Counterpart (23 page)

“What should I have said? Oh, yeah, love the whole drive-in movie thing. By the way, take off your pants?”

He rubs his face, but I can see him fighting a smile.

“I don't know,” I go on. “I guess I was hoping you would make the first move. For once.”

Camus lowers his hand, his almost-smile immediately absorbed into a frown. “For once? What's that supposed to mean?”

Eject. Eject!

“Nothing. Never mind.”

I get up from the bed and head into the small bathroom attached to the room, where the humming fluorescent lights offer a nice distraction from my buzzing thoughts.
Me and my big mouth.
To be fair, I've never been great at censoring myself, but being awake for over twenty-four hours is probably not helping the situation.

I hear the door creak open and turn to find Camus standing silently in the doorway, arms crossed, head bowed, as if seeking wisdom in prayer. Several excuses flit through my mind—
I need to wash my hands; I thought I heard the toilet running
—but in the end, I say nothing, because for once there are no simple words to repair what has broken.

When Camus finally speaks, his voice is low and his expression devastatingly earnest. “You should know, being near her,” he says slowly, “made my skin crawl. She wasn't you.”

“But she had my memories—
Rhona's
memories. More than I had when I showed up, anyway. She was me.”

Camus gives a violent shake of his head. “No. She may have started out as Rhona, she might have called herself Rhona, but no one stays the person they were at birth. From that first breath, life begins changing who we are. Sometimes it makes us better people, sometimes worse. In her case, she let the evil win.”

“She didn't exactly have a choice. The machines had her. Tortured her.”

“The machines have tortured all of us,” Camus says seriously. “We're all living in this prison of our own making; the machines our judges, executioners, wardens. Some cells are larger than others, certainly, and”—he rubs his thumb gently across the back of my hand—“some of us have better cellmates, but it doesn't alter the fact we're prisoners of this world. The only way out is through.”

I hunch over the sink, trying to think of a response. But instead, my gaze remains fixed on the porcelain basin, the drain flecked with clear drops of water. How easily would that drain swallow my blood? As easily as my shower drain earlier tonight?

While I'm moodily considering my sins, Camus's arms come around me, wrapping me in the fragrance of some generic body wash. Spicy, warm, and oddly comforting. It brings me back to the other night, when I came back to our quarters after a long day, and found him hanging out in the doorway of our bathroom, finishing up his bedtime rituals. He had a toothbrush in hand and some foam around the edges of his mouth, looking perfectly ordinary in this incredibly messed-up world of ours. Sometimes it's the simplest moments that resonate with me the most. Then, as now, I can't help thinking,
this is how our life would be.
If it weren't for the machines, maybe I would come home to him every day, without the threat of death constantly between us. We'd live somewhere nice, inexpensive. A two-bedroom in the city—there would still be cities. He would welcome me into our bedroom with a smile, his cheeks stroked clean by a razor, and when I laid my face against his, or trailed my mouth across his jaw, his smooth skin would sing of a sharp ocean breeze. Or whatever other fragrance he wore, from the aftershave on sale at the store that week. I wonder what it says about me, that even in my wildest fantasies, I dream of a practical life.

Back in the real world, Camus and I merely stand there, aligned against one another. Together, and yet not. If he can feel me trembling, with cold or rage or sadness or fear, he doesn't comment on it.

His next words are worse: “You said, for once.”

Damn. I'd hoped he would let that go. I release a slow breath, shaking my head. “I wasn't thinking. I shouldn't have said it.”

“No? In all the time I've known you, before and after Anchorage, you've always spoken your mind. It's one of the things I most admire about you. When it isn't driving me crazy.”

“Camus. Don't.”

“What?” Camus tries to make his voice light, but it sounds fake. I feel the tension in his hands, his arms. He's asking a question he doesn't truly want to know the answer to, and he knows it. “What could possibly be so terrible it gives even the fearless Rhona Long pause?”

I spin around in his arms, forcing him to release my hands.

He holds his hands frozen in midair, as though I'm about to attempt an arrest.

“All right. You want the truth?” I swallow. “Sometimes…sometimes it feels like I love you more than you love me.”

The moment the confession is out of me, sliding sick and ugly into the world, I suddenly understand Samuel's fears. I owe him an apology for not taking them more seriously.

Meanwhile, Camus's look crosses from worry into simple confusion.

