Crashland (28 page)

“Maybe. If you answer one question honestly.”

“I've answered all of them honestly so far.”

“Really? Sometimes I forget how young you are.” He exhaled sharply. “Only the very young . . . and the dying . . . have no time to lie.”

“Answer my question, then. Will you stop fighting me?”

“Perhaps . . . if you tell me my real name.”

“What? I don't know what that is.” She looked up at Forest and Sargent. They shook their heads. “None of us do.”

“Nonetheless . . . that's what it will take. I'll stop fighting you, and you can work out how to kill me. If I have to go, I'll go as the person I was, and not before.”

“All right,” she said, figuring she had nothing to lose. “I'll find your name, and the rest. I promise you.”

“Don't promise
me
,” he said irritably. “Promise the me you're going to tell, who you haven't met yet. He probably doesn't even exist right now. He'll come out of a fabber sooner or later, not knowing that he's the one who will change everything. . . .”

His eyes were slipping shut. His slump had become even more pronounced.

“Hey,” she said, poking his uninjured shoulder. “You're not going anywhere just yet, not without telling me what you dupes think I know.”

“It's
my
question, Clair,” he said, his voice little more than a mumble. “And it is this: what did you see?”

“Where? When?”

“What did you see, Clair, in the stars . . . what did you see?”

NOBODY SLIPPED OVER
and Clair caught him, propping him gently upright even as she resisted the urge to shake him to get the answers she needed.

“I don't understand,” she said. “Tell me more.”

He didn't respond.

“No riddles, remember?”

Sargent was at her side, reaching past her to check the dupe's vital signs. Only then did Clair realize that he wasn't breathing.

She sagged back into a sitting position as Sargent did what she could. Jesse came to stand behind her, hands on her shoulders, not seeming to mind the crusted blood there. His father's blood.

“Well, that told us nothing,” he said, “except that Nobody is one fucked-up dude.”

She shook her head, not disagreeing with his diagnosis but suspecting that Nobody had actually told her a great deal. The Cashiles, too, in their elliptical way. She just had to work out what it was.

“He's dead,” said Sargent, stepping away and wiping her hands on the thighs of her armor. “Let's get rid of the corpse before it springs any nasty surprises on us.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward, scooping up the body as though it were a doll, and the other followed him out of the crow's nest. When they and the body were gone, Clair's lenses came back to life. She felt like closing her eyes and sinking into blackness, but she couldn't do that yet. Not until she was sure they were safe. Those who were left.

I'm so sorry, Mom
, she thought with a heavy heart. If both factions of dupes were telling the truth, that meant there was a third group acting against her—and she had no idea who they could be.

“I'm out of ideas,” she said, leaning back into Jesse's ready embrace, his chest pressed solidly against her back. “I guess we can evacuate now.”

“Yes.” The answer came over a chat she hadn't even known was open. Devin and Trevin were part of the conversation from elsewhere in the seastead. “Preparing for breakup.”

“Breakup?” Clair echoed.

Sargent helped her to her feet. “The seastead is compartmentalized. Seal the bulkheads, and whole sections act as giant booths. RADICAL can take what's inside of them and then remake all the bulkheads and everything so it won't look like anything's gone anywhere. It'll be like the
Marie Celeste
, only bigger. It'll delay the dupes while they work out what happened.”

“How is the data going to get out? I thought we were cut off.”

“From the Air, yes,” said Devin. “But we are connected to the powersat grid. The beam powering the seastead is intense enough to cover any transmissions going up to orbit. We'll come back to ground using the same trick. No one will be able to track us.”

“We'll only get away with it once, though,” said Sargent.

“And it sets a dangerous precedent,” said Forest. “The powersat grid is not protected against this kind of exploitation. It will need to be.”

“Yes, well, you can look into that on the other side.” Devin sounded unrepentant. “Unless you have a better plan to get out of this mess?”

“I do not.”

“Where will we go?” Clair asked.

