Kiln People

by David Brin

  Only then another pulse struck.

  45

  Desert Rox

  … as Greenie is driven to ditspare …

  Tuesday’s child is full of grace -

  Wednesday’s child is full of woe -

  Thursday’s child has far to go, and -

  And? I wondered. After my eventful and generously extended span on Earth — more than two whole days — what next?

  Not much, at the rate my body was starting to decay. I could feel the familiar signs of golem senescence creeping in, plus glimmerings of the salmon reflex, that urge to report home for memory inloading. To escape oblivion by returning to the one real organic brain where I might yet live on.

  A brain that might actually still exist! Just when I had grown accustomed to the idea that it was blown to bits, I wondered. Suppose Albert Morris lives, and I could somehow reach him before I dissolve. Would he have me back?

  Assuming he still lived?

  As Beta flew his agile little Harley through the night, that seemed a growing possibility! According to web reports I viewed while crammed behind Beta’s pilot seat.

  “That settles it,” one of the amateur deduction mavens announced. “They never found enough protoplasmic residue in that burnt house for a whole body!”

  “And see how the police are behaving. Munitions auditors still swarm all over, but the Human Protection Division is gone! That means no one was killed there.”

  I should be glad. Yet, if Albert did exist, he probably commanded a whole army of himselves, using high-class grays and ebonies to track down the villain who destroyed my … our … his garden. Why, in that case, should he welcome back a stray green who refused to mow the lawn?

  Good question — and moot if I couldn’t find him! Where was Albert when the missile struck? And where was he now?

  Beta tossed a theory at me, turning his head to be heard over the engines. “See what some hobbyist ditectives found in Tuesday’s streetcam data.” His domed head gestured to a display globe showing the Sycamore Avenue house, before it was destroyed. Leaning my chin on Beta’s pilot seat, I watched the garage door open in soft pre-twilight. The Volvo crept out.

  “He left! Then why did everybody think he was still there when the missile … Oh, I see.”

  As the car turned down Sycamore, one camera got a fine view of the driver. It was an Albert Morris gray. Bald and glossy — the perfect golem. By implication, realAl must still be in the house.

  Beta knew better. “Appearances mean nothing. Your archie is nearly as good at disguises as I am.” Strong praise from a master of deception. “But then where … ? I spent lavishly for a top freelance voyeur. She tracked the car from camview to camview along the Skyway Highway, to this camera-blank road.” ditBeta waved past the windshield at a slender desert lane below. Moonlight painted wan, lonely tones — a different world than the ditto-clogged city, or suburbs where comfortably unemployed realfolk distract themselves by pursuing a million hobbies. Below, nature reigned … subject to advice and consent from the Department of Environments.

  “What could Albert be up to, coming out this way?” I wondered aloud. Our memories were the same Tuesday noon. Something must have happened since.

  “You have no idea?”

  “Well … after I was made, Ritu Maharal phoned with news that her father was killed in an auto wreck. My next move would’ve been to study the crash site.”

  “Let’s see.” Beta twiddled chords on a controller. Images rippled, zooming to a rocky desolation, underneath a highway viaduct. Police and rescue cruisers surrounded a ruin of twisted metal. “You’re right,” Beta announced. “It’s not far from here, and yet … odd. Albert drove some distance past the crash site; we’re already fifty klicks south.”

  “What could be south, except …”

  Abruptly I knew. The battle range. He was heading to see Clara.

  Beta asked. “Did you say something?”

  “Nothing.”

  Albert’s love life wasn’t any of this character’s business. Anyway, I had seen Clara today, rummaging through the ruins. So they must not have connected, after all. Something was fishy, all right.

  After flying in silence for a while, I asked Beta for a chador. He took a compact model from the glove compartment and passed it back. Wriggling in the cramped space, I slipped the holo-luminescent folds over my head and spent a while rapid-reciting a report, summarizing what happened since the last time I filed, not caring if Beta listened in. He already knew all about events that took place after Palloid and I left the Ephemerals Temple.

