Reborn

11

"So I'm the Antichrist, am I?" Jim said after Bill had related his conversation with the kooks outside. He had spotted the crowd out front and had watched Bill talk to them. When Bill returned, he had met him at the door. "I love it!"

"Jim, please!" said Carol, at his left by the window. "This isn't fu

"Of course it is! It's a gas!"

He could tell by their expressions that no one agreed with him, least of all Ma. She looked angry and afraid. Jim had to admit to a certain discomfiture himself. He knew he wasn't the Antichrist. Hell, he'd stopped believing in that sort of dreck back in his days at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion! That didn't mean he liked other people believing he was the devil or whatever.

But that bit about not having a soul… that was kind of creepy. It showed some pretty original thinking on the part of those nuts out there. Jim wasn't sure he believed in souls, anyway. As far as he could see, you were born, you did your best at what you had to do for as many years as you could, and then you died. That was it. No soul, no heaven, no hell, no limbo, no purgatory.

But what if there really was such a thing as a soul?

And what if he didn't have one?

Despite all his i

"I've a good mind to call the cops," his mother said. "Have Sergeant Hall come out and tell them all to get lost! That'll end this fiascal!"

"Fiasco, Ma," he said. "But stay put. I'll scare them off."

He was besieged by protests from all sides but he ignored them and hurried out the door. This might be fun.

Behind him, he heard Carol say, "I'm calling the police!"

12

"Who's this coming now?" said Mr. Veilleur from beside her in the backseat of Martin's car.

Grace gasped as she recognized the figure approaching the gate from within. "That's Jim!"

"The clone? The one they think is this Antichrist?"

"Yes! Walking right up to them!"

"Pretty courageous for someone who's supposed to be the 'spawn of the Devil,' don't you think?"

"I don't know what to think," she said, remembering the smoke rising from Henry's old house, and now this. She felt utterly miserable.

"You're not alone," Mr. Veilleur said in a gentle voice. "Neither does anyone else."

13

"Hi, folks!" Jim said, strolling up to the gate with his hands in his pockets, looking as casual as he could. "What's up?"

"Who are you?" said the ski

"Oh, you know me, don't you, pal? I'm Jim Stevens, alias the Antichrist."

There were cries of astonishment from the group. Some of them even scuttled away and hid behind others. It was all Jim could do to keep a straight face. Even their leader took a step back. His voice shook as he spoke.

"You… you admit it?"

"Sure. I came into the world to really mess it up for you Christian types. You know, spread sin and fear and war and disease and bring on Armageddon. That sort of stuff. But to tell you the truth, I can't find a place to begin."

"He's mocking us! He's trying to confuse us, trying to make a joke out of this!"

"A joke? Just look back on the last twelve months, Hatchet Face." Jim was surprised how clearly his mind was working despite the drinks he'd had earlier. "We've had a six-day war in the Middle East that upset the whole balance of power there, a military junta in Greece, martial law in Thailand, more fighting in Cyprus, Palestine, and especially Vietnam, thousands upon thousands of homeless, hungry refugees in Somalia and Jordan and good ol' Vietnam. And over in the Soviet Union they're celebrating fifty years of their revolution which has so far cost the Russian and East European populace something in excess of thirty million lives. Here at home we've got race riots in East Harlem, Roxbury, Newark, Detroit, and lots of other places. The blacks hate the whites, the whites hate the blacks, the shorthairs hate the longhairs, the longhairs hate anybody with a steady job, the Arabs hate the Jews, and the Klan hates everybody. Ever-growing numbers of people are spending their lives stoned on grass or else they're nuking their psyches with LSD. And on top of all that they kicked my dear friend, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell out of Congress! Sheesh! What's left for me to do?"

Spano's mouth worked spasmodically. "I… I…"

"Devil of a predicament, isn't it?" Jim said.

"Do not let yourselves be swayed by the Father of Lies!" Spano cried.

"Right on," Jim said.

He wondered if Hanley had envisioned this sort of scene. Maybe that was why he had kept the whole experiment under wraps. Apparently the scientist's instincts had been on target. Jim had spent days hating Roderick Hanley, but now he was having a slow change of heart.

Besides, I wouldn't be alive without him.

Maybe he hadn't been such a bad guy, after all.

"The Antichrist tries to tell us that the evil in the world is not the devil's work!"

Antichrist! There it was again, and Jim was suddenly angry. As his anger grew, the fears and self-doubt of the past week began to melt away. Who was this pasty-faced twerp to tell him who he was? He would decide who he was! And he was Jim Stevens. So what if he was genetically the same as Roderick Hanley, Ph.D., Nobel laureate? It didn't matter. He wasn't Roderick Hanley—he was someone else. He was his own man and no one—not these religious nut cases or anyone else—was going to hang a sign on him.

He smiled. Carol had been right all along: Being a clone really didn't matter. As long as Carol stuck by him, he could handle anything. So easy! Why hadn't he seen it himself?

"Pray!" Spano was saying to his followers. "Close your ears to his lies!"

Jim was suddenly tired of the game.

"Get lost," he said. "You're all pretty pathetic. Take off before the cops get here."

"No!" Spano cried. "We want the police! We want the world to know your name so that Christians everywhere can be warned of who you really are!"

"Scram!" Jim shouted.

He was really angry now. He pulled on the gate but it was locked. With a sudden burst of energy, he climbed up the iron pickets to the top of the brick gatepost.

14

"Oh, God! What's he doing!" Carol cried at Bill's shoulder as they watched Jim reach the top of the gatepost column.

Bill had been watching the scene from the front door with Carol and Jim's mother. His palms had grown slick with sweat.

"He's going to get killed!" Emma said.

"Bill!" Carol said, her grip tightening on his arm. "Get him down from there! Please!"

"I'll try."

He hurried down the driveway. This whole affair was getting out of hand. The best thing was to get Jim back inside and let the police handle it. But he sensed that getting Jim to change course once he was on a roll like this was not going to be easy. A nameless fear quickened his pace, but he sensed that he was already too late.