“Whoa!” shouted Tony/Lyle, stumbling back as the pile of materials crashed straight into his lap.
“Watch out!” Larry cried at the same moment, dropping his tools as he leaped to his feet. He hesitated a moment, then grabbed Susan’s shoulders and pulled her back from the table, keeping a tight grip as she struggled to escape.
“Let me go!”
“Calm down,” said Larry. “Just take it easy, we’re all friends here.”
“We’re wasting our time!” she shouted. “All these stupid syringes and gelcaps and none of it is working!”
“Tens of thousands of Lyles,” said Larry, “and you say it isn’t working?”
“Oh, we’re making plenty of Lyles,” said Susan, “but we’re not destabilizing the market. We’re trying to convince people ReBirth is too dangerous to use, but all we’re doing is driving up the price. It’s time for a new plan.”
“I agree,” said Tony/Lyle, “even without knowing what it is.” He took off his hazmat hood. “Anything that gets us out of these damn suits.”
“Careful,” said Larry, “you’re covered with lotion.”
“And?” asked Tony/Lyle. “I’m already Lyle, what’s the worst it can do to me?”
Larry shrugged, and Susan started gathering up the fallen lotion. “It’s not about quantity,” she said, “it’s about precision. We don’t turn everyone into Lyle, we turn key people into … someone. I don’t know who yet, but if it’s the right people and the right DNA, we can get our message out there.”
“The world’s already full of genetic terrorists,” said Larry. “Every politician in the country wears a hazmat suit, everywhere they go. Who can we hit?”
“I’m working on it,” said Susan. “For now, we recruit. I have friends from some of the protests I did in college—activists, rebels, that kind of stuff. They’ll help us.”
“And what about all this stuff?” asked Tony/Lyle. “We still have gallons of Lyle lotion that we could get arrested just for looking at. I don’t want to haul it around, or leave it somewhere as evidence against us.”
“So we flush it,” said Susan. “We smash the bottles, burn the rug, and dump the lotion down the drain.” Her voice was quiet but fierce. “And then we change the world.”
44
Wednesday, September 26
6:27 A.M.
Ayra de Menezes Hospital, São Tomé
79 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Carl Montgomery had the plague. It had swept the entire island in just a few days, rendering everyone—even the natives, who should have been immune—practically too weak to move. It hit adults the worst, causing them to void their bowels and bladders in an almost constant stream. Several had already died of dehydration, but only the servants; Carl and his son were receiving the best care money could buy. Even with that, though, they were immensely ill. Even the doctors were sick.
“We need to go to a real hospital,” said Jeffrey. His voice was weak, barely audible from the far side of the room. “We need to go to Lisbon.”
Carl summoned all his strength to tell him off. “I didn’t build a palace on an island with no extradition just so I could extradite myself.”
“We’re going to die,” whispered Jeffrey.
“I don’t die,” Carl snarled, and forced himself to sit up. His hands gripped the bed railings fiercely, and he smiled viciously. You can’t take my strength, he told the plague. Kill everyone on this island, and I’ll still be here.
“Is that the nurse?” asked Jeffrey.
“It’s me, idiot,” said Carl. He had remade himself as a copy of his son, young and healthy, but now that the plague had come he was back in his wheelchair again. No matter: he’d been weak before, and he’d still built a company that practically ruled the world. He could get through this, too. He found the control stick on his wheelchair and drove it out the door and into the hallway. He bumped against something too low for him to see, an obstacle in the middle of the hall, and when it moaned he realized it was another patient, or maybe a nurse or doctor, too sick to move. “Get out of my way,” he rumbled, “some of us have things to do.”
His eyes were failing, too, but he could see that the hallway was littered with bodies. Pale bodies, when they should have been brown. He rolled back toward the nearest one, peering closer, and recognized his private nurse. Well, almost: his body was shriveling, and his skin was discolored. Splotchy, and almost pink in places. What plague was this?
And then it hit him, and he roared in debilitated rage. This was no plague.
This was ReBirth.
Someone had infected the entire island—Carl’s island—with ReBirth, turning everyone on it into somebody so small and weak they couldn’t resist. And whoever it was would be invading soon; it couldn’t possibly mean anything else. Carl would find who’d done this, and he’d make them pay.
Who was he turning into? Somebody small, he knew, because the adults were shrinking. Somebody weak, by the same reasoning, and judging by his failing vision it was somebody blind, as well. But there was something else in the DNA, hidden under the rest. Not just size and age, but a sickness—something devastating deep in the genes. Worming itself into him cell by cell. He had to reach the factory in time; he had to get new DNA before it all came crashing down.
He waited in front of the elevator, his crumpled reflection staring back from the shiny metal doors. He’d seen that face somewhere … was he turning into someone he knew? The doors opened, and the image disappeared. Carl drove in, gasping for breath, shoving a fallen body out of his way with the rubberized bumper of his wheelchair. The interior of the elevator was mirrored, and as the door closed he saw his image again, surrounding him on every side, repeated a thousand thousand times into the endless distance of the parallel mirrors.
