“I’ll tell everyone you’re here,” said Senator Moore. “We’ll call for you when we’re ready.”
Cynthia led Lyle down another hall, and he followed awkwardly with his box. “He should never have questioned your abilities,” she snapped. Now that the two of them were alone she seemed much more furious than an insult to Lyle should reasonably have made her. She was taking this personally, and Lyle wondered how much of her current power, including her freedom from prison, was based on his own performance in the upcoming meetings. If he screwed it up, would she take revenge? The thought made him queasy, and he hurried to catch up.
“Are they expecting some kind of presentation?” Lyle asked. “I don’t have anything prepared—”
“You just got out of prison,” said Cynthia. “No one’s expecting PowerPoints and handouts. My guess is they’ll want to hear as much as you can tell them about the lotion itself, followed by a Q and A, which will inevitably turn to the topic of solutions. Sound smart and confident the entire time—a stretch for you, but do your best—and we’ll get out of this fine.”
“Be honest,” said Lyle softly, hoping no one was close enough to overhear. “You know as well as I do that there’s no cure for this, no magic reversal. When ReBirth changes your DNA, nothing can change it back but more ReBirth, and we’re already seeing where that road takes us. What are you expecting us to accomplish in there? What can we even do?”
“Think of it like a hostile corporate takeover,” said Cynthia. “The human race is a company, and ReBirth’s going to buy us out, gut the executive board, and rebrand us into an extension of itself.”
“So how do we survive a biological merger?” asked Lyle. “Try to convince a hand lotion we’re too valuable to fire?”
“We accrue so much stock that the buyout makes us rich,” said Cynthia. “And here we are, me out of hiding and you out of a prison camp, with the hopes of the whole world pinned on us. I’d say we’re doing pretty well.”
Lyle frowned. “How do you intend to cash in your stock in this metaphor?”
Cynthia raised her eyebrow. “If I tell you everything, what’s left for me?” She stopped at a door and opened it, revealing a sleepy but well-groomed receptionist yawning at a desk. “Lyle, meet Lilly. I’m sick of your names already.”
The woman stood up, and Lyle found himself reflexively analyzing her appearance: African American, attractive; good hair that she hadn’t been keeping great care of lately; good skin, especially around the corners of the mouth and eyes, which was important for a makeup model; passable hands, though nothing they’d use in a nail polish ad; a slim body, though not an especially curvy one. Her strongest feature was her young, open face with striking eyes and a bright smile, which managed to stay bright even when it was wrapped around a stifled yawn.
He looked at Cynthia in surprise. “I thought you were joking about the cover model.”
Lilly rolled her eyes. “I don’t even have makeup on.”
“Lyle hired half our models at NewYew,” said Cynthia. “Give him a minute, he’ll figure it out.”
Lyle frowned and looked at Lilly again, wondering what he’d missed. She pulled on a coil of her hair. “I wore it straight back then.”
“Natural Blue Black,” said Lyle, snapping his fingers and almost dropping his box. “Number 328B.”
“I’m impressed,” said Lilly. “I don’t even remember the color, let alone the part number.”
“Lyle’s full of stupid little facts like that,” said Cynthia, brushing past her to the larger office beyond. “Did you send my message to Ambassador Larracilla?”
“You already asked me that,” said Lilly, glancing at Lyle with a smirk, “and I already told you that I did. He hasn’t sent a response.” Lyle was shocked at her combative attitude—Cynthia wasn’t the kind of person you got snarky with.
“Counting just now I’ve asked you three times,” Cynthia called out from the other room, and her voice held exactly the level of distaste Lyle expected. “I’m trying to stress to you that this message is important.”
“And counting just now I’ve answered you four times,” said Lilly, “so maybe I’m taking this more seriously than you are.”
Lyle’s jaw nearly dropped.
Cynthia stepped back into the room, her expression icy. “Are you saying I should have woken you up in the middle of the night to remind you?”
