Twinmaker

“There you are,” said the dupe. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Be cool, Mallory,” said Theo. “We have everything under control.”

Dupe-Libby took her eyes off Clair. She didn’t say anything. She just stared at the rest of them, eyes frosty and distant, as though assessing them.

Then she raised the gun and shot Big-Ears square in the chest. The sound was deafening, the action devastating. He went down in a shower of blood, and for a second the others just gaped at him, shocked by the suddenness of it all. Arabelle was still staring at his fallen body when Libby shot her as well.

Then the others were reacting. Libby pushed Clair behind her and backed into the doorway, firing as she went. Bullets ricocheted around them, kicking up splinters and whining like angry bees. One caught Libby high on the left shoulder, and she screamed.

Clair took her by the other arm and pulled her backward, out of the firing line.

“Clair, it hurts!”

Clair knew that voice.

“Give me the gun, Q. Give it.”

There wasn’t time to hesitate. Q needed her to be strong, or they would both die. Clair took the gun from her and hefted it in her right hand. A red crosshair appeared in her vision, just as it had in Manteca. She swung the pistol behind her as they rounded a corner, blasted a couple of times at Jamila, but didn’t stop to see if she hit her target. Already she could hear raised voices and alarms in response to the gunfire.

“Through here,” she said, pushing Q ahead of her, back into the kitchen. Lights were coming on all around her, which would make it harder to hide. Someone was still following them. Definitely female, judging by the glimpses Clair got over her shoulder.

“Come on, Q.”

“It hurts.”

“I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“Why does it go on hurting? How do I make it stop?”

“Be quiet, Q, or they’ll find us.”

Too late. A bullet missed Clair by millimeters, and she dragged Q down behind a heavy stainless steel bench. Slugs slammed into it in quick succession. Clair put her hands over her ears. The sound alone was painful.

Then a deeper note joined in, boom-boom, and suddenly everything was quiet apart from the ringing in her ears.

Clair lowered her hands and raised her head slowly over the edge of the bench. Arcady was standing in the doorway, as hairy as a bear, wearing nothing but a shotgun and a worried expression. She left the pistol on the floor and stood up. He pointed the rifle at her, then lowered it. There was gunfire coming from elsewhere in the Farmhouse.

“Back to the hall,” he said, unashamed of his nakedness. “Safety in numbers.”

Clair reached down and pulled Q to her feet. She was whimpering and limp. Arcady’s rifle came to bear again.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “She’s a friend.”

“She’s dressed like one of them.”

That was true. The uniform of the dupes was a thick black bodysuit with hood pulled back. Maybe that was how they had gotten past the security systems: some kind of infrared camouflage.

“Q duped the dupes,” Clair said in a steady voice that barely sounded like her own. “She can explain for herself.”

53

BY THE TIME they were in the hall, Q’s hands were shaking, and her teeth were chattering. Arcady put her on a table at the center of a growing audience. Clair tore a sleeve off her farm shirt and tied it around Q’s bullet wound. The cloth immediately turned a bright, sodden red.

“Shock,” said Ray, examining her.

“Are you a doctor?” Arcady wasn’t watching anyone living. He was staring at a double line of bodies: dupes on one side, sentries on another. The body count was about equal, eleven in total. No Dylan Linwood among the dupes this time: his cover was blown. “That’s a flesh wound, nothing serious.”

“This has nothing to do with the bullet,” said Clair, finding it easier to argue with him now that he’d put on some pants. “I’ve seen it before. Her mind doesn’t fit Libby’s body. She needs to go back into a booth and d-mat out of here.”

“Sorry,” said Arcady, “but that’s not going to happen.”

“If she doesn’t, she might be permanently injured,” said Jesse, pressing through the crowd to stand on the other side of Libby’s body, opposite Clair. Her face grew warm. He was wearing pajama pants and no top, and his chest hair looked very dark against the paleness of his skin. “Just look at her. You can tell she hasn’t done it right.”

Arcady said, “What I mean is she can’t leave. We have no way of connecting to the outside world, even if we wanted to. No way at all.”

“Not true.” Q tried to sit up, but the pain was too great. Jesse helped her onto her elbows. “That’s how we got in here. By d-mat.”

“Aren’t you listening to me?” said Arcady again. “Our system is closed.”

“All systems are leaky. You receive weather reports and software updates, don’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“The thin end of a wedge. One crack is all it takes. One line of code to widen the crack . . . one executable in your private net, one custom chip built from scratch in a booth, one transmitter to widen the bandwidth. . . . Step by step, they get in deep. It took them fewer than eight hours to slave your booths to their data. If I hadn’t been watching, I would never have been able to piggyback on their signal.”

“You led them to us,” said Arcady, rounding on Turner. His voice quivered with fury. “You brought them right to our doorstep.”

Turner was standing to one side with a blanket over his shoulders. He had been quiet ever since the principal purpose of the breach had been revealed to him. I’m looking for Turner. “I’m sorry. We had no idea they would respond so quickly.”

“And you could have stopped this,” Arcady accused Q. “You did nothing to warn us.”

“She’s here, isn’t she?” said Clair, taking Q’s hand in turn and holding it tightly, trying in vain to still the dancing muscles.

“Clair is right,” said Turner. “Q put herself at risk. Without her, we might all be dead now.” He shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around him.

“Or worse,” said Arcady. Then he shook his head. “Whatever. We’re pulling the plug on the damned machines. I’ll take an ax to them myself.”

“Not yet,” Jesse insisted. “First, she needs to go back into the booth. Otherwise, she might . . . I don’t know . . . die or something.”

A ring of worried, puzzled faces stared down at Q as she quivered and shook on the table. She was very pale, and her eyes were barely open. Jesse brushed sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead.

“How come the dupes can do this,” Ray asked, “and she can’t?”

“They’ve had more practice,” Clair guessed.

“I’ll give you . . . ,” Q started to say, but the twitching of her jaw muscles made it hard for her to continue, “. . . give you the woman . . . who was supposed to be here.”

Clair gripped her hand tighter. “Yes, of course. Someone must have been on their way already, in Libby’s body, otherwise Q couldn’t be here now. There’d be a parity violation.”

“So what?” asked Arcady.