“Are we going to talk properly,” she bumped back, “or just sit here all day slinging quotes at each other?”
An incoming call patch began to flash.
She took a deep breath. This was it.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
But the voice at the other end of the call was a familiar one.
“Clair?” said Zep. “Quit screwing around. I need you.”
15
CLAIR’S INFIELD SHOWED no return bumps, just Zep’s anxious face staring at hers.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Libby. You have to get here, fast.”
“Where are you?”
“My dorm. Quick, she’s leaving.”
“I’m on my way.”
Clair hesitated just for a second. If someone was tracking her, this was exactly the wrong time to go anywhere.
But what else could she do?
She told the booth to take her to Zep’s and hoped for the best.
He lived in a cheap all-male dorm on the Isle of Shanghai. It was an open community, not sealed off from the outside world like a lot of natural-sports frats. Its gaggle of young men came from widely scattered regions, united only by the willingness to put their bodies through hell in exchange for a shot at fame.
The booth finished its work. Her nose was unchanged. The moment the doors opened, Clair knew she was in the right place.
The street outside was filled with the constant ding-dinging of bicycles in vigorous use, decorated with multicolored flags and ribbons. From every fabber streamed the aroma of spices. Shanghai was not so much a city as an inextricable tangle of numerous cultures and times, with traditions that stretched back centuries before d-mat.
Lines of market stalls stretched into the hazy distance, with hundreds of hawkers competing for the attention of passersby. The trade was in original goods—handmade, hand grown, freshly killed, or wrenched from the sea—but convincing customers that something was unique and not built from a fabber’s memory could be very difficult. Claims and counterclaims were being made in loud voices. The racket hurt Clair’s ears.
She hurried toward Zep’s quarters, bumping him to let her know she was on her way. The ground-floor entrance led to an elevator and a flight of stairs. She took the former to the third floor.
“Clair, through here,” Zep called when its doors opened.
She looked up, saw him waving, beyond a bunch of young men playing a haptic MMORPG in a communal hall. They jumped and tumbled like spastic acrobats, laughing and calling in a patois she didn’t understand. Someone whistled at her. She ignored him.
Zep’s room was no cleaner than usual. It was small, cluttered with trophies, and filled almost entirely with bed. There was a fabber in one corner. A pile of clothes lay next to it, awaiting recycling. There was an overwhelming scent of him, with a faint hint of familiar perfume around the edges.
“Where is she?”
“Gone.” Zep came around behind her and shut the door. “Libby’s out of control, Clair.”
“Out of control how?”
“Like crazy how. She came over last night—”
“I know she did. I spoke to her.”
“How did she seem to you?” If he noticed her accusatory tone, he didn’t say anything.
“We argued. She knows about us, I’m sure of it. Did you tell her?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“Were you going to?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t get a word in. She came out of nowhere. I had no warning at all.” He collapsed back onto the bed. It skreeked under his weight. “The very second she got here, we had to go out again. She had this terrible headache, she said. I can’t get meds from my fabber—doping regulations, you know—so we went to a friend of mine who gave her something really strong, something I’d never heard of before. Then she wanted a drink, and it didn’t mix so well. I tried to get her to cool down, but she wouldn’t listen. She was going on and on about awful stuff—things I’d never heard before about her family. If half of it is true, no wonder she’s such a mess.”
“What about her family?”
“How her grandmother was murdered in a death camp, and she was raped as a child. You must know all about this. You’ve been her friend forever.”
Clair rubbed at her temple with the ball of her right thumb. “She wasn’t raped as a child, and both her grandmothers are alive. I’ve met them.”
“So why would she tell me that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to get your attention.”
“Well, it’s working. But why she’d want this kind of attention is beyond me.”
Clair sat on the edge of the bed, feeling exhausted and confused. Libby had taken drugs and gone a little wild. Nothing unheard of for a girl in high school, and there were campus counselors trained to deal with things like that.
“Did Libby say anything to you about strange messages?” Clair asked him.
“What kind of messages?”
“Like someone was watching her,” she said, extrapolating from her own experience, “judging her, even.”
“No. Did she tell you about them?”
Clair debated with herself for a second, then showed him the bumps she had received.
“When I spoke to her yesterday, the first time, Libby mentioned weird messages,” Clair said. “I used Improvement to prove that I trust her. . . .”
He scooched down the bed so he was sitting behind her.
“You used Improvement?” he asked. “Seriously?”
“Why not? It didn’t do anything—nothing I can see, anyway. But now these messages have come, and I don’t know what to think.”
He touched her shoulder, and she shrugged him off.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not trying anything,” he said, backing away with his hands raised. “Honest.”
“I believe you, but . . .” Clair clenched her fists and pressed them into her thighs. She found it hard to think with him so close. “If someone’s bugging her, too, maybe that’s helped push her over the edge. On top of what you and I did, I mean.” She turned on him. “Zep, how could you let her leave like that?”
