F Paul Wilson - Sims 04 (8 page)

 
          
Zero
shrugged. “I doubt he was talking about a fabric or an electric current. I
believe he got out the first syllable of the answer—‘s-u-r’
or
‘s
-e-r’ or ‘c-e-r’ or maybe even ‘c-
i
-r’ for
circle—and then the seizure hit and the rest of the word or words were crushed
into a guttural mess.”

 
          
“But
this was in direct response to ‘Who do you work for?’ so it’s got to have some
relevance, don’t you think? I mean, at least it’s a start. Question
is,
how to find out if it means anything?”

 
          
“Why
don’t we simply ask?”
Romy
said.

 
          
“Oh, sure.
I’ll just call up Mercer Sinclair and say, ‘What
does the word “surge” mean to you?’ That’ll work.”

 
          
A
smile played about
Romy’s
lips, the first since last
night. “Why call when you can ask in person?”

 
          
NEWARK
,
NJ

 
          
Meerm
feel
ver
bad today.
So fat belly.
Legs
swoll
.
Hard move.
Many move inside, like thing kicking.
Kick-kick-kick.
And
dizz
.
Ver
dizz
.

 
          
Oop
.
Meerm
trip, fall against bunk. Make noise.
Loud.
Must hide.
Benny
come
.

 
          
Climb
top closet. So hard climb. More hard squeeze into hole. But
Meerm
push hard. Push back board and wait in dark. Soon Benny
come
.
Talk self. Always talk self.

 
          
“Who’s
up here? Goddamn it, I heard you.
I been
hearing you
all week! Now come out!”

 
          
Benny
come closet. Pull door.
Meerm
not breathe. Hear Benny
voice through wall.
Shout-shout-shout.

 
          
“Where
are you,
dammit
!
You
gotta
be somewhere! Or maybe
I
just gone
loco! No! I know what I heard,
dammit
!”

 
          
Benny
leave closet.
Many loud noise in room—dresser move, bunk
move, door slam-slam-slam.
Then noise stop.

 
          
“All
right so maybe I am hearing things. Next I’ll be seeing things. That’s it. I’m losing
it.
I been
babysitting these monkeys so long I’m going
bugfuck
nuts! But I
coulda
sworn…”

 
          
Benny
go way but
Meerm
stay.
Too tired.
Too scare to move. And hurt. Kick and hurt all time.
Poor
Meerm
.
When hurt stop?

 
          
MANHATTAN

 
          
DECEMBER
19

 
          
Romy
was late for the meeting.
On
purpose.

 
          
For
the past few years she’d made a point of keeping a few shares of
SimGen
stock in her 401(k) for the sole purpose of being
invited to shareholders’ meetings. She’d been to a number of these and knew how
they went—blather and hype from beginning to end. The only interesting part was
the finale when Mercer Sinclair took questions from the audience.

 
          
By
the time she reached the upper floors of the Waldorf Astoria she already knew
from the ecstatic talk in the lobby that
SimGen
—or “
simgee
,” as the stockholders liked to call it,
phoneticizing
its SIMG stock symbol—had come in with
earnings of $1.37 per share, beating not only the analysts’ predictions of
$1.26, but the whisper number of $1.31 as well.

 
          
She
walked into the magnificent four-story Art Deco grand ballroom just in time to
fill out an index card with her question for the CEO. Instead of passing her
card down to the center aisle, she walked it to the rear of the ballroom and
personally handed it to the elderly gent who would be reading them.

 
          
“I’d
really like to know the answer to this,” she whispered, laying a hand on his
arm and flashing her warmest smile.

 
          
He
looked at her over the top of his reading glasses and smiled. “I’ll see what I
can do, miss.”

 
          
Then
she found an empty seat along the side and waited. Mercer Sinclair,
dark-haired, dark-eyed, and impeccable in a charcoal gray silk Armani suit,
stood behind a podium on the dais and breezed through the usual run of inane
questions from the audience about future earnings projections and new product
outlooks—all of which were explained in detail in the annual report—and deftly
fielded inquiries about the Reverend Eckert’s assertions that the lost
sim
was pregnant, laughing them off as a crude and
transparent ratings ploy.

 
          
And
then the reader-man got to
Romy’s
question.

 
          
“Mr.
Sinclair, a stockholder wants to know, ‘How big a part does surge play in your
day-to-day operations?’”

 
          
Romy
leaned forward, studying Mercer Sinclair’s face as it
floated in the glow from the podium. She saw him stiffen as if touched by a
cattle prod, watched his eyes widen,
then
narrow. Even
if she were blind she’d have detected his shock from his stammering reply.

 
          
“
Wh
-
what?
I-I don’t understand the question. What does it mean? Could the person who
asked it please identify himself and clarify the question?”

 
          
Romy
didn’t move.

 
          
“Please,”
Sinclair said. “I…I’m quite willing to answer any question, but I have to
understand it first. Who asked it? If you’ll be kind enough to clarify…”

 
          
Romy
sat and watched him stumble and fumble, peering into
the great dark lake of faces before him.

