Kiln People

by David Brin

  “Dust,” he said in tones of bemused interest. “They left shapes in it. Deep ones. Everybody did.”

  We all waited a few seconds, but there was no more.

  “O-o-okay,” Pal commented. “I hope that’s good news. About dust. Hm.”

  Absent and unruffled, Albert put a hand to steady Pal’s chair on the gravel path. Clara and I watched till they rounded a corner, toward the sound of cooing doves. On the roof, several stories above, a reflective dome was said to house the famed hermit himself — realAeneas Kaolin.

  With a glance at each other for encouragement, Clara and I headed up broad granite steps.

  After rolling along for a while, Pal gives the signal. At last!

  I drop from the undercarriage of his chair onto sun-warmed pebbles. Wait for the wheels to pass and … now!

  Skittering on-belly, dodging Albert’s human feet, I dash into shade beneath a gardenia hedge. Oof, what stench! Too much of my small head was modeled on a critter who hunts by scent. Should have left more room for brains.

  Ah well. Just do what my maker wants. And satisfy the built-in craving of curiosity — better than food or sex. Go!

  But keep alert for sensors, trip-threads. My clever eyes tune to see IR beams. Also cockatrices, tripfalls, and regular old gopher traps.

  A decorative brickwork niche runs all the way up. Get inside. Deploy claws tipped with diamond augments. Strong paws sink those shiny diamond-tipped claws into stone.

  Lovely what you can do with clay, these days.

  A platinum rox stood in the foyer, watching servants direct the grunting forklift toward a large study — the same place where Yosil Maharal’s open coffin lay a couple of weeks ago. But Kaolin wouldn’t expect me to know about that. Those memories were destroyed. Supposedly.

  The shipping crate was his immediate concern, though he beckoned us to follow. Clara happily aimed her implant at the old spears, shields, maces, and other pointy things on display. Only when the forklift gently dropped its cargo by a southern wall did our host turn with an extended hand.

  “Major Gonzales and ditto Morris. You’re early. By several hours.”

  “Are we? My fault then,” Clara said. “I’m operating on East Coast time these days.”

  A dubious excuse. Still, the convenience of a real guest outweighs annoyance to any ditto, even the ditto of a trillionaire.

  “Not at all. You two are busy people these days! Thanks for accepting my invitation. Though I imagine you had your own reasons for coming.”

  “There are matters to discuss,” I agreed.

  “No doubt. But first, how are the bodies working out?”

  I glanced down at the one I wore today. Its buff shade of beige-gray, plus realistic hair and skin texture, pushed the tolerant edges of legality. But no one complained amid all the buzz about my “heroics.” I cared more about other features, those letting me smell and see and touch Clara with utter vividness.

  “Impressive work. Must be expensive,”

  “Very.” He nodded. “But that doesn’t matter if—”

  The platinum golem flinched as one side of the shipping crate fell with a sharp bang. Servants moved on to the other panels.

  “Naturally,” ditKaolin resumed, “you’ll be supplied with these hyperquality blanks, gratis, till the problem with your original is sorted out. Have there been any signs … ?”

  “Plenty of signs. But none that say welcome.”

  After two weeks of expert study, it was evident that the mind/soul of realAlbert Morris had “gone away” in some fashion no one understood. Yosil Maharal might have explained. But he too was gone, even more decisively.

  “Well, you can count on Universal Kilns. Either until it becomes possible to reload to your original, or else …”

  “Or else till I pass my limit at performing ditto-to-ditto transfers.”

  He nodded. “We’ll help with hyperquality blanks and the experimental golem-prolongation process. In part because we owe a debt—”

  “You sure do,” Clara muttered.

  The shiny golem winced. “Though in exchange, my technicians naturally wish to monitor your remarkable endurance. No one else ever achieved such fidelity, imprinting from one animated doll to another!”

  I noticed Kaolin’s right hand quiver slightly. If anything, he was downplaying his eagerness.