“You did wake me up in the middle of the night to remind me.”
Cynthia glared a moment longer, then walked back into her office. “Since you obviously have so much time on your hands, take the same message to Ambassador Hitudeki—and make sure you change all the country references. I don’t think Japan will be persuaded by our offers to Mexico.” Cynthia closed the door, and Lilly sat back down at her desk with a laugh.
“I can’t believe you said that,” said Lyle.
“Which part?”
“Any part.” He set his box of papers in one of the chairs by the wall, and sat down in the chair next to it, just across from Lilly. “Nobody talks like that to Cynthia—it’s like walking into a buzz saw.”
“She’s all bark,” said Lilly, tapping away on her keyboard. “Maybe before, but in here I’m one of the only allies she has. If you’ve ever thought of the United Nations as some kind of paragon of peace and cooperation, you are in for a big surprise. It’s like Carrie White’s locker room in here. And the worse it gets outside, and the closer they come together inside, they still exclude her because it’s a big stupid boys’ club. I’m practically her only friend.”
Lyle raised his eyebrow. “That’s how you treat your friends?”
Lilly smirked. “‘Friend’ was a strong word. She’s still a gorgon, she’s just … a gorgon who’s not allowed to eat me.”
“Gorgons don’t eat people,” said Lyle. “But don’t worry, I see your point.” He looked at his box of papers with a sad, internal sigh, then dropped it unceremoniously on the floor. “Screw it,” he said. “I could read a thousand news reports and still not know how to change anything.” He looked at Lilly. “Cynthia’s position here is much more interesting. Were you here when they brought her in?”
“Actually she’s the one who brought me in,” said Lilly.
Lyle leaned forward. “You, specifically?”
“I don’t know why.” Lilly looked up at him, her face clear and guileless. “Most of the nonmodel, nonwaitress credits on my résumé are office assistant kind of stuff, receptionist and that kind of thing. Maybe she just … had an old file and looked through it for candidates? I don’t know.”
Lyle shook his head. “Every file NewYew had was entered into state’s evidence when the company dissolved, so there’s no way Cynthia could just accidentally have one. Even if she’d stored encrypted copies online somewhere, why go to all the trouble of accessing them just to hire a secretary? No offense.”
“Why would that offend me?”
“I don’t know,” said Lyle. “Just being polite.” He steepled his fingers, trying to think. “If she accessed the NewYew files it must have been for something more, something to do with ReBirth, but what would she be doing in the part of the files that had old models’ names in it? There’s nothing important in there. Again, no offense.”
“Who do you normally talk to, that you have to say ‘no offense’ after every sentence?”
“Cynthia.”
Lilly laughed. “That explains it. That one was slightly offensive, though, even though I know what you’re saying.”
Lyle stared at her, wondering if he’d seen her somewhere else than on the box photo. “What’s your last name?”
“Washington,” she said. “Why?”
“Lilly Washington,” said Lyle, staring blankly as he listened to the name. He’d heard it somewhere, or seen it. “How many times have you left this building since you were hired?”
“Why does any of this matter?”
“Because I think I saw you in our list of prospective ReBirth models,”
said Lyle. “And I think you were rejected. Have they let you leave?”
“Well, I’m not a prisoner here—”
“Have you ever left?”
Lilly paused, then shook her head. “Not since the day after I was hired. Most of the ambassadors are living here these days, and their staffs.”
“Have you tried to leave?”
Lilly paused again, and her face fell. “No. They bring in everything we need, though, and it’s dangerous out there. It almost doesn’t matter what this job pays, this building has running hot water. Sometimes they forget to bring the right food—”
“Lillian Washington,” said Lyle, snapping his fingers. “Grandmother with breast cancer, tonsils removed in the fifth grade, and still signed up on your parents’ insurance. You have celiac sprue.”
Lilly’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you stalking me?”