“I didn’t have a choice. She slipped me one of the painkillers before we went to bed. I was groggy. Still am.”
He did look washed-out and pale, a far cry from his usual confident, unstoppable self.
“I’m going to try calling her,” she said. “Maybe she’ll talk to me.”
“Brace yourself,” he said. “It’s like she’s an entirely different person.”
“Don’t say that. She’s just going through a rough patch.”
To Clair’s amazement, Libby answered immediately.
“I’m beautiful, Clair.” She sounded stoned. “I’m beautiful.”
“Of course you are—you always have been, right? Tell me what’s going on. Let’s talk.”
“What’s there to talk about?” Her voice hardened. “He only wants you because you’re different.”
“Libby, listen to me.” Clair did her best to ignore the attempt to wound her. “I tried Improvement, and it didn’t work—”
“I’m in heaven, and I’m so beautiful,” Libby chanted, marshmallow-soft again. “You’re not and never will be.”
Libby ended the call, and she wouldn’t answer when Clair tried again.
“What did she say?” asked Zep.
“She . . . hang on.”
A call patch appeared in her infield, its source the string of q’s.
Clair turned to face Zep.
“He’s back.”
“Who?”
“The creep . . . stalker, whatever he is.”
“What are you going to do? Are you going to talk to him?”
“He’s the only lead we’ve got.”
She reached out and took Zep’s hand. His strong fingers gripped hers as she winked the patch on.
; Before she could utter a single word, an unexpected voice spoke to her. It didn’t sound like a stalker. It sounded like a child, but that could have been a filter designed to disguise the speaker’s true identity, Clair supposed.
“How do you know Liberty Zeist?”
With the voice came a streaming video, not of the person who was talking but of Libby pacing back and forth in an empty marble foyer, biting her fingernails. It looked real-time but didn’t have any map data or date stamp. The picture was greenish and grainy. Libby was wearing a clingy jumpsuit that Clair had never seen before. Her white hair was tied back in a severe ponytail that made her look somehow older and younger at the same time. There was no sign of the birthmark. Was that makeup or something real? It had to be makeup, surely.
“How do I know Libby?” Clair said. “She’s my best friend, and I’m not going to let you hurt her.”
“I have not hurt her. She is beautiful.”
“Yes, she is, and that’s the way she’s going to stay, buddy.”
“All things change.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What’s he saying?” whispered Zep. “I can only hear your side.”
Clair shook her head. The voice was still talking.
“You say that she is your friend. You are trying to help her. Is that correct?”
“Of course it’s correct,” she said. “Tell me why you sent me those messages.”
“Change and beauty are the heart of Improvement. I thought you would understand.”
“Understand what?”
“It puzzles me that you do not understand. I don’t understand you in return.”
“Did you message Libby as well?”
“Yes, but she didn’t answer as you did.”
“Is that disappointing? Would you rather Libby had been talkative than silent? Is that how you prefer your . . . your victims?”
She was being deliberately provocative, trying to get a rise out of him.
“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘victims.’ I have hurt no one.”
“So you say, pal.”
“I am merely talking. We are exchanging information and learning from each other. Is that not stimulating for you?”
Clair made a disgusted sound that echoed flatly off the dorm’s walls. She didn’t really want to think about what the person she was talking to found stimulating.
“If you’ve hurt Libby in any way at all—”
“I would never hurt her. She is beautiful.”
“She is, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she’s safe.”
“Because she is your friend,” said the voice in its too-innocent way. “If I helped her, would that make me her friend, as you are?”
“What?”
“I said: if I helped her, would that make me her friend—”
“I heard what you said. I just . . . I don’t believe this. You’re screwing with my head. Is this what you do to people? Is this how you get your kicks? You reel people in with false promises. You find out who they are and toy with them. Maybe you drive some of them out of their minds. Is that what’s happened to Libby? Did you get inside her head and have a little fun?”
There was silence at the other end for a long time.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she said.
“I do not understand,” said the voice. “I am not in your head. I do not understand your motivation at all.”
“Oh . . .”
Clair bit down on a frustrated retort. This wasn’t helping.
“Clair?” said Zep, squeezing her hand. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head. There was only silence on the other end of the line. No breathing, even. It was almost as though there was no one there at all.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Clair Hill,” said the voice. “It is nice to meet you.”
That was the first time her name had been used. It frightened and alarmed her. Of course the caller knew who she was—otherwise they wouldn’t be talking—but to hear her name when she didn’t know the stalker’s in return made her feel vulnerable and exposed.
She ended the chat immediately. The video of Libby closed with it. A new call patch started flashing in her lenses, regular and relentless, like the ticking of an electronic heartbeat.
qqqqq . . . qqqqq
16
“CLAIR, ARE YOU all right?”
