Kiln People

by David Brin

  Someone else joined in at that point.

  “Leave her alone, Morris. You’re badgering the wrong me.”

  It was the wounded battle-golem assigned to guard us, so stolid till now that we had been sheltering behind it like a stone. The square-jawed face looked down, regarding me with barely any expression. Still, I sensed the familiar contempt of my longtime foe. Even knowing, at last, that it was born of neurotic overcompensation didn’t help much. I still hated the guy.

  Beta spoke in a deep-gravelly voice, but with the same snide tone.

  “As you suspect, we did have an arrangement, Yosil and I. He slipped me a limitless supply of specialty golem blanks, straight from Research, with all sorts of great features like pixelated skin that can change color patterns on command.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Yosil helped ship them directly into Ritu’s supply fridge while I worked from inside, to ensure she never examined her blanks closely. Together, we made it seem that a number of her dittos were doing exactly what she wanted them to do, minimizing her worries and suspicions. It was a big help in my operations and worked well … till just a short time ago.”

  “And what did Maharal get in return?”

  “I taught him the fine art of evasion! How to dodge and weave and evade the World Eye. My underworld contacts were a big help. It became sort of a father-and-son pastime.” The ditto winked at Ritu, who shuddered and turned away, so Beta turned the knowing smile toward me.

  “I suspect Dad always wanted a boy,” he said.

  Sibling cruelty can be disgusting. So is destructive self-hatred. This lay somewhere viciously in between.

  “I have to admit,” Beta went on, “that she put up quite a fight the last few weeks. Ever since learning about me, she stopped imprinting and killed every Beta that approached her for inloading. I was running out of delay-release versions!”

  “The decaying ditto that I found in a Dumpster behind the house—”

  “Bang.” Beta used a finger to mime a pistol firing. “Ritu terminated it. Then she grabbed Dad’s makeup kit in the house and disguised herself to look just like that gray, hoping the pretense would let her come south with you and …” Beta shook his head. “Well, I have to admit her forcefulness surprised me. I was only able to interfere a little, from inside. Good for you, Alpha!”

  “How touching,” I answered for Ritu, who looked too angry for speech. “So Father liked you best. Is that why you’re fighting your way into good old Dad’s sanctuary right now?”

  Before Beta could answer, something clicked in my thoughts.

  “The lab isn’t dormant, guarded by leftover robot sentries. Somebody’s inside, right now, planning to use stolen germ weapons in some grisly scheme. Is it Yosil’s murderer? Are you breaking in to avenge your father?”

  Beta paused, then acknowledged, “In a manner of speaking, Morris. But as long as buried truths are coming out, you might as well know” — he nodded toward Ritu — “that we have more in common with our father than you’d ever imagine.”

  Ritu blinked, looking directly at the golem for the first time. “You mean—”

  “I mean that a genius like his could never be contained within a single personality, or confined to one human brain. In Yosil, the divisions were less explicit. Still—”

  I let out a grunt of realization, recalling some bad movied plots Ritu and I’d discussed during our desert trek. How many focused on the same old nightmare, couched in contemporary terms — the fear of being conquered by your own creation, by your own darker half? In Ritu, technology brought an inner nightmare to life, amplifying an irksome personality trait into a fully reified arch criminal.

  How much further might the same syndrome go, if unleashed by a virtuoso?

  “Then Maharal—”

  Before I could finish, a shrill whistle echoed down the corridor. Beta grunted with satisfaction. “It’s about time!” The big war-ditto stood up awkwardly, favoring a gravely wounded left side, motioning for Ritu and me to follow. “The way is clear ahead.”

  When Ritu shivered, the golem soothed.

  “Picture it as a family reunion. Let’s go see what Father has become.”

  56

  Top of the Line

  … as green doughboy tries to rise …

  There weren’t any glowbulbs in the crude staircase and I had no way to judge the time spent dragging up one rough step then another, hauled along by a single good arm and a half-functional leg, leaving bits of me crumbling along the way. The ascent seemed measureless except for rhythmic throbs each time my battered form heaved upward. I counted one hundred and forty of these pulses. A hundred and forty opportunities to relax into darkness forever — till the utter blackness around me started to give way.

  Attenuated light slid down the stairs, tentatively liquid in quality, actually cheering me a bit. It’s hard to feel completely hopeless during that special moment when you first catch sight of dawn.

  It was daybreak, I soon verified, pouring through a rough cut in the far wall of a modest room that was nearly filled by a bulky machine. Crawling nearer, I saw a funnel-track slanting toward the narrow window. A rugged frame held more than a dozen slender tubes bearing dorsal and pectoral fins, as if to maneuver with agility through water or air.

  My good eye glimpsed ominous cutlass-shaped symbols marking the sleek forward tips; still realization came slowly.

  Missiles, I thought, fighting expiration fatigue. Stacked in an automatic launching system.

  And … I further noted when a row of electronic displays came alight …

  And the machinery just turned on.

  57

  Bosons in the Circuit

  … or the importance of being Emet …

  As I grow larger, as knowledge floods into me, I grow more appreciative of the grand vision that drew my tormentor to this place and hour. Yet the closer he came to greatness in recent months, the more it intimidated poor Yosil Maharal. No wonder, for he stood alone atop a vaulting arch that had been built across the millennia by humanity’s greatest minds, each of them battling darkness in his or her own way, against all odds.

