29

Imitation of a Counterfeit Life ... Gumby and Pal, poking around ...

The interior of the Rainbow Lounge lay eerily empty.

Some holoflashers had been left on, illuminating the dance floor and the Grudge Pit with twisted images, like multidimensional Dalí landscapes roamed by erotic figures possessing far too many limbs. But without the intense background beat of CeramoPunk music, the flickering shapes were rather pathetic. This place demanded crowding -- a hot press of several hundred brightly colored bodies, hyped to wear their standing waves exposed, ultrasensitive, like the prickly emotions of teenagers.

"I wonder who's gonna take over the Rainbow," Palloid mused. "Do you think Irene had heirs or left a will? Does it all go up for auction?"

"Why? Thinking of becoming a tavernkeeper?"

"It's tempting." He leaped from my shoulder onto the bar, a broad expanse of heavily lacquered teakwood. "But maybe I don't have the personality for it."

"You mean the patience, concentration, or tact," I commented while poking around. The bar featured a dazzling array of tubes, faucets, bottles, and dispensers of intoxicants, euphorics, stimulants, levelers, speeders, slowers, uppers, downers, horizoners, myopics, stigmatics, zealotropics, hystericogens --

"Touché, Albert. Though Irene's idea of tact was rather specialized. The kind used by pimps, bouncers, and cops. Screw 'em all."

"Nihilist," I muttered while scanning labels for a dizzying array of concoctions. My search wasn't going to be easy. The varieties of abuse that you can put a clay body through never cease to amaze me, and almost certainly astonished the inventors of dittotech, back when people started fiddling with home modification kits. You can fine-tune a golem so it will react spectacularly to alcohol or acetone, electric or magnetic fields, sonic or radar stimulation, images or aromatics ... not to mention a thousand specially designed pseudoparasites. In other words, you can pound, pluck, or molest the Standing Wave in countless ways that would be lethal to your real body, and transfer home vivid memories when the busy day is done.

No wonder there are experience addicts. By comparison, the opiate-alkaloid cocktails that sad folks used to inject in Grandpa's day were like a dose of vitamins.

"Nihilist? You dare call me that? Who's standing here, using up lifespan helping you, friend?"

"You call it help to squat up there, kibitzing? How about some assistance down here, behind the bar?"

He replied with a desultory snarl, but did leap to ground at the far end, sniffing as he scanned labels, grumbling audibly that I owed him for this. I wasn't buying any of his act, of course. My friend's personal addiction was to poke away at the world's weirdness. After events of the last hour, he never seemed happier.

I hope he gets to inload all this, I thought, recalling the real Pal, imprisoned in his life-sustaining chair. He'd get a kick out of remembering old Horus, toppling onto his butt from the Final Options van. Pal might also help distract Clara from her grief by describing how we spent these haunted hours ...

No, I shied away from thinking about her. Anyway, Clara would remember Albert with fondness. That beat most kinds of immortality that I'd heard of. A lot more immortality than this particular green frankie was going to get.

Anyway, who wants to live forever?

I kept marveling at the variety of substances stored behind the bar. Irene must've had real political clout, to get an environmental variance. There are more toxic brews here than in the late state of Delaware.

"Got it!" Palloid announced, punctuating his triumph with a smug somersault. I hurried over to his end of the bar where a series of large wooden pull levers stood -- like those used to serve draft beer in a real people tavern. One of them bore a designation that said: Ketone Kocktail.

"Hm, could be. If she had said, 'ketone tap.' "

"Are you sure she said 'cap'?"

"Pretty sure." I jiggled the pull lever, not eager to dispense any of the pressurized contents. My cheap green body -- even renewed under artificial dyes of orange and gray -- couldn't endure most of the exotic mixtures offered for sale here.

"The cap -- " Palloid began.

"I know. I'm checking it now." The lever had a large decorative tip, like a tapered brass tube covering the end. I twisted one way, then the other. It gave a little, then no more. Even when I wrenched hard.

I was about to give up, then thought, Maybe it works in several successive directions, like a Chinese puzzle box.

I tried combinations of twists, pulls, and shoves, and began making some progress with the cap, confirming my guess. Gradually it worked outward along a complicated, grooved sleeve. A physical storage device, then, like the piezomechanical recorders that Albert always installed in his grays. More secure than anything electronic. Irene clearly grasped that the world of digital data is far too flighty to entrust with any real secrets. Safety-through-encryption is a bad joke. If you must keep something away from prying eyes, put it in hardwriting. Then hide the only copy in a box.

I hope this thing doesn't require any sort of ID check, or involve disarming a self-destruct. When Irene told me about this cache with her final words, I assumed it was an act of deathbed contrition -- or perhaps a little karmic insurance. But another explanation was possible. A trap. A petty act of vengeance for interfering with her last red ditto.

If I could sweat, I would have started right about then.

"Better step back, Pal," I urged.

"Already done it, chum," I heard him call from beyond the farthest end of the bar, over a dozen meters removed. "Other than that, I'm with you all the way."

His wry expression of support almost made me chuckle. Almost.

I didn't breathe through the last several twists and turns, operating on storage cells until ...

... the brass cylinder came off at last, revealing a hollow interior with something crammed inside. Exhaling with relief, I tapped it on the bar.

A slim tube of plastic rolled out. Beta, said a paper tag, attached to the film with a clip.

"Cool!" Palloid yelped, leaping onto the bar again, using agile paw-hands to pry at other decorative caps. "I bet she had all kinds of stuff hidden away. Maybe Irene had a sideline, blackmailing politicians! She was in the business of catering to perversions and there's still lots of depravities that can cost you votes, if people find out about 'em!"

"Right. Dream on." As if Pallie cared about politics. "Just be careful," I urged. It was my turn to retreat cautiously while he fiddled with one poison dispenser after another. Further warnings would be futile, so I left him there, happily risking his brief existence on a whim.

"I'll be in Irene's office," I said.

We had passed it along the way, a sophisticated-looking data center offering surveillance views into every corner of the establishment. (I chuckled when I saw Palloid barely dodge a spray of some fuming liquid as he kept poking around, looking for more secret hiding places.) There were also some of those hookups the luckless grayAlbert mentioned in his recital-diary -- plug-in units designed to let a ditto link directly (well, sort of) to computers. From everything I've read, the advantages are dubious. I'd much rather wear a chador.

Luckily, the office held some regular net-access consoles, too. Irene had left several turned on, indicating rushed departure. I might not have to mess with passwords and such. Hacking is such a retro and tedious chore.

Anyway, my first stop was a simple analog strip reader. The film tube fit perfectly. Are there any clues here to explain why someone arranged for that vicious attack against Universal Kilns? Or the much worse felony of real-killing Albert Morris?

As soon as I activated the strip reader, the first holofoto spilled into midair before me. So that's what "Vic Collins" looked like. Tuesday's hapless gray was right about this character. Plaid clothes over plaid skin ... ouch!

Yet it made devilish sense. Some people hide their appearance by looking nondescript. Forgettable. But you can accomplish much the same thing by making it too painful and disgusting to look at you. Still, it was hard to see how this portrait could help answer any of the big questions.

Was Irene right about Vic Collins being a front persona of Beta, the notorious ditnapper?

I recalled that last encounter with one of Beta's rapidly dissolving yellows, stuck in a disposal tube next to the Teller Building, slobbering cryptic remarks about betrayal and somebody called "Emmett." Albert was already tired and distracted by then. And wary toward yet another of Beta's notorious head games.

Sitting in Irene's office, I saw little similarity between that yellowdit and the holo visage in front of me, a squarish face, rather snide, and cross-hatched with a blinding array of intersecting stripes. There were several dozen pictures in Irene's secret archive, date-stamped, every time the conspirators rendezvoused in back of a limousine at some remote location -- occasionally with a third party who looked like a cheap ivory of Gineen Wammaker. According to a notation, Collins used a static-disruptor to block sophisticated photo-optical recording devices. These snapshots on old-fashioned chemical emulsion were the best Irene could do as she kept a wary eye on her allies.

Not wary enough, though. Did Irene ever try tracking Collins through the publicam network? I wondered. The first step -- following his trail back to the limo rental agency -- seemed obvious.

Oh, Albert would have loved the challenge! Starting with these time-and-place fixes, he'd concentrate with all the intensity of a Vingean focus trance, backtracing the plaid Collins-dittos, eager to see what tricks they used to cover their trail, pouncing on any slipup.

I suppose I could have tried to do that, sitting there in Irene's deserted office. But did I want to? Just because I inherit Albert's memories, and some skills, that doesn't mean I'm him! Anyway, that missile wrecked more than Al's house. Nell contained all those specialized programs to help Morris follow people and dittos across the vast cityscape.

There are times I wish the citizens of PEZ were less laid back and freedom-loving. Elsewhere, folks put up with higher levels of regulation and supervision. Every golem made in Europe carries a real transponder, not a pathetic little pellet tag. Factory-registered to its owner, trackable by satellite from activation to dissolution. There are still ways to cheat, but a detective knows where to start.

On the other hand, I live here for a reason. Tyranny may have only taken a holiday. It could return, first in one corner of the world, then another. And democracy is no absolute guarantee. But in PEZ, the word "authority" has always been so suspect. They'd have to kill everybody first, then start over from scratch.

Turning the film cylinder, I flipped from one holo to the next as Irene and her collaborators met to discuss a stratagem for quasi-legal industrial espionage, or so she thought. But her allies had other plans -- manipulating Irene for her resources and Albert Morris for his skills. And the fanatics, Gadarene and Lum, setting them up to take initial blame.

Having met those two, I knew that any first-rate investigator would soon grow suspicious. They just weren't competent enough to sabotage Universal Kilns. And though Gadarene might have a motive to destroy UK, Lum wanted to "liberate slaves," not destroy them. A smart cop would see them as patsies, framed to take the fault. Beta set up Irene to take the heat when that first level failed.

She realized all this when the news broke last night. A knock on the door could come within hours. Oh, she could have stayed and helped investigators peel away more layers. But Beta knew her too well. Revenge wouldn't matter, only arranging with Final Options for a last stab at "immortality."

So, I'm the one left to clean up after her ... and after Albert, for that matter. And ...

It seems I'm spending all my lifespan scrubbing toilets after all.

Actually, Irene did a good job getting close-ups of Beta with her little microcam -- if it really was him. Perhaps my frankie brain viewed things differently, but I was more interested in examining the face than trying to track it from one publicam to another.

All right, I thought. Question number one: was "Vic Collins" really Beta, the infamous ditnapper and copyright thief? The red Irene ditto seemed sure. Maybe they had a long and profitable business relationship. And I could easily picture the pragmatic Gineen Wammaker deciding to stop fighting Beta, joining forces with him instead. Weren't they all in approximately the same trade? Catering to perverse cravings?

I snap-enabled a link from the strip reader to Irene's computer, getting quick response when I asked for some standard image-enhancement programs, then used them to zoom on Collins's features. "Now ain't that interesting," I murmured.

Apparently, Collins used a completely different pattern of plaid design, each of the first five times he sent dits to meet Irene. But on the final three occasions, his skin motif remained the same. Which element is meaningful? I wondered. The earlier variation? Or the fact that he later stopped bothering to change patterns?

I didn't have resources to do a mathematical-configuration analysis of the interlocking stripes -- determining if some code lay embedded in the complex patterns. It would be just like Beta to wear cryptic clues on his very skin, daring foes to decipher them. Vic Kaolin did have the resources for such analysis, and I was supposedly working for him at the moment. I could have this evidence forwarded to the mogul in seconds, at a spoken command.

"Zoom in," I said instead, letting the focus of my gaze control where -- the plaid skin on the left cheek of the most recent image of "Vic Collins."

I missed Nell. And especially all the wonderful automated tools she kept in her icy core, ready at Albert's disposal. But with some cheap substitutes, fetched via the Internet, I got a pretty good close-up appraisal of the clay surface, which turned out to be finely molded, with supple, kiln-cured texture. Very high quality. Beta could afford fine bodies.

Hell, I knew that. This wasn't significant or new. So? I'm not Albert Morris. What makes me think I can play private eye?

Before giving up, I decided to point the same tools at earlier images Irene took when Collins first started meeting her in back of limousines. Was it a hunch?

I stared, blinked, and stammered, "What the -- ?"

The texture was entirely different! Coarser. And this time it featured a myriad tiny protrusions, like goosebumps, row after row, at least a thousand per linear centimeter. Pixel emitters, I realized. Like they weave into smart fabrics that change colors on command. Only these lay flush in normal-looking gray pseudoskin. The plaid pattern was created by these elements; some turned dark, others pale, combining to form an illusion of intersecting stripes.

So. Even if I used old publicam records to follow Collins back in time, say to the limo rental agency, I'd lose him anyway. There'd come some point, a bit earlier, when he'd vanish in a crowd at some carefully scouted blind spot. Tracing farther back, I'd never see a plaid person arrive because he shifted coloration instantly! I bet Collins even had inflatable prosthetics under the skin, to alter his facial contours just as quickly. No need for the quick-change dyes, putty, and cosmetics Albert used.

Oh, old Albert had been proud of his own ability to weave in and out of sight, wiping his trail clean. But Collins -- or Beta -- had him beat by a mile! It was enough to make me laugh or cry for poor Al, who used to fancy himself as Sherlock to Beta's Moriarty. He was never in the same league.

All very impressive. But why did Beta stop using his quick-change trick, switching to dittos that were more luxurious but less sneaky? And why did he decide to hire an Albert Morris gray to do the old dodge-and-weave during the attack on UK, instead of handling it himself? I checked all the images again. The last three pictures of Collins were different, all right. You could even see it in his facial expression -- a smirk that first seemed natural struck me as feigned in the later images.

If only the meetings were held here, at the Rainbow! Irene could have made full holo radar scans, recorded voice patterns, word rhythms, hand mannerisms ... all the little habits that a man takes along when he copies himself into clay dolls. Cues nearly as individualized as the Standing Wave itself. Did Irene or Wammaker notice any difference? Were they clueless that something had changed?

