Sims

Luca clenched his teeth. Damn. He should have thought of that.

“Dumb idea, Luca,” Lister said. “It had people questioning your suitability for leading a field operation. Fortunately I was able to defuse that talk with your other idea. That went over big. The Old Man sent two people from his own office to help me canvass the SimGen Natal Center staff. We’ve been at it all day.”

“We?” Luca said, glad he’d presented the Natal Center idea as his own.

Lister smiled. “I know I’ve become something of a REMF, but with manpower so short, I had to get personally involved.”

“Did anyone mention being approached?”

Lister shook his head. “Negative.”

“One of them could be lying. That sim’s baby is too valuable to leave the delivery to chance. They’re going to want experienced help.”

“I agree. But then I thought to myself, if I was looking for that kind of expertise, would I approach a Natal Center OB and ask him or her to jeopardize career and benefits and pension plan and stock optionsand take a pass on a five-million-dollar bounty? I don’t think so. No, if I were smart—and these people are reasonably smart—I’d go to aformer SimGen Natal Center OB, preferably a disgruntled one. One with a grudge or a score to settle.”

Luca found himself nodding. Good thinking.

“Any hits?”

“A few of them look promising. Most have relocated but one still lives in the area. Name’s Elizabeth Cannon. Her letter of resignation was a real bridge burner, calling SimGen a ‘slave factory’ and its board of directors ‘morally bankrupt.’ She lives on Long Island now and needs checking out. I emailed you the particulars. Finding this sim isn’t just your number-one priority, Luca; it’s theonly priority.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? I hope so. This couldn’t be happening at a worse time. We should be devoting all our resources to making sure Guillotine comes off letter perfect; instead, I’m not reporting two dead operatives and praying that damn monkey doesn’t give birth before you find her. This has got all the makings of a major clusterfuck.”

Luca realized with a start that Lister was scared. Beneath the tough-guy pose, he was terrified. Not for his future in SIRG, but the future of SIRG itself. They were all frightened, all the way up to the Old Man.

Lister took a deep breath. “I’ll be hunting down the other disgruntled OBs. Cannon’s yours.” He paused. “You look tired, but I don’t advise sleep. Get on this ASAP. We don’t know how much time we have.”

“Roger.”

The meeting over, Luca stepped out of the SUV and watched Lister drive away.

Elizabeth Cannon…he’d check her out first thing in the morning. But he also wanted to check out this genomic competition that had so rattled the Sinclairs. He needed every edge he could get.

He headed for his office computer to look up some genetics.

16

MINEOLA, NY

DECEMBER 24

Romy watched Betsy adjust the IV running into Meerm’s arm. The air seemed close in the spare, windowless little procedure room. Patrick had walked out—the sim’s distress had been too much for him—leaving Romy alone with Betsy and Meerm.

Betsy looked up at her. “The contractions have subsided.”

“How long can this go on?” Romy asked, relieved the sim’s pain had finally eased.

Betsy shook her head. “Not too much longer. I was right in the middle of an ultrasound when she started having contractions. I’d love to give the baby another week but Meerm’s uterus won’t last that long.”

“Why baby hurt Meerm?” the sim said.

“As I told you, Meerm,” Betsy said softly, “the baby’s not trying to hurt you. It’s just that you’re too small and the baby’s too large.” She turned to Romy and lowered her voice. “I tried to give her an anatomy lesson earlier. I don’t know how much of it took.”

“On the new ultrasound,” Romy said, “did you see what sex it was?”

Betsy smiled. “Meerm wanted to know too. Isn’t that something? I didn’t think sims differentiated that much between sexes, but she was very curious. She wants a girl.”

“And?”

“Can’t say. The baby’s packed in too tight. If I had one of the higher resolution imagers I could tell, but not with this model. I’ll do another one tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Yes. It would be nice to be able to call the baby ‘he’ or ‘she’ instead of ‘it.’”

“Indeed it would. Oh, by the way, Zero called to see how the night went.”

“When will he be here?”

“He won’t. He thinks it’s safer for all concerned if I’m the only one seen coming and going from here.”

Romy hoped her disappointment didn’t show. She needed to talk to Zero—not on the phone, but face to face. Her emotions were still in wild turmoil, but she needed to know howhe felt, and whathe wanted. Once she knew that, she could begin to sort out her own feelings, make some decisions. She didn’t know what the future held, but she was keeping all options open for now.

Then Patrick stuck his head into the little room. “I think the house is being watched.”

Romy felt her shoulders tighten. “You’re sure?”

“I haven’t seen men with binoculars trained on us, but someone’s sitting in a car parked up the street facing this way, and he’s been there for a while.”

“Show me.”

He led her to the picture window in the living room. It was midday but the low gray sky shed little light into the room. Romy reached for a lamp, then thought better of it.

“Damn,” Patrick said. “It’s gone. But I tell you, it was sitting right over there for a good half hour.”

Romy scanned the street and saw a blue sedan parked against the curb at the other end.

“Was that there before?” she asked, pointing.

“No,” Patrick said. “I’m sure it wasn’t. And this one’s got—doesn’t that look like two men inside?”

“Yes, it does,” Betsy said, coming up behind them. “I’m calling the police.”

“Is that such a good idea?” Patrick said.

Romy smiled. “I think it’s a great idea. If theyknew something, they’d havedone something. Betsy left SimGen with a roar, so it’s no surprise they’re watching her. Probably watching a number of ex-Natal-Center people. But why should we let them have an easy time of it? Let’s make them explain to the local constabulary what they’re doing out there.”

17

“Here’s what we’ve got on her,” Lowery said, unfolding his notes behind the wheel of the surveillance car.

Luca stared at Dr. Cannon’s two-story colonial from the passenger seat. He’d wanted a personal look at the lay of the land, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Elizabeth Cannon, age forty-eight, never married, no kids, lives alone. In solo obstetrics-gynecology practice. Works out of a home office, on the staff of Nassau County Community Hospital.”

“Home office?” Luca said.

“Yeah. That extension on the left side there.”

“Where are her patients?”

“I called about that. Her answering service said she’d canceled her office hours from today through next week but would still be seeing her hospital patients and doing her deliveries.”

“Odd, don’t you think?”

Lowery shrugged. “Hey, it’s Christmas Eve. And she took Christmas week off. Do the same if I could.”

“We don’t find that sim,” he told Lowery, “you’ll have the longest Christmas vacation of your life.”

The scanner squawked—Lowery was tuned into the local cop frequency. Something about a fender bender on Maple Street.

“So far she’s been a good little girl. Made her hospital rounds this morning, then went grocery shopping.”

“Buy a lot?” Luca asked.

“Come to think of it, yeah. Watched her load six bags in the back of her wagon—a blue Volvo, by the way.”

Luca straightened in his seat. Interesting. “Six bags for one woman living alone?”

“Like I said, it’s Christmas. Maybe she’s planning a big family dinner.”

“Read your own notes—she’sgot no family.”

The more Luca thought about Dr. Elizabeth Cannon, the more he liked her as a real possibility. A loner with tons of experience delivering sims, she’d probably jump at the chance to shut down a place she thought of as a “slave factory.” Now here she was, stocking up on groceries—enough to feed a sim and the missing Cadman and Sullivan perhaps? Plus she had a home office, the perfect place to deliver a sim. Was that why she’d canceled her office hours? Wouldn’t do to have one of her patients spot a pregnant sim, would it.

He felt some of his fatigue lifting.

“All right,” Lowery said, “let’s just say this sim is in there. How—?”

“Sheis in there,” Luca said. “I feel it in my gut.”

“Okay. I’ll go with that, because my gut’s giving me the same message, but does your gut have any idea how we get her the fuck out of there? Look at this neighborhood, will you? It’sLeave It To Beaver -ville. There’s no room to operate.”

Luca had already noticed that. Neat, middle-size houses, most sporting Christmas decorations, nestled side by side and back to back on quarter-acre lots, with wide streets that nobody parked on. Sitting here like this, their car looked as alien as a flying saucer. Only a matter of time before—

Another squawk on the scanner, this one about a suspicious car parked on Cavendish Drive.

“Shit!” Lowery said. “That’s us.”

Luca slapped the dashboard. “Move. I don’t want any local heat seeing our faces.”

“So what do we do?” Lowery said as he put the car in gear.

“A raid. Oh-four-hundred tomorrow morning.”

“Are you kidding? On Christmas?”

“Can you think of a time it’ll be less expected? Six of us hit the place front and back wearing FBI jackets and full assault gear. If we find the sim we secure her, terminate everyone else, and take off. If we don’t find her, we apologize for raiding the wrong address, and disappear.”

“FBI?”

“Hey, it’s not like they never raid private homes and it’s not like they’ve never fucked up before either. Everybody still remembers Waco. It’ll take days, maybe weeks, before the feds convince the public they weren’t involved.”

Lowery grinned. “And by then we’ll be long gone. I like it.”

“It’s win-win,” Luca said. “If I’m right, we’ll have the sim. If I’m wrong, no more wasting time watching Cannon.”

But I’mnot wrong, he told himself. That sim’s in there. I can smell her.

18

SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY

“Even though it’s only Christmas Eve, we’ll call this our Christmas dinner,” Zero said as he opened the lids of the pizza boxes on his dining room table. “Because who knows where we’ll be tomorrow? No turkey for our sim Christmas, I’m afraid. Just two large pies—a plain and a sausage.” He glanced at his two guests. “Do either of you know what Christmas means, by the way?”

Kek didn’t even look up; he’d been lured away from one of the computers where he’d been engrossed inMortal Kombat XX , and now he grabbed a slice of the sausage pie and started wolfing it down.

