by Sims (lit)
“How’d they die?” Romy asked.
“Don’t need no forensics team for that.” He poked his index finger against his temple and cocked his thumb. “Bam! One to the head for each of them. Must’ve used jacketed slugs because—”
“Thank you,” Romy said, holding up a hand.
“Yeah, well, it was messy, all right. But not near as messy as what was done to them after they was shot.”
Romy stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“Sliced them open from here”—his gun barrel finger became a scalpel and he dragged it from the base of his throat to his groin—“to here.”
“Christ!” Patrick said.
Romy swallowed. “Why on earth…?”
“Beats me. Dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor. Freaking mess down there, and if they think I’m gonna clean it up because it’s ‘evidence,’ they can—”
“I want to see,” Romy said.
“No, you don’t, lady. If there’s one thing I know in this life, lady, it’s you do not want to go down in that cellar.”
She looked around at the hollow-eyed buildings and the hollow-eyed stragglers with nothing better to do than stand at the police tape and stare.
He’s so right, Romy thought. I don’t.
But she had to see this for herself. Nothing made sense. If these were the sims from the globulin farm, what were they doing here? Had they been “liberated” just to be executed and mutilated?
Setting her jaw to keep her composure, Romy pulled a stick of gum—Nuclear Cinnamon—from her purse and began to chew.
The cop nodded knowingly. “I see you’ve been down this street before.”
“What’s going on?” Patrick said.
She turned and offered him a stick, saying, “Because sometimes the smell’s so thick you can taste it.”
“You’re going in?” he said. He looked genuinely concerned. “That’s way above and beyond, Romy. Leave it for the forensics people. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “Because they’re sims the M-E will give them a cursory once-over, if that. Most likely the remains will be shipped back to SimGen and we’ll never hear a thing. I don’t expect you to come with me, Patrick. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t. But I need to see what’s been done, so I can get a feel for the kind of monsters we’re dealing with here.”
She turned to the patrolman. “Let’s go.”
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Might smell a little better in there now with the doors open, but I’m not going back in until I have to.” He pointed toward the open front door. “Once you’re inside, head straight back to the kitchen; hang a U and you’ll be facing the cellar stairs.” He handed her his flashlight. “There’s no electricity so you’ll need this. Just don’t drop it. Or blow lunch on it.”
“Thanks. I won’t.”
Knowing that if she hesitated she might lose her nerve, Romy immediately put herself in motion. She’d examined dead sims before, some of them in a ripe state of decomposition, and had learned some tricks along the way.
She’d gained the top of the two crumbling front steps and was pulling a tissue from her purse when she sensed someone behind her.
Patrick. His face looked pale, and despite the cold she thought she detected a faint sheen of sweat across his forehead.
“Wait for me out here,” she told him.
“Sorry, no. I could have stayed in the yard if the cop had gone with you, but I can’t let you go down there alone.”
“Patrick—”
“Let’s not argue about it, okay. I’m going in. Give me a stick of that gum and we’ll get this over with.”
She stared at him a moment. Patrick Sullivan was turning out to be a gutsy guy. She handed him a tissue along with the gum.
“When we head down to the cellar, hold this over your mouth and nose, pinching the nostrils and breathing into the tissue. That way you’ll rebreathe some of your own air.”
He nodded, his expression grim as he unwrapped the gum and stuck it into his mouth. “Let’s go.”
Romy led the way. Despite the open doors front and rear, the odor was still strong on the main floor; but when she rounded the turn and stood before the doorless opening leading down from the kitchen, it all but overpowered her. She heard Patrick groan behind her.
“Tissue time,” she said. “And it could be worse. At least it’s cold; that slows down decomposition. Imagine if this were August.”
Patrick made no reply. Romy stared at the dark opening of the cellar doorway. She wished there were someone else she could dump this on, but couldn’t think of a soul.
Steeling herself, she flicked on the flashlight and started down into the blackness. She kept the beam on the steps, moving carefully because there was no railing. The odor was indescribable. It made her eyes water. Even with her nostrils pinched, it wormed its way around the cinnamon gum in her mouth and made a rear entry to her nasal passages by seeping up past her palate.
When she reached the bottom Romy angled the beam ahead, moving it across the concrete. At first she thought someone had started painting the floor black and run out of paint three-quarters of the way through; then she realized it was blood. Old, dried blood. The cellar must have been awash in it.
She flicked the beam left and right to get her bearings and stopped when it lit up what looked like a pile of dirty rope. She remembered what the cop had said—dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor—and knew she wasn’t looking at rope.
She swallowed back a surge of bile and forced herself forward, trying not to step in the dried blood—might be evidence there—as she moved. She stopped again when her beam reflected off staring eyes and bared teeth. She’d found the dead sims. Clad only in caked blood, their bodies ripped from stem to stern, they’d been stacked like cordwood against one of the walls. Their dead eyes and slack mouths seemed to be asking,Why? Why? And she wanted to scream that she didn’t know.
Behind her she heard Patrick retch. She turned and saw him leaning against one of the support columns.
“You okay?” she said through her tissue.