  “Who’re you sending the report to?” he asked casually when I removed the chador. A keypad glowed nearby, ready for any net address. The in-box of the chief of police. The whistle-blowers page of the Times. Or the fan/junkmail queue of one of those golem astronauts who were on Titan right now, taking turns exploring for a day or two, then dissolving to save on food and fuel till the next replacement came out of storage.

  I asked myself the same question. If I send an encrypted file to Albert’s cache, there’s no guarantee Beta won’t tag it with a parasite-follower.

  Clara, then? What about Pal?

  Assuming the Waxers hadn’t hurt my friend amid all that mayhem, he’d be in a helluva state — either steaming mad over the loss of Palloid’s memories or else in a stupor if they made him take a forget-sniff. Either way, Pal didn’t know how to be discreet.

  Then I thought of someone fitting … with the added virtue that it’d gall Beta. “Inspector Blane of the Labor Subcontractors Association,” I told the transmitter unit, with an eye to my companion’s reaction. Beta merely smiled and fussed over the controls while my report went out.

  “Include a copy of the film,” he suggested. “Those pictures Irene took.”

  “They implicate you—”

  “In Class D industrial espionage. A trifling civil matter. But the sabotage attempt at UK was serious! Realfolk might have been endangered. Those pictures prove Kaolin—”

  “We don’t know it was him. Why sabotage his own factory?”

  “For insurance? An excuse to write off capital equipment? He strove hard to blame all his enemies — Gadarene, Wammaker, Lum, and me.”

  I’d been thinking about Kaolin. What’s in the Research Division that he might want to destroy? A program he couldn’t justify shutting down … unless it were ruined by some act beyond his control?

  Or one he didn’t want to share?

  I knew firsthand of one breakthrough — golem-rejuvenation — that gave me this extra, eventful day. Suppose I kept loyal to Aeneas for that, bringing him the film. Would my reward me be another extension? I guess it’s to my credit that I never felt tempted. The habit of a lifetime … thinking yourself expendable when you’re in clay.

  Still, why suppress the new replenishment technology? To keep people buying lots of ditto blanks?

  Not necessarily. Kilns and freezers and imprinters were the big-ticket items, and sales had tapered off. There was also talk of “conservation” — how we may deplete the best golem-quality clay beds in a generation or two. What could be more profitable than for UK to act responsibly … and make billions … by manufacturing and selling replenishers? Anyway, suppose he did wipe out every ditto in the Research Division. Word of the breakthrough would leak anyway, in a matter of months.

  He must have had a reason, though. One I hadn’t fathomed yet.

  “The film could exonerate me — and you,” Beta urged. “I have a scanner here. Just feed it in and send.” He indicated a slot in the control panel.

  “No,” I said, feeling wary. “Not yet.”

  “But in seconds Blane could have a copy and—”

  “Later.” I felt another of those weird headaches coming on — brief but intensely disorienting, accompanied by queasy, claustrophobic feelings, as if I weren’t here at all, but someplace cramped, confining. Probably a side effect of my overextended existence. “Are we getting close?”

  “The Volvo�
�s last trace was about there.” Beta pointed to a curvy stretch of desert road. “Then no further sightings. It never showed up where the next camview covers the highway. I’ve been circling, looking for signs, but Albert disconnected his car-transponder, naughty boy. And there’d be no pellet in his brow if he was real. I’m at a loss.”

  “Unless—”

  “Yeah?”

  “—he set forth with a spare in the trunk.”

  “A spare?” Beta ruminated. “Even if it wasn’t baked yet, the pellet would respond if we broadcast a close enough coding. Great. Let me just take a reading of your pellet for comparison …”

  Reaching around, Beta pushed a portable scanner. The reasoning — if Albert took a spare, it could be from the same factory batch as me. Similar codes, unless he scrambled them. And he was often too lazy to bother.

  “Good idea.” But I warded off the scanner. “Just don’t play games. You already read my code. I felt it when I hopped aboard.”

  Beta offered his usual grin. “Fair enough. A little paranoia suits you, Morris.”

