by David Brin
“What the hell?” Horus shouted. “Hey, what are you doing? Get off my van!”
Chasing after her, the purple left his machinery running as a sharp whine began to rise, aimed at some impending crescendo. I drew closer, both to see what was happening outside and to have a look at realIrene … the organic woman who was lying there on the dais, eager to expire in just the right way, so that her Standing Wave might soar, heaven-bound.
How did the red ditto express it?
There are raw rhythms out there in space … similar to a Standing Wave … like fresh golem clay … The first minds to impose their waveforms -
Oh, man.
I stepped up to the dais. Outside, the desperate red ditto could be seen climbing on top of the van! Closely followed by Horus, whose robe flapped around bare legs in a rather undignified manner as he clutched after her. Meanwhile, intense energies flowed amid the nest of sparking tendrils that surrounded realIrene’s head.
“Mr. Morris—”
It was little more than a moist croak, barely audible above the nucleoelectric whine. Trying not to touch anything, I bent close to the dying woman. Her pale complexion was splotchy and pitted with small pimples. For once, I was glad not to be able to smell.
“Albert—”
This wasn’t a person I could like very much. Still, her suffering was genuine and she deserved pity, I suppose.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked, wondering when the machinery was timed to unleash all this pent-up force. It might not be safe to stand there.
“I … heard … what you said …”
“What, about karma and all that? Look, I’m no priest. How should I know—”
“No … you’re right …” She gasped for breath between words. “Behind the bar … unscrew the ketone cap … get the son of … son of a …”
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Better get outta there, buddy-boy,” Palloid urged. He was already standing in the doorway with sunshine on his back. I hurried off the dais to join him, glancing back in time to see an eruption of soft lightnings start to flash. Irene’s body convulsed. So did the surrounding cluster of red golems, in perfect synchrony. It wouldn’t be long now.
Retreating to the alley, we looked up at the other commotion, going on atop the van. Irene’s final ditto, the one who was about to be orphaned, clutched at the big antenna, sobbing quite realistically while Horus held her by an ankle. He, in turn, clung to the cargo rack, trying to drag her off.
“Let go!” he shouted angrily. “You’ll wreck it! Do you have any idea how long I saved to buy a franchise—”
Palloid leaped onto my shoulder as I stepped away, putting more distance between us and … whatever was about to happen.
Thunder seemed to boom within the back room of the Rainbow Lounge, like a pulsing of drums … or maybe a million giant bullfrogs with bad thyroid conditions. All right, comparisons fail me, but anyone born in this century would recognize the bass cadence of a hugely amplified Standing Wave. Perhaps a ponderous caricature, impressive but lacking subtlety. Or else a colossally augmented version of the real thing. Who could tell which?
Irene may be able to tell … in a few seconds.
Her final golem wailed on the roof of the van, fighting the tug of Horus in order to thrust her head in front of the antenna.
“Don’t leave me!” she moaned. “Don’t leave me behind!”
Palloid commented dryly, “I didn’t think worker ants were s’pozed to care so much about their individual selves.”
“I was just wondering the same thing,” I replied. “Maybe the hive metaphor isn’t right, after all. The human personality best suited to her way of life is all ego. She could never let go of even a small part of herself. I guess being large can be just as addictive as—”
Pal’s ditto interrupted, “Here it comes!”
We retreated down the alley till I felt the fence against my back, then stared as a sharp light spilled through the rear doors of the Rainbow Lounge, from the chamber where Irene and her copies lay.
The light seared, casting shadows even across daylit asphalt. Instinctively, I raised a hand for shade.
The struggle atop the van ended as Horus fell to the ground with a yelp. The very same moment, something surged along those superconducting cables. The final red ditto screamed, grappling the antenna desperately, causing the mounts to creak as that glittering surge enveloped the van. Spark-flecked aurorae covered both her and the dish … even as her weight bore on the delicate apparatus, causing it to groan -
A visible beam shot forth, blasting through the clay body, which shivered, quickly hardening and sloughing off chunks, then overturned into the delicate parabola, bearing it down, shearing the metal support bolts with staccato pops. I watched with Pal — and poor Horus howled — as the antenna turned … then toppled over the side of the van.
