"Kiln People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

10 Golem Home

The Rainbow Lounge has a retro name and revo clientele. Once you step past a flickersign that says NO REALFOLK ALLOWED, it feels like you’ve entered some nightmarish TwenCen sci-fi movie, filled with cavorting mutants and leering androids.

Of course, a lot more than just a warning keeps archies away. True-flesh can’t endure the bone-jarring rhythms hammered by a vibrating dance floor. Staccato-strobes hurl juttering lightning arcs that would send organic neurons into conniptions. The atmosphere, clotted with soot from a hundred smoldering ash pipes, could lace your native lungs with lively tumors. The stench — mildly intoxicating to dittos — must be filtered before venting to outside air.

Back in one-body days, Saturday night mattered. Now, places like the Rainbow hop around the clock, even on a Tuesday afternoon — whenever fresh dittos can arrive, baked for harsh pleasure in their owners’ kilns, decorated in everything from paisley spirals to moiré patters that turn skin into blurry art. Some come molded as gaudy sex caricatures or sport scary accessories, like razor talons or acid-dripping jaws.

“Would you like a head-check?” The red attendant behind a counter offers me a glowing tag. Next to coatracks stand refrigerated cubbyholes. A tag for cranial storage can help ensure that violent memories will be savored later.

“No thanks,” I tell her. And yes, I admit that I used to frequent spots like this. Hey, who gets past their teen years nowadays without sampling depths of hedonism that would shame Nero? Why not, if the only thing you keep are memories? And even that’s optional. Nothing that happens to your ditto can harm the real you, right?

That is, if you ignore certain rumors …

For many, the intensity fix is addictive — inloading experiences too raucous for mere protoplasm. Especially the unemployed, spending their purple wage to beat back the ennui of modern life.

“Please wait over there, ditMorris. I’ll come for you shortly.”

Jarred from doorway contemplation, I glance at my guide, another red-hued femdit. Her speech carries through the racket with remarkable clarity. Sonic interference dampers, embedded in the walls, shape a channel for her words to reach my ears. A tech-marvel you can take for granted, when you happen to own the place.

“Pardon? Where should I wait?”

Queen Irene’s red golem points again, past the dance floor and beyond the Grudge Pit. This time I see an empty table with a winking RESERVED light.

“Will this take long? I haven’t got all day.”

That expression has special meaning for a creature like me, self-sentenced to oblivion for the good of my maker. But my guide only shrugs, then heads off through the crowd to inform her sisters that the hired spy has arrived.

Why should I spend my last eighteen hours working for people I don’t like, doing a job I don’t understand? Why not escape! The street is just meters away.

But if I did escape, where could I go? realAlbert would force me to spend all of my remaining span in quick-court, fighting the maestra’s breach-of-contract suit. Anyway, I’m probably being watched right now, targeted by a sighting beam. I can see more copies of the same umber-colored female hurrying about, serving drinks, mopping spills and sweeping bits of broken customers. Several of the reds glance my way. They’ll know if I make a break for it.

I head for the table, wading through a maelstrom of noise. Living noise that grabs your body like a cloying lover, hampering every move. I don’t like this “music,” but the garish dancers do, throwing themselves into frenetic collisions that few could mimic in flesh. Bits of clay fly, as if from a potter’s wheel.

Staunch partiers have a saying — if your ditto makes it home in one piece, you didn’t have a good time.

Seating booths line the walls. Others lounge at open tables that project garish holo images — whirling abstractions, vertigeffigies, or gyrating strippers. Some draw the eye against your will.

Sidling around the mob, I pass through a fringe minimum, where the sonic dampers overlap, canceling everything to a hush, like inside a padded coffin. Stray bits of dialogue converge from all over the club.

“… so there’s this clamber-amble, creeping up my leg? I look down an’ see it’s wearing Josie’s face, grinning at the tip! So I got maybe three secs to decide, did she send it as a poison pet or an apology? Get the pixel?”

“… the committee finally accepted my thesis, only they slapped a perversion tax, on account of ‘sadistic themes’! The nerve. I bet none of those old turds ever read the gospels of deSade!”

“… uh … taste this … d’you think they’re watering the benzene?”