  I’m not Morris, I thought. But the protest, which seemed proud on Tuesday, felt weary now.

  “Let’s see if we can find that ditto spare,” the pilot murmured, turning back to his instruments. The skycycle leaped powerfully at his bidding.

  It must pay to be a copyright pirate. Even after Beta’s enemy wrecked his bootlegging empire, he still has enough loot stashed away for an emergency backup copy to ride in style.

  “Got it,” Beta said minutes later. “The resonance is … damn! The car headed east, into the badlands. Why would Albert drive cross-country in a Volvo?”

  I shrugged, unable to guess as the signal grew stronger. Such a long-range fix would be impossible in the city, with so many pellets all around. Here, it positively throbbed just ahead.

  “Careful, this is rough country,” I urged. The lower ravines lacked even moonlight. Beta let instruments take over, doing what computers and software are best at, performing simple procedures with utter precision. A minute later, amid a roar, a shuddering bump, and then a tapering sigh, we landed in a narrow canyon with the Harley’s headlight shining at the canted wreckage of a battered land car. Not as badly smashed as Maharal’s, but trapped just as surely.

  How did this happen? Could Albert be dead, after all?

  I had to wait for Beta to open the canopy and exit first, waving his scanner around, then followed to verify there were no real bodies. So Albert either walked away or was taken. Good. I didn’t relish burying my maker.

  “Every piece of electronic apparatus is ruined. Some kind of pulse weapon could do that,” Beta commented. “Best guess, almost two days ago.”

  “And no one spotted the car in all that time.” I glanced up to see how narrow the ravine was.

  “Here’s the ditspare.” The trunk of the wrecked auto groaned wide to reveal a small portakiln and a CeramWrap cocoon that lay split open. The golembody had never been heat-activated. Instead of dissolving, it slumped like a corroding clay figurine, cracking in the desert heat. A latent life — a potential Albert — who never got a chance to stand or comment sardonically on the ironies of existence.

  In the skycycle’s beam, I saw a deep gouge at the base of the ditto’s throat. The little recitation-recorder. I give them to every gray, to narrate investigations in realtime. Someone cut it out. Only Albert would know it was there.

  Beta, using a torch to examine every inch of the passenger compartment, cursed colorfully. “Where could she have gone off to from here? Did someone pick them up? Was she trying to reach …”

  “She? There was a passenger?”

  Contempt filled Beta’s voice, replacing his recent cordiality. “Always two steps behind, Morris. Did you think I’d go to all this trouble just to find your missing rig?”

  I thought quickly. “Maharal’s daughter. She hired Albert to investigate her father’s accident … Albert must’ve headed out with her to look over the crash site. Or else—”

  “Go on.”

  “Or else to the place Maharal fled from when he died. Some place Ritu knew about.”

  Beta nodded. “What I can’t figure is why Morris went in person. And in disguise. Did he know his house was being targeted?”

  I had an idea about that, from the way Albert felt when he made me. Lonely, tired, and thinking of Clara, whose battalion waged war not too far from here.

  “What do you know of the assassins?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Me? Why, nothing.”

  You know something! I could tell. Not the whole story, maybe. But you have suspicions.

  Time to tread carefully. “Tuesday, after helping Blane raid your Teller operation, I met a decaying yellow in a back-alley disposal tube. It spoke convincingly like you, claiming that a big new enemy was taking over. Then it blurted a request that I go to Betzalel … and protect someone named Emmett … or maybe the emet. Can you explain what you meant?”

  “The yellow was desperate, Morris, if he asked you for a favor.”

  Ah, the familiar, insulting Beta. But I was playing for time, checking my surroundings in case things went abruptly sour.

  “I was too exhausted to think much about it. Still, the words sounded familiar. Then I recalled. They refer to the original Golem legend, back in the sixteenth century, when Rabbi Loew of Prague was said to have created a powerful creature out of clay in order to protect the Jews of that city from persecution.

  “The emet was a sacred word, either written on the creature’s brow or placed in its mouth. In Hebrew, it means ‘truth,’ but it can represent the source or wellspring — all things arising from one root.”

