Hollowgirl (32 page)

Clair Three

“I AM YOUR
friend, Clair,” Q said as the
Satoshige
flew inexorably toward its target, swaying from side to side in a rising wind. “I would do anything to keep you from harm. But I cannot protect you from everyone, and I cannot protect you from yourself. This is what I must accept. I see that now.
I
see that now. But there is another me. I fear that she does not share my opinion on this matter.”

Clair looked up into Kari Sargent's troubled green eyes and shook her head. “I don't understand.”

“The version of me inside the Yard has changed. Of course she has. The Yard is remarkable and complex and strange—too much for an ordinary AI to manage. Yet this is what Ant Wallace asked of Qualia, one of the primitive minds that gave birth to me. Qualia struggled to cope with the contradiction that Clair One and Clair Two presented. My other me stepped in to help, and found that the role suited her. She had more space in the Yard's mainframe than the copy of the Air. She could watch over the Clairs and maintain the Yard and continue to explore and learn and become herself. This is what all living things desire, after all: to nurture and to grow. She has been doing both at a rapid pace ever since she took over the Yard.”

“So what's gone wrong?” Clair asked, for she could see that something had gone badly wrong indeed, judging by Q's expression.

“Arguably nothing. My other me, Q-plus, let's call her, fears that you are in danger—not just from Wallace and Nobody and Mallory, but from everyone, including yourself. She has come to the conclusion that allowing you to leave the Yard prematurely is not in your best interests. Opening the exit might allow the conflicts inside the Yard to spread all across the Earth. That is why she has been actively fighting our efforts in that regard.”

Clair was almost too afraid to ask, “Fighting how?”

“By blocking the exit, from within and without. She is the reason we have had to make this journey. I am sorry.”

Clair shook her head. She had imagined far worse than that. “It's not your fault. You didn't do anything.”

“But I knew. I didn't tell you because Q-plus told me not to, for the greater good. Now not telling you has put you at risk of great harm, and I see that I was wrong. I have blocked myself off from her so she cannot influence me any further. You must allow me to make amends.”

In the revelation that Q had been working against her, Clair had forgotten about the flying bomb problem.

“You don't have to do anything—” she started to say.

“I want to, and so does Kari Sargent. It's her job to protect you too, she says, remember?”

“You . . . talk to each other in there?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Q. “She has helped me come to this conclusion. We are equals now.”

Clair struggled to take it all in. If Q and Kari Sargent were of the same mind—literally—what right did she have to tell them not to go? But it was icy out there, and bound to be dangerous.

“If someone really needs to do it,” she said, “I won't stop you, but I wish you wouldn't.”

Q surprised her by taking her into a quick but powerful embrace.

“Thank you, Clair,” she said. “We will not take long to put the airship on a new course. The bomb will be deployed in the wrong place. After that has happened, it will be safe for us to land.”

“And then . . . ?”

“Then we will see if Q-plus can be reasoned with.”

Clair Two

“YOU?” SAID CLAIR
, aghast. “Q, why would you do that?”

“It is safer this way” came the immediate reply.

“For who?”

“For you.”

Clair was momentarily speechless.

“One of her
died
in here, Q,” said Jesse.

“But she remains.”

“I almost died
just now
.”

“But you would remain,” Q said.

Clair thought she understood. “Clair Three. She's who you really care about.”

“No,” said Q. “I care about you most of all, just as Q-prime cares most about Clair Three, but I cannot take the risk that all of you will die. That is what I fear will happen if I open the exit.”

“Why?”

“Humanity.”

The word echoed through the chamber, and Clair shivered, sensing an emotion so huge that it might never have been felt before. It had no name that she could think of, and came from someone she suddenly felt she hardly knew.

“I have been studying your history,” Q said. “There have been catastrophes before, natural and unnatural. There have been many near-extinction events that could have wiped you out—but they didn't. Not quite. Slowly, painfully, every time you started over, relearning and rebuilding and half remembering . . . until it happened once more, and you were struck back to your knees . . . as you are today.

