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

28 A China Syndrome

Yosil Maharal — or rather his gray ghost — appears to be quite proud of his private collection: starting with a unique hoard of cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals from ancient Mesopotamia, the muddy land where writing began more than four thousand years ago.

“This was the very first kind of magic that actually worked in a reliable and repeatable way,” he told me, holding up an object the shape and hue of a dinner roll, covered with shallow, overlapping wedge incisions. “At last, a kind of immortality could be achieved by anybody who learned the new trick of recording their words and thoughts and stories, by marking impressions in wet clay. The immortality of speaking across time and space, even long after your original body returned to dust.”

I may be no genius but I grasped his allusion. For he was just such a manifestation of continuity beyond death. A complex cluster of soul-impressions made in clay, speaking on after the original Yosil Maharal had his organic life snuffed out near a lonely culvert, under a desert highway. No wonder he felt a sense of kinship with the little tablets.

Maharal’s private collection also includes samples of ancient hand-wrought pottery, like several large amphorae — containers that held wine in a Roman bireme that sank two thousand years ago — recently recovered by explorerdits from the bottom of the Mediterranean. And nearby, in the same display case, lay a setting of rare blue porcelain dinnerware, once carried around the Horn of Africa in the belly of a clipper ship to grace the table of some rich merchant.

Even more precious to my host were several fist-sized human effigies, from an era much earlier than Rome or Babylon. A time before towns or literacy, when all our ancestors roamed roofless, in hunter-gatherer tribes. One by one, Yosil’s gray golem lovingly displayed about a dozen of these “Venus” figurines, molded out of Neolithic river mud, all of them featuring voluminous breasts and copious hips that tapered down from generous thighs to the daintiest of feet. With evident pride, he told me where each little statuette was found and how old it was. Lacking clear faces, most of them looked enigmatic. Anonymous. Mysterious. And prodigiously female.

“Back in the late twentieth century, a spirited postmodern cult organized itself around these effigies,” he lectured while tugging a chain around my neck, leading me from one display case to the next.

“Inspired by these tiny sculptures, a few hyperfeminist mystics deduced a delightfully satisfying ideological fantasy — that an Earth-Mother religion preceded every other spiritual belief system, all over the planet. This ubiquitous Neolithic creed must obviously have worshipped a goddess! One whose top traits were fecundity and serene maternal kindliness. That is, till gentle Gaia was toppled by violent bands of macho Jehovah-Zeus-Shiva followers, spurred by an abrupt wave of vile new technologies — metallurgy, agriculture, and literacy — that arrived with concurrent and destabilizing suddenness, all at once shaking the tranquil old ways and toppling the pastoral mother goddess.

“It follows that every crime and catastrophe of recorded history stems from that tragic upheaval.”

Maharal’s ghost chuckled, rolling one of the Venus figures affectionately in his hand. “Oh, the goddess theory was quite fabulous and creative. Though there is another, far simpler explanation for why these little figurines are found in so many Stone Age sites.

“Every human culture has devoted considerable creative effort to crafting exaggerated representations of the fertile female form … as erotic art. Or pornography, if you will. I think we can safely assume there were frustrated males back in caveman days, as there are today. They must have ‘worshipped’ these little Venus figures in ways that we’d find familiar. Rather less lofty than Gaia veneration, but no less human.

“What has changed, after all that time, is that today’s clay sex idols are far more realistic and satisfying.

“But therein lies a rub.”

Standing in chains, wearing a miniature body and forced to listen to this drivel, I could only wonder. Was he being intentionally offensive, in order to gauge my reaction? I mean, why should the great Professor Maharal care what I think? Anyway, I’m just a cheap quarter-sized reddish-orange golem, imprinted off the gray he captured at Kaolin Manor on Tuesday. What kind of intellectual conversation can he hope to have with the likes of me?

Well, I don’t feel mentally deficient. Ever since stepping from the kiln, I’ve checked and found no apparent memory gaps. I can’t do a differential equation in my head … but Albert himself was only able to manage that for about eight weeks, long ago, when he needed calculus to pass a college course. It took the hard, concentrated work of three ebonies to gain access to that painful beauty, then he flushed it away right after exams, making room amid a hundred billion neurons for more relevant memories.

See? I can even do irony.

All right, apparently I’m better at copy-to-copy imprinting than even I realized — something Yosil Maharal must have known for a long time. Maybe from back when I took part in that high school summer research project. Were my scores really so special? Has he been grabbing my copies to study ever since?

The thought makes me feel creepy. Worse — violated. Man, what a jerk.

He claims to have reasons. And yet, don’t all fanatics?

“Now here is my greatest treasure,” Yosil said, leading me to another exhibit. “It was given to me by the Honorary Son of Heaven himself, three years ago, in gratitude for my work at Sian.”

