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

25 Impassioned Clay

To my utter surprise, Vic Aeneas Kaolin wanted to hire me as a ditective!

“So. Would you two like a chance to find the perverts who did all this?”

He said it waving at a nearby crowd of holo bubbles, jostling for our attention. Most of them showed the sabotage site at Universal Kilns, now swarming with multicolored repair-dittos, like a hive of busy ants struggling to restore the vast factory to profitable operation.

Other bubbles peered down at the smoldering ruins of a small suburban house.

The trillionaire’s offer left me speechless, though Pallie’s little weasel-golem took it with aplomb.

“Sure, we can solve this case for you. But we gotta charge quadruple Albert’s normal rate. Plus expenses … including a new house, to replace the one that just got blown up.”

How about getting Albert a new organic body, while we’re at it? I pondered caustically. Pal could be amazing sometimes, sweating over minor stuff while ignoring the big picture. Like the fact that Albert Morris no longer existed. So who was legally going to take this case? I had no more legitimate authority than a talking toaster.

Kaolin acted unperturbed. “Those terms are acceptable, but with a condition that payment shall depend entirely on results. And that Mr. Morris truly turns out to have been innocent, as the archive-recording seems to suggest.”

“Seems to suggest!” Palloid yelped. “You heard the story. That poor guy was duped! Hoodwinked, chiseled, set up, conned, fooled, frauded, framed, swindled—”

“Pal,” I tried to interrupt.

“—cozened, misled, tricked! A patsy. A fool, tool, doofus, dolt, blockhead, pawn—”

“That may be,” Kaolin cut him off with a hand gesture. “Or else the archive might have been contrived in advance. Pre-recorded in order to offer a plausible alibi.”

“That can be checked,” I pointed out. “Even buried in the gray’s throat, the recorder would have picked up ambient city noise from his surroundings. People talking. A truck’s engine on a nearby street. Muffled sounds, but under intense analysis they’ll correlate with actual events, recorded on nearby publicams.”

“So,” Kaolin conceded with a nod. “Not pre-recorded, then. But still perhaps a lie. The gray could have gone through all the motions, reciting as he went, while pretending not to be one of the conspirators. Feigning gullibility—”

“—naivete, credulousness, stupidity—”

“Shut up, Pal! I don’t” — I shook my head — “I don’t think any of this is really our business anymore. Shouldn’t you be handing this tape over to the police?” ditKaolin pursed his expressive, realistic lips. “My attorney says we’re right at the borderline, the cusp between civil and criminal law.”

Surprise provoked my bitter laugh. “A major act of industrial sabotage—”

“Without a single human victim.”

“Without a single … What in hell do you call that?”

I jabbed a finger at one of the news bubbles, showing an aerial view of my poor burned house. I mean Albert’s house. Whatever. Responding to my vehement attention, that bubble swelled in size, jostling others aside and magnifying. Our point of view zoomed toward several black investigator specialdits from the Violent Crimes Unit, who could be seen probing the wreckage. Top professionals, looking for body parts. And missile parts, no doubt.

“There is, as yet, no confirmed link between that tragedy and what happened at UK.”

Kaolin said it with such a straight face that I stared at him for several seconds.

“You will only get away with that line for a few hours at best, no matter how good your lawyers are. When the cops find my body … I mean Albert’s … and when testimony is taken from ditnesses and cameras inside UK, your insurance company will have no choice but to cooperate with the authorities. The police will know you found something small and important in the foamy mess after the prion attack. If you pretend you didn’t find anything, one of your contract employees will—”

“—will likely turn me in, hoping to cash a whistle-blower prize. Please, I’m no fool. I won’t try to keep the recording away from the cops. Not for very long, that is. But a short delay may prove helpful.”

“Helpful how?”

“I get it!” chirped Pal’s mini-ditto with obvious relish, its ferret grin widening. “You want the saboteurs to think they succeeded. Assuming they never knew about the graydit’s little recorder, they may think they’re safe. That gives us time to go after ’em!”

“Time?” I demanded. “What time? Are you all nuts? I was baked almost twenty hours ago! My clock is close to used up. I’ve barely got enough time left to take in dinner and a show. Whatever makes you think I can investigate a case under conditions like this, even if I wanted to?”

At which point Aeneas Kaolin smiled.

“Oh, I may be able to reset that ticking clock of yours.”

Less than thirty minutes later, I stepped out of the biggest apparatus the mogul had in his laboratory-basement. A hissing, steaming contraption that hammered, zapped, sprayed, and massaged me till I hurt all over … like that time Clara made me take an army calisthenics course in realflesh and skivvies. My moist clay pseudoskin fizzed disconcertingly with freshly injected élan. If I didn’t explode or melt in the next few minutes, I might take on the world.

