Crashland

by Sean Williams

  “This time it’s your choice,” she said, “and I’m asking you to trust me. Nicely. I promise you it’ll be okay.”

  “How can you promise that?”

  She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him long enough to make her point. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a reflection of the two of them in the glass: short and tall, both with so much hair. It worked. That was the only thing she could promise.

  “I guess it’s only fair,” he said in a resigned tone. “You crossed the country the Abstainer way, so now it’s my turn. Besides, the damage has been done. If d-mat does turn you into a zombie, that’s what I am now.”

  Clair hated that word. It reminded her again of his father, who had been unpleasant enough even before being turned into a dupe.

  “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

  He hugged her. “Yes,” he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief into his neck. It was all well and good to stick to one’s principles—admirable, even, and one of the things she liked about him—but being reasonable would keep them together. And staying together was more important than anything else, short of saving the world.

  [14]

  * * *

  BEFORE THE SHUTTERS came down and she was cut off from the Air again, Clair posted a caption. It was a picture of her own face accompanied by the words “Watch this space.” She couldn’t think of anything cleverer than that, and it was the basic message she wanted to convey. The dupes were telling lies about her, and she didn’t know how to stop that at the moment. She could only hope that people wouldn’t make up their minds too firmly, too quickly, and that when she, the real Clair Hill, was able to reappear later they would recognize the person she had always been.

  But was she really that same person anymore? She didn’t know. It wasn’t just the things she had seen and done, and the small matter of being a copy—it was the weirdness of seeing herself do things that she definitely hadn’t done. Her dupes took liberties with her body that no one should ever be able to; their very existence cast her own sense of self into question. When the rest of the world was so easily confused about who she was, even her closest friends, it was hard not to feel that way herself.

  “Ready?” Devin asked when the view of the fighting outside was cut off.

  “Actually,” said PK Drader, raising a hand, “I’m wondering if some of us should peel off. Me and Xia here, for instance: I really should take her into permanent custody. You can come with us to HQ, if you want,” he added for the benefit of the tech. “Cold weather doesn’t agree with me.”

  He winked at Jesse, who didn’t respond. Clair assumed the odd, one-sided camaraderie harked back to when Jesse had been in his custody, while Clair had been interrogated. If it was another good cop/bad cop scenario, then it was doomed to fail with Jesse because he had been raised to think that there weren’t any good cops at all.

  “Very well,” said Forest with a nod. “That is what we will do. If you can arrange it, Devin . . . ?”

  “Easy,” said Devin, pointing at PK Drader, Xia, and the tech. “You three stand to one side. It’ll be simpler to split the pattern that way.”

  Once those words would have sent a shudder of dread through Clair. Altering a pattern was supposed to be dangerous, and it was definitely illegal, but it had happened to her so many times now that she barely thought about it anymore.

  PK Drader and the two women stepped to one side. There was no blood on the floor, but Xia was standing exactly where Zep had fallen dead for the second time.

  “Au revoir,” said PK Drader. “And bon voyage to us all.”

  Clair took Jesse’s hand again and squeezed it tightly. He brought the back of hers up to his lips and kissed it.

  mmmmm-click

  Then her hand was empty, awkwardly upraised, and she was alone with Devin in a cylindrical space approximately ten yards across, with no visible doors or windows. Contorted reflections of her danced in curved mirrors as she twisted to look behind her.

  “What is this?” she asked, alarmed by Jesse’s sudden disappearance. “What went wrong?”

  “Nothing. You’re exactly where I said I’d take you. Look.”

  The mirrored walls turned transparent, revealing a flat, snowy expanse dotted with a dozen black silos mounted on thick struts that speared down into the ice. The sky above was bright blue, dusted with long streaks of white. Streamers of wind swept back and forth across the fields and drifts of snow. It looked like nowhere on Earth.

  She reached instinctively to the Air to orient herself. She had basic access only—no bumps, no chats. Taking neither Devin nor RADICAL at their word, Clair confirmed for herself that she was deep in Queen Maud Land, on the East Antarctica ice sheet, the largest remaining ice sheet on the planet. The temperature outside was forty degrees below zero. She shivered at the thought of it.

  “Is this some kind of trick?” she asked, sweeping the Air aside and rounding on Devin. There was no sign of anyone else but the two of them. They were alone at the bottom of the world. If he thought that made her his prisoner . . .

  He backed away from her with his hands upraised, as though she were about to attack him. “No trick, honest. I just want to talk to you alone.”

  “About what? About why I should trust you?”

  She proffered the hand that had until seconds ago been holding Jesse’s. She could still feel the faint pressure of his lips against her skin.

  “This is so not helping,” she said.

  “Just hear me out, will you?”

  “You’ve got one minute.” What she would do at the end of that minute she didn’t know, but it was important for him to know that she wasn’t a pushover.

  “There’s another ideological war going on,” he said, “and you need to be clear about who’s on the winning side.”

  “I’m not going to join WHOLE,” she said. “I thought that was obvious.”

