Twinmaker

67

THE PATCHES OF dry land that had once been Chinatown and Little Italy were extensively canalled. Clair led her entourage up ramps to a level high above the tourist boats, where Q helped them navigate through the maze of bridges and monorails. They hopped from building to building to SoHo, the southernmost tip of the main Manhattan island, and touched ground on Broadway. There they left the bridges and went right down to ground level, where the original road surface remained largely unchanged.

Their entourage spread out around them, waving at passersby and taking up a new chant: Counter-Counter-Counter. Jesse raised his fist in acknowledgment and chanted along with them. Clair didn’t join in. She was too conscious of the time.

“Q, can you tell where Turner is?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Clair. I am unable to connect with the drone, and there’s been no sign of the submarine.”

That didn’t mean anything either way, Clair knew. The sub was likely camouflaged, and most people had probably assumed it was elsewhere now that Clair had popped up on the ground. Turner might be minutes or hours from VIA HQ. He might have changed his route entirely. There was no way for her to know until he surfaced.

She searched her busy infield for the message from Ant Wallace’s assistant.

“For the sake of the crowd,” she sent, “would Mr. Wallace be willing to meet somewhere public?”

“That’s not necessary,” Catherine Lupoi replied. “Your meeting will be broadcast in its entirety to the Air.”

“Good,” Clair sent back. “But I’m worried about what the crowd will do when I’m not around.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Wallace’s assistant said in a reassuring tone. “We have PKs on hand. You’ll note quite a gathering here, too.”

Clair checked and found that to be absolutely true. At least a hundred people had congregated in Penn Plaza to witness her arrival. Some of them were singing. Clair grimaced when she recognized “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Jesse wouldn’t be pleased by that.

She passed the word back to Jesse and Ray.

“They can’t possibly ignore us now,” said the older man. “Not when we turn up with an army on their doorstep!”

Some army, she wanted to say. But he was speaking for the benefit of the drones and the crowd, and they cheered along with him. Perhaps he was speaking for himself, too. Turner might have sent him to keep an eye on her, but that didn’t mean Ray was her enemy. He might even want her to succeed so Turner wouldn’t have to.

Between Twenty-third Street and One Hundredth, where water claimed the island, Park Avenue was preserved as a national monument, complete with yellow cabs and food stalls. Clair took advantage of the clear road surface to go faster, pushing the monocycles to the limits of their tiny motors. Around them, the buildings grew taller. She could see the Empire State Building a few blocks ahead.

At a sign advertising a “genuine replica steakhouse,” they turned left and rolled on up Thirty-third Street. Ray’s “army” had doubled, and the cry of Counter! became a regular chant that echoed off the stone walls around them. Peacekeepers had become more visible too. Domed blue helmets stood out on every corner and in front of the historic storefronts. Clair wondered if they were afraid of a riot. She wondered if she should be too.

At Greeley Square, at last, their destination became clearly visible. One Penn Plaza was a tall black glass oblong that was imposing even from several blocks away. No greenery marred its precise lines. No signs or logos, either, despite the perfect flatness of its north- and south-facing sides. Some organizations might have had visual and virtual ads rolling 24-7, but not VIA. The evidence of its labor was all around them.

The skyscraper slabbed vertically out of a wider base. Clair and her entourage circled the base once, counterclockwise, passing Madison Square Garden, its southwestern edge literally hanging over the water, in order to approach the crowd from the other side. A cheer rose up. Placards waved. Some people booed. A surge of information rolled through the Air, spiking Clair’s popularity levels to new heights.

As they wheeled past the plaza’s stand of d-mat booths to approach the main lobby entrance, gunshots cracked over the crowd

“Traitors!” a voice shouted. “Terrorists!”

People went in all directions. More gunshots, and Clair found herself on the ground with Jesse, not entirely sure how she had gotten there, her pistol in her hand but no one to point it at.

Over the shouts and screams came the sounds of barked commands. Peacekeepers, Clair hoped. She didn’t want fighting to break out in the crowd. A man cried in protest as barking voices ordered him to the ground.

Clair raised her head. Three PKs were standing over a spread-eagled man dressed in combat gear and flak helmet. He had been liberally sprayed with thick white confinement foam that held him immobile on the ground. There was a rifle trapped safely beneath one of the PKs’ boots. The crowd had scattered to points of cover, from where they watched the scene unfold. There was no cheering now, just weeping and exclamations of shock. Two people were injured. There was blood on the ground.

In a panic, remembering Zep, Clair turned to check on Jesse. He was fine.

“Thanks, Clair,” he said, sitting up and brushing himself off. “That was close.”

She just nodded, although she still had no memory of what had happened immediately after the first shot. Her pulse was still racing, and it was hard to think. The Air was full of clamoring voices. Footage was already streaming in, including a perfect shot of her throwing herself at Jesse and tackling him to the ground.

“I’m sorry, Clair!” Q’s voice was frantic. “I should have seen him. I should’ve done something—”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Do you know who he is?”

Data poured into her infield. The shooter looked like an ordinary guy, if a little extreme in his anti-Abstainer outbursts. He had a feed not so different from hers, except with a much longer history, detailing deaths by terrorist attacks all around the world. He had lost his mother in a shutdown in Cairo, which WHOLE said was a power failure, VIA sabotage.

Clair hadn’t known that such arguments existed. It hadn’t been part of her world until now.

A peacekeeper towered over her, offering her his hand.

“Best you move inside, Clair,” he said. “Things could get ugly out here.”

His name was PK Drader, Clair’s lenses informed her, leader of the Rapid Response team. His face was hidden behind his visor. He had narrow shoulders set on a slight angle, as though he were leaning into a strong wind.

Clair nodded but didn’t take his hand. She could stand on her own. Jesse did the same. Ray joined them, and PK Drader and three other peacekeepers formed a protective cordon around them as the three of them approached the Penn Plaza building. Their monocycles lay abandoned on the ground behind them. The crowd was emerging slowly from cover. This wasn’t a game anymore. It was something else entirely, now that someone had been tangibly hurt.

Clair wondered what would happen to the shooter. Then she saw two bullet holes in the glass doors ahead of them and decided she didn’t care. That was the third time she had been fired at in four days. It had to stop.