythms of a plucked soul … molding dolls that walk and talk … and we take it all for granted …

  Damn. Something’s bugging me. Think … how could Universal Kilns conceal anything huge and ground-breaking?

  Yes, evil thrives on secrecy. It’s what drives Albert on. Expose villainy. Find truth. But is that what I’m doing now?

  “Finally,” I muttered, as the gray started asking the right questions. In fairness, he did express doubts earlier. But that made the transcription even more frustrating, listening as he forged ahead, despite all misgivings.

  Maybe the gray was defective, like me — a poor-quality copy made by an exhausted original. Not Albert at his best. On the other hand, he had been manipulated by experts. Maybe we never had a chance.

  Some kind of gnat dodges a swat, darting toward my face. I use a surge-energy burst to grab … crumpling it in my hand.

  The mini-Pal dug his claws into my pseudoflesh.

  “Dammit, Albert. I spent good money on them tiny drones.” He glared those ferret eyes, as if the gray’s obstinacy were somehow my fault. I might have reacted, sweeping him off my shoulder. But the recording was approaching its deadly climax.

  It makes sense … They’d maximize damage by delaying ignition … either with a timer or by setting it to go off when I pass a second security scan …

  “Stop!” I cry -

  From that point, the recitation turned into a rapid, jerky groan, much harder to make out, like words grunted by a hurried runner, or someone trying to concentrate on a desperate task.

  Trying to save a lot more than his own measly life.

  I spy a version of myself bearing a weasel-golem … Looks like today’s green found something better to do than clean toilets. Good for you, Green …

  That made me feel a bit ashamed, for sardonic things I thought about this gray. Could I have tried harder to save him? Might realAl be alive now, if we succeeded?

  Regret seemed pointless, with my own clock rapidly ticking out. Why was Kaolin playing this tape for us? To taunt our failure?

  The poor forklift writhes … can’t blame him, but it drives me deeper, holding my breath … being consumed …

  Am I deep enough? Will the huge clay body contain -

  The recital ended in a harsh squeal.

  Palloid and I turned once again to watch the stolid, almost-human features of ditAeneas Kaolin, who regarded us for a long time while one of his hands trembled slightly. Finally, he spoke in a low voice that sounded more fatigued than a middle-aged golem ought to feel.

  “So. Would you two like a chance to find the perverts who did all this?”

  Pal’s ditto and I shared a stare of blank surprise.

  “You mean,” I asked. “You mean you want to hire us?”

  What, exactly, did Kaolin expect us to accomplish in the ten hours (or less) that we had left?

  23

  Glazed Buns

  … as Albert discovers, realtime, how real it can get …

  The desert is a lot brighter than they portray in holocinema. Some say the glare can even penetrate your skull and affect the pineal gland — that deeply buried “third eye” oldtime mystics used to call a direct link to the soul. Searing light is said to reveal hidden truths. Or else make you delirious enough to find cosmic meaning in stark simplicity. No wonder deserts are the traditional abode of wild-eyed ascetics, seeking the face of God.

  I wouldn’t mind running into an ascetic, right about now.

  I’d ask to borrow his phone.

  Is this thing working? I spent the last couple of hours messing with a tiny, muscle-powered sound archiver, testing it by reciting an account of what happened last night. First I had to dig it out of the gray golem I had stored in back of my wrecked Volvo. A gruesome chore, but the ditto was spoiled anyway, along with every bit of electronics in the car, when that platinum Kaolin fired a strange weapon at us on the road.

  A subvocal archiver doesn’t need electricity — one reason I install them in my grays, scribing microscopic spirals onto a cylinder of neutral-density dolomite. I can’t recite in high-speed grunt code, like I do when I’m clay. Still, the little unit should pick up ambient sound, like a spoken voice, while wedged under the skin behind my jaw. Small twitches can provide power. Ritu will think it’s a nervous tic, after all we’ve been through.

  She left our cave — a sheltered cleft amid boulders — to drink from a little canyon pool we found. Even dittos need water out here, unless you want to be baked into dinnerware. It gives me an excuse for my own trips to the pool. I’m real, after all. The mark of Adam is on me, covered by makeup and clothing.

  Why keep feigning artificiality? As a kindness. Ritu’s golem hasn’t much chance of getting home to inload. As if her rig would want these memories. I, on the other hand, face pretty good odds of getting out of here. Wait till nightfall, then hoof west by moonlight till I reach a road, a house, or some eco group’s webcam. Anything to shout an SOS into. Civilization is simply too big to miss nowadays, and a healthy organic body can endure lots, if you don’t do anything stupid.

  Suppose I do reach a phone. Should I use it? Right now my enemy — Vic Kaolin? — must think I’m dead. True-dead from that missile strike against my home. And now all my dittos too. A lot of effort to deny Albert Morris any continuity. Reappearing would only draw attention again.

  I need information first. A plan.

  And better keep away from the cops, too. Till I can prove I was set up. A little extra suffering — a cross-desert march avoiding cameras all the way — could be worthwhile if it lets me sneak into town undetected.

