Kiln People

by David Brin

  Only I didn’t see her among them.

  You learn to look for signs … a certain carriage or bearing or maybe a sashay of the hips. I’ve been able to pick out Clara, on the flickering image of a battlefield sportscam, amid a squad of mud-encrusted quadrupeds covered with refractory plates of stegasauroid armor. Mere costumery doesn’t matter. Something in the way she moves, I guess.

  No, she wasn’t in this bunch. In fact, they all moved pretty much the same, swaggering in a manner that seemed as brash as hers, only more arrogant. And maybe a bit mean. There was a sense of familiarity, without being able to pin it down.

  I didn’t shout. The troop of thirty or so combat golems passed by, heading deeper into the storage room, toward the place where I was standing before the monster abducted me. And for the first time, I wondered, was the thing actually trying to help me?

  Soon I heard sounds of tearing metal! My captor moved out from the shadows, far enough for us to glimpse the demolition of several wall cabinets! War-dittos attacked them, ripping off doors and tossing the contents aside, searching … searching …

  … till one let out a cry. The back of one cabinet split open with a loud hiss, exposing blank emptiness where a stone wall was legally supposed to be.

  I knew it!

  Of course, my satisfaction was mixed. This showed I was a still a pretty good private eye. It also meant I was an idiot for not calling the authorities before! Now …

  Now?

  I wondered as the big golem shifted me under its good arm and headed the other way, out of the storage room, into the hall.

  ThHhHhHhHhH-mmmmmph!

  Behind us, I heard laser and phase-maser fire! Low, menacing hums followed by the rapid pops and cracks of spalling rock … and the splat of warm, moist clay hitting some wall. The battle-dits must have encountered something inside the tunnel. Defenses. Strong ones.

  And you were going to just charge on through. Fool, I chided myself.

  If only I could make that call! But the chador was gone. Anyway, the big monster was carrying me in the opposite direction, down a long hallway toward the fresh smell of newly baked souls.

  We entered a chamber containing deluxe freezers and kilns — the kind used by elites, equipped with the highest quality Standing Wave sifters. More stuff for the gummint cream to use if they ever had to hide down here while the rest of us were getting snuffed out, far above. Several freezers gaped open, with their contents recently looted. A high-speed kiln hissed, the machinery chugging through final warmdown after having just processed a large batch — presumably the pack of warriors I just saw. The ones now fighting their way into a tunnel under Urraca Mesa.

  But where was the archetype source, the archie? The one who did the imprinting? Clearly, this was not the military police at work. I tried to look around for the copier machine itself. We rounded a corner.

  From my position, pinned under that giant arm, I caught a blurry glimpse. One figure lay stretched out on the original platten of the copier, while a second shape bent over, holding some ominous instrument.

  The big golem who was carrying me let out a bellow and charged!

  The standing figure turned, grabbing for a weapon — but the three of us crashed together before the pistol came to bear, tumbling in a pile.

  “My” golem needed its arm in order to fight the thick-limbed soldier-dit, so I rolled free, scooting away as fast as I could, then scrambling to my feet while rubbing my bruised rib cage. The battle surged as two monstrous roxes pounded each other, rolling back and forth amid horrendous roars!

  Real people first, I thought, remembering lessons from school. I hurried to the figure who lay supine on the platten … and gasped to find Ritu Maharal! She lay there, conscious — you have to be, in order to make decent copies — but her eyes didn’t track at first as I tugged at the cruel straps holding her down.

  “Al …” she choked. “Al — bert … !”

  “What bastard did this to you!” I cursed, hating whoever it was. Involuntary copying — soul-stealing — is an especially nasty kind of rape. As soon as the straps were loose, I hauled her off the table and to a far corner, as far as possible from the battling titans. She clung to me hard, burying her head in my shoulder, sobbing as her warm skin shivered.