But Tome smiled and said, “Lights and trees and presents.”

“Yes, that’s a big part of it. A time of peace on earth and good will toward men, I’m told. But what about sims? Does that include good will toward sims?”

Zero had made the mistake of allowing himself a glass of holiday cheer: one Scotch and water. Terrible tasting stuff, didn’t know how Ellis Sinclair had drunk so much of it all those years, but he’d forced it down—the season to be jolly and all that. Now he wished he hadn’t. Not used to alcohol, and though he wasn’t feeling much in the way of physical effects, it seemed to have untethered his thoughts, leaving them to wander. Now they were wandering into terra incognita.

“Tome not know, Mist Zero.”

Not know what? Oh, yes…about good will toward sims.

“Of course you don’t, Tome. Christmas has become a secular holiday for the most part, but it’s still a religious occasion for those who celebrate the arrival of their god to save mankind. But what of us sims? Are we included in that salvation? Or are we damned?” He toasted with a piece of plain pie. “Joy to the world.”

But he felt no trace of joy, felt instead as if he were standing on the brink of a precipice, gazing into the unknown. The world as he’d always known it was about to change. Radically. And with it his relationship to that world and all the people he knew in it. Nothing would ever be the same.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to come out of hiding, to wander about with his face exposed to the world, to be aperson . He could not.

He surprised himself by starting to sing: “We three sims of chimpanzee blood, wondering how we’ll ride out the flood…” He noticed Tome and Kek staring at him. “Come on, sing! You know the words!”

But then he couldn’t go on, not with his throat constricting around a sob.

What have I done? My race, my brother sims—what will happen to them when Meerm’s baby is shoved in the face of the world? By saving them will I doom them to extinction?

19

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

DECEMBER 25

“We leave at oh-three-hundred,” Luca told Lowery. The two of them had the SimGen security offices virtually to themselves. He checked his watch. “That gives you ten minutes to get the other four assembled by the cars and ready to go.”

“Got it,” Lowery said and trotted off.

Luca turned back to the printouts on his desk. This genetics stuff was so complicated. He’d done search after search before tracking down intergenomic and intragenomic competition, and then more searching before finding articles he could understand. Weren’t many of those, but he’d managed to glean some idea of what it all meant. He still didn’t see what was so frightening about it.

Intergenomic competition…a theory that arose back in the nineties about the maternal and paternal halves of the fetal genome competing for dominance during development. Luca understood it best when he translated it into combat terms. In a male embryo, the Y chromosome from the father directs the struggle against the maternal half of the genome. But in a female, with no Y to marshal the forces of the paternal genome, the maternal X has an easier time against the paternal X; it can then push more characteristics from its own underlying genome toward the front, thus showing more of its maternal DNA to the world.

Intragenomic competition was a newer and more controversial theory. Whileinter genomic competition applied to all species,intra genomic competition applied only to recombinant transgenic species of higher mammals, and it was a double war. While the usual intergenomic competition was being waged, there was also a civil war going on within the recombinant genome. As Luca understood it, the recombinant half would try to express the genes from its original underlying genome at the expense of the foreign genes that had been spliced into it.

Yeah? So what?

If all this held true, a human father meant the pregnant sim’s baby would look more like a human if it was a boy and more like a chimp if it was a girl.

Again: So what?

I must be missing something, Luca thought, because the only scary thing here is how boring this is.

He checked his watch again. Time to go. An 0300 departure would get them to Mineola in plenty of time to gear up for the raid.

And they had plenty of gear. Like the others, Luca was wearing a black cotton BDU; but before they went in they’d add body armor and Kevlar helmets with visors; each would carry tactical forearm 15,000 candlepower flashlights and an HK submachine gun equipped with double 30-round translucent magazines.

He hoped to use that weapon. He wanted that sim, yes, but wanted Cadman and Sullivan there too. Especially Romy Cadman. He wanted one last look at that pretty face before he put a bullet into it.

20

MINEOLA, NY

The racket—footsteps in the upstairs hallway, a fist pounding on a door, Betsy’s voice shouting—startled Romy awake. She found herself up and moving without knowing how or why.

“Wake up! Patrick! Romy! It’s time! We’ve got to go!”

Go? Where? She pulled open her door and caught Betsy as she hurried by. “What’s wrong?”

“Meerm’s in hard labor. We can’t hold off any longer. Got to get her to the hospital right now!”

Romy saw Patrick stick his head out of his room and called to him. “Did you hear?”

He nodded blearily. “What time is it?”

“Three-twenty!” Betsy cried, moving away. “Get dressed. We’ve got to move!”

Romy jumped into her clothes and was down the stairs in seconds, Patrick right behind her. They dashed to Betsy’s bedroom where they found a very confused and frightened Meerm lying on a cot and wrapped in blankets.

“Patrick, you carry her,” Betsy said as she yanked the spread and blankets off her own bed. “We’ll fix up the car.”

Romy followed her to the garage where they flattened the rear seats in the Volvo and spread out the bedclothes. Patrick appeared a moment later carrying the moaning Meerm. They nestled her in the rear section.

“Patrick, you drive,” Betsy said. “Do you know the way to the hospital?”

“No.”

“I’ll direct you, then. Romy, you stay here in the back with me.”

And then they were on their way, Betsy and Romy kneeling on either side of Meerm in the back as Patrick pulled out of the driveway. Romy opened her PCA and left a beeper message for Zero: “It’s happening. We’re on our way to the hospital.”

As she hung up she heard Betsy on her own PCA.

“…know it’s Christmas, Joanna, but this is more than just an emergency section, it’s an historical event…I wish I could say more than that, but I can’t. Have I ever lied to you? Well then, believe me, Joanna, youwant to be part of this. Okay, good. I’ll see you there.”

As Betsy hung up and punched in another speed-dial code, she glanced at Romy and smiled. “My surgical team. A dedicated bunch, but itis Christmas Day. My nurse anesthetist is Hindu, so she’ll be no problem; but both my scrub nurses have small children.” She shrugged. “One’s coming. I hope I can persuade the other. If not…do you faint at the sight of blood, Romy?”

“Me?” Romy said, caught off guard. “No, I’m okay with blood. But if you’re talking about assisting on a surgery…I don’t think…”

“Let’s hope you won’t have to, but be prepared. I may need you.”

Slice open Meerm’s belly? Romy didn’t know if she could help with that.

21

“Second floor—clear!”

“Office—clear!”

“Garage—empty!”

Luca stood in the center of Dr. Cannon’s living room listening to the reports through his headset, and felt ridiculous.

The op had started out perfectly. With the six team members divided between two Jeeps and a rented van, they’d arrived in town with time to spare. They’d left the Jeeps in the lot of an autobody shop and headed for Cannon’s house in the van. The plan was to ditch the van at the shop lot after the op and make it back to SimGen in the Jeeps. But now…

Shit, the house was empty.

Luca had had his first premonition the moment they’d pulled up in front: the lights were on. Upstairs and down. At four in the morning?

They’d crept up to the windows—no one moving about inside. They’d slammed through the rear door—no alarm.

Footsteps pounded down the stairs behind him. Luca turned and saw a helmeted figure approaching, recognized him as Lowery when he lifted his visor.

“Three bedrooms upstairs. The reports on her say she lives alone, but all three have slept-in beds. They’re not warm, but I’d guess they haven’t been cold too long. Looks like they left in a big hurry.”

Luca felt as if he were turning to ice. “You’re saying they might have been tipped?”

Lowery shrugged. “Who’d tip them? You and me were the only ones who knew where we were going. Maybe they got spooked. Maybe they spotted us watching the place and decided to take off.”

Luca turned away and ground his teeth. He should have kept someone here until the raid, but without Snyder and Grimes he was short-handed. What did he do now?

“All right,” he said into his helmet mike. “Everybody back to the van. We’re outta here.”

They’d return to the other cars, but not to SimGen. Not yet. He was staying in this area. Maybe he’d split up the team and send them looking for Cannon’s Volvo. Slim chance there, but better than doing nothing.

Needed time to think. No question now that Cannon and the sim were together. Find the doc and he’d have the sim, and Cadman and Sullivan too, no doubt.

Butwhere?

22

Zero watched the surreal scene below with a by-now-familiar mix of anticipation and dread. The faint aftereffects of the Scotch had evaporated when he received Romy’s message. He’d arrived at the hospital shortly after Betsy and the others, and left Tome and Kek parked in the van while Patrick admitted him through the doctor’s entrance. Like every other department in the hospital, security was a skeleton crew because of the holiday; so Zero, wearing a hat pulled low, dark glasses, and a scarf around his lower face, made it to the OR suite without being stopped.

Betsy had commandeered the amphitheater OR, and now Zero gazed down at a brightly lit operating table fifteen feet below, where a nurse was scrubbing and shaving Meerm’s distended belly. The sim lay tense and trembling with IVs running into both arms. The hovering dark-skinned anesthetist, who Betsy referred to as Madhuri, was ready to put her under.

The scrub nurse looked up and said, “Hey! Who’s the guy in the mask?”

Zero leaned back out of sight. He’d replaced the hat and scarf with his usual ski mask.

“A trusted friend,” Betsy said. “Don’t worry about him, Joanna. Just get our patient prepped.”

Betsy had told him she’d chosen the amphitheater for its audio-visual system, and Zero thought that an inspired idea. They could still lose this war; maybe an A-V record would provide some insurance. The problem was how to get the system up and running.

“There,” Patrick said, close at his side as he sighted along the top of the mounted camera. “That’s pointing in the general direction.”

Zero turned and seated himself at the computer console. “Good. Now let’s see if we can get a picture.”

