Counterpart

by Hayley Stone

  “If you have to ask…” Kapoor murmurs.

  “Do you think they’re sincere?” Hawking directs her question to Camus, specifically, in a steady tone that volunteers none of her own thoughts.

  Camus pauses—an answer in and of itself, though nobody has the balls to comment on it. “Maybe, though it hardly matters. They’ll need us as much as we them if anyone’s going to have a prayer of combating the machines and retaking the continent. In truth, I don’t find the idea of forming a joint cabinet entirely without merit either. This”—he gestures to our little group of politicians—“was never meant to be a permanent form of government. We’ll need something larger and more stable moving into the future.”

  I shift in my seat, the chair’s rigid back still trying to throw my spine out of alignment. “Is there any room for negotiation?” I ask. “Maybe a trial period?”

  “We’re not dealing with a magazine subscription,” Camus says, “or an online-dating site.”

  “So, what? Compatibility is a nonissue?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  Farther down the table, Samuel coughs into his fist. I realize Camus and I have absorbed the entire council’s attention in our brief tête-à-tête. Which is a nice way of saying we’re bickering like an old married couple. Not exactly a morale booster. Although at this point, anyone present who doesn’t suspect we’re having relationship troubles must be either blind or willfully ignorant.

  “We may not have the luxury of deciding who we climb into bed with,” Camus continues in a calmer tone, while I try to ignore the pain radiating up from my tailbone. This freaking chair.

  “And if we decline their offer?” Kapoor asks.

  “For as little as they possess, the Soviets still have a tremendous amount of pride.”

  “You’re saying if they don’t get their way, they’ll take their toys and go home,” I say.

  “Not necessarily, but it will certainly put a strain on our relationship,” Camus answers, quickly clarifying, “McKinley and Chersky, that is.”

  I study Camus while the other council members discuss the finer points of such an agreement—the change in power structure, its pitfalls, and so on. His brow remains furrowed throughout the debate, and despite contributing a word here and there, he rarely looks up from his small black tablet. Even then, it’s only to occasionally glance at me. His green eyes break down the moisture in my mouth, but don’t vacate my mind. What are you up to, Camus?

  “Commander Long?” Albany’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answer honestly. Better to be thought a fool, I think, than to act like one by jumping the gun with such an important decision. “An alliance is vital to the resistance and, when it comes down to it, the Soviets’ request isn’t extreme or uncalled for. They’re already here; maybe they should have some say in how things are run. Plus, we could always use more boots on the ground outside the base.

  “At the same time, I share many of the council’s concerns. McKinley has its secrets.” Me, for one. “Its weak spots. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the Soviets knowing them. And quite frankly, I don’t think Commander Forsyth’s made a strong enough case for such a merger.” That last line might be an unnecessary dig, but it’s also the truth.

  Camus fastens his lips together. I know he wants to say something.

  Go ahead, I think. Show your hand.

  In the end, he remains silent.

  “Perhaps it’s best to table this discussion until after we finish with Calgary,” Hawking offers after the empty stretch. “One crisis at a time.”

  “Agreed,” I say, then to Camus, “Can you stall the Russians a little longer?”

  He spins his stylus once around his thumb. “Possibly. They’ll want an answer sooner rather than later.”

  “We’ll have one for them,” Hawking assures him.

  Just maybe not the one they—or you—want, I think.

  “Enough of this. Let’s get down to the real reason we’re here,” Cordier says impatiently. Like some of his colleagues, he’s elected to bring his own beverage to the meeting: a plastic bottle filled with clear liquid that could be water, vodka, or tequila. I’m not sitting close enough to smell his breath so I can’t tell. Thankfully. Cordier screws and unscrews the cap while he speaks. “The Calgary mission needs to happen now. No more excuses. No more postponements.”

  For once, I agree with Cordier. “He’s right. We need to stop talking about the mission and commit to a launch date.”

  “You sound like you already have one in mind,” Hawking says.

  “The end of the week.”

