48

Mortar Enemies

… as Tuesday’s frankie takes a turn as
baked goods …

They say that golemtech arrived in Japan with much less upheaval than in the West, almost as if they expected it. The Japanese had no trouble with the idea of duplicating souls, in much the same way that Americans embraced the Internet, seeing it as a fundamental expression of their national will to talk. According to legend, all you had to do was give something eyes—a boat, a house, a robot, or even the fluffy AnpanMan who hawked pastry in cute TV commercials.

When it came to investing an object with soul, eyes mattered above all.

I thought about that while clinging to the bottom of Beta’s skycycle, sheltering my face from a terrible wind that kept alternating between fire and ice. Protect the eyes, I told myself, desperately clutching a pair of slim handholds while my feet pressed hard against the landing skids. Protect the eyes and brain. And never regret that you chose this way to die.

During level flight my chief problem was wind chill, sucking warmth out of every exposed catalysis cell. But that was a picnic compared to the agony whenever the Harley banked or turned. Without warning, one or another of the thrust nozzles would swivel, grazing me with jets of collimated flame. All I could do then was swing my head to the other side of the narrow fuselage and try to squirm out of the way, reminding myself over and over why I had put myself in this fix … because it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.

The alternative—to stay behind at the wrecked Volvo and make some kind of signal, then wait around for help—might have made sense if I were real, without a ticking expiration clock that could lapse any time in the next hour or so. But my logic had to be ditto logic. When Beta took off, I felt just one imperative more urgent than what little remained of my life.

Don’t lose the scent.

I now realized Beta was key to understanding all that had happened during this bizarre week, starting from the moment I slinked into the basement of the Teller Building to uncover his pirate copying facility, with its stolen Wammaker template. That operation had already been hijacked by some enemy, presumably Aeneas Kaolin. Or so Beta claimed; Aeneas told a different story, portraying himself as the victim of perverted conspiracies. Then there were the dark, paranoid musings that Yosil Maharal had muttered on Tuesday morning, after he was already dead.

Who told the truth? All I knew for certain was that three brilliant and unscrupulous men—all of them much smarter than poor Albert Morris—were engaged in some kind of desperate, secretive, triangular struggle. And the secretive part was what impressed me most.

Nowadays, it takes power, money, and genuine cleverness to keep anything out of the public glare—a scrutinizing glare that was supposed to have banished all those awful, dark, twentieth-century clichés, like conniving moguls, mad scientists, and elite master criminals. Yet here were all three of those archetypes, battling each other while colluding to keep their conflict hidden from media, government, and the public. No wonder poor Albert was out of his league!

No wonder I had no choice but to follow the trail, whatever the cost. As Beta’s skycycle sped through the night, just forty meters or so above the desert floor, I knew that one cost was going to be this body of mine, which kept getting baked each time those narrow torch-jets shifted to adjust course. Especially the portion of me that stuck out the most, my hapless clay ass. I could feel colloidal/pseudo-organic constituents react to the heat by fizzing and popping, sometimes loud enough to hear above the wind’s tumult, gradually transforming supple lifeclay to the hard consistency of porcelain dinnerware.

Let me add, as a cheap utility greenie with an unbuffered Standing Wave, that it also hurt like hell! So much for the advantages of soulistic verisimilitude. I tried to find distraction by imagining our destination—presumably the goal that realAlbert and Ritu Maharal had been heading toward when the Volvo got ambushed. Some cryptic desert hideaway, where her father lurked during the weeks he went missing from Universal Kilns? Beta apparently knew where to go—which made me wonder.

He’s trying to follow Ritu. But why, if not to reveal Yosil’s hiding place? What other use could Beta have for her?

I tried to concentrate, but it’s hard to do when your butt keeps getting singed every minute or two by sonocollimated heat. I found myself returning over and over to the image of poor little Palloid, my ferret-ditto companion, who got smashed before unhappy Pal could harvest memories of our long day together. That was my sole chance to be remembered, I thought glumly. At this rate, all that’ll be left of me is a pile of shattered statuary when Beta lands.

For solace, I tried conjuring up an image of Clara’s face—but that only increased the pain. Her war must be approaching its big climax by now, I thought, picturing how close we were to the Jesse Helms Combat Range. Beta would turn aside before then, of course. Still, I wondered about the coincidence … and hoped that Clara wouldn’t get in too much trouble for going AWOL when Albert’s house was destroyed. We had assigned each other survivor benefits, so maybe the army would understand.