That yellow who was melting in the recycling tube, next to the Teller Building ... didn't he claim that some kind of disaster had befallen Beta, even before Blane and I raided the place?

I glanced at a monitor showing the main floor of the Rainbow Lounge. Pal's mini-golem was making a party of it, singing along with a raucous tune that played on the dance floor sound system while he kept poking into every conceivable niche and hiding place, adding to a collection of metal parts torn from various portions of the bar. Only a few small streams of noxious fluid appeared to be leaking onto the floor, so far. But at this rate he might demolish the whole place before his internal clock ran out.

The little mock ferret tapped another decorative cylinder on the bar, peering through it while crooning along to a catchy anthem that had been revered by nihilists long before any of us were born. Rocking back on his haunches, he bayed skyward --

"Life is a lemon and I want my money back!"

Hey, I can relate. In fact, I've felt that way for well over twenty-four hours. But even if I could somehow get a refund on this so-called life, whose account would I send it to?

Toggling a switch on the desk, I called down to the lounge. "Pal! You doing okay down there?"

The driving beat automatically faded as he swiveled around, grinning. "Just great, Gumby, old chum! I found some more secret stashes." He held up a holopix tube like the one I had found. "My hunch was right! Irene had nailed herself a couple of local council officials to blackmail."

"Anything juicy?"

"Naw. Local interest, mostly. I keep hoping for something on the President, or maybe the Protector in Chief. But all I found in the last one are pictures of kids. Family snaps, not kinkyporn." Palloid shrugged. "What about you? Anything useful?"

Useful? I was about to answer no when another of those odd hunches tweaked an off-resonance in my mutated Standing Wave. I signaled Irene's computer with some rapid eye-wink commands, calling up two images of Collins-Beta -- one early and the other late -- flicking back and forth between them. "I'm not sure, but I think ... "

The image on the left showed Beta the chameleon, his gray golemskin studded with a myriad tiny pixel emitters tuned to combine into one of those eye-hurting plaid motifs, but capable of changing instantaneously to some wildly different pattern. The other face, on the right, looked similar at superficial scale. But zooming in close, you could see the tartan pattern was simply painted atop normal gray ...

Wait a minute, I thought, noticing some abrasion marks on the most recent Collins golem, near its left cheek. Nothing unusual there. Clay scratches easily and cannot repair itself. You sometimes end a day pitted and cratered, like some moon. But these tiny scrapes glittered. Closer magnification revealed bits of gray surface coating, curling away from a different hue beneath, still metallic-looking, but shinier. Not quite silvery. More of an expensive-looking matte finish, like white gold.

Or else, maybe, platinum.

"Yeah?" Palloid shouted up at me. "What is it you think?"

I didn't want to say more. Who knew what kind of listening devices Vic Aeneas Kaolin planted in me, when he kindly renewed my lease on pseudolife? Heck, I still lacked any clear picture of his underlying motive for sending me out "to find the truth."

Choosing words carefully, I said, "Maybe it's time you and I got out of here, Pal."

"Yeah? And head where?"

I thought about that. We needed a special kind of help. The kind I never knew existed till yesterday, when I was just a few hours old.

30

Apeing Essence ... realAlbert gets sympathy from a simian simulacrum ...

Fortunately, there was a lot of traffic coming and going to the battle range, everything from big supply carryalls and triple-decker tour buses to jitneys and sportcycles. Air travel's tightly restricted though, and the site is far enough from the city that sending a ditto all this way makes little sense. It would only have short time to loiter around before having to head back again.

True aficionados -- and news reporters -- are better off coming in person, which explains the row of fancy realfolk hotels, amusement centers, and casinos near the main gate, with their high observation towers gazing at the battleground proper. At night, musicians play impromptu arrangements to accompany the flash and bang effects rising over the escarpment.

Like I said, it's a pretty typical military base. Bring the family!

We hitched a ride the final few klicks, flagging down a ramshackle mobile home with twelve wheels and a wheezing catalysis engine that reeked of illegal petrol conversion. The driver, a big fellow, dark brown with greasy locks, welcomed us aboard with a grunt.

"I'm not going all the way to the hotels," he said. "I'll be turnin' offroad to the Candidates Camp."

"We're aimed there as well, sir," I explained with a shallow bow, since he was real while I was pretending not to be. The driver eyed us up and down.

"You don't have the look of soldier-aspirants. What kind of model are you, strategists?"

I nodded and the big fellow guffawed. "Some would-be generals, wandering around lost in the desert!" His deriding tone wasn't unfriendly, though.

I now faced yet another problem. As soon as I stepped inside the big van, a small light started flashing in my left eye. For the first time in almost two days, my implant was picking up a useful carrier wave and asking permission to respond. Three tooth clicks and I could be investigating what happened to my burned-out home and why amateur criminalists linked me to a sabotage attempt at Universal Kilns. Above all, in just moments I could be talking to Clara!

But that little flash also signaled a poison. While passive, my implant wouldn't give away my position. But the moment it latched in, others would know I still lived ... and where to find me.

Ritu and I settled into a back seat while the driver chattered about the war, which had gone through several stunning reverses, a memorable match drawing attention from all over the globe. Soon he pulled off the main highway and down a rutted track leading toward the chaotic encampment I spied earlier.

The Candidates Camp is exactly what you'd expect in an age when war is sport and countless people dream of some way to stand out from the crowd. Amid plumes of trampled dust, you quickly sniff the acrid wafting odors of simmering clay emitted by scores of souped-up portakilns, fussed over by aficionados who bray proudly about their special modifications. Crowds gather each time one opens, to stare and criticize as a new monster steps forth, zingularly equipped in ways that could get you arrested or fined in the city. Gargoyles, ogres, and leviathans ... spiked, fanged, or clawed ... feral-eyed or dripping caustic poisons from their jaws ... yet propelled by the ego and soul-stuff of some nerdy hobbyist, woman-born, preening and posing in the background, hoping to be "discovered" by the professionals, just beyond the fence -- perhaps even winning a coveted place of glory on the honorable plains of battle.

Our driver grew more talkative as he maneuvered into a parking space at one end of the encampment. "I wasn't gonna come out this time, especially after PEZ got off to such a bad start on Monday. Sure looked as if it was gonna be over quick. Good-bye icebergs and hello again water rationing! In fact, I gotta hand it to the Indonesians for coming up with those sneaky little minidit assassin-golems. They sure played havoc with our first-wave troops. But then came our counterattack on Moesta Heights! Did you ever see anything like it?"

"Wow," I said ambiguously, eager only to get out as soon as he shut down the hissing engine.

"Yah, wow. Anyway, I suddenly realized -- I got a perfect battle-mod to counter to those Indie minis! So I figured, come out and give a demo. With any luck, I'll be in the arena soon, making a deal with the Dodecahedron by nightfall!"

"Well, we sure do wish you luck," I mumbled while jiggling the doorknob.

He looked disappointed by my lack of interest. "I had a hunch you two were scouts for the army, but I was wrong about that, wasn't I?"

"Scouts?" Ritu asked, clearly puzzled. "Why would the army have scouts outside the battle range?"

"Go on, get outta here," the driver said, yanking a lever and releasing the door, spilling us into the hot afternoon.

"Thanks for the ride." I jumped to ground and quickly headed south, past a cluster of Winnebagos where families gathered together under a striped canopy, chewing barbecued snacks next to a big holo screen showing recent combat updates. If I were a true fan, I'd stop to check the score and see what odds the touts offered. But I only really care about war during the finals, whenever Clara qualifies.

I think she likes that about me.

On one side stood house trailers fronted with fold-down booths selling everything from hand-woven lumnia rugs and wondrous cleaning formulas to aromatic funnel cakes. Beyond the usual Elvis Shrine, clusters of monster truck aficionados sweated under their beloved vehicles, preparing for a rally at a nearby offroad course. There were the usual types of real-life weirdos -- clippies and stickies and nudies and people walking about shrouded in opaque anonymity chadors -- but all of this was secondary. Fringe stuff to the real purpose of this offbeat festival.

I was looking for its core.

Ritu caught up and grabbed my arm, trying to match my rapid pace. "Scouts?" she asked a second time.

"Talent scouts, Miss Maharal. The reason for all of this." I encompassed the chaotic encampment with a sweep of one arm. "Wannabes and Trytobes converge here to show off their homemade battle-dits in a makeshift coliseum, hoping the pros will be watching. If army guys see anything they like, they may summon the designer inside the fence. Perhaps make a deal."

"Huh. Does that happen often?"

"Officially, it never happens at all," I replied while turning and seeking my bearings. "Amateur ditviolence has been deemed an undesirable public vice, remember? It's sin-taxed and reproved, like drug addiction. Remember how they yammered against it in school?"

"That doesn't seem to be slowing it down any," she murmured.

"No shit. It's a free country. People do what they want. Still, the military can't be seen officially encouraging the trend."

"But unofficially?" One eyebrow arched.

We were passing an arcade where carnies touted all sorts of amusement games and joyrides, most of them mechanical and retro, designed to give a safe but scary thrill to trueflesh. Next door, a long tent sheltered stalls for bio-aficionados to exhibit home-geniformed life forms -- the modern equivalent of prize bulls and pigs -- amid a clamor of grunts, cackles, and braying cries. Lots of color and atmosphere, all the way down to the homey stench.

"Unofficially?" I answered Ritu. "They watch, of course. Half the creativity in the world comes from bored amateurs, nowadays. Open source and fresh clay -- that's all folks need. The army'd be stupid to ignore it."

"I was wondering how you planned to get from here into the base proper," she gestured beyond the exhibits and shouting carnies and whirling fun rides to the killwire fence. "Now I get it. You're looking for one of those scouts!"

We were close enough to the killwire to feel its soul-distorting currents along our spines. It had to be nearby ... the centerpiece of this anarchic fairground. The reason for its being.

Just then I caught a glimpse of my goal, beyond a big, grimy tent with slobbery elephant seal noises coming from within. A long line of archies stood patiently outside, waiting their turn to enter. But whatever was going on inside -- whether violent or massively erotic -- I didn't care, and Ritu quashed her curiosity in order to keep up. I hurried, stepping gingerly past the canvas pavilion with its commotion of loud, clammy grunts.

Looming on the other side of the filthy tent stood a spindly structure of horizontal planks and slanting cables, held up by a single tensegrity spire. Several hundred onlookers crowded the grandstand, setting its spiderweb array jiggling each time they stood to cheer or sat back down with a disappointed collective moan. Their broad posteriors, clad in soft fabrics, showed they were all realfolk, with arms and necks tanned stylishly brown in the desert sun.

Between their cheers and moans came other sounds -- howls and bitter snarls echoing from the arena's heart. Defiant insults, hurled by mouths designed for biting instead of speech. Frenzied impacts and moist tearings.

Some think we're going decadent. That all the urban brawlers, the inload-junkies and pseudowars mean we're becoming like Imperial Rome, with its bloody circuses. Immoral, unbalanced, and doomed to fall.

But unlike Rome, this isn't foisted on us from above. A weak government even preaches moderation. No, it rises from below, just another branching of human enthusiasm, unleashed from old constraints.

So, are we decadent? Or going through a phase?

Is it barbarous when the "victims" come willingly and no lasting harm is done?

I honestly had no answer. Who could know?

The arena's main entrance bore an archies-only symbol and a wary guardian -- somebody's pet monkey, perched on a stool, armed with a spray bottle of solvent non-toxic to trueflesh. Ritu and I could have slipped inside without harm, except possibly to our makeup. But I still had use for the pretense. So we walked by, seeking a place among the non-citizen onlookers who pressed under the grandstand, peering through a shuffling maze of archie feet. Many of the dittos were combatants, garishly hoofed, taloned, and armored, awaiting their own turns on the gladiatorial grounds.

It stank down there. Slobbering, grunting, and farting dense colored puffs from their hyped-up metabolisms, contestants exchanged good-natured jibes while swapping bets and opinions about each round of grotesque slaughter. But not everybody. One fellow was actually reading from a cheap web-plaque, through a pair of outsized spectacles perched on his tyrannosaur snout. When a trumpeted blare called him forth to the arena that ersatz dinosaur tossed his lit-plaque to the ground but gently plucked the eyeglasses between two pincers and slipped them onto one plank of the grandstand, between the feet of an archie who picked up the specs and pocketed them without a word.

Well, some people like to make the most of their time, whatever body they happen to be wearing.

Clara had told me about this place, though I never visited during any of my earlier trips from the city to watch her platoon in action. She didn't think highly of the "innovations" that bright amateur designers concoct to show off next to the killwire fence.

"Most are too gaudy, based on legendary monsters or personal nightmares," she said. "They may be fine for a scary movie, but no damned good in combat. A frightening leer won't help much when the enemy has a particle beam weapon sighted between your horns."

That's my girl. Always ready with tender wisdom. I found myself actually breathless with anticipation, getting close to her at last. Beyond just missing Clara, I also knew she'd have insights about my predicament with Kaolin, Maharal, and Universal Kilns. Anyway, I wanted to reach her before word got through that I'd been killed in my home by a terror missile. Maybe she's been too distracted to watch any news, I hoped. The last thing I wanted was for her to be worried or in mourning while she still had a job to do for team and country.

"Oh my," Ritu Maharal commented while peering into the arena at a maelstrom of bellowing carnage transpiring within. "I never realized all this could be so -- " She fell short, breathless, unable to find words.

I was peering, too. Not at the fight but the surroundings, seeking a particular entity. The object of my quest wouldn't have fangs. It wouldn't be an archie, either. Professionals have better things to do with realtime than attend this amateur exhibition in person.

"You never realized all this could all be so what?" I asked, making conversation absently. There were some big forklift-type dittos on the other side of the ring, assigned to haul away losers before their smoldering bodies could turn into slurry. But no. That was a lot of pseudoflesh to invest. I was betting on something more compact, economical.

"So exciting! I always felt a kind of aloof superiority toward this kind of thing. But you know, if I imprinted one of these combat dittos, I bet I'd actually stay interested in the same thing for a day ... both of me, I mean."