  “It is, but I’ll be honest and say that it’d be easier if you did. WHOLE and its goons are predictable, within certain parameters. You know, I was surprised today, when they came out lobbing bombs at the dupes. They’re usually so self-limiting, too busy looking backward to see what lies ahead. Most people are, so don’t take offense when I say that you’re no different. You’re not looking back quite as far, that’s all.”

  “Again,” she said, “if you’re trying to win me over, great job.”

  “This isn’t about talking you into something you don’t want to do, Clair. I’m just trying to put RADICAL in perspective. We may not agree on everything, but we’re unquestionably your allies. You just haven’t realized that yet. Look in your right hip holster.”

  “I don’t have . . .”

  A holster, she was about to say. But she looked down and discovered that she did, one containing a sleek automatic pistol.

  “Did the PKs arm you?” he asked. “Of course they didn’t. They want you dependent on them. We want you to make up your own mind. We . . .”

  He stopped and looked around in puzzlement and alarm. The booth was humming around them like a giant metal beehive.

  mmmmm—

  “This shouldn’t be—”

  —click

  “—happening. How did you get in here?”

  PK Sargent put herself between Devin and Clair.

  “I’m a PK,” she said. “We’re not completely useless. Are you all right, Clair? Has he tried to hurt you?”

  “No,” she said, surprised but glad to see her. “Where’s Jesse?”

  Sargent pointed out into the Antarctic at one of the twelve silos. “See that tank there, third along? He and the Inspector are okay, if a little confused as to where you disappeared to.”

  “What’s wrong with wanting to talk in private?” Devin asked, from the side of the tank he’d edged into, away from both Clair and Sargent.

  Sargent turned on him again, her expression severe.

  “Privacy is a privilege, not a right,” she said. “You can earn that privilege now by doing less talkin
g, more communicating.”

  He exhaled as though the world wearied him. “Fine. You and your Inspector friend are bad influences on Clair. That’s what this is about. You encourage the perception that someone’s going to wave a magic wand and d-mat will be fixed so everyone can go back to school, work, whatever. Clair needs to know that this is unlikely ever to happen, and that it would be a bad thing if it did.”

  “I’m right here,” she said. She was quite capable of making up her own mind, if people gave her the right information. “What are you talking about?”

  “The cat is out of the bag,” he said, “and this time I don’t mean Q. D-mat is the second most powerful technology on the planet. But unlike AI, unregulated d-mat is unquestionably a good thing. The collapse of VIA is not the disaster everyone thinks it is. It’s an opportunity.”

  “Not if you use it for something illegal,” said Sargent.

  “Like duping?” said Clair.

  Devin looked wounded. “Absolutely not. I’m as morally opposed to everything Wallace did and may still be doing as you are. I want him and his army stopped, and soon—before people get the wrong idea about what d-mat is and what it can do for us.”

  “I come into this . . . where?” asked Clair.

  “Isn’t that obvious? You have the ear of someone very powerful—if not now, then maybe again in the future. With her in our camp, we’d carry the day for sure.”

  Clair sighed in frustration. It always came back to this. “You sound pretty confident that you could convince her when you can’t even find her.”

  “I think it’s connected. There’s no current legal framework in which she’s allowed to exist. Only RADICAL offers any chance of providing that framework, so it’s in her best interests to talk to us. All she has to do is prove that we can trust her. You’ll tell her that, won’t you? You won’t tell her we definitely want to get rid of her or anything? Because that would be wrong.”

  “She’s way too useful for that. Sure.”

  “Hey, Sarcasm Queen, you want to use her too—only you want to do it to restore the status quo.”

  “You say that as though it’s a bad thing,” said Sargent. “Why?”

  Devin smacked his forehead with one hand. “So conservative . . . and so predictable! From you of all people. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. Wallace ran rings around the PKs for years because you never thought anyone in his position would be so audacious. And he knew that. Absolute power, PK Sargent, lies not always in kings and presidents. Don’t think we’re safe just because we don’t have them anymore.”

  “What do you mean ‘from me of all people’?” Sargent asked, a dangerous look in her eyes.

  “Billie” was all he said. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  Clair didn’t, and the way Sargent and Devin were glaring at each other suggested that she wasn’t going to be told anytime soon.

  “Stop arguing,” she said. “You’ve had your say, Devin. I’ll think about it. All right?”

  Devin’s expression didn’t change. Clearly he didn’t feel like he had had his say at all.

  “All right,” he said, rubbing his right cheek with slender, well-manicured fingers. “I’ll take you to Jesse, if that’s what you want.”

  She nodded. “And leave us alone for a while, both of you.”

  “Is that okay with you, Sarge?”

  The peacekeeper nodded. To Clair she said, “I’m close by if you need help. We’ll bump you with any major developments but won’t disturb you unless something dramatic happens.”

  “This far south,” Devin said, “you don’t even see penguins.”

  [15]

  * * *

  THE TANK HUMMED and clicked, and Clair was suddenly in Tank Six, where she found Jesse looking flustered and unhappy. He too had been d-matted to their new location, and he wasn’t pleased about it.

  “You asked me to trust you,” he said, pacing the room, banging the curved wall with his knuckles. It rang like a gong, but the icy view was unchanged. “There’s no reason to keep doing this. Why can’t we just walk?”