“That's the question,” said Trevin. “Anywhere that has a powersat receiver, heavy cargo booths, and a d-mat network that we can hack into—i.e., pretty much any city anywhere. But the dupes will track the signal eventually, so it has to be somewhere defensible, or somewhere that can be abandoned at a moment's notice. Our best suggestion is now sunk, or might well be soon, so over to you guys.”

There was silence. Sargent glanced at Forest, and Clair knew that they were communicating silently, perhaps considering options. OneEarth was bound to have all sorts of strongholds, but would they let RADICAL in? And were they secure enough to keep the dupes out? OneEarth was required by law to be transparent when it came to things like this, so every weakness of every redoubt could be easily exploited by the dupes, as in Crystal City.

Clair's mind was blank, still reeling from everything that had happened in the previous hours. If that had been war, she wanted no more of it. Time for yet another strategy, but what? Her primary goals hadn't changed: if it felt like they had receded even further into the distance, it was only because she was tired and nothing she had tried so far had worked. That didn't mean she was never going to succeed. There had to be a way to ensure that all the death and destruction on the seastead hadn't been a complete waste.

Her mother liked to say,
The only thing separating success from failure is giving up
. Allison had lots of sayings like that, some of them helpful, some of them not so much. Some, like this one, were true, but didn't help solve anything, really. Not in a concrete here's-how-to-rescue-me kind of way. That, Clair would have to figure out for herself, when she had time and energy to try again.

Then she remembered something Jesse had said earlier, before the fighting had started.

“Russia,” she said in a voice she could barely hear. The audacity of what she was thinking startled even her. “That's where we should go.”

“Why?” asked Devin. “What's there?”

Jesse stared at her in surprise; then a cautiously delighted smile spread across his face. “Agnessa Adaksin. The muster.”

“The what?” asked Trevin. “Whose master?”

“Muster,”
Clair corrected him. “WHOLE has a new leader and she's gathering everyone together in one place.”

“So?”

“There's only one other group that hasn't underestimated what d-mat can do,” Jesse said. “Who else has as good reason to hate the dupes as much as us?”

“That may be true,” said Devin, “but they've got good reason to hate us as well.”

“And us,” said Sargent.

Clair nodded, not unaware of the hurdles ahead of them. But Jesse was beaming, and she felt an instinctive
rightness
about the idea. Every high-tech attempt to evade the dupes had failed. Maybe it was time for something simple.

And she could be sure of one thing: there would be no Cashiles or Dylan Linwoods in a community guaranteed to have no d-mat booths or fabbers.

“We'll deal with everyone getting on with everyone else when we get there,” she said. “Where exactly
is
there, Jesse?”

“New Petersburg,” he said. “On the Neva Straits.”

“Send me the exact location,” said Devin, sounding resigned. “I am painfully aware that we are running again.”

“You're not the only one,” said Clair. “But let's just do it, if we're going to. I bet the dupes aren't wasting any time working out what to do next.”

“I have no objections,” said Forest.

Sargent nodded. “It's not as if the other peacekeepers can't keep looking for the dupes while we're off doing this.”

“And for Q, too?” said Devin. When neither peacekeeper responded, he shrugged. “Fair enough. RADICAL will be doing the same without us, while working on the next contingency. It looks like we might need it.”

“That's settled, then,” said Trevin. “Hold on to your hats, people. We're on our way.”

eeeeeee—

Clair felt rather than heard a rising whine that tickled the backs of her eardrums. When it reached its peak, it threatened to tear her head apart.

—EEEEEEE—

“Is this the way it's supposed to go?” she bumped Devin.

“Beats me,” he bumped back. “We've never actually ridden a powersat beam before.”

“Are you for real?”

“Never been realer.”

Clair clutched her head as the screech blasted her from all sides. It felt as though every cell inside her body had burst and her blood had flashed instantly to steam. Her body exploded into countless tiny fragments—and yet, when she opened her eyes to see what had happened, she found herself standing exactly where she had been.