"Hm, great ... unless your monstrous alter ego turned around and bit you in half," I commented. Rita blanched but I continued to scan. The one I sought would need a good vantage point, yet shouldn't be obvious to all the aficionados flocking round this place. What if they don't send anybody? I worried. Maybe the professionals just use some hidden camera to keep an eye on --

Then I spotted the guy. I felt sure of it. A small figure, shambling about the edges of the arena, poking at each fallen warrior, reading their pellets with a narrow stick-probe. He looked like a chimp or gibbon. You see little fellows like him all over town, so common they almost fade into the background.

Of course, I thought, the tax collector.

"Come on," I told Ritu, pulling at her when she tried to stay and watch the end of a bout. I swear, I almost left her right there, so anxious was I to move on. Fortunately, one contestant struck the other a fatal blow just then, sending its massive body crashing with a thud that set the whole amphitheater vibrating and the crowd frenetically cheering.

"Let's go!" I shouted.

This time she came.

The ape grunted and spat when I called to him from behind the arena. He squatted on his haunches atop a wooden pillar, idly watching the next event.

"Go 'way," he muttered, in a voice only a little more clear than a real chimp's.

Naturally, I wasn't the first to have figured out his guise. It must be a nuisance when amateurs come over and try to influence him with direct appeals.

"I need to talk to a member of the 442nd," I said.

"Sure. You an' every other fan, after the assault on Moesta Ridge. But sorry, no autographs till after the war, pal."

"I'm no fan. This message is personal and urgent. She'll want to hear it, believe me!"

The chimp spat again, brown slip with a touch of arsenic glaze. "And why should I believe you?"

Frustration boiled inside, but I kept my voice even.

"Because if Sergeant Clara Gonzales finds out that you kept me from getting through to her, she'll grab you by the archie and give you a memory you'll never get rid of."

The ape blinked at me a couple of times.

"You do sound like you know Clara. Who are you?"

It was a dangerous moment. But what choice did I have?

I told him ... and those dark eyes stared at me. "So, you're the ghost of poor Albert the ditective, come all this way to bid her good-bye. Damn shame what happened to you, man! Getting torched by a hoodoo missile always hurts. I can't imagine what it must've felt like in person."

"Uh, right. I kind of hoped to reach Clara before she found out about it."

The pseudochimp tsked and shook his head. "I wish you had, fellah. 'Cause you wasted your remaining span coming out here. The minute Clara heard the news, she took off!"

It was my turn to stare in surprise.

"She ... went AWOL? In the middle of a war?"

"Not only that, she snatched a guv'ment copter and flew straight to the city. Our team commander's in a funk over this, let me tell you!"

"I can't believe it." My legs felt weak and my heart beat hard.

"Yeah, ironic. She drops everything rushing to town, only to miss your ghost who rushed out to console her."

The observer-scout leaped off his perch to land next to me and held out a hand. "I'm Gordon Chen, corporal in the 117th Support Company. We met once, I think, when you came down for last year's playoffs."

An image came to mind, of a rather tall half-Oriental fellow with perfect posture and a gentle smile ... about the least simian-looking human being I ever saw. Yet he wore this body with ease. "Yeah," I answered absently. "At a party after the Uzbek semi-final match. We talked about gardening."

"Uh-huh. So it really is you." His ditto-teeth looked formidable when he grinned. "Gautama! I often wondered how it must feel to be a ghost. Is it weird?" He shook his head. "Forget I asked. Is there's anything I can do for you, Albert? Just ask."

There was something he could do for me. But asking could wait a few seconds. Or minutes. I still had to let it all sink in. My disappointment at having missed Clara. Plus surprise that she could be so impulsive. But above all, one transfixing fact.

I always knew she cared for me. We're great friends, good in bed. We make each other laugh.

But for her to pull a crazy stunt like this! Dropping everything to go sift the ashes of my house, hoping and praying that I wasn't there when it blew up ... Why, she must actually love me!

Over the course of the last two days I had learned that I was both a crime suspect and a target for assassins. I'd been ambushed, left for dead, then endured a harsh desert trek, and faced even more disappointing setbacks. Yet, despite all that, I suddenly found myself feeling rather ... well ... happy.

If I survive the efforts of my enemies, and don't wind up a corpse or in jail, I'm going to have to talk to her. Rethink our reluctance to --

Just then, the ongoing background noise of grunting combat gave way to a loud sizzle, followed by a wet-heavy swatting sound. The crowd of ecstatic archies stood up all at once, roaring and setting the spiderweb grandstand jiggling as a spiky round object soared out of the arena in a high arc, dripping trails of gore behind it.

"Sherds!" Corporal Chen cried, leaping back with apelike agility. Ritu and I hurried after, barely dodging as a fanged and glowering head struck just meters away, rolling to a stop near my feet.

Rapid golem-dissolution was already setting in as smoke and slurry poured out both ears, staining the moist sand. The owner of this head better fetch it quick, if he wanted a complete inload. All those barbs and horns and stingers might be part of a hobbyist's loving, homemade combat design, but I sure wasn't bending over to touch the huge, snaggle-toothed thing!

And yet, even after what it had just been through, the head still clung to consciousness. Crocodillian eyes blinked for a few seconds, focusing briefly with an expression more disappointed than tragic. The jaw moved. Trying to speak. Against my better judgment, I bent closer.

"Wow ... " the head whispered, while light still glinted in those feral eyes. "What ... a ... russshhh ... !"

The chimpanzee soldier snorted, a sound tinged with grudging respect.

Stepping back, I turned to Clara's comrade and asked, "Did you mean what you just said -- about being willing to do something for us?"

"Sure, why not?" The ape-ditto shrugged. "Any buddy of Clara's is a bud of mine."

31

Golem Crazy ... as Little Red gets ready to make his mark ...

I stared at the gray ghost of Yosil Maharal, as the news gradually sank in

"A ... missile attack?"

"That's right. Little remains of your home -- and your archie -- but a smoking crater. So your only hope now is the same as mine. Successful completion of my experiment."

I reacted with churning fear and dread, naturally. This cheap red body that I wore, though small, was equipped for a full range of emotion. And yet, I've stared death in the face so many times, and till now always managed to put off that final losing match. So why not hope? Maharal could be bluffing. Testing my reactions.

I kept a blank face, turning things around. Testing him.

"Continuity, Professor. That's what it's all about. Even with the new technology to refill élan cells, your clay body can't be replenished more than a few times. You've got to emulate my copying ability in order to make soul-impressions from one ditto to the next, indefinitely. Without an organic brain to return to, it's your only option."

He nodded. "Go on."

"But something's eluded you. Whatever I do -- however I manage to make such good copies -- the knack isn't easily duplicated."

"That's right, Morris. I believe it has partly to do with your casual attitude toward the dittos that went missing over the years. An attitude you demonstrate even now. See how relaxed you are, on hearing that your real body was destroyed? Anyone else would be frantic."

I felt anything but relaxed. In fact, I was pissed off! But other priorities ranked higher than going orbital and screaming at this fellow. All my other prisoner-selves would have diagnosed Smersh-Foxleitner syndrome by now. They'd decide to feign a lackadaisical attitude. Act unimpressed. Draw Maharal out.

Shall I stay with that approach? Or try a new tack in order to surprise him?

At the moment, shackled down, I saw no way to take advantage of surprise. Better save it for later.

"You see," Maharal continued, warming to his subject, "we humans are all still deeply rooted in the animal response set ... the desperate drive to continue organic existence. Inherited survival instinct played an important role in our evolution, but it can also be an anchor, pinning down the Standing Wave. It's one reason why few people make truly first-rate ditto impressions, without affectual holes or memory gaps. They hold back, never letting their entire selves roll fully in the clay."

"Hm. Cute metaphor," I replied. "But there are millions of exceptions. In fact, lots of folks are far more careless with their golems than I am ... or was. Experience junkies. Org-warriors. Janitors who make commercial throwaway units by the gross. And blue cops who will gladly jump in front of a train to save a cat. Then there are nihilists -- "

That word made Yosil wince, his expression briefly pained. A deeply personal kind of pain. Something clicked as I put together some disjointed clues from what felt like only yesterday.

"Your daughter," I guessed, stabbing at a hunch.

He nodded, an unsteady jerk. "Ritu might be called a nihilist, of a certain kind. Her dittos are ... unpredictable. Disloyal. They don't care. At another level I ... don't think she does, either."

One could easily read guilt in his supple gray features. A hopeful track to follow. A new track, since none of my other captive-selves would have met Ritu. Might I use this tenuous personal connection in some way? If I could force Yosil to view me as more of a person ...

But Maharal only shook his head. His expression hardened. "Let's just say that no simple or single trait explains your ability, Morris. In fact, I consider it a rare combination, perhaps impossible to replicate in another person who remains enmeshed in his own complicated life. The local viewpoint -- parochially limited and yet addictive -- has long been recognized as an unseverable chain. An anchor, keeping the soul ensnared."

"I don't see -- "

"Of course you don't see. If you did, your mind would quail from the majestic beauty and terror of it all!"

"I -- "

"Oh, it's not your fault." Having surged, his emotion drained away as quickly. "Each of us remains convinced that our own subjective viewpoint is more urgent than anyone else's -- indeed, even more valid than the objective matrix that underlies so-called reality. After all, the subjective view is a grand theater. Each of us gets to be hero of an ongoing drama. It's why ideologies and bigotries survive against all evidence or logic.

"Oh, subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature's champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet ... and several times to our species nearly wiping itself out."

I had a sudden recollection of first meeting this fellow -- Maharal's gray ghost -- at UK on Tuesday, shortly before his original was found dead in a ruined car. That morning, ditYosil spoke of his archie in surprising terms, describing realYosil as a borderline paranoid, drifting in and out of dark fantasies. Later, he described nightmares about "technology gone mad ... The same fear that Fermi and Oppenheimer felt when they watched the first mushroom cloud ... "

It seemed easy enough to dismiss at the time. Intriguing, but also melodramatic. Now I wondered. Could father and daughter have different versions of the same underlying tendency? A penchant for unreliable copying? How ironic, then, if one of the founders of modern dittotech was unable to make golems he could depend on!

I started speculating exactly when Yosil Maharal made his great conceptual breakthrough. Last week? Monday? Just hours before his death, when he thought himself quite safe and alone? A growing suspicion made me feel creepy, all up and down my spine.

Meanwhile, the gray golem kept talking. "No, the value of egotistical self-importance cannot be denied, back when individual humans competed with each other and with nature to survive. Only now it's a mixed blessing, fostering waves of social alienation. More fundamentally, it limits the range of plausibility wave functions that we're willing to perceive, or to collapse into reified events that others can share and verify -- "

Maharal paused. "But this is going over your head."

"I guess you're right, Doc." I pondered for a moment. "Still, I think I read a popular article a while back ... You're talking about the Observer Effect, right?"

"Yes!" He took a step forward, enthusiasm briefly winning over his need for scorn. "Years ago, Bevvisov and I argued whether the newly discovered Standing Wave was a manifestation of quantum mechanics, or a completely separate phenomenon that happened to use similar transformation dynamics. Like most scientists of his generation, Bevvisov disliked using the word 'soul' in relation to anything that could be measured or palpably manifested in the physical world. Rather, he believed in a variant of the old Copenhagen quantum interpretation -- that every event in the universe arises out of a vast sea of interacting probability amplitudes. Unreified potentialities that only take on tangible effect in the presence of an observer."

"In other words, that 'subjective viewpoint' you were talking about."

"Right again. Someone has to consciously notice the effect of an experiment or event, in order for the wave functions to collapse and for it to become real."

"Hm." I was struggling, but tried hard not to show it. "You mean like that cat inside a box, who's both alive and dead at the same time, till they open the lid."

"Very good, Albert! Yes. As in the life or death of Schrödinger's cat, every decision state in the universe remains indeterminate till it's reified through observation by a thinking being. Even if that being stands many light-years away, glancing at the sky and casually noting the existence of a new star. In so doing, he can be said to have helped create the star, collaboratively, with every other observer who noticed it. The subjective and the objective have a complex relationship, all right! More than anyone imagined."

"I see, Doc. That is, I think I do. And yet ... this has to do with the Standing Wave ... how?"

Maharal was too excited to get exasperated. "Long ago, a renowned physicist, Roger Penrose, proposed that consciousness arises out of indeterminate quantum phenomena, acting at the level of tiny organelles that reside inside human brain cells. Some believe it's one reason why no one ever succeeded at the old dream of creating genuine artificial intelligence in a computer. The deterministic logic of the most sophisticated digital system remains fundamentally limited, incapable of simulating, much less replicating, the deeply nested feedback loops and stochastic tonal modes of that hypercomplex system we call a soul-field ... "

Oog. Now this was rapidly going way over my head. But I wanted to keep Maharal talking. In part because he might reveal something useful. And to delay things. Whatever he planned on doing to me next, with all of his mad scientist machinery, I knew by now that it was going to hurt.

A lot. Enough to make me lose my temper.

I really hate it when that happens.

" ... So, each time a human Standing Wave is copied, there remains a deep level of continuing connection -- 'entanglement,' to use an old-fashioned term from quantum mechanics -- between the copy and its original template. Between a ditto and its organic original. Not at a level that anyone normally notices. No actual information gets exchanged while the golem is running around. Nevertheless, a coupling remains, clinging to the duplicate Standing Wave."

"Is that what you mean by an anchor?" I prompted, seeing a connection at last.

"Yes. Those organelles Penrose spoke of do exist in brain cells. Only instead of quantum states, they entangle with a similar but entirely separate spectrum of soulistic modes. While dittoing, we amplify these myriad states, pressing the combined waveform into a nearby matrix. But even when that new matrix -- a fresh golem -- stands and walks away, its status as an observer continues to be entangled with the original's."

"Even if the golem never returns to inload?"

"Inloading involves retrieving memories, Morris. Now I'm talking about something deeper than memory. I'm talking about the sense in which each person is a sovereign observer who alters the universe -- who makes the universe, by the very act of observing."