  The struggle went slowly at first, with more false starts than progress. After all, what could primitive women and men accomplish, what secrets could they pierce without fire or electricity, lacking biochemistry or soulistics? Sensing there must be something more to life than tooth and claw, the earliest sages focused on their one precocious gift — a capacity for words. Words of persuasion, illusion, or magical power. Words that preached love and moral improvement. Words of supplicating prayer. Call it magic or call it faith. Well endowed with hope — or wishful thinking — but little else, they imagined that words alone would suffice, if uttered sincerely enough, in proper incantations, accompanying pure thoughts and deeds.

  Later successors, unbaring the splendor of mathematics, supposed that was the key. From Pythagorean harmonies and numerological puzzles like Kabbalah to elegant superstring theories, math seemed to be God’s own language, the code He used to write creation’s plan. Like quantum mechanics — the elegant sorting of aloof fermions and gregarious bosons — all the proud equations added to a growing edifice. They were foundations, gorgeously true.

  But not enough. For the stars we yearned to touch remained much too far away. Math and physics could only measure the vast gulf, not cross it.

  Same with the vaunted digital realm. Computers briefly tantalized, hinting that software models might prove better than reality. Enthusiasts promised new-improved minds, telepathic perception, even transcendent power. But cyberstuff fell short of opening grand portals. It became another useful tool set, just another incremental brick in the arch.

  Back in Grandma’s time, biology was the queen science. Decipher the genome, the proteome, and their subtle interplay with phenotype! Solve ecology’s riddle and achieve sustainability in nature! These were attainments every bit as vital as harnessing flame or kicking the habit of all-out war. />
  Yet where were answers to the truly deep questions?

  Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don’t look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.

  From here on is God’s domain, where only faith will take us. Though you may have penetrated the secrets of matter and time, made life in a test tube, even covered Earth with thronging duplicates, man will never infiltrate the realm of the immortal soul.

  Only now we’re crossing that line, Yosil and I, armed not with virtue but skill, utilizing every insight gathered by Homo technologicus during ten thousand years of painful struggle against nescient darkness.

  One matter remains to settle before the adventure can begin.

  Which of us will carry … and which will ride?

  Oh, there is another issue.

  Can such a bold endeavor properly commence, if it begins with a terrible crime?

  ditYosil pulls the pendulum aside now, preparing to climb aboard and launch his final dittobody into the glazier, right between the mirrors. No more nervous yammering about philosophy and metaphysics — I can sense the basso drumbeat of fear in his Standing Wave, so shuddering that it robs the poor gray’s power of speech. A fear like realYosil must have felt on Monday, when he saw things getting out of hand, with no way to avoid paying the ultimate price of hubris.

  A fear intensified by pressing events, as the last mechanical defenders fall before that army in the tunnel …

  … and instruments show ditYosil at last that something’s gone wrong with his precious plan. The glazier readings aren’t what he imagined they’d be at this point. He may finally suspect that I’m still here, not erased at all but riding the tsunami! Growing mightier by the second.

  The pendulum is aimed to slice right through the glazier, at its very heart. Suddenly I realize — this will hurt. In fact, it could be worse than anything I endured as an organic, or dittoing one copy at a time.

  I can see how it’s supposed to work … how ditYosil’s inner fire may spark the glazier’s heightened energies, seeding his own imprint with each pass, like rolling a cylinder seal over and over again in soft clay. Despite everything that’s gone wrong with his plan — despite my lingering presence — it just might work. He may succeed in taking over, wiping me out!

  Or else, we may cancel each other, leaving behind a wild, self-feeding beam of spiritual essence that could burst out of here unguided, like an all-consuming storm. A psychlone …

  I didn’t think that anything could still frighten me. I was wrong.

  Right now all I want is to go back. Return to the sere beauty of the soulscape. Contemplate again those virgin territories, more vast than any unexplored continent, more promising than a galaxy, though as-yet barely colonized by a mere few billion minuscule algae flecks along the shore — flecks who barely suspect their own latent destiny.

  Especially one cluster of unsuspecting algae — a few million — who’ve been targeted for a special fate, to make the ultimate sacrifice. Like hand-servants accompanying a Babylonian monarch to his tomb, their supporting role is to die, offering their soul-energies, contributing potency to the glazier beam, propelling the Standing Wave to new levels.

  Ancients would have called this “necromancy,” drawing magical force from the mysterious power of death itself. However named, it will be a ghastly crime …

  … and I’ve almost reconciled myself to it. All those waning embers that I witnessed earlier — dying human souls striving at their very last moments to fly free, then guttering out, falling to leave ashen impressions on the barren plain — this will make their dashed hopes worthwhile, right?

  After gazing across the Continent of Immortal Will, beckoned by its wealth of possibilities, how seriously should I worry about a few doomed algae on the shore?

