F Paul Wilson - Sims 04 (11 page)

 
          
Luca
turned away. He needed more men. He reached for his phone to call Lister, have
him find back-up. They’d comb this area until—

 
          
The
sound of squeaking brakes just outside the front door made him turn. A battered
old school bus had pulled to a stop at the curb. As he watched through the
cracked glass, the bus doors folded back and a line of
sims
began stepping down to the sidewalk.

 
          
“Hold
everything,” Luca said as he headed for the door. “I think reinforcements just
arrived.”

 
          
He
hadn’t wanted to call for help
Now
he wouldn’t have
to. He stationed himself at the top of the front steps and held up his hands.

 
          
“Nobody
goes inside yet,” he told the
sims
.

 
          
He
made them wait in the fine drizzle until the bus had emptied out. They looked
to number about forty or so.

 
          
“Hey!”
the grizzled old driver said. He’d come to the bus door and stood staring at
Luca. “Who are you?”

 
          
“Someone
who’s commandeering these
sims
.”

 
          
“They
ain’t
yours to commandeer! Where do you get off
thinkin
—
”

 
          
Luca
glared at him. “Move on, old man. This isn’t your concern.”

 
          
The
driver looked as if he were about to say something, then changed his mind. As
the bus wheezed away, Luca turned back to the
sims
.

 
          
“We’ve
come for
Meerm
,” he told them, raising his voice. “We
know you’ve been hiding her. But that’s all right. We’re here to help her and—”

 
          
“No!”
said a
sim
, pointing at Grimes. “No help
sim
! Hurt
sim
!”

 
          
Luca
looked more closely at the
sim
who’d spoken and
noticed that his left eye sported the yellowing remains of a shiner. He turned
to Grimes.

 
          
“What’d
you do, Grimes?” he said, keeping it low and through his teeth. “Beat him up?”

 
          
Grimes
blinked and swallowed. “I thought he’d lied to us, so I just—”

 
          
“So
you just scared the shit out of them, guaranteeing they’d never tell us a
thing. This could have been over a week ago, you fucking stupid—” He turned
away before he ripped out the man’s bobbing Adam’s apple and made him eat it.
“I’ll deal with you later.”

 
          
Fighting
for calm, he faced the
sims
again. He’d hoped to enlist their voluntary support, make them want to find
Meerm
for him. But Grimes had blown that, so he’d have to
take a direct approach.

 
          
“I
know
it’s
cold out and you’re all probably tired and
hungry. There’s nothing you’d like better now than to get inside and eat and
relax, right? Well, guess what? That’s not going to happen until
Meerm
is found. We’re going to start searching now, and
we’re going to keep searching till we find her, even if it takes all night,
understand?”

 
          
Luca
could see from the resignation in their eyes that they understood, all right.
They understood just fine. And this would work. He had forty-plus searchers
instead of the maximum dozen humans he’d be able to muster on such short
notice. And these were better than humans. Who better to sniff out a
sim
than another
sim
?

 
          
Yeah,
this will work. Damn well better. But what if it didn’t? What if they came up
empty tonight and all this commotion caught the attention of some of Eckert’s
followers? Or Morales opened his yap to the wrong people? Eckert could wind up
with the pregnant
sim
.

 
          
He
turned and found Morales standing in the front hallway.

 
          
“Listen
up,” he told the little man. “If I find the
sim
, you
get the five million. Anyone else finds
her,
you’re
out in the cold. So keep your mouth shut about this.”

 
          
Morales
stared at him, rubbing his shoulder. “First you push me around,
then
you do this. You loco, man?”

 
          
Not
loco, Luca thought, turning away. But if anyone’s going to bring in this
sim
, it’s going to be me.

 
          
MANHATTAN

 
          
Patrick
closed his eyes and leaned back in his swivel chair.

 
          
“My
eyes are going to burn out the back of my skull if I stare at this computer
screen another minute.”

 
          
“Here,”
Romy
said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Let me spell
you. We’ve only got a few more to go.”

