Twinmaker (23 page)

“Only . . . I thought he was going out with Libby.”

“He was. But he liked me, too.”

“Oh. Did you like him back?”

“Don’t say it like that. I never wanted to. I just did, and there was no way to stop it. I
wanted
to stop it, of course, but . . .”

“I get it,” he said. “It was complicated.”

She nodded, unsure whether it would be easier or harder now that everything that had seemed so momentous and world-shattering just hours ago was ended forever. The certainty of Zep’s death was undeniable, but sometimes it still felt surreal, like something that had happened to someone else. She wondered how long it would take to fully sink in.

“What about you?” she asked Jesse in turn. Anything to change the subject. “What’s your love life like?”

He might have blushed. It was hard to tell by starlight.

“Love life?
What
love life? I can’t date at school because everyone thinks I’m a freak. I could hook up with someone via the Air, but what would be the point when everyone lives so far apart? And the girls I’ve met through WHOLE have been . . . predictably intense. So nothing at all, I’m afraid.”

“You wouldn’t use d-mat even to get lucky?” she asked.

“Not even. We Stainer boys are made of sterner stuff than that.”

“No point dreaming of what you can’t have, I guess.”

“Exactly.”

She wished she had told herself that when Zep had been nothing but a dream, a
safe
dream because he was unavailable. She’d had crushes before that had never gone anywhere. If Zep had stayed one of them, none of this would have happened. She would be asleep in her bed in Maine, not staring down in the vain hope of telling the difference between rocks and pitfalls in a night so dark she could hardly see her feet. . . .

“Do you hear that, Clair?”

Jesse had stopped in his tracks, and she stumbled to a halt next to him.

“A bike or something,” she said, thinking of their ruthless pursuers. “Coming this way.”

“Is it Q?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not take any chances.”

They took shelter behind a boulder overlooking a low crack in the ground. There they waited, Clair’s palm sweaty on the pistol grip. Would the vehicle go past them or stop? Would it be Q or “Dylan Linwood”? Had their long flight been for nothing?

The engine noise grew steadily louder and then ebbed into a low whirr. Stones ground under wheels as the vehicle came to a halt on the other side of the boulder.

“Clair?” came a loud voice out of the darkness. “I know you’re nearby, but I can’t locate you precisely. Sorry it’s taken me so long. This whole area is under intense scrutiny. I’m lucky I could get in at all.”

Clair sagged with relief.

“It’s okay,” she told Jesse. “That’s our ride.”

“That’s Q? Really?”

“I know she sounds young, but let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.” She poked him lightly on the shoulder. “You know what
that
phrase means, don’t you?”

She climbed out of the crack in the ground before he could answer. Twenty yards away sat a squat moon buggy of a thing, little more than a frame with four balloon wheels capable of collapsing to fit inside a d-mat booth, then expanding out to seat two. It had a sprinkling of antennae protruding from the rear bench and a small dish pointing skyward. A pair of tiny cameras mounted at the front swiveled to face her, locked on.

“Don’t reply via the Air,” said Q through a speaker somewhere on the buggy. “I have established a secure maser link with the quadricycle. No one can detect it unless they’re standing directly in the beam.”

“You can hear me like this?” Clair asked, speaking aloud as she came closer.

“Perfectly well, Clair.”

“I could kiss you, Q. Hell, I could kiss
this
thing, whatever it is.”

Jesse approached more warily. “Hello?”

“Jesse Linwood, I presume,” said Q with a new formality. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Same, I guess.”

Clair took off her backpack and helmet and threw them into the space between the seats, then climbed gratefully aboard. The flimsy-looking sides barely flexed under her weight.

“I don’t suppose you thought to pack any supplies.”

“It didn’t occur to me, Clair. I’m sorry. I’ll take you past the booth in Copperopolis, if you like.”

“All right,” she said. “But let’s not hang there too long. We’re running behind as it is. Jesse? Are you getting on or what?”

He was examining the underside of the frame. “Yes. It’s just . . . a nice design. Reminds me of one of the old Mars rovers. Good choice, Q.”

“Thanks, Jesse.” The voice over the speakers relaxed slightly. “Would you like to drive?”

“If that’s okay with you, sure!”

