Sims (10 page)

She closed her eyes and fell into a dream dredged from an incident in her childhood. Romy had been an Air Force brat with an American pilot father and a German mother. They moved around a lot and it always seemed as soon as Romy just started getting used to a new place, her father would be transferred to another base in another state.

The dream involved the time when she was nine or ten and came upon a couple of the local boys throwing rocks at a lame old dog who'd dared to bark at them from its yard. But it wasn't a dog in the dream—it was a sim. Her dream rage was as fresh and hot and sudden as it had been all those years ago when she'd charged into those boys with flailing fists. That had been Raging Romy's debut. And in the dream, just as in real life, she sent one of the terrified boys running home with a bloody nose, and had the other on the ground, bashing him with a rock and screaming at him,
How do you like it? How do you like it?
and not stopping until someone pulled her off.

In real life he'd told his parents, who threatened Romy's folks with a lawsuit if they didn't “do something about that girl.” The first of many such threats during the years to come.

And in real life the owner had come out of the house to thank her. But here in the dream, the owner came out, but it wasn't old Mrs. Moore, it was Patrick Sullivan. And there, right in front of her, he sold that old sim to a man from the university to be used in medical experiments . . .

Romy awoke sobbing.

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ
OCTOBER 5

“I understand what you're saying, miss, but I can't find your name on the list.”

The young guard at the gate, so young his face still sported a few pimples, looked flustered as he stood outside his kiosk, staring at his hand-held computer; he pushed buttons and stared again, shaking his head.

Romy felt sorry for him but couldn't let that show. She'd shoved the court papers in his face, demanding entrance, and now she glared at him from the driver's seat of her car.

“Then call someone who
can
find my name,” she said through clenched teeth, “or I'll shut this whole damn place down and you'll be lucky if you find a job pumping gas in downtown Paterson!”

He ducked inside his kiosk and made a hurried phone call. A moment later he stepped out and pointed to a small parking area to her right.

“Pull over there, please. Someone's coming down.”

Muttering unintelligibly under her breath, Romy complied. Then she turned off her engine, leaned back, and smiled. This was working out just as she'd planned.

Minutes later a small four-seater helicopter lifted over the wooded rise dead ahead and buzzed toward her. It set down in the field on the far side of the road. A man stepped out of the front passenger seat and strode toward her. He didn't duck as most people do while under the whirling blades, didn't have to clutch a hat to his head because he was bareheaded, didn't have to worry about the vortex mussing his hair because it was cut too short to matter. He walked erect, purposefully, but with no sense of urgency, as if he knew within a centimeter the locations of the blades slicing the air above his scalp.

The word
military
flashed in Romy's brain like a neon sign as she took in his broad shoulders, measured step, straight spine. Or at least ex-military. She
put him in his early forties. And judging from his skin tones, black hair and eyes, Romy bet on a heavy Latino ancestry. Not a bad-looking man. Attractive in an animal sort of way.

“Ms. Cadman,” he said as he reached her car. He didn't smile, didn't offer his hand. “We weren't expecting you so early.”

“According to your gate man you weren't expecting me at all.”

“He only has the morning list. Your arrival is scheduled for one o'clock.”

“One o'clock?” she said. “Ridiculous! Why would I waste half a day?”

He pulled open her car door. “Step out, please.”

He said it like a cop. Romy saw no reason why not, so she swiveled in her seat—giving him a good shot of her legs before she adjusted her skirt—and stood before him.

Maybe that had been a mistake. A shiver ran over her skin as his eyes raked her blazer, blouse, and skirt. She'd seen eyes like that before. On a crocodile. She felt naked.

“You'll want this next, I suppose,” she said, fumbling for her OPRR ID card and handing it to him.

“You read my mind,” he said as he took the card. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth but didn't quite make it to his eyes. “That could mean trouble.” He handed it back. “Welcome to SimGen, Ms. Cadman. I'm Luca Portero, Chief of Security here.”