“You know how to work this sort of rig?” Patrick said, leaning over his shoulder.

“Not really, but it seems to be a dedicated system, and if the menu’s at all intuitive…”

The menu formed on the screen and Zero groaned. It looked like a crossword puzzle with numbered feeds and rows ofinput from andoutput to and acronyms he didn’t understand. Suddenly the air in the balcony seemed too thin. He ripped off the mask and took a deep breath. He looked down at his trembling fingers poised over the keyboard. It wasn’t just the computer program, it was everything…the huge responsibility that he’d taken on over the past couple of years…he felt as if it were all crashing down on him at once. Everything he’d been living for hinged on what he and these good humans did here tonight.

He took another breath and focused on the screen. He could handle this.

A little trial and error, a lot of intuition…he could do it. He had to do it.

Meerm so ver fraid. Not fraid needle. Fraid this place. And fraid hurt. Hurt so bad.

“Okay now, Meerm,” say mask lady. Nice lady. “I’m going to make the hurt go away.”

Meerm feel warm, feel hurt go. This ver nice lady.

“I’m going to put you to sleep now, Meerm,” lady say. “And when you wake up, you’ll have a baby. Won’t that be nice?”

Yes. Baby. Meerm baby. So nice. Meerm want hold, want kiss. Make baby safe. Hold-hold-hold and nev let go.

Sleepy now, but not stop think baby…Meerm baby…Meerm ver own baby…happy Meerm…

23

“Stop!” Luca shouted. “Pull over right now!”

Lowery slammed on the brakes. As the Jeep screeched to an unexpected halt, the two following vehicles skidded past and swerved to stops ahead.

“Where’s the blower?” Luca shouted. “Give me the fucking blower!”

“Here,” Lowery said, slapping the PCA into his palm. “What’s the matter?”

“I am so stupid,” Luca said, punching in 4-1-1. “So fucking stupid!”

“Are you going to tell me—?”

“Cannon’s answering service! They’ll know where she is!”

He got the number from information, punched it in, and asked for Dr. Cannon.

“Dr. Cannon’s not available,” a woman’s voice told him. “Dr. Moss is covering.”

Shit! “I really need to speak to Elizabeth personally. This is her brother and we’ve got a family emergency that needs her immediate attention.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ll try her house and—”

“I’ve already called and she doesn’t answer.”

“Maybe she’s at the hospital. I can page her if you wish.”

“Would you? That would be wonderful.”

Luca waited on hold, feeling the time drag by, and then the operator was back on.

“I just spoke to the hospital. Dr. Cannon is in surgery. I can leave a message for her as soon as she gets out.”

Surgery? Could it be…?

“Which hospital?”

“Nassau Community. Do you want me to—?”

He cut her off and turned to Lowery. “Nassau Community Hospital. You know where it is?”

“Not a clue. Give me the address and the GPU will—”

“Right.”

Luca punched 4-1-1 again. He’d call the switchboard and ask for the address.

“Why didn’t I see it?” he shouted. “The sim’s in labor! That’s why Cannon’s house was empty. Everyone’s at the hospital. She’s having her baby.”

Lowery grinned. “And we didn’t bring any cigars.”

“Yes, we did,” Luca said, patting his HK. “The exploding kind.”

24

Romy, capped, masked, and garbed in surgical green, stood between Betsy and Joanna at the stainless steel sink and learned how to scrub. Betsy’s other scrub nurse had begged off, refusing to leave her five-year-old son to open his Christmas presents without her. That left Romy to fill in.

“Work the lather into the skin,” Betsy was saying, her voice slightly muffled by her surgical mask, “especially between the fingers and around the nails.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Romy said. She was shaking inside. “It’s not the blood or the cutting, it’s just that I’ve never even seen—”

“You’ll be fine,” said Joanna to her right. “I’ll handle the technical stuff. The most you’ll have to do is hang on to a retractor while—”

“She’s crashing!” cried an accented voice from the operating room. “Something’s happened!”

“Oh, God, her uterus!” Betsy said. “It’s ruptured!” She grabbed three packets of sterile gloves and handed them out. “Just put them on! Forget about gowns and sterile procedure. We’ll worry about sepsis later. Right now we’ve got to move or we’ll lose her!”

The next ten minutes were a crimson-tinged blur through which Romy watched Betsy and Joanna work like a single four-armed organism. Their communication seemed almost telepathic as Joanna would slap an instrument into Betsy’s palm as soon as she thrust out her hand. Romy repressed a cry of anguish as Betsy cut quickly through Meerm’s abdominal wall, releasing a torrent of blood that gushed down her flanks and soaked the table. Joanna said something about a uterine artery and Betsy was calling for suction but Romy’s eyes were locked on the glistening bloody dome of Meerm’s uterus floating in that sea of red. And the surreal aspect of being able to glance up at the TV monitor suspended in a corner and view the scene from a different angle. And then Betsy was cutting into that muscular sack, reaching through the slit and pulling out a limp, bloody, silent baby. She held it up by its feet, slapped it once, then again, and with that the little arms jerked outward and the baby emitted a piercing cry. And then Betsy was clamping and cutting the cord as she called for Zero or Patrick, she didn’t care who, to get down here and take charge of this baby because she needed everyone here to help her stop Meerm’s hemorrhaging before she died.

Seconds later, Patrick, looking even more frightened than he had after they’d been run off the Saw Mill, stumbled through the doors into the OR.

“What do Ido ?” Patrick said as Joanna deposited the squirming, squalling, scrawny, blood-slippery bundle of baby into his arms. It terrified him. God, what if he dropped it? “I don’t know a thing about babies! I’ve never—”

“No Butterfly McQueens allowed,” the nurse told him. “Madhuri will talk you through it.” Then she turned back to the furious activity on the operating table.

Patrick turned to the anesthetist. “Madhuri?”

“Take it to the table over there,” she replied in a voice that was at once lilting and rapid fire. “There’s a basin of warm water. Rinse it off, wipe it down, and then wrap it tightly in one of the blankets.”

“But—”

“Hurry! Get it wrapped up! You don’t want hypothermia! I’d help you but I can’t leave—” She glanced at a monitor and called out, “Heart rate up to one-sixty!”

Gingerly cradling the slippery baby in his arms, Patrick stepped to the cleaning table and placed it on a towel. And now, as it screamed and thrust out its skinny limbs, he could see that it was a girl. He dipped a towel in the basin of warm water and began wiping away the blood and clinging membranes. This caused an escalation in the wails. She was so small, so fragile looking. He hoped he didn’t rub too hard and break something, but he kept it up, working as quickly as he could. As soon as she was reasonably clean, he found a soft blanket at the rear of the table and wrapped it around her.

He looked over to Madhuri to ask, Now what? but she was busy hanging a new IV bag, a small, red one, on an IV pole so loaded with infusion bags it looked like a Christmas tree. The baby was still crying so he lifted her into his arms—he felt a little more confident now that she was dry and blanket wrapped—and held her tight against him.

Amazingly, her wails tapered off. And now that he had a chance to look at her, he marveled at how human she looked. He’d never seen a real live newborn. He’d seen photos, of course; whenever the associates at his old firm had entered fatherhood, they always brought in pictures taken right after birth showing these homely, scrunched-up elfin faces that everyone pronounced beautiful. But this babywas beautiful. Maybe because she hadn’t been extruded through a birth canal. A nice symmetrical face, a tiny nose, little bow lips, a light down of hair on her head but none on her body. Damn, she looked human. More so than some of those associates’ kids.

He turned to look at the operating table and met Romy’s dark eyes, the only part of her face visible between the cap and the mask.

“How’s Meerm doing?” he asked.

Betsy stood next to Romy, and answered without looking up. “I clamped the big bleeder but she’s not out of the woods yet. She damn near bled out. We’ve got packed red cells and volume expanders running full blast, and that should bring her pressure back.”

“Patrick,” said Zero’s voice over the loudspeaker, “hold up the baby so we can get a good view.”

Patrick turned, loosened the blanket, and lifted her toward the camera lens pointed his way from the balcony. Zero had got the video system working in time; now he seemed to have mastered it. Patrick glanced at the monitor and saw himself, viewed from above, holding the baby.

“Boy or girl?” Romy asked as Patrick turned back their way.

“Girl. A beauty.”

Betsy’s head snapped up. “Abeautiful girl?”

“A real doll.”

Patrick saw the confusion in Betsy’s eyes and was framing a question about it when Madhuri began shouting.

“V-fib! She’s in V-fib!”

Oh, no! Zero felt a pang as he saw the sudden frenzied activity around the operating table on the computer screen. You can’t lose her. She just became a mother.

He watched with growing dismay as Betsy performed CPR on Meerm’s chest, then applied the defibrillator paddles, shocking her heart again and again. His eyes drifted from the painful scene to the thumbnail feeds he’d accessed from the hospital’s security cameras—an easy task once he’d got the hang of the program. Almost five in the morning and all quiet at Nassau County Community Hos—

Zero stiffened as he saw two Jeeps and a van pull up at the emergency room entrance. No audio, but the way the vehicles rocked on their springs meant they’d been moving fast.

Most likely nothing, he told himself, but he kept watching, and his gut began a quick crawl when he saw six men in full SWAT gear pile out onto the pavement. He couldn’t see their faces through their lowered visors but he spotted “FBI” on the back of one of them. He didn’t believe that for an instant. This was SIRG through and through, and maybe Portero himself.

He glanced at the OR feed—Betsy was still laboring over Meerm’s inert, supine form—then at his upload indicator for the digital movie of the birth. Almost complete. But now he had to slow the invaders, mislead them, divert them.