Lyle laughed nervously. “I get that a lot, actually. But no, no stalking, I just have a very good memory. Just now you said that sometimes they forget to bring in the right food, and by that you mean gluten-free. You were rejected from the ReBirth program because you have a genetic disorder called celiac disease: you can’t digest wheat gluten properly.”
“Any gluten, actually, but wheat’s the usual culprit.”
“That’s probably why you had your tonsils taken out, back before you were diagnosed, and they didn’t know why you got sick all the time.”
“How do you know all of this?”
Lyle laughed tiredly. “I’ve recently become an expert in genetic illness. Don’t worry, all I know is your medical history.”
“That’s still a lot.”
“Here’s my theory,” said Lyle, leaning forward. “Cynthia wasn’t just looking for an assistant, she was looking for one she could trust—one she could be as certain as possible was exactly who she said she was, and not a spy from … I don’t know, anywhere. Even within this building you say nobody trusts each other. So she went through our list of rejected models and found someone with a genetic disorder debilitating enough that no one would ever want to copy it, yet light enough that it wouldn’t interfere with your work. Then she cross-referenced that with the old résumés on file to see which ones had secretarial experience. Filter for all those crazy requirements, and the only one left is Lilly Washington: make sure she’s still herself, untainted by the lotion, and boom, she’s hired.”
Lilly stared at him, mouth hanging slightly open. “I…” She shook her head. “Here I thought I was hired for typing sixty words a minute.”
“Sorry.”
“What does it mean, though?” she asked. “Say it’s true: what does it tell us? That Cynthia’s paranoid?”
“No one’s ever argued with that,” said Lyle, “but no one’s ever said she’s stupid, either. Even the people who hate her. If she’s protecting herself this closely, it means her position here, and mine, and yours for that matter, are a lot more tenuous than we thought.”
Lilly laughed, but the sound was completely devoid of humor. “Welcome to the end of the world. Find me someone whose position isn’t tenuous and I’ll buy you a pony.”
Lyle laughed back, and in that moment he seemed to see her in a new light. He returned the gentle tease. “Can you afford a pony on what she’s paying you?”
“A cigar, then.”
“I don’t smoke.”
Lilly smiled. “I’ll dip into my savings, and buy a pony to smoke it for you.”
Lyle smiled, too.
The outer door opened, and Ira/Moore stood imperiously in the doorway. “Come with me, Doctor. Time to meet the General Assembly.”
53
Tuesday, November 27
7:32 A.M.
United Nations, Manhattan
17 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“This session of the United Nations General Assembly will now reconvene.”
Lyle sat nervously in his seat between Cynthia and Ira/Moore, overawed by the size and scope of the room. It was a wide auditorium with rounded walls, filled from front to back with more counters and tables and chairs than he could count. Most of them were empty. The walls were lined with four rows of windows, one on top of the other, which during a normal session were presumably filled with translators or other observers but today were mostly dark and empty. The walls leaned in, and Lyle felt like they were looming over him dangerously. At the front of the room sat a podium, and behind it a broad desk on a dais; behind that a golden wall rose up like a monolith. Even with the room mostly empty, Lyle felt compressed by the sheer weight of the room’s legacy.
“The nation of Japan would like to point out that we barely have twenty members left in attendance,” said the Japanese ambassador. “No resolutions we vote on here can possibly be passed.”
“The United Republic of Tanzania is tired of listening to Japan whine about this.”
“It’s a serious concern,” said Japan.
“Here we go again,” said Estonia.
“Every member nation was invited,” said the man at the podium, “and their failure to attend must be taken as a voting abstention, the same as every other attendance issue.” He had an American accent, and Lyle thought he recognized him from the news, but couldn’t put a name on him. He leaned over to Cynthia and whispered softly.
“Who’s that?”
“Chad.”
“He doesn’t look African.”
“He’s from the U.S. State Department. His name is Chad.”
“Oh.” Lyle sunk back into his chair.
“Japan is right,” said Libya. “One or two attendance abstentions is quite a different thing from a hundred and seventy-three of them.”
