Julian had no doubts. He had enemies, vast and malicious, and nobody was more entitled to his paranoias.
Just short of Illinois, the Buick made a long-scheduled stop.
Julian took possession of his clone at the last moment. The process was supposed to be routine—a simple matter of slowing his thoughts a thousandfold, then integrating them with his body—but there were always phantom pains and a sick falling sensation. Becoming a bloated watery bag wasn’t the strangest part of it. After all, the Nest was designed to mimic this kind of existence. What gnawed at Julian was the gargantuan sense of Time: A half an hour in this realm was nearly a month in his realm. No matter how brief the stop, Julian would feel a little lost when he returned, a step behind the others, and far more emotionally drained than he would ever admit.
By the time the car had stopped, Julian was in full control of the body. His body, he reminded himself. Climbing out into the heat and brilliant sunshine, he felt a purposeful stiffness in his back and the familiar ache running down his right leg. In his past life, he was plagued by sciatica pains. It was one of many ailments that he hadn’t missed after his Transmutation. And it was just another detail that someone had thought to include, forcing him to wince and stretch, showing the watching world that he was their flavor of mortal.
Suddenly another old pain began to call to Julian.
Hunger.
His duty was to fill the tank, then do everything expected of a road-weary driver. The rest area was surrounded by the Tollway, gas pumps surrounding a fast food/playground complex. Built to handle tens of thousands of people daily, the facility had suffered with the civil chaos, the militias and the plummeting populations. A few dozen travelers went about their business in near-solitude, and presumably a team of state or Federal agents were lurking nearby, using sensors to scan for those who weren’t what they seemed to be.
Without incident, Julian managed the first part of his mission. Then he drove a tiny distance and parked, repeating his stiff climb out of the car, entering the restaurant and steering straight for the restroom.
He was alone, thankfully.
The diagnostic urinal gently warned him to drink more fluids, then wished him a lovely day.
Taking the advice to heart, Julian ordered a bucket-sized ice tea along with a cultured guinea hen sandwich.
“For here or to go?” asked the automated clerk.
“I’m staying,” he replied, believing it would look best.
“Thank you, sir. Have a lovely day.”
Julian sat in the back booth, eating slowly and mannerly, scanning the pages of someone’s forgotten e-paper. He made a point of lingering over the trite and trivial, concentrating on the comics with their humanized cats and cartoonish people, everyone playing out the same jokes that must have amused him in the very remote past.
“How’s it going?”
The voice was slow and wet. Julian blanked the page, looking over his shoulder, betraying nothing as his eyes settled on the familiar wide face. “Fine,” he replied, his own voice polite but distant. “Thank you.”
“Is it me? Or is it just too damned hot to live out there . . .?”
“It is hot,” Julian conceded.
“Particularly for the likes of me.” The man settled onto a plastic chair bolted into the floor with clown heads. His lunch buried his little table: Three sandwiches, a greasy sack of fried cucumbers, and a tall chocolate shake. “It’s murder when you’re fat. Let me tell you . . . I’ve got to be careful in this weather. I don’t move fast. I talk softly. I even have to ration my thinking. I mean it! Too many thoughts, and I break out in a killing sweat!”
Julian had prepared for this moment. Yet nothing was happening quite like he or anyone else had expected.
Saying nothing, Julian took a shy bite out of his sandwich.
“You look like a smart guy,” said his companion. “Tell me. If the world’s getting emptier, like everyone says, why am I still getting poorer?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s the way it feels, at least.” The man was truly fat, his face smooth and youthful, every feature pressed outward by the remnants of countless lunches. “You’d think that with all the smart ones leaving for the Nests . . . you’d think guys like you and me would do pretty well for ourselves. You know?”
Using every resource, the refugees had found three identities for this man: He was a salesman from St. Joseph, Missouri. Or he was a Federal agent working for the Department of Technology, in its Enforcement division, and his salesman identity was a cover. Or he was a charter member of the Christian Promise organization, using that group’s political connections to accomplish its murderous goals.
What does he want? Julian asked himself.
He took another shy bite, wiped his mouth with a napkin, then offered his own question. “Why do you say that…that it’s the smart people who are leaving . . .?”
“That’s what studies show,” said a booming, unashamed voice. “Half our people are gone, but we’ve lost ninety percent of our scientists. Eighty percent of our doctors. And almost every last member of Mensa . . . which between you and me is a good thing, I think . . .!”
Another bite, and wipe. Then with a genuine firmness, Julian told him, “I don’t think we should be talking. We don’t know each other.”
A huge cackling laugh ended with an abrupt statement:
“That’s why we should talk. We’re strangers, so where’s the harm?”
Suddenly the guinea hen sandwich appeared huge and inedible. Julian set it down and took a gulp of tea.
His companion watched him, apparently captivated.
Julian swallowed, then asked, “What do you do for a living?”
“What I’m good at.” He unwrapped a hamburger, then took an enormous bite, leaving a crescent-shaped sandwich and a fine glistening stain around his smile. “Put it this way, Mr. Winemaster. I’m like anyone. I do what I hope is best.”
