Crashland

by Sean Williams

  “But your body is here thanks to . . . ?” prompted Devin.

  “Stroke,” she said. “One damaged cell in one thin vein wall, and I am as you see me. It could have been worse, I’m very aware of that: I could be dead or a vegetable. But even so, locked-in syndrome is no fun. Without telepresence I’d have gone insane years ago.”

  “Was fault ever acknowledged?” asked Forest.

  “By VIA? How easily you jump to that conclusion.” She laughed, and the sound was as rich and full as though it came from a human throat. The body on the bed didn’t move at all. “This had nothing to do with d-mat, unlike your face, PK Forest. . . . Yes, I know about that. The things you discover when you have all the time in the world to look. The great Inspector, upholding the regime that made him a cripple: there’d be something truly poignant about that if it weren’t just . . . sad.”

  Clair stared at Forest, searching his features for any sign that what Agnessa said was true. But of course there was none.

  “Blame is overrated,” he said.

  “A man with nothing to live for would say something like that,” she said. “At least I still have my soul. I can atone for what I’ve done. You . . . all of you . . . are beyond hope.”

  “We’re not here to discuss philosophy,” said Devin.

  “Indeed. You want somewhere safe . . . to think, you said.”

  There was no way to tell, but Clair knew that Agnessa was looking at her.

  “Yes,” she said, because that was the simple truth. “We’ve learned a lot about the dupes . . . at least I think we have . . . but I need access to the Air to work out what it is, and we can’t have that and hide at the same time. This might be the safest place on Earth right now, because you don’t have any booths or fabbers. If we can just stay here for a day or two, until we work it out—”

  “What’s to stop the dupes from dropping a missile from orbit on us, like they did in Antarctica?” interrupted Agnessa. “There’s nowhere on Earth truly safe from these people.”

  “They appear to be divided into at least two factions,” said Jesse. “One of them doesn’t want to kill Clair. The other . . . We’re not sure about him, but we think he’ll hold off for a while. We should be safe.”

  “‘Should be’? That’s hardly a ringing endorsement. And to what end?”

  “That’s . . . complicated.” Clair rubbed at her forehead. She flinched when flakes of brown rained down in front of her eyes. Dylan Linwood’s dried blood clung to her like a grotesque kind of camouflage. “One of them told me that I’ve known something all along, without knowing it, something important . . . if that makes sense.”

  “Not really. Why would a dupe tell you anything that you could use against them? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “This is why I need time to think. And I have to try. Running hasn’t worked. Fighting hasn’t worked. What else is there? Give up and let Ant Wallace win?” Frustration had her hand shaking. She dropped it back down to her side. “Never.”

  Agnessa said nothing for a minute that seemed to last an hour.

  “Leave us, all of you except Clair,” she said. “I want to talk to her alone. Then I’ll talk to Jesse. Nelly, show our guests to the waiting room.”

  The big nurse made ushering motions with her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation the others obeyed. Clair watched anxiously as they left, nervous about being alone with the leader of WHOLE. She was so different from what Clair had imagined. Instead of a revolutionary leader in combat fatigues at the head of a ragtag army amassed in the grim north, she was a crippled old lady who looked like she would die in minutes if unplugged from her machines.

  Nelly pulled the door closed behind her with a solid clunk and Agnessa said, “Pull up a chair. Sit next to me. You’re looming.”

  Clair looked around and saw a stack of plastic chairs in the windowless corner of the room. She lifted one off and put it by the bed, so Agnessa would have been looking at her if her eyes weren’t covered by the hood.

  “You’re nothing but trouble, Clair Hill,” the old woman said. “Everywhere you go, you sow discord and strife. Do you mean to, or does it just follow you around like a bad smell?”

  Clair opened her mouth to protest that it wasn’t intentional—all she wanted was a quiet life—but Agnessa’s throaty laugh stopped her before she could say anything.