Before me, preserved inside a sealed glass case, stood the statue — life-size — of a man with the upright bearing of a soldier, staring straight ahead, ready for action. So detailed was the sculpted handiwork that it portrayed rivets holding together strips of leather armor. A mustache, goatee, and stark cheekbones embellished strong Asiatic features — touched off by hints of whimsy. The entire effigy was made of brown terracotta.

Naturally, I knew of Sian, one of the artistic gems of the world. It would be inconceivable for a private individual to own one of these statues — if there had not been so many of them. Thousands, reclaimed from half a dozen buried regiments, discovered across more than a century, each of the effigies modeled after a particular soldier who served Ch’in, the first emperor, who conquered and united all the lands of the East. The same Ch’in who first built the Great Wall and gave his name to China.

“You know about my recent work there,” ditYosil said — not a question but statement of fact. Naturally. He’s spoken to other Alberts, giving them the very same guided tour.

To what purpose? I wondered. Why explain all this, knowing the memories will be lost and that I must be told again, the next time he ditnaps another me to serve as an unwilling subject?

Unless that’s part of what he is trying to test …

“I’ve read a thing or two about your Sian work, in the journals,” I answered guardedly. “You claim to have found soul-traces in some of the clay statues.”

“Something like that.” ditYosil’s thin smile carried evident pride, recalling the worldwide sensation that his discovery provoked. “Some call the evidence ambiguous, though I think it’s clear enough to conclude that some kind of primitive imprinting process must have been at work. By what means? We still haven’t determined. A fluke, perhaps — or the work of some ancient prodigy — helping to explain the astonishing political events of that era, as well as the terrified awe that his contemporaries held for Ch’in.

“As a direct result of my findings, the present-day Son of Heaven finally agreed to open the colossal Ch’in tomb next year! Some deep mysteries may come to light, having slept for millennia.”

“Hm,” I answered, a bit incautiously. “Too bad you won’t be there to witness it.”

“Perhaps not. Or maybe I will. So many delicious contradictions come laden in that one sentence of yours, Albert.”

“Uh. What sentence was that?”

“You said ‘too bad,’ implying values. The word ‘you’ was directed at me, as a thinking being, the person who is holding you captive right now, right?”

“Uh … right.”

“Then there are the phrases ‘be there’ and ‘witness it.’ Oh, you said a mouthful, all right.”

“I don’t see—”

“We live at a special time,” ditMaharal expounded. “A time when religion and philosophy have become experimental sciences, subject to hands-on manipulation by engineers. Miracles become trademarked products, bottled and sold at discount. The direct descendants of men who used to chip flint spearheads by the riverbank are not only making life but redefining the very meaning of the word! And yet—”

He paused. I finally had to coax him.

“And yet?”

Maharal’s gray face twisted. “And yet there are obstacles! So many of the outstanding problems in soulistics seem to have no hope of being solved, due to the ineffable complexity of the Standing Wave.

“No computer can model it, Albert. Only the shortest and fattest superconducting cables can convey its subtle majesty, barely well enough to let you press an imprint upon a nearby receptacle of specially prepared clay. Mathematically, it’s a horror! Given all the odds, I’m astonished the process works at all.

“In fact, many of today’s deepest thinkers suggest that we should just be thankful and accept it as a gift, without understanding it, like intelligence, or music, or laughter.”

He shook his head, offering a good facsimile of a disdainful snort.

“But naturally, people on the street know nothing of this. Born with the cantankerous human spirit, they are never satisfied with a marvel — or with their vastly expanded lives. Not at all! They take it for granted, and keep demanding more.

“Make it possible for us to imprint distant golems, so we can teleport around the solar system! Give us telepathy, by letting us absorb each other’s memories! Never mind what the metamath equations say. We want more! We want to be more!

“And of course, people are right. Deep down, they sense the truth.”

“What truth do you mean, Doctor?” I asked.

“That human beings are about to become very much more! Though not in any of the ways they now imagine.”

With that cryptic remark, Maharal carefully put away the last of his dear collectibles — the cuneiform tablets and pottery shards. The ancient amphora vessels and China dinnerware. The enigmatic/erotic Venus statuettes and snow-glazed Dresden figurines. The parchment texts in Hebrew, Sanskrit, and the cryptic coded charts of medieval alchemy. Finally he gave an affectionate nod to the stalwart terracotta soldier, still standing watch with his flickering, barely detectable imbuement of soul. Maharal took obvious comfort from these treasures, as if they proved his work part of a time-honored tradition.

Then, yanking the chain around my neck, he forced me to stumble after him like a small child following a heartless giant, back into the laboratory filled with machines that hissed and whirred and sparked, making the air tingle in frightening ways. I had a hunch that some of the effects might be for show. Yosil had a flair for the dramatic. Unlike some “mad scientists,” he knew what he was and clearly relished the role.

A transparent soundproof partition divided the room. Beyond, I glimpsed the table where “I” became aware just an hour or so ago, still warm from the kiln. And nearby, strapped to another platform, lay a gray figure much taller than this body of mine. The self that I had been for several days. The one who provided a template for this narrating consciousness.