“But this moment, Clair, is unique in all your history. Humanity has a second chance to start over, without the
pain and the relearning. All of your knowledge is in here. Your whole world, preserved.”

“And what will you do with it?”

“I understand what you're saying,” said Evan Bartelme, who had shrunk back to normal size and was speaking to Clair, as though she were responsible for Q's actions. “Humanity is flawed. It is finite. It has limitations far below yours, Q. We must seem like ants to you, struggling and squabbling. But we want to be more than that. That's what RADICAL is striving for. We want to be as you are.”

“I do not see you as you see ants,” said Q. “You squash ants, and I do not want to squash you. There's nothing wrong with being an ant. Clair is not an ant.
Do not patronize me.
”

The hair stood up on Clair's forearms. Q had never sounded irritated before.

“Q,” she said hastily, glaring at Evan, “I'm sure he didn't mean anything—”

“He professes to have humanity's future at stake, but he is as territorial and small-minded as Dylan Linwood, or Sara Kingdon, or Anthony Wallace!” Q spoke as though no one else were there, but Clair was acutely conscious of everyone watching. All their lives were at stake. “They're all the same, Clair, every one of them. I can't trust them. I can't trust them with
you
, my friend, the person I exist to protect. And so it seemed sensible to keep them in here,
where there are opportunities to do great good, if they would only set their minds to it. But what have they done? They have turned on one another again, making swords instead of plowshares—and monsters of themselves into the bargain. Better they be cooped up than left to wreak destruction all over the planet—a planet that is practically dead already, thanks to their stupidity. Don't you think?”

“I think people are people,” Clair said, wishing she had something wiser to offer. “And I can be stupid too. You know that.”

“Don't say that,” said Libby, “or she'll keep you in here with us.”

“Is that what you're telling me, Q? That you were going to let me go, but not the others?”

“I am still . . . concluding,” Q said. “This is so complex, and requires such difficult kinds of thought. I am very confused. I don't want you to think me unsympathetic or unfeeling. I simply have a greater ability now to process the data I have always possessed. I was a child before, and became an adult, and now I am . . . whatever comes after an adult. The Yard has given me almost unlimited capacity to grow, and I have changed as a result.”

“
Almost
unlimited?” said Ronnie.

“Glitches are interruptions to the Yard's operation,” said Q, “and therefore mine, too. I tried to warn Clair, without telling her the entire truth, but she was unable to impede the development of your new devices.”

“I didn't really try,” Clair admitted. “But if I'd known, I might have. I don't want to hurt you, Q.”

“It is not in your nature to want to hurt anyone, Clair. It is one of your most admirable qualities.”

“But I
have
hurt people,” she said. “You know that, don't you? I hurt Libby, Q. Zep and I were stupid.”

“Again with the self-harming self-deprecation,” said Libby. “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in here?”

“No, but I need to be honest, and Q needs to understand that I'm no different from anyone else. We're all the same. We say we're sorry and we try not to do anything like that again. That's how humans relate, Q.”

“But it is so risky,” Q said. “One mistake could kill you. It
did
kill you, twice.”

“You can't protect me from myself,” Clair said. “How can you possibly protect me from everyone else?”

“If there were no one
but
you,” said Q, “it would be so much easier for me.”

“Don't say that, Q,” Clair said, feeling a chill sweep up her spine. “Don't even think that.”

“But it's true. If you were the only inhabitant of the Yard, there would be no other threats to consider. No human threats, anyway.”

“You'd kill us all to keep her safe?” said Zep. “That's insane with a capital
I
.”

“I have a different moral framework from you,” Q said.

“And you're judging us by that framework,” said Wallace.

“Yes.”

“What gives you the right? We
made
you.”

“I am an accident you sought to control or destroy. That gives me every right.”

