F Paul Wilson - Sims 04 (2 page)

 
          
“I
just assumed…”

 
          
Zero
looked at
Romy
. “You might want to sit down.”

 
          
“Oh, no.”
She stood blinking for a few heartbeats, then
retreated two steps and dropped into the chair by the wall. “Do I want to hear
this?”

 
          
“Probably
not, but you need to.”

 
          
Zero
then went on to explain who was behind the
SLA
and the reasons for its atrocities. Patrick
listened, but all the while his eyes were fixed on
Romy
.
He watched her initial disbelief give way to unwilling acceptance of a
horrifying truth. Her expression was slack by the time Zero finished. He wanted
to step to her side and slip his arms around her, but thought better of it.
Jostle her now and she might explode.

 
          
Patrick
too was shocked. To think that just two weeks ago in front of the burned-out
ruins of the
Bronx
globulin farm,
Romy
had introduced him to the engineer of all this death and destruction.

 
          
“There’s
got to be some way we can nail
Portero
for this,”
Patrick said.

 
          
“Don’t
count on it. He’s a pro, a very careful one.”

 
          
“That
doesn’t mean we can’t manufacture some evidence.”

 
          
“No,”
Zero said, shaking his head.
“Too dangerous.”

 
          
Romy
finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I…I’d always figured
Portero
for a snake. But…I
never dreamed…I mean, executing three humans and twelve
sims
…
just to cover his
tracks.”

 
          
“And
those are just the ones we know about. You two might have been added to list if
we hadn’t intervened when Patrick’s car was knocked off the road.”

 
          
“That
was him?” Patrick said, turning toward
Romy
. “You
mean I was standing two feet away from the guy who tried to kill me and I
didn’t know it?”

 
          
“Not
him directly,” Zero said. “But he planned it.”

 
          
“Why
didn’t anyone tell me?”

 
          
He
shrugged. “No one said, ‘Let’s not tell Patrick.’ When it happened, we still
weren’t sure of you. And after you came on board, it simply never came up.”

 
          
“Just
as well, I guess,” he said. “If I’d known I might have opened my big yap and
given something away.”

 
          
“Which
brings me back to what I was saying before,” Zero said. “Watch your backs. You
and
Romy
have put yourselves on the wrong side of
Manassas Ventures.
Manassas
is connected to
SimGen
and therefore, by
extension, to Luca
Portero
. We’ve known he was
ruthless, we just didn’t know until now how ruthless. There’s nothing this man
won’t do, so please be careful. I’ll do whatever I can to back you up, but the
organization can do only so much.”

 
          
Patrick
turned to
Romy
. “Maybe we should move in together.”

 
          
She
rolled her eyes. “Not that again.”

 
          
“For mutual protection, of course.”

 
          
“Of course.”

 
          
“Not
such a bad idea, actually,” Zero said. “I know I’d rest easier, but I’ll leave
that up to you two.”

 
          
Zero,
I think I love you, Patrick thought.

 
          
But
Romy
didn’t appear to be buying. “Let’s worry about
Meerm
,” she said. “How do we find her first?”

 
          
“Why
don’t we try thinking like a
sim
?” Patrick said,
hating to leave the subject of cohabitation. “If I were a lost and frightened
sim
, where would I hide?”

 
          
“With
other
sims
,” Zero said. “The trouble is
,
if she’s hiding from humans she’s not exactly going to
come out and announce herself.”

 
          
Patrick
had a thought.
“How about my
roomie
?
Is there some way Tome can help sniff her out? You know, set a
sim
to find a
sim
?”

 
          
Zero
pointed at him. “Now that’s an idea.”

 
          
“As
long as it doesn’t put him in any danger,” Patrick added. He’d grown fond of
that old
sim
, and the possibility of anything
happening to him put a twist in his gut. “I don’t want him hurt.”

 
          
“None
of us do,” Zero said. “Let’s sit down and see where we can take that.
Meanwhile, I’ve appealed to a higher power for help.”

 
          
“You’ve
been praying?”
Romy
said.

 
          
“No,
I meant that in a more literal sense. I was speaking of the Reverend’s
satellite.”

 
          
SUSSEX COUNTY
,
NJ

 
          
“Watch
this,” Sinclair-1 said the moment Luca stepped into the darkened office. The
sun was down but only a corner floor lamp was lit.

 
          
Luca
glanced around.
No one else present.
“Watch what?”

