She was beginning to feel that she had behaved recklessly. She had simply mounted the stairs and joined the flow of people entering by the front door. They'd gone straight ahead and she had followed them, entering the hall, which had a vaulted ceiling high above and a wooden balcony at the rear. Faded color banners of some sort hung from the rafters, left over from the former occupants. The room was large enough to make them feel small.
There were perhaps fifty people altogether. They were prosperous-looking, and they could have been an upper-middle-class group anywhere — say, parents at a get-acquainted evening at a private school. Except that they did not come in pairs. About half were the prototypes, she thought, the beloved offspring. They were roughly her age — or seemed to be, though in truth, they looked older. Some of their parents were there, too, the original scientists in the Lab. These are the true believers, she thought, the ones who'd started it all. They looked old indeed, wispy-haired, withered and frail, with liver-spotted skin, and they were scattered through the crowd like white mushrooms. Here and there were other men and women in nurse's uniforms and scrubs and lab coats like her own, which made her feel a bit less conspicuous.
The crowd was strangely silent. What was odd was how everyone in the audience appeared separate and isolated. She could not put her finger on it exactly, but never before had she sat in a group that felt so atomized, less than whole. Everyone, she imagined, was thinking of himself. Maybe this is the way it is, she thought, when a group of men are about to go into battle.
The reason that she did not want to be close to the stage was that Uncle Henry was sitting upon it. He looked stiff in a straight-back wooden folding chair, looking out upon the crowd as if he were a captain surveying a rough patch ahead in the ocean. He was about to speak, she could tell, because he took an envelope out of his breast pocket and jotted a note upon it.
Sure enough, he stood and approached a lectern at stage left. He cleared his throat. It was not a gesture to capture attention, for no one in the crowd was talking and all eyes were already upon him.
"You know why we have gathered," he began, dispensing with an introduction.
"There is no need for me to recall the road that brought us here. Let me just say on behalf of all the Elder Physicians — and on behalf of Dr. Rincon — that we regret this temporary setback in our journey, though temporary we are confident it will prove to be. There is no road worth the taking that does not double back upon itself at some point. This is not going backward. This is going forward in a different direction."
A man sitting near her in a three-piece suit scoffed under his breath. The sound did not carry far, but it created a slight stir that caused the speaker to frown.
"What went wrong? you might ask. Let me remind you of the first axiom: Science does not know right and wrong. The double helix has no moral content. We are, each of us, a universe unto ourselves — just as profound, as benighted, just as shallow, as lighted. 'Each living creature,' wrote Darwin, 'must be looked at as a microcosm — a little universe formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in the heaven.'
"Do not worry. The pendulum of the historical-cultural cycle is swinging to our side. May we all recite Rincon's First Law: 'Human life alone is sacred, its preservation and extension is our mission.'"
Tizzie noted that most people had not joined in.
Uncle Henry lifted the envelope out of his breast pocket.
"We have already begun the heroic measures. We will perform ten operations a day — three surgeons working full time. They are our own. From start to finish, the operations will take three days. The schedule will be posted upon the bulletin board outside this hall. If you do not keep your appointment, you will not be rescheduled. Is that clear?"
His hatchet gaze swept the hall.
"Are there any questions?"
There was a rustling of discontent, a cough here and there. A hand shot up — only one.
"Dr. Baptiste. What are the chances?"
"The chances?"
"Of survival."
"I would say the chances are not inordinate. But neither are they insignificant."
That man called him Dr. Baptiste, Tizzie thought.
My God! Uncle Henry is Baptiste!
The realization frightened her more than she would have thought possible. The man in the three-piece suit complained in a stage whisper to no one in particular. "One hundred and fifty years," he said. "I'll be lucky if I see the other side of forty."
She looked at him; he appeared to be about forty-five.
Another man glared at him and said: "Be quiet, Judge."
From on stage, the voice of Uncle Henry — Baptiste — boomed out.
"You will all be happy to know that the clones are in good shape. They have been prepared their whole lives for an event such as this. It truly is their finest moment. They have weathered the travel well and have adapted readily to their new environment."
His voice dropped a notch, now the stern schoolmaster.
"Obviously, you should not encounter your clone while it is still alive. That would be a violation of protocol of the highest order. It is recommended — required — that you stay here indoors."
Tizzie tried to shrink lower in the chair. His gaze was moving up and down the rows, like a whip.
It settled on her. He seemed to squint, as if trying to make out her face but not quite succeeding.
"And you," he thundered. "You there in the lab coat. Did you have a question?"
She felt the blood rushing to her head, a numbness spreading up from her legs. She shook her head no.
"But surely I saw your hand. Tell us who you are. Why are you wearing a lab coat? What are you doing here?"
Tizzie was vaguely aware of people turning to look at her, a buzzing beginning throughout the auditorium. One of them was a red-haired man, whose eyes widened. Alfred. He began to open his mouth.
"The birth," she said, faltering. "I'm here for the birth."
"The birth," repeated the man on the stage with false mirth. "The birth. I would say you have come to the wrong place if you're expecting to witness a birth."
The audience laughed, too, but it was not a jovial sound.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tizzie saw two men coming toward her — men with white in their hair. She felt their hands roughly grabbing her arms, lifting her out of the seat and hustling her out of the hall. In the process, her sunglasses were knocked off. Tizzie looked back and saw Uncle Henry looking at her, his face suddenly, unexpectedly sad.
They took her outside and frog-marched her across the yard to another building that she hadn't noticed before. It had an outside staircase running up one side, and they dragged her up it and through a thick wooden door. By the time they started down a long corridor lined with doors, she realized where she was — in the military prison.
They put her in a small room. She had been there less than a minute, when she heard a voice from a next-door room call out her name. She recognized the voice instantly — Jude's.
Chapter 31
Skyler knew from the plans he had memorized that the hospital had a false roof. The question was how to get inside it.
He went to the short back side of the rectangular one-story building, stepped away and looked up. The two sides of the roof came together in a gradual peak. In the center of the triangle underneath was a round object — a vent for an attic fan. It was not far from the outstretched branch of an oak. Instantly, a flashback vision seared his brain — the memory of him and Julia clambering up the tree to spy on Rincon, so long ago.