Continuing realtime recitation. Time to enter the Funnel. It’s one of my favorite parts of this job. Getting a chance to prove that I can fool a world that’s filled with eyes.

“We arranged for the items you requested.”

The red-hued Irene-golem hands me a plain satchel. I inspect the contents. Everything’s there.

“You sent a lens sniffer ahead, along the route I described?”

“We did, per your instructions. The sniffer verified surveillance gaps in the places you predicted. Current details are noted.” She hands me a data-plaque.

“Current? As of when?”

“About an hour ago, while you were being repaired.”

“Hm.”

An hour can be eternity. But I’m optimistic while scanning the map with its glowing icons and overlapping cones of vision. Yes, the city swarms with eyes, the way a jungle fills with insects. Coverage gaps are precious in my line of work. Today’s most difficult hurdle will be to cover my tracks long before I reach Universal Kilns. I’ll need several changing sites along the way — shadow gaps that are just big enough to allow a quick shift in appearance without being noticed — preferably near locales with lots of dittos coming and going.

Irene might have faith in her sniffers — programmed to spot the telltale reflective glint of a glass camera lens — but even the best military scanners can’t detect every pinhole spex that may lurk in some crevice or tree trunk. Any number of pin-spies might have been installed since I last used this Funnel route. Fortunately, most of those have low resolution. They’ll miss a truly artful transformation.

I have mixed feelings about revealing this path — one of Albert’s recent favorites — to Gineen and her cohorts. True, nearly every Funnel has limited useful lifespan, as countless amateurs keep finding and rendering them useless. And my pay for this job makes the sacrifice worthwhile. Still, I’d be happier if I had days to prepare, with multiple dittos working in tandem. Everything would be more secure.

Don’t sweat it. I offered no guarantees on such a rush job, and Albert gets fifty percent for just trying. Worst case, they are the ones risking exposure.

And yet, my mind spins with potential failure modes. One is coming up ahead.

We slow beneath a highway overpass, coming to rest behind an identical van that quickly accelerates away, resuming our former course and speed, leaving us parked in its place. The driver — briefly glimpsed — is another inherently loyal Irene-golem. The old car-switcheroo, first used more than a hundred years ago, but lately modified with reconfigurable chassis and chameleon stretchyskin so this van will look quite different when Gineen and her gang depart again.

Scanning the concrete walls that support the overpass, I spy just one trafficam, its lens recently covered with bird droppings. The real stuff, in case there’s later analysis.

So far, so good. Still, I’m unhappy, feeling slovenly and unprofessional. These measures may fool publicams and voyeurs — possibly even private snoops hired by Universal Kilns. But it takes more than a few tricks to dupe real cops. This will work only if our little adventure stays shy of outright illegality.

“You’ll get out here, wait exactly eight minutes, then proceed to that grove,” Vic Collins explains, pointing one of his plaid-dyed fingers toward a copse of geniformed licorice-drop trees. “We control, or have taken out, all of the cameras between here and there.”

“You sure about that?” Lack of preparation time requires a brute force approach that I’d rather have supervised myself.

He nods.

“Unless any sky-eyes are retargeted in the next few minutes. Within the grove, you’ll make your first change, ditch the bag, along with the clothes you’re wearing, and emerge as a utility orange-dit. We’ll send a dog in later, to pick up the satchel.”

“Be sure that you do. If I’m traced back to the grove, a savvy examiner will guess this car-switching dodge.”

“Then you mustn’t let anyone trace you back to the grove,” Vic Collins concludes. “We are counting on your skill.”

Oh, brother.

“The bus station is key. I’ll do a dodge and weave there, through the ditto crowds. Are more supplies waiting in the locker I specified?”

“You’ll find another bag containing a change of clothes and skin dye.” Collins holds up a hand, guessing my next question. “And yes, the dye is a gray variant — perfectly legal. We can say myob to the cops.”

“Myob is as myob does,” I retort. “If I so much as suspect I’m involved in anything higher than a Class Six misdemeanor, I’ll drop out. No matter how big a liability bond you posted.”

“Relax, ditMorris,” Irene soothes. “We have no fear of the law. Our sole aim in this subterfuge is to keep UK from linking us—”

“—or suspecting today’s little reconnaissance, yes. They could make things unpleasant, even if we’re legal.”

“These precautions are for your rig’s protection as much as ours, ditMorris. With what you learn today, we can narrow down our suspicions and follow up by slapping specific datapoenas on Universal Kilns, under the tech-disclosure laws. The beauty of it is that they’ll never have a reason to ever link you to our lawsuit.”

It makes sense. That is, assuming I don’t choose to tell Aeneas Kaolin all about this, just as soon as I pass inside Universal Kilns!

Sure, I’d forfeit my bond and lose most of Albert’s hard-won credibility points, but there’d be compensations. Maybe he would make me a subject of his ditto life-extension experiments. I could have more than another twelve hours, maybe lots more!

Huh. Now where did that thought come from? It was almost … well, frankie … confusing the more important “I” with the trivial i that’s thinking these thoughts.

How bizarre!

Anyway, why daydream about doing things that I’ll never do. Or cheap posterities that I’ll never win?

“And after the bus station?” Vic Collins prompts.

“I’ll catch the 330 dino to Riverside Drive and UK headquarters. Head straight for the employee entrance, wave my ID, and hope their security AI is as lax as you expect. Again, if you’re wrong about that, if they ask any inconvenient questions, I’ll just turn around and leave.”

“We understand,” the red ditto says with a nod. “But we’re confident they’ll let you in.”

Irene and company somehow know that Ritu Maharal hired one of Albert’s grays. One that went missing a few hours ago. Still, the guards at UK may just wave me through, assuming I’m on business for a major stockholder. The trick may work at the outer portal, where hundreds of realfolks and dittos pass each hour. Hell, gaggles of tourists line up there for excursion passes, forming guided groups to view the factory where their disposable bodies are made.

But Wammaker and her pals expect me to breeze through several more checkpoints, each more secure than the last, blithely peering about as I plunge deeper, on the lookout for tech-hints without ever once actually committing fraud or telling a clearcut lie!

(Did Vic Collins also arrange for a security lapse in advance? Some inside bribery to lubricate things? He seems the kind who might know how, with his furtive-yet-superior manner. It’s a good thing I have all our conversations taped, on the recorder I’m subvocalizing into right now.)

And they did pay in advance. Crypto-cash, encoded to one of Albert’s accounts. All I need do is try. Put in a modest effort. A seventy-five percent fee just for getting inside.

Still, I wish they’d just let me drive my scooter to Universal, instead of going through this rigmarole. Amateurs. The rest of my “life” was devoted to them. Doing my professional best to make this ditzy, half-ass spy job work.