“You two need a bed for the night?” he asked them. “It’s not too late to throw something together. Breakfast included, free of charge.”
“No thanks,” said Clair quickly, wondering if he grew his own food and cooked it or used a fabber. “You get many people out here?”
He scratched at his scalp. “Some. Student geologists, the odd surveyor, historians, hobbyists. Is that what you two are? On some kind of school trip, perhaps?”
“That’s it,” she said, leaping on the idea. “A treasure hunt, actually. If you see someone else tonight, don’t tell them we were here.”
He tapped his nose. “Gotcha.”
“Well, I guess we’d better move on,” she said. “Don’t want to fall too far behind. Thanks for letting me use your bathroom.”
He smiled almost sadly and said, “Sure, honey.”
With one hand, he reached under his dressing gown and pulled out a shotgun. He pumped the action and pointed it at stomach height, midway between Jesse and Clair.
They froze.
38
KNEES, THOUGHT CLAIR, wanting to howl at her stupidity. No one had knees that bony.
“What do you want?” she asked, holding up her hands.
“We’ve got nothing, Jay,” said Jesse. “Don’t do this to us.”
“It’s not about you,” he said. The smile was gone now. He was determined, but he didn’t look happy about it. “I lied. The last people through here weren’t balloonists. I had some other visitors tonight. They came out of this thing.” He cocked his head at the booth behind him. “They said to keep an eye out for people using the roads. I’m supposed to let them know if I see anyone.”
“Did you let them know?” asked Clair.
“They told me you were terrorists. I saw you fiddling with the booth. I may not approve of it, but it’s the only thing this place has going for it. You blow it up, and I might as well go out back and dig my grave.”
“Did you let them know, Jay?”
His watery gaze darted from her to Jesse and back again. “I did what I had to.”
Clair cursed silently to herself. This is what happens when you let your guard down, a voice whispered in her mind. The pistol was in the buggy, out of reach. The old man was too far away to risk rushing him. There was only one thing she could do.
She opened a connection to the Air.
“Q, we’re in trouble, and we need your help.”
“I am monitoring your situation by the sensors in the quadricycle, Clair. What can I do?”
“We need a distraction,” she said. “Anything. Use the buggy or the booth. Whatever it takes.”
“I have a thought. You said—”
“I don’t care what, Q. Just get us away from him.”
Q didn’t answer, and after a moment the light on the door of the booth switched from green to red. In use.
“Is the gun really necessary?” asked Jesse.
“They told me to keep you here any way I could.”
“You couldn’t come up with anything better?”
“I offered you free breakfast. What else was I supposed to do? An old guy like me’s no match for you fancy kids.”
“We are kids, Jay.” Jesse edged minutely away from Clair. “What kind of terrorists do you think we’d make?”
Jay stepped back, decreasing the angle required to fire at either one of them. “Don’t try anything, boy. I’m no fool. This place used to jump in its day. Come back here, into the light.” He gestured with the barrel of the shotgun, swinging them around onto the creaking wooden porch. As they moved, he moved too, keeping a constant distance between them until he was standing where they had been. He could see the booth now, and they couldn’t. He noticed the red light instantly, indicated it with his bristly chin.
“That’ll be them now, coming to arrest you. Shouldn’t take long. I won’t need to hog-tie you or anything undignified.”
“Doesn’t matter if you tie us up or not, Jay,” Clair said. “They’ll kill us all the same, and it’ll be your fault.”
“Kill you? Don’t be absurd. There’s no death penalty anymore, not even for terrorists.”
“We keep telling you,” said Jesse in frustration. “We’re not terrorists, and if you think they’re peacekeepers, you’re fooling yourself.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know them from Adam, boy, but they weren’t here fiddling with my booth like you were. Or covered in blood, pretty girl, that’s obviously not yours.”
“It will be soon.”
He shifted his feet. “I need d-mat, see? Without it, I’ve got nothing. Nothing at all.”
The booth behind them finished doing whatever it did inside its mirrored walls. Clair heard the hiss of air pressure equalizing and the smooth glide of the door swinging open.
“Thank you, Mr. Beaumont,” said a woman’s voice. “I have them now.”
The words almost took Clair’s strength away. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. It was supposed to be Q rescuing them, not the bad guys coming to finish them off.
But Jay’s eyes were narrowing in suspicion. “I don’t know you,” he said. “You weren’t here before.”
Clair half turned, and froze to hide her surprise.
Beside her Jesse literally gasped.
“You don’t need to know me, Mr. Beaumont,” said the young woman standing in front of the booth. She was wearing dark, practical clothes similar to Clair’s and holding a pistol that could have been the one Clair had just recycled. In every other respect, however, she was the exact opposite of Clair.
It was Libby. The only thing missing was her birthmark. But where had she come from?
“All that matters is that you’ve done as you were instructed,” Libby said. “Now it’s time for me to take over.”
“What’s going to happen to them?” Jay was hesitating. His shotgun hovered in no-man’s-land, between his prisoners and the young stranger who had come to deal with them.
