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.”
“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.
“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.”