F Paul Wilson - Sims 05 (10 page)

 
          
Two
more men dead!

 
          
“Shit-shit-SHIT!”
Luca Portero screamed as he smashed a
glass paperweight against his office wall. He didn’t have to worry about anyone
hearing; security staff was minimal on Sundays.

 
          
Luca
hadn’t seen the bodies yet, but Lowery, who’d found them, had told them that
both their skulls had been cracked like eggs. That sounded eerily similar to
the way Ricker and Green had bought it off the Saw Mill. But this was in broad
daylight, damn it!

 
          
Could
things get any fucking worse?

 
          
As
if in answer to his question, the secure phone rang. He hesitated—because, yes,
things could get a lot worse—then answered it. He repressed a sigh of relief
when he heard Lowery’s hello.

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“I’ve
been checking around the area and found some squatters in this broke down old
apartment house on the same block.”

 
          
“Did
they see anything?”

 
          
“Not
what happened to Snyder and Grimes, but they did see this black van parked on
the street—”

 
          
“They’re
sure it was black?”

 
          
“Double-checked that.
They swear it was black. But here’s
the meat: the one looking out the window says she saw a very swollen looking
female sim being led into the black van.”

 
          
Oh,
no! No! They’ve found her! Snatched her right out from under our noses! How the
fuck could this happen?

 
          
“She’s
absolutely sure?”

 
          
“No
question.”

 
          
“Who
was doing the leading?”

 
          
“Two
men—one ‘very strange looking,’ according to her, but she was kinda vague about
that—along with a woman, and another sim, an old male.”

 
          
Luca
dropped into his desk chair and cradled his head in his free hand.
Cadman and Sullivan.
Had to be.
Plus that old sim Sullivan kept
around,
and someone
else working with them.

 
          
And
they had the pregnant sim.

 
          
“All
right,” Luca said, straightening. This wasn’t FUBAR yet. It still could be
salvageable. “We abandon
Newark
. Divide the remaining men into four teams: one on Sullivan’s apartment,
one on his office, one on Cadman’s apartment, one on her office. You see them,
grab them.”

 
          
“But—”

 
          
“I
don’t care what you have to do to nab them, just get it done. If there’s any
flack we’ll straighten it out later. I want one of those shits and I want them
brought to me!”

 
          
He’d
interrogate them personally and they’d lead him to this pregnant sim.
No need to worry about being recognized because whoever he dealt
with would not be leaving vertically.

 
          
But
what if they’d all gone to ground?

 
          
MINEOLA
,
NY

 
          
“She’s
not going to last much longer,” Betsy Cannon said as she angled the
doppler
wand this way and that against Meerm’s swollen, gel-coated
belly.

 
          
Romy,
Zero, Betsy, and Meerm were crowded into the tiny, white-walled, windowless
procedure room in Betsy’s home office. Meerm lay on the table, Betsy working
over her, Romy and Zero watching from the other side.

 
          
“What
do you mean?” Romy said, watching in rapt fascination as the 3-D shape of the
fetus within Meerm’s belly formed on the monitor screen.

 
          
“Her
uterus has taken just about all it can. It’s too small for this baby.
Andyet…the baby could use more gestation time.”

 
          
At
least Zero had his ski mask back on. They’d all agreed on the way here that no
one else needed to know Zero’s history. When it was all over—and with Meerm’s
baby, that could be very soon—he promised to go public.

 
          
The
mask made it easier now for Romy, but she wished Zero had waited outside with
Patrick and Tome; she was still uncomfortable with him, especially standing
next to him like this. And she didn’t want to feel uncomfortable, hated herself
for it.

 
          
But…how
else could she feel? She was fighting her way through an emotional maelstrom
and still hadn’t regained her bearings. She’d admired Zero so; he’d become a
hero in her eyes and in her heart, and that was fine, but she’d also been
sexually attracted to him, had fantasized about him, and now…now to learn that
he’s not human.

 
          
So
what?
said
the ghost of Raging Romy, ever ready to
shout Up yours!
to
the world. It’s not as if he’s a
squid or a plant—he’s a fellow primate.

 
          
That
was true and real and forward thinking, but another more primitive part of her was
repulsed and kept damning her, whispering that in another time, or in a
SimGen-less world, Zero would have been born a chimpanzee, destined to spend
his days sitting in a jungle sucking ants off a stick.

 
          
Sicko
evil girl! Wanting to make love with a monkey! Sick! Sick! Sick!

