Twinmaker (8 page)

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 Lib
by 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.”

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 along.”

“Your real date isn’t feeling well,” she said, forcing herself to say the words. “Do I have to remind you of that?”

“Well, exactly. She’s out of action. The night is young. What do you think?”

“I think I’ve had enough of the crashlanders for one week,” she said. “And gossip, too. We should probably take a break from hanging out until Libby is feeling better.”

He frowned. “You mean I can’t see you at all?”

“That’s for the best. Don’t you think?”

“Hell no. It’s not our fault Libby can’t or won’t talk to us. She’s the one who’s making us do this.”

“What difference would it make if she did talk? What would you tell her?”

“That we’re going to the ball without her. That’s all.”

“What about what happened? What about you and her . . . ?”

Breaking up
, she wanted to say, but she wasn’t going to put the words in his mouth.

“Not yet. I mean, how could I? She’s sick. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“But it’s fair to kiss her best friend and then try to cover it up?”

He had the humanity to blush. “I feel bad about that . . . not the actual kissing part, though. I guess I could bump her, but that would be as bad as waiting, wouldn’t it? It’s not something you’d want to hear in a message. Right, Clair?”

“I guess so.”

“What about you—have you told her?”

He had a point there. She
had
had the chance to tell Libby, but she had shied away from doing so. It wasn’t something she was proud of.

“I don’t know what to tell her,” Clair said. “That’s why I’m not coming out tonight. I don’t want to get into something I’m not sure about. Not when it could cost me so much.”

“Sometimes you don’t know until you give it a try, Clair.”

“Sometimes . . . but not this time.”

He nodded without meeting her eyes. “Okay, Clair-bear. If that’s how you want it to be, that’s how it’ll be. I promise not to be a dick about it.”

“Do you really think you can manage that?”

“Oh, it’ll be tough, I know, but for you . . . anything.”

She managed a smile, although it hurt her to pretend to be anything other than torn up and miserable.

“Call me if she calls you,” Clair said.

“I will.”

He signed off, and she was alone.

Tomorrow, she told herself, everything would be different. Zep would talk to Libby, and Improvement would be revealed as nothing at all. The emotional storm would be rough, but she would weather it as she always did. And when life returned to normal, maybe she would let Ronnie take her out partying. She was sure there were guys out there who weren’t slimeballs or taken.

ZEP WAS HUGE, a giant monster smashing the dikes of Tokyo. Libby and Clair were the pilots of a massive robot sent to stop him, except they couldn’t agree on which way to go. The robot began to tear itself to pieces while the sea rushed in to engulf the city. instead of foam, the waves were topped with thousands of handwritten notes, all saying the same thing:
Charlie X-ray Romeo Foxtrot
. . .

Clair rarely dreamed, but when she did, it was memorable.

Her sleep was interrupted by a nagging flash that brought her out of deep unconsciousness in stages. Only slowly did she become aware that someone was calling her and that they were do
ing so through her most intimate and private channel, reserved solely for Libby.

“What?” she said, fumbling with her night-darkened lens interfaces. Behind the dark shutters of her eyelids, she imagined crises unnumbered. “Libby, what is it?”

“You called me,” came the reply. Libby sounded shockingly bright and breezy. There was no sign in her voice of migraine or fatigue. “I’m calling you back. There’s no drama.”

“Are you sure?” She checked the time. “It’s the middle of the night. I was asleep.”

“Well, I’ve been sleeping all day, and I’m tired of doing nothing. Lying around is a waste of the New Improved Me, right?”

“Let me see you,” said Clair, pulling herself up in bed onto her elbows and blinking the sleep from her eyes.

“Why?”

“Because I want to.” The last dregs of the dream disappeared, leaving a lingering sense of alarm.

“You want proof. That’s what you mean,” said Libby in a sharp tone. “Life is good, Clair. I’m beautiful. You’re not going to make me feel bad, no matter what you say.”

Libby appeared in a window in Clair’s vision like a translucent ghost. She was dressed in a tight-fitting white top and had styled her blond hair in a wave. Her complexion was impeccable. Clair could see nothing but clear white skin from hairline to jaw and a smile that was as sharp as her tone.

The birthmark certainly
appeared
to be gone . . . but appearanc
es could be deceiving. Libby was touching up her lips in pink, and her eyeliner was blue, so there was definitely makeup in play. Could she have found a new shade that did the job more effectively than the last one? Would she really lie about such a thing just to save face?

“I don’t want to make you feel bad,” Clair said, wondering why Libby would even suggest such a thing.

“You may not want to, but that’s what you do. You talk about me behind my back, you think I’m crazy—”

“That’s not what I think—”

“You want to swoop in and solve all my problems. Well, I’m not your
project
, Clair. I have everything under control. It’s time you realized it and let me be who I am.”

Clair blinked back a sudden sting of tears. Was that really how Libby saw her? Interfering and controlling? Not helping or
finishing
, as Zep had put it? Libby had never said anything to indicate that she thought this way, not in all their long years together.

“That’s not what I mean to do, Libby. Honest. I love who you are. You don’t need to change anything or do anything for me to think you’re the best.”

“But you won’t let me change. That’s the problem.” Libby was fussing with her appearance as she talked, either ignoring or not noticing Clair’s attempts to make her look back at her. “You don’t believe in Improvement.”

“Well . . . it is a little hard to accept. . . .”

“Basically, you’re calling me a liar.”

“I’m not calling you anything, Libby!” Clair’s sense of hurt flared into frustration. Why was Libby trying to pick a fight with her in the middle of the night? Was it the Zep situation or another weird mood? “I’m just . . . just worried about you, that’s all.”

“Don’t be. I feel fine. Just look at me. I
look
fine, right?”