“No.” His voice was hoarse. He held up a thumb and forefinger; they appeared to be touching. “I’m just this far away from losing my lunch.”
“I skipped lunch, thank God.” She paused, then, “Look, I need to get closer.”
“I don’t. I’ll stay back here and guard the steps, if you don’t mind.”
“I appreciate it,” she told him. He’d already proved himself as far as she was concerned.
Turning, she spotted fresh, dusty prints ahead in the dried blood, leading to the cadavers; one of the cops, no doubt. To avoid further contamination of the scene she used them as stepping stones to move forward, knowing all along that it was wasted effort—no one was going to spend much time sifting this abattoir for clues. But there was a right way to do something, and then there was every other way.
Closer now she flashed her beam into the gaping incision running the length of the nearest cadaver’s naked torso. A female. Her ribs had been ripped back, revealing lungs but no heart. Romy leaned forward and checked the abdominal cavity. Liver and kidneys gone. She craned her neck to see into the pelvis—uterus and ovaries missing too.
She moved onto another, a male this time, and the results were similar except that his testicles had been removed.
Romy straightened. They’d been gutted, all of them, and the males castrated. She took a quick turn around the rest of the basement but found no sign of the excised organs. The intestines had been removed and discarded in a pile because they were valueless and only got in the way. But all the rest were missing.
“Let’s go,” Romy said, taking Patrick’s arm and pointing up the steps toward daylight and fresher air. “I’ve seen enough.”
More than enough.
They hurried to the first floor and back out to the front yard. Romy didn’t understand the mi
ssing ovaries and testicles—she knew of no use for them—but she understood the rest all too well.
Furious, she went straight to the cop and slapped the flashlight back into his palm.
“Didn’t you notice anything missing down there?” she said.
He looked uncomfortable. “Like what?”
“Like their organs! They weren’t just killed, they were harvested! Andthat ”—she jabbed a finger at his chest—“is a felony!”
17
HARLEM
DECEMBER 14
Beece work ver hard today. Many cloth to cut. Boss say, Faster, faster! Beece cut fast as can. Still boss yell.
Beece ver hot. Thirsty. Go sink for drink. Drink quick ’cause sink next boss office. Too long drink boss yell.
Boss door open. New man walk through. Red-hair man. Show boss papers. Beece hear talk.
“I’m from the city Animal Control Center, Mr. Lachter.”
“Hey, I treat my sims good.”
“No, Mr. Lachter, that would fall under the auspices of the ASPCA. We have a different mandate, and at the moment we’re looking for a lost sim.”
Beece almost leave sink, now stay. Lost sim? Could be Meerm? Listen more.
“I got all mine. I count ’em every morning. None missing, no extras.”
“Good. But from past experience we know that lost sims tend to seek out other sims, so we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d keep your eye out for any sim that might wander in.”
Boss laugh. “He does, I’ll put him to work!”
“It’s a female and if she shows up you should isolate her immediately.”
“Why’s that?”
“She may be sick. Nothing contagious to humans, but she might infect other sims.”
Infect? Beece think. What mean infect?
“I don’t need none of that. I can barely make production quotas now.”
“If she shows she may look a little different than the average sim and—”
“Different? What is she, a new breed?”
“No. Same as the rest, but she might look a little heavier…perhaps ‘bloated’ is a better term. She’s sick and we can take care of her, but we have to find her first.”
Meerm! Man talk about Meerm! Meerm sick but fraid doctor. Beece feel sorry Meerm. City Man want help Meerm. No hurt Meerm.
Beece fraid talk Boss. Boss yell all time. But Meerm Beece friend. Must help Meerm.
Beece step in office. “’Scuse, please, boss.”
Boss face go mad. “What the hell you doing here! Get back to work, you lazy—”
“No, wait,” red-hair city man say. He look Beece. “Do you know something?”
“Sick sim come home.”
“Home? Where’s home?”
“I crib them in Newark overnight,” Boss say.
“Newark? Why so far?”
“Because it’s tons cheaper to bus them back and forth than rent space for them around here. Sorry if that’s out of your jurisdiction, pal, but—”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. Just give me the address of this place. I’ll take it from there.”
Beece happy. Red-hair city man nice. Help Meerm. Make Meerm better.
18
SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ
“This is good,” Mercer Sinclair said as he skimmed the reports. “This is very good.”
Just SimGen’s security chief in the office with him today. Portero had personally delivered the police reports on the sim massacre in Brooklyn, an unusual courtesy. Perhaps the man was coming around, learning to be a team player.
Who am I kidding? Someone like Harry Carstairs is a team player, but not Portero. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “team.” Mercer smiled to himself. Come to think of it, neither do I.
This visit meant one thing: Portero wanted something.
He’d never come right out and ask, Mercer knew. He’d use an oblique approach, try to sneak it in when no one was looking. Mercer was sure he’d find out what it was before the meeting ended.
“I thought you’d be upset,” Portero said.
Is that why he came? To watch me blow my top? Sorry, Little Luca. Not today.
“I am. I hate the idea of losing a dozen of our sims. That’s something people seem to forget—they’reour sims. No matter what country they’re shipped to, even if it’s the other side of the world, they still belong to SimGen. We can barely keep up with demand as it is, so of course I hate to lose even one.”