As Zero slipped the ski mask back over his head, he had an idea…

25

Luca’s mind raced as he led his men from the emergency area to the lobby. First thing, he had to seal the building and cut off any escape. But for that he needed to know where the exits were, and the place to find out was Information.

As they stormed into the dimly lit, high-ceilinged lobby he found the reception desk empty; the entire population was two gray-haired ladies and an aging security guard clustered before a TV monitor fixed on a wall. He hurried over to grab the guard but stopped dead when he saw what they were watching.

Four humans operating on a pregnant sim.

The guard turned, saw them, and stumbled backward, reaching for his two-way.

Luca reached out and grabbed his arm. “FBI!” He shouted and pointed to the monitor. “Take us to that operating room!”

“W-wait,” the guard said. “You can’t just come in here and—”

Luca squeezed his arm. Hard.“Now!” He shoved him toward a hallway.“Move!”

As the cowed guard led them toward a bank of elevators, Luca turned to Stritch and pointed toward the old ladies. “You stay here. Keep them away from the phones.”

Behind his visor Luca repressed a sigh of relief. No need to worry about covering the exits. The baby hadn’t been born yet. No one would be going anywhere until that happened.

26

“She is gone,” Madhuri said, her voice an octave lower than usual.

“No!” Betsy cried. To Romy’s horror, she’d had to watch while Betsy cracked open Meerm’s chest and manually compressed her heart. She was still at it, working like a mad woman. “We’ve still got a chance!”

“Betsy, she is dead.”

Romy looked at the anesthetist’s black eyes and noticed they were rimmed with tears. Joanna’s too. Romy knew they mirrored her own. They all knew that Meerm wasn’t coming back.

She reached across and gently gripped Betsy’s forearms. “She’s right, Betsy. Meerm’s gone. You did your best but—”

“I should have brought her in sooner!” Betsy wailed. She leaned forward over Meerm’s inert heart, and sobbed. “But I was worried about the baby! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“You did all you could,” Romy said, touching the back of her sweat-soaked scrubs. “But she—”

Zero burst through the OR doors. “We have to go! SIRG just stormed into the lobby, armed to the teeth!”

“Who’s SIRG?” Joanna said, gaping at Zero’s mask. “And who the hell are you?”

“A friend,” Betsy said, ripping off her bloody gloves. She’d regained some of her composure but seemed exhausted.

“And SIRG,” Romy added, feeling her gut clench, “is a group that wants to kill that baby.”

“Like hell they will!” Joanna cried.

“Let’s go!” Betsy said. “We’ve got a minute, maybe two at the most before they’re here!”

“But what about Meerm?” Romy said.

“We’ll have to leave her.”

“No—”

“Romy,” Zero said softly, “I grieve for her as much as you—more than you—but they won’t be interested in Meerm now; they’ll want her baby, and we can’t let them have her.”

“We’ll take her,” Joanna said. “Madhuri, Betsy, and me. We’ll put her in an isolette and hide her in a motel or something.”

“What’s an isolette?” Patrick asked. He was still holding the baby and seemed very protective.

“It’s an incubator of sorts,” Madhuri said. “A special enclosed container we use for preemies. Keeps them safe and warm.”

“Good idea,” Betsy said. “Since they probably know my car, we’ll leave it here and take one of yours.”

Joanna said, “We’ll rustle up a portable isolette and meet you at the doctor’s entrance.”

She and Madhuri bustled off while Betsy and Romy pulled a green sheet over Meerm’s body. As the rest of them hurried out into the hall with the baby, Romy hung back. She rested a hand on the lifeless form beneath the sheet.

“You never had a chance, did you,” she whispered. “But things are going to change. And whenever people talk about the change, they’ll mention your name.”

Small goddamn consolation, she thought as she hurried away to catch up to the others.

27

Five men in full gear, plus the guard, made for a claustrophobic ride as the elevator crept to the fourth floor. When the doors opened, Luca and his team piled out and followed the guard to the operating suite.

The old man pointed to a pair of double doors. “The amphitheater’s through there.”

“That’s where they’re transmitting from?”

The guard nodded. “But the cameras are upstairs—through that door.”

“Any other way out?”

He shook his head.

Luca ripped the guard’s two-way off his belt and flung it against the tiles of the nearest wall. “Stand over there and don’t get in the way.” He signaled to Lowery. “You and Majesky take the stairs. The rest of you—with me.”

He depressed the bolt catch release lever on his HK to chamber the first round and stepped toward the doors. He didn’t expect resistance, but it never hurt to be prepared. And besides, he knew of no better attention getter than a three-round burst into the ceiling.

He kicked open the doors and stepped through. “All right—!”

Empty. The place looked like a cyclone had ripped through it, but not a soul in sight.

“What the—?”

He turned, ready to go out and bang that guard’s head against the wall for sending them to the wrong room when he noticed the shape under the bloody sheet on the table. Three quick steps took him to it. He hesitated, then reached out and pulled it off.

A dead sim, bloody, carved open from chest to groin. Looked like Jack the Ripper had been at her. He saw the gaping belly, the empty uterus.

The pregnant sim…this had to be her…but where—?

Oh, no…oh, no…

His knees felt gelatinous, his arms weak, the HK a hundred-pound weight in his hands as he turned and saw the TV monitor—where the operation was still in progress…at this table…on this sim…right in this room.

They’d fooled him…played him for a grade-A-prime sucker…

He looked up toward the spinning ceiling, saw a camera pointed his way from the balcony.

“Lowery?” he whispered into his comm mike. “Lowery, what’s going on?”

A helmeted head popped into view next to the camera. “They’re running a movie of the operation.”

“Stop it, Lowery,” he said, softly at first but with his voice rising. “Stop it right now!”

“I don’t know how!”

“Yes, you do, goddamn you!” He was screaming now. “Yes, you fucking well do!Now do it! ”

“Okay, okay!”

Luca heard the clinking release of the bolt on Lowery’s submachine gun, followed by one three-round burst, then another. The monitor went blank…

…but its final image had been Patrick Sullivan holding up a very human-looking baby girl…and Luca remembered how the Sinclairs had feared the birth of a girl…and he also remembered all that crap he’d read about inter- and intragenomic competition…

I took him a moment to piece it all together, but then suddenly he knew what had terrified them.

You slimy bastards! After what you did, you had the nerve to look down your noses atme?

Now more than ever he wanted that baby.

28

Racing along the hallway, Romy hung on Patrick’s arm and stared at the baby. She couldn’t take her eyes off that pink, perfect little face.

“You weren’t exaggerating, Patrick,” Romy told him. “She is truly beautiful.”

Behind her, she heard Betsy say, “Skip the elevators and take that stairway at the far end of the hall.” Then in a lower voice to Zero: “I need to talk to you about that baby.”

The two of them fell behind as Romy and Patrick entered the stairwell and started down. On the ground floor they exited and found themselves at the doctor’s entrance. Joanna and Madhuri were already there with what looked like an oversized clear-topped bread box on wheels.

“We took the elevator,” Joanna said, eyes wide, “and we saw a SWAT guy in the lobby. He had ‘FBI’ on his back,” Joanna said. “Are we in trouble?”

“They’re not FBI,” Romy told them, trying to keep the dread out of her voice. They mustnot get this baby. “They’re dressed-up thugs.”

Patrick passed the baby to Madhuri who kept her wrapped in her arms as they made the frigid pre-dawn dash across the near empty parking lot to Joanna’s minivan. Patrick loaded the isolette into the rear while Romy helped Madhuri and the baby into the front seat.

As Joanna started the engine, Romy spotted Betsy hurrying their way. Behind her she saw Zero leaning against the brick wall outside the doctor’s entrance. Her heart twisted. His posture was strange, as if he was sick.

“Is something wrong with Zero?” she asked Betsy as she arrived.

“He’s a little upset. I don’t have time to explain now. He can tell you. If you need us we’ll be at—”

Romy raised a hand. “Don’t say it. Better if we don’t know. That way they can’t make us tell.”

Betsy’s face blanched. She nodded, then hugged Romy. “Get the hell out of here before they find you.”

The three women and the baby roared off.

Romy watched for a few heartbeats, praying for the baby’s survival, then Patrick was tugging on the sleeve of her scrubs.

“Romy. Let’s move.”

Zero reached the van a few seconds before they did. He pulled off his ski mask as he climbed into the rear seat, moving like an arthritic old man.

“Will you drive, Patrick?” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

As they got moving, Romy turned in the passenger seat and looked back. Kek was in the far rear; Tome sat next to Zero who was staring at the floor in silence.

“What’s wrong, Zero?”

“What?” he said, blinking and looking up at her. “What’s wrong? Everything’s wrong.”

“Meaning?”

“Please don’t ask me about it.” The lost look in his yellow eyes constricted Romy’s throat. “Not yet.”

“Where are we going?” Patrick said as they shot out of the parking lot.

“To pay a visit to someone who has answers I need.”

“Who?”

“Ellis Sinclair.”

29

“Fan out!” Luca shouted. “They could still be in the building!”

He doubted it, but that might be just what they wanted him to do: figure they’d taken off and go on a wild search through the streets, leaving them safe right here, laughing at him. That was what they’d expect him to do, only this time he wouldn’t.

“Everyone take a floor, take a hall, go from room to room. Look for a baby, a newborn baby girl.”

Luca kicked back through the operating room doors and grabbed the old guard by his collar. “The nursery! Where’s the nursery?”

“Th-third floor,” the old man cried, cringing.

“Take me there!”

A few minutes later he was standing before a plate-glass window, staring at the rows of bassinets, only half a dozen of them occupied. To his right a frightened new mother cried out and asked him what was wrong. He ignored her.

