“Thank you, Steve.” Rick sighed, beginning to walk. “It really is good to see you.”
“Most people just send flowers. Raising the dead is a little extreme.” I matched my steps to his, watching him as we walked. “What’s going on, Rick? What’s really going on?”
“I meant it when I said that, if it had been up to me, I would have simply handed you over to Shaun as soon as you woke up enough to know yourself.” A muscle in Rick’s jaw twitched as he continued. “I will go to my grave knowing that I have been responsible for your death more than twenty times. Each time one of the clones of the original Georgia Mason was decanted I told myself, ‘That’s it. No more. If she’s not real, we find another way.’ But each time, I couldn’t think of another way, and we needed you. I needed you.”
“Why?”
“Same reason those people back there were hoping you’d play nicely with the other children—people associate your face with the truth. If you tell them a lie they want to believe, they won’t question it.”
“And the government can keep on killing people like me. People like your wife. God, Rick, is that really what you want?”
“No. That’s what they want.” Rick stopped at an unsecured door, pushing it open. Gregory was sitting at a terminal on the other side, with Dr. Shoji looking over his shoulder. I couldn’t even be surprised. Rick kept talking: “I want you to tell the world the truth. I want you to blow it all to hell. People believe you. People believe in you, because of the way you died. They’ll believe the truth even if they don’t want to, as long as they’re hearing it from you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Hello, Georgia,” said Gregory, looking up from the screen. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It was touch and go for a while there, but I pulled through,” I said. “How about you?”
“Minor burns, concussion, and I won’t be working with the CDC again anytime soon. That’s all right. I was tired of them anyway.”
“Good.” I turned to Rick. “Now please. Explain. A huge global conspiracy has ruined my life—hell, has ended my life, and then started it over again, leaving me with probably the worst identity issues I could imagine—and they did it for what? So you could clone me and use me to sell ice to the Eskimos?”
“A huge global conspiracy has ruined your life. If it helps, they also killed my wife.” Rick’s smile faded like it had never been there at all. “I took Lisa’s death for a suicide, because that’s what they told me it was. I found out differently only when I saw her file. They did it because of what you saw back in that room—there is no cure for Kellis-Amberlee. There’s never going to be a cure. There’s just going to be a war with the virus, one we can’t win, but can only adapt to. We can only survive it. And that’s not acceptable to some people.”
“So they’re doing this instead?”
“It didn’t start out like this, Georgia. It started out with good intentions—God, such good intentions. They thought they were taking steps to protect the country. In the end, no one noticed when protection turned into imprisonment, or when ‘for the good of the people’ turned into ‘for the good of the people in power.’ It was all baby steps, all the way.”
“Aren’t the worst things usually that way?” I asked. “So why’s Ryman on their side now? Wasn’t he supposed to be the good guy? The one we could depend on?”
Rick didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, waiting. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Emily,” I whispered. “Emily Ryman has retinal KA.”
“Which makes her an excellent candidate for an ‘accidental’ death if he stops playing along—and you’re not their first clone. Just the first one that really replicates the person you were based on. If you’d been alive for the last year, you would have noticed that Emily rarely speaks in public. She just stands and smiles. Does that sound like the Emily Ryman you know?”
I stared at him in mute horror. Rick continued: “They replaced her the night after the inauguration, and now she and the children are hostages against the president’s good behavior. He’s in the same position you are. He’s a perfect figurehead, because even people who believe all politicians are corrupt remember his association with you on the campaign trail—and they remember what happened to Rebecca Ryman. They believe in him, even if they don’t realize it.” Rick laughed a little, bitterly. “I think this may have been the plan all along. Tate was never going to wind up in power. Ryman was too good a puppet to pass up.”
“I think I hate the human race,” I said.