  Am I up to it? Oh, I’ve withstood a thousand injuries that would’ve finished any of my ancestors — from incinerations to smotherings to decapitations. I’ve died more times than I can count. But a modern person never does any of that in organic form! The real body is for exercise, not anguish.

  My tough old twentieth-century grandpa threw his body — his only life — off a bridge one time at the end of an elastic band. He suffered unbelievable torment in primitive dental offices. He traveled every day on highways without guidebeams, trusting his entire existence to the uncertain driving skills of total strangers whipping past him in crude vehicles fueled by liquid explosives.

  Grampa might’ve shrugged at this challenge, walking all the way from a desert ravine to the city, without complaint. I’ll probably whimper when a pebble gets in my shoe. Still, I’m determined to try. Tonight, after Ritu’s golem passes on to where hopeless golems go.

  I’ll keep her company till then.

  She’s coming back, so no more reciting. Anything else that gets recorded will have to be picked up from conversation.

  “Albert, you’re back. Did you salvage anything from the car?”

  “Not much. Everything’s fried, my forensic gear, radio, and locators … I figure nobody knows we’re here.”

  “Do you have any idea how we got here?”

  “A wild guess. That weapon ditKaolin fired, it killed every bit of electronics and must have been meant to scramble imprinted clay.”

  “Then why are we still walking about?”

  “That old Volvo has more metal than most cars today. We were better sheltered than the poor gray stored in back. Also, I surprised Kaolin by charging right at him, spoiling his aim. That may be why we only blacked out.”

  “But after! How did we get to the bottom of this gully, surrounded by miles of cactus and scrub. Where’s the road?”

/>   “Good question. This time I spotted something at the wreck we didn’t notice before, a puddle near the driver’s door.”

  “Puddle?”

  “Golem slurry. Remains of our would-be assassin, I guess.”

  “I … still can’t believe it’s Aeneas. Why would he want us dead?”

  “I’m curious about that too. But here’s the interesting part, Ritu. The puddle looked too small — about half-sized!”

  “Half … he must have been torn in two when you smashed into him. But how did the remnants get way out here?”

  “My guess? Though ripped apart by the collision, Kaolin must have dragged what was left of himself to the car, climbing to my half-open window. We were knocked out, inside. The engine was running but the doors and the windows frozen. He couldn’t squeeze through to finish us with his bare hands. So—”

  “So he reached in to grab your side-stick controller … the throttle and steering lever … piloting us offroad, across open desert, with his half-body dangling all the way.”

  “He had to get us under cover, so we wouldn’t be spotted and rescued. Somewhere surrounded by hot country no ditto can cross by day. We’d be trapped if we did waken. Then, his mission accomplished, ditKaolin ended his torment by dropping off and melting.”

  “But what’s to stop us from walking out after dusk? Oh. Right. Expiration. What time on Tuesday were you imprinted, Albert?”

  “Um … earlier than you, I expect. Kaolin had reason to think we can’t last beyond midnight. He saw us both at your house, remember?”

  “Are you sure that was the same Aeneas-copy who shot us?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Perhaps. If this one was made up to look like him.”

  “Possible. But those anatomically correct platinums are expensive and hard to manufacture in secret. Put it this way, Ritu. If you had a working phone, is Kaolin the first guy you’d call?”

  “I … guess not. Still, if we had some idea why—”

  “I bet it connects with all the other weird stuff that happened yesterday. Your father’s fatal ‘accident’ not far from here. The disappearance of his ghost at Kaolin Manor, along with one of my grays. Kaolin may have thought Maharal’s ghost and my gray were in cahoots.”

  “In what?”

  “Then there was the attack on UK. Another of my dittos was involved somehow, according to the scandal channel. Sounds like something set up to discredit me.”

  “So everything’s about you? Is that a bit solipsistic?”

  “There’s nothing solipsistic about my house getting blown up, Ritu.”

  “Oh, right. Your archie. Your real … I forgot.”

  “Never mind.”

  “How can I? You’re a ghost now. Terrible. And I got you into all this.”

  “You had no way of knowing—”

  “Still, I wish there were something I could do.”

  “Forget it. Anyway, we can’t settle a mystery, stuck here in the desert.”

  “And that bothers you, Albert. Beyond knowing your life’s ended. Beyond the injustice, I sense frustration — wishing to solve one more riddle.”

  “Well, I am a detective. Learning the truth—”

  “It drives you, even now?”

  “Especially now.”

  “Then … I envy you.”

  “Me! Your rig lives on. She’s in no apparent danger. Kaolin seemed a lot more interested in—”

  “No, Albert. What I envy is your passion. The focus, purpose. I’ve admired it for some time.”

  “I don’t know if it’s so—”

  “Really. I imagine it adds a special sting to dying — to being a ghost — never knowing why it happened.”

  “Never is a strong word. I can hope.”