“The grand romantic gestures are wonderful,” I explain, “but they also feel empty. For show. Like you're trying to convince yourself that we're a couple, and this is what couples are. But I don't want to be characters in a movie, Camus, going through the motions.” I pause, allowing him an entrance, but he doesn't take it.

So I continue.

“Do you know when I feel you most? In the little moments. When we eat meals together, and you ask me if there's anything left on your plate that I want. When you make a space for me on the elevator closest to the door, because you know how much I hate riding them. When we're in bed together, and you roll over in your sleep, resting your hand right here on my hip.” I smile, but it's like trying to apply wet duct tape. It doesn't stick. “I just want to feel like we're moving in the same direction. Instead, it feels like you're keeping the possibility of an exit open.”

He opens his mouth, then shuts it. Then: “How long have you felt like this?”

It's a good question. The closest figure I come to is, “A while.”

“I see.”

Deny it,
I think.
Tell me I'm wrong, Camus. Tell me it's all in my head.

Tell me you love me.

To Camus's credit, he doesn't move away from me, doesn't retreat from the subject. But I see it in his eyes—the lonely, heartbroken look of someone who realizes they are not where they expected to be, and have no idea how to proceed. He takes a moment to order his thoughts. I finally understand the heavy fear a sudden calm must have brought to a homesteader living in Kansas.

“What if she had been more like me?” I press into the silence like a pin into a balloon. “
Exactly
like me? What if the woman who strode back into McKinley last week was the same woman you lost near Anchorage? Are you telling me you wouldn't be the least—tempted?”

“Tempted?”
I can practically hear his forehead scrunching into those familiar trenches, while his tone is slightly wounded. “Do you really think that little of me?”

“I don't know what to think!”

He glances upward, directing his frustration toward the ceiling. “Did you question Samuel about his loyalty?” he snaps, and continues without letting me respond. “After all, he was the one so devoted to the woman I loved that he spent two years holed up underground, making clones of her.”

“Now you're jealous of Samuel?”

“How could I not be?” His reply is fast, lashing out like a whip, and catching me by surprise. His eyes return to mine, carrying an injured look that squeezes my heart. “You trust him implicitly, you let him keep your secrets, but you would crucify me for a crime I haven't even committed.” He shakes his head. “Tempted! As if I'm so changeable.”

“My secrets?”

It takes me a moment to track Camus's train of thought, not the least because I'm barely keeping this argument from going entirely off the rails. Then it hits me.

“The cloning. You're talking about my decision to have him clone me.”

He presses his lips into a thin line, saying nothing.

“You said you understood why I didn't tell you.”

“I did,” he says. “I do.” His voice is hushed, but anger still penetrates his tone. “But it doesn't erase the fact that I lived for six months without hope,
without
you.
Samuel didn't. He didn't know six months of agony. Six months of being force-fed empty consolations and feeling pitied at every council meeting. Six months of lying awake at night, imagining everything I could have done differently. Do you know how many bullets I took for you in my dreams, Rhona? How many times I saved you?”

My throat closes like a fist. “Camus, I—”

He holds up a hand. For a long moment, he's silent, wrestling with the memories. When he finally speaks, every syllable is deliberate, strained through his teeth. “I'm doing everything in my power to ensure that doesn't happen again. The world can't afford to lose you again. And neither can I.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

His jaw twitches. “I wasn't aware I needed to parade my misery in order to make you feel at ease. I'll bear that in mind for future.”

“Camus…”

He breaks his stillness, pacing away from me, out of the bathroom.

“Camus!”

Near the door, he staggers and reaches out to a nearby counter to steady himself, no doubt still plagued by whatever drug Crazy Rhona used on him. My heart plummets as his shoulders slump, his forehead almost meeting a cabinet on the wall. “Perhaps we both need some space,” he says to the cabinet. “Just for the time being. The doctors want me to stay overnight for observation, anyway.”

“Space? Were you even listening to anything I said?” I want my words to sound light
,
but instead my voice hits a note of desperation. “That's the opposite of what I want.”

“No? Then what is it you want, Rhona?” He sounds tired. Defeated. And I think,
Why are we doing this to one another?
Clawing at each other's walls, exposing the insecurities, all the rot and mold beneath our carefully manufactured facades.