“The head man? Should I be flattered?”

She'd read up on a number of the key people in SimGen, and Luca Portero was one of them. She'd never seen him, but knew his folder: Army Special Forces, decorated in Afghanistan, honorable discharge with the rank of sergeant after twenty years in; hired by SimGen within weeks of his discharge.

“A visit from OPRR is an occasion.”

“Get used to it,” she said. “If I have my way, we'll be here every week.”

His smile froze, then faded. “We'll use the copter to take us to the center of the campus. It's faster.”

“I'm here today as vanguard for the full inspection team; to do that I must see the facilities firsthand—from ground level.”

“Of course. We'll pick up a car at center campus and continue from there.”

Once inside the helicopter, conversation was impossible, especially with Romy in the rear and Portero up front next to the pilot. The security chief spent the time talking into his headset, and did not look happy.

So Romy took in the scenery. The trees were showing off their vivid fall
colors but she could not let that distract her. She was looking for concealed roads, hidden installations, anything not visible in the aerial photos that might escape OPRR inspection. But she saw nothing.

Romy caught her breath as the copter cleared a hill and the center of the SimGen campus flashed into view. The glass sides of the buildings, none taller than six stories, picked up the hues of the neighboring hillsides and made them their own, integrating the manmade structures into their surroundings. As much as she hated the company, she had to admit it appeared to be a beautiful place to work.

She knew the layout of the campus by heart and immediately identified the taller executive and administration buildings. She wasn't interested in those; her inspection team would be focusing on the natal center, the sim dormitories and training centers, and the two research buildings—general and basic.

Zero had told her he was particularly interested in the basic research facility. He'd mentioned mysterious shipments in and out of an enclosed loading dock near its northwest corner, and that only a select few were allowed anywhere near the place. But was that all he knew? Was the basic research facility so secret even his high-up contacts didn't know what went on inside . . . or wouldn't tell him? Or did Zero already know and want OPRR to expose it?

What could they be doing in there that was so sensitive? Her mind flashed lurid images of experiments on human subjects, or Doctor Moreau–type vivisections, or hideous failed splices, locked in cages with their claws or tentacles reaching through the bars. She doubted it was anything that exciting. And she'd find out soon enough, wouldn't she.

Squinting against the glare of the morning sun, she located the building and spotted a medium-size delivery truck backing into a shedlike structure jutting from its flank. She reached for the binoculars in her shoulder bag—the set with a spycam concealed within—but changed her mind. She might find a better use for them later—no sense in letting Portero know now that she'd brought them along.

As she watched, a corrugated steel door rolled down, sealing the truck in the shed.

Romy could understand the need for an enclosed loading dock on a windy winter day, but the weather was positively balmy this morning. The only other purpose would be to conceal what was being loaded or unloaded.

When the copter landed, Portero led her to a blue Jeep Geronimo, one of many wheeling through the campus.

“Do you buy these by the dozen?” she asked.

“Four-wheel drive is not a luxury here, especially in the winter. When it snows in these hills, it
snows
.”

Once they were seated within he gave her another penetrating up-and-down look. “Are all the OPRR investigators so beautiful?”

Puh-
leese
! Romy thought. She wanted to tell him to save his imagined wit and charm but decided it might be best not to acknowledge the compliment.

“I'm considered OPRR's plain Jane,” she said brusquely. “I'd like to begin with the research facilities.”

Portero started the engine. “They're not ready for you yet. We'll start with the natal center.”

“I prefer research first, then natal. It's a more natural progression.”

“If it was up to me, I'd take you anywhere you want to go,” he said.

Why don't I believe that?

He went on: “And if you'd arrived at your scheduled time, I'd be wheeling us there right now. But the powers that be say that if you insist on starting with research, you can wait in one of our empty offices until one o'clock and start then. But if you wish to get to work immediately, natal is available.”