  “There you go, Albert! Optimistic, even after death. Hoping some plane or satellite will notice that SOS of shredded seat fabric you laid out on the sand. At least it would let you tell everything to the next detective.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Even now that the sun is going down, with no rescue copters in sight?”

  “A character flaw, I guess.”

  “A splendid one. I wish I had it.”

  “You’ll continue, Ritu.”

  “Yes, tomorrow there’ll be a Ritu Maharal and no Albert Morris. I know I should be more sensitive saying it—”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Can I tell you something, Albert? A secret?”

  “Well, Ritu, confiding in me may not be the best—”

  “The truth is — I always had trouble with dittos. Mine often head off in ways I don’t expect. I didn’t want to make this one.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And now, to face death out in the desert. Even if it’s just one of us who—”

  “Can we discuss something other than imminent extinction, Ritu?”

  “Sorry, Albert. I keep compulsively returning to the same insensitive topic. What would you like to talk about?”

  “How about the work your father was doing, before he died.”

  “Albert … your contract excludes you from enquiring into that subject.”

  “That was then.”

  “I see your point. Anyway, who could you tell? All right. For years Aeneas Kaolin nagged Father to work on one of the hardest questions in soulistics — the non-homologous imprinting problem.”

  “The what?”

  “Transferring a golem’s Standing Wave — its remembrance and experience — into a repository other than the human original who made it.”

  “You mean dumping a day’s memory into somebody else?”

  “Don’t laugh. It’s been done. Take a hundred pairs of identical twins. Five or so can swap partial memories by exchanging dittos. Most get brutal headaches and disorientation, but a few can do perfect inloads! By using golem intermediaries to share all their life memories, the siblings become, in effect, one person with two organic bodies, two real lifespans plus all the parallel copies they want.”

  “I heard of that. I thought it was a fluke.”

  “No one’s eager for publicity. The potential for disruption—”

  “Your father was trying to make it possible between non-twins? People who aren’t related? Egad.”

  “Don’t be too surprised. The notion’s been around since dittoing began, inspiring countless bad novels and movieds.”

  “There are so many, by amateurs and metastudios. I don’t try to keep up.”

  “That’s because you’ve got work. A real job. But the arts are all some people have.”

  “Um, Ritu? What does this have to do with—”

  “Bear with me. Did you see the parasensie called Twisted? It was a big phenom, a few years ago.”

  “Someone made me sit through most of it.”

  “Remember how the villains went around snatching the dittos of important scientists and officials—”

  “Because they had a way to inload memories into a computer. Cute notion for a spy thriller, if impossible. Transistor versus neuron. Math versus metaphor. Didn’t someone prove the two worlds can never meet?”

  “Bevvisov and Leow showed we’re analog beings. Physical, not software bits and bytes. But souls can still be copied, like anything else.”

  “Didn’t your father study under Bevvisov?”

  “Their team first imprinted a Standing Wave into a doll at Kaolin Klaynamation. And yes, the plot gimmick in Twisted was dumb. A computer the size of Florida couldn’t absorb a human soul.”

  “I don’t think every story about other-inloading involves computers.”

  “True. In some dramas they ditnap a golem and dump its memories into a volunteer, to extract secrets. Sometimes the inloaded personality takes over! A scary notion that can really get to an audience. But seriously, what might actually happen if we learn to swap memories between people, erasing the boundary between human souls?”

  Subvocal note to self. Watching Ritu speak, I realize — she’s making light conve
rsation, but her speech rhythms indicate high degrees of stress, carried realistically in the gray. The topic concerns her deeply.

  If only I had some of my analytical gear while this is going on!

  “Well, Ritu. If people could swap memories, men and women wouldn’t be such enigmas to each other anymore. We’d understand the opposite sex.”

  “Hm. That could have drawbacks. Think how the sexual tension contributes to the spice of … oh!”

  “What is it?”

  “Albert, look at the horizon!”

  “Sunset, yah. Pretty.”

  “I forgot how special this time of day is, in the desert.”

  “Some of that orange radiance comes from SWETAP. I guess we’re going to have to get used to drinking water that glows … Hey, are you getting cold? We could generate heat by walking. It’s safe now.”

  “To what purpose? You were made before sunset yesterday, remember? Better save what little élan you have left. Unless you can think of something better to do with it.”

  “Well …”

  “Let’s sit close and share heat.”

  “All right. Is that better? Um … you seemed to be saying that all these bad movieds had something to do with your father’s final project.”

  “In a sense. Holo-story plots always focus on the most stupid ways that technology can be abused. But Father had to consider every scenario. Other-inloading has serious moral implications. And yet—”

  “Yes?”

  “For some reason, I felt that my father already knew a lot about the subject. More than he was letting on.”

  “Go on, Ritu.”

  “Are you sure you want me to? Does it matter, with the end rushing closer every minute? One more thing I always found creepy about dittoing. The ticking clock — far better to find some distraction before the final melting away.”

  “Distraction. Okay. How would you like to spend the remaining time, Ritu?”

  “I … well … What’s your personal philosophy about banging pots?”