Saturday, June 16
9:37 P.M.
NewYew headquarters, Manhattan
181 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle put down his pen and rubbed his eyes; they felt raw and red from overuse. There was no time for his regular job anymore—all he did, for hours every day, was trawl through page after page of genetic tests and medical histories in search of congenital weaknesses. If ReBirth was to be loosed upon the world, the least he could do was make sure they were selling clean DNA.
It was the kind of work Susan would have been ideal for: long and slow and detail oriented, exactly the kind of thing you hire an intern for in the first place. As far as Lyle could tell Susan was still a “guest” in São Tomé, but he had no idea what that entailed. It drove him mad not knowing, but he couldn’t spare the time to do anything about it; there were only three weeks left until the launch of ReBirth, and he had stack after stack of small-print DNA results to examine. Saving the entire population from a deadly drug was more important, at the moment, than saving one girl from a vacation.
Lyle looked back at the printout in front of him, poring over the genetic charts, but his eyes watered from fatigue, and he blinked the tears away. He was too tired, and his eyes were too strained; he’d been working since five in the morning, almost sixteen hours ago. He pushed his chair back and stood up squinting and rubbing his eyes. He could start again in the morning.
He walked to the elevator, wracked with doubts. Am I doing the right thing? No. Definitely not. But am I doing the best thing I can, given the situation? I didn’t want it to get this far, but I made a little compromise here and a concession there and now we’re filling hundreds of thousands of bottles of ReBirth, which we’re planning to sell illegally, and Susan’s been kidnapped and a dozen other people with her and I think I helped start some kind of a cult. I didn’t mean to.
Heh. I wonder if the judge will accept that in court. “I’m sorry I broke a dozen laws and endangered millions of lives. I didn’t mean to.” He stepped out onto the sidewalk with a slow, resigned sigh.
The night sky was clear, and the streets were still warm. The subway entrance was just a block away, but Lyle stopped on the sidewalk and stared up, wondering. What are Pedro and Christopher Page and all the others doing right now? They look like me, but do they really? What if they eat better, or exercise more, or get more sun—are they healthier than I am? Are they more handsome? What about their clothes? I don’t know what looks good and what doesn’t, and I haven’t really dressed all that well since that girl in college helped me shop for clothes … what was her name? Paula? I liked Paula. I think I loved her, but she never loved me back. I’ve never known how to be in a relationship. It’s a skill I never learned … but the other Lyles have it, or some of them, at least. Somewhere out there is a version of me that dresses better, looks better, and has a girlfriend. He probably has a wife and children. He definitely makes better choices.
If I’m not the best me, who is? And what am I supposed to be instead?
A limousine pulled up to the curb, right next to Lyle, and the back door swung open.
“Dr. Fontanelle, please join us.”
Lyle peered inside the dark limo; there were several figures, but their faces were shadowed. “Who are you?”
“Your brothers.”
“I don’t have any brothers.”
“Brothers in mind,” said the voice from the car. Two men stepped up behind Lyle—strong men with grim faces and iron grips. They had his arms almost before he knew they were there, and it was too late to run. They pushed him firmly toward the car.
“What do you want?” asked Lyle, bracing himself on the sides of the doorway. “Show me who you are.”
“I told you,” said the voice, “we are your brothers.” The mysterious speaker pressed a button to bring up the lights, and Lyle gasped in shock: the back of the limo was full of five people, all identical.
All Lyle.
Lyle’s own face smiled at him coldly. “Now get in the car.”
Lyle was too shocked to resist; the big men pushed him through the door and he fell onto the seat, clutching it desperately, righting himself and staring at their faces in horror.
“But,” said Lyle, “you’re all gone!”
The other Lyle raised his eyebrow. “You know about us?”
“You’re the…” But no; the men in São Tomé knew fully well that Lyle knew about them. These weren’t the test subjects, and they weren’t the factory workers. Who else had the lotion?
The answer came as quickly as the question: These are the thieves.
The men outside closed the door with a thump, and the limo pulled away into the street; Lyle looked up just in time to see another copy of himself standing on the sidewalk, clipping on his security badge. He checked his belt and found the badge missing—they’d stolen it from him when they pushed him into the car.
“You’re the ones who stole the lotion,” he said.
“I take it from the vagueness of your accusation,” said the lead Lyle, “that you don’t know any more than that.”
Lyle shook his head.
“We’ve been watching you with some interest, Doctor. You and the rest of your company. When you abducted our contact we thought you’d discovered us, but it seems our fears were unfounded. For a company in possession of such power, you’re far less dangerous than we’d expected.”
“Your contact?” asked Lyle. “What are you talking about—we didn’t abduct any—” He stopped. We have abducted people, he corrected himself. Everyone accidentally affected by the lotion: the test subjects, the plant workers, and now Susan. One of them was a contact for the thieves? Which one?
“You’re an excellent scientist, Dr. Fontanelle,” said the lead Lyle. “As you can see, we’ve all sampled your product and found it extremely compelling. There is a use for a thing like this—many uses, few of them legal. All of them powerful.”
“What do you want?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Doctor? We want Igdrocil.”
Lyle looked back at him, wondering what, if anything, his expression gave away. Igdrocil was the imaginary herbal ingredient Sunny and Kerry had dreamed up for the label; it was their shorthand way of saying “the part that overwrites your DNA,” without coming right out and saying it, or even understanding it. Igdrocil was what made the lotion work.
Lyle just had no idea what it was.
“You want to make your own lotion,” said Lyle.
