Kiln People

Ritu, too, must use her UK co

“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—”