Score one for you, Romy thought, hiding her frustration. After all, she was a professional.

“Very well. Natal it is.”

But don't look so smug, she thought as she watched Portero put the Jeep in gear. The game has just begun.

The Natal Center—intellectually she'd been prepared for it, but emotionally . . .

Anne Twerlinger, associate director of the center, was a reed-thin middle-aged redhead who stank of cigarettes, wore retro pointy-framed glasses, and spoke with what Romy could only describe as a sniff in her tone, as if convinced that at any moment her nostrils might be assailed by a noxious odor.

Portero had stayed behind in Twerlinger's office, making phone calls, while she started the tour by leading Romy down a narrow corridor. The right
wall was glass from waist to ceiling, and looked in on the natal center's cloning lab.

“I'm sure I don't have to tell you about the sim genome,” Twerlinger said, then proceeded to do just that. “As everyone knows, it consists of twenty-two chromosome pairs—one fewer than humans, two fewer than chimps; much of the junk and non-functioning genetic material has been removed, leaving it one of the cleanest mammalian genomes in existence. Sims don't mate, mainly because we've genetically reduced their sex drives to nil; but even if they did, no offspring would be produced because their ova cannot be fertilized.”

“Why not have just one sex?” Romy said.

“Because we're all conditioned to view work as gender specific: We're comfortable with females cleaning houses, males loading trucks. And SimGen is nothing if not sensitive to the marketplace.”

“Why should the females have ovaries at all?”

“We'd rather they didn't, of course, but we've found that a regular hormone cycle is necessary to their accelerated maturation process.” She waved tobacco-stained fingers at the masked and gowned workers on the far side of the glass. “New sims are cloned by nuclear transfer from a bank of identical cells, and implanted in a special class of females we call breeders. Breeder sims are as sterile as their sisters, but exist for one purpose: to incubate new sims.”

They came to the end of the corridor. Twerlinger pushed through into a much larger space: wide, long, its low ceiling studded with recessed fluorescents. The place was huge—the size of a football field at least, and filled with beds. It might have been the world's largest homeless shelter except that it was filled with sims instead of humans.

Pregnant sims.

“My God,” Romy said. “And you have three floors like this?”

“And two more identical buildings with a fourth under construction. We can't keep up with the demand. We've begun building natal centers abroad now. The one in Poznan is almost complete.”

They ambled among the beds, arranged in clusters around common areas with sinks and toilets. Twerlinger pointed to partitioning walls rising not quite to the ceiling throughout the space.

“We divide our breeders up by how far along they are. Early, middle, late gestation: eight months overall.” She spread her arms. “OPRR will find nothing to complain about here, Ms. Cadman. Breeders lead lives of pampered ease. They do not do a lick of work their entire lives.”

“But they engage in labor of another sort.”

A sniff. “I suppose you might put it that way.”

Most of the mothers-to-be Romy passed were either napping or lounging together on sofas, watching TV.

“They look bored out of their minds.”

“Breeders are provided excellent nutrition and get adequate exercise,” the assistant director said as if she hadn't heard.

“And what of labor and delivery?”

“Would you like to see a delivery? I can guarantee that a number are in progress as we speak.”

“I'll leave that to the team. But how does labor go?”

Twerlinger shrugged. “The breeders rarely need sedation, but if they do, they get it. Our breeder sims receive better obstetrical care than a lot of humans, Ms. Cadman.”

“And after delivery?”

“It's usually single offspring, but we're beginning to have some success with increasing the incidence of twins. Once we perfect that we can double output.”

“I'm surprised you don't simply clone them and incubate them ex-utero.”

“We tried that. Believe me, we tried that every which way imaginable, but the resultant offspring were much less tractable and far less emotionally stable than the ones gestated in utero. That's the one thing we guarantee our lessees: stable and dependable workers. So . . .” She smiled here, a fleeting flash of yellowed teeth. “. . . we do it the old-fashioned way.”