Twinmaker

68

“WE’RE HERE,” JESSE said as the glass doors slid closed behind them. He looked shaken but relieved. “We actually made it.”

“Don’t get cocky,” said Ray. “This is the hard part.”

Clair agreed. They might have beaten Turner to VIA, but he was still out there somewhere, perhaps right under their feet, right at that very moment. And then there was Ant Wallace: he wouldn’t be a pushover. Her plan was, basically, to convince him that he wasn’t doing his job.

The lobby was cool and dimly lit, a marble expanse with a reception desk directly between the doors and a bank of elevators at the opposite end. A single person sat behind the desk, an ageless woman with porcelain skin and a sleeveless halter top in silver and gray. Her red hair was piled up in a series of complex curves with no visible means of support. Clair felt intimidated, although the woman didn’t actually do anything as they approached. Doing nothing was more than enough.

Only when Clair was right in front of her did the receptionist stir. Her voice was honey and steel. She came right to the point.

“Mr. Wallace will see you in his office. Please proceed to elevator three.”

One perfectly manicured hand indicated a bank of sliding doors to her left.

“Thank you,” Clair said. The woman didn’t acknowledge her.

“Can you still hear and see me?” she asked Q.

“Perfectly well, Clair,” came the instant reply. “This is exciting! What do you think he’ll say?”

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

The elevator doors opened as they approached, revealing a heavyset security guard in a shiny blue suit that was a near-perfect match for his stubble. He motioned them inside without a word. Clair obeyed. Through the foyer’s glass windows, she saw the crowd waving at her, mouthing words she couldn’t hear. Through the Air she saw herself, expressionless, as the doors closed over them. It didn’t look like her as she thought of herself. Was she really her, Clair couldn’t help but wonder, or someone who only thought she was?

The elevator moved underfoot. Clair’s weight seemed to double. There was no progress indicator above the door, no counting upward like Clair had seen in old movies.

“You’ll be required to leave your weapons behind at the next checkpoint,” said the guard in the blue suit. His voice was surprisingly light. “They’ll be returned to you afterward.”

“How do you know we have any?” asked Jesse.

“You’ve been scanned.”

Ray shrugged philosophically.

The doors opened, and the security guard escorted them into an unremarkable corridor. There was another security guard waiting for them, next to a table, on which they placed everything lethal. Clair gave them her pistol. Jesse had nothing but a pocketknife. A small arsenal appeared from Ray’s pockets and the depths of his pack, including three pistols, a collapsible rifle, ammunition for all, and several grenades.

“We’re lucky you didn’t start a war when that guy started firing outside,” Clair said.

“He’s lucky the PKs were there,” Ray said.

“This way,” said the first blue suit, indicating a double door at the end of the corridor.

This is it, Clair thought. This is really it.

On the other side of the door was an office that took up half an entire floor. It contained a desk and several chairs but seemed empty. The view more than made up for that. They were looking out across the archipelago, over a jungle of rooftops and parabolic bridges and sails and swooping monorail tracks. The light seemed brighter from their elevated position, even through storm clouds moving in from the west. The whole world shone with optimism and opulence.

In front of the view, behind the desk, sat a woman in her fifties, not Ant Wallace, as Clair had expected. Tall and solid, with swept-back gray hair and a thin, bladelike nose, she was wearing a conservative, tight-fitting suit that was a light shade of blue identical to that of the suits of the men outside the room. She stood up but didn’t shake their hands.

“Catherine Lupoi?” asked Clair, remembering the name of Ant Wallace’s assistant.

The woman shook her head. “Angela Kadri, head of security. Ant will be down in a moment. I’ve been asked to make you comfortable. Is there anything you’d like to drink, eat?”

Clair felt a moment of dizziness that she put down to lack of sleep and a terrible awareness of how important the coming moments were. After every hardship they had endured, every mile covered, every discomfort and privation, they were about to come face-to-face with VIA’s head of operations, a man who could make the world really pay attention. If Improvement was ever to be stopped, if Libby and Q were ever to be restored, if Clair’s doubts about her mind were ever to be put to rest, he had to be convinced of its reality. If she failed, nothing would change—but everything would change for her, because all she held dear would be gone.

“Clair, are you all right?”

Jesse was asking her the question, but everyone was staring at her, like she was an actor who had forgotten her lines.

“I think I need to sit down,” she said.

“Please, feel free.” Kadri indicated the chairs scattered about the room. “There are facilities if you need them. I’ll go see what’s holding Ant up.”

Kadri strode crisply across the room and through the double door. Clair looked around her and noticed an arched entranceway she hadn’t seen earlier. She went through it and found herself in a privacy alcove containing a fabber, a sink, and a small mirror. She looked dirty and desperate, like every other Abstainer she had ever met. Worse than that, she looked as crazy as Dylan Linwood.

Suddenly convinced that Wallace was going to brush them off, no matter what they said to him, she leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She saw a double image of herself as she did so, one from the mirror and another via a video feed someone was posting. They had hacked her lenses somehow, so she was seeing what she was seeing twice over.

She turned to see Jesse watching her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, honest. And that’s me talking, in case you’re wondering.” This kind of anxiety could only come from herself.

He half smiled. “I can tell.”

“What about you?”

“I’m shitting myself,” he said. “I wish Dad were here. He’d do a much better job of explaining things than I would. Not that you won’t, I mean,” he added. “You’ll be great.”

“What about after?” she said, meaning What will you be going home to? What’s left out there for you?

He looked away. “I’m not thinking that far ahead.”

“You could go to Melbourne to live with your mom’s family.”

“I don’t want to do that. I don’t know them, and it would mean changing schools.”

“You could do that.”

“But I don’t want to,” he said, with a flash of his old prickliness. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No,” she said. “That’s not what I want,” she said, only realizing the truth of it as she said it.

“Good, because . . . well, to hell with it.” He paced around the tiny space, looking at her and then looking away, over and over, as though making sure she wasn’t about to vanish into thin air. “I know this isn’t the right time, and I know you had that thing with Zep, but we’ve been holding hands, and we kissed once, and then you kinda threw yourself at me downstairs—not like that,” he amended, “but it happened, and it must mean something when a girl tries to save your life. Right?”

“Jesse—”

“Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m not your type. Girls like you don’t date Abstainers. So we’re doomed from the start, but I have to—”

“Jesse, listen to me.”

“Wait, Clair. I’ve been rehearsing this in my head ever since Brooklyn, and this might be the last chance I have to say it, so I need to get it out. I’ve had a thing for you for years, and then Improvement brought us together, but now it’s going to be fixed, and I’m worried that everything will go back to normal, and you—”

“Jesse.”

She put a hand over his mouth.

“Someone hacked my lenses. The whole world is seeing this. Hearing it too, probably.”

He swiveled slowly to face her.

“Oh . . . that’s . . . great.”

Before he could say or do anything else, a piercing wail split the air.