Soon I heard sounds of tearing metal! My captor moved out from the shadows, far enough for us to glimpse the demolition of several wall cabinets! War-dittos attacked them, ripping off doors and tossing the contents aside, searching … searching …

… till one let out a cry. The back of one cabinet split open with a loud hiss, exposing blank emptiness where a stone wall was legally supposed to be.

I knew it!

Of course, my satisfaction was mixed. This showed I was a still a pretty good private eye. It also meant I was an idiot for not calling the authorities before! Now …

Now?

I wondered as the big golem shifted me under its good arm and headed the other way, out of the storage room, into the hall.

ThHhHhHhHhH-mmmmmph!

Behind us, I heard laser and phase-maser fire! Low, menacing hums followed by the rapid pops and cracks of spalling rock … and the splat of warm, moist clay hitting some wall. The battle-dits must have encountered something inside the tunnel. Defenses. Strong ones.

And you were going to just charge on through. Fool, I chided myself.

If only I could make that call! But the chador was gone. Anyway, the big monster was carrying me in the opposite direction, down a long hallway toward the fresh smell of newly baked souls.

We entered a chamber containing deluxe freezers and kilns — the kind used by elites, equipped with the highest quality Standing Wave sifters. More stuff for the gummint cream to use if they ever had to hide down here while the rest of us were getting snuffed out, far above. Several freezers gaped open, with their contents recently looted. A high-speed kiln hissed, the machinery chugging through final warmdown after having just processed a large batch — presumably the pack of warriors I just saw. The ones now fighting their way into a tunnel under Urraca Mesa.

But where was the archetype source, the archie? The one who did the imprinting? Clearly, this was not the military police at work. I tried to look around for the copier machine itself. We rounded a corner.

From my position, pinned under that giant arm, I caught a blurry glimpse. One figure lay stretched out on the original platten of the copier, while a second shape bent over, holding some ominous instrument.

The big golem who was carrying me let out a bellow and charged!

The standing figure turned, grabbing for a weapon — but the three of us crashed together before the pistol came to bear, tumbling in a pile.

“My” golem needed its arm in order to fight the thick-limbed soldier-dit, so I rolled free, scooting away as fast as I could, then scrambling to my feet while rubbing my bruised rib cage. The battle surged as two monstrous roxes pounded each other, rolling back and forth amid horrendous roars!

Real people first, I thought, remembering lessons from school. I hurried to the figure who lay supine on the platten … and gasped to find Ritu Maharal! She lay there, conscious — you have to be, in order to make decent copies — but her eyes didn’t track at first as I tugged at the cruel straps holding her down.

“Al …” she choked. “Al — bert … !”

“What bastard did this to you!” I cursed, hating whoever it was. Involuntary copying — soul-stealing — is an especially nasty kind of rape. As soon as the straps were loose, I hauled her off the table and to a far corner, as far as possible from the battling titans. She clung to me hard, burying her head in my shoulder, sobbing as her warm skin shivered.

“I’m here. It’ll be okay,” I assured, not sure the promise could be kept. Eyeing possible ways to exit the room as “my” one-armed monster battled the other big golem. The one who had been tightening Ritu’s straps, preparing to -

I glanced at the floor where an implement lay fallen from that ditto’s fingers. Not some torture device but a med-sprayer, filled with some purple concoction. I wondered … could appearances be deceiving. What if this was only a doctor, trying to help Ritu?

The fallen laser clattered across the floor, kicked to and fro as the giants bellowed, strained, and tore at each other. Should I try to grab the weapon? Not easy, amid those heaving limbs. And suppose I did manage to recover the weapon. Should I shoot the first ditto, or the second?

As Ritu quivered in my arms, the issue was settled with a double crack of finality. Both of the struggling war-golems suddenly shuddered and went still.

“Well, I’ll be a …”

It took a moment to disentangle poor, disheveled Ritu and guide her back, taking a few steps toward the two bodies, already starting to smolder on the floor. I approached cautiously, though she tried to hold me back, till I could see them clearly on the ground, beyond the imprinting tables.

My captor — the rox with one arm — lay atop the other one, apparently lifeless.

The one beneath, who had been standing over Ritu preparing to inject either medicine or poison, lay with its neck twisted at a creepy angle. But a spark remained. The eyes glittered, staring directly into mine, beckoning.

Against my better judgment — and Ritu’s frantic tugging — I approached.

One of the eyes winked.

“Hello … Morris,” came individual raspy words. “You … really … have to stop … following … me around like this.”

A chill coursed my spine.

“Beta? Great Rava of Prague! What are you doing here?”

A chuckle. Snide and superior. I knew it all too well.

“Oh, Morris … you can be … so dense.” The effigy of my enemy coughed, spitting slip with an ugly, deathlike glaze. “Why don’t you ask her what … I’m doing here?”

The glittering eyes moved to Ritu.

I glanced up at Yosil Maharal’s daughter, who moaned in response.

“Me? Why should I know anything about this monster!” ditBeta coughed again. This time the words came mixed in a chalky death rattle.

“Why indeed … Betty …” Then all light vanished from its eyes.

I guess, long ago, there used to be some gratification from having your worst enemy die in front of you. A sense of completion, at least. But Beta and I had done this to each other — gasped our cryptic last in each other’s arms — so many times that I could only view it now with utter frustration.

“Damn!” I kicked the one-armed golem on top. The mute one who apparently had been intent on rescuing me and Ritu, all along. “Why’d you have to kill it? I had questions!”

I turned back to Ritu, still shivering in reaction and clearly in no shape to be interrogated.

Just then a nearby autokiln hummed back into active mode, hissing and rumbling.

Nobody had asked it to, as far as I could tell.

I didn’t like the sound.

Echoes … the weird ones from outside … keep getting stronger, recurring every few minutes. Whenever the big machine triggers another “resonance” mode, I/we pick up hints of something that seems both other and familiar. At once oddly reassuring and strangely terrifying.

Aw, man … we/I had just started getting used to being combined. A twinned state … one mind sharing two bodies — gray and little red — sloshing back and forth, continuously imprinting each other. Two emulated brains, linked not only by a common soul-template, but the same active Standing Wave, thrumming through the empty space between us.

A space where Yosil Maharal’s gray ghost is preparing to sit, on a swaying platform that swings back and forth, passing between Gray and Little Red at regular intervals.

There’s something familiar about the period of the pendulum … linked to the pattern of our rhythmic soul-bursts. No coincidence, I bet.