These babies, all so human looking. But that didn’t mean the sim baby couldn’t be among them. No way to tell. The safest thing would be to kill all the girls, but he didn’t know if he could do such a thing.

Movement on the screen of the monitor over the nurse’s station at the rear of the nursery caught his eye. The sim operation film…the one Lowery had supposedly shot up…it was still playing. Suddenly the film cut off and a man appeared. Luca knew that face…the Reverend Eckert! Somehow he’d got hold of the film. Eckert was broadcasting it all over the world!

Luca turned and began a stumbling trot back toward the elevators. Only one thing to do now.

Run.

30

MANHATTAN

It’s over, Mercer Sinclair thought as he turned away from his plasma screen TV and staggered to his living room window. He stared out over the oddly silent Fifth Avenue at the pale, dawn-lit shadows of Central Park. We’re done.

He hadn’t been able to sleep so he’d turned on the TV and begun channel surfing. He’d paused when he recognized Reverend Eckert’s face—that damn fool seemed to be on some channel somewhere every hour of the day and night—and stayed when he heard him rant about a sim giving birth to a half-human baby. And then he’dshown the birth.

Portero and SIRG had failed. Miserably. And worse, the sim baby was a girl, an all too human-looking girl.

What do I do now? he wondered, his gaze wandering to the squatting granite mass of the Metropolitan Museum a few blocks uptown. The markets were closed today in the US and most of Europe, and the trading day had already ended in Asia. But when the Pacific Rim markets reopened later tonight, SimGen stock would go into freefall.

Money wasn’t the issue; even without SimGen he was worth more than he could spend in a dozen lifetimes. No, it was the company itself that mattered. He’d devoted his life to building SimGen. It was his child, his only family, and now the wild dogs he’d kept at bay for so long would leap upon her and tear her to pieces.

Mercer thought of the .38 caliber revolver he kept in the drawer by the bed. Maybe that would be the best way, the easiest way. Better that than—

He stopped.

What am I thinking? It’snot over! I’ll fight this! Stonewall any questions, deny any and all allegations. Sims aremy property, and it will take years—decades!—before someone can say otherwise. And that someone will be the Supreme Court of the United States, because that’s how far I’ll take it. And I’ll win that fight.

Oh, no. This is not over.

31

FAR HILLS, NJ

Ellis stared at the screen, fascinated, shouting, “They’ve done it! They’vedone it!”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, or even what the rest of today would hold, but everything in his life was going to be different from now on. If nothing else, today promised a brighter future for the sims of the world.

His phone rang. “Ellis,” said a deep voice he immediately recognized.

“Zero! Congratulations! I just saw the film of the birth. Tragic about poor Meerm, but uploading the film to Eckert was a brilliant move. Where are you?”

“At the front gate.”

That startled Ellis. And something about Zero’s voice wasn’t right. “I’ll open it right away. Have you got the baby with you?”

“No. But I have questions. Alot of questions.”

Ellis’s stomach plunged: He’d been dreading this moment, dreading it for decades. “Yes, I suppose you do. I’ll open the gate.”

He pressed a button on a wall unit that operated the gate mechanism, then went to a front window to watch a black van climb the long winding driveway to the house. The cook and the maid had the day off; he’d planned to visit Robbie and Julie later, but he might have to delay that.

Ellis stepped outside as the van pulled to a stop before the front door. Zero alighted immediately and Ellis was surprised to see that he’d removed his mask, his simian features naked to the world. He walked past Ellis without a word, without a handshake, without even eye contact, and stepped into the foyer. A man and a woman emerged—Romy Cadman and Patrick Sullivan, looking perplexed. Ellis introduced himself and welcomed them. The last to debark were Kek and an aging sim, but they did not approach.

“You two are welcome inside,” he said.

“No, sir,” said the sim. “We stay. Good air.”

“As you wish.”

As Tome and the mandrilla wandered out onto the frosty lawn, Ellis stepped back inside and faced his guests.

“Can I offer anyone some—”

“You’ve seen the film,” Zero said, his voice thick. “Meerm’s baby is a girl, a very human-looking girl. Dr. Cannon told me she should look more like a sim and she told me why. She also gave me a possible explanation for why the baby looks so human. She didn’t want to believe it and neither do I. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

“Then tell me it’s not true!”

“I only wish I could.”

Zero lunged toward him, teeth bared, hands clawing forward. Ellis braced himself for the impact.

“Zero, no!” Romy cried.

Her voice seemed to pull him back. He turned away and leaned a hand against the wall.

“Monster!” The word came out half growl, half sob. “How could you?”

“I didn’t. At least not knowingly.”

“Can someone tell me what this is all about?” Romy said.

“Yes,” Ellis replied. “I suppose it’s time I told someone. Let’s all sit down and I’ll try to explain.”

He led them to the two-story cherrywood library that housed the book collection that had once been a pride, but had long ago stopped meaning anything. Romy and Patrick took a couch. Zero dropped into a wingback leather chair and stared at the floor; the pale morning light through the tall windows washed out what little color was left in his face. Ellis remained standing. This was going to be too painful to tell sitting down. He needed to be up, moving about to release the tension coiled like an overwound spring in his chest.

He wished Zero were alone, but Zero might wind up telling Romy and Patrick anyway, so it was better they all heard it firsthand.

“I’ve lied to you, Zero. Lied to you from the day you were old enough to understand. You’re not a mutant sim. You’re the very first viable sim. We designated you ‘Sim Zero.’ Your cells provided the source material that was modified and remodified into the creatures we now call sims. All sims are your descendants, Zero. You are the sim Adam.”

Ellis heard Romy gasp, heard Patrick mutter, “Oh, man!” But he was watching Zero.

Zero looked up, fixed him a moment with his yellow irises, then looked away again. “And who ismy Adam?”

“That’s a longer, more complicated story. ButI was lied to long before you were, Zero. To see the whole picture, we have to go back to the early days when my brother and I were plowing all our capital and everything we could borrow into germline engineering a commercially useful chimp-human hybrid. We weren’t looking to create a labor force then. We had other uses in mind—antibodies and xenografts were high on our list. We could see success down the road but we needed more funding. To get it, we made a deal with the Devil.

“Mercer approached the Pentagon with a plan to co-develop an aggressive warrior-type simian-human hybrid along with the more docile strain we wanted to market for commercial use. The World Trade Towers were still standing then, but everyone in the military accepted that sooner or later we’d be at war again in the Middle East. So the generals jumped at the plan. But they realized the outrage that would arise when the public learned that the army was creating gonzo animal warriors and training them to kill humans—what if they got loose?—so they cloaked their involvement under layers of security and bureaucracy.

“A wing of Army Intelligence was created to develop and train these hybrids as warriors; it was given the innocuous name of Social Impact Studies Group. SIRG in turn created Manassas Ventures as a conduit for the funds funneled to our new company, SimGen. To make this look like a real venture capital deal, the head of SIRG, a colonel named Conrad Landon, demanded that Manassas get a piece of SimGen in return for the investment. We agreed, not knowing at the time that we’d be mortgaging our souls.

“But even with all these millions in funding, the transgenic road to a sim-human hybrid was fraught with obstacles, and at times seemed impassable. Somatic cell nuclear transfer, embryo splitting, and germline modifications are routine procedures now, but not then. We found we were able to increase the intelligence of apes, mandrills, and baboons by only small degrees, which did not make the Pentagon happy. And we were also running into walls trying to ‘upgrade’ the chimp genome closer to human. We were swapping genes from our own cells into chimp germlines and making a hideous mess of it. With a string of failures and the Pentagon breathing down our necks, I was cracking under the pressure.”

Ellis sighed, remembering and regretting his decision to take a sabbatical at that time. Merce had been enraged, screaming that he was jeopardizing both their futures, but Ellis had made up his mind. He’d recently wed Judy and already their marriage was in trouble because he was never home. So for his own sanity and the sake of his marriage, he’d left his brother to work alone while they flew to France and rented a little house in Provence. It had temporarily saved his marriage, but it ruined the rest of his life.

“So I took a breather to rest and recoup. I intended to stay a month but that stretched into two, then three, then longer. I shouldn’t have gone at all. I’ve done many foolish things in my life, but the most foolish was trusting my brother to work alone.”

32

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

Darryl Lister had been waiting twenty minutes in Portero’s undersized backwoods shack. How did he stand this crummy, uncomfortable furniture? The guy lived like a refugee.

But not for too much longer.

He heard a car pull up outside and gestured to Venisi, one of the two men he’d brought with him, to check the window. He looked out and nodded.

Okay. Portero was here. Darryl took a deep breath. He’d been steeling himself for this moment since the word had come down a few hours ago. Now that it was here he wanted to get it over with. They’d been through a lot, Portero and he, but the time had come to put the past aside and deal with the present.

Darryl pointed to either side of the front door; Venisi and Markham nodded, drew their pistols, and moved into position.

He’s seen my car, he thought. He’ll be expecting me, but not them.

A few seconds later Portero stepped through, dressed in black BDU shirt and pants, his face tight, obviously ready for a confrontation. He immediately spotted his two extra guests and his hand darted toward his sidearm, but stopped halfway.

“Let’s not do anything precipitous, Portero,” Darryl said.

Portero glanced around the room. “Maria?”

“She’s in the bedroom. She didn’t feel a thing.”

Portero squeezed his eyes shut. “You didn’t have to—”

“Yes, I did.” Markham had held her down while Venisi put a bullet through her brain. She’d looked very peaceful when Darryl had looked in on her. “And it’s your fault. If you’d dumped her when I told you, she’d still be alive now, but you’re bigger than the rules, aren’t you, Portero. Now hold still while these two gentlemen search you.”

