F Paul Wilson - Sims 05 (9 page)

 
          
“Might
take more than a couple of minutes,” Patrick sighed. “I mean, would you trust a
stranger in a ski mask?”

 
          
“Damn,”
Romy said, feeling as if the tunnel walls were closing in on her. “She doesn’t
come out in two
minutes,
I’ll go in there myself and
drag her out.”

 
          
“Shhh!”
Patrick hissed. “I’ll be damned! I think Zero’s
going to take off his mask!”

 
          
Romy
looked and—dear God, Patrick was right. Remaining statue-still, she held her
breath and watched.

 
          
This
is going nowhere, Zero thought. And it’s because of me. Or because of this ski
mask.

 
          
No
question about it: Meerm was in that elevator shaft, hiding in the dark, but
she wasn’t budging. Tome was doing his best, but he wasn’t cut out for
persuasion. Zero could try going in after her, and that would work if the space
beyond the door was limited to just the shaft. But what if it opened into the
rest of the warehouse? They’d never find her.

 
          
All right.
He couldn’t blow this chance. It might never come
again.
Time to put it all on the line.

 
          
Zero
pulled off his dark glasses, slipped his thumbs under the edge of his ski mask,
and ripped it off.

 
          
“Look,
Meerm,” he said, leaning through the open door. “Look at me. I’m not a man. I’m
a sim. Not a sim exactly like you, but a sim just the same. And I promise you,
Meerm, I swear to you that I am not here to harm you.
Just
the opposite.
I am here to help you and protect you from being harmed by
the bad men.”

 
          
Zero
waited, hoping he’d said enough, praying he hadn’t said too much. He glanced at
Tome who was staring at him with wide eyes. He nodded to the old sim, to let
him know, yes, this is true. Maybe…maybe if only Tome and Meerm knew, he could
still keep his secret. The two
sims
would talk, of
course, but Zero could tell Romy and Patrick that he’d used makeup to look like
a sim so he could coax Meerm out. They’d buy it. It was much more plausible
than the truth.

 
          
Zero
refocused on the black hole of the elevator shaft. He heard a rustle within,
and then a hoarse, fragile voice…

 
          
“Is
true? You not man?”

 
          
“No,
Meerm.” Zero fought back a sob. It had worked. He could feel Meerm tipping his
way. “I’m a sim too. But if I am to help you, we must hurry from here.
Now.”

 
          
“Meerm
want go.” And now a face, a swollen, care-ravaged sim face, floated into the
light. “Meerm not like here. But…”

 
          
“We
must go now, Meerm. The bad men are looking for you. If they come before—”

 
          
Meerm
stepped out into the light. Zero gasped at the sight of her—her belly so big
and her ankles so swollen she could barely move. She took a step forward, but
caught her foot and started to fall. Zero grabbed her,
then
lifted her into his arms. She was heavy for a sim, but nothing he couldn’t
handle.

 
          
“Don’t
be afraid, Meerm,” he said in a soothing voice as she started to struggle.
“You’re okay, now. I’ll make you safe and keep you that way. No one will hurt
you ever again.”

 
          
As
he turned toward the tunnel he saw two figures emerging from its entrance. Romy
and Patrick, faces ashen, mouths agape, eyes fixed on his nonhuman face. They
couldn’t miss its yellow eyes and simian cast—his brow ridge was not so
pronounced as Meerm and Tome’s, he knew, his nose not quite as flat, but he was
unmistakably sim like.

 
          
Oh,
no, he thought as dismay softened his knees and he almost stumbled. Oh, God,
what have I done?

 
          
Just
when they were so close to success, he’d ruined everything. Now the whole
organization would fall apart because…because who’d want to follow a sim?

 
          
Even
worse was the uncomprehending look of betrayal he saw in Romy’s eyes.

 
          
But
he had to press on. She looked away as he approached, so he addressed Patrick.

 
          
“Help
me get her through the tunnel. We haven’t got much time.”

 
          
Patrick
blinked, hesitated a heartbeat,
then
nodded. “Less
than you think.”

 
          
As
they eased Meerm into the opening, Zero prayed Romy would follow.

 
          
Silence
ruled the van. Zero leaned forward as Patrick piloted them toward the freeway.

 
          
“Follow
the signs toward the
Goethals
Bridge
,” he told him.

 
          
He
glanced at Romy, huddled against the passenger door at the far end of the front
seat, staring dead ahead without blinking, looking as if she were in a trance.

 
          
I’ve
really done it now, Zero thought. I’ve lost her. She’ll never trust me again.

 
          
Meerm
whimpered at his side. She was curled next to him on the rear seat. He laid a
reassuring hand on her shoulder. Tome and Kek hunched behind them in the open
rear section.

 
          
“Goethals,”
Patrick said.
“Got it.
But I think…I think
we
…” He seemed to run out of words.

 
          
“You
think you deserve an explanation,” Zero said. “Of course you do.”

 
          
“I
mean,” Patrick said, “I feel as if the world just tipped ninety degrees.”

 
          
Zero
glanced again at Romy who still hadn’t moved. She’d known him so much longer
than Patrick. Her world must feel even further out of kilter.

 
          
“You’re
not human?” Patrick said.

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“I
heard you tell Meerm that you’re a sim.”

 
          
“I
am.”

 
          
“But
how come you don’t…?”

 
          
“…look
like the average sim? I’m one of the earliest, so early that you’ll find no UPC
tattoo on the nape of my neck. Plus I’m a mutant—bigger and paler than my
brother
sims—
too big and too human-looking for the
workforce. So they kept me separate. I was raised in SimGen’s basic research
facility and after a while I became a mascot of sorts. My only contacts growing
up were the Sinclair brothers and their most trusted techs. Later, when Harry
Carstairs arrived to take over sim training, he took a special interest in me.”