“This gizmo of yours is gonna change a lot of things,” Pal commented from a perch nearby, licking the same puffy glow. ditKaolin answered, “It has drawbacks — like prohibitive cost — that may prevent commercial development. There were only two prototypes and … not all results have been satisfactory.”

“Now he tells me,” I grumbled. “No, please ignore that. Beggars can’t be choosers. Thanks for extending this so-called life.”

Looking down, I saw that a color change had been thrown in for free. My third in one day. Now I had the look of a high-quality gray. Well, well. Who says you can’t advance in life? There can be progress, even for a frankie.

“Where do you plan to go first?” the platinum trillionaire asked, clearly eager to get us on our way. Even though I’m not Albert Morris, I tried to picture what my maker, the professional private eye, would do at this point.

“Queen Irene’s place,” I decided. “Come on, Pal. We’re going to the Rainbow Lounge.”

Kaolin lent us a sturdy little car from the company fleet, no doubt carrying a transponder to track our movements and a sound tap as well. Palloid had to agree not to inload back into the original Pal, or even contact his archie. In fact, we were under orders not to tell anyone else about what we had learned in the mansion basement.

Whether or not those orders were exactly legal, I felt sure that Kaolin had some way to enforce them, or he’d never let us depart. Maybe it was my turn to carry a bomb. Something small, inserted while my body was renewed in that hissing experimental restoration machine? I had no immediate way to check it out … or any reason to, so long as our goals were the same.

Getting to the truth, right? That’s what we’re all interested in, right? Me and Kaolin. Only how could I tell?

Again and again, the same question popped into mind. Why me?

Why hire the crude green frankie of a private eye whose behavior must already appear deeply worrisome in Kaolin’s eyes? Even if Albert’s gray hadn’t been one of the conspirators, he was their unwitting dupe — as Pal so colorfully put it.

Either way, it seemed strange for the mogul to trust me.

Then again, who could he trust? Kaolin wasn’t kidding about the Henchman Law. When first introduced, it soon turned into the quickest way for a fellow to retire early — by tattling on his boss. Whistle-blower prizes grew bigger as one white-collar scam after another collapsed, feeding half of the resulting fines back into new rewards, enticing even more trusted lieutenants, minions, and right-hand men to blab away. To everyone’s surprise, a world filled with cameras proved to offer pretty good safety against retribution by most mobs. Many gangs and cabals destroyed themselves simply by trying to enforce silence on defectors.

The implacable logic of the Prisoner’s Dilemma triggered collapse of one conspiracy after another as informers became public heroes, accelerating the rush for publicity and treasure. For a time it looked as if perfidy had its back to the proverbial wall. Any criminal scheme with more than three members appeared doomed from the start.

Then dittotech arrived.

Nowadays, it’s possible once again to have a gang of ruthless accomplices, if all of them are you! Better still if you do find a few trustworthy allies to share the imprinting chores, since they may have skills you lack. But you’re still wise to keep the number of original members low. Three or four. Five, tops. Any more and you still have an excellent chance of being betrayed by some trusted aide. A guilty conscience can get plenty of lubrication if the rewards are also big.

Kaolin may have several thousand real employees, who make tens of thousands of proficient and hardworking dittos for him every day. But could he ask any of them to skate the fine edge of the law — as Pallie and I were about to do? The Vic’s choices were few. Either do it himself, by sending out his own copies, or hire someone with the right skills. Someone who’s already shown a willingness to skulk at the boundaries of legality, and yet with a reputation for keeping his word. Someone also highly motivated to dig quickly to the bottom of this mess.

Having listened to the archive-recording of that hapless gray, Kaolin must figure that I qualify on all counts. I sure wasn’t about to complicate matters by mentioning I’m a frankie. He might drop me in the nearest recycler!

Waiting for a driver to bring our loaner car, I resumed bugging Kaolin with questions.

“It would help if I had some idea why somebody wants to wreck your factory.”

“Why should concern you less than who,” he replied sternly.

“Come, sir. Understanding motives can be integral to catching bad guys. Do your competitors resent having to pay royalties on your patents? Do they envy your production efficiency? Could they be trying to knock UK down a notch?”

Kaolin barked a short laugh. “A publicly held firm is under too much scrutiny. And terrorism is risky — not the style of my smug counterparts at Fabrique Chelm or Hayakawa Shobo. Why use bombs when they can cause me far more aggravation with their lawyers?”

“Well, who do you consider desperate enough to use bombs?”