  “Hm, yes. Monitoring. That may present a problem if—” I stopped as Kaolin’s servants finally broke apart the shipping box, liberating a heavy crystal display cabinet. Within stood the dun brown figure of a small, well-built man — a soldier with Asiatic features, hand-molded and kiln-fired roughly two thousand years ago. His confident half smile seemed almost alive.

  “Only ten of the Sian terracottas have left China,” ditKaolin breathed happily. “I’ll keep this one here to honor my late friend Yosil. Till his heir returns to claim it.”

  The tycoon clearly didn’t expect that to happen any time soon, though I saw a portrait of Ritu Maharal prominently displayed atop the grand piano. Had it been deliberately moved there as a gesture?

  My “memory” of this room came from a voice-recording Clara found under Urraca Mesa, inside the shattered Albert gray who was kidnapped from this very estate, subjected to cruel torments, then assigned to serve as a “mirror” in that bizarre experiment. Fortunately, the gray’s diary spool survived the culminating explosion, offering a compulsive sotto voce recitation about the murderous activities of a mad ghost. Another recording spool, removed from realAlbert’s neck, offered a sporadic, low-quality transcription of a few more puzzle-piece events — a roadside ambush, desert treks, and underground betrayals, shedding some light on how Yosil’s daughter got involved.

  How much more convenient if all three versions of us had been able to recombine memories at the end! As things stood, Clara and I had to rely on old-fashioned detective work.

  “Have they made any progress treating Ritu’s condition?”

  “Just diagnostic work. Contact’s been made with the Beta personality. Doctors are probing for any more siblings lying dormant within.” Kaolin gave a melancholy sigh. “None of this would have happened before the age of golemtech. Surely not the original tragic blunder Yosil inflicted on Ritu as a child. And even if she did still get a divided-personality syndrome, it would never have manifested so powerfully in the outer world. Who would ever expect such a character as Beta to emerge and—”

  “Oh, spare us,” Clara interrupted.

  We turned to see her examining the Sian soldier, one warrior to another. But her attention to our conversation never drifted.

  “You knew about Beta for years,” she added. “You found it convenient to maintain a relationship with one so uncannily skilled at deception. Someone able to consistently fool the World Eye! One of the last brilliant underworld figures, and you were in a position to blackmail him into doing all sorts of favors, because Beta was ultimately vulnerable at the source. Come on, admit it.”

  Platinum fists tightened, but anger was futile. As realAlbert’s assigned guardian and my nominal owner, Clara had legal standing. I was her adviser, not the other way around.

  “I … admit no such thing.”

  “Then let’s investigate. Subpoena cam-records going back years, interview employees under the Henchman Law. Heck, it won’t take much for me to interest the national security apparat, now that—”

  “—of course speaking hypothetically,” Kaolin rushed in. “For the sake of argument, suppose I did have prior dealings with the figure known as Beta. You’d scour forever without finding a single genuine criminal act on my part. Sure, I may have committed a few civil torts … all right, maybe a lot of those. Gineen Wammaker and some other perverts could sue for copyright damages.

  “So? Would you jeopardize our beneficial relationship on her account?”

  Implicit was a threat. The hyperquality bodies I got free, plus gear for high-fi imprinting and replenishment, were matters of survival to a stranded soul. My unique copying talent
still needed plenty of help, until realAlbert finally chose to let me climb back into the only organic brain on Earth that could accommodate me.

  Would it work even then? I couldn’t help still regarding myself as Frankie — or Gumby — a rebellious green puppet who ran off one day, declaring independence while dreaming of becoming a real boy. Perhaps my Standing Wave and Albert’s strangely mutated soul were too far diverged ever to rejoin again.

  I might be a ghost.

  Well, if so, I was a ghost with full sensoria, loved by an exciting woman, with important work to do. One can imagine worse afterlives.

  “Let’s talk about this triangle that you had going with the Maharals,” Clara urged our host. “You and Yosil and Beta and … I guess it was a square if you include Ritu herself … each one using the others, scheming and exploiting each other’s talents and resources, making and breaking deals—”

  “No,” I interrupted.

  When she gave me a questioning look, I added, “Later, please, Clara.” ditKaolin seemed relieved. “Yes. Later. Anyway, I forget myself. Please come this way. I ordered refreshments.”

