Libby signed off and Clair fell silent.
Jesse considered contacting her, and even went so far as to begin composing a bump telling her where he was and what had happened, and how relieved he was that she was safe. But then he erased it and replaced it with something much shorter, which after several minutes of circular thought he sent on an impulse. Being so uncertain, he decided, might actually be worse than any negative consequences of acting.
Clair, is everything okay?
He waited for her to reply, feeling his palms begin to sweat.
When the words appeared in his lenses, his puzzlement only deepened.
I think you’ve got the wrong person.
He stared at the words in his infield, reading them over and over. Was she sending him a subtle signal to go away? Was she in danger? Maybe she was trapped in an uncanny loop of her own, unable to break free and help either him or herself. Not that he wanted her help. He didn’t want her to d-mat into the bubble in which he was trapped. He couldn’t bear the thought that anything he did might cause her harm.
Could she be a dupe … ?
His heart was troubled. What would he do without her? He wasn’t just thinking about how to survive. He was thinking about kissing her again, feeling her against him after so long imagining it, and wishing that moment had lasted longer so he could properly remember it.
Perhaps it was time to move on, he told himself with a sigh. In at least one sense of the phrase …
11
At Ninth and Thirty-first he almost ran into the same squad of dupes he had fled from before. Retracing his steps to Seventh and Thirty-first he looked at the buildings around him for somewhere he could hide.
‘Psst!’ The sound came from his right.
He was caught in the very act of fleeing. A split-second later and he would have been gone.
Through the open entranceway of an apartment building someone waved for him to approach. ‘In here!’
Warily, Jesse did as he was told. ‘Who are you?’ He was ready to run at the slightest provocation.
‘Does that matter right now? I’m not one of them, that’s the main thing.’
As Jesse came nearer he saw that the waving hand belonged to a woman in her fifties with short white hair and practical clothes that had obviously been made by hand. An Abstainer.
‘You were with that girl, Clair,’ she said. ‘I saw you as you came through the islands. That’s right, isn’t it?’
Jesse nodded, introducing himself. In return he learned that the woman’s name was Marcia.
‘Did it do any good?’ Marcia asked him. ‘You coming here?’
‘I’m still working that out.’
Her stare was insightful. ‘Didn’t think so.’
She led him into the building. The lobby contained a communal d-mat booth, its door propped open by a brick so no one could d-mat into it.
‘That’s where they killed me,’ Marcia said, giving the booth a baleful glare. ‘Beats me why they brought me back. But if it means I can help you, that’s something. Come on through.’
He followed her deeper into the building and up two flights of stairs. The apartment block had seen better days. Paint was peeling from the walls. The air smelled of mildew and human sweat, and something sharper – an acrid tang that reminded Jesse of something he couldn’t quite put a name to. It was quiet. The only sound came from their footfalls, which accordingly seemed very loud.
Marcia led him to a locked apartment door and produced a key. On the other side of the door was her home: a large, L-shaped space with glazed windows down one wall. The air smelled of rosemary and thyme as well as that other scent, stronger than ever in here. There was a kitchen and a small potted garden growing at the far window. The furniture was in a state of disarray, as though someone had turned the apartment upside down.
‘Haven’t cleaned up after the dupes yet,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t sure there was any point, not if they were only going to come back and finish the job – which they still might.’
She stood motionless in her kitchen, all bones and lined skin, looking much older than she had before and haunted with it. Jesse could understand how she felt. She had been forcibly copied, which meant her face and body might have been used to betray friends and loved ones, perhaps many times, without her knowledge. Jesse was sure that not knowing only made it easier to imagine the worst.
‘Are you … ?’ He wasn’t sure how to finish the question, but he knew he had to say something. ‘Did you live here alone?’
His words broke the spell that had momentarily gripped her. ‘No. I’ve got Jerry, Violet, Nico, and Tolliver. Perhaps you’ll help me look for them when everything goes back to normal. I haven’t seen them since I woke up downstairs, in the booth.’
Her haunted look found a focus, but at least she was back with him again.
‘And they are … ?’
‘My cats.’
Of course. That explained the smell. ‘Maybe they were frightened off.’
‘Probably. But it’s weird they haven’t come back. It’s been hours now, and they must be hungry. I hope …’ Her bottom lip pulled in, making her look vulnerable. ‘I hope they still recognise me.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ he said, although he knew nothing at all about the effect of d-mat on pets and their owners. Maybe cats could tell the difference between a real person and an identical copy.
‘Tea?’ Marcia asked him.
‘Uh, sure.’
And so they had tea, sitting on two chairs that Jesse righted. Marcia briefly explained that her parents had become Abstainers after a friend died during a d-mat jump: she’d arrived at her destination with the wrong blood type in her veins.
‘A simple thing,’ she said. ‘One of so many things that could go wrong. Why would anyone ever use d-mat?’
‘We’ve done it,’ Jesse said, as gently as he could. ‘Don’t you still feel like you?’
‘I guess.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘But I’d say that, wouldn’t I, even if I was a copy? I’d have to believe it, or else why go on pretending to live at all?’