  “When you get to know me better, you’ll understand that I mean that as a compliment.”

  [45]

  * * *

  “I’VE BEEN FOLLOWING you, Clair,” Agnessa said, as LM Kingdon had, and at first Clair feared that the conversation was going to go the same way. “Your journey has not been an easy one, and I feel that I know what brought you here. The safety we offer is more than physical. WHOLE has never lied to you. I’m sure others have told you that, but this time it’s true. You may not agree with everything we tell you, but we have earned your trust. The question for us is whether you have earned our trust in return.”

  Clair stared at the old woman’s mouth, wishing she had some visual clue to what Agnessa was thinking. She was as inscrutable as PK Forest, in her own way. At least this conversation, she was sure, was private.

  “Killing d-mat isn’t enough?” Clair said.

  “You and I both know that was an accident.”

  She acknowledged that with a guilty nod. And with that acknowledgment, she felt, went the best argument she had for WHOLE to be her ally. If she confessed that she wanted nothing more than for d-mat to work again, they would throw her out on her ear in a second, at the mercy of the dupes.

  “It was worth a try, though,” Agnessa said, with a hint of chuckle in her voice. “You remind me of me when I was young. You see through the bullshit the way others don’t. That gives you an edge—but sometimes you wish you could just see things normally and live a contented, shallow life. From the moment we learn to speak, we’re destined to cause trouble, for ourselves and for those around us. We either speak up or burn up from the inside, consumed by our own vision.”

  Clair wondered where this was going.

  “Some people here would regard you as a hero,” Agnessa said, “but your alignment with RADICAL and the PKs confuses them: neither organization wants the same things as us, not even remotely. We allow them here only under extreme sufferance. Others would shoot you on sight, if not for Jesse Linwood. I offer you a middle ground, something to remember no matter what you might hear me say in public. You’re neither hero nor villain. You’re the girl who gave Turner Goldsmith the ending he needed—and for that I will always be grateful. That’s why I let you in.”

  There was an edge to Agnessa’s voice that Clair couldn’t interpret.

  “I didn’t want him to die,” Clair said. “Really, I didn’t.”

  “Neither did I, but it’s a blessing he has. Turner Goldsmith was a dreamer, and now he’s a martyr. That’s the only immortality he craved.”

  “So you knew his secret.”

  “About his genes? Yes, I knew. I was his deputy for so long, it was impossible not to know. I thought I’d go long before he did. But the way it’s worked out is best for everyone. WHOLE has a new purpose now, a tangible enemy. Our worst fears walk the streets. With every hour, our numbers grow. The world is turning, and we turn with it. And you . . . you are here with us once more. Where will you turn, Clair? Or more important, what will you turn into?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. Remember: I see through the bullshit too.”

  Clair hung her head. She did know what Agnessa meant. For days she had been wondering what kind of person she was: bad friend, Mean Girl, terrorist, peacekeeper . . . Everything life threw at her came with another option, another choice for her. And she couldn’t be all of them. She had to pick one and stick to it. But which one? How was she supposed to decide when she could barely remember who she was and how this had all started? Was it really because of a crush on Zep that had undermined her friendship with Libby? Was that all? Or
was there something she had never seen before, something about her that made all this conflict and confusion inevitable, as Agnessa said? Was everything she did just making it worse?

  She was astonished to find herself crying, but she was, and there was nothing she could do about it. The emotion was coming from somewhere locked deep away, and now that that deep place was open it wasn’t going to close in a hurry. It wasn’t just about her mother, or Libby, or Zep, or even herself. It was everything. Tears dripped from her eyes onto Agnessa’s hospital coverlet, red from dried blood at first, but then becoming clear. She didn’t move, except to shake and breathe, and to crush her eyelids together until the worst of it was over.

  It seemed to take forever, and when it was finished she felt drained of everything except doubt.

  “I could see that coming a mile off,” Agnessa said, not unsympathetically. “Now that it’s out of the way, let’s talk properly. Tell me what it is you’re trying to figure out.”

