“It’s cold.”
“That’s how I like it.”
Mallory put both hands on the pistol grip and herded Clair back into the office.
Clair obeyed, wondering why Q was taking so long to find her. How far from New York was she?
“Hold out your arms,” Mallory said. “Wider.”
The transmitter was tucked into the waist of Clair’s pants. If Mallory searched her, she was bound to find it.
“I want to talk to Wallace,” she said. Anything to distract her.
“Not until I’m sure it’s safe. Legs apart.”
“You think I’m going to attack him with coffee?”
Signal found.
“Clair! Can you hear me? Is it really you?”
The voice came clearly through her ear-rings. Q sounded relieved, excited, and very close.
“Yes!” Clair bumped back. She didn’t dare mouth the words as she normally would. Mallory was too close, running her hands along and under her arms. Even from behind she might notice. “Really!”
“Oh! I was so worried. I knew that dupe wasn’t you. Do you know where you are?”
“Private d-mat booth. Can you see it?”
“Yes. I have access to all the station’s systems.”
“Activate it. Change the pattern. Get rid of Libby.”
“Send her somewhere else?”
“Don’t care. Before she finds the transmitter!”
Mallory was checking her legs, moving upward. Clair was out of time.
Hoping it was impossible for someone to perform a body search while simultaneously holding a gun, Clair chopped her right elbow downward as hard as she could, striking Mallory on the side of the skull.
Mallory fell backward with a cry. Clair staggered a step too, clutching her elbow. She had never done anything like that before. She was amazed by how much it hurt.
There wasn’t time to worry about the pain. Mallory was fumbling at her pocket for the pistol. Clair braced herself and kicked as soon as the gun came up to point at her. The pistol shot out of Mallory’s hand and skittered across the room. Clair lunged for it with her left hand, wishing she’d had the forethought to elbow Mallory with that arm. She was right-handed.
Mallory came after her but not quickly enough. Clair was on her feet, holding the gun. There was no need for an autotargeting system this time. From that distance, even with her left hand, Clair could have shot Mallory with her eyes closed.
Mallory froze.
“You won’t.”
Clair looked into Libby’s face and saw nothing but Mallory.
“Try me.”
Mallory straightened.
“All right, then. Go on, do it.”
ssss—
The air was thinning around them as Q activated the booth.
—ssss—
“Do it, Clair! Do it!”
—pop
Clair blinked. Apart from an afterimage of Libby’s desperate, pleading face in her retinas, Mallory was gone.
76
CLAIR SAGGED TO the floor and let the pistol fall limply from her hand. There was no one to point it at now. She was alone.
But not really alone. Q was in her ears, asking her if she was okay.
“I’m fine,” she said, holding her right arm close to her chest and stomach. She wondered if her elbow was broken. It certainly felt like it.
“We need to find Jesse and the others. Wallace has put them in a hangover somewhere. If you’ve hacked in, you might be able to see them.”
“Someone’s fighting me,” said Q, “but I can hold them off while you look around. Here’s the station map.”
Clair’s lenses flared with data. It was like staring into the sun. The station, as Q had called it, was a turbulent ocean of information that seemed largely concerned with maintaining the station itself. There was an extensive menu called Environment, and another called Attitude Control. Uplinks and Downlinks confused her for a moment, until she realized exactly what was going on.
“A space station?” she said. “We’re in space?”
“In a centrifugal habitat in geocentric orbit, to be exact.”
“If only Jesse knew!”
She forced herself to concentrate. There was a menu called D-mat, which covered transit control, fabber requests, and what looked like complicated duping processes. There were several extremely large caches, any one of which might have been the hangover she was looking for. Luckily, files were recorded by name and date of birth. She searched on Jesse, and found him almost instantly—his frozen pattern, anyway, data waiting to be brought back to life. His middle name was Andrew.
“Got him,” she said. “How do I bring him back?”
Q walked her through a simple series of menu options. “Select Reconstitution: full. Select Destination: . . . where do you want him to go?”
“Uh, back where we came from, I guess. But not VIA HQ. Somewhere nearby. Is it safe there?”
“Peacekeepers have the area sealed off. I may have caused . . . a small amount of mess.”
Clair didn’t doubt it. She could only imagine what lengths Q had gone to in order to find her.
“We’ll worry about that later.”
They sent Jesse on his way, safely out of Wallace’s grasp. Clair found the others and did the same. All except Gemma: she wasn’t rescuing a traitor.
When she reached Turner, she hesitated briefly, then moved on. She would decide what to do with him when she found the others: Dylan Linwood and the other dupes. Libby. Zep.
She searched all the caches by name, but their patterns weren’t listed. There must be another cache somewhere off station.
“We’re running out of time,” said Q. Her voice was strained. Clair wondered what forces were being arrayed against her. Just keeping Wallace out of the room must be causing her an immense effort.
“I haven’t searched for you, yet, Q. What’s your real name?”
“Uh . . . I don’t remember, and there isn’t time for me to try. I’m okay out here. I don’t need a body. Please hurry, Clair.”
“All right . . . for now. I just need to figure out what to do with Turner. How do I get Turner’s pattern out of the station without bringing him out of a booth?”
“You mean . . . erase him?”
Clair forced herself to confront the decision head-on, without couching it in terms that made it any less horrible.
“I guess you could put it that way.”
“It’s not possible, Clair. You can’t use d-mat to erase someone. That would mean breaking parity—making one of someone into zero of someone. It’s not allowed. Even in a private network like this one, it would still be wrong.”
“But we have to do it. Don’t think of it as killing him. In his mind, he’s already dead. He’s a zombie. It’s what he’d want, Q.”
“Why, Clair?”
“His genes are too dangerous to leave in Wallace’s hands. The safest thing is to get rid of them entirely. We have to do it . . . for him and for everyone else. Don’t you see?”
Q didn’t respond.
“Q? Did you hear me?”
“Sorry, Clair. I . . . uh, I have a message for you from Ant Wallace.”
There was something odd about Q’s voice. Clair had never heard her sound defeated before.
“You have five minutes, Clair,” said Wallace over the intercom, “or I’m opening an airlock. If you don’t give me what I want, you’ll suffocate.”
“Shut him off,” Clair said. “Does he think I’m stupid? I’ll be gone long before then.”
“There’s something we didn’t think of, Clair,” said Q. “I can’t send you back to Earth.”