Twinmaker

“Don’t talk,” said the dupe, “unless it’s to tell me about your friends in WHOLE.”

“What friends?” said Jesse bitterly. “We don’t know where they’ve gone.”

“That’s a lie. Tell me the truth.”

“Or what? You’ve already taken everything from me.”

“What about her?”

The pistol shifted to point at Clair. Complex shapes danced in his lenses. Orders? Map data? Clair couldn’t tell.

“Who are you?” asked Jesse again, rage and fear quivering in his voice.

Make something up, Clair told herself. Got to try something.

“They went north,” she said, “to Seattle.”

“That’s a lie,” the dupe said. “There’s been no air traffic in that direction.”

That was interesting. No traffic meant the airship hadn’t moved. But if the airship hadn’t moved, that meant . . .

Clair took her eyes briefly off the fake Dylan Linwood and studied the vista behind him. Something was moving against the backdrop of hills, all outline and no detail, visible because of the way the colors didn’t quite match. The patch was almost perfectly circular, and there was no way to tell how far away it was, but it was between the airfield and the hills, swinging northward and getting larger. It was already the size of a full moon. How many seconds until the sound of its engines were audible over the rising dawn chorus?

“Let’s make a deal,” she said, thinking faster than she ever had before. “You tell me who you work for, and I’ll tell you where the airship is.”

“No deals,” he said. “Tell me now, or I’ll shoot one of you at random.”

“But we don’t know,” protested Jesse.

“The longer you stall, the longer I’ll keep you alive after.”

“I’m not stalling,” said Clair. “I just want you to give me something in return. Why don’t you tell me your name, at least?”

“No.” His one red eye glared balefully.

In her lenses, an emergency patch appeared. She clicked it, hardly daring to hope.

“Gemma Mallapur says to get ready,” whispered Q in her ear. “We need you to stall for ten seconds.”

To the dupe, Clair said, “What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said, pointing the gun at her chest.

“Sure you are. It can’t be easy, living in someone else’s body.”

“Easier than you think.”

Inspiration struck her. Seven days. “But it isn’t permanent, is it? How many times have you died? How many times has someone like me killed you? How many bodies have you lived in now?”

His borrowed eyes widened slightly.

“Three seconds,” said Q.

“No, wait,” she bumped back. “I think I’m getting through to him.”

“Two.”

Clair took Jesse’s arm as though for solidarity.

“Come on,” she said. “Tell me who you were.”

The dupe straightened.

“I am nobody.”

His finger tightened on the trigger, and Clair braced herself.

“Get down now, Clair,” said Q.

She dropped and pulled Jesse to the asphalt with her. The agent jerked as though shoved in the back. Red mist burst out of a sudden hole in his chest. A split second later, the sound of the shot reached them, followed by another shot from much closer at hand. The dupe’s finger had squeezed the trigger as he dropped. The slug that might have killed Clair whined harmlessly off the asphalt. Two more shots in rapid succession whizzed over their heads before the sharpshooter in the airship realized that the job was done.

The dupe went down and stayed down.

Jesse was moving before she could grab him. He threw himself at the fallen body and pounded its bloody chest.

“Who are you?” he screamed. “Who are you?”

41

CLAIR RAN AFTER him and kicked the dupe’s pistol away. “Dylan Linwood’s” battered face was turned as though to stare at her, but all his eyes contained were empty, unseen data. Anyone could be watching.

She put a hand over the body’s face and closed the eyelids. Bright blue and blood red: she was glad to be rid of that terrible gaze.

Now she could definitely hear the airship’s engines whining and whirring as the craft came in to land.

Clair pulled Jesse away from the body.

“Why did they do this to him?” he asked, his voice thick with tears. “Who are they?”

The airship rose hugely over them, and Clair gaped up at it, amazed by how big it was. Easily a hundred yards across, it had a wide, two-story upper deck and a docking station on the lowest tip, connected by a narrow shaft so it looked like a fat, inverted teardrop hanging in the dawn sky. Three smaller, egg-shaped dirigibles clung to the docking station, rocking in the breeze. At close range, the airship’s camouflage lost much of its efficacy, and she could make out propellers whirring on the half-seen underside, guiding it to a safe landing. The downwash flattened her hair across her scalp and whipped Jesse’s mop from side to side.

He looked up from his father’s body and gripped Clair’s arm.

“It’s a Skylifter!” he said, wiping his eyes with his free hand.

She checked the Air in case that detail was significant. Skylifters were antiques left over from the days when people still hauled freight from one place to another but said they were worried about carbon emissions. The Air didn’t mention anything about WHOLE.

A patch winked in her eye. She answered it.

“I hope I did the right thing this time, Clair,” said Q.

Clair didn’t know what to say. She had been stupid, and that had almost got her and Jesse killed.

“You did,” she said, “but we’ve got a lot to talk about, Q. About Libby and the dupes.”

“Yes, Clair. I will tell you all I can, when I can. I promise.”

The airship touched down. A hatch opened. Ray and a man she hadn’t seen before stepped out of the interior and loped toward her.

“You two get aboard,” Ray told them. “We’ll bring the body.”

Clair hesitated, wondering if they realized it really wasn’t Dylan Linwood. Then she understood. Evidence.

How long until another version of him stepped out of a booth in San Andreas, or Copperopolis, or anywhere else she tried to hide?

“Come on,” she said, taking Jesse’s hand as he had taken hers outside Copperopolis. The airship had impressed her and restored her hope. “It’s time to get some answers.”

42

THE ELEVATOR WAS easily large enough for all of them, with a second shaft surrounding it, containing a spiral staircase. Clair fidgeted as the cage lifted them to the top of the Skylifter. She didn’t know what to expect of either Turner Goldsmith or the airship’s interior. The latter was swaying ponderously beneath her in a not entirely