Crashland (16 page)

His ignorance shouldn't have surprised her. He was a killer, not an English major.

“Where's the other one?” she asked.

“Behind you,” said a voice.

She spun around and saw another Cashile coming down the same hill over which the birds had flown.

HER MIND BALKED
at the sight. Even though she knew what the dupes were and what they were capable of, this was the first time she had seen indisputable evidence that someone other than herself had been duplicated. Here she was talking to two identical people, except for their minds. If she'd entertained any doubts that VIA was truly broken, they were now completely dispelled.

“You're probably wondering why we've come to you like this,” said the second Cashile. He had a slightly different accent from the first. “It's not to fight you. We're unarmed.” He held out his arms and wiggled his child's fingers. “We just want to talk, that's all.”

“About Q,” she said, swinging the pistol between the two of them, not believing for a second that they meant her no harm.

“Yes. Tell us where she is or there'll be no more talking.”

She imagined them clamming up like kids having a tantrum. “What makes you think I know?”

“If anyone does, it's you,” said Cashile-1. “If you don't, then we don't need you.”

“Your only chance of surviving is to tell us.”

Clair fired once at Cashile-2. He was coming too close. The bullet sprayed the dirt a yard in front him. The recoil kicked the gun up in her hand with surprising force, and he stopped dead. She was glad she hadn't missed and accidentally shot him, even if he was a dupe. Birds scattered in all directions, abandoning the tiny valley that probably had been theirs alone for years.

“If I don't tell you, I'm dead,” she said. “If I do tell you, I'm probably dead too. It's kind of lose-lose for me.”

“Wallace's offer still stands. Help us and you get your friends back. We'll even throw in Jesse's dad, if you like.” Cashile-1's smile perfectly matched the other's. “We're not unreasonable.”

“You're murderers and liars”—noting as she said it the implied confirmation that Jesse's father's original pattern still existed, somewhere, along with the patterns of her friends. “I'd be insane to trust you.”

“You trust Devin Bartelme, don't you? The difference between us is not as great as he would like you to think.”

Clair raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“Come with us and we'll tell you.” The Cashiles were closing in again. “Let's get off this rock and go somewhere civilized.”

“No.” She backed away.

“Devin has already left, you know. He's abandoned you to save his own skin.”

That was entirely possible. He'd had time to get to the lighthouse by now.

“That means the booth is tied up,” she said. “It's just you two and me now.”

“There are other booths. The next dupes you meet won't be so reasonable.”

Clair couldn't afford to doubt that. What had happened to PK Sargent was proof. Maybe the Cashiles genuinely wanted to make her see reason, but their dual purpose could be to delay her until the killers arrived. The distinction between
tell us or die
and
tell us and die
was a thin one. Which faction did these dupes belong to?

“I'm going to the lighthouse,” she said. “You can either try to stop me or let me go. Or come with me, I guess.”

With a reasonableness that made Clair feel like she'd slipped into some kind of dream, Cashile-1 said, “We'll come with you, of course. Can't have you wandering around on your own. You never know what could happen.”

Warily, she set off along the valley again, with one Cashile on either side of her. At first she tried to stay ahead of them, but that way she couldn't see both at once, which only made her more nervous. They settled into an easy lope, the three of them side by side, as though going out for an afternoon stroll through the countryside.

“Hollow men,” she said, finding the silence as uncomfortable as the veiled threats. “Don't you have any hollow women?”

“It's a convenient phrase,” said Cashile-2, with a glance at Cashile-1. “And it is from T. S. Eliot, since you asked. Some of us are better read than others.”

“How many different, uh, hollow people are there?”

“A surprising number. You might think it'd be simpler to be all the same, but it's not. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. You don't want an army of soldiers who all share an identical blind spot, physically or mentally.”

“Is that what you are, then, an army?”

“We could be,” said Cashile-1. “We're prepared to fight, anyway.”

“And you don't mind the thought of dying after a few days in someone else's body?”

“We'll always come back. That's the deal. We do this, and we don't ever die.”

“But you don't live in your own body. Or is that still out there, somewhere?”

Cashile-2 shrugged. “What does it matter? A body is just a body. It's what's inside that counts.”

Once again Clair struggled with the absurdity of the situation. Here she was arguing philosophy with dupes on an island in the middle of nowhere while people all over the world were stranded and dying because of the crash. Why were the dupes being so frank all of a sudden? It made a welcome change from being shot at or blown up or hassled about Q, but it didn't make any sense.

Then she realized with a jolt: they were trying to make her
understand
.

Clair almost laughed—did they really think she would ever accept them or what they did?—and stopped herself in time. The lighthouse was in view, a stubby finger protruding from a brick fist relatively high up on a headland. This unexpected chance to learn more about the dupes wasn't going to last much longer.

“You're not like the others I've met,” she said. “There's one I've seen a couple of times. . . .”

“He calls himself ‘Nobody,'” said Cashile-2.

“Yes,” she said, surprised. That was exactly who she had been thinking of. He had been in her dupe, and before that in Dylan Linwood's body in California. He had tried to kill her both times.

“We know all about him,” said Cashile-1 with a roll of his eyes.

“He's one of the first,” said Cashile-2. “The boss asked him to retire once, but he wouldn't. Which wasn't a problem while he was . . . useful . . . which I suppose he still is, in his own way.”

“He wants me dead,” Clair said. “Is that what ‘the boss' wants?”

Another exchanged glance. “Nobody's way off program. You can't tell us what we need to know if you're dead.”

Clair nodded, not taking that as definite confirmation that there were two factions among the dupes, one of which wanted her dead. Maybe the Nobody dupe was under separate orders to terrorize her into capitulating.

“Are you officially telling me that Ant Wallace survived?” she asked, trying to maintain the chatty tone. “He must have if that deal he offered is still on the table.”

