F Paul Wilson - Sims 03 (2 page)

 
          
“Sure it does,” Romy said, drawing
out the first word.
“But to send its chief of security?”

 
          
“‘Free the sims’ is not a phrase
SimGen takes lightly, especially when it involves murder. I decided to look
into this myself.”

 
          
“You should introduce yourself to
that sergeant over there,” Romy said. “His name’s Yarger and
he’s
anxious for all the help he can get.”

 
          
“I’m sure he is.” Portero jerked a
thumb toward the smoking ruin. “What do you think?
Globulin
farm?”

 
          
“That’s my guess.”

 
          
Patrick remembered now. “That’s where
they infect
sims
with viruses and such and then drain
off and sell their immune globulins, right?”

 
          
The man turned his glittering stare
on Patrick. “And you are…?

 
          
“This is a friend,” Romy said.
“Patrick Sullivan. Patrick, meet Mr. Portero, security chief at SimGen.”

 
          
“Oh, yes,” Portero said. “I believe
I’ve heard of you. Some sort of lawyer, right?”

 
          
Patrick noticed that Portero had
clasped his hands behind his back as he spoke. A handshake seemed out of the
question.

 
          
“Some sort, yes,” Patrick said. “But
about this globulin farm…?”

 
          
“A small operation from what I can
gather,” Portero said.

 
          
Patrick glanced at the blackened
ruins. “Not any kind of operation now.”

 
          
“Thanks to this so-called
SLA
,”
Portero said. He stared at Romy. “Ever hear of them, Romy?”

 
          
Patrick felt his insides clench at
the sound of her first name on Portero’s lizard lips, but said nothing.

 
          
Romy regarded him coolly. “Not till
this morning.”

 
          
“I don’t understand their methods,”
Portero said, rubbing his jaw as he looked around. “I can see them making off
with the sims, to free them later. But why fire the building? What if they’d
missed a few
sims
in their raid? They’d have been
cooked just like that corpse.” He turned to Romy. “Did your sergeant friend
mention finding any sim bodies?”

 
          
“No, thank God.”

 
          
“Yes…Thank God.” Portero’s eyes
became distant; he seemed to recede for a moment,
then
gathered himself. “But why did these terrorists make off with the humans as
well?”

 
          
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Romy
said.

 
          
Portero smiled as he shook his head.
“Oh, I doubt that, Romy. I doubt that very much.”

 
          
And then he swaggered away.

 
          
“Something about this has got him
worried,” Romy said. “He’s putting on a good show, but something’s bothering
him.”

 
          
“Is that why he never blinks?”

 
          
“He doesn’t have to; he has
nictitating membranes.”

 
          
“That figures. And his tiny reptile
heart is set on you.”

 
          
Romy’s lips twisted. “Yeah, I know.”

 
          
“But I’m taller.”

 
          
She smiled for the first time since
he’d arrived. “You know, sometimes I’m glad you’re around.”

 
          
“Only sometimes?”

 
          
She hooked her arm through his and
started walking. “Let’s go grab some breakfast and wait for Zero to get back to
me.”

 
          
“Excellent idea,
but in a better neighborhood, if you please.”

 
          
As they moved away he glanced back at
Portero, intending to give him a look-what-I’ve-got wink, but thought better of
it when he saw the fierce look in those icy dark eyes.

 
          
MANHATTAN

 
          
They were just finishing a leisurely
breakfast at an East Seventies café when Romy’s PCA went off. She checked the
readout:

 
          
GARAGE 10AMØ

 
          
She was glad for the change from the
Worth
Street
basement. Use one place too often and
eventually the wrong person was going to make the right connection. She and
Patrick hopped a cab to the
West Side
.

 
          
“I don’t see a garage,” Patrick said
as they stepped out onto
Ninth Avenue
in the Thirties.

 
          
He noticed the sidewalks were busy
here, but nowhere near as crowded as the midtown madhouse a few blocks east.

 
          
“It’s down the street, closer to
Tenth. But let’s stand here awhile. Just to be sure no one followed us.”

