SIMS

SIMS Page 77

NEWARK, NJ

Something's not right, Zero thought with a pang of unease. We're missing something.

He sat next to Tome in the rear seat of the van as it bounced over the rough pavement of Newark's dark back streets toward the sim quarters Portero had led him to last night. Not quite 6:00P .M. yet but the sun was long gone and icy night had taken command.

Tome was dressed like the worker sims, but he'd been equipped with a PCA. The plan was to drop him off where he could sneak into the building and mix with the other sims. Zero was confident that Tome's gentle nature and above-average intelligence would gain him the respect and confidence of the other sims, enough so that one of them would trust him with Meerm's whereabouts. When he found out, he'd press the preset speed-dial number and they'd pick him up.

Zero sighed. Not a perfect plan. It hinged entirely on the assumption that the sim laborers knew where Meerm was hiding.

His face itched under the ski mask; he'd traded tinted glasses for the ultra darks he usually wore, but they still impaired his vision. He wished he could pull everything off and ride along like a normal human being. But then, he wasn't a normal human being.

Just ahead of him, Patrick and Romy were a pair of silhouettes in the front seat.

"You two have done wonderful work," Zero said. "You make a great team."

"We do, don't we," Patrick said from behind the wheel.

Zero watched them glance at each other and smile. He could sense the growing bond between him. And as much as it made him ache to see Romy with Patrick, he knew it was for the best. Despite their surface differences, Zero sensed that they complemented each other on the deeper levels where it really counted.

He steered his thoughts away from Romy and toward what she and Patrick had uncovered today.

"We now have an ironclad chain of evidence. It doesn't take a handwriting expert to decipher the signature on Alice Fredericks's Manassas Ventures check as 'Conrad Landon.' That draws a direct line from the Department of Defense to SimGen."

"It's not something that will hold up in a court of law," Patrick said. "Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen grounds for preventing it from being admitted as evidence. But in the court of public opinion, it's a hydrogen bomb."

"Assuming the public gives a damn," Romy said.

Patrick nodded. "Oh, they'll care all right. We lay it out clear and simple for them. We show how SimGen's early financing was public money: from Manassas Ventures which got it from SIRG which got it from the Department of Defense. The obvious question then is: Why? What did the D-o-D get in return? So we'll explain how Manassas leases trucks in Idaho that show up on the SimGen campus, transporting cargo back and forth, cargo that no one's allowed to see. But we've seen it, and that's when we show them Kek. When we reveal that Kek was found in Idaho, they'll be able to connect the last dots themselves: SimGen is producing hybrid simian soldiers for the Department of Defense to use in black ops or guerrilla operations. When the public learns that SimGen has been turning normally harmless creatures into man-killers, they'll care. They'll care like crazy. SimGen's dirty little secret will finally be out in the open for all to see, and that will be the beginning of the end of SimGen."

Zero had been listening to Patrick, but someone else's words had been echoing through his brain at the same time.

You have no idea what you're getting into, the forces you'll be setting in motion...they'll crush you.

"No comment back there?" Patrick said.

"As I told you: wonderful work."

But still that uneasy feeling plagued Zero. Was this the danger Ellis had warned him about? He could see now why the people behind SimGen were so ruthless when it came to protecting the company.

So he added, "Now we know why SIRG's funding was cut off: it didn't need any more. With all the SimGen stock it holds in Manassas Ventures, SIRG is a financially independent organization. Which means we've got to be more careful than ever."

"Right," Patrick said. "More than careers and reputations hang in the balance should their little operation be exposed. Billions of bucks are at stake."

Romy half turned in her seat. "Which raises a scary question: If SIRG has its own billions to finance its operations, who does it answer to?"

"No one with a conscience, that's for sure. Maybe someone high up in the Pentagon, maybe only Conrad Landon himself."

"I think we can count on SIRG to do whatever it deems necessary to protect its investment," Zero told them. "That's why, if we're going to bring SimGen down, I'd prefer to find a way that keeps you two out of the spotlight."

