"We need to get the escape plan ready," Connor says. Risa knows he"s talking more to himself than to her. "We can"t do a dry run, because the spy sats will pick it up, but everyone needs to know what to do."
Risa feels the same blast of communal intuition. Suddenly getting the h.e.l.l out of the Graveyard sounds like a very good idea. Even without a safe destination.
"Composite human . . . ," someone grumbles. "I wonder what it looks like."
"C"mon, haven"t you ever seen Mr. Potato Head?"
There"s a smattering of nervous laughter, but it doesn"t lighten the mood.
"Whatever it looks like," Risa says, "I hope we never see it."
17 * Cam
With a finger he traces the lines of his face, down the side of his nose to his cheek. Left, then right. Out from the symmetrical starburst of flesh tones on his forehead, then beyond to the lines that spread beneath his hairline. He dips his finger into the graft-grade healing cream again and spreads it across the lines running down the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his chest, and every other place he can reach. He can feel the tingling as the engineered microorganisms in the cream do their job.
"Believe it or not, the stuff is actually related to yogurt," the dermatologist told him. "Except, of course, that it eats scar tissue." It also costs five thousand dollars a jar, but, as Roberta has told him, money is no object when it comes to Cam.
He"s been a.s.sured that when treatment is done, he"ll have no scars at all, just hairline seams where every little bit of himself meets.
His cream-spreading ritual takes half an hour, twice a day, and he"s come to enjoy the Zen-like nature of it. He only wishes there were something that would heal the scars in his mind, which he can still feel. He sees his mind now as an archipelago of islands that he labors to build bridges between-and while he"s had great success engineering the most spectacular of bridges, he suspects there are some islands he"ll never reach.
There"s a knock at his door. "Are you ready?" It"s Roberta.
"Reins in your fist," he tells her.
A pause, and then, "Very funny. "Hold your horses." "
Cam laughs. He no longer needs to speak in metaphors-he"s created enough bridges in his mind to bring some normality to his speech-but he enjoys teasing Roberta and trying to stump her.
He dresses in a tailored shirt and tie. The tie"s muted colors, yet bold, fractal pattern, were specifically chosen to project a sense of aesthetic composition; a subliminal suggestion that an artistic whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. He fumbles with the tie. While his brain knows how to tie it, his virtuoso fingers obviously had never learned to do a Windsor knot. He must focus and overcome the frustrating lack of muscle memory.
Roberta knocks again, a little more insistently now. "It"s time."
He takes a moment to admire himself in the mirror. His hair is just about an inch long now. A virtual coat of many colors; streaks extending out from the focal point of multiple skin tones on his forehead. Blond runs down the middle, blending to amber on both the left and right. Shades of red and brown arc back from his temples, then give way to jet black above his ears, and tight, dark curls at his sideburns. "All the famous hairstylists will be trampling one another to get to you," Roberta said.
Finally he opens the door before Roberta"s knocking becomes frantic. Her dress is a little more elegant than the slacks and blouse she usually wears, but still very understated. It"s all calculated to keep the focus on him. For a moment she seems annoyed at him, but now that she gets a good look at him, her irritation melts away.
"You look spectacular, Cam." She smoothes out his shirt and straightens his tie. "You look like the shining star you are!"
"Let"s hope I don"t give birth to complex elements."
She looks at him quizzically.
"Supernova," he says. "If I"m a shining star, let"s hope I don"t blow up." He wasn"t even trying to stump her. "Sorry-it"s just the way I think."
She gently takes him by the arm. "Come, they"re waiting for you."
"How many?"
"We didn"t want you to be overwhelmed by your first press conference, so we limited it to thirty."
His heart beats heavily, and he must take a few deep breaths to slow it down. He doesn"t know why he should be so nervous. They have prepared him with three mock press conferences already, where questions were hurled at him in multiple languages. In each one of those he did just fine-and this time it will be only in English, so he has one less variable to worry about.
This one, however, is real. This time he"s about to be officially introduced to a world that is unprepared for him. The faces he saw at those fake press conferences were friendly ones pretending not to be, but today he will be facing actual strangers. Some will just be curious, others amazed, and some might be flat-out horrified. Roberta told him to expect this. What he"s worried about are the things that not even she can predict.
