Twinmaker

“How are you doing, Q?”

“I am making the final adjustments now, Clair,” said Q. “You are yourself again.”

There was no immediate change in her lenses’ format. Clair wondered what she should be feeling. This was her chance to reconnect with her world—her media, her family, her friends. Her life. But it felt oddly distant, as though it all belonged to a different version of her—Clair 1.0, who had never shot someone, never walked cross-country in the middle of the night, never peered behind the curtain of her perfectly sheltered life.

Clair 2.0 had done all those things and more. What if the two versions weren’t compatible?

She uploaded the caption and waited to see what would happen.

57

BETWEEN CONSECUTIVE EYE blinks, her infield went from empty to full. There were bumps banked up two days from Ronnie, Tash, and her parents, rated varying degrees of urgent. Among them were queries from teachers, tutors, and study mates. There were messages from crashlanders, Abstainers, and peacekeepers. There was even one from Xandra Nantakarn, asking if she and Libby would be coming to another ball soon. “Great publicity,” she said. “You girls are quite the mystery. Let me know when you come out of hiding.”

Clair told herself to be glad people were talking about her. That was exactly what the plan needed. Ringing, empty silence would be the death of them all.

On top of family and friends and friends of friends, the PKs wanted to interview her in order to clarify her involvement in several “atypical events” over the previous days. It was quite a sequence: the video stunt at school, the explosion of Jesse’s home, the hostage situation with her parents, her chase by the dupe across the world, her vanishing from the Air and the disappearance of Zeppelin Barker, plus the crash of the Skylifter. Whether they knew she was involved in all of them or were just guessing she was, she didn’t know and wasn’t in a hurry to find out.

Clair sent them the standard polite reply she sent to every one of her contacts, stating that she expected to be in New York in a day or two to talk to someone in VIA. She kept the details of the meeting vague, since at that point there weren’t any to share. She mentioned only that she would be traveling by means other than d-mat because d-mat wasn’t safe for her at the moment. In explanation, she linked to the Counter-Improvement document without saying whether she herself or anyone she knew had used Improvement or not. She was careful to make no mention of either the Abstainer movement or WHOLE. Clair Hill had to be nothing other than ordinary for the story to get any kind of traction.

Clair Hill, the girl crossing North America practically on foot because she’s too frightened to use d-mat. Clair Hill, the girl seeking reassurances from VIA that the world she lives in is in good hands. Clair Hill, wanting to keep her friends and loved ones safe at no small cost to herself.

She had once read about witches who believed that wishing for something three times made it come true. She was aiming for more like three thousand wishes, but the end result she hoped for would be the same.

It didn’t take long for Ronnie and Tash to notice her reappearance. Or her parents. As the four-wheeler raced along the old highway, Clair organized a hookup with all of them at once, figuring it was best to get the conversation over with. Mandan was getting closer with every minute, and she wanted to be alert for what might happen there. But she owed her friends and family an explanation. And she needed their help.

“Look, I know this all sounds crazy—”

“Crazy?” Her mother was practically bursting out of her lenses. “You run off in the middle of the night— someone points a gun at us, asking where you are—you disappear—”

“I can explain everything, Mom,” she said, “but not now. You have to trust me. It’s safer for everyone that way. I know what I’m doing.”

“But what are you doing? Playing trains in the middle of nowhere when you should be in school—”

“Monday’s a free day.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I didn’t know there were trains anymore,” said Tash. “Where did you find it?”

“That’s a long story.” Clair didn’t want to go into every detail. “I just need you to help me spread the word.”

“What word?” asked Ronnie.

“Tell everyone what I’m doing. Start discussions. Post updates. Make a lot of noise, any way you can. I need this to be big, or . . .” She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t alarm her mother even more. “. . . or something really bad will happen. I swear. And not just to me.”

“I think we should call the peacekeepers,” said Oz, her stepfather’s long, sun-warmed face uncharacteristically grim. “They’ve been looking for you. They’re as worried as we are.”

“Yeah, but about the wrong thing. Remember that guy with the gun to your head?” Clair said with calculated harshness. “How much use the PKs were then is exactly how much use they are now. This is between me and VIA. We have to make them fix it.”

“But what is it?” Allison asked. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it? Why won’t you tell me now?”

“We did talk about it, kind of. Someone’s using d-mat to hurt people. They hurt Libby, and they want to hurt me.”

“And Zep?” asked Tash. “Is he with you?”

Clair couldn’t answer immediately. That wasn’t a question she had anticipated. The surge of emotion it provoked was difficult to control.

“Clair?” asked Ronnie.

“He . . . I’ll tell you later.” From their point of view, he was still alive, just missing. She didn’t know to break it to them. “For now, just do as I ask. Please. I’ll send you a message in a second—Counter-Improvement, Jesse calls it. Pass it to everyone you know. Generate a buzz.”

“Jesse Linwood’s with you?” asked Tash. “The Lurker?”

Clair bristled at the old nickname but didn’t have time to defend him.

“You can follow me via the link in the message. It’s important you do, but don’t freak out if I disappear every now and then. I’m with people who literally move in mysterious ways.”

“If that’s what I have to do to make sure you come back in one piece,” Allison said, “then I’ll do it. But be careful, please.”

“I will,” Clair promised. “I’ll do my best, and I know you all will too.”

She signed off, feeling a sharp tug in her heart. Her hands were shaking again, and it was a moment before she could look up.

58

AS THEY CAME into Mandan, the gleaming lines of a train track became visible on her right, along with the train itself, a long string of wheeled containers trailing behind an engine that issued neither smoke nor steam. Clair was faintly disappointed. She had imagined something more antique than an electric locomotive but at the same time much faster. The farmers easily overtook the train as it trundled into town.

Mandan was large enough to have eye-in-the-sky drones surveying the empty streets. Clair waved at them, half expecting dupes to burst out of doorways and windows at any moment. There could be booths coming into life all around them, building another death squad.

But there weren’t, or if there were, the dupes stayed hidden. The drones watched them without overt curiosity, and the small expedition reached the train station unmolested. Under the eaves of an ancient wooden