  “I’m here. It’ll be okay,” I assured, not sure the promise could be kept. Eyeing possible ways to exit the room as “my” one-armed monster battled the other big golem. The one who had been tightening Ritu’s straps, preparing to -

  I glanced at the floor where an implement lay fallen from that ditto’s fingers. Not some torture device but a med-sprayer, filled with some purple concoction. I wondered … could appearances be deceiving. What if this was only a doctor, trying to help Ritu?

  The fallen laser clattered across the floor, kicked to and fro as the giants bellowed, strained, and tore at each other. Should I try to grab the weapon? Not easy, amid those heaving limbs. And suppose I did manage to recover the weapon. Should I shoot the first ditto, or the second?

  As Ritu quivered in my arms, the issue was settled with a double crack of finality. Both of the struggling war-golems suddenly shuddered and went still.

  “Well, I’ll be a …”

  It took a moment to disentangle poor, disheveled Ritu and guide her back, taking a few steps toward the two bodies, already starting to smolder on the floor. I approached cautiously, though she tried to hold me back, till I could see them clearly on the ground, beyond the imprinting tables.

  My captor — the rox with one arm — lay atop the other one, apparently lifeless.

  The one beneath, who had been standing over Ritu preparing to inject either medicine or poison, lay with its neck twisted at a creepy angle. But a spark remained. The eyes glittered, staring directly into mine, beckoning.

  Against my better judgment — and Ritu’s frantic tugging — I approached.

  One of the eyes winked.

  “Hello … Morris,” came individual raspy words. “You … really … have to stop … following … me around like this.”

  A chill coursed my spine.

  “Beta? Great Rava of Prague! What are you doing here?”

  A chuckle. Snide and superior. I knew it all too well.

  “Oh, Morris … you can be … so dense.” The effigy of my enemy coughed, spitting slip with an ugly, deathlike glaze. “Why don’t you ask her what … I’m doing here?”

  The glittering eyes moved to Ritu.

  I glanced up at Yosil Maharal’s daughter, who moaned in response.

  “Me? Why should I know anything about this monster!” ditBeta coughed again. This time the words came mixed in a chalky death rattle.

  “Why indeed … Betty …” Then all light vanished from its eyes.

  I guess, long ago, there used to be some gratification from having your worst enemy die in front of you. A sense of completion, at least. But Beta and I had done this to each other — gasped our cryptic last in each other’s arms — so many times that I could only view it now with utter frustration.

  “Damn!” I kicked the one-armed golem on top. The mute one who apparently had been intent on rescuing me and Ritu, all along. “Why’d you have to kill it? I had questions!”

  I turned back to Ritu, still shivering in reaction and clearly in no shape to be interrogated.

  Just then a nearby autokiln hummed back into active mode, hissing and rumbling.

  Nobody had asked it to, as far as I could tell.

  I didn’t like the sound.

  44

  The Dit and the Pendulum

  … as gray combines with red …

  Echoes … the weird ones from outside … keep getting stronger, recurring every few minutes. Whenever the big machine triggers another “resonance” mode, I/we pick up hints of something that seems both other and familiar. At once oddly reassuring and strangely terrifying.

  Aw, man … we/I had just started getting used to being combined. A twinned state … one mind sharing two bodies — gray
and little red — sloshing back and forth, continuously imprinting each other. Two emulated brains, linked not only by a common soul-template, but the same active Standing Wave, thrumming through the empty space between us.

  A space where Yosil Maharal’s gray ghost is preparing to sit, on a swaying platform that swings back and forth, passing between Gray and Little Red at regular intervals.

  There’s something familiar about the period of the pendulum … linked to the pattern of our rhythmic soul-bursts. No coincidence, I bet.

  No bet, I feel Little Red agree, from outside my gray skull, feeling no different than any of the many internal voices that a person conjures up, in the course of a day.

  Weird.

  “You said you were making the perfect copier,” I prompt ditMaharal, trying to get him talking. Even his smarmy lecturing beats the dread of waiting. Or maybe I’m just claying for time.

  He looks up from his preparations, glancing toward me. Busy, but never too busy to pontificate.