"Which is why we're heading to Newark, I assume."

"Exactly. I think it will be safer for all concerned if we let Meerm and her baby bring down SimGen."

"But that puts the child in jeopardy," Romy said.

"No more so than now. Meerm's baby is just as much a threat to SimGen dead as it is alive. Its half- human, half-sim DNA will tell the whole story, a story that, unlike the money trail you've discovered, can't be denied or stonewalled or spun into something with no resemblance to the truth. That baby is a slam dunk."

"Then it's all on our buddy Tome."

"Yes, Mist Sulliman," Tome said from his seat beside Zero. "Tome ready help."

"I know you are," Zero said softly.

Now Romy looked back at him from the front seat. "Zero, I've been around you long enough to know when you're holding something back. What aren't you telling us?"

So many things...but right now Ellis Sinclair's words continued to haunt him, especially his warning about the fallout from what they might uncover.

Things that will hurt me personally, and devastate other, more innocent, parties. Things that no one will want to hear. And don't think you'll come through unscathed, either.

That last part had been particularly unsettling, but not as jarring as his final warning about what they might find.

Some of it is sensitive. And some of it is...unspeakable.

Zero couldn't allow Romy and Patrick even a hint of his connection to Ellis, but perhaps he could hint at the man's warnings.

"It's not so much holding back as a feeling that there's something more behind all this, something we're missing."

"Like what?" Patrick said. "SIRG is the bastard child SimGen's been hiding in its basement. That's enough, don't you think?"

"I suppose so."

But he remained dissatisfied and uneasy. What had they missed?

Zero shook off the worries as he spotted a street sign.

"We're getting close."

"Another scenic neighborhood," Patrick said. "The Bronx, East New York, Alphabet City, and now Newark. Where next? Beirut?"

Zero had to admit that Patrick had a point. Low-rent businesses, abandoned, graffito-crusted buildings, stripped skeletons of cars lining the street...but just the kind of low-rent neighborhood someone would pick to house sim laborers.

"It's to the right up ahead," he told Patrick, "but don't make the turn. Cruise through the intersection and everyone keep an eye out for surveillance teams."

"You think Portero's watching the place?" Romy said.

"Count on it."

They made a couple of passes through the immediate area, and along the way spotted four occupied sedans. The first, with a pair of men slouched in the front seat, was parked across the street from the front door of the building; a single occupant in each of the other three; two of those were situated on the streets that flanked the sim building, the last sitting opposite a narrow alley that appeared to lead toward the rear of the building.

Patrick pulled into the curb two blocks away and stopped under a dead streetlight. Ahead and to the right, the light over the front door of the sim crib glowed like a star in the darkness.

"This looks too risky, Zero," he said. "Tome's not going in."

"Tome can go," said the sim.

"Uh-uh," Patrick said, shaking his head, and Zero could sense his resolve turning to stone. "I won't allow it."

Zero sighed. "I agree."

He couldn't see any way of slipping Tome past Portero's surveillance.

"Damn." Zero made a fist. "I anticipated two teams, not four."

"Might be five - one roving. I swear we passed the same green Taurus twice."

Just then a school bus rumbled past and pulled to a stop before the sim building. As Zero watched it disgorge its crew of sim laborers, he had an idea.

"All right," he said. "Let's head back."

Romy said, "We're not giving up already, are we?"

"Not a chance. Just changing tactics. And I promise you, by this time tomorrow night Tome will be safely inside that building, and no one will be the wiser."

"Tomorrow's Saturday," Patrick said. "Will the sims be working?"

"Of course. They workevery day. 'Weekend' has no meaning for a sim."

As they drove back Zero reviewed all they'd learned about SIRG and Manassas. He knew Ellis had been sincere when he'd warned him against digging too deep. Well, they'd dug, and dug deep. They'd discovered a dirty little secret, yes, but nothing "unspeakable."

And that worried Zero.