Crashland

by Sean Williams

  “Let’s discuss this in safer environs,” he said, indicating the booth. “PK Forest and your friend are waiting for you there.”

  Clair considered his offer. Seasteads were floating cities that plied the open ocean, never making landfall. They had been another solution to the problem of rising sea levels, but even before that, long before OneEarth, they had also been miniature city-states, where people with weird ideas had formed their own private empires so no one could bother them. Clair and Libby had once visited the Serbia, a famous wreck on the equator where tens of thousands of people had died of an incurable and highly contagious disease. The massive vessel had foundered and been left that way for decades, rising and falling with the water levels, until declared safe by peacekeepers and opened to tourists. Perhaps RADICAL used one like that as a headquarters, as WHOLE used to with its antiquated Skylifter. Perhaps they found it a suitable home for their weird ideas.

  Sargent and Devin were already gone. She had no reason to stay on the island any longer. If Trevin was as good as his word, Jesse would be at the other end. Perhaps some answers, too.

  “All right,” she said. “After you. Jesse had better be there, or I’m leaving.”

  “You’re free to leave any time you like. But where would you go?”

  She had no answer to that.

  Trevin hitched up against the back wall of the booth so there would be room inside for her, too. He smelled faintly, and rather incongruously, of rose water. Hang in there, hang in there, said the faintest of whispers in her ears, and then the light flashed and they were gone.

  mmmmm-click

  The sound brought back recent memories of the Maze, and her gut roiled anxiously. It felt like days since she’d last eaten or drunk anything, but it had only been since the Antarctic forest. Her throat was parched from all the running and the tension.

  The doors opened on a wide staging area containing more than fifty booths and twice as many people in gray armor running back and forth. The air smelled of oil, electricity, and salt, and was full of urgent voices. Before they left the booth, Trevin touched the corner of his right eye, the universal sign for check your lenses. She switched them back on and found among the endless flurry of bumps and grabs a series of patches requesting interfaces and shared data, all dressed in hard metallic colors. She put the patches on hold until she learned more about her location. All she could determine at that moment, thanks to her limited access to the Air, was that they were not far from the coast of Greenland. Outside it would be dark, the exact opposite of how it was on the other side of the world, in Valkyrie Station. There was no immediate sign of Jesse.

  Trevin guided her through the throng to a side area, where Devin was being loaded into what looked like a steel coffin. Mirrors on the inside confirmed that it was a medical booth, designed to transport the gravely injured to a hospital. She had seen such things before, at her mother’s workplace as well as in dramas.

  Hold on, D, said a solitary whisper.

  D for Devin, thought Clair.

  “You’re T,” she said, staring at Trevin, then back to Devin as the medical booth closed over his brother. “The two of you are the whisperers!”

  “Of course,” said Trevin. “We’re linked by an entangled neural network—twin telepathy made real by technology, if you like. It was something our mother gave us when we were young.”

  Clair was tempted to pursue the Bartelme family history but instead opted for a more practical question: “So why can I hear it?”

  “The Air doesn’t like the unusual traffic we generate. Too radical, you might say. Get close to us and augs interfere. Some people can’t take the hint.”

  He looked haughtily at Clair, who was standing next to him by the medical booth.

  She wasn’t backing away. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “It’s not something we advertise.”

  “So you can talk about people without them knowing?”

  “So we can pool our knowledge in every situation. Devin’s the mobile one. I prefer to stay at home, watching his back. Between the two of us, there’s not much we can’t handle . . . and we don’t like being apart, particularly when one of us might be dying.”

  She glimpsed a closeness then, behind the bravado, and realized that he was more worried about Devin than he was willing to admit, either here or on Ons Island. The poem he had whispered to Devin while Devin raved about their mother might have been something shared from their childhood. Clair had never had a sister or a brother, but she knew the power of childhood memories. She thought again of Charlie, and squirmed inside at the thought that a dupe called Nobody had shared this memory with her.

  “Is he going to be all right?” asked Clair, indicating the sealed booth.

  “Oh yes, D will be fine now.”

  “Do you have surgeons on the seastead or have you sent him somewhere else?”

  “No surgeons,” he said. “We grew out of that medieval practice years ago.”

  “Then how . . . ?” she started to ask, but was distracted by the arrival of Jesse and PK Forest. Forest was wearing the same armor as before, and Sargent acknowledged her fellow peacekeeper with a nod. Forest’s expression didn’t change, but he did raise a hand in something that might have been welcome, or even gladness. It was hard to tell.

  Jesse had changed into nondescript gray overalls that looked like a dressed-down version of the armor worn by the soldiers around them. The outfit suited him much better than the PK gear. They grinned as they approached each other, then hugged. They didn’t hold on for long, but he squeezed her tightly, and she took strength from the embrace, glad for the opportunity, however brief it was, to let Jesse support her.

  “You made it,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “Safe as houses. You know what that means?”

  She smiled at this shared memory of marching across California badlands and sniping at each other in the dark.

  “I get the idea,” she said.