Now I was lost again. "You mean each of us -- "

" -- some of us more than others, apparently," Maharal snapped, and I could tell his anger was back. An envious hatred that I was only now starting to fathom. "Your personality appears more willing, at a deep level, to accept the tentative nature of the world -- to deputize your subselves with their own, independent observer status -- "

" -- and therefore with complete standing waves," I finished for him, struggling to keep a hand in the conversation.

"That's right. At bottom, it has little to do with egotism, nihilism, detachment ... or intelligence, obviously. Perhaps you simply have a greater willingness to trust yourself than most people do."

He shrugged. "Even so, your talents were hampered. Limited. Severely constrained. Their only evident manifestation was a facility at making good copies, even though you should be capable of much more: When it came to moving beyond, into fresh territory, you remained as anchored as the rest of us.

"Then, less than a week ago, I stumbled onto what must be the answer. A remarkably simple, though brute-force approach to achieving the end I seek. Ironically, it is the same transforming event that our ancestors associated with release of the soul."

He paused.

And I guessed. It wasn't hard.

"You're talking about death."

Maharal's smile broadened -- eager, patronizing, and more than a little hateful.

"Very good, Albert! Indeed, the ancients were right in their dualist belief that a soul can be unlinked from the natural body after death. Only there is so much more to it than they could imagine -- "

At that moment, while Maharal droned smugly on, my proper course of action seemed clear as day. I should hold back. Show only reticence and self-control. Continue drawing him out. There were more questions, things to discover. And yet ...

I couldn't help it. Anger erupted, taking over my small body with surprising force, straining at the shackles.

"You fired that missile! You murdered me, you son of a bitch, for the sake of your goddamned theories! You sick, sadistic monster. When I get loose from here -- "

Yosil laughed.

"Ah. So, despite a lucid moment or two, the name-calling commences on schedule. You really are a tediously predictable person, Morris. Predictability that I plan to make good use of."

And with that, ditMaharal turned back to his preparations -- muttering commands into the votroller and flicking switches -- while I lay fuming, torn between the gutter satisfaction of hating him and realizing that the reaction was exactly what he wanted.

Of course, below it all lurked curiosity -- wondering where he planned to send me next.

32

Waryware ... as Frankie goes over the rainbow, and undercover ...

We abandoned the Universal Kilns car that Vic Aeneas Kaolin had given us, figuring it must be bugged.

What other arrangements did the tycoon make? That thought kept recurring as I flagged down an open pullcab outside the shuttered Rainbow Lounge. Hopping into the passenger seat, I asked the driver to take us down Fourth Street.

"And step on it!" my little ferretlike companion urged, panting with eagerness to be off. In a little pouch, Palloid carried some of the treasures he recovered while scrounging behind the bar, where the late Queen Irene had stashed some of her secrets. I think he was already scheming how to sell the material back to its "rightful owners," for a "finder's fee," without having to call it blackmail.

Our cabbie shrugged, dislodging glossy shades from their perch on his forehead and dropping them over his eyes. This revealed a nifty set of little devil horns -- probably an implanted compass/locator, cheap enough to supply even to disposable dittos.

"Hold on, gents," he called. Grabbing both arms of the rickshaw yoke, he bore into the pavement with powerful kicks of big-thighed legs, like those of a muscular goat. Only after accelerating beyond thirty klicksper did he touch a switch engaging the little electric cruise motor, lifting his gleaming ceramic hooves off the ground.

"You got a specific destination in mind?" our Pan-like driver asked me over one shoulder. "Or is an eminent gray like you just visiting? Trawling for memories? Maybe you want a quickie view tour of our fair city?"

It took me a moment to recall that I had been retinted at Kaolin's house, to a high-class "emissary" shade of gray. The driver apparently thought I was from out of town, traveling with a dittopet.

"I know all the historical and secret spots. Market arcades stocked with bootlegs you'll never see back east. Alleys where the law never ventures and no cameras are allowed. Just pay a small vice tax and sign a waiver. Once you're inside, anarchism-paradise!"

"Just keep going down Fourth," I replied. "I'll let you know when we get close." I had a specific destination in mind all right, but wasn't about to say it aloud. Not while we were probably under surveillance, both from outside and within.

He accepted this with a grunt and adjusted his visor, steering lazily with a finger on the tiller. Meanwhile, I took out the flip-phone I'd been given shortly after this body was restored to youthful vigor.

"Who're you calling?" Palloid asked.

"Who do you think? Our employer, of course." Just one number was on the autodialer.

"But I thought -- then why did we abandon the car if -- "

Those dark little eyes glittered. I could see Pal's suspicious little mind working. "Okay, then. Be sure to give Aeneas my love."

As a cheap green -- dyed orange and then gray -- I couldn't roll my eyes expressively. So I just ignored him. The phone made old-fashioned clickety-beep noises as it hunted for a Kaolin authorized to answer. One of his shiny golems would do ... or else possibly the real hermit-trillionaire, cowering behind layers of germproof glass in the tower of his manicured mansion. Failing that, a computer-avatar to either take a message or handle routine decisions, perhaps using a fine rendition of Kaolin's own voice.

So I waited. You expect to wait when you're clay. Despite the mayfly timetable, impatience is for those with real lifespan to lose.

Meanwhile, dittotown flowed past, with all of its extravagant fusion of griminess and brilliant color. Some of the older buildings, poorly maintained and no longer inspected, bore condemnation logos forbidding entry by real persons. Yet all around us thronged crowds, oblivious to the rickety surroundings -- people built for a day of hard labor, yet far gaudier than their drab makers. The busy worker ants who keep civilization going -- every hue and candy-striped combination -- bustled in/out of nearby factories and workshops, bearing heavy loads, hurrying to confidential meetings or carrying rush orders on spindly legs.

Traffic snarled for a while, forcing us to wend around an open pit construction site, marked by a broad holo sign:

CITYWIDE ROXTRANSIT PNEUMATIC-TUBE PROJECT:

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

A glimmering animated display showed steady progress toward the day when clayfolk and other cargo would zip to every part of town via an extended network of airless tubes, shuttling to any address like so many self-targeted Internet packets, automatically and at hardly any cost. Jitney and brontolorry drivers complained that the completed portions of the project were already spoiling their most lucrative routes. Spates of sabotage occasionally delayed work, reminding folks of the old Luddite days, when unions fought pitched street battles against dittotech. One recent explosion even caused a nearby building to collapse, crushing more than four hundred golems and throwing glass fragments far enough to cut a real person three blocks away, requiring half a dozen stitches. It was a major scandal.

Despite social unrest though, Universal Kilns and the other ditto-makers lobbied hard for tube installation in every city. How better to ensure that customers will receive millions of fresh blanks quickly, helping them get the most out of each imprinted day? The less time a golem spends in transit, or stored in the fridge, the more clients feel they get their money's worth. The more blanks they'll order.

Below the cheery sign, cut-rate epsilon models labored, hauling out baskets of dirt on their speckled-green backs while others descended, bearing lengths of ceramic pipe built to withstand high pressures, deep underground. Epsilons don't even get a full, imprinted personality -- no soul-stuff and no salmon reflex -- just a simple drive to labor on and on and on, till drawn by the call of a recycling tank.

Squinting at the scene one way, I glimpsed a science-fiction nightmare worse than Fritz Lang's Metropolis -- slaves and prols laboring for distant masters before toppling to an early death, preordained and unmourned. Squint another way, and it seemed marvelous! A world of free citizens, extending tiny portions of themselves -- easily expendable bits -- to take turns doing all the necessary drudgery, so everyone can spend their organic lifetimes playing or studying.

Which was true?

Both at the same time?

Should I care?

My own thoughts surprised me.

Is this what happens to a ditto's brain when it lasts beyond a second day? I wondered. Does élan-replenishment make you all dreamy and philosophical? Was it triggered by the events I witnessed at Irene's?

Or is it because I'm a frankie?

Come on, Kaolin. Answer your damn phone!

Actually, his delay gave me some cause for hope. Maybe Aeneas didn't really care much about me and Palloid. Kaolin might be too busy to bother checking up on us.

Ah, but "busy" doesn't mean what it used to. A rich man can keep imprinting enough fancy dittos to make any job manageable. So there had to be another reason.

We were a block past the pneumo-tube dig when the cabbie suddenly veered, emitting gouts of bitter cursing. I clenched the seat, bracing for collision, but traffic wasn't at fault. No, the driver was fuming over faraway events that had nothing to do with his job.

"Idiots!" he cried. "Couldn't you guess they'd be waiting for you around that hill? The Indies must've had it zeroed in from five different angles. Schmucks. PEZ should just give up this match and concede. Send our whole team onto the battlefield in their naked rig hides. We'll be better off starting all over with new talent!"

A faint glimmer shone around the edges of his shades. So, the sun-glasses were also vids. Most are.

Still, I wasn't paying to be hauled into a wreck by some sports-distracted coolie. One more unnecessary swerve and I just might slap a civil lien on him --

In whose name? Where would the money go? Poor old Albert had a sister in Georgia, but she owned five patents and didn't need cash. Then I recalled -- whatever remained of Al's estate would go to Clara. Whatever the cops didn't seize. Or Kaolin. It all depended on finding someone else to blame for the attack on Universal Kilns.

I had suspicions about that. But first there'd have to be more evidence.

"Hey, fan-boy!" Palloid shouted at the driver, who was still cursing as we dodged some peditstrians then barely missed getting squashed by a huge, eight-legged delivery van. "Forget the score, watch the road!"

The driver muttered something over his shoulder at my friend, who snarled in response, arching his long back and extending claws, as if preparing to leap. I was about to flip the phone shut and intervene when a voice abruptly buzzed in my ear.

"So, it's you. I was wondering when you'd check in," came the tycoon's murmured voice. I couldn't tell which Kaolin it was, though presumably the platinum who gave us our assignment. "What did you learn at Irene's place?"

No apology for keeping me waiting. Well, that's a trillionaire for you.

"Irene's true-dead," I replied. "She used one of those soul-antenna services and took all her dittos along with her to the Nirvianosphere, or the Valhallan Belts, or wherever."

"I know. The cops just arrived there and I've got the scene in front of me. Incredible. What a psycho! Do you see what I mean, Morris? The world is filling up with perverts and dittoing only makes it worse. I sometimes wish we never -- "

He stopped, then resumed. "Well, never mind that. Do you think Irene chose this moment to end it all because her conspiracy failed? Because they didn't manage to wreck my factory?"

Kaolin did an impressive job of feigning confused innocence. I decided to play along.

"Irene was just another dupe, sir. She honestly thought she had hired Albert's gray as a quasi-legal industrial spy."

"You mean all that nonsense about looking for the secret of teleportation?"

I glanced back at the pneumo-tunnel construction project -- an awful lot of investment that would lose much of its purpose if remote dittoing ever came true.

"The story seemed plausible enough to deceive an Albert Morris gray. Why not her too? Anyway, by this morning Irene realized she'd been set up to take blame for the prion attack. So she chose to check out under her own terms."

"Another patsy, then. Like you and Lum and Gadarene." Kaolin snorted. "Did you find any leads to who's behind it all?"

"Well, her two partners were a plaid ditto who called himself Vic Collins and another one who claimed to be a copy of the maestra, Gineen Wammaker."

"Is that all? We already knew as much from the gray's tape recording."

I didn't want to say more. Yet Kaolin was still my client ... at least till I verified some things. I couldn't legally or ethically lie to him.

"Vic Collins was a facade, of course. Irene thought he might really be Beta."

"You mean the golemnapper and counterfeiter? Have you got any proof?" Kaolin's voice grew a bit more excited. "This could be what I need to bring some real pressure to bear. Force the cops to take that bastard seriously as a real public threat, not just another d-commerce nuisance. We may be able to put him out of business for good!"

My reply was careful.

"I had a similar thought. I've been after Beta for three years. We've had harsh encounters."

"Yes, I recall. Your narrow escape on Monday, followed by Tuesday morning's raid on his Teller Building operation. There's a lot of bad slip between the two of you."

"Yes, in fact -- "

I could see our destination up ahead. I had to make Kaolin feel comfortable enough not to watch my movements too closely for the next few minutes. Timing would be critical.

"That's why I'm heading back toward the Teller Building right now."

Toward. It wasn't a lie, exactly. It fit our present trajectory across dittotown, in case he was tracking.

"Going to look for more clues, eh? Great!" Kaolin said. I heard muffled voices in the background, demanding the platinum's attention. "Call again when you learn more," he told me, then broke the connection without salutation or formality.

Just in time, I noted with some relief.

"Stop here!" I told the cabbie, who was still dividing his attention unnervingly between the road, the war news, and bickering with Pal. How do guys like this keep their hack license? I wondered, tossing him a silver coin and hopping out. Fortunately, Palloid kept to his perch on my shoulder, rather than get into a fight. But it was a close call.

Temple of the Ephemerals, flashed the sign in front. Up granite steps I dashed, past all the forlorn dittos hanging about -- wounded, damaged, or otherwise derelict, lacking any hope of being welcomed home for inloading. Most looked worn down, near dissolution. Yet I was by far the oldest! The only clay person present who had any direct memory of Tuesday's sermon. Not that I was here to attend services.

Only a short queue of haggard copies stood waiting for emergency repair service, led by a lanky purple with half its left arm torn off. Fortunately, the same dark-haired volunteer was on duty, offering succor to the hopeless and downtrodden. Whatever psychological reason drew her to dedicate precious realtime helping those with little life worth saving, I felt glad of it.

"Yipes!" Palloid gasped a shaky squeak upon catching sight of the volunteer nurse. "It's Alexie."

"What? You know her?"

Pal's mini-ditto answered in a low whisper, "Uh ... we dated for a while. You don't think she'll recognize me, do you?"

I couldn't help comparing two mental images. One of the real Pal -- handsome, grizzled, and broad-shouldered, though missing his entire lower half and confined for life to a sustaino-chair -- a picture that had little in common with the agile, grinning little weasel creature on my shoulder except when it came to stuff that really mattered, like memory, personality, and soul.

