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’t have 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 into my 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, “telling us …that…that a sim is not a recombinantly evolved chimp…it’s a recombinantly devolved 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 really not a man, am I. I’m a thing. A freak!”
“Zero, don’t!” Romy sobbed.
But Zero went on, glaring at Ellis. “What have you done 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’t want 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 to dissolve 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 was their 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’m not giving up. Not by a long shot. We can win, and I c
an 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 shark-like grin. “And a motley crew if I ever saw one,” he said. “Four humans, a sim, a—holy shit! So that’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 firing you !”
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.
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