Twinmaker

getting out of there.

Jesse followed, his face a mask of anxiety.

“I’m sorry, Clair,” he said at the door.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Clair had invaded Jesse’s world in search of answers, and now her head was full of Stainers and dead mothers and d-mat conspiracies.

“You remember the way to the station? It’s a safe neighborhood, but I’m happy to walk you if you feel uncomfortable.”

“No need for that.”

“Hey,” he said as she headed for the road, “next time bring Libby along. Dad can browbeat her in person. He might even convert her. That’d look great for him at the meetings.”

Clair glanced back at him and was brought up momentarily by the stricken expression on his face. She wondered how many kids from school ever came to visit him. She might have been the first in years. How, in his mind, had he imagined it playing out?

He looked lonely.

“Miracles happen,” Clair said, not stopping, “but not that big a miracle.”

11

CLAIR WENT HOME, angry at Dylan Linwood and at herself for imagining that he would help her. He didn’t owe her anything. He and Jesse might as well really exist in a different world from her. By refusing to use d-mat and fabbers, Jesse Linwood existed farther away than Libby, who lived thousands of miles around the bulge of the Earth.

She could see it from their eyes now, and she was embarrassed on her own behalf. To them it must have seemed deeply patronizing, the way she had barged into their lives, seeking answers to questions that didn’t matter to them in the slightest. She lived in a world of instantaneous plenty, and she was worried about a friend’s bad mood? No wonder Dylan Linwood had responded by trying to prop himself up as someone with secret knowledge and influence far beyond her own. His theory about Improvement causing random errors was imaginary, no doubt, but it was all he had to retaliate with. That and feeding her anxieties. She had enough of those without him adding to them.

When she reached the station, she gave the booth directions and closed her eyes, grateful for her ordinary life. One moment Manteca, the next Maine. Hissing, the door opened on cooler air and a barrage of silence.

Her mother was in the living room. She nabbed Clair before she could escape to her room.

“Come sit with me awhile,” Allison said. “I feel I haven’t seen you in person for ages. How’s school? What’s the latest gossip?”

The crisis among Clair, Libby, and Zep surely counted as gossip, but Clair was loath to go into that with her mother.

“School is the same,” she said, stretching out on her back along the couch. “There’s this new clique . . . the crashlanders. Libby and I got in.”

“Well, that’s great.” Allison didn’t ask for details. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your study . . .”

“It won’t, Mom. What about you? Where have you been working this week?”

“Northern Australia. We’ve got two self-sufficient herds now, and we’re working on a third.”

“Still elephants?”

“Still elephants. The tweaks we made to the clones seem to be holding. No sign of inbreeding yet.”

Allison was a veterinarian specializing in the restoration of animals to their natural environment, or the closest available. For community service, she was employed by ERA, the Environment Reclamation Agency. For fun and popularity, she played with ancient DNA in the hope of bringing back woolly mammoths.

Clair didn’t understand every aspect of her work, but she knew one thing for certain. Allison changed the molecular coding of her animal clones using d-mat.

“How does it work?” Clair had never before had cause to ask her mother that question. “Does VIA give you permission to break the law?”

“No one can do that. VIA won’t allow any pattern changes in the global system at all—not to living things and especially not to people. We use our own private network instead. We can do whatever we want in there.”

“What would happen if someone hacked VIA . . . you know, if they wanted to make those kinds of changes in the global system . . . for whatever reason?”

“It happens every now and again,” said Allison. “Young idiots wanting to show off their skills and bad taste in body sculpting.” She flashed a quick grin. “The peacekeepers pounce on them within minutes. There’s no error too small to spot; that’s how the system works. Really, if you wanted to do something illegal like that, you wouldn’t do it in public. Like most crime, home is where the harm is.”

“So someone could do it with a private network,” Clair said.

“They would need resources that are tightly controlled, and access to the powersats as well. It’s not the sort of thing you can just fab up in your basement.” The smile lines around her eyes creased. “What’s brought this on?”

Clair shook her head, wondering how Dylan Linwood would respond to this. Would it reassure him or make him more paranoid than ever? Would he find a way to make his theory work despite everything Allison said? “Nothing. Just something going around. A meme.”

“Is it the one about how the government installs tracking devices in all of us so they can monitor our movements? I remember that from when I was your age. Somehow my generation managed to avoid being crushed under a totalitarian boot heel, and we’ll avoid whatever it is you’re worried about too, I’m sure.”

She reached out and entwined her fingers in Clair’s heavy curls. Apart from several streaks of gray at her temples, Allison had exactly the same hair as her daughter. Their brown eyes were the same too, but there the similarity ended. Allison was fortunate to have her mother’s nose, unlike her daughter.

“Oz will be back in the morning,” Allison said. “Would you like to do something together?”

Oscar Kempe—Clair’s stepfather—had been the third in their family unit since her second birthday, and he fulfilled the role of father in all but genes.

“Sure,” she said warily. “Depending on homework.”

“And the crashlanders.” Allison smiled again. “I understand. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

Her warm fingers released Clair’s hair, allowing Clair to retreat to her room.

“Good night, Mom.”

“Sleep tight.”

Clair posted a good-night caption (a house slowly overtaken by sand dunes) but was in no mood for sleeping.

She had bumped Libby on the way home, but Libby hadn’t replied. Ronnie and Tash hadn’t heard from her either. In desperation, she called Zep.

“Has she called you?” she asked, cutting through his usual chitchat.

“No, but she’s home,” he said. “I spoke to Freda. She said that Libby hasn’t left her room all day.”

Freda, originally Freedom, was Liberty’s only sibling. Often annoying and frequently in the way, she was occasionally good for dishing the dirt on her older sister.

“Has she seen a doctor?” Clair said.

“Freda didn’t know. Maybe not. She’s only been out of school for a day.”

And that, Clair told herself, was where she could leave it. Libby had a headache caused by transit lag and nothing more. Improvement had nothing to do with it. It was just a passing thing, an empty meme, a symptom of Libby’s insecurity, not the cause of anything sinister or dangerous.

Maybe, Clair thought, she just wanted Libby to be sicker than she was so Libby would be out of the picture for a while. Was Clair’s self-absorption really so profound? She hated that thought. But here she was talking to Zep and feeling the same hateful ache as ever. She could see him in a window superimposed on her ceiling as though he were floating or lying over her. It was all too easy to imagine reaching out and touching him.

“There’ll be another ball tonight,” said Zep, as though he could read her mind. “If you go, you could take me