I maneuver so I'm standing next to him, but I don't dare touch him out of fear that he'll pull away. “I want you to fight for me. I want to
feel
like you're fighting for me. Not on my behalf, not for the resistance, its optics, but for me. For us. For this.”

Camus shakes his head. “Everything is war with you these days, isn't it?”

“Oh, please.”

“I'm only saying, love shouldn't be a constant battle, a game of one-upmanship. You should trust me, trust I care for you, even when I'm not screaming it from the mountaintops.”

“I do trust you. This isn't about trust.”

“No? You just accused me of being faithless. You believe I would abandon you for another woman.”

Before I can respond, the door slides open without warning, blasting cool air into my back. Camus leans away from me, and I back up from him.
Is this how it's going to be now?
The realization is jarring, if not downright concussive. I feel dazed.

“What's going on?” Renee Hawking demands, folding her arms across a dark silk robe. She's pinned her hair flat against the top of her skull, but it still poufs out at the back, making her look a little like a triceratops. Under different circumstances, I might find it funny, but currently my well is dry. “One of my assistants just informed me of your message over comms. You were attacked? The both of you?”

I hear her speak, but in my head I'm thinking,
Camus is wrong. The only way out is out.

“Come with me, Councilwoman,” I tell Renee, leading her back through the door and into the hall. “There's something you need to see on the dormitory level…”

Several days later, the council's still recovering from the shock of the killing, and the knowledge that other clones exist, while I've managed to plug the gaping hole in my conscience with a winning combination of sleep aids and enough hard candy to open a small Wonka factory in my stomach. Around this time, Zelda calls me down to the military level to discuss her findings regarding the doppelgänger machine.

“Glad Her Majesty found the time to—hold up. Is that a candy cane?” Zelda asks me, straightening up from over a laptop computer when I step into the training room.

“It is, indeed,” I answer without shame, sucking the striped candy.

As far as sweets go, candy canes weren't my first choice. I don't hate peppermint like Camus does, but I'm a dark-chocolate gal through and through. Or I think I was. I haven't tasted it since my second birth. That's something they don't warn you about the end of the world: the impending chocolate holocaust. While raiding the cafeteria pantry earlier for something to lift my spirits, I did stumble upon some old Hershey's with almonds, but they were all so old that if they had been human children they would've been potty-trained and would already know their ABC's. In my infinite capacity for optimism, I still unwrapped six of the expired bars before giving up; each was slightly discolored, and a few even wore white spots of mold. In lieu of chocolate, I've had to settle for stale gobstoppers, fireballs, and, today, candy canes. Because there wasn't enough disappointment in my life already.

Zelda slants her gaze toward Ulrich, who's standing behind me nursing his own candy cane. It's his third one. His fingertips are red and sticky where he's been holding it, sans the plastic wrapper. “You, too?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

Ulrich offers her a shrug, which rattles the Heckler & Koch G36 slung across his back, and continues eating.

“Really, Long?” Zelda says.

I pull the candy cane from my mouth, trying not to notice how I've managed to work it into a shiv, and wave it at her. “I don't want to talk about it. What have you got for me? Where's the machine?”

“Somewhere in here.” Zelda gestures vaguely at the room.

Instead of her research room, she asked me to meet her here, in one of the larger training rooms. This one has been designed to imitate the Alaskan tundra, preparing soldiers for combat out in the open. Apart from a few rocks, some phony trees, and raised ground, there's very little in the way of cover. It's also freezing. Zelda neglected to tell me I should bring a jacket. The longer we stand here, not moving, the more I feel it. Soon, it's an effort to keep my teeth from chattering, while my fingers are already going numb around the base of the candy cane.

“What do you mean,
somewhere
?” I shove my candy into my pocket, ignoring the messy consequences. In the same action, I drop my other hand to my waist, to the EMP-G holstered there, and scan the room corner to corner. “You don't know?”

“Calm down,” she tells me. In the history of that phrase, I don't think it's ever worked as intended.

“Don't tell me to calm down,” I snap, backing up toward Ulrich and the wall. He doesn't seem concerned, but maybe that's just the sugar pacifying him. As I've recently learned, his sweet tooth is ridiculous. I shoot Zelda a withering glare. “You're in charge of what might be the most important discovery in the past six years, and you've
lost
it?”

She locks her hands on her waist. “I didn't lose it. It's hiding.”

“Hiding. Oh, even better.”

Zelda shakes her head. “No, you don't get it. Long—it's playing hide-and-seek.”