Darryl had warned his two men about Portero. He’d seen the guy in action—tough, fast, vicious—and didn’t want any slipups. Venisi covered him while Markham removed Portero’s pistol from his holster and did the pat down.

“What’s this all about?”

“Clean-up time. The time when you tie up the loose ends, mop up the floor, close the door, and walk away.”

When Markham was done, he nodded.

“You’re telling me I’m a loose end?”

“Eminently so.”

Portero looked at the ceiling. “I see.”

Darryl had to admire his composure. No breakdown, no begging. But he’d expected no less. If he kept this up, the next five minutes would be bearable.

“The Old Man found out about Snyder and Grimes,” Darryl told him. “I had to say you hid their deaths from me as well.”

That had been one hairy meeting. The Old Man had just received word that the DoD had reversed its approval for Operation Guillotine—soon as the Pentagon heard about the sim’s baby, it decided it wanted nothing to do with monkey commandos—and he was in a frothing rage. For a few bladder-clenching moments there Darryl had thought he might be scheduled for a one-way ride into the woods, but he’d managed to shift all the blame to Portero.

“Snyder and Grimes brought your loss total to six men—five KIA and one Section Eight. But that’s only part of the reason I’m here.” He gestured toward the door. “Let’s step outside.”

Portero led the way, followed by Venisi and Markham. Darryl brought up the rear.

“It’s all falling apart,” he said as he ejected the clip from the pistol that had been used on Maria. “The sweetest arrangement ever—ever—is tumbling down around us. All because you didn’t do your job. So now we have to fall back. Covering our tracks isn’t going to be enough. We have to erase them.”

One by one he began removing the .45 caliber rounds from the clip.

“For instance, as we speak, there’s an inferno raging in the middle of an Idaho nowhere, roasting a lot of monkey meat. When the arson squad, or whoever eventually gets the job, starts to sift through the ashes, they’re going to have a lot of questions, but no answers.”

When he got down to the last round, he left it in the clip and pocketed the others.

“Since no clean-up can be guaranteed perfect, another aspect of the process is to provide plausible deniability for the high-ups should the dogs come sniffing their way. That means removing the weak or the too-visible links in the chain. You, unfortunately, fall into both those categories.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We were. But this goes beyond friendship. It’s not like I have a choice, so don’t make this harder than it already is. You botched a number of crucial ops and, worse, made a spectacle of yourself at that hospital this morning.”

Darryl watched him bristle at this, but Portero said nothing. Couldn’t blame him. Why talk? Nothing he said would change anything.

“And because I brought you in, it falls to me to usher you out.”

Darryl checked the pistol to make sure the chamber was empty, then wiped it and the clip clean with a handkerchief. He handed both to Portero.

“So…it’s time. After all we’ve been through, I feel it’s only fair to offer you a chance to do the right thing.”

Portero took a deep breath, then nodded and accepted the weapon.

“I’d like to do it alone.”

“I think we’d all prefer that.” Darryl gestured to the trees. “Do it in the woods.” That was where Darryl had planned to leave the body anyway. It might be months before anyone found it, if ever. “But don’t try anything cute, Portero. Stay in sight. I’m giving you the option to go out like a man. Try to run and we’ll hunt you down like a dog.”

Another nod from Portero as he stared at the pistol and the clip in his hands, then he turned and walked into the trees.

“Spread out,” Darryl told Venisi and Markham in a low voice. “Triangulate on him. Keep him in sight. He starts to run, take him down.”

But Portero acted the good soldier. He walked about a hundred feet along a path into the trees, stopped beside a big oak. He faced them and raised the pistol to the side of his head.

Jesus, he’s looking right at us.

Darryl’s instinct was to turn away, but he forced himself to watch.

The shotcracked through the chill air, Portero’s head jerked to the left, and his body collapsed into the brush.

Darryl let out a breath. Done. Clean and neat.

He gestured to Venisi and Markham. “Check him out. If he’s still breathing, finish him.”

He’d heard of people surviving some outrageous head wounds. And with the way things had been going for Portero lately, who knew? He might have botched this too.

33

FAR HILLS, NJ

“When I returned after six months away in France,” Ellis told his audience of three, “refreshed, renewed, ready to work, I discovered that Mercer had made a staggering leap in our research. He presented me with six surrogate mothers, all recently implanted with human-chimp hybrid embryos. We hired obstetricians to watch them carefully through their pregnancies, but to our dismay, one after another miscarried until only one was left. But her fetus was a tough cookie. It held on, and in her thirty-eighth week she delivered a living hybrid infant: Sim Zero.”

Patrick said, “By any chance was her name Alice Fredericks?”

“Why, yes,” Ellis said, startled to hear that name after so many years. “I believe it was. How on earth—?”

“We’ve met.” He turned to Zero. “We’ve spoken to your mother, Zero.”

“She’s not my mother,” he snapped without looking up. “I don’thave a mother.”

“He’s right, Patrick,” Ellis said. “Zero was grown by cloning techniques from a recombinantly hybridized nucleus. But when Mercer saw Zero he said that he’d overdone it: He’d swapped in too much human genetic material.

“He explained to me how, among many other changes, he’d deleted the two chimp chromosomes that millions of years ago fused to form human chromosome 2, and replaced them with a human chromosome 2. He’d also ‘cleaned up’ the hybrid genome by removing loads of junk DNA—deleting AT-rich regions, shortening CpG islands—along with codons and minisatellites; he even managed to remove an entire chromosome that may have performed some useful function in the past but was now just taking up space.

“So Zero wound up with a largely junk-free twenty-two-pair genome—one shorter than human, two shorter than the chimp’s. Mercer told me he did it to make the splicing easier, but I later learned he had a more sinister reason.

“However we both agreed that Zero was too human. The public would never accept the merchandising of something that looked so much like themselves. To make a commercially viable laborer, we’d have to swap back some of the chimp genes he’d removed.”

He noticed Romy’s hate-filled look. “I fully deserve your opprobrium, Ms. Cadman. But please understand, I was a different person then: young, drunk with the egomaniacal power to shape and create, never looking beyond the next splice. That was why I went blindly along with Mercer’s solution to work backward from Zero: Use his cells as a starting point and swap back some of the chimp genes he’d removed. I was ablaze with excitement at the possibilities opening before me. And because I trusted my younger brother, I didn’t ask the questions I should have.

“So we worked back from Zero with great success. Seeing that success, and realizing that its own future was tied to SimGen’s, SIRG started gathering information on any public official who might have a say in the legalization of sims. When we introduced the species, SIRG contacted those who voiced opposition. When blackmail wasn’t an option, SIRG’s field operatives went to work using intimidation and violence. It was SIRG’s behind-the-scenes manipulations that resulted in the classification of sims as neither humans nor animals but property—SimGen’s property.

“And I confess that I knew all this—not all the details, but the general plan—and I approved, thinking, Why should we allow these small minds to block the road to the future? Mercer and I were like gods, leading the way to a new world. To hell with anyone who dared stand in our way.”

Ellis stopped, took a breath. “I believe I was crazy then, suffering from some sort of monomaniacal mental derangement. But eventually I sobered. When all the legal hurdles had been cleared and the labor markets across the globe were clamoring for sims, sims, and more sims, when my personal net worth exceeded that of some small nations, when I finally had time to look back and reflect on how I arrived at my position, I became suspicious.

“Something was gnawing at my subconscious and wouldn’t let up. So I went back to the source, to Zero, who was still alive; the basic research center’s only permanent resident. I took an oral scraping of his cells and started checking his DNA. Mercer’s ‘cleaning up’ of Zero’s genome may have made the splicing easier, but I realized then that it also removed links back to the source DNA. After exhaustive efforts, working in secret, I eventually traced Zero’s DNA back to its origin.”

Ellis looked around at the three faces fixed on his. Yes, even Zero had lifted his head for this.

Could he say it? Could he push these words past his lips? He had to. He’d come too far to turn back.

“That source DNA didn’t belong to a chimpanzee. It belonged to me.”

Romy’s voice was barely audible. “Oh…dear…God!”

Patrick was speechless, staring in slack-jawed shock.

And Zero had closed his eyes.

Ellis spoke past the lump in his throat. “I confronted Mercer and, after strident initial denials, he reluctantly confirmed it: Zero had been fashioned from one of my cells. My brother had lied to me about adding too many human genes to a chimp genome to make Zero; the truth was he’d swapped chimp genes intomy genome. And from there I unwittingly helped him in further devolving Zero’s genome to create the sims.”

“You’re telling me,” Patrick said, sputtering, “tellingus …that…that a sim is not a recombinantly evolved chimp…it’s a recombinantlyde volved human being? Tome is a human being who’s been genetically adulterated and then farmed out as a slave? I…I…” He raised his hands, then let them drop.

Ellis understood. There were no words for what he and Mercer had done.

Romy was silent, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at Zero.

“Then I am—or was—a man?” Zero said, eyes open now, his too human features tortured. “But I’m reallynot a man, am I. I’m a thing. A freak!”

“Zero, don’t!” Romy sobbed.

But Zero went on, glaring at Ellis. “What have youdone to me?”

Ellis could barely hear his own voice. “The unforgivable. The unconscionable. The unspeakable. But I didn’t know, Zero.”

“That’s a little convenient, don’t you think?” Romy said, the edge on her voice slashing at him. “’Fess up: You didn’twant to know.”

“Maybe you’re right. But I do know I’ve been trying to undo this ever since I found out. Until this moment, Mercer and I have been the only two who’ve known the truth. Not even Colonel Landon of SIRG knows. What astonished me then, and what I still find incomprehensible, is how Mercer could know all along that the sims he was leasing to the world as slaves were his cloned half brothers, and not be bothered a bit.”

