Kiln People

1 A Good Head for Wine

It’s hard to stay cordial while fighting for your life, even when your life doesn’t amount to much.

Even when you’re just a lump of clay.

Some kind of missile — a stone I guess — smacked the brick wall inches away, splattering my face with stinging grit. There wasn’t any shelter to cower behind, except an overstuffed trash can. I grabbed the lid and swung it around.

Just in time. Another slug walloped the lid, denting plastic instead of my chest.

Someone had me nailed.

Moments ago, the alley had seemed a good place to hide and catch my breath. But now its chill darkness betrayed me instead. Even a ditto gives off some body heat. Beta and his gang don’t carry guns into this part of town — they wouldn’t dare — but their slingshots come equipped with infrared sights.

I had to flee the betraying darkness. So while the shooter reloaded, I raised my makeshift shield and dashed for the bright lights of Odeon District.

It was a risky move. The place swarmed with archies, dining at cafés or milling about near classy theaters. Couples strolled arm-in-arm along the quay, enjoying a riverside breeze. Only a few coloreds like me could be seen — mostly waiters serving their bland-skinned betters at canopied tables.

I wasn’t going to be welcome in this zone, where owners throng to enjoy their long, sensuous lives. But if I stayed on back streets I’d get hacked into fish food by my own kind. So I took a chance.

Damn. It’s crowded, I thought, while picking a path across the plaza, hoping to avoid brushing against any of the sauntering archies. Though my expression was earnest — as if I had a legit reason to be there — I must have stood out like a duck among swans, and not just because of skin color. My torn paper clothes drew notice. Anyway, it’s kind of hard to move delicately while brandishing a battered trash lid between your vitals and the alley behind you.

A sharp blow struck the plastic again. Glancing back, I saw a yellow-hued figure lower his slingshot to load another round. Furtive shapes peered from the shadows, debating how to reach me.

I plunged into the crowd. Would they keep shooting and risk hitting a real person?

Ancient instinct — seared into my clay body by the one who made me — clamored to run. But I faced other dangers now — from the archetype human beings surrounding me. So I tried to perform all the standard courtesies, bowing and stepping aside for couples who wouldn’t veer or slow down for a mere ditto.

I had a minute or two of false hopes. Women chiefly looked past me, like I didn’t exist. Most of the men were more puzzled than hostile. One surprised chap even made way for me, as if I were real. I smiled back. I’ll do the same for your ditto someday, chum.

But the next fellow wasn’t satisfied when I gave him right of way. His elbow planted a sharp jab, en passant, and pale eyes glittered, daring me to complain.

Bowing, I forced an ingratiatingly apologetic smile, stepping aside for the archie while I tried to focus on a pleasant memory. Think about breakfast, Albert. The fine odors of coffee and fresh-baked muffins. Simple pleasures that I might have again, if I made it through the night.

“I” will definitely have them again, said an inner voice. Even if this body doesn’t make it.

Yes, came a reply. But that won’t be me. Not exactly.

I shook off the old existential quandary. Anyway, a cheap utility rox like me can’t smell. At the moment, I could barely grasp the concept.

The blue-eyed fellow shrugged and turned away. But the next second, something struck pavement near my left foot, ricocheting across the plaza.

Beta had to be desperate, shooting stones at me amid a throng of real citizens! People glanced around. Some eyes narrowed toward me.

And to think, this morning started so well.

I tried to hurry, making a few more meters farther across the plaza before I was stopped by a trio of young men — well-dressed young archies — intentionally blocking my path.

“Will you look at this mule?” the tall one said. Another, with fashionably translucent skin and reddish eyes, jabbed a finger at me. “Hey, ditto! What’s the rush? You can’t still be hoping for an afterlife! Who’s gonna want you back, all torn up like that?”

I knew how I must look. Beta’s gang had pummeled me good before I managed to escape. Anyway, I was only an hour or two short of expiration and my cracking pseudoflesh showed clear signs of enzyme decay. The albino guffawed at the trash can lid I was wielding as a shield. He sniffed loudly, wrinkling his nose.

“It smells bad, too. Like garbage. Spoilin’ my appetite. Hey! Maybe we have cause for a civil complaint, you reckon?”

“Yeah. How about it, golem?” the tall one leered. “Give us your owner’s code. Cough up a refund on our dinner!”

I raised a placating hand. “Come on, fellas. I’m on an urgent errand for my original. I really do have to get home. I’m sure you hate it when your dittos are kept from you.”

Beyond the trio, I glimpsed the bustle and noise of Upas Street. If only I could make it to the taxi stand, or even the police kiosk on Defense Avenue. For a small fee they’d provide refrigerated sanctuary, till my owner came for me.

“Urgent, eh?” the tall one said. “If your rig still wants you, even in this condition, I’ll bet he’d pay to get you back, eh?”

The final teen, a stocky fellow with deep brown skin and hair done in a wire cut, appeared more sympathetic.

“Aw, leave the poor greenie alone. You can see how badly it wants to get home and spill. If we stop it, the owner may fine us.”

A compelling threat. Even the albino wavered, as if about to back off.

Then Beta’s shooter in the alley fired again, hitting my thigh below the shielding trash can lid.

Anyone who has duped and inloaded knows that pseudoflesh can feel pain. Fiery agony sent me recoiling into one of the youths, who pushed me away, shouting.

“Get off, you stinky thing! Did you see that? It touched me!”

“Now you’ll pay, you piece of clay,” added the tall one. “Let’s see your tag.”

Still shuddering, I managed to hobble around so he stood between me and the alley. My pursuers wouldn’t dare shoot now, and risk hitting an archie.

“Fool,” I said. “Can’t you see I’ve been shot?”

“So?” The albino’s nostrils flared. “My dits get mangled in org-wars all the time. You don’t see me griping about it. Or bringing a fight to the Odeon, of all places! Now let’s see that tag.”

He held out a hand and I reflexively reached for the spot under my forehead where the ID implant lay. A golem-duplicate has to show his tag to a realperson, on demand. This incident was going to cost me … that is, it would cost my maker. The semantic difference would depend on whether I made it home in the next hour.

“Fine. Call a cop or arbiter,” I said, fumbling at the flap of pseudoskin. “We’ll see who pays a fine, punk. I’m not playing simbat games. You’re impeding the double of a licensed investigator. Those shooting at me are real criminals …”

I glimpsed figures emerging from the alley. Yellow-skinned members of Beta’s gang, straightening paper garments and trying to look innocuous amid the crowd of strolling archies, bowing and giving way like respectful errand boys, not worth noticing. But hurrying.

Damn. I never saw Beta this desperate before.

“… and my brain holds evidence that may be crucial in solving an important case. Do you want to be responsible for preventing that?”

Two of the teens drew back, looking unsure. I added pressure. “If you don’t let me get about my owner’s business, he’ll post a charge for restraint of legal commerce!”

We were attracting a crowd. That could slow Beta’s bunch, but time wasn’t on my side.

Alas, the third punk — with the artificially translucent skin — wasn’t daunted. He tapped his wrist screen.

“Giga. I got enough juice in the bank to cover a blood fine. If we’re gonna pay this dit’s owner, let’s have the joy of shutting it down hard.”

He seized my arm, clenching with the strength of well-toned muscles — real muscles, not my anemic imitations. The grip hurt, but worse was knowing I’d overplayed my hand. If I’d kept my mouth shut, they might have let me go. Now the data in this brain would be lost and Beta would win after all.

The young man cocked his fist dramatically, playing for the crowd. He meant to snap my neck with a blow.

Someone muttered, “Let the poor thing go!” But a noisier contingent egged him on.

Just then a crash reverberated across the courtyard. Voices cursed harshly. Onlookers turned toward a nearby restaurant, where diners at an outdoor table hopped away from a mess of spilled liquid and shattered glassware. A green-skinned busboy dropped his tray and murmured apologies, using a rag to wipe glittering shards off the upset customers. Then he slipped, taking one of the infuriated patrons along with him in a spectacular pratfall. Laughter surged from the crowd as the restaurant’s maîtredit rushed out, berating the greenie and seeking to appease the wet clients.

For an instant no one was looking at me except the albino, who seemed miffed over losing his audience.

The waiter hammed it up, continuing to dab at upset archies with a sodden cloth. But for a moment the green head briefly glanced my way. His quick nod had meaning.

Take your chance and get out of here.

I didn’t need urging. Slipping my free hand into a pocket, I pulled out a slim card — apparently a standard credit disk. But squeezing it thus made silvery light erupt along one edge, emitting a fierce hum.

The albino’s pinkish eyes widened. Dittos aren’t supposed to carry weapons, especially illegal ones. But the sight didn’t scare him off. His grin hardened and I knew I was in the clutches of a sportsman, a gambler, willing even to risk realflesh if it offered something new. An experience.

The grip on my arm intensified. I dare you, his ratty glare said.

So I obliged him, slashing down hard. The sizzling blade cut through fleshy resistance.

For an instant, pain and outrage seemed to fill all the space between us. His pain or mine? His outrage and surprise, for sure — and yet there was a split second when I felt united with the tough young bravo by a crest of empathy. An overwhelming connection to his teenage angst. To the wounded, self-important pride. The agony of being one isolated soul among lonely billions.

It could have been a costly hesitation, if it lasted more than a heartbeat. But while his mouth opened to cry out, I swiveled and made my getaway, ducking through the roiling crowd, followed by enraged curses as the youth brandished a gory stump.

My gory stump. My dismembered hand clenched spasmodically at his face till he recoiled and flung the twitching thing away in disgust.

With that same backward glance I also spotted two of Beta’s yellows, dodging among disturbed archies, impertinently shoving several aside while they slipped stones into their wrist catapults, preparing to fire at me. In all this confusion they were unworried about witnesses, or mere fines for civil ditsobedience. They had to stop me from delivering what I knew.

To prevent me from spilling the contents of my decomposing brain.

I must have been quite a spectacle, running lopsidedly in a shredded tunic with one amputated arm dripping, hollering like mad for startled archies to get out of the way. I wasn’t sure at that moment what I could accomplish. Expiration senility might have already begun setting in, made worse by pseudoshock and organ fatigue.

Alerted by the commotion, a cop rushed into the square from Fourth Street, clomping in ungainly body armor while his blue-skinned dittos fanned out, agile and unprotected, needing no orders because each one knew the proto’s wishes more perfectly than a well-drilled infantry squad. Their sole weapon — needle-tipped fingers coated with knockout oil — would stop any golem or human cold.

I veered away from them, weighing options.

Physically, my ditto hadn’t hurt anyone. Still, things were getting dicey. Real people had been inconvenienced, even perturbed. Suppose I got away from Beta’s yellow thugs, and made it into a police freezer. My original could wind up getting socked with enough low-grade civil judgments to wipe out the reward for tracking Beta down in the first place. The cops might even get careless about icing me in time. They’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Several private and public cameras had me in view, I bet. But well enough to make a strong ID? This greenie’s face was too bland — and blurred even more by the fists of Beta’s gang — for easy recognition. That left one choice. Take my tagged carcass where nobody could recover or ID it. Let ’em guess who started this riot.

I staggered toward the river, shouting and waving people off.

Nearing the quayside embankment, I heard a stern, amplified voice cry, “Halt!” Cop-golems carry loudspeakers where most of us have synthetic sex organs … a creepy substitution that gets your attention.

From the left, I heard several sharp twangs. A stone struck my decaying flesh while another bounced off pavement, caroming toward the real policeman. Maybe now the blues would focus on Beta’s yellows. Cool.

Then I had no more time to think as my feet ran out of surface. They kept pumping through empty space, out of habit, I guess … till I hit the murky water with a splash.

I suppose there’s one big problem with my telling this story in first person — the listener knows I made it home in one piece. Or at least to some point where I could pass on the tale. So where’s the suspense?

All right, so it didn’t end quite there, with my crashing in the river, though maybe it should have. Some golems are designed for combat, like the kind hobbyists send onto gladiatorial battlefields … or secret models they’re rumored to have in Special Forces. Other dittos, meant for hedonism, sacrifice some élan vital for hyperactive pleasure cells and high-fi memory inloading. You can pay more for a model with extra limbs or ultra senses … or one that can swim.

I’m too cheap to spring for fancy options. But a feature I always include is hyperoxygenization — my dittos can hold their breath a long time. It’s handy in a line of work where you never know if someone’s going to gas you, or throw you in the sealed trunk of a car, or bury you alive. I’ve sorbed memories of all those things. Memories I wouldn’t have today if the ditto’s brain died too soon.

Lucky me.

The river, cold as lunar ice, swirled past me like a wasted life. A small voice spoke up as I sank deeper in the turbid water — a voice I’ve heard on other occasions.

Give up now. Rest. This isn’t death. The real you will continue. He’ll carry on with your dreams.

The few you had left.

True enough. Philosophically speaking, my original was me. Our memories differed by just one awful day. A day that he spent barefoot, in boxer shorts, doing officework at home while I went rooting through the city’s proxy underworld, where life is cheaper than in a Dumas novel. My present continuity mattered very little on the grand scale of things.

I answered the small voice in my usual way.

Screw existentialism.

Every time I step into the copier, my new ditto absorbs survival instincts a billion years old.

I want my afterlife.

By the time my feet touched the slimy river bottom, I was determined to give it a shot. I had almost no chance, of course, but maybe fortune was ready to deal from a fresh deck. Also, another motive drove me on.

Don’t let the bad guys win. Never let them get away with it.

Maybe I didn’t have to breathe, but movement was still tricky as I fought to get my feet planted, getting headway through the mud, with everything both slippery and viscous at the same time. It would have been hard to get traction with a whole body, but this one’s clock was ticking out.

Visibility? Almost nil, so I maneuvered by memory and sense of touch. I considered trying to fight my way upriver to the ferry docks, but then recalled that Clara’s houseboat lay moored just a kilometer or so downstream from Odeon Square. So I stopped fighting the heavy current and worked with it instead, putting most of my effort into staying near the riverbank.

It might have helped if I’d been made with variable-setting pain sensors. Lacking that optional feature — and cursing my own cheapness — I grimaced in agony while pulling one foot after another through the sucking muck. The hard slog left me time to ponder the phenomenological angst faced by creatures of my kind.

I’m me. As little life as I have left, it still feels precious. Yet I gave up what remains, jumping in the river to save some other guy a few credits.

Some guy who’ll make love to my girlfriend and relish my accomplishments.

Some guy who shares every memory I had, till the moment he (or I) lay on the copier, last night. Only he got to stay home in the original body, while I went to do his dirty work.

Some guy who’ll never know what a rotten day I had.

It’s a coin flip, each time you use a copier-and-kiln. When it’s done, will you be the rig … the original person? Or the rox, golem, mule, ditto-for-a-day?

Often it hardly matters, if you re-sorb memories like you’re supposed to, before the copy expires. Then it’s just like two parts of you, merging back together again. But what if the ditto suffered or had a rough time, like I had?

I found it hard to keep my thoughts together. After all, this green body wasn’t built for intellect. So I concentrated on the task at hand, dragging one foot after another, trudging through the mud.

There are locales you pass by every day, yet hardly think about because you never expect to go there. Like this place. Everyone knows the Gorta is filled with all sorts of trash. I kept stumbling over stuff that had been missed by the cleaner-trawls … a rusted bike, a broken air conditioner, several old computer monitors staring back at me like zombie eyes. When I was a kid, they used to pull out whole automobiles, sometimes with passengers still inside. Real people who had no spare copies in those days, to carry on with their smashed lives.

Those times had some advantages. Back in Grandpa’s day, the Gorta stank from pollution. Eco laws brought the stream back to life. Now folks catch fish from the quay. And fish converge whenever the city drops in something edible.

Like me.

Real flesh is supple. It doesn’t start flaking after just twenty-four hours. Protoplasm is so tenacious and durable that even a drowned corpse resists decay for days.

But my skin was already sloughing, even before I fell in. Expiration can be held off by willpower for a while. But now the timed organic chains in my ersatz body were expiring and unraveling with disconcerting speed. The scent swirled, attracting opportunists who came darting in from all sides for a feed, grabbing whatever chunks seemed close to falling off. At first I tried batting at them with my remaining hand, but that only slowed me down without inconveniencing the scavengers much. So I just forged ahead, wincing each time a pain receptor got snipped off by a greedy fish.

I drew a line when they started going for the eyes. I was going to need vision for a while yet.

At one point warm water shoved suddenly from the left, a strong current pushing me off course. The flow did drive off the scavengers for a minute, giving me a chance to concentrate …

Must be the Hahn Street Canal.

Let’s see. Clara’s boat is moored along Little Venice. That should be the second opening after this one … Or is it next?

I had to fight my way past the canal without being pushed down into deep water, somehow finally managing to reach the stone embankment on the other side. Unfortunately, persecuting swarms reconverged at that point — fish from above and crabs from below — drawn by my oozing wounds, nipping and supping on my fast-decaying hide.

What followed was a blur — a continual, shambling, underwater slog through mud, debris, and clouds of biting tormentors.

It’s said that at least one character trait always stays true, whenever a ditto is copied from its archetype. No matter what else varies, something from your basic nature endures from one facsimile to the next. A person who is honest or pessimistic or talkative in real flesh will make a golem with similar qualities.

Clara says my most persistent attribute is pigheaded obstinacy.

Damn anyone who says I can’t do this.

That phrase rolled over and over through my diteriorating brain, repeating a thousand times. A million. Screaming every time I took a painful step, or a fish took another bite. The phrase evolved beyond mere words. It became my incantation. Focus. A mantra of distilled stubbornness that kept me slogging onward, dragging ahead, one throbbing footstep at a time … till the moment I found myself blocked by a narrow obstacle.

I stared at it a while. A moss-covered chain that stretched, taut and almost vertical, from a buried anchor up to a flat object made of wooden planks.

A floating dock.

And moored alongside lay a vessel, its broad bottom coated with jagged barnacles. I had no idea whose boat it was, only that my time was about up. The river would finish me if I stayed any longer.

Using my one remaining mangled hand, I gripped the chain and strained to free both feet of the sucking mud, then continued creeping upward in fits and jerks, rising relentlessly toward a glittering light.

The fish must have sensed their last chance. They converged, thrashing all around, grabbing whatever flaps and floating folds they could, even after my head broke surface. I threw my arm over the dock, then had to dredge memory for what to do next.

Breathe. That’s it. You need air.

Breathe!

My shuddering inhalation didn’t resemble a human gasp. More like the squelch that a slab of meat makes when you throw it onto a cutting board and then slice it, letting an air pocket escape. Still, some oxygen rushed into replace the water spilling from my lipless mouth. It offered just enough renewed strength to haul one leg aboard the planking.

I heaved with all my might, at last rolling completely out of the river, thwarting the scavengers, who splashed in disappointment.

Tremors rocked my golembody from stem to stern. Something — some part of me — shook loose and fell off, toppling back into the water with a splash. The fish rejoiced, swirling around whatever it was, feeding noisily.

All my senses grew murkier, moment by moment. Distantly, I noted that one eye was completely gone … and the other hung nearly out of its socket. I pushed it back in, then tried getting up.

Everything felt lopsided, unbalanced. Most of the signals I sent, demanding movement from muscles and limbs, went unanswered. Still, my tormented carcass somehow managed to rise up, teetering first to the knees … and then onto stumps that might loosely be called legs.

Sliding along a wooden bannister, I flopped unevenly up a short flight of steps leading to the houseboat that lay moored alongside. Lights brightened and a thumping vibration grew discernable.

Garbled music played somewhere nearby.

As my head crested the rail, I caught a blurry image — flickering flames atop slim white pillars. Tapered candles … their soft light glinting off silverware and crystal goblets. And farther on, sleek figures moving by the starboard rail.

Real people. Elegantly dressed for a dinner party. Gazing at the river beyond.

I opened my mouth, intending to voice a polite apology for interrupting … and would someone please call my owner to come get me before this brain turned to mush?

What came out was a slobbery groan.

A woman turned around, caught sight of me lurching toward her from the dark, and let out a yelp — as if I were some horrible undead creature, risen from the deep. Fair enough.

I reached out, moaning.

“Oh sweet mother Gaia,” her voice swung quickly to realization. “Jameson! Will you please phone up Clara Gonzalez, over on the Catalina Baby? Tell her that her goddam boyfriend has misplaced another of his dittos … and he better come pick it up right now!”

I tried to smile and thank her, but scheduled expiration could no longer be delayed. My pseudoligaments chose that very moment to dissolve, all at once.

Time to fall apart.

I don’t remember anything after that, but I’m told that my head rolled to a stop just short of the ice chest where champagne was chilling. Some dinner guest was good enough to toss it inside, next to a very nice bottle of Dom Pérignon ’38.

2 Ditto Masters

All right, so that greenie didn’t make it home in one piece. By the time I came to fetch it, only the chilled cranium was left … plus a slurry of evaporating pseudoflesh staining the deck of Madame Frenkel’s houseboat.

(Note to self: buy Madame a nice gift, or Clara will make me pay for this.)

Of course I got the brain in time — or I wouldn’t have the dubious pleasure of reliving a vividly miserable day that “I” spent skulking through the dittotown underworld, worming through sewers to penetrate Beta’s lair, getting caught and beaten by his yellowdit enforcers, then escaping through town in a frenzied dash, culminating in that hideous trudge through underwater perdition.

I knew, even before hooking that soggy skull into the perceptron, that I wasn’t going to savor the coming meal of acrid memories.

For what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.

Most people refuse to inload if they suspect their ditto had unpleasant experiences. A rig can choose not to know or remember what the rox went through. Just one more convenient aspect of modern duplication technology — like making a bad day simply go away.

But I figure if you make a creature, you’re responsible for it. That ditto wanted to matter. He fought like hell to continue. And now he’s part of me, like several hundred others that made it home for inloading, ever since the first time I used a kiln, at sixteen.

Anyway, I needed the knowledge in that brain, or I’d be back with nothing to show my client — a customer not known for patience.

I could even find a blessing in misfortune. Beta saw my green-skinned copy fall into the river and never come up. Anyone would assume it drowned, or got swept to sea, or dissolved into fish food. If Beta felt sure, he might not move his hideout. It could be a chance to catch his pirates with their guard down.

I got up off the padded table, fighting waves of sensory confusion. My real legs felt odd — fleshy and substantial, yet a bit distant — since it seemed like just moments ago that I was staggering about on moldering stumps. The image of a sturdy, dark-haired fellow in the nearby mirror looked odd. Too healthy to be real.

Monday’s ditto’s fair of face, I thought, inspecting the creases that sink so gradually around your real eyes. Even an uneventful inloading leaves you feeling disoriented while a whole day’s worth of fresh memories churn and slosh for position among ninety billion neurons, making themselves at home in a few minutes.

By comparison, outloading feels tame. The copier gently sifts your organic brain to engrave the Standing Wave onto a fresh template made of special clay, ripening in the kiln. Soon a new ditto departs into the world to perform errands while you have breakfast. No need even to tell it what to do.

It already knows.

It’s you.

Too bad there wasn’t time to make one right now. Urgent matters came first.

“Phone!” I said, pressing fingers against my temples, pushing aside disagreeable memories of that river bottom trek. I tried to concentrate on what my ditective had learned about Beta’s lair.

“Name or number,” a soft alto voice replied from the nearest wall.

“Get me Inspector Blane of the LSA. Scramble and route to his real locale. If he’s blocked, cut in with an urgent.”

Nell, my house computer, didn’t like this.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” she commented. “Inspector Blane is off duty and he has no ditto facsimiles on active status. Shall I replay the last time you woke him with an urgent? He slapped us with a civil privacy lien of five hundred—”

“Which he later dropped, after cooling off. Just put it through, will you? I’ve got a splitting headache.”

Anticipating my need, the medicine cabinet was already gurgling with organosynthesis, dispensing a glassful of fizzy concoction that I gulped while Nell made the call. In muted tones I overheard her arguing priorities with Blane’s reluctant house comp. Naturally, that machine wanted to take a message instead of waking its boss.

I was already changing clothes, slipping into a bulky set of Bullet-guard overalls, by the time the Labor Subcontractors Association inspector answered in person, groggy and pissed off. I told Blane to shut up and join me near the old Teller Building in twenty minutes. That is, if he wanted a chance to finally close the Wammaker Case.

“And you better have a first-class seizure team meet us there,” I added. “A big one, if you don’t want another messy standoff. Remember how many commuters filed nuisance suits last time?”

He cursed again, colorfully and extensively, but I had his attention. A distinctive whine could be heard in the background — his industrial-strength kiln warming up to imprint three brute-class dittos at a time. Blane was a guttermouth, but he moved quickly when he had to.

So did I. My front door parted obligingly and Blane’s voice switched to my belt portable, then to the unit in my car. By the time he calmed down enough to sign off, I was already driving through a predawn mist, heading downtown.

I closed the collar of my trench coat, making sure the matching fedora fit low and snug. Clara had stitched my private eye outfit for me by hand, using high-tech fabrics she swiped from her Army Reserve unit. Great stuff. Yet the protective layers felt barely reassuring. Plenty of modern weapons can slice through textile armor. The sensible thing, as always, would be to send a copy. But my place is too far from the Teller Building. My little home kiln couldn’t thaw and imprint quickly enough to make Blane’s rendezvous.

It always makes me feel creepy and vulnerable to go perform a rescue or arrest in person. Risk isn’t what realflesh is for. But this time, what choice was there?

Real people still occupy some of the tallest buildings, where prestigious views are best appreciated by organic eyes. But the rest of Old Town has become a land of ghosts and golems, commuting to work each morning fresh from their owners’ kilns. It’s an austere realm, both tattered and colorful as zeroxed laborers file off jitneys, camionetas, and buses, their brightly colored bodies wrapped in equally bright and equally disposable paper clothes.

We had to finish our raid before that daily influx of clay people arrived, so Blane hurriedly organized his rented troops in predawn twilight, two blocks from the Teller Building. While he formed squads and passed out disguises, his ebony lawyer-golem dickered with a heavily armored cop — her visor raised as she negotiated a private enforcement permit.

I had nothing to do except chew a ragged fingernail, watching daybreak amid a drifting haze. Already, dim giants could be seen shuffling through the metropolitan canyons — nightmarish shapes that would have terrified our urban ancestors. One sinuous form passed beyond a distant streetlight, casting serpentine shadows several stories high. A low moan echoed toward us and triassic tremors stroked my feet.

We should finish our business before that behemoth arrived.

I spied a candy wrapper littering the sidewalk — a strange thing to find here. I put it in my pocket. Dittotown streets are usually spotless, since most golems never eat or spit. Though you do see a lot more cadavers, smoldering in the gutter, than when I was a kid.

The cop’s chief concern — to ensure none of today’s bodies was real. Blane’s jet black copy argued futilely for a complete waiver, then shrugged and accepted the city’s terms. Our forces were ready. Two dozen purple enforcers, lithe and sexless, some of them in disguise, moved out according to plan.

I glanced again down Alameda Boulevard. The giant silhouette was gone. But there would be others. We’d better hurry, or risk getting caught in rush hour.

To his unwatered joy, Blane’s rented mercenaries caught the pirates off-guard.

Our troops slinked past their outer detectors in commercial vans, disguised as maintenance dits and courier-golems making dawn deliveries, making it nearly up the front steps before their hidden weapons set off alarms.

A dozen of Beta’s yellows spilled out, blazing away. A full-scale melee commenced as clay humanoids hammered at each other, losing limbs to slugfire or exploding garishly across the pavement when sprays of incendiary needles struck pseudoflesh, igniting the hydrogen-catalysis cells in spectacular mini-fireballs.

As soon as shooting started, the armored city cop advanced with her blue-skinned duplicates, inflating quick-barricades and noting infractions committed by either side — anything that might result in a juicy fine. Otherwise, both sides ignored the police. This was a commercial matter and none of the state’s business, so long as no organic people were hurt.

I hoped to keep it that way, sheltering behind a parked car with realBlane while his brute-duplicates ran back and forth, urging the purples on. Quick and crude, his rapid-rise dittos were no mental giants, but they shared his sense of urgency. We had just minutes to get inside and rescue the stolen template before Beta could destroy all evidence of his piracy.

“What about the sewers?” I asked, recalling how my recent greendit wormed its way inside yesterday … an excursion as unpleasant to remember as that later trek along the river bottom.

Blane’s broad face contorted behind a semi-transparent visor that flashed with symbols and map overlays. (He’s too old-fashioned to get retinal implants. Or maybe he just likes the garish effect.) “I’ve got a robot in there,” he grunted.

“Robots can be hacked.”

“Only if they’re smart enough to heed new input. This one is a cable-laying drone from the Sanitation Department. Zingleminded and dumb as a stone. It’s trying to bring a wide-baud fiber through sewer pipes into the basement, heading stubbornly for Beta’s toilet. Nobody’s getting past the thing, I promise.”

I grunted skeptically. Anyway, our biggest problem wasn’t escape, but getting to the hideout before our proof melted.

Any further comment was cut off by a novel sight. The policewoman sent one of her blue copies strolling right in the middle of the battle! Ignoring whizzing bullets, it poked away at fallen combatants, making sure they were out of commission, then severed their heads to drop into a preserva sac for possible interrogation.

Not much chance of that. Beta was notoriously careful with his dits, using fake ID pellets and programming their brains to self-destruct if captured. It would take fantastic luck to uncover his real name today. Me? I’d be happy to pull off a complete rescue and put this particular enterprise of his out of business.

Noisy explosions rocked Alameda as smoke enveloped every entrance of the Teller Building, spreading down to the car where Blane and I took shelter. Something blew off my fedora, giving my neck a sharp yank. I crouched lower, breathing hard, before reaching into a pocket for my fiberscope — a much safer way to look around. It snaked over the hood of the car at the end of a nearly invisible stalk, swiveling automatically to aim a tiny gel-lens at the fight, transmitting jerky images to the implant in my left eye.

(Note to self: this implant is five years old. Obsolete. Time to upgrade? Or are you still squeamish after last time?)

The blue copdit was still out there, checking bodies and tallying damage — even as our purple enforcers stepped up their assault, charging through every convenient opening with the reckless abandon of fanatic shock troops. As I watched, several stray slugs impacted the police-golem, spinning it around, blowing doughy chunks against a nearby wall. It staggered and doubled over, quivering. You could tell the pain links functioned. Purple mercenaries may operate without touch cells, ignoring wounds while blasting away with pistolas in both hands. But a blue’s job is to augment the senses of a real cop. It feels.

Ouch, I thought. That’s got to hurt.

Anyone watching the mutilated thing suffer would expect it to auto-dissolve. But the golem straightened instead, shivered, and went limping back to work. A century ago, that might have seemed pretty heroic. But we all know what personality types get recruited for the constabulary nowadays. The real cop would probably inload this ditto’s memories … and enjoy it.

My phone rang, a hi-pri rhythm, so Nell wanted me to take it. Three taps on my upper-right canine signaled yes.

A face ballooned to fill my left eye-view. A woman whose pale brown features and golden hair were recognizable across a continent.

“Mr. Morris, I’m sifting reports of a raid in dittotown … and I see the LSA has registered an enforcement permit. Is this your work? Have you found my stolen property?”

Reports?

I glanced up to see several floatcams hovering over the battle zone, bearing the logos of eager sniff-nets. It sure didn’t take the vultures long.

I choked back a caustic comment. You have to answer a client, even when she’s interfering. “Um … not yet, Maestra. We may have taken them by surprise but …”

Blane grabbed my arm. I listened.

No more explosions. The remaining gunfire was muffled, having shifted deep into the building.

I raised my head, still tense. The city cop stomped past us in heavy armor, accompanied by her naked blue duplicates.

“Mr. Morris? You were saying something?” The beautiful face frowned peevishly inside my left eye, where blinking offered no respite. “I expect to be kept informed—”

A squadron of cleaners came next, green and pink — candy-striped models, wielding brooms and liquivacs to scour the area before rush hour brought this morning’s commuters. Expendable or not, cleaner-dits wouldn’t enter a place where fighting raged.

“Mr. Morris!”

“Sorry, Maestra,” I replied. “Can’t talk now. I’ll call when I know more.” Before she could object, I bit a molar, ending the call. My left eye cleared.

“Well?” I asked Blane.

His visor exploded with colors that I might have interpreted if I were in cyberdit form. As a mere organic, I waited.

“We’re in.”

“And the template?”

Blane grinned.

“Got it! They’re bringing her up now.”

My hopes lifted for the first time. Still, I scuttled low across the pavement to reclaim the fedora, planting its elastic armor back over my head. Anyway, Clara wouldn’t appreciate it if I lost it.

We hurried past the cleaners and up twenty steps to the main entrance. Broken bodies and bits of pseudoflesh melted into a multicolored haze, lending the battleground an eerie sense of unreality. Soon, the dead would be gone, leaving just a few bullet-spalled walls and some rapidly healing windows. And splinters from a huge door the purples blew to bits when they forced their way inside.

Newsbots swooped down, gattling us with questions. Publicity can be helpful in my line of work, but only if there’s good news to report. So I kept mum till a pair of Blane’s LSA brutes emerged from the basement, supporting a much smaller figure between them.

Slimy preserving fluid dripped from naked flesh that shone like glittering snow, completely white except where livid bruises marred her shaved head. And yet, though bald, abraded, and ditto-hued, the face and figure were unmistakable. I had just been speaking to the original. The Ice Princess. The maestra of Studio Neo — Gineen Wammaker.

Blane told his purples to rush the template to a preserva tank, so it wouldn’t expire before testifying. But the pale figure spotted me and planted her heels. The voice, though dry and tired, was still that famously sultry contralto.

“M-mister Morris … I see you’ve been spendthrift with your expense account.” She glanced at the windows, many of them shredded beyond self-repair, and the splintered front door. “Am I expected to pay for this mess?”

I learned several things from the ivory’s remark. First, it must have been snatched after Gineen Wammaker hired me, or the ditto wouldn’t know who I was.

Also, despite several days stored torturously in WD-90 solution, no amount of physical abuse could suppress the arrogant sensuality that Gineen imbued into every replica she made. Wigless, battered and dripping, this golem held herself like a goddess. And even deliverance from torment at Beta’s hands hadn’t taught her gratitude.

Well, what do you expect? I thought. Wammaker’s customers are sickies. No wonder so many of them buy Beta’s cheap bootleg copies.

Blane responded to the Wammaker replica as if she were real. Her presence was that overpowering.

“Naturally, the Labor Subcontractors Association will expect some reimbursement. We put up considerable resources to underwrite this rescue—”

“Not a rescue,” the ivory model corrected. “I have no continuity. Surely you don’t think my original is going to inload me after this experience? You’ve recovered her stolen property, that is all.”

“Beta was ditnapping your dittos off the street, using them as templates to make pirate facsimiles—”

“Violating my copyright. And you’ve put a stop to it. Fine. That’s what I pay my LSA dues for. Catching license violators. As for you, Mr. Morris — you’ll be well compensated. Just don’t pretend it’s anything heroic.”

A tremor shook the slim body. Her skin showed a skein of hairline cracks, deepening by the second. She looked up at the purples. “Well? Are you going to dip me now? Or shall we wait around till I melt?”

I had to marvel. The ditto knew it wasn’t going to be inloaded back into Gineen’s lovely head. Its life — such as it was — would end painfully while her pseudobrain was sifted for evidence. Yet she carried on with typical dignity. Typical arrogance.

Blane sent the purps on their way, hurrying their small burden past the striped cleaners, the blue-skinned cops, and remnant evaporating shreds of bodies that had been locked in furious combat only minutes before. The way his eyes tracked Wammaker’s ivory, I wondered — was Blane one of her fans? Maybe a closet renter?

But no. He snarled in disgust.

“It’s not worth it. All this expense and risk, because a prima donna won’t bother to safeguard her dits. We wouldn’t have to do any of this if they carried simple autodestructs.”

I didn’t argue. Blane is one of those people who can be completely matter-of-fact about kiln tech. He treats his own dittos like useful tools, no more. But I understood why Gineen Wammaker won’t implant her copies with remote-controlled bombs.

When I’m a ditto, I like to pretend I’m immortal. It helps me get through a drab day.

The police barriers came down just in time for rush hour as great lumbering dinobuses and spindly flywheel trollies began spilling their cargoes — gray office-golems, cheaper green and orange factory workers, swarms of candy-striped expendables, plus a sprinkling of other types. Those entering Teller Plaza gawked at the damaged walls. Grays called up their news services for summary replays of the fight. Several of them pointed at Blane and me, storing up some unusual memories to bring home to their archies, at day’s end.

The armored policewoman approached Blane with a preliminary estimate of costs and fines. Wammaker was right about dues and responsibilities. LSA would have to foot most of the bill … at least till the day we finally catch Beta and force a reckoning. When that happens, Blane can only hope that deep pockets lay somewhere along Beta’s obligation trail. Deep enough for LSA to come out ahead on punitive damages.

Blane invited me to join him in the basement, inspecting the pirate copying facility. But I’d seen the place. Just a few hours ago “I” was down there getting my ceramic hide pounded by some of Beta’s terracotta soldiers. Anyway, the LSA had a dozen or so ebony crime-scene analysts under contract who were much better equipped to handle the fine-toothed-comb stuff, using specialized senses to sift every nook and particle for clues, hoping to discover Beta’s real name and whereabouts.

As if it ever does any good, I thought, stepping outside for some fresh air. Beta is a wily son of a ditch. I’ve been hunting him for years and he always slips away.

The police weren’t much help, of course. Ditnapping and copyright violation have been civil torts ever since the Big Deregulation. It would stay a purely commercial matter, so long as Beta carefully avoided harming any real people. Which made his behavior last night puzzling. To chase my greenie into Odeon Square, firing stones from slingshots and barely missing several strolling archies — it showed something like desperation.

Outside, I waded through a hubbub of folks coming and going. All were dittos, so an archie like me had right-of-way. Anyway, with golembodies still smoldering unpleasant fumes nearby, I moved away quickly, frowning in thought.