"Maybe not," I answered, stepping past all the waiting dittos, heading for the front of the line. "If you keep your mouth shut."

Several injured golems grumbled as I strode up to Alexie's treatment station, with its unsanitary table surrounded by cheap barrels of golem-grout, ditspackle, and praydough. She glanced at me -- and for the first time I noticed she was pretty, in a darkly severe, dedicated-looking way. She began to insist that I wait my turn, but stopped when I raised my shirt, turning to display a long scar of hardened cement on my back.

"Remember your handiwork, Doc? You sure did a great job with that nasty little eater that was chewing out my innards. I recall one of your colleagues said I wouldn't last the day. You should collect on that bet."

She blinked. "I remember you. But ... but that was Tues -- "

Alexie stopped, eyes widening. No dummy, she went silent as the implications sank in.

Smart, yeah. But then why did she go out with Pal?

Dropping my shirt, I asked, "Is there a place where we can talk in private?"

She gave a jerky nod and motioned for us to follow her upstairs.

Palloid kept uncharacteristically silent as Alexie scanned. She quickly discovered the tracker bugs that Kaolin installed, when he so kindly extended our pseudolives.

She also found the bombs.

Maybe just in time, I thought. Our employer expects us to report from the Teller Building. He may get upset to find out we've slipped the leash.

"What pig did this to you?" Alexie cursed, carefully dropping the bombs into a battered-looking containment canister. There are special circumstances when golems can be legally required to carry autodestructs, with triggers operated by radio control. But it's pretty rare in PEZ. Naturally, Alexie's group opposes the practice in principle. I refrained from telling her that our bombs were installed by the great slavemaster himself, Vic Kaolin. If she knew, she might go online at once to tell everyone in her community of activists.

I couldn't allow that. Not yet.

Palloid needed a few repairs, too. While she worked on him, I gazed past her balcony at the stained glass window of the main church. The old Christian symbols had been replaced to show a circular rosette, like a flower whose petals all tapered outward before flaring abruptly at the very end, at right angles, to pointed tips. At first, I thought each figure might be a fish, tail thrust outward. Fish ... for arti-fishial? Then I realized, they were square-headed whales -- sperm whales, apparently -- portrayed gathering together their huge brows in some meeting of cetacean minds.

What was the symbolism? Whales -- long-lived, though perpetually endangered -- seemed just the opposite of dittos, who faded fast but sprang forth daily in greater numbers, ever replenished by human ingenuity and desire.

It reminded me a bit of the mandala emblem worn by that technician-priest of Final Options, Inc., who presided over the attempted transcendence of Queen Irene. Though clearly different in detail, both groups were struggling with the same problem, how to reconcile soul-imprinting with abiding religious impulse. But who am I to judge?

Okay, I like these Ephemerals folks. Maybe I owe them a couple of favors. Still, I had to play things coy.

Alexie finished and declared us clean. Suddenly, I felt free for the first time since ... well, since I met up with Pal and Lum and Gadarene under the shadows of an ancient skooterboard park, getting snared in all this dirty business.

"Now I can phone home!" Palloid exulted, forgetting his vow of silence. "Wait'll I tell myself what I've seen! It'll be a rush of an inload."

Alexie tilted her head, eyes narrowing, perhaps recognizing something about Pal's speech rhythm. I didn't give her time to follow the thought.

"My pa -- my little friend and I both need secure web access," I said. "Do you have a couple of chadors we can use?"

After an uncertain pause, she nodded, then pointed to a coatrack. Two black, shapeless garments hung next to a desk. "They've been cleaned recently. No bugs."

"That'll do fine, thanks." I started toward the coatrack.

"Just so you know," she added, "I subscribe to Waryware Services, so don't try to pull any scams or illegal stuff while using our access. Take that kind of crap elsewhere."

"Yes, ma'am."

Alexie frowned. "Can I trust you both not to touch anything else up here, while I go back and help more patients?"

Palloid nodded vigorously. "We'll repay this kindness," I assured.

"Hm. Maybe you can explain to me sometime how it is that you're still walking around, so long after you should be slurry."

"Sometime. I will."

She departed with a final dubious look. As her footsteps vanished downstairs, I gave Palloid a questioning glance. "All right!" he answered with a lithe shrug. "So maybe she's better than I deserved. Shall we get on with it now? Kaolin won't stay fooled for long."

My little friend leaped onto the desk and I helped him slip under a chador, so the active hood covered him, adjusting to his strange body plan. I threw the other garment over my head and let its black drapery flow over my arms, down past my waist. From the outside, I now looked like some shrouded creature from those dark days, half a century ago, when a third of the countries on Earth forced women to veil their faces and forms under shapeless tents of muslin and gauze. A repressive move that backfired when the old, confining chador transformed into something completely liberating.

From within --

I was suddenly in another universe. The wonderful cosmos of VR, where data and illusion mix in profusions of color and synthetic depth. Sensors under the garment felt the positions of my arms, fingertips, and each puff of breath, reacting to every grunt from my simulated larynx. A few muttered commands, and within seconds I had three active globe-worlds set up.

The first one zoomed toward a smoldering ruin where my house ... Albert's house ... had been. Freeware correlators swooped in from the surrounding webscape begging for permission to fetch data for me about this tragic event. A couple of the agents had good reputations, so I posed a few parameters and unleashed them. At the first curiosity layer, it wouldn't cost a penny and there'd be no possibility of a backtrace. Nothing to distinguish me from millions of other net voyeurs. These were major news events, so my enquiries shouldn't attract any attention till I probed close to bone.

My second bubble skimmed news reports about the sabotage attempt at Universal Kilns. I wanted the official police summary -- especially to see if Albert was still a suspect. Also, any event like this one attracted all sorts of conspiracy theories and minority reports, offered by whistle-blower clubs, accountability hobbyists, solitary paranoiacs, autonomous whatif agents or wandering yesbut avatars. And if none of those were on the right track, I might post one of my own! Anonymous rumormongering is a venerable kind of mischief that has its own special place. realAlbert would be much better at this. And one of his ebonies would be better still.

Me? I'm just a green and a frankie. But I'm all that's left.

While those two bubbles churned at the edges, fizzing with correlative foam, I made ready a third, more dangerous than the others.

The just-in-case cache, where Albert kept his backup files, in case anything happened to our house computer.

Suppose Nell detected the incoming missile ... even bare seconds before it struck. According to programming, she would have dumped as much data as possible into the remote cache. That record might let me glimpse what my maker was doing -- possibly even thinking -- the very minutes that he died.

A big prize. But accessing it could be risky. Whoever sent that missile must've been surveilling the house, in order to be sure Albert was there when it struck. But how intense was the scrutiny? Did they simply prowl around outside with mini-cameras, keeping track of Al's comings and goings? What if they managed to penetrate his privacy shields, say by floating a micro-spy inside the house? It happens now and then. Technology keeps changing and the cams keep getting smaller. Only fools count on their secrets staying safe forever.

Someone out there may know everything, including the location of the cache. Lurker software could be waiting to pounce on anyone who tries accessing it. A borrowed chador won't mask me for long.

But what choice did I have? My only alternative was to head over to Pal's place and get drunk together till this artificially extended pseudolife finally expired.

Well, feh to that! I typed with waggling fingertips and muttered some phrases under the chador's sheltering drapery, hoping that Albert didn't change passwords on me after learning he had made his first frankie.

Almost at once I found myself looking at a pretty good facsimile of Nell.

Experts claim there's no such thing as true digital intelligence, and never will be. I guess they ought to know by now. It's another of those "failed dreams" from TwenCen science fiction that never came true, like flying saucer aliens. Still, simulation has become a high art, and it doesn't take much of an animated program to fool most folks with a well-made talking head ... at least for a couple of turings.

Her face was originally modeled after a junior professor I had a brief thing for, back in college. Sexy without being overly distracting. A personification of efficiency without imagination. In addition to demanding and verifying the next-level password, the avatar scanned my face and sent a short-range probe to the pellet buried in my forehead.

Normally, that should be enough. But not this time.

"Dissonance. You appear to be Tuesday's green, yet you wear gray dye and should have expired by now. Access to cache denied until a plausible explanation is given."

I nodded. "Fair enough. Here's your explanation. Briefly, the research guys at Universal Kilns have discovered a way to extend ditto lifespan. That explains why I'm talking to you. The breakthrough appears to have triggered some kind of conflict between Vic Aeneas Kaolin and Dr. Yosil Maharal. It's possible this led to Maharal's murder. And the murder of Albert Morris."

The animated face contorted -- a caricature of doubt. I had to remind myself, this wasn't the Nell I remembered. Only a phantom, a replica that had been stashed in some corner of the vast datasphere, operating in a patch of rented memory.

"Your explanation of the discrepancy in your lifespan is deemed plausible, given other information that was cached by Tuesday's ebony before the explosion. However, a new dissonance must be resolved before I can give you access."

"What new dissonance?"

Nell's phantom did a good approximation of her disapproving frown, a familiar programmed nuance that I never cared for. It generally appeared at times when I was being particularly dense.

"There is no convincing evidence that Albert Morris was murdered."

If I were real, I'd have coughed and sputtered. "No convincing -- ? What kind of smoking gun do you need? Isn't it murder when somebody blows you up in a bloody missile attack?"

I had to remind myself, this wasn't a real or clay person to be argued with -- or even a top-level AI. For a software-cache phantom, the shadow-Nell looked good. But it must be damaged, or caught in a semantic bind.

"The missile attack is irrelevant to the dissonant issue at hand -- Albert Morris's putative murder," the face replied.

I stared, repeating a single dismaying word.

"Ir -- irrelevant?"

The semantic bind must be severe. Damn. I might not be able to gain access at all. "How ... could the murder weapon be irrelevant?"

"Organic citizen Albert Morris has been missing for just over a day. No trace of him has appeared on the Web, or on the Streetcam Network, or -- "

"Well, of course not -- "

"But the disappearance was expected. Moreover, it has no direct relation to the destruction of his home."

Amazed, I could only let this sink in. Expected? No relation to the destruction?

As if compelled, I turned to gaze at the bubbleview that peered down upon the house on Sycamore Avenue. Several hovering voyeur-eyes and newscams contributed to a highly textured image that ballooned larger when I stared, offering a vivid overhead view of blackened timbers and collapsed masonry walls. The remnant chimney jutted like a defiant finger. The back porch, its wrought-iron balustrade curled into a corkscrew by recent heat, led to rose trellises that were reduced to charred stumps.

Police flickertape kept gawkers at bay -- both realfolk and dittos who might try for souvenirs. I spotted several teams of ebony specialists inside the cordon, crouching with scanners and samplers, sifting for evidence. Other figures could be seen stepping amid the debris.

While I was busy speaking to the cache-phantom, those correlator agents that I hired had been busy gathering info about the missile attack, lining that bubble's edges with summaries and flowcharts. I stabbed one reporting on the weapon that had done all this. The exact model type was unknown but clearly sophisticated, delivering lots of punch in a small package. That helped explain how it could be smuggled into dittotown and set up without detection. More impressive was the way it launched amid wild gyrations and a dense cloud of obscuring chaff, masking its point of origin as five semi-abandoned houses burned in its wake, erasing any clues to whoever planted the damned thing. Worse, a scarcity of publicams in the area made it extra hard for the cops establish a reverse-time shakeout. They might never pin down who planted it.

I wondered, in awe, Who would have access to such a weapon? And why use it on a measly local private eye?

The first half of my question had a ready answer. Oh, the police were keeping mum, but professional circumspection didn't have any hold over thousands of amateur analysts and retired experts out there with time on their hands. After intensely poring over the available information, they reached a consensus.

It must have been military hardware. And not the normal variety used by our national teams in ritual battles, before mass audiences on the International Combat Range. Naturally, nations keep their best stuff hidden away, just-in-case. This had to be one of those nasty items, put on the shelf amid hopes that it would never be used.

This explained why so many ebonies were crawling over the site. They probably cared much more about the weapon than poor old Albert.

There were other anomalies. Opinions sputtered and fizzed at the bubble's fringe.

This Morris guy was supposedly involved somehow in that attempt to sabotage Universal Kilns, Tuesday night. Obviously they took revenge on him ...

Within just a couple of hours? Ridiculous! It took days or weeks to set up the missile carefully enough to obscure its emplacement from backtracing ...

Right! Morris was obviously framed! The missile was meant to incinerate him so he couldn't testify ...

That could be. Still, there's something fishy about all this. Why haven't they found a body? ...

What body? It was vaporized ...

Blown to smithereens ...

Oh yeah? Then where's the organic residue? ...

There's plenty of DNA traces, identical to Morris's profile ...

That's right, traces! Hell, if you blew up my house while I was away, you'd find lots of bits ... skin cells, dandruff, hairs. Take the pillow on your bed -- a tenth of its weight consists of stuff that flaked off your head after a thousand nights ...

Ew, disgusting!

... so it's no good just to say they found the guy's DNA in the same house where he lived. To confirm death, show me differentiated tissue! Even if he was puréed, you'd find bits of bone, blood, intestinal cells ...

That rocked me. Partly because I should have thought of it! Even as a green-frankie. After all, I still had Albert's memories. His training.

What could this mean?

Probably I'd have reached the obvious conclusion in another second or two. But suddenly I was distracted by the sight of a single figure moving across the smoldering ruins, poking embers with a stick. Something about the slender physique drew me, and the globeworld responded by zooming closer.

Dressed in neutral dungarees, with hair bundled under a cap, it seemed at first to be a high-class ditto, especially with her face smeared gray by ash. But when an ebony bowed out of her way, I realized, she must be real. And her movements were those of an athlete.

A small identifier label popped up next to her as the camera view zoomed closer:

VICTIM' S ASSIGNED HEIR

My emotions were stronger than expected, given the cheapness of the body I wore.

"Clara," I murmured as her face came into focus, wearing a grim expression, one that combined grief and anger with extreme puzzlement.

"Final password accepted," said a voice -- Nell's phantom, responding to the single word I had spoken.