Another step, and I’m beyond the quiet fringe minimum, abruptly staggering under a double-reinforced roar. Screams bellow from the Grudge Pit, where swaggering bravos carve each other while other clients tender themselves as prizes to the winners. The latest victor stands over his steaming victim, crossing both wrists with raised weapons that whirl like spinning scythes, throwing enzyme-soaked gore onto cheering bystanders. Bets are paid with glimmering eye-picts, or wads of stained purple bills. Under their garish skin decorations, you can spot which dismembered dittos were bought at a public kiln for twenty welfare dollars.

The winner’s triumphant turn brings us eye-to-eye. We lock a gaze briefly and his grin freezes — in recognition? I don’t recall ever seeing his particular pseudoface. The connection lasts but an instant, then he turns back to admiring cheers.

A similar victory might have won him a chiefdom in some olden tribe. Now, well, at least he gets a moment to pretend. Of course, a real pro like my Clara could eat punks like this for breakfast. But she has better things to do right now, two hundred klicks away at the front lines, defending her country.

The RESERVED light goes dark when I sit where I’m expected, wondering how Clara’s war is going. Part of me feels sick that I’ll never see her again. Though of course I will, as soon as one army or the other wins … or else when combat breaks up for the traditional weekend truce. realAlbert had better be good to her, or I’ll come back from wherever golems go, and haunt the lucky bastard!

“What’ll it be?” a waitress asks. A special model, resembling the other Irene-copies, but voluptuous, with big hands for carrying trays.

“Just a Pepsoid. With ice.” My grays are self-sufficient, but it’s hot in here and an electrolyte boost won’t hurt. On Wammaker’s expense account.

Turns out that I’m near another sonic fringe. If I lean to one side, I can slip my head into a zone of relative silence, damping out the thudding music and shrieking battle cries, leaving only dribbles of chatter from the booths.

“… What’re you smoking? Izzat buckyball-black? Can I sniff?”

“… Did you hear they closed the Pithy Pendulum? Health spectors found a zhimmer virus in the filters. Your infected ditto brings it home and WHAM! Next thing, your rig’s drooling in a psycho ward …”

“… I love that bug-eye look! Are they functional?”

Wordless sounds of ersatz passion also carry. Through haze, I glimpse couples and trios writhing in alcoves. And if your body plan won’t fit your partner’s, the management rents adapters.

“Hush,” I tell the table, which erects a curtain of white noise, quashing the surrounding din. “Give me news from the war front.”

“Which war?” a voice buzzes, silicon-based, not clay. Specifics are needed. “Five major matches and ninety-seven minor league events are currently in progress around the globe.”

Ah. So who is Clara fighting, this week? I should pay closer attention to the standings. If this were a sports bar, the contest would be on a big screen, twenty-four hours.

“Um, try the combat range nearest town.”

“The Jesse Helms International Combat Range lies two hundred and fifty-four kilometers south by southeast. This week, the Helms Range is proud to host a return match between the Pacific Ecological Zone of the United States of America and the Indonesian Reforestation Consortium. At stake are iceberg harvesting rights in the Antarctic—”

“That’s it. How’s the PEZ team doing?”

A holo image spreads across the table, zooming toward sunburned mountainy terrain demarcated by sharp boundaries. Outside, beyond a palm-treed resort oasis, lies a protected landscape of desert mesas. Inside: a pocked and tormented patch of Mother Gaia that’s been sacrificed for the sake of the rest. A vast cousin of the Rainbow Lounge, where human drives are channeled, with far more at stake.

“Pacifican forces made significant territorial advances during Monday’s initial action. Casualties were low. But IRC tribunes assessed a number of penalties that may cancel out these gains …”

Sparkles flash before me as the POV drops closer to Earth. Sparkles that seem rather gay-looking, till you recognize rocket-artillery barrages and fierce laser strikes. Clara works in a realm of awful killing machines that could wreak horror if they ever spilled beyond the world’s combat ranges. I’m torn between zooming toward the front lines or swerving to that tree-lined oasis, at the border. Only -

— someone barges suddenly through the wispy privacy screen, blocking half the holo image.

“So, it is you.” A figure stands before me, tall and snake-skinned. “How convenient.”