Beta seemed upset last night. He’s captured me before, without ever interrogating so fiercely!

In fact, he usually just kills me, with no malice or hard feelings. At least to the best of my knowledge. Those times that I recovered memories.

The same distress that drove Beta’s yellows to torture my green last night also made them careless. Shortly after pummeling me, they all departed, leaving me tied up in that basement factory between two autokilns that were busily cranking out cheap Wammaker copies, imprinting their kinky-specialist personalities from that little ivory they had ditnapped. Carelessly, the yellows never even bothered to check what tools I might have tucked away under pseudoflesh! Escaping turned out to be much easier than breaking in — (too easy?) — though Beta soon recovered and gave chase.

Now I was back and victorious, right? Shutting down this operation must be a real blow to Beta’s piracy enterprise. So why did I feel a sense of incompletion?

Strolling away from the traffic noise — a braying cacophony of jitney horns and bellowing dinos — I found myself confronting an alley marked by ribbons of flickertape, specially tuned to irritate any natural human eye.

“Stay Out!” the fluttering tape yammered. “Structural Danger! Stay Out!”

Such warnings — visible only to realfolk — are growing commonplace as buildings in this part of town suffer neglect. Why bother with maintenance when the sole inhabitants are expendable clay people, cheaply replenished each day? Oh, it’s a remarkable slum, all right. Cleanliness combined with decay. Just another of the deregulated ironies that give dittoburgs their charm.

Averting my gaze, I strolled past the glittery warning. No one tells me where I can’t go! Anyway, the fedora should protect against falling debris.

Giant recycling bins lined the alley, fed by slanting accordion tubes, accepting pseudoflesh waste from buildings on both sides. Not all dittos go home for memory inloading at the end of a twenty-hour work day. Those made for boring, repetitive labor just toil on, fine-tuned for contentment, till they feel that special call — beckoning them to final rest in one of these slurry bins.

What I felt beckoning, right then, was my bed. After a long day and a half — that felt much longer — it would be good to make today’s copies and then drop into sweet slumber.

Let’s see, I pondered. What bodies shall I wear? Beyond this Beta affair, there are half a dozen smaller cases pending. Most call for just some fancy web research. I’ll handle those from home, as an ebony. A bit expensive, but efficient.

There has to be a green, of course. I’ve been putting off chores. Groceries, laundry. A toilet keeps backing up. The lawn needs to be mowed.

The rest of the gardening — some pruning and replanting — fell under the category of pleasure/hobby time. I’d save that to do in person, maybe tomorrow.

So, will two dittos suffice? I shouldn’t need any grays, unless something comes up.

Beyond the recycling bins lay another gap between buildings — a back alley veering south, with ramps leading to an old parking garage. Overhead, the narrow lane was spanned by hand-strung utility wires and clotheslines where cheap garments flapped in the morning breeze. Shouting voices and raucous music floated down rickety fire escapes.

Nowadays, everybody needs a hobby. For some people, it’s a second life — sending a ditto a day down here to golemtown, joining others in pretend families, engaging in mock businesses, dramas, even feuds with the neighbors. “Clay operas,” I think they’re called. Whole derelict blocks have been taken over to feign Renaissance Italy or London during the Blitz. Standing in that alley, under the flapping clotheslines and raucous-scratchy music, I had only to squint and imagine myself in a tenement ghetto of more than a century ago.

The romantic attraction of this particular scenario escaped me. Realfolk don’t live like this anymore. On the other hand, what’s it to me how people spend their spare time? Being a golem is always a matter of choice.

Well, almost always.

That’s why I kept working on the Beta Case, despite endless irritations and pummelings — and the me’s that vanish, never to be seen again. Beta’s style of industrial thievery had much in common with oldtime slavery. A disturbing psychopathology underlay his profitmaking criminal enterprise. The guy needed help.

All right, so dittotown has all sorts of eccentric corners and eddies — from Dickensian factories to fairyland amusement centers to open war zones. Were any of this alley’s curious features relevant to my case? The area had been scanned by some LSA floater-eyes before this morning’s raid. But human vision can notice things cameras don’t. Like bullet scars on some of the bricks. Recent ones. Spalled mortar felt fresh between my fingertips.

So? Nothing strange about that in dittotown. I don’t like coincidences, but my top priority at the moment was to settle with Blane and go home.

Turning back, I reentered the lane between those big recycling tanks, only to halt when a hissing sound dropped from somewhere overhead.

It sounded vaguely like my name.

I stepped aside quickly, reaching under my vest while peering upward.

A second faint hiss focused my attention on one of the accordion shafts slanting from upper floors of the Teller Building to a slurry bin. Squinting, I saw a silhouetted figure writhe inside the flexi-translucent tube, pawing at a small tear in its fabric. The humanoid shape had wedged itself, splaying both legs to prevent falling a final two meters into the tank.

The effort was futile, of course. Acrid vapors would devour whatever scanty pseudolifespan the poor fellow had left. Anyway, the next ditto to jump in that tube would land with enough force to dislodge this fellow’s decaying limbs, carrying them both into the soup!

Still, it happens now and then — especially to teens who haven’t grown accustomed to life’s new secondary cycle of nonchalant death and trivial rebirth. They sometimes panic at the recycling stage. It’s natural. When you imprint memories and copy your soul into a clay doll, you take along a lot more than a To Do list of the day’s errands. You also bring survival talents inherited from the long era when folks knew just one kind of death. The kind to be feared.

It all comes down to personality. They tell you in school — don’t make disposable dittos unless you can let go.

I raised my gun.

“Say, fella, would you like me to put you out of your—”

That’s when I heard it again. A single whispered word.

“Mo-o-r-r-r-isssss!”

Blinking several times, I felt that old frisson down the spine. A feeling you can only experience fully in your real body and your original soul — with the same nervous system that reacted to shadows in the dark when you were six.

“Um … do I know you?” I asked.

“Not as well … as I know you …”

I put my weapon away and took a running leap, grabbing the upper edge of the recycling tank, then hauled myself on top. No sweat. One of your chief tasks each day, when you find that you’re the real one, is to keep the old body in shape.

Standing on the lid brought me a lot closer to the fumes — an aroma that you find somewhat attractive when you’re a golem in its last hour. In organic form, I found it rank. But now I could see the visage peering through torn plastic, already slumping from peptide exhaustion and diurnal decay, the cheeks and molded brow ridges sagging, its former bright banana color fading to a sickly jaundice. Still, I recognized one of Beta’s favorite, bland disguises.

“It seems you’re stuck,” I commented, peering closer. Was it one of the yellows that tormented me last night, when I was a captive green? Did this one shoot pellets at me, across Odeon Square? He must have escaped this morning’s raid by fleeing upstairs ahead of Blane’s purple enforcers, then jumping into the accordion tube through some mislaid hope of getting away.

Still vivid in memory was one yellow Beta, leering as he expertly stimulated the pain receptors that even my greens find realistic. (There are drawbacks to being a first-rate copier.) I recall wondering at the time, why? What did he hope to accomplish with torture? Half of the questions he asked didn’t even make sense!

Anyway, a deep assurance helped me ignore the pain. It doesn’t matter, I told myself over and over, during last night’s captivity. And it didn’t. Not very much.

So why should I feel pity for this golem’s suffering?

“Been here a long time,” it told me. “Came to learn why there’s been no contact from this operation …”

“A long time?” I checked my watch. Less than an hour had passed since Blane’s purples attacked.

“… and found it was taken over, like the others! They chased me … I climbed in this tube … sealed the top … I figured—”

“Hold it! ‘Taken over,’ you say? You mean just now, right? Our raid—”

The face was slumping rapidly. Sounds escaping from its mouth grew steadily harder to understand. Less like words than gurgling rattles.

“I thought at first … you might be responsible. After hounding me for years … But now I can tell … you’re clueless … as usual … Morrissss.”

I wasn’t standing there, breathing nasty fumes, in order to be insulted. “Well, clueless or not, I’ve put this operation of yours out of business. And I’ll shut down others—”

“Too late!” The yellow fell into hacking coughs of bitter laughter. “They’ve already been taken over … by—”

I stepped closer, nearly gagging on decay reeks that spilled from cracks in the golem’s skin. It must be hours past deadline, holding together by willpower alone.

“Taken over, you say? By whom? Another copyright racketeer? Give me a name!”

Grinning caused the face to split, separating flaps of yellow pseudoskin, exposing the crumbling ceramic skull.

“Go to Alpha … Tell Betzalel to protect the emet!”

“What? Go to who?”

“The source! Tell Ri—”

Before he could say more, something snapped. One of Beta’s legs, I guess. The smug expression vanished, replaced on that skeletal face by a look of sudden dread. For the span of an instant, I imagined I could see the Soul Standing Wave through Beta’s filmy clay eyes.

Moaning, the ditto dropped from sight …

… followed by a splash. As fumes gusted, I offered a feeble benediction …

“ ’Bye.”

… and jumped back down to the alley. One thing I didn’t need right then was to let another of Beta’s perverse little paranoia games into my head! Anyway, the brief encounter was recorded by the implant in my eye. My oh-so-analytical ebony golem could ponder the words later.

A job like mine requires focus. And ability to judge what’s relevant.

So I dismissed the incident from mind.

Until next time, I thought.

Back on Alameda, I decided not to wait for Blane to finish in the basement. Let him d-mail me a report. This job was done. My end of it, at least.

I was walking back to my car when a feminine voice spoke up from behind me.

“Mr. Morris?”

For a brief instant I envisioned Gineen Wammaker, the real one, having rushed downtown to congratulate me. Yeah, I know. Fat chance.

I turned to see a brunette. Taller than the maestra, less voluptuous, with a narrower face and somewhat higher voice. Still very much worth looking at. Her skin was one of the ten thousand shades of authentic human-brown.

“Yes, that’s me,” I said.

She flashed a card covered with splotchy fractals that automatically engaged the optics in my left eye, but the patterns were too complex or newfangled for my obsolete image system to deconvolute. Irritated, I bit an incisor to frame-store the image. Nell could solve the puzzle later.

“And what can I do for you, Miss?” Maybe she was a news sniffer, or a thrill perv.

“First, let me congratulate you on this morning’s success. You have a sheen of celebrity, Mr. Morris.”

“My fifteen seconds,” I answered automatically.

“Oh, more than that, I think. Your skills had already come to our attention, before this coup. Might I prevail on you to spare a moment? Someone wants to meet you.”

She gestured down the street a short distance, where a fat limousine was parked. An expensive-looking Yugo.

I considered. The maestra expected me to call with final assurance that third-hand Wammaker toys would stop flooding the market. But hell, I’m human. Inside, I felt as if I had already reported to one Gineen — the white ditto. Why should anyone have to go through that twice? Illogical, I know. But Miss Fractal gave me an excuse to put off the delectably unpleasant duty.

I shrugged. “Why not?”

She smiled and took my arm, in the old thirties style, while I wondered what she wanted. Some press flacks love to sniff detectives after a showy bust — though reporters seldom drive Yugos.

The limo’s door hissed open and the sill lowered, so I barely had to duck my head entering. It was dim inside. And lavish. Bioluminescent cressets and real wood moldings. Pseudoflesh cushions beckoned, wriggling voluptuously, like welcoming laps. Crystal decanters and goblets glittered in the bar. Fancy. Schmancy.

And there, sitting cross-legged on the backseat like he owned the place, was a pale gray golem.

It’s a bit odd to see a rox riding in style with an attractive rig assistant, but how better to show off your wealth? In fact, my host looked as if he’d been born gray. Silver hair and skin like metal, all angles and high cheekbones … not gray, I realized, but a kind of platinum.

He looks familiar. I tried sending a snap-image to Nell, but the limo was shielded. The platinum golem smiled, as if he knew exactly what had happened. I took small comfort from the fact that this creature had no legal rights.

So what? It could still buy and sell you in a second, I told myself, taking the opposite seat while Miss Fractal alighted primly onto a living cushion between us. Opening the limo’s cooler, she took out a bottle of Tuborg and poured me a glass. Basic hospitality. My daytime brew is a matter of public profile. No points for research.

“Mr. Morris, let me present Vic Aeneas Kaolin.”

I managed to quash any outward surprise. No wonder he looked familiar! As one of the founders of Universal Kilns, Kaolin was one of the richest men along the entire Pacific coast. Strictly speaking, the “Vic” honorific — like Mister — should only be used with the real person, the original who can vote. But I sure wasn’t about to stand on protocol if this fellow wants his elegant drone to be called Vic … or Lord Poobah, for that matter.

“A pleasure to meet you, Vic Kaolin. Is there a service I can offer?”

The metal-shiny ditto returned a thin smile, nodding through a window at the contract cleaners, still sweeping up battle remnants.

“Congratulations on your success cornering a wily foe, Mr. Morris. Though I’m not sure about the endgame. All this violence seems unsubtle. Extravagant.”

Did Kaolin own the blemished Teller Building? Wouldn’t a trillionaire have more important chores for his duplicates than hand-delivering a damage lien to a private eye?

“I just performed the investigation,” I said. “Enforcement was up to the Labor Subcontractors Association.”

The young woman commented. “LSA wants to be seen acting decisively about the problem of ditnapping and copyright piracy—”

She stopped when the Kaolin copy raised a hand with skin texture nearly as supple as realflesh, including simulated veins and tendons. “Enforcement isn’t an issue. I believe the matter we want to discuss is an investigation,” he said quietly.

I wondered — surely Kaolin had employees and retainers to handle security matters. Hiring an outsider suggested something out of the ordinary. “Then you didn’t simply rush down here on impulse, because of all this.” I motioned at the untidy scene outside.

“Of course not,” said the young assistant. “We’ve been discussing you for some time.”

“We have?” Kaolin’s ditto blinked, then shook its silvery head. “No matter. Are you interested, Mr. Morris?”

“Naturally.”

“Good. Then you’ll accompany us now.” He raised a hand again, brooking no argument. “Since you’re here in person, I’ll pay your top consulting rate until you decide to accept or refuse the case. Under a confidentiality seal, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Both his belt phone and mine recognized the key words “confidentiality seal.” They would grab the last few minutes of conversation from latent memory, covering them under a date/time stamp to serve as a contract, for the time being.

Kaolin’s limo started up.

“My car—” I began.

The young woman made a complex gesture, tapping fingers rapidly together. An instant later, there flashed in my left eye a brief text message from my Volvo, asking permission to slave its autodrive to the big Yugo. It would follow close behind, if I said okay.

I did so with a tap of incisors. Kaolin’s assistant was very good. Perhaps even worth lavishly hiring in the flesh. I wished I caught her name.

A forward glance caught the shadow of a driver beyond the smoky panel. Was that servant real, too? Well, the rich are different than you and me.

It was still morning rush hour and the limo had to weave slowly around huge dinobuses, discharging golem passengers from racks slung along sinuous flanks. The buses shuffled and grunted, undulating their long necks gracefully, swinging humanlike heads to gossip with each other as traffic lurched along. From their imposing height, the imprinted pilots had a fine view of the wounded Teller Building. They could even peer into high windows and around corners.

Every kid dreams of becoming a bus driver when he grows up.

Soon we departed Old Town with its blend of shabbiness and gaudy color — its derelict buildings taken over by a new race of disposable beings, built either for hard work or hard play. Crossing the river, we made good time even with my car following behind, tethered by invisible control beams. The architecture grew brighter and more modern, even as the people became bland-looking, equipped only with nature’s dull pigmentation, ranging from pale almost-white to chocolate brown. Trollies and dinobuses gave way to bikes and joggers, making me feel lazy and neglectful by comparison. They tell you in school — take care of your organic body. One rig is all you get.

Aeneas Kaolin’s duplicate resumed speaking.

“I’ve been backtracing your impressive set of narrow escapes yesterday. You appear to be resourceful, Mr. Morris.”

“Part of the job.” I shrugged. “Can you tell me what this is about now?”

Again, the thin smile. “Let Ritu explain.” He motioned to his living assistant.

Ritu, I noted the name.

“There has been a kidnapping, Mr. Morris,” the dark-haired young woman said in a low, tense voice.

“Hm. I see. Well, recovering snatched property is one of my specialties. Tell me, did the ditto have a locator pellet? Even if they cut it out, we can possibly nail down where—”

She shook her head.

“You misunderstand, sir. This was no mere theft. Not a dittograb, as they say on the street. The victim is a real person. In fact, it is my father.”

I blinked a couple of times.

“But …”

“He’s more than just a person,” inserted Kaolin. “Dr. Yosil Maharal is a brilliant researcher. A co-founder of Universal Kilns and a major patent holder in the realm of corporeal duplication. And my close friend, I should add.”

For the first time, I noticed that the platinum’s hand trembled. From emotion? Hard to tell.

“But why not go to the police?” I asked. “They handle crimes against real people. Did the kidnappers threaten to kill Maharal if you tell? I’m sure you’ve heard there are ways to notify special authorities without—”

“We’ve already discussed the matter with state and national gendarmeries. Those officials have been unhelpful.”

I took this in for several seconds.

“Well … I’m at a loss how I could do better. In a situation like this, cops can sift memory files from every public and private camera in the city. For a capital crime, they can even unleash DNA sniffers.”

“Only with a major warrant, Mr. Morris. No warrant was issued.”

“Why not?”

“Lack of sufficient cause,” Ritu replied. “The police say they won’t file an application without clear evidence that a crime was committed.”

I shook my head, trying to adjust my perceptions. The young woman opposite me wasn’t just Aeneas Kaolin’s efficient assistant. She must be a rather rich person in her own right, perhaps a high official in the company that her eminent father helped establish — a company that transformed the way modern people go about their lives.

“Forgive me,” I asked, shaking my head. “I’m confused. The police say there’s no evidence of crime … but you say your father was kidnapped?”

“That’s our theory. But there are no witnesses or ransom notes. A motivationist from the Human Protection Division thinks that Dad simply snuck away, on his own volition. As a free adult, he has the right.”

“A right to try. Not many have the skill to pull off a clean escape, deliberately dropping out of the World Village. Even if you exclude all the private lenses and myob-eyes, that leaves an awful lot of publicams to avoid.”

“And we sifted thousands without tracking down my father, I assure you, Mr. Morris.”

“Albert,” I corrected.

She blinked, hesitantly. Her expression was complex, dour one moment, then briefly beautiful when she smiled. “Albert,” she corrected with a graceful, slanted nod.

I wondered if Clara would call her attractive.

The limo was driving past Odeon Square. Memories of last night made my toes itch … recalling sensations of having them gnawed off by crabs during that hellish underwater trek. I glimpsed the restaurant where a waiter-dit saved me by distracting the crowd. Naturally, it was closed this early. I vowed to drop by and see if the fellow still had a labor contract there. I owed him one.

“Well, we can check out the possibility that your father played hookey. If he arranged to drop out of sight, there should be signs of preparation in his home, or the most recent place he was spotted. If the locales haven’t been disturbed. How long since you saw your father, Ritu?”

“Almost a month.”

I had to choke back a cough. A month! The trail wouldn’t just be cold by now but sedimentary. It was all I could do to keep a blank face and not insult the clients.

“That’s … a long time.”

“As you might guess, I tried first to utilize my own contractors and employees,” Kaolin’s ditto explained. “Only later did it dawn on us that the situation calls for a genuine expert.”

I accepted the compliment with a nod, yet worried why he would want or need to butter me up. Some people are naturally gracious, but I had a feeling this fellow did little without calculation. Flattery from the rich can be a danger signal.

“I’ll need to scan Dr. Maharal’s house and workplace. And permission to interview his associates. If clues lead to his work, I’ll have to know all about that, too.”

Kaolin’s expensively realistic face didn’t look happy. “There are … sensitive matters involved, Mr. Morris. Cutting edge technologies and potentially crucial breakthroughs.”

“I can post a strong confidentiality bond, if you like. Would half a year’s income do?”

He chewed on it for a few seconds. Duplicates are often empowered to speak for their originals — and the most expensive grays can think as well as their archetype, at some metabolic cost. Still, I expected this one to defer any final decision till I spoke to the real Vic.

“An ideal solution,” it suggested, “would be if you came aboard as a Kaolin household retainer.”

Not ideal to me, I thought. Fealty oaths are a big fad among aristos, who like the feudal image of lords and faithful vassals. But I wasn’t about to let go of my individuality. “An even better solution would be for you to take the word of a professional who lives by his reputation. It’s a better guarantee than any oath.”

I was only making a counterproposal — part of a negotiation that would finish with Kaolin’s original. But the gray ditto surprised me with a firm nod.

“Then that is all we’ll require, Mr. Morris. Anyway, we appear to have arrived.”

I turned to see the limo approach a tall fence made of blue metal that shimmered with an ionization aura. Beyond the guarded gate, campus grounds extended to three huge bubbledomes, gleaming mirrorlike under the sun. The centermost reared over twenty stories high. No logos or company emblems were needed. Everybody knew this landmark — world headquarters of Universal Kilns.

Another giveaway was the crowd of demonstrators, shouting and waving banners at vehicles streaming through the main entrance — a protest that had waxed and waned for over thirty years. In addition to standard placards, a few aimed holo projectors, splatting car windows (and a few unwary faces) with colorfully irate 3-D comments. Naturally, Kaolin’s limousine filtered out such intrusions. But I mused over a few painted posters:

There Is Only

One Creator!

Brown Is Beautiful

Man-made “Life” Mocks

Heaven and Nature!

And, of course -

One Person:

Just One Soul

Naturally, these protestors were all archies, continuing a struggle that had been lost in both the courts and the marketplace before many of them were born. Yet they persisted, denouncing what they saw as technological arrogation of God’s prerogatives — condemning the daily creation of manufactured beings. Millions of disposable people.

At first, looking out the right side, I saw only True Lifers clamoring and carrying on. Then I realized, several of them were shouting epithets at another crowd — a younger, hipper-looking throng on the left side of the entryway, equipped with more holo throwers and fewer placards. The second group had a different message:

End the Slavery of Clay People!

“Synthetic” Is a Social Slur

UK Serves the “Real” Ruling Class!

Rights for Roxes!

All Thinking Beings Have Souls

“Mancies,” said Kaolin in a low voice, glancing at this second crowd, which included lots of bright-skinned dittos. Unlike the True Lifers, who were a familiar sight, this Emancipation movement had burgeoned much more recently — a crusade that still had many people scratching their heads.

The two protest groups despised each other. But they agreed on hatred of Universal Kilns. I wondered, would they put aside their animus and join forces if they knew the company chairman, Vic Aeneas Kaolin himself, was passing nearby?

Well, not “himself.” But close enough.

As if he knew my thoughts, he chuckled. “If these were my only enemies, I wouldn’t have a care in the world. Moralists make a lot of noise … and sometimes mail a pathetic bomb or two … but they are generally predictable and easy to sidetrack. I get a lot more aggravation from practical men.”

Which particular opponents did he mean? Kiln technology disrupted so many fundamentals of the old way of life, I still puzzle why it wasn’t throttled in the crib. Beyond ravaging every labor union and throwing millions out of work, roxing almost triggered a dozen wars that only quelled after intense diplomacy by some first-rate world leaders.

And some people say there’s no such thing as progress? Oh, there’s progress, all right. If you can handle it.

Security scanners cleared the limo and we left the demonstrators behind, passing a main entrance where buses delivered ditto workers, discharging them from leathery racks. But most arriving employees were organic humans who would make their copies onsite. Quite a few archies approached on bicycles, glowing from the sweaty workout, looking forward to a steam and massage before getting to work. Companies like UK take good care of their people. There are benefits to giving a fealty oath.

We cruised beyond the main portal, then on past sheltered loading docks, shipping machinery like freezers, imprinting units, and kilns. Most of the ditto blanks that people buy are made elsewhere, but I did glimpse some specialty items as we swept by — rigid figures dimly visible inside translucent packing crates, some of them uncannily tall, or gangly, or shaped like animals out of some legend. Not everyone can handle being imprinted into a non-standard human shape, but I hear it’s a growing fashion among trendsetters.

The limo approached a formal entrance, clearly meant for VIP arrivals. Liveried servitors with emerald skin, the same color as their uniforms, rushed up to open our doors and we emerged under a canopy of artificial trees. Flowers dropped fragrant petals in rainbow profusion, like soft rain, dissolving into sweet, pigmented vapor before touching ground.

Looking around, I saw no sign of my Volvo. It must have peeled off to a more plebeian parking place. The dented fenders wouldn’t suit this ambiance.

“So, where to now?” I asked the gray Kaolin replica. “I’ll need to meet your original and finalize—”

His blank expression stopped me.

Ritu explained. “I thought you knew. Vic Kaolin doesn’t see visitors in person anymore. He conducts all business by facsimile.”

I had heard. He wasn’t the only rich hermit to retreat into a sanitized sanctum, dealing with the world via electronic or pseudoflesh deputies. But in most cases it was affectation, a pose — a way to limit access — with exceptions made for important matters. The disappearance of a renowned scientist might qualify.

I started to say this, then saw that Ritu no longer paid attention. Her pale eyes shifted to stare past my right shoulder, both irises flaring while her chin quivered in shock. At almost the same moment, Kaolin’s copy let out a reflex gasp.

Ritu vented a single word as I swiveled.

“Daddit!”

A clay person approached us from behind the floral arbor — with skin a much darker shade of gray than Kaolin’s elegant platinum-colored unit. This ditto was embossed to resemble a slender man about sixty, walking with a faint limp that seemed more habit than a current affliction. The face, narrow and angular, bore some resemblance to Ritu, especially when it shaped a wan smile.

The paper garments were taped in several places, but a gleaming Universal Kilns ID badge said YOSIL MAHARAL.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

Ritu didn’t leap into its arms. Her use of the paternal-mimetic greeting meant the Maharal household must have kept real and simulated distinct, even in private. Still, her voice quavered as she grabbed a dark gray hand.

“We were so worried. I’m glad you’re all right!”

At least we can guess he was all right some time in the last twenty-four hours, I observed quietly, noting the torn garments and cracked pseudoskin. Expiration wasn’t many hours away. Flakes of some outer covering, perhaps remnants of a disguise, peeled off corners of ditMaharal’s face. The ditto’s voice conveyed both tenderness and fatigue.

“I’m sorry to fret you, Pup,” it said to Ritu, then turned to Kaolin. “And you, old friend. I never meant to upset you both.”

“What’s going on, Yosil? Where are you?”

“I just had to get away for a while and work things out. Project Zoroaster and its implications …” ditMaharal shook its head. “Anyway, I’m feeling better. I should have a good handle on things in a few days.”

Kaolin took an eager step.

“You mean the solution to—”

Ritu interrupted. “Why didn’t you get in touch? Or let us know — ?”

“I wanted to, but I was wallowing in a pit of suspicion, not trusting the phones or webs.” ditMaharal gave a rueful chuckle. “I guess some of the paranoia is still clinging to me. That’s why I sent this copy, instead of calling. But I just wanted to reassure you both that things do feel much better.”

I faded back a few steps, not wanting to intrude while Ritu and Kaolin murmured, evidently glad and relieved. Naturally, I felt a twinge over losing a lucrative case. But happy endings are never a bad thing.

Except that I somehow felt uneasy — unsure that anything “happy” was going on here. Despite the prospect of going home with a fat check for half a morning’s consultation, I had that hollow feeling. The one that always haunts me when a job feels unfinished.

3 Something in the Fridge

I parked by the Little Venice Canal and keyed myself aboard Clara’s houseboat, hoping to find her at home.

It suited Clara to live on the water. At a time when most people — even the poor — seem feverishly intent on building up their homes, maximizing both ornate space and possessions, she preferred spartan compactness. The river’s briny tide, its unsteady rocking, reminded her of the world’s instability — which she found somehow reassuring.

Like those bullet holes in the north bulkhead, streaming rays of summer illumination into the boat’s tiny salon. “My new skylights,” Clara called them, soon after we both managed to wrestle the gun out of Pal’s hands, that time when he broke down right there in front of us, the one and only time I ever saw our friend sob over his bad luck. The very day he got released from the hospital — the half of him that remained — in his shiny new life-support chair.

Later, as we were about to drive Pal home, Clara brushed aside his apologies. And from that moment she vowed to keep the perforations unpatched, treasuring them as valued “improvements.”

You can see why I would always come by the boat, too, whenever I feel punctured or let down.

Only this time, Clara wasn’t home.

Instead, I found a note for me on the kitchen counter.

GONE TO WAR, it said.

I muttered sourly. Was this payback for the way my zombie-self ditsrupted Madame F’s dinner party last night? Neighborly relations mattered to Clara.

Then I recalled, Oh yes, a war. She did mention something a while back, about her reserve unit being called up for combat duty. For a battle against India, I thought. Or was it Indiana?

Damn, that sort of thing could last a whole week. Sometimes more. I really wanted to talk to her, not spend the time worrying about where she was and what she might be doing, out there in the desert.

The note went on:

Glancing toward her little sim-study, I saw light rimming the door. So, before departing, Clara must have made a duplicate, programmed to finish some homework assignment. No doubt I’d find a gray or ebony version of my girlfriend inside, swathed in the robes of a virtuality chador, laboring to fulfill some academic requirement in her latest major maybe Bantu Linguistics or Chinese Military History — I couldn’t follow the way her interests kept swerving, like a hundred million other permanent students on this continent alone.

Me, I was one of a vanishing breed — the employed. My philosophy: why stay in school when you have a marketable skill? You never know when it’ll become obsolete.

The magnetic latch released silently when I touched it, easing open the door of the study. True, her note asked me stay out, but I feel insecure sometimes. Maybe I was just checking to be sure that my biometrics still had full trust access, throughout the boat.

They did. And yes, there was her gray, studying at a tiny desk cluttered with papers and data-plaques. Only the legs showed — pasty-clay in texture but realistically shapely. Everything above the waist lay shrouded under holo-interactive fabric that kept bulging and shifting as the ditto waved, pointed, and typed with wriggling hands. Word mumbles escaped the muffling layers.

“… No, no! I don’t want some commercial hobby simulation of the Fizzle War. I need information on the real event! Not history books but raw debriefing transcripts having specifically to do with bio-crimes like TARP … Yes, that’s right. Real harm done to real people back when war was …

“I know the trial records are forty years old! So? Then adapt to the old data protocols and … Oh, you dim-witted excuse for a … and they call this artificial intelligence?”

I had to smile. Mere duplicate or not, it was Clara right down to the soul — cool in a crisis yet capable of great affection. And all too prickly toward the incompetence of strangers, especially machines. It did no good to lecture her that software avatars couldn’t be browbeaten like infantry recruits.

I found it curious — and maybe a bit creepy — how Clara could assign a duplicate to do classwork, yet never bother to inload the golem’s memories. How does that help you learn anything? All right, I’m old-fashioned. (One of my “endearing” qualities, she says.) Or maybe it’s hard to imagine what keeps a golem motivated, with no promise of rejoining its original at the end of the day.

Well, you do it too, sometimes, I thought. Didn’t you lend Clara an ebony last week, to help her with a term paper? Never came back, as I recall. Not that I mind.

I hope we had some good, scholarly fun.

Though tempted, I decided against bothering the homework-ditto. Clara liked specialists. This one would be all drive and intellect, toiling till its ephemeral brain expired. Again, it comes down to personality. Zingleminded focus on each task at hand, that’s my Clara.

The houseboat reflected this. In an era when people spend copious spare time lavishly furnishing their homes or building hobby-hoards, her place was severely efficient, as if she expected to shove off at a moment’s notice, heading toward some distant shore, or perhaps a different era.

Tools were evident, many showing handmade touches, like an all-weather navigation system worked into the grain of a carved mahogany walking stick or a set of formidable, self-targeting fighting bolas wrought from meteoritic nickel-iron. Or the his and hers armored chadors that hung from a nearby coatrack. Decorative outer layers of burnished titanium chain mail covered the real apparatus — a floppy cowl of plush emitters that could transport you anywhere you want to go in VR space. Assuming you had a good reason to visit that sterile digital realm.

Our matched set of chadors stayed here on the boat — the closest thing to a firm expression of commitment I had from her so far. That and a pair of solido-dolls of us hiking together on Denali — her straight brown hair cropped close, almost helmetlike, around a face that Clara always dismissed as too elongated to be pretty, though I had no complaints. To me she looked grown-up, a real woman, while my own too-youthful features seem forever pinched in a dark moodiness of adolescence. Maybe it’s why I overcompensate, working hard to keep a serious job, while Clara feels more free to explore.

Otherwise? No clutter of collectibles. No trophies from a hundred battlefields where her combatant dittoselves crawled through shellfire, charging laser positions in her team’s more famous matches.

At one level, I was involved with a college student. At another level, a warrior and international celebrity. So? Who hasn’t grown accustomed to living several lives in parallel? If humanity has one majestic talent, it’s an almost infinite capacity to get used to the Next Big Thing … then take it for granted.

I looked back at the note Clara left for me. Her thumbprint, bio-sculpted to resemble a familiar winking leer, marked the end, pointing to a second scrap of paper underneath:

Her duplication machine — a sleek model from Fabrique Gabon — took up a quarter of the boat’s petite salon. The storage compartment, translucent with frost, revealed a humanoid figure — Clara’s shape and size — presumably imprinted and ready for baking in the kiln.

Pondering the well-proportioned silhouette, I felt like a husband whose absent wife left a ready-to-heat supper in the fridge. A strange thought, given Clara’s attitude toward marriage. And yes, Clara likes to make specialists. This ivory wouldn’t be big on intellect or conversation.

Well, I’ll take what I can get.

But not now. Between one emergency and another, I’d been up for forty hours and needed sleep more than surrogate sex. Anyway, a vague sense of unease gnawed as I drove back to my own place.

“Did you check on the waiter at La Tour Vanadium?” I asked Nell, parking the Volvo in its little garage. My house computer answered in a customary mezzo-soprano.

“I did. The restaurant reports that one of their waiters lost his service contract last night, for upsetting clients. They are hiring skilled dittos from another source, starting tonight.”

“Damn.” This meant I owed the guy. Manual labor contracts aren’t easy to come by, especially at classy eateries, where owners demand uniform perfection from the staff. Identical waiters are more predictable, and employees who are cast from the same mold don’t squabble over tips.

“Did they give his name?

“There is a privacy block. But I’ll work on it. Meanwhile, you have ongoing cases. Shall we go over them while imprinting today’s duplicates?”

Nell’s tone was chiding. Our normal routine had gone completely off-kilter. Usually, by this hour I’d have already turned out copies to run errands and make inquiries while the rig went back to sleep, napping to conserve precious brain cells for the creative side of business.

Instead of collapsing into bed, I headed for my kiln unit and lay down while Nell thawed several blanks for imprinting. I looked away as they slid into warming trays, doughlike flesh puffing and coloring as millions of tiny achilles catalysis cells began their brief, vigorous pseudolives. Today’s kids may take this all for granted, but most people my age still find it a little unnerving, like seeing a corpse waken.

“Go ahead,” I told Nell, while neural probes waved around my head for the critical phase of imprinting.

“First, I’ve been fending off Gineen Wammaker all morning. She’s anxious to talk to you.”

I winced as tickling sensations began dancing across my scalp, comparing my ongoing Soul Standing Wave to the basic ground state stored in memory.

“The Wammaker job is done. I completed the contract. If she’s gonna quibble over expenses—”

“The maestra has already paid our bill in full. There are no quibbles.”

Blinking in surprise, I almost sat up.

“That’s not like her.”

“Perhaps Ms. Wammaker noticed that you were abrupt with her this morning, and subsequently refused her calls. That could have put you in a position of strength, psychologically speaking. She may worry that she provoked you once too often, perhaps losing your services for good.”

Nell’s speculation had some merit. I felt no desperate need to keep working for the maestra. Relaxing again, I felt the tetragramatron’s sweep intensify, copying my sympathetic and parasympathetic profiles for imprinting.

“What services? I said the job is done.”

“Apparently she has another in mind. Her offer is our top-standard fee, plus ten percent for a confidential consultation early this afternoon.”

I pondered it … though you really aren’t supposed to make crucial decisions while imprinting. Too many random currents surging in your brain.

“Well, if playing hard-to-get works, make a counter offer. Top-standard rate plus thirty. Take it or leave it. We’ll send a gray if she accepts.”

“The gray is thawing as we speak. Shall I also continue preparing an ebony?”

“Hm. A bit expensive, if I’m making a gray anyway. Maybe he can finish with Wammaker early and get home in time to help.”

“That should suffice for casework. But we still need a green—”

Nell paused abruptly.

“I’m receiving a call. An urgent. From someone named Ritu Lizabetha Maharal. Do you know this woman?”

Again, I barely refrained from sitting up, ruining the transfer.

“I met her this morning.”

“You could have told me.”

“Just pipe it in please, Nell.”

A wall screen lit up, showing the slim face of Vic Kaolin’s young assistant. Her real skin flushed taut with emotion, not at all like the relieved expression I last saw an hour ago.

“Mr. Morris … I mean Albert …”

She blinked, realizing that I lay supine in the kiln. Many folks consider imprinting private, like getting dressed in the morning.

“Forgive me for not getting up, Miss Maharal. I can interrupt if it’s urgent, or call you back in a few—”

“No. I’m sorry to disturb you while you’re … It’s just that I — I have terrible news.”

Anyone could tell as much from her expression — bleak and grieving. I hazarded a guess.

“Is it your father?”

She nodded, tears welling.

“They found his body in …” She stopped, unable to proceed.

“His rig?” I asked, shaken. “Not the gray ditto I met, but the real … your father’s dead?”

Ritu nodded.

“C-could you please send a you over here, right away? Send it to the Kaolin estate. They’re calling this an accident. But I’m sure Dad was murdered!”

4 Gray Matters

Running subvocal commentary.

Notes-as-we-go.

If this body of mine were real, a passerby might see my lips move, or hear a low whisper as I tape this. But talking into a microphone is irritating and inconvenient. Folks can listen. So I order all my gray ditto blanks with silent-record feature and a compulsion to recite.

