Hollowgirl

by Sean Williams

  Q was silent for a long moment.

  “Rules are important,” she eventually said. “Humans like rules even if they are invalid, or superseded, or outright nonsensical, and this leads me to suspect that a mind’s relationship to constraints placed upon it is one of the calling cards of true consciousness. It’s important that rules exist so we can rail against them. They are made to be broken, isn’t that right? I can’t imagine an animal thinking this because, on the face of it, it doesn’t make any sense. Yet in a certain light, it makes perfect sense, don’t you think?”

  Clair didn’t know what to say. Q asking her opinion on something like this was like her asking a child for its thoughts on the works of Mary Shelley.

  But she had to at least make the effort to reply, while the opportunity was there.

  “Surely some rules are better than others,” she hazarded.

  “Maybe. Context is everything. But some rules are fundamental, and broken at our own risk. How we relate to space, for instance. How we relate to ourselves and the people around us. If WHOLE’s engineers are right, you could soon be anywhere or anything you want simply by wishing for it. When such basic notions as space and identity are mutable, how are you going to tell anywhere and anyone apart? What rules will apply?”

  “Uh . . . I don’t know,” said Clair. “It sounds a bit like you, actually.”

  “And look at me,” said Q. “My life to date has been very confusing.”

  “Maybe you’re still looking for the right rules.”

  Another silence. Clair waited it out, unsure whether she’d said something accidentally profound or very, very stupid.

  The only thing that stopped Q from breaking parity the first time was the rules, and that had turned out just perfect. . . .

  Before Q could respond, Clair received a bump from Kari.

  “Check the feed from LM Kingdon. You need to see this.”

  [45]

  * * *

  THE BROADCAST HAD been sent to everyone. It was being reposted in captions all through the Yard.

  “Peacekeepers and volunteer recruits have been working tirelessly in close cooperation with VIA,” LM Kingdon said, “to locate and capture the terrorists responsible for recent acts of violence against members of the New Consensus.” She was shown standing against the backdrop of a OneEarth flag with her throat covered in a bandage. “The lives lost and effort wasted are incalculable, which is why I know you will rejoice with me at the announcement that arrests have been made. The evidence has been processed, and soon you will all bear witness to the judgment meted out on these enemies of peace and humanity.”

  Arrests? Clair wanted to ask, Who have we lost? but Kingdon was continuing.

  “These twenty-two people were netted in raids conducted in the last six hours.” Kingdon contrived to look both severe and triumphant as names and images scrolled down both sides of the image of her face. “They are many, and they did not work alone. We will not stop until every conspirator has been caught, tried, and punished to the full extent of the law.”

  What are they going to do? Clair thought. Lock us all in prison?

  Then she recognized one of the faces among the strangers on the screen—a slender woman with Jesse’s coloring—and Clair became aware of the rising buzz on the Kupa-piti feed.

  “That’s my sister—”

  “That’s my father—”

  “That’s my daughter!”

  “Mom!”

  Jesse’s voice cut through the chorus. His mother had disappeared in a d-mat accident many years ago, but a dupe of her had shown up at the WHOLE muster in Russia. Even though she had never been a member of WHOLE, that wasn’t stopping Kingdon from using her against the people who loved her.

  Clair’s determination to fight in the final assault increased, if that were possible. When she tried to imagine how Jesse felt, how she would feel if her mom was on the list, her blood boiled and she had to grind her teeth to stop herself from interrupting.

  “Quiet,” said Dylan Linwood over the interface. “Listen to what the woman is saying.”

  “These twenty-two are guilty of heinous crimes. My fellow lawmakers and I took this into account when considering sentencing. Our unanimous decision was that the gravest criminals deserve the gravest punishment. These twenty-two will be executed at six hundred hours tomorrow. Those who conspired with them have until then to turn themselves in. If they do not, they will be hunted down and destroyed like the vermin they are.”

