Saturday, June 30
12:15 P.M.
Ibis Cosmetics headquarters, Manhattan
167 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle had mixed twenty-seven batches of ReBirth in the last week. He had followed his recipe; he’d changed his recipe; he’d ignored his recipe completely and freehanded the entire thing. He’d made good lotion every time, but it didn’t copy DNA.
After determining that the retrovirus wasn’t doing the copying, his next best theory was that the functional lotion had become contaminated with something else, perhaps something in his laboratory at NewYew, and so he had mixed a series of batches (numbers three through twelve) without any of his standard clean protocols—he didn’t wash his hands, he didn’t keep the tools or beakers clean, he didn’t protect the ingredients. On Wednesday a message came through from Abraham Decker containing a full list of the other chemicals and substances present in his laboratory, complete with photos of the laboratory layout. Lyle wanted to talk to Decker in person, but the Ibis Lyles assured him it was too dangerous at the moment; Decker was struggling to maintain his cover, and even sending the lists and photos had put him in danger of discovery. On the weekend, maybe. Lyle buckled down, waited for the weekend, and mixed more batches. Numbers thirteen through twenty-seven were various attempts to re-create specific contaminations from Decker’s list of ingredients, trying to see if any of them, or groups of them in combination, could reproduce the accident that had created ReBirth. None of them had.
“What I need to do,” said Lyle, “is analyze the lotion in action.” He talked to himself all the time now, for there was no one else to talk to. The Ibis Lyles had refused his request for an assistant. “If I could watch it under a microscope, and really see what it’s doing and how it’s doing it, I might be able to make it work.” He reached for the phone to call the secretary, but stopped when he heard the lock on the door click open. Someone was coming in. He looked up and watched himself walk through the door, his own face in his own beige suit.
“Hello, Lyle.”
Lyle felt the familiar queasiness that always seemed to hit him when he saw one of his copies. He set down the phone. “Which one are you,” he asked. “Brady? That’s the CEO, right? Ira Brady?”
“We call him Prime now,” said the other Lyle. “Our real names are potentially dangerous these days, and we needed a good way of differentiating who was who.”
Lyle raised his eyebrow. “So Brady is Lyle Prime? As in, the first? The original? Shouldn’t that be me?”
The other Lyle shrugged. “It’s really more of a seniority thing, but … there you go. Sorry.”
Lyle shook his head, sitting at his desk. “Well, great. First I’m not the only me, and now I’m not even the real me.”
“At least you’re still you,” said the other Lyle. “The rest of us who are you are actually somebody else, from our point of view. You have to admit that’s worse.”
“You’d think so, but I don’t know,” said Lyle. “This is still pretty mind-blowingly weird.”
The other Lyle walked toward him, extending his hand. “I’m Abraham Decker, by the way. I’m you at Ibis—and that’s always how I used to explain it, even before this whole … mess. You were the head chemist at NewYew, and one of the best in the business, and I was the head chemist at Ibis—kind of in your shadow, I guess. Now I’m you at NewYew and you’re me at Ibis. In a weird sort of way.”
Lyle looked at the man’s hand and grimaced, feeling another wave of queasiness. “I’m sorry. No offense, Mr. Decker, honestly, but it’s just too strange to shake my own hand.”
Decker/Lyle nodded, dropping his hand and backing up toward another desk chair. “I understand completely.” He grabbed the chair by the chemical counter, pulled it forward a bit, and sat. “And please, there’s no ‘mister’ necessary, everybody just calls me—well, I was going to say that everybody calls me Decker, but these days everybody calls me Lyle. Even Prime and the others, as part of the charade.”
“I’ll just call you Decker,” said Lyle, smiling ruefully. He knew the man was here to talk about the lotion, to answer the questions Lyle had been pestering Ibis with for days, but now that he was here Lyle saw his chance to ask about other news—about NewYew, and ReBirth, and the world outside. The product launch event was only a few days away. What was really happening out there? “You were finally able to get away from NewYew?” he asked. “They don’t have you under surveillance?”
“I’ve managed to gain a level of trust,” said Decker/Lyle, “probably more than you’ve had in several months, actually.”
“They trusted me,” said Lyle, though even as he said it he felt a flicker of doubt.
“They’re holding your intern hostage,” said Decker/Lyle.
“Susan?”
Decker/Lyle nodded. “Everyone knows you had a thing for her, so they’re holding her hostage to keep you from talking. Cynthia explained the whole thing to me in a very uncomfortable meeting. You have information that could bring the entire company down, and they don’t trust you to keep quiet, so they’re using Susan as an … insurance policy.”
Lyle shook his head; he’d suspected they might try this, but to have it confirmed, and so coldly, was a shock. He looked at Decker/Lyle harshly. “You have to keep quiet. Don’t let them hurt her.”
“I don’t care for her one way or the other,” said Decker/Lyle, “that’s the irony here. But I do care about their trust, because it’s the only way I can get the information and the access that I need.”
“So you’re playing along.”
“All it took was to stop bickering,” said Decker/Lyle, shrugging. “I don’t attack their ideas the way you did, and every now and then I suggest a few of my own in the same vein. They love me now.”
“This just keeps getting better and better,” said Lyle, throwing up his hands. “I’m not the only me, I’m not the original me, and now I’m not even the best me.” He could just imagine this impostor in the boardroom, laughing at Jeffrey’s jokes and cheering at each new plan to turn his lotion into vast, heaping piles of illegal profits. More effective than me, but far, far worse. “At least I’m not living a lie. Or compromising every principle the real Lyle ever stood for.”
Decker/Lyle raised his eyebrow. “You mean scientific advancement?”
“I mean saving lives.”
“I told you, I won’t let them hurt Susan.”
“I’m not talking about Susan,” said Lyle, “I’m talking about everyone—saving lives in general.”
Decker/Lyle smirked. “When have you ever stood for saving lives?”
Lyle stared at him, his mouth hanging open. “I … what do you mean? I’ve always stood for saving lives.”
“Just ‘lives’ in general?” asked Decker/Lyle. “Is that a charity I’m not familiar with? The Saving Lives Foundation?”
“I mean helping people,” said Lyle angrily.
“Well, okay,” said Decker/Lyle, “but again: which people? I don’t want to be a jerk about this, Dr. Fontanelle, but I’ve spent years trying to emulate you, first in my own job and now in yours. You’ve never been involved in any charity organizations, you didn’t contribute to any relief efforts or nonprofits in anything more than a token capacity, and even then only when it was your own company’s new flavor of the week. Tossing a couple hundred bucks at the Haitian hurricane or the Salvation Army doesn’t make ‘saving lives’ one of your core principles. I’ve been playing your role … accurately.”
“My life is not a role.”
“It is for me.”
