“What are they doing here?” she asked him.
“They came to see you,” he said. “The girl who’s taking on VIA single-handed.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” she said. “It’s not.”
“I know. But it sounds better that way, doesn’t it?”
The girl, no more than five, waved shyly at Clair. Clair hesitated, then waved back. That was what Libby would’ve done, she told herself.
The freight car was open and ready for them. Jesse drove their four-wheeler inside. Clair was about to follow when the whine of tiny electric fans rose up behind her. She turned and saw a drone dropping down to head height. It flashed its lights in a complex sequence, spun once around its axis, and waited for her to react.
“Is that you, Q?”
“How did you know, Clair?” came the delighted response via the drone’s PA speakers.
She smiled. “A lucky guess.”
“It took me much longer than I expected to install my own command agents. The democratic algorithms are triple secure, with—”
“No need for the details, Q. Good thinking, though. I’m glad you’ll be here to keep an eye on us.”
Clair crossed into the car, and the drone went to follow.
“We’ll be Faraday shielded when the door is shut,” Turner said.
“Can the drone keep up with the train outside?” Clair asked Q.
“Not for long, but I can magnetically affix it to the car to stop the batteries from running low.”
“Great. Do that. And keep your eyes open. We don’t want anyone taking us by surprise.”
The floor shifted beneath them. Everyone put out a hand to steady themselves as the train began to move. Clair leaned on Jesse, who braced himself against the nearest wall.
“Out you go, Q. It’s time to shut the door.”
“Bon voyage,” said the drone as it zipped through the car door.
Turner pressed a button, and the door slid shut behind them with a metallic boom.
Lights came on inside, and presumably some kind of air circulation system too. Clair felt a puff of wind against her cheek.
The train accelerated, turning steadily to the right. Clair found it hard to stand, even with Jesse as a crutch.
“I suggest we all get some sleep,” said Turner, flipping open his backpack and pulling out his bedroll. No one had rested since the dupes had woken them all up in the middle of the night. “We’ve got hours to kill until we get there.”
There was a pair of chemical toilets at the far end of the car. Clair used one, then found an empty spot on the back of the four-wheeler and tried to rest. The rocking of the car beneath her was less soothing than she had imagined it would be. Jesse lay down next to her, bundled up tightly in a sleeping bag so little more than his nose was visible. She wanted to ask how he was doing but didn’t want to disturb him. Maybe she was the only one finding it hard to settle.
Libby’s body was just yards away, wrapped tightly in plastic. Or was it Mallory’s body, since that was the name of the last person to inhabit it? A rose by any name, she thought. A mind in any body . . .
She did drop off eventually and woke with her breath stopped in her throat as though someone were choking her. The interior of the car was lit only by power LEDs and static displays, a meaningless constellation of yellows, reds, greens, and blues. Jesse had moved closer in his sleep, but his face was as hidden as ever. Clair sat up and pushed herself away from him. Her head was pounding. She felt trapped. She wanted to leap out of the car and onto solid earth. She wasn’t used to things moving, shifting, turning the way they did in the world Jesse and the others inhabited.
Now you’re free, Gemma had said. Free to be herself, but she didn’t feel free. She wanted everything to be still, just for a moment, so the person she had been could catch up to her, if it wasn’t already too late for that.
“God, I hope it’s not,” she breathed.
“Deceitful as it is,” said a soft voice out of the dark, “hope at least leads us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.”
She looked around. Two dark eyes were staring at her out of the gloom. They belonged to Turner.
“Is that a quote?”
“More or less. Someone French, I think.”
He unfurled himself from his sleeping bag and came to sit nearer her.
“You can’t sleep either,” he said.
“It’s not that. I mean, I was asleep, but . . .” She hesitated, not entirely sure which particular anxiety was dominating her thoughts at that moment. “I’m afraid I might’ve talked you all into something really stupid.”
“This plan of yours?” He smiled. “If I worried about every stupid thing I’ve done, I’d never sleep again.”
His unlined, youthful face gave him away. “You’re not the worrying kind,” she said. “I can tell that just by looking at you.”
“Appearances . . .” He stopped as Ray snuffled and rolled over, then continued in a softer tone, “. . . are deceitful, like hope.”
“Apparently. Everyone tells me you’re eighty years old.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
“Obviously.”
“I’m eighty-three next month.”
She stared at him with aching migraine eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”
“I’m not lying,” he said. “People come to WHOLE for a variety of reasons. They are harmed, or someone they love is harmed. Some people just know: they look at the people around them and the situation in the world at large, and they know that there’s something very rotten in the state of d-mat.”
He sighed. “I’m not like them. D-mat never harmed anyone I love, my family, anyone I ever cared about, yet I have lost them all forever. They might as well be dead, because I am dead to all of them now. I faked my death to spare them what happened to me.”
“What was it?” she asked. “Some kind of disease?”
“Quite the opposite. I am as healthy as a thirty-year-old man and have been for many decades. D-mat twisted my body and made it into a disguise. Everything about me is wrong. My very existence is a lie and a curse—a curse that many, unfortunately, would kill to possess.”
“D-mat gave you eternal youth?”
“D-mat mutated me. It’s frozen me, set me apart from the world. When my condition started to show, I had no choice but to abandon my life. I can never go back, or people will ask questions. I can’t move on, can’t ever be normal. God help me if I tried to have children. What horrors might they inherit from me? What mutations might I visit upon them in turn? That is the vilest thing of all.”
“Haven’t you had your genome sequenced, diagnosed—?”
“No.” He shook his head in absolute denial. “Once it’s out there, once someone learns what I am, the secret could not be contained, and then we’d be back where we were fifty years ago, overpopulated, poisoning the planet with our filth. Really, I should wear gloves and shave my head, or lock myself in a bubble, or kill myself to stop my genes from escaping—but I am human to that extent at least. I want to be part of the world and make a change for the better, while I can.”
A horrid thought struck her. “Jamila had a crush on you, and she was, what, twenty-five?”
He inclined his head. “Grossly inappropriate, but very flattering for a guy who remembers the birth of the Air. I didn’t do anything about it, I swear.”
60
THE CAR KNOCKED from side to side with the irregularities in the tracks. Clair struggled to accept that a man who looked barely older than her had actually lived longer than her grandfather.
“You’re ancient enough to remember the Water Wars,” she said.