  Kingdon’s feed went dark.

  Executed.

  Clair checked the time. It was ten p.m. That gave them eight hours to rescue Jesse’s mom and the others.

  “Since when did OneEarth bring back the death penalty?” she asked Q, but there was no response.

  She knew the answer, anyway. Since Kingdon and her cronies had taken over the Yard and made it their own, just as they had planned to take over the world.

  It was a sign of things to come if they weren’t stopped.

  With considerable effort, Clair levered herself up so she was sitting vertically rather than leaning on cushions.

  Jamila, the woman left in charge of the hospital while Kari was busy, appeared immediately at her side.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting up,” Clair said. “Give me a hand, will you?”

  “I’m calling PK Sargent.”

  “Do that, but first give me a hand.”

  Jamila did, with a long-focused look that said she was doing both things at once.

  Clair paused with her legs dangling off the makeshift bed, head spinning, augs buzzing with the upset chatter in the prison. People on all sides of the alliance were agitating for immediate action. After the last meeting had ended, they had all gone back to their respective projects, but now they were gathering together again, virtually and physically. It wouldn’t be long before someone acted precipitously and walked right into Kingdon’s trap.

  Clair had thought herself done with speeches. But when the circumstances demanded one and no one else was stepping forward . . .

  “We all heard it,” she said to everyone in the prison. “We all know what it means: they’re using hostages now, people we love. Let’s count ourselves lucky they didn’t start doing this sooner, otherwise there could be a hundred people up there, not just twenty-two. We’re going to do something about it, and we’re going to do it right. Let’s use the time we have to make sure of that.”

  “Girl’s making sense,” Libby immediately sent back. “The only way to save these people is to do what we were going to do anyway.”

  “I agree,” said Evan. “We mustn’t give them the pleasure of knowing that we are rattled. Silence will only make them more nervous.”

  “Nervous enough to start the executions early?” asked Jesse. Clair could hear the shock in his voice. He barely remembered his mother, but of course that didn’t stop him from wanting to save her.

  “They’re still pretending to be the good guys,” said Ronnie. “The illusion of due process is not something they’re going to give up just yet.”

  “Let’s not wait too long, though,” said Zep.

  “We’ll go when we’re ready and not a moment before,” said Dylan Linwood. “Get back to work.”

  “And Clair, you need to get back into bed,” said Kari Sargent from the door of the hospital.

  “But I can’t just lie here . . . ,” Clair started to say.

  “You’re not just lying there. Your body is working hard. Let it do its job or you’ll be useless to anyone. Besides, wasn’t that you I heard bossing everyone around a moment ago?”

  Clair scowled. She hated it when Kari made sense.

  “Do you promise I’ll be up in eight hours?”

  “Maybe less, if you behave,” she said, but Clair couldn’t tell if she was lying. Kari put her hands on Clair’s shoulders and forced her back down. “If she gives you any more trouble, Jamila, use the blue patches. They’ll knock her right out.”

 
; “You wouldn’t,” Clair said.

  “I will if you make me.” Kari smiled down at her. “Your mom would kill me if I didn’t. She’s as a big a pain in my ass as you are, you know that?”

  Clair could imagine. Allison had been helping Team WHOLE and had most of the Yetis under her thumb.

  “All right,” she said. “You tell me I’ll be up in time and I’ll stay right here.”

  “Good. Thank you.” Kari handed control back to Jamila. “If everything’s okay here, I’ll get back to the team. They’ve got a lot of work to do before they’re going anywhere. . . .”

  Clair watched Kari’s broad back as she headed out of the hospital, noting that Kari hadn’t actually promised anything. Jamila hovered for a while, as though doubtful that Clair was going to keep her word. When she eventually wandered off, Clair closed her eyes and considered her options. There weren’t many, and none she liked.

  In the end she opted for the one that she alone could do, even though it was the one that terrified her the most.

