Kiln People

“A relaxing agent. We have tasks ahead of us, you and I. It won’t be helpful for you to get upset. You tend to get unpredictable when agitated.”

Huh. Clara says the very same thing about me. I’ll take it from her, but not from this clown. Sedative or no, I’ll get “agitated” whenever I darn well please.

“You talk as if we’ve done this before.”

“Oh yes. Not that you’d remember. The first time we met was long ago and not in this lab. All the other times … I disposed of the memories.”

How can I react to such news, except by staring? This implies I’m not the first Albert Morris that Maharal has ditnapped. He must have snared several other copies — some of those who mysteriously vanished over the years — and trashed them when he was done …

… when he was done doing what? The usual perversions don’t seem Maharal’s style.

I hazard a guess. “Experiments. You’ve been grabbing my dits and experimenting on them. But why? Why me?”

Maharal’s eyes are glassy. I can see my own gray face reflected in them.

“Many reasons. One is your profession. You regularly lose high-quality golems without worrying much about it. As long as your mission goes well — villains are caught and the client pays — you write off a few unexplained losses here and there as part of the job. You don’t even report them for insurance.”

“But—”

“Of course there’s more.”

He says it in such a way, one that’s both knowing and tired of repetition, as if he’s given me the same explanation many times before. It’s a notion I find chilling.

Silence stretches. Is he waiting? Testing me? Am I supposed to figure out something, just from evidence before my eyes?

The initial flush of kiln-baking has faded. He stands before me in standard gray tones, looking moderately fresh … but not entirely. Some of those under-the-skin blotches haven’t gone away. Whatever process he uses to restore élan vital must be uneven. Imperfect, like a film doye

“There … must be a limit. A limit to the number of times you can refresh the cells.”

He nods.

“It has always been a mistake to seek salvation solely through continuity of the body. Even the ancients knew this, back when a human spirit had just one home.

“Even they knew — perpetuity is carried not by the body but by the soul.”

Despite a vatic tone, I could tell he meant this in a technological as well as a spiritual sense. “Carried by the soul … You mean from one body to another.” I blinked. “From a ditto to some body other than its original?”

It sinks in. “Then you’ve made another breakthrough. Something even bigger than extending a golem’s expiration deadline.”

“Go on,” he says.

I’m reluctant to speak the words.

“You … think you can go on indefinitely, without the real you.”

A smile spreads across the steel gray face, showing pleasure at my guess, like a teacher gazing at a favorite pupil. Yet there is chilling harshness in his golem grin.

“Reality is a matter of opinion.

“I am the true Yosil Maharal.”

22

Mime’s the Word

This is my first chance to recite a report since I barely escaped that mess at Universal Kilns.

Talking into an old-fashioned autoscribe feels like a poor use of precious time, especially when I’m on the run. How much more convenient it is for Albert’s special-model ditective grays — outfitted with fancy subvocal recorders and built-in compulsions to describe everything they see or think, in realtime present tense! But I’m just a utility green, even after getting several dye jobs. A cheap knockoff. If there’s to be an account of my miserable part in all this, I must do it the hard way.

Which brings up the prize question. An account for whom?

Not for realAlbert, my maker, who is surely dead. Or the cops, who would as soon dissect me as look at me. As for my gray brothers. Hell, it creeps me out just thinking about them.

So why bother reciting at all? Who will care?

I may be a frankie, but I can’t stop picturing Clara, away fighting her war in the desert, unaware that her real lover has been fried by a missile. She deserves the modern consolation — to hear about it from his ghost. That means me, since I’m the only ditto left. Even though I don’t really feel like Albert Morris at all.

So here it is, dear Clara. A ghost-written letter to help you get past the first stage of grief. Poor Albert had his faults, but at least he cared. And he had a job.

I was there when it happened — the “attack” on Universal Kilns, I mean. Standing on the factory floor not thirty yards away, staring in wonder as gray number two ran by, all blotchy and discolored from something horrid that was roiling his guts, preparing to burst. He sped on past, barely glancing at me, or at Pal’s little ferret-ditto on my shoulder, though we had just gone through Hades to sneak inside and rescue him!

Ignoring our shouts, he searched frantically, then found what he was looking for — a place to die without hurting anybody.

Well, anybody except that poor forklift driver, who never understood why a stranger suddenly wanted to burrow up his gloaca. And that was just the fellow’s first rude surprise. The giant ditworker let out a bellow, then began expanding to several times his former size, like a distended balloon … like some cartoon character blowing too hard on his own thumb. I thought the unlucky forklift was about to explode! Then we’d all be finished. Me for sure. Everyone in the factory. Universal Kilns. Maybe every ditto in the city?

(Imagine all the archies having to do everything for themselves! They’d know how, of course. But everyone is so used to being many — living several lives in parallel. Being limited to just one at a time would drive folks nuts.)

Lucky for us, the hapless forklift stopped expanding at the last moment. Like a surprised blowfish, he stared about with goggle eyes, as if thinking, This was never in my contract. Then the soul-glow extinguished. The clay body shuddered, hardened, and went still.

Man, what a way to go.

There followed a maelstrom of chaos and clamoring alarms. Production machinery shut down. Worker-golems dropped every routine task and the vast factory thronged with emergency teams, converging to contain the damage. I saw displays of reckless courage — or it would have been courage if the crews weren’t expendable duplicates. Even so, it took valor to approach the bloated carcass. Faint sprays jetted from the leaking, distended body. Any ditto who brushed even a droplet fell in writhing agony.

But most of the poison was checked, held inside the massive, quivering forklift. As it started to slump and dissolve from within, purple-striped cleaners arrived with long hoses, spraying the area with anti-prion foam.

Company officials followed. No real humans yet, but lots of busy scientific grays in white coats, then some bright blue policedits and a silver-gold Public Safety proctor. Finally, a platinum duplicate of the UK chief himself, Vic Aeneas Kaolin, strode upon the scene demanding answers.

“Come on,” Pallie’s little ferret-self said from my shoulder. “Let’s scram. You’re orange right now, but the big guy still may recognize your face.”

Despite that, I was tempted to stay and find out what just happened. Maybe help clear Albert’s name. Anyway, what awaited me out there in the world? Ten hours of futile head-scratching, listening to the whining recriminations of Gadarene and Lum till my clock ran out and it was my own turn to melt away?