Now I am one of them.

Damn.

Oh, never mind. I’m always just a bit grumpy getting up off the warming tray, grabbing paper garments from a rack and slipping them over limbs that still glow with ignition enzymes, knowing I’m the copy-for-a-day.

Of course I remember doing this thousands of times. Part of modern living, that’s all. Still, it feels like when my parents used to hand me a long list of chores, saying that today will be all work and no play … with the added touch that Albert Morris’s golems have a high chance of getting snuffed while taking risks he’d never put his realbod through.

A lesser death. Barely noticed. Unmourned.

Ugh. What got me in this mood?

Maybe Ritu’s news. A reminder that true death still lurks for us all.

Well, shrug it off! No sense brooding. Life’s fundamentally the same. Sometimes you’re the grasshopper. Some the ant. The difference now is that now you can be both, the very same day.

While I donned a scratchy gray jumpsuit, real-me got up from the padded scan-table and cast a glance my way. Our eyes met.

If this me makes it back here to inload tonight, I’ll remember that brief moment of contact from both sides, worse than staring deeply in a mirror, or bad déjà vu, which is one reason why we do it seldom. Some folks get it so bad, they try never to meet themselves at all, using screens to shut themselves off from the golems they make. Others couldn’t care less — in fact, they find their own company charming! People are various. Humanity’s great strength, I hear.

Fresh from imprint, I knew exactly what my organic archetype was thinking at that moment of eye contact. A rare bit of envy. Wishing he could go see the beautiful Ritu Maharal in person. Maybe offer some help or comfort.

Well, tough, Albert. That’s what I’m for. She did ask for a ditto, after all. A high-quality gray.

Don’t worry, boss. All you gotta do is inload me later. I’ll get continuity and you’ll remember every detail. Fair exchange. Trading one day’s experience for an afterlife.

Transport is always troublesome on busy days. We have just one car, and archie holds onto it, in case he has to go out. Got to keep the rig body safe from rain and hard objects. Like traffic hazards. Or bullets.

Too bad, since he usually stays home in bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, “investigating” cases by roaming the Net, paying for research scans with a flick-ident of our retina. So the Volvo mostly sits in the garage. We dittos get around by bus or scooter.

There are just two scooters left, and we made three golems today. So I have to share the little Vespa with a cheap little green who’s heading downtown on errands.

I drive, of course. The greenie rides behind, silent as a wart, as we putt-putt all the way to the rendezvous where Ritu’s sending a car to meet me. There’s a small park, just off Chavez Avenue. Shady enough for a ditto to wait without melting in the sun.

I stop the scooter, leaving the motor running. Greenie slides forward to grab the handlebars as I dismount. Smooth maneuver. Done it lots of times.

He takes off without looking back. Tomorrow I’ll remember what Greenie’s thinking right now. If he makes it home. Which seems doubtful as I watch him weave through traffic, slipstreaming a delivery van. Ack, you can lose a perfectly good scooter that way! I really should drive more carefully.

Standing here, waiting for the car from Universal Kilns, I close my eyes and feel summer’s warm languor. My grays need good senses, so right now I can smell the nearby pepper tree as kids in long pants clamber the rough branches, shredding musty bark and shouting at each other with the sober intensity that children bring to play. And roses and gardenias — I inhale complex fragrances through sponge-sensor membranes, feeling almost alive.

Not far off, more than a dozen hobbyists can be seen, crouching in broad sun hats, indulging a passion for gardening — yet another way to pass time in a world without enough jobs. It’s one reason I chose this place for pickup. The local horticulture club is superb. Unlike my neighborhood, where nobody gives a damn.

I glance around to make sure I’m not in anybody’s way. Parks are mostly for archies. The kids are all real, of course. Most folks only copy a child in order to teach rote lessons — or to send an occasional me-gram to Grannie. Some parents are reluctant to do even that, fearing subtle damage to growing brains. Such conservatism may fade as we take the technology for granted, like any other routine miracle.

(I hear that some divorced couples are pioneering new styles of visitation. Mom lets Dad take Junior’s ditto to the Zoo, then refuses to inload the kid’s happy memory, out of spite. Yeesh.)

Most of the adult caregivers in the park are rigs, too. Why not? You can fire up a clay copy and send it to the office, but when it comes to hugs and tickles, flesh has no substitute. Anyway, it makes you look bad, sending your child out tended by a purple or green. That is, unless you hire a poppins from one of the Master Nannies — a status symbol few can afford at this end of town.

… wait a sec … The phone just rang. I pick up my portable to listen in as Nell answers. She passes the call to my real self.

It’s Pal. I can see him in the tiny display, propped in a big wheelchair, his half-paralyzed face surrounded by wish sensors. He wants me to come by. Something’s up. Too sensitive to explain over public netwaves.

My rig answers in a grumpy voice. Been awake two days. (Poor guy.) Can’t come in person and too tired for another imprinting.

“I’ve got three dits out on errands,” I hear me tell Pal. “One of them will drop by your place, if time allows.”

Huh. Pal lives downtown. Just a few blocks from the Teller Building. He couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?

Three dits? The green won’t be up to handling Pal, and I can’t picture Gineen Wammaker letting the other gray escape early, so it’s probably up to me. I’ve got to go console and consult poor Ritu Maharal — while cops glare and mutter about “meddling private eyes” — then take a stinking crosstown bus to hear Pal rant his latest conspiracy theory till I’m ready to expire. Great.

Ah. Here’s the car from UK. It’s no Yugolimo, but nice. Driver’s a stolid-looking purple — all focus and reflexes. Good for delivering you safely. Not someone you’d go to for sage advice about personal relationships.

I get in.

He drives.

City streets roll by.

Pulling out a cheap slate, I dial up something to read. The Journal of Antisocial Proclivities. There are always new developments to keep up on, if you want to stay employable in your field. My real brain always dozes when I try to read this kind of stuff. Good at concepts, but the Standing Wave drifts. So I pay extra for gray blanks with good attention foci.

I never would have made it through college without those dittos I sent to the library.

Wait a minute.

I lift my gaze from the article when the triple domes of Universal Kilns pass by on the right, then fall behind. We must be heading somewhere else. But I thought -

Ah, yes. Ritu never actually mentioned UK. She said “the Kaolin estate.”

So, I’ve been invited to the great one’s sanctum, after all. Well, lade-da.

Let’s go back to reading about the use of pseudo-incarceration in Sumatra, where it seems they’re using multi-dittoing to simulate a twenty-year prison sentence in just two. Saves money and chastens the wicked, or so they say. Yuck.

The next time I look up, we’re driving through an exclusive neighborhood. Big houses beyond tall hedges. Mansions perched at the end of long drives, each one bigger, more impressive, and better protected than the one before it. My left-eye sensors trace guardian fields lining the tops of walls. Decorative spearheads mask sleep-gas jets. Mock ferrets squat in trees, watchful against interlopers. Of course, none of it would keep out a real pro.

The Kaolin Manor entrance looks unassuming. No garish protections. The best are unseen.

We flow straight through, then up a curving drive.

It’s a big stone chateau, surrounded by meadows and old trees. A few modest outbuildings, gardens, and hedge-sheltered guest cottages can be seen, off to one side. The gardens are disappointing. Nothing special. Few of the rare specimens I’d plant, if I were rich. Then I spot an architectural anomaly — a mirrorlike dome covering the roof of one entire wing. The sanctuary that a famous recluse retired to, years ago, leaving the rest of the mansion for servants, guests, and golems. Apparently, Aeneas Kaolin takes his hermitage seriously.

There’s just a white hospital van parked in front of the main house. I expected official vehicles. Police inspectors. Portable forensic labs. Normal procedure when murder is afoot.

Clearly, Ritu’s notion of foul play isn’t shared by the authorities. Well, that’s why she called me.

A butler sends his copper-colored duplicate to open my door. Another escorts me inside. Nice treatment, seeing as how I’m not real.

I’m inside now, under a vaulting atrium. Fine wood paneling. Nice decorative touches — lots of wall-mounted helmets, shields, and pointy weapons from other ages. Clara would love this stuff, so I freeze a few picts to show her later.

Conversation wafts my way as I’m led to a book-lined library, now serving a more somber function. The splendid oak table bears a cherry-wood casket with an open lid. Somebody’s dear departed, lying in state. A dozen or so human figures are in view, though just two are real — the corpse and a grieving daughter.

I should move toward Ritu, since she summoned me. But it’s a platinum Kaolin-ditto who dominates the scene. Is it the same one I met earlier this morning? Must be, since it gives a nod of recognition before returning attention to a vid call — consulting with underlings and advisers, I reckon. All the onscreen images look worried. Yosil Maharal was a vital member of their organization. Some major project may be in big trouble.

Damn. I half-hoped Kaolin himself would show up for this tragic scene, taking a short ride down from that silvery dome. Maybe he’s a genuine recluse, after all.

A jet black technical specialist finishes waving his wand of instruments over the casket, subjecting the cadaver to cascades of glittering light. The expert turns to Ritu Maharal.

“I have repeated all scans, Miss. Again, there is nothing to indicate your father’s accident had anything to do with foul play. No toxins or debilitating drugs. No needlemarks or infusion bruises. No trace of organic interference. His body chemistry does show signs of extreme fatigue, consistent with falling asleep at the wheel before driving inadvertently over the highway viaduct where he was found. This matches the conclusion of police investigators, who went over the wrecked vehicle and found no signs of tampering. And no indication of other persons, either in or near the car. I’m sorry if this news displeases you. But accidental death appears to be the correct diagnosis.”

Ritu’s face seems carved from stone, her coloration almost ditto white. She keeps silent, even as a tall gray moves close to put an arm around her. It’s a duplicate of her father — the one I met just a couple of hours ago — with a face resembling the corpse. Of course no man-made process can imitate the texture of real skin, durable enough to last decades, yet so worn and haggard-looking after more than half a century of cares. ditto Maharal stares down at his real self, knowing that a second, lesser death will come soon. Duplicates can only inload memories back to the original who made them. The Template Effect. So now he’s orphaned with no home base, no real brain to return to. Only a ticking expiration clock and pseudocells fast running out of élan vital.

In a sense, Yosil Maharal lingers on, able to contemplate his own passing. But his gray ghost will vanish in at most a few more hours.

As if sensing this, Ritu throws both arms around her daddit, squeezing tightly … but briefly. After a few seconds, she drops her arms and lets a matronly green lead her away. Perhaps an old nanny or family friend. Departing, Ritu averts her gaze, avoiding both fathers — the dead and the dying.

She doesn’t see me.

What shall I do? Follow?

“Give her a while,” a voice says.

I turn and find ditMaharal, standing close.

“Don’t be concerned, Mr. Morris. My daughter is resilient. She’ll be much better in half an hour or so. I know Ritu wants to talk to you.”

I nod. Fine. I’m paid by the minute. Still, curiosity is my driver, whether I’m riding around in flesh or clay.

“She thinks you were murdered, Doc. Were you?”

The gray shrugs, looking rueful. “I must have sounded odd this morning, when we first met. Maybe a bit paranoid.”

“You downplayed it. But I felt—”

“—that there must be something? Where there’s smoke, there must be fire?” ditMaharal nodded, spreading his hands. “I was already recovering from my panic when I made this copy. Still, it felt — and feels — like emerging from a spell.”

“A spell?”

“A fantasy of technology gone mad, Mr. Morris. The same fear, perhaps, that Fermi and Oppenheimer experienced when they watched the first mushroom cloud at Trinity Site. Or something like the curse of Frankenstein, long delayed, but now coming true with a vengeance.”

Those words would give my original a case of the shivers. Even as a gray, I experience some visceral dread.

“You no longer feel that way?”

Maharal smiles. “Didn’t I just call it a fantasy? Humanity managed to evade destruction by atom bombs and designer germs. Maybe it’s best to trust that people will take on future challenges with common sense.”

He’s playing it coy, I think.

“Then could you please explain why you went into hiding, in the first place? Did you feel someone was after you? Why change your mind? Maybe your rig had a relapse after making you. The accident suggests sleepless anxiety, maybe panic.”

Maharal’s ghost-ditto ponders this for a moment, meeting my gaze — one gray to another. But before he can answer, Vic Aeneas Kaolin comes striding over, a stern look on his platinum face.

“Old friend,” he tells ditMaharal. “I know this is a hard time for you. But we must think about salvaging what we can. Your final hours should be put to good use.”

“What do you mean?”

“A debriefing, of course. To salvage your work for posterity.”

“Ah. I see. Pressure-injecting my brain with a million meshtrodes, zapping me with gamma rays to make an ultratomograph, then sifting every pseudoneuron through a molecular strainer. It doesn’t sound like a pleasant way to spend my last moments.” Maharal mulls it over, working his jaw with realistic expressions of tension. And I can sympathize. “But I suppose you’re right. If something can be preserved.” ditMaharal’s reluctance is understandable. I sure would hate to go through stuff like that. But how else can anything be retrieved? Only the original human template can inload a duplicate’s full memory. No other person or computer can substitute. If the template’s missing or dead, all you can do is physically sift the copy’s brain for crude sepia images — the only data that’s machine-readable from golemflesh.

The rest — your consciousness Standing Wave, the core sense of self that some call the soul — is little more than useless static.

There used to be an old riddle. Are the colors you see the same as the ones I see? When you smell a rose, are you experiencing the same heady sensations that I do, when I sniff the same flower?

Nowadays we know the answer.

It’s No.

We may use similar terms to describe a sunset. Our subjective worlds often correspond, correlate, and map onto each other. That makes cooperation and relationships possible, even complex civilization. Yet a person’s actual sensations and feelings remain forever unique. Because a brain isn’t a computer and neurons aren’t transistors.

It’s why telepathy can’t happen. We are, each of us, singular and forever alien.

“I’ll have a car take you to the lab,” ditKaolin tells ditMaharal, patting the arm of his friend, as if the two were real.

“I want to be present during the debriefing,” I inject, stepping in.

Kaolin isn’t happy about this. Again, I spot a trembling of his elegantly sculpted hand as he frowns.

“We’ll be covering sensitive company matters—”

“And some of the recovered images may shed light on what happened to that poor man.” I gesture toward realMaharal, lying cold in his coffin. Left unsaid is the fact that I’ve been hired by the body’s sole legal heir. Ritu could sue me for malpractice if I don’t attend the sifting. Legally, she might prevent anyone from dissecting her father’s ghost.

Kaolin considers, then nods.

“Very well. Yosil, would you go on ahead to the lab? Mr. Morris and I will come along once you’ve been prepped.” ditMaharal doesn’t answer at first. His expression seems far away, gazing at the door where Ritu departed, minutes before.

“Um, yes? Oh, all right. For the sake of the project. And the members of our team.”

He clasps Kaolin’s elegant hand briefly and gives me a curt nod. When next we meet, his head will be under glass and under pressure.

Now Maharal’s ghost departs toward the big atrium and the front door.

I turn back to Kaolin.

“Dr. M. mentioned having been fearful, on the run, as if someone might be hunting him.”

“He also said the fear was unjustified,” Kaolin replies. “Yosil was recovering from that paranoia when he made the ditto.”

“Unless he later had a relapse … which could help explain the fatal accident if Maharal felt compelled to flee something, or someone.” I thought for a moment. “In fact, the ditto never actually denied that anyone was after him. He only said the danger felt less frightening when he was made. Can you think of a reason—”

“Why anyone might want to hurt Yosil? Well, in our business there are always dangers. Fanatics who think Universal Kilns is a front for the devil. Every now and then, some nut tries to unleash holy vengeance.” He snorts disdainfully. “Fortunately, there is a famous inverse relation between fanaticism and competence.”

“That correlation is statistical,” I point out. Antisocial behavior is my field, after all. “There are exceptions. In a large, educated population, you’ll have at least a few genuine Puerters, McVeighs, and Kaufmanns — both diabolical and brainy — who prove competent enough to wreak …”

My voice trails off, suddenly distracted. Kaolin answers, but my attention veers.

Something’s wrong.

I glance left, toward the grand hallway, following a trace — something troubling that teased the corner of one eye.

What is it?

The broad, arched corridor looks unchanged, still lined with ancient arms and trophies from historical conflicts. Yet something’s amiss.

Think.

I had been dividing my attention, the way I always do, real or rox. Maharal’s ditto just departed in that direction, heading for the atrium … where a right turn would take him out the front door for that final trip to Universal Kilns.

Only he didn’t turn right. I think he turned left instead. It was only a glimpse, but I feel sure of it.

Is he trying to see Ritu, one last time?

No. She quit the library in the opposite direction, with her green companion. So where’s the ditto heading?

On one level, it’s none of my business.

The hell it isn’t.

The magnate is explaining why he doesn’t worry about fanatics. It sounds like a canned speech. I interrupt.

“Excuse me, Vic Kaolin. I have to check on something. I’ll be back in time to ride with you to the lab.”

He looks surprised, perhaps miffed, as I turn to go. The marble floor squeaks under my cheap shoes as I hurry down the hall, sparing a moment to grab one more good look at the oldtime weapons and banners. Clara will kill me if I don’t memorize enough for a decent image tour.

At the atrium, I glance right. The butler and his three copies look up, interrupting their conversation. (What could the duplicates possibly have to talk about? My selves almost never have anything to say to each other.)

“Did you see ditMaharal come by here?”

“Yessir. Just a moment ago.”

“Which way did he go?”

The butler points behind me, toward the rear of the mansion. “Is there anything I can do for—”

I hurry in the direction indicated. It may be a dumb impulse to give chase like this, instead of quizzing Vic Kaolin while I have the chance. If Maharal were real, his detour wouldn’t bug me. I’d assume he went to the toilet. Take a pee before going on your last ride. Nothing more natural.

But he isn’t natural. He’s a thing, with no bladder and with no rights, who’s been asked to walk into a room where agonizing interrogation and death await. Anyone might veer from that path. I know I have, on at least three occasions.

Striding past the grand staircase, I duck into a minor hallway lined with cloakrooms and closets. Beyond a pair of double doors, dishes clatter amid a murmur of cooks. The gray might have dodged through there. But sensors in my left eye discern no vibration. The big swinging doors haven’t been touched for at least several minutes.

Hurrying past the kitchen, I pick up a faint scent that most normal humans barely notice or else avoid. A sweat-sweet tang of ultimate redemption.

The Recyclery.

Most of us just put our expired dittos (or leftover parts) in a sealed bin on the street for weekly pickup. But businesses that deal in high volumes need their own rendering plants to compress and filter the remains. Down a short, windowless passage stood a door few dittos pass through twice. Did Maharal go that way, preferring a quick end in the vats over the agony of brain-sifting? He didn’t seem the kind to suicide over mere pain. Still, there are other possible reasons … like dying to keep a secret.

Seeking alternatives, I turn left to look down a broader hallway. Ahead lies a glass-covered veranda, furnished in wicker, overlooking a lawn and private woods.

A screen door is still hissing gradually shut, closing against a pneumatic damper. Deciding quickly, I hurry and push through, stepping onto a parquet balcony. To the left stands a big screened aviary filled with greenery and cooing sounds. Kaolin’s famed avocation is bird-raising, especially genetically enhanced racing doves.

Not that way. To the right, steps lead down gardened slopes. Hurrying after my hunch, I’m rewarded soon by a soft noise. Footfalls, somewhere ahead.

I can sympathize if Maharal’s ghost doesn’t want to go through the torment of image-sifting. If he’d rather stroll under a blue sky for his last hour or two. But I work for his heir and legal owner. Anyway, if villainy murdered his original, the culprits should be held accountable. I want whatever clues lie hidden in his ceramic skull.

A flagstone path plunges past a wide meadow toward a grove of old trees. Sycamores and purple prunus, mostly. Nature’s nice, when you can afford it.

There! I glimpse a moving figure. ditMaharal, all right. He leans forward, shoulders hunched, hurrying. It was just intuition before. Now I’m sure, the golem’s up to something.

Only what? This trail swings by the brow of a low hill to overlook a row of small houses on the other side, lined up along a compact street, complete with sidewalks and front lawns — a quaint old suburban neighborhood, transplanted to Vic Aeneas Kaolin’s east forty acres. This must be where his domestic employees live. The richer you are, the more benefits you have to provide in order to keep real servants.

Man, he sure is rich.

No sign of Maharal. My immediate concern, did he plunge into the tract? He may vanish among the houses.

I turn, scanning.

There! Half-crouched behind a hedge, he’s trying to open a backyard gate.

Better not spook him. Instead of charging ahead, I creep just inside the pocket forest, staying shadowed as I work my way closer.

Only a few people are about, this time of day. An orange gardener mows someone’s lawn with a noisy machine. A woman hangs laundry from a clothesline, something I never used to see in the days before kilning, when time was so precious you never had enough. Now the air’s better and some folks find sun-drying worth a ditto’s hour.

The woman’s skin is sunburned pink — a human shade. Huh. Well, maybe she enjoys the tactile feel of pinning up wet clothes in a breeze. Sends her dittos to do other things.

Soft retro music flows from an open window at one end of the small neighborhood, clashing with two loud voices that rise in shrill argument from a house in the middle. The same one where Maharal’s hands fumble over the back gate and finally seize the latch. Hinges squeak as he slips through — and I’m running, skidding down the forested slope, dodging trees and coming in so fast that I barely stop in time to avoid hitting the fence. Enzyme speedup warms my limbs, expending stored energy at four times rate. All right, so I’ll expire a bit earlier. Thems breaks.

Maharal shut the gate after himself, so I must reach over like he did, feeling for the latch. Not the ideal way to perform a modern break-in. Normally I’d test for alarms and such. But this little neighborhood sits within Kaolin’s ultra-security cordon, so why bother? Besides, I’m in a hurry.

The wood is frayed and pungent, the latch just a rusty hook. I slip into the backyard, observing crabgrass speckled with dog droppings … a worn baseball and glove … a few half-melted toy soldiers lying in the sun. Everything is homey and old-fashioned, down to the man and woman screaming in the stucco house.

“I’m finished letting people walk all over me. You’ll pay, sadistic bastard!”

“For what? I have the same deadline every week, ask anybody.”

“Any excuse to leave here, going crazy with screaming kids—”

“Talk about crazy—”

That ill-advised riposte brings a shriek. Through a window I glimpse a matronly figure with orange hair and pale skin, hurling crockery at a cringing man. They look real; people seldom assign a domestic spat to dittos, saving that full passion for flesh that knows it will endure ten thousand bitter tomorrows, long enough to serve up vengeance for each hurt, real or imagined.

I spot Maharal’s ghost, skulking past three small boys, aged maybe four to nine, who sit in the muggy shade of a dilapidated porch, as the screen door amplifies each miserable clatter and yell. I’m surprised some roving lawyerbot hasn’t been attracted by now, zeroing in to offer the kids a brochure on parental malpractice. ditMaharal puts a sly finger to his lips, and the eldest boy nods. He must know Maharal, or else the cloud of misery is too dense for speech as the gray hurries by, heading toward the little street. It’s the only way out, so I follow seconds later, imitating Maharal’s gestured plea for silence.

The boys look more surprised, this time. The middle one starts to speak … then the eldest grabs his arm, using both hands to twist in opposite directions, raising cries of pain. Instantly, all three are embroiled in flying punches, emulating the violence indoors.

My grays imprint Albert’s conscience, so I hesitate, wondering if I should intervene … Then I spot something both weird and reassuring about the two who are closest. They’re dittos! Despite a caucasian-beige coloration, the skin texture’s artificial. But why put kid-duplicates through a cruelly simulated summer afternoon? Surely the memories won’t be inloaded.

Sounds perverted. Make a mental note to look into this later. But it gives me an excuse to leave, jogging down a narrow drive past someone’s cherished restoration of an old Pontiac. Why would a scientist’s ghost spend his last hours skulking through a servants’ enclave, rife with midget soap operas? My concentration is broken by gratitude for my own childhood as I hasten around the corner of a tall hedge, only to find -

Maharal!

The gray stands in front of me … smiling … aiming a weapon with a flared nozzle.

No time to think. Suck a deep breath! Put your head down and charge!

A roar fills my universe.

What happens next depends on what he just shot me with -

5 Clay Station

Damn.

I’m always grumpy getting up off the warming tray … grabbing paper garments from a rack and slipping them over limbs still glowing with ignition enzymes, knowing I’m copy-for-a-day.

Of course I remember doing this a thousand times. Still, it always feels like getting a long list of nasty chores, taking risks you’d never put your protobody through. I start this pseudolife filled with premonitions of a lesser death, dark and unmourned.

Ugh. What put me in this mood? Could it be Ritu’s news? A reminder that real death still lurks for us all?

Well, shrug it off! Life’s still the same as it was in the old days.

Sometimes you’re the grasshopper.

Sometimes an ant.

I watched gray number one head off to meet Miss Maharal. He took the Vespa, with today’s greenie riding on the saddle behind him.

That left one scooter for me to use alone. Seems fair. Number one gets to see Ritu and snoop around the affairs of a gazillionaire. Meanwhile, I must go visit the great witch of Studio Neo. At least I get to have my own transport. realAlbert turns away, shuffling out of the kiln room with nary a backward glance. Well, he needs to lie down. Rest the body. Keep it fit so we dupes can inload sometime tonight. I don’t feel snubbed. Much. If you’ve gotta be clay, it’s good to be gray. At least there are realistic pleasures to enjoy -

— like swerving through traffic, surprising stolid yellow-striped truckers as I cut in front of them, always alert for the telltale buzz of my cop-detector and making sure not to inconvenience any real people. Aggravating dits can be sport, just so long as each violation stays below the five-point threshold programmed into the publicams lining every street. (The threshold where they drop privacy constraints and form a grand posse.) I once racked up eleven four-pointers in a day, without triggering a single fine!

This little Turkmeni scooter doesn’t have as much power as the Vespa, but it’s agile and durable. Cheap, too. I make a note to order three more. Anyway, it’s risky having only two scoots on hand. What if I suddenly need to make an army, like happened last May? How will I rush a dozen red or purple copies of myself where they’re needed? By dinobus?

Nell obediently jots down my note, but she won’t put through a buy order till realAlbert wakes. Neurons okay all big purchases. Clay can only suggest.

Well, I’ll be Albert tomorrow. If I inload. If I make it home. Which shouldn’t be too problematic, I guess. Meetings with the maestra are wearing, but seldom fatal.

Slowing down for a light now. Stopping. Taking a moment to glance west, toward Odeon Square. Fresh memories of last night’s desperate flight and narrow escape still perturb my Standing Wave, even if it was only a green who suffered so.

I wonder who the waiter was. The one who helped me get away.

Light’s changed. Go! Maestra hates it when you’re late.

Studio Neo, just ahead. Charming place. It fills what used to be a huge windowless urban mall. Nowadays shopping is either a chore — you ask House to arrange deliveries — or else you do it for pleasure, strolling in person along tree-lined avenues like Realpeople Lane, where balmy venturi breezes flow all year round. Either way, it’s hard to picture why our parents did it in sunless grottos. A fluorescent-lit catacomb is no proper world for human beings.

So now malls are set aside for the new servant class. Us clayfolk.

Jitneys and scooters zip around the vast parking structure, conveying fresh dittos to clients all over town. And not just any dittos. Most bear specialized colors. Snow white for sensuality. Ebony for undiluted intellect. A particular scarlet that’s oblivious to pain … and another that experiences everything with fierce intensity. Few of these creatures return to their point of origin when the élan cells run down. Their rigs don’t expect them back for memory inloading.

Most Neo customers do return the scooters, however. To reclaim the deposit.

I park the Turkomen in a coded space set aside for folks like me — ditto intermediaries traveling on business, conveying important information between real people. Grays get priority, so the more luridly colored step aside as I enter the main arcade. Most do it reflexively, holding doors for me, almost as if I were human. But a few whites give way grudgingly, casting impertinent glares.

Well, what do you expect from whites? Pleasure is partly a matter of ego. Their kind needs self-importance in order to function.

Studio Neo occupies all four layers of the old mall, filling the grand atrium with a myriad holographic glows — an emporium of creative effort, illuminated by the garish logos of more than a hundred pushy production companies, each of them aspiring for pinnacle position in this anthill — a place up at the top the pyramid, where I’m heading right now.

The hungriest and most ambitious producers station dittowares right next to the escalators, offering free samples.

“Try me now and take home a special memory …” croons a pale form in a diaphanous gown, her figure enhanced in ways that real tissue couldn’t possibly support. “Then let us home-deliver. Your rig could enjoy me in person tomorrow!”

Tomorrow, she will be sludge in a tank. But I don’t say it. Manners, inherited from simpler days of youth, make me say, “No, thanks” — wasting breath on a creature who couldn’t care less.

“Had a rough day?” another one chants, this one exaggeratedly male, rippling in places where no natural man ever rippled — that is, outside the pages of a comic book. “Maybe your rig will inload you anyway, if you bribe him with something unique to remember. Try me and find out how good it gets!”

Or how weird it gets. No way to tell, of course, what kind of flesh this creature’s soul-imprint came from, whether a courtesan or a gigolo. The most aggressive or compliant of each kind tend to be crossovers, overcompensating for their upbringings, with relish.

This time I manage to pass without comment, riding the escalator to better precincts.

Some of the second-story firms offer specialized golem blanks. Put your mind into a toothy reptile, or a dolphinlike form to go deep-diving. Or go partying in a body with made-to-order parts. Some have hands like Swiss Army knives. I sometimes buy accessories from a discreet technical boutique, choosing enhancements for dittos sent on dangerous assignments. Pal shops here too, experimenting with ever more outré golems. He’d prefer that all his memories come that way, and none from his ravaged fragment of a natural body.

The next tout to approach isn’t selling sex. A gray like me, she’s dressed in conservative linen paper, fashioned like a TV doctor’s costume, all the way down to the endoscope hanging from her trim neck.

“Pardon the intrusion, sir. May I ask if you’ve been practicing prudent imprinting?”

I have to blink; it sounds familiar. “Oh, right. You mean protecting my real self from diseases that a ditto—”

“—might bring home and transmit through inloading. Yes, sir. Have you given any thought to how dangerous it can be to reclaim a golem that’s been who-knows-where in the course of a day? Exposed to everything from viruses to memic toxins?”

She offers a slim pamphlet and suddenly I remember a story in the news recently, played up mostly for humor, about people who evidently think we’re living in the bad old plague days of the Fizzle War.

“I try to stay clean. If there’s any question, I inload without touching my rig.”

“Memic toxins don’t require physical contact,” the imitation doctor insists. “They can spread via inloaded memories.”

I shake my head. “We’d be told if any such thing were—”

“There have been outbreaks in more than a dozen cities, around the globe.” Her professional demeanor slips, pushing the pamphlet. “They’re hiding the truth!”

They? A conspiracy fan, then. Talk about memic toxins! Could all of the agencies responsible for public safety — and all of their employees — collude to prevent the public from learning of a new plague? Even that wouldn’t suffice today, with so many clever amateurs around. Then there are the Henchman prizes, made alluring to draw confessions out of the most trusted lieutenant.

“An interesting hypothesis,” I murmur, backing away. “But then why haven’t the free-nets—”

“The toxin designers are clever. Varying symptoms from town to town! The free-nets correlate incidents, rumors, anecdotes. Nevertheless—”

Continuing to back up, I gratefully let the up escalator catch my heel, yanking me aboard the moving steps while feigning an apologetic-polite smile. The “doctor” stares after me for a moment, then swivels to approach another passerby.

Maybe later I’ll ask Nell to do a sift search on the topic of “memic plagues.” Till then, call it another aberrant entertainment served up by Studio Neo.

Now I’m passing the really classy establishments. “Scenarios Unlimited” will send you an expert interviewer — an ebony, zinglemindedly dedicated to create a script to match your budget and favorite fantasy. Then he’ll return with props and a complete cast of characters to play out any scene, from high literature to your darker dreams.

“Proxy Adventures” will take your imprinted-but-unbaked copy to some far corner of the world where they’ll kiln-activate it, put it through a day of frenetic escapades, then return the flash-frozen cranium in perfect condition, so you recall everything. A twenty-four-hour adventure, ready to serve.

Then there are specialists offering services no one imagined before golemtech. Almost anything that’s illegal to do to another human in flesh can be done to a ditto — though often with with fees and a perversion tax.

No wonder Inspector Blane hates this place. It’s one thing to contract out your duplicates for honest labor. Unions fought it and lost, and now millions earn a living in several places at once, doing whatever they happen to be good at, from janitorial service to nuclear reactor maintenance. A fair market offers top expertise to all, at affordable prices.

But expertise in entertainment? Brought down from the silver screen, liberated from the boob tube, leaping off the pages of pulpy romance novels, made tactile and personal … They say that when the Web started, the heaviest single use was for porn. Same here. Only now it walks and talks back to you. It can do whatever you want.

Wait a sec.

It’s the phone. I pick up in time to hear Nell pass the call to my real self.

Pal’s half-paralyzed face fills the little display, surrounded by wish sensors to command his magic wheelchair. He wants me to come over.

My rig sounds grumpy and tired. He won’t do another imprint.

“I’ve got three dits running around on errands,” he tells Pal. “One will drop by, if time allows.”

Three? The green won’t be up to handling Pal. And gray number one has to see Ritu Maharal about her murdered dad. There’s a chance he may even meet and question the real Vic Kaolin — something worth telling Clara about, when she gets back from her war.

So it’s up to me. If Wammaker lets me escape early, I’ll go listen to Pal’s latest wild-eyed theory or scheme. Crum. I can already feel my short “life” getting used up.

Top floor, where rooftop heliports give quick access to rich clients. Where illustrious producers serve fine coffee and fancy hors d’oeuvres, even to visiting grays! Here, elegant shops let you hire first-rate actors to play convincing roles in bodies molded to resemble anyone across time. There’s a penalty when a ditto doesn’t resemble its rig, but it’s small when no fraud is involved. Not that producers refuse a little fraud, now and then.

Wealthy clients also come here to arrange extravaganzas. Once, someone hired Clara’s reserve infantry platoon, off-duty, to be extras in a bloody rendition of Caligula’s final orgy-slaughter. She snuck me in to watch the performance from behind a purple curtain. The reenactment was vivid, lurid, and maybe even educational in its attention to historical detail. The swordfights were superb. Clara’s golem died especially well.

Still, I didn’t care for the show.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she agreed. In fact, not one member of her outfit inloaded memories from that evening’s brutal carnage. It kind of makes you proud of our boys and girls in khaki.

I’m still more than twenty meters from the elegant portico of Wammaker’s when a cowled figure catches my eye, gesturing from the shadows.

“Mr. Morris. Good of you to come.”

Taking a step closer, I recognize the ditto under the hood. Maestra’s executive assistant, her face a conservative gray tone, perfectly matching her attire.

“Will you come with me, please?”

She beckons and I follow … away from Wammaker’s. “Our meeting concerns sensitive topics, better discussed elsewhere,” she explains, handing me a cowled robe like her own. “Please put this on.”

If I were real, I might worry. Could the maestra be planning some ornate revenge for my breezy behavior toward her earlier? But then, so what? I’m just a ditto.

I put the robe on and follow.

A small service elevator takes us down, back to the low-rent floors of the old mall. Doors open and my guide heads straight for a nondescript storefront with opaque windows, bearing the name RENEWAL ASSOCIATES. I follow her into a realm of hanging fabrics that shimmer with piezoluminescence, wafting in tailored breezes. Some effort’s even gone to growing indoor plants that provide a welcoming atmosphere. Mostly simple ferns and ficus. But your eye is meant to be drawn elsewhere, to holo posters of Gineen and her best affiliates — women and men whose copies offer sybaritic pleasures to those weary of mere sex.

Off the waiting room stand shaded booths where clients may consult privately with special advisers. Still, it’s not as elegant as Wammaker’s. The maestra must be branching out.

“Please wait,” the assistant says, pointing to a straightback wooden chair … no doubt a precious antique, and uncomfortable as well. I stand again as soon as she departs. My golem blanks have relax-a-stilt joints. Sitting is redundant.

Of course I’ll be kept waiting, so I pull out a cheap reading plaque and dial up the Journal of Antisocial Proclivities. Since Ritu Maharal proclaimed that her father was murdered, I thought about looking up homicide. (I wonder how gray number one is doing right now. Have I reached any conclusions yet?) But after passing through Studio Neo, my thoughts wander toward another problem. Decadence.

Are the new puritans right? Is golemtech hardening our hearts?

Clara calls this place a “soul-callus.”

“Today we can wallow in depravity without paying for it in disease or hangovers,” she said only last week. “The oldest profession’s been updated for a new age, without prisons, prudity, or any need for empathy. What a deal.”

Me, I’m usually less cynical. Life is better in lots of ways. Wealthier. More tolerant. No one cares what shade of brown your real skin is.

But my grays do vary a bit from one another and this one feels a dour suspicion that Clara may be right.

Blinking, I notice that the reading plaque already glows with a selected journal article. It must’ve done an iris-dilation interest scan while I pondered gloomy thoughts. (Who says dittos don’t have a subconscious?)

Sublimation of the Immortality Impulse:

A Return to Necromancy?

Ouch. What a title for a scientific paper! Not my usual cuppa tea. Still it’s intriguing. I wonder …

“Mr. Morris?”

It’s the assistant. I expected to be snubbed longer than that. Maybe Wammaker really is worried about something this time.

Looking up, I notice the assistant’s gray dittobody has blue eyes.

“The maestra will see you now.”

6 It’s Not Easy Being Green

I hate getting off the warming tray, throwing paper garments over limbs that still glow with ignition enzymes.

Not only am I a copy today, I’m the greenie.

Damn.

After a thousand times, it still feels like I’m being punished. Given a long list of nasty chores. Sent to take all sorts of risks you’d never put Lord Protobody through.

I start this pseudolife filled with dark feelings.

