Crashland Read online

  Epigraph

  I saw a planet running out of days.

  I saw a president with hands upraised.

  I saw a clock that was very good at chess.

  I saw a computer in a fine silken dress.

  I saw a priest dancing a jig.

  I saw a pop star with the heart of a pig.

  I saw a surgeon choking on gas.

  I saw a soldier in a tube made of glass.

  I saw the infinite even though it was naught.

  I saw the mind that thought this thought.

  Folk Poem, c. 2036

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 71 redux

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Sean Williams

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  [1]

  * * *

  THE DAY THE world ended, Clair Hill was sitting at a table in a tiny interview room opposite two uniformed peacekeepers, one of whom was the tallest woman she had ever met. With short blond hair and a friendly, open expression, PK Sargent’s first order of business was to offer Clair a cup of coffee and summon a medic to look at her bruised elbow. The injury was minor but the memory of how she had gotten it was one of several running on rapid repeat through Clair’s mind. There was nothing the medic could do about those.

  The other peacekeeper, PK Forest, conducted the interrogation. In contrast to Sargent, who looked at most ten years older than Clair, Forest was a small man in his fifties, with narrow shoulders and thinning black hair. There was something wrong with his face. It jumped from expression to expression almost entirely without transition, one moment frowning, the next with eyebrows raised in disbelief. A second later he would tug his lips down as though profoundly saddened by something Clair had said.

  She tried to look Forest in the eyes, not wanting to give the impression that she was hiding anything, but there was something wrong with them, too. They didn’t track. They flicked from place to place with tiny, discrete movements. Flick . . . flick . . . flick. She forced herself to focus on the bridge of his nose instead, where his eyebrows almost met, and tried to concentrate.

  His questions were relentless.

  “I’m sorry you think I’m repeating myself”—flick—“but it’s vital we know precisely what happened in the space station. You were a captive, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “A prisoner, you say, of this man?”

  An image of Ant Wallace appeared in the default PK-blue wallpaper of her lenses. The man who had until recently been in charge of d-mat looked just as ordinary and trustworthy as he always had, but it was a mask that meant nothing now. Clair had seen the man behind it, the man who had drawn her into a trap and threatened to kill her friends and destroy her life if she didn’t give him what he wanted. He had forced her to desperate ends that even now she could barely believe.

  Apart from that image, her infield was empty, a blank window in her field of vision that would normally be filled with bumps, news feeds, and chat requests. She was still completely disconnected from the Air, and no one would tell her when that was going to change.

  “Yes,” she said, adding for the tenth time, “Ant Wallace took me prisoner.”

  “Was this person also present?”

  The photo of Wallace was replaced by another image, this time of a woman Clair didn’t know. Thick, black hair, Asian heritage like Forest.

  “I don’t think so,” Clair said. “No, wait . . . is that Mallory Wei?”

  “It is.” Flick. “How did you know?”

  “Something about the eyes.” Mallory was Ant Wallace’s wife, forced to cycle endlessly through the final stages of suicidal depression because Wallace couldn’t bear to let her go. Her mask wasn’t as complete as her husband’s. Mallory’s eyes held depths of empty despair.

  “She was inside Libby’s body. I never saw her real face.”

  “Liberty Zeist was also present?” Forest asked.

  “No, just her body. I’ve told you a thousand times! Improvement put Mallory in Libby’s head. It killed her, just like it killed everyone else who was Improved. Why aren’t you doing something about that? Why are you asking me all these questions instead of trying to stop the dupes?”

  Flick.

  “We are trying to stop them, Clair,” said Forest with an earnest expression she had seen before and didn’t trust. There wasn’t a single thing about him that didn’t scream fake to her. “Every peacekeeper has been mobilized to deal with the situation. But what is the situation? It is not just the failure of d-mat. It is the failure of the Virtual-transport Infrastructure Authority to oversee d-mat. And it is the failure of Ant Wallace to oversee VIA, in turn. He broke the most fundamental law he was obliged to uphold—that no one could ever be killed or injured by d-mat. How was this allowed to happen? We must understand what occurred, and you are at the center of this process, Clair. It is my job to ask the questions that will help me understand you.”

  “I’m just here to pretty the place up,” said Sargent. A joke, but Clair didn’t smile.