  Jesse explained that he and Forest had gone straight from Valkyrie Station to the seastead, where they had been following her progress via Devin’s lenses as best they could, anxiously awaiting her return. She had been in the Maze for six hours, and contact with Devin during that time had been sporadic. Only moments ago, the news of the sabotage and the ambush on Ons Island had filtered through.

  “Is it all like this?” she asked, stepping away from him to take in the cavernous space around them.

  “This is the busiest part,” he said. “There are places where nothing is happening at all. Living areas, that kind of thing. They made me explore while we waited for you.”

  “Made you?” she said with a smile. “They twisted your rubber arm?”

  “No, really. I was getting in their way, and I was . . . well, I was worried about you. They said it could be a long time and eventually it was simpler just to believe them. I’d love to show you the engines of this thing . . . or the anchor . . . ?”

  He gave her the chance to indicate that she did indeed want nothing more than to admire stupendous machines and mountains of metal, and he capitulated graciously when she did not.

  Clair stood hand in hand with him for a moment, reflecting on everything that had just happened. The VIA network was compromised. Dupes were openly attacking anyone in their way. The world was falling apart around her, and only worse lay ahead.

  War. The very idea of it was so strange and overwhelming. But if the dupes weren’t going to let up, she couldn’t see what she could do but fight them back. The Cashiles hadn’t denied that Wallace was still alive, so she felt comfortable running with the assumption that he was. Someone had to stop him. Properly stop him, this time, hopefully more successfully than Clair had been, the first time.

  “So what happens next?” asked Clair. “Who decides?”

  “We do,” said Trevin. “You, Jesse, Forest and Sargent, Devin—everyone involved from the beginning. If we can reach consensus, RADICAL will follow.”


  Before Clair could express her doubts about that ever happening, the medical booth slid open and Devin sat up, looking disoriented but otherwise perfectly healthy.

  “Hello, everyone,” he said, rubbing his shoulder where he had been shot. There was no sign of the wound. His armor was gone. Now he was wearing a simple blue tunic, like a hospital gown, and looked perfectly healthy.

  “What happened? Did I die?”

  [25]

  * * *

  “NOT QUITE,” SAID Trevin, brows bunching in annoyance that Clair was sure hid relief. “Please don’t do that again.”

  “I’ll endeavor not to.”

  “How did you get well so quickly?” asked Jesse, his eyes so wide the whites showed around the edges. “It’s not possible.”

  “It is with d-mat,” said Trevin, glancing at Sargent and Forest. “You might want to avert your eyes, peacekeepers.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Sargent.

  “We don’t hold to your exacting standards regarding what’s acceptable and what’s not,” Trevin said.

  “I was scanned into data,” explained Devin, swinging his legs out of the booth and dropping down to the floor beside them. “My healthy form is on record, and medical algorithms compared the injured me to that record. My injuries were erased, without surgery, drugs, transfusions, anything primitive like that. I was made whole, then returned as you see me now.”

  Sargent said nothing, and neither did Forest. Clair couldn’t tell what Jesse was thinking, but he didn’t look happy about it, and his hand was squeezing hers just a little too tightly. She wasn’t sure what she thought. This was Improvement as it was supposed to work, not tampering with a birthmark or a nose, but fixing someone’s injuries, saving a life. In theory this was a good thing, or could have been, but it was on a long list of d-mat misuses that Clair had broadcast from the train as they’d passed Philadelphia, a list of unsettling things in a world where d-mat was unchained.

  “Imagine that world,” she had told her viewers. “If Improvement isn’t stopped, that’s exactly what’s coming.”

  Had she already been living in that world without knowing it?

  “This is what the dupes meant,” she said, “when they said you weren’t so different from them. RADICAL and the dupes are both using d-mat illegally.”

  “That’s absolutely true,” said Trevin, “but there’s a world of difference between us and them, still. We don’t copy or mind-rape people. We believe in free and informed experimentation with the forms we have. It’s your body; you should be able to do whatever you want with it.”

  “No need to preach, T,” said Devin. “The best way to convince people is to show them what we can do. And this is what we can do. This is what everyone can do given the ability to change their patterns.”

  “The Consensus Court has ruled human pattern editing to be unacceptable,” said Forest.

  “The Consensus Court is wrong.” Devin shrugged. “I know that’s a big claim, but we’re not forcing it down anyone’s throats. We’re just getting on with our own thing, keeping our heads down—and not letting anyone tell us what we can and can’t do. No offense, but don’t think you can walk in here and tell us to stop.”

  Flick. Forest’s expression became one of apparently sincere regret. “I assure you that this is not my intention. I merely wish to clarify the position I am required to take in future negotiations . . . and to indicate that, moving forward, there are certain details that perhaps it would be best I did not know.”

  Devin and Trevin nodded identically.

  “Right,” said Trevin. “Got it. Which brings us to the question I have for you, PK Forest. Do you actually have any plans for moving forward? Because I see precious little evidence of you and your kind doing much of anything so far.”

  “Easy, tiger,” said Devin before either Forest or Sargent could respond. “I, for one, would like a set of proper clothes before we start flinging accusations around. Does that sound reasonable?”

  It did to Clair, who felt like she had been wearing her filthy armor for days on end. For the sake of consensus, too. Arguing now would just make things difficult later.