 
          
Romy
did her best to shut out that voice, but it wouldn’t go away, couldn’t because
it was part of her, and that was what so dismayed her. She’d always thought she
was better than that.

 
          
“How much longer?”
Zero asked.

 
          
Betsy
Cannon brushed back strands of graying hair from her face.
“Hard
to say.
If this were a sim baby I’d say she’s almost due. If human I’d
say premature. But this baby…I don’t know. And there’s another problem: Meerm’s
uterus is small, smaller even than a breeder sim’s. That baby is packed tight
in there, so tight I can’t determine its sex.”

 
          
“We
could lose the baby?” Romy said.

 
          
“It’s
a real possibility.”

 
          
Romy
stared at the color image on the monitor, watched the rapid filling and
emptying of the chambers of its little heart, saw the baby move, squirming for
comfort in the confines of the too-small womb.

 
          
We
can’t lose you, she told it. You must live. We’re so close now and…the
salvation of an entire species rests on you.

 
          
“We
could lose the mother as well,” Betsy added. “The baby is going to be
premature, and I can tell you right now that a vaginal delivery is out of the
question. This baby is coming out by section.”

 
          
“Cesarean?”
Romy said
,
looking at
Meerm’s distended belly. “How…where…?”

 
          
“I
don’t know.” Betsy’s expression was grim. “Not here, that’s for certain.
It’s
major surgery and I’m not equipped for that, not unless
we intend to sacrifice the mother.”

 
          
Romy’s
gaze darted to Meerm’s face. The poor sim didn’t have a clue as to
who
or what they were talking about.

 
          
“That’s
not an option,” Zero said. The finality in his tone stabbed Romy with a
reminder of why she’d been so attracted to him. “Tell me what you need and I’ll
arrange it.”

 
          
“A
sterile operating room and a skilled surgical team,” Betsy said. “Can you
manage that?”

 
          
“Tall
order,” Zero said. His voice had lost some of its confidence.

 
          
And
then another voice spoke.

 
          
“Why Meerm sick?”

 
          
They
all stared at her a moment, then Betsy spoke.

 
          
“You’re
not sick, Meerm. You’re going to have a baby.”

 
          
Her
sloping brow furrowed.
“Baby?
What is baby?”

 
          
“You
know babies,” Betsy said. “You must have seen many babies on television.”

 
          
The
brow furrows deepened.
“Baby?”

 
          
“Only
this won’t be like the human babies you’ve seen. This will be a sim baby.” She
gave a little shrug as she glanced at Zero and Romy, signifying that she was
simplifying the situation as best she could for Meerm.

 
          
“Where
baby?”

 
          
Betsy
tapped the sim’s abdomen. “Right in here. And the baby will come out soon.”

 
          
“Baby here?”
Meerm said
,
a slow
smile of wonder spreading across her face as she gently rubbed her hands across
her belly.
“Baby inside?
Baby
kick-kick-kick?”

 
          
“Oh,
yes!” Betsy laughed. “I’ll bet that baby’s been kick-kick-kicking like crazy!”

 
          
As
they all watched Meerm gaze at her belly, a question occurred to Romy.

 
          
“Will
she be able to care for a baby?” she said softly.

 
          
“She
won’t have to worry a bit,” Betsy said. “That baby will get great care. As a
one-of-a-kind species, it will belong to the world.”

 
          
“No,
it will belong to Meerm. It will be her baby. We’re not going to forget that,
are we?”

 
          
“Ah,
Romy,” Zero said through a sigh. “That’s why we need you: to ask the tough
questions.”

 
          
Something
in his voice struck
her…
did Zero…could Zero feel about
her the way she…?

 
          
No.
Out of the question.
He couldn’t. He simply couldn’t.

 
          
SUSSEX COUNTY
,
NJ

 
          
“Let’s
get this started,” said Sinclair-1, spinning his chair away from the
winter-browned hills beyond his office window to face Luca and Abel Voss. “I’ve
still got a lot to do today.”

 
          
Luca
thought the CEO looked particularly irritable this afternoon. That was going to
get worse when he heard Luca’s news. Normally he’d relish the prospect of
upsetting him, but not now. All the blame rested squarely on him.

 
          
“We’re
waiting for your brother.”

 
          
Voss
shifted his bulk in his chair to face Luca. “I thought he wasn’t comin.”

 
          
“I
called and told him this was too important to miss,” Luca replied.