  It felt good to focus on specifics: “Where Q is hiding, where Ant Wallace is hiding, where the dupes come from, if that’s three separate places or one and the same. Who kidnapped my mother and how to rescue her. Whether I can trust the PKs. A particular dupe’s real name . . .”

  She trailed off, although there were even more suspicions that needed resolving, and soon. What did the Cashiles mean when they told her that Wallace was a pawn, just like them? Could Q really be working with the dupes? What had Clair seen that made her such a threat to the dupes? If the dupes really hadn’t blown the barrage in Washington or attacked Valkyrie Station from orbit, who had? How many factions of the dupes were there?

  “That’s quite a list,” Agnessa said. “How long are you expecting to stay here? A year?”

  “A few days. If you can give us that, I’m sure I can work things out.”

  Agnessa laughed a third time. “Listen to you! I’d say you were mad if I didn’t know better. Two days . . . That’s probably the most I can give you. Beyond that, I can’t guarantee we’ll even be here. The muster has served its purpose by bringing people together and reaffirming my new role, but if we sit around waiting too long, we’ll break up into factions and be useless again. We were a target before you turned up, and now we’re even more so. And I’m not the kind of leader who likes to go softly-softly, like Turner did. Perhaps it’s the way I am. Other people have the power, but I have the ideas. Out there, it’s all action. In here, I make decisions and others do as I say. I’m their leader. Does that sound familiar?”

  Agnessa was talking about her, although that struck Clair as crazy to an extreme.

  “I’m not a leader.”

  “My bullshit-o-meter is twitching again.”

  Clair didn’t argue. She didn’t want to be a leader, but if people were offering to listen to her decisions, wasn’t that kind of the same thing? As long as she could resign when it was all over, and people left her alone to think.

  “So we can stay?” she asked.

  “For now,” said Agnessa. “On probation. Don’t give me reason to regret this.”

  “I won’t, I promise.” Clair wanted to ask what WHOLE was getting out of it, but she didn’t have the energy to look this gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you.”

  “Thank me by taking a shower and getting changed. People are leery enough without you looking like you crawled here from the depths of hell.”

  Clair felt as though she had. “I will.”

  “Nelly’ll tell you where to go. Send Jesse in on the way out.”

  “I will,” Clair said again, and she caught herself doing it. I make decisions and others do as I say. Agnessa made it look easy, but maybe it was easy when people were scared and out of options. Being a good leader might be more about timing than the decisions themselves. Timing, and a loud voice.

  [46]

  * * *

  THE OTHERS WERE waiting for her in a chamber bare of any furniture apart from chairs and a tatty yellow rug on the linoleum floor. They looked up when she entered.

  “We can stay,” she said. “Not everyone wants us here, though, so we have to be on our best behavior.”

  “That I can do,” said Devin. “Eating real food might be the impossible ask.”

  “You’ll eat what you’re given and be glad of it.” Nelly narrowed her eyes. “Is it Jesse’s turn now?”

  Clair nodded. “Agnessa said you’d show us where to go.”

  “I will. In you go, boy. She won’t bite you.”

  Jesse looked nervous, and Clair tried to smile encouragingly. “We’ll meet up later.”

  “Most likely,” said Nelly, not helping much. “I’ll bring him over when she’s finished with him.”

  Nelly shooed Jesse up the corridor, then returned to unlock the double door leading outside. The night hadn’t changed, for all that it felt as though she had been with Agnessa for hours. Maybe it had been hours, Clair thought. It was late in the year, and they were a long way north. The only visual way to tell that time had passed was by looking at the fleet of airships in the sky above them: they appeared to have gained a few new members.

  Her lenses told her that it was early Wednesday evening in New York. The Air had returned, but she was reluctant to look at it, for fear of what new rumors people might be spreading about her. From RADICAL to WHOLE: what would people make of that?