  “All right,” said Trevin. “We’ll meet again when everyone’s ready. No one is to release any planning or policy statements before then. Understood?”

  He looked at Clair when he said that, which surprised her. She wasn’t about to declare war on the dupes without discussing it first.

  “So we’re just ignoring this?” said Jesse, indicating the booth with a scowl. “People are editing their patterns whenever they want and suddenly this is okay?”

  He had a point. It was just the wrong time to explore it.

  “Why don’t you show me around?” Clair said, taking his hand. “You, me, and that anchor makes three.”

  [26]

  * * *

  HE KNEW SHE was trying to distract him, but he didn’t fight it.

  “All right,” he said, guiding her around the booths, from which people in gray RADICAL uniforms still came and went at a steady pace. He walked quickly and without talking, pulling her through two huge metal doors and onto a ramp wide enough for a dozen people. It spiraled up the inside of a chimney, at the top of which Clair saw only darkness. Possibly the night sky, because the air was sufficiently chilly to suggest that the chimney was open to the elements. They wound twice around the chimney, each loop granting Clair glimpses of several other staging areas, each identical to the first.

  “What is the point of this place?” she said. “They didn’t build it just for today, did they?”

  “It think it’s a contingency,” he said. “That’s what Hassannah called Valkyrie Station, remember? Maybe this is another one of those. There’s enough space here for thousands and thousands of people. I get the impression it’s kept ready for times like this.”

  Preparations for global disaster would explain the energy levels of everyone she saw, Clair thought. Not just focused industry, but a bit of panic as well, hidden behind bluff and bluster in Trevin’s case.

  RADICAL was taking this very seriously, she realized then. Seriously enough to risk friction with the PKs. RADICAL wasn’t a terrorist organization like WHOLE, but clearly it shared a similar disregard of the law when the law got in the way of what RADICAL thought was right.

  Clair glanced over her shoulder and saw a large, armored figure trailing behind them. PK-blue armor, not RADICAL gray. It was Sargent, keeping an eye on them. Perhaps she was afraid Clair might run off with RADICAL given the chance.

  “Devin said something about new clothes,” she said. “And I’m dying for a drink of water.”

  “I’ll take you there, if I can find the way. They gave us a double berth. I know that’s a bit presumptuous, but I don’t think we’ll be here that long, and if we are we can always ask for something else. There’s a fabber. One of the guys here showed me how to use it.”

  Clair hid a smile at his awkwardness about the bed arrangement. It was sweet. “You won’t eat the food but you’ll wear the clothes?”

  “As long as it’s not going in me, I can live with it.”

  She supposed that was progress.

  “Uh . . . this way,” he said, peering across a metal antechamber that could have accommodated a small circus. “I read once how they sent the first permanent moonbase in one piece seven times, recycling it over and over until they got all the leaks out. But this is way bigger than that. Look.”

  They had reached a railed landing where she could lean out and see forward and back along the side of the seastead. The massive vessel was lit with strings of navigation lights and bulged around the middle. She guessed it was a mile or two from end to end and maybe a quarter of a mile across. She had never seen anything so huge, and she could hardly believe it floated on water: no doubt Jesse could tell her how, if she asked. The dedicated powersat beam that kept the lights and mighty engines going was visible as a faint yellow stream, flickering through the atmosphere in a perfectly strai
ght line from the south, touching down somewhere on the giant vessel’s stern.

  From far below she imagined she could hear the whisper of waves, but underfoot she felt not the slightest hint of motion, either forward or side to side. Perhaps she would be safe from the dupes here, for a while.

  “Does it have a name?” she asked.

  “Athene,” Jesse said. “Doesn’t seem big enough, does it?”

  She agreed. Small dogs had bigger names, which perhaps said more about the people who named such things than the things themselves.

  “I used to call my bike Trigger,” Jesse said. “I wonder if it’s still where I left it. . . .”

  Clair had to think for a second to remember what he was talking about. Jesse had chained his bike up at school the day his father had confronted Gordon the Gorgon. It felt like that had happened a thousand years ago to an entirely different Clair. In several senses the latter was probably quite true. What Clair was she up to now—4.0?

  The memory of school was equally distant. What would be happening if none of this had taken place? She would be hanging out with her friends, agonizing over Zep and other romantic entanglements, dodging homework and the Mean Girls a year above them—the same girls Libby had defended Clair from in the earliest days of their friendship.

  Clair wondered if Q thought of her as the equivalent of a Mean Girl, for what she had done. That was a depressing thought. Equally depressing was the thought of where her other friends were now, thanks to her. Libby was almost certainly gone forever, unless Clair could find a way to bring her back. Ronnie and Tash didn’t seem to notice her, perhaps because of some kind of filtering the seastead put on her access to the Air. Ronnie was pacing from one end of her house to another like a caged lion: she could have left anytime, but what was out there for her? Without d-mat she was cut off from everything she knew and cared about. Tash, meanwhile, was climbing up a steep massif, glimpsed only in snatches by the lenses of her fellow climbers. She wasn’t talking or posting. She was just moving forward the only way possible for her.