 
          
Sinclair-1
gave him a questioning stare. Luca only nodded. Yes, they’d agreed that Ellis
would be excluded from tactical meetings, but Luca had a reason. He was sure
Sinclair-2 already knew that Meerm had been snatched from under SIRG’s nose,
and damn well knew who had done it; he was going to use Sinclair-2 to bait a
trap for the people he’d been supplying with information.

 
          
They
included Cadman and Sullivan, Luca knew, and at least two or three others.
Whoever they were, they’d all vanished. He’d hoped to nab either Cadman or
Sullivan and wring the pregnant sim’s whereabouts out of them, but since he
couldn’t find them, he was looking for a way to make them come to him.

 
          
Because he needed that sim.
Lister had thrown a shit fit
this morning when he’d heard about losing Grimes and, of all people, Snyder.
Grimes had been something of a jerk, but Snyder had been their most dependable
man. Luca had stashed the bodies in the woodshed behind his cabin—he hoped the
cold weather held—and Lister was keeping the news from the higher-ups for now,
but couldn’t cover it up indefinitely. If Luca could produce the pregnant sim,
however—say, today or tomorrow—the deaths wouldn’t matter.

 
          
The
office door opened and Sinclair-2 entered. The older brother looked strange
today. And then Luca realized what it was: His usual down and dour demeanor was
gone and he looked almost…happy.

 
          
You son of a bitch.

 
          
He
fought the urge to grab him by his scrawny neck and twist it till he spilled
everything he knew.
Every last thing.

 
          
But
that was not an option. Even though Mercer Sinclair was considered the true
untouchable—his was the public face of SimGen, so closely identified with the
company that if he went down, so would the stock that made SIRG an entity unto
itself—Ellis Sinclair was also considered off-limits. No move could be made
against him without direct authority from the Old Man himself.

 
          
What
Luca couldn’t understand about Ellis Sinclair was
why .
Why would anyone in his right mind want to kill this golden goose called
SimGen? So that had to be the answer: The older Sinclair was out of his mind.

 
          
Which didn’t make Luca want to kill him any less.

 
          
He
swallowed his bile and said, “I won’t waste anyone’s time here: We have it on
good authority that the pregnant sim is in the hands of Patrick Sullivan and
Romy Cadman.”

 
          
“Oh,
Christ,” Sinclair-1 groaned, closing his eyes.

 
          
“That
tears it,” said Abel Voss.

 
          
Sinclair-2
leaned back in a sofa and said nothing.

 
          
“When?”
the CEO said, recovering quickly. “Where are they now?”

 
          
“This morning.
And if I knew where, we wouldn’t be having
this meeting.”

 
          
“Damn!”
Sinclair-1 glared at Luca. “You’ve got to get her back!”

 
          
“We’re
working on it.”

 
          
Sinclair-2
finally spoke. “Give it up, Merce. Can’t you see it’s gone too far? It’s past
the point of no return now.”

 
          
“Not
yet! Not until they produce that baby!”

 
          
“And
even if they do,” said Voss, “we can call it a hoax, can’t we?
Some cheap publicity stunt, a twenty-first century version of the
Piltdown man or Barnum’s Cardiff Giant.
We get our PR boys to crank up
their bullshit machines and start poundin away at every news outlet they know:
A hoax, that’s all it is.
Just a hoax.
Those boys are
so good, before you know
it,
we’ll be believin it
ourselfs.”

 
          
Sinclair-1
was shaking his head. “That won’t fly in this case. They have a real live sim
mother. They can identify the human father—what was his name?”

 
          
“Craig
Strickland,” Luca said.
“The security guard at the globulin
farm.”

 
          
“Who’s
dead, right? But that doesn’t preclude fingerprinting his DNA. Plus they can
put the sim mother and human father together for months in the same building in
the
Bronx
. And most important, they’ll have the baby.
With all that, it’s a simple everyday process to establish paternity.”

 
          
Luca
could have cheered. He’d been looking for an opening to bait his trap, and this
was it.

 
          
“I’ve
taken care of that,” he said. “Because of his connection to a crime,
Strickland’s body has been in cold storage in the New York City Morgue since it
was pulled out of the ashes in the
Bronx
.
A real crispy critter.”

 
          
“So?”
Voss said.

 
          
“So
yesterday it was released. Since Strickland’s got no family—at least none
that’s come forward—I had one of my men present himself as Strickland’s cousin
and claim his body. We’re going to have it cremated as soon as possible.”