A hatch opened in front of the vacant seat, and a delicate-looking steering system unfolded. It looked like a retro game controller, but with fewer buttons.

“Cool,” he said, finally getting into his seat. He tested the joystick. Beneath them, the buggy stirred. He nodded, pushed the joystick forward. The wheels spun, kicking up gravel. Clair let herself be pressed back into the seat, hoping the long, awkward night would soon be over.

THE RIDE WAS too bouncy to be called truly comfortable, although it seemed so after the long walk. Clair offered a weak cheer when they reached the empty roads of Copperopolis. The map in her lenses checked off a series of oddly named streets as they flew by: Knolls Drive, Sugar Loaf Court, Little John Road, Charmstone Way. They sounded like something from a fairy tale, but there was nothing remotely fairyish about the arid, abandoned lots. She imagined dark eyes staring at her through all the broken windows.

According to the map, decoy airships were still drifting all over the state of California. Three were stationary. One of those—the real deal—was at the Maury Rasmussen airfield. She took hope from the fact that it had arrived safely. Furthermore, it hadn’t left yet. She and Jesse were still in the race.

“Are we going to make it?” he asked.

“Don’t jinx us by asking that,” she said, feeling the steady churn in her gut as she thought about what might happen if they didn’t. “What comes after we get away in the airship? Have you thought about that?”

He shook his head. “Have you?”

“Well, I’m not joining WHOLE and becoming a social outcast . . . uh, no offense.”

“None taken.”

“I just want to save Libby somehow, which means finding a way to reverse the effects of Improvement.”

“In four days?”

“Why not?
Someone
can do this: we just need to find out what they know. It’ll be easier working backward, surely.”

“I can help with that,” said Q brightly.

“It strikes me,” said Jesse, “that there’s only one group that stands to look bad if word of this gets out. That’s VIA. I mean, say Improvement’s really real, and duping is real too, then that proves what a shitty job they’re doing, keeping people like you safe. But how does it work if VIA’s as bad as Gemma thinks?”

“They can’t be,” Clair said. “If it
was
VIA, there wouldn’t be death squads chasing after us now. I’d have been erased the first time I used d-mat, and the rest of you would be crushed under a million peacekeepers. VIA is too powerful. So it has to be someone working
around
VIA . . . and you’re right: VIA won’t like that at all. All I’d have to do is get them on our side, and I’d have the biggest ally imaginable. But how would I do that? Who would I talk to?”

“You could start at the top,” Jesse said. Clair couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

“Q, who’s in charge of VIA?” she asked.

“Head of operations is Ant Wallace,” came the instant reply. “His office is in New York City.”

Images flickered across Clair’s lenses as Q supplemented her words with stills and text. Anthony Reinhold Wallace was a man of medium height and medium build, with a pleasantly symmetrical face and lightly graying hair. VIA itself occupied One Penn Plaza, a skyscraper on the west shoreline of the main island of Manhattan.

Clair felt a giddy feeling, as though she were back on the roof of the Phoenix Observatory, staring into an abyss. She thought
That’s a really long way to go
for the first time in her life
.
And if she couldn’t get the dupes off her tail, they would be behind her every step.

“There must be an easier way,” she said.

“You’ll think of something,” Jesse said with a confidence she knew wasn’t earned.

“Or Turner Goldsmith will,
if
we make it to the airship . . .”

“Don’t jinx us, Clair, remember?”

Jesse took the corners fast, lifting two wheels off the ground. Clair clung to the sides of her seat, liking this mode of travel even less than the electrobike, but at least she wasn’t walking anymore. On Copperopolis’s main street, next to an old saloon that looked like something out of the Wild West, they found the town’s only d-mat booth. Its door slid open as they approached, revealing a box much like the one Q had sent Clair in Manteca. This one was addressed to Isabella Charlotte Tremblay but opened at her palm print. Inside were sandwiches, some water, and a fully loaded pistol that was superficially identical to the one in her pocket. Clair swapped sidearms so the one she had couldn’t be matched against the bullets fired in Manteca, sealed the box, put it in the booth for recycling, and returned to the buggy.

Today is Friday
, she thought.
I’m supposed to be doing chores and then hanging out with Ronnie, Tash, and Libby. How did I end up here?

