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

21 Duplicity

My first clear realization, as I awake, is not about the cramped tube where I find myself confined. I’ve been ambushed, snared, boxed, and crated so many times, I hardly notice anymore. No, my first thought is that I should not have been sleeping. I’m a ditto, after all. With just a ticking enzyme clock, I don’t have time for frivolities.

Then it comes rushing back -

I was hurrying along a ragged hedge in an old-fashioned suburban enclave, created for Aeneas Kaolin’s servants. Stepping over a bike, I wondered — where did Maharal’s ghost hurry off to? Why did the inventor’s final golem run off, instead of helping solve its maker’s killing?

I hastened around the hedge, only to find — ditMaharal! The gray stood there, smiling, aiming a weapon with a flared nozzle …

The memory’s distressing. Worse, I have a weird impression that more than a little time passed since. Hours. More than I can afford.

It’s a good thing I pay to give my ditto blanks phobia blocks, or I’d be having fits right now, pinned inside a narrow cylinder, pickled in a syrup of oily sustaino-fluid. All right, Albert … ditAlbert … quit banging the walls. You’ll never break out of here by force. Concentrate!

I remember hurrying to catch up with Maharal’s ghost, rounding the corner of a tall hedge, only to find my quarry had turned, pointing spray gun at my face. I plunged into a diving tackle, hoping fresh reflexes would prove quicker than his day-old body.

It must not have worked.

How long have I been out? I send a time query to my tracker pellet and the response is a sharp pain — someone must have ripped it from my brow. A throbbing hole gapes when I wriggle up a hand to poke the wound.

In countries with strict laws, pellet removal automatically kills the ditto. In PEZ, the old precautions faded till there’s just a cheap transponder and data chip. I can live without it. But my archie will have a hard time retrieving his lost property, which is why bad guys dig the pellets out.

Did they also think to remove the rest of my implants? I can’t tell if my auto-recorder is still running. For all I know, this subvocal narration may be futile, words vanishing into entropy, like my thoughts. But I can’t stop compulsively reciting. It’s built in to keep doing it till this pathetic clay brain dissolves.

Wait. Most sustaino-tanks come equipped with a little window, so owners can view their assets. All I see right now is blank metal, but there’s light coming from somewhere.

Behind me. Pressing both palms against the tank’s inner wall, I rotate slowly … and there it is. Beyond a thick sheet of glass, I see a room that resembles some mad scientist’s laboratory.

Mine isn’t the only preservation cylinder. Dozens lean haphazardly on rough, stony walls. Beyond, I see storage freezers for raw blanks, several imprinting units, and a large kiln for baking fresh duplicates. Every piece of equipment bears the same logo — a U followed by a K, each letter enclosed by its own circle. Side by side, they blend into something like the symbol for infinity. All over the world, it stands for quality. The genuine article. Kosher. The real McCoy.

Could I be inside the gleaming headquarters of Universal Kilns? Something about the stark rock wall says no. High-bandwidth superconducting cables lay haphazardly draped across cluttered work benches. Shabby dust layers show that no contract janitorial service sends striped golems to clean here. Wherever “here” is.

At a guess, I’d say the loyal Dr. Maharal was pilfering office supplies, and possibly a lot more, before his demise.

Beyond the normal run of dittoing equipment, several machines look unfamiliar, with the open-scaffold look of prototypes. One array of high-pressure tanks and nozzles had been hissing and fuming, obscured in multicolored fog till a few seconds ago, before reaching a climax and abruptly falling silent.

A horizontal panel swings back and clouds of vapor spill away from a naked figure, lying on a cushioned platform — with that fresh, doughy look that you always have when emerging from the kiln. The features are those of Yosil Maharal, resembling the corpse I saw at Kaolin Manor, though hairless and metallic gray, flushed with glimmering reddish undertones.

A sudden jerk and gasp; it starts to breathe, sucking air to feed the catalysis cells. Eyes snap open, dark, without pupils. They turn, as if sensing my gaze.

There is a coldness in their regard. Icy, with an agony. That is, if you can read anything in a ditto’s eyes.

Sitting up and swiveling to plant both feet on the floor, Maharal’s golem starts toward me. Limping. The same uneven gait I once attributed to some recent injury. But that was a different copy. It had to be. This ditto is new. Its uneven gait must have some other explanation. Habit, perhaps.

New? How could it be new? Maharal is dead! There’s no template to copy anymore. No soul to lay its impression into clay. Unless he happened to have a few imprinted spares, stored in a fridge. But the machine this creature just stepped out of doesn’t look like any fridge or kiln I ever saw.

Even before he speaks, I wonder — Am I looking at some kind of technological marvel? A breakthrough? Project Zoroaster?

Still naked, ditMaharal peers through the small window of my container, as if inspecting a valuable acquisition.

“You appear to be managing well enough.” The words enter via a small diaphragm, vibrating the greasy fluid within. “I hope you’re comfortable, Albert.”

How can I answer? I shrug helplessly.

“There is a speaking tube,” the gray golem explains. “Below the window.”

I glance down, groping, and find it. A flexible hose with a mask to fit over the nose and mouth. As soon as I strap it on, suction begins, flushing my throat with water, then air, provoking spasmodic coughing fits. Still, it’s a relief to start breathing again. How long has it been?

It also means the enzyme clock resumes ticking.

“So” — coughing again — “so your other gray took a spare out of the fridge and told you who I am before it expired. Big deal.”

The Maharal-duplicate grins.

“I did not need to be told. I am that same gray. The one who spoke to your archetype Tuesday morning. The one who stood by my own corpse at noon. The same ‘ghost’ who shot you Tuesday afternoon.”

How can that be? Then I remember the strange-looking machine. Looking again at the blotches that flicker under a complexion that rather glows as if new … I think I get it.

“Ditto-rejuvenation. Is that what it’s all about?” After a brief pause, I add, “And Universal Kilns wants to suppress your discovery in order to keep up sales.” ditMaharal’s smile hardens.

“A good guess. If only that were all. There would be disruptions. Economic ramifications. But nothing that society couldn’t handle.”

Thinking hard, I try to grasp what he’s implying.

Something more serious than economic disruption? “How … how long can a ditto go on acquiring new memories before it gets hard to inload?”

My captor nods.

“The answer depends on the original imprinting personality. But you are on the right track. With enough time, a golem’s soul-field starts to drift, transforming into something new.”

“A new person,” I murmur. “Plenty of folks may worry about that.” ditMaharal is watching me, as if evaluating my reactions. But evaluating for what?

Pondering my present state, I’m struck only by a calm acceptance.

“You’ve put something in the sustainofluid. A sedative?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

“Of course there’s more.”

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

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

The initial flush of kiln-baking has faded. He stands before me in standard gray tones, looking moderately fresh … but not entirely. Some of those under-the-skin blotches haven’t gone away. Whatever process he uses to restore élan vital must be uneven. Imperfect, like a film doyenne with her latest face-lift. Underneath are signs of irreversible wear and tear.

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

He nods.

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

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

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

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

“Go on,” he says.

I’m reluctant to speak the words.

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

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

“Reality is a matter of opinion.

“I am the true Yosil Maharal.”