It’s the gladiator I saw just minutes ago in the Grudge Pit, exulting over a steaming victim. He looms closer, purple hands still swathed in wet clay grue, like some brutal potter.

“How’d you get out of the river?” he demands.

All at once, I realize it’s the rowdy who blocked my way last night, on Odeon Square! Only that had been his archie back when I was green, trying desperately to escape Beta’s yellowdits.

“River?” Let’s play innocent. “What makes you think I went swimming? Or that I’d remember you?”

His fighter-ditto isn’t made for subtle expressions. The face goes rigid as he realizes what he just gave away. Then he shrugs, deciding not to care what his words reveal.

“You remember me, all right,” he growls. “I saw you jump in. And I know you made it back home to dump.”

Know? How could he know? Never mind. Modern wisdom says never to be surprised if hidden knowledge leaks. Over the long term, no secret endures.

Let’s see if he appreciates sarcasm.

“A golem walking the length of a river! Well, goodness. Anyone who accomplished something like that should be the talk of the town! Maybe you should try jumping in yourself sometime.”

The suggestion doesn’t sit well.

“I kept your damn arm. Baked it hard. Want it back?”

I can’t help smiling as I recall his stunned expression when I left him standing in the plaza gripping my severed wrist. A rare happy memory from a lousy ditto-day.

“Keep it. Make a nice urn.”

He scowls. “Stand up.”

Instead, I yawn and stretch, both posturing and buying time. Courage is conditional. If this body of mine were made for partying, I just might try to slab and spin this guy, for the hell of it. realAlbert, with plenty to live for, would flee such a mad fool without shame. My options are murkier. I’m gray and an orphan, with no chance of continuity but some puzzles I’d like to solve in my remaining hours. All told, I’d rather management came to shoo him off. Alas, not a single red Irene is in sight.

“I said, get up!” Bully-boy growls, preparing to strike.

“Do I get choice of weapons?” I ask abruptly.

Hesitation. He can’t just cut me to bits when I’ve made it a matter of honor. Duels have rules, y’know. And people are watching.

“Sure. After you.” He gestures toward the Grudge Pit, insisting that I lead the way.

I need an out before we get there. There are a few tools in my pocket — a small cutter and a cyberscope — but he won’t make the same mistake as last night, letting me strike up close, by surprise.

Where the hell are my hosts? If I had any idea they were so lax, I’d have made that break earlier! Hit the street. Maybe head for Pal’s. Advise Albert to avoid the maestra in future, like a plague.

We weave past tables, most of them aglow with shimmering bolos, lighting garish faces. No one looks familiar in the young crowd. Anyway, this character is probably part of the in-group. Flexing my knees a bit lower with each step, I think-prep an enzyme rush while slowing the pace, as if suddenly reluctant.

As I hoped, my nemesis plants a beefy hand in my back. Gives a push.

“Go on! The armory’s just ahea—”

I won’t chance it against his hyped-up reflexes. Instead of whirling at him from a fake stumble, I leap sideways and up, landing on a nearby table, kicking aside glasses to slip between the projected holos of two female dancers, rubbing their hips in erotic rhythm.

I think he yells, but there’s so much noise from upset clients — they reach for me, so I jump again!

Like a pip, shot from between the gyrating dancers, I fly from that table to another, landing this time amid a swirling maelstrom of jagged virtual scythes, spinning round and round like Death’s personal tornado. It’s so realistic that I cringe, half expecting to be puréed. But my body passes through the illusion, even as more customers scream outrage and glass crunches underfoot. Hands grab an ankle, so I spin-kick, knocking them off.

Of course the light storm blinds me, too. I can barely glimpse my next target, a table where a gently spinning Earthglobe beckons. I flex -

— but a sudden force knocks the rickety platform, spoiling my launch. I strike the next table edge-on, rolling in pain amid chairs, kicking feet and broken bottles.

Blows buffet my left side, driving a groan. My tormentor, or an irritated customer? Rather than look, I scuttle like a crab while groping in a pants pocket for my cutter — too short-range to serve as much of a weapon.

Uh-oh. Boots ahead. Many. He’s called friends. They’re bending and peering under tables. In moments -

My hand falls on the base of this table, held to the floor by three heavy bolts.