  “I went to school too, y’know,” Beta stifled a yawn. “And Betzalel was another of those golem-making rabbis. So?”

  “So, tell me why you’re following the trail of Yosil Maharal’s daughter so avidly.”

  He blinked. “I have reasons.”

  “No doubt. First I thought you meant to grab her as a template for your ditto-piracy trade. But she’s no phaedomasochistic vamp, like Wammaker, with an established clientele. Ritu’s pretty, but physical attributes are trivial with golemtech. It’s the personality — the unique Standing Wave — that makes one template special compared to another.” I shook my head. “No, you’re tracking Ritu to find the source. Her father. To find whatever secret frightened Yosil Maharal into studying the arts of deception. It’s one so terrifying that he fled across the desert Monday night, fleeing something that chased and finally killed him.”

  Greeted by silence, I insisted. “What game are you involved in? How do you fit in between Maharal and Aeneas Kaolin—”

  Beta’s golem threw back its head and laughed. “You’re just fishing. You really don’t have a clue.”

  “Oh? Then please explain, great Moriarty! What can it hurt to tell me?”

  He stared a moment.

  “Let’s make a trade. You transmit those pictures. Then I’ll tell a story.”

  “Irene’s pictures? From the Rainbow Lounge?”

  “You know what pictures I mean. Dispatch them to Inspector Blane. He knows how you got ’em, from the report you just sent. Transmit and verify. Then we’ll talk.”

  It was my turn to pause. He rescued me from that rooftop in order to help track down realAlbert … and thus Ritu Maharal … and thus her father’s secret hideaway.

  Now he has no further use for me, except to send the pictures.

  “You want me to be the one who transmits them … for the sake of credibility.”

  “You have credibility, Morris — more than you realize. Despite ham-handed efforts to frame you, nobody in high places considered you a likely saboteur. The pics you found at the Rainbow will clinch it, help exonerate you—”

  “And you!”

  “So? They implicate Kaolin. But if I send them, well, who will believe an infamous ditnapper? They’ll say I faked ’em.”

  This explained why Beta hadn’t simply taken the film
away from me. But his patience was wearing thin. “I know you, Morris. You think this gives you leverage. But don’t press it. I have bigger concerns.”

  Resignation washed over me. “So, in exchange for lending a little credibility to the theory that Kaolin sabotaged his own factory, you’ll tell me a few glimmers of useless information that will vanish when this body dissolves soon. Not much of a deal.”

  “It’s the only one you’re being offered. At least your notorious curiosity will be fed.”

  How inconvenient it is, to have an enemy who knows you so well.

  He never let me out of sight, or easy reach of his younger, stronger arms.

  “Send no messages,” Beta warned, standing next to the Harley’s open cockpit, uncovering the slot of the reader-scanner for me to slip in the spool of pictures. “Just transmit, verify, and sign off.”

  He punched in Blane’s mailbox at LSA headquarters. A nearby screen asked: Validate Sender ID. Then a single number flashed: 6

  Too quickly for conscious thought, I impulsively jabbed a response: 4

  The unit responded with 8 … and I stabbed 3.

  It went back and forth like that, rapidfire, two dozen more times, feeling entirely random to me. It wasn’t random, of course, but a kind of encryption that’s hard to crack or feign, based on a partial copy of Albert’s personal Soul Standing Wave that Blane keeps secure in a hard-baked ceramium — a kind of cypher key that can be used many times. Any particular give-and-take pattern of number cues would be different, unique, yet show a high correlation with the sender’s personality -

  — assuming it didn’t matter that I was a frankie! Nor my overwrought emotional state, scared and suspicious as hell. It actually surprised me when the screen flashed ACCEPTED, taking no longer than usual. Beta’s spiral ditto grunted approval.

  “Good, now step away from the cockpit.”

  I did so, watching a slim gun — one of his fingers, removed and reversed to aim a narrow muzzle, waved for me to move back. “I’d love to stay and chat, as promised,” said the nine-digited golem. “But I’ve wasted too much time on you already.”