“But you seem almost…happy.”
“I’m happy that these SLA creeps have been exposed for what they are. Yesterday’s discovery shows they’re not pro-sim activists, they’re murderous organleggers.” He glanced at the police report again. “They’re sure these are the same sims that were hijacked from the globulin farm?”
Portero nodded. “Absolutely. Lucky thing NYPD was able to resuscitate that memory chip from the Bronx. And lucky too these globulin farmers were excellent record keepers: They scanned the neck bar codes of all their ‘cows’ into their computers.”
“Then that nails the SLA. When they’re caught they’ll go down for murder and illegal organ trafficking. Any chance of tracing those organs?”
Portero shrugged. “Unlikely. They were probably shipped overseas while still warm. I’ve heard the Third World black market in transplant organs is booming, but…” He looked troubled.
“But what?”
“I know there’s a big demand for human organs, but sim organs?”
“They’re called xenografts—nonhuman organs. Human bodies used to reject them almost immediately, but with the new treatments that remove his to compatibility antigens, the rejection rate is about equal to human allografts. Those hearts, livers, and kidneys are worth a fortune on the black market.”
Portero nodded and Mercer thought, You haven’t a clue as to anything I just said.
“Hearts, livers, kidneys,” Portero said. “What about uteruses and ovaries? Are they transplantable?”
“No value at all. Nor are the testicles they cut off—unless someone’s developed a taste for a new kind of Rocky Mountain oyster.”
Just the thought made Mercer ill.
“Then why go to the trouble to harvest them?”
“Maybe they were stupid organleggers.”
“One other thing concerns me,” Portero said. “The chip from the globulin farm shows records of thirteen sims housed there right up until the night of the fire. But only twelve were found in that Brooklyn basement.”
“You’re sure?”
“We know from the records that a female sim is unaccounted for. The only reason I can imagine why she wasn’t butchered along with the rest is that she wasn’t with them.”
“You think she escaped?”
“I suspect she was never captured. I think she fled the raid and the fire, and is hiding somewhere in the city.”
“Why on earth would she hide?”
“Maybe she saw the security man murdered and she’s frightened. She could be anywhere, too terrified to show herself.”
A witness, Mercer thought. A sim could never testify in court, but this one might be able to provide the police with a lead or two.
Mercer glanced down at the embedded monitor in his desktop. Damn near every headline scrolling up the screen this morning seemed to be about the sim slaughter in Brooklyn. The good part was that the phony “SLA” had shown its true colors; the bad part was the depiction of sims as helpless victims, easy prey for human scum. Too high a sympathy factor there. He needed to counter that, and this missing sim offered a unique opportunity.
“I want that sim found,” he told Portero. “To make sure she is, SimGen is going to offer a million-dollar reward to whoever finds her.”
Portero looked dubious. “Do you think that’s necessary? I’m sure my people—”
“Forget your people. This is strictly a SimGen matter. We’ll handle it.”
Yes. The more he thought about this, the more he liked it. Here was a way to take b
ack the headlines and reassert SimGen as the true champion and defender of sims.
“Very well,” Portero said, rising. “Since there’s nothing for me to do in that regard, I’ll get back to my office.”
After Portero was gone it occurred to Mercer that he hadn’t discovered the reason for the security chief’s personal visit. He’d been sure he’d wanted something. But what?
Well, whatever it was, he hadn’t got it.
19
Luca Portero went directly from the CEO’s office to the parking lot where he picked up one of the SimGen Jeeps. He grinned as he drove out the gate.
A million-dollar reward—and Sinclair thinks it was his idea. Doesn’t have a clue that I steered him into the whole thing.
The meeting had been a thing of beauty, he had to admit. Knowing Sinclair-1’s obsession with SimGen’s public image, Luca had simply parceled out the information—first playing dumb about the xenografts, then mentioning an unaccounted-for sim, then hinting that she might be a witness—letting Sinclair pounce from one to the next like a mouse following a trail of cheese bits, until he’d ended up right where Luca wanted him.
A reward! Put SimGen in the news: The corporation with a heart as big as its market cap value!
Putty in my hands, Luca thought.
His grin faded as he thought about what lay ahead. Another meeting. This one with Darryl Lister. He and his old CO hadn’t had a face-to-face in almost a year, which could only mean that the subject was as delicate as it was important.
That made him uneasy. Worse yet, they were meeting at Luca’s house.
He pulled up the long drive to the rented two-bedroom cabin in the center of five acres of dense woods. He liked the isolation. This was his retreat from SimGen and lost sims.
Lister wasn’t due for another half hour. Still plenty of time to get Maria out of the way and—
He hit the brakes when he saw the black Mercedes SUV parked in front of the house.
Lister? Shit!
He still had time to salvage this. Was Lister alone? With the late morning sun glinting off the SUV’s windshield, Luca couldn’t tell how many were in the car.
When he pulled up next to it he was startled to see that it was empty. He hurried through his front door and found Darryl Lister sitting on the couch, sipping a beer. Maria stood behind him, rubbing her hands together, her dark eyes wide with anxiety.
