Crashland

by Sean Williams

  “WHOLE dreams of taking out VIA. Turner Goldsmith was a tin-pot terrorist who never stood a chance of anything until you came along.”

  “He was more than that,” Clair said, startled to find herself defending someone she had thought crazy just days ago. WHOLE might have been a bunch of hardline Abstainers yearning for a world without d-mat, but they weren’t evil. “People don’t know anything about what Turner was really like. They’re afraid of WHOLE, and now they’ll be afraid of me, too.”

  “There’s no need to worry about that, Clair. Until someone proves to us that you’re a criminal it’s our responsibility to keep you safe. If you’ll let us . . . and under certain circumstances, even if you won’t.”

  That made Clair sit up straighter. Her hands balled into fists on her thighs.

  “So I could be innocent and you could keep me here anyway?”

  “If your safety made a critical difference to an important investigation, yes. But not literally here. We’d take you somewhere much more comfortable, depending on how long you’d be with us.” Sargent studied her sideways. “Don’t look so worried. I’m not telling you this to threaten you. You asked, remember?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t expect you to be so honest.”

  “Why not? I’m an honest person.” Sargent smiled quickly—another brief flash of her white teeth, and then they were gone. “You know what they say about civilization being just three meals away from savagery? Maybe it’s the same with d-mat. What if this is the last conversation I ever have? I don’t want it to be even partly bullshit.”

  Clair didn’t want to smile, but she did. Not because Sargent had said anything funny. Quite the opposite. Clair needed to smile because otherwise she would have to cry. And once she started, she wasn’t sure she would ever stop.

  “Does my mom know where I am?”

  “Yes.”

  The uncomplicated answer made her feel stronger. She tried another.

  “Is Jesse okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I know you’re lying,” she said, although she wanted it to be true, very much. He had helped her; he had encouraged her; he had seen something in her. And she had seen something in him too. They had kissed. Then she had destroyed his world. “Everyone he knows is dead. His home was blown to bits. None of it was backed up. He has nothing to go back to.”

  Sargent shrugged and said, “That’s not how he sees it.”

  Clair blushed. “When can I talk to him?”

  “Soon, I hope. Your mother, too.”

  “She’s here?”

  “D-mat . . . broken . . . remember?” Sargent smiled. “No. I meant over the Air. That’s working fine. When you get your privileges back we’ll be able to put you through to her. She’s in protective custody, in case the dupes try to take her hostage again.”

  Clair thought of her mother in a cell like this one, and Jesse in another cell, and she asked herself what she had to go back to, at that moment. She was the girl who’d taken on d-mat and won. The girl who’d sacrificed herself, killed herself, and lived. The girl who couldn’t save her best friend, and had betrayed the new friend who’d tried to help her. What awful thing was she going to do next?

  “If you want to make a difference,” Sargent said, “tell me everything you know about what happened to Zep.”

  Clair came out of her thoughts with a sudden shock, as though she had been dropped naked into a bath of icy water.

  [3]

  * * *

  “ZEP IS DEAD,” Clair said, wondering how there could be any doubt about that even though she desperately wished it wasn’t so. “He was shot.”

  “Yes, by a dupe outside the safe house in Sacramento Bay. We don’t have a body but his blood was found at the scene, plus other evidence strongly suggesting that what you say is true.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “Uh . . . brain matter. You really don’t want to know.”

  She really didn’t.

  “Why are you asking me if you already know what happened?”

  “Because it’s not just about Sacramento Bay. It’s about what happened on the station as well.”

  “Wallace brought him back and Mallory shot him again.” More memories. Clair shuddered. “I told you all of that.”

  Sargent leaned forward, her eyes cloudy again.

  “Zeppelin Barker came back from the dead,” she said. “That’s supposed to be impossible.”

  “Jesse’s dad did too—”

  “Yes, but Wallace had captured Dylan Linwood’s pattern much earlier. He kidnapped Dylan specifically to dupe him, by forcing him into a booth so he could be scanned. Not Zep. Zep was just some random kid—sorry, but you know what I mean—just someone who got in the way. So where did the pattern come from? Wallace didn’t know he’d need him later to blackmail you. There was no forcing him to be scanned, and any transit patterns should have been erased days earlier. How did Wallace get hold of it?”

  “Zep was an earlier version of himself.” Clair forced herself to recall his confusion and shock on finding himself where he hadn’t expected to be. Exactly as Clair had felt on returning to New York, after the station had blown up. Zep had jumped from his dorm in Shanghai to meet her at school, and later a copy of him from that jump had been brought back, exactly as he had been but minus the memories of everything that had happened since that day. This version of him may not have experienced the events in the safe house, he might have been a few hours younger than the Zep who had first died, but he was completely real and alive in a way that still tore her up on the inside. “He didn’t know what was going on.”

  “Keeping a pattern after transit is illegal,” Sargent said. “It leads to copying—and worse, editing copies to change what’s inside, as we’ve seen in the last few days. No one’s supposed to do it.”

  “Obviously Wallace did,” said Clair.

  “So what if the data’s still out there? What if we could bring Zep back again? I think we’d be obligated to do it. Saving lives is what PKs do, right?”