They walk down the hall to a spiral staircase that leads to the main living room-a staircase he had not been allowed to use for his first weeks, until his coordination improved. Now, however, he could dance his way down those stairs if he chose to. Roberta tells him to wait until she announces him. She goes down first, and Cam can hear the rumble of chattering reporters die down. The lights dim, and she begins her presentation.
"Since time immemorial, mankind has dreamed of creating life," Roberta begins, her voice amplified and larger than life. Flashes of light reach the top of the stairs. Cam can"t see the images from her presentation, but he knows them. He"s seen it all before.
"But the great mystery of life itself has been elusive," Roberta continues, "and every dream of creation has ended in humbling failure. There"s a good reason for that. We can"t create what we don"t understand, so until we understand what life is, how can we ever create it? No-instead it is the task of science to take what we already have and build on it. Not create life, but perfect it. So we put forth the question, how can we recombine both our intellectual and physical evolution into the finest version of ourselves, the best of all of us combined? As it turns out, the answer was simple once we knew the right question." She pauses to build the suspense. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Camus Comprix, the world"s first fully composite human being!"
At the sound of applause, Cam begins his descent down the spiral staircase, posture proud but gait casual. The audience is still in shadows as he descends, and all the lights are focused on him. He can feel the heat of the spotlights, and although he"s in a familiar place, it"s as if they"ve transformed the living room into a theater. He hesitates halfway down, takes a deep breath, and continues, making it seem that his pause was intentional-a photo-op tease, perhaps, because this is one press conference where no cameras are allowed. His presentation to the public is being carefully orchestrated.
The applause gives way to astonishment as the crowd gets a good look at him. There are gasps and whispered chatter as he descends to the microphone. Roberta steps aside, giving him the floor, and by the time she does, there is absolute silence in the room as they all stare at him, trying to process what they"re seeing: a young man who is, as Roberta put it, "the best of all of us." Or at least the best of various unwound teens.
In the charged silence, he leans toward the microphone and says, "Well, I have to say, you"re a very well put-together group."
Chuckles all around. He"s surprised by the amplified timbre of his own voice, a resonant baritone that sounds more confident than he actually is. The lights come up over the group of reporters, and with the ice broken, the first hands rise with questions.
"Pleased to meet you, Camus," says a man in a suit that"s seen better days. "I understand you"re made up of almost a hundred different people-is that true?"
"Ninety-nine to be exact," Cam says with a grin. "But there"s room for one more."
The group of reporters laughs again, less nervously than the first time. He calls on a woman with big hair.
"You"re clearly . . . um . . . a unique creation." Cam can feel her disapproval like a wave of heat. "How does it feel to know you were invented rather than born?"
"I was born, just not all at the same time," he tells her. "And I wasn"t invented, I was reinvented. There"s a difference."
"Yes," says someone else. "It must be quite a weight to know that you"re the first of your kind. . . ."
This line of questioning was addressed in the mock conferences, and Cam knows his answers by heart. "Everyone feels like they"re one of a kind, don"t they? That makes me no different from anyone else."
"Mr. Comprix-I"m an expert in dialects, but I can"t place yours. You keep shifting in and out of vocal styles."
Cam hasn"t considered this before. It"s hard enough to put thoughts into words, without thinking about how those words are coming out. "Well, I suppose that all depends on which brain cells I"m wrangling."
"So then your verbal eloquence came hardwired?"
Again, the kind of question he"s expecting. "If I were a computer, it would be hardwired, but I"m not. I"m a hundred percent organic. Human. But to answer your question, some of my skills came from before, others have come since, and I"m sure I"ll continue to grow as a human being."
"But you"re not a human being," someone shouts from the back. "You might be made from them, but you"re no more human that a football is a pig."
Something about this statement-this accusation-cuts him in an unguarded place. He"s not prepared for the emotion it brings forth.
"Bull seeing red!" Cam says. It comes out before he can funnel it through his language center. He clears his throat and finds the words. "You"re trying to provoke me. Perhaps there"s a blade you"re hiding behind your cape, but it won"t keep you from getting gored."
"Is that a threat?"
"I don"t know-was that an insult?"
