F Paul Wilson - Sims 03 (6 page)

 
          
NEWARK
,
NJ

 
          
“Hey, you sim.”

 
          
Finger poke
Meerm. Open eyes and see sim look in face.

 
          
“You new sim?
You no work.
Why you ride?”

 
          
“Cold.
Hurt.
Sick.”

 
          
“Beece tell drive man.”

 
          
“No!” Meerm sit up. Look out window.
Bus on bridge cross water. Whisper, “No tell mans!
Mans hurt
Meerm!”

 
          
“Mans not hurt.”

 
          
“Yes-yes!
Mans hurt Meerm.
Make Meerm sick. Please-please-please no
tell mans!”

 
          
Other sim look round, say, “Okay. No
tell mans.” Sit next Meerm.
“I Beece.”

 
          
“I Meerm.”
Look window. “Where go?”

 
          
“Call
Newark
.
Sim home there.”

 
          
Ride and ride, then bus stop by big
building. Meerm follow Beece and other sim out. Up stair to room of many bed,
like room of many bed in burned home.

 
          
Meerm say, “Mans hurt here?”

 
          
“Mans no hurt.
Mans feed.
Sim sleep.
Sim
work morning.”

 
          
Beece show Meerm empty bed. All other
sim go eat. Meerm hide. Beece and other sim bring food. Meerm eat.
Not yum-yum food like old burned home but not garbage food.

 
          
Meerm sleep on empty bed. Warm.
Fed.
If only sick pain stop, Meerm be happy sim.

 
          
MANHATTAN

 
          
DECEMBER 13

 
          
Patrick paced his new office space,
waiting for Romy. He’d asked her to show up early for their meeting with the
Manassas Ventures attorneys. The prime reason was to offer her some coaching on
how to respond to them. The second was to spring a little surprise.

 
          
He stopped next to an oblong table in
the space that did double duty as his personal office and conference room, and
looked around. The offices of Patrick Sullivan, Esq., occupied the fourth floor
of an ancient, five-story Lower East Side building; gray carpet, just this side
of industrial grade, white walls and ceiling—the latter still sporting its
original hammered tin which he’d decided he liked. His degrees and sundry
official documents peppered the walls between indifferent prints he’d picked up
from the
Metropolitan
Museum
store. And of course he had his books and journals scattered on shelves and in
bookcases wherever there was room.

 
          
He heard the hall door open.
Romy.
He called out, “Back here!” but the woman who came
through the door was not Romy.

 
          
“Mr. Sullivan?”

 
          
An older woman in an ancient tan
raincoat, frayed at the sleeves and at least three sizes too big for her.

 
          
He recognized her: the
space-alien-abducted-and-impregnated lady whose sim child had been stolen and
given to Mercer Sinclair. He remembered everything about her except her name.

 
          
“Alice Fredericks,” she said. “Remember?”

 
          
“Yes, of course. How are you, Miss
Fredericks?”

 
          
“I could be better. I still haven’t
found a lawyer yet.”

 
          
“To sue SimGen
about the space aliens?”

 
          
“Yes.
And for
taking my sim child.
I looked you up and learned you’d opened a new
office, so I came straight here. Will you take my case now, Mister Sullivan?”

 
          
How to let this poor lady down easy?

 
          
He gave her an apologetic shrug. “I’m
afraid my schedule’s rather full now.” He glanced at his watch. “And I’m
expecting a client for an important conference in just a few minutes and—”

 
          
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I should have made
an appointment.”

 
          
“That’s okay.” He pushed a legal pad
and a pen across the table to her. “But I’ll tell you what. Leave me your
number and I’ll call you when my schedule opens up.”

 
          
“Then you’re not afraid?” she said,
scribbling on the sheet.

 
          
“Of SimGen?
Never.”

 
          
“I meant the space aliens. You’re not
afraid of the space aliens?”

 
          
“Never met one I couldn’t take with
one hand.”

 
          
“Thank you,” she said, puddling up
again. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

 
          
“I’m sure I don’t.”

 
          
“That’s the number of the phone in
the hall outside my room. Just ask for me and someone will get me.”

 
          
Patrick nodded. He felt a little bad,
giving her the brush like this, but it was the gentlest way he knew to get her
out of his office.

 
          
Romy entered as
Alice
was leaving.

 
          
“Who was that?”

 
          
“A poor soul with a
crazy story about SimGen.”
Patrick shook his head. “If she’s representative
of my future clientele, I’m in big trouble. But never mind her.” He spread his
arms. “What do you think of my new office?”

 
          
“Not bad,” she said, looking around
as she seated herself at the mini conference table.

 
          
She was being generous, he knew. “I
know what you’re thinking, and I agree: I need a decorator.”

 
          
“Not really.” She smiled faintly as
she gazed up at the patterned ceiling. “I kind of like the anti-establishment
air of the place.”

 
          
“So do I. Gives me a feeling of
kinship with the likes of Darrow and Kuntsler.”

 
          
She smiled.
“Darrow,
Kuntsler and Sullivan.
What a firm.”

 
          
“Better than my old firm, Nasty,
Brutish and
Short
.”

 
          
He studied her across the table as
she smiled. She looked good. The wicked shiners she’d developed after the Great
Injury had faded from deep plum to sickly custard yellow. The sutures were gone
from her scalp; she’d been able to hide the angry red seam by combing her short
dark hair over it, but today she’d left it exposed for
all
the
world to see.

 
          
“Want some coffee?” he said.

 
          
She shook her head. “I’m tense
enough, thank you.”

 
          
“How about decaf?
I can have my legal assistant perk up a pot in no time.”