  Kapoor frowns. “That’s in three days.”

  Thank you, Captain Obvious. “Plenty of time to put together the strike force,” I say. “I have people in mind, and we already have the resources in place.”

  After all, I almost add, visiting Calgary isn’t like popping down to the local grocery mart. Leaving aside the fact it’s in another country, the old Cowtown is occupied entirely by machines, deep in enemy territory. Getting there will require the use of some of our best stealth technology—which really hasn’t advanced much since the beginning of the war. The machines murdered many of our best minds, and captured the rest. If they’re still alive somewhere—if—the machines have likely digested all their knowledge by now.

  “I still don’t see why we don’t just drop bombs on the city and have done with it,” another council member farther down the table grumbles. “Incendiary, maybe.”

  “Because it would be a waste of resources, for one,” Camus says. “Not to mention, we wouldn’t receive confirmation that the bombs even hit their intended targets from such a distance away. To say nothing of the machines themselves, many of which can withstand temperatures upwards of 1100 degrees Celsius.”

  “What about a bigger bomb? More bombs?”

  Camus pins his stylus to the table. “Shall I convert that number for you to Fahrenheit?”

  “Our goal isn’t scrapping machines,” I remind the council member, “though that’s always a nice perk. The purpose of Calgary, in case any of you have forgotten”—I level my gaze at the rest of the members seated around the table—“is to get in and get out. No muss, no fuss. And above all, no casualties. If everything goes according to plan, it should be a quick slam dunk for humanity.”

  Camus grimaces at my metaphor. I’ll admit it’s not my best, but I think I made my point. Samuel smiles a little, shaking his head slightly.

  “You seem awfully casual about hunting down your fellow clones,” Hawking remarks.

  I jerk back in my chair. “Hunting down? Who said anything about killing them?”

  With a few gestures, Hawking summons a map of Calgary to the table’s LED surface. By the way others lean forward, craning their neck to see around my chair, I guess she’s also put something on the wall of screens behind me. I have to physically turn my body around to see—another reason why this layout is so ridiculous. The edge of the chair grinds into my thighs.

  “According to the proposal you set forth,” she says, “which we’ve already agreed on, the objective is to eliminate the clones as weapons the higher echelon can use against us.”

  “Yes,” I agree slowly, “by liberating them from the machines. Not murdering them in cold blood.”

  When I try to meet my colleagues’ eyes, I find a surprising number of them have suddenly become obsessed with their tablets and other devices. The temperature of the room has drastically shifted. I could lick my finger, lift it into the air, and feel it. I’m sailing into the wind.

  “And then what?” Hawking rests her hands on the table, obscuring what looks like a small park. “Do you imagine we might rehabilitate them? We’ve all heard your story of the clone who staged the attack on McKinley. After so much time as prisoners, the others will be just as broken, emotionally as well as physically. The damage to their psyches may be irreparable.”

  “Emphasis on t
he may. You don’t know for sure.”

  “Actually, we do. Doctor Lewis?”

  Samuel sits up, his expression freezing into automatic apology.

  “Weren’t you the one who told us the clones would be physically disabled? Isn’t that why, in addition to the testimonial of Miss Lefevre’s machine, we believe they’re in Calgary at all? Because, and I quote”—Hawking reads from her tablet, obviously prepared for resistance—“ ‘Calgary makes sense. It’s one of the closest cities with the facilities necessary to prevent a rapid deterioration of the clones’ health.’ ”

  “Let’s not forget the fact that our technicians also managed to confirm Calgary as the source of the phony broadcasts,” I point out, trying to insert myself back into the conversation, hoping to shield Samuel from the councilwoman. I haven’t forgotten the dangerous look in her eyes when she interrogated Dopey, or her creative and ugly threats toward the machine when she thought it was resisting her. It’s not a stretch to imagine her throwing a person on the rack, if it got her answers. Like hell, I’ll let her hang Samuel. “We know they all originated somewhere in that area.”

