by Sims (lit)
“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 wastheir 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’mnot giving up. Not by a long shot. We can win, and I can 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 sharklike grin. “And a motley crew if I ever saw one,” he said. “Four humans, a sim, a—holy shit! Sothat’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 firingyou !”
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.
And then Portero was swinging his pistol in her direction. Patrick and Zero stood frozen to her right, Ellis was lunging toward his fallen brother. Portero shifted his pistol toward him, then seemed to change his mind.
“Later,” he said softly, then focused on Romy.
Kek growled and started forward.
“Kree-gah!” Portero said and Kek froze.
Portero smiled as he eyed Kek. “Before being assigned here I worked with some of these mandrillas in our Idaho facility. They’re conditioned from birth to stop whatever they’re doing when they hear that word, then wait for another command—from the person who said it. I’m told the word is ape talk from the Tarzan books.” His gaze returned to Romy. “Pretty cool, huh?” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “And now it’s your turn, Ms. Romy Cadman. You’ve messed up my future, so now it’s only fair I mess up yours.”
Out of the corner of her right eye she saw Zero take a step closer to her, saying, “Leave her alone!”
“Hey, listen!” Portero snarled. “I don’t know what kind of a freak you are, but another step and you’re a dead freak. Got that?”
Kek growled again and Portero yelled, “Kree-gah” a second time. “Don’t make me shoot you, boy,” he told Kek. “I’ve got plans for you.”
“What plans can you possibly have for Kek?” Romy said, hoping she could get him talking, maybe long enough for help to arrive, if any was coming.
“I may need a diversion at the airport. I’ll just set him to tearing things up in another part of the terminal after I get there.” He raised the pistol, centering it on Romy’s chest. “But enough idle chatter. Good-bye Romy Cadman.”
Romy felt a stunning impact against her right shoulder as, once again, two booming reports split the air. She saw the muzzle flashes as she fell to her left and realized that Zero had hurled himself against her.
No!
She heard Kek’s enraged howl as he launched himself through the air, saw Portero try to bring his pistol to bear on the hurtling creature but he wasn’t fast enough, heard him shout “Kree-gah! Kree-gah!” but no amount of conditioning was going to keep Kek from anyone who hurt Zero. Portero went down with screams of pain and terror.
Zero!
Romy rolled and was on her feet in a heartbeat, but Zero was down, slumped on his side, his life running out of him front and back into two red puddles.
Romy swims into Zero’s vision. Joy bursts within his ruined chest at the sight of her alive and unharmed. Her pale, strained face is framed in scintillating fog as she leans over him and wails for someone to call for help.
Too late. Even though he feels no pain, or perhaps because he feels no pain, Zero knows he’s dying. The impact of the bullets tearing though his chest was agonizing, but now…now he feels feather light and completely at peace.
He stares at Romy’s tear-stained face as she calls his name again and again, begging him to hang on. But he has no strength to hang on. He tries to move his lips but they won’t respond. They must! He has to tell her that it’s better this way.
If this morning had gone differently…if Betsy hadn’t confided to him her suspicions about Meerm’s baby, and if Ellis hadn’t confirmed them, his outlook would have been so different. He could have lived with the belief that he was an intellectual improvement on a nonhuman creature, could have held his head high as the best of his breed that aspired to the next evolutionary step. But the truth changed all that. He is not a step up from anything. He’s an adulterated…thing…a freak of science. He doesn’t know how long he could have survived knowing that he was cheated of his humanity.
He feels her hand in his. He wills his fingers to move, and they do, they close on hers. She bursts into sobs.
He wants to tell her how he’s loved her. And how, thinking he was a sim, he could have been satisfied to go on loving her from afar. But he doesn’t know how he could bear seeing her and being with her, and ever dreaming about what, but for the violation of a few genes, might have been.
It’s better this way.
The opening in the glittering cloud encircling Romy’s face begins to narrow, brightening as she seems to recede.
A sob builds in what’s left of his chest. Not yet. Let me look at her a little longer.