  “I guess.” Clair didn’t know where this was going, but she would take every small hope where she could get it. “You could save the lives of everyone who died in the crash.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Sargent said, leaning forward with sudden intensity. “I want to find those patterns. I want to convince the Consensus Court to let us bring them back.”

  The lock snicked and the door opened. Sargent leaned away from her. Clair realized only then how close their heads had been, like they were sharing a secret.

  “The law specifically forbids the reactivation of the patterns of people who have been declared legally dead,” said PK Forest as he circled the table and returned to his chair. He held something in his hands, a bundle wrapped in white paper. “Unless we find compelling evidence that Zeppelin Barker is still alive, he cannot be reactivated, pattern or no pattern. It would be profoundly inequitable. Here.”

  He offered Clair the bundle. She didn’t move.

  “You could at least sound sorry about it,” she said.

  Flick.

  “I am not sorry. We call it ‘reactivation,’ but it would really be resurrection. Death is an essential part of human life. Society lacking that basic constraint would be . . . terrifying. Remember Mallory Wei.”

  Clair did. Her fate was a living hell. If Wallace had had his way, she might have repeated the cycle of resurrection and suicide forever.

  A glance at Sargent told her that she was thinking something similar.

  But did that mean it was wrong to bring back someone who died unnaturally young, too young to have really lived at all, who might actually want to come back? She wasn’t just thinking of Zep, but Libby as well, and everyone else killed by Improvement. If their patterns could be found, they could be saved. . . . Wasn’t what Sargent wanted to do the same thing she had been trying to do all along? Their means were different, but their ends were the same.

  “Open it,” Forest said, indicat
ing the package. He was watching her closely.

  Clair did as she was told. Inside was a sandwich, but not just any sandwich. She could tell instantly that it was an alfalfa-and-peanut-butter sandwich on pain de mie bread.

  “How did you get this?” She stared at him in outrage. “It’s from my private profile. You can’t access this without telling me. That’s not fair!”

  Flick.

  Forest raised his hands in appeasement and smiled almost charmingly. “This is me telling you that we are satisfied now that the other you is an illegal duplicate, and accordingly her ownership of your profile has been revoked. You will shortly gain full access, with new security provisions to ensure you aren’t hacked again. We have no more reservations about your claims of selfhood. You are legally Clair Hill. Please eat.”

  Clair didn’t pick up the sandwich. It was her favorite comfort food, but it didn’t comfort her now. “What does that mean, exactly? That I’m not legally dead and never have been? Or are you making an exception for me?”

  “That would be inequitable,” said Sargent with a sharp look at Forest.

  “It would indeed.” Forest folded his hands in his lap. “Existing laws do not necessarily provide the best moral compass in these circumstances. What if they were to tell me that you could not legally remain alive? I can assure you that I would not feel compelled to shoot you where you sit.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Do not be too relieved. We have methods of dealing with inconvenient duplications that do not involve violence. It is not an uncommon crime.”

  Clair looked from Forest to Sargent and back again. Forest’s smile hadn’t changed. It was a pretty good approximation, although it was beginning to look a little fixed. He clearly wasn’t joking.

  “We need you, Clair, and you need us. That is the simple truth of it.” Flick. “Now, the sandwich. In a moment you will be too busy to eat, and I do not want you starving on my watch.”

  “The Inspector hates it when that happens,” said Sargent.

  That broke the smile. Forest shot Sargent a look of mild rebuke, perhaps for her use of the nickname, then settled back into a mask of blank impassivity.

  “It was a test, wasn’t it?” Clair said. “I recognized the sandwich.”

  “It wasn’t that. You were upset about us accessing your profile,” said Forest, “rather than what we might have found in it. That was what convinced me.”

  “I was already convinced.” Sargent nodded encouragingly. “Eat up, and be glad the fabbers are still working. Remember, three meals . . .”

  Clair ate the sandwich.

  [4]

  * * *

  SHE HAD BARELY swallowed the last mouthful when her lenses flickered, startling her, and notifications began pouring in. Her infield immediately jammed. Bumps and caption updates from family and friends rose to the surface while everything else crowded in the background. It was a very dense background.

  At first glance, all everyone was talking about was d-mat. Or, rather, the lack of d-mat. People were stuck in places both ordinary and weird. Most were at home, school, or work, but some were on the summit of mountains or on the bottom of oceans or in the middle of deserts, huge distances from anywhere civilized. Families had been torn apart. Friends were looking for friends. Public warnings flooded in from PKs and other branches of the OneEarth administration, telling people to stay out of booths for the time being. There were rumors of accidents and partially transmitted bodies and wild speculations as to what was going on. There were protests and petitions for action, and the occasional violent clash with the PKs. Clair could sense a global panic mounting.

  She blanked her caption and searched for something from Q.

  The only message in her inbox was the last Q had sent.

  Friendship has to be earned.

  Clair felt just as ashamed as she had the first time she read it.

  “I know you can see what’s happening,” she sent in reply. “Please come back. I’m sorry I broke my promise. We need you. I need you.”