Murmurs from the crowd. He"s made it interesting for them. Roberta throws him a warning glance, but Cam suddenly feels the rage of dozens of unwound kids swelling in him. He must give it voice.
"Is there anyone else out there who thinks that I"m somehow subhuman?"
And as he looks out to the thirty reporters, hands go up. Not just the big-haired woman and the heckler from the back, but others as well. As many as a dozen. Do they really mean it, or are they all just matadors flapping the cape?
"Monet!" he shouts. "Seurat! Close to the canvas, their work looks like splotches of paint. But at a distance you see a masterpiece." Someone controlling the media screens pulls up a spontaneous Monet, but rather than punctuating his point, it makes his comments seem contrived. "You people are all small-minded and have no distance!"
"Sounds like you"re very full of yourself," someone says.
"Who said that?" He looks around the crowd. No one will take credit. "I"m full of everyone else-and that"s spectacular."
Roberta approaches and tries to take over the microphone, but he pushes her away. "No!" he says. "They want to know the truth? I"m telling them the truth!"
And suddenly the questions come like bullets.
"Did they tell you to say all this?"
"Is there a reason why you were made?"
"Do you know all their names?"
"Do you dream their dreams?"
"Do you feel their unwindings?"
"If you"re made of the unwanted, what makes you think you"re any better?"
The questions come so fast and with such intensity, Cam can feel his mind begin to rattle itself into fragments. He doesn"t know which one to answer-if he can even answer any of them.
"What legal rights should a rewound being have?"
"Can you reproduce?"
"Should he reproduce?"
"Is he even alive?"
He can"t slow his breathing. He can"t capture his own thoughts. He can"t see clearly. Voices make no sense, and he can see only parts, but not the larger picture. Faces. A microphone. Roberta is grabbing him, trying to focus him, trying to get him to look at her, but his head can"t stop shaking.
"Red light! Brake pedal! Brick wall! Pencils down!" He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Stop?" It"s a plea to Roberta. She can make this go away. She can do anything.
"Looks like he"s not wound too tight," someone says, and everyone laughs.
He grabs the microphone one more time, his lips pressed against it. Screeching. Distorted.
"I am more than the parts I"m made of!"
"I am more!"
"I am . . ."
"I . . ."
"I . . ."
And a single voice says calmly, simply, "What if you"re not?"
"That"s all for now," Roberta tells the jabbering crowd. "Thank you for coming."
He cries, unable to stop. He doesn"t know where he is, where Roberta has brought him to. He is nowhere. There is no one in the world but the two of them.
"Shhh," she tells him, gently rocking him back and forth. "It"s all right. Everything will be all right."
But it does nothing to calm him. He wants to make the memory of those judgmental faces go away. Can she cut it out of his mind? Replace the memory with some random thoughts of another random Unwind? Can they do that for him? Can they please?
"This was just a first salvo from a world that still needs to process you," Roberta says. "The next one will go better."
Next one? How could he even survive a next one?
"Caboose!" he says. "Closed cover. Credits roll."
"No," Roberta tells him, holding him even more tightly. "It"s not the end, this is just the beginning, and I know you"ll rise to meet the challenge. You just need a thicker skin."
"Then graft me one!"
She chuckles like it"s a joke, and her laughing makes him laugh too, which makes her laugh only louder, and suddenly in the midst of his tears he finds himself in a fit of laughter, yet angry at himself for it. He doesn"t even know why he"s laughing, but he can"t stop, any more than he could stop crying. Finally he gets himself under control. He"s exhausted. All he wants to do is sleep. It will be that way for him for a long time.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.
"Have you ever stopped to think about all the people helped by Unwinding? Not just the recipients of much-needed tissues, but the thousands employed in the medical profession and supporting industries. The children, the husbands and wives of people whose lives are saved by grafts and transplants. How about soldiers wounded in the field of duty, healed and restored by the precious parts they receive? Think about it. We all know someone who has been positively touched by unwinding. But now the so-called Anti-Divisional Resistance threatens our health, our safety, our jobs, and our economy by disregarding a federal law that took a long and painful war to achieve.
"Write to your congressperson today. Tell your legislators what you think. Demand that they stand up against the ADR. Let"s keep our nation and our world on the right path.
"Unwinding. It"s not just good medicine, it"s the right idea."