F Paul Wilson - Sims 04 (7 page)

 
          
MANHATTAN

 
          
Patrick
checked the cars on
Henry Street
outside his office building before stepping out. All looked empty, no
plumes of idling exhaust. After the other night, he was spooked, and not
ashamed to admit it. You weren’t paranoid when they really were out to get you.

 
          
He
stepped out onto the sidewalk and cried out as he collided with someone. He
jumped back, ready to run back inside, when he noticed it was an older woman.
He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

 
          
“I’m
sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t looking.”

 
          
“Did
I frighten you, Mr. Sullivan?” she said.

 
          
He
looked at her face.
Uh-oh.
Alice Fredericks.
The Mother of All Sims.

 
          
“Hello,
Miss
Fredericks
.
Nice to see you again.
No, you didn’t frighten me. I just didn’t expect anyone there.” He made a show
of glancing at his watch. “I’m just heading off to a meeting and—”

 
          
“You
didn’t call me, Mr. Sullivan.” Her look was reproachful. “You said you would
and I’ve been waiting every day but you haven’t called.”

 
          
“I
told you,” he said, backing away, “I’ll call when my schedule lightens up. It’s
just that there’s been so much going on.”

 
          
No
lie there.

 
          
“You’re
not afraid, are you?”

 
          
Maybe
he should tell her he was very afraid, that he was terrified. Then she’d look
for someone else. But he couldn’t make himself say it.

 
          
“Not
of space aliens.” True enough.
Too many other truly
frightening things going on in his life right now to worry about space aliens.
“Not a bit.”

 
          
“Very
well,” she said. “I’ll be waiting.”

 
          
He
turned and hurried toward
Catherine Street
to find a taxi.

 
          
After
a ride during which Patrick spent more time looking out the rear window than
the front, the cabby dropped him off at Penn Station. He wandered around
Seventh Avenue
, going in and out of stores to make sure he
wasn’t being followed, then headed further west.

 
          
Finally
he arrived at Zero’s garage just behind a middle-aged woman. Despite the
parka-like hood cinched tight around her head against the cold, he recognized
her.

 
          
“Dr.
Cannon,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Patrick Sullivan. I don’t know if
you remember me, but I was—”

 
          
“You
were helping at the Beacon Ridge atrocity,” she said with a smile as she pushed
back her hood. He noticed that her long graying mane had been shorn to an almost
boyish length. “Yes, of course I remember. And call me Betsy, please.”

 
          
The
door opened and
Romy
was there, smiling.
“A two-
fer
!
Come in, Betsy.
So good of you to come.”

 
          
“No
problem. It’s easier for me to come to Zero than him to come to me.”

 
          
“And
you cut your hair. I love it!”

 
          
Patrick
stepped inside and closed the door behind him, remembering Zero’s hurried phone
conversation with Dr. Cannon last night. She was on staff at
Nassau
County
Community
Hospital
and, following her instructions to Zero,
Patrick and
Romy
had driven David Palmer out to the
hospital and left him in the parking lot for her to “find.”

 
          
Now,
as the three of them trooped toward the rear of the garage,
Kek
suddenly came bounding down the ladder from his domain in the loft and charged
them. Patrick tensed, waiting for Zero or
Romy
to
call him off, but they said nothing. Then Betsy Cannon opened her arms and
embraced the beast.

 
          
“How
is my friend
Kek
doing?” she said.

 
          
Kek
signed something to her and Betsy laughed. They had a
brief conversation—Betsy speaking,
Kek
signing,
then
Kek
scrambled back up the
ladder to his observation post.

 
          
“You
nursed him back to health, I’m told,” Patrick said as
Kek
vanished into the ceiling.

 
          
“Not
really. Zero did most of the nursing. I tried to save his frostbitten fingers
but was only eighty-percent successful. As an OB-GYN I have surgical training,
but—”

 
          
“
OB
?”
Patrick
glanced past her at Zero who nodded. “Then if we find this pregnant
sim
—?”

 
          
“You’ll
bring her to me, of course. I’ve lots of experience delivering
sims
.”

 
          
“You
have?”

 
          
“Certainly.
I spent six years as medical director of
SimGen’s
natal center. When it finally seeped through to me
that I was delivering a race of slaves into the world, I quit. And not long
after that I received a call from Zero.”