  She might have said more, but she didn’t want to beg while the peacekeepers were still watching her private profile. She could see a notification from them informing her of the fact. A quick glance at her public observers showed the PKs at the very top there too, followed by a large number of people, familiar and unfamiliar. Friends from school rubbed shoulders with celebrities and people she’d never heard of. One was a lawmaker called Kingdon who Clair assumed PK Forest had allocated her, now that Clair was legally recognized. The woman had sent her a brief message:

  Don’t feel you’re alone in this, Clair. Let me help you. I’m here if you need me.

  Clair didn’t pursue the offer then. She didn’t know what she needed. The total number of people following her was hypnotic, in the hundreds of thousands already and growing before her eyes. So much for her dream of going back to an ordinary life once Improvement was dealt with.

  In addition to the bump from LM Kingdon, there were dozens from her parents, swinging wildly across the spectrum of emotions. They were hard to read, and Clair sent a reply to the least crazy-sounding, telling them that she was okay and would call soon.

  Before she did that, though, she had to know what her mother had been reading about her.

  This was the most difficult thing of all.

  For starters, the Abstainers thought she was a hero. Clair Hill was the girl who killed d-mat—never mind what she herself thought about that. She didn’t want to be a hero, particularly not for a cause she didn’t agree with. All she had wanted to do was stop Improvement and save Libby.

  Then there were friends and acquaintances who felt betrayed by what they thought were her actions. Some called her a liar, others a dangerous fearmonger. To them she was the girl who killed d-mat for personal fame. Those who had supported her now felt that she had made them look foolish. It was going to take a lot to rebuild that trust.

  Clair searched for word from her closest friends. Ronnie was home in Florida, anxiously surfing the Air through her augs, but Tash was in a jungle in South America, hacking her way through vines to get back to civilization. Tash had sent Clair a message that said simply, “You broke the world WTF!?!” Ronnie was ominously silent. Clair was too nervous to send them messages of her own, for fear of what her friends might say back.

  The peacekeepers, at least, had issued a statement saying that the testimony offered earlier by someone claiming to be Clair Hill, effectively a confession that she had made up everything about Improvement, was false and that the real Clair Hill was now reinstated. That saved her the trouble of explaining about dupes and how she had become one—because that still sounded crazy, even in the world as it was now—and it made her numbers pop even more. But the dupes and Improvement and Ant Wallace and the station and anything that really mattered were all being swamped by the much more important crisis the world had to deal with, which was that it had effectively ground to a halt.

  Hospitals were no longer just a jump away, and neither were peacekeepers or refuges for those under threat. And what about prisons, some of which had no doors at all, only d-mat booths: How were the guards going to get in and out? What about people working in space? What about the crashlanders trapped somewhere called the Cave of Crows over a mile below the surface of the Earth, where they had held their latest ball?

  How was Clair going to fix this?

  Someone took her hand. She blinked out of her infield and realized that the real world had changed around her. The seats formerly occupied by Sargent and Forest were now empty. Sitting next to Clair in the interview room’s fourth chair was the one person who hadn’t bombarded her for explanations via the Air.

  Jesse.

  Her throat felt so full and tight that she couldn’t speak.

  “Are you all right?” He was studying her face. She didn’t know what it showed, but if it was anything like the emotional turmoil she felt inside, she was amazed he could bear to look at her. “I tried calling yo
ur name and you didn’t seem to hear—oh, okay.”

  She had pulled him to her and wrapped her free hand around his neck. It felt so good to be close to him, so safe and familiar. He had lost his world, and so in a very real way had she. But they still had each other. She wasn’t alone, for all that LM Kingdon might think she was.

  He returned the hug with both arms. His chin rested heavily on her shoulder and she closed her eyes, breathing into his hair. Again she found herself fighting back tears. They had been through so much. They had survived so much. It felt like it really meant something. And it did. They wouldn’t have gotten this far without working well together.

  She pulled back from him and looked down at their hands. It amazed her how tightly they were holding on to each other, and how right it felt that she could cling to him and he didn’t mind.

  “Sorry I didn’t notice you,” she said. “Lots to catch up on.”

  He nodded. “Too much. I’ve hardly looked at my augs. I’ll never respond to everyone. Apparently we’re famous now.”

  She had seen his name mentioned in the Air almost as often as hers.

  “I know,” she said, but without any sense of accomplishment. This kind of popularity was what Libby had wanted, not her. It wasn’t something she had earned. She was under no illusions that the people talking about her knew or cared about who she actually was.

  Also, being famous wasn’t going to stop them from being killed this time.

  “Are you going to make an announcement?” he said.

  “Me?” Her heart sank at the thought. “Can’t you do it?”

  “People probably think I’m a joke. The last thing they saw me saying was . . . well, you know.”

  That you had a crush on me for years, Clair didn’t say, and I barely noticed you. More fuel for the Clair-is-a-bitch crowd.

  Jesse looked so anxious, so uncertain, that her heart ached. She kissed him to put that ache to rest, and because she wanted to. The world was ending. Zep might or might not be dead. Her friends hated her, and god only knew when she’d ever go home. But he was here, and he tasted like spearmint. She hoped her breath wasn’t too awful—and then, for a wonderful moment, she wasn’t thinking at all.