  “Indeed,” she admits. “But right now, we’re discussing the subject of the clones’ health. Their location is peripheral. Doctor Lewis?”

  Samuel organizes a collection of styli in front of him from smallest to largest. I can see the wheels turning in his head, trying to craft an answer that Hawking can’t use as a bludgeon against me. “Yes. That’s true, but—”

  “There. You see?” Hawking speaks over him, directly to me, and then widens her gaze to the rest of the table. “The clones will be more liability than asset. Just extending their lives will put a drain on McKinley’s medical resources. Finite resources that could go toward helping our sick and wounded…”

  “Councilwoman. With respect, Councilwoman.” Samuel has to repeat himself to get past Hawking’s monologue. “You didn’t let me finish.”

  She gives him a stiff nod to continue.

  “It’s true, I have no idea what condition any of the clones will be in after all this time,” Samuel admits. “But if they were brought to Calgary, it stands to reason the higher echelon is doing everything in their power to keep them alive.”

  He doesn’t say how exactly, but he doesn’t need to. Considering their massive databases, the machines are the gatekeepers to a vast archive of human knowledge, including our understanding of medicine. They also have the practical skills. In some of the finest hospitals all over the world, machines used to perform both supervised and autonomous surgeries. Not to mention their work as field medics back in the day.

  I think of Ulrich, his life preserved only so he could be tortured for months. I think of what the other Rhona told me about the clones, their personalities mutilated by violence and the threat of death. I clench the table’s edge. What are the machines doing to my genetic sisters—at this very moment in time—while we sit here dithering?

  “What about the one who attacked Commander Long?” Cordier asks.

  “What about her?” Samuel replies.

  “You said she was suffering from throm-something, thrombosis…”

  “Thrombocytopenia,” Matt chimes in.

  Everyone turns to look at him, seated fourth from the end, beside Kapoor. It’s the first time he’s spoken this whole meeting, and most of the previous council meetings.

  He looks tired. Shadows have gathered under his eyes, and he rests his arms on the table, not so much lazily; more as if for support. I think I know the reason, too. Commander Pan isn’t doing well. Her recovery suffered a setback when she threw a clot last week, and despite Matt’s best efforts to treat her, it’s not looking good. That’s ignoring the strain his other patients are putting on him, too. The attack carved McKinley into a new shape, and some of its occupants weren’t spared the same, ugly cost. Those who lost limbs, or were otherwise disfigured by the blasts, haven’t had the luxury of forgetting the horrors of that day like the rest of us—nor do the doctors who are continuing to treat them.

  “She had low blood-platelet levels,” he says, “making her more susceptible to bruising. Later, when she was stabbed, it caused her to clot at a slower rate. The idiopathic nature of the condition ordinarily makes it difficult to judge its cause, but as I mentioned in a previous session, the autopsy revealed an aggressive form of lymphoma. The machines attempted to treat her with chemotherapy, causing the hair loss, but it is unlikely it would have given her more than a few months to live. She was late stage.”

  No one besides me notices how Renee has gone rigid at the mention of blood cancer. I wonder how her own treatments are going; she never speaks of them, or about how she’s feeling. Is she afraid? Angry or bitter? The instinct to survive drove Crazy Rhona to acts of terrorism and attempted murder. What does Renee feel driven to accomplish before she dies? Does she view McKinley as her legacy as much as I do? Is this why she’s been behaving so erratically?

  “Right,” Cordier says. “If the machines are so concerned about the well-being of these clones, why send out their most vulnerable?”

  “Maybe the others are in worse condition,” Kapoor volunteers.

  The table responds with a murmur of agreement, while Cordier’s question strikes me like a punch in the chest. I’ve had a month to stew about the whole matter, thinking about my clone attacker, what motivated her and why she had to die—why I had to be the one left holding the knife—and I have a different interpretation.

  “Or maybe she was never meant to survive,” I tell him. “McKinley was a suicide mission. So the machines sent the one clone they knew was a goner either way.”