“Do you think there’s a toilet?” she asked.

“Maybe round the back,” Jesse said, taking a sandwich, staring at it skeptically, and fishing out the meaty bits he wouldn’t eat whether they were fabbed or not.

“Save the meat for me. I’m starving.”

The old saloon had a rear light that flicked on as she came around the corner. It revealed a chemical toilet with a door that opened onto the empty landscape. She used it as quickly as she could, holding her breath from the smell creeping up the pipe.

Coming back around the saloon, she heard voices.

“Never trusted that thing,” someone was saying in a low, querulous voice. “They put it here in exchange for free power. I know it comes from the satellites now, but you still need wires to get it around on the ground, they said. Either that or move. It’s for emergencies, but who’s going to have an emergency out here? The last group to come by were balloonists. If they have an emergency, they’re dead. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” said Jesse with a small laugh. “How long have you lived here?”

“Since I was a boy, and I ain’t going anywhere now.”

“No one’s making you. We’re just passing through.”

Jesse didn’t sound overly worried, so Clair walked around the corner and into view. Jesse was leaning against the buggy, the last of his sandwich in one hand, eyes hidden in the shade of his shaggy bangs. In front of him, facing away from the saloon and lit by a single globe under the veranda roof that hadn’t been on before, was an old guy, weathered and faded by the sun. His eyes were so gray they were almost transparent. He looked about a hundred. Clair thought he was probably no more than seventy, just old enough to remember life before the powersats.

She cleared her throat. He turned.

“Ah, here’s the pretty one,” he said with a yellow-toothed smile, extending his hand. “Jayden Beaumont, proprietor of the Old Corner Saloon.”

“Clair Hill. Sorry if we woke you, Mr. Beaumont.”

His grip was strong. “Call me Jay. And no need to apologize. I don’t sleep so well these days. Tumbleweeds in Telegraph City, I hear them.”

He let her go and she stepped away. He smelled stale, like the survivor of a fifty-year bender, and was wearing a thin silk dressing gown and slippers that had seen better decades. Bony, angular knees poked at the inside of the gown. She couldn’t tell if he was wearing anything under there. Didn’t want to know.

“You two need a bed for the night?” he asked them. “It’s not too late to throw something together. Breakfast included, free of charge.”

“No thanks,” said Clair quickly, wondering if he grew his own food and cooked it or used a fabber. “You get many people out here?”

He scratched at his scalp. “Some. Student geologists, the odd surveyor, historians, hobbyists. Is that what you two are? On some kind of school trip, perhaps?”

“That’s it,” she said, leaping on the idea. “A treasure hunt, actually. If you see someone else tonight, don’t tell them we were here.”

He tapped his nose. “Gotcha.”

“Well, I guess we’d better move on,” she said. “Don’t want to fall too far behind. Thanks for letting me use your bathroom.”

He smiled almost sadly and said, “Sure, honey.”

With one hand, he reached under his dressing gown and pulled out a shotgun. He pumped the action and pointed it at stomach height, midway between Jesse and Clair.

They froze.

KNEES
, THOUGHT CLAIR, wanting to howl at her stupidity. No one had knees
that
bony.

“What do you want?” she asked, holding up her hands.

“We’ve got nothing, Jay,” said Jesse. “Don’t do this to us.”

“It’s not about you,” he said. The smile was gone now. He was determined, but he didn’t look happy about it. “I lied. The last people through here weren’t balloonists. I had some other visitors tonight. They came out of this thing.” He cocked his head at the booth behind him. “They said to keep an eye out for people using the roads. I’m supposed to let them know if I see anyone.”

“
Did
you let them know?” asked Clair.

“They told me you were terrorists. I saw you fiddling with the booth. I may not approve of it, but it’s the only thing this place has going for it. You blow it up, and I might as well go out back and dig my grave.”

“Did you let them know, Jay?”

His watery gaze darted from her to Jesse and back again. “I did what I had to.”

Clair cursed silently to herself.
This is what happens when you let your guard down
, a voice whispered in her mind. The pistol was in the buggy, out of reach. The old man was too far away to risk rushing him. There was only one thing she could do.