Hollowgirl (36 page)
Authors: Sean Williams
Clair Two
â
KISSING AS THOUGH
it were the first kiss in the universe, and the last and the greatest too, but the fabric of the Yard was turning to amber around them, making every breath a battle, a battle she was steadily losing. With all her strength she strained to keep ahold of him, but Jesse slipped away, and suddenly, with a lurch of her heart, she realized that she couldn't see or feel him at all. Her thoughts were growing sluggish . . . like cold water slowly . . . freezing.
“Enough,” said Q.
âpop
Suddenly she was standing in a booth. Her clothes were different, and she was being hugged by someone. Not Jesse. But that wasn't the weirdest detail. Her mind was full of things that hadn't been there beforeâthings about the world around her, and about herself, as though a doorway had opened up in her mind, a doorway she had never known was there before. Suddenly she knew much more about herselfâwho she was and who she had been, but not about who she would be, in the future. There were limits to all gifts, even those from someone as remarkable as Q.
Clair remembered Q saying, “I have a present for you,” but a second ago she had been a different Clair doing something completely different: Clair Two had been running with Jesse, honestly believing that her life was coming to an end. That feeling remained with her. At the same time she had been Clair Three, standing in the borehole station d-mat booth, embracing Q, and feeling a hope not unqualified by grief. Those two experiences and emotions mixed together like coffee and cream, forming a complex spiral of indescribable complexity.
There was a third part of the pattern.
A second ago Clair
One
had been dying, which was the strangest memory to hold entangled with the others. She had been lying on the floor of Wallace's office with a grenade in her hand, realizing that Clair Two had been the
same as her all along, bracing herself for a death that was unexpected but entirely of her own choosing.
Now all three were stitched together in one incredible tapestry. Nothing had been lost; every moment was retained, even the ones that overlapped. When Clair One argued with Clair Two in the observatory, she remembered both sides. When Clair Three and Clair Two discussed the death of Clair One, she remembered both sides. All sides were the same and yet different. It was confusing and wondrous, a wonderful confusion of Clairs, of herself, of lives unlived and deaths undone, leaving her feeling a little bit older, a little bit broader, and a lot surer of herself.
So many different experiences seen through the same eyes . . . but the eyes were constant, which was what mattered. And the feelingsâdetermination, despair, hope, loss, triumphâwere all hers. Perhaps it was time to stop worrying about who she was and start simply being herself.
Not Clair 1.0 or Clair 7.0. Clair
complete
.
Now that she was done, the rest of the world would soon follow. Libby, Zep, Tash, Ronnie, her mother . . . and Jesse, most important of all.
“Clair, you're shaking,” said Libby. “Are you all right?”
She pulled back and stared into the face of her best friend, who, despite the confusion in her own eyes, was defiantly, brilliantly, amazingly
her
.
Clair said, “Yes, now I will be.”
Clair Complete
“HERE'S A NEW
one,” Jesse said. “Still think I'm wrong?”
Clair had called him fifteen minutes ago, knowing he'd be awake even though it was full night in New New Petersburg. She had been having a dream about lightning trying to get through the walls of her ultramax cell, but had successfully woken herself before screaming. Slowly and surely, she was learning to fight the nightmares.
Stretching from one side of the bedroom to the other, the window next to Clair provided a perfect view over Daly Channel to San Bruno. Golden sunlight poured across the bed like honey. Jesse's voice had been a comforting ebb and flow in her augs, very nearly lulling her back to sleep.
Now this.
She blinked on the media patch in her infield and watched the short video he had sent.
“Everyone got out of the Yard, right?” a young woman was saying. She looked about fifteen, with long green hair and matching eyes. “That's what they
tell
us. But it's not true. There's one guy they never let out. The worst terrorist of all, they say. But really they're just jealous. He's smarter than all of them combined, and he's found a way to hack into the Air.
“If you want to hear the truth, here's what you do. Say his name three times inside a d-mat booth. The lights will flash and you'll see him in the mirrors, clear as day. And you know what that means, right? You can't hack a mirror unless it's a simulation. So
none
of us got out. We're all still in the Yard.
Everything they tell you is a lie.
“Remember this. Next time you're in a booth, say his name three times: Cameron Lee.”
Clair groaned and buried her head under a pillow.
“It's too early for this crap.”
“Are you
sure
it's crap?”
“Of course,” she said. “If Nobody were alive, he wouldn't be haunting d-mat booths. He'd be coming after me, and Kari would have caught him by now. If anyone can find him, she can.”
“Forget Nobody,” said Jesse. “What about
It's all a lie
? Could she be right?”
“What, that we're still in the Yard and only think this is real?”
“Yeah, that.”
“It's just a story, Jesse.”
“Yeah, but what if it isn't?”
She sighed, wishing she could go back to sleep.
“I saw the ruins of the world with my own eyes,” she said. “I'm pretty certain it was real.”
“Clair
Three
did, but then she went through a d-mat booth and could've ended up anywhere.”
“Next you're going to tell me they faked the moon landing.”
“I'm not talking about âthey.' I'm talking about
Q
.”