"Access to cache allowed."

I glanced to my right. Nell's computerized image was gone, replaced by a list that scrolled down, showing a catalogue of contents. Nell's simulated voice continued.

"The first item, by relevance, is one that you requested in your present golem form on Tuesday, at thirteen forty-five hours. You asked for a trace of the waiter-contractor who was fired from his job at Tour Vanadium restaurant. Despite being handicapped in this primitive form, I managed to complete the trace. The waiter's name and life summary are given below. He has lodged a protest with the Labor Subcontractors Association, disclaiming any responsibility for the incident that led to his termination ... "

Waiter? I wondered. Restaurant? Oh. I had forgotten about all that. A trivial matter now.

"There were other items in queue, just before the explosion," Nell's phantom continued. "Unanswered calls and messages from Malachai Montmorillin, Inspector Blane, Gineen Wammaker, Thomas Facks ... "

It was a long list, and ironic. If only Albert had taken that call from Pal, trying to warn him about a plot involving Tuesday's second gray -- a plot to frame him with the attack on Universal Kilns -- I might not even be here now. I might have spent the rest of my short span as a liberated frankie, detached from Albert's concerns, juggling for kids on a street-corner or trying to find that clumsy waiter. Until at last I fell apart.

"I can also replay a recording of the final call your original made, to Ritu Maharal, arranging a joint trip to investigate her father's cabin in the desert."

What was that? A trip, together?

I trembled suddenly. A trip with Ritu Maharal ... to the desert? Abruptly I saw a glimmer, an outline of what could have happened. How Albert might have departed in person, under the guise of a ditto!

If he did, was it because he suspected the house was under surveillance by assassins? If so, the ploy worked. He sure fooled everyone into believing his real self was still there. I had to absorb this stunning notion. There could be a flaw ... but Albert might not be dead, after all!

Good news, right? It'd liberate me from a heavy burden -- sole obligation to uncover the truth. For all I knew, right now Al and a dozen of his loyal copies were already hard on the trail of the villains, closing in with grim determination to avenge his incinerated garden.

And yet ... the idea also brought with it a sense of letdown. For a while, I had actually felt important. As if this little sliver of existence somehow mattered on the grand scale of things. Justice seemed to depend on me. On what I chose to do.

Now?

Well, my duty's clear. To report, of course. To describe everything I've learned and offer my services to my betters.

But it's nowhere near as romantic as fighting on, alone.

I decided what to do while watching Clara poke through the ruins, apparently far more concerned with uncovering Albert's fate than taking part in her war. If Al was alive, he hadn't even bothered to contact her. Not even to let her know he was all right!

Maybe he preferred the company of the beautiful heiress, Ritu Maharal.

Bastard.

Sometimes you only see yourself clearly by standing on the outside. Or better yet, by becoming someone new.

All right, that brings me up to the present. My story's done. I'll submit one copy for the cache ... in case there are any Alberts running around who care to listen.

And I'll send an abbreviated report to Miss Ritu Maharal. She was Albert's final employer, just before the missile attack, so I guess she deserves to be told that I think Aeneas Kaolin has gone murderously insane.

But I'm really doing it for Clara. She's the reason why I stood here under this chador for ten extra minutes, rapid-reciting a first-person narration of everything I've seen and done for the last couple of days, leading all the way to this moment. Doing it despite entreaties from Pal's little ferret-ditto, warning that each added second exposed us to danger. Either from Kaolin or some unknown enemy, maybe even worse.

Whatever. My report probably won't matter. I've uncovered only a few pieces of the puzzle, after all. Far from enough to solve the case, for sure.

Maybe I just duplicated work that's already been done by other, much better versions of "me."

Hell, I don't even know where I'll go next ... though I do have a few ideas.

Still, I can tell you one thing, Clara.

As long as this small patch of soul continues, I'll remember you. Till the recycling tank finally claims me, I've got something ... and someone ... to live for.

33

Lasting Impressions ... realAlbert gets to view a parade in still life ...

Wow.

This place is amazing.

I really must switch to realtime, in order to describe what I'm seeing right now.

Even so, can I begin to do it justice? Especially having to grunt into a tiny recorder-implant that I borrowed from a dead golem. An implant that may not even be functioning properly?

And yet, what can I do except try? Not many people get to witness this spectacle. Not without getting their brains wiped clear of the memory, right afterward.

An entire army stands at attention before me, divided by rank and specialty into squads, platoons, companies, and regiments. Casting long shadows in the dim light, row after row of sturdy figures extends into the distance. Neither living nor quite lifeless, silent in the chilly dry air of a deep subterranean cavern that must stretch for kilometers, each soldier abides sealed by a thin layer of gel-wrap to maintain freshness, awaiting an order that may never come -- a command to turn on the lights and fire up nearby kilns, rousing a clay legion from its sleep.

Corporal Chen says they have a motto in this corps -- Open, bake, serve ... and protect.

That touch of whimsy -- a note of self-deprecating humor -- reassures me. A bit. I guess.

Oh, it's not too much of a surprise. There have always been rumors of a secret stash -- or more than one -- where the nation's real military power is kept, dormant but ever ready. Surely the generals and planners in the Dodecahedron know that twenty little reserve battalions, like Clara's, won't suffice if real war ever returns. Everyone assumes that those gladiator-entertainer units represent the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, but to see it now, with my own eyes ...

"Come on," says ditto-Chen, motioning for us to follow his apelike form. "This way to that secure dataport I promised."

Ritu's been wiping her face with a cleanser towel to remove ragged leftovers of gray makeup ever since we entered a tunnel leading deep under the vast military complex. Only now the towel hangs from a limp hand as she stares at endless ranks of golem-soldiery, standing watch in their filmy, shrink-wrap cocoons.

"Amazing. I can see why they would build such a facility here, under the surface base, so the warriors who train up there can readily imprint spare copies for this stockpile force. But I still don't understand." She waves at the rigid brigades standing before us. "Why do you need so many?"

With a shrug, Chen resigns himself to the role of tour guide.

"Because the other side may have made even more." He takes a bowlegged step toward us. "Think about it, Miss. It's cheap to dig holes. So is making an army of pre-imprinted dittos. You don't have to spend anything on food or training. No insurance or pensions and very little maintenance. We have good intelligence that it's been done in over a dozen other countries, some of them unfriendly. The Indies have their force in a big cave under Java. The Southern Han, the Guats, and the Gujarats all have mega-hordes tucked away underground. After all, who could resist the temptation? Imagine having available a military force bigger than the Prussians fielded at the Marne -- one that can be mobilized and transported across the world within hours. With every trooper fully prepared, carrying the skills and experience of a battle-hardened veteran."

"It's scary as hell," I answer.

Chen nods in agreement. "So we gotta have the same thing -- a corps of defenders, ready to rise from the ground at a few hours' notice. At one level, it's simply a matter of outditting the enemy."

"I mean the whole situation is scary. This kind of insane arms race -- "

"Arms, legs, torsos ... don't quibble. Call it diterrence -- making sure the other guy knows he'll get hurt bad if he ever tries to throw us a first strike. The same logic worked for our ancestors, way back in the age of nukes, or we wouldn't be here now talking."

"Well, I think it stinks," Ritu comments.

"Amen, Miss. But till the politicians finally get around to negotiating a treaty -- one with real teeth for onsite inspections -- what else can we do?"

It's my turn to pose a question.

"What about the secrecy. How can it be maintained in this day and age? The Henchman Law ... "

" ... is designed to bring out whistle-blowers. True enough. Yet no insider's tattled openly about this buried army. And the reason is simple, Albert. The Henchman Law is aimed against criminal activity. But don't you think the brass in the Dodecahedron went over the legalities carefully? They never denied having a reserve defense force. There's nothing heinous or illicit -- no real people have been hurt in any way -- so there's no 'whistle-blower' reward. What good will it do anybody to reveal this place, then? All he'd get for the trouble is a lien slapped against his lifetime earnings, to help pay the cost of moving our golem corps to a new site."

Chen looks at Ritu and me archly.

"And that holds for you two, by the way, in case you're getting any self-righteous notions. We don't mind private rumors. Go ahead and blab generalities and exaggerations to your friends, if you like. Just don't put any pix or location details on the Net, or you could wind up deep in debt, making monthly payments to the Dodec. For life."

The very moment that he said that, I was using the implant in my left eye to snap-record a scene. For private use, I rationalized.

Maybe I should erase it.

"Now," Chen insists. "Let's get you to that secure portal I promised."

Still a bit numb from the corporal's slanted threat, Ritu and I follow him silently past more rows of modern janissaries, silent as statues, most of them dyed in blur-pattern camouflage. Up close, you can see how big these combat-golems are! Half-again normal size, with much of the difference consisting of extra power cells, for strength, endurance, and to operate enhanced sensoria.

Though most of the figures are thick-limbed and broad-shouldered, I keep looking for Clara's face. Surely she would have been asked to be among the templates, imbuing her skill and battle spirit into hundreds, maybe even thousands of these duplicates. I feel miffed that she never told me ... at least not about the scale of all this!

Ritu continues pressing Chen as we walk.

"It seems to me there's a danger beyond that of foreign adversaries. Isn't this legion something of a temptation to those holding the keys? What if the Dodecs -- or the President or even the Protector in Chief -- ever decide that democracy is too damned inconvenient? Imagine a million fully equipped battle-golems spilling out of the ground like angry ants, capturing every city in a coup -- "

"Wasn't there a thriller about that exact scenario, a few years back? Good effects and lots of cool action, I recall. Hordes of ceramic monsters, marching about stiff-limbed, shouting in stilted voices, blasting everything in sight ... except the hero, of course. Somehow they kept missing him!"

Laughing, Chen waves a long arm at the companies surrounding us. "But honestly, it's pretty farfetched. Because every one of these doughboys was imprinted by a licensed citizen reservist, strictly according to regulations. They have our memories and values. And it's kind of hard to stage a coup when all your grunts are made from guys like me -- and Clara -- who happen to think democracy's just fine.

"Also there are coded autodestructs, with the ciphers distributed to -- "

Chen stops, shaking his head. "No, forget all the safeguards. If you can't have faith in procedures and professionalism, then consider logic."

"What logic is that, Corporal?"

Chen pats the plastic-sheathed flank of a nearby war-golem, perhaps one containing a duplicate of his own soul.

"The logic of expiration, Miss. Even augmented with extra fuel, a battledit like this one can't last more than five days. A week, tops. I defy you to come up with a way to hold onto those captive cities, after that. No small group of conspirators could imprint enough replacements. And no large group could possibly keep such an undertaking secret nowadays.

"No, the purpose of this army is to absorb the first shock of an enemy surprise attack. After that, it'll be up to the people to defend themselves and their civilization. Only they can provide enough fresh souls and raw courage to throw into an extended conflict."

Chen shrugs. "But that was true way back in Grandpa's day, and his grandpa before him."

Ritu has no ready answer for this and I manage to keep silent. So Chen turns again to lead us rapidly past more regiments, one perfectly arrayed unit after another, till we lose count of their serried ranks, awed by the vast hall of mute guardians.

Ritu's especially uncomfortable here. Edgy and distant, unlike the easy companionship of our trek across the desert together. Part of it may have to do with her own trouble in making dittos -- never able to predict what will happen when she imprints. Sometimes everything goes normally -- the Ritu-golem emerges enough like her to share the same ambitions and perform assigned chores, then return at day's end for routine inloading. Other copies vanish mysteriously, only to send back cryptic taunting messages.

"Can you imagine what it's like to be mocked by someone who knows every intimate thing you've ever done or thought?"

"Then why imprint at all?" I asked, during our long walk together across the wilderness.

"Don't you see? I work at Universal Kilns! I grew up in the claynamation trade. It's what I know. And to do business nowadays you have to copy. So I kiln a couple of golems each morning and hope for the best.

"Still, whenever it's an urgent appointment -- or something has to be done right -- I try to handle it in person."

Like this trip to investigate her father's cabin -- and the nearby site where he died. When I invited Ritu, she decided to invest a day of real lifespan. Only now we've been sidetracked for several, ever since that wretched "Kaolin" ambushed us on the highway. Stuck far from town, out of contact and only slowly nearing our goal. It must be frustrating for her ...

... as it is for me. To come all this way and find Clara's gone AWOL, having dashed off to poke at the ruins of my house while I'm stuck in the boonies. Dammit, I hope we reach that secure portal of Chen's soon. I have got to find a way to get in touch --

At last!

The columns of clay soldiery finally come to an end. We emerge from the silent host, only to pass under bigger shadows -- row after row of towering autokilns, presently idle, but primed to fire up quickly and bake freshly unwrapped warriors in giant batches, stimulating their élan storage cells into vigorous activity, sending whole divisions to self-sacrifice and glory.

Corporate brand logos loom over us, embossed proudly on these mechanical behemoths. No symbol is more prominent than the circled U and circled K. Yet Ritu doesn't seem proud, just nervous, rubbing her shoulders and arms, her eyes darting left and right. Her jaw is set and tense, as if walking is an exercise of pure willpower.

Now Chen leads us through a sliding gate into yet another vast chamber where innumerable suits of armor dangle on hooks from the tracked ceiling. A forest of duralite helmet-and-carapace combos, ready to slip over bodies still puffy from the oven. We have to sidle along a narrow avenue between tracks, our shoulders brushing metal livery and leggings, jostling sets of refractory coveralls into ghostly motion.

I can't help feeling dwarfed, like we're children, tiptoeing through a dressing room for giants. This chamber's even more intimidating than the assembly of golem-soldiers. Maybe because there's no soul here. That ditto-army was human, after all. Well, a kind of human. But this armory has the chill impersonality of gears and silicon. Empty, the suits remind me disquietingly of robots -- deadly unaccountable, and free of anything like conscience.

Fortunately, we make good time. Minutes later, we're on the other side, and I'm glad to be out of there!

No sooner do we emerge from the "dressing room" than Chen beckons me to join him at the rail of a balcony. "Albert, you've got to see this! You'll find it interesting, if Clara's been any kind of influence on you."