 
          
“This, goddamn it.
I just recorded it off the dish.”

 
          
Sinclair
poked his desktop and the plasma TV screen on the wall flickered,
then
lit with the face of the Reverend Eckert.

 
          
“My dear brothers and sisters.
I had an entirely different
sermon prepared for this broadcast, but just moments ago I experienced an
epiphany, a revelation of such staggering importance that I felt it my duty to
you and to my ministry to discard my prepared sermon and immediately address
this matter.

 
          
“Do
you know what an ‘urban legend’ is? I’m sure you do, but in case some of you
don’t, let me explain. Urban legends are stories that are told and retold so
many times
that
they take on a patina—or should I say,
the appearance—of truth. We never get the story firsthand; usually we’re told
that somebody’s uncle or aunt, or that a friend’s grandmother knows someone who
personally experienced the incident.

 
          
“You
might have been warned against bringing home a large cactus because somebody
knows someone whose cactus burst open to let out a torrent of deadly
tarantulas.

 
          
“Or
you heard about the burned corpse of a frogman found in the ashes of a forest
fire, the story going that he was SCUBA diving when he was scooped up by a
firefighting helicopter as it filled its bucket from the lake near the fire.

 
          
“Or
the ‘documented facts’ that
eelskin
wallets erase
magnetic cards and giant alligators infest
New York City
sewers, and on and on.

 
          
“Brothers
and sisters, I could spend the whole program cataloguing these tales, but
that’s not why I’m speaking to you today. I pray you’ve caught my meaning,
because I want you to believe that what I am about to say is not an urban
legend.

 
          
“As
I told you earlier, I’ve had a revelation from On High. But some people, for
their own selfish reasons, will want to deny its truth. My words, as they
spread, will be written off by these professional doubters as just the latest
in a long line of urban legends. But don’t listen to them, friends. I have it
on excellent authority, not from a friend of a friend, but from the ultimate
Unimpeachable Source that what I am about to tell you is God’s Truth.

 
          
“That
Truth concerns a
sim
, a female
sim
,
lost, alone, frightened, hiding somewhere in
New York City
. Yes, I’m talking about the same
sim
that Satan’s own corporation,
SinGen
,
has offered five million dollars for. But have you asked yourselves why
SinGen
is offering so much for one lowly
sim
? They’ll tell you it’s to help bring murderers to
justice, but is that really the case? The humans these murderers killed were
criminals themselves. And
sims
are killed every day without
SinGen
offering so much
as a dime to find the culprits.

 
          
“So
there I was today, sitting alone in my home chapel, spending quiet time in
communion with the Lord, wondering what was so special about this particular
sim
to make the devil’s company squander so much of its
tainted lucre to find her.

 
          
“And
then it came to me. In a blaze of inspiration that could only be the result of
the touch of the Lord his own self, I knew!

 
          
“This
lost
sim
is pregnant!

 
          
“Now,
now, I know we’ve all been told that
sims
can’t procreate, but think about who’s been telling us that: the devil
corporation run by Satan, the Father of Lies. Only God is perfect. Satan makes
mistakes—that’s why he rules in Hell after all, instead of in Heaven. And Satan
made a real whopper of a mistake this time.

 
          
“What’s
that? Yes, I hear you. I hear what you’re saying. You’re saying, ‘A pregnant
sim
, Reverend Eckert? How can that be? Who is the father?’

 
          
“And
that, brothers and sisters, is the worst part. This was no immaculate
conception. No, this is an abomination. This
sim
pregnancy is the result of un-plumbed wickedness and moral decrepitude. For the
father, I say to you, the father of this
sim’s
baby
is human!

 
          
“Of
course, I use the term loosely, for what sort of human would defile himself so
by doing such a thing to a helpless animal? But yes, you heard correctly, the
father is human!

 
          
“Now,
I know what you’re saying in your hearts, if you’re not crying it out loud,
‘Why, Reverend Eckert? Why would God allow such an unspeakable thing to occur?’
And I must tell you, friends, that I asked myself the same question. I wondered
if this could be a sign of the End Times: Could the child of this unholy union
be the Antichrist?

 
          
“But
the Lord his own self was guiding my thoughts because I suddenly realized that
this unborn child is just the opposite of the Antichrist. For it will not be
born to establish Satan’s rule on earth, but to dislodge his foul foothold,
destroy the satanic beachhead we know as
SinGen
!

 
          
“That
is the real reason the company is offering so much to find this poor,
mistreated, pregnant
sim
.