Ugh. What a mood. Archie must really be tired to start me off with a Standing Wave as gloomy as this. Any worse and I might’ve been a frankie …

Well, shrug it off! Today you’re an ant.

And green, at that. Leave philosophy to your betters.

Well, last night another green took on Beta’s henchdits, and won. A hero-duplicate, who slogged through hell to bring back vital news. So a green can matter! Even if today’s job is to fetch groceries, clean toilets, mow the lawn, and other horrors.

Grays get fancy realtime recorders. But I gotta do quick dumps into an old microtape ring. Post hoc. Don’t know why I bother. If Archie wants to know what I did today, he can inload and find out.

I rode into town behind gray number one, keeping both eyes tight shut while he swerved like a maniac, risking both of our carcasses, and nearly wrecked our last Vespa. Schmuck.

Left him in a park, waiting to meet the UK limo they’re sending over. He’ll see the beautiful Ritu soon, and talk to Vic Kaolin, and maybe investigate a murder.

And later, maybe tonight, realAlbert will get lonesome. He’ll go thaw the sybarite Clara left for us in her freezer. I felt a wave of irrational jealousy about that. A temptation to drive over to her houseboat and use it myself!

Of course I didn’t. Her dit would take one look at me and refuse to waste itself on the coarse senses of a green. Anyway, what’s the point? If I inload, I’ll rejoin Albert and share it all in realflesh. And when Clara returns from the front, I’ll share that reunion, too.

So I went about my chores. Visited the market, adding some fresh items to the normal delivery — fruits and deli stuff, plus a gourmet dish or two. Should arrive by the time Archie wakes from his nap. I hope I’ll like the herring. It’s Danish.

Dropped by the bank and updated my level three passcodes. Everyone does a monthly update in person, with biometric and chemical scans to verify you’re you. But for weeklies a ditto will do. No one can fake a personal Standing Wave. Anyway, it’s been years since the Big Heist. Some analysts think cyber crime is already passé.

That may be. But villainy still worries citizens. It comes up as a top priority every election. There must be nearly a hundred real cops in this city alone. If Yosil Maharal was murdered, that makes twelve homicides in the state so far this year. And summer’s barely half over.

I don’t fear being unemployed soon.

Oh, the phone rang while I was shopping. It was Pallie, needing some attention again.

Albert grumbled. “I’ve got three dits running around on errands. One will drop by, if time allows.”

Three dits?

Gray number one is busy with Ritu Maharal and Vic Kaolin — a big case, maybe a real moneymaker. Gineen Wammaker may tie up gray number two all day.

Care to bet I’ll be sent to hear Pal’s latest conspiracy theory?

Crum. What’s a greenie for?

Had to pick up the lawn mower from fix-it shop. Repairs cost eight-fifty, plus abatement fees for the old gas engine. Tied it securely to the back of the Vespa, but that messed the scooter’s balance. Nearly cracked up in a fast curve on the way home. Got a five-point violation, too. Crap.

At least the mower started right up. (Mitch, the repair guy, knows his stuff. He was there in person, this time.) Soon I had the lawn edged better than that orange-striped “gardener” everyone else in the neighborhood hires. Things grow on my tiny patch of earth. Roses. Fresh carrots and berries. I like growing things, same as Clara needs to hear water lapping on the hull of her houseboat.

Next, tackle the pile of dishes in the sink, then toilets. Might as well clean the whole damn house while I’m at it. Except vacuuming. Lord Archie’s gotta nap.

Ho-hum.

Some days I weigh existential matters. Simple ones a green can grasp. Like, should I volunteer NOT to inload tonight? I mean, why remember this banality? Albert’s already experienced nearly a hundred subjective years, counting golem recollections. Some techies put a theoretical max at five centuries. So why not conserve?

I’ve debated this with myself lots of times, and recall always deciding to inload. Well, duh! Only those dittos who chose continuity became part of continuing memory. But Nell says more than a hundred and eighty of my copies chose oblivion instead. Dispirited deputy-selves who endured dreary days that I’m better off forgetting.

Heck, there are days I had in person that I’d erase, if I could. An ancient problem, I guess. At least nowadays you get a little choice in the matter.

Pausing at Archie’s work screen, I looked over our ongoing cases — about a dozen routine investigations, tracked by priority and progress charts. Most can be pursued by Net — making remote enquiries, sifting data from public sources, or persuading the owners of private streetcams to share their posse archives without a court order. Sometimes I send out my own spy-wasps to follow suspects around town. I couldn’t afford to stay in business if everything had to be done in person, or even by golem-duplicate.

Half of the cases involve my specialty — snaring copyright violators. Pros like Beta offer endless aggravation, but fortunately most rip-offs are done by amateurs. The same goes for face thieves, who send out dittos with illegally forged features, pretending they were roxed from other people. Troublemaking kids, mostly. Catch ’em. Fine ’em. Teach ’em to behave.

Then there are jealous spouses — a private eye’s standby, since the days of ragtime.

Some modern marriages are complex, admitting new partners by joint consent. Most folks prefer old-fashioned monogamy. But what does that mean nowadays? If a husband sends a ditto to fool around while he’s busy at work, does that constitute fantasy, flirtation, or outright infidelity? If a wife rents a little whitey to get through a lonely afternoon, is that prostitution, or a bit of harmless diddling with an appliance?

Most people think flesh-on-flesh still feels best. But clay can’t get pregnant or pass disease. It lets you rationalize, too. Some partners draw the line at inloading memories after a dittosex affair. If it isn’t remembered, it didn’t happen. No recall, no foul.

But if you can’t remember it, what was the point?

All the complications can get confusing for creatures with jealous whims that formed in the Stone Age. Anyway, hurt feelings aren’t my concern, just facts. The crux is that civilization fails without accountability. What people do with it is their own concern.

Scanning the screen, I see I’ll need four dits tomorrow. Two just for stakeouts and tails. The freezer is well stocked with blanks, but our scooter situation is dire.

Onscreen I see that gray number two just requested more Turkomens. I prefer Vespas, but who listens to a green?

Looking around the house, I see more cleaning to do. Pencils to sharpen and notes to file. More grotty chores, so the real me can spend precious fleshtime being creative.

I’d let out a long sigh … if this body were equipped for it.

To hell with all this. I’m going to the beach!

7 Price of Perfection

The maestra has guests.

Four are females, identical, with frizzy pink hair and earthen-red skin so dark it’s almost umber. They look nervous, agitated. One stares constantly at a vid-screen, nodding and grunting. A sluglike string of flesh seems to ooze out the side of her head, clamping a pseudopod onto an electronic sensor pad.

She’s jacked in, of all things! Sending and receiving straight from her clay brain into the Net — direct linkage, digital to neuroanalog — a nasty, unwholesome process that can fry you silly.

The remaining guest is male, modeled on an archetype who must be painfully slender in person. Following a fashion trend, this ditto avoids the stodgy old standard colors that were prescribed during the first generation of kilning.

His skin is plaid.

Ouch. I can barely make out his face amid the visual noise. Instead of paper garments, he wears lavish cloth. And the woven pattern of his shirt and pants actually matches the skin dye job. Expensive styling for a ditto!

Gineen Wammaker steps forward in delectable person, her real flesh nearly as pale as one of her pleasure roxies. Only flashing green eyes give away her inner nature as a fierce businesswoman who demolishes competitors without mercy. She takes my facsimile hand in her real ones.

“How good of you to send a gray so quickly, Mr. Morris. I know how busy you are, and how focused your profession requires you to be.”

In other words, she forgives me, even though I really should have come in person. Still, Wammaker’s sarcasm is milder than usual. Something’s fishy, all right.

“I hope the bonus I sent shows adequately my gratitude for your part in shutting down the pirate copying facility.”

I haven’t seen any bonus. Maybe she wired it while I waited outside. Typical. Anything to keep you off-balance.

“It’s a joy to be of service, Maestra.” I bow and she inclines her head slightly, letting golden locks spill over bare shoulders. We don’t fool each other a bit. Ironically, that’s a basis for respect.

“But I grow inattentive. Let me introduce my associates. Vic Manuel Collins and Queen Irene.”

The male is closer. We shake hands and I can tell his gaudy decorations mask the texture of a standard gray ditto. As for his title; “Vic” used to mean something. But the term has grown swank and overused among the idle rich, most of whom were never venture capitalists, or anything useful at all.

Just one of the umber-colored females steps forward, acknowledging my presence but offering no smile, nor a hand to shake. “Queen” is another modern ambiguity. I’ll wait and see if my suspicions are verified.

Gineen offers seats, plush and body-conforming. A candy-striped servdit — one-half scale — offers refreshments. Being gray, I can taste-sample a powdery Zairian truffle that explodes into aromatic dust at the back of my throat. A gift for Albert to remember when I inload. Still, Wammaker is showing off, being lavish with visiting dupies. Part of her appeal, I suppose.

Sitting now, I can see past the shoulder of the umber rox who is jacked in, fixing her attention on a pict-screen. It shows a large room where still more red dittos come and go rapidly — all of them copies of the same basic person-image, though some are scaled way down to one-third size or less. At least a dozen hover around a single figure in the middle, hard to make out amid the throng. There’s a lot of machinery — kiln apparatus and life-support gear.

“I asked you here, Mr. Morris, to discuss a little matter of technology and industrial espionage.”

I turn back to Wammaker.

“Maestra? I specialize in tracking people — both clay and flesh — mostly to uncover copyright violations and—”

My host lifts a hand. “We suspect certain technological innovations have been hoarded. Significant breakthroughs, that could threaten to make copyright meaningless, are being monopolized clandestinely.”

“I see. That sounds illegal.”

“It most certainly would be. Technologies are most perilous when exploited in secret.”

My thoughts churn. It may be illegal, but why tell me? I’m no cop or tech-sleuth.

“Who do you suspect of hoarding?”

“Universal Kilns Incorporated.”

Blinking, I hardly know where to begin.

“But … they pioneered the field of soulistics.”

“I do know that, Mr. Morris.” Her smile is indulgent.

“They also benefit most from an open and orderly market.”

“Naturally. In fact, UK continues to engage in normal commercial research, coming up with gradual improvements in the copiers they sell. Technical details about these improvements can be kept confidential temporarily, till patents are filed. Even so, they have a legal duty to warn people if some major innovation threatens to fundamentally alter our culture, or economy, or world.”

“Fundamentally alter”? Creepy words that make me curious as hell. And yet, one fact is paramount — I shouldn’t be holding this conversation.

“That may be, Maestra. But right now I have to tell you—”

The plaid-skinned male interrupts with a voice that’s rather deep for such a wiry frame.

“We’ve been tracking leaked information from inside those shiny domes at UK. They’re up to something, possibly a big change in the way people make and operate golems.”

Curiosity gets the better of me. “What sort of change?”

Vic Collins takes a wry expression on his garishly cross-shatched face. “Can you guess, Mr. Morris? What do you figure might transform the way folks use this modern convenience?”

“I … can think of several possibilities, but—”

“Please. Stretch yourself. Give us an example or two.”

Our eyes meet and I wonder, What’s he up to?

Some people are known for imprinting imaginative grays, capable of creative thinking. Is that what all this is about? A test of rapid reasoning, outside my organic brain? If so, I’m game.

“Well … suppose people could somehow absorb each other’s memories. Instead of just imprinting and inloading between different versions of yourself, you’d be able to swap days, weeks, or even a lifetime of knowledge and experience with someone else. I guess it could wind up being like telepathy, allowing greater mutual understanding … the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us. It is an old dream that’s—”

“—also quite impossible,” the dark red womandit cuts in. “Each human’s cerebral Standing Wave is unique, its hyperfractal complexity beyond all digital modeling. Only the same neural template that created a particular duplicate wave can later reabsorb that copy. A rox can only go home to its own rig.”

Of course that’s common knowledge. Still, I’m disappointed. The dream of perfect human understanding is hard to give up.

“Go on, please,” Gineen Wammaker urges in a soft voice. “Try again, Albert.”

“Um. Well, for years folks have wished for a way to imprint at long range. To sit at home and copy your Standing Wave into a ditto blank that’s far away. Today, both bodies have to lie right next to each other, linked with giant cryo-cables. Something about noise-to-bandwidth ratios …”

“Yes, that’s a common complaint,” Gineen muses. “Say you have urgent, hands-on business to do in Australia. Your quickest bet is to make a fresh ditto, pack it into an express mail rocket, and hope it splashes gently on target. Even the quickest round trip, returning the ditto’s skull packed in ice, can take all day. How much better if you could just transmit your standing wave over a photonic cable, imprint a blank that’s already on the scene, look around a bit, then zip the altered wave right back again!”

“It sounds like teleportation. You could go anywhere — even the Moon — almost instantly … assuming you shipped some blanks there in advance. But is this really needed? We already have robotic telepresence over the Net—”

Queen Irene laughs.

“Telepresence! Using goggles to peer through a faraway set of tin-eyes? Manipulating a clanking machine to walk around for you? Even with full retinal and tactile feedback, that hardly qualifies as hands-on. And speed-of-light delays are frightful.”

This “queen” and her sarcasm are starting to bug me.

“Is that it? Has Universal Kilns achieved long-range imprinting? The airlines will hate it. And what’s left of the unions.”

Hell, I can see aspects that I’d loathe, too. Maybe you could teleport anywhere in minutes. But cities would lose their individual charm. Instead of local experts and artisans holding sway, each town would wind up having the same waiters, janitors, hairdressers, and so on. The best of every skill and profession, duplicated a gazillion-fold and spread all over the world. No one else would have a job!

(Envision some New York super private eye opening a branch office here, stocking it daily with flawless gray duplicates, raking in fat fees while he sits in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I’d have to go on the purple wage. Get some time-killing hobby. Or go back to school. Ack.)

Obviously, the maestra doesn’t fear competition.

“If only that were the breakthrough at hand,” she comments wistfully. “Tele-dittoing would open up major business opportunities for me, globally. Alas, that’s not the innovation we’re talking about. Or not the most worrisome one. Do try again.”

Damn, what a bitch. Riddles are just the sort of delicious torment Gineen Wammaker specializes in. Even knowing this, I’m tempted to keep showing off.

But first there’s a matter of professional ethics to settle.

“Look, I really think I ought to inform you that—”

“Lifespan,” says Vic Collins.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What if a ditto body” — he gestures at his own — “could be made to last more than a day? Possibly much more.”

Pause. Ponder it. This possibility hadn’t occurred to me.

I choose words carefully. “The … whole basis of kilning — the reason it’s practical — is that a golembody carries all of its own energy, right from the start.”

“Stored as super molecules in a clay-colloidal substrate. Yes, go on.”

“So there’s no need to imitate the complexity of real life. Ingestion, digestion, circulation, metabolism, waste removal, and all that. Science is centuries away from duplicating what evolution took a billion years to create — the subtle repair systems, the redundancy and durability of genuine organic …”

“Nothing like that is required for longer duration,” answers Collins. “Just a way to recharge the supermolecules in each pseudocell, restoring enough energy for another day … then another, and so on.”

Reluctantly, I nod. Clara said that military dittos come packed with fuel implants, letting a few versions last several days. But that’s still living off storage. Recharging would be quite another matter. A breakthrough, all right.

“How many times … how long can a ditto … ?”

“Be renewed? Well, it depends on wear and tear. As you say, even high-priced blanks have little self-repair capability. Entropy grinds down the unwary. But the chief short-term problem — how to keep a roxbody going one more day at a time — may be solved.”

“A dubious solution,” mutters the umber-colored Queen Irene. “Long-lasting dittos could diverge from their human prototype, making it harder to inload memories. Goals may wander. They might even start caring more about their own survival than how to serve the continuity being that created them.”

I blink, confused by her terminology. Continuity being?

Glancing left, I see her identical sisdit, who remains jacked into a remote terminal, staring at a flatvid screen. Portrayed there, I glimpse over a dozen interchangeable workers, all the same unique crimson shade, swarming around a huge, pale figure, like worker bees jostling around -

Ah. I get it. Queen Irene. Pallie told me about this, taking dittoing to its next logical stage. Still, witnessing it makes me shudder.

“There could be other repercussions,” Vic Collins adds. “The whole social contract may be upended, if our suspicions are correct.”

“That’s what we want you to investigate, Mr. Morris,” Gineen Wammaker concludes.

“Are you proposing industrial espionage?” I ask warily.

“No.” She shakes her head. “We don’t seek to steal any technologies, only to verify their existence. That much is perfectly legal. With confirmation, we can then sue Universal Kilns under one of the transparency laws. For hoarding, if nothing else.”

I stare at her. This is preposterous, on about a dozen levels.

“You honor me with your trust, Maestra. But as I told you, tech-sleuthing is just a sideline for me. There are real experts.”

“Whom we find less suitable than you.”

I’ll bet. What you’re asking skirts a razor’s edge away from illegal. An expert would know how to keep on the safe side of that border. I might make one mistake and wind up in hock to UK, paying off a criminal-tort lien till the next ice age.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way out of this.

“I am flattered, Maestra. But the biggest reason I can’t take this assignment is a possible conflict of interest. You see, even as we speak, another gray of mine is at Universal Kilns, consulting about another matter.”

Expecting disappointment or anger, I see only amusement in Wammaker’s eyes. “We’re already aware of this. There were newscams and other spy-eyes all over the Teller Building this morning, remember? I saw Ritu Maharal pick you up in a UK limo. Putting that together with public reports of her father’s untimely death, I find it simple to imagine what your other gray is discussing, right now at Kaolin Mansion.”

At Kaolin Mansion? I thought gray number one was going to UK headquarters. These people know more about my business than I do!

“ditto Morris, there’s a way to insulate you and your rig from legal jeopardy for conflict of interest. Nowadays, it’s possible for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing, if you get what I mean.”

Unfortunately, I think I do.

There goes my hope of an afterlife.

“It’s really quite simple,” says Vic Collins. “All we have to do is—”

He stops, interrupted as a phone rings.

It’s my phone, chattering an urgent rhythm.

The maestra looks miffed, and rightly so. Nell knows I’m in a meeting. If my house computer thinks the call is so damn important, she ought to wake Archie.

I grunt an apology, flipping the wrist plate over one ear.

“Yes?”

“Albert? It’s Ritu Maharal. I — I can’t see you. Don’t you have vid?”

Pause a sec. But none of my other selves will answer, so I must.

“This phone is a cheap strap-on. I’m just a gray, Ritu. Anyway, don’t you already have one of me—”

“Where are you?” she demands. Something in her voice makes me sit up. It sounds like grief, giving way to rising panic.

“Aeneas is waiting in the car, getting impatient. He expected you and my … father’s ditto to join him. But you both vanished!”

“What do you mean, vanished? How could they …”

Now I realize — she thinks I’m that gray! The confusion could be cleared up with a few words, but I don’t want to cue in Gineen, or her weird friends. So what can I say?

Just in time, another voice cuts in, a bit groggy. It’s Archie, roused from his nap again.

“Ritu? It’s me, Albert Morris. Are you saying that my gray is missing? And your father’s too?”

I flip-shut the phone. My first priority must go to the clients here in front of me — even if I won’t be working for them in a minute or two.

Silence reigns. Finally, Wammaker leans forward, her golden hair spilling past pale shoulders to her famed decolletage.

“Well, Mr. Morris? About our offer. We need to know what you’re thinking.”

I take a deep breath, knowing it will hasten the metabolism of my fast-draining pseudocells, bringing slightly closer an extinction that can only be forestalled by making it home tonight. Home, to rejoin my original with what I learn today. And yet, I already know Wammaker’s plan — a way that I might legally spy for her without conflict of interest. It requires that I — this gray doppelganger — sacrifice all hope of survival, for the good of more important beings.

No, it’s even worse than that. What if I refuse? Can she let me leave, knowing that I might report this meeting to Vic Kaolin? Sure, I post a PI confidentiality bond for all customers. I’d never break a patron’s confidence. But the paranoid maestra could decide not to risk it, since UK can buy my bond for pocket change.

To be safe, she’ll destroy this body of mine, content to pay Albert triple damages.

And he’ll take the cash, too. Who bothers to avenge a dit?

Wammaker and her guests watch me, awaiting an answer.

Looking past them, I seek visual comfort in something green and growing — indoor plants that the maestra of Studio Neo has scattered casually about her meeting chamber, to give it a homey feel.

“I think …”

“Yes?”

Her famous indecent smile pulls at something dark inside you. Inside even clay.

Take another deep breath.

“I think your ficus looks a bit dry. Have you tried giving it more water?”

8 Feats of Clay

Moonlight Beach is one of my favorite spots. I go there with Clara whenever the crowds let up, especially if we have tourism coupons that are about to expire.

Of course, it’s set aside for archies. All the best beaches are. I’ve never been here as a green before … unless some of my missing dittos vanished the same way I did today. By throwing away all hope and playing hookey.

Parking the scooter in a public rack, I hiked to the bluff edge for a look, hoping to find the place half-empty. That’s when rules relax, archies feel less territorial, and coloreds like me can safely visit.

Tuesday’s a weekday. That used to make a difference, when I was a kid.

But no such luck. People swarmed across every open area with blankets, umbrellas, and beach toys. I spied a few bright orange lifeguards, padding about with webbed arms and feet, puffing their massive air sacs while patrolling for danger. Everyone else was some shade of human-brown, from dark chocolate to pale as sand.

If I set foot down there, I’d stand out like a sore thumb.

Peering south past a distant fluttering marker, I saw the rocky spit that’s set aside for my own kind. A brightly tinted mob, crammed together at the point where rip tides and jagged outcrops make things dicey for real flesh. No lifeguards ventured down there, just a few yellow-striped cleaners, equipped with hooks to dispose of the unlucky. Anyway, who wants to waste beach time on an imitation? It’s hard enough getting a reservation to come in person.

Suddenly, I felt resentful of all the rules … the waiting lists and tourism allotments … just to spend a little time at the shore. A century ago, you could do what you wished and go where you liked.

That is, if you were rich and white, a small inner voice reminded me. The whitish-brown of a ruling elite.

The mere idea of racism seems bizarre today. Yet each generation has problems. As a kid, I endured food rationing. Wars were fought over fresh water. Now we suffer afflictions of plenty. Underemployment, the purple wage, state-subsidized hobby-frenzy, and suicidal ennui. There are no more quaint villages or impoverished natives. But that means having to share all of Earth’s fine places with nine billion fellow sightseers — and another ten to twenty billion golems.

“Go ahead, brother. Make a statement.”

The voice broke my gloomy reverie. I turned to see another greenie, standing off to one side of the trail. Archies and their families ignored him as they passed, though he brandished a placard flowing with bright letters:

Compassion is color-blind.

Look at me. I exist. I feel.

The ditto grinned, meeting my gaze and gesturing toward Moonlight Beach.

“Go on down there,” he urged. “I can tell, you want to make them see you. Seize the day!”

I’ve noticed more of these creatures lately. Agitators for a cause that leaves most people mystified — at once both echoing past righteous struggles and trivializing them. I’m torn between disgust and a wish to pillory him with questions. Like why does he make dittos, if he hates being discriminated against when he is one?

Would he give equal rights to entities that last no longer than may-flies? Shall we give the vote to copies that can be mass-produced at whim — especially by the rich?

And why doesn’t he go down to the beach, right now? Jostling among real humans, trying to jog their conscience, till one of them gets irritated enough to demand his ID pellet, posting a fine against his owner for some minor insult. Or till one of them decides to pay a fine, for the pleasure of cutting him to tiny pieces.

Of course that’s why he stands on this bluff, holding up a sign but otherwise staying out of the way. This fellow is probably a brotherdit to some of the protestors I saw this morning, outside Universal Kilns. Somebody whose fervor is to send out proxies that demonstrate all day. An expensive avocation … and an effective way to protest.

That is, if his cause weren’t absurd! More proof that most people have way too much free time nowadays.

Suddenly, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. I began today having fantasies about taking Clara’s pleasure-ditto for myself, wallowed in philosophical issues beyond reach of a mere green, then abandoned the chores I had been made for, running off to waste beach time in a body that can’t enjoy the sand’s texture or the sea’s tart taste.

What’s wrong with me today?

Then it hit me. A weirdly thrilling perception.

I must be a frankie!

A borderline case, for sure. No staggering around with arms outstretched, going unh-uhhhhnh like Boris Karloff. Still, they warn you that dog-tired neurons are a recipe for trouble when you imprint, and poor Albert must have been running on fumes when he made me.

I’m a false copy. A Frankenstein!

Realizing this, a strange acceptance settled over me. The beach lost its allure and the agitator’s rhetoric palled. I retrieved my scooter, aiming it downtown. If this frankied rox lacks enough patience for house chores, maybe I’ll take it over to Pal’s and listen to him for a while.

If anyone can relate to my condition, it’ll be Pal.

Update. Post-recorded about an hour later.

I just had some bad luck. Bad and weird.

On my way to Pallie’s, I suddenly found myself trapped between some hunters and their prey.

Maybe I was preoccupied, careless, and driving much too fast. Anyway, I missed the warning signs. Maser flashes from the helmets worn by a pack of urban idiots, baying and yelling as they chased their quarry through the steel and masonry canyons of Old Town.

Other dittos veered aside. Lumbering dinobuses squatted down and hunched their scaly flanks. But I saw thinning traffic as an opportunity and zoomed straight toward the opening. Soon, maser beams were all over me, piercing clothes and tingling pseudoflesh. They resonate when they touch real skin, warning hunters not to shoot. But there aren’t many archies downtown anymore, so it makes a great recreational battleground … for jerks.

They came dashing round the next corner, sweeping the intersection with hi-tech sensors and weapons. A hunter shouted, raising his bulbous, cannonlike thing in my direction!

Why me? I sniveled. What’d I ever do to you?

The shooter fired and fierce heat passed behind my left ear. A poor shot, if he was aiming at me.

Swerving my scooter to speed the other way, I braked barely in time to avoid hitting a gangly, naked humanoid! Bright yellow but stained with red concentric target-circles on his chest and back, he teetered in front of the Vespa staring past me, wild-eyed, then spun about to flee.

The pursuers screamed jubilation — sludgeheads grabbing an afternoon’s adrenaline rush. Their guns sizzled, shooting past me again, cheerfully risking a dit-bystander fine if they fried my corpus in the bargain. And maybe I should’ve gone for the trade! Met the guns with outstretched arms. Albert would get double damages for a mere frankie. Good trade.

Instead, I hunched on the handlebars, slamming the throttle. The Vespa answered with a reedy wail, rearing like a bucking pony. At its high point, something hit the front tire. There were other impacts, on the machine and my body, as my scooter dug in and fled.

The quarrydit was fast — puffing, running and dodging like mad. Still he spared me a brief glance as I passed, and I realized two things.

One: he has the same face as one of the hunters.

Two: I could swear he’s having a good time!

Well, the world is filled with all kinds of kinkiness and folks with too much free time. But I was busy controlling the wounded Vespa. By the time I turned a corner, beyond the line of fire, it was coughing, smoking, then died.

I stood next to my poor scooter, mourning its fatal wounds, when the phone rang, emitting an urgent rhythm.

By reflex, I tapped my left ear, with its cheap implant, in time to hear one of Albert’s other selves answer.

“Yes?”

“Albert? It’s Ritu Maharal. I — I can’t see you. Don’t you have vid?”

Words buzzed while I examined the scooter. Some kind of gummy substance splattered over the hybrid engine, shorting it out. I didn’t dare touch the stuff, clearly devised to incapacitate dittos.

“… I’m just a gray, Ritu,” a voice answered. “Anyway, don’t you already have one of me—”

“Where are you? Aeneas is waiting in the car, getting impatient. He expected you and my … father’s ditto to join him. But you both vanished!”

I found more of the same gunk on the right leg of my paper garment. Hurriedly, I tore and kicked away the shredded pants, then searched for more.

“What do you mean, vanished? How could they …”

“Ritu? It’s me, Albert Morris. Are you saying that my gray is missing? And your father’s too?”

Dull pain sensations drew my attention to a place in my back where something truly bothersome was going on. Turning to look at my spine in the Vespa’s mirror, I spotted a hole, half the size of my fist, in the lower left … and it was growing! If I were human, I’d already be crippled or dead. As things stood, I couldn’t have much time left.

I spotted the intersection of Fourth and Main … still too far from Pal’s to reach him by foot. There were camionetas and jitneys on Main Street. Or I could stick out my talented green thumb and try to hitch. But where?

Then I remembered. The Church of the Ephemerals lay on Upas Street, just two blocks away!

I turned and started running east, while my archetype kept on talking to the alluring Ritu Maharal.

“So my gray was last seen following your father’s—”

“Out the back door of the mansion. After that, no one’s seen or heard either of the dittos … Oh, no. Aeneas just walked in. He looks angry. He’s ordering a complete search of the grounds.”

“Do you want me to come over and help?”

“I — just don’t know. Are you sure the gray hasn’t checked in?”

The pain in my back got worse as I stumbled down Fourth. Something was chewing me up from within! I still had enough sense to step aside for anybody who looked real. Everyone else got out of my way as I grunted and shouted, running toward the one place that might offer help.

An edifice of dark stone loomed ahead. The place used to be a Presbyterian church, but all the real parishioners left this part of town long ago, letting it refill each day with a new servant class. One supposedly without souls to save.

That’s when the Ephemerals took over.

Underneath a multicolored rosette symbol, the glass-faced announcement board foretold a coming sermon. Culture can be continuity, said a cryptic message in uneven letters. There’s more to immortality than inloading.

Staggering up the front steps, I passed an assortment of dittos — all shades and colors — who were lounging about, smoking and chatting as if none of them had chores to do. Many were damaged or disfigured, even missing arms or legs. I hurried past, plunging into the dim coolness of the vestibule.

It wasn’t hard to spot the lady in charge — dark brown and real — sitting on a stool next to a table piled high with papers and supplies. She wrapped the arm of a greenie whose whole left side looked badly burned. Overhead, another of the rosette symbols gradually turned, like a circular mandala or a flower whose petals all flared to wide tips.

“Open your mouth and inhale this,” the volunteer told her patient, pushing a pop-breather at the poor roxie’s face. Snapped, it billowed a compact cloud of heavy fumes the green sucked gratefully.

“It’ll numb your pain centers. You must be careful then. Any bump or minor injury might—”

I interrupted.

“Excuse me. I’ve never been here before, but—”

She jerked her thumb to the left. “Please get in line and take your turn.”

I saw a rather long queue of injured dittos, patiently waiting. Whatever mishap brought each one to this place, their owners clearly wouldn’t inload such memories. Nor were these golems quite ready for recycling. Not with ancient instincts still screaming at them to fight on. The Standing Wave’s oldest imperative is endure. So they came here. Like me.

But I couldn’t afford to be patient. Turning around, I insisted.

“Please, ma’am. If you’d just look at this.”

She raised her eyes, tired and perhaps cranky after long hours in this makeshift clinic. The volunteer nurse started to utter a curt dismissal, only it died on her lips. She blinked, then shot to her feet.

“Somebody help me here, stat! We’ve got an eater!”

What followed was weird, in a crazed-panicky-resigned kind of way. Like a scene from some old wartime hospital drama, updated with the hasty banter of a pit crew at an auto race. I lay prone on a filthy tabletop, listening through a haze while others dug into my back with makeshift, unsanitized tools.

“It’s a clayvore! Damn, look at the bastard move.”

“Watch out, it’s big one. Grab those needle-nose pliers.”

“Try to catch it whole. Eaters are illegal in this state. We may get a month’s rent from the bastard who used this!”

“Just grab the little devil before it gobbles something vital. Hey, it’s trying for the central ganglia—”

“Shit. Oh wait, I think … Got it!”

“Oh man, look at the nasty mother. What if they ever gave these things a taste for real flesh?”

“How do you know they haven’t, in some secret lab?”

“Don’t be paranoid. The Henchman Law ensures—”

“Shut up and put that awful thing in a jar, will you? Now someone get me a cup of plaster. The ganglia’s intact. I think we can get by with a patch.”

“I don’t know. The wound’s pretty deep and this green’s young. Maybe we should give the motivators a quick test.”

I listened from quite some distance away. The pop-breather stopped pain, all right — a merciful aspect of ditto design, required by law. It also explains why there are few free clinics. This was the first time I ever used one … to the best of my knowledge, that is. What a futile idea, after all — spending effort to save creatures who will vanish in a few hours anyway. Like ditto emancipation, most folks don’t see the point.

Yet there I was, fighting to survive, and grateful for the help.

As I said before, a ditto’s personality is almost always based on its archetype. Almost always. Maybe I came here for help today because I’m a frankie. Because I no longer share Albert’s wry stoicism. At least not completely.

Anyway, the operation was far shorter than any visit to a realperson hospital. No worry about recovery or infections or malpractice suits. I had to admire the volunteer staff, making do with makeshift equipment and stale, off-market parts.

Ten minutes later I was sitting among other brightly hued patients and derelicts in the old church’s wooden pews, sipping Moxie Nectar while antidotes countered the pain drug. Underneath a hand-carved sign that read Helping the Kneady a crippled purple stood at the old preacher’s rostrum, reciting to us from a sheet of paper that she held in her good hand.

“It is not for Man to set boundaries, or to define the limits of soul.

“Once, human beings were as children, needing simple tales and naive visions of pure truth. But in recent generations the Great Creator has been letting us pick up His tools and unroll blueprints, like apprentices preparing to work on our own. For some reason, He’s permitted us to learn the fundamental rules of nature and start tinkering with His craft. That’s a fact as potent as any revelation.

“Oh, it is a heady thing, this apprenticeship and the powers that go with it. Perhaps, in the long run, it will turn out to be a good thing.

“But that doesn’t make us all-knowing. Not yet.

“Most religions hold that some immortal essence stays inside a real human being — the original body — when copies are made. The golem-duplicate is just a machine, like some kind of robot. Its thoughts are projections — daydreams — sent in a temporary shell to perform errands. To help make your ambitions come true.

“For a rox, afterlife comes only by reuniting with its rig … just as the rig achieves it someday by reuniting with God. That’s how older religions dismiss the ambiguity, the moral quandary, the troublesome morality of making new intelligent beings from clay.

“But doesn’t some bit of immortal tincture transfer, each time we copy? Don’t we still feel passion and pain, while wearing these brief forms? Does heaven have a place for us, as well?

“If it doesn’t, well, maybe it ought to.”

The sermon droned on while I regathered my thoughts. Again, I saw the rosette pattern overhead — this time in a stained glass window that looked half-finished. Several crippled dittos worked in a corner, fashioning another flared bit for the flower. Only this petal looked more like a fish of some kind.

I always figured the people who ran this place — the Ephemerals Temple — were related to the self-righteous kooks who picket Universal Kilns, like that greenie at the beach. So-called mancies who want citizenship for dittos. Or maybe the religious aspect meant they were kin to those other demonstrators … conservatives who see roxing as an affront to God.

But neither seems to be true. They aren’t asking for equal rights, only compassion. And to save a little soul-stuff, here and there.

All right, so maybe they’re sincere kooks. I’ll ask Nell to send the Ephemerals a donation. If realAlbert doesn’t veto it.

Still, I got out of there as soon as I could stand, seeking a quiet place to make this recording. Maybe Al and Clara will listen to it together and ponder a few new notions.

That’s enough immortality for me. For a frankenstein mutant.

Meanwhile, it’s time to get busy. I may not be a faithful duplicate of my original, but we still share some interests. Things I’d like to know before vanishing away.

9 The Sleeper Wakes

Even in the old days it was normal to wonder, now and then, if you were real. At least it was normal for zen masters and college sophomores.

Now, the thought can strike you in the middle of a busy day. Running errands and doing business, you actually lose track of which table you got up from that morning. You can’t help checking, lifting a hand to glance at the color, or giving flesh a quiet pinch.

The worst part is dreaming.

Dittos hardly ever sleep. So the mere fact that you’re dreaming ought to reassure.

It ought to. But nightmares have their own logic. You can thrash in bed, worrying that you aren’t really you … but someone else just like you.

My brain still felt loggy when Ritu Maharal’s second call got me up for good. Clara would say it serves me right. “Only old-fashioned cyberfarts think they can ignore the sun.”

Easy advice, from someone in her profession. Wars are mostly scheduled, nine-to-five affairs nowadays. But in my line of work it’s easy to slip off-track. Well, four hours of rest — plus a bottle of ginger-fizzy Liquid Sleep — would have to do. Anyway, Ritu’s news had me worried.

Shambling into my office, I checked the ditto roster to see how my copies were faring. If gray number one had gone missing, some clue might be evident on the board. Or maybe another of my selves could be diverted to Kaolin Manor.

I blinked at the glowing emblems, unable to believe my eyes. All three status lights flashed amber for inaccessible/incommunicado!

“Nell, can you explain this?”

“Not completely. Gray number one vanished less than an hour ago, at the estate of Vic Aeneas Kaolin.”

“I know that already.”

“Then do you also know they just found that gray’s ID pellet lying on the ground in an off-limits area, restricted to Kaolin’s intimate servants? The Vic’s attorney wants to know what your ditto was doing there.”

“How the hell should I know?” And to think, this day began so well. “Put that aside for now. What’s going on with gray number two?”

“A coded message just came in. That gray has gone over to no-return, autonomous mode.”

I blinked in surprise.

“He did? Without consulting me?”

“It’s always been your policy to give grays this leeway.”

“Yes, but why—”

“The copy was offered a quick, profitable job with a consortium led by Gineen Wammaker. In order to avoid conflict of interest with your other cases, the investigation must take place under conditions of sequestered cognizance.”

“Under conditions of what?” I shook my head. “Oh, you mean no self-telling. I can’t inload the dit, or even find out what it does.”

This wasn’t the first time a copy of mine took a sealed assignment, heading off on its own in order to make a quick profit for the real me. I’ve been well paid for investigations that I’ll never remember, even if the customer was satisfied.

What goes through my mind, when I decide to accept such a case? Sitting here in my real body, I can’t picture making the sacrifice. But I guess something in my character makes it possible — even likely — under the right circumstances.

