Larry and Tony/Fabio opened the van, opened the crate in the back of it, and led their guest toward the dais.
“You’ve been collecting blank lotion,” said Susan to the revolutionaries. “You’ve been stealing it on the streets and taking it from the government and scrounging it in every corner of the country. Now we have enough, and we’re going to teach the world to be afraid again. We’re going to cross the bridge to Manhattan, break into the UN, and turn every world leader in there into this guy.”
Larry brought their guest up onstage, and he spread his lips in a wide, leering grin and hooted madly.
“This is Mr. Bubbles,” said Susan. “He’s a chimpanzee.”
51
Monday, November 26
5:48 P.M.
Lyle Camp 6, Upstate New York
18 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle had managed to lay low for three and a half weeks now, and was confident he could do it indefinitely if it came to that. He knew the facility already, of course, and could navigate it more easily than the other Lyles, but that wasn’t the main thing. He could stay hidden simply because he was the only Lyle in the complex who wanted to. The others were clamoring to get out, buying and selling their slots in the interview queue, desperate for any chance to convince the guards that they didn’t belong here, that they needed to be somewhere else, that they had a real life and a real identity, and could you please help me get back to it? In a crowd like that, Lyle could hide forever. He sold his queue slot day after day, digging himself deeper and deeper into the interminable wait in exchange for a piece of bread or a packet of beans. He wanted nothing, and the camp asked nothing of him.
On some level, this bothered him.
It wasn’t that he wanted to get out; the Lyle Camp wasn’t wonderful, but for a man facing death row it was a welcome alternative. What bothered him was his own lack of ambition. Just months ago he had been important—he had been the chief scientist of one of the largest health and beauty companies in the world. He had made things. He had accomplished things. He had created and dreamed and lived. And now he was just sitting in a derelict factory, biding his time, waiting for … for what? For the prison guards to get bored and give up? For the government to change its policies? For the world to fall apart in some kind of nuclear apocalypse? How did he think this was going to end?
“Maybe it never will,” he mused, but that was the whole problem. The idea that endless sameness could appease him. When had he become this man, so willing to sit and wait while the world moved around him? Or maybe he’d always been like this. He tried to think back to the things he’d done before, to what a “normal” life had been for him. Wake up in the morning; take the train to work; talk to Susan; endure a meeting with Cynthia; take the train home; watch Star Trek; eat a low-salt meal, maybe a piece of chicken and a plate of brussels sprouts.
Brussels sprouts. The Ibis Lyles had said they’d inherited his taste for them, as if the genetic code for the layout of his tongue had somehow predisposed them to love the flavor. Lyle sat on a catwalk above the factory floor and watched the Lyles mill around below him, hundreds in here and thousands more outside. New ones every day, each a tiny variation of the unique individual Lyle used to think he was. Did they all like brussels sprouts? Did they all watch Star Trek? Did they all lead quiet, unassuming lives, never making waves, the same routine for years on end? Lyle had never had ambition, he realized. He’d become a scientist because he was good at it, because it came naturally to him. He’d gone into cosmetics because the opportunity was there, fresh out of college, and after he’d paid his dues and gotten his job experience he’d never bothered moving on. He didn’t speak up. He didn’t change.
“How many of you actually lived your lives,” he called down. Nine hundred identical faces looked up, some finding him immediately, some searching in confusion for the source of the voice. “How many of you actually have something to go back to, something real, something that isn’t just this, in a different building, in a different face: just milling around and pretending that it all means something?”
Some of the faces found him; some of them spotted some other Lyle on the same catwalk and looked at him instead. Lyle stood up, abruptly furious at the relentless nothingness that had defined his entire life. “How many of you have never made any real decisions? You sit there, at your desk in your cubicle, at your desk in your dorm room, at your stupid counter in your dead-end job slapping cheese onto somebody else’s sandwiches. This isn’t the life you wanted? Well, that one wasn’t, either. The only difference now is that the blinders are gone, and the truth is right in front of you, and you can’t pretend you’re unique anymore just because you don’t look like every other face in the world. Because now you do. Now it’s obvious. Now you’re just me, and I’m you, and we’re all him, and him, and him, and none of it means anything. You all want your lives back? How many of you actually used them for anything?”
Some of the Lyles yelled back angrily; some talked to each other; some dropped their heads or slinked into corners. Lyle yelled again: “How many? How many?” Suddenly a hundred identical fingers pointed up, not at Lyle but off to his left, and he looked up just in time to watch himself climb onto the railing of the catwalk and step off, arms pinwheeling as he fell a hundred feet to the floor. A hundred Lyles shouted in one voice, scrambling out of the way.
It wasn’t even the first suicide they’d seen that day.
“Attention,” said the PA system, and the room fell quiet. “I have been instructed to announce that the terrorist Susan Howell has been caught and found guilty of treason. She will be publicly executed in one hour, outside the south fence. That is all.”
Lyle looked south, as if he could peer straight through the wall and into the field beyond, and past that to the fence and the execution and Susan. Susan. Why were they killing her here? Why now? There was no reason for it.
Unless it was a ploy to reveal him.
