Kiln People

by David Brin

  Well, some people like to make the most of their time, whatever body they happen to be wearing.

  Clara had told me about this place, though I never visited during any of my earlier trips from the city to watch her platoon in action. She didn’t think highly of the “innovations” that bright amateur designers concoct to show off next to the killwire fence.

  “Most are too gaudy, based on legendary monsters or personal nightmares,” she said. “They may be fine for a scary movie, but no damned good in combat. A frightening leer won’t help much when the enemy has a particle beam weapon sighted between your horns.”

  That’s my girl. Always ready with tender wisdom. I found myself actually breathless with anticipation, getting close to her at last. Beyond just missing Clara, I also knew she’d have insights about my predicament with Kaolin, Maharal, and Universal Kilns. Anyway, I wanted to reach her before word got through that I’d been killed in my home by a terror missile. Maybe she’s been too distracted to watch any news, I hoped. The last thing I wanted was for her to be worried or in mourning while she still had a job to do for team and country.

  “Oh my,” Ritu Maharal commented while peering into the arena at a maelstrom of bellowing carnage transpiring within. “I never realized all this could be so—” She fell short, breathless, unable to find words.

  I was peering, too. Not at the fight but the surroundings, seeking a particular entity. The object of my quest wouldn’t have fangs. It wouldn’t be an archie, either. Professionals have better things to do with realtime than attend this amateur exhibition in person.

  “You never realized all this could all be so what?” I asked, making conversation absently. There were some big forklift-type dittos on the other side of the ring, assigned to haul away losers before their smoldering bodies could turn into slurry. But no. That was a lot of pseudoflesh to invest. I was betting on something more compact, economical.

  “So exciting! I always felt a kind of aloof superiority toward this kind of thing. But you know, if I imprinted one of these combat dittos, I bet I’d actually stay interested in the same thing for a day … both of me, I mean.”

  “Hm, great … unless your monstrous alter ego turned around and bit you in half,” I commented. Rita blanched but I continued to scan. The one I sought would need a good vantage point, yet shouldn’t be obvious to all the aficionados flocking round this place. What if they don’t send anybody? I worried. Maybe the professionals just use some hidden camera to keep an eye on -

  Then I spotted the guy. I felt sure of it. A small figure, shambling about the edges of the arena, poking at each fallen warrior, reading their pellets with a narrow stick-probe. He looked like a chimp or gibbon. You see little fellows like him all over town, so common they almost fade into the background.

  Of course, I thought, the tax collector.

  “Come on,” I told Ritu, pulling at her when she tried to stay and watch the end of a bout. I swear, I almost left her right there, so anxious was I to move on. Fortunately, one contestant struck the other a fatal blow just then, sending its massive body crashing with a thud that set the whole amphitheater vibrating and the crowd frenetically cheering.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted.

  This time she came.

  The ape grunted and spat when I called to him from behind the arena. He squatted on his haunches atop a wooden pillar, idly watching the next event.

  “Go ’way,” he muttered, in a voice only a little more clear than a real chimp’s.

  Naturally, I wasn’t the first to have figured out his guise. It must be a nuisance when amateurs come over and try to influence him with direct appeals.

  “I need to talk to a member of the 442nd,” I said.

  “Sure. You an’ every other fan, after the assault on Moesta Ridge. But sorry, no autographs till after the war, pal.”

  “I’m no fan. This message is personal and urgent. She’ll want to hear it, believe me!”

  The chimp spat again, brown slip with a touch of arsenic glaze. “And why should I believe you?”

  Frustration boiled inside, but I kept my voice even.

  “Because if Sergeant Clara Gonzales finds out that you kept me from getting through to her, she’ll grab you by the archie and give you a memory you’ll never get rid of.”

  The ape blinked at me a couple of times.

  “You do sound like you know Clara. Who are you?”

  It was a dangerous moment. But what choice did I have?

  I told him … and those dark eyes stared at me. “So, you’re the ghost of poor Albert the ditective, come all this way to bid her good-bye. Damn shame what happened to you, man! Getting torched by a hoodoo missile always hurts. I can’t imagine what it must’ve felt like in person.”

  “Uh, right. I kind of hoped to reach Clara before she found out about it.”

  The pseudochimp tsked and shook his head. “I wish you had, fellah. ’Cause you wasted your remaining span coming out here. The minute Clara heard the news, she took off!”

  It was my turn to stare in surprise.

  “She … went AWOL? In the middle of a war?”

  “Not only that, she snatched a guv’ment copter and flew straight to the city. Our team commander’s in a funk over this, let me tell you!”

  “I can’t believe it.” My legs felt weak and my heart beat hard.

  “Yeah, ironic. She drops everything rushing to town, only to miss your ghost who rushed out to console her.”

  The observer-scout leaped off his perch to land next to me and held out a hand. “I’m Gordon Chen, corporal in the 117th Support Company. We met once, I think, when you came down for last year’s playoffs.”

  An image came to mind, of a rather tall half-Oriental fellow with perfect posture and a gentle smile … about the least simian-looking human being I ever saw. Yet he wore this body with ease. “Yeah,” I answered absently. “At a party after the Uzbek semi-final match. We talked about gardening.”

