Twinmaker

34

“DITCH THE . . . WHAT? You can’t be serious.”

“I am, Jesse. It’s the only way.”

“And then you expect us to walk to the airfield, Clair? You have no idea. It’ll take us days!”

“We won’t walk . . . I hope. Hang on.”

She clicked off the helmet-to-helmet radio. They had already broken radio silence once; a second time wouldn’t make a difference.

“Where’s the nearest d-mat booth, Q?”

“Copperopolis” came the instant reply.

“Okay, I need you to do something for me. It’s a big favor, but I don’t have any alternatives. I need you to send some kind of vehicle to that booth, then drive down to meet us. It’ll take us all night to get to the landing field otherwise, and we’ll miss the rendezvous.”

“Me?” asked Q. “Come join you? In California?”

“Yes,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers. “You’ll have to fake a solo d-mat license, I guess, but you should be able to do that. You changed my name and everything before. Isn’t it about time you got your hands dirty?”

“I don’t know,” Q said. “I mean, I’m not sure I can. But I’d like to. I really would. I just think it might take more time to organize than you have available . . . for reasons that are hard to explain right now. . . .”

“You don’t know what you’re capable of until you try. That’s what my mom always says. Right?”

Q fell silent, and Clair waited her out, mentally chanting Come on, do it in time with her heartbeat.

“I’ve had another thought,” said Q eventually. “This might work even better than your suggestion. I can outfit a quadricycle with a telepresence system and pilot it to you by remote control. That way I can stay where I am to keep an eye on things and help you at the same time. Would that work for you?”

Clair wasn’t in a position to argue, even though Q’s unwillingness to come in person made her nervous. What was she hiding? Or was she just afraid of getting too involved and putting her own life at risk?

Maybe she just didn’t know how to drive, like Clair.

“Fine,” Clair said. “Better get moving, though. The faster our new ride reaches us, the better.”

“Yes, Clair. I’ll get on it right away.”

“Thanks, Q.” She hesitated, then added, “I really owe you for this.”

“That’s what friends are for, Clair.”

Not in the world I come from, Clair wanted to say.

She clicked back to Jesse, who had been fuming in silence while she talked to Q, driving mechanically through the arid night.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

He took her explanation about as well as she expected.

“You must be out of your mind,” he said. “How do I know we can trust this Q person to do as she says? How do I know I can trust you?”

Was he kidding? “I don’t see how you have any other choice. We have to lose the bike, and we’re going to use the dam to do it.”

“And who put you in charge?”

“No one. I just know it’ll work.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because it has to. Otherwise, we’re dead like Zep and Arabelle and Cashile, and it’ll be all your fault!”

She punched him the shoulder, making the bike wobble.

“Hey, watch it!”

She could see only Zep, face ruined and bloody. Her throat closed tight, and the night swam around her.

She needed answers, and sleep, and a shower, and a spare second to think when she wasn’t being hunted through the dark with no one but Jesse to lean on. She needed her mom, she needed a hug, she needed a thousand things that he couldn’t give her.

She punched Jesse on the shoulder a second time, harder than before. She was angry at him for making her cry, first, then angry at him for what he said next, because that meant he knew she was crying.

Everything depended on them getting to the airship, because there, she had to believe, things would start to go right again.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “We’ll do it your way.”