The man nodded. “Being you is a profound experience, but hardly the most useful thing in the world. All we can really do as you is replace you, which we have now done, but our sources tell us you have very little power or freedom in the NewYew hierarchy these days. Even Jeffrey, the great embarrassment, has more say in the boardroom than you.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because we look exactly like you, and because we are not idiots.” The man glowered; Lyle had never seen his own face look so frightening. “If we can go anywhere you go, and talk to anyone you talk to, we would have to be extremely incompetent not to have a fairly good idea of exactly what you’re doing, and when, and why. More importantly, we have much grander plans to pursue, and much grander people to impersonate.”
Lyle swallowed. “The president?”
“Eventually, yes, though presidential power is mostly ceremonial. But the director of the CIA, perhaps? Or Senator Moore, the special liaison to the Department of Homeland Security? These are positions with real, immediate power, which can help us cement our position for the future.” He smiled. “I assure you that we have thought this through very, very carefully.”
Lyle’s mind reeled, thinking about the terrifying ramifications of such a plot, but he had more pressing concerns. He forced himself back to the present—back to the stony faces of his five solemn kidnappers. Maybe he could talk his way out of this? “You’re right,” he said, “I’m practically a figurehead these days—I don’t know what you expect to accomplish by replacing me.”
“They must keep you around for something.”
Lyle shrugged, surprised to find himself nearly overwhelmed with emotion. “I think they just don’t trust me to leave. Plus they still don’t understand the science.”
“Do you understand it, Dr. Fontanelle?”
Lyle shook his head. “I know what it does, and I think I know how, but I still haven’t figured out why.” He looked around the limo. “You don’t understand it, either, do you? You definitely didn’t understand it when you stole it, or you wouldn’t have turned into me. I’m guessing you used it by accident the first time—” He stopped abruptly, staring at the lead Lyle. “But now it’s been weeks, and you still look like me. You stole the formula when you stole the lotion: you can make your own.” He looked around in confusion. “Why are you still me?”
The lead Lyle frowned. “We have an older formula: 14G.”
“14G is the final,” said Lyle. “We haven’t changed it since then—the active ingredients are exactly the same as what we’re putting in stores next month.”
“That can’t be,” the man hissed. “We’ve tried it a hundred times—a thousand times! You think we want to spend our lives as you?”
“Have you kept it clean during manufacture?” asked Lyle. “Have you kept it away from your own DNA? Did you imprint it properly?”
“Yes, of course!” the man shouted. “We know all of that—we’ve been listening in on you for weeks, dammit, we know how it works! But it’s not working!”
“That’s what my replacement is doing,” said Lyle, “isn’t he? He’s going through my files in person to try to figure it out.”
“Your replacement is going to get us blank lotion from the manufacturing plant,” said Evil Lyle. “It’s a temporary measure, but we have plans that can’t wait any longer. He’s also going to look for the latest formula, though if what you say is true he’s not going to find anything.”
“It’s true, I swear it.”
“No matter,” said Evil Lyle. “That’s why we have you.”
Lyle nodded; he’d been expecting this ever since they’d shoved him into the car. “You want me to make you more.”
“It would certainly be easier than stealing it from NewYew every time we need it.”
“But I don’t know how,” said Lyle. “When we make it in our plant it works fine, but if you can’t make it work, then I understand even less about the lotion than I did when you shoved me into the car. There’s no reason for ReBirth to do what it’s doing.”
“I don’t care why it works,” said Evil Lyle, “I just want it to work!”
“But ‘why’ is the most important part,” said Lyle. “I can’t make it do something unless I know why it does it. That’s like asking me to repair an engine without knowing anything about combustion or electricity.”
“Which in this analogy are chemistry and genetics,” the man growled. “You know all about chemistry and genetics!”
“Not for ReBirth,” said Lyle. “The engine was a bad analogy: let’s say instead that combustion and electricity are the principles that should work but don’t. ReBirth is like opening the hood of a car and finding the engine replaced by a rock, or an alligator. It’s obviously functioning on some kind of scientific principle, because it’s predictable, but until I know what that principle is I can’t do anything to fix it.”
The limo was silent; the five men stared at him, and Lyle forced himself not to squirm under their gaze. They’re weighing me, he thought. Like a worm right before it gets stabbed with a hook.
The lead Lyle looked at the others, face solemn, then back at Lyle. “You will simply have to do your best.”
“And if I still can’t figure it out?”
Evil Lyle reached into his suit coat and pulled out a gun. “No one will even know that you are missing.”
“Fine,” said Lyle, putting out his hand to stall them. “I … need my lab.”
“We’ve prepared a lab for you.”
“My notes,” said Lyle, “my equipment—”
Evil Lyle shook his head. “Our agent can get everything you need out of your office.”
Lyle eyed the gun, searching for a way out. Even if he escaped, he couldn’t just go to Carl and the board—as soon as they found out there were other copies of him, loose and with nefarious plans, they’d pack him off to São Tomé for “containment.” Part of him didn’t mind that—it longed for it, in fact. It would be an end to his troubles, an end to his fears, just a lifetime of blissful house arrest in a tropical paradise, lounging on a beach with Susan … and nine or ten other copies of himself. No. He wouldn’t do it—it wasn’t worth it. Even without the other Lyles, he knew he couldn’t just sit there doing nothing while this technology—his technology—was used and abused by one misguided group after another.
Lyle looked at the other Lyle, at all five of them. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll help. I need to figure it out anyway, and if you’re really willing to give me the support I need, you’re my best chance of doing it.” He looked out the window. “Where’s your lab?”
“We’re here,” said the lead Lyle, and the car pulled to a stop.
“Here in Manhattan?” Lyle frowned. “We’ve only gone a couple of blocks.”
Another pair of burly thugs stepped up to the doors and opened them. “Welcome to your new home,” said Evil Lyle. “You’re the new chief scientist at Ibis Cosmetics.”