Kiln People

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 sca

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 pe

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 ski

“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 pla

“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, ru

“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.”