“Go back inside the saloon, please, Mr. Beaumont,” Libby said, moving one step closer to him. “You don’t need to see any more.”
Clair couldn’t take her eyes off her. There was something odd about her, something not quite right. Something more than the missing birthmark.
Jay nervously licked his lips. “Just don’t do it here,” he said. “Don’t do anything to them on my porch.”
He lowered the shotgun and went inside, brushing within arm’s reach of Clair as he did so. His eyes stared fixedly at the ground.
The door shut and locked behind him with a terminal click.
Jesse’s hands came down.
“Libby?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Libby waved him quiet with the pistol. She was watching the saloon intently.
“I don’t think he heard,” she said. Her demeanor relaxed, and her voice changed too. Clearly she had been acting before, playing the role she needed to play. But instead of becoming Libby as Clair knew her, she became someone else.
“Get in the buggy, both of you, and get out of here. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up.”
“Q?” said Clair, feeling as though she had been sucker punched in the gut. “Is that you?”
“You guessed! I wasn’t sure if you would.” She clapped her hands, but then stumbled and steadied herself against the porch. “Oh, you really need to get moving. ‘Dylan Linwood’ left Columbia five minutes ago. He’s d-matting to the San Andreas Memorial as we speak, and that’s only two and a half miles from the rendezvous. If you don’t move quickly, he will get there before you. Clair, are you listening?”
Q approached and Clair physically recoiled. She was Libby, but she wasn’t. It wasn’t right.
“How did you do this?” asked Jesse, staring in amazement and shock. “You made Libby a dupe!”
“Not really . . . it’s hard to explain.” Q turned to address him, tangling her feet in the process. “Please, Jesse. The longer I stay here, the less control I have over the situation.
You must leave immediately while I use the booth to go back to the way I was.”
“Get out of her body,” said Clair. “Please get out of her body.”
“I will,” said Q, “as soon as you’re gone. I promise.”
Q approached with one hand outstretched. The hand was shaking as though with palsy.
“Get out of her body!”
The horror in her voice shocked even Clair. Q backed away, counterfeit face crumpling in dismay.
“Come on, Clair,” said Jesse, taking her by the shoulders. “She’s right. This can’t hold us up. We need to get in the buggy and get the hell out of here, right now.”
Clair didn’t disagree. She didn’t agree, either, but she did allow herself to be led away. The buggy was ready to go, humming impatiently to itself, the sandwich Q had made for her still resting on the seat. Clair pitched it as far from her as she could. She felt sick to the stomach. Sick to her very heart.
Q had put her own mind into Libby’s body.
So where was Libby now?
Jesse got in and put the buggy into motion. It accelerated hard up Main Street, heading for Route 4. Clair looked behind her just once, at the figure standing alone under the porch light. It turned and walked into the booth. Vanished.
39
CLAIR LEANED FORWARD and ground her palms into her eyes. The bouncing of the buggy and the whipping of the wind weren’t helping her nausea.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Jesse. “You’re thinking that we have proof now. Proof of everything, thanks to Q. The dupes are real, and so is everything else Gemma—”
“Shut up.” It was true. That was exactly what she was thinking, and it wasn’t remotely a happy thought. The clock is ticking, Gemma had said. How many days did Libby have left, exactly?
We have proof now.
When had they become a we, Clair wondered.
An intersection came into view ahead. Jesse slowed them to a crawl.
“Which way, Clair?”
“You decide.”
“That’s your job, remember? We had an agreement. You navigate; I’ll drive.”
She forced herself not to dwell on what she’d just seen.
Think of the roads, the map. A puzzle can’t hurt anyone . . . and if we’re not going to make the airship, we might as well turn around right now and let the old man take us prisoner again.
Her original intention had been to take the most comfortable but now much less direct route to the airfield through a place called Angels Camp. There was an alternative, a more direct course that brought them close to the rear of the airfield. It was less than twelve miles by road, with a short overland leg at the end.
She weighed up the two routes in her mind. Fear made thinking easier. Fear of being left behind, of being stuck in the wilderness forever, of being shot, ultimately, and of losing the real Libby forever.
Comfort was no longer an option.
“North,” she said. “Route 4 for three miles, then take the left up Pool Station Road. Don’t stop until I tell you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Time to really put the pedal to the metal.”
That one she didn’t understand, but its meaning became clear as the buggy’s engine jumped an octave in pitch and their speed rapidly increased.
The helmet rocked at her side, nudging her hip. There hadn’t been so much as a squawk from the open channel since they had left Tulloch Dam, and according to the map the airship hadn’t moved. Figuring their position was largely blown already, she slipped the helmet over her head and selected the open channel.
“Got held up,” she said. “Expect company.”
“Understood” came the brief reply—Ray’s voice—then silence fell again.
Clair slipped off the helmet and sat for a moment, exhausted. She had decided which way to go in the short term. She was helpless now to do anything other than wait for the consequences.
