“Fundamentally alter”? Creepy words that make me curious as hell. And yet, one fact is paramount — I shouldn’t be holding this conversation.

“That may be, Maestra. But right now I have to tell you—”

The plaid-skinned male interrupts with a voice that’s rather deep for such a wiry frame.

“We’ve been tracking leaked information from inside those shiny domes at UK. They’re up to something, possibly a big change in the way people make and operate golems.”

Curiosity gets the better of me. “What sort of change?”

Vic Collins takes a wry expression on his garishly cross-shatched face. “Can you guess, Mr. Morris? What do you figure might transform the way folks use this modern convenience?”

“I … can think of several possibilities, but—”

“Please. Stretch yourself. Give us an example or two.”

Our eyes meet and I wonder, What’s he up to?

Some people are known for imprinting imaginative grays, capable of creative thinking. Is that what all this is about? A test of rapid reasoning, outside my organic brain? If so, I’m game.

“Well … suppose people could somehow absorb each other’s memories. Instead of just imprinting and inloading between different versions of yourself, you’d be able to swap days, weeks, or even a lifetime of knowledge and experience with someone else. I guess it could wind up being like telepathy, allowing greater mutual understanding … the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us. It is an old dream that’s—”

“—also quite impossible,” the dark red womandit cuts in. “Each human’s cerebral Standing Wave is unique, its hyperfractal complexity beyond all digital modeling. Only the same neural template that created a particular duplicate wave can later reabsorb that copy. A rox can only go home to its own rig.”

Of course that’s common knowledge. Still, I’m disappointed. The dream of perfect human understanding is hard to give up.

“Go on, please,” Gineen Wammaker urges in a soft voice. “Try again, Albert.”

“Um. Well, for years folks have wished for a way to imprint at long range. To sit at home and copy your Standing Wave into a ditto blank that’s far away. Today, both bodies have to lie right next to each other, linked with giant cryo-cables. Something about noise-to-bandwidth ratios …”

“Yes, that’s a common complaint,” Gineen muses. “Say you have urgent, hands-on business to do in Australia. Your quickest bet is to make a fresh ditto, pack it into an express mail rocket, and hope it splashes gently on target. Even the quickest round trip, returning the ditto’s skull packed in ice, can take all day. How much better if you could just transmit your standing wave over a photonic cable, imprint a blank that’s already on the scene, look around a bit, then zip the altered wave right back again!”

“It sounds like teleportation. You could go anywhere — even the Moon — almost instantly … assuming you shipped some blanks there in advance. But is this really needed? We already have robotic telepresence over the Net—”

Queen Irene laughs.

“Telepresence! Using goggles to peer through a faraway set of tin-eyes? Manipulating a clanking machine to walk around for you? Even with full retinal and tactile feedback, that hardly qualifies as hands-on. And speed-of-light delays are frightful.”

This “queen” and her sarcasm are starting to bug me.

“Is that it? Has Universal Kilns achieved long-range imprinting? The airlines will hate it. And what’s left of the unions.”

Hell, I can see aspects that I’d loathe, too. Maybe you could teleport anywhere in minutes. But cities would lose their individual charm. Instead of local experts and artisans holding sway, each town would wind up having the same waiters, janitors, hairdressers, and so on. The best of every skill and profession, duplicated a gazillion-fold and spread all over the world. No one else would have a job!

(Envision some New York super private eye opening a branch office here, stocking it daily with flawless gray duplicates, raking in fat fees while he sits in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I’d have to go on the purple wage. Get some time-killing hobby. Or go back to school. Ack.)

Obviously, the maestra doesn’t fear competition.

“If only that were the breakthrough at hand,” she comments wistfully. “Tele-dittoing would open up major business opportunities for me, globally. Alas, that’s not the innovation we’re talking about. Or not the most worrisome one. Do try again.”

Damn, what a bitch. Riddles are just the sort of delicious torment Gineen Wammaker specializes in. Even knowing this, I’m tempted to keep showing off.

But first there’s a matter of professional ethics to settle.

“Look, I really think I ought to inform you that—”

“Lifespan,” says Vic Collins.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What if a ditto body” — he gestures at his own — “could be made to last more than a day? Possibly much more.”

Pause. Ponder it. This possibility hadn’t occurred to me.

I choose words carefully. “The … whole basis of kilning — the reason it’s practical — is that a golembody carries all of its own energy, right from the start.”

“Stored as super molecules in a clay-colloidal substrate. Yes, go on.”

“So there’s no need to imitate the complexity of real life. Ingestion, digestion, circulation, metabolism, waste removal, and all that. Science is centuries away from duplicating what evolution took a billion years to create — the subtle repair systems, the redundancy and durability of genuine organic …”

“Nothing like that is required for longer duration,” answers Collins. “Just a way to recharge the supermolecules in each pseudocell, restoring enough energy for another day … then another, and so on.”

Reluctantly, I nod. Clara said that military dittos come packed with fuel implants, letting a few versions last several days. But that’s still living off storage. Recharging would be quite another matter. A breakthrough, all right.

“How many times … how long can a ditto … ?”

“Be renewed? Well, it depends on wear and tear. As you say, even high-priced blanks have little self-repair capability. Entropy grinds down the unwary. But the chief short-term problem — how to keep a roxbody going one more day at a time — may be solved.”

“A dubious solution,” mutters the umber-colored Queen Irene. “Long-lasting dittos could diverge from their human prototype, making it harder to inload memories. Goals may wander. They might even start caring more about their own survival than how to serve the continuity being that created them.”

I blink, confused by her terminology. Continuity being?

Glancing left, I see her identical sisdit, who remains jacked into a remote terminal, staring at a flatvid screen. Portrayed there, I glimpse over a dozen interchangeable workers, all the same unique crimson shade, swarming around a huge, pale figure, like worker bees jostling around -

Ah. I get it. Queen Irene. Pallie told me about this, taking dittoing to its next logical stage. Still, witnessing it makes me shudder.

“There could be other repercussions,” Vic Collins adds. “The whole social contract may be upended, if our suspicions are correct.”

“That’s what we want you to investigate, Mr. Morris,” Gineen Wammaker concludes.

“Are you proposing industrial espionage?” I ask warily.

“No.” She shakes her head. “We don’t seek to steal any technologies, only to verify their existence. That much is perfectly legal. With confirmation, we can then sue Universal Kilns under one of the transparency laws. For hoarding, if nothing else.”

I stare at her. This is preposterous, on about a dozen levels.

“You honor me with your trust, Maestra. But as I told you, tech-sleuthing is just a sideline for me. There are real experts.”