“How do you—?”
“Your name? The same way I know your address, and your social registration number, and your bank balance, too.” He took a moment to consume half of the remaining crescent, then while chewing, he choked out the words, “Blaine. My name is. If you’d like to use it.”
Each of the man’s possible identities used Blaine, either as a first or last name.
Julian wrapped the rest of his sandwich in its insulated paper, watching his hands begin to tremble. He had a pianist’s hands in his first life but absolutely no talent for music. When he went through the Transmutation, he’d asked for a better ear and more coordination—both of which were given to him with minimal fuss. Yet he’d never learned how to play, not even after five hundred days. It suddenly seemed like a tragic waste of talent, and with a secret voice, he promised himself to take lessons, starting immediately.
“So, Mr. Winemaster . . . where are you heading . . .?”
Julian managed another sip of tea, grimacing at the bitter taste.
“Someplace east, judging by what I can see . . .”
“Yes,” he allowed. Then he added, “Which is none of your business.”
Blaine gave a hearty laugh, shoving the last of the burger deep into his gaping mouth. Then he spoke, showing off the masticated meat and tomatoes, telling his new friend, “Maybe you’ll need help somewhere up ahead. Just maybe. And if that happens, I want you to think of me.”
“You’ll help me, will you?”
The food-stuffed grin was practically radiant. “Think of me,” he repeated happily. “That’s all I’m saying.”
For a long while, the refugees spoke and dreamed of nothing but the mysterious Blaine. Which side did he represent? Should they trust him? Or move against him? And if they tried to stop the man, which way was best? Sabotage his car? Drug his next meal? Or would they have to do something genuinely horrible?
But there were no answers, much less a consensus. Blaine continued shadowing them, at a respectful distance; nothing substantial was learned about h
im; and despite the enormous stakes, the refugees found themselves gradually drifting back into the moment-by-moment business of ordinary life.
Couples and amalgamations of couples were beginning to make babies.
There was a logic: Refugees were dying every few minutes, usually from radiation exposure. The losses weren’t critical, but when they reached their new home—the deep cold rock of the Canadian Shield—they would need numbers, a real demographic momentum. And logic always dances with emotion. Babies served as a tonic to the adults. They didn’t demand too many resources, and they forced their parents to focus on more managable problems, like building tiny bodies and caring for needy souls.
Even Julian was swayed by fashion.
With one of his oldest women friends, he found himself hovering over a crystalline womb, watching nanochines sculpt their son out of single atoms and tiny electric breaths.
It was only Julian’s second child.
As long as his daughter had been alive, he hadn’t seen the point in having another. The truth was that it had always disgusted him to know that the children in the Nest were manufactured—there was no other word for it—and he didn’t relish being reminded that he was nothing, more or less, than a fancy machine among millions of similar machines.
Julian often dreamed of his dead daughter. Usually she was on board their strange ark, and he would find a note from her, and a cabin number, and he would wake up smiling, feeling certain that he would find her today. Then he would suddenly remember the bomb, and he would start to cry, suffering through the wrenching, damning loss all over again.
Which was ironic, in a fashion.
During the last nineteen months, father and daughter had gradually and inexorably drifted apart. She was very much a child when they came to the Nest, as flexible as her father wasn’t, and how many times had Julian lain awake in bed, wondering why he had ever bothered being Transmutated. His daughter didn’t need him, plainly. He could have remained behind. Which always led to the same questions: When he was a normal human being, was he genuinely happy? Or was his daughter’s illness simply an excuse . . . a spicy bit of good fortune that offered an escape route . . .?
When the Nest was destroyed, Julian survived only through more good fortune. He was as far from the epicenter as possible, shielded by the Nest’s interior walls and emergency barricades. Yet even then, most of the people near him were killed, an invisible neutron rain scrambling their minds. That same rain had knocked him unconscious just before the firestorm arrived, and if an autodoc hadn’t found his limp body, then dragged him into a shelter, he would have been cremated. And of course if the Nest hadn’t devised its elaborate escape plan, stockpiling the Buick and cloning equipment outside the Nest, Julian would have had no choice but to remain in the rubble, fighting to survive the next moment, and the next.
But those coincidences happened, making his present life feel like the culmination of some glorious Fate.
The secret truth was that Julian relished his new importance, and he enjoyed the pressures that came with each bathroom break and every stop for gas. If he died now, between missions, others could take his place, leading Winemaster’s cloned body through the needed motions . . . but they wouldn’t do as well, Julian could tell himself . . . a secret part of him wishing that this bizarre, slow-motion chase would never come to an end . . .
The Buick stayed on the Tollway through northern Illinois, slipping beneath Chicago before skipping across a sliver of Indiana. Julian was integrated with his larger self several times, going through the motions of the stiff, tired, and hungry traveler. Blaine always arrived several minutes later, never approaching his quarry, always finding gas at different pumps, standing outside the restrooms, waiting to show Julian a big smile but never uttering so much as a word in passing.