Just hearing about it leaves me feeling rather creepy. “That gray had better be careful,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t trust the maestra.”

“The ditto knows Wammaker can be devious. Do you want me to play back its message? Voice profiles ranged from cautious to paranoid.”

Should I find that reassuring? My grays are exceptionally good. In fact, some years ago I was invited to join a research study of people who imprint especially high-fidelity golems. Anyway, what could I do but shrug and accept the situation? If you can’t trust your own gray, who can you trust?

“All right, then tell me what happened to the green. This place is a mess. Dishes piled in the sink, trash bins full. Where’s it gone?”

In response, Nell threw a phone image on the wall. A bland version of my own face abruptly glistened like a plaster cast, stained a color reminiscent of dying chlorophyll.

“Hi me,” the visage waved jauntily against a shabby background, evidently somewhere in dittotown. “I just dictated a full report, which I’ll send in a minute. But here’s the short version.

“You blew it, Albert! Shouldn’t imprint when you’re wipe-out tired like you were this morning. You’ve always been lucky, but this time you finally made a frankie.”

The green face paused to let the news sink in, grinning with ironic resignation that looked at once familiar and yet odd, somehow. I can’t say for sure that I ever smiled quite that way.

“What’s it like being a mutant copy? I know you’re curious, so let me tell you. It feels downright weird. Like I’m me … and not me … at the same time. Know what I mean?

“Of course you don’t. Anyway, the crux of it is that I won’t be doing your dishes or vacuuming your house today. But not to worry! You don’t have to call the cops or a disposal service. I’m no public hazard … no crazy stuff. I just have a few interests of my own, that’s all.

“If I get a chance, I’ll send one last report before I expire. I owe my creator that much, I suppose.

“Thanks for making me. Guess I’ll see you around.”

The green ditto winked and signed off. I stared at the blank wall until Nell broke in.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is your very first Frankenstein duplicate. Shall I make an appointment for you to get a routine medical scan? Life Upkeep is having a sale on checkups this week.”

I shook my head.

“You heard him. I was tired, that’s all.”

“Then shall I put out a notice, renouncing the green’s pellet?”

“And let every sicko hunt-fetishist go gunning for it? The poor thing seems harmless. I wonder, though …”

Could the same effect have touched the grays I imprinted this morning? They were made from more expensive blanks, and the scan times were longer. Anyway, with both of them incommunicado, what could I do but hope for the best?

There was little more to be learned from the green’s dictated report, only some colorful incidents at Moonlight Beach and that dittotown church where they repair golems — interesting and dramatic, but no new light shed.

Nell broke in. “Now that we’ve updated ditto status, there is work to do. Several ongoing cases need attention. And Ritu Maharal expects you to call back with conjectures about her father’s fatal accident.”

I nodded. There are always too many things going on to handle all by myself.

“Break out a specialist,” I ordered. “An ebony. Top of the line. I’d better imprint right away.”

“An ebony has already been prepped.”

The storage unit hissed, emitting oily fog as a fresh golem blank slid onto the warming tray, wearing a mirrorlike, glossy black sheen. More expensive than a quality gray, it came pre-tuned for intense focus, amplifying high levels of professional concentration for a full twenty-four hours — assuming that your original already has those qualities. Which may explain why you don’t see ebonies as often as sybaritic whites. A full day of intense pleasure may be as wearing to inload as a day of hard work, but a lot more people have an aptitude for pleasure.

The kiln was ready. The soul-sifter’s writhing tendrils awaited my head. But first I needed a moment to seek calm. Losing contact with two grays was bad enough, but for one of my greens to turn frankie? The unprecedented occurrence had me worried. Was I rested enough to keep it from happening again?

Turning away from the copier, I pushed open the back door of my small house and stepped into the garden. Warm sunshine on my face helped a lot. So did the smell of growing things. Moving over to my very own zen lemon tree, I plucked a small fruit and used a penknife to slice open one end, rubbing some juice onto my wrists. The scent filled my sinuses and I closed my eyes, clearing my thoughts.

Soon confidence returned. Back to work.

Laying my head between the soul-pickups, I gave the mental signal to begin. This would be a long, careful scan, taking maybe ten minutes, so I tried to stay relaxed and immobile as delicate fingers began riffling through me — mostly the brain but also heart, liver, and spinal cord — copying from the template of my Standing Wave, pressing its image into the nearby clay figure. It all felt familiar, like hundreds of other times. Yet on this occasion I felt self-consciously aware of the undercurrent — ripples of emotion and semi-random memories that imprinting evokes at a level below clear consciousness. Vague, oceanic feelings of connectedness washed over me, sensations that William James called “the religious experience,” before mankind got around to transforming the spiritual realm into just another area of technological expertise.

It was only natural for my drifting thoughts to contemplate the greenie … especially the time it reported spending at the Ephemerals Temple. Apparently there was more to the place than a bunch of kooks, wasting their altruistic impulses on wounded mayflies. It made me wonder.

What happens to the soul of a ditto who loses his salvation — who never gets to inload back into the “real” self who made him? It always seemed a metaphysical and rather futile question — except three of me faced that situation today.

For that matter, what happens when your original dies? Some religions think there’s a final transfer, loading your entire lifestream into God, in much the same way that your golems pour their memories back into you at the end of each day. But despite fervent yearnings — and well-funded private research — no one’s ever found proof of such transfer to some higher-level archetype-being.

Unsettling thoughts. I tried to let go and just drift, letting the unit do its work. But moments later, Nell interrupted with another high-priority call.

“It is from Vic Aeneas Kaolin,” my house computer said. “You have no operational self-copies to take it. Shall I answer with an avatar?”

Use a crude software emulation to greet a trillionaire? I quivered at the notion. Might as well insult him with a recorded voice saying, I’m not in right now, leave a message.

“Put him through to me here,” I ordered. This was going to be one of those days.

The image that erupted in front of me showed the tycoon’s familiar visage — slender and heavy-browed — sitting in a tidy office with an ornate fountain-sculpture bubbling in the background. I almost sat up in surprise when I saw that he was brown! One of the pale, North European shades. It would be worthwhile interrupting the scan in order to show respect for his rig.

Then I spied a glint … a brief, specular reflection off his cheek. A non-specialist might be fooled by the guise, but I could tell this was another golem, baked in human shades. It wasn’t even illegal, since you can wear any color you like in the privacy of your own home, as long as no fraud is involved.

I remained supine, letting the tetragramatron unit continue sifting and imprinting a duplicate of my soul.

“Mr. Morris.”

“ditKaolin,” I replied, indicating that I saw through the amateurish guise. He paused, then inclined his head ever so slightly. After all, I was the real person in this conversation.

“I see you are imprinting, sir. Shall I call back in an hour?”

As before, I found his way of speaking a bit old-fashioned. But you can afford affectations when you’re rich.

“It’s a deep scan, but I’ll hardly need a whole hour.” I smiled, while keeping my head quite still between the tendrils. “I can call you back in ten—”

“This will only take a minute,” the ditto interrupted. “I want you to come work for me. Right away. At double your normal rate.” He appeared happily confident that I would leap up and accept without hesitation. Strange. Was this the same fellow whose lawyers sent threatening notes a little while ago, because they found the pellet of my missing gray in a restricted area? The same Kaolin who wouldn’t let me send a copy of my own to investigate the disappearance?

“If this has to do with Dr. Maharal’s tragic death, you know that I’ve already been retained by his daughter, Ritu. Accepting your offer right now could risk conflict of interest, unless special arrangements are made.”

“Special arrangements” could mean spinning off more grays who never come home. That thought, mixed with the turbid sensations of imprinting, left me feeling a bit queasy.

Kaolin’s ditto blinked, then glanced offscreen. Perhaps he was receiving instructions from his archetype — the real mogul-hermit. Curiosity flamed within me. There were all sorts of rumors about the tycoon. Some of the more garish stories described him as hideously deformed by a rare, genetically engineered plague developed in his own laboratories. I made sure this conversation was being recorded at high fidelity. Clara would want details, when she came home from her war.

The brown golem brushed away my objection. “That’s a mere technicality. You will perform the same investigation, but I can pay for your exclusive services, sparing poor Ritu the expense during her time of grief.”

That “exclusive services” part sounded like this morning’s Fealty Oath ploy, repackaged a bit. True, I could always use money. But the world is more than money.

“Have you cleared this idea with Ritu?”

The flesh-colored ditto paused, again checking some information source offscreen. Barring a recent memory transfer, this one would have no personal knowledge of me, only what he had been told.

“No, but I’m sure she’ll find my offer—”

“Anyway, she’s already paid for today, in advance. Why not wait and see what I come up with? We can all compare notes tomorrow. Put everything on the table. Does that sound fair enough?”

Kaolin was clearly unused to being put off.

“Mr. Morris, there are … complications that Ritu doesn’t know about.”

“Hm. You mean complications relevant to her father’s death? Or the abduction of my gray?”

Grimacing, the platinum ditto realized his mistake. He was on the verge of giving me probable cause to subpoena him, if I chose.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said, with a curt nod. The image vanished and I chuckled briefly, then closed my eyes with a sigh. Perhaps now I could finish imprinting in peace.

Alas, no longer distracted by the phone call, I felt once again immersed in the turbulence of soul-sifting. Emotion flurries and flashes of memory, most of them too brief to recognize, kept surging out of dark, unconscious storage. Some of them felt like anticipating the past, others like remembering the future. It grew stifling, especially when the perceptron tendrils entered both nostrils for the final and deepest phase of imprinting — the phase called “breath of life.”

Nell broke in.

“I have another incoming call, from Malachai Montmorillin.”

This was the utter last straw. Almost gagging on the tendrils, I grunted -

“Can’t listen to Pal raving right now.”

“He appears to be quite insist—”

“I said no! Use that buzzoff avatar on him. Anything. Just keep him away till I finish work tonight!”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so vehement. The same intense feeling would carry over into the ebony. Anyway, poor Pal couldn’t help being the way he was.

But I didn’t have time for his crazy games right then. Sometimes you just have to focus on the job at hand.

10 Golem Home

The Rainbow Lounge has a retro name and revo clientele. Once you step past a flickersign that says NO REALFOLK ALLOWED, it feels like you’ve entered some nightmarish TwenCen sci-fi movie, filled with cavorting mutants and leering androids.

Of course, a lot more than just a warning keeps archies away. True-flesh can’t endure the bone-jarring rhythms hammered by a vibrating dance floor. Staccato-strobes hurl juttering lightning arcs that would send organic neurons into conniptions. The atmosphere, clotted with soot from a hundred smoldering ash pipes, could lace your native lungs with lively tumors. The stench — mildly intoxicating to dittos — must be filtered before venting to outside air.

Back in one-body days, Saturday night mattered. Now, places like the Rainbow hop around the clock, even on a Tuesday afternoon — whenever fresh dittos can arrive, baked for harsh pleasure in their owners’ kilns, decorated in everything from paisley spirals to moiré patters that turn skin into blurry art. Some come molded as gaudy sex caricatures or sport scary accessories, like razor talons or acid-dripping jaws.

“Would you like a head-check?” The red attendant behind a counter offers me a glowing tag. Next to coatracks stand refrigerated cubbyholes. A tag for cranial storage can help ensure that violent memories will be savored later.

“No thanks,” I tell her. And yes, I admit that I used to frequent spots like this. Hey, who gets past their teen years nowadays without sampling depths of hedonism that would shame Nero? Why not, if the only thing you keep are memories? And even that’s optional. Nothing that happens to your ditto can harm the real you, right?

That is, if you ignore certain rumors …

For many, the intensity fix is addictive — inloading experiences too raucous for mere protoplasm. Especially the unemployed, spending their purple wage to beat back the ennui of modern life.

“Please wait over there, ditMorris. I’ll come for you shortly.”

Jarred from doorway contemplation, I glance at my guide, another red-hued femdit. Her speech carries through the racket with remarkable clarity. Sonic interference dampers, embedded in the walls, shape a channel for her words to reach my ears. A tech-marvel you can take for granted, when you happen to own the place.

“Pardon? Where should I wait?”

Queen Irene’s red golem points again, past the dance floor and beyond the Grudge Pit. This time I see an empty table with a winking RESERVED light.

“Will this take long? I haven’t got all day.”

That expression has special meaning for a creature like me, self-sentenced to oblivion for the good of my maker. But my guide only shrugs, then heads off through the crowd to inform her sisters that the hired spy has arrived.

Why should I spend my last eighteen hours working for people I don’t like, doing a job I don’t understand? Why not escape! The street is just meters away.

But if I did escape, where could I go? realAlbert would force me to spend all of my remaining span in quick-court, fighting the maestra’s breach-of-contract suit. Anyway, I’m probably being watched right now, targeted by a sighting beam. I can see more copies of the same umber-colored female hurrying about, serving drinks, mopping spills and sweeping bits of broken customers. Several of the reds glance my way. They’ll know if I make a break for it.

I head for the table, wading through a maelstrom of noise. Living noise that grabs your body like a cloying lover, hampering every move. I don’t like this “music,” but the garish dancers do, throwing themselves into frenetic collisions that few could mimic in flesh. Bits of clay fly, as if from a potter’s wheel.

Staunch partiers have a saying — if your ditto makes it home in one piece, you didn’t have a good time.

Seating booths line the walls. Others lounge at open tables that project garish holo images — whirling abstractions, vertigeffigies, or gyrating strippers. Some draw the eye against your will.

Sidling around the mob, I pass through a fringe minimum, where the sonic dampers overlap, canceling everything to a hush, like inside a padded coffin. Stray bits of dialogue converge from all over the club.

“… so there’s this clamber-amble, creeping up my leg? I look down an’ see it’s wearing Josie’s face, grinning at the tip! So I got maybe three secs to decide, did she send it as a poison pet or an apology? Get the pixel?”

“… the committee finally accepted my thesis, only they slapped a perversion tax, on account of ‘sadistic themes’! The nerve. I bet none of those old turds ever read the gospels of deSade!”

“… uh … taste this … d’you think they’re watering the benzene?”

Another step, and I’m beyond the quiet fringe minimum, abruptly staggering under a double-reinforced roar. Screams bellow from the Grudge Pit, where swaggering bravos carve each other while other clients tender themselves as prizes to the winners. The latest victor stands over his steaming victim, crossing both wrists with raised weapons that whirl like spinning scythes, throwing enzyme-soaked gore onto cheering bystanders. Bets are paid with glimmering eye-picts, or wads of stained purple bills. Under their garish skin decorations, you can spot which dismembered dittos were bought at a public kiln for twenty welfare dollars.

The winner’s triumphant turn brings us eye-to-eye. We lock a gaze briefly and his grin freezes — in recognition? I don’t recall ever seeing his particular pseudoface. The connection lasts but an instant, then he turns back to admiring cheers.

A similar victory might have won him a chiefdom in some olden tribe. Now, well, at least he gets a moment to pretend. Of course, a real pro like my Clara could eat punks like this for breakfast. But she has better things to do right now, two hundred klicks away at the front lines, defending her country.

The RESERVED light goes dark when I sit where I’m expected, wondering how Clara’s war is going. Part of me feels sick that I’ll never see her again. Though of course I will, as soon as one army or the other wins … or else when combat breaks up for the traditional weekend truce. realAlbert had better be good to her, or I’ll come back from wherever golems go, and haunt the lucky bastard!

“What’ll it be?” a waitress asks. A special model, resembling the other Irene-copies, but voluptuous, with big hands for carrying trays.

“Just a Pepsoid. With ice.” My grays are self-sufficient, but it’s hot in here and an electrolyte boost won’t hurt. On Wammaker’s expense account.

Turns out that I’m near another sonic fringe. If I lean to one side, I can slip my head into a zone of relative silence, damping out the thudding music and shrieking battle cries, leaving only dribbles of chatter from the booths.

“… What’re you smoking? Izzat buckyball-black? Can I sniff?”

“… Did you hear they closed the Pithy Pendulum? Health spectors found a zhimmer virus in the filters. Your infected ditto brings it home and WHAM! Next thing, your rig’s drooling in a psycho ward …”

“… I love that bug-eye look! Are they functional?”

Wordless sounds of ersatz passion also carry. Through haze, I glimpse couples and trios writhing in alcoves. And if your body plan won’t fit your partner’s, the management rents adapters.

“Hush,” I tell the table, which erects a curtain of white noise, quashing the surrounding din. “Give me news from the war front.”

“Which war?” a voice buzzes, silicon-based, not clay. Specifics are needed. “Five major matches and ninety-seven minor league events are currently in progress around the globe.”

Ah. So who is Clara fighting, this week? I should pay closer attention to the standings. If this were a sports bar, the contest would be on a big screen, twenty-four hours.

“Um, try the combat range nearest town.”

“The Jesse Helms International Combat Range lies two hundred and fifty-four kilometers south by southeast. This week, the Helms Range is proud to host a return match between the Pacific Ecological Zone of the United States of America and the Indonesian Reforestation Consortium. At stake are iceberg harvesting rights in the Antarctic—”

“That’s it. How’s the PEZ team doing?”

A holo image spreads across the table, zooming toward sunburned mountainy terrain demarcated by sharp boundaries. Outside, beyond a palm-treed resort oasis, lies a protected landscape of desert mesas. Inside: a pocked and tormented patch of Mother Gaia that’s been sacrificed for the sake of the rest. A vast cousin of the Rainbow Lounge, where human drives are channeled, with far more at stake.

“Pacifican forces made significant territorial advances during Monday’s initial action. Casualties were low. But IRC tribunes assessed a number of penalties that may cancel out these gains …”

Sparkles flash before me as the POV drops closer to Earth. Sparkles that seem rather gay-looking, till you recognize rocket-artillery barrages and fierce laser strikes. Clara works in a realm of awful killing machines that could wreak horror if they ever spilled beyond the world’s combat ranges. I’m torn between zooming toward the front lines or swerving to that tree-lined oasis, at the border. Only -

— someone barges suddenly through the wispy privacy screen, blocking half the holo image.

“So, it is you.” A figure stands before me, tall and snake-skinned. “How convenient.”

It’s the gladiator I saw just minutes ago in the Grudge Pit, exulting over a steaming victim. He looms closer, purple hands still swathed in wet clay grue, like some brutal potter.

“How’d you get out of the river?” he demands.

All at once, I realize it’s the rowdy who blocked my way last night, on Odeon Square! Only that had been his archie back when I was green, trying desperately to escape Beta’s yellowdits.

“River?” Let’s play innocent. “What makes you think I went swimming? Or that I’d remember you?”

His fighter-ditto isn’t made for subtle expressions. The face goes rigid as he realizes what he just gave away. Then he shrugs, deciding not to care what his words reveal.

“You remember me, all right,” he growls. “I saw you jump in. And I know you made it back home to dump.”

Know? How could he know? Never mind. Modern wisdom says never to be surprised if hidden knowledge leaks. Over the long term, no secret endures.

Let’s see if he appreciates sarcasm.

“A golem walking the length of a river! Well, goodness. Anyone who accomplished something like that should be the talk of the town! Maybe you should try jumping in yourself sometime.”

The suggestion doesn’t sit well.

“I kept your damn arm. Baked it hard. Want it back?”

I can’t help smiling as I recall his stunned expression when I left him standing in the plaza gripping my severed wrist. A rare happy memory from a lousy ditto-day.

“Keep it. Make a nice urn.”

He scowls. “Stand up.”

Instead, I yawn and stretch, both posturing and buying time. Courage is conditional. If this body of mine were made for partying, I just might try to slab and spin this guy, for the hell of it. realAlbert, with plenty to live for, would flee such a mad fool without shame. My options are murkier. I’m gray and an orphan, with no chance of continuity but some puzzles I’d like to solve in my remaining hours. All told, I’d rather management came to shoo him off. Alas, not a single red Irene is in sight.

“I said, get up!” Bully-boy growls, preparing to strike.

“Do I get choice of weapons?” I ask abruptly.

Hesitation. He can’t just cut me to bits when I’ve made it a matter of honor. Duels have rules, y’know. And people are watching.

“Sure. After you.” He gestures toward the Grudge Pit, insisting that I lead the way.

I need an out before we get there. There are a few tools in my pocket — a small cutter and a cyberscope — but he won’t make the same mistake as last night, letting me strike up close, by surprise.

Where the hell are my hosts? If I had any idea they were so lax, I’d have made that break earlier! Hit the street. Maybe head for Pal’s. Advise Albert to avoid the maestra in future, like a plague.

We weave past tables, most of them aglow with shimmering bolos, lighting garish faces. No one looks familiar in the young crowd. Anyway, this character is probably part of the in-group. Flexing my knees a bit lower with each step, I think-prep an enzyme rush while slowing the pace, as if suddenly reluctant.

As I hoped, my nemesis plants a beefy hand in my back. Gives a push.

“Go on! The armory’s just ahea—”

I won’t chance it against his hyped-up reflexes. Instead of whirling at him from a fake stumble, I leap sideways and up, landing on a nearby table, kicking aside glasses to slip between the projected holos of two female dancers, rubbing their hips in erotic rhythm.

I think he yells, but there’s so much noise from upset clients — they reach for me, so I jump again!

Like a pip, shot from between the gyrating dancers, I fly from that table to another, landing this time amid a swirling maelstrom of jagged virtual scythes, spinning round and round like Death’s personal tornado. It’s so realistic that I cringe, half expecting to be puréed. But my body passes through the illusion, even as more customers scream outrage and glass crunches underfoot. Hands grab an ankle, so I spin-kick, knocking them off.

Of course the light storm blinds me, too. I can barely glimpse my next target, a table where a gently spinning Earthglobe beckons. I flex -

— but a sudden force knocks the rickety platform, spoiling my launch. I strike the next table edge-on, rolling in pain amid chairs, kicking feet and broken bottles.

Blows buffet my left side, driving a groan. My tormentor, or an irritated customer? Rather than look, I scuttle like a crab while groping in a pants pocket for my cutter — too short-range to serve as much of a weapon.

Uh-oh. Boots ahead. Many. He’s called friends. They’re bending and peering under tables. In moments -

My hand falls on the base of this table, held to the floor by three heavy bolts.

Cut them? Why not? Here goes -

The table wobbles … tips …

Grab it. Now surge upward!

They jump back in alarm. It’s not much of a weapon, but with the holo still shining I appear to be brandishing more than a bitty cocktail table! Writhing images extend another two meters, like shining snakes. A flail made of burning light.

Just light, yet they cringe. Imprinted with barely altered caveman souls, they can’t help seeing a flaming torch. Soon I’m circled by a zone of respect, empty out to the holo’s reach. And now, some spectator voices cheer for me.

I spot the punk, with pals, all wearing studded black as if they invented the look. Pathetic.

They clench and snarl. In bare moments, rational evaluation will win out, overcoming cave reflexes. They’ll charge through the cool light. But hemmed by onlookers, what can I …

All at once the tenor of sound shifts. The thundering dance music vanishes. Angry shouts are damped. Past the sucking whistle of my hyper-breathing, an amplified voice penetrates.

“ditMorris, if you please …”

Swerving again, I feint at the bravos. They retreat, perhaps for the last time as their eyes narrow angrily.

Then, abruptly, they give way — pushed aside by a band of newcomers, small but forceful, using sound-wands to clear a path. Red females, restoring order to their club.

It’s about time.

Backing toward the Grudge Pit, the chief punk gives me a final look, surprisingly passionless, even amused or gratified. The pounding “music” returns. Soon, the Rainbow is back to normal.

One of the Irenes, unapologetic, shakes her ruddy finger.

“ditMorris, kindly put that table down!”

It’s hard to comply for a moment. Instinct, you know.

“Please, no more distractions. You’re expected. The hive awaits.”

The holo display sputters out and I drop my makeshift weapon. That’s it? No apology for leaving me at the mercy of idiots?

Oh, stifle the complaint, Albert. It’s not like your life was in danger, or anything important.

Jerking her crimson head, my guide beckons me to follow her toward the back of the club, then through a plush curtain. Blessed silence reigns suddenly, as the heavy drape falls behind us. Silence so welcome that I sway. It takes several beats before I can think. Then -

Wait … I’ve seen this room before.

During the meeting at Studio Neo, one red-clay Irene had been jacked into a screen showing throngs of umber duplicates, fussing around a single pale figure, supine on a fancy life-maintenance couch. Now, up close, I see the real woman lying amid the bustle, staring blankly while tended by one-third scale duplicates. Fluid drips into her mouth. Mechanical arms massage her limbs. The face, though flaccid and distant, is clearly the template for every red I’ve seen running about this place. Her shaved head bears a medusa of writhing cables, leading to industrial strength freezers and kilns.

A fresh-baked copy emerges, still glowing from the oven. It stretches for a languorous moment before accepting paper overalls, then stepping away, targeted to do some chore without direction or instruction. Meanwhile, another reenters from the outside world, clearly tottering on depleted cells. Without ceremony, two sisters neatly sever the day-old head, dropping it into a memory transfer coil.

The archie’s pale face winces for an instant during inload. The discarded body rolls off for recycling.

Some foresee this as our future, I muse. When you can spin off countless copies to perform any task, your durable organic body will serve one function, as a place to deposit memories and pass them on, a sacred prisoner like the ant queen, while bustling workers carry out life’s real activity and savor.

I find the prospect repulsive. But my grandparents thought the same of basic imprinting. The words “golem” and “ditto” were epithets, till we got used to them. Who am I to judge what future generations will think normal?

“ditMorris, welcome.”

I turn. The Irene facing me has the skin texture of a high-quality gray, tinted with her trademark umber glaze. Standing near is the other rox I met at Studio Neo, “Vic” Manuel Collins, with the eye-hurting plaid dye job.

“You call this welcome? I’d like to know why you left me out there, to be—”

Collins lifts a hand. “Questions later. First, let us see to your repairs.”

Repairs?

Looking down, I see bad news. Deep gashes in my left side! One leg cut more than halfway through along its length and oozing badly. Hopped-up on action enzymes, I felt little.

Ack, I’m ruined.

“You can repair this?” My chief emotion is numb curiosity.

“Come along,” says the nearest Irene. “We’ll fix you up in no time.”

No time? I ponder in a daze, following. To a ditto, “no time” is a very demanding phrase.

11 Ghosts in the Wind

There didn’t seem to be much I could do about my missing duplicates. Gray number two was on autonomous mode; he couldn’t legally contact me, and the maestra might prevent it even if he wanted to. The greenie had sent a weird declaration of independence, before going off on his own. And there was no sign at all of gray number one, who vanished at Kaolin Manor along with a ghost of Yosil Maharal. The Universal Kilns security staff had taken charge of that mystery, sifting the estate for any sign of both missing dittos. So far to no avail.

I didn’t expect them to achieve much. It’s easy to smuggle a rox in a box. Millions, cushioned mummylike in CeramWrap, get shunted all over the city each day by truck, courier, or pneumatic tube. And it’s even easier getting rid of a dead one — just flush the remains into a recycler. Without a pellet, one batch of golem slurry is no different than any other.

Anyway, I had investigations to take care of, including one for a client who was willing to pay top rates. Ritu Maharal wanted me to look into the mysterious death of her father. As legal heir, she could now access his records, from credit purchases to calls from his wrist phone. Maharal’s movements during time spent working for UK were another matter. But when Ritu asked Vic Aeneas Kaolin for those chronicles, the tycoon assented, grudgingly, to keep her from going public with “wild stories” about her father being murdered.

The permissions came through soon after I finished making an ebony specialist, tuned for total focus on professional skill. That duplicate went right to work, waving its arms and chattering rapidly under the muffled folds of a virtual reality chador, immersed in a world of rapidfire data-globes and zooming images. All logic and focus, the ebony could handle the rest of my caseload for the time being, letting me concentrate on one task — discovering where Yosil Maharal spent the last few weeks.

Never mind what cyber marketeers say about their fancy autonomous search programs. Data-sifting is an art. We may live in a “transparent” society, but the window glass is frosted and foggy in countless places. Peering through those patches can take skill.

I started by setting up a digital avatar — a simple software representation of myself — and launching it through the publicam network. Though less intelligent or flexible than a creature with a Standing Wave, it carried some of my expertise combined with a relentless drive to hunt down any images that Yosil may have left while traveling on city streets. Ritu gave me about sixty solid sightings to start with — places he was confirmed to have been at exact times. The avatar zoomed in on those space-and-time coordinates, then tried to follow the scientist as he moved from one recorded scene to the next. Gradually, a map began to fill in, detailing his movements during the months before he died.

Often, that kind of search is enough, all by itself. Few people have a knack for evading the publicam mesh.

Alas, Maharal must have been one of them. Indeed, he proved wily at escaping from view, almost at will. My avatar’s search left a chart with many gaping holes, some lasting a week or more!

Ritu’s pockets were deep and she wanted answers fast. So I put out bids for sightings by privately owned lenses, which are far more numerous than public cameras. Restaurant security scanners, window-ledge lurkers, newsbugs, amateur sociologists, even nature lovers and urban sporting clubs — anyone whose sensors might have spotted Yosil when he was out of publicam range. Since Ritu owned her father’s copyright now, there wasn’t even a voyeur tax. Low bids poured in. I let the avatar haggle and choose enough pix to fill in Yosil’s trail.

Meanwhile, I focused on the scene of his death.

Outside the city, it’s like another world. A primitive realm of immense areas where vision is blurry, even nonexistent … unless you happen to be there in person, using your own eyes.

Adult: If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

A modern child: It depends. Let me check if any of the local cams had sonic or vibrational pickups.

Cute. But in fact, most places on Earth still aren’t covered by any close-in cams at all! It’s a lot easier to disappear in the countryside, beyond any sign of habitation.

Unfortunately, that’s where Maharal spent his last hours, and possibly days.

I started with police images of the crash site, offering stunning holographic detail out to a diameter of two hundred meters surrounding Maharal’s wrecked vehicle — a big Chevford Huntsman with an extravagant methane engine. It lay crumpled and half-burned at the bottom of a ravine. The river was dry this time of year, but giant granite boulders testified to the smoothing effects of a torrent that scoured the streambed during some winters.

The desert, I thought, glumly. Why did it have to be the damn desert?

Overhead, spanning the gully, stood the highway viaduct where Maharal’s vehicle began its fatal plummet, the guardrail a twisted snake of shredded metal. I spent some time nosing around the scene, shifting and interpolating from one hovering copcam to the next. While emergency vehicles came and went, muscular dittos heaved at the wreck — sometimes with fancy tools, but then dropping them to use raw strength — striving to free the dead scientist’s corpse.

The road made a sharp turn just before reaching this lonely site. Skid marks intersected the maimed guardrail … as if the driver had realized his peril suddenly, though too late. This, combined with results from Maharal’s autopsy, convinced authorities that he must have simply dozed off at the wheel.

The tragedy never would have happened if he used the car’s auto-navigation system. Why would someone drive at night, in an unlit desert, with all safety features cut out?

Well, I answered my own question, robot-piloting leaves a trace. You don’t use autonav when you’re worried about being followed. Maharal’s gray ditto had admitted that the good doctor spent his last days oscillating in and out of paranoia. This supported the story.

Reversing the flow of time, I watched emergency vehicles converge backward and then disperse again, one by one, till just a solitary camview was available … a speckly image from the first sheriff’s cruiser to arrive on the scene. When I tried ratcheting still earlier, the fatal patch of desert not only went dark, it vanished from memory, like a blind spot you couldn’t even look at. It appeared only on maps. An abstraction. For all anyone knew for sure, it did not even exist during the time in question.

Farm country would’ve been better. Agriculturalists use a lot of cameras to monitor crops. Anything irregular, like a stranger, might show up. But the hectare in question featured just a simple EPA toxicity detector, vigilant against illegal dumping. The nearest real lens was more than five klicks away — a habitat scanner programmed to count migrating desert tortoises and such.

Still, I didn’t give up. There are ten thousand commercial and private spy-sats orbiting this planet, and even more robot aircraft cruising the high stratosphere, serving as phone relays and newscams. One of them might have been focused on this obscure place when the accident happened, recording a handy image of Maharal’s headlights, swerving and then spinning as the car plunged to its doom.

I checked … and there was no such luck. All the high-resolution lenses were busy elsewhere that night, zooming onto busier sites. Tech-pundits keep promising we’ll have WorldOmniscient viewing in a few years, with close-ups of the whole Earth available to everyone, all the time. But right now, that’s just sci-fi stuff.

My best bet was to try a little trick of my own, using the coarse data from a micro-climate orbiter. Not a true camera, the weathersat is assigned to track wind gusts across the southwest, using Doppler radar.

Traffic stirs the air, especially in open countryside. Long ago I figured out that you can trace the passage of a single vehicle, if conditions are right. And if you’re lucky.

Using special processing software, I massaged the weathersat’s recorded scan of the area near the viaduct, moments before the crash. Looking for very small patterns, I prodded and palped the Doppler elements till they were grainy, fluctuating at the edge of chaos.

At first, it looked like nothing more than a storm of multicolored noise. Then I began picking out patterns.

There!

It looked like a trail of mini-cyclones, spinning along both sides of the desert road — a ghostly wake, barely perceptible against a background of noise-washed pixels. Pushing the clock slowly backward from the time of the crash, I followed that spectral trace as it writhed southward along the road, vanishing and then reappearing like a phantom snake, moving at the pace of a speeding car.

This might work, I thought, so long as Maharal didn’t pass any other traffic … and assuming the air stayed quiet all that lonely night.

Almost any outside disturbance could erase the wraithlike spoor.

Comparing distance and time scales, I could tell one thing about Maharal’s condition that night as he sped toward his tryst with death — the Universal Kilns scientist sure must have had a bee up his shorts! He topped over a hundred and twenty klicks along most of that curvy road. The guy was just asking for trouble.

Could someone have been following him? Chasing? The trail of cyclonic disturbance was too ragged and smeared to tell if it was made by one vehicle or two.

I asked Nell to keep following the faint pattern as far back in time as she could.

“Acknowledged,” my house computer answered, almost sounding human. “If you aren’t too busy, there are some other matters that have come up while you were immersed in work. Your colleague Malachai Montmorillin called several more times. I put him off, per your instructions.”

I felt a little guilty. Poor Pal. “I’ll make it up to him tonight. Orders stand.”

“Very well. I have also received a pneumatic shipment from Universal Kilns. Five new ditto blanks.”

“Put them away. And please stop bothering me with trivia.”

Nell went silent. I could see on one monitor that she was concentrating on following Maharal’s desert track. So I turned away to check on the cyber-avatar that I had unleashed in the city cam-web.

The results looked gratifying!

Purchased images and camera-posse reports were pouring in, providing a picture of where Yosil Maharal had spent much of the last few months, at least when he was in town. I skim-sampled the resulting movie at high speed, tailing the late researcher as he moved from one eyeview to the next … shopping in a fashionable arcade, for instance, or visiting his hygienist for a routine oral-symbiont upgrade. The mesh of spottings still amounted to only a couple of hours a day, on average. But after all, Maharal spent most of his time working in the lab at Universal Kilns, or at home.

Except for those mysterious trips to the countryside, that is. It was essential to forge a link between his city trail and those cryptic sojourns out of town.

Still, I felt content with progress so far. If the city mesh kept filling in at this rate, I should have something worthwhile to report to Ritu.

A sharp twinge brought my hand to my right temple. One byproduct of all this work was a growing headache. Real neurons can only take so much holovideo input. Anyway, it was time I got up to relieve my bladder.

Stopping at the chemsynth unit on my way back, I ordered a tension potion — something to ease the knot in my neck, but without any thought-dulling endorphins. I took the frothy concoction back to the study … only to find someone in my place! Somebody built like me, but with longer fingers and a disdainful expression that I seldom wear. At least I hope I don’t.

The glossy, emulated skin was the color of deep space. Agile hands danced over my controller-array.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. The ditto had its own cubbyhole.

“Tidying up this mess while waiting for you to come out of the john. Your search avatar thinks that it’s tracked down most of Maharal’s missing in-town movements.”

I glanced at the screen. “Yeah? Eighty-seven percent coverage ain’t bad … for the time Maharal wasn’t at home or the lab. What are you getting at?”

Again, a sardonic smile.

“Oh, nothing, maybe. Except that some of these so-called sightings may not be Dr. Yosil Maharal at all.”

I gave the ditto a hollow look, which only invited more disdain.

“Care to make a wager, Boss-me? I’ll bet my inload that Maharal’s got you fooled. In fact, he’s been tricking everybody for a very long time.”

12 Leggo My Echo

Out of politeness, I waited till the crippled purple preacher finished her sermon before I stood up to leave the Ephemerals. Unfortunately, the sweetly inspirational tone was marred by an altercation that broke out in the vestibule as I made my way outside. A man whose skin tone verged egregiously between golem-beige and human-brown shouted while waving a placard covered with in flowing, cursive script:

You all miss the point.

There’s a next step a’coming …

Angry congregants milled, trying to nudge the interloper through an exit without shoving — on the offchance that he might be real. The uncertainty fostered by his ambiguous coloration was augmented by sunglasses, along with flaming red hair and a beard that could either be fake or genuine. The fellow was committing half a dozen misdemeanors just by looking this way — like some kind of ditto-human crossbreed — an effect he must have been aiming for.

“You’re all a bunch of daisies!” he cried, as a dozen or so Ephemerals crowded him toward a side door. “Colored on the outside, but dull as flesh within! Don’t you know it takes blood to pull off a revolution? The protoplasm elite will never give way to the New Race without violence. They’ll cling to domination till they’re wiped off the face of the Earth! Only then can we progress to the next level!”

I had to admit, standing there, that sometimes you just gotta admire the passion of the truly insane — a passion that bulls right past all sense or reason. I mean, was he really suggesting that dittos can exist, somehow, independently of organic originals who were woman-born? How was that even remotely logical? The variety of inventive ideas — and ideologies — that people can come up with never ceases to amaze me, especially when they’re stoked by the ultimate drug, self-righteousness.

