I finally gave up trying to subvocalize in realtime. It was too exhausting, using that little jaw-powered recorder. My real body isn’t designed for it! Anyway, things got way too busy, right after Ritu abandoned us in that vast underground base, disappearing amid a great army of silent defender dolls.

At first, Corporal Chen and I could only stare in amazement. Where did she go? Why on earth would she leave us, especially in that spooky cavern of all places?

Chen was torn. He wanted to drag me out of there, now that he had seen auditors sniffing around, perhaps investigating who stole the missile that had “killed” me. On the other hand, the ditto-corporal couldn’t just abandon Ritu Maharal, letting a civilian — a real one — roam around the hidden base unescorted.

“Do you have any gear that can track residual body heat?” I asked in a low whisper, gesturing at the suits of battle armor hanging in neat rows that stretched forever. “Or something that’ll pick up metabolic byproducts?”

My apelike companion glowered.

“If I admit that, you could have a whistle to blow.”

“I might? Oh, yeah.” The golem army is supposed to shield us against other golem armies. It might be harder to justify stockpiling stuff that can hunt down real people. Only the police are supposed to have things like that, under lock and key.

I shrugged. “I guess we’ll just let Ritu wander around, then. If she gets lost, she can use one of those big machines to wake some soldier and ask directions. Did I mention she works for Universal Kilns?”

Chen growled. “Dammit! Okay. Follow me.”

He swiveled around and hurried, striding bowlegged toward one end of the vast dressing room.

Most of the helm-and-coverall suits were measured for outsized bodies like those we’d seen in the Hall of Guardians. How did this particular Corporal Chen hoped to fit in one? I soon got my answer. The last few dozen rows held an assortment of garments, in all sizes, featuring wildly varying numbers of limbs and appendages. Apparently, there were specialized combat-dittos we never saw on TV, even in major league wars.

“The suits with green and amber stripes are scout models,” he explained. “They have adaptive camouflage and full sensoria … including some that might serve our needs in tracking down … um … in finding and helping Miss Maharal.”

Chen was clearly nervous about this. His eyes darted and I could guess what he was thinking. It might have been simpler if Ritu kept her disguise on, as I did. But the makeup made her skin itch and she’d wiped it off.

“Could a real person use one of these?” I asked, fingering the sleeve of one armored uniform, hanging nearby.

“Could a — oh, I get you. If Ritu climbed into a suit and sealed up properly, she wouldn’t leave an organic residuals trail after that. Yeah. First thing I should check is whether she came this way.”

Chen grabbed a scout ensemble — much shorter than average, to roughly fit his simian dittobody — and began working the zippers. I stood behind, reaching out, as if to help …

… and seized him round the shoulders with my left arm, grabbing his head tightly with my right, bearing down hard.

I had a couple of things going in my favor — strong realhuman muscles and the element of surprise. But how many fractions of a second before his soldier training kicked in, erasing the advantage?

“Wha — ?” He dropped the garment and grabbed at my arms, crying out, trying to whirl, clutching for a hold.

Chen might be a pro, but I knew a thing or two about betrayal and murder. And his tax collector body wasn’t top-of-the-line. The neck snapped, just in time, as he yanked hard on my thumb, causing an incendiary eruption of pain.

“Ow!” I yelped, letting go and shaking the offended digit.

The golem slipped out of my arms and fell to the floor. Supine and paralyzed, he was still able to watch me curse and dance and suck my thumb.

I saw realization fill his eyes.

Chen knows I’m real. And that he hurt me.

Even as the light of consciousness began to fade, the ditto’s mouth moved, forming a single word, without air to give it voice.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

Then the active Standing Wave went flat. I could see it … almost feel it go away.

My next move was obvious. I still needed that secure web port Chen first promised, and he had just shown me how to get there safely, by wearing one of those “scout” ensembles. Its sensor array should help me detect and avoid those Dodecahedron auditors we spotted. And perhaps catch Ritu’s trail, if I was lucky.

Frankly, her disappearance wasn’t my biggest concern. As soon as I got properly zip-sealed and was sure of air, I bent over to pick up the clay figure at my feet. Poor ditChen. I’d like to say my aim was to get him to a freezer, and save the day’s mortal memories. But I just needed a place to stash the decaying clay out of sight, preferably an anonymous recycling bin.

Anyway, the real Corporal Chen wouldn’t benefit by downloading what had happened here today. The best favor I could do for him was erase his involvement.

All right, maybe that was rationalization. I had cut him down for one reason, above all. As soon as he donned a scout suit, he would have begun scanning for a real human … and would’ve found one standing right next to him. Damn inconvenient for me. I couldn’t allow it.

I think he understood, at the end.

There was no recycling bin nearby, so I pried out his dogtag pellet and stuffed the rest of him into a refuse can.

I’ll make it up to Chen, if I ever get out of this mess. Someday I’ll insist on buying him dinner. Though he’ll never have any idea why.

It took only a few minutes to get a feel for the scout gear and adjust the camouflage settings to background light levels. Like a squid or octopus, the light-sensitive skin rippled to match whatever lay on the other side of me. A blurry rendition, to be sure. Not true invisibility, but a much better version than you can buy nowadays at the Hobby Store. Good enough to fool most edge-and-movement pattern recognition systems — digital, organic, or clay.

Yup. Even after the Big Deregulation, the guvvies still manage to spend our tax dollars developing cool things.

With the sensors of my scout uniform set to maximum wariness, I set out for the site where Chen had spotted those auditors. Maybe I’d try to eavesdrop for a while and find out why they suspected that stolen military hardware was used in my assassination. Even more important, that secure net-access port must lie somewhere beyond the weapons hall.

I also hoped to find a snack machine. Surely real people came down here sometimes! Being organic is nice, but it has disadvantages. By that point, I was so hungry that even self-hypnosis couldn’t drive away the pangs anymore.

It made me thankful the scout uniform had sound dampers. My growling stomach seemed loud enough to wake the sleeping army next door!

Here’s to high technology.