 
          
Finally
he fluttered a hand at the reader and said, “Very well…I guess he left…next
question.”

 
          
He
went on responding but
Romy
could tell his heart was
no longer in it. His answers were terse, his manner distracted, as if he
couldn’t wait to be done with this.

 
          
Before
the lights came up,
Romy
wandered back to where the
elderly question reader was winding up the Q and A session, and grabbed the
discard pile of cards he’d already read. No sense in leaving any unnecessary
traces behind.

 
          
She
had a bad moment when two men in suits followed her into the elevator down to
the lobby, but they spent the ride talking about hockey and got off on the
twenty-second floor. She used a side exit and stepped out onto East
Forty-ninth. She waited to see if anyone followed, then hurried downhill to
sunny
Lexington
Avenue
where Patrick waited. His face was too well known to
SimGen
stockholders to risk his presence at the meeting,
but he hadn’t been able to stay completely away.

 
          
“Well?”
he said as he took her arm and began walking her uptown. The cold snap had
broken and the day was clear and mild. “Did he react?”

 
          
“Did
he ever,”
Romy
said. “He just about lost it. Looked
as if he’d just been stripped naked and hosed with ice water.”

 
          
Patrick
grinned and jabbed the air with a fist.
“Knew it!”

 
          
She
had to hand it to Patrick. He had an acute ear for nuances and he’d heard
something in that one syllable from David Palmer. He’d been sure it was
significant, and he’d been right.

 
          
He
threw an arm around her shoulders. “Damn, I wish I could have been there.” He
waved his free hand in the air. “But forget about that. The question now is
,
how do we capitalize on this?”

 
          
“For
one thing,”
Romy
said, “we know the word itself has
meaning. It’s not just part of another word or a phrase.”

 
          
“If
I’d known that last night I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. I went
through an online dictionary and plugged in every spelling of ‘surge’ I could
think of to see if it might be the first syllable of another word.
Got nowhere.
Didn’t do any better when I tried every
possible homonym. ‘Surge’ is not a common syllable.”

 
          
“For
which we should be thankful, I guess. Imagine if he’d said ‘con’?”

 
          
“Then
we’d be cooked. But ‘surge’ itself doesn’t appear to mean anything.”

 
          
“It
might if it’s an acronym.”

 
          
He
stopped walking as if he’d hit an invisible wall. His arm dropped from her
shoulder and she missed it.

 
          
“An acronym!
Of course! And acronyms usually mean
government.” He pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Do you know
how many
Washington
agencies, departments, sub departments, and
bureaus are designated by acronyms? It’s staggering.”

 
          
She
looked away, glancing around to see if anyone was watching them. “What makes
you so sure you’ll find it in
Washington
? You’ve already traced the chain of
subsidiaries leading to Manassas Ventures offshore. Who knows how far offshore
the chain goes? Maybe it ends in
Moscow
.
Or
Beijing
.”

 
          
“You
wouldn’t be trying to discourage me, would you?”

 
          
“Not
at all, but we’re still a long way from home.”

 
          
“At
least we’ve got the Internet.”

 
          
“Right.”
He glanced around. “I think I’ll head downtown for
a little point-and-click session on my office computer. Want to come along?”

 
          
“I’ve
got to get back to OPRR, but we can share a cab.”

 
          
He
looked into her eyes. “What almost happened the other night at your place?”

 
          
“We
almost got dosed with
Totuus
.”

 
          
“No.
I mean, what was in the cards before we opened the door and found the two
uninvited guests?”

 
          
Romy
held his gaze. She’d grown to like Patrick, even
admire him in some ways, but she didn’t love him. She enjoyed his company and,
even though she knew injecting sex into their relationship might complicate
matters, she’d wanted him that night. But that wasn’t the same as wanting him
every night.

 
          
“We’ll
never know, will
we
,” she said, giving him a warm
smile. “It was a moment, one that might come again.”

 
          
“Or might not.”
His expression soured, leaving him looking
needy.

 
          
Well,
I have needs too, she thought. Sometimes sex is front and center, but lots of
times something else pushes it down the line.

 
          
She
knew all too well how she’d let the war on
SimGen
take
over her life, but the time to press the fight was now. Every day of delay
meant another day of slavery for the
sims
.
Plenty of
time later to play catch
up.

 
          
“It’s
the Masked Marvel, isn’t it,” he said.

 
          
“Who?”

 
          
“Zero.
You’ve got a thing for him.”

 
          
“Don’t
be silly. I’ve never even seen his face.”

 
          
“That
doesn’t mean you haven’t imagined it, or that you can’t be infatuated with
him.”

 
          
She
tensed. Patrick had hit a bit too close to home. Yes, she had times when she
fantasized about Zero. His inner strength and resolve spoke to her, reaching
out through his layers of protective insulation to touch her like no one else
she had ever known. And his air of remove that proclaimed him beyond her reach
only heightened the attraction.

 
          
Fearing
her expression might give something
away,
she stepped
off the curb and waved at an approaching taxi.

 
          
“You’re
talking crazy.”