  “I call it a ‘glazier,’ ” he says, with evident pride.

  “A … what?”

  “G-L-A-Z-I-E-R,” he spells. “It stands for God-Level Amplification by Zeitgeist Intensification and Ego Refraction. Do you like the name?”

  “Like it? I—”

  Starting to answer, I feel the latest amplification wave strike, triggering another spasm as I strain against the bindings that hold me down. It’s painful, and rife with those strange echoes, but fortunately quick. Actually, I’m kind of getting used to the hits.

  I’ve started noticing something in them other than just agony. Something queerly like music.

  When the wave ebbs, I can resume answering ditMaharal’s question.

  “I … hate it. What … whatever made you pick such an awful name?”

  The golem that assassinated its own maker — and mine — reacts to my goading by laughing aloud. “Well, I admit there was a touch of whimsy involved. You see, I wanted to make a parallel with—”

  “—with a laser. I’m not stupid, Maharal.”

  He winces in evident surprise.

  “And what else have you figured out, Albert?”

  “The two of us … we two Morris dittos … the gray and red … we’re like the mirrors at both ends of a laser, is that it? And the important stuff … whatever’s supposed to be amplified … goes in between.”

  “Very good! So you did go to school.”

  “Kid stuff,” I growl. “And don’t patronize me. If I’m gonna provide the instrument for making a god out of you, show some respect.” ditYosil’s eyes widen for just a moment, then he nods.

  “I never quite looked at it that way. So be it, then. Let me explain without patronizing.

  “It’s all about the Standing Wave that Jefty Anonnas found glimmering in that region of phase space between neuron and molecule, between body and mind. The so-called soul-essence that Bevvisov learned to press into clay, proving that the ancient Sumerians had an inkling of a lost truth. The motivational essence that Bevvisov and I then imprinted onto Aeneas Kaolin’s wonderful claynamation automatons, with results that stunned us all and transformed the world.”

  “So? What does this have to do with—”

  “I’m getting to that. Sustained by fields and atoms, like everything else, the Standing Wave is nevertheless so much more than the sum of our parts — our memories and reflexes, our instincts and drives — in much the same way that ripples on a sea show only the surface portions of a vastly complex tug and pull below.”

  I’m feeling another pulse approach. Watching the suspended platform, I’ve realized that it swings back and forth exactly twenty-three times between each painful throb of the machine.

  “All of that sounds awfully pretty,” I tell ditYosil. “But what about this experiment? So you’ve got my Standing Wave bouncing back and forth, with the two of me acting as mirrors. Because I’m such a good copier that—”

  The next pulse hits, hard! I grunt and strain. Sometimes the effect is worse, like plucking harmonies out of catgut while it’s still inside the cat. Then, abruptly, another of those echoes comes over me …

  … and I briefly find myself envisioning a moonlit landscape of dark plains and ravines, covered with opal glows and shadows, rolling along below me, as if viewed by a creature of the air.

  Then it passes.

  I try to hold my train of thought, using the conversation as an anchor … since my real anchor, the organic Albert Morris, is dead, I’m told.

  “So, you use my Standing Wave … because I’m such a good copier. And you’re a bloody awful one. Is that right, Yosil?”

  “Impudent, but correct. You see, it’s fundamentally a matter of accounting—”

  “Of what?”

  “Accounting, the way physicists and soulists do it. Adding up, arranging, or counting assortments of identical particles. Or anything else, for that matter! Grab a bunch of marbles out of a bag … does it matter which one is which, if they all look alike? How many different ways can you sort them, if they’re all the same? It turns out the statistics are totally different if each marble has something unique about it! A nick, a scratch, a label …”

  “What the hell are you talking—”

  “This distinction is especially important at the quantum level. Particles can be counted in two ways — as fermions and bosons. Protons and electrons sort as fermions, which are forced to stay apart from one another by an exclusion principle that’s more fundamental than entropy. Even if they seem identical and come from the same source, they have to be counted individually and occupy states that are quantum-separated by a certain minimum amount.