Now I'm confused. “Come again?”

“You were right about it having your memories. They must have gotten them off the servers at Brooks, like Samuel suspected. It's got some kind of artificial brain to store them. I'm no expert, but it looks like the kind of thing we were developing to cure people who'd suffered serious brain trauma. You know, total vegetables. Only this thing is a whole brain—closer to a computer than an organ, really.”

I've still got my eyes on the landscape, trying to pick anything sharp and metal from amidst the slushy brown-and-white stretch of land.
Where is it?
Shivers roll up and down my spine like the fists of a massage chair.
Come out, come out, wherever you are…

Or don't,
I mentally amend.
That works, too.

“The machine's brain isn't like a human one, though,” Zelda continues. “It can't forget like us. Our brains only hold so much information. Think about it like an old dial-up modem. When we remember, we reestablish a connection, reactivating the network we need. Use those neural pathways all the time and there's no problem. But stop for a while, and the brain focuses on the connections you want to keep, culling the other lines. In other words, use it or lose it.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a Samuel analogy.”

She smiles with an edge. “I might've consulted a doctor or two. I'm about machines, not people.”

No kidding.

“Go on,” I tell her slowly.

Zelda hunches back over the laptop, bringing up a screen of indecipherable code. There aren't just 1's and 0's, but symbols, parenthesis, and more, like someone had banged their head against a keyboard. “It's like this: Everything you ever did—your entire life—it's all there, stored locally, some as files and the rest as code. Once I figured that out, it was just a matter of rolling back the machine's brain to an earlier state.”

I narrow my eyes, reaching for a conclusion. “An earlier state?”

“I made it a kid,” Zelda announces gleefully.

“Why?”

“Why the hell not? The thing thinks it's you. Take away its guns, the years of physical training and mental conditioning, and it's no longer a threat. It's just playtime with steel knees and an LED smile.”

I stare, slack-jawed for a moment, before finally shaking my head. “Okay, so you've clearly lost your mind. Ulrich, what do you think about all this?”

He pops the candy from his mouth only long enough to say, “If it is hiding, go seek.”

“Not helping.”

“Look,” Zelda says, more soberly. “I couldn't take all its ranting and crocodile tears. It was messing with my ability to concentrate. This way, it's not dangerous, and it's out of my hair.” She pauses, typing a few things into the computer. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Who knew you were such a needy kid?”

Most kids, when they're an only child, learn to happily play by themselves, but I could never stand to be by myself for more than an hour. Even as a toddler, I apparently found my own company insufficient, my thoughts like an enemy army waiting just beyond the horizon. I prefer people. Friendship. Something to keep me busy and occupied. Maybe Zelda doesn't understand that, having grown up the elder of two, at the dawn of the electronic age.

“Okay, so couldn't you have just left the machine off while you tinkered with it?”

“Short answer? No.”

“What's the long answer?”

“I have my reasons, all right?”

I don't have to think long about what they are. Zelda's simply curious. Those who helped design and program the artificial intelligences did so out of passion for the work. At some point, money was involved, sure, but there's no shame in accepting payment for your life's ambition.

“Anyway, you're missing the point of all this,” she says. “The machines
created
something. They were never programmed to do that. Scout, destroy, repair, identify, communicate with…yes. The list of things they can do is long and impressive, but not limitless. Creating something? From scratch?” She shakes her head, dreadlocks tickling her exposed neck. I didn't notice before, but she's wearing a dark-magenta shirt, long-sleeved, with holes over the shoulders. How she isn't freezing is beyond me. Warm-blooded, I guess. “The higher echelon is evolving. But you want to know the best part, the real kicker? They've had help.”

“Help as in…human help?”

A voice suddenly cries out from behind one of the artificial knolls—my voice, but with the petulant tone of a six-year-old. “Are you still looking?”

I raise my brows at Zelda.

“Yeah,” she calls back, not quite convincingly, but I guess it's still enough for a prepubescent machine. “Damn, you're good at this game.”

“
Ooooh
,” the machine cries, voice pitching upward in alarm. “That's a bad a word!”

Zelda smirks at me. “Look at you, all self-righteous even as a baby.”

“Don't do that,” I say stiffly. “That thing isn't me.”

“I bet that's what your predecessor would've said about you, too.”