 
          
The sun had poked through the clouds
but did little to moderate the chill wind whistling off the
Hudson
.

 
          
“Do you ever ask yourself if you’re
crazy?” Patrick said, looking around as if expecting to see trench-coated men
lurking in doorways.

 
          
“All the time.”

 
          
“Good. That’s a healthy sign. Because
I think we’re both crazy.”

 
          
“I think I know where this is going.”

 
          
“Do you?
Great.
Then maybe you can tell me why we’re at the beck and call of this guy. Who is
he? What’s driving him? Why’s he doing this? What’s in it for him?”

 
          
“I can’t answer all your questions,”
she told Patrick, “but I can tell you why he’s doing it: to stop the slave
trade of sentient beings.”

 
          
“But what’s in it for him?”

 
          
“Cessation of the
slave trade of sentient beings.”

 
          
“Bull.
Idealistic
crap.”

 
          
The words stung Romy. “You don’t
believe people can be motivated by ideals?”

 
          
“Foot soldiers can be, and they often
are.
But not the generals, not the guys running the war.
They’ve got something else driving them, whether it’s a better place in history
or a spot closer to their god or riches or fame or glory or power or revenge or
guilt; there’s always something in it for them.”

 
          
“What about Gandhi?
Schindler?
Father Damien? Mother Teresa?”

 
          
He shrugged. “Everyone in the world
knows their names. Maybe that’s what they were after.”

 
          
“I’m glad I’m not you,” she said.
“What an awful way to view life.”

 
          
“Maybe I’ve seen too many so-called
idealists caught with their hands in the till.”

 
          
“A corrupt individual doesn’t corrupt
the ideal.”

 
          
“No argument
there,
and I didn’t bring this up to start one. But look at the situation. Here’s a
guy who has to have spent a fortune setting up this nameless organization to
stop SimGen, and then he hides his identity from everyone who works for him. I
can see him not trusting me, but what about you? You say you’ve worked with him
for years. He’s got to know you’re in this for the long run. Why doesn’t he let
you see his face?”

 
          
“How do you know he hasn’t?” she shot
back.

 
          
Patrick’s eyebrows jumped. “Has he?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“See what I mean?”

 
          
“Maybe he’s someone we’d recognize.”

 
          
“Yeah, there’s a thought. You know…he
seems to be built a lot like David Letterman.”

 
          
Romy wasn’t going to dignify that
with a response.

 
          
“Let’s walk,” she said, satisfied
that no one was on their tail.

 
          
“Seriously, though, I’d feel a lot
better about this Zero guy if I knew what makes his motor run.” Patrick seemed
to be in summation mode as they headed toward
Tenth
Avenue
, walking sideways, the wind ruffling his
blond hair as he gestured with his hands.
“If it’s because a
SimGen truck ran over his mother when he was a kid, fine.
Or if he’s got
huge short positions on SimGen stock, fine. Or even if it’s because of
something crazy like Mercer Sinclair stole his girlfriend in seventh grade,
okay too. I just want to know so I can have a handle on how much he’ll risk
to get
what he wants.
Because so far we’re
the ones in the line of fire, not him.
He wasn’t in my car when it was
run off the Saw Mill. He wasn’t at Beacon Ridge when the
sims
offered to share their poisoned food with us.”

 
          
Romy hated to admit it, but Patrick
was making sense. She’d been taken with Zero from their first meeting. She’d
sensed the fire burning beneath all his layers of disguise, and had been warmed
by its heat. But what fueled that fire? It was a question she’d never asked.
She’d assumed it burned the same as her own, an all-consuming desire to right a
wrong. Was that foolish?
Perhaps.
But she had to go
with what she felt.

 
          
“All I can tell you,”
she
said, “is that I believe in his cause and he’s never let
me down. I don’t intend to let him down.”

 
          
He sighed.
“Fair enough.
I’m trusting
your judgment.
For
now.”

 
          
Down near Tenth, Romy stopped before
a dirty white doorway next to an equally dirty white roll-up garage door and
pressed a buzzer. She glanced up into the eye of an overhead security camera
and nodded once, signaling that all was clear. The door buzzed open.