  Nelly took them along a series of narrow makeshift paths between demountable structures that looked as though they had seen better days. Clair had forgotten what it was like being around Abstainers. In the Farmhouse, where only d-mat had been verboten, fabbers had been allowed for things like clothes and cutlery, but here everything had to be made by hand or machined and regularly maintained and cleaned to keep it as new.

  She planned to scrub her undersuit until it was practically transparent, first chance she got.

  They came to a wide clearing that was partly farmed, partly communal. A dozen or so young men and women were playing soccer in one corner, cheered on by a clutch of children. Flagpoles displaying a variety of different banners stood in for goals. Clair recognized the colors of several defunct nations flapping listlessly in the chill breeze. There was no sign of OneEarth’s navy-blue circle on white flag, which made her wonder if some members of WHOLE were separatists as well as hard-line paranoids.

  They came to a row of dormitory buildings. Theirs was third along, and had been empty for a long time, judging by the dust and the closeness of the air. Clair was glad no one had been displaced to make room for them. Within were six narrow single bedrooms, about the same size as the berths on the seastead. No fabber, of course, but no kitchen, either.

  “Mess hall’s across the way,” said Nelly, pointing to the other side of the soccer field. “Laundry and bathroom two dorms up. Agnessa’s arranging a change of clothes. Someone will come to you.”

  “If we need anything,” said Forest, “who do we ask for?”

  “You ask for me,” she said. “Don’t be shy, but don’t be wasting my time, either.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Devin.

  “Will you bring Jesse here when he’s done?” Clair asked.

  “Me or someone else.”

  And with that she was gone, heading back the way she had come with a heavy stride and even heavier brows.

  An abrupt young man came shortly with changes of clothes for all of them. They weren’t new, but Clair didn’t care. Devin and Forest retired to their randomly allocated rooms to change. Sargent insisted on coming with Clair to the shower and laundry block. They found it empty, and Sargent volunteered to clean the undersuit while Clair sluiced what felt like layers of blood and grime from her skin, hair, and fingernails. When she emerged from the shower, she felt somewhat renewed but far from her usual self—as though Dylan Linwood’s blood had sunk into her, tainting her. She had to concentrate to stop her hands from shaking again, and if she wasn’t careful her head soon filled with images of the dupes that had attacked her.

  At least she could bear to
look in the mirror now. Her first glimpse had shown her a face she barely recognized, caked with blood except for around her eyes, which had been smeared in rough circles when she cried. She couldn’t guess how much weight she had lost, but she knew she had, because her stomach was flatter than it had ever been and her ribs were showing. That wasn’t the kind of Improvement she was looking for. She looked like a photo taken of her grandmother during the Water Wars, one her mother kept in her private profile to remind herself, she always told Clair, of how bad things had once been. That they might one day be that bad again was something Clair had never seriously considered. She was sure her mother was taking little comfort from being right, wherever she was.

  The undersuit was wet but wearable. Clair thanked Sargent and slipped behind a curtain to get changed. When she tried on the clothes she had been supplied with, she found them to be loose around the hips but tight across the chest. Luckily there was a belt. She did what she could with the top and hoped she wasn’t bulging in any embarrassing places.

  Sargent looked slightly ridiculous in clothes obviously intended for a man draped over her PK armor, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “I think the Inspector and I should sleep in shifts,” Sargent said as they walked back to the dormitory. “Someone needs to be alert in case our situation alters unexpectedly.”

  Clair could think of a thousand ways that could happen—dupes could attack, Agnessa could change her mind, the PKs could grow tired of babysitting her—but she wasn’t volunteering to stay up any later than she absolutely had to.

  “I’m hitting the sack,” she said, heading straight into her tiny room. Jesse hadn’t returned, so there was no point even pretending to be awake. “Wake me if there’s any drama.”

  “Sleep well,” said Devin. “If you’re lucky, I might even make you breakfast.”