Joining him at the rail, I find the terrace overlooks yet a third immense gallery, some distance below this one, containing the greatest hoard of weapons I ever saw. Everything from small arms to flame guns to personal helico/raptors can be seen arrayed in neat stacks and or piled on shelves -- like a huge emporium of destruction. A central library of war.

Chen shakes his head, clearly wistful.

"They insist on keeping the best stuff down here, in reserve. Just-in-case, they say. But I sure wish we could use this gear topside, during some of our regular matches. Like against those Indies we're fighting this week. Tough bastards. It'd be great if -- "

The ditcorporal stops abruptly, arching his simian head to one side.

"Did you just hear something?"

For a second I'm sure he's pulling my leg. This eerie place seems perfect for a haunting.

Only then ... Yes, a faint murmur. I hear it now.

Scanning below, I finally glimpse figures moving down there amid a distant row of shelves. Some are jet black and others the color of steel, carrying instruments and clipboards, peering amid stacks of warehoused killing apparatus.

Chen whispers a curse. "Shards! They must be doing an audit! But why now?"

"I think I can guess."

He looks at me with dark eyes under heavy, apelike ridges. Abruptly, comprehension dawns.

"The hoodoo missile! The one that fried your archie and your home. I figured it for another homemade job, like urban punks and criminals make in their basements. But the brass must suspect that it was stolen from here. Damn, I should have thought of that!"

What can I say? The possibility occurred to me a while ago. But I didn't want to spook Chen when he's being helpful.

"Why would anyone in the military would want me dead? I admit, Clara's threatened to break my arm a few times ... "

The joke goes flat. Chen's ape-ditto writhes.

"We gotta get out of here. Right now!"

"But you promised to take us -- "

"That was when I thought the place'd be empty! And before it occurred to me that military hardware might be involved. I'm sure not takin' you straight into a team of tight-ass rule enforcers!" Chen grabs my arm. "Let's get Miss Maharal and -- "

The sentence falls flat as we both turn and stare.

Ritu had been right behind us.

Now she's gone. The only vestige is a rustling commotion along one long row of hanging armor coveralls -- a fading wavelet in a rippling sea of shrugging torsos and helmets that nod and bow politely in her wake.

34

Fishing Real ... as Little Red gets jerked around ...

It can be hard to penetrate the mind of a genius.

That's usually no cause for worry, since true brilliance has a well-known positive correlation with decency, much of the time -- a fact the rest of us rely on, more than we ever know. The real world doesn't roil with as many crazed artists, psychotic generals, dyspeptic writers, maniacal statesmen, insatiable tycoons, or mad scientists as you see in dramas.

Still, the exceptions give genius its public image as a mixed blessing -- vivid, dramatic, somewhat crazy, and more than a little dangerous. It helps promote the romantic notion, popular among borderline types, that you must be outrageous to be gifted. Insufferable to be remembered. Arrogant to be taken seriously.

Yosil Maharal must have watched too many bad movieds while growing up, for he swallowed that cliché whole. Alone in his secret stronghold, without anyone to answer to -- not even his real self -- he can ham up the mad scientist role, to the hilt. Worse, he thinks something about me offers the key to a puzzle -- his sole chance at eternal life.

Trapped in his laboratory, helplessly shackled down, I start to feel a well-known pull -- the salmon reflex. A familiar call that most high-level golems feel at the end of a long day. The urge to hurry home for inloading, only now amplified many times by strange machinery.

I've always been able to shrug it off, when necessary. But this time the reflex is intense. An agonizing need, as I yank against the bonds holding me down, struggling heedless of any damage to my straining limbs. A million years of instinct tell me to protect the body I'm wearing. But the call is stronger. It says this body doesn't matter any more than a cheap set of paper clothes. Memories are what count ...

No. Not memories. Something more. It's ...

I don't have a scientist's terminology. All I know right now is craving. To return. To get back into my real brain.

A brain that no longer exists, according to ditYosil, who informed me a while ago that the real body of Albert Morris -- the body my mother spilled into the world more than twelve thousand days ago -- was blown to bits late Tuesday. Along with my house and garden. Along with my school report cards and Cub Scout uniform. Along with my athletic trophies and the master's thesis I always meant to finish someday ... and souvenirs from more than a hundred cases that I solved, helping to expose villains, sending the worst of them to therapy or jail.

Along with the bullet scar in my left shoulder that Clara used to stroke during lovemaking, sometimes adding toothmarks that would fade gradually from my resilient realflesh. Flesh that is no more. So I'm told.

I have no way to know if Maharal is telling the truth about this calamity. But why lie to a helpless prisoner?

Damn. I worked hard on that garden. The sweet-pit apricots would've ripened next week.

Good, I'm getting somewhere with this approach -- distracting myself with useless internal chatter. It's a way to fight back. But how long can I keep it up before the amplified homing reflex tears me apart?

Worse, the golem-Maharal is talking too. Jabbering on while he labors at his console. Maybe he does it for his nerves. Or as part of a devilish plot to harass mine.

" ... so you see it all started decades before Jefty Annonas discovered the Standing Wave. Two fellows named Newberg and d'Aquili traced variations in human neural function, using primitive, turn-of-the-century imaging machines. They were especially interested in differences that appeared in the orientation area, at the top rear of the brain, during meditation and prayer.

"They discovered that spiritual adepts -- from Buddhist monks to ecstatic evangelicals -- all apparently learned how to quell activity in this special neural zone, whose function is to weave sensory data together, creating a feeling of where the self ends and the rest of the world begins.

"What these religious seekers were able to do was eliminate the perception of a boundary or separation between self and world. One effect -- a presentiment of cosmic union or oneness with the universe -- came accompanied by release of endorphins and other pleasure chemicals, reinforcing a desire to return to the same state again and again.

"In other words, prayer and meditation induced a physicochemical addiction to holiness and unity with God!

"Meanwhile, other investigators plumbed for the seat of consciousness, or the imaginary locus where we envision our essential selves to exist. Westerners tend to picture this locale centered behind the eyes, looking out through them, like a tiny homunculus-self riding around inside the head. But some non-Western tribes had a different image -- believing that their true selves dwelled in the chest, near the beating heart. Experimenters found they could persuade individuals to shift this sense of locality, where self or soul resides. You could be trained to envision it outside your body. Riding some nearby object ... even a doll made of clay!"

Amid this ongoing rant, the professor occasionally pauses to offer me a smile.

"Think of the excitement, Albert! At first, these clues came with no apparent connection. But soon, brave visionaries began realizing what they were onto! Pieces of a great puzzle. Then a gateway to a realm fully as vast as the grand universe of physics ... and just as full of possibilities."

Helplessly, I watch as he cranks a big dial up another notch. The machine above me gives a preliminary groan, then sends yet another jolt into my little red-orange head. I manage to choke back a moan, not wanting to give him any satisfaction. For distraction, I keep mumbling this running commentary ... even though I have no recorder and the words are futile, vanishing into entropy as I think them.

That's beside the point. I keep telling myself to find a habitual behavior and stick to it! Venerable advice for the helpless prisoner, offered long ago by a survivor of far worse torment than Maharal could ever dish out. Advice that helps me now as --

Another jolt impales my skull! My back arches in spasms. Writhing, I feel wracked by a need to return.

But return where? How? And why is he doing this to me?

Suddenly I notice something through the pane of glass dividing Yosil's lab. On the other side I see grayAlbert. The ditto who was captured at the Kaolin Estate on Monday. The one who was brought here, replenished and then used as a template to make me.

Each time this body of mine wrenches, so does the gray!

Is Maharal doing the same thing to us both, simultaneously? I see no big machine like this one aimed at the gray.

That means something else is happening. That ditto is somehow feeling what I feel! We must be -- agh!

That was a bad one. I bit down so hard I might have broken a tooth, if I were real.

Got to speak. Before the next jolt.

"Rem -- em -- emo -- "

"What is that, Albert? Are you trying to say something?"

Yosil's ditto hovers near, offering faux sympathy. "Come on, Albert. You can do it!"

"Remo -- tuh ... Re-mote! Y-you're t-tryin-ing to do r-r-r -- "

"Remote-imprinting?" My captor chuckles. "You always guess the same thing. No, old friend. It's nothing as mundane as that old dream. What I'm trying to achieve is much more ambitious. Phase-synchronizing the pseudo-quantum soul states of two related but spatially separated standing waves. Exploiting the deep entanglement of your Shared Observer Unification Locus. Does that mean anything to you?"

Shivering. Jaws chattering.

"Sh-shar-shared observ -- "

"We talked about this before. The fact that each person helps to make the universe happen by acting as an observer, collapsing the probability amplitudes and ... oh, never mind. Let's just say that all copies of a Standing Wave remain entangled with the original version. Even yours, Albert, though you give your golems remarkable leeway.

"I want to use the connection! Ironically, that requires severing the original link, the only way it can be severed ... by eliminating the template prototype."

"Y-you k-killed -- "

"The original Albert Morris, using a stolen missile? Of course. Didn't we already cover that?"

"Yourself. You killed yourself!"

This time, the gray golem before me winces.

"Yes, well ... that, too. And it wasn't easy, believe me. But I had reasons."

"R-reasons ... ?"

"Had to act fast, too. Before I realized fully what I was up to. Even so, I nearly got away from me, speeding along that desert highway."

It's getting harder to talk ... even to grind out single words ... especially each time another spasm strikes. The relentless pummeling of the machine, plucking the chords of my Standing Wave with a sharp twang ... makes me cry out to escape ... to rush back for inloading ... to a home brain that no longer exists.

Uhn! That was bad. How much worse can it get?

All right, think! Suppose the real me is gone. What about the gray in the next room? Can I dump this soul back into him? Without inloading apparatus to connect us, he might as well be on the Moon.

Unless ...

... unless Maharal expects something else to happen. Something -- uhn! -- unconventional.

Can it ... can it be that I'm expected to send something ... some essence of me ... across the room and through that glass wall to my gray, without any thick cryo-cables or any of the normal inloading junk connecting us?

Before I can even begin to ask, I sense another jolt gathering strength, a big one, readying to strike.

Damn, this one's gonna hurt ...

35

Glazed and Confused ... as Tuesday's gray gets the urge ...

Damn. What was that?

Did I just imagine a wave of something, passing through me, like a hot wind?

I could be making it up. Strapped to a table, unable to move, sentenced to the worst fate possible.

Thinking.

Ever since Maharal made me imprint that little red-orange copy and left me here to stew, I've been trying to come up with a clever escape plan. Something all those other captive Alberts never tried before. Or, failing that, some way to get a message out to real-me. A warning about Yosil's techno-horror show.

Yeah, I know. As if. But scheming, no matter how futile, helps pass the time.

Only now I'm getting surges of weird anxiety. Flickering almost-images, too brief to recall, like fragments of a dream. When I chase them using free association, all that comes to mind is a vast row of silent figures ... like the statues of Easter Island. Or pieces on a giant chess-board.

Every few minutes, there's another episode of wild, claustrophobic need. To leave this prison. To go home. To flee this stifling body I'm wearing and get back into the one that counts. One made of nearly immortal flesh.

And now, something like an ugly rumor whispers, There's no me any longer to go home to anymore.

36

Kiln Street Blues ... Greenie goes gallivanting ...

Dittotown? Sherds!

Departing the Temple of the Ephemerals, Palloid and I hurried down Fourth Avenue past dinobuses that bellowed and snorted, hauling in cheap factory laborers, round the clock. Truckbills and brontolorries grunted at each other, jostling to deliver their wares, while errand boys sprinted by on gangly legs, stepping over the bowed heads of stubby epsilons, who marched to underground workpits without a thought or care. Obsessive little dit-devils scurried about, sweeping up any debris or trash, keeping the street spotless. And striding imperiously amid all these disposables were lordly grays, ivories, and ebonies, carrying the most precious cargo of all -- memories that real human beings may actually want to inload at day's end.

Dittotown is part of modern life, so why did it feel so unfamiliar this time? Because of all I've learned as a frankie, at the ripe old age of almost two?

Ducking past the Teller Building, where Tuesday's raid led poor Albert into troubles beyond his ability to cope, I hurried down a "shortcut" recommended by the little weasel-shaped fellow riding on my shoulder. Soon we left the commercial district with its bustling factories and offices, and plunged south into the backstreet area -- a world of decaying structures, reckless whims, and short-term prospects.

The dittos that you'll find in that area were sent on missions that have little to do with business or industry.

One flashing sign yelled E-VISCERAL! Touts stood outside, dyed in garish colors, beckoning passersby to enter for "the trip of your lives." Through gutted walls I saw that a twenty-story building had been converted into one giant thrill ride ... a wildly gyrating roller coaster without straps or safety backups, and with the added feature that many customers had guns -- trading shots with those streaking past them in other cars. What fun.

Next came a row of mud-pimperies and d-brothels -- with exaggerated holems of all kinds leering out of brightly curtained windows -- for those who can't afford to have their fantasies special-made and delivered to their door.

There followed some of the same soot-wracked battle lanes that I visited as a teen, still marked with flickertape risk warnings and cheap kiosks renting weapons to those who neglect to bring their own. Free head-collection, yammered one flasher-ad, as if any of these places would dare charge for the traditional service. Let Us Stage Your Gang Rumble! another yelled. Discounts for Birthday Parties!

You know. The usual ditritus. Embarrassing reminders of youth.

It was distracting for another reason. My skin had started shedding. The gray coating that had seemed so posh and high-class back at Kaolin Manor, when I got my renewal treatment for another day of life, was apparently no more than a cheap spray-on. Once it started peeling, the whole thing came away in strips, taking away the red-orange layer underneath. Rubbing away the itchy stuff, I found myself rapidly regaining this body's original hue -- utility green. Good for mowing the lawn and cleaning the bathroom. Not for playing detective.

"Turn left here, then right at the next intersection," Palloid urged. His claws dug in. "But watch out for Capulets."

"Watch out for what?"