Turning and departing by the front door, I descended wide stone steps to the street with the fanatic’s words still ringing in my ears.

“Get ready!” the crackpot yelled in a fervid voice that seemed to cling, even as I walked away.

“A new age is coming for the ditsenfranchised … if you prepare!”

Nobody wanted to talk about the waiter who caused a brief uproar last night, at La Tour Vanadium.

When I arrived, most of the restaurant staff — contract specialdits from busboys to maître d’ — were darting about wordlessly, clearing away lunch and setting tables for the early dinner crowd. A few customers lingered while twin chartreuse waiters hovered nearby. Gym bags lay at the archies’ feet. A nice chardonnay can be just the thing after exercise, soaking warm neurons with a happy glow.

Optimists predict that someday a real body may last as many decades as a ditto has hours. Well, far be it from me to begrudge this.

Wearing cheap paper overalls from a vending machine, and still feeling throbs in my back from that hasty patch-up at the Ephemerals, I knew I wouldn’t impress the manager. One copper-colored eye narrowed behind a monocle-spex, scanning to verify my blurry copy of Albert Morris’s investigator license. He’d know in seconds if my maker had disowned me.

Would Albert do that, just because I refused to clean his toilets? Could I already be on the hit list of some pervo hunt club? Worse, he might declare me a danger to society. A police exterminator could be swooping down, right now, like an avenging hawk …

I was betting my life on Albert’s softheartedness, unable to renounce his first frankie.

The manager flipped up his monocle, handing back the smudged ID. “As I told your house computer, there is nothing to investigate. You can’t seriously be interested in yesterday’s little accident! Since when is it a felony to spill some drinks and break a little glass? We obtained waivers from every customer, offering free meals in recompense.”

“Generous, but—”

“Is someone reneging? Is that why you’re here? We can call an online jury to watch recordings. Any reasonable panel—”

“Please. I’m not here to plant a grudge lien. I just want the waiter.”

“There’s nothing to extort. He was covered by our insurance, until we terminated his contract.”

“So he was fired. Did he work here long?”

“Two years. This morning he had the nerve to claim that last night’s incident wasn’t his fault. His ditto never made it home, so it must have been hijacked and replaced by an imposter!” The manager sniffed disdain. But if I had hackles, they’d have risen.

“Give me contact info and I won’t bother you again.”

He glared. It would be simple to snub a utility green. But what if Albert himself followed up?

“Oh … all right.” His monocular flipped down as he signaled commands. Then, with a dismissive grunt, he turned away.

Damn. Instead of speaking or writing the name, he sent an info-blip to Nell! I could phone her for it, but then maybe I’d have to talk to Albert, like a teen crawling back to Dad. Double-damn. Heading for the exit, I wondered about this obsession to solve one minor riddle before I expire. The matter seemed unimportant. Why worry about it?

I stopped in the doorway, my cheap green senses adjusting to daylight, when something caught my eye. Literally. Like a gnat darting nearby, it came buzzing near my face. I swatted, deterring the pesky thing briefly. Then it came back.

Premature ditto decay can attract scavengers, and there was plenty of damaged pseudoflesh hanging off my back. I swiped at it again. It tumbled — then streaked right at me, diving with uncanny speed!

I fell back against a wall, clutching my eye. Worse than the pain were the explosions of color! Skyrocket flashes converged, forming shapes. Forming letters:

No time

Take a cab to Fairfax Park

Pal

13 Doing Their Ditto Work

Unconsciousness can be disturbing to a realperson.

For a ditto, it’s like death. And wakening is akin to being born again.

Where am I?

A sideways glance tells me I’m still in Irene’s hive. Across a wide chamber, I glimpse the huge pale figure of her archetype body — the queen — tended by more than a dozen reddish mini-copies. Full-sized versions come and go swiftly on errands. Not one says a word. No one has to.

In bleary contemplation, I envision an atom’s core and its surrounding fog of virtual particles. Irene-duplicates keep emanating from the maroon-colored mass to perform missions for the hive. Others — aged and experienced — spiral in bearing the modern nectar: knowledge to accumulate and share with more copies. And at the center, a realperson whose role it is to absorb and redistribute that knowledge, using imitation bodies to do everything else.

I’ve got to admit, Irene is impressive. Her self is very large.

Come on, Albert, focus.

How long was I out? Feels like moments. They were going to repair me … fix the awful damage inflicted by those angry gladiators in the Rainbow Lounge.

Did it work? There’s no pain, but that means nothing.

Arms and hands all seem to work. Clasping my side now … my leg.

In place of gaping wounds, I feel lumpy ridges, like hard scar tissue. Beneath, large areas feel numb, senseless. But all limbs flex and stretch satisfactorily. Splendid work, for a quick splice and patch job.

But then, if anyone would have advanced repair technology, you’d expect it to be Queen Irene.

Sitting up, I find I’m clothed in generous gray cloth.

“How do you feel?”

It’s the high-quality Irene — dyed from a gray blank — standing alongside her associate, the male golem with plaid skin. Vic Collins.

“Surprisingly good. What time is it?”

“Almost two-thirty.”

“Huh. That didn’t take long.”

“We’ve automated the repair process considerably. Without much help from Universal Kilns, I might add.”

“So you suspect them of suppressing this technology, too?”

“As you can imagine, the company prefers that people buy lots of new blanks. Of course, fixing damaged dittos would be economical, ecological, merciful—”

“Does this relate to your other concern? A breakthrough in extending ditto lifespans.”

Vic Collins nods. “They are linked. You can hardly expect UK to be eager about sharing technologies that undercut their market. But the law says they must patent and publish advances or else lose them.”

Hence the eagerness of this small consortium to do a little quasi-legal espionage. If they can get the goods on a suppressed or hoarded technology, the Whistle-blower Prize could be substantial. Up to thirty percent of the resulting patents. In this case, it could make them tycoons. I’m tempted to pursue the topic, but time can press when your remaining span on Earth is measured in hours. Unlike Irene, I have no rig to return home to. Not if I keep the deal we’ve made.

“Speaking of UK,” I prompt.

“Yes, we should be going, if you feel ready.”

I hop off the table. Except for the unpleasant feeling of numbness under my scars, things appear to be okay. “Did you get the stuff?”

“We gathered the supplies and information you require in order to penetrate Universal Kilns.”

“Not penetrate. I agreed to scout for you, in a strictly legal manner.”

“Forgive my poor choice of words. Please come this way.”

There’s no pain. Still, I limp a bit while following Irene and Collins out the rear of the Rainbow Building. A silent ocher driver waits in the sheltered alley, holding the door of a van with opaque windows. I pause, wanting to get a few matters clear before entering.

“You still haven’t explained exactly what I’ll be looking for.”

“We’ll brief you along the way. There are important matters we hope you’ll uncover with your renowned investigative prowess.”

“I’ll do my best” — then I reiterate for the spool recorder inside me — “within the law.”

“Naturally, ditMorris. We would not ask you to do anything illegal.”

Right, I think, trying to penetrate his gaze. But it’s futile. Eyes made of clay aren’t windows to the soul. It’s still a matter of debate whether there’s any “soul” inside of creatures like us at all.

Entering the van, I find the fourth member of our party, smiling with a celebrated mixture of distance and seductiveness, crossing snow white legs that glisten with their own luster beneath sheer, extravagant silk.

“Greetings, Mr. Morris,” murmurs the voluptuous pleasure-ditto.

“Maestra,” I reply, wondering.

Why would Gineen Wammaker dispatch a top-of-the-line pearl model to accompany us? A simple gray should suffice, to hear my report. Or why send a rox at all? Any useful information can be sent by Web.

My grays carry a good semblance of normal male reaction sets. So her art affects me — both attracting and repelling at once, beckoning some of the more sick-hostile corners of sexuality. Her famed, perversely alluring specialty.

Like any decent adult, I can quash such reactions. (Especially by thinking about honest, self-respecting Clara.) Surely Wammaker knows this, so the aim can’t be to influence me.

So why is she here? Especially as a pearl … a creature of profuse sensuality … unless this mission represents another chance for her to enjoy some depraved bliss?

My worries, already verging on paranoia, bloom anew.

“Let’s go,” she tells the driver. Gineen clearly doesn’t mind that I stare. Perhaps she even knows what I’m thinking.

I’m wishing that I had a better class of clientele.

14 Under False Colors

What are you saying?” I asked the jetto. “That my web sightings may not be Maharal?”

With finger flicks and winked signals, my ebony duplicate fetched data and put moving pictures onscreen. I watched a collage of recordings made weeks ago as Yosil Maharal strolled down an avenue filled with pedestrians and gyrocyclists. One of those fashionable display arcades where you can sample a myriad products, select features you like, and have made-to-order items delivered by courier-ditto before you get home.

From a distance, Maharal appeared to enjoy a window-shopping stroll, sauntering through one boutique after another. A district like this one has more cameras than a typical street, letting Nell’s software avatar sew an almost gap-free retrospective mosaic as our target moved from one lens view to another, with time stamps glowing in a low corner.

“Did you notice anything happen, just now?” the ebony asked.

“What’s to notice?” I twitched, feeling awkward under that unblinking gaze, knowing what contempt I tend to feel toward my real self, whenever I’m black.

He clicked his tongue. The onscreen image froze and raster-scanned. Enhancing cells zoomed toward where Maharal had joined a small crowd, watching a street performer weave sculptures out of smoke-gel. The fragile artifacts grew and blossomed like delicate apparitions, lifted and shaped by the puffs of air exhaled from the virtuoso’s pursed lips. When a child clapped her hands, reverberations made the creation shudder and bow toward her, before rising again as the artist breathed new layers.

Working with similar skill, my golem specialist swiftly crafted a composite image from three cameras, scattered around the plaza. Maharal’s picture grew more grainy as we zoomed in on his face. The UK scientist was smiling. All seemed normal, till I felt a creepy suspicion.

“Zoom closer,” I said, with misgivings. “The skin texture … by God, it’s not real!”

“I see it now,” Nell commented. “Note the subject’s forehead. The pellet dimple has been concealed under makeup.”

I slumped. We were looking at a ditto.

“Hm,” the ebony commented. “It appears that our good doctor committed a nine-point misdemeanor. Those flesh tones are human-brown. Shade ninety-four X, to be exact. Definitely illegal for duplicates to wear in public.”

This was unlike Kaolin’s weak ploy, when he phoned me earlier. His archetype guise had been amateurish and quasi-legal since he was at home at the time. But Maharal, in his developing paranoia, must have felt it worth risking a stiff fine in order to drop out of the city-village without a trace.

I glanced at the time stamp. Twelve minutes since the last time Maharal passed near a hi-res publicam, allowing a good reality check. He must have made the switch during that interval. But exactly when? The collage was awfully tight. “Please backtrack, Nell. Show the most biggest coverage gap since fourteen-thirty-six.”

From the plaza, Maharal’s ghost image began scurrying in reverse till he vanished into a shop offering fine utility coats for men. My avatar did a quick negotiation with the store’s internal security system … which refused to share any images because of a quaint privacy policy. Nothing would budge the stubborn program, not even Maharal’s death certificate and Ritu’s permission slip. I might have to go talk to the manager in person.

“How long was he in there?” I asked.

“A little over two minutes.”

More than enough time for Maharal to trade places with a waiting ditto. But it was a risky move. Despite the lens-detecting scanners they sell nowadays, you can never absolutely guarantee you’re not being watched. Even inside a buried oil drum. (I know, from personal experience.) Still, Maharal must have felt pretty confident.

Now I must assign a new software avatar to do a careful backscan and find out when the ditto entered the store. It must have come in disguise, then spent hours in there, crouched behind coatracks or something. After the switch, realMaharal would have waited a while, changing carefully into another disguise before reemerging, positive that his decoy had derailed any normal search routines.

I’ve pulled the same ruse myself, many times.

“He may have the shopowner’s complicity,” my ebony specialist pointed out. “The ditto could arrive in a shipping crate and realMaharal might depart the same way.”

I sighed over the drudgery ahead, inspecting and analyzing countless images.

“Don’t sweat it. I’ll handle the sift from my cubicle,” the specialist assured me. “I’ve already got our other cases under control. Besides, I think you’ll want to look at what your other search uncovered at the crash site.”

He got up and moved toward the little niche where I recall spending many happy hours — a cramped cubbyhole that I find comfortably cozy whenever I’m ebony, tuned to want nothing more than the pure joy of professional skill. Watching my copy go, I felt a little envious … and grateful to both Maharal and Kaolin for helping invent dittotech.

It’s a terrific boon, if you have a marketable skill.

The ebony was right. Investigation of the crash site had reached a new plateau.

Onscreen, my display depicted a vast swathe of desert southeast of town — a strange realm where trustworthy realtime images were as sparse as drinkable water and where it took sophisticated trickery to sift the trail of a moving car. Following my instructions, Nell had traced a ghostly spoor of whirling cyclones back through the night, moving earlier and ever farther from Maharal’s death rendezvous. The overlay showed a dotted line weaving toward a range of low mountains near the Mexican border, not far from the International Combat Arena. Once inside those hills, I knew the trail of mini-tornados must vanish amid a whirl of canyon turbulence.

But I’d seen enough to feel an eerie chill. I knew this country.

“Urraca Mesa,” I whispered.

Nell spoke up.

“What did you say?”

I shook my head.

“Dial up Ritu Maharal,” I ordered. “We need to talk.”

15 Copycats

Fortunately, my greenie expense allowance was still active — Albert hadn’t disowned me yet — so I was able to hire a micro-cab from Odeon Square, weaving across Realtown on a single gyro-wheel with two cramped seats. Swift it may have been, but the trip was also excruciating as the driver kept going on and on about the war.

Apparently, the battle in the desert had begun going sour for our side. The cabbie blamed this on bad leadership, illustrating his point by calling up recent action highlights in a viewbubble that enveloped me, trapped on the rear saddle, amid scenes of violent carnage by bomb and shell, by cutter beam and hand-to-hand dismemberment, all lovingly collated by this avid aficionado.

Albert had learned plenty from Clara over the years, enough to know this armchair general’s opinions weren’t worth spit. The guy had a taxi franchise with eleven yellow and black — checkered duplicates driving hacks, presumably all yapping at cornered customers. How did he keep a high enough satisfaction index to merit so many cabs?

Speed was the answer. I had to give him that. Arrival offered me the day’s greatest surge of pleasure. I paid the cabbie and escaped into the cement maze of Fairfax Park.

Big Al doesn’t like the place. No greenery. Too much space was given over to concrete ramps, spirals, and jutting slabs, back when real kids might spend every spare moment of lifespan careening on stunt bikes, skateboards, and flare skooters, risking broken necks for sheer excitement. That is, till new pastimes lured them away, leaving behind a maze of metal-reinforced walls and towers like forsaken battlements, some of them three stories high, too costly to demolish.

Pallie loves the place. All that buried rebar acts like a partial Faraday Cage, blocking radio transmissions, thwarting spy-gnats and eavesbugs, while the hot concrete surface blinds visual and IR sensors. Nor is he above bouts of nostalgia, shooting the old slopes in his latest, souped-up wheelchair, popping rims and sliders, hollering and teetering while catheters and IV tubes whip around him like war pennants. Some kicks have to be experienced in flesh, I guess. Even flesh as harshly wounded as his.

Albert kind of puts up with Pal — partly out of guilt. Feels he might have tried harder to dissuade the guy from going out that night when ambushers jumped him, roasting half his body and leaving the rest for dead. But honestly, how do you “dissuade” a thrill-addict mercenary who’d stroll into a blatant trap, just asking to get his balls shot off? Hell, I’m more cautious in clay than Pal is in person.

I found him waiting under the shadow of “Mom’s Fright,” the biggest skooter ramp — with a swoop chute so sheer it makes you sick just looking at it. He had company. Two men. Real men, who eyed each other warily, separated by Pal’s biotronic wheelchair.

It felt awk being the sole ditto, and the feeling got worse when one of them — a brawny blond — gave me the look, staring through me like I wasn’t there.

The other one smiled, friendly. Tall and a bit skinny, he struck me as somehow familiar.

“Hey, green, where’s your soul?” Pal jibed, raising a burly fist.

I punched it. “Same place as your feet. Still, we both get around.”

“We do. How’d you like that message wasp I sent? Cool, eh?”

“Kind of cyber-retro, don’t you think? Lot of effort for a simple come-hither. Hurt like hell when it pierced my eye.”

“Omelettes,” he said, apologizing backhandedly. “So, I hear you cut yourself loose!”

“Shrug. How much good to Albert is an Albert who’s not Al?”

“Cute. I didn’t figure Sober Morris could make a frankie. Anyway, some of my best friends are mutants, real and otherwise.”

“Sign of a true pervert. Do you know if Al’s planning to disown me?”

“Nah. Too soft. He did post a credit limit, though. You can charge two hundred, no more.”

“That much? I didn’t clean a single toilet. Is he angry?”

“Can’t tell. He cut me off. Got other probs. Seems he lost both of this morning’s grays.”

“Ouch. I heard about the first, but … damn. Number two had the Turkomen. That was a good scooter.” I pondered this a second. No wonder my AWOL raised so little dust. “Two grays gone. Huh. Coincidence? Happenstance?”

Pallie scratched a scar, running from his shaggy black hair to a stubbled chin.

“Thinking no. Reason I sent the wasp.”

The big blond grunted. “Will you cut this useless chatter? Just ask the vile thing if it remembers us.”

Vile thing? I tried to meet the fellow’s eye. He refused contact.

Pal chuckled. “This is Mr. James Gadarene. He thinks you might recognize him. Do?”

I looked the man up and down. “No recollection … sir.” Adding some formality might be a good idea.

Both strangers grunted, as if half-expecting this. I hurried on.

“Of course that’s no guarantee. Albert himself forgets faces. Even some guys he knew in college. Depends how long ago we met. Anyway, I’m a frank—”

“This memory would be less than twenty hours old,” Gadarene interrupted without actually looking at me. “Late last night, one of your grays rang my doorbell, flashed some private eye credentials and demanded an urgent meeting. The ruckus even woke some of my colleagues in our compound next door. I agreed — reluctantly — to meet the gray, alone. But in private the damned thing only paced around, blathering nonsense that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Finally, my assistant came in from the next room with news. The gray wore a static generator. It was deliberately jamming my interview recorder!”

“So you have no chronicle of the meeting?”

“Nothing useful. That’s when I got fed up and tossed the cursed thing out.”

“I … don’t recall anything remotely like that. Which means the real Albert Morris doesn’t either. Or he didn’t, as of ten this morn. Before that, all of our dittos have been accounted for, stretching back at least a month. Every one brought home a complete inload … though some were pretty banged up.” I winced, recalling last night’s awful trek under the river. “Heck, I don’t even know what ‘offices’ you’re talking about.”

“Mr. Gadarene heads an organization called Defenders of Life,” Pallie explained.

At once I grasped the fellow’s hostility. His group fiercely opposes dittotech on purely moral grounds — a stance requiring great tenacity nowadays, when realfolks live surrounded and outnumbered by countless creatures of servile clay. If one of Albert’s copies had behaved in the manner just described, it would be an act of towering rudeness and deliberate provocation.

From Gadarene’s bitter expression, I guessed a special ire toward me. As a frankie I had declared independence, professing to be a free, self-motivated life form … though a pseudobeing with few rights and fewer prospects. At least other dittos could be viewed as extensions or appendages of some real person. But I’d seem the worst kind of insult toward heavenly authority. A soul-less construct who dares to say I am.

At a best guess, I’d wager his people never donate to the Temple of the Ephemerals.

“Same thing happened to us, early this morning,” the other fellow said — the tall man who looked vaguely familiar.

“I think I do recognize you,” I mused. “Yes … the greenie I ran into, picketing at Moonlight Beach. Its face copied yours.”

From his wry smile, I could tell the man already knew about my encounter with his cheap demonstrator-ditto. The green may have already inloaded. Or perhaps it phoned home to report my resemblance to their wee-hours visitor.

“Mr. Farshid Lum,” said Pal, finishing introductions.

“Friends of the Unreal?” I guessed. The biggest organization of mancies I’d heard of.

“Tolerance Unlimited,” he corrected with a frown. “The FOTU manifesto doesn’t go far enough in demanding emancipation for synthetic beings. We think short-lived people are just as real as anyone else who thinks and feels.”

That drew a snort from the blond. And yet, despite a philosophical chasm that gaped between them, I sensed common purpose. For now.

“You say a Morris copy also barged into your place—”

“—ranted for a while and then left, yeah,” Pallie inserted. “Only this time we got some clear images through the static. It was one of your brodits, or sure looked like one.”

He handed me a flat pix. Though blurry, it resembled Albert, as close as any gray takes after its rig.

“Appearances can be faked. So can credentials. The static indicates that someone didn’t want too close an inspection—”

“I agree,” interrupted Gadarene. “Moreover, when we phoned Mr. Morris this morning for an explanation, his house computer—”

“—Nell—”

“—dismissed the whole event as impossible, since you didn’t have any duplicates active at the time we were being harassed. The house refused even to wake Albert Morris for comment.”

“Curious,” I comment.

“In fact, your rig has both of our groups listed as crank organizations,” said Lum, with a wry expression, as if he wore the moniker with pride. “Since the house filtered and refused my queries, I went to the public Albert Morris net profile, looking for one of his friends. Someone who would talk to us.”

“Me,” Pal said. “I’m not bothered by cranks. I like ’em!”

“Likes attract,” I muttered, winning brief but angry eye contact from Gadarene.

“Yeah, well, my cup ranneth over when I got two queries, from groups that normally despise each other. Smelling a rat, I tried calling Al, but he brushed me off. Too busy for an old Pal, today. So I went snooping for someone else who might shed light on the matter … and found you.”

“Me? I already said, these stories don’t fit anything I remember.”

“And I believe you. But do you have any ideas? What comes to mind?”

“Why ask me? I’m just a green, not exactly equipped for analytical thought.”

“Oh, but you won’t let that stop you!” Pallie laughed.

I frowned at him, knowing he was right. I couldn’t refuse to poke away at this, even if I’m made of the cheap stuff.

I turned to Gadarene and Lum.

“Looking at it from your point of view, several possibilities arise.”

I held up one finger. “First, I might be standing here lying. Al could have some valid reason for wanting to poke two irate public advocacy groups in the eye, stir them up, then claim it wasn’t him that done it.”

“Please,” Pallie shook his head. “It’s the sort of thing I might try. But Albert’s about as much fun as a judge.”

For some reason, the insult made me smile. Yeah, poor Sober Albert.

“Well, then, maybe someone’s trying to set him up.”

Once upon a time, crime and prosecution revolved around establishing or demolishing alibis. If you could prove that you were somewhere else at the time of a crime, it meant you didn’t do it. Simple as that.

The alibi excuse started vanishing back in the cyber age, a time when countless big and little heists redistributed cash by the billions while perpetrators hunched over remote computer screens slurping caffeine, dispatching electronic minions to rob in supposed anonymity. For a while, it looked as if society would bleed a death of a myriad cuts … till accountability was restored and most of the surviving cyberfarts either went to jail or grew up.

Today, the whereabouts of your protoplasmic self hardly matters. Culpability is a matter of opportunity and will. Effective alibis are hard to come by.

“Interesting you should come up with that idea,” Pallie commented. “The same thing occurred to me as I watched this morning’s raid on Beta’s hideout — that was good work, by the way. I saw Albert meet Ritu Maharal … and later heard about her father’s death. But what really got me going is the maestra.”

“Gineen Wammaker? What about her?”

“Well, for one thing, I know that Al’s second gray dropped out to do a closed-cognito job for her.”

I hesitated. It wouldn’t be kosher for me to confirm that such a contract existed. I owed Albert some loyalty, since he hadn’t made me an outlaw. The sap.

“All right, both women asked Al to send a gray over. And both grays vanished. So? It’s probably a coincidence. Anyway, those grays were baked and imprinted hours after mystery dittos barged in to bother you two gentlemen. What’s the connection?”

“That puzzled me, too. So I called Wammaker.”

“How I envy you. And what did the Ice Princess say?”

“That she never asked for a Morris-ditto! At least, not since the Beta job was finished. In fact, she told me that Detective Morris is far too rude to be a suitable retainer in future, and furthermore that—”

“Can we get on with this?”

James Gadarene evidently didn’t like discussing the maestra of Studio Neo, whose perverse specialties went out of their way to tweak oldtime morality. The blond shifted his bulk irritably, and a bit ominously. He struck me as the sort who sometimes dismembers dittos — willingly paying fines — for the sheer pleasure of punishing evil with his bare hands.

“All right,” Pal continued cheerfully. “So I figured I’d find out what I could about your second gray. See if Wammaker’s lying. It meant accessing the camera-web and doing some path tracing.”

“You?” I chuckled at the idea of Pallie carefully assigning search-avatars and sifting a gazillion intermeshed images. “You never had the patience.”

He shook his head ruefully.

“Naw, I’m just an old-fashioned action figure. Still, I know a few graying digital mavens who owe me favors. All they had to do was track a series of sub-myob traffic infractions when the gray drove from your house to the mall. Once inside, the ditto was in view by publicams, much of the time. It parked its scooter and took the escalator … but never actually reached Wammaker’s.”

“No?”

“Instead, it got waylaid by the maestra’s assistant — at least that’s who it looked like, barely visible under a skulkhood. Together they went two floors down to a rented storefront … and disappeared.”

“So? Maybe Gineen wanted to meet some distance from her regular clients. Especially if the matter’s sensitive.”

“Could be. Or … what if someone else wants to use Albert’s gray, while making everyone think Gineen hired it?”

I tried to wrap my head around the idea.

“You mean someone faked Gineen’s initial call to Albert this morning, then arranged it so lots of cams would see the gray approach Wammaker’s … But then” — I shook my head — “it’d take lots of skilled fakery. A false Gineen to make the call. Then a fake assistant.”

“And fake Alberts, sent earlier to bother these good citizens.” Pallie nodded toward both Gadarene and Lum.

The bigger man groaned. “None of this made any sense when you explained it to me an hour ago, and it sure hasn’t gotten any better. Some of us have just one life, you know. You’d better put all this together soon.”

“I’ve been trying,” Pal answered, a bit miffed. “Actually, this kind of deductive stuff is more Albert’s kind of thing. What d’you think, Greenie?”

I scratched my head. Purely out of habit, since there are no follicles or parasites on my porcelain pate.

“All right. Let’s say all these charades were meant for different audiences. Take those dittos who invaded your premises last night … they didn’t talk about anything significant, you say?”

“Just blather, as far as I could tell.”

“But they took pains to keep the blather from being recorded. So you can’t prove it was nonsense, can you?”

“What d’you mean? What else could it have been?”

“It might look as if you were conspiring together.”

“Con … conspiring?”

“Look at it from an outsider’s point of view, Mr. Gadarene. They see a gray enter your establishment, then leave — hastily and furtively — an hour or so later. One might conclude that you discussed matters of substance. This could all have been arranged in order to establish a plausible link between your group and Albert Morris.”

“Then the same thing happens at my place,” said Lum.

“And at Studio Neo. Only this time the gray is real but the visit is faked,” Pal prompted. “Was that also for public consumption?”

“Partly,” I nodded. “But I’ll bet chief audience for that bit of theater was the gray itself. Recall that it went on detached mode right after the meeting, yes? It must be convinced, even now, that it’s working for the real maestra. She’s not the most likable person—”

Gadarene snorted loudly.

“—but she’s a businesswoman of substance, with high credibility at fulfilling contracts and staying in the letter of the law. The gray might despise and distrust her. But he’d take an interesting case for a good fee.”

“Let me get this straight,” offered Farshid Lum. “You think someone pretended to be Wammaker in order to sign your gray up for a task—”

“A task that might be a cover for something Al would never agree to,” Pal suggested.

“—and that bit of theater earlier, at Tolerance Unlimited—”

“—and the Defenders,” Gadarene cut in, “was designed to make it seem we are involved in whatever diabolical …” He groaned. “I’m still confused. We’re not getting any closer!”

“Oh yes we are.” Pal looked at me. “You have an idea, don’t you, my green friend?”

Unfortunately, I did.

“Look, I’m not designed for this. I’m not a brainy ebony or a high-class gray. Anything I offer will just be conjecture.”

Lum waved away my demurral. “I’ve looked up your profile, Mr. Morris. Your reputation for creating fine analytic selves can’t be matched. Please, continue.”

I might have complained right then that I’m not one of Albert’s “selves.” But it would be moot.

“Look, we still don’t have much data,” I began. “But if this chain of wild deductions can stand, I’ll guess a few things.

“One: the person or group behind it all has sophisticated dittoing abilities, especially the art of giving a golem a face it’s not supposed to have. Since that’s illegal, we’re already in dangerous territory.

“Two: there’s apparently some need to enlist willing participation by one of Albert’s grays. Appearances won’t do. The gray must be convinced to give genuine effort — providing some skill that Al’s known to be good at. The mission has to appear legal … or at least worthwhile and not too heinous … for the gray to cooperate.”

“Yes, go on,” Pal prompted.

“Three: there’s a multipronged effort to assign blame for whatever’s going to happen. Guilt-by-association. Fake calls from the maestra. An apparent meeting at Studio Neo …”

“And us,” Lum commented, abruptly serious. “The charade of waking me at night was meant to look like a sneaky conference of conspirators. But why me? And why pull the same stunt on Mr. Gadarene’s group of misguided spirits?”

Pal chuckled loud enough to drown out the blond’s growl. “But that’s the beauty of it! On the surface, it seems your two groups could never get together. You seem at opposite poles. Ironically, that makes a conspiracy seem almost workable.”

When they stared at him, Pal spread his burly hands wide, making the wheelchair roll.

“Think! Is there somebody you both hate? Some person, group, or organization that both groups despise. So deeply, you might plausibly join forces?”

I watched both men struggle with the concept. Accustomed to demonizing each other, they clearly found it hard to conceive that they shared any common interest.

I knew the answer already, and felt chilled down to my clay substrate. But I didn’t prompt them.

They’d get it in a minute or two.

16 Send In the Clones

Continuing realtime recitation. Time to enter the Funnel. It’s one of my favorite parts of this job. Getting a chance to prove that I can fool a world that’s filled with eyes.

“We arranged for the items you requested.”

The red-hued Irene-golem hands me a plain satchel. I inspect the contents. Everything’s there.

“You sent a lens sniffer ahead, along the route I described?”

“We did, per your instructions. The sniffer verified surveillance gaps in the places you predicted. Current details are noted.” She hands me a data-plaque.

“Current? As of when?”

“About an hour ago, while you were being repaired.”

“Hm.”

An hour can be eternity. But I’m optimistic while scanning the map with its glowing icons and overlapping cones of vision. Yes, the city swarms with eyes, the way a jungle fills with insects. Coverage gaps are precious in my line of work. Today’s most difficult hurdle will be to cover my tracks long before I reach Universal Kilns. I’ll need several changing sites along the way — shadow gaps that are just big enough to allow a quick shift in appearance without being noticed — preferably near locales with lots of dittos coming and going.

Irene might have faith in her sniffers — programmed to spot the telltale reflective glint of a glass camera lens — but even the best military scanners can’t detect every pinhole spex that may lurk in some crevice or tree trunk. Any number of pin-spies might have been installed since I last used this Funnel route. Fortunately, most of those have low resolution. They’ll miss a truly artful transformation.

I have mixed feelings about revealing this path — one of Albert’s recent favorites — to Gineen and her cohorts. True, nearly every Funnel has limited useful lifespan, as countless amateurs keep finding and rendering them useless. And my pay for this job makes the sacrifice worthwhile. Still, I’d be happier if I had days to prepare, with multiple dittos working in tandem. Everything would be more secure.

Don’t sweat it. I offered no guarantees on such a rush job, and Albert gets fifty percent for just trying. Worst case, they are the ones risking exposure.

And yet, my mind spins with potential failure modes. One is coming up ahead.

We slow beneath a highway overpass, coming to rest behind an identical van that quickly accelerates away, resuming our former course and speed, leaving us parked in its place. The driver — briefly glimpsed — is another inherently loyal Irene-golem. The old car-switcheroo, first used more than a hundred years ago, but lately modified with reconfigurable chassis and chameleon stretchyskin so this van will look quite different when Gineen and her gang depart again.

Scanning the concrete walls that support the overpass, I spy just one trafficam, its lens recently covered with bird droppings. The real stuff, in case there’s later analysis.

So far, so good. Still, I’m unhappy, feeling slovenly and unprofessional. These measures may fool publicams and voyeurs — possibly even private snoops hired by Universal Kilns. But it takes more than a few tricks to dupe real cops. This will work only if our little adventure stays shy of outright illegality.

“You’ll get out here, wait exactly eight minutes, then proceed to that grove,” Vic Collins explains, pointing one of his plaid-dyed fingers toward a copse of geniformed licorice-drop trees. “We control, or have taken out, all of the cameras between here and there.”

“You sure about that?” Lack of preparation time requires a brute force approach that I’d rather have supervised myself.

He nods.

“Unless any sky-eyes are retargeted in the next few minutes. Within the grove, you’ll make your first change, ditch the bag, along with the clothes you’re wearing, and emerge as a utility orange-dit. We’ll send a dog in later, to pick up the satchel.”

“Be sure that you do. If I’m traced back to the grove, a savvy examiner will guess this car-switching dodge.”

“Then you mustn’t let anyone trace you back to the grove,” Vic Collins concludes. “We are counting on your skill.”

Oh, brother.

“The bus station is key. I’ll do a dodge and weave there, through the ditto crowds. Are more supplies waiting in the locker I specified?”

“You’ll find another bag containing a change of clothes and skin dye.” Collins holds up a hand, guessing my next question. “And yes, the dye is a gray variant — perfectly legal. We can say myob to the cops.”

“Myob is as myob does,” I retort. “If I so much as suspect I’m involved in anything higher than a Class Six misdemeanor, I’ll drop out. No matter how big a liability bond you posted.”

“Relax, ditMorris,” Irene soothes. “We have no fear of the law. Our sole aim in this subterfuge is to keep UK from linking us—”

“—or suspecting today’s little reconnaissance, yes. They could make things unpleasant, even if we’re legal.”

“These precautions are for your rig’s protection as much as ours, ditMorris. With what you learn today, we can narrow down our suspicions and follow up by slapping specific datapoenas on Universal Kilns, under the tech-disclosure laws. The beauty of it is that they’ll never have a reason to ever link you to our lawsuit.”

It makes sense. That is, assuming I don’t choose to tell Aeneas Kaolin all about this, just as soon as I pass inside Universal Kilns!

Sure, I’d forfeit my bond and lose most of Albert’s hard-won credibility points, but there’d be compensations. Maybe he would make me a subject of his ditto life-extension experiments. I could have more than another twelve hours, maybe lots more!

Huh. Now where did that thought come from? It was almost … well, frankie … confusing the more important “I” with the trivial i that’s thinking these thoughts.

How bizarre!

Anyway, why daydream about doing things that I’ll never do. Or cheap posterities that I’ll never win?

“And after the bus station?” Vic Collins prompts.

“I’ll catch the 330 dino to Riverside Drive and UK headquarters. Head straight for the employee entrance, wave my ID, and hope their security AI is as lax as you expect. Again, if you’re wrong about that, if they ask any inconvenient questions, I’ll just turn around and leave.”

“We understand,” the red ditto says with a nod. “But we’re confident they’ll let you in.”

Irene and company somehow know that Ritu Maharal hired one of Albert’s grays. One that went missing a few hours ago. Still, the guards at UK may just wave me through, assuming I’m on business for a major stockholder. The trick may work at the outer portal, where hundreds of realfolks and dittos pass each hour. Hell, gaggles of tourists line up there for excursion passes, forming guided groups to view the factory where their disposable bodies are made.

But Wammaker and her pals expect me to breeze through several more checkpoints, each more secure than the last, blithely peering about as I plunge deeper, on the lookout for tech-hints without ever once actually committing fraud or telling a clearcut lie!

(Did Vic Collins also arrange for a security lapse in advance? Some inside bribery to lubricate things? He seems the kind who might know how, with his furtive-yet-superior manner. It’s a good thing I have all our conversations taped, on the recorder I’m subvocalizing into right now.)

And they did pay in advance. Crypto-cash, encoded to one of Albert’s accounts. All I need do is try. Put in a modest effort. A seventy-five percent fee just for getting inside.

Still, I wish they’d just let me drive my scooter to Universal, instead of going through this rigmarole. Amateurs. The rest of my “life” was devoted to them. Doing my professional best to make this ditzy, half-ass spy job work.

But what if their suspicions are right, and I help prove it?

If Universal Kilns is deliberately suppressing major improvements in dittotech, the news could be big. Albert’s reputation might skyrocket.

And I’ll have made him a new enemy. One of Earth’s biggest corporations.

17 Graying Gracefully

Ritu Maharal appeared reluctant to accompany me on a last-minute trip to the desert. But how could she refuse? Hardly any of the reasons that her mother might have used — from modesty to a hectic schedule — have any bearing nowadays.

“It’s quite a distance along twisty roads,” she said, clearly looking for an out. “There could be delays. If we’re gone more than a day, how will we get home?”

I had a ready answer.

“If it looks like we’re about to expire, we can stop at a ditimart and get our heads frozen.”

“Have you ever shipped your head from a ditimart?” Onscreen, her oval face gave a pursed frown. “The ditsicle can take days to arrive, and it’s never as fresh as the ads claim.”

“We won’t have to ship. I’ll copy another gray and stash it in the car, to thaw if time runs short. That way I can finish scouting around some more, and still bring the heads back in a cooler.”

At least, that’s what I told Ritu. In fact, I had other plans. Plans she didn’t have to know about.

NOHB. None of her business.

“You’re sure this is important?” she asked, shaking her gleaming black locks a bit petulantly. I wondered; was this major UK stockholder quibbling over the cost of a golem?