A soundless, blinding wave spread outward, like a radiant ripple of pure light. It washed over Pallie and me, driving tremors up my back. Both of my ears popped, loudly and painfully. Arcing static discharges followed the wavefront, blowing the back doors off the van and clouds of equipment into the street.
The transmission finished, not aimed toward the cosmos above, but into the floor of a gritty alley.
Horus slumped, moaning in despair till all was silent.
“You know, Gumby,” my small ferret-shaped friend muttered from his perch on my shoulder, when we were both finally able to stir from dazzled shock over the spectacle. “You know, this city is built on some rich layers of pure clay. It’s one reason Aeneas Kaolin built his first animation lab here, long ago. So it’s not too far-fetched to imagine—”
“Shut up, Pal.” I didn’t want to share whatever perverse notion had just occurred to him. Anyway, the smoke was clearing and I saw no sign of fire. Nobody would prevent us from going back inside the Rainbow Lounge.
“Come on,” I said, rubbing my jaw, which hurt below the ears. “Let’s see what parting gift Irene left for us.”
“Hm? What’re you talking about?”
I wasn’t sure. Had she said “ketone cap”? Or something about atonement?
Anyway, I tried not to think ill of Irene. Despite all she had done, it just didn’t seem right. Especially when we crept inside, passing both a barbecued ruin on the dais and surrounding supine heaps of smoldering brick statuary.
I had never seen anyone die quite so thoroughly before.
28
A China Syndrome
… as Little Red learns far more than he wanted to know …
Yosil Maharal — or rather his gray ghost — appears to be quite proud of his private collection: starting with a unique hoard of cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals from ancient Mesopotamia, the muddy land where writing began more than four thousand years ago.
“This was the very first kind of magic that actually worked in a reliable and repeatable way,” he told me, holding up an object the shape and hue of a dinner roll, covered with shallow, overlapping wedge incisions. “At last, a kind of immortality could be achieved by anybody who learned the new trick of recording their words and thoughts and stories, by marking impressions in wet clay. The immortality of speaking across time and space, even long after your original body returned to dust.”
I may be no genius but I grasped his allusion. For he was just such a manifestation of continuity beyond death. A complex cluster of soul-impressions made in clay, speaking on after the original Yosil Maharal had his organic life snuffed out near a lonely culvert, under a desert highway. No wonder he felt a sense of kinship with the little tablets.
Maharal’s private collection also includes samples of ancient hand-wrought pottery, like several large amphorae — containers that held wine in a Roman bireme that sank two thousand years ago — recently recovered by explorerdits from the bottom of the Mediterranean. And nearby, in the same display case, lay a setting of rare blue porcelain dinnerware, once carried around the Horn of Africa in the belly of a clip
per ship to grace the table of some rich merchant.
Even more precious to my host were several fist-sized human effigies, from an era much earlier than Rome or Babylon. A time before towns or literacy, when all our ancestors roamed roofless, in hunter-gatherer tribes. One by one, Yosil’s gray golem lovingly displayed about a dozen of these “Venus” figurines, molded out of Neolithic river mud, all of them featuring voluminous breasts and copious hips that tapered down from generous thighs to the daintiest of feet. With evident pride, he told me where each little statuette was found and how old it was. Lacking clear faces, most of them looked enigmatic. Anonymous. Mysterious. And prodigiously female.
“Back in the late twentieth century, a spirited postmodern cult organized itself around these effigies,” he lectured while tugging a chain around my neck, leading me from one display case to the next.
