KilnPeople

how	who
why	who

A Good Head for Wine ... or how Monday's green ditto brings home fond memories of the river ...

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

"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.

" ... 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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

"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.

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.

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.

"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.

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?"

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 ... "

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.

"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.

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

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?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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 -- "

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.

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

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

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."

"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.

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.

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.

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?"

"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?"

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.

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.

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.

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

"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 -- "

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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?"

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.

"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:

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:

"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?

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 -- "

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.

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.

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.

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."

"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."

"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.

Something in the Fridge ... or how realAl decides that he needs some help ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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 -- "

"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.

"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."

"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."

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

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.

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.

"His rig?" I asked, shaken. "Not the gray ditto I met, but the real ... your father's dead?"

"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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 --

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.

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.

"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.

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

" -- 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 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.

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."

"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."

"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?

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.

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

"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.

"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.

"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.

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

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

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.

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

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.)

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.

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.

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

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.

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 --

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

PART I

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