Lyle looked down at the floor to see some of the other Lyles trying, without any tools, to clean up the mess of the jumper. The soldiers never came inside anymore, for fear of riots. Lyle crossed the catwalk to the stairs, and followed the slow trickle of other Lyles headed south to see the execution. Trick or not, Lyle wanted to be as close to the front as he could. It would be the only way to tell.
The army had set up a platform just beyond the south fence, and the yard outside was already crowded with hundreds of curious Lyles. Lyle managed to work his way to the front, wondering if each Lyle he brushed past was someone he’d talked to before, someone with whom he’d shared a meal or traded his queue number. Maybe he knew them on the outside—his neighbors from Queens, or fellow commuters from the train, or a worker in his own office.
Did they have the real Susan, or a ReBirth clone? They had her DNA. And she was, by all accounts, a real terrorist, but executing her here only made sense if they were trying to flush Lyle out of hiding. Except they didn’t know which camp the real Lyle was in. They had camps all over the country. Did they make a fake Susan to kill at every single one?
Next to the platform was a truck, surrounded by armed soldiers. Who would come out of it?
The canvas flap on the back of the truck was thrown open from the inside, and an officer stepped out, followed by … Lyle craned his neck to see. A girl. Blond. Susan’s height, Susan’s build. His breath caught in his throat. The girl stepped down and lifted her hands to brush her hair from her face—both hands, because they were cuffed together. She looked up, and Lyle saw again how beautiful she was, how young she was, how sad and tired and weathered she was. The crowd behind him was restless, shifting and craning their necks and shouting: there were catcalls, and demands to release her, and demands to kill her, and a hundred other things lost in a jumbled roar.
The officer—a general, Lyle saw, though he couldn’t read the nametag—followed Susan onto the platform. She wasn’t fighting. The real Susan would be fighting, Lyle thought, but even that he couldn’t be su
re of. They were about to kill her, for goodness sake—what if her spirit was finally broken? He walked her to the end of the platform. He didn’t offer a blindfold. The general walked back to the other end and a half dozen soldiers formed a line in front him, weapons at their sides.
“Ready!”
The soldiers brought their rifles up. Lyle looked in desperation at Susan, wondering what he should do. If I say anything. I’m next.
“Aim!”
The rifles tipped forward, six black lances pointed straight at her heart. Susan faltered, her brave mask crumbling into fear, and Lyle screamed.
“It’s me!” he screamed. It was the one thing that none of the other Lyles could possibly think to say, because they didn’t know who Susan was. They didn’t know the connection, and they didn’t know this was a trap. And they didn’t know that springing that trap was the only way to save her. Lyle clung to the fence and howled as loudly as he could. “I’m the real Lyle Fontanelle!”
Almost immediately a soldier was there, grabbing his arm through the fence, and dozens of others leaped immediately into action, pointing their weapons and shouting for the crowd to move back. When the army had cleared a path along the fence to the gate, more soldiers entered and surrounded him. The general approached him, his face grim and uncertain. His nametag said Blauwitz.
“Who first came up with the idea of using ReBirth commercially?” asked General Blauwitz.
The same question Kerry used to identify him in the park. It was something only the NewYew executives would know—a perfect way to assure that he was the real Lyle, but also a clear sign that somehow, impossibly, NewYew was behind this. Lyle glanced at the truck, then at Susan, still standing on the platform with five black rifles pointed at her heart. Lyle looked back at the general.
“Jeffrey,” he said.
Blauwitz slapped a pair of handcuffs on Lyle’s wrist, and the other on his own. There was no way to lose him in the crowd now. “We got him!” the general shouted. “Pack this up.”
The general pulled him toward the gate, surrounded by their armed escort. Beyond the fence the soldiers lowered their weapons, and Susan breathed a sigh of relief. One of the soldiers unlocked her handcuffs, and she smiled.
“Was she real?” Lyle asked.
“The real Susan Howell?” asked Blauwitz. “Don’t I wish.”
They led him to a black SUV, locking the gate behind them as ten thousand screaming Lyles begged to come, too. Blauwitz unlocked the cuffs and opened the door, and Lyle climbed in awkwardly.
“You’re with them now?” asked Lyle. The door shut behind him, and they were alone.
Cynthia’s eye’s glittered. “They wanted to find you, and I knew how. I traded you for a position on their committee.”
“The Execute Lyle Committee?”
“Execute you?” asked Cynthia. “Lyle, you’re the most valuable person on the planet right now. You’re going to save the world.” She grimaced and pressed herself closer to the door. “But first you’re going to shower. You smell like somebody murdered a wrestler in an outhouse.”
General Blauwitz opened the front door and climbed in. “Everybody ready? Time to visit the UN.”
PART FOUR
REBIRTH
52
Tuesday, November 27
6:13 A.M.
Cynthia Mummer’s apartment, Upper West Side, Manhattan
17 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle knew how the lotion worked.
