Greeted by silence, I insisted. “What game are you involved in? How do you fit in between Maharal and Aeneas Kaolin—”

Beta’s golem threw back its head and laughed. “You’re just fishing. You really don’t have a clue.”

“Oh? Then please explain, great Moriarty! What can it hurt to tell me?”

He stared a moment.

“Let’s make a trade. You transmit those pictures. Then I’ll tell a story.”

“Irene’s pictures? From the Rainbow Lounge?”

“You know what pictures I mean. Dispatch them to Inspector Blane. He knows how you got ’em, from the report you just sent. Transmit and verify. Then we’ll talk.”

It was my turn to pause. He rescued me from that rooftop in order to help track down realAlbert … and thus Ritu Maharal … and thus her father’s secret hideaway.

Now he has no further use for me, except to send the pictures.

“You want me to be the one who transmits them … for the sake of credibility.”

“You have credibility, Morris — more than you realize. Despite ham-handed efforts to frame you, nobody in high places considered you a likely saboteur. The pics you found at the Rainbow will clinch it, help exonerate you—”

“And you!”

“So? They implicate Kaolin. But if I send them, well, who will believe an infamous ditnapper? They’ll say I faked ’em.”

This explained why Beta hadn’t simply taken the film away from me. But his patience was wearing thin. “I know you, Morris. You think this gives you leverage. But don’t press it. I have bigger concerns.”

Resignation washed over me. “So, in exchange for lending a little credibility to the theory that Kaolin sabotaged his own factory, you’ll tell me a few glimmers of useless information that will vanish when this body dissolves soon. Not much of a deal.”

“It’s the only one you’re being offered. At least your notorious curiosity will be fed.”

How inconvenient it is, to have an enemy who knows you so well.

He never let me out of sight, or easy reach of his younger, stronger arms.

“Send no messages,” Beta warned, standing next to the Harley’s open cockpit, uncovering the slot of the reader-scanner for me to slip in the spool of pictures. “Just transmit, verify, and sign off.”

He punched in Blane’s mailbox at LSA headquarters. A nearby screen asked: Validate Sender ID. Then a single number flashed: 6

Too quickly for conscious thought, I impulsively jabbed a response: 4

The unit responded with 8 … and I stabbed 3.

It went back and forth like that, rapidfire, two dozen more times, feeling entirely random to me. It wasn’t random, of course, but a kind of encryption that’s hard to crack or feign, based on a partial copy of Albert’s personal Soul Standing Wave that Blane keeps secure in a hard-baked ceramium — a kind of cypher key that can be used many times. Any particular give-and-take pattern of number cues would be different, unique, yet show a high correlation with the sender’s personality -

— assuming it didn’t matter that I was a frankie! Nor my overwrought emotional state, scared and suspicious as hell. It actually surprised me when the screen flashed ACCEPTED, taking no longer than usual. Beta’s spiral ditto grunted approval.

“Good, now step away from the cockpit.”

I did so, watching a slim gun — one of his fingers, removed and reversed to aim a narrow muzzle, waved for me to move back. “I’d love to stay and chat, as promised,” said the nine-digited golem. “But I’ve wasted too much time on you already.”

“Do you have a particular destination in mind?”

Keeping the mini-gun trained on me, he climbed into the skycycle. “I found two sets of footprints, heading south. I have a pretty good notion where they’re going now. You’d just slow me down.”

“So you won’t explain about Maharal and Kaolin?”

“If I told you more I’d have to shoot you, against the slim chance that someone might come by and rescue you. As things stand, you’re clueless as usual. I’ll leave you to dissolve in peace.”

“Big of you. I owe you one.”

Beta’s grin showed that he knew how I meant it. “If it matters any, I’m not the one who tried to kill your rig, Morris. I doubt it was Kaolin, either. In fact, I hope the real you survives what’s about to happen.”

What’s about to happen. He expressed it that way deliberately, to frustrate me. But I kept silent, not giving him any satisfaction. Only action would accomplish anything now.

“Good-bye, Morris,” ditBeta said, closing the glass bubble, revving the engine to a rising pitch. I stepped back, thinking furiously.

What are my choices?

I still had the cautious option — wait a bit, burn the Volvo’s fuel and hope to attract attention before I melt.

But no. I’d lose his scent. My reason for living.

The skycycle drove dust-billows down the narrow canyon defiles. ditBeta offered a jaunty wave, then turned his corkscrew head back to the job of taking off.

It was my cue. In that split second, as the Harley swung about and began climbing atop three pillars of superheated thrust, I ran forward and leaped.

There was pain, of course. I knew there would be pain.

There wasn’t much choice except to follow. Back to the storage room. Back to the dark opening where I had seen a small army of clay soldier-figures go plunging into a tunnel of death.

Ritu was still shivering in my arms, recovering her composure from the violation that my enemy inflicted on her — by forcing her onto an imprinting machine against her will. I wanted to ask Ritu about that. To find out how and why Beta (if it really had been a copy of the infamous ditnapper) grabbed her in the deep underground sanctuary of a supposedly secure military base.

Before I could begin, a series of loud tones reverberated around us from rank after rank of nearby rapid-bake kilns, announcing the emergence of yet more battle-dittos, sliding forth red and glowing with freshly sparked enzyme catalysis — special models that had been stored here at taxpayer expense, blank but ready to be imprinted with the souls of reserve warriors like Clara, only now hijacked by an infamous criminal for some reason I couldn’t fathom.

If there had been just one or two of them, I could handle the situation quickly. Even a war-golem is helpless during those first moments after sliding from the activation oven. But a glance down the aisle of towering machines showed there were too many — dozens — already beginning to stand on trembling legs … legs like tree trunks … and stretching arms that could crush a small car. In moments their eyes would focus on Ritu and me. Eyes fired up with some purpose that I didn’t want any part of.

And there were more bell-like tones, from tall ovens even farther away, ringing their birth announcements till they merged like some rippling call of destiny. Do not ask for whom the kiln tolls, commented a wry little voice within.

Time to get out.

“Let’s go,” I urged Ritu, and she nodded, as eager as I was to leave that place.

Together we fled in the only direction available, back toward the storeroom where that huge, silent mystery golem grabbed me less than half an hour ago and saved my life — though I didn’t know its motive at the time. Departing, I glanced at the dissolving corpse of my benefactor, wondering who he was and how he knew that I needed help at that particular moment.

Then we were running past dark, fearsome-looking figures, molded and augmented for war. Terracotta forms that turned to glare at us, clumsily reaching out, but slowed by uneven peptide activation. Thank heavens. Fleeing their ranks, I led Ritu back down the corridor of shelves, looking for some weapon big enough to make a difference against their numbers. I’d settle for a simple phone to call up Base Security!