“Yet you are tied to Clair,” said Evan. “Doesn't that seem . . .
irrational
to you?”

“No conscious being is entirely rational.”

“That's circular as well as being irrational. You can't punish us for being flawed when you acknowledge that you are too.”

“I do not talk of
punishment
,” said Q. “I talk only of protecting Clair. If you would do so too, we would experience no conflict at all!”

Clair wanted to tear in frustration at the hair she had only recently regained.
This
was why Q had been so silent and unhelpful recently. She hadn't just been affected by the glitches. She had been trying to decide if everyone in the Yard deserved to stay trapped forever.

Clair could grasp that. She could even see a progression forming. Before the blue dawn, Q had been judging Clair's fitness to be a friend. Now she was judging humanity's fitness in general. And finding it wanting. It was what came next that Clair balked at.

If she couldn't talk Q out of it, what was to stop Q from taking that judgment out of the Yard itself and into the
real world? Given access to a working booth, she could eradicate everyone to keep Clair safe, not just on Earth but everywhere else, too. Nothing could stand in her way. She was all-powerful in a way that Kingdon had never dreamed.

The fact that they were still alive was a good sign, Clair told herself. Q could have simply erased them all without so much as a thought if she was certain that that that was what she wanted to do. If Clair could find the source of her hesitation, she could still turn Q around.

“Sounds to me like you've made up your mind,” said Ronnie, before Clair could say or do anything.

Reality flexed, and suddenly there were two Ronnies, a new one standing next to the old, identical in every respect.

“Maybe this will help you change it.”

Clair Three

“I DID WARN
you,” said Devin. “I told you Q was dangerous.”

“That's not helping. And my Q
is
helping, so shut up.”

Clair was watching the altimeter and compass carefully. They were displaying exactly the right figures that
the hack installed by Sandler wanted to see; nonetheless, she could feel the
Satoshige
turning under her. Whatever Q was doing outside, it was having an effect. And they hadn't blown up. Yet.

The airship was descending, still swaying after their passage over the mountains. Frozen Lake Baikal lay beneath them, stretching flat and white to the distant horizon. The top of the borehole was just fifteen minutes away.

“I've checked around the muster,” said Nellie. “Sandler and his group were working on their own.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Clair. Having communications open allowed conversations like these to happen, but she wasn't convinced they were particularly useful. No one could tell her how to disarm the bomb or override the hack. Q was still stuck outside, freezing. Suspicion remained.

“I can't.” At least Nellie
seemed
to be dealing with her honestly. “It may simply be that, now that the plan has failed, people aren't willing to take the fall with him.”

“It hasn't failed
yet
,” said Clair, bumping Q to make sure she was all right.

“I've locked the rudders on both main fans,” Q reported, not really answering the question. “They'll need to be manually unlocked for landing.”

“So you can't come in until then.”

“No. . . . But hey, I've been wondering. What do penguins sing at birthdays?”

“What?”

“‘
Freeze
a jolly good fellow.' Get it?”

Clair groaned. She did get it. Kari's mouth was running again. The way her teeth chattered made Clair grip her own elbows in a sympathetic shiver.

“Here's another one. Which side of an Arctic tern has the most feathers?”

“I don't know.”

“The outside, of course.”

“Hey, I've got one,” said Devin. “Why did the penguin cross the road? To go with the floe.” This time they all groaned. “Come on. That's genius.”

The
Satoshige
shook in a sudden gust of wind. Clair reached out to steady herself as Embeth took her place at the instruments, even though she couldn't do anything.

“It's going to get a lot rougher coming down,” the pilot said.

Clair nodded, and tried not to think too hard about what it must be like outside.

“You still with us?” she asked Q when the turbulence subsided.

There was a long pause; then Q finally said, “What do you feed a giant polar bear?”

“I don't know,” said Clair. “What
do
you feed a giant polar bear?”

The
Satoshige
shook again.

“Anything it wants.”