“You tell me whether it is, Ritu. You say you want your father’s death solved, yet you never bothered to tell me that your family owned a cabin by the border, just a hundred clicks from the crash site.”

She winced. “I should have mentioned it. But honestly, I thought Dad got rid of the place ages ago, before I was sixteen. Do you think it might relate to his … accident?”

“In my experience, nothing can be dismissed early in an investigation. So please, gather any data you can find regarding that property. And before you imprint, do spend a little time thinking about your childhood trips to the cabin, so your gray won’t have trouble remembering.”

I often do that — ask the client to think hard about a subject before they send a golem to be questioned. For some reason, most people fail to imprint their Standing Wave completely. The sloppy-copy effect — a kind of swiss cheese amnesia when the ditto tries to access older memories. It never happens to me. My grays even recall some things that I can’t in real form. I wonder why.

Hesitating another moment, Ritu finally agreed with a jerky nod.

“Very well. If you think it’s important.”

“I’m hopeful it may help break the case.”

She drummed elegant, long fingertips on the desk in front of her screen. “I’m at Universal Kilns right now. Going through some paperwork to keep busy … though Aeneas has given me an indefinite leave of absence.”

None of that was relevant to my current needs, not on any practical level. Yet I realized, suddenly, that I’d been insensitive. After all, this was about the recent death of her father.

“Yeah, well, I know it’s a hard time for you. Tell me, did they ever find—” I paused, but there were no better words. “Did they find Dr. Maharal’s ghost?”

“No.” Ritu stared past the monitor, looking stricken and a bit confused. Her full lips quivered. “There’s been no sign of the ditto. Aeneas is quite upset about it. He thinks your missing gray might have something to do with the disappearance.”

More likely the other way around, I thought, recalling the lengths Yosil Maharal took, back when he was alive, trying to drop out of sight. Top theory at the moment? My gray must have caught Maharal’s ghost sneaking off. Pursuing, I must have carelessly fallen for a trap.

I do that sometimes — underestimate the quarry. Nobody’s perfect … and you can get lazy when such mistakes are never permlethal. It kind of makes you marvel at those detectives of olden times, who confronted and confounded remorseless evil while equipped with just one life. Now those guys really had it.

So gray number one may be a puddle of dissolved slurry right now, sinking into the grass somewhere on Aeneas Kaolin’s mansion grounds. And by now Maharal’s ghost could be … what? Whiling away its last hour or so in seclusion somewhere? Maybe spending it with a hired Wammaker copy, for all I knew.

Or else, more likely, executing some final chore for its enigmatic maker. Something deep, complex, and possibly nefarious. I couldn’t shake a creepy feeling about that.

“I’m willing to send another gray to the estate, and help in the search,” I offered.

“That may not be a good idea right now,” Ritu answered, dubious. “Aeneas wants his own people handling that end. But you and I can still investigate other matters. In fact, this desert trip may be useful, after all. When do we start?”

Wondering at her change in tone, I nodded.

“Well, you could make a copy there at UK—”

“I’d rather do it at home … and pack a few things. Also, there may be some pictures of the cabin in my scrapbook.”

“That could help.”

Ritu worked her mouth. “Are you sure this can’t wait till morning?”

In fact, waiting might be wise. And yet, I felt a growing sense of urgency. A need to get on with the part of my plan that Ritu Maharal didn’t have any reason to know about.

“I’ll swing by and pick you up by six. That way, we can cross the desert at night and reach mesa country around dawn.”

Ritu shrugged, appearing resigned.

“Okay. Here’s my address—”

“No.” I shook my head. “We’ll meet at your father’s place instead. I’ve been meaning to give it a look-over. We can do that before heading out.”

I had to pack quickly. The Volvo has an expandable compartment in back, custom-designed to haul up to three imprinted golem blanks in a vac-pac, or just one with a ready-bake kilnette. There’s even room leftover to haul some forensic supplies. I had already prepared a gray ditsicle for the trunk. That left enough time for a makeover.

I stripped down, stepped into the shower, and asked Nell to gray me.

“First protect your eyes,” she reminded.

“Oh, yeah.” I grabbed a container off the shelf and popped out a fresh pair of dark, full-orb contact lenses. I hadn’t done this for a while, so they stung a bit going in.

“Ready.”

A tingling sensation began creeping upward, starting with my toes.

“Spread your legs and lift your arms,” Nell said.

I complied, feeling a bit creepy as she played a resonance laser over my skin, burning off hairs and dead skin cells in a zillion microscopic protein explosions, closer than a razor could shave. Air jets blew away ash and dross, followed by ion-focused droplets of a special solution, to both seal and nurture my pores during the hours they’ll spend cut off from air.

Next came the paint job, quick-staining with my own secret formula. In minutes — lacking only some touch-ups with ditspackle — I could pass for a high-class golem. Except under very close inspection. I held off inserting the mouthpiece for a while yet. It can be a bit uncomfortable.

The procedure’s not exactly illegal — not like disguising a golem to look real in public. But it’s highly discouraged. Someone could shoot me dead when I’m like this, and get off with a mere fine. Small wonder it’s not done very much. Ironically, that’s why a gifted amateur like Yosil Maharal nearly pulled off an inverted version of the same ruse a few weeks ago. Studying those recorded images, my ebony specialist had been lucky to spot certain telltale discrepancies in skin texture. Discrepancies I carefully eliminated there in my dressing room.

Of course I could mention another difference between me and Ritu’s late father.

When he tried this subterfuge, it was aimed at concealing some dark secret. But my reasons were simpler.

I was doing it for love.

Well, it felt that way at the time. Ebony-me even complained about the impulsiveness of my decision to go on this trip in person.

“You’re acting on emotion. Clara left an ivory in her fridge. That should slake your animal drives till the weekend when she returns.”

“An ivory’s not the same. Anyway, Maharal’s cabin happens to be near the battlefield! I can’t pass up this opportunity to drop by and surprise her.”

“Then send your own ivory. There’s no need to go in person.”

I didn’t answer. The ebony was just being snippy. He knew that Clara and I can take or leave casual dittosex, even with occasional outsiders, because it doesn’t matter. No more than a passing fantasy.

Because it’s no real substitute for the real thing. Not to us.

“This isn’t a productive use of time,” said my hyperlogical doppelganger, trying a different tack while I tossed some clothes in a bag.

“That’s what I have you for,” I retorted. “Be productive! Can I assume our other cases are in hand?”

“They are.” The glossy black version of me nodded. “But what happens when I expire, less than eighteen hours from now?”

“Stick your head in the icer, of course. I imprinted another jet, along with a gray and a green, in case you need ’em to take over.”

Ebony-me sighed, as usual regarding my real self as childish and irresponsible.

“None of the new dittos will have my recent memories. Continuity will be broken.”

“Then thaw your replacement an hour early and update him.”

“With words? You know how inefficient—”

“Nell will help. Anyway, I should be back before Wednesday’s ebony fades. Then I’ll inload his memories, and yours, from the freezer.”

“So you say now. But you’ve been distracted before and let brains spoil in the fridge. Anyway, suppose you get killed wearing that foolish disguise?”

Long fingers, the color of space, reached out to pinch my faux-gray skin.

“I’ll take every precaution not to let that happen,” I promised, pulling away and avoiding those dark eyes. It’s tough lying to yourself, especially when you’re standing right in front of you.

“Be sure and do that,” ebony muttered. “I’ll make a lousy ghost.”

Heading to Maharal’s place, I shut off the Volvo’s hypercautious autopilot and drove manually. Weaving through traffic helped ease my nerves … though some green peditstrians yelled obscenely when I swerved past. All right, I could drive better. Blame my disguise for influencing me subconsciously. Or it could have been the war news.

“… recent battlefield reversals and heavy casualties have pushed retreating PEZ-USA forces into a pocket, with their backs against the Cordillera del Muerte Mountains. Although the position seems strong for defensive tactics, oddsmakers have already begun offering early buyouts of final outcome wagers, assuming the battle to be lost.

“If so, and if the disputed icebergs go to Indonesia, this debacle will cast doubt on President Bickson’s plan for staying off the SouthWestern Eco-Toxic Aquifer Plume.

“Faced with SWETAP-related backlash from voters, congressional leaders have already started gathering e-signatures for a demarchy petition, demanding that Bickson offer terms and cut PEZ losses before their armed force is completely annihilated.

“But a Glasshouse spokesgolem ruled out that option, insisting that hope remains for victory on the battlefield. ‘It’s all or nothing,’ the Bicksondit said. ‘When it comes to fighting SWETAP, half a berg is the same as none at all.’ ”

Cursing, I told the radio to shut up. Instead, I asked Nell for a reminder-summary of Yosil Maharal’s personal background.

Despite having twelve whole hours to research, she hadn’t been able to dig up much about his childhood before arriving as a refugee from one of those nasty little ethnic wars they used to have over in South Asia, after the turn of the century.

Adopted by distant relatives, the shy boy thrived on schoolwork, showing little interest in social affairs. Later, as a budding scientist, Yosil ignored the fashionable but doomed cyber and nanotech fads, zeroing instead on the virgin field of neuro-ceramics. After Jefty Annonas cracked the mysterious floating wonder of the Soul Standing Wave — more intricate than any genome — Maharal joined a start-up company led by the greatest Vic of our time, Aeneas Kaolin.

He never married. Maharal’s gene-merging and nurturing agreement with Ritu’s mother originally featured some twisty responsibility diagrams, at one point including a gay couple, an estate management bank, and an heirless cousin. But all of those adjunct- and demi-parents cashed out several years before Mom died in a copter crash, when Ritu was twelve.

Yikes. And now Daddy’s punched his clock, too. Life ain’t fair. Poor kid.

I felt a little guilty, pushing her to take this trip. But I had a hunch about this “cabin” of her father’s, and Ritu’s help may be vital. Anyway, if her gray found the journey traumatic, realRitu could just toss away the head without inloading. No memory, no foul.

Our ancestors, who suffered far more than we do, never had that option.

A black, all-terrain limousine stood out front of the address Ritu gave me. I sent a scan of the plates to Nell, who replied that it belonged to Universal Kilns.

So. Good of Kaolin to lend her a limo, I thought. But then, it’s not every day you lose a close friend and your assistant loses a father.

I parked my battered car behind the gleaming Yugo and headed for the house — a larger-than-average veridian home, without much yard but covered by slanting solarium panes to trap each ray of sunlight, dark plates for photovoltaic energy and green for drip-treating household waste. There were enough of the gleaming sewage cells to serve an active family, but just a few had active algae cultures. In fact, most looked completely unused.

A bachelor pad, then. And the bachelor spent long periods away from home.

I mounted fourteen steps, passing between decorative loquots that deserved better care. Pausing next to the poor things, I felt tempted to pull out my cutter and prune some crossing branches. After all, I was early.

Then I noticed the front door stood ajar.

Well, I was expected. Still, there was some ambiguity. As a licensed private detective and a quasi-agent of the civil posse, I couldn’t just walk in. By law, I had to announce myself.

“Ritu? It’s me, Albert.” I left out the grammatically correct ditto modifier, though I came disguised as a golem. Most people are sloppy about it, anyway.

The atrium floor was speckled from an active-element mosaic skylight, shifting random colors and playing bright-dark tricks on the eye. Ahead, stairs climbed around two landings before reaching the upper story. Glancing left, I saw an open-plan sitting room, furnished in a rather fogeyish cyberpunk style.

A faint clatter — more like a hurried rustle — came from my right, beyond a set of double doors, carved wood with frosted panels. No lights shone within that room, but a shadow could be made out, moving furtively on the other side.

A murmur … a few words that I couldn’t hear at all well, sounded like ” … now where would Betty have hidden …”

Creepiness prickled my spine. I touched one of the doors. The glass was both rough and cool — perfect sensations that reminded me of the chief thing that I must not forget:

You’re real. So be careful.

As if I needed prompting! Fey suspicions thrummed my Standing Wave, coursing back and forth between the only organic heart and brain I’ll ever have. As a ditto, I might go barging into the next room, just to see what’s what. But as an organic heir of paranoid cavemen, I settled for giving one door a shove, then staying well back from the threshold as it swung open.

I spoke louder. “Hello, Ritu?”

Inside lay Yosil Maharal’s home office, featuring a desk and bookshelf covered with old-fashioned papertomes and lasersheet folios. One shelf of a display case held awards and honors. Others displayed strange trophies — like an array of mounted hands, ranging widely in size and coloration. Some were sliced open to show metal parts, relics of a time when dittoclay had to be slathered over robot frames, when clanking duplicates were techno-playthings for the rich, at once both crude and awe-inspiring, enabling just an elite to divide their lives and be in two places at the same time.

An era when dittos were called “deputies,” and those who could afford them seemed ordained to have much bigger lives than the rest of humankind. Before Aeneas Kaolin gave self-copying to the masses.

It was quite a display. But right then my chief concern lay in the part of the room I couldn’t see, far from the window, steeped in shadows.

“Lights on,” I tried from the doorway. But the house computer was voice-keyed, barring unknown guests from even courtesy control. Yosil was some host.

I could try transmitting the command through Nell, asserting my investigation contract with Maharal’s daughter and heir. But the chain of handshakes and probate haggles could take minutes, distracting me the whole time.

No doubt a conventional light switch lay just yonder, within easy reach … and reach of some lurker-in-the-dark, armed with any weapon my eager imagination could provide.

Was I being paranoid? Fine.

“Ritu, if that’s you, just tell me to come in … or to wait outside.”

I heard a soft sound, within. Not breathing, but another rustle. I felt tension beyond the door. Something like coiled energy.

“Is that you, ditAlbert?”

The voice came from upstairs, behind me. Ritu, calling down, without a hint of guile.

“Yeah! It’s me,” I answered without turning. “Did you … do you have other company?”

Through the frosted glass, I spied another shudder. This time a straightening, perhaps signaling resignation. I backed away several steps across the atrium, giving leeway to whatever might emerge.

I also eyed escape paths, just in case.

“What did you say?” Ritu shouted again from above. “I didn’t expect you for an hour. Can you wait?”

A silhouette crossed the closed half of the glazed double door. Tall, angular … and gray — it drew closer.

For an instant, I thought I had it! A furtive gray, in this house? Who else could it be but the ghost? Maharal’s ghost! The one that didn’t want to spend its last moments in a lab, being dissected for trace memories. It would be a shambling wraith by now, persisting by sheer will power, burning its final reserve of élan vital before melting away.

I readied to pounce, demanding answers. Like what happened to my own ditto! The one I sent to the mansion this morn -

— then blinked in surprise. The figure that emerged wasn’t Maharal’s ghost. Not even gray, strictly speaking.

A gleaming platinum stepped under the speckled light. The golem-sigil on its brow shone like a jewel.

“Vic Kaolin,” I said.

“Yes,” the ditto nodded, covering its agitation with pugnacity. “And who might you be? What business do you have in this house?”

Surprised, I raised a spackled eyebrow.

“Why, the job you hired me to do, sir.”

That wasn’t strictly true. I wanted to probe this ditto’s level of ignorance. His glossy expression froze, transforming rapidly from pugnacious to guarded.

“Ah … yes. Albert. It’s good to see you again.”

Despite its lame effort at a recovery, this was clearly a different ditKaolin than the one I met early this morning, as dawn broke over the shattered windows of the Teller Building. Nor did it share any recent memories with the one who phoned me at home around noon, hectoring me while I imprinted the ebony. This one didn’t remember me at all.

Well, in itself, that meant little. It could have been imprinted hours before all that. But then, why pretend to know me? Why not just admit ignorance? He could send a query to his rig. Get an update from the real Kaolin.

Here’s a life lesson — don’t embarrass the mighty. Let ’em save face. Always give them an out.

I pointed into the home office of Yosil Maharal. “Did you find anything useful?”

The guarded expression deepened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re here for the same reason I am, right? Looking for clues. Something to explain why your friend kept skipping town, evading the all-seeing World Eye for weeks at a stretch. And especially what he was doing last night, racing across the desert, careening over highway viaducts.”

Before he could answer, Ritu called down again.

“Albert? Who are you talking to?” ditKaolin’s dark eyes met mine. Following my adage, I gave him that out.

“I met a shiny new Aeneas, coming up the walk!” I shouted up the stairs. “We entered together.”

The platinum ditto nodded. Acknowledging a debt. He would have preferred going unnoticed, but my cover story would do.

“Oh Aeneas, I wish you wouldn’t hover so! I’m all right, really.” She sounded exasperated. “But as long as you’re here, would you show Albert around?”

“Of course, dear,” ditKaolin answered, gazing briefly upstairs. “Take your time.”

When he faced me again, there was no trace of agitation, or pugnacity. Only serene calm.

“What were we discussing?” he asked.

Crum! I thought. You’d think a rich bastard could order up ditto blanks that concentrate better.

Aloud, I prompted, “Clues, sir.”

“Ah, yes. Clues. I looked for some, but—” The platinum head shook, left and right. “Maybe a professional like you can do better.”

Despite everything, Kaolin is only guessing that I’m a ditective, I thought. Why doesn’t he just ask?

“After you.” I gestured politely, insisting he reenter the office ahead of me.

He turned, spoke a command, and light filled the room. So Maharal must have given voice authorization to his boss. Or else -

I felt another vague suspicion simmer in the part of my skull where I chain that crazy but creative beast, paranoia. Keeping the ditto in sight, never turning completely away from him, I looked over a display case while tapping cipher-code with my teeth.

Nell. Verify Kaolin sent this dit. Confirm it’s legit.

She acknowledged the work order, flashing in my left eye. But even with my priority as the real guy, this query could take time, leaving me wondering about a possibility.

Dr. Maharal had been an expert in duplication tech, and a gifted hobbyist at the arcane art of disguise. He also seemed blithe about mere inconveniences like the law. With his Universal Kilns access, he could borrow all sorts of templates … including possibly that of Aeneas Kaolin.

So, could this platinum be another Maharal ghost, masquerading as the Vic?

But that didn’t make sense. realMaharal’s corpse had been cold for nearly a day, but the platinum looked much newer. No way this could be Ritu’s daddit, in disguise.

Well, organic imagination doesn’t have to make sense, I recalled. Nor must paranoia be reasonable. It’s a beast who barks at nothing … till the day it’s right.

There was a simple way to verify the platinum’s identity. As a real person, I could turn and demand its pellet … at the cost of revealing my own costume ruse. I chose against it. Nell should answer soon, anyway. So I fixed my attention on Maharal’s home.

The office showed signs of recent amateur tampering. Table legs were shoved out of old carpet impressions. The contents of book and display cases had all shifted, disturbing dust layers as someone groped all over, perhaps looking for hidden panels.

I learned a lot just by glancing at the lasersheet folios. They were barely touched, so Kaolin must not have been looking for purloined data or software.

Then what?

And why was he trying to search all by himself? He has security people. He can hire forensic experts or even rent a downtime police unit.

At first I thought the problem might be Ritu, standing up to her boss and barring Kaolin access to her father’s home. That could explain today’s furtive entry — trying to search the place without alerting her — which implied some need to keep her in the dark.

Except that Ritu’s easygoing attitude just moments ago, giving us both leave to look around, didn’t fit the image of a rift between Kaolin and Maharal’s daughter. At least not an obvious one.

Glancing at the Vic, I saw he had regained his famed, sphinxlike composure. Dark eyes tracked me, perhaps still annoyed that I had found him here. Yet he appeared willing to make the best of things. Supervising an expert hireling at work, that was more his style.

There were pictures on the walls, both inside the office and in the hall beyond. A fraction showed Yosil posing with people I didn’t recognize — I used my archaic but serviceable eye-implant to take iris-snaps of some, for Nell to identify. But most of the framed images showed a younger Ritu at various events like graduation, a swimming competition, riding a horse, and so on.

Maybe I should have given the place a major workover — a chemsift for substances on the International Danger List would take just minutes with a good scanner. But whatever Maharal was up to, I suspected that it wouldn’t show in obvious ways.

An inertial transect might be more revealing. Strolling from room to room, I opened closets and cupboards, peering into each one long enough to freeze a complete perspective-set, transmitting each one to Nell, and then moving to the next. She wouldn’t need color, just multiple angles and position stamps, down to half a centimeter, using surveying principles George Washington would have understood. Any secret chambers or compartments should appear in the resulting geodesic.

Kaolin expressed approval. But again, if he wanted this kind of work done, why not hire a whole survey team and do a thorough job?

Perhaps the matter was so sensitive, he could only trust his own duplicates.

If so, my presence must be cause for mixed feelings. I had stopped working for Kaolin when Yosil Maharal’s body was found crumpled in his car — when the case switched from suspected kidnapping of a valued employee to a daughter’s vague misgivings about murder.

I made a mental note to ask Ritu about her father’s relationship with the UK chief. If it was murder, I could imagine scenarios putting the Vic on a shortlist of suspects.

Take what happened to Maharal’s ghost — and my gray — a few hours ago. Might Kaolin have arranged for them both to vanish on his estate? Maybe the gray sniffed too close to some dire truth. Maybe the ghost had good reason to flee.

Soon the first-floor transect was complete. Nell’s preliminary analysis showed no secret chambers. At least nothing bigger than a breadslice. But she did cite one anomaly.

Two photographs were missing. They had been hanging near the bottom of the staircase when I first arrived. Now, my home computer reported they were gone! Their shadows still showed up by infrared, a bit cooler than the surrounding wall.

I turned in search of Vic Kaolin … and spotted him emerging from the lavatory. Plumbing sounds gurgled in the background. He just disposed of something by flushing it away! The platinum ditto looked back at me, a portrait of innocence, and I cursed under my breath.

If I had come as an ebony specialist, tuned and equipped for close forensic site analysis, I might have watched him with one eye literally in the back of my head. Now, there seemed little I could do about it. Quizzing Kaolin would only alienate him without explaining the photos.

Better to wait, I decided. Let him think I didn’t notice. Maybe ask Ritu about the pictures later.

I went out to my Volvo, opened the trunk, and fetched a thumper with seismic pickups. Lugging the equipment back up the steps, I planted detectors all around the house. In moments I would know if there were secret chambers underground. Unlikely, but worth checking out.

While waiting for the data to come in, I poked around the recycling unit out back, with its separate slots for metals, plastics, mulchable organics, and electronics. And clay. The bins should all have been empty, since Yosil Maharal spent the last few weeks away from home. But the telltales showed some mass in the golem-disposal unit. Enough for one full-size humanoid form.

I opened the access panel — only to witness a dim gray figure sag before the sudden onslaught of air, rapidly finishing its collapse to slurry.

Smell can be a powerful sense. From vapors wafting off the slumping mass, I could tell much. It died well before expiration … and no more than an hour ago. Acting quickly, I reached inside to grope through where the skull had been, feeling through dissolving fibrous matter till I snagged a small, hard object. The ID pellet. Later, in private, I might give it a quick scan and find out if this meant anything … or if a neighbor had simply deposited an excess ditto in the Maharal Dumpster to avoid recycling fees.

Wiping my hand on a towelette, I sauntered back to verify the seismic readings. Sure enough, they showed no hidden chambers. I don’t know why I bother. Maybe the romantic spirit in me keeps hoping for the catacombs of Treasure Island, something beyond the normal run of city-cam traces, chasing down copyright violators and dallying spouses. At least that was Clara’s diagnosis. Somewhere deep under Albert Morris lay the soul of Tom Sawyer.

My heart beat faster when I thought of her, and the direction I’d be driving in just a little while. Maybe, after a hard day’s work in the desert, after Ritu’s ditto expired, I might swing by the battle range and surprise -

That was when I sensed a change. Something missing. A presence, like a shadow, now gone.

The silent, lurking presence of ditAeneas Kaolin.

I looked for the limo and saw only blank space at the curb. The limo was gone.

Perhaps the golem left in order to avoid Ritu’s gray, who could be heard now puttering around downstairs. But that didn’t make any sense, did it?

Nothing did.

In moments, Ritu’s gray emerged from the house, carrying a small valise, and locked the door behind her. “I’m ready,” she announced in a somewhat aloof tone, though short of outright unfriendly. In her case, if any character trait clearly bridged the gap from original to copy, it was the sense of tension I had picked up earlier. An edgy guardedness that kept one at a distance while somehow augmenting her severe beauty.

I hurried to collect my thumpers and other hardware, throwing them into the trunk atop the portakiln. Soon we were heading southeast through a shrouding twilight. Toward the desert, where mysteries still prowl and nature can rip away all civilized masks, revealing the stark struggle life has always been.

18 Orange You Glad?

It’s not that Pallie can’t make dittos. He’s actually quite gifted, with a flexible self-image that can propel almost any golem-shape, from quadruped to ornithrope to centipede. That rare ability to imprint non-human forms might have let him be an astronaut, ocean prospector, even a bus driver. But Pal’s dittos can’t deal with inaction, amplifying his core restlessness. A ditective should stay patient and focused — say during a long stakeout — but his copies can’t. With great intelligence and imagination, they’ll rationalize any excuse to transform inertia into motion.

It’s why he went in person that night, three years ago, to a rendezvous with treacherous men. Pal’s way of being cautious, I suppose.

So we had to lug his real self along with us in Lum’s van. Pal’s wheelchair slid in back as the mancie leader hopped into the pilot seat. Then, with a devilish grin, Lum offered me shotgun position — a blatant dig at Gadarene, who rumbled ominously. Wanting no trouble between the two reluctant allies, I stepped aside for the big conservative, adding a respectful bow. Anyway, I’d rather ride with Pal, wedged in back between the van’s hull and a battered portakiln.

The oven felt warm when I sat on it. Someone was cooking. Lacking a sense of smell, I couldn’t tell whom.

We set off, merging with traffic. The optically active cerametal hull sensed the direction of my gaze from millisecond to millisecond, automatically transforming a narrow patch from opaque to transparent wherever I happened to be looking, slewing this micro-window about to match my wandering cone of attention. Anyone standing outside the van might see four small dim circles jiggering about, like tiny manic spotlights, one for each occupant, revealing little to outsiders. But to each of us inside, the van appeared made of glass.

Lum caught a nav beam, which sensed four passengers — three of them real — and granted carpool priority, speeding us along. North, toward the hi-tech district, following my hunch about where to find trouble. Funny how Lum and Gadarene were ready to trust a frankie’s instincts. As if I knew what I was talking about.

Fluids dripped through IV tubing and diagnostic lights winked as I checked Pallie’s medconsole. The unit was pissed off at him for using stimulants, back when he showed off for us at the abandoned scooter park.

“Just like old times, eh?” he said, giving me a wink. “You, Clara, and me, tackling the forces of evil together. Brains, beauty, and physique.”

“Well, that describes Clara. What about you and me?”

He chuckled, flexing a sinewy forearm. “Oh, I wasn’t bad at muscle stuff. But mostly I provided color. Sadly lacking in the modern world.”

“Hey, aren’t I green?”

“Aye, and a lovely faux-viridian shade you are, Gumby. But that’s not what I mean.”

I knew exactly what he meant: the color our grandparents supposedly had, back in the zesty twentieth and early twenty-first, when people took risks every day that few moderns would think of facing with their precious trueflesh. It’s strange how much more priceless life can feel, when you have more of it to grasp.

Me? I had sixteen or so hours left. Not much time for ambition or long-range plans. Might as well spend it all.

I turned to Gadarene, whose attention focused toward a World Eye portal on his lap. “Any luck tracing the gray?”

The big man scowled. “My people have put out a hue and cry. We’re offering top bids for a pix-trace, but the trail’s blank. Nothing since the gray was last seen, at Studio Neo.”

“There won’t be,” I said. “Albert knows how to vanish when he wants to.”

Gadarene flushed. “Then contact your rig. Have him recall the ditto!”

The organo-chauvinist leader appeared frantic. I didn’t want to provoke him. “Sir, we’ve gone over this. That gray is on autonomous mode. It won’t communicate with realAlbert, because that could constitute violation of contract. If the gray is being deceived by experts, they’ll take measures to ensure it stays deceived.”

“I bet the first thing they did to the gray was disable the recall feature in its pellet,” Pallie said, and I added, “They’ll put e-sniffers on Al’s house. Nell will catch on eventually, but it can work for a span. So we can’t contact Morris directly. If the conspirators notice, they may spook or change plans.”

Gadarene muttered, “I still can’t figure it out. What plans?”

“To make us look bad,” said Lum, dropping his normally sunny mien. “Both your group and mine. We’re being set up as patsies.

“I’ll bet Universal Kilns is behind this,” Lum continued. “If they can convince the world we’re terrorists, they may get a demarchy writ to eliminate the pickets and demonstrations. No more disclosure lawsuits and net harassment from groups opposing their immoral policies.”

“You mean they’d sabotage themselves, to blame us?”

“Why not? If the stunt generates public sympathy, all the better! It might even throw off those anti-monopoly bills that keep coming up, trying to reverse the Big Deregulation.”

Pal chuckled again.

“What’s so funny?” Gadarene snapped.

“Oh, I was just thinking about how innocent you both sound, right now. Are you practicing for the cameras?”

“What do you mean?” Lum asked.

“I mean that you non-violent protestors have been up to your own skulduggery, I bet. Some flashy way to demonstrate your disapproval of Universal Kilns. Moralists can always justify going outside the law when it suits their sense of righteous timing.”

Gadarene frowned sullenly at Pal. Lum said, “That’s different.”

“Is it? Never mind. I’m not interested in canned rationalizations. Just tell me how far along your preparations have come.”

“I don’t see why—”

“Because you’re playing out of your league, gentlemen!” I cut in, a bit too loud for a respectful green. But I had caught Pal’s drift and it made sense. “Professionals are at work today, hatching a scheme that’s been long arranging. Right now it doesn’t matter if the secret mastermind is Universal Kilns, or some enemy of theirs. Whatever they’re planning to do in the next few hours, they’ve set you fellows up to take the blame.”

“But maybe we can help, if you come clean,” Pallie offered. “Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed and schemed about striking a blow against UK. Tell us, right now, if you’ve done more than dream! Have you been up to something that could be used against you? Something that could pin you to a crime?”

Both men glared at Pal and me — and sideways at each other. I could almost taste their mutual distrust. Their internal struggle for a way out.

Gadarene spoke first; perhaps he was more accustomed to bitter confession.

“We’ve … been digging a tunnel.”

Lum stared at his longtime adversary. “You have? Well, imagine that.”

He blinked a few times, then shrugged with a wry chuckle. “We’ve got one, too.”

The triple domes of Universal Kilns HQ shimmered, set afire on their western flanks by a late afternoon sun. I couldn’t help thinking of three giant pearls, planted atop a busy anthill, since those grassy slopes sheltered an even larger industrial plant underground. But with its coat of greenery, the factory looked more like a college campus, placid and unthreatening, rimmed by a deceptively innocent-looking hedge.

To modern citizens, the site was legendary, even Promethean. A cornucopia spilling forth treasures — hardly a cause of ire. But not everyone felt that way. Outside the main gate, beyond a screen of trees, lay a camping ground that was staked out years ago under the Open Dissent Act, when Aeneas Kaolin first moved his corporate headquarters here. Each maverick or radical group with a grievance had its own patch — a cluster of canopies and expando-vans — to marshal demonstrations.

Why keep agitating over a cause that’s long-lost? Because cheap dittos make it easy … an irony that most radicals were much too sober to notice.

So proclaimed the largest banner, identifying Lum’s community of tolerance zealots, though smaller signs marked passionate subsects, each with an agenda weirder than the next. I mean, sure, I’d rather not have to bow to Gadarene, just because I’m green. But I’m a frankie. For anyone else, isn’t it just a matter of taking turns? Sometimes grasshopper, sometimes ant. Even after my time at the Ephemerals, I still found it hard to grasp what kind of society these people had in mind.

Still, they came from a tradition that had saved the world. The tolerance-and-inclusion reflex was strong for good reasons — because it took centuries of pain to acquire. Confused or not, these folk stood on high moral ground.

Not far away, another sign broadcast shining holo letters, expressing a more clearcut demand:

The “open source” movement wanted all of UK’s technologies and trade secrets released to the public, so every garage hobbyist might experiment with new dittoing techniques and wild golem variants, promising a burst of total creativity. Some envision an age when you’ll imprint your Soul Standing Wave into everything around you — your car, your toaster, the walls of your house. Hey, why not each other? To enthusiasts out there — eager, overeducated, and bored — every boundary of self and other was spurious. A small step from being several places at once to being everywhere, all of the time.

Those techno-transcendentalists stayed away from yet another encampment where the denizens had a different complaint altogether — that the world already has too many people in it, without doubling or tripling Earth’s population each day with fresh swarms of temporary consumers. Wearing green robes of the Church of Gaia, they wanted humanity pared way down, not exponentiated. Dittos may not eat or excrete, but they use resources in other ways.

Grunting with delight, Pal nudged my arm and pointed.

A single figure could be seen pacing just outside the big encampment, picketing the picketers!

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS IS AN ADDICTIVE DISEASE, GET A LIFE! chided the placard carried by a creature with extremely long, shaggy arms and a head like a jackal’s. Perhaps the ditto’s appearance was some kind of arty, satirical statement. If so, I didn’t get it.

Some people — most people — have way too much time on their hands, I thought.

Once, years ago, this site swarmed with a more pragmatic and far angrier breed of protester. Labor unions, upset over a convulsed job market, stirred up Luddite movements across the globe. Riots surged. Factories burned. Golem-workers were lynched. Governments teetered …

… till overnight, passions ebbed. How do you suppress a technology that lets people do all the things they want to do, all at the same time?

As our van passed into the compound, I glimpsed a final placard, carried by a bearded man who beamed happily as he paced, even though everyone else seemed to avoid him, even with their eyes. His message — in a fine, flowing cursive calligraphy — was one I saw just an hour or two earlier:

You all miss the point.

There’s a next step a’coming …

Gadarene’s bunch bivouacked to one side, separated from the other groups by a gulf of mutual hostility. Instead of sending cheap dittos to this site each day, his followers were real people. Every one of them.

As we pulled up, a dozen or so men and women emerged from big trailers, accompanied by gaggles of youngsters. Their clothing had that look — colorful but inexpensive — evidently purchased on the purple welfare wage.

I’ve met abstainers before, but never in such numbers. So I couldn’t help staring. Here were people who refused to copy themselves. Ever. It felt like gazing at creatures of another age, when fate cruelly forced all men to live cramped lives. Only these folks lived that way deliberately!

On seeing Lum step from the van, members of the flock grumbled threateningly. But Gadarene silenced them with a curt headshake. Instead, he bid two strong youths to hoist Pal from the back. Others hauled the portakiln as we followed him into the biggest trailer.

“I am still not sure I should show you this,” he groused. “It is the work of years.”

Pal stifled a yawn. “Take your time. We’ve got days and days to decide.”

Sarcasm can be effective. Still, I often wondered how my friend managed to live this long.

“How do we know it isn’t already too late?” Lum asked.

“Best guess, the enemy won’t act till nightfall,” I replied. “If it’s a bomb, they’ll want to maximize the flashy visual effects, while minimizing real human casualties.”

“Why?”

“Killing archies tends to really piss folks off,” Pal said. “Property crimes are different. Deregulated. Anyway, conspiracies tend to unravel when you get down to mass murder. Henchmen turn whistle-blower. No, they’ll wait till second shift, with only dittos at work, to produce lots of gaudy dismemberments without criminal culpability.

“Which means there may still be time to act,” Pal concluded, “if you quit stalling and show us what you’ve got.”

Gadarene still squirmed. “Why not ask Lum first? He’s got a tunnel, too.”

“I’ll be using that one.” Pal nodded. “But Mr. Lum’s passage is too small for Albert here … I mean Frankie. Your tunnel has to be bigger, eh, Gadarene? Human size.”

The big conservative shrugged, giving in at last.

“We dug by hand. It took years.”

“How did you evade seismic detection?” I asked.

“With an active lining. Any sonic or ground wave that hits one side of the sheath is re-radiated on the other. We used a quadrupole grinder at the digging surface, canceling noise beyond a few meters.”

“Clever,” I said. “And how close are you to breaking through?”

Gadarene looked away, avoiding my eyes. He mumbled in a voice almost too low to hear, “We made it … a couple of years ago.”

Pallie guffawed. “Well, that takes it! Such passion, digging like moles to reach the hated enemy. Then nothing! What happened? Lost your nerve?”

If looks could kill … But Pal had already survived worse.

“We couldn’t agree on which action would be … suitable.”

I found myself kind of sympathizing. It’s one thing to labor with a vague/distant goal of punishing the wicked. It’s another to actually do it in ways that edify the world, attract public support, while keeping your precious realhide out of prison. The Gaia Liberation folks learned this the hard way, during their long war against the gene-techs.

“Was that your problem, too?” I asked Lum.

The mancie leader shook his head. “Our shaft took a twisty route, so we just broke through. Anyway, our aims are different. We aim to liberate slaves, not to sabotage their birthplace.”

Pal shrugged. “Well, that explains why it’s happening right now. You both have leaks or spies. Or your digging was detected after all. Either way, someone knows. They’ll use your tunnel shafts to deflect blame for what’s about to happen. Last night’s charade — sending fake Morrisdits to visit you — was just frosting on the cake you’re being cooked in.”

I didn’t add that Albert, my maker, appeared targeted for the worst baking of all.

Unhappy silence reigned, till Lum spoke up.

“I’m confused. Don’t you two hope to use our tunnels, to get inside and look for the missing gray?”

“We do.”

“But if the enemy already knows about the tunnels, won’t there be traps waiting for you?”

Pal’s sanguine grin is the most infectious I know. He can really convince you that he knows what he’s doing. “Trust me,” he said, turning both palms up. “You’re in good hands.”

His ditto radiated the same air of confident aplomb ten minutes later, as I stared down a narrow hole in the ground, contemplating how quickly my short existence could end in such a place.

“Don’t sweat it, Frank,” the mini-golem said in a piping voice, perfectly imitating Pal’s blithe speech rhythms. “I’ll take point-position. Just follow my glossy butt.”