  She bumped LM Kingdon, using the words Kingdon had sent her on the first occasion they had talked.

  “Is now a good time?”

  Kingdon’s reply took a surprisingly long thirty seconds.

  “It’s a terrible time to joke around, child.”

  “Neither of us is joking around.” And I’m not a child. “You’ve made that absolutely clear.”

  “Don’t begin to suggest that this is my fault. Your attack on VIA was vicious and unprovoked. It escalated the situation far beyond my ability to control it. Who do you think has been keeping Wallace in check? Not you. Not me, although I’ve tried. Mallory Wei was your best ally, and you killed her.”

  “I was unconscious at the time,” Clair said. “Shot by one of your goons. That sounds like escalation to me.”

  Again, a long silence, followed by a chat request.

  Clair accepted it and noted a raft of encryption measures that weren’t standard for communications through the Air. Maybe, she thought, this is a call that not even RADICAL can hack into. In which case, good.

  “What do you want?” Kingdon asked her. Through the chat Clair could see that Kingdon was walking along the edge of a canal somewhere in the Manhattan Isles. The sky was slate gray. Wind sent ripples chasing each other back and forth across the water’s surface. There was no sign of the bandage or a wounded throat. Clair wasn’t surprised: faking an injury to elicit sympathy was exactly what someone like Kingdon would do.

  “I want to make a deal,” Clair told her.

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “What are you afraid of? Looking bad? That’s not something dictators worried about, I thought.”

  “I’m not a dictator. I’m trying to do what’s right for everyone.”

  “By taking us over?”

  “By restoring a form of government we understand. Don’t get me wrong: the Consensus Court was a fine experiment. But the experiment has failed. It gave us Wallace and Q, and who knows what would have been next? People prefer a firm hand on the tiller. I will provide it.”

  That sounded like so much bullshit to Clair, who had seen very little evidence that the Consensus Court had failed in principle. All the problems Kingdon named were caused by individuals, not by group decision making.

  That said, Clair was not so deluded as to think that she might not be one of those problem-causing people. Or that Kingdon didn’t think Clair was.

  “You’ve killed one of me already,” she said. “You have a body to parade around, if that makes you feel better, and the glitches we caused are mostly gone now. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Maybe if you lie down and play dead for me . . . but of course you won’t. You think you know what’s best for everyone. You won’t rest until you’ve rammed it down our throats.”

  “Pot, kettle, black.”

  “I used to think we were alike, Clair, but now I know we’re not. You’re naive. Do you even know the central tenet of institutional consensus, the single rule that forces me to do what I have to do? It’s that the Consensus Court cannot be overturned by the Court itself. That’s the one decision it cannot make. So the only way to get rid of it is by revolution. Blame your grandparents for this, not me. In the meantime, I know what’s right, I know what must be done, and I’m not going to shy away from it. It takes a true leader to tear everything down in order to build something new.”

  Clair felt as though Kingdon was rehearsing a speech rather than saying anything meaningful. Clair had to get her off that track.

  “The Earth isn’t the only place we can live,” Clair said. “Why can’t you have what you want in here and let everyone who doesn’t want to be part of it live outside?”

  “That’s not going to work, of course.”

  “Why not? All you have to do is let us go. What’s the cost to you? Losing the moral high ground? Looking weak?”

  “You’re forgetting the exit.”

  “I’m not forgetting the exit. That’s the most important thing.”

  “So why, Clair, are we even having this conversation?”

  Clair was confused. She felt as though Kingdon was in a completely different argument from the one she was in. Maybe it was a deliberate plot to distract her.

  She had one card left, and she played it.

  “What if I turn myself in?”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I would if you promised to let everyone go.”

  Kingdon laughed. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Do you think I’m lying?” She wasn’t lying. “If you really believe individuals are what matter, then this is your chance to make all your problems go away at once. You can do whatever you want with me. Lock me down here forever. Shoot me in Times Square. Your call. Your choice. All you have to do is let everyone else go and I’ll come quietly. I swear it. Once I know that everyone will be safe, I’ll come quietly.”