  “It’s cold outside,” Clair said, reminded of a creepy old song Oz liked to sing after a couple of drinks, about some guy trying to pressure a girl into staying over because of the weather. It drove her mom crazy.

  “So why build down here at all?” Jesse’s question was a good one. “What happens if we want something to eat—do we have to go through all that again?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” She was beginning to get annoyed herself. “And so what if we do? Isn’t it worth it to get Libby back? And your dad?”

  “That’s never going to happen,” he snapped.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You really think the PKs will let us bring them back, even if we find their patterns?”

  “If we can prove they’re still alive. We saw them in the station, after all—you saw them—”

  “I’m not testifying to bring them back. They’re dead, Clair. Get over it.”

  She thought of Zep’s shattered face. “Don’t say that.”

  With a soft sound, a rectangle appeared in the Antarctic plain and a head poked through a door that hadn’t been there before. Clair swung around at the intrusion, ready to tell the person who had interrupted them to get the hell out. She and Jesse had never argued before. Like they needed an audience.

  The head belonged to a girl of around nine years old, with long, sun-bleached hair in braids. She was wearing white jeans and a pink flowered top. Clair was startled. The last thing she had expected to see in a research station at the South Pole was a child.

  “Mom says we’re ready for you to come on down now,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  Clair stared at her in confusion, unable for a moment to speak.

  “No,” said Jesse.

  “Come down anyway,” the girl said. “It’s nicer in the garden.”

  Garden?

  The girl retreated through the hatch, which stayed open so they could follow. There was a short metal landing on the other side, with a ladder leading downward, presumably through one of the tank’s thick legs into the ice cap.

  The girl was already several yards down the ladder. Clair hurried to keep up. Warm yellow light rose up to meet her. The ladder emerged from the roof of a large chamber that had been hacked out of the ice and insulated from the cold. Vines tangled along the rungs of the ladder as Clair passed between spreading tree branches and palm fronds. The air was thick and warm, and smelled of green. Sunlight shone from the ceiling, either a convincing replica or piped down from the outside. Somewhere, water was trickling. There were bees.

  At the bottom of the ladder Clair stepped onto a thick, mossy mat that had the springiness of soil. The undergrowth was thick and dark, and something mouse-sized rustled to her left, as though reacting to her appearance.

  The girl was waiting for her at the bend in a path that led deeper into the underground forest, waving for her to follow. Clair looked up, considered waiting, but decided not to stick around for Jesse. He wasn’t far behind. He would find them.

  The girl led Clair to a clearing in the heart of the cave, where a woman who looked like an older version of the girl was waiting for them. Same hair, same oval face, same quartz-gray eyes, same smile. Clearly her mother.

  “Welcome,” said the woman. “My name is Hassannah. Devin asked us to meet you here. We hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  In the center of the clearing was a thick camping rug. Rolled up nearby, two sleeping bags.

  “Thanks,” said Clair, remembering to be polite. “That’s very kind of you. What is here, exactly?”

  “If you get hungry,” said the girl, ignoring her question or just not interested in it, “you can help yourself to anything in here.” She waved one arm theatrically, taking in the entire cave. “The fruit and vegetables are all edible, and so are the mushrooms, and most of the leaves, too. There are nuts, but you need to cook them. I can do that for you, if
you want.”

  She looked so eager, Clair didn’t have the heart to say no, but Hassannah intervened.

  “Not right now, Akili,” she said. “Maybe later. Our guests are tired.”

  “Thanks, Akili,” said Jesse from behind Clair. She hadn’t heard him arrive. “This is amazing.”

  He was looking around with a delighted expression, and the girl practically danced on the spot.

  “There’s a spring over there for drinking,” she said, pointing. “You use your hands.”

  “Facilities past the old oak,” said Hassannah helpfully. “We’ll leave you to rest now.”

  “Why?” asked Clair before they could go. “I mean, why is all this here?”

  Hassannah smiled. “We believe in making contingency plans.”

  “Contingent against what?” asked Jesse.

  “Humanity almost destroyed the world once. It could easily do so again.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “We take turns tending the gardens,” said the girl, shaking her head. “Today is our turn. If you’d come tomorrow, you would’ve met Sam and Kanathia.”

  “So this place is a kind of ark?”

  “A refuge,” said Hassannah. “One of many.”

  When Clair had first met Devin, he had said something grandiose about protecting the interests of future humans. Maybe he had meant it exactly as it sounded. Maybe there were similar enclaves under each of the twelve silos visible at the surface. Maybe each was a different kind of environment—jungle, plains, desert, farm . . .

  Just in case Q goes crazy and kills us all, Clair wanted to say sourly, but she didn’t want to scare the girl.

  “We’ll leave you now,” said the woman. “Questions can wait until the morning.”

  Tugging her daughter by the hand, Hassannah continued along the path and vanished into the foliage. Clair heard Akili say something about Jesse’s hair, but any reply was cut off by the sighing of another door.

  Clair and Jesse were alone, exactly as she had requested. But it wasn’t how she had expected it to be. The argument had merely been paused, not finished. Some questions couldn’t wait.