A little after midnight, the Buick’s driver took his hand off the wheel, lay back and fell asleep. Trusting the Tollway’s driving was out of character, but with Blaine trailing them and the border approaching, no one was eager to waste time in a motel bed.
At two in the morning, Julian was also asleep, dipping in and out of dreams. Suddenly a hand took him by the shoulder, shaking him, and several voices, urgent and close, said, “We need you, Julian. Now.”
In his dreams, a thousand admiring faces were saying, “We need you.”
Julian awoke.
His cabin was full of people. His mate had been ushered away, but his unborn child, nearly complete now, floated in his bubble of blackened crystal, oblivious to the nervous air and the tight, crisp voices.
“What’s wrong?” Julian asked.
“Everything,” they assured.
His universal window showed a live feed from a security camera on the North Dakota-Manitoba border. Department of Technology investigators, backed up by a platoon of heavily armed Marines, were dismantling a Toyota Sunrise. Even at those syrupy speeds, the lasers moved quickly, leaving the vehicle in tiny pieces that were photographed, analyzed, then fed into a state-of-the-art decontamination unit.
“What is this?” Julian sputtered.
But he already knew the answer.
“There was a second group of refugees,” said the President, kneeling beside his bed. She was wearing an oversized face—a common fashion, of late—and with a very calm, very grim voice, she admitted, “We weren’t the only survivors.”
They had kept it a secret, at least from Julian. Which was perfectly reasonable, he reminded himself. What if he had been captured? Under torture, he could have doomed that second lifeboat, and everyone inside it . . .
“Is my daughter there?” he blurted, uncertain what to hope for.
The President shook her head. “No, Julian.”
Yet if two arks existed, couldn’t there be a third? And wouldn’t the President keep its existence secret from him, too?
“We’ve been monitoring events,” she continued. “It’s tragic, what’s happening to our friends . . . but we’ll be able to adjust our methods . . . for when we cross the border . . .”
He looked at the other oversized faces. “But why do you need me? We won’t reach Detroit for hours.”
The President looked over her shoulder. “Play the recording.”
Suddenly Julian was looking back in time. He saw the Sunrise pull up to the border post, waiting in line to be searched. A pickup truck with Wyoming plates pulled up behind it, and out stepped a preposterously tall man brandishing a badge and a handgun. With an eerie sense of purpose, he strode up to the little car, took aim and fired his full clip through the driver’s window. The body behind the wheel jerked and kicked as it was ripped apart. Then the murderer reached in and pulled the corpse out through the shattered glass, shouting at the Tech investigators:
“I’ve got them! Here! For Christ’s sake, help me!”
The image dissolved, the window returning to the real-time, real-speed scene.
To himself, Julian whispered, “No, it can’t be . . .”
The President took his hands in hers, their warmth a comfortable fiction. “We would have shown you this as it was happening, but we weren’t sure what it meant.”
“But you’re sure now?”
“That man followed our people. All the way from Nebraska.” She shook her head, admitting, “We don’t know everything, no. For security reasons, we rarely spoke with those other survivors—”
“What are we going to do?” Julian growled.
“The only reasonable thing left for us.” She smiled in a sad fashion, then warned him, “We’re pulling off the Tollway now. You still have a little while to get ready . . .”
He closed his eyes, saying nothing.
“Not as long as you’d like, I’m sure . . . but with this sort of thing, maybe it’s best to hurry . . .”
There were no gas pumps or restaurants in the rest area. A small divided parking lot was surrounded by trees and fake log cabin lavatories that in turn were sandwiched between broad lanes of moonlit pavement. The parking lot was em
pty. The only traffic was a single truck in the westbound freighter lane, half a dozen trailers towed along in its wake. Julian watched the truck pass, then walked into the darkest shadows, and kneeled.
The security cameras were being fed false images—images that were hopefully more convincing than the ludicrous log cabins. Yet even when he knew that he was safe, Julian felt exposed. Vulnerable. The feeling worsened by the moment, becoming a black dread, and by the time the Tokamak pulled to stop, his newborn heart was racing, and his quick damp breath tasted foul.
Blaine parked two slots away from the sleeping Buick. He didn’t bother looking through the windows. Instead, guided by intuition or hidden sensor, he strolled toward the men’s room, hesitated, then took a few half-steps toward Julian, passing into a patch of moonlight.
Using both hands, Julian lifted his weapon, letting it aim itself at the smooth broad forehead.
“Well,” said Blaine, “I see you’re thinking about me.”
“What do you want?” Julian whispered. Then with a certain clumsiness, he added, “With me.”
The man remained silent for a moment, a smile building.
“Who am I?” he asked suddenly. “Ideas? Do you have any?”
Julian gulped a breath, then said, “You work for the government.” His voice was testy, pained. “And I don’t know why you’re following me!”
Blaine didn’t offer answers. Instead he warned his audience, “The border is a lot harder to pierce than you think.”
“Is it?”
“Humans aren’t fools,” Blaine reminded him. “After all, they designed the technologies used by the Nests, and they’ve had just as long as you to improve on old tricks.”
“People in the world are getting dumber,” said Julian. “You told me that.”
The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 Page 37