  She looked down at her hands where they rested on the lap of her orange prison jumpsuit. She didn’t know that it was actually a prison jumpsuit, but it was so baggy and characterless and tight around the wrists and ankles that she felt like a prisoner inside it. Her clothes and shoes had been taken away for forensic analysis when she had arrived at the peacekeepers’ New York office, not far from Penn Plaza. Her skin and hair had been sampled for chemical and biological traces. Then Forest and Sargent had turned up and started on her. No one had threatened her; she wasn’t in handcuffs. But it was clear that she couldn’t leave. Not once had she been allowed to talk to anyone else, in person or via the Air. It was just her and them in a room that was effectively a cell, with plastic walls, floors, ceiling, and fixture
s, like they hosed it down after every session. The air itself was sterile.

  “I’m not at the center of this,” she said.

  “Who is, then, if not you?”

  “You know who. It’s Q.”

  Flick.

  “Who is Q?”

  She wanted to rip out her hair. “Qualia and Quiddity? The AIs who were supposed to keep d-mat safe? Wallace did something to them so he could make Improvement work, and that led to Q. I don’t know how. But that’s who she is. She thought she was real, and she is real, but she’s not really . . .”

  “Human?” Forest said.

  “Define ‘human,’” said Sargent.

  “Not like us, whatever she is,” Clair said. “I’m worried about her.”

  “Because of what happened in the station?”

  “Yes.” Clair dreaded the thought of the interrogation looping back on itself again. You say you lied to Q. You said you’d always be her friend, and then you betrayed her, but she saved you anyway. She brought you back from the dead, breaking parity and the laws of d-mat to do it. Why?

  “Are you going to charge me with murder?” she asked, clearing her infield to wipe Mallory’s real face from her mind. She and Turner Goldsmith, leader of the activist group WHOLE, had used grenades to blow up the station and everyone in it, including themselves.

  “Why?” Forest asked her. “Do you think you are the same Clair Hill as the one who died in the station?”

  “I am the same Clair Hill.”

  “Not exactly the same, and not legally the same. You are a copy made from the same pattern as that other version of you, taken the last time you went through d-mat.”

  “But I think I’m the same. Doesn’t that mean I’m the same?”

  “That’s for the Consensus Court to decide,” said Sargent. “Then there’s the other Clair Hill we have in custody at the moment. Is she you as well?”

  “Of course not! She’s a dupe, not a copy—the person inside her isn’t me.”

  “But how do we tell you apart if you’re both claiming to be Clair Hill?”

  “I don’t know. Ask a lawmaker! Speaking of which, when are you going to let me talk to one?”

  “Just as soon as someone makes the decision that you officially exist,” said Forest. He leaned a fraction closer, his expression not threatening but not reassuring, either. His eyes held a challenge.

  Clair put her head in her hands. It hurt, and not just because of the harsh white lights that had been glaring down at her for hours. Her thoughts kept coming back to the same problems, over and over again, and they were no less harrowing and exhausting than the interview. Wallace had stolen her best friend’s mind. He had threatened her mother. He had to go. But there had been other people on the space station when it had blown up—his partners in crime, his minions—and she couldn’t forget them. She couldn’t forget what she had done. She couldn’t stop accusing herself of being even worse things than Forest and Sargent were implying.

  Murderer. Terrorist. Dupe.

  The words made her feel sick inside.

  Is that who I am now? Is Clair 3.0 some kind of monster?

  “I just want to go home,” she said through her fingers. “I want to talk to my parents. I want to see Jesse. I want . . .”

  I want to know that Ant Wallace is dead and what I did wasn’t for nothing.

  “I just want d-mat to start working again,” said Sargent. “The rest I can deal with, once that’s fixed.”

  Clair raised her head. Great, she thought. Another thing on her conscience.

  “If I don’t exist,” she said, “how can I possibly help you with anything?”

  Flick.

  Forest smiled.

  “Good point, Clair. Excuse me. I will be back in a moment.”

  He stood briskly and walked to the door. It opened for him and he was gone without a backward glance.

  [2]

  * * *

  THE DOOR CLICKED shut.

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know,” Sargent said. “Maybe to stretch his legs. He likes to walk when he thinks, and it’s a bit cramped in here. You’ve probably noticed.”

  Clair sagged back into the plastic seat. It squeaked under her. She didn’t realize how tense PK Forest made her until he left the room.

  “His face bothers you, doesn’t it?” PK Sargent put her hands on the table and folded them neatly in front of her. She was wearing a commitment ring on one finger, a simple white gold band. “Freaked me out too, when I first met him.”

  Clair leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She was tired and hungry and her elbow hurt.

  “You’re wasting your time, PK Sargent. You should be out there trying to find those dupes who got through before the crash, not in here trying to good-cop me into telling you whatever it is you think I’m not telling you.”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Good cop/bad cop? You should know that the Inspector hasn’t got a bad bone in his body. He’s a very smart cop, and if you’re lying about anything, he’ll know. Do you want to know how?”