  More silence. Clair didn’t know what to hope for. She didn’t want to turn herself over to Kingdon and Wallace, but she would if it avoided a war that might tear the Yard apart.

  She had seen the world outside now. It wasn’t a paradise waiting to be reclaimed. It was a mess requiring people to put it back the way it had been. It needed everyone in the Yard—millions, Q had said. More than on Mars, the moon, and all the other colonies combined. The people of Earth had to make their own salvation . . . no matter the individual cost to her.

  “You’re not a fool,” said Kingdon. “I’ll grant you that. And in the end, we both want the same thing: to get out of here and build a new world from the ashes. That’s what matters most.”

  “So you agree?”

  “Nothing of the sort. Being smart doesn’t mean you can’t be crazy or ignorant at the same time, and I can’t take a chance on you being either of those things. Sorry, but if that’s your best offer, then we’re done.”

  “I guess we are.”

  “Good-bye, Clair. Please don’t do anything rash.”

  The chat closed on Kingdon’s end, leaving Clair alone and shivering under her sheet. She hadn’t realized how much she was sweating until she hugged herself and felt her clammy skin.

  Part of her couldn’t believe what she’d just tried to do. Part of her couldn’t believe that it had failed. Was Kingdon really so blind? Did she assume she had the power to catch Clair anyway? Or did she know something Clair didn’t, which is why she had said “naive” and “ignorant”?

  She bit her lip, worrying about that last point. What if she had missed something important, something that could make all the difference?

  Something to do with the exit, perhaps? What if Kingdon was at Wallace’s mercy on that front too, in which case she couldn’t promise anyone anything?

  There was no way to know what she didn’t know, until it mattered. And there was no way Clair was bumping Wallace to make him the same offer. He already had enough of her blood on his hands.

  [46]

  * * *

&
nbsp; CLAIR HAD A string of visitors over the next three hours. Some people wanted explanations. Some wanted assurance. Some just wanted to play out the very same anxieties she was struggling to keep in check. Clair didn’t have the heart to turn any of them away, even if she didn’t have much to offer.

  Jesse wasn’t among them, but Billie was.

  “Your one-armed man snatched me up just before the hollowmen made their move,” she explained. “If he’d come five minutes later, I’d be number twenty-three with my head on the block.”

  Clair could only sympathize. Before offering herself to Kingdon, she had thought long and hard about what it would be like to await execution. It was harrowing to imagine.

  “You’re with us now,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Yes, everything’s just dandy.” Billie shook herself, like a dog. “I feel terrible about what I did. . . . I should have asked more questions. I shouldn’t have let her go.”

  “You’re not to blame,” Clair said. “It’s what she wanted to do. And we wouldn’t know where to go now if it weren’t for her.”

  “But she . . . you . . .” Her eyes were a brilliant auburn color and they didn’t let Clair off the hook. “You’re so damned young.”

  Everyone kept saying that.

  “We all die in the end,” said Clair.

  Billie’s smile came and went so fast it might never have been there. “Except for you.”

  She left Clair with that thought. It wasn’t a cheerful one, particularly if Clair didn’t heal in time to join the fight. Should things go wrong, everyone she loved would be dead soon, while Clair sat in bed and watched. That possibility made her feel old and trapped, like Aunt Arabelle in her wheelchair.

  At three o’clock, the teams gathered on the testing range for one final debriefing. The entire prison watched, plus Clair Three and the crew of the Satoshige on the outside. Everyone’s eyes were on the clock. Any hitches now might mean death for the twenty-two awaiting execution.

  Team RADICAL went first. The news wasn’t encouraging on that front.

  “We’ve made the channel as stable as we can,” said Evan. “As you can see, it’s still far from reliable. We won’t be able to do anything more until we can put someone on-site at either end.”