 
          
Inside, a single dusty bulb glowed in
the ceiling. They found Zero, barely visible in the gloom, his tall lean figure
swathed in sweater, jeans, ski mask, dark glasses, and gloves, pacing beside a
beat-up Ford Econoline delivery van, once white, now soot gray.

 
          
“Have you heard any more about this
SLA group?” he said without preamble.

 
          
Romy sensed the tension in his voice.

 
          
“Nothing.
I
called a few of the cops I know but nothing’s broken yet beyond the identity of
the corpse in the ashes: Craig Strickland, a twenty-four-year-old loser with a
history of assaults.”

 
          
“Doesn’t sound like your typical
globulin
farmer.
”

 
          
“They figure he was security. He may
have tried to resist. As for the
SLA
, an
all-points
has been issued but they and their captives seem
to have vanished.”

 
          
“Two vans filled with human and sim
hostages and no one’s seen a thing?”

 
          
“Not yet.”

 
          
Zero slammed a gloved fist against
the already dented side of the van.

 
          
“Damn! Who are these psychos? What do
they hope to accomplish for
sims
by murdering humans?
Not that the world is any poorer for the loss of a globulin farmer, but killing
him shifts the focus. The public’s attention is on the murder now, not on the
sims the dead man was abusing.”

 
          
“Pardon my paranoia,” Patrick said,
“but maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe these aren’t sim sympathizers. Maybe
SimGen is behind them.”

 
          
“I don’t buy that,” Zero said, “but
let’s assume SimGen has somehow come to the conclusion that the gains from
high-profile murder will, by some stretch of the imagination, outweigh the
risks. If that’s true, and if they’re going to spray paint ‘Death to sim
oppressors’ at the scene, then why kill only one of the globulin farmers? Why
not make a real statement and kill them all?”

 
          
“Hostages?”

 
          
Zero’s expression was unreadable
behind his mask and shades, but Romy could imagine a dour look as he stopped
his pacing and faced Patrick.

 
          
“How many people can you see stepping
forward to pay a globulin farmer’s ransom?”

 
          
Patrick shrugged. “Okay.
So much for the hostage idea.”

 
          
“‘Death to sim
oppressors!’”
Zero said, slamming his fist against the van again. “Damn
them!
Idiots!”

 
          
Romy had never seen him show so much
emotion. She found it oddly exciting.

 
          
Down, girl, she told herself as she
pulled her digital camera’s chip case from her pocket.

 
          
She said, “I may have another piece
to add to the puzzle. I took a shot of an Asian man—Japanese, I think—at the
scene. He ducked away as soon as he saw the camera. I’ve never seen him before,
and it may mean nothing, but he was definitely camera shy.”

 
          
Zero seemed to have calmed
himself
. He took the chip. “I’ll see if he’s anyone we
should know about.”

 
          
“But what’s the plan?” she said.
“What do we do about this SLA?”

 
          
“No choice but to wait and see. I
doubt we’ll have much of a wait. A group like that won’t want to stay out of
the headlines. But in the meantime, we’re ready to make our move against
Manassas Ventures.”

 
          
Romy stiffened.
“When?”

 
          
“Monday, first
thing in the morning.
Are you up for it?”

 
          
Monday…she’d have to take a personal
day.

 
          
“I think so.”

 
          
She wasn’t looking forward to this.
It involved playing a role, pretending she was a kind of person she despised.
She hoped she could bring it off.

 
          
Zero’s dark lenses were trained on
her.
“Something wrong?”

 
          
She didn’t want to let him in on her
apprehensions. He had enough on his plate.

 
          
“I just keep thinking about those
sims.” And that was no lie. “Whoever these SLA people are, I hope they’re
taking good care of them.”

 
          
“Amen to that,” Zero muttered. He
shook his head. “‘Free the sims.’ Don’t they understand? Sims
have
never been allowed to learn to fend for themselves. A
free sim isn’t free at all. It’s a lost soul.”