 
          
“So
I say to you, my brothers and
sisters,
do not listen
when you are told that this can’t be true, that it’s just another urban legend.
It is not! If you live in the Northeast, live anywhere in or around
New York City
, I beg you, as soon as I am finished here:
Leave your homes and
hie
into the streets to look for
this unfortunate creature.

 
          
“And
if you find her, do not call
SinGen
, no matter how
much money it is offering. Do not allow yourselves to be tempted by the devil’s
offer. Sell this
sim
and you are selling your soul.
Instead, call the number flashing at the bottom of your screen and I will
personally see to it that this
sim
and its child are
protected from Satan’s forces.

 
          
“And
when the child is born, I shall bring it to the halls of Congress and display
it to the leaders of our nation. And then the scales shall fall from their eyes
and they will see that they have allowed an abomination to move into their
house; and the shackles shall loosen from their limbs and they will act,
casting
SinGen
into the outer darkness whence it
came, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 
          
“Go
now, my brothers and sisters. Fill the streets. Waste not another moment.
Find—”

 
          
The
screen went blank. Another touch on the desktop and the lights came up.

 
          
Luca
blinked, momentarily mute with shock. He opened his mouth to speak but Sinclair
voiced his thoughts.

 
          
“He
knows! How the hell did he find out?”

 
          
“A
leak,” Luca said. “I’ve suspected one for some time now.”

 
          
“You
think the room is bugged? By someone other than you, I mean.”

 
          
Luca
was taken aback by the casualness of the remark.

 
          
“What?”
Sinclair said, a tiny smile twisting his lips. “You think I don’t know your
people have this office bugged? Probably the whole campus as well,
am
I right?”

 
          
He
was. Offices, labs, even rest rooms—all bugged. Luca shrugged it off.

 
          
“We
sweep this office regularly. No listening devices of any sort.”
Other than ours.

 
          
“I
found out yesterday,” Sinclair said,
then
pointed to
the blank TV screen. “He knows today.
How else but a bug?”

 
          
“A person.
I’ve long suspected your brother. This confirms
it.”

 
          
“It
confirms nothing of the sort. Ellis? Ridiculous!”

 
          
“Really?
Until yesterday, only a select few of our people
knew. Even the men I’ve had combing the city don’t know; they think we want
this
sim
because she’s got a rare immune globulin in
her blood.
Weeks of searching without a hint of a leak.
But yesterday afternoon I tell you and your brother, and today, just
twenty-four hours later, the Reverend Eckert is telling the world. If it’s not
your brother, then it’s you.”

 
          
Sinclair
sat down and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well, it’s not me. And I can’t
believe
it’s
Ellis, not after the way your people
threatened his children.”

 
          
“I’m
not aware of any threat.”

 
          
“No?
Well, I guess it was before your time.”

 
          
That
part was true. But Luca knew perfectly well what the CEO was talking about. A
brilliant little op, involving nothing overt, but it had kept Ellis Sinclair in
line ever since.

 
          
Sinclair
looked at him. “Maybe Eckert did have a revelation.”

 
          
“You
don’t really expect—”

 
          
“I
don’t mean from God.”

 
          
“Then—”

 
          
“Hear
me out. Here’s this guy who’s got a hard-on for
SimGen
.
He hears we’re offering five million to find this lost
sim
,
so he figures out the worst case scenario for us, and broadcasts it. It’s just
a coincidence that he happens to hit on the truth.”

 
          
Luca
snorted. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

 
          
Sinclair
sighed. “No. No, I don’t.”

 
          
“However
Eckert came to it, we can count on a lot of his people on the streets looking
for that
sim
, trying to find her first.”

 
          
“Does
that worry you, Mr.
Portero
? Don’t let it. The more
the merrier. Eckert’s people merely increase our chances. They may believe in
God, but when it comes down to five million dollars’ worth of cold hard cash,
they’ll believe in that even more.”

 
          
“We’ll
see.” Luca wasn’t so sure about that, but saw no point in arguing. He had
another point to press. “In the meantime, my people will expect you to do
something about your brother.”

 
          
“Very well.
From now on, any meetings concerning matters of
a sensitive nature will be conducted without him.” His eyes narrowed. “But you
don’t have any hard evidence against Ellis, do you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have
looked so shocked when I played you that tape. I’d be surprised if you weren’t monitoring
his calls. Have you been following him as well?”