The creature looked like an oversized ferret, with a stretched, semi-human head. But the strangest part was its fur, all glistening, with tiny bulges that moved all over the place, like it was infested with parasites or something.

“What if there is a trap in there?”

“Oh, I give odds there will be,” Little Pallie answered. “Let me worry about that. I’m ready for anything!”

This, from someone whose dittos almost never made it home in one piece. I wished realPal were still present, so I could chew him out one last time. But he went over to the Emancipators’ camp with his portakiln, preparing to dispatch yet more hisselves down their twisty, specialized tunnel — one cleverly designed to resemble a network of harmless animal holes worming semi-randomly toward the giant industrial complex. Providence is kind to the half-mad, I guess. Pallie could happily dispatch a dozen or more kamikaze dittos, each of them thrilled to take part in a suicide mission. It was all good fun to him-and-them.

If my body had been built for any decent pleasure, I would have turned around and sought it out, right then and there, leaving that place behind. Or maybe not.

“Come on, Gumby,” the pseudoferret told me with a toothy grin. “Don’t go into a funk on me. Anyway, you’re committed now. Where else can you go in that color?”

I glanced down at my arms, now dyed — like the rest of me — in a hue widely known as UK Orange. An in-house shade, trademarked by Aeneas Kaolin long ago. If this caper didn’t work, copyright violation would be the least of my worries.

Well, at least I’m not green anymore.

“Tally-ho!” squalled Pal’s diminutive ditto. “Nobody lives forever!”

With that cheery motto, the Paldit squirmed around and dived into the hole.

No, I thought in reply. Not forever. But a few more hours would be nice.

I cross-checked the friction rollers on my wrists, elbows, hips, knees, and toes. Then I knelt to slip inside. Without looking back, I sensed the hulking, nervous figure of James Gadarene, hovering nearby, watching.

Then something happened that actually moved me, in a strange way. I was already a couple of meters into the awful passage when I heard the big zealot utter some kind of benediction.

Maybe I wasn’t supposed to hear it. Still, unless I’m mistaken, Gadarene actually asked his God to go with me.

In all the time I’ve walked this Earth, it’s one of the nicest things I’ve heard anybody say.

19 Fakery’s Bakery

Tuesday afternoon fades and a vast industrial complex prepares to change shifts. The entry/exit portal throngs with moving bipeds, all of them human in one fashion or another.

In olden times, the whole population of a factory — thousands of workers — would swing into motion at the blowing of a whistle, half of them heading home, tired from eight or ten — or even twelve — hours work, while equal numbers shuffled in for their turn at the machines, transforming sweat and skill and irreplaceable human lifespan into the wealth of nations.

Today’s flow is gentler. A few hundred archie employees, many of them wearing exercise clothes, chat amiably as they leave, heading for scooters and bikes, while a more numerous and colorful host of paper-clad dittos arrives by dinobuses, trooping in the opposite direction.

Some elderly dittos are also departing, homeward bound to inload a day’s memories. But most stay, working on till it’s time to slip into the recycling vat — armies of bright orange drones, laboring with focus and without resentment, because some other self will enjoy fat wages and stock options. It can be kind of spooky if you stop and really think about it. No wonder I never had a factory job. Wrong personality for it. Way wrong.

Even the golem entrance is decorated in eye-soothing tones, with sensoresonant music playing in the background as I wait in line to sign in. There’s also a faint vibration, coming through the bottoms of my feet. Somewhere lower down, beneath the grass-covered slopes, giant machines are mixing pre-energized clay, threading it with patented fibers tuned to vibrate at the ultra-complex rhythms of a plucked soul, then kneading and molding it all into dolls that will rise, walk, and talk like real people.

Like me.

Should this feel like coming home? My present, pre-animated body was made here, mere days ago, before being shipped to Albert’s storage cooler. If today’s snooping expedition takes me down to that factory realm, will I recognize my mother?

Oh, quit it, Al.

I’m me, whether gray or brown. Grasshopper or ant. The only practical difference is how polite I’ve got to be.

That … and expendability. In a sense, I’m freer when I’m gray. I can take risks.

Like the one I’m about to face in moments, when I try to sign in. Will UK security be as lax as the maestra predicts?

I almost hope not. If I’m stopped — or even if the guards ask inconvenient questions — I’ll just turn around and leave! Apologize to Gineen and her pals. Send my half-fee home to Nell and spend the rest of my life doing … what? Forbidden by contract from inloading memories, or even seeing my rig again, I guess I’d find some other way to pass time. Maybe take in a play. Or stand on a street corner entertaining parents and kids with sleight-of-hand tricks. I haven’t done that in a while.

Or maybe I’ll visit Pal. Find out what he was so excited about this morning.

All right, I admit it. I’d be disappointed to come so far, and just get turned away. My demilife is targeted now. I have a mission, a purpose, to help my clients find out if Universal Kilns is violating the disclosure law. That seems a worthwhile goal, and well paid.

Approaching the entry kiosk, I find I’m actually nervous, hoping this will work.

Honestly? It was fun for couple of hours — scurrying through outdoor and indoor crowds, ducking through cramped niches, doing quick dye jobs and rapid clothing changes, vanishing and reappearing to fool the omnipresent cameras. In fact, it was today’s highlight so far. Doing something you’re good at — what else can make you feel more genuinely human?

All right, it’s my turn. Here goes.

The big yellow golem on duty at the entry kiosk wears an expression of such ennui, I wonder if it’s feigned. Even a ditto tuned for vigilance can get bored, I guess. But maybe he’s been bribed. Wammaker and Collins never told me the details, hence my unease …

A beam reaches out to stroke the pellet on my brow. The guard glances at me, then at a screen. His jaw twitches, opening a bit to subvocalize a brief comment, inaudible to me but not to the infrasonic pickup embedded in his throat.

Two items spit from a slot in the kiosk, a small visitor’s badge and a slip of paper — a map featuring green arrows, suggesting where I should go. The arrows point up, toward the executive suites, where a different Albert Morris copy had an appointment, hours ago. That me never showed up, but the failure isn’t any of my business. My interests lie elsewhere.

I mutter reflexive thanks to the guard — unneeded politeness that betrays both my upbringing and my age — then I head for the down escalator.

Whose fault is it if the Universal Kilns mainframe gets two of us mixed up, confusing this me with a completely different me?

Normally, at this point in a mission, I’d try to report in. Find a public phone jack — I see one right across the lobby — and dump an encrypted copy of the report I’ve been dictating almost nonstop since this morning. Let Nell know where I am. Let Albert in on what’s been done.

But that’s contractually forbidden this time. Gineen Wammaker doesn’t even want me to call her. Nothing that might be traced to Studio Neo or her strange comrades. One result is a thwarted feeling as I crave to spill the contents of my built-in recorder, like a penitent’s impulse to confess.

Well, add it to all the other irritating traits of this oddball mission. I’m riding the down escalator now, dropping into a huge anthill complex underneath the glittering corporate domes, worrying about the next phase — looking for clues that Vic Aeneas Kaolin is illegally withholding scientific breakthroughs.

All right, let’s suppose — as the maestra and Queen Irene suspect — that Universal Kilns has solved a nagging problem of our age, how to transmit the Standing Wave of human consciousness across distances greater than a meter. Will there be clues or signs that a layman like me might recognize? Pairs of giant antennas, facing each other across a cavernous chamber? Hyperconducting terrahertz cables, thick as a tree trunk, linking a human original to the distant lump of clay she plans to animate?

Or might UK executives already have perfected the technology? Could they be using it right now, in secret, to “beam” copies of themselves all over the planet?

How about the other breakthroughs that Wammaker and Irene and Collins suspect? Ditto life extension? Ditto-to-ditto copying? Modern wish-fantasies, but what if they’re about to come true?

My employers want me to seek evidence, but the other half of my job is just as urgent … do nothing illegal. Whatever I happen to glimpse by wandering around can be blamed on poor UK security. But I won’t pick any locks for Gineen and her friends.

I could lose my license.

Damn. Something’s been bugging me all afternoon. Like an itch that won’t localize. Normally I’d follow the intuition, but there’s so much that’s unconventional about this job — the non-disclosure contract, the ban on inloading — plus the fact that I’m working for the maestra, which I swore I’d never do again. Add that violent episode back at the Rainbow Lounge and now this tightrope act, trying to a spy on a major corporation without breaking laws. Any of that would make a guy feel creepy.

So it’s strangely easy to dismiss my uneasy feelings. Attribute them to this assortment of known irritations … not something even worse, glimmering on the edge of awareness …

Here’s were I should get off. First sublevel. RESEARCH DIVISION, it says in bright letters over a friendly, campuslike entry portal. Beyond another simple security kiosk I glimpse high-class gray and black dittos — even some high-sensory whites — moving about with lively animation, frenetically busy and apparently enjoying it. Scientists and techies generally love copying, since it lets them run experiments around the clock. Like creating whole armies of yourself to raid Nature’s storehouse, day and night, grabbing every grain of data while your real brain stays well rested for theorizing.

Irene said it should be easy to get past security here, too. Yosil Maharal was head of Research and an Albert gray was hired to investigate the poor man’s death, so these folks should expect a visit. Heck, even if they turn me away, I can peer around from the entrance -

Now what are you doing?

Crum, I didn’t get off!

I stayed on the moving way, letting it carry me right past the entry portal, downward past Sublevel One, heading deeper underground!

This isn’t according to plan …

But it kind of makes sense, right? I think I see what unconscious impulse made me keep going. Won’t the Research Department have its own back routes to the deeper caverns, where large-scale experiments can run? Techies hate security, so those back routes will be less formal, less guarded than the central shaft. In fact, I’ll bet there are no guard-kiosks below at all. Anyway, my cover story will seem more plausible if I wander in through the industrial plant, having gotten “lost” somewhere along the way.

Sounds good. But does it explain why my legs locked moments ago, preventing me from getting off? Dammit. Dittotech would be a whole lot more convenient and rational if soul-copying didn’t require dragging your whole subconscious along, every time.

More basement levels rise slowly past while I grapple with the question. A wide portal labeled TESTING offers a glimpse into a kind of hell — warrens of experimental chambers where new golem models undergo torturous ordeals, like crash dummies of old, but aware, able to report the effects of every mangling or indignity. And none of the deliberate mutilations can be called immoral, since you’ll find eager volunteers for anything nowadays.

Yay, diversity.

Still riding the down escalator, I find that I’m rubbing my side — the long bulge of numb scar tissue covering that wound I got during the fight at the Rainbow Lounge. There’s no pain, yet I find it increasingly bothersome. Is the irritation psychocermaic?

I buy grays that are hyper-tuned for concentration, compelled to recite and analyze while roving in the field. Beyond that, all of them partake in Al’s quirky subconscious — the part of me that worries, correlates, then worries more. Looking back, it now seems awfully strange how that fellow zeroed in on me at Irene’s club … coincidentally the same punk that Monday’s green ran into last night, on Odeon Square, before taking that walk under the river.

And strange that Queen Irene — eager to see me and with many selves to spare — left me waiting in that violent club, where trouble found me.

Was it meant to find me?

I’ve dropped down to the first industrial level. Sprawling around me now, huge stainless steel tanks array into the distance like regiments of stout, shining giants.

The air fills with pungent, earthy aromas of peptide-soaked clay. Only a fraction comes from new material. The rest gets recycled, delivered every day in great slurry tubes from collection points all over the city — a frothy pureé that only hours ago made up individual humanoid beings, walking and talking, pursuing ambitions and countless distinctive yearnings. Now their physical substance reunites, blending together again in these tanks … the ultimate democratic commingling.

Mixing paddles stir as sparkling powders rain into the concoction, seeding nano-coalescent sites that will grow into rox cells, pre-energized for one frenetic day of mayfly activity. My limbs twitch. I can’t help picturing the entropy steadily seeping into my own cells as they rapidly use up the élan vital they absorbed in these same tanks.

In a few hours that depletion will lead to the pang. A wish to return, like some ageing salmon, to the one who imprinted me. For inloading, a ditto’s only chance at an afterlife, before this body rejoins the everlasting river of recycled clay.

Only there will be no inloading this time. No continuity. Not for me.

The floor rises past me, leading to another subterranean level, bigger and noisier than the last. Those big tanks that I saw — now overhead — funnel their frothy brews to titanic, hissing machines that groan and turn relentlessly. Robot tractors shove huge spools along ceiling tracks, delivering acres of finely woven mesh that shimmers in ways that no natural eye can bear to look upon — the diffraction spectrum of raw soul-stuff. Or the nearest approximation devised by science.

Mesh and prepared clay merge under enormous rotary presses, kneading and forming a pasty union, squeezing out surplus liquid, then popping yet another doughy humanoid shape onto rolling conveyors. On and on they come, pre-dyed to signify cost and built-in abilities. Some roll onward for custom feature installation. Other basic models, state-subsidized, are so cheap that even the poor can afford to replicate, living larger lives than their ancestors could have imagined. Across the globe, similar factories replenish half the ongoing human population, dispatching short-term bodies to a billion home coolers, copiers, and kilns.

A miracle stops being remarkable when you give it to everybody.

Watching titanic presses spit out ditto blanks — hundreds per minute — I’m hit by an absurdity.

Irene and Gineen say I should look for hidden industrial breakthroughs here at Universal Kilns. But that can’t be the real reason they sent me!

Think, Albert. UK has competitors. Tetragram Limited. Megillar-Ahima’az of Yemen. Fabrique Chelm. Companies who licensed Aeneas Kaolin’s original patents, till they expired. Wouldn’t they care about hidden innovations, more than the maestra and her friends? With greater resources, they could find out dozens of ways … like offering top jobs to UK employees. How could Universal Kilns hope to conceal ground-breaking discoveries like those Vic Collins spoke about?

Yes, evil thrives on secrecy. It’s what drives Albert on. Expose villainy. Find truth. Yadda. But is that what I’m doing, now? Hell, nobody can run a really big conspiracy, nowadays, when whistle-blower prizes tempt your henchmen with cash and celebrity status. Countless smalltime scams still flourish, keeping me in business. But could anyone hide secrets as major as my employers described?

Why would anyone bother?

Suddenly, it’s plain what all their talk about “hidden breakthroughs” was about. They were appealing to my vanity! Distracting me with hints of exciting new technology. With intellectual puzzles. And with their grating, obnoxious personalities. All manner of irritating digressions, so my general unease could be explained by excitement, or nerves, or personal dislike.

The floor rises past me again, bringing a new layer of the factory to view. At first it looks like more of the same vast assembly line, but these presses are more specialized. Blue police models flop limply onto a conveyor belt, pre-equipped with Peace Talons and loudspeakers. Another grunting unit pops out oversize designs, big-muscled and armor-skinned, dyed in military blur-camouflage. They remind me of Clara, off fighting her war in the desert.

That’s an ache I must quash. She’ll never concern you again, dittoboy. Concentrate on your own problems. Like why did the maestra and her friends hire you?

Not to penetrate Universal Kilns, clearly. That was pathetically easy. (Albert should offer Aeneas Kaolin a spec proposal to upgrade security here!) Wammaker and company didn’t have to pay a guy like me triple fees just to come and have a look around. Collins and Irene could have sent anyone. They could have come themselves.

No, I already did the hard part — the part they hired me for — before ever reaching the front gate. Dodging all the public cameras out there, changing my appearance a dozen times, skillfully muddying my trail so no one would connect me to my employers.

Could they have a reason, much bigger than the one they gave me?

Glancing at the nearest wall, I spot a recorder-cam. An absorber, the cheapest kind, laying one quickscan frame into a polymer cube every few seconds till it’s full and needs replacing monthly. I must’ve passed a hundred since arriving. And they read my ID pellet at the entry kiosk. So, there’s been a record from the moment I arrived. If anyone cares to check, they’ll know an Albert Morris gray wandered around. But UK can’t complain if I stay legal. So long as all I do is get “lost” and look around.

But what if I do something bad? Maybe without meaning to …

Damn! What is this thing?

A small bug — like some kind of gnat — flutters before me. It dodges a swat, darting toward my face. I can’t afford distractions, so I use a surge-energy burst to grab the thing, midair, crumpling it in my hand.

Where was I? Wondering if Gineen and the others had some hidden plan. Like maybe for something else to happen while I’m in Universal Kilns? The moving way takes me down to another level where yet more machines rumble. Again, I’m rubbing my injury … now wondering if the glassy bulge in my side may contain more than scar tissue.

Could that be why the thug-gladiator attacked me, in the Rainbow Lounge? No coincidence, perhaps it was all arranged … to make me willing to accept a blank interval during “repairs,” when actually -

Another damned bug flutters before me, then makes a kamikaze dive for my face!

Another muscle surge and it crackles in my hand. Can’t let pests distract me. What I need is some way to check these crazy suspicions.

Hopping off the moving way, I jog alongside a conveyor belt hauling assorted fresh industrial dittos. Gangly window washers, long-armed fruitpickers, sleek aqua farmers, and burly construction helpers, all made for jobs where mechanization is too inflexible or costly, as inert as dolls, lacking any human spirit to drive them. I may find what I need just ahead, where these specialized blanks get wrapped in cocoons of fluffy-hard airgel CeramWrap for shipment.

There! A worker in UK orange stands near the conveyor, watching a vidboard covered with flashing symbols. Quality Control, says a logo stamped in his broad back. Striding forward, I wear a friendly grin while swatting yet another of those pesky, irritating gnat things. (A local industrial infestation?)

“Hello there!”

“Can I help you, sir?” he inquires, puzzled. The few grays who come down here wear UK badges.

“I’m afraid I may be lost. Is this the Research Department?”

A chuckle. “Man, you are lost! But all you have to do is get back on the way and—”

“Say, that’s a nifty diagnostic station you’ve got there,” I interrupt, trying to stay casual. “Mind if I use it on myself for a sec?”

The tech’s puzzlement turns wary. “It’s for company business.”

“Come on. It won’t cost anything but electricity.”

His imitation brows purse. “I need it whenever the system detects a flawed blank.”

“Which happens how often?” Waving off a persistent gnat, I notice that the orange guy isn’t afflicted by the buzzing things.

“Maybe once an hour, but—”

“This’ll take a minute. Come on. I’ll put in a good word for you upstairs.”

Implication? That I’m a VIP visitor. Show me courtesy and I’ll add points to his file. Shame on me for fibbing.

“Well …” he decided. “Ever used a type-eight Xaminator? I better work the controls. Stand over there. What’re we lookin’ for?”

Stepping up to a fluorescent screen, I lift my tunic showing the big scar. He stares.

“Well, look at that.” Turning curious, the tech starts readying a scan. Only now I’m distracted by two of the cursed gnat things.

What the hell are they, and why are they picking on me?

With uncanny coordination, they dive at the same instant, one for each eye. My right hand snags one, but the other feints, swerves, then streaks for my ear!

Damn, it hurts, burrowing inside!

“Give me a few secs,” the orange guy says, fiddling controls. “I’m used to inspecting raw blanks. Got to cancel interference from your imprinted soul-field.”

Slapping the side of my head … I stop when a voice abruptly explodes from within, booming like a wakened god.

“Hi, Albert. Calm down. It’s me. Pal.”

“P-Pal?”

Stunned, I lower my hand. Can the bug hear me when I speak aloud? “But what—”

“You’re in big trouble, dittolad. But I’ve got your location. I’m heading there now, with one of your greens. We’ll get you out of this mess.”

“What mess?” I demand. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“I’ll explain shortly. Just don’t do anything!”

The tech glances up from his station.

“Did you say something? We’re almost ready here.”

“I’m just getting a diagnostic scan,” I tell the bug in my ear. “Right here by one of the assembly—”

“Don’t do that!” Pal’s voice bellows. “Whatever you’re carrying may be primed to go off when you pass a security scanner.”

“But I already passed through one, at the main entrance—”

“Then a second scan may be the activation signal.”

Abruptly, it makes sense. If Gineen and Irene planted something deadly in me, they’d maximize damage by delaying ignition, either with a timer or by setting it to go off when I pass a second scan, somewhere deep inside … say upon entering the research wing, which I almost did just minutes ago.

“Stop!” I cry — as the technician pulls a switch.

… things … happening very fast …

… apply surge energy … shift subjective time … trade lifespan for rapid thoughts.

Darting aside to escape the beam, I can already tell it’s too late. The scan-tingle hits me. The bulge in my side reacts. I brace for an explosion.

“Say, you’re right!” the technician says. “There is something inside, but — where are you going?”

Running now. A blur of surge action.

It’s not a simple bomb, or I’d be a billion flaming pieces now. But something’s churning within me and I don’t like it a bit.

Pal’s bug writhes in my ear.

“Head for the loading dock!” it shouts. “We’ll meet you there.”

Ahead, beyond giant machines ship-wrapping ditto blanks in airgel cocoons, I glimpse truck headlights moving through the lowering night. Picturing the anthill mound of UK HQ, I dare hope — If I can just get outside, will that foil the maestra’s plan? Outdoor explosions do less harm.

But it’s not a bomb. I sense fizzing heat. The scan set off complex chemical reactions. Programmed synthesis, perhaps manufacturing a tailored nanoparasite or destroyer prion. Running outside might spare UK only to put the city in peril!

Pal shouts in my ear to turn left. So I do.

I can feel the wall cameras, their passive eyes recording. No time to stop and shout my innocence — I didn’t know! Only actions can speak for Albert Morris now. To keep him out of jail, I kick in my reserves.

Ahead, the loading docks. Gel-wrapped ditto blanks slide into pneumatic tubes, departing for distant customers with a sucking whoosh. Giant forklifts — huffing and puffing — haul larger models onto trucks.

“Over here!”

The yell echoes, both in my ear and across the loading bay. I spy a version of myself, dyed UK Orange, bearing a weasel-like creature on his shoulder. Both dittos bear wounds, still smoking from recent combat.

“Are we glad to see you!” shouts the four-legged mini-Pal. “We had to fight our way inside this place, past some nasty — Hey!”

No time to stop and compare notes. Running by, I share a split-second glance with my other self and recognize this morning’s greenie. Looks like I found something more interesting to do today than clean toilets. Good for you, Green.

The churning in my gut is nearing some climax, feeding my crude golem-organs to a chemical frenzy. Some hell is about to burst. I need something massive to contain it.

Shall I dive into the packaging machine? No. Airgel won’t do.

So I choose a nearby forklift instead, grunting and farting as it burns extra fuel loading big crates onto a truck. Its diplodocus-head turns, resembling the human who imprinted it.

“What can I do for you?” the low voice rumbles, till I dash under its legs. “Hey, buddy, what’re you—”

Below the tail, a repellent exhaust spills high-octane fumes, a quivering moist enzyme flatulence from the hardworking clay body. Ignoring all instinct, I plunge both arms between pseudoflesh lips, forcing the waste-sphincter apart in order to …

… in order to climb within.

The forklift bellows. I sympathize but hold on as he jumps and swerves, trying to shake me out of the worst place I’ve ever been.

To the best of my knowledge, that is. Some of my other dits may have seen worse. The ones who never made it home … though somehow I doubt it.

Worming my way deeper, I hope my built-in recorder survives. Maybe this final act of sacrifice will free Albert from blame. It’s a good thing he won’t inload any of this. I’d be traumatized for good.

The poor forklift writhes. Pulses of foul gas try to blow me out. But I hold on, punching and grabbing fierce handholds. One big contortion culminates in lancing agony as my right foot comes off! Bitten by the frantic golem.

I can’t blame him, but it only drives me deeper, holding my breath against the stench, using a final burst of emergency élan to climb the sickening cloaca, trying for its heavy center.

Meanwhile, I’m being consumed from within. Used as feedstock for some awful reaction as the fulminating contents of my midriff prepare to erupt.

Am I deep enough? Will the huge clay body contain whatever-it-is?

Man, what a day I’ve -

20 Too Much Reality

Suburbia.

Man, what a wasteland.

Half an hour from Ritu Maharal’s place, taking the east ribbonway out of town, we got snagged by a guide beam that took over the Volvo, slaving its engine, rolling us along at a “maxyficient” crawl through a zone of high-density traffic. Cyclists sped past us for much of the way, given priority by computers that prudishly favor real human muscle power over mere dittos in a car.

Beyond and below the ribbonway, a series of ’burbs flowed by, each one garish in its own colorful architectural vogue — from gingerbread castles to Twentieth-Century Kitsch. Village rivalry helps distract people from two generations of high unemployment, so locals and their dittos toil like maniacs to create lavish showpieces, often focusing on an ethnic theme — the hometown pride of some immigrant community that long ago dropped in to join a cultural bouillabaisse.

Some liken Skyroad Ten’s elevated carbonite ribbon to some exponentiated version of It’s a Small World, stretching for more than a hundred kilometers. Globalization never ended human cultural diversity, but it did transform ethnicity into another hobby. Another way for people to find value in themselves, when only the genuinely talented can get authentic jobs. Hey, everyone knows it’s phony, like the purple wage. But it beats the alternatives — like boredom, poverty, and realwar.

I felt relieved when we finally made it past the final city greenbelt, plunging into the natural, bone-dry air of actual countryside. Ritu’s gray didn’t talk much. She must have been in a mood when she imprinted. Hardly surprising, with her father’s corpse not even cool yet. Anyway, this trip hadn’t been her idea.

To make conversation, I asked her about Vic Aeneas Kaolin.

Ritu had known the tycoon ever since her father joined Universal Kilns, twenty-six years ago. As a girl she used to see the mogul often, until he went hermit, one of the first aristos to stop meeting people in the flesh. Even close friends hadn’t seen the man in person for a decade. Nor did most people care. Why should it matter? The Vic still kept appointments, attended parties, even played golf. And those platinum dittos of his were so good they might as well be real.

Ritu, too, must use her UK connections to get high-quality blanks. Even in the dim light, I could tell her gray was supple, realistic, and well textured. Well, after all, I had asked her to send a first-rate copy to help in my investigation.

“I’m not sure which pictures you’re talking about,” she answered, when I enquired about the missing photos in her father’s house — the ones that Kaolin’s ditto stole from the wall. Ritu shrugged. “You know how it is. Familiar things become part of the background.”

“Still, I appreciate your effort to recall.”

She closed her eyelids, covering the uniform blue of her golem-orbs. “I think … there may have been a picture of Aeneas and his family, when he was young. Another showed him and my father standing before their first non-humanoid model … one of those long-arm fruitpickers, if I recall right.” Ritu shook her head. “Sorry. My original may be more help. You can have your rig ask her.”

“Maybe.” I nodded. No need to let on that the Albert Morris original was sitting right next to her. “Can you tell me how Kaolin and your father were getting along recently? Especially just before Yosil disappeared.”

“Getting along? They were always great friends and collaborators. Aeneas gave Dad plenty of leeway for his idiosyncratic behavior and long disappearances, and a permanent waiver from the lie-detector sessions the rest of us take, twice a year.”

“Twice a year? That must be unpleasant.”

Ritu shrugged. “Part of the New Fealty System. Usually they just ask, ‘Are you keeping some big secret that might harm the company?’ Basic security, without getting nosy, and the screenings apply equally to all levels in the company.”

“To all levels?”

“Well,” Ritu’s graydit acquiesced, “I can’t recall anyone insisting that Aeneas himself come take a scan in person.”

“Out of fear?”

“Courtesy! He’s a good employer. If Aeneas doesn’t want to meet other people in the flesh, why should anybody in the UK family choose to question his reasons?”

Why indeed? I pondered. No reason … except old-fashioned flaming curiosity! Clearly, it’s another case of personality matching your career path. Folks like me just aren’t cut out for this new world of fealty oaths and big industrial “families.”

We lapsed into silence after that and I didn’t mind. In fact, I needed an excuse to shut down … that is, pretend to go into dormant mode. The car would drive itself toward the distant mesa where her father’s cabin lay. During those hours, I ought to get some good old organic sleep.

Fortunately, Ritu herself supplied a justification. “I gave this ditto some net research to do during the drive. Would you mind if I proceed now?”

On her lap lay a chador portable workstation, doubtless very sophisticated, with an opaque hood that could be tossed over the head, shoulders, and arms.

“Fine,” I said.

“Do you want a privacy screen, in addition to the chador?”

She nodded, repaying me with the same appealing smile that I saw when we first met. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Some people think courtesy is wasted on dittos, but I never understood their reasoning. I sure appreciate it when I’m clay, or when I’m pretending to be. Anyway, her needs coincided with my own.

“Sure. I’ll set the screen for six hours. We should be getting close to the cabin about then, with dawn coming up.”

“Thank you … Albert.” Her smile took on higher wattage, making me flush. I didn’t want it to show, so with no more ceremony than a friendly nod, I touched the PS button between our seats, releasing a sheet of nanothreads from overhead, creating a black curtain that quickly solidified into a palpable barrier, separating the car’s occupants. I stared at it for a minute, briefly forgetting the real reason why I had impulsively decided to take this trip in person. Then I remembered.

Clara. Oh yeah.

I pulled a sleeping cap out of my valise, laying it over my temples. With its help, a few hours should do just fine.

Ideally, ditRitu would never know.

The interrupt call yanked me out of a dream. A true meat-nightmare in which an army of dark figures struggled across a blasted moonscape, too sere to support any life. Yet there I stood, rooted in place like a dying tree, unable to move as towering metallic forms stomped all around me, flourishing blood-drenched claws.

One part of me clenched in terror, wholly subsumed in the mirage. Meanwhile, a more detached portion stood back, as we sometimes do in dreams, abstractly recognizing the scene from a sci-fi holofilm that scared me spitless, back when I was seven. One of the few deliberately cruel things my sister ever did to me, when we were young, was to play that creepy thing for me late one night, despite a “Toxic for Preteens” warning label.

I woke, floundering in the brief disorientation that comes from getting torn out of REM sleep, wondering where I was and how I got there.

“Wha — ?” The induction cap fell off as I sat up, heart pounding.

Glancing left, I saw a moonlit desert landscape flowing gently past as the Volvo cruised a two-lane highway, without another vehicle insight. Spiky Joshua trees cast eerie shadows across the dry realm of rattlesnakes, scorpions, and maybe a few hardy tortoises. To my right, the privacy screen stood intact, swallowing light and sound. Fortunately. It kept Ritu from witnessing my undignified and undittolike wakening.

“Well? Are you up?”

The voice — low and directional — came from the car’s control panel. A homunculus stared at me with a face like my own, only glossy black, wearing an expression that fell just short of insolent disdain.

“Uh, right.” I rubbed my eyes. “What time izzit?”

“Twenty-three forty-six.”

So. About three and a half hours since I curled up for a nap. This had better be important.

“What’s up?” I croaked with a dry mouth.

“Urgent matters.”

Behind the ebony duplicate I saw my home workroom. Every screen was lit, several tuned to news outlets.

“There’s been an accident at Universal Kilns. Looks like industrial sabotage. Someone set off a prion-catalyst bomb.”

“A … what?”

“A cloud of organic replicators designed to spread and permeate the facility, ruining every synthetic soul-mesh in the place.”

Blinking in surprise, I must have stared like an idiot.

“Why would anyone—”

“Why isn’t our chief concern right now,” my jet golem interrupted, sharply and typically. “It appears that two of our own duplicates were inside UK headquarters at the time. ‘Behaving suspiciously’ is the phrase I sifted out of a police decrypt. They’re arranging warrants right now to come over and seize our records.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Two of them? Two of our dits?”

“Plus a couple of Pal’s.”

“P-Pal? But … I haven’t even spoken to him in … there must be some mistake.”

“Perhaps. But I have a bad feeling about this. Both logic and intuition suggest that we’re being set up. I suggest you drop present concerns and return at once.”

Appalled and mystified, I could only agree. This had much higher priority than nosing around Yosil Maharal’s old cabin — or my other impulsive aims for this trip.

“I’m turning around,” I said, reaching for the controls. “At top speed I should reach home in about—”

The jetto cut me off abruptly, raising a glossy hand.

“I’m picking up Citywatch — a realtime alert. Unauthorized pyrotechnics, five klicks east of here …”

A dreadful pause, then -

“A missile launch. The spectrum matches an Avengerator Six. They’re tracking …”

Dark eyes met mine.

“It’s coming here. ETA ten seconds.”

I stammered: “B-but …”

With ineffable calm, ebony fingers danced. “I’m spilling everything to external cache twelve. You concentrate on saving our hide. Then find out who did this and get the bas—”

Like a doomed mirror, my dark reflection abruptly shattered into millions of glittering shards that swirled briefly in front of me. Then, one by one, they rapidly winked out till only a faint stir of air remained.

The Volvo spoke up with the dull voice tones of silicon.

“YOU ASKED TO BE TOLD OF ANY NEWS EVENTS EXCEEDING PRIORITY LEVEL FIVE THAT AFFECT YOUR HOME NEIGHBORHOOD. I AM PICKING UP FLASH REPORTS OF A LEVEL NINE EMERGENCY ON YOUR BLOCK, CENTERED AT YOUR ADDRESS.”

How I envied our ancestors, who were sometimes spared bad tidings for a few hours or days, back in technologically benighted eras when news traveled much slower than light and was channeled through journalists or bureaucrats. I didn’t really want to see. I barely managed to choke out:

“Show me.”

A series of holo images erupted, showing instanews from half a dozen publicams and private voyeur-floaters, programmed to zoom like vultures toward anything unusual, selling their feeds directly to the Net. In this case, the attractive novelty was a conflagration. A house — my house — burning wildly and with such heat that a flame funnel had already formed, tipping any unwary cams that fluttered too close.

Stunned, I worked for a while on pure reflex, paying top rates for pan-spectral composites till a clear picture converged out of darkness and flames.

“Damn,” I muttered, hating whoever had done this. “They burned my garden, too.”

I took the car offbeam and turned around, gunning it back toward the city. If I drove at thirty above the speed limit, I figured I could purge all the micro-fines with a public necessity plea. You know, rushing home to help authorities clear up this mess. Anyway, an act of good faith might help convince someone to listen when I proclaim my innocence.

Innocent of what? I still had no clear picture of what happened at Universal Kilns.

Two copies of me … and several of Pallie. But which copies? The one that disappeared at Kaolin Manor, presumably. And the gray that cut off communication after accepting a closed contract? Whatever job it took, things must have gone sour in a big way.

News began filtering out of UK headquarters. A prion bomb had gone off, but preliminary reports were optimistic. Employees jabbered among themselves about an exceptional stroke of luck. The affected area was small because a brave forklift operator sat on the saboteur at the last moment, quenching the explosion with its huge golembody, limiting the poison’s dispersal.

Great, I thought. But what does it all have to do with me?

I got no answer on Pallie’s phone, or via our secret drop box. Not one of the four dittos I had made Tuesday replied to my ultra-urgent pellet flash. I could only account for one of them — the loyal jetto who stayed at his post, striving until hell plummeted into his lap, converting his damp clay body into drifting ceramic flakes.

I glanced at the privacy screen — the curtain separating me from the car’s passenger cell. Should I dissolve it and inform Ritu’s gray? But surely, as a senior UK employee, she must have already received an alert about something amiss at her company. Or was her project so narrowly focused that she banished all distractions, like news?

Maybe she did know, and preferred to keep the curtain up. Rumors, spreading across the Net, already named me as a likely suspect in the sabotage at Universal Kilns. I debated whether to dissolve the privacy screen from this side and try to explain. Practice my innocent plea, before trying it on the police …

Just then a pair of sharp glints caught my eye. Headlights. Reluctantly, I ratcheted down the Volvo’s hell-bent speed … then brought it down some more. Something struck me as wrong about the lights. Their position on the road was odd. Maybe the highway swung a bit to the right, up ahead …

Only it didn’t seem about to. I kept edging rightward, instinctively planning to pass the headlights on that side, but unexpectedly the road drifted the other way, slightly left! Tapping the brake, I slackened speed some more, hoping to consult the nav computer.

The other car was close!

Expecting to finally avoid him on the right, I nearly plowed into the other fellow before comprehending the situation in an instant. The imbecile had pulled onto the shoulder on my side, pointing his high beams at oncoming traffic! Only a last-second left swerve took me back onto the road, missing the fool by inches!

The swerve turned into a spin, tires squealing and smoking as the world reeled. I had time to regret a life spent blithely ignoring basic traffic safety rules. No wonder Clara insisted on doing the driving, whenever we went somewhere together. My wonderful, fierce Clara … and no ghost of mine to console her.

I envisioned ending up like Yosil Maharal, crumpled at the bottom of a ditch … till the whirling spin finally ended with the Volvo squat and safe, sitting in the middle of the two-lane highway, shining its twin beams back at the idiot who almost caused a wreck.

A dark figure stepped from the other car, hard to picture amid the glare. I was about to get out too, and have some choice words with the fellow. Then I saw that he carried something long and heavy. Shading my eyes against the dazzle, I watched him raise the bulky, tubelike thing to his shoulder.

“Pulp!” I cursed, slamming into second gear and pounding the accelerator. Instinct urged me to turn the wheel, frantically swerving to flee whatever weapon he was bringing to bear! Only Albert’s forebrain knew better.

Clara explained it to me long ago — a basic military principle.

Sometimes your only hope is to scream defiance, charge ahead; and hope for the best.

Evidently. The tactic sure surprised my attacker, who leaped back, colliding with the hood of his car before trying to steady his aim. I howled, shoving my right foot to the floor, spurring the Volvo’s engine to an emergency-power roar.

In that split instant, amid the glare of two converging sets of headlights, I knew several things at once.

Good lord, it’s Aeneas Kaolin!

And — he’s going to get his shot off before I reach him.

And — no matter what weapon he’s got, I’ll still have the satisfaction of turning his sorry clay ass into pottery shards.

That offered small comfort as a bolt of horrid lightning spewed from Kaolin’s gun, enveloping my car in fireworks. Pain followed right behind.

Still, through the blinding coruscation I got to see the platinum ditto throw both arms up, venting a last-instant wail of spontaneous despair.