Sims (3 page)

To manufacture and market the product—Mercer Sinclair insisted from the get-go on referring to sims as a product—the brothers had formed SimGen. And SimGen got the government to agree that the creatures were just that: a product.

How they accomplished that feat remained a mystery to Patrick and lots of other folks. President Bush the Second had come out against the whole idea, calling it “Godless science,” and the Democratic congress, with its hands deep in the pockets of the very anti-sim Big Labor, was ready to put the kibosh on the whole thing. SimGen stock was in the toilet.

But somehow anti-sim legislation kept getting deadlocked in various committees; for some unfathomable reason, union bluster tapered off.

Instead of waiting for the ax to fall, SimGen started cranking out sims for the unskilled labor markets. Common consensus was that the Sinclair brothers had lost their minds and very soon would lose their shirts. Who'd want transgenic laborers during a global recession with millions of humans out of work.

The Bush administration, wrapped up in the seemingly endless war on terrorism, failed to pass any regulatory bills. And then came the boom of the mid-oughts, making the nineties look like a pop gun and tightening all the
labor markets. Suddenly sims weren't such a godless idea after all. In fact, they made good economic sense. They even allowed the US to compete with Asia in the textile markets. The result: A lot of senators and congressmen who previously might have been expected to vote against, came out in support of pro-SimGen legislation.

Patrick remembered how animal rights activists had cried foul and said the fix was in, but nothing was ever proven, and in those days SimGen hadn't anywhere near the money to buy off so many legislators.

Now was a different story, of course. SimGen had been raking in the megabucks for years. As the darling of mutual funds and small investors alike, its market cap value was soaring.

All of which made Patrick feel like a microminiature David. Because the real heavyweight opposition to organizing the sims would come from the SimGen Goliath. The last thing they'd want was someone unionizing their property.

What he needed were allies. But who? The religious fundamentalists would be no help; Orthodox Jews, Moslems, and Christian Born Agains had found common ground in their opposition to sims, but they wanted sims abolished, not unionized. The animal rights groups like PETA and Greenpeace were a possibility, but they seemed to be in disarray; they'd tried guerrilla tactics like raiding piecework shops and “liberating” the sim workers; but the sims, unused to freedom, and lost and confused in the big wide world, wound up returning to the shops on their own.

Patrick could see that he was going to be all alone out there.

On the other hand, maybe SimGen wouldn't bother to lift a finger. Maybe they'd know what Patrick knew: that he didn't have a kitten's chance in a room full of pit bulls. But what he could do was raise a ruckus and embarrass the hell out of Beacon Ridge, then settle out of court for a nice piece of change. That was what he'd aim for.

But after that . . . what? What would the Beacon Ridge sims do with their money? Maybe Patrick could convince them to start a practice of tipping the
golfers
. He smiled. Wouldn't that be a kick.

He checked his watch: 10:14. Time to meet with his new clients.

He parked on a side street near the creek that ran through the grounds. Yellow legal pad in hand, he stepped out, found an opening in the high privet hedge, and for some reason thought of his father.

Mike Sullivan was a retired steamfitter who had been a diehard union man all his life. He'd raised his family within earshot of the Rensselaer rail-yards outside Albany until Patrick was twelve, then moved them to Dobbs
Ferry. Patrick remembered how proud he'd been when his son became the first member of the family to graduate college. But he hadn't been so crazy about Patrick's idea of a career in law. He couldn't afford to send him, so Patrick had paid his own way through Pace Law. If he'd gone on to become a champion of the labor movement, Dad might have bragged about his son the lawyer; but Patrick had shied away from the crusader role, opting to join the lumpen proletariat of the profession in a medium-size firm, and scratch his way up through the ranks.

Dad had been able to live with that. But would he be able to live with the idea of his son as a labor organizer—of sims?

Do I really want to do this?

Patrick knew he should give himself a little more time—maybe a lot more time—to weigh the pros and cons. He had an impulsive nature which he managed to control at the bargaining table, but it had put him in hot spots more than once. Did he want to start this fire?