 
          
It
seemed like they’d been at this all day.
Romy
had
arrived at his office late this afternoon and together they’d cooked up a list
of acronyms, using every possible combination of letters that might conceivably
be pronounced “surge”—from CERGE, CERJE, CIRJ, and so on, to SIURJ, ZIRJE,
ZOORGE and beyond. Then he’d begun plugging them into one Internet search
engine after another.

 
          
So
far the hits had been few and none had panned out.

 
          
“Only
a few more, you say?” He stretched. “I’ll keep at it then. What’s next?”

 
          
Romy
consulted her list.
“S-I-R-G.”

 
          
Patrick
typed it into the entry box on the searcher and hit
ENTER .
Half a second later a string of varicolored type cascaded down the screen. The
engine reported 1,753 hits.

 
          
“We’ve
got something,” he said.

 
          
SIRG
turned out to be the acronym for a raft of organizations, ranging from the
Summit Implementation Review Group to the Spatial Information Research Group to
the Student Internet Research Group.

 
          
“These
sound exciting,”
Romy
said dryly, reading over his
shoulder. She’d been nibbling on a sweet roll and her breath carried a hint of
cinnamon. He was sure her lips would taste even better. “Hope you didn’t get
your hopes up.”

 
          
Patrick
shook his head, trying to forget how close she was and focus on the screen.
“I’ve learned better by now.”

 
          
He
clicked his way through one link after another; all the groups seemed pretty
straightforward. Then he came to something called the Social Impact Research
Group.

 
          
“Social
impact of what?” he said.

 
          
“And on what?”
Romy
added.

 
          
The
article was an old one, quoting from another even older article. SIRG received
only passing mention in reference to some unspecified appropriations bill.

 
          
“Wait,”
Romy
said. “Appropriations
means
government. Hit a few more links.”

 
          
He
did but found only scattered mentions of the group; nothing of substance, no
hint as to its purpose.

 
          
“Let
me try,”
Romy
said.

 
          
They
switched seats. Patrick watched her access a directory of US Federal Government
agencies and
enter
a string of asterisks into a password
box.

 
          
“Don’t
forget,” she said, as if reading his mind, “I work for a government agency
myself. I’ve picked up a few passwords and access codes along the way.”

 
          
He
watched a while longer, then got up and moved away.
Romy
was far more facile than he at the keyboard. She worked too fast for him—he’d
no sooner focus on a screen than she’d be clicking to another. He stepped to
the window and stared out at the night.

 
          
This
block of
Henry Street
was reasonably well lit. He studied the parked cars for signs of life.
None.
The only pedestrian was a drab-looking woman making
her way along the sidewalk directly below.

 
          
This constant vigilance
rawed
his nerves.
When would it end? When could he relax again, if ever?

 
          
He
wandered over to where Tome was busily filing papers.

 
          
“Getting
tired, Tome?”

 
          
“No,
Mist
Sulliman
,” the old
sim
said, grinning up at him in the narrow confines of the file room.
“This fun.”

 
          
Whatever
turns you on, he thought. He patted the
sim’s
bony
back.

 
          
“Great, my friend.
Have a ball.”

 
          
Patrick
was turning to go when he spotted something blinking on a little table in the
corner. Tome followed his gaze. He snatched up the rectangular object and hid
it behind his back.

 
          
“What’s
that?”

 
          
Tome
looked down. “Picture, Mist
Sulliman
.”

 
          
“A picture?
Can I see it?”

 
          
“Mist
Sulliman
be mad,” he said, eyes still on his shoes.

 
          
“Nonsense.
Just let me see.”

 
          
With
obvious reluctance, Tome placed the framed picture, upside down, into Patrick’s
outstretched hand.

 
          
He
turned it over and stared in shock. The Virgin Mary…Our Lady of Guadalupe, to
be exact, but not like Patrick had ever seen her. The traditional gold-leaf
glory radiating around her had been enhanced with flashing red rays. Patrick
flipped it over and spotted the battery case that powered the diodes.