If Albert truly is still alive, they may still have a chance to be happy together …

Anyway, something else was happening as the Harley sped through a night where even the stars seemed out of joint. My soul-wave kept doing unsettling things, jittering wildly … up-down, in-out … and through some of those weird directions that nobody has ever named properly—self-contained dimensions of spirit that Leow and others only began mapping a generation ago, exploring the newest terra incognita or final frontier. At first, the disturbances were almost too brief to notice. But those periodic tumults grew progressively stronger as the awful flight went on. Spikes of egotistical self-importance alternated with troughs of utter abnegation when I felt less than dust grain. Later, the effect was one of brief but intensely focused awe. When it passed, I wondered—

What next? Zen-like detachment?
Feelings of unity with the universe?
Or will I hear the booming voice of God?

Every culture has had what William James called “varieties of religious experience.” They bloom whenever a person’s Standing Wave plucks certain chords in the parietal nexus, Broca’s area, or the spiritual-paraphrase juncture of the right temporal lobe. Of course, you can get similar sensations in clay—a soul is a soul—but the feelings are almost never as compelling as in trueflesh.

Or unless you get replenished and given one more whole day of life? Could this be why Aeneas Kaolin sabotaged his own Research Division? Because the new trick of extending ditto endurance had a side effect? Might it convert golemfolk, eventually sparking a holy revival among billions of artificial men? What if dittos stopped going home for inloading each night, abandoning their archies to seek their own, separate highway to redemption?

What a bizarre thought! Perhaps it was provoked by my visits to the affably crackpot Ephemerals. Or else by the blazing agony of being half-roasted alive! Maybe.

Still, I couldn’t shake a growing impression that something or someone accompanied me during that tormented ride across a fractured sky, keeping pace nearby or within, between the fiery hell of my lower body and my wind-chilled face. Now and then, a half-heard echo seemed to urge me to hang in there …

The blustering gale abated a little, letting me glimpse a rough terrain of plateaus and deep ravines, steeply shadowed by a setting moon. The Harley began losing altitude, its wan beams lending the fractal landscape a kind of jagged beauty. Hollows loomed upward like gaping maws, eager to swallow me whole.

Maneuvering jets roared, swiveling to vertical, surrounding me in a cage of throbbing flame. I had to release one grip in order to throw an arm over my eyes. That left just two feet and a hand pressed against the skid supports, bearing my entire weight while those fingers and toes gradually cooked, hardening into crispy things.

As for the noise, it grew tolerable soon … I guess because I had nothing to hear with anymore. Hold on, an internal voice said, probably some tenacious part of Albert Morris that never learned to quit. I’ll give him credit for that much, old Albert. Tenacious bastard.

Hold on just a little while—

Shivering reverberations rattled me like a mud doll. Some remote bits snapped! My stubborn grip failed at last and I felt …

(Time to rejoin the Earth already?)

… only the plummet was much shorter than expected. About half a meter or thereabouts. I barely felt a jolt as my seared backside hit the rocky desert floor.

Engines sputtered to a stop. Heat and ruction faded. Dimly, I knew—we’ve landed.

Still, it took several tries before I managed to command an arm to move, uncovering my last undamaged sense organs, and at first all I could see were clouds of agitated dust—then dim outlines of one landing skid. It took hard work to turn my head and look the other way. My neck seemed to be coated with a hard crust, something that resisted movement, cracking and giving way grudgingly, after strenuous effort.

Ah, there he is …

I spied a pair of legs turning to step away from the skycycle. There was no mistaking the spiral pattern motif covering the ditto’s entire body. Ascending a dirt path, bordered by pale stone, Beta strode with a confident swagger.

I once moved like that. Yesterday, when I was young.

Now, broiled, abraded, and near expiration, I felt lucky to drag myself with one arm and half of another, grateful that the skycycle had plenty of ground clearance.

Once fully clear of the hot fuselage, I struggled to sit up and assess the damage.

That is, I tried to sit up. A few pseudomuscles responded down there, but they failed to make anything bend properly. With my good hand I reached down to tap along my hard-glazed back and buttocks. I clanked.

Well, well. It always seemed a quixotic-doomed gesture to leap through flaming jets and grab the departing skycycle. Yet here I was! Not exactly kicking, but still in motion. Still in the game. Sort of.

Beta had passed out of sight, vanishing among the varied shades of blackness. But now at least I could dimly make out his goal—a low, boxy outline nestled in the flank of an imposing desert mesa. Under starlight, it seemed little more than a modest, one-story structure. Perhaps a vacation cabin, or a long-abandoned shack.

Resting next to the slowly cooling Harley, I felt one more of those periodic otherness waves swarm by again. Only now, instead of preaching at me to persevere, or tantalizing with hints of infinity, the strange half-presence seemed more curious … questioning … as if it wondered, wordlessly, what business I had there.

Beats me, I thought, answering the vague feeling. When I figure that one out, you’ll be the first to know.