 
          
The
idea of birthing
sims
thrust
Alice Fredericks’s crazy, tortured face into Patrick’s mind. “Let me pop you a
question out of far left field: Do you know if
SimGen
ever used human women to bear
sims
?”

 
          
“What?”
Romy
said. “That’s not out of left field, that’s from
the bleachers!”

 
          
“Not
while I was there, I assure you,” Betsy said. “Why do you ask?”

 
          
Patrick
told them about Alice Fredericks and her story.

 
          
“She
certainly sounds delusional,” Betsy said.

 
          
“I’m
ready to believe that
SimGen’s
connected to almost
anything bad,” Zero said, “but I draw the line at space aliens. Let’s get back
to reality, shall we?” He turned to Betsy Cannon. “Any idea yet as to what’s
wrong with the patient we sent you last night?”

 
          
“The
more we learn about his condition,” she said, shaking her head, “the more
mysterious it becomes. He has a form of aphasia that’s both expressive and
receptive.”

 
          
“Sorry?”
Patrick said.

 
          
“He
can’t understand what’s said to him, or even written out for him, and can only
jabber word salad when he wants to speak.”

 
          
Patrick
shivered inside. “Sounds like an inner circle of lawyer hell.”

 
          
“Syndromes
like it can occur with strokes or sometimes with tumors that affect the
Broca
speech area of the brain, but an MR scan showed a
perfectly normal brain. We shipped him out to
NYU
Medical
Center
this morning where they did a PET
scan—that’s positron emission tomography. It gives us a functional as opposed
to structural view of the brain, and Mr. Palmer’s
Broca
area has been damaged.”

 
          
“Damaged
how?”
Romy
said.

 
          
Betsy
shrugged. “Neurology is not my field but I’ve been asking a lot of questions
under the guise of being interested because I found him in the parking lot. The
experts’ best guess is a toxin.”

 
          
“
Totuus
?”
Romy
said. “You mean I did that to him?”

 
          
“No.
Totuus
was found in his system, but the NYU
neurologists believe he had another compound in his bloodstream that combined
with the
Totuus
to form a neurotoxin specific to the
Broca
area.”

 
          
“Pretty
damn sophisticated,” Zero said.

 
          
Betsy
nodded.
“Amazingly sophisticated, according to the experts.
All just theory, of course, one they have no way of testing at the moment, but
it goes a long way toward explaining his syndrome.”

 
          
“And
it fits with his behavior last night,”
Romy
said.
“Remember how he broke down and cried when he found out we’d injected him with
the
Totuus
? He must have known he had the other
compound floating through his bloodstream, and knew what was coming.”

 
          
Zero
said, “A failsafe to prevent anyone from using Palmer’s own
Totuus
against him.”

 
          
“Is
it permanent?”
Romy
asked.

 
          
Betsy
shrugged. “Who can say? No one I’ve spoken to has ever dealt with anything like
this.”

 
          
“My
guess is
it’s
temporary,” Zero said. “I can’t see anyone
willingly taking something that could cause irreversible brain damage. But
temporary can be a long time.”

 
          
“Talk
about covering your tracks,”
Romy
said, shaking her
head. “How are we ever going to nail these monsters?”

 
          
Betsy
smiled and tightened her scarf around her neck.
“That I will
leave to you.
As for me, as long as I’m in the city I believe I’ll do
some Christmas shopping. Good luck. And you know I’m available anytime day or
night if you find that pregnant
sim
.”

 
          
Patrick
showed her out,
then
returned to where Zero and
Romy
were standing.

 
          
“I’ve
been thinking,” he said. “What if it wasn’t just the mixture of the two drugs
in his bloodstream? What if saying a vital word was what triggered the—what was
it?”

 
          
“Aphasia,”
Zero said, then shook his head. “That sounds even more farfetched.”

 
          
“Maybe.
But what was he saying at the very instant something
tripped the circuit breaker in his brain?”

 
          
“I
don’t remember,”
Romy
said, “but it’s easy enough to
find out.”

 
          
She
went to a shelf on the wall and retrieved the recorder. She reversed it for a
second, then hit
PLAY .
Romy’s
voice burst from the tiny speaker.

 
          
“—op stalling!
Tell me now: Who do you work for?” was
followed by Parker’s hoarse rasp: “SIRG—” and then strangled noises and cries
of alarm.

 
          
Romy
switched off the player. She looked pale. “Want to
hear it again?”

 
          
“That’s
okay. You heard the word: ‘Surge,’ right?”