“You mean other than those pathetic fanatics ranting by my gate?” The platinum ditto shrugged. “I don’t bother counting my enemies, Mr. Morris. In fact, I would have retired by now, to one of my country estates, were it not for some rather urgent research interests that force me to remain nearby, within easy dit-imprinting range.” He sighed. “If you must demand an opinion from me, I can only hazard to guess that this gruesome act of sabotage must be the work of perverts.”

“Uh … perverts?” I blinked a couple of times in surprise. “When you used that word before, I didn’t think you meant literally.”

“Oh, but I do. It isn’t just religious nuts and tolerance fetishists who despise me. Surely you already know about this? I may have helped usher in the age of dittoing, but I’ve also long opposed ways the technology is misapplied. From the very beginning, I was appalled by some unsavory uses customers came up with.”

“Well, innovators often have an idealized view of what will emerge—”

“Do I strike you as a woolly-headed idealist?” Kaolin snapped, sharply. “I realize any new thing gets misused, especially when you share it with the masses. Take the way every new medium, from printing to cinema to the Internet, became a major conduit for pornography almost as soon as it was introduced. Or when lonely weirdos started using dittos for sex, muddying all the boundaries between fantasy, infidelity, and self-abuse.”

“Surely that didn’t surprise you.”

“Not the basic level. Anyone could see this technology would make casual sex between strangers safe again, after several generations of fear. It’s a natural pendulum swing, based on deeply embedded animal drives. Hell, the trend of using animated dolls began even before Bevvisov and Leow imprinted the first Standing Wave. I wasn’t thrilled to see ditto-swap clubs arise everywhere, but at least that seemed human.

“Only then came the ‘modification’ movement. Wave after wave of so-called innovations, exaggerations, deliberate mutilations …”

“Ah yes. You fought to prevent people from changing the blanks you sold them. But surely that’s a dead issue now.”

Kaolin conceded with a shrug. “Still, I’m sure the perverts recall how I fought them. And each year I contribute financial support to the Crudity Bill.”

“You mean the Prudity Bill,” Palloid muttered from a balustrade of the mansion’s service portico. “Do you really want to require that all dittos come out of the factory with their capacity for emotions suppressed?”

“Only feelings that promote violent or hostile behavior.”

“But that’s half the fun of being a golem! You can do stuff on the edge. Unleash the repressed inner demon—”

“Repression exists for good reasons,” Kaolin answered hotly. Palloid sure knew how to goad him. “Social, psychological, and evolutionary reasons. Every year, anthropologists track worrisome trends. People growing more hardened to outrageous levels of violence—”

“—in certain narrowly defined times and places. Like daydreaming about stuff you’d never do in person. There’s no conclusive evidence that it translates over to behavior in the real—”

“—becoming callused to mutilations of the human form—”

“—and experiencing firsthand what it feels like to be larger or smaller, crippled, or the opposite sex—”

“—inflicting suffering—”

“—experiencing it—”

“—desensitizing—”

“—gaining new empathy—”

“Enough!” I cried. For a brief time it had been enthralling to watch the platinum golem of a multi-trillionaire get sucked into a shouting match with a ferret-formed creature from dittotown. But Pal’s lack of anything like a sense of self-preservation can get unamusing rather quickly. We still existed on this guy’s sufferance.

“So you think this attack may have been in revenge for your consistent support of the Crudity Bill?” I asked. ditKaolin shrugged. “It passed in Farsiana-Indus, last year. That makes twenty-six countries, and the Argentines vote next month. Degenerates may see a worrisome trend, toward a time when our adjunct selves are actually calmer and better than we are—”

“—You mean sexless and boring—”

“—helping to elevate humanity instead of debasing us,” Kaolin finished, giving Palloid a scowl that declared the debate over. And my small friend took the hint this time. Or maybe it was the arrival of our car, delivered to the portico by a blank-faced yellow whose only personality trait was a soft melody that he kept humming while holding the driver-side door for me, then as he jogged away, hurrying to catch a jitney cab back to headquarters.

I adjusted the pilot seat and Platinum Kaolin gave me a portaphone with a secure comm number to call, if anything especially urgent came up. Otherwise, I was instructed to send a dictated report to his hi-pri box every three hours, for automatic summarization-transcription.

I was about to shut the door when Pal’s little weasel-ditto leaped from my shoulder onto Kaolin’s! The silvery golem flinched as Palloid squirmed around his neck. “Incredible texture,” crooned the miniature ditto. “So realistic. I been wondering …”

It seemed about to give Kaolin a big kiss. Then, without warning, Palloid whirled and sank its gleaming teeth into that shimmering neck, just above the collar line!

Twin wounds oozed a pasty grue.

“What the hell?” Pain and anger flushed as Kaolin swept a fist that Palloid dodged easily, vaulting through the car’s open window into my arms. Licking shiny-reflective gore off serrated jaws, he spat with distaste.