Cut them? Why not? Here goes -

The table wobbles … tips …

Grab it. Now surge upward!

They jump back in alarm. It’s not much of a weapon, but with the holo still shining I appear to be brandishing more than a bitty cocktail table! Writhing images extend another two meters, like shining snakes. A flail made of burning light.

Just light, yet they cringe. Imprinted with barely altered caveman souls, they can’t help seeing a flaming torch. Soon I’m circled by a zone of respect, empty out to the holo’s reach. And now, some spectator voices cheer for me.

I spot the punk, with pals, all wearing studded black as if they invented the look. Pathetic.

They clench and snarl. In bare moments, rational evaluation will win out, overcoming cave reflexes. They’ll charge through the cool light. But hemmed by onlookers, what can I …

All at once the tenor of sound shifts. The thundering dance music vanishes. Angry shouts are damped. Past the sucking whistle of my hyper-breathing, an amplified voice penetrates.

“ditMorris, if you please …”

Swerving again, I feint at the bravos. They retreat, perhaps for the last time as their eyes narrow angrily.

Then, abruptly, they give way — pushed aside by a band of newcomers, small but forceful, using sound-wands to clear a path. Red females, restoring order to their club.

It’s about time.

Backing toward the Grudge Pit, the chief punk gives me a final look, surprisingly passionless, even amused or gratified. The pounding “music” returns. Soon, the Rainbow is back to normal.

One of the Irenes, unapologetic, shakes her ruddy finger.

“ditMorris, kindly put that table down!”

It’s hard to comply for a moment. Instinct, you know.

“Please, no more distractions. You’re expected. The hive awaits.”

The holo display sputters out and I drop my makeshift weapon. That’s it? No apology for leaving me at the mercy of idiots?

Oh, stifle the complaint, Albert. It’s not like your life was in danger, or anything important.

Jerking her crimson head, my guide beckons me to follow her toward the back of the club, then through a plush curtain. Blessed silence reigns suddenly, as the heavy drape falls behind us. Silence so welcome that I sway. It takes several beats before I can think. Then -

Wait … I’ve seen this room before.

During the meeting at Studio Neo, one red-clay Irene had been jacked into a screen showing throngs of umber duplicates, fussing around a single pale figure, supine on a fancy life-maintenance couch. Now, up close, I see the real woman lying amid the bustle, staring blankly while tended by one-third scale duplicates. Fluid drips into her mouth. Mechanical arms massage her limbs. The face, though flaccid and distant, is clearly the template for every red I’ve seen running about this place. Her shaved head bears a medusa of writhing cables, leading to industrial strength freezers and kilns.

A fresh-baked copy emerges, still glowing from the oven. It stretches for a languorous moment before accepting paper overalls, then stepping away, targeted to do some chore without direction or instruction. Meanwhile, another reenters from the outside world, clearly tottering on depleted cells. Without ceremony, two sisters neatly sever the day-old head, dropping it into a memory transfer coil.

The archie’s pale face winces for an instant during inload. The discarded body rolls off for recycling.

Some foresee this as our future, I muse. When you can spin off countless copies to perform any task, your durable organic body will serve one function, as a place to deposit memories and pass them on, a sacred prisoner like the ant queen, while bustling workers carry out life’s real activity and savor.

I find the prospect repulsive. But my grandparents thought the same of basic imprinting. The words “golem” and “ditto” were epithets, till we got used to them. Who am I to judge what future generations will think normal?

“ditMorris, welcome.”

I turn. The Irene facing me has the skin texture of a high-quality gray, tinted with her trademark umber glaze. Standing near is the other rox I met at Studio Neo, “Vic” Manuel Collins, with the eye-hurting plaid dye job.

“You call this welcome? I’d like to know why you left me out there, to be—”

Collins lifts a hand. “Questions later. First, let us see to your repairs.”

Repairs?

Looking down, I see bad news. Deep gashes in my left side! One leg cut more than halfway through along its length and oozing badly. Hopped-up on action enzymes, I felt little.

Ack, I’m ruined.

“You can repair this?” My chief emotion is numb curiosity.

“Come along,” says the nearest Irene. “We’ll fix you up in no time.”

No time? I ponder in a daze, following. To a ditto, “no time” is a very demanding phrase.