Twinmaker

It wasn’t for lack of practice. It was for not being a person to start with. She had never had a body before. She had never felt pain. She had never really existed.

77

“WHAT ARE YOU thinking, Clair? We have just three minutes left.”

Clair snapped out of her thousand-yard stare.

“I’ve worked out who you are,” Clair said. “And I think Ant Wallace guessed too. That’s why he’s so interested in you. Q, you’re not one of the Improved at all. You’re the most amazing person on the planet!”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing amazing about me.”

“That’s where you’re absolutely wrong.”

As quickly as she could, Clair outlined everything she had just come to understand. Q was an accident, but that only made it even more incredible that she existed. She was someone rather than something, with needs and desires just like anyone else.

“So I’m . . . not real?”

“You are real, Q. You’re as real as I am. And that means you’re right: we can’t break parity. Doing it might mean killing Quiddity.”

“So what? He’s just an ordinary AI.”

“He’s the closest thing you have to a father.”

“He’s nothing to me, Clair. Not like you. You’re my friend. If I am what you say I am, then the only things stopping me from saving you are rules—and they’re not even my rules: they’re VIA’s rules.”

“But the rules are there for a reason, Q. If you break parity, you break d-mat, and if you break d-mat . . .”

Clair stopped, imagining a world without d-mat. No food, no water, no medicines, no waste disposal, no tools. Families would be scattered all across the planet with no means of finding each other again. Some homes didn’t even have doors anymore, so anyone inside would be trapped until the system rebooted. If it did reboot. Who knew if that would be possible or not with one of the two AIs broken?

That it also meant no dupes, no Improvement, and no Ant Wallace pulling the strings seemed a small consolation.

There had to be another way.

A plan came to her then, a plan so terrible she almost dismissed it out of hand. She couldn’t possibly do something so awful. It wasn’t in her. It wasn’t like her.

But . . . You’ve changed.

Clair put her face in her hands, knowing that she could do it if she had to.

And it looked very much as though she did.

“I want you to surrender.”

“What?”

“You have to, Q. We can’t destroy the world for my sake or for Turner’s. I’m not like WHOLE. I believe that d-mat does more good than bad—and maybe even Wallace can be turned around, with you there to argue with him.” Clair tried to find the right words, even though her heart wasn’t in them. “You know that duping people is wrong. You know Improvement has to be stopped. Wallace thinks he’s getting some superhuman slave, but he’s wrong. He’s getting a conscience.”

“Clair, I—”

“Don’t argue, Q. It has to be this way. Go to him now and tell him he’s won.”

“If that’s what you want—”

“It is.”

“I’ll make him get rid of the dupe,” Q said. Her voice was hollow. “As soon as I can, so you can go back home. I won’t let him hurt you.”

“I know you will, Q. You’re a good friend.”

There was a very long pause.

“I am?”

“Always and forever.”

“Do you promise?”

Don’t think of it as betraying her. . . .

“I promise.”

78

Q WENT. CLAIR sensed her going and could see the conversation starting with Wallace elsewhere in the station.

She stood up. Her plan required that she remain connected to the station’s operating system, and she didn’t know how long she had until Wallace revoked that access. But she didn’t need long. All she had to do was call up a particular file and start the process rolling.

sssssss-pop

“That was . . . unexpected.”

The voice came from behind her. She turned and was relieved to see only Turner. Her instructions hadn’t been interfered with by Wallace or anyone else. Turner’s pattern had been plucked safely from the cache and brought to her intact. He looked puzzled, and with good reason. No time at all would have passed for him since his kidnap from the One Penn Plaza building. Unfortunately, there was very little time now to explain what had to happen next.

“Your backpack,” she said, hurrying to him. “Give it to me.”

He did as he was told. Someone was pounding at the door, and Q was sending Clair urgent messages.

She stamped the transmitter underfoot, silencing one of the distractions.

“Ray had grenades,” she said, rummaging through the pack. “Tell me you’ve got some left . . . please.”

“Several.” He showed her. There were four of them, apple-sized black spheres with handgrips and a menacing air. “What’s going on, Clair?”

There wasn’t time to explain fully.

“You wanted to take some direct action, didn’t you?” she said. “Well, here’s your chance.”

He paused for a second, meeting and holding her gaze.

Everything he needed to know was in there.

This was for Libby, she told herself, and Q and Turner and the entire world. It was sacrifice, not suicide, but if a little bit of Mallory was in her, making her do it, then that made the justice all the more poetic. With one gesture, she would rid the world of everything she had been fighting.

Turner grinned.

“We made a terrorist of you in the end, huh?”

She didn’t smile.

ssss—

That wasn’t her activating the booth. Someone had noticed and was trying to stop them. They had only seconds left before the process was complete and they were taken elsewhere, put on ice, or erased.

Clair and Turner faced each other, a grenade in each hand.

“On three,” she said. “One. Two . . .”