The Lyle with Down syndrome had been his first big clue, but the final piece that did it was right there in the papers Cynthia had given him: box after box of newspapers, net news printouts, recorded news videos, and even private government reports. The key had been in NewYew’s procedural accounts of how they manufactured the lotion. The only batches that worked, that had active cloning capabilities, were the ones that had blank ReBirth mixed into them at the factory. Just like that very first batch, way back when they’d started, where Jerry had mixed in Lyle’s sample to help match the consistency. Everything had propagated from that one tiny bottle he had mixed together in his lab. It was a random mutation in the RNA.
He knew how it worked, but it didn’t matter. The world was falling apart, and knowing why wasn’t going to save it.
The lotion itself was no more widespread than any typical drug problem—more noticeable, perhaps, because of its visual nature, but not really any more prevalent than cocaine or marijuana or meth. The massive surge of Lyles in the New York area was an admitted exception, and the government had apparently come to the same conclusion Lyle had: ReBirth was in the water supply. Anyone who could had been urged to evacuate.
Much more dangerous than the lotion’s civilian usage, the news outlets all agreed, was the lotion’s appeal to governments themselves. The various religious side effects had been bad enough, most notably the Holy Vessel’s divine cloning experiment and the resulting New Crusade. Latin America was still burning, from Argentina to the Southwestern U.S. The various countries of the Middle East had either descended into chaos or been locked down under fascist control. Even China, ostensibly nonreligious, had seen its share of denominational uprisings.
Potentially much worse, however, was the fallout from São Tomé. Before the invasion the world’s governments had wanted ReBirth as a weapon; after it, they feared it like a plague. The only way to avoid São Tomé’s fate was to destroy ReBirth or to be the sole owner, and the possibility that someone might achieve the second option made everyone too jealous to consider the first. Governments themselves, as entities, had become as addicted to ReBirth as any crackhead. They had to have it, or they would be destroyed by those who did.
At 6:13 in the morning, Lyle and Cynthia and their military escorts loaded themselves into Humvees and trekked across the city. Lyle was shocked to see how much of a wasteland it had become. Makeshift fences had been erected around “clean” zones; groups of homeless huddled around trash can fires; shanty towns and lean-tos had sprouted up in every alley and park, ominous not so much for their existence as for the fact that the police hadn’t knocked them down. Law was disappearing, and Lyle knew that civilization itself was not far behind.
The UN building was ringed with guards and barbed wire, protecting the last vestiges of a fading world government. Their small procession stopped at the gate, showed copious IDs, and traded a long series of complicated pass codes before the barricades were finally moved aside. They drove down into a subterranean parking garage only to be greeted by more guards, who walked them through the same tense rituals. Eventually satisfied, if not actually trusting, the guards opened the elevator and Lyle followed his escorts with mounting trepidation. He still had a box full of unread reports clutched awkwardly under his arm.
“This is where we’ll be living for the next several days,” said Cynthia. “We’ve requested an airlift to D.C., where it’s more secure, but for now this is as secure as we can get.”
“The sooner you can solve this, the better,” said Blauwitz.
“I don’t know what you’re expecting me to do,” said Lyle.
“Do you know how the lotion works?” asked Cynthia.
“I think so,” said Lyle. “I haven’t done the tests, but I think I’ve finally worked out the theory of it. But that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it—you need a team of scientists in here, real genetic scientists, I’m just a…” He threw up his free hand and turned to General Blauwitz. “I make lipsticks for a living, General. If you want someone to color match your eyes and your eye shadow I’m your man, but saving the world? Please tell me you have a backup plan.”
Blauwitz looked grim. “You are the backup plan.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Lyle. “You’re not the first people to kidnap me and hope for the best.”
The elevator door opened, and a tall, older man greeted them with a smile. “Dr. Fontanelle, it’s good to see you again. I’m Eric Moore, Senate liaison to the Department of Homeland Security.”
r /> “Another member of our ‘Save the World’ Committee,” said Cynthia.
Lyle fumbled with his heavy box of papers in an effort to take the man’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t remember meeting you before.”
“I looked different,” said Moore, and he smiled almost wickedly. “It was back in my prime.”
Lyle stared at the man, the word “prime” sparking some half-forgotten memory. He couldn’t quite place it.
“When Ibis abducted you, you said you couldn’t help them,” said Moore. “They held you for weeks, and all you did was run up their expenses and set their lab on fire. Our theory is that you were refusing to help them, spending all your time on a carefully calculated plan of escape instead. Can you confirm this?”
Lyle stammered. “How did you know I was abducted by—Holy hell. Prime?”
“What?” asked Cynthia.
“Nothing,” said Ira/Moore. “It’s shocking, I fear, how completely our best laid plans have all come crashing down. But you, Lyle: we need to believe that you know more than you let on. We’ve pinned an awful lot of hope on you. An entire world of hope.”
Lyle felt sick and confused—did the others know that Moore was a ReBirth clone? Would they even care? He wondered if he should expose him, and realized he had no way to prove it, and realized further that here, at the end of the world, it might not even matter. He shrugged helplessly and sighed. “I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t know how much it will help.”
“Nonsense,” said Cynthia. “He’s a genius. The only scientist in the building who’s been on the cover of Scientific American.”
Lyle looked at her oddly. “Do you mean there are other scientists?”
“I mean we have a cover model,” said Cynthia.