Damn right he did. Hell hath no fury like an attorney scorned. Beacon Ridge didn't want him? Fine. They were going to regret that. Not only was there a buck or two to be made, but instead of seeing less of the man he'd blackballed, Holmes Carter was pretty soon going to feel like he was married to Patrick Sullivan.

Here comes the bride, Patrick thought as he stepped through the hedge onto Beacon Ridge property.

Beacon Ridge quartered its sims in a long barracklike building in the low corner of the club grounds, a section that flooded during a heavy rain. The lights were on, the windows open, and music filtered out into the cool night air. Patrick stopped and listened. Was that . . . ?

“Ma-gic . . . mo-ments . . .”

Perry Como?

He saw a sim silhouetted in the lighted doorway. It pointed to him and ducked back inside, crying, “Is him! Comes now! Just like said, he come!” A babble of voices arose from within.

What am I? Patrick thought. The messiah?

Tome met him at the door and motioned him inside. “So happy come you, Mist Sulliman. Welcome to sim home, sir.”

Patrick stopped and looked around. The two dozen Beacon Ridge male and female sims who carried the golf bags on the links, set and cleared the tables in the dining room, washed the dishes and peeled the potatoes in the kitchen, and cut the grass and weeded the flower beds, stood gathered before him in the front room of their quarters. Overhead fluorescents shone on scattered stuffed chairs, long mess-hall style eating tables, and industrial carpeting. Two TVs, one in each far corner, were on but no one was watching; soft music crooned from the radio.

Patrick had once visited a client in a mental hospital; this reminded him of that institution's day room.

“What's behind the wall?” he said.

“We sleep.”

With most of his fellow sims trooping behind like lemmings, Tome led Patrick to the dormitory section where triple-decker bunks lined the walls. A toilet and shower area lay beyond the next wall. Patrick wondered about the coed living conditions, then remembered reading that in addition to being sterile, sims' libidos were genetically suppressed.

Back in the front room, Tome led Patrick to a graying female sim seated in one of the easy chairs.

“This Gabba, sir,” he said. “She oldest. Like mother here.”

“Yessir.” The aging female started a slow, painful rise from her chair. “So pleased meet—”

Patrick waved her back—probably take the arthritic old thing ten minutes to stand and another ten to sit down again. “Don't get up. I'm gonna sit anyway.”

He looked around, found an empty chair, and lowered himself into it. The rest of the sims gathered around in a circle. He spotted Nabb but didn't see Deek. He'd never been this close to so many sims at one time and was struck by how similar they looked. You didn't notice when you saw them singly or in pairs, but crowded together like this . . .

He'd read where SimGen made minor variations in the genomes as they cloned them so sims wouldn't look like they'd all been cast in the same mold. Maybe this crowd didn't exactly have a cookie-cutter appearance, but no question they'd all been baked from the same batter.

Now, here, with their pidgin English and weird looks and odd way of moving, he felt as if he'd dropped in on a colony of simple folk of a different race and culture.

But these folk were
owned
. He could not allow himself to forget that. Anything he'd read about SimGen credited two moves for its success: First was the company's patents on nearly all the viable recombinant chimp genomes, guaranteeing the field to itself; second was the Sinclair brothers' decision not to sell their product, but to lease it instead.

A sim lease was too pricey to allow it to be a common household servant, but the creatures were a huge bargain as unskilled labor—no social security taxes, no pension plans, no compensation or unemployment insurance. And when one got hurt or too infirm to do the job, SimGen replaced it.

As a result, more and more businesses all over the industrialized world were lining up for sims.

And since the creatures were all genetically sterile, preventing black-market types from growing their own, SimGen had an absolute lock on the market. Special legislation had classified sims as neither humans nor animals; since they did not occur naturally, and since SimGen owned the patent on their genome and, in a very real sense, manufactured them, they were deemed a product, a commodity—
property
—and SimGen owned every damn one of them.

He leaned toward Gabba. “Okay, the first thing I have to ask is where the hell you came up with the idea of a union?”