  Only someone with my stubborn brain chemistry would try and transform it into something more. Make the best of an impossible situation. The machines promised her Camus would live; they never promised she would be with him, but still she tried. It’s our fatal flaw—every Rhona, everywhere, regardless of the time of our births or our mounting fears. This is our legacy: We try. Past the point where any sane, reasonable person would give up, we soldier on, like idiots or heroes, stewards of our own fate. We goddamn try. We never stop trying.

  I look over at Camus, catching his eyes.

  Well. Almost never.

  At that moment, everything around me feels like it disappears underwater—I can’t hear or see anything but him. Camus doesn’t smile, but I swear I feel him reaching out, begging me for something—something I can’t give him right now. This body can’t belong to him and McKinley at the same time; these thoughts can’t be wasted on tenderness and desperate affection when they also have to pilot hundreds to survival. What were the lines to that poem he gave me once? My blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom…

  Wrong. Kisses are a distraction, and my blood doesn’t know what it wants. It’s just blood. There but for a small prick of a needle, or a well-placed bullet…

  Yet contrary to my mind, my heart still speeds up in the heat of his stare. That traitorous organ. I drop my gaze, quickly tuning back to the debate.

  Samuel, Cordier, and several other council members are arguing about the ethics of “mercy killing” (Cordier’s words) when Hawking interrupts, raising her voice to be heard above the din. “Doctor, your morality is admirable, and your heart may be in the right place. Nevertheless, I have to wonder if its origins are grounded in genuine philanthropy or your own self-interest.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say leaping to Samuel’s defense.

  “Only that any creator would be protective of his creation.”

  A hush settles over the table, the implication clear. Forget my sailing into the wind analogy. This is a damn shot across the bow.

  “That was out of line,” I answer stiffly, scooting forward on my chair and sitting up, trying to seem taller than I am.

  Hawking doesn’t appear remotely apologetic. “I disagree. This is a discussion that should’ve been had ages ago. Its relevance now should be obvious. It was one of Doctor Lewis’s clones w
ho attacked us. One of his clones who continues to set traps for resistance factions, making us look like incompetent fools. He should answer for that.”

  “She…makes a good point, Commander,” Albany says, wearing a reluctant look.

  I wish I had something to hold in my hands—so I could crush it, or tear it to pieces. “Samuel isn’t the enemy here,” I say in a clear voice, “and neither am I, for that matter. Renee, you’re looking in the wrong place for someone to blame. The machines are out there; that’s where our focus should stay.”

  “What happens in McKinley has the potential to affect the rest of the world,” Hawking replies. Before I can respond, she cuts her gaze to my left. “Commander Forsyth, you—perhaps more than anyone here—have been impacted by Doctor Lewis’s mistakes. Now this new proposal recommends bringing more of these dangerous clones into the base. The council could benefit from your thoughts on the matter.”

  Camus lays down his stylus, but keeps his hand folded over it protectively.

  “What mistakes would those be, exactly?” he asks crisply. “The mistake of bringing the woman I love back to life? The same woman, I might add, who came to the rescue of Churchill base—after you and the rest of its leadership made the disastrous decision to answer a phony distress beacon? Or perhaps you mean his mistake of not informing the council, when we have always proven so compassionate and understanding in the past?”

  I exchange a look with Samuel, who blinks back at me in surprise.

  “Tell me, Renee, is it the idea of the clones’ existence you have a problem with—or merely one in particular?”

  “You didn’t answer the question, Commander,” Hawking says. “This isn’t about me.”

  “Precisely. So quit politicking and agree to a solution, rather than creating more irrelevant debate. Rhona is right. We don’t need to sit here crucifying our own. Doctor Lewis has done more in service to this base than half the people at this table—enough that any errors in judgment can and should be forgiven.” His green eyes shift to Samuel, who reacts as if physically touched. Something powerful passes between them—understanding a long time coming. “And as far as I’m concerned, have already been.”