She had to admit that he had a point. People weren't organized enough to fake something so big so well. But with Q, anything was possible.
“On the assumption that it might be true,” Jesse went on, “I tried ripping home. It didn't work.”
A shame,
she thought. The bed was empty without him. “That settles it, then.”
“Not at all. Q might have fixed the rips
and
added a new rule to the Yard in order to stop anything like glitches from forming again. That fits with the hack, right?”
She mulled this over. One of the first things people had discovered while rebuilding civilization was that the new d-mat network didn't work the same way it used to. A subtle but very powerful hack operated in every machine, new or old, to forbid the transmission of children under fifteen and all forms of duping or resurrection. It was as though someone or something had rewritten the laws of physics, making it impossible for anyone to abuse the system the way Ant Wallace had.
Clair had no doubt who was behind it. No one who knew Q had a doubt.
At first she'd thought it another gift, but recently she'd come around to thinking of it as a
challenge
.
Crack this puzzle,
Q was saying,
and maybe you'll be worth talking
to.
That certainly fit with the last message Q had sent her.
Needless to say, RADICAL was working hard on the challenge, if such it was. They had a lot of people in storage they wanted to bring back, and until they managed it they would remain a minority voice in the emerging consensus that Devin liked to call “the radical whole.”
Clair wondered if that was an unintended consequence of the hack, or something else Q had meant quite deliberately.
“Maybe it is true,” she said. “Maybe we are living in a new improved simulation with Q watching us like a god. So what? I don't see that we can do anything about it.”
“True,” he said. “But if Nobody is alive, maybe
he
knows. He had to end up somewhere.”
She slid the pillow away and stared, grimacing, out into the bright morning. There would be no more sleep this morning, and perhaps none tonight if she didn't change the subject.
“When are you coming home? I miss you.”
“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “We've finished programming the fabbers and set them loose. The conversion rate isn't as high as we'd likeâone fish per thirty pounds of ashâbut the breeders are actually more efficient than we expected. In two years, the ocean will be blue again.”
He talked on, happily distracted. They worked in completely different spheresâhe and his mom traveling the world, encouraging isolated Abstainers to help in the
recovery efforts, she in San Francisco, where Kingdon's coconspirators were facing trials. That meant they were apart a lot, but it was better that than breaking their own personal consensus: fabbing okay, d-mat definitely not. Between their example and the mysterious d-mat hack, Clair hoped the next generation would treat the technology surrounding them with more respect, even if it was occasionally inconvenient.
The day after tomorrow wasn't too long to wait, though, she told herself. Jesse would return by airship, a much faster and safer design than the
Satoshige
, and they would spend a day getting used to each other again before settling back into the comfortable routine they had spent the last year establishing.
It had been jarring at first, seeing him from three very different perspectives. She had barely known him, loved him, and lost him all at the same time. Meanwhile, he remained haunted by the other Jesse and the experiences he could never share. But . . .
slowly and surely
. That was their mantra. It was the Reconstruction's mantra too.
Life is good,
she told herself, banishing all thoughts of Nobody and the dark days.
Does it matter if I'm wrong or not?
She felt real, safe, and loved. If Q was watching over her, that was all the more reason to relax.
Besides, there was the last message. The world, if simulation it was, was no prison.
“Come find me,” said Q's last message, “when you're ready. I'll be waiting.”
A gift, a challenge, and . . . an invitation.
Clair rolled to the edge of the bed and stretched down to meet the polished wooden floor, smooth and cool beneath the soles of her feet.
Maybe one day,
she thought,
we will.
             Â
I bid these joys farewell
             Â
and pass them by for a life of my own, afar;
             Â
not free from strife
             Â
âfrom the strife of noble human hearts aloneâ
             Â
for there will be agonies enough among the stars,
             Â
with nobody but Nobody to talk to.
For my niece, the one and only Jessica Claire Sopp
Sincere thanks to my extremely hard-working yet endlessly cheerful editor Kristin Rens, and Jill Grinberg, without whose valuable support, advice, and representation I would have even fewer hairs on my head. (While I hope never to write a book as complicated as this one ever again, I would do so knowing that there's an excellent team in place to prop me up along the way.) To Katelyn Detweiler, Ant Harwood, Kelsey Murphy, Stella Paskins, Eva Mills, Sophie Splatt, and everyone at Balzer + Bray, Egmont UK, and Allen & Unwin who made this series so marvelous to behold on numerous continents. To Garth Nix, James Bradley, Caroline Grose, Anne Hoppe, and my wife, Amanda Nettelbeck, for hearing me out during times of crisis and offering valuable advice when sorely needed. To Sean E. Williams and Lindsey Duoos Williams for firsthand research into faraway caves. To Val and Lee for lifesaving names, and Hannah, Steph, Linda, Madeleine, and Jon for limb-saving medical advice. To the quoted and misquoted: Edgar Allan Poe, Buddha, Matsuo Basho, and, of course, the mighty John Keats,
who enriches these pages in so many ways.
It would be proper to list everyone who made this book (and series) possible, but there are far too many of you. If your name doesn't appear here, rest assured that I love you regardless, and that I will make amends with chocolate.