  Except -

  Except that one of those tiny flickers has begun to annoy me, like a stone in my shoe. Like a pebble in my saddle. The soulscape doesn’t count distance in meters, but affinity, and this spark was too close to notice, clinging to me like a shadow. Only now do I turn to examine the irritation and discover that …

  … it’s me!

  Or rather, it’s the living, breathing Albert Morris — source of the Standing Wave that I’ve amplified profoundly. I can sense him sneaking closer in physical space, filled with all those old organic fears, drives, and sympathies. Nervous and yet dogged as ever, so near we might actually touch.

  How could this happen? ditYosil claimed to have killed Morris with a stolen missile! Death of the body should release the anchor, liberating the soul. I saw news reports — the burning house and garden — yet he survived.

  This must be why my personality never succumbed to erasure! The wave kept reimprinting somehow, from the original source, till it grew self-sustaining.

  That’s great. I’m glad to be here. But now what? Will Albert’s presence interfere? Will his biotic anchor pin the glazier to “reality” when the crucial moment comes to fly free?

  Yosil’s ghost has finished strapping himself in. With enemy soldier-dits breaking down the final door, he can’t procrastinate anymore. Preparing to let the pendulum fly, he gathers nerve for a vocal command.

  “Initiate final stage!” he shouts to a control computer. “Launch the rockets!”

  So. Preparing for battle, I can feel reassured. Whatever is about to happen to the city isn’t my fault. The mass murder of so many won’t be my doing. Their karma can’t affect me.

  I’m as much a victim as anybody else, right?

  I will make their sacrifice worthwhile.

  58

  Claylight

  … as something dawns on Greenie …

  A single wan star gleamed through the roughcut window, twinkling like the panel lights of a dark machine that nearly filled the room at the top of the stairs. I felt ominous vibrations through the ground, rather than my ruined ears, as the mechanism awoke. Slim objects tightened formation in the feeder magazine, each bearing scythelike crimson symbols. I wasn’t too far gone yet to recognize an automatic launching system. Damn. Not good.

  No, it isn’t.

  Perhaps you should stop it.

  Instead of nagging, what I needed were ideas how. How was I supposed to stop it!

  Buttons glowed, about the height of a standing man’s shoulder. One of them might cut the launcher from its remote controller. But how to get up there? The weapon’s flank, military-smooth, offered no gripholds suitable for a one-armed man sprawled on the floor, even more hopeless than trying to climb aboard that autokiln downstairs.

  “I … can’t …” came a hoarse whisper from my throat. “It’s too far.”

  Then improvise.

  I looked around, seeing no convenient ledge or chair to clamber on. No handy tools, or even bits of stone to throw. The cheap clothes that Aeneas Kaolin gave me, half a lifetime ago, were mostly gone, shredded to useless ribbons.

  TARGETING COMMANDS ACCEPTED, said a row of dire words. COMPUTING TRAJECTORIES. There followed a series of numbers. Even in my dismal state I could recognize range and heading data.

  Some maniac is shooting at the city!

  I guessed Beta. Doubtless he murdered Professor Maharal in order to take over this facility. Why? Desperate because all his ditnapping schemes were collapsing, I guessed. My old foe must hope to wreak such havoc, the authorities will have more urgent chores than chasing down a copyright thief.

  Frustrated and supine on the floor, I knew my theory made no sense, and didn’t care. What mattered was stopping him. I’d give anything. My pitiful life, certainly. I already surrendered my left arm to the cause. What else could I possibly …

  A shout escaped my corroding mouth. Some things are only obvious after you think of them.

  I did have one tool that might w
ork, if I hurried.

  It wasn’t going to be easy … but what is?

  59

  Divine Flu

  … as realAlbert confronts unpleasant news …

  The self-made army of stolen war-golems finally broke through. While Ritu and I were shepherded over the last shattered robot defenders, a dozen of Beta’s scarred veterans hurried the other way, rushing to help the rear guard. How long could they resist the force battling toward us from the Base?

  Not long. I had a feeling things would start happening fast.

  They had better. I may not have much time.

  Smoke fumed around the edges of an armored door with a big hole burned through. Waves of heat still poured from recently molten metal as we passed into what must be the buried lair of Yosil Maharal. Ritu and I found ourselves standing on a parapet overlooking a scene that was altogether bizarre — a grotto filled to bursting with equipment, much of it jerry-rigged by stringing together hardware with familiar UK logos.

  Surely this must be the hoard of electroceramic gear that Kaolin accused Maharal of swiping from work. What on Earth was he trying to accomplish here? I wondered. No doubt some avenue of research that Aeneas forbade him to pursue in the company’s R D department.

  Flooding to me came foreboding words, “the curse of Frankenstein,” followed by a clipped image of a mushroom cloud.

  Huge antennalike coils funneled from all angles toward a pair of humanoid figures, splayed at opposite ends of the room, facing each other with arms pinioned wide. One of these dittos was dark red, the other a specialized shade of a gray that I sometimes wear myself. Ornate inloading apparatus festooned all over their clay bodies, though I couldn’t imagine what so many souped-up linkages could be for.

  Between the pair of dittos, some kind of giant clockwork mechanism kept time to the swaying of a huge pendulum. And damn if there wasn’t a golem there too, riding back and forth like a child on a swing!