“Inspired by these tiny sculptures, a few hyperfeminist mystics deduced a delightfully satisfying ideological fantasy — that an Earth-Mother religion preceded every other spiritual belief system, all over the planet. This ubiquitous Neolithic creed must obviously have worshipped a goddess! One whose top traits were fecundity and serene maternal kindliness. That is, till gentle Gaia was toppled by violent bands of macho Jehovah-Zeus-Shiva followers, spurred by an abrupt wave of vile new technologies — metallurgy, agriculture, and literacy — that arrived with concurrent and destabilizing suddenness, all at once shaking the tranquil old ways and toppling the pastoral mother goddess.
“It follows that every crime and catastrophe of recorded history stems from that tragic upheaval.”
Maharal’s ghost chuckled, rolling one of the Venus figures affectionately in his hand. “Oh, the goddess theory was quite fabulous and creative. Though there is another, far simpler explanation for why these little figurines are found in so many Stone Age sites.
“Every human culture has devoted considerable creative effort to crafting exaggerated representations of the fertile female form … as erotic art. Or pornography, if you will. I think we can safely assume there were frustrated males back in caveman days, as there are today. They must have ‘worshipped’ these little Venus figures in ways that we’d find familiar. Rather less lofty than Gaia veneration, but no less human.
“What has changed, after all that time, is that today’s clay sex idols are far more realistic and satisfying.
“But therein lies a rub.”
Standing in chains, wearing a miniature body and forced to listen to this drivel, I could only wonder. Was he being intentionally offensive, in order to gauge my reaction? I mean, why should the great Professor Maharal care what I think? Anyway, I’m just a cheap quarter-sized reddish-orange golem, imprinted off the gray he captured at Kaolin Manor on Tuesday. What kind of intellectual conversation can he hope to have with the likes of me?
Well, I don’t feel mentally deficient. Ever since stepping from the kiln, I’ve checked and found no apparent memory gaps. I can’t do a differential equation in my head … but Albert himself was only able to manage that for about eight weeks, long ago, when he needed calculus to pass a college course. It took the hard, concentrated work of three ebonies to gain access to that painful beauty, then he flushed it away right after exams, making room amid a hundred billion neurons for more relevant memories.
See? I can even do irony.
All right, apparently I’m better at copy-to-copy imprinting than even I realized — something Yosil Maharal must have known for a long time. Maybe from back when I took part in that high school summer research project. Were my scores really so special? Has he been grabbing my copies to study ever since?
The thought makes me feel creepy. Worse — violated. Man, what a jerk.
He claims to have reasons. And yet, don’t all fanatics?
“Now here is my greatest treasure,” Yosil said, leading me to another exhibit. “It was given to me by the Honorary Son of Heaven himself, three years ago, in gratitude for my work at Sian.”
Before me, preserved inside a sealed glass case, stood the statue — life-size — of a man with the upright bearing of a soldier, staring straight ahead, ready for action. So detailed was the sculpted handiwork that it portrayed rivets holding together strips of leather armor. A mustache, goatee, and stark cheekbones embellished strong Asiatic features — touched off by hints of whimsy. The entire effigy was made of brown terracotta.
Naturally, I knew of Sian, one of the artistic gems of the world. It would be inconceivable for a private individual to own one of these statues — if there had not been so many of them. Thousands, reclaimed from half a dozen buried regiments, discovered across more than a century, each of the effigies modeled after a particular soldier who served Ch’in, the first emperor, who conquered and united all the lands of the East. The same Ch’in who first built the Great Wall and gave his name to China.
“You know about my recent work there,” ditYosil said — not a question but statement of fact. Naturally. He’s spoken to other Alberts, giving them the very same guided tour.
To what purpose? I wondered. Why explain all this, knowing the memories will be lost and that I must be told again, the next time he ditnaps another me to serve as an unwilling subject?
Unless that’s part of what he is trying to test …
“I’ve read a thing or two about your Sian work, in the journals,” I answered guardedly. “You claim to have found soul-traces in some of the clay statues.”
