Twinmaker

38

KNEES, THOUGHT CLAIR, wanting to howl at her stupidity. No one had knees that bony.

“What do you want?” she asked, holding up her hands.

“We’ve got nothing, Jay,” said Jesse. “Don’t do this to us.”

“It’s not about you,” he said. The smile was gone now. He was determined, but he didn’t look happy about it. “I lied. The last people through here weren’t balloonists. I had some other visitors tonight. They came out of this thing.” He cocked his head at the booth behind him. “They said to keep an eye out for people using the roads. I’m supposed to let them know if I see anyone.”

“Did you let them know?” asked Clair.

“They told me you were terrorists. I saw you fiddling with the booth. I may not approve of it, but it’s the only thing this place has going for it. You blow it up, and I might as well go out back and dig my grave.”

“Did you let them know, Jay?”

His watery gaze darted from her to Jesse and back again. “I did what I had to.”

Clair cursed silently to herself. This is what happens when you let your guard down, a voice whispered in her mind. The pistol was in the buggy, out of reach. The old man was too far away to risk rushing him. There was only one thing she could do.

She opened a connection to the Air.

“Q, we’re in trouble, and we need your help.”

“I am monitoring your situation by the sensors in the quadricycle, Clair. What can I do?”

“We need a distraction,” she said. “Anything. Use the buggy or the booth. Whatever it takes.”

“I have a thought. You said—”

“I don’t care what, Q. Just get us away from him.”

Q didn’t answer, and after a moment the light on the door of the booth switched from green to red. In use.

“Is the gun really necessary?” asked Jesse.

“They told me to keep you here any way I could.”

“You couldn’t come up with anything better?”

“I offered you free breakfast. What else was I supposed to do? An old guy like me’s no match for you fancy kids.”

“We are kids, Jay.” Jesse edged minutely away from Clair. “What kind of terrorists do you think we’d make?”

Jay stepped back, decreasing the angle required to fire at either one of them. “Don’t try anything, boy. I’m no fool. This place used to jump in its day. Come back here, into the light.” He gestured with the barrel of the shotgun, swinging them around onto the creaking wooden porch. As they moved, he moved too, keeping a constant distance between them until he was standing where they had been. He could see the booth now, and they couldn’t. He noticed the red light instantly, indicated it with his bristly chin.

“That’ll be them now, coming to arrest you. Shouldn’t take long. I won’t need to hog-tie you or anything undignified.”

“Doesn’t matter if you tie us up or not, Jay,” Clair said. “They’ll kill us all the same, and it’ll be your fault.”

“Kill you? Don’t be absurd. There’s no death penalty anymore, not even for terrorists.”

“We keep telling you,” said Jesse in frustration. “We’re not terrorists, and if you think they’re peacekeepers, you’re fooling yourself.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know them from Adam, boy, but they weren’t here fiddling with my booth like you were. Or covered in blood, pretty girl, that’s obviously not yours.”

“It will be soon.”

He shifted his feet. “I need d-mat, see? Without it, I’ve got nothing. Nothing at all.”

The booth behind them finished doing whatever it did inside its mirrored walls. Clair heard the hiss of air pressure equalizing and the smooth glide of the door swinging open.

“Thank you, Mr. Beaumont,” said a woman’s voice. “I have them now.”

The words almost took Clair’s strength away. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. It was supposed to be Q rescuing them, not the bad guys coming to finish them off.

But Jay’s eyes were narrowing in suspicion. “I don’t know you,” he said. “You weren’t here before.”

Clair half turned, and froze to hide her surprise.

Beside her Jesse literally gasped.

“You don’t need to know me, Mr. Beaumont,” said the young woman standing in front of the booth. She was wearing dark, practical clothes similar to Clair’s and holding a pistol that could have been the one Clair had just recycled. In every other respect, however, she was the exact opposite of Clair.

It was Libby. The only thing missing was her birthmark. But where had she come from?

“All that matters is that you’ve done as you were instructed,” Libby said. “Now it’s time for me to take over.”

“What’s going to happen to them?” Jay was hesitating. His shotgun hovered in no-man’s-land, between his prisoners and the young stranger who had come to deal with them.

“Go back inside the saloon, please, Mr. Beaumont,” Libby said, moving one step closer to him. “You don’t need to see any more.”

Clair couldn’t take her eyes off her. There was something odd about her, something not quite right. Something more than the missing birthmark.

Jay nervously licked his lips. “Just don’t do it here,” he said. “Don’t do anything to them on my porch.”

He lowered the shotgun and went inside, brushing within arm’s reach of Clair as he did so. His eyes stared fixedly at the ground.

The door shut and locked behind him with a terminal click.

Jesse’s hands came down.

“Libby?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Libby waved him quiet with the pistol. She was watching the saloon intently.

“I don’t think he heard,” she said. Her demeanor relaxed, and her voice changed too. Clearly she had been acting before, playing the role she needed to play. But instead of becoming Libby as Clair knew her, she became someone else.

“Get in the buggy, both of you, and get out of here. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up.”

“Q?” said Clair, feeling as though she had been sucker punched in the gut. “Is that you?”

“You guessed! I wasn’t sure if you would.” She clapped her hands, but then stumbled and steadied herself against the porch. “Oh, you really need to get moving. ‘Dylan Linwood’ left Columbia five minutes ago. He’s d-matting to the San Andreas Memorial as we speak, and that’s only two and a half miles from the rendezvous. If you don’t move quickly, he will get there before you. Clair, are you listening?”

Q approached and Clair physically recoiled. She was Libby, but she wasn’t. It wasn’t right.

“How did you do this?” asked Jesse, staring in amazement and shock. “You made Libby a dupe!”

“Not really . . . it’s hard to explain.” Q turned to address him, tangling her feet in the process. “Please, Jesse. The longer I stay here, the less control I have over the situation. You must leave immediately while I use the booth to go back to the way I was.”

“Get out of her body,” said Clair. “Please get out of her body.”

“I will,” said Q, “as soon as you’re gone. I promise.”

Q approached with one hand outstretched. The hand was shaking as though with palsy.

“Get out of her body!”

The horror in her voice shocked even Clair. Q backed away, counterfeit face crumpling in dismay.

“Come on, Clair,” said Jesse, taking her by the shoulders. “She’s right. This can’t hold us up. We need to get in the buggy and get the hell out of here, right now.”

Clair didn’t disagree. She didn’t agree, either, but she did allow herself to be led away. The buggy was ready to go, humming impatiently to itself, the sandwich Q had made for her still resting on the seat. Clair pitched it as far from her as she could. She felt sick to the stomach. Sick to her very heart.

Q had put her own mind into Libby’s body.

So where was Libby now?

Jesse got in and put the buggy into motion. It accelerated hard up Main Street, heading for Route 4. Clair looked behind her just once, at the figure standing alone under the porch light. It turned and walked into the booth. Vanished.