  “Uh-huh. So it really is you.” His ditto-teeth looked formidable when he grinned. “Gautama! I often wondered how it must feel to be a ghost. Is it weird?” He shook his head. “Forget I asked. Is there’s anything I can do for you, Albert? Just ask.”

  There was something he could do for me. But asking could wait a few seconds. Or minutes. I still had to let it all sink in. My disappointment at having missed Clara. Plus surprise that she could be so impulsive. But above all, one transfixing fact.

  I always knew she cared for me. We’re great friends, good in bed. We make each other laugh.

  But for her to pull a crazy stunt like this! Dropping everything to go sift the ashes of my house, hoping and praying that I wasn’t there when it blew up … Why, she must actually love me!

  Over the course of the last two days I had learned that I was both a crime suspect and a target for assassins. I’d been ambushed, left for dead, then endured a harsh desert trek, and faced even more disappointing setbacks. Yet, despite all that, I suddenly found myself feeling rather … well … happy.

  If I survive the efforts of my enemies, and don’t wind up a corpse or in jail, I’m going to have to talk to her. Rethink our reluctance to -

  Just then, the ongoing background noise of grunting combat gave way to a loud sizzle, followed by a wet-heavy swatting sound. The crowd of ecstatic archies stood up all at once, roaring and setting the spiderweb grandstand jiggling as a spiky round object soared out of the arena in a high arc, dripping trails of gore behind it.

  “Sherds!” Corporal Chen cried, leaping back with apelike agility. Ritu and I hurried after, barely dodging as a fanged and glowering head struck just meters away, rolling to a stop near my feet.

  Rapid golem-dissolution was already setting in as smoke and slurry poured out both ears, staining the moist sand. The owner of this head better fetch it quick, if he wanted a complete inload. All those barbs and horns and stingers might be part of a hobbyist’s loving, homemade combat design, but I sure wasn’t bending over to touch the huge,
snaggle-toothed thing!

  And yet, even after what it had just been through, the head still clung to consciousness. Crocodillian eyes blinked for a few seconds, focusing briefly with an expression more disappointed than tragic. The jaw moved. Trying to speak. Against my better judgment, I bent closer.

  “Wow …” the head whispered, while light still glinted in those feral eyes. “What … a … russshhh … !”

  The chimpanzee soldier snorted, a sound tinged with grudging respect.

  Stepping back, I turned to Clara’s comrade and asked, “Did you mean what you just said — about being willing to do something for us?”

  “Sure, why not?” The ape-ditto shrugged. “Any buddy of Clara’s is a bud of mine.”

  31

  Golem Crazy

  … as Little Red gets ready to make his mark …

  I stared at the gray ghost of Yosil Maharal, as the news gradually sank in

  “A … missile attack?”

  “That’s right. Little remains of your home — and your archie — but a smoking crater. So your only hope now is the same as mine. Successful completion of my experiment.”

  I reacted with churning fear and dread, naturally. This cheap red body that I wore, though small, was equipped for a full range of emotion. And yet, I’ve stared death in the face so many times, and till now always managed to put off that final losing match. So why not hope? Maharal could be bluffing. Testing my reactions.

  I kept a blank face, turning things around. Testing him.

  “Continuity, Professor. That’s what it’s all about. Even with the new technology to refill élan cells, your clay body can’t be replenished more than a few times. You’ve got to emulate my copying ability in order to make soul-impressions from one ditto to the next, indefinitely. Without an organic brain to return to, it’s your only option.”

  He nodded. “Go on.”

  “But something’s eluded you. Whatever I do — however I manage to make such good copies — the knack isn’t easily duplicated.”

  “That’s right, Morris. I believe it has partly to do with your casual attitude toward the dittos that went missing over the years. An attitude you demonstrate even now. See how relaxed you are, on hearing that your real body was destroyed? Anyone else would be frantic.”

  I felt anything but relaxed. In fact, I was pissed off! But other priorities ranked higher than going orbital and screaming at this fellow. All my other prisoner-selves would have diagnosed Smersh-Foxleitner syndrome by now. They’d decide to feign a lackadaisical attitude. Act unimpressed. Draw Maharal out.

  Shall I stay with that approach? Or try a new tack in order to surprise him?

  At the moment, shackled down, I saw no way to take advantage of surprise. Better save it for later.

  “You see,” Maharal continued, warming to his subject, “we humans are all still deeply rooted in the animal response set … the desperate drive to continue organic existence. Inherited survival instinct played an important role in our evolution, but it can also be an anchor, pinning down the Standing Wave. It’s one reason why few people make truly first-rate ditto impressions, without affectual holes or memory gaps. They hold back, never letting their entire selves roll fully in the clay.”

  “Hm. Cute metaphor,” I replied. “But there are millions of exceptions. In fact, lots of folks are far more careless with their golems than I am … or was. Experience junkies. Org-warriors. Janitors who make commercial throwaway units by the gross. And blue cops who will gladly jump in front of a train to save a cat. Then there are nihilists—”

  That word made Yosil wince, his expression briefly pained. A deeply personal kind of pain. Something clicked as I put together some disjointed clues from what felt like only yesterday.