Ulrich grunts, and I turn in time to catch him shaking his head. The look he gives Zelda is a warning one. She frowns and leans over the computer, the muscles in her arms bulging against her long sleeves. For a programmer, she stays remarkably fit. Which reminds me, I should probably start working out again. You know, with all my free time.

“All I'm saying,” Zelda continues with an air of defensiveness, “is you're not exactly in a position to judge what's human or not, what's
you
or not.”

“Zelda,” Ulrich says disapprovingly.

“It's all right,” I say to Ulrich, then to Zelda, “You're entitled to your opinion.” I shrug. “Even if it's a crappy one.”

“It doesn't sound like you're looking!” the machine calls out again.

“You're too good,” Zelda replies, noticeably without a curse word. I don't get it. This thing killed people. It's a monster in a metal skin. I understand wanting to dissect its head, learn its secrets. But why is she treating it with such compassion in the meantime? I've never seen Zelda care about anyone's feelings; she's even rude to Ulrich half the time. “Someone else is going to help me look.”

She turns to me.

I turn to Ulrich.

Ulrich looks between us. With a sigh, he drops the arm holding the candy cane and grumbles something in German before unslinging the assault rifle from his back and resting it against Zelda's desk. He stomps dramatically toward the middle of the room, probably so the machine will hear and know he's searching. Or to illustrate his deep disapproval. Maybe a combination of both.

“What did he say?” I ask Zelda while Ulrich fee-fi-foes around.

“That he isn't getting paid enough for this.”

“He's not getting paid at all.”

Zelda holds out her hand, as if to say,
Exactly.

“What makes you think the machines have help?” I say, getting back on topic.

“The higher echelon is smart—brilliant, really.” Zelda sits back against the small desk and crosses her arms. “It developed new code for itself, broke every shackle we placed on it. Let's not forget, this is the same intelligence that devoured every other AI on the market, essentially murdering its competition. But you know what happens when you become that smart? You start looking for shortcuts. You get lazy.”

“Work smarter, not harder.” That's always been my policy.

Zelda nods. “You got it. The higher echelon has enough on its plate without dealing with the intricacies of developing a new sentient being. So, what does it do?” She smiles, almost affectionately, like a proud mother. “It outsources.”

“Outsources to who? I thought the machines killed all their creators.”

“They didn't kill me,” Zelda points out. “Maybe others survived. Maybe the higher echelon are keeping them hostage, forcing them to perform maintenance, and now work on this project. Who knows? What I do know is there are deliberate errors in this code. Errors no machine would make. Hell, errors any programmer worth her weight in silicon wouldn't make.”

“So?”

“God, Long. I know you're no brain surgeon, but try and keep up. The errors are breadcrumbs. I followed the trail, and they lead me to coordinates.” Her fingers flit across the keys—a new screen pops up. It's a map of North America with small purple dots over a handful of Canadian and United States locations: Calgary, Echo Bay, Palo Alto, Detroit…and that's just at a glance.

Zelda waits, watching me with an expression of uncontained expectation.

I realize she wants congratulations. Kudos. I don't know why it surprises me, but it does. For someone so determined to convince the world she doesn't give a damn, I've always suspected Zelda cares a great deal about its survival. More than that, I think she wants people not to hate her for her contribution to the rise of the machines. Then again, maybe it has nothing to do with anyone else. Maybe she just wants to stop hating herself.

“Coordinates for what, exactly?” I ask.

“I have no—”

A peal of laughter interrupts Zelda, followed by a slew of cursing. In
Deutsch.

I yank my EMP-G from its holster, ready to come to Ulrich's aid—but my fear proves unfounded. A moment later, the German appears over the hill, marching toward us, wearing the machine for a backpack. Despite its considerable size, the machine has wrapped each of its mechanical limbs around Ulrich's body, securing itself like some kind of artificial leech. Or, you know, like a kid desperate for a piggyback ride.

“He found me.” The machine giggles.
Giggles.

Zelda doesn't bother to restrain herself. She throws back her head, bursting into laughter at the sight. Ulrich doesn't share her sense of humor, or the machine's innocent enthusiasm for the game. “Remove it,” he orders Zelda. “Now. Or I will do it myself.”

“Did you try asking it to get off?” I offer.

He looks at Zelda, who shrugs, still smiling. “Might work,” she agrees.

“Get,” Ulrich tells the machine through his teeth, “off.”