“Just keep going down Fourth,” I replied. “I’ll let you know when we get close.” I had a specific destination in mind all right, but wasn’t about to say it aloud. Not while we were probably under surveillance, both from outside and within.

He accepted this with a grunt and adjusted his visor, steering lazily with a finger on the tiller. Meanwhile, I took out the flip-phone I’d been given shortly after this body was restored to youthful vigor.

“Who’re you calling?” Palloid asked.

“Who do you think? Our employer, of course.” Just one number was on the autodialer.

“But I thought — then why did we abandon the car if—”

Those dark little eyes glittered. I could see Pal’s suspicious little mind working. “Okay, then. Be sure to give Aeneas my love.”

As a cheap green — dyed orange and then gray — I couldn’t roll my eyes expressively. So I just ignored him. The phone made old-fashioned clickety-beep noises as it hunted for a Kaolin authorized to answer. One of his shiny golems would do … or else possibly the real hermit-trillionaire, cowering behind layers of germproof glass in the tower of his manicured mansion. Failing that, a computer-avatar to either take a message or handle routine decisions, perhaps using a fine rendition of Kaolin’s own voice.

So I waited. You expect to wait when you’re clay. Despite the mayfly timetable, impatience is for those with real lifespan to lose.

Meanwhile, dittotown flowed past, with all of its extravagant fusion of griminess and brilliant color. Some of the older buildings, poorly maintained and no longer inspected, bore condemnation logos forbidding entry by real persons. Yet all around us thronged crowds, oblivious to the rickety surroundings — people built for a day of hard labor, yet far gaudier than their drab makers. The busy worker ants who keep civilization going — every hue and candy-striped combination — bustled in/out of nearby factories and workshops, bearing heavy loads, hurrying to confidential meetings or carrying rush orders on spindly legs.

Traffic snarled for a while, forcing us to wend around an open pit construction site, marked by a broad holo sign:

A glimmering animated display showed steady progress toward the day when clayfolk and other cargo would zip to every part of town via an extended network of airless tubes, shuttling to any address like so many self-targeted Internet packets, automatically and at hardly any cost. Jitney and brontolorry drivers complained that the completed portions of the project were already spoiling their most lucrative routes. Spates of sabotage occasionally delayed work, reminding folks of the old Luddite days, when unions fought pitched street battles against dittotech. One recent explosion even caused a nearby building to collapse, crushing more than four hundred golems and throwing glass fragments far enough to cut a real person three blocks away, requiring half a dozen stitches. It was a major scandal.

Despite social unrest though, Universal Kilns and the other ditto-makers lobbied hard for tube installation in every city. How better to ensure that customers will receive millions of fresh blanks quickly, helping them get the most out of each imprinted day? The less time a golem spends in transit, or stored in the fridge, the more clients feel they get their money’s worth. The more blanks they’ll order.

Below the cheery sign, cut-rate epsilon models labored, hauling out baskets of dirt on their speckled-green backs while others descended, bearing lengths of ceramic pipe built to withstand high pressures, deep underground. Epsilons don’t even get a full, imprinted personality — no soul-stuff and no salmon reflex — just a simple drive to labor on and on and on, till drawn by the call of a recycling tank.

Squinting at the scene one way, I glimpsed a science-fiction nightmare worse than Fritz Lang’s Metropolis — slaves and prols laboring for distant masters before toppling to an early death, preordained and unmourned. Squint another way, and it seemed marvelous! A world of free citizens, extending tiny portions of themselves — easily expendable bits — to take turns doing all the necessary drudgery, so everyone can spend their organic lifetimes playing or studying.

Which was true?

Both at the same time?

Should I care?

My own thoughts surprised me.

Is this what happens to a ditto’s brain when it lasts beyond a second day? I wondered. Does élan-replenishment make you all dreamy and philosophical? Was it triggered by the events I witnessed at Irene’s?

Or is it because I’m a frankie?

Come on, Kaolin. Answer your damn phone!

Actually, his delay gave me some cause for hope. Maybe Aeneas didn’t really care much about me and Palloid. Kaolin might be too busy to bother checking up on us.

Ah, but “busy” doesn’t mean what it used to. A rich man can keep imprinting enough fancy dittos to make any job manageable. So there had to be another reason.

We were a block past the pneumo-tube dig when the cabbie suddenly veered, emitting gouts of bitter cursing. I clenched the seat, bracing for collision, but traffic wasn’t at fault. No, the driver was fuming over faraway events that had nothing to do with his job.

“Idiots!” he cried. “Couldn’t you guess they’d be waiting for you around that hill? The Indies must’ve had it zeroed in from five different angles. Schmucks. PEZ should just give up this match and concede. Send our whole team onto the battlefield in their naked rig hides. We’ll be better off starting all over with new talent!”

A faint glimmer shone around the edges of his shades. So, the sun-glasses were also vids. Most are.

Still, I wasn’t paying to be hauled into a wreck by some sports-distracted coolie. One more unnecessary swerve and I just might slap a civil lien on him -

In whose name? Where would the money go? Poor old Albert had a sister in Georgia, but she owned five patents and didn’t need cash. Then I recalled — whatever remained of Al’s estate would go to Clara. Whatever the cops didn’t seize. Or Kaolin. It all depended on finding someone else to blame for the attack on Universal Kilns.

I had suspicions about that. But first there’d have to be more evidence.

“Hey, fan-boy!” Palloid shouted at the driver, who was still cursing as we dodged some peditstrians then barely missed getting squashed by a huge, eight-legged delivery van. “Forget the score, watch the road!”

The driver muttered something over his shoulder at my friend, who snarled in response, arching his long back and extending claws, as if preparing to leap. I was about to flip the phone shut and intervene when a voice abruptly buzzed in my ear.

“So, it’s you. I was wondering when you’d check in,” came the tycoon’s murmured voice. I couldn’t tell which Kaolin it was, though presumably the platinum who gave us our assignment. “What did you learn at Irene’s place?”

No apology for keeping me waiting. Well, that’s a trillionaire for you.

“Irene’s true-dead,” I replied. “She used one of those soul-antenna services and took all her dittos along with her to the Nirvianosphere, or the Valhallan Belts, or wherever.”

“I know. The cops just arrived there and I’ve got the scene in front of me. Incredible. What a psycho! Do you see what I mean, Morris? The world is filling up with perverts and dittoing only makes it worse. I sometimes wish we never—”

He stopped, then resumed. “Well, never mind that. Do you think Irene chose this moment to end it all because her conspiracy failed? Because they didn’t manage to wreck my factory?”

Kaolin did an impressive job of feigning confused innocence. I decided to play along.