No bet, I feel Little Red agree, from outside my gray skull, feeling no different than any of the many internal voices that a person conjures up, in the course of a day.

Weird.

“You said you were making the perfect copier,” I prompt ditMaharal, trying to get him talking. Even his smarmy lecturing beats the dread of waiting. Or maybe I’m just claying for time.

He looks up from his preparations, glancing toward me. Busy, but never too busy to pontificate.

“I call it a ‘glazier,’ ” he says, with evident pride.

“A … what?”

“G-L-A-Z-I-E-R,” he spells. “It stands for God-Level Amplification by Zeitgeist Intensification and Ego Refraction. Do you like the name?”

“Like it? I—”

Starting to answer, I feel the latest amplification wave strike, triggering another spasm as I strain against the bindings that hold me down. It’s painful, and rife with those strange echoes, but fortunately quick. Actually, I’m kind of getting used to the hits.

I’ve started noticing something in them other than just agony. Something queerly like music.

When the wave ebbs, I can resume answering ditMaharal’s question.

“I … hate it. What … whatever made you pick such an awful name?”

The golem that assassinated its own maker — and mine — reacts to my goading by laughing aloud. “Well, I admit there was a touch of whimsy involved. You see, I wanted to make a parallel with—”

“—with a laser. I’m not stupid, Maharal.”

He winces in evident surprise.

“And what else have you figured out, Albert?”

“The two of us … we two Morris dittos … the gray and red … we’re like the mirrors at both ends of a laser, is that it? And the important stuff … whatever’s supposed to be amplified … goes in between.”

“Very good! So you did go to school.”

“Kid stuff,” I growl. “And don’t patronize me. If I’m gonna provide the instrument for making a god out of you, show some respect.” ditYosil’s eyes widen for just a moment, then he nods.

“I never quite looked at it that way. So be it, then. Let me explain without patronizing.

“It’s all about the Standing Wave that Jefty Anonnas found glimmering in that region of phase space between neuron and molecule, between body and mind. The so-called soul-essence that Bevvisov learned to press into clay, proving that the ancient Sumerians had an inkling of a lost truth. The motivational essence that Bevvisov and I then imprinted onto Aeneas Kaolin’s wonderful claynamation automatons, with results that stunned us all and transformed the world.”

“So? What does this have to do with—”

“I’m getting to that. Sustained by fields and atoms, like everything else, the Standing Wave is nevertheless so much more than the sum of our parts — our memories and reflexes, our instincts and drives — in much the same way that ripples on a sea show only the surface portions of a vastly complex tug and pull below.”

I’m feeling another pulse approach. Watching the suspended platform, I’ve realized that it swings back and forth exactly twenty-three times between each painful throb of the machine.

“All of that sounds awfully pretty,” I tell ditYosil. “But what about this experiment? So you’ve got my Standing Wave bouncing back and forth, with the two of me acting as mirrors. Because I’m such a good copier that—”

The next pulse hits, hard! I grunt and strain. Sometimes the effect is worse, like plucking harmonies out of catgut while it’s still inside the cat. Then, abruptly, another of those echoes comes over me …

… and I briefly find myself envisioning a moonlit landscape of dark plains and ravines, covered with opal glows and shadows, rolling along below me, as if viewed by a creature of the air.

Then it passes.

I try to hold my train of thought, using the conversation as an anchor … since my real anchor, the organic Albert Morris, is dead, I’m told.

“So, you use my Standing Wave … because I’m such a good copier. And you’re a bloody awful one. Is that right, Yosil?”

“Impudent, but correct. You see, it’s fundamentally a matter of accounting—”

“Of what?”

“Accounting, the way physicists and soulists do it. Adding up, arranging, or counting assortments of identical particles. Or anything else, for that matter! Grab a bunch of marbles out of a bag … does it matter which one is which, if they all look alike? How many different ways can you sort them, if they’re all the same? It turns out the statistics are totally different if each marble has something unique about it! A nick, a scratch, a label …”

“What the hell are you talking—”

“This distinction is especially important at the quantum level. Particles can be counted in two ways — as fermions and bosons. Protons and electrons sort as fermions, which are forced to stay apart from one another by an exclusion principle that’s more fundamental than entropy. Even if they seem identical and come from the same source, they have to be counted individually and occupy states that are quantum-separated by a certain minimum amount.

“But bosons love to mingle, overlap, merge, combine, march in step — for example, in the amplified and coherent light waves generated by a laser. Photons are bosons, and they are anything but aloof! Happily identical, they join together, superimpose—”

“Get to the point, will you?” I shout, or this could go on all night.

Yosil’s ghost frowns at me.

“The point? Even though a golem-copy can be very much like its original, something always prevents the soul-duplicate from being truly identical … or being counted with Bose statistics. That means it cannot be coherence-multiplied, the way light is in a laser. That is, it couldn’t be, till I found a way! Starting with an excellent copier and an ego of just the right ductility—”

“So it’s like a laser and you’re using two of me to supply your mirror. What’s your role in all this?”

He grins.

“You’ll supply the pure carrier waveform, Morris, since you’re good at that. But the substance of the soul we’re amplifying will be mine.”

Hearing this and looking at his facial expression — oh, he’s got Smersh-Foxleitner, all right. Stage four at least. Amoral, paranoid, and profoundly self-deceptive. The worst sufferers can believe seventeen different things before breakfast … and sometimes brilliantly weave the incompatible notions together by noon!

“What about the god-level part of your machine’s stupid name?” I ask, not expecting to like the answer. “Isn’t that unscientific? Even mystical?”

“Don’t be rude, Albert. It’s a metaphor, of course. At present we have no words to describe what I’m about to achieve. It transcends today’s language the way Hamlet outsoliloquies a bonobo chimp.”

“Yeah, yeah. There have been Neo Age rumors about such ‘transcendence’ for as long as I can remember. Soul-projection machines and wild-eyed schemes to upload people straight to heaven. You and Kaolin were pestered by such nonsense for decades. Now you’re telling me there’s a core of truth?”

“I am, though using true science rather than wishful thinking. When your own Standing Wave becomes a Bose condensate—” ditYosil pauses, cocking his head, as if curious about a sound. Then, shaking his head, he seems ready to go on, enthusiastically describing his ambition to become something new — something much bigger or better than the mere run of mortals. He opens his mouth -

— as a noise penetrates the underground chamber, now clearly audible. A distant rumble from beyond one stony wall.

An instrument panel erupts with warning glows, some red, others amber. “Interlopers,” a cyber voice announces. “Interlopers in the tunnel …”

An image globe resolves in thin air, growing larger as we both feed it with our attention. Inside, we see dim figures marching along a murky corridor of undressed limestone. Sudden flashes pour from an outcrop, slicing one of the figures in half, but the rest of the armed force respond with uncanny quickness, swinging weapons up to fire, blasting hidden robo-sentinels. Soon the way is clear and they resume their steady march.