 
          
He
hadn’t done any of this yet. The idea had occurred to him less than an hour
ago, and he had to clear it with Lister first. But Sinclair-2 didn’t know that.

 
          
“That
still doesn’t help us,” Sinclair-1 said. “If indeed his corpse was, as you so
elegantly put it, a ‘crispy critter,’ the NYPD would have had to look into his
DNA in the course of identifying the body. Even after he’s reduced to ash, his
RFLP profile will remain in the department’s database.”

 
          
Voss
frowned. “What’s R-F—
”

 
          
“Restriction
fragment length polymorphisms,” Sinclair-1 said. “A way of testing for the
differences in the banding pattern of DNA fragments from different individuals.
DNA fingerprinting, in other words.”

 
          
“We
know all about his RFLP in the database,” Luca said. “Ever hear of hacking a
computer? Hardly anyone’s better at it than my people. We’ll have someone
else’s RFLP—yours, if you want it—in that computer before sunrise.”

 
          
“I
get it,” Voss said, nodding. “I’m not hearin a word of this talk of illegalities,
of course. Matter of fact, I ain’t even in this here room right now. But if I
were, even a genetics cretin like
myself
can see
what’ll happen: They’ll hold up this Strickland boy as the father for all the
world to see, but when it comes time for matchin up the DNA, there’ll come a
cropper. They’ll go to the NYPD computer and—Lordy, Lordy, will you look at
that—no match. And when they look to exhume the body—”

 
          
“—they’ll
be nowhere,” Luca interrupted.
“Because Craig Strickland will
be nothing but a pile of dust.
A pile I will personally scatter over the
Hudson River
.”

 
          
“And
without DNA backup,” Voss cried, slapping his thighs, “the hoax angle from our
flacks will start lookin mighty acceptable to the Great Unwashed. I like it! I
like it very much!”

 
          
Luca
had been watching Sinclair-2. His sunny disposition appeared to be fading.
Rapidly.
Good. He’d taken the bait.

 
          
“So,”
Luca said, clapping his hands. “That leaves one more matter to discuss: Who’s
delivering the sim’s baby?”

 
          
“Deliverin?”
Voss said. “Deliverin how?”

 
          
“This
sim, this Meerm or whatever she’s
called,
is going to
be giving birth. Who’s going to handle that?”

 
          
Sinclair-1
slapped his palm on the table.
“Excellent point.”
He
jumped to his feet. “If, as you say, this OPRR woman and that lawyer Sullivan
have the sim, they’re not going to handle the delivery on their own. The baby
is too important. They’re going to seek out expert help.”

 
          
“You
mean some sort of obstetrician?” Voss said.

 
          
“Not
just any
OB.
They’ll want one experienced with sim
births. And if I was looking for a sim
OB
, there’s only one place on earth with a
staff that fits the qualifications.”

 
          
“The
Natal
Center
!”
Luca said. Damn it! He should have thought
of that himself. “They could be approaching someone on the staff right now.”

 
          
Sinclair-1
pointed to Luca. “Send a notice to the entire
Natal
Center
staff—MDs and assistants alike—warning them
that they might be approached, and to report any feelers that might come their
way.”

 
          
Voss
said, “And you might want to remind those folks that they’re eligible for the
five-million
reward
.”

 
          
“Excellent
point,” Sinclair-1 said.

 
          
“We’ll
check out any
Natal
employees who’re out sick or taking an unplanned vacation,” Luca added.

 
          
But
all this was going to require more manpower. He’d have to go to Lister for it.
But that was okay. Canvassing the
Natal
Center
was a good tactical move, and Luca would
present it as his own idea.

 
          
Sinclair-2
suddenly shot from his seat and began pacing. He looked jittery. I do believe
we’ve hit a nerve, Luca thought.

 
          
The
CEO stared at his brother. “What is it, Ellis? You have something to add?”

 
          
Sinclair-2
stopped at the window and stared out at the hills. “I just thought of
something.
Something terrible.”

 
          
“Oh?”
Sinclair-1 smiled. “Finally realized what that baby will do to our stock?”

 
          
“I’m
not worried about the stock,” he said. “I’m far more worried about what this
baby will do tous, Merce—you and me.
Personally, not
financially.”

 
          
“I’m
not following.”

 
          
“What
if Meerm’s baby is a girl?”