12
When Jesse had finished his tea, he decided to put his theory into words for the first time. It sounded crazy even as he told Marcia, but he needed to get it out into the world, where it would be either deified or damned by the evidence.
‘I think we were put in storage somewhere,’ he said. ‘Our patterns, I mean, after we were null-jumped. I think the dupes do that routinely so they can use us as spies or whatever, if they need us later. Maybe they had specific plans for us. We don’t know, because all we remember is the last thing that happened to the real us – the versions who were copied. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Marcia grunted. Jesse took that as a cue to continue.
‘Then something happened, and all the dupes and all of us – everyone in their massive database of saved patterns – were pulled out of storage at once. That’s why everyone has come back from the dead. Maybe things went badly for Wallace and his backup kicked in, along with everyone else’s. Hopefully things did go badly for him, and he’s lost, and someone’s coming to get this version of him soon.
‘Anyway, we didn’t really go anywhere. We just arrived back where we started, at the other end of the null-jump. And everything around us is weird now. Space folds over itself; people pop in and out like they’re d-matting without booths—’
‘Is that why there’s hardly anyone here?’ Marcia interrupted. ‘You’re the only person I’ve seen apart from the dupes, but lots of other people used d-mat. Were we the only people who were in storage? Who were useful to the dupes?’
‘I guess so,’ he said. He hadn’t considered that.
‘Well, lucky them,’ she said. ‘Who wants to live a lie?’
Jesse felt for her. Hard-line Abstainers believed that using d-mat erased the soul. He’d believed that too, at least in theory – but now, knowing Clair and having gone through d-mat himself, he was doubting that. He
certainly seemed real enough.
Jesse didn’t think most people who used d-mat had ever doubted the reality of their existence. They might even be fine with coming back from an old pattern, assuming there weren’t two of them walking around at the same time. That would be a total headfuck.
He was only guessing, though, how ordinary people thought. His experience was that they didn’t think about the philosophical implications of d-mat at all, until things went wrong.
‘It feels like we’re outnumbered at the moment,’ he said, ‘but maybe that’s only because we’re close to Wallace’s HQ. There must be people like us who have been duped all over the world. There’d be safety in numbers if we all got together.’
‘So why don’t you?’
He explained his inability to travel more than a few blocks, and then described the even more puzzling matter of Theo and Cashile and their magical teleporting electrobike.
If he could work out how they did that then he could round up Clair and his father, find somewhere safe to hide from the dupes …
‘What’s the point?’ She looked searchingly around the room. ‘My cats never went through d-mat. I’m going to go crazy here without them.’
On a scale of potential tragedies it was a minor one. But that was the terrible thing about Wallace’s secret work: every tragedy was deep and personal to those involved. Jesse had lost his father. And Clair … his Clair …
He realised why Clair had sounded so different when he had checked in on her through the Air. She’d sounded like she had at school, before Libby used Improvement. She wasn’t the version of herself that he had known, but an earlier version, taken the night she had gone to the crashlander ball.
So his instinct to bump her and make sure she was okay had been wrong. Why would she care if he was worried? To this Clair, he was nothing but a kid at school she barely noticed, except for when he was being different to everyone else.
There wasn’t even a sign of this Clair in the Air now. Wherever she was, she was keeping her head down, which was undoubtedly a good thing. The dupes might have been wrong-footed like everyone else, but they were catching up fast. The last thing he wanted to think was that she had been already captured, or worse …
He thought of the kiss again, and the concern his Clair had shown for him in the trap. She cared. Or at least she had.
The thought of losing his Clair, or of having to start over with the other one if the stars ever aligned again, made him feel as alone and despondent as Marcia.
But giving in now would mean Wallace was certain to win. Marcia was probably right. The dupes would come back to see if she was still there, wary of known threats so close to HQ. If they did, she and Jesse would be cornered.
What would my Clair do? he asked himself. Would she sit around drinking tea and feeling sorry for herself?
He didn’t think so.
The question of whether she even liked tea was one he vowed to explore, if the plan he came up with had the slightest chance of working.
13
What Jesse needed was somewhere out in the open, somewhere Cashile and Theo could jump back to …
When he described this necessity to Marcia, she said, ‘Greeley Square’s not far from here. It might be inside the bubble and there’s space for a bike to get a good run-up.’
Jessed checked the Air. Greeley Square was between Sixth and Broadway, a full block east. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’
‘Well, if you’re going out there, I’d better come with you.’
He was about to protest when she opened a cupboard next to the sink, revealing not pots and pans but a small arsenal of rifles and pistols. She offered him a weapon, shrugged when he turned it down, and tucked it into the back of her pants. ‘In case you change your mind later.’
Jesse knew he wouldn’t. There had been plenty of opportunities in the last few days to take up arms – and arguably good reasons to do so – but he had stayed firm to his convictions. Guns weren’t long-term solutions. They were certainly no substitute for brains.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
He blinked out of his thoughts. Some soldier he’d make, standing around thinking about how clever he was while everyone else locked and loaded.
‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
14
They left the apartment block and eased out into the street, first making certain that it was clear of dupes. They ran lightly and quickly. Every faint sound made Jesse nervous.
As they crossed Sixth Avenue and turned north, the bark of distant gunfire forced them under cover. The irregular chatter continued for a minute, between at least two parties, according to Marcia, and then ceased. All guns sounded the same to Jesse. They waited a minute, and then resumed their crouched scurry.
Sixth Avenue was a claustrophobic canyon with too many shadows. Luckily the trees of Greeley Square were visible dead ahead, and they made short work of the distance. When they were safely under the cover of the boughs, they squatted and caught their breath.
‘Your friends,’ said Marcia. ‘They’ll find you here?’
Jesse nodded. He had to believe that. ‘I’d bump them but I don’t know if that would be safe. That could be how the dupes tracked us last time.’
Marcia nodded. ‘Giving away our position would be bad.’
‘You don’t have to wait—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. If the dupes catch you, you’ll only lead them right back to me.’
She grinned to indicate that she was joking, and Jesse was struck by her change in mood. Maybe it was the knowledge that there were others like her left in the world. Maybe it was having a purpose. Either way, he was glad she wasn’t home alone, moping, so he didn’t feel compelled to argue.
Also, having Marica around made him feel safer. He didn’t like guns, but he didn’t disapprove of people who did – if they were on his side.
They waited half an hour, shifting position every time it seemed that dupes might be nearby. There was more gunfire, and voices calling though they were too far away to make out the words. As the minutes crawled by, Jesse fretted that something bad might have happened to Cashile and Theo, which only made being stuck in Manhattan even worse. If he could just work out what they had done, and then do it himself …
‘Attention!’ boomed a voice from further north along Sixth Avenue. ‘Everything is under control. There is no reason to panic.’
Jesse and Marcia moved carefully through the trees, seeking the source of the broadcast. Down the middle of Broadway walked a woman with a megaphone, flanked by two men in blue peacekeeper uniforms.
‘If you require assistance, please make yourself known,’ the woman went on. ‘The interim emergency taskforce will explain the situation and ensure you’re safe.’
‘Could be a ruse,’ Marcia breathed. ‘Let’s wait and see what happens.’
Jesse was inclined to agree. He had been taught to mistrust the PKs almost as assiduously as d-mat. Also, peacekeeper uniforms were easily fabbed.
The woman turned right into Thirty-third Street, repeating her message as she went. Halfway along the block, a couple in their forties emerged from a building that looked like an old hotel. There was a brief conversation that Jesse couldn’t make out, and then more peacekeepers arrived from Sixth Avenue to take the pair elsewhere. The couple went willingly enough, but Jesse remained uneasy. Even if these were the good guys, Jesse’s experience told him they would still gave Abstainers a hard time.
Better to stay hidden, he and Marcia decided after a quick, whispered conversation.
Then the sound of an electrobike reached their ears. It fluttered and danced, and seemed for an instant as though it might fade into silence before coming back stronger than ever.
‘Uh-oh,’ he said. ‘That’s them.’
‘Your friends, Theo and Cashile?’ Marcia asked. ‘Can’t help rotten timing. Let’s see what the gang here do in response.’
The woman with the megaphone ceased talking as though
she’d noticed the sound. There was a moment’s conferral, then people began emerging from the buildings lining the roads, presumably using the d-mat booths within to travel here from elsewhere. From outside the bubble? Jesse couldn’t know. They weren’t wearing uniforms, and Jesse recognised two of the dupes he had seen in Wallace’s HQ. They were all armed.
For a fleeting second Jesse wished he too could use d-mat. It would make the perfect escape: quick, painless (he now knew), and in theory untraceable.
Given that Wallace still seemed to be calling the shots, though, Jesse wasn’t about to break a lifetime’s habit. There had to be another way to avoid a disaster.
‘Shit,’ Marcia said, raising a pistol in each hand.
‘I can try to tell Theo to go away,’ Jesse said, wondering if his bumps would reach Theo and Cashile while they were traveling. However they were traveling.
‘That could get us caught, too.’
‘We have to do something!’
Marcia shushed him. ‘It’s okay. I have plan. What we need is a distraction.’
He nodded, grateful that she was taking charge. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘You go that way.’ She pointed north to where the park met Thirty-third Street. ‘I’ll lead them along Thirty-second until I hit the edge of the bubble and jump back to the other side.’
‘But … you have to come with me.’
‘Oh, sure. Doesn’t have to be right now, though. Besides, this is my city, and I’m going to fight for it.’ She grinned out of the shadows, giving him a flash of her perfectly white teeth. He wondered, irrelevantly, if they were false. ‘Don’t worry about me. You just concentrate on getting out of here and putting that army of yours together.’
‘What army?’
‘You know, the people like us who were duped against our will. Get them all in one spot, you said. Safety in numbers, you said. Well, screw safety. Fight back, I say. Come back and get me when you’re done. Me and my cats.’
With that, Marcia was off, before Jesse could so much as think about stopping her. She ran, hunchbacked, from cover to cover, passing the dupes on the western side of the park without being seen.
Redux Page 3