But the cloud brightens further as the iris closes. And then she’s gone and only the swirling light remains. And Zero wonders if there’s a heaven. For Romy’s sake he hopes so, because he knows that’s where she’ll go when her time is up.
But what about him? Did he retain enough of that transcendent spark to allow him to pass on into another life? Will he be welcomed? Or rejected as unfit?
He never fit anywhere during his earthly life. Just once in his existence he’d like to feel he fits somewhere.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful.
And now the light suffuses him and he’s floating…
Dazed, Patrick dropped to his knees beside Romy where she cradled Zero’s head on her lap. She was bent over his face, weeping. The sound tore at his heart. One look at Zero’s glazed eyes and Patrick knew he was gone. But maybe Romy hadn’t realized that yet. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
“I called the security office, the county sheriff, the state police. Cops and ambulances are on the way.”
“Too late!” she sobbed. “He’s gone!”
“I know,” he said softly. He reached past her arm and closed Zero’s eyes.
She leaned over further and kissed his forehead. “I loved him, Patrick.”
“And he loved you. You should have heard how he talked about you. And it wasn’t just talk. He loved you enough to die for you.”
“I want him back.”
“I know…I know…” Heputa hand on her shoulder. “I do too.”
“Can I…?” she said without looking up. “Do you mind if I just stay here with him alone until…until they come?”
“Sure. Of course.” Patrick was stung, but he understood.
He rose and became aware of a wet slapping sound. He saw Kek kneeling on Portero’s chest. He gripped the man’s ears as he repeatedly smashed the back of his head against the floor. That head, wobbly on an obviously broken neck, was bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth; the gray carpet was red under his skull.
“He’s dead, Kek,” Patrick said. “You can’t kill him any more.”
Kek looked up with tears in his eyes, then, without missing a beat, went back to his work.
Suddenly Patrick remembered Tome. He whirled and found the old sim squatting on the carpet a few feet away, his face buried in the arms folded atop his knees.
“Tome? Are you hurt?”
The sim looked up with tear-filled eyes. “Ver sad, Mist Sulliman. All Tome’s fault.”
“No way, Tome,” he said, feeling a surge of anger. “Weknow whose fault this is, and it’s not yours.�
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With that Patrick turned toward the CEO’s desk and saw Ellis rise from behind it. He shot him a question with his eyes, and Ellis shook his head. His expression was grim and sad, but no tears.
Three men dead in less than half a minute. Yes, men. From this day on Patrick swore to remember Zero as a man. Although, considering the two others who’d joined him in death, that might not be a compliment.
As sirens began to wail outside, he wanted to ask Ellis Sinclair where they went from here, but the rhythmic smacking of Portero’s head against the wet carpet was turning his stomach.
“Kek! Stop! Please!” But the mandrilla ignored him. “Can’t somebody stop him?”
“Let him be,” Romy said in a flat tone without looking up. “Let him take as long as he wants.”
Epilogue
“I still can’t believe it,” Abel Voss said.
“Neither can I,” Ellis replied.
The two of them sat in Mercer’s old office. Less than a week now since death had filled this space. Ellis had ordered the carpets cleaned, but the removal of the bloodstains had been only partially successful. He’d expected that, and had declined to order new carpet. Just as he’d declined to repair the cracked picture window. He didn’t want to help anyone, especially himself, forget what had happened here.
He’d attended funerals of two brothers since that day. At Mercer’s he was part of a huge throng of mourners, none of whom shed a tear. At Zero’s he stood among a few select members of the organization—Dr. Cannon and Reverend Eckert among them—all weeping openly. He’d been a central figure at the first; he’d had to invite himself to the second, his presence tolerated only because he claimed a blood relationship.
“Then again,” Voss said, “when you think about it, who else was he gonna leave it to?”
Mercer’s personal attorney had read his will this morning. He’d left all his stock to Ellis, who was still in shock.
“It was an old will,” Ellis said. “If he’d had the slightest inkling he was going to die, I’m sure he would have changed it. But Merce thought he’d go on forever. Or damn near.”