  “But bosons love to mingle, overlap, merge, combine, march in step — for example, in the amplified and coherent light waves generated by a laser. Photons are bosons, and they are anything but aloof! Happily identical, they join together, superimpose—”

  “Get to the point, will you?” I shout, or this could go on all night.

  Yosil’s ghost frowns at me.

  “The point? Even though a golem-copy can be very much like its original, something always prevents the soul-duplicate from being truly identical … or being counted with Bose statistics. That means it cannot be coherence-multiplied, the way light is in a laser. That is, it couldn’t be, till I found a way! Starting with an excellent copier and an ego of just the right ductility—”

  “So it’s like a laser and you’re using two of me to supply your mirror. What’s your role in all this?”

  He grins.

  “You’ll supply the pure carrier waveform, Morris, since you’re good at that. But the substance of the soul we’re amplifying will be mine.”

  Hearing this and looking at his facial expression — oh, he’s got Smersh-Foxleitner, all right. Stage four at least. Amoral, paranoid, and profoundly self-deceptive. The worst sufferers can believe seventeen different things before breakfast … and sometimes brilliantly weave the incompatible notions together by noon!

  “What about the god-level part of your machine’s stupid name?” I ask, not expecting to like the answer. “Isn’t that unscientific? Even mystical?”

  “Don’t be rude, Albert. It’s a metaphor, of course. At present we have no words to describe what I’m about to achieve. It transcends today’s language the way Hamlet outsoliloquies a bonobo chimp.”

  “Yeah, yeah. There have been Neo Age rumors about such ‘transcendence’ for as long as I can remember. Soul-projection machines and wild-eyed schemes to upload people straight to heaven. You and Kaolin were pestered by such nonsense for decades. Now you’re telling me there’s a core of truth?”

  “I am, though using true science rather than wishful thinking. When your own Standing Wave becomes a Bose condensate—” ditYosil pauses, cocking his head, as if curious about a sound. Then, shaking his head, he seems ready to go on, enthusiastically describing his ambition to become something new — something much bigger or better than the mere run of mortals. He opens his mouth -

/>   — as a noise penetrates the underground chamber, now clearly audible. A distant rumble from beyond one stony wall.

  An instrument panel erupts with warning glows, some red, others amber. “Interlopers,” a cyber voice announces. “Interlopers in the tunnel …”

  An image globe resolves in thin air, growing larger as we both feed it with our attention. Inside, we see dim figures marching along a murky corridor of undressed limestone. Sudden flashes pour from an outcrop, slicing one of the figures in half, but the rest of the armed force respond with uncanny quickness, swinging weapons up to fire, blasting hidden robo-sentinels. Soon the way is clear and they resume their steady march.

  “Estimated arrival at this locale in forty-eight minutes …”

  Maharal’s gray ghost shakes its head.

  “I hoped for more time, but it can be done.”

  He hurries away, abandoning our conversation, returning to his preparations. Preparations that would use me -

  — use us! Little Red insists.

  — use us to help elevate his soul, amplifying it to some grandiose level of power. Typical bloody Smersh-Foxleitner. The mad scientist’s disease.

  I wonder. Could this really work? Might the ghost of a dead professor manage to transform himself beyond any need for an organic brain, or even a physical link to the world? Perhaps rising so high that life on a mere planet becomes trivial and boring? I could picture such a macro-Maharal entity just heading off, seeking cosmic-scale adventures among the stars. Which’d be cool by me, I guess, so long as he went away and left this world alone.

  But I have an uneasy feeling that ditYosil has in mind a more local kind of deification. Both more provincial and deeply controlling.

  Many of the folks I know won’t like what he’d become.

  Oh, and the process will probably use up the “mirrors” of his … glazier. Whatever the outcome, I don’t figure i/we (gray/red) will much enjoy serving as Yosil’s vehicle to reach this personal nirvana of his.

  “You know—” I began, hoping to distract him.