F Wilson: Sims

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.