 
          
“Assistant?
I didn’t know you’d hired anyone.”

 
          
“You don’t expect a high-powered
attorney like me to stoop to
filing
my own papers, do
you?” Patrick turned toward the file room and called out, “Assistant! Oh,
assistant! Can you come here a minute?”

 
          
Tome, who’d been waiting quietly and
patiently behind the door as instructed, said, “Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

 
          
Romy’s eyes fairly bulged. “That
sounds like—”

 
          
And then Tome, ever so dapper in his
new white shirt, clip-on tie, and baggy blue suit, stepped into the room.

 
          
“It is!” she cried. She leaped to her
feet and crossed the room in three long-legged strides. She threw her arms
around Tome and hugged him as she looked at Patrick with wonder-filled eyes.
“But how?
You couldn’t…you didn’t…”

 
          
“Kidnap him? Not quite.”

 
          
She kept her arms around the old sim
as Patrick explained Tome’s post-traumatic depression and the arrangement with
Beacon Ridge. Because she was taller than Tome, Romy’s bear hug pressed his
head between her breasts.

 
          
Hey, that’s where I should be,
Patrick thought as Tome grinned at him.

 
          
Nothing salacious
or suggestive in that smile, just pure happiness.
Being away from the
barracks had worked wonders on the old sim. Within two days he was up and
about, eating with gusto. And once Patrick had taught him the rudiments of
filing, Tome took to the task with religious zeal.

 
          
Romy barraged Tome with questions
about how he was feeling and what he’d been doing since the tragedy. Patrick
had things he needed to discuss with Romy so he gave them a little time to
catch up,
then
interrupted.

 
          
“Tome, would you mind doing some more
filing before our guests arrive?”

 
          
“Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

 
          
After Tome disappeared into the file
room, Romy turned to him. “Does he bunk here?”

 
          
“No. We’re roomies.”

 
          
“Roomies?”
She gave her head a slow shake. “Am I hearing and seeing things? I’ve heard
hallucinations can be an aftereffect of head trauma.”

 
          
“It’s not so bad.” The apartment he
rented in an upgraded tenement not far from here was plenty of room for the two
of them. “He keeps pretty much to himself. I got him one of those compact
TV-DVD combinations for his bedroom and he spends most of his time there.”

 
          
Her eyes were bright as she stared at
him. “What a wonderful, wonderful thing to do.”

 
          
“He’s a riot,” Patrick said,
grinning. “I bought him that suit and he’s absolutely in love with it. I had to
go out and buy an iron and a board because he insists on ironing it every
night.” She was still staring at him.
“Hey, no biggie.
I figure it’s only for a month or so, till he gets back on his feet.”

 
          
“Still, I never would have imagined…”

 
          
“I’m told I’m full of surprises.” He
pulled a packet of folded sheets from an inside pocket of his jacket and slid
them across the table to Romy. “But I’m not the only one.”

 
          
“What’s this?”

 
          
“A report from the
Medical Examiner’s office on the three floaters from the
Hudson
.”

 
          
“The globulin
farmers?
How’d you get it?”

 
          
“It arrived by messenger this
morning, no return address, but I can guess.”

 
          
Romy nodded. “So can
I
.” They’d decided not to mention Zero if there was any
chance of a bug nearby. “He has contacts everywhere.”

 
          
“I can save you the trouble of
reading it,” Patrick said as she unfolded the pages. “Remember how the bodies
showed signs of torture? Well, toxin analysis revealed traces of a synthetic
alkaloid in the tissues of all three. I won’t try to tell you the chemical
name—it’s in there and it’s a mile long—but the report says it’s known in the
intelligence community asTotuus ; developed in Finland as a sort of ‘truth’
drug, and supposedly very effective.”

 
          
“Totuus,” Romy
said,
her face a shade paler. “I wonder if that’s what they planned to use on me.”

 
          
“When?”

 
          
“When they drove us
off the road.
Remember I said one of them had a syringe and said
something about ‘dosing’ me up and getting a recorder ready?”

 
          
“Right.”
The
memory twisted his insides. “You think there’s a connection between the
SLA
and—?”

 
          
“I guess not. But listen to this: The
report says the Totuus was administered before they were tortured.”

 
          
“I don’t get it,” Romy said. “Why use
torture when you’ve got a truth drug?”

 
          
Patrick wandered to the window
overlooking
Henry Street
and watched the traffic. The same question had been bothering him.

 
          
“Maybe for fun.
I don’t know what’s driving these
SLA
characters, but
it’s pretty clear now they’re a vicious bunch.”

 
          
“And if they want to ‘free the sims’
as they say, where
are the ones they ‘liberated’
?”

 
          
“I was wondering the same thing. If
they—”

 
          
A black Mercedes limo stopped and
double parked on the street below. In this neighborhood that could mean only
one thing.

 
          
“They’re here,” he said.
“Fashionably early.”

 
          
He watched as two dark-suited,
briefcase-toting figures emerged, one male, one female; he noticed the woman
lean back into the car and
speak
to someone still in
the back seat.

 
          
Three arrive but only two come up.
Odd…

 
          
“All right,” he said, clapping his
hands.
“Places, everyone.
Tome, you know what to do;
Romy, you know your part. We’ve got only one shot at this so let’s get it
right.”

 
          
The two
Manassas
attorneys soon arrived, trying unsuccessfully to hide their astonishment at
being welcomed by a sim. Introductions were made, cards exchanged. The woman, a
redhead, thin and pale as a saltine, was Margaret Russo; the heavy, dark-haired
man, who looked like he scarfed up all his associate’s leftovers, was David
Redstone.