 
          
Harry…how
he’d loved Harry Carstairs. The man’s daily visits had been the
high point
of his adolescence.

 
          
“He
was impressed by my linguistic skills so he tested my intelligence; when he
found it to be not only far above sim average but above human average as well,
he and—”

 
          
He
cut himself off. Better not mention Ellis.

 
          
“He
got permission to see how far they could take me. I learned to read, and built
up my own library; I was never allowed out of basic research, but television
gave me a window onto the rest of the world. Harry and I…I guess you might say
we bonded. He taught me to play chess and we spent hours hovering over the
board.”

 
          
He
missed Harry, especially their chess games. Every so often Zero would give in
to a compulsion to see the man. He’d sneak by Harry’s house at night and watch
him as he sat and played chess against his computer; he’d longed to knock on
the window and challenge him to a game. But Harry believed him dead, and had to
go on believing that.

 
          
Patrick
said, “But how did you graduate from SimGen mascot to Zero, SimGen nemesis?”

 
          
“I’ve
always been called Zero. I imagine it’s derived from part of my serial number
when I was an embryo. As for my ‘graduation’…I believe I became inconvenient.
Here I
was,
this man-size sim who was an evolutionary
and commercial dead end. Somewhere along the line, a corporate decision was
made to terminate me.”

 
          
“Jesus,”
Patrick whispered.
“Just like that?”

 
          
“Just like that.”

 
          
“What
were they going to do—shoot you?”

 
          
“An injection.
They drew blood from me at regular intervals.
This time they were going to put something in instead of take something out.”

 
          
Zero
saw Romy glance quickly over her shoulder, then return to her thousand mile
stare.

 
          
“Scumbags,”
Patrick muttered, shaking his head.

 
          
Only
one, Zero thought. Mercer Sinclair had made the unilateral decision.

 
          
He
looked down at Meerm who’d closed her eyes and seemed to be dozing. Termination
would have been her fate if Portero had found her first.

 
          
Patrick
asked, “How’d you manage to escape?”

 
          
“I
found I had a highly placed ally in the company who arranged to fake my death.”

 
          
Ellis again.
He’d told his brother that he didn’t want a
stranger terminating Zero, that he’d do it himself. But he injected Zero with a
sedative instead of poison, cremated another dead sim in his place, and
spirited him out of SimGen. He told Zero everything, and set him up with a
steady flow of cash and data aimed toward one purpose: to stop SimGen and free
his brother
sims
.

 
          
“This
ally is the source of all your inside information, I take it,” Patrick said.

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
Patrick
shook his head again.
“A high-up inside SimGen working
against it.
Is he nuts or does he have a personal beef with the
Sinclairs?”

 
          
“Both,
I think. But it’s also a moral issue with him.”

 
          
All
true. But Zero had always sensed something else driving Ellis Sinclair, almost
as if he felt he had to atone for something.
Something
“unspeakable,” perhaps?

 
          
Patrick
laughed. “Put a sim in charge of bringing down the makers of
sims
.
I’ve got to say, it has a nice symmetry to it. And now that we’ve got Meerm, it
looks like your job is just about over.
Congratulations,
Zero. They chose the right man. I mean sim. I mean—hell, I don’t know what I
mean. All I can say is I never had an inkling you weren’t human.”

 
          
And
now we come to the crucial junction, Zero thought.

 
          
“Does
it bother you that I’m not?” He directed the question at Patrick but he was
watching Romy. He thought he saw her flinch.

 
          
“I
don’t know. You’re not like Tome or any other sim I’ve met. In fact, you’re
more human than some humans I know.
Smarter too.
What
a world! But you haven’t steered me wrong yet. So I guess the answer is no. To
tell the truth, every day I’m getting less and less sure about what exactly
‘human’ means.”

 
          
Bless
you, Patrick, he thought, then looked at Romy. He couldn’t bear her silence any
longer. This had to be dragged out in the open now.

 
          
“And
you, Romy?” he said. “You haven’t said a word.”

 
          
For
a few seconds, she didn’t move,
then
she twisted
swiftly in her seat and faced him. Angry tears streaked her cheeks.

 
          
“You
lied to me!”

 
          
“I
never told you I was human.”

 
          
“You
pretended to be!”

 
          
“I
never pretended to be anything other than who I am. I didn’t even change my
name.”

 
          
“You
hid yourself—that was a lie!”

 
          
“No,
I had to. Would you have joined me if you’d known I was a sim?
A mutant sim?”

 
          
Her
angry expression faltered,
then
she turned away again.

 
          
“Think,
Romy. When was I ever untrue to you? Were the goals of our activities against
SimGen ever other than what I said they were? Have I ever misled you into doing
something that you didn’t want to do, or worked you toward an end that wasn’t
your own as well?”

 
          
She
replied in a tiny voice. “No.”

 
          
“Then
can I ask you why you’re so angry at me?”

 
          
“Who
says I’m angry at you?” she said in that same small voice. “Maybe I’m angry at
me.”

 
          
Baffled,
he replied, “I don’t—”

 
          
She
held up a hand. “Can we just leave it be? I’ve got some adjusting to do and I
need some time. Okay?”

 
          
“I
understand, but I need to know: Are you still with us?”

 
          
She
nodded without speaking, without looking around.

 
          
Zero
leaned back and closed his eyes to hold back the tears.

 
          
After
a while Patrick said, “
Goethals
Bridge
dead ahead. Why do we want that?”

 
          
“Because it’s the quickest route out of
Jersey
.”

 
          
“But
where are we going?”

 
          
“Dr. Cannon’s.”
He took one of Meerm’s hands in his. “We’re
bringing her the most important patient of her career.”