Wisps of old man’s hair clinging to the top of a round, sickly head. Sunken eyes. Oxygen tubes curving around his ears and into his nose. He’d seen that face, or a hundred like it, every day in his NewYew office for years. A little bald child.
“I have cancer,” he said.
The doors opened, and he tried to back up, but the way was blocked by something the electric motor wasn’t strong enough to push. More bodies, filling the hallway, stacked two deep by the elevator as if they’d been crawling toward it for help. He pushed the control stick as far as he could, but the chair wouldn’t move. He stared at the mirrored walls of the elevator, and the little boy with cancer stared back. Carl screamed in rage, a hoarse, impotent whisper, and on every side of him an endless line of dying reflections screamed in silent unison.
He pulled himself forward, lowering himself out of his seat, determined to crawl to the NewYew compound if that’s what it took. The IV tube pulled loose with a painful pinch, and when he flopped to the floor the oxygen tube ripped free from its tank. He gasped on the floor, his vision dimming, the cancer eating him alive. His arms seemed hollow as he reached forward, trying to crawl over the legs of a little fallen replica of himself. The world swam in his view; his ears roared like seashells. He dragged himself forward an inch. His sphincter fell apart, liquid excrement dribbling down his legs and soaking his hospital gown. He dragged himself another inch.
He choked, gasping for air, and reached toward the door.
45
Friday, September 28
3:45 P.M.
The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
77 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“They don’t have it,” said General Blauwitz. A still photo of his face filled the screen on the wall, and his voice echoed tinnily through the room. “They have manufacturing facilities, they have other kinds of lotion, but they don’t have blanks.”
General Clark frowned. “Have you looked everywhere?”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Ira/Moore. “Why would they not be manufacturing blanks? For storage, if nothing else?”
“Obviously there might be samples somewhere,” said Blauwi
tz, “and we’re still searching, but I’m telling you: they were not manufacturing blank ReBirth anywhere on this island. I don’t think they even knew how. Where we expected to find blanks we’ve found vast stores of inert ReBirth, chemically identical to the stuff we’ve tried and failed to make on our own.”
“Still no Igdrocil,” muttered Ira/Moore. He pounded the table in fury. “If they don’t have it, who does!”
“I can’t guarantee anyone on this island is still alive,” said Blauwitz. “That Toby lotion really did a number on their communal digestive system—it looks like this snowballed into flu, dehydration, and then a malaria outbreak before they even had time to get leukemia. I don’t know if I can overstate this: this island looks like the world ended.”
“For them it did,” said Miller.
“I’ll save who I can,” said Blauwitz, “but it’ll be all I can do just to clean it up before anybody else sees it. We can’t let anyone know what happened here. I’ll call you later.” He severed the connection.
General Clark stared at the room. “Congratulations, we’ve made a bad situation worse.”
“Did the lotion work faster than normal?” asked Miller. “What happened?”
“We were too concerned about the lotion’s direct effects and didn’t consider the side effects,” said Ira/Moore. “There wasn’t enough food and water on the island to keep up with the demands of a mass increase in metabolism.”
“That still sounds like we’re putting it lightly,” said Clark.
“Now we know what happens when ReBirth gets used on a large scale,” said Miller. “Our espionage gadget just became a weapon of mass destruction.”
“We need Lyle,” said General Clark. “Not a knockoff, the real thing. He’s the only one who knows how to make ReBirth.”
“If he’s even alive,” said Miller.
“He’s definitely alive,” said Ira/Moore. “But he doesn’t understand ReBirth or Igdrocil any better than the rest of them.”
“You’re sure of this?” asked Clark.
He never made it for us, thought Ira/Moore, but that might have all been a deception. Just biding his time until he could burn our building down. He sighed and threw up his hands. “No, I’m not sure. But how do we find him? He has the best disguise in the world. Current estimates suggest we have more than seven thousand Lyles on the East Coast alone, and more than twenty thousand total in the country. There’s at least three thousand in Arizona—we think Mexicans have been using the lotion to jump the border. And because we can’t tell them apart, if we start grabbing Lyles and interrogating them we’re literally never going to stop. We’d interrogate the same guy a dozen times.”
“We could … tag them?” said Clark.
“They’re not bears,” said Miller. “Besides, the ACLU’s starting to make waves over these Lyles, and anything we do to them will fall under even closer scrutiny than before.”
“Seriously, though,” said Ira/Moore, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Why not tag them?”
“I was joking,” said Clark.
“The Lyles are criminals, right?” asked Ira/Moore. He leaned forward, excited by his new idea. “By the definition we created, anyone who uses ReBirth without government sanction is a terrorist; that’s why I’m in this meeting, representing Homeland Security. The ACLU can go and screw itself once Homeland Security gets involved. We’ve never prosecuted more than a handful of ReBirth biological weapons cases, and then only for dealers, but we have the power to prosecute anyone. I say we don’t just talk to the Lyles, we round them up: every single one of them has broken the law, so why not arrest them?”
“Because you just told us there’s more than twenty thousand of them,” said Miller. “We don’t have anywhere to put that many people, certainly not in any of the prisons this administration keeps underfunding.”