“Welcome to Russia,” said a shaky-sounding Devin.

Except for that part
, she thought.

THE SECTION OF
the seastead containing them had arrived in a cargo booth the size of a small building. When the crow's nest doors slid apart, the corridor outside ended in a vertical mirror several yards along. They had to go down a ramp two floors, onto another mirror, this one horizontal, where Devin joined them.

“Well, that was fun.”

“Which part?” asked Jesse.

“None of it, to be honest.” He looked around as though getting his bearings. “I'll come with you for the next leg and have all this shipped elsewhere. If we step outside, I'll cycle the booth and get us some transport.”

“What about Trevin?” asked Clair, following Devin to the hangar-sized doors.

“He's got things to attend to.” Devin tapped his forehead. “We'll still be in touch.”

“Speaking of which,” said Sargent, “we're not keeping this a secret, are we?”

“No point,” said Devin. “And probably impossible. Better to be up front about something we can't hide.”

Clair nodded, agreeing with the sentiment, although nervous about what awaited her in the Air. She was more worried about that than she was about walking practically unarmed into the WHOLE stronghold. Unarmed and completely exhausted. She ached from head to toe.

“We're about four miles from the muster,” Devin said. “As far as getting there goes, I thought we'd try something a little different.”

The wall of the giant booth cracked open, creating a horizontal aperture through which poured icy-cold air.

Devin guided them outside into a deep, winter night lit only by blue streetlights. The enormous booth was surrounded by tall, thin buildings, the purpose of which Clair couldn't imagine—old atmosphere processors, maybe, from the Water Wars. Between them in the near distance she saw trees, and the sight of all that green made her want to run and disappear into it, never to return. Her body and mind had endured so many shocks in recent days that they barely seemed to fit together anymore. She needed to rest, but instead she was jumping headlong into the mouth of the whale. The mouth of WHOLE, more literally.

Her lenses were bugging her with messages from the real world. Oz, Tash, and Ronnie were prominent, but Clair didn't want to read any more accusations or interrogations or reminders of her failure. Oz had sent her several messages conveying his love and hope that she was looking after herself. Clair doubted this plan would qualify.

She reduced everything except for notifications from the people around her to a single icon and let it sit in her infield, not daring to believe that this simplified anything but knowing that, for the moment, it was as much as she could cope with. One problem at a time. The rest could wait.

The booth boomed shut behind them, then a moment later opened again, revealing a squat vehicle with a fat black skirt and two elegant fans positioned vertically at the rear.

“A hovercraft?” said Jesse. “Can I drive?”

“Be my guest,” said Devin.

“Do you have a license?” asked Forest.

“Are you going to arrest me if I don't?” Jesse said. “'Cause that'd make a
great
impression.”

The peacekeeper inclined his head.

They climbed aboard. There were seats for four passengers, plus one for the pilot. Clair sat behind Jesse, feeling like she was making the exact opposite of progress. Here they were, the five of them at a disadvantage again. And here she and Jesse were, fleeing dupes in some weird vehicle created from an archaic pattern dredged out of the dark corners of the Air. Somewhere out there, she bet, Nobody was laughing Dylan Linwood's head off.

Engines whirred into life. Fans roared. The hovercraft rocked beneath them, then settled. Accelerating smoothly, they drove—sailed? flew?—into the ruins of New Petersburg.

Everyone knew the story. Coastal cities had faced difficult decisions during the Water Wars. Some stayed and worked with the rising seas, like New York, with its flooded streets and canal culture. Others, like Washington and London, built massive barrages to keep the oceans at bay.

The third strategy was to abandon the city and rebuild nearby, which is what Saint Petersburg had attempted. The original city was re-created in stages on the southern isthmus of the strait that ultimately connected the former Lake Ladoga to the Baltic Sea. But the development took longer than planned, and the seas rose faster than expected, so the population of the original city, some million people facing complete inundation, fled farther north. New Petersburg ended up a ghost town of skeletal skyscrapers and empty freeways.