  A sure-enough paranoid bastard lives here. Good thing I’m one, too.

  My chosen path upward is choked with prickly things — detectors and nanowires … toxin-mites and mini-caltrops. Ridiculous overkill!

  I must switch routes. Try climbing the open wall instead, where the nasty stuff will all be weathered by sun and smog and rain. Anyway, who looks out for burglars climbing a flat wall in broad daylight?

  Can’t answer that. Brain’s too small for memories. But I seem to know what’s possible.

  Pixelated skin on my back mimics the reflectance of each bit of wall I pass over. Got the idea from a cool trick of Beta’s. Bought the tech-details off a UK techie for a Henchman Prize. Cheap! Other gimmicks are military — Clara has connections. But the cleverest come from hobbyists, unhappy with UK’s long refusal to share source code.

  Take the special eye in the middle of my right paw. Press it against an opaque window as I pass by. It hijacks the room’s attention monitor and voilà! A narrow circle turns clear for a whole millisecond!

  Long enough to verify, nobody’s in that room. Ah well. The next one seemed likelier for architectural reasons that I can’t remember now.

  Just a little farther …

  Following behind our host, Clara glanced back at the terracotta soldier of Sian, part of a legion modeled — some say imprinted — from real warriors who served the legendary First Emperor, duty-bound to come fiercely alive whenever called. Clara played much the same role in scores of replicas. Only now she had another job, helping investigate how things went so wrong in the Dodecahedron, where the halls were now resounding to a staccato thud of falling heads.

  On a veranda we found food and drink — generous portions for Clara and nibble-bites that appeal to a high-class golem like me, with tastebuds but no stomach to speak of. Clara laughed, pointing at two figures across the tree-flecked meadow, one rolling in a wheelchair. The other broke pace to skip, like a small boy. ditKaolin jotted on a clipboard held by an ebony assistant. “More lawsuits,” he explained. “Now from Farshid Lum and those ditto liberation freaks! As if I dug their stupid tunnel into UK headquarters.”

  “Perhaps they want to learn who set them up for blame in a case of industrial sabotage. I’m curious, too.”

  Aeneas shrugged. “Beta, of course. No one was better at such ploys. He schemed with that Irene deviant, tricking an Albert into—”

  “Into doing some quasilegal technology sniffing, they claimed. A prion bomb never featured, till someone else hijacked the plan.” ditKaolin groaned, sitting down to grab a glass of Golem-Cola. “Yes, I’m familiar with the popular theory. Beta and I were allies, but had a falling out. I took revenge by waging total war, furtively using the Albert Morris Detective Agency, among many weapons. Despite his brilliance, Beta had an Achilles heel when I found his secret point of origin. Soon I eliminated his copies and took over his operations. Right?”

  “According to some popular theories.”

  “But it gets better! Next, I manipulated Irene and Wammaker and Lum and everybody else … to sabotage my own factory!”

  The words formed a lovely confession, ruined by Kaolin’s dripping sarcasm. “Can’t you see how foolish it all sounds? What motive could I have?”

  I nodded in complete agreement.

  “Yes. Motive is key.” ditKaolin stared at me, then went on, “True, I didn’t just sit there when Yosil and Beta turned on me, stealing from both UK and the government.” He nodded to Clara. “I won a few rounds. Still, I’m the victim!”

  “It’s hard to tell. All the maneuvers—”

  “—disguises and double-crosses,” Clara added, “even the belligerents needed a multidimensional diagram.”

  “So? The Maharals were geniuses! Father and daughter, in all their manifestations. And crazy! What could I do but act in self-defense?”

  I answered silently, You might have gone public. Called on the cleansing immune systems of an open society. That is, if you had no craziness of your own to hide.

  Clara bore in. “So you admit you waged clandestine war against your former allies.”

  “I’d be a fool to deny it after you arrested my ditto right there in Yosil’s lab, wearing a Beta disguise!” Kaolin smiled then. “I was getting pretty good, actually. I sure had you fooled, both in dittotown and in the scooter, didn’t I, Albert?”