“Clay! Patooie. Okay, he’s fake, after all. Had to check, though. He could’ve been pretending to be phony.”

It was vintage Pal. Authority figures bring out the worst in him. I hurried to mollify our employer.

“Sorry about that, sir. Uh … Pal likes to be thorough. And that is an awfully realistic-looking body, you must admit.” ditKaolin fumed.

“What if I had been in disguise? That goddam thing could have maimed me! Besides, it’s none of your bloody business how I choose to present myself! I have a good mind to—”

He stopped abruptly, taking a deep breath. The lacerations ceased oozing after a couple of seconds, turning into hard ceramic crust. Between dittos, this was a trifle, after all.

“Oh, get out of here. Don’t bother me again unless you find something interesting.”

Pal responded cheerily, “Thanks for a lovely visit! Give my regards to your archety—”

I peeled out of there, cutting off Palloid’s clever remise. Passing through the front gate into city traffic, I cast a sharp, disapproving glare at my companion.

“What?” The ferret face grinned back at me. “Tell me you weren’t curious, looking at such a fancy-realistic golem! There are all those stories. About how nobody’s seen his archie in years.”

“Curiosity is one thing, Pal—”

“One thing? Hey, at this point it’s about the only reason I have to keep going. Know what I mean?”

I did, alas. Even though I had been granted an extension — double the lifespan I expected to have yesterday, when I stepped out of the kiln — a day is still only a day. To a frankie or a ghost.

What could I accomplish in that time? Maybe some justice. Or a little revenge on the villains who murdered poor Albert. Those can be satisfying accomplishments. But you can’t take them with you beyond the recycling tank.

Curiosity, on the other hand, has a timelessness that no deadline can erase. There are worse things for a man to live for, whether he’s born of woman or kiln. It can sustain you, whatever happens and no matter how low your fortunes sink.

“Anyway, Albert. Did you see the look on skinny’s face when I bit him?”

“Hell, yes, I saw it! You little—” I shook my head. The image of Kaolin’s vain countenance still surfed the foamy veneer of my Standing Wave. That expression of affronted shock was -

— hilarious.

I couldn’t help but guffaw. Laughter shook us both while I swerved the little cruiser through a yellow light, incurring another four-point infraction to put on our UK expense account. Mirth combined with the fizzing sense of renewal that still permeated my invigorated clay flesh. It left me feeling more alive than I had in, well, hours!

“All right, then,” I said at last, trying to concentrate on my driving. We were in Realtown and there might be children about. No time for inattention at the wheel.

“Come on, Pal. Let’s see what’s happening at Irene’s.”

What was happening was death.

A crowd milled near the entrance to the Rainbow Lounge. All sorts of garishly colored dittos — specialized and home-modified for pleasure or ritual combat — shifted and murmured in confusion, denied entry to their favorite hangout by ribbons of glare tape that shimmered to eye-hurting rhythms, sending keep away messages straight to the golem fibers threading their clay bodies.

A female-shaped red stood in the entryway. Wearing dark glasses. Explaining patiently as Palloid and I drew near.

“… Let me say again, I’m sorry, but you cannot enter. The club will soon be under new management. Till then, you must find another place to pursue your frantic pleasures.”

I looked her over. Exaggerated curves seemed to cry out slutty waitress, while recessed needles under the nails indicated a bouncer’s capacity to enforce order, whenever customers got rowdy. This had to be one of the worker drone members of Irene — the colony-being we heard described in grayAlbert’s recited diary. She matched the depiction, except for looking haggard and worn, obviously tottering on her last energy stores.

Some customers drifted off, hoping to find another dive open at this hour. One offering as much amusement. I saw grimness in their haste. Especially the dittos with spiky appendages for fighting or exaggerated sexual display. That kind is often made by addicts — experience junkies who need regular fixes of intense recent memories, the more extravagant or violent the better. If these dits fail to bring home the goods, their originals won’t take them back. Their chance of continuity-through-inloading depends on finding excitement elsewhere, anywhere.

Still, more customers kept arriving, milling about hopefully or trying to argue with the red bouncer. Would she stand there in the doorway till she melted? From the testimony of Albert’s luckless gray, I had an impression that Irene took inloading very seriously.

“Let’s try around back,” Palloid suggested from my shoulder. “According to the gray’s recording, that’s where this hive keeps its queen.”

Its queen. I’ve heard of such things, naturally. Still, it’s creepy. Hives and queens, man. Some say we’re all heading that way, eventually, by the inherent logic of dittotech.

Interesting times, all right.

“Okay,” I told my small comrade. “Let’s go back and have a look.”