Poor gray. Left there to simmer and worry and scheme in vain. At least I had the distraction of an opponent.

“How did you manage to put all this together in secret?” I asked, gesturing around. The sheer amount of material — not to mention the expensive gizmos — would have been difficult to transport to this hidden underground lair (wherever it is) even in the old days of CIA plots and bad movieds about alien autopsies. To find it done today by a single person, somehow evading the all-seeing and all-shared public Eye of Accountability, showed that I was in the hands of a true genius. As if I didn’t know it already.

A genius who clearly resented me for some reason! Not only was he physically callous toward this body I wore, he kept oscillating between taciturn silence and bouts of sudden talkativeness, as if driven by some inner need to impress me. I recognized clear signs of a Smersh-Foxleitner inferiority complex … and wondered what possible good the diagnosis was going to do me.

Mostly, I kept looking for possible ways to escape, knowing that each of my earlier prisoner-incarnations must have done the very same thing. But all they accomplished with their efforts had been to turn Maharal hypercautious — so that now he only imprints experimental copies of me that are too weak to punch their way out of paper manacles.

Fettering me to a chair beneath a machine resembling a giant microscope, he aimed the huge lens at my little reddish-orange head.

“I have access to ample resources, quite near here,” Maharal said, answering my question — though unhelpfully. Fiddling with dials and muttering into a computerized votroller, he looked more focused on the task at hand than on me personally. But I knew better by now.

The man worried about me — a disquiet that ran deep. Anything I said could vex him.

“All right, so we ruled out teleportation and telepathy. Even so, you’ve made impressive breakthroughs, Doctor. Your process to extend a ditto’s pseudolifespan, for instance. Wow. Imagine if all golems could replenish their élan a week or two … it could really hurt the value of Universal Kilns stock, I bet. Is that why you had a falling out with Aeneas Kaolin?”

My remark drew a sharp look. Gray lips pressed together in a line, silent.

“Come on, Doc. Admit it. I could feel tension between you two, under all the feigned affection back at Kaolin Manor, when you showed up as a ghost to view your own corpse. The Vic seemed anxious to get his hands on that artificial brain of yours, and dice it to bits. Why? In order to learn more about all this?” I gestured at the big lab with its mysterious stolen equipment. “Or was he trying to hush you?”

Maharal’s grimace told me I hit home.

“Is that it? Did Aeneas Kaolin murder your real self?”

The police hadn’t found any signs of foul play at the desert crash site where realYosil Maharal had died. But in searching for clues, they only considered today’s technology. Aeneas Kaolin possessed tomorrow’s.

“As usual, you are thinking small, Mr. Morris. Like poor Aeneas.”

“Yeah? Then try explaining, Professor. Starting with why I’m here. All right, so I make great copies. How does that help you solve those great mysteries of soulistics?”

His eyes rolled upward and shoulders shrugged — an expression of fatigued contempt, exactly according to the Smersh-Foxleitner pattern. Maharal doesn’t just envy my ability. He actually fears me! So he must exaggerate the intellectual gulf between us and minimize my humanity.

Did my other selves notice this? They must have!

“You would not understand,” he muttered, returning to his preparations. I heard the crackle of high-power equipment, warming up with me sitting at the focus.

“I’m sure you said that to the other Alberts you captured. But tell me this, did you ever, even once, try to explain? Maybe offer me collaboration, instead of unwilling experimental torment? Science isn’t meant to be a lonely business, after all. Whatever your reasons for working in isolation—”

“—are my reasons. And they are more than sufficient to justify these means.” Maharal turned to regard me tiredly. “Now you’ll spout moral arguments, about how wrong it is to treat another thinking entity this way. Even though you showed no such regard for your own dittos! Never even bothering to investigate why so many went missing over the years.”

“But … I’m a private eye. That involves sending myselves into dangerous situations. Taking risks. I came to think of them—”

“—as disposable selves. Their loss to be regretted no more than our grandparents would lament the waste of an irritating day. Well, that’s your privilege. But then, don’t call me a monster if I take advantage.”

That gave me pause. “Have I called you a monster?”

Stone-faced. “Several times.”

I pondered this a moment.

“Well, then, I have to guess that your … procedure is gonna hurt. A lot.”

“Rather, I’m afraid. Sorry. But there is good news! I have reason to hope things will go much smoother this time.”

“Because you’ve improved your method?”

“In part. And because circumstances have changed. I expect your Standing Wave will be more malleable … more mobile … now that it’s no longer anchored to organic reality.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“What do you mean, no longer anchored?”

Maharal frowned, but I could tell the expression masked a layer of pleasure. Perhaps he wasn’t even aware how much he enjoyed telling me the news.

“I mean that you’re dead, Mr. Morris. Your original body was vaporized late Tuesday night, in a missile attack that destroyed your home.”

“A … what?”

“Yes, my poor fellow artifact. Like me, you are now — as they say — a ghost.”