“See TV,” Tome said.

Patrick had expected Gabba, the apparent matriarch of the group, to respond, but obviously Tome was the spokessim.

“Read also paper,” Tome added.

“Yeah, that's right. You can read.” He still couldn't quite believe it. “How about the rest of you?”

“Only Tome read,” the sim said.

“Okay, so you came up with this idea of starting a union. That means you want something you don't have. To tell you the truth,” he said, looking around, “compared to other sims who work in sweatshops or on production lines or digging ditches, you've got it pretty cushy here.”

Never failed. With humans, and now apparently even with sims: The more you have, the more you want. But maybe he should be careful here. Didn't want to change their minds.

He quickly added, “But that doesn't mean, of course, that your living conditions can't be improved. So what are our demands gonna be? More food? Better quarters?”

“Sim want family, sir,” Tome said.

Patrick felt as if he'd been slapped. Talk about coming out of left field . . .

Family? Uh-uh. No way that's gonna happen.

“You don't mean like becoming wives and husbands and having children, and all that, do you? Because if—”

“No, sir,” Tome said, waving his arms around at his fellow sims. “This family.”

“I don't get it.”

“Sims grow up large group, no mommy, no daddy, just child sims. Get know others, make friend, then take away. Come here, make friend, then take away. No want take away. Want stay together. Want family.”

“I see,” Patrick said slowly. “Family . . . interesting concept.”

He looked around at the intent faces of the creatures encircling him. The faces were definitely simian, but far less so than any monkey in the wild. They'd been retooled from chimpanzees, a creature genetically damn near human. But pure chimps had mothers and fathers and a family structure. Sims were even closer to humans yet they were raised like cattle and leased out as soon as they were fit for work. And then they were traded in or swapped around like used cars.

Nowhere along the line did they have any semblance of a family.

Patrick felt a twinge of discomfort, almost like sympathy. He brushed it away. Never get emotionally involved. Stick to the facts.

But hey, if I feel something . . .

This was good. Oh, this was very good. He could use this. He could embellish this a little and tug like mad on all sorts of heartstrings.

He began scratching notes on his pad: Poor lost sims, raised without parents or siblings, cast out into the cold cruel world to work long hours for no pay. They weren't asking for wages, not for anything material, they just wanted a little personal continuity in their lives . . . the right to keep certain close-knit groups of sims from being broken up . . . allowed to live together and work together . . . as a makeshift family of sorts . . .

I
love
it!

Maybe he could even start up a nationwide Sim Legal Aid Fund.

This was looking better and better.

“Okay. That kind of family just might fly. So that's what we'll shoot for. Let's do it.”

Tome's eyes lit. “Is yes? Mist Sulliman do?”

“That's what I said.”

Tome pumped his long arms in the air and the rest of the sims began screeching and jumping about, capering in circles, leaping in the air. Only Gabba remained seated, but she was clapping and grinning.

Patrick had to smile. What a rambunctious crew. Something innocent and almost childlike about them, like early humans might have been before hundreds of generations of social conditioning turned them into the uptight species they were today.

Tome raised his fist and screeched, “La Causa!”

The rest of the sims took up the cry, turning it into a chant.

Patrick raised his hands to calm them.

“Where did you pick up ‘La Causa'?” he said when he could hear himself.

“From Jorge,” Tome said.

“Who's Jorge?”

“He cook kitchen. Ask him union. He give smile and do fist and say, ‘La Causa.' ”

Again exuberant jumping and running and chanting.

When finally they calmed down, Patrick said, “The best way to approach this may be to demand a union and then settle for all of you staying together as a group.”

“Settle?” Tome said, frowning. “That mean no union?”

Don't start going Cesar Chavez on me, Tome.

“A union could be a long shot, I'm afraid,” Patrick said. Like to the moon and beyond. “I'm telling you this up front so you won't be disappointed if we lose on that one.” Never raise a client's expectations. Always low-ball the outcome. “But I think we could possibly walk away from this deal with a family and some cash.”