  “Your daughter,” I guessed, stabbing at a hunch.

  He nodded, an unsteady jerk. “Ritu might be called a nihilist, of a certain kind. Her dittos are … unpredictable. Disloyal. They don’t care. At another level I … don’t think she does, either.”

  One could easily read guilt in his supple gray features. A hopeful track to follow. A new track, since none of my other captive-selves would have met Ritu. Might I use this tenuous personal connection in some way? If I could force Yosil to view me as more of a person …

  But Maharal only shook his head. His expression hardened. “Let’s just say that no simple or single trait explains your ability, Morris. In fact, I consider it a rare combination, perhaps impossible to replicate in another person who remains enmeshed in his own complicated life. The local viewpoint — parochially limited and yet addictive — has long been recognized as an unseverable chain. An anchor, keeping the soul ensnared.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “Of course you don’t see. If you did, your mind would quail from the majestic beauty and terror of it all!”

  “I—”

  “Oh, it’s not your fault.” Having surged, his emotion drained away as quickly. “Each of us remains convinced that our own subjective viewpoint is more urgent than anyone else’s — indeed, even more valid than the objective matrix that underlies so-called reality. After all, the subjective view is a grand theater. Each of us gets to be hero of an ongoing drama. It’s why ideologies and bigotries survive against all evidence or logic.

  “Oh, subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature’s champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet … and several times to our species nearly wiping itself out.”

  I had a sudden recollection of first meeting this fellow — Maharal’s gray ghost — at UK on Tuesday, shortly before his original was found dead in a ruined car. That morning, ditYosil spoke of his archie in surprising terms, describing realYosil as a borderline paranoid, drifting in and out of dark fantasies. Later, he described nightmares about “technology gone mad … The same fear that Fermi and Oppenheimer felt when they watched the first mushroom cloud …”

  It seemed easy enough to dismiss at the time. Intriguing, but also melodramatic. Now I wondered. Could father and daughter have different versions of the same underlying tendency? A penchant for unreliable copying? How ironic, then, if one of the founders of modern dittotech was unable to make golems he could depend on!

  I started speculating exactly when Yosil Maharal made his great conceptual breakthrough. Last week? Monday? Just hours before his death, when he thought himself quite safe and alone? A growing suspicion made me feel creepy, all up and down my spine.

  Meanwhile, the gray golem kept talking. “No, the value of egotistical self-importance cannot be denied, back when individual humans competed with each other and with nature to survive. Only now it’s a mixed blessing, fostering waves of social alienation. More fundamentally, it limits the range of plausibility wave functions that we’re willing to perceive, or to collapse into reified events that others can share and verify—”

  Maharal paused. “But this is going over your head.”

  “I guess you’re right, Doc.” I pondered for a moment. “Still, I think I read a popular article a while back … You’re talking about the Observer Effect, right?”

  “Yes!” He took a step forward, enthusiasm briefly winning over his need for scorn. “Years ago, Bevvisov and I argued whether the newly discovered Standing Wave was a manifestation of quantum mechanics, or a completely separate phenomenon that happened to use similar transformation dynamics. Like most scientists of his generation, Bevvisov disliked using the word ‘soul’ in relation to anything that could be measured or palpably manifested in the physical world. Rather, he believed in a variant of the old Copenhagen quantum interpretation — that every event in the universe arises out of a vast sea of interacting probability amplitudes. Unreified potentialities that only take on tangible effect in the presence of an observer.”

  “In other words, that ‘subjective viewpoint’ you were talking about.”

  “Right again. Someone has to consciously notice the effect of an experiment or event, in order for the wave fu
nctions to collapse and for it to become real.”

  “Hm.” I was struggling, but tried hard not to show it. “You mean like that cat inside a box, who’s both alive and dead at the same time, till they open the lid.”

  “Very good, Albert! Yes. As in the life or death of Schrödinger’s cat, every decision state in the universe remains indeterminate till it’s reified through observation by a thinking being. Even if that being stands many light-years away, glancing at the sky and casually noting the existence of a new star. In so doing, he can be said to have helped create the star, collaboratively, with every other observer who noticed it. The subjective and the objective have a complex relationship, all right! More than anyone imagined.”

  “I see, Doc. That is, I think I do. And yet … this has to do with the Standing Wave … how?”

  Maharal was too excited to get exasperated. “Long ago, a renowned physicist, Roger Penrose, proposed that consciousness arises out of indeterminate quantum phenomena, acting at the level of tiny organelles that reside inside human brain cells. Some believe it’s one reason why no one ever succeeded at the old dream of creating genuine artificial intelligence in a computer. The deterministic logic of the most sophisticated digital system remains fundamentally limited, incapable of simulating, much less replicating, the deeply nested feedback loops and stochastic tonal modes of that hypercomplex system we call a soul-field …”

  Oog. Now this was rapidly going way over my head. But I wanted to keep Maharal talking. In part because he might reveal something useful. And to delay things. Whatever he planned on doing to me next, with all of his mad scientist machinery, I knew by now that it was going to hurt.