Twinmaker

66

THEY SURFACED AT the Atlantic Avenue docks, emerging from the submarine double time and not lingering to say farewells. By the time Clair, Jesse, and Ray stepped onto dry land, the sub was gone. They took a moment to get their bearings under a gray morning sky, then headed off uphill for the War Memorial.

Brooklyn Heights was connected by a restored bridge to the Manhattan archipelago. Clair checked her updates and news on the popularity front as she took her physical bearings. They had picked up people of a nautical bent, thanks to the submariners, and regained some of the crashlanders, thanks to Xandra Nantakarn throwing a party in Clair’s honor in an old underwater base. Counter-Improvement continued to spread, particularly in areas where the original Improvement message had been rife. Social commentators were beginning to notice, not the symptoms of Improvement itself but an upwelling of concern about them. One venerable columnist described Clair as an example of something he called the New Youth Movement: “Crashlander, Abstainer, fugitive, campaigner, all in an ordinary week. What next?”

What next indeed, thought Clair. It all depended on whether she got to Wallace safely. And whether she was herself when she got there.

“Let’s move,” she said. “We’ve got a hike ahead of us.”

“This is nothing,” said Ray. “I walked the John Muir Trail once. Two hundred ten miles in sixteen days—that’s a hike.”

“Even I think that’s crazy,” said Jesse. “Q, where do we go from the memorial?”

“Manhattan Bridge,” she said.

“Okay, then. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’”

“‘I would the friends we miss were safe arrived,’” Q said.

“What?”

Clair said nothing as Q explained that she was also quoting—not misquoting, unlike Clair—from Macbeth. The words were too appropriate. She just walked up the hill as fast as she could, ignoring the way her shoes rubbed her heels and concentrating on what she had to do.

Their unscheduled appearance in Brooklyn Heights caused a new spike of interest. Drones appeared as though from nowhere to chronicle their arrival. By the time they reached the memorial, they had accrued a small coterie of people who had d-matted in from all over the world to say hello, ask questions, challenge her assumptions, or ask her out. She responded to all of them as politely as she could, knowing it was the right thing to do in order to keep people watching. But she didn’t stop walking, and she kept one hand always under her overalls, tightly clutching her pistol.

At the bridge she discovered that a well-wisher had fabbed them autostabilizing monocycles—an early Dylan Linwood design, as it happened—to save them making something of their own. Clair had Q hack into their operating system to make sure they weren’t booby-trapped, then accepted the gift. That prompted a run on similar devices, and Clair hurried off before she could gain an entourage that would only slow them down and potentially put innocent people in danger. The world was watching; there was in theory no reason to feel nervous. But the city ahead was a minefield. There could be snipers in any window, and not just dupes. The hate mail and death threats in the comments of her posts were rising in tandem with her popularity.

They formed a line and headed out, Clair first, then Jesse, then Ray, drones tagging along with them like balloons on a string. Vines hung from the suspension cables around them, and trees grew tall out of soil piled deep in the bridge’s lower levels. Ahead was the famous Manhattan skyline, as familiar to Clair as the gondolas that plied its crystalline waters. The buildings weren’t the tallest in the world, and they certainly weren’t the only ones to have suffered inundation, but their restoration had been a potent symbol for the generation following the Water Wars. Clair’s parents still talked about seeing the opening of the first walkways as kids.

The sun was behind Clair now, and the electric motors of the monocycles were whisper quiet on the graceful arch over the river. There had once been another bridge, Clair knew, but its foundations had subsided as the water rose to swallow it, and it had been turned into a reef with great ceremony, a sacrifice to the drowned boroughs and the new world of d-mat.

As they cruised over the central section of the bridge, Clair could see the elaborate marble arch on the other side. The entourage Clair had worried might impede her progress was awaiting them there.

She cursed silently to herself, even as she flashed her best smile and waved. The Air might have made her famous, but d-mat enabled anyone with a passing interest to jump right into her path. At this rate, every road between Little Venice and VIA HQ would be full of gawkers.

“Looks to me,” drawled Jesse, loud enough for the drones to hear, “like we’ve got ourselves a posse.”

In as much time as it took for his words to flash through the Air and back again, the crowd cheered.

“Last one to VIA’s a rotten egg!” he called, and the crowd cheered again. Some of them shouted his name, and it quickly became a chant.

By the time Clair reached the arch, the crowd was moving as one, accelerating to meet and race alongside her, catcalling and jostling but keeping up, for the most part. They were a mixture of kids and teenagers, plus some older people who had the Abstainer look. Most rode monocycles, but some had Segways, sunboards, or even bicycles. There was a carnival atmosphere that belied the deadly seriousness of her purpose. It was a game to them, she supposed. A game for the curious and bored, jumping on a bandwagon that was popping at the time.

Clair understood. She’d never been much for flash crowds and celebrity bombing, but Libby had occasionally dragged her to them, and they could be fun. And there was no denying that she was grateful to Jesse for his quick thinking. By redefining their journey as a race, he had turned an obstacle into something that, if she squinted hard enough, might even be called an asset. A human shield, she didn’t want to think.

She looked back at him, and he winked.

“Are you enjoying this?” she asked.

“Who me? You’re the one in the lead.”

Jesse-Jesse-Jesse went the crowd as they rode on into the Manhattan archipelago. A girl leaned in to kiss his cheek, and he blushed and pushed her away. Clair felt a surprising twinge of jealousy and told herself sternly to concentrate on the road ahead.