  Clair sighed. “I’m not lying. Everything I’ve told you is true.”

  “It’s because of his face,” Sargent continued as though Clair hadn’t spoken. “There’s something wrong with his nerves. He needs muscle therapy to move anything above the neck, and even then he can’t just let it happen like normal people do. He has to consciously make every twitch and glance, because people can’t bear to be around him otherwise. Sometimes he uses that to put people off guard, and I suspect he’s doing a bit of that to you now, just to see how you react. That’s why the Inspector is so good at spotting liars. He knows things about people’s faces that they never dreamed of.”

  Clair sat up again and opened her eyes. Sargent smiled, revealing white, even teeth. If she was trying to put Clair off guard in her own way, it was working, but only because Clair was too exhausted to fight back.

  “Why do you call him that?”

  “The Inspector? Because that’s what he would have been, way back when, before we were all called PKs. Old names like that are partly why I joined up. My nickname as a kid was ‘Sarge.’ It’s an old army rank. You know what the army was?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sorry, don’t mean to patronize you. And I know I’m babbling. I do that when I’m nervous.” Sargent’s long fingers wound and unwound around themselves. “This is big, Clair, perhaps the biggest thing ever, and it’s taking longer to fix than anyone thought. The AIs that run VIA didn’t boot up when the system restarted. There might have been deliberate sabotage; it might just be damage caused by what Q did; either way, VIA can’t operate safely without them, not without producing even more dupes or killing more people. We’re all worried about what’s going to happen if we can’t get d-mat working again soon. Do you know what’s going to happen?”

  Clair shook her head. “I . . . wasn’t expecting to be here, remember?”

  Sargent’s mouth turned down at the corners. “That can’t have been an easy thing to do. The hardest, probably. And the bravest under the circumstances.”

  Something broke inside Clair, something she had been holding in ever since she had arrived in the booth in Penn Plaza. She had been expecting to see Turner Goldsmith and a bag of grenades. In her heart and in her head, she’d been ready to die by her own hand to stop Wallace. Instead, she had been alive, and another Clair Hill had died, and there was Jesse, and the peacekeepers, and then the world had ended.

  Her chest convulsed. It was like her body was trying to vomit, but all that came out was a single sob, startlingly loud in the cramped space.

  She put her hand over her mouth and twisted her lips tightly together. Her eyes were hot and aching, but she promised herself that she wasn’t going to cry. Not while so many people were worse off than her.

  “Are you all right?” Sargent said.

  Clair nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “If I was playing good cop, I’d be p
atting you on the back right now and saying something stupid like ‘There, there, it’ll be all right.’”

  Clair nodded again, heartily glad Sargent hadn’t done that. She didn’t know how she would have reacted. Screamed, maybe. Called her a liar at the very least.

  “Here’s how I think it’s going to go down,” Sargent said. “Lawmakers are struggling right now. If we don’t want to, we won’t have to charge you with anything. You didn’t kill anyone; you didn’t break parity. The Clair Hill who did that is dead. But we can’t let you go, either. It’s not safe outside, not until the dupes who got through before the system crashed are rounded up. We don’t have an exact number, but there are thousands of them, and we have to act on the assumption that they’re still trying to kill you. So you need protection. We can provide that. We can move you away from here without anyone knowing. We can hide you while things settle down. It’s our job to keep the peace—and as the Inspector says, you are part of that process. We have a responsibility to you along with everyone else. Keeping you safe is my job. I want you to know that I’m good at it.”

  Clair took a deep breath and lowered her hands. She felt as though the immediate emotional crisis had passed, and if Sargent’s little speech had something to do with that, no matter how small, then she was grateful. There was so much in her head, so much pressing her to act, to find Libby and Q, to finish whatever needed finishing, to do anything at all other than sit around talking. But she didn’t feel like she would explode into a thousand pieces if she wasn’t careful, not so much, not anymore.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “How many what?”

  “People died . . . when d-mat crashed.”

  Sargent blinked but didn’t look away. Her eyes, a clear jade green, seemed to cloud over. “There’s no direct way to tell, with VIA still flatlined. But reports are coming in. It looks like hundreds, maybe a thousand.”

  Clair’s shoulders slumped. “That’s my fault.”

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous. We shut it down. If we hadn’t, the world would be up to here in dupes.” Sargent raised a hand to the considerable height of her shoulder.

  “But people will blame me. They know I was coming to talk to Wallace. They know I was with WHOLE. They’re bound to think that WHOLE attacked VIA and I was part of what happened next.”