“But you didn’t go public,” Patrick said. “You didn’t even quit the company.”

“I wanted todissolve the company, but Mercer and SIRG controlled too much stock. I couldn’t go public with what I knew because I had children by then and I’d been instrumental in creating the sims. If the truth got out I’d be seen as a monster on a par with Mengele, and my children would be seen as offspring of a monster.

“I was trapped, and SIRG knew it, but just in case I had second thoughts, my daughter Julie disappeared for half a day. She wasn’t harmed, in fact she had a nice time with the lady who took her to an amusement park, but the message was too clear. To protect myself I hid a number of computer disks revealing everything; they’ll be released to all the media in the event of my death. SIRG and I entered a cold-war state of mutually assured destruction, but it was too much for me. Knowing I’d been instrumental in a monumental atrocity made me unfit for human companionship. And since I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my wife, my marriage fell apart.

“So I dedicated myself to the only solution I could think of: a Quixotic quest to develop a true chimp-origin sim to replace the human-origin sims in circulation. But I’ve found it impossible. I don’t think it can be done.

“But all the while, Zero had been growing up in the sealed-off section of basic research. Mercer had forgotten about him until Harry Carstairs casually mentioned him. Mercer decided he was a liability, the Missing Link between sims and humans. He ordered Zero destroyed—sacrificed, put down, like any other lab specimen that had outlived its usefulness.

“When I heard I told Mercer I’d take care of it. But I had no intention of allowing Zero to be killed. I was suddenly energized. In Zero I saw a chance to bring SimGen down. Instead of administering a lethal injection, I spirited him off. I financed him, setting him up as the nemesis of SimGen, a fifth column to turn people against the use of sims. I saw him as a way to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. And Zero was more than willing to help liberate his brother sims.

“Now Meerm’s baby will accomplish that. What I’d hoped for was to put SimGen out of business with all of its secrets intact. That might not be possible now, seeing as the baby is a girl.”

“Why is that so important?” Patrick said. “I saw Dr. Cannon react when I told her it was a beautiful girl.”

“It’s too complicated to delve into here. Just let me say that in an X-dominated hybrid genome with a human father and a sim mother, the mother’s non-native genes—that is, the minority derived from another species—would be largely suppressed. Even though they’re there in the genotype, they don’t show up in the phenotype. In other words, if sims had been truly derived from chimps, Meerm’s daughter would have retained significant chimp features. But because the substrate of Meerm’s genome was human, the chimp genes didn’t have a chance. That’s why, in spite of all the added chimp DNA, she gave us a beautiful, pink, human-looking baby.”

Romy said, “Then I guess your dirty little secret won’t be a secret much longer.”

“That will be up to you three, of course. The fact that the baby’s a girl will cause people who know genetics to question whether there might be more human DNA in sims than anyone ever imagined, but I doubt they’ll be able to prove anything. And their questions will be drowned out in the tidal wave of protests against the cloning of more sims. Thanks to Reverend Eckert the world has watched the birth of a baby born of the union of man and sim. And after seeing that, the movement to have them reclassified as Hominidae will gain unstoppable momentum.”

He turned to Zero and felt the lump grow in his throat again.

“And you, Zero, are a man. The finest, most noble man I’ve ever known. And you can live as a man. Whatever you want of mine is yours, Zero. I don’t know whether to call you brother or son, but like it or not, I’m part of you. We’re related.”

Zero stared at the bookshelves, saying nothing.

Ellis stepped closer to him. “I already have a son, Zero, but for a long time now I haven’t had someone I’ve cared to call brother. There’s still a lot to be done; years of struggle ahead before this abominable, tragic mess is straightened out. I helped cause it with one brother; I need another brother to help me rectify it. Can you forgive me enough to be that brother, Zero? Please?”

“I’ll help you,” Zero said, rising and looking him in the eye. “Because I need to finish what I began. But don’t call me brother. And don’t ask me to forgive you.”

The words struck like hammer blows. Ellis briefly had harbored a hope, a vision of Zero and him tearfully embracing and letting the past be past. But he could see now that wasn’t going to be. He ached for absolution, but it wouldn’t be coming from Zero or the two people with him. Not yet, at least.

“Fair enough,” Ellis said. He resisted an impulse to offer his hand. Even that might be asking too much right now. “As a first step I propose arranging a meeting immediately with my brother. We’ll lay out the facts for him and make it perfectly clear that SimGen is dead.”

34

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

Luca Portero waved as he cruised past the guard in the gate kiosk and pointed his Jeep toward the SimGen main campus. He’d wanted to avoid any small talk because he could barely hear his own thoughts, but he’d take ringing in his ear over a hole in his head any day.

When he’d buried an AK-47 and an extra pistol in a waterproof gun case, he’d doubted he’d ever have to use them. It was simply a precautionary measure. But when Lister had told him it was time to “do the right thing,” he’d known exactly where he wanted to do it.

Do the right thing…was Lister crazy? Like there was some sort of honor in executing yourself instead of making somebody else do it? What century was he living in?

Correction:used to live in.

Luca had raised the pistol to his head but pointed at the very rear of his skull. At the last second he’d angled it even further rearward to send the slug past the back of his head. But the report had damn near deafened him. He might never hear out of his right ear again.

He’d dropped right onto the spot where he’d buried the gun case. The two inches of covering dirt scraped off quickly. The pistols Lister’s butt boys were carrying were nothing against the Kalashnikov. After they were down, Portero ran back and caught Lister trying to get away in his car. The bastard had squealed for mercy, screaming about friendship—friendship!After handing me a pistol so I could off myself!

Luca blew his head off.

Now he had to sky out of the country. No need for panic. No one here knew about Lister. He figured he had hours yet, and wanted to use some of that to deal with his office computer. He’d been scrupulous about avoiding any links to his numbered account in Bermuda, but you couldn’t be too careful where SIRG was involved. They had people who could drag all sorts of information from a supposedly destroyed memory chip. So the chip was going with him. The ocean floor dropped to a couple of miles deep off Bermuda; he’d bury the chip at sea.

As expected, the campus was all but deserted. Only a few security personnel about. Perfect.

He’d just sat down before his computer and was preparing to open the box and tear out the memory chip, when he heard his office door open behind him. His fingers closed around the grip of his .45.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Portero,” said a voice he couldn’t place. “I didn’t expect you in today.”

He turned and recognized one of the newer men on the security force—knew the face but not the name. He’d been hired last summer; low on the ladder, which was no doubt how he’d pulled Christmas duty.

“Yeah,” Luca said. “Just checking on something before I go home.”

“Lots of brass in today.”

Luca’s ears were singing and the last thing he needed was chitchat with this kid, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“Really? Who?”

“Both Sinclairs. First the big guy copters in. Then Ellis Sinclair arrives in this beat-up van, driving it himself.”

“Is that a fact?”

Luca wasn’t surprised. If there was any time for a crisis meeting it was now.

“And you’ll never believe who was with him: that fox from OPRR—you know, the one who led the inspection a few—”

“Romy Cadman,” Luca said, and felt his blood jump a few degrees.

The bitch was back. And with Sinclair-2. So they were no longer hiding their connection. Lister had put the blame on Luca, but that was wrong. This wastheir fault. Especially hers. Things had started downhill the moment she arrived. If not for Romy Cadman he’d still be sitting pretty here, building his retirement account, planning ways to move up the SIRG ladder. Instead he was on the run and would have to keep on running the rest of his life.

Maybe it was fate that had brought him back at this moment. He had scores to settle, scales to balance.

What was the expression—in for a dime, in for a dollar? He’d left a pile of bodies back at his house; no reason why he couldn’t leave a few more in Sinclair-1’s office.

35

This was a different Mercer Sinclair than the one Romy had seen at the shareholders’ meeting. The suave good looks, the debonair poise were gone. This man looked haggard, years older. But he hadn’t lost any of his fight.

“As usual, Ellis, you want to give up. You always were a quitter. But I’mnot giving up. Not by a long shot. We can win, and I can tell you how. But I’m not discussing it before outsiders—certainly not with someone here from OPRR.”

“I’m not representing OPRR today,” Romy told him, “but I’ll leave if—”

“No,” Ellis said. “We all stay. We all have a stake in this.”

Romy looked around, realizing how true that was. Ellis had led them all to the CEO’s office—Romy, Patrick, Zero, and Tome and Kek as well. The last three had the most at stake.

“Then this meeting is over,” said Mercer Sinclair. “When you come to your—”

Abruptly the door opened and Luca Portero swaggered in. The pistol in his hand startled Romy, and the wild look in his eyes terrified her.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” he said, breaking into a sharklike grin. “And a motley crew if I ever saw one,” he said. “Four humans, a sim, a—holy shit! Sothat’s how you took down four of my men! Where’d you get the mandrilla? I never would’ve—” His cold gaze settled on Zero. “And who or what the fuck are you?”

“They were just leaving, Portero,” Mercer Sinclair said quickly. “And so are you.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. You’re fired. As of this minute you are no longer employed at SimGen.”

“You talk to me like that?” Portero said. “Where do you get the balls to use that tone of voice with me after what you did?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You stood there time after time and looked down your nose at me and pretended to be horrified at what you called my ‘methods,’ when all the while you built this company by turning humans into monkeys and telling the world it was the other way around. You can’t fire me, you piece of shit. I’m firingyou !”

And before Romy knew it, Portero’s pistol was leveled at Mercer Sinclair’s chest. He fired twice, two rapid, booming reports, hitting him in the chest.