 
          
“This
is…amazing,” Patrick said. “Where did you get it?”

 
          
“Buy
on street.
Mist
Sulliman
not mad?”

 
          
“Why
on earth would I be mad?”

 
          
“Lady
on street
yell
Tome. Say Mother Mary not for
sim
.”

 
          
Bitch.
Although he could see how true believers would object to
sims
taking up their religion,
worshippingtheir
god. It diminished them, made them feel less special.

 
          
“But why, Tome?
Why’d you buy it?”

 
          
“Tome
pray
for Mist
Sulliman
and
Miss
Romy
. Ask Lady to protect.”

 
          
Patrick
was touched, didn’t know quite what to say. He stepped past Tome and replaced
the blinking icon on the table.

 
          
“Thank
you, Tome. I…we have something called freedom of religion in this country. That
means you can pray to any god you want. And…thanks.”

 
          
He
wandered back toward
Romy
, ready to tell her about
Tome’s prayers, when she called out to him.

           
“Look at this,” she said, her
expression troubled. “This particular SIRG—the Social Impact Research Group—had
millions and millions of government dollars poured into it through most of the
nineties and into the
oughts
, and then the money
stopped.”

 
          
“Money from where?”

 
          
“That’s
the weird part. I can’t find out who picked up the tab.”

 
          
“Somebody
had to. Some department or agency had to be debited before SIRG could be
credited.”

 
          
“I
know. There’s a whole string of agencies and departments and groups that seem
to be intermediaries but I keep running into dead ends or getting lost in the
maze whenever I try to track the money back to its source.”

 
          
Patrick
shook his head. “Almost like…”

 
          
Romy
looked up at him.
“
Manassas
Ventures.”

 
          
“Do
you think…?”

 
          
She
held up a hand. “Before you go getting excited, let me tell you that I think
SIRG might be dead.
As in defunct.
Can’t find a
mention or a penny of appropriations from any source whatsoever for
years.
”

 
          
“Damn!
For a moment I thought we were on to something. But then again, how much pay
dirt could we expect from something with a name like the Social Impact Research
Group?”

 
          
“Don’t
let a title put you off,” she said. “Ever hear of SOG?”

 
          
“Son of Godzilla?”

 
          
Romy
smiled up at him.
“Close.
Try
the ‘Studies and Observations Group.’ It was started in the
Nam
era. That innocent title covered a joint
Special Operations unit that included members from the Air Force, Navy
SEALs
, and Special Forces. They were sent into
Laos
to wage a secret war.”

 
          
“So
you think someone who thought SOG was a clever cover might have come up with
SIRG?”

 
          
“Just a thought.”
Romy
looked back
at the screen and rubbed her neck.

 
          
“Stiff?”

 
          
“Yeah.
Been a long day.”

 
          
He
gripped both her shoulders and began kneading the back of her neck with his
thumbs. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the light weave of her
sweater.

 
          
She
groaned. “That feels
good .”

 
          
You’re
telling me, he thought.

 
          
“SIRG
appears to be defunct,” she said as he continued to knead. “But it could be
operating under a different name. Either way, just to be sure we’ve turned over
every rock before we move
on,
I think we should know
where its money came from, don’t you?”

 
          
“But how?”

 
          
Patrick
stretched his fingers forward, working his massage down to her collar bones.

 
          
“My…office.”
Romy
groaned again.
“You’re making it hard to concentrate.”

 
          
“Just soothing those tight muscles.
Relax.”
Patrick himself was anything but as a rapturous pressure built
within.

 
          
She
cleared her throat. “What was I saying?”

 
          
“Something about your office.”
He slipped his fingers over
her collar bones onto the upper edges of her pectorals.

 
          
“Oh,
right.
OPRR’s
computers are linked to the government.
And my boss, Milton Ware, is an absolute master at weaving through
bureaucratese. I need to find a way to put Uncle
Miltie
onto the scent without knowing why. Maybe if I—”