Twinmaker

77

“WHAT ARE YOU thinking, Clair? We have just three minutes left.”

Clair snapped out of her thousand-yard stare.

“I’ve worked out who you are,” Clair said. “And I think Ant Wallace guessed too. That’s why he’s so interested in you. Q, you’re not one of the Improved at all. You’re the most amazing person on the planet!”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing amazing about me.”

“That’s where you’re absolutely wrong.”

As quickly as she could, Clair outlined everything she had just come to understand. Q was an accident, but that only made it even more incredible that she existed. She was someone rather than something, with needs and desires just like anyone else.

“So I’m . . . not real?”

“You are real, Q. You’re as real as I am. And that means you’re right: we can’t break parity. Doing it might mean killing Quiddity.”

“So what? He’s just an ordinary AI.”

“He’s the closest thing you have to a father.”

“He’s nothing to me, Clair. Not like you. You’re my friend. If I am what you say I am, then the only things stopping me from saving you are rules—and they’re not even my rules: they’re VIA’s rules.”

“But the rules are there for a reason, Q. If you break parity, you break d-mat, and if you break d-mat . . .”

Clair stopped, imagining a world without d-mat. No food, no water, no medicines, no waste disposal, no tools. Families would be scattered all across the planet with no means of finding each other again. Some homes didn’t even have doors anymore, so anyone inside would be trapped until the system rebooted. If it did reboot. Who knew if that would be possible or not with one of the two AIs broken?

That it also meant no dupes, no Improvement, and no Ant Wallace pulling the strings seemed a small consolation.

There had to be another way.

A plan came to her then, a plan so terrible she almost dismissed it out of hand. She couldn’t possibly do something so awful. It wasn’t in her. It wasn’t like her.

But . . . You’ve changed.

Clair put her face in her hands, knowing that she could do it if she had to.

And it looked very much as though she did.

“I want you to surrender.”

“What?”

“You have to, Q. We can’t destroy the world for my sake or for Turner’s. I’m not like WHOLE. I believe that d-mat does more good than bad—and maybe even Wallace can be turned around, with you there to argue with him.” Clair tried to find the right words, even though her heart wasn’t in them. “You know that duping people is wrong. You know Improvement has to be stopped. Wallace thinks he’s getting some superhuman slave, but he’s wrong. He’s getting a conscience.”

“Clair, I—”

“Don’t argue, Q. It has to be this way. Go to him now and tell him he’s won.”

“If that’s what you want—”

“It is.”

“I’ll make him get rid of the dupe,” Q said. Her voice was hollow. “As soon as I can, so you can go back home. I won’t let him hurt you.”

“I know you will, Q. You’re a good friend.”

There was a very long pause.

“I am?”

“Always and forever.”

“Do you promise?”

Don’t think of it as betraying her. . . .

“I promise.”