“We're not officially telling you anything,” said Cashile-1, with bright coyness. “But if you want to trade information, now's the time. . . .”

They had reached the path leading to the lighthouse. Another figure was walking in the same direction as them, along the weathered tarmac, so their paths crossed. Clair froze. It was Dylan Linwood, dressed exactly as Clair had last seen him, in scruffy shirt and shorts, left eye filled with blood. She stopped short of actually running, but only just, as she remembered all the times he had threatened her and chased her in the past. In her mind the worst of the dupes were synonymous with his ominous, craggy face. She took this as a sign that the warm and fuzzy get-together was over now.

“See reason, Clair,” said the Linwood dupe. He put himself on the path in front of her, forcing her to stop. The Cashiles stood behind her so she couldn't run. “You don't have any options left.”

He didn't sound like Nobody, but he was right regardless. The Linwood dupe had a pistol in his hand, pointed at her just as hers was at him. The question was: if it came down to it, who could fire first?

Clair took a deep breath and looked down at the path, trying to prepare herself for what surely had to come. There was no trail of blood from Devin's injury, which was worrying. Maybe the Cashiles had been lying about him reaching the lighthouse, and he had collapsed after she had left him. Maybe the dupe of Jesse's father had killed him. There was her motivation to shoot dupe-Dylan, she told herself, if she needed one. Killing a wounded, unarmed teenager in cold blood warranted
some
kind of retaliation.

“I can't tell you anything about Q,” she said. Why did no one ever believe her about this? If she'd said it once, she'd said it a hundred times. “I don't
know
anything about Q. No more than you do, honestly. So if you're going to kill me, you might as well do it now.” She gripped the pistol tightly and braced herself. “Or try to.”

The dupe of Dylan Linwood moved with fluid speed, wrenching the pistol from her grasp before she could pull the trigger. He tossed it to Cashile-2 while Cashile-1 whipped Clair's other pistol out of her holster. Suddenly she was standing unarmed in the center of a ring of dupes, all of them pointing deadly weapons at her. Her eyes filled with acid tears of embarrassment.
Shit
.

“We're not going to kill you, Clair,” said Cashile-1, “even if you really don't know anything about Q's whereabouts. You still have some value as a hostage.”

“And while you might be prepared to throw it all away to spite us,” said Cashile-2, “we know Q wouldn't let you. That's how the crash happened in the first place, right?”

Don't be so sure about that
, Clair wanted to say.
She might not do it a second time
. But convincing them of that point could mean a death sentence, so she stayed silent. No more frank exchanges with the enemy, not when they had the upper hand.

“This way,” said the third dupe, indicating the path up to the lighthouse.

As they walked her up the hill a fourth figure stepped into view at the entrance to the lighthouse, and her heart sank. How many dupes did Wallace need to bring her in?

But this dupe had red hair and was holding a boxy contraption in both arms, wires draped behind him.

“Clair, watch out!” Devin cried.

The box flashed, and Cashile-2 flew backward in a pink mist.

CLAIR RECOILED. CASHILE-2
had been struck with sufficient force to tear his body to rags scattered a surprising distance down the path.

The box flashed again. This time the incredible force struck the ground to Clair's left, missing both of the remaining dupes and gouging a crater a foot deep and several yards long. Cashile-1 ran away. The third dupe raised his pistol. He fired at Devin the same instant the box flashed a third time.

Clair was moving by then too. She felt rather than saw the third dupe go down much like Cashile-2 had, but less definitively, with half his body still intact. She was running in a long arc for the lighthouse steps, avoiding a direct line between her and whatever it was that Devin was using to blow the dupes away. She glanced once over her shoulder and saw only the two bodies on the path below. Cashile-1 was nowhere to be seen.

Devin staggered and fell as she came up the steps. The box he was holding—an ordinary fabber, with its mirrored door removed and gleaming power cable leading into the lighthouse—fell with a thud to the ground. She ran to him, saw a gaping wound under his armpit that hadn't been there before.

“Got me before I could get him,” he said. “Damned dirty dupe.”

She slipped her arms under his armpits and dragged him inside, leaving a red path behind them.

“The fabber!” He flapped an arm at the fallen box.

She returned for it, keeping low in case Cashile-1 had already returned with sharpshooting friends.

“Jerry-rigged d-mat gun,” he panted when she returned. “Can make atoms with any velocity. Just a matter—get it?—of giving them all the same velocity, in the same direction.
Boom
.”

He looked bright-eyed and feverish, and there was far too much blood, much more than before, but at least he was still talking.

“You won't use guns but you'll use this?”

“I like a challenge,” he said. “Anyway, guns didn't help you. Watch the windows. See who gets here first. Help's on its way.”

Clair propped him up in one corner of the room so he could cover some of the view while she ran to check the rest. The building was too large for just two people to defend it. Maybe if they went up into the lighthouse itself . . . that way they could see for miles around without obstruction. But they could also
be
seen and would therefore be vulnerable. Barricading the doors behind her was the only option.

There were two tables in the room, plus a cupboard and heavy chest of drawers, which she slid hastily into place as best she could.

The lighthouse's single d-mat booth, a small affair, barely large enough for two, was a burned-out ruin two rooms down. It looked as though it had imploded.

“What happened back there?” she asked when she returned.

“Was cycling someone,” Devin said. “Couldn't tell who. Didn't want to take any chances.”

“You cut off our escape route.”

“Seemed sensible at the time. Tried to bump you, but you were off the Air. Very antisocial.”

She nodded. “Seemed sensible at the time.”

He smiled. There was blood on his teeth.

“They ignored me . . . at their peril.”

“Don't try to talk.”

She saw movement on the hillside below, and she reached for the modified fabber to shoot anything that looked remotely threatening.