“Then we form camps,” said Ira/Moore. “I know this sounds extreme, but we can do this—we have the legal power, and we have the legal precedent. Every single Lyle out there has been trafficking and using a biological weapon. It is, effectively, illegal to be Lyle Fontanelle. All we have to do is start punishing people in violation of that policy. And in the process, we question each one until we find the original.”
“I don’t like this,” said General Clark.
“Everything that happened on São Tomé could happen here,” said Ira/Moore. “As soon as Al Qaeda or North Korea or who knows who else gets hold of some ReBirth, suddenly we’re a nation of blind cancer patients dead of dehydration and plague, torn apart by dogs in the streets. Are you willing to do what it takes to stop that?”
The room was silent. Finally General Clark nodded. “Get the camps organized before you make an announcement—and be diplomatic when you do it. If we tell them it’s a prison camp we’ll start a civil war. Call it … amnesty. A chance for nonterrorist ReBirth users to come clean, and get help.”
“Get help?” asked Miller.
“Under ideal circumstances, yes,” said Clark. “As long as we’ve got them all in one place we may as well do something to help them regain their old identities. If possible. But finding the real Dr. Fontanelle is our number-one priority.” She sighed and shook her head, seeming to deflate in her chair. “This is going to be hell.”
46
Wednesday, October 3
8:15 A.M.
Port Chester, New York
72 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
One of the Lyles at the train station had Down syndrome.
Lyle couldn’t help but stare. He had seen his own face in subtle variations a thousand times now, maybe ten thousand times, and while none of them were perfect replicas they were incredibly, uncannily similar. Ten thousand identical twins, however different they might be in the details, were still more or less identical. To see an outlier so wildly different was almost as big of a shock, at this point, as the first Lyle clone had been so many months ago. The Down syndrome clone was standing with a woman, and it was all Lyle could do not to walk straight to him and pepper them both with questions.
Fascinated or not, though, Lyle was still intensely paranoid, and he scanned the train platform carefully for anyone who might be watching. The government was actively searching for Lyles now, rounding them up into “Amnesty Centers,” and Lyle had started disguising himself to stay free: dyed hair, a fake mustache, a hat and gloves, even a makeshift fat suit with extra bulk around his midsection. Anything to break up his profile and distinguish him from the thousands of other Lyles that seemed to be coming out of the woodwork. There were at least five Lyles on the platform now, probably headed into Manhattan to turn themselves in. What will happen to them? he wondered. Should I just go with them, and stop running? What will they do when they find out I’m the real Lyle? Kill me, or imprison me, or force me to make more ReBirth?
Maybe they won’t even care. That thought scared Lyle more than any of the others.
When Lyle had first gone into hiding, it was just to get away from Ibis, and from the police, and from everyone else who wanted to capture him. Then he’d stayed in hiding as some kind of self-styled Robin Hood, bringing ReBirth to the terminally ill, but that was more of an illusion that anything else; he’d helped, what, five people? Six? He had no resources, and all his efforts to find more had led to dead ends. Now he was hiding simply to hide. Because continuing on one path was easier than finding a new one.
But now …
Now, a Lyle with Down syndrome changed everything. For months he’d been trying to figure out how ReBirth did what it did, and here was the best lead he’d ever had: an anomaly. A corner case in which the process didn’t work the same way it had in every other. Figuring out why ReBirth didn’t work right with this man might help him to figure out what “working right” meant.
Lyle finished his study of the platform, then studied it again, just in case. There didn’t seem to be anybody waiting to jump out and grab him. He leaned away from his pillar and walked toward the couple. Down syndrome is
a genetic disorder, he thought, growing more scientifically excited as he approached them. Maybe ReBirth reacts differently to that? But it’s cured all the congenital disorders they’ve tried it on before—why not this one?
He stopped in front of the couple. “Excuse me, sir.”
The Lyle stared at him a moment, then smiled broadly and held out his hand. Lyle shook it.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked. Her attitude was clipped and cold, her voice strained and her eyes bloodshot. Lyle imagined she’d spent a lot of time recently worried and crying, which seemed appropriate. He kept his own voice as soft and nonconfrontational as possible.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Lyle, “but I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t help but notice this man’s condition. Please, may I ask you: did he have Down syndrome before he used ReBirth?”
“I really don’t want to talk about this,” said the woman.
“I didn’t,” said the man. He had a slight lisp. “It started five weeks ago. A bad dose.”
“A bad dose,” Lyle mused, looking at the other Lyle’s face: his own face, but with the classic characteristics of Down syndrome. Almond-shaped eyes, a slightly flat nose, smaller ears than normal. The eyes, interestingly, showed the typical Lyle heterochromia, a patch of light in a darker iris, but here it was multiplied into a dozen or more small spots. Lyle didn’t know what would cause something like that. He searched his memory for what little he knew about the causes of Down syndrome, but it was far from his area of expertise.
“We’re going to the Amnesty Center,” said the woman. “Do you think they can change him back?”
“Have you tried a dose of other lotion?” asked Lyle. “From a different source?”
“Of course,” said the woman, “we’ve tried everything, but it never goes away.”
Lyle frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. How many doses has he used?”
“Before or after the Down syndrome?”