  Don’t call me Albert, I almost said. But what’s the point?

  Then the mogul’s expression darkened. “I never expected you to follow, grabbing the Harley when I took off … and it’s a good thing. You thwarted a catastrophe — the whole city’s in your debt.

  “As for those damned germ missiles, I swear, I never had any idea Yosil planned to take things so far.”

  Third window on the second floor — it’s just the right position for a waiting-meeting room.

  Carefully check for motion detectors and pressure-sensitive coatings. Okay, now press the paw with its clever gel-lens into one corner and -

  Ha! Our best guess was right.

  Within — a comfy salon. Plush chairs. Plenty to drink. Just the place for Kaolin to stash folks at an awkward moment. Like when Clara and Gumby drove up, hours earlier than expected, interrupting a secret meeting!

  A convention of scoundrels.

  That was crucial, as far as both the public and the law were concerned. Could Kaolin be pinned with crimes against real people?

  Clear evidence blamed Yosil Maharal, driven by visions of transcendence, for trying to blow up Albert Morris in his home, then stealing war germs to aim at millions. Plenty of onus remained left over, to heap on the small group of Dodecs who chose to hide those bioweapons, instead of destroying them by treaty.

  But what could Aeneas be accused of? Shooting at realRitu and realAlbert on a desert highway? The act was criminal — endangering organic citizens. But anyone would say Ritu and Al were just asking for trouble by traveling disguised as grays. Besides, they survived that attack. At most, Kaolin would pay triple golem-geld.

  Likewise if it were proved that he participated in Beta’s old ditnapping empire — lawyers and accountants might stay busy for years, but that’s what they’re for.

  Oh, the tally could add up, starting with a new car for Albert. Repairs to the Teller Building and Pal’s dittotown apartment. A free supply of high-sensitivity ivories for the maestra of Studio Neo. Settlements for Lum and Gadarene. So? Kaolin could buy his way out of all that with pocket change.

  He knew that I thought him responsible. Prove it, he’d be thinking. Offer a motive anyone would believe.

  What about the filmstrip Palloid and I found at the Rainbow Lounge? Why did Kaolin, disguised as spiral-Beta, want me to transmit it? To undermine my reputation as an honest investigator? Or to muddy the waters? Clara tried explaining once, but the interconvoluted logic fell right out of my floppy brain.

  It’s what I de
serve for getting mixed up in a war among prodigies. All my “victories” were gained through sheer doggedness. That plus -

  Across the meadow, I saw realAlbert pluck up something from the path to show Pal. A pebble maybe, or another miracle -

  — plus some help I’ll never understand.

  No, the key to all of this wouldn’t be found among the murky twists and turns. In an era when everyone has means, opportunity, and too-easy alibis, just one thing stays elemental.

  Motive.

  How strange to see through a clever eye in my paw. No stranger than having paws, I guess. Or a brain too small for speech.

  Grabbing another stolen glimpse through this “opaque” window, I feel like a stealthy, leering predator. Inside, sitting or pacing the room nervously, I see a covey of conspirators.

  Three are easy to recognize. The perversion queen, Gineen Wammaker. And James Gadarene, who preaches that folks should go back to living one life at a time. Those two are easy because they’re real. And Farshid Lum, the fanatic “mancie” who claims that mayfly creatures like me should get the vote. His duplicate wears an honest copy of his own face.

  Three others came today as nondescript dittos, but we already know their names — movers and shakers who want to help control the coming changes in dittotech.

  Which of them is worth watching before I move on?

  Easy! The maestra crosses her long legs, seductively vamping the puritan, Gadarene, who stomps away. But seconds later he can’t help looking back again!

  Blushing in shame, he’s under her spell, poor Jimmy-boy.

  Oh, she’s the maestra all right. In every provocative remark and saucy move, queen of the city’s seamy side, tantalizing with subtly implicit sadomasochistic thrills that her fans prize.

  And me, drooling at the window? I’m relishing it, too!

  “Those virus warheads changed everything around here,” Kaolin said.

  “No kidding,” Clara replied. “Six current and retired Dodecs in prison. The whole defense establishment—”