Twinmaker

called them Stainers, after George Staines, their founder, and the idea that giving up d-mat would bring back all the pollution humanity had finally gotten rid of. They were regarded as crazy by pretty much everyone. Hence the defacement and worse.

Stainers didn’t claim to be sane. They claimed to be right.

“Improvement killed my child” was all the woman’s warning said.

Clair worried at her fingernail, thinking of Libby’s ghostly image crashing to black.

Feeling faintly foolish but knowing her grandmother’s genes wouldn’t let the thought go until she had pursued it to the very end, she scoured her contacts until she found the name of the only Stainer in her grade and asked if they could talk.

Jesse Linwood was a junior like her, and they shared Modern History on Tuesdays, but that was where their similarities ended. Jesse’s other subjects were focused on math and engineering. They never hung out.

It wasn’t personal. Their paths simply never crossed. He didn’t come on excursions if they involved d-mat —which they always did—or eat at the refectory, where the food was always fabbed. Libby called him the Lurker because he sometimes popped up in school social media but rarely said anything. That could have been the fault of his augs, which were embarrassingly ancient. His audio came through an actual earring clipped to his earlobe, instead of a tiny tube tucked neatly into the aural canal like everyone else had. He had only one visible contact lens, which he switched from eye to eye as though it irritated him. Clair took for granted the fact that she could type using menus in her lenses or just mouth the words she wanted to say, but Jesse audibly whispered when talking in a chat, and when he was bumping someone or accessing his menus, his fingers visibly twitched. Sometimes his augs broke down, leaving him deaf and dumb to the Air until he fixed them. It drove the teachers crazy.

He never proselytized like some Abstainers did, but people knew who he was all the same. His clothes were obviously not fabbed fresh each morning—sometimes they were patched or even dirty—and he carried a leather satchel that looked a hundred years old. He had other nicknames, some them undeserved. Clair was pretty sure he wasn’t actually a terrorist, like the members of the World Holistic Leadership. WHOLE was always issuing manifestos and sending viruses through the d-mat network. Cold viruses, not computer ones.

After a delay of some minutes, Jesse replied, “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

“The wrong what?” she bumped back.

“Number. Address. Telephones, you know?”

She’d read of telephones in old stories but had never seen one.

“They used numbers, not names?”

There was another delay before he bumped back. She imagined his fingers twitching away, wherever he was, and was too impatient to wait for a reply.

“It’s Clair Hill, from Modern History.”

“I know who you are. You’ve never texted me before.”

Another old word, but she knew what this one meant. “I want to ask you something about d-mat.”

“I don’t know anything about d-mat.”

“What happens when d-mat goes wrong, I mean.”

This time the pause was longer.

“I thought it might’ve been about this morning.”

She frowned. “What about this morning?”

“You were at the station. I saw you.”

“I didn’t see you. What were you doing there?”

The pause dragged on so long, she thought he might not reply at all.

“Doesn’t matter,” he finally said. “What do you want to know?”

The delays between bumps were maddening.

“It would be easier to actually talk than do it like this.”

“Sure, but not now. My audio’s on the fritz, and I have a prac after lunch. Meet me at the gate after last period?”

Clair was reluctant. People might see.

Then she felt bad for feeling that way. So what if people saw them together? Besides, there was a chance Libby would get better as the day progressed, and Clair wouldn’t have to go through with it.

“All right,” she bumped back. “Thanks.”

“No probs. See you.”

Clair leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. She didn’t want to leave the library, but she had done all she could, for now. And she had some explaining to do. Ronnie would tell her she was overreacting; Tash would go into a worry spiral. Both would make her feel worse. Neither would change her mind.

“Improvement killed my child,” she thought, and then tried her best not to think it again.

“On my way,” she bumped Tash.

“We were beginning to wonder what you were up to,” Tash bumped back.

“And who with,” Ronnie added.

Gathering up her backpack, Clair resigned herself to explanations on several fronts at once.

8

MIDWAY THROUGH THE afternoon, Libby’s caption changed from Disturb at own risk to SiCkO, with a crocodile biting a zebra on the rump. Clair took that as a clear sign that Libby wasn’t feeling better, meaning that Clair had to go through with her meeting with Jesse Linwood. She was already regretting and feeling slightly embarrassed about contacting him. Jesse was so far out of her social circle, he might as well have come from another planet.

Ronnie and Tash waved her off at the end of school, peppering her with provocative bumps.

“Retro is in,” said Tash, “but not that retro.”

Clair walked on, telling herself to be glad they weren’t giving her a hard time about Zep. She had been determinedly honest with them over what had happened at the party. She knew she had done the wrong thing. Forgiveness was optional. She would understand if they reserved their sympathy for Libby.

“I just want to know,” Ronnie had said, “what’re you doing poaching that slimeball when there are eligible bachelors all over campus. You know you can do better, right?”

“He may be a slimeball,” said Tash, “but at least he has taste.”

“I don’t think Zep’s really a slimeball,” Clair started to say.

“Oh no!” cried Ronnie, putting the back of one hand to her forehead. “This can’t be happening!”

“. . . any more than I’m a poacher,” Clair concluded firmly. “It just happened. It won’t happen again.”

They hadn’t sounded convinced.

“Come lat-jumping with me this weekend,” Tash said. “We’re taking the thirtieth. That’ll give you something else to think about.”

“Or come party with me,” said Ronnie. “Plenty more slimeballs where he came from.”

“Pass,” Clair said. She wasn’t interested in circumnavigating the globe latitude by latitude or in available men. “But thanks. I’m glad you’re still talking to me.”

“Just don’t run off with the Stainer, or else we’ll have to communicate by smoke signals. . . .”

Jesse Linwood was waiting for her by the gate, slouched in a way that belied his gangly height, with shaggy brown hair covering his eyes. He was wearing tatty blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a blocky logo she didn’t recognize—it looked like an upside-down flowerpot, only bright red. The legendary satchel was on the ground at his feet, slumping listlessly like something melting in the sun. In one hand he held a paperback novel that was so dog-eared, it should probably have been in a museum.

She didn’t catch the title. When he saw her, he put his weight on both feet and stood straighter, slipping the book into his back pocket.

“Hey, Clair,” he said.