Zep’s hand was still gripping hers. She didn’t want to let go, but she forced herself to.
“I’m definitely okay,” she said, thinking through a fog of confusion and exhaustion. “I used Improvement seventy times, and I feel perfectly fine. Do I look fine to you?”
“Your usual excellent self.”
“So Libby being such a mess can’t have anything to do with Improvement . . . right?”
“Maybe she was a mess to start with.”
Clair glared at him, and he looked away with a shrug.
“What did the stalker say? Did he give you any clues?”
“Nothing. It was weird. I’m not even sure he was a he. . . .”
She trailed off because another call patch was coming through, and this time it had an ID. She stared at it, puzzled. Why was Jesse Linwood contacting her now?
Curious, she took the call.
“Are you at school?” he asked, sounding breathless.
“Why?”
“It’s Dad. I hassled him to keep looking into Improvement, and he found something.”
“What is it?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. Then he left on the electrobike without telling me where he was going.”
“So he went for a ride. So what?”
“This just came.” Jesse sent her a link to a streaming video. “You need to see it.”
She followed the link and saw Dylan sitting in the principal’s office of Manteca New Campus High School.
“Always a pleasure,” said Principal Gordon, a tall, smartly dressed woman with tightly wound auburn hair. Her nickname was Gordon the Gorgon. There was a sour cast to her lips that expressed anything other than pleasure. “What is this regarding?”
“It’s a matter of life and death,” Dylan told her. “One of your students is already at risk.”
“Oh no,” said Clair, standing. There was only one thing Dylan could be talking about. “How long has this been running?”
“It just started. I called you right away.”
“Has he mentioned anyone by name?”
“Not yet, but he might,” he said. “Maybe I can stop him. I’ll come as fast as I can.”
“All right.” She was already on her feet. “I’m on my way too.”
Zep had risen to his feet when she did, and when she went to leave, he pulled her back.
“What now?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll tell you on the way,” she said, tugging free.
“Wait. I’ll lock up.”
“No time!”
She was out of his room and running across the dorm, sending him the link as she went. The facts would have to speak for themselves.
Libby’s popularity was higher than it had ever been, thanks to the crashlanders. But how long would that last if Dylan used Libby’s name? Her closest friends had refused to believe that Improvement was anything other than spam targeting the gullible. Even if it worked, the fact that she had used it would undermine Libby’s carefully maintained facade of cool. When Libby learned that Clair had passed on something that she had revealed only to her innermost circle, she was bound to feel embarrassed, betrayed, undermined . . . and in her current state, that might be the straw that broke their friendship’s back. It would certainly undo all the effort Clair was making to prove to Libby that she trusted her.
“A matter of life and death, you say, Mr. Linwood?” Principal Gordon was saying in the video. “Do explain.”
The principal’s office was furnished in mid-twentieth-century style, with wood paneling, leather armchairs, and a low desk that was pure
ornamental ostentation. She had taken the seat farthest from the door, a magisterial perch with a coffee table beside it. Facing her were three less-imposing pieces. Dylan was in the center chair, scruffy but straight-backed in his work clothes. The video was being taken from a position high up on the wall opposite them, where a clock or bookcase concealed a camera. Hacking into its feed and releasing the data into the Air didn’t seem beyond Dylan’s capabilities, based on the little Clair knew about him.
“There’s a dangerous meme, called Improvement, and it’s here on your campus,” he said. “You need to stamp it out before it claims another victim.”
“Really, Mr. Linwood.” Principal Gordon arched an eyebrow. “I believe that once again you are overstating the case.”
“But you are aware of the phenomenon?”
“I have heard rumors.”
“Have you taken any provisions against it?”
“Not specifically.”
“So you admit that you allow your students to fend for themselves as an insidious threat spreads among them.”
“Please. We’re not talking about some deadly new virus—”
“In a very real sense, we might be. Improvement spreads in exactly the same fashion as a virulent disease. Outbreaks flare up and fade away, apparently at random. Each time, it disappears, only to reappear later and wreak further havoc.”
Clair reached the street and hurried for a d-mat booth.
“We’re talking about a meme much more sinister than any mere disease,” Dylan was saying, “and I’m not leaving until I am certain that this institution is capable of providing its students with the protection they deserve.”
Clair was at the booth. She dived in and called out the name of her usual station. The video feed died as the lights in the booth flared. She forced herself to stand still and not fidget too much—not that it made any difference to her or the way d-mat worked. The flight of a bullet fired across the booth at the exact moment of transit would have been unaltered in any way. That was the VIA guarantee.
The doors opened in Manteca and Clair began to run.
“Mr. Linwood,” Principal Gordon was saying over the video stream, “I completely agree with you that Manteca New Campus is obliged to protect its students to the fullest extent possible, but we cannot protect them from imaginary threats. I thought I had made this absolutely clear the last time you—”
Twinmaker t-1 Page 8