“Something like that.” ditYosil’s thin smile carried evident pride, recalling the worldwide sensation that his discovery provoked. “Some call the evidence ambiguous, though I think it’s clear enough to conclude that some kind of primitive imprinting process must have been at work. By what means? We still haven’t determined. A fluke, perhaps — or the work of some ancient prodigy — helping to explain the astonishing political events of that era, as well as the terrified awe that his contemporaries held for Ch’in.
“As a direct result of my findings, the present-day Son of Heaven finally agreed to open the colossal Ch’in tomb next year! Some deep mysteries may come to light, having slept for millennia.”
“Hm,” I answered, a bit incautiously. “Too bad you won’t be there to witness it.”
“Perhaps not. Or maybe I will. So many delicious contradictions come laden in that one sentence of yours, Albert.”
“Uh. What sentence was that?”
“You said ‘too bad,’ implying values. The word ‘you’ was directed at me, as a thinking being, the person who is holding you captive right now, right?”
“Uh … right.”
“Then there are the phrases ‘be there’ and ‘witness it.’ Oh, you said a mouthful, all right.”
“I don’t see—”
“We live at a special time,” ditMaharal expounded. “A time when religion and philosophy have become experimental sciences, subject to hands-on manipulation by engineers. Miracles become trademarked products, bottled and sold at discount. The direct descendants of men who used to chip flint spearheads by the riverbank are not only making life but redefining the very meaning of the word! And yet—”
He paused. I finally had to coax him.
“And yet?”
Maharal’s gray face twisted. “And yet there are obstacles! So many of the outstanding problems in soulistics seem to have no hope of being solved, due to the ineffable complexity of the Standing Wave.
“No computer can model it, Albert. Only the shortest and fattest superconducting cables can convey its subtle majesty, barely well enough to let you press an imprint upon a nearby receptacle of specially prepared clay. Mathematically, it’s a horror! Given all the odds, I’m astonished the process works at all.
“In fact, many of today’s deepest thinkers suggest that we should just be thankful and accept it as a gift, without understanding it, like intelligence, or music, or laughter.”
He shook his head, offering a good facsimile of a disdainful snort.
“But naturally, people on the street
know nothing of this. Born with the cantankerous human spirit, they are never satisfied with a marvel — or with their vastly expanded lives. Not at all! They take it for granted, and keep demanding more.
“Make it possible for us to imprint distant golems, so we can teleport around the solar system! Give us telepathy, by letting us absorb each other’s memories! Never mind what the metamath equations say. We want more! We want to be more!
“And of course, people are right. Deep down, they sense the truth.”
“What truth do you mean, Doctor?” I asked.
“That human beings are about to become very much more! Though not in any of the ways they now imagine.”
With that cryptic remark, Maharal carefully put away the last of his dear collectibles — the cuneiform tablets and pottery shards. The ancient amphora vessels and China dinnerware. The enigmatic/erotic Venus statuettes and snow-glazed Dresden figurines. The parchment texts in Hebrew, Sanskrit, and the cryptic coded charts of medieval alchemy. Finally he gave an affectionate nod to the stalwart terracotta soldier, still standing watch with his flickering, barely detectable imbuement of soul. Maharal took obvious comfort from these treasures, as if they proved his work part of a time-honored tradition.
Then, yanking the chain around my neck, he forced me to stumble after him like a small child following a heartless giant, back into the laboratory filled with machines that hissed and whirred and sparked, making the air tingle in frightening ways. I had a hunch that some of the effects might be for show. Yosil had a flair for the dramatic. Unlike some “mad scientists,” he knew what he was and clearly relished the role.
A transparent soundproof partition divided the room. Beyond, I glimpsed the table where “I” became aware just an hour or so ago, still warm from the kiln. And nearby, strapped to another platform, lay a gray figure much taller than this body of mine. The self that I had been for several days. The one who provided a template for this narrating consciousness.