Images strobe-flashed through Romy’s shocked brain—Sinclair’s eyes bulging—his mouth forming an astonished O—his backward tumble with outflung arms—the window behind him cracking as it was splattered with red.

And then Portero was swinging his pistol in her direction. Patrick and Zero stood frozen to her right, Ellis was lunging toward his fallen brother. Portero shifted his pistol toward him, then seemed to change his mind.

“Later,” he said softly, then focused on Romy.

Kek growled and started forward.

“Kree-gah!” Portero said and Kek froze.

Portero smiled as he eyed Kek. “Before being assigned here I worked with some of these mandrillas in our Idaho facility. They’re conditioned from birth to stop whatever they’re doing when they hear that word, then wait for another command—from the person who said it. I’m told the word is ape talk from the Tarzan books.” His gaze returned to Romy. “Pretty cool, huh?” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “And now it’s your turn, Ms. Romy Cadman. You’ve messed up my future, so now it’s only fair I mess up yours.”

Out of the corner of her right eye she saw Zero take a step closer to her, saying, “Leave her alone!”

“Hey, listen!” Portero snarled. “I don’t know what kind of a freak you are, but another step and you’re a dead freak. Got that?”

Kek growled again and Portero yelled, “Kree-gah” a second time. “Don’t make me shoot you, boy,” he told Kek. “I’ve got plans for you.”

“What plans can you possibly have for Kek?” Romy said, hoping she could get him talking, maybe long enough for help to arrive, if any was coming.

“I may need a diversion at the airport. I’ll just set him to tearing things up in another part of the terminal after I get there.” He raised the pistol, centering it on Romy’s chest. “But enough idle chatter. Good-bye Romy Cadman.”

Romy felt a stunning impact against her right shoulder as, once again, two booming reports split the air. She saw the muzzle flashes as she fell to her left and realized that Zero had hurled himself against her.

No!

She heard Kek’s enraged howl as he launched himself through the air, saw Portero try to bring his pistol to bear on the hurtling creature but he wasn’t fast enough, heard him shout “Kree-gah! Kree-gah!” but no amount of conditioning was going to keep Kek from anyone who hurt Zero. Portero went down with screams of pain and terror.

Zero!

Romy rolled and was on her feet in a heartbeat, but Zero was down, slumped on his side, his life running out of him front and back into two red puddles.

Romy swims into Zero’s vision. Joy bursts within his ruined chest at the sight of her alive and unharmed. Her pale, strained face is framed in scintillating fog as she leans over him and wails for someone to call for help.

Too late. Even though he feels no pain, or perhaps because he feels no pain, Zero knows he’s dying. The impact of the bullets tearing though his chest was agonizing, but now…now he feels feather light and completely at peace.

He stares at Romy’s tear-stained face as she calls his name again and again, begging him to hang on. But he has no strength to hang on. He tries to move his lips but they won’t respond. They must! He has to tell her that it’s better this way.

If this morning had gone differently…if Betsy hadn’t confided to him her suspicions about Meerm’s baby, and if Ellis hadn’t confirmed them, his outlook would have been so different. He could have lived with the belief that he was an intellectual improvement on a nonhuman creature, could have held his head high as the best of his breed that aspired to the next evolutionary step. But the truth changed all that. He is not a step up from anything. He’s an adulterated…thing…a freak of science. He doesn’t know how long he could have survived knowing that he was cheated of his humanity.

He feels her hand in his. He wills his fingers to move, and they do, they close on hers. She bursts into sobs.

He wants to tell her how he’s loved her. And how, thinking he was a sim, he could have been satisfied to go on loving her from afar. But he doesn’t know how he could bear seeing her and being with her, and ever dreaming about what, but for the violation of a few genes, might have been.

It’s better this way.

The opening in the glittering cloud encircling Romy’s face begins to narrow, brightening as she seems to recede.

A sob builds in what’s left of his chest. Not yet. Let me look at her a little longer.

But the cloud brightens further as the iris closes. And then she’s gone and only the swirling light remains. And Zero wonders if there’s a heaven. For Romy’s sake he hopes so, because he knows that’s where she’ll go when her time is up.

But what about him? Did he retain enough of that transcendent spark to allow him to pass on into another life? Will he be welcomed? Or rejected as unfit?

He never fit anywhere during his earthly life. Just once in his existence he’d like to feel he fits somewhere.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful.

And now the light suffuses him and he’s floating…

Dazed, Patrick dropped to his knees beside Romy where she cradled Zero’s head on her lap. She was bent over his face, weeping. The sound tore at his heart. One look at Zero’s glazed eyes and Patrick knew he was gone. But maybe Romy hadn’t realized that yet. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her.

“I called the security office, the county sheriff, the state police. Cops and ambulances are on the way.”

“Too late!” she sobbed. “He’s gone!”

“I know,” he said softly. He reached past her arm and closed Zero’s eyes.

She leaned over further and kissed his forehead. “I loved him, Patrick.”

“And he loved you. You should have heard how he talked about you. And it wasn’t just talk. He loved you enough to die for you.”

“I want him back.”

“I know…I know…” Heputa hand on her shoulder. “I do too.”

“Can I…?” she said without looking up. “Do you mind if I just stay here with him alone until…until they come?”

“Sure. Of course.” Patrick was stung, but he understood.

He rose and became aware of a wet slapping sound. He saw Kek kneeling on Portero’s chest. He gripped the man’s ears as he repeatedly smashed the back of his head against the floor. That head, wobbly on an obviously broken neck, was bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth; the gray carpet was red under his skull.

“He’s dead, Kek,” Patrick said. “You can’t kill him any more.”

Kek looked up with tears in his eyes, then, without missing a beat, went back to his work.

Suddenly Patrick remembered Tome. He whirled and found the old sim squatting on the carpet a few feet away, his face buried in the arms folded atop his knees.

“Tome? Are you hurt?”

The sim looked up with tear-filled eyes. “Ver sad, Mist Sulliman. All Tome’s fault.”

“No way, Tome,” he said, feeling a surge of anger. “Weknow whose fault this is, and it’s not yours.”

With that Patrick turned toward the CEO’s desk and saw Ellis rise from behind it. He shot him a question with his eyes, and Ellis shook his head. His expression was grim and sad, but no tears.

Three men dead in less than half a minute. Yes, men. From this day on Patrick swore to remember Zero as a man. Although, considering the two others who’d joined him in death, that might not be a compliment.

As sirens began to wail outside, he wanted to ask Ellis Sinclair where they went from here, but the rhythmic smacking of Portero’s head against the wet carpet was turning his stomach.

“Kek! Stop! Please!” But the mandrilla ignored him. “Can’t somebody stop him?”

“Let him be,” Romy said in a flat tone without looking up. “Let him take as long as he wants.”

Epilogue

“I still can’t believe it,” Abel Voss said.

“Neither can I,” Ellis replied.

The two of them sat in Mercer’s old office. Less than a week now since death had filled this space. Ellis had ordered the carpets cleaned, but the removal of the bloodstains had been only partially successful. He’d expected that, and had declined to order new carpet. Just as he’d declined to repair the cracked picture window. He didn’t want to help anyone, especially himself, forget what had happened here.

He’d attended funerals of two brothers since that day. At Mercer’s he was part of a huge throng of mourners, none of whom shed a tear. At Zero’s he stood among a few select members of the organization—Dr. Cannon and Reverend Eckert among them—all weeping openly. He’d been a central figure at the first; he’d had to invite himself to the second, his presence tolerated only because he claimed a blood relationship.

“Then again,” Voss said, “when you think about it, who else was he gonna leave it to?”

Mercer’s personal attorney had read his will this morning. He’d left all his stock to Ellis, who was still in shock.

“It was an old will,” Ellis said. “If he’d had the slightest inkling he was going to die, I’m sure he would have changed it. But Merce thought he’d go on forever. Or damn near.”

“So now that you’re the absolute head honcho, what’s your first step?”

“I’ve already taken it,” Ellis said, rising and moving to the window. “I’m shutting down the natal centers. No new sim embryos implanted, all unborns aborted.”

Killing unborn sims…the idea sickened him. But it had to stop now.

Voss grunted. “That leaves us a company without a product. But I guess you’re just stayin ahead of the curve, seein as how the government will pretty soon be gettin around to forcin us to do just that.”

How true. News networks around the world had picked up the film of Meerm’s delivery; repeated broadcasts had raised a firestorm of protest: if sims and humans can interbreed, then sims should be members of the human genus.

If they only knew.

But they never would. Romy and Patrick had struck a deal: they would never reveal what they knew if Ellis never revealed that Romy would be raising Meerm’s baby, who she’d named Una. She wanted the child—mother a sim, father a pervert—to grow up out of the limelight without ever knowing her origins.

Fair enough. Una and her mother had already done enough to further the sim cause. Ellis would do the rest.

“Okay,” Voss said. “So no new sims. What about all the others out there already?”

“I’m going to start recalling them. I want you to get the ball rolling on building dorms for them on our Arizona land. I want them built as fast as possible. As soon as a block is ready for habitation, I’ll cancel enough leases to fill it. That’s the way we’ll do it: a rolling recall until every living sim is out of the workforce and assured of freedom and comfort for the rest of their lives.”

Voss swallowed. “At least they don’t live too long, but even so, you’re gonna bankrupt the company, son!”

“Most likely.” He looked out at the gleaming buildings of the main campus, and the rolling hills beyond. “But we’ve got lots of hard assets. We’ll sell them all.”

And when that’s not enough, he thought, I’ll use my own funds, every last penny if necessary.

Ellis Sinclair figured he was long overdue to become his brothers’ keeper.