“Then what do you propose instead?” demanded Mexico. “Should we just sit back and do nothing while the world falls apart around us? We’ve invited them and they’re not here—let’s try to get something done anyway.”
“The nation of Estonia,” said Estonia, “has heard enough of this assembly’s arguing to last a lifetime. The scientist has arrived, and I say we listen to him. If he has anything valuable to say it will be more than this room’s heard in weeks.”
“The nation of Samoa agrees,” said Samoa, “but does so in a slightly more polite manner.”
“Fine,” said Chad. “The General Assembly officially recognizes Dr. Lyle Fontanelle, and invites him to take the podium.” He stepped aside, and Ira/Moore nudged Lyle to stand up. Lyle walked slowly to the front of the room, his footsteps echoing as he went. He hadn’t exactly been expecting applause, but even so, the silence felt crushing. His mouth was completely dry when he reached the front of the room.
The spotlights made it difficult to see everyone, scattered as they were across such a wide room. “Good morning,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen of the … United Nations—or the General Assembly? Is that how I address you?” He heard a murmur from the Estonian section, and wondered what they were saying about him, and in that moment he felt something inside of him snap. He was sick of being scared, sick of being dragged around, sick of being mocked by the people who’d brought him here to help. Twelve hours ago he’d been dying by inches in a prison camp, and now he was standing at the podium of the United Nations. His stock, as Cynthia had put it, was on the rise. If he had power now, even for a minute, he was going to use it.
Lyle looked back up at the auditorium, peering into the unlit depths. “I’m sorry, can everybody come up here to the front? All close in where I can see you? I feel like I’m talking to an empty hall.”
“You are talking to an empty hall,” said Estonia.
“You, too,” said Lyle, pointing back at the Estonia delegate. “Everybody, right up front. Get friendly. If this is the last group of sane … anyone in the world, let’s at least act like it.”
“That’s not the way we do things,” said Japan. “There are rules of order we can’t expect you to understand—”
“I don’t want to understand them,” said Lyle. “You’ve been following your rules th
roughout this whole process and look where it’s got you.” He gestured at the vast, empty room. “I think your rules are stupid.” He stole a glance at Cynthia and saw her red-faced and fuming, but still keeping silent. You don’t have the power here, he thought at her. If not even your secretary’s afraid of you, I won’t be, either.
The delegates still hadn’t moved, and Lyle spoke again. “Come on, guys, you can do it. Right up here. Bring your little nametag plaques if you feel weird without them.” The Mexican delegate stood up and came forward, grinning wickedly at Lyle’s breach of form. “Good,” said Lyle, “there’s one. Mexico wins the prize; somebody get him a candy bar. Who’s next? Here, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to unplug the microphone and just start talking about ReBirth. Mexico’s the only one who’s going to hear any of it.” He unplugged the mic and more people came forward. Soon most of the remaining assembly members were clustered in the first few rows, twenty delegates and nearly twice that many staff members. Cynthia, Lyle noticed, was no longer fuming, and wore her standard face of arch calculation. He’d impressed her. Lyle looked away from her and scanned the group with a surge of his earlier fear.
“Wow,” said Lyle. “All in one place there’s kind of a lot of you.”
“We’ve moved our seats,” said Bangladesh. “Now stop wasting our time and talk.”
“Right,” said Lyle. “What do you want to know?”
Kenya raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have a presentation?”
“This time yesterday I was trading cigarettes for prison food,” said Lyle. “I know more about ReBirth than apparently anyone else in the world, but no, I don’t have a presentation. Ask me questions.”
“Why did you create it?” asked Germany.
“By accident,” said Lyle. Some of the delegates seemed shocked, but Lyle was past caring. “A lot of preliminary studies have been done using gene therapy to heal burns, and I was trying to use the same technology in an antiaging cream. It was a wrinkle remover.”
Kenya scowled. “You destroyed the world with a wrinkle remover?”
“Not personally, no.”