I saw what he meant in a few minutes, rounding a corner, then stopping in surprise to stare down a street that had been expensively transformed since the last time I ventured this far into dittotown -- an entire city block, meticulously rebuilt as a lost fragment of Renaissance Italy, from cobblestones all the way to a garish Brunelleschi fountain in the grand piazza, facing a romanesque church. Towering at both ends were two ornate fortress-mansions, their balconies festooned with the fluttering banners of competing noble houses. Multicolored bravos leaned from terraces to shout at those passing below, or swaggered on patrol, sporting flounces over gartered tights and bulging codpieces. Buxom females dragged around tents of ornate silken fabric, strolling past shopkeepers hawking tastefully archaic merchandise.

Such a lavishly expensive recreation seemed rather much for dittotown, where the whole thing might be wrecked the next time a nearby golemwar got out of hand, spilling bazookafire over the border. But I soon realized, risk was the very justification for its existence. The reason for its inditgenous population.

Shouting broke out near the fountain. One fellow in red and white stripes nudged another whose skin and clothes both featured polka-dot motifs ... each the livery of a feuding house. Bright rapiers abruptly whistled, clanging like harsh bells, while a crowd gathered to cheer and wager in faux-Shakespearean lingo.

Ugh, I thought, getting it. One of them must be Romeo. I wonder if all members of the club take turns with the role, or if it's a matter of seniority. Maybe they auction off the honor daily, to finance this place.

Unemployed and bored with cautious play-acting in the suburbs, these aficionados must get up early to send dittos here each crack of dawn, then spend all restless day at home, eagerly awaiting another headful of drama -- whether dead or alive. Nothing they might legally experience in realflesh could match the vivid, alternate life they led here.

And I thought Irene was weird!

Easy, Albert, a part of me chided. You have a job and lots more. The real world has meaning to you. Others aren't so lucky.

Oh yeah? answered another inner voice. Shut up, twit. I'm not Albert.

Several polka-dot bravos turned away from the duel to eye Palloid and me, as we passed under a nearby flowered colonnade. They glowered, hands drifting to pommels.

Must be Capulets, I realized, offering a quick, inoffensive bow and hurrying onward, with averted eyes.

Thanks, Pal. Some shortcut.

Some trend. I soon learned that whole sector of dittotown had been given over to simulations, whole stretches of abandoned buildings finding new life as imitation worlds. The next block had a Wild West theme, complete with sauntering gunslingers dyed in every shade of the Painted Desert. Another streetscape followed some glassy-metallic sci-fi scenario that I didn't have time to figure out as we hustled by. The common touch was danger, of course. Oh sure, digital virtual reality offers an even wider range of weird locales, vividly rendered in the privacy of your own chador. But not even touchie attachments can make VR feel real. Not like this. No wonder the cyber realm is mostly for cyberfarts.

The next zone was the grandest of all, and most terrifying.

It spanned six whole blocks, with giant holo screens at both ends, fostering the illusion of an endless, sweeping cityscape. A cruel cityscape of dilapidated tenements and chilling familiarity. A world my parents used to describe to me. The Transition Perdition. That era of fear and war and rationing was nearly over by the time I was born, when the dittoboom began delivering its cornucopia, along with the purple wage. But mental scars from the Perdition still afflict my folks' generation, even now.

Why? I wondered, while staring at the vast imitation. Why would anyone go to so much expense and care, trying to recreate a hell we so narrowly escaped? Even the air seemed hazy with something acrid that stung the eyes. "Smog," I think it was called. Talk about verisimilitude.

"We're almost there," Palloid urged. "Third brownstone on the left. Then head upstairs."

I followed his directions, taking the front steps of a run-down brick apartment building two at a time. The realistic lobby featured water dripping into a bucket and peeling, old-fashioned wallpaper. I'm sure I would have smelled urine, had I been equipped with full senses.

No one was out and about as I climbed three flights. But I heard noises behind closed doors -- angry, eager, passionate, or violent sounds -- even the yelling of children. Most of it is probably computer-generated, for realism, I thought. In order to make the place appear crowded to customers. Still, why would anyone want to experience such a life, even on a whim?

My companion pointed down a dingy hallway. "I rented one of these little flats a few months ago, to serve as a safehouse for special meetings. Best to have our rendezvous here, instead of my real home. Anyway, it's closer."

He aimed me to a door with the number 2-B spelled in flaking decals. I knocked.

"Enter!" a familiar voice shouted.

The knob turned under my hand -- expensively machined metal parts, lavishly rusted to give a satisfying squeak. So did the hinges, as I pushed into a room decorated in Early Bachelor Shabby.

Several people stood when I entered, except of course the one I'd come to see. Pal's life-support chair whirred as it rolled forward and lifted to two wheels, a modern techno-anomaly amid all this ersatz poverty.

"Gumby! I gave up on you -- till I got that report of yours an hour ago. What an adventure! Fighting your way into Universal Kilns! A prion attack! Did you really see a Morris gray climb up the ass of a forklift?" He guffawed. "Then a face-off with Aeneas Kaolin. And I can't wait to inload all that fun stuff at Irene's!"

Pal's burly hands reached for the ferretlike ditto, but Palloid suddenly went shy, backing around my neck to the other shoulder. "That can wait," the littler version of my friend snapped. "First, why is Gadarene here, and who are these other guys?"

I had also recognized the golem-hating fundamentalist. His presence in dittotown was like the Pope coming to Gehenna. The poor fellow must be desperate and it showed on his real face.

A green stood opposite Gadarene and I figured it could only be Lum, the emancipation fanatic. This cheap clay visage bore only a passing resemblance to his wide-cheeked original, but it nodded with polite familiarity.

"So you made it out of UK, ditMorris! I was skeptical when Mr. Montmorillin urged us to hurry down here for a meeting. Naturally, I'd love to know how you got your extended lifespan. This could be a real boon to the oppressed!"

"Nice to see you, too," I answered. "And explanations will come in due time. First, who is he?"

I pointed to Pal's third guest. A golem dyed in mauve shades, with a risqué tan stripe spiraling around from the top of his head all the way down. The ditto's chosen face was unfamiliar, but the smile gave me a sudden sense of worrisome familiarity.

"So we meet again, Morris," the spiraled copy said, in a speech rhythm that scraped raw memories. "If our paths keep crossing, I'll start to think you're following me."

"Yeah, right. And greetings to you too, Beta." Much as I hated this guy, I sure needed to ask him some questions.

"I think it's time we talk about Aeneas Kaolin."

37

Ditrayal ... realAlbert hurts a digit ...

I finally gave up trying to subvocalize in realtime. It was too exhausting, using that little jaw-powered recorder. My real body isn't designed for it! Anyway, things got way too busy, right after Ritu abandoned us in that vast underground base, disappearing amid a great army of silent defender dolls.

At first, Corporal Chen and I could only stare in amazement. Where did she go? Why on earth would she leave us, especially in that spooky cavern of all places?

Chen was torn. He wanted to drag me out of there, now that he had seen auditors sniffing around, perhaps investigating who stole the missile that had "killed" me. On the other hand, the ditto-corporal couldn't just abandon Ritu Maharal, letting a civilian -- a real one -- roam around the hidden base unescorted.

"Do you have any gear that can track residual body heat?" I asked in a low whisper, gesturing at the suits of battle armor hanging in neat rows that stretched forever. "Or something that'll pick up metabolic byproducts?"

My apelike companion glowered.

"If I admit that, you could have a whistle to blow."

"I might? Oh, yeah." The golem army is supposed to shield us against other golem armies. It might be harder to justify stockpiling stuff that can hunt down real people. Only the police are supposed to have things like that, under lock and key.

I shrugged. "I guess we'll just let Ritu wander around, then. If she gets lost, she can use one of those big machines to wake some soldier and ask directions. Did I mention she works for Universal Kilns?"

Chen growled. "Dammit! Okay. Follow me."

He swiveled around and hurried, striding bowlegged toward one end of the vast dressing room.

Most of the helm-and-coverall suits were measured for outsized bodies like those we'd seen in the Hall of Guardians. How did this particular Corporal Chen hoped to fit in one? I soon got my answer. The last few dozen rows held an assortment of garments, in all sizes, featuring wildly varying numbers of limbs and appendages. Apparently, there were specialized combat-dittos we never saw on TV, even in major league wars.

"The suits with green and amber stripes are scout models," he explained. "They have adaptive camouflage and full sensoria ... including some that might serve our needs in tracking down ... um ... in finding and helping Miss Maharal."

Chen was clearly nervous about this. His eyes darted and I could guess what he was thinking. It might have been simpler if Ritu kept her disguise on, as I did. But the makeup made her skin itch and she'd wiped it off.

"Could a real person use one of these?" I asked, fingering the sleeve of one armored uniform, hanging nearby.

"Could a -- oh, I get you. If Ritu climbed into a suit and sealed up properly, she wouldn't leave an organic residuals trail after that. Yeah. First thing I should check is whether she came this way."

Chen grabbed a scout ensemble -- much shorter than average, to roughly fit his simian dittobody -- and began working the zippers. I stood behind, reaching out, as if to help ...

... and seized him round the shoulders with my left arm, grabbing his head tightly with my right, bearing down hard.

I had a couple of things going in my favor -- strong realhuman muscles and the element of surprise. But how many fractions of a second before his soldier training kicked in, erasing the advantage?

"Wha -- ?" He dropped the garment and grabbed at my arms, crying out, trying to whirl, clutching for a hold.

Chen might be a pro, but I knew a thing or two about betrayal and murder. And his tax collector body wasn't top-of-the-line. The neck snapped, just in time, as he yanked hard on my thumb, causing an incendiary eruption of pain.

"Ow!" I yelped, letting go and shaking the offended digit.

The golem slipped out of my arms and fell to the floor. Supine and paralyzed, he was still able to watch me curse and dance and suck my thumb.

I saw realization fill his eyes.

Chen knows I'm real. And that he hurt me.

Even as the light of consciousness began to fade, the ditto's mouth moved, forming a single word, without air to give it voice.

"Sorry," he mouthed.

Then the active Standing Wave went flat. I could see it ... almost feel it go away.

My next move was obvious. I still needed that secure web port Chen first promised, and he had just shown me how to get there safely, by wearing one of those "scout" ensembles. Its sensor array should help me detect and avoid those Dodecahedron auditors we spotted. And perhaps catch Ritu's trail, if I was lucky.

Frankly, her disappearance wasn't my biggest concern. As soon as I got properly zip-sealed and was sure of air, I bent over to pick up the clay figure at my feet. Poor ditChen. I'd like to say my aim was to get him to a freezer, and save the day's mortal memories. But I just needed a place to stash the decaying clay out of sight, preferably an anonymous recycling bin.

Anyway, the real Corporal Chen wouldn't benefit by downloading what had happened here today. The best favor I could do for him was erase his involvement.

All right, maybe that was rationalization. I had cut him down for one reason, above all. As soon as he donned a scout suit, he would have begun scanning for a real human ... and would've found one standing right next to him. Damn inconvenient for me. I couldn't allow it.

I think he understood, at the end.

There was no recycling bin nearby, so I pried out his dogtag pellet and stuffed the rest of him into a refuse can.

I'll make it up to Chen, if I ever get out of this mess. Someday I'll insist on buying him dinner. Though he'll never have any idea why.

It took only a few minutes to get a feel for the scout gear and adjust the camouflage settings to background light levels. Like a squid or octopus, the light-sensitive skin rippled to match whatever lay on the other side of me. A blurry rendition, to be sure. Not true invisibility, but a much better version than you can buy nowadays at the Hobby Store. Good enough to fool most edge-and-movement pattern recognition systems -- digital, organic, or clay.

Yup. Even after the Big Deregulation, the guvvies still manage to spend our tax dollars developing cool things.

With the sensors of my scout uniform set to maximum wariness, I set out for the site where Chen had spotted those auditors. Maybe I'd try to eavesdrop for a while and find out why they suspected that stolen military hardware was used in my assassination. Even more important, that secure net-access port must lie somewhere beyond the weapons hall.

I also hoped to find a snack machine. Surely real people came down here sometimes! Being organic is nice, but it has disadvantages. By that point, I was so hungry that even self-hypnosis couldn't drive away the pangs anymore.

It made me thankful the scout uniform had sound dampers. My growling stomach seemed loud enough to wake the sleeping army next door!

Here's to high technology.

38

I, Amphorum ... red, gray, and other encounters across space and time ...

Like a container -- or several -- spilling over at the rim, I fill up.

My only desire? To empty all these vessels that I am!

The urge to reunite ... to recombine ... to rejoin, overwhelms me.

But which me?

What me?

Why, when, and where me?

All the famed journalistic double-U questions, turning around to bite the reporter.

Double-U. Double-yous. Identical, yet different. For one of me knows things the other doesn't.

One has seen clay jars from shipwrecks two thousand years old. Mother- or whore-goddess figures that were molded out of river mud twenty millennia ago. Wedgelike symbols, pressed by hand, way back when hands first learned to scribble thoughts ...

One has seen all those things. The other me writhes, wondering where all these images are coming from. Not memories, but fresh, immanent, experience in the raw and actual.

I know what Maharal is doing. How could I not know?

Yet the aim of all this torment remains obscure. Has he gone mad? Do all dittos face the same fate when they become ghosts, cast adrift without the anchor of a soul-home?

Or is he exploring a new way for the Standing Wave to vibrate? Multifariously.

I do feel less like an individual actor. More like an entire cast. An arena.

I am a forum.

Ack! This isn't at all like the familiar sensation of inloading we all know -- passively absorbing memories as a soul-wave replica flows back to combine with the original. Instead, two waves seem to stand in parallel, gray and red but equal in status, both interfering and reinforcing, jostling toward mutual coherence ...

And droning in the background, like a bad tour guide or a hated lecturer, the voice of ditYosil tells me, over and over again, that observers make the universe. Oh, he teases and taunts with every rising throb of the salmon reflex, urging me to "go home" to a self-base that longer exist.

"Answer me a riddle, Morris," my tormentor asks.

"How can you be in two places at once, when you're not anywhere at all?"