“Moon’s rising, which means dawn’s on its way,” Jesse said, indicating the thin sliver creeping over the rumpled horizon to their right. “I’m worried we’re going to run out of time. They won’t keep the airship anywhere near the ground during the day, when it’s most vulnerable.”
Clair could do nothing to reassure him. Their vulnerability was gnawing at her as much as the airship’s. Not to mention Libby’s vulnerability.
“How does duping work?” she asked. “I mean, how can you put yourself into someone’s head?”
Jesse glanced at her, then back to the road. “Are you asking me or Q?”
“I don’t know. You.” Q was silent, for which Clair was grateful. “I mean, first you have to copy someone’s pattern, and then you have to change it, and then put it back into the system. How is that possible?”
“Did you see how her hand was shaking?” Jesse asked her. “It was fine when she came out of the booth, but it got worse really fast. It looked like nerve damage. . . .”
“Seven days,” Jesse went on when she didn’t sat anything. “That’s how long Gemma said Libby had. Maybe duping isn’t permanent because the minds and bodies don’t match. Maybe it’s the same with Improvement.”
“People change themselves so much, their minds and bodies didn’t match anymore, it drives them insane, and they kill themselves? Jesus.”
Clair couldn’t believe Jesse was taking it so calmly. Wasn’t he, the Stainer, supposed to be more outraged about this kind of thing than she was?
The speakers came to life. “Clair, are you there? I’m back now, and I’m sorry if I made a mistake. I was just trying to—”
Clair found the OFF button. Instantly, a patch appeared in her lenses. She switched them off too and sat still and silent in the rushing darkness.
The road forked. She gave Jesse directions from memory, without needing her lenses. Around them, the landscape became hillier. They were right on the edge of the Central Valley now. If they went much farther east, they’d hit the mountains, and the going would become really rough.
“Look for a bridge,” she said. “Just past it, that’s where we’re leaving the road.”
“Right.” He twisted the controls to avoid the outstretched branches of a fallen tree. The road snaked a third of a mile, then straightened. They were in the homestretch.
Clair gulped as Jesse locked all four wheels and sent the buggy into a skid. She braced herself for impact, but there was no sign of anything on the road ahead. Nothing at all. The bridge had fallen in.
The buggy jerked to a halt two yards from the creek. She could see slabs of concrete where the bridge had once been anchored to the shore. Jesse switched off the buggy and left it sitting in the middle of the road while they climbed out and jogged to inspect the creek. It was shallow, but the sides were steep and slippery toward the bottom, where the buggy was certain to become stuck. Clair retreated to get her pack, and they leaned on each other for balance until they felt smooth stones underfoot and rushing water over their feet. Instantly, Clair’s shoes were soaked. The cold was as piercing and as bracing as her fear of being late.
The other side of the creek was lightly wooded, and they slipped gratefully under the cover of the trees, squelching as quietly as they could.
“No, this way,” she said, turning Jesse around and pointing northeast. They ran straight across the countryside without concern for anything other than what would be waiting for them when they arrived. They ran until they hit a ridge, and then they walked. From the top of the ridge they could barely make out a long gray oblong that might have been a landing strip and possibly a clutch of old buildings. In the misty predawn light, the airship wasn’t visible.
It’ll be there. She told herself to focus on what was waiting for them inside it. Turner Goldsmith, the leader of WHOLE, would have answers. He would whisk them away from the assassins in the dark and tell them what to do next. She wasn’t expecting a knight on a charger like something from a fairy tale—but he was a grown-up who presumably knew what he was doing. He would help them like he had helped others
in the past.
They ran down the other side of the ridge and approached a steeper, stonier rise with more caution, wary of turning an ankle. In the hush before sunrise, every footstep sounded deafening.
At the top of the rise were two runways connected by taxiways at both ends. All but one of buildings was abandoned and weatherworn. To the right of those two were spaces that might have been for light planes or automobiles. Parked haphazardly across those wide, empty spaces were three electrobikes.
There was no sign at all of their riders or the airship.
Clair stopped dead on the asphalt and looked around. The light was brighter now. Everything was still and silent and empty. No engine noise. No voices. No giant airships hanging in the sky.
“They left without us,” said Jesse.
40
THE HOPELESSNESS IN his voice broke her heart. Clair took his hand and squeezed his cold fingers. It wasn’t his fault they had been slow. If they had been any less careful, they might have ended up like Arabelle, Cashile, and Theo. She and Jesse had done their best to keep the others in the loop, and what had WHOLE done in return? They had left without so much as a good-bye. Forget Turner Goldsmith and explanations. Forget help. At the very least, Gemma could have told them not to bother, sparing Jesse and Clair a futile end to their long and exhausting trek.
She blamed herself. If she hadn’t switched off her lenses in abhorrence at Q’s actions, she would have known. She would have seen the airship moving on the map and directed the buggy accordingly.
“It’s not over yet,” she said, trying to find some hope to cling to. Any would do. “They left the bikes. We can use them. They’ll be faster than the buggy thing.”
“You can’t drive,” said Jesse.
“I’ll learn. You can teach me.”
“Where would we go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere a long way from here, for starters.”
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