Sims (31 page)

But wait . . . he remembered one sim, a caddie . . .

“Where's Deek?” he said.

Carter glanced around. “I don't see him. Might be sitting outside. The other survivors seemed to have bounced back, but not Tome.”

That's because he was the patriarch, Patrick thought.

He proceeded into the rear area and looked around. The dorm area was
dimly lit; his gaze wandered up and down the rows of bunk beds, searching for one that was occupied.

“Left rear corner,” Carter said. “Lower bunk.”

Patrick started forward, puzzled. He'd already looked at that bunk and had thought it was empty. But now he could see a shape under the covers, barely raising them, curled and facing the wall.

“Tome?” he said.

The shape turned and Patrick recognized Tome's face as it broke into a wide smile.

“Mist Sulliman?” The old sim slipped from under the covers and rose to his feet beside his bed. “So good to see.”

Patrick's throat constricted at the sight of Tome's stooped, emaciated form. Wasn't he eating at all?

“Good to see you too, Tome.”

He held out his hand and, after a second's hesitation, Tome reached his own forward.

“You come see Mist Carter?” Tome said as they shook hands.

“No, Tome. I came by to see you.” Patrick saw something in Tome's eyes when he said that, something beyond gratitude. “But Mister Carter tells me you're not doing well. He says you spend all your free time in bed. Are you sick, Tome? Is there anything I can do?”

“Not sick, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Tome sad. See dead sim ever time walk through eat room. Can't stay. Tired all time.”

Patrick nodded, understanding. Tome had to go on living in the building where the sims he'd considered his family were murdered, had to eat in the room where they died. No wonder he was wasting away.

Then Patrick had an idea, one he knew would cause complications in his life. But the sense of having failed Tome and his makeshift family had been dogging Patrick since that terrible and ugly night, and helping him now wasn't something he merely wanted to do, it was something he needed to do.

“You know what you need?” Patrick said. “You need a change of scenery. Wait here.”

He went back to Carter, pulled him into a corner and, after a ten-minute negotiation, the deal was set.

“All right, Tome,” he said, returning to the bunk. “Pack up your stuff. You're going on a vacation.”

Tome's brow furrowed. “Vay-kaysh . . .”

Poor old guy didn't even know what the word meant. Patrick decided
not to try to explain because this wasn't going to be a real vacation anyway. Simply removing Tome from the barracks might be enough, but Patrick thought the old sim would want to feel useful.

“You're going to stay with me for a while. I've got a brand new office and I need a helper.”

Tome straightened, his eyes brighter already. “Tome work for Mist Sulliman? But club own—”

“That's all taken care of.”

Patrick had convinced Carter to allow him to take over Tome's lease payments for a month or so. As club president, Carter had the authority, and the board couldn't squawk too much because it wasn't costing the club a penny. The lease payments wouldn't be cheap but Patrick had all that money left in the Sim Defense Fund and figured it wouldn't be a misappropriation to use some of it to help a sim.

As for keeping Tome busy, the old sim had taught himself to read so it shouldn't be a big stretch for him to learn to file.

“Unless of course,” Patrick said, “you'd rather stay here.”

“No, no,” Tome said, waddling over to a locker. “Tome come.”

As Patrick watched him stuff his worldly belongings into a black plastic trash bag, he wondered at his own impulsiveness. He'd been planning to convert the second of the two bedrooms in his newfound apartment into a study, but he guessed that could wait. Let Tome have it for a month or so. Who knew how much of his abbreviated lifespan the old sim had left?

Not as if it's going to interfere with my love life, Patrick thought, thinking of the persistently elusive Romy.

“Tome ready, Mist Sulliman,” the sim said, standing before him with straightened spine and thin shoulders thrown back.

“Let's go then,” Patrick said, smiling at himself as much as at Tome. He felt like Cary Grant teaching Gunga Din to drill. Not a bad feeling; not bad at all. “Time to see the world, Mr. Tome.”

NEWARK, NJ

“Hey, you sim.”

Finger poke Meerm. Open eyes and see sim look in face.

“You new sim? You no work. Why you ride?”

“Cold. Hurt. Sick.”

“Beece tell drive man.”

“No!” Meerm sit up. Look out window. Bus on bridge cross water. Whisper, “No tell mans! Mans hurt Meerm!”

“Mans not hurt.”

“Yes-yes! Mans hurt Meerm. Make Meerm sick. Please-please-please no tell mans!”

Other sim look round, say, “Okay. No tell mans.” Sit next Meerm. “I Beece.”

“I Meerm.” Look window. “Where go?”

“Call Newark. Sim home there.”

Ride and ride, then bus stop by big building. Meerm follow Beece and other sim out. Up stair to room of many bed, like room of many bed in burned home.

Meerm say, “Mans hurt here?”

“Mans no hurt. Mans feed. Sim sleep. Sim work morning.”

Beece show Meerm empty bed. All other sim go eat. Meerm hide. Beece and other sim bring food. Meerm eat. Not yum-yum food like old burned home but not garbage food.

Meerm sleep on empty bed. Warm. Fed. If only sick pain stop, Meerm be happy sim.

MANHATTAN
DECEMBER 13

Patrick paced his new office space, waiting for Romy. He'd asked her to show up early for their meeting with the Manassas Ventures attorneys. The prime reason was to offer her some coaching on how to respond to them. The second was to spring a little surprise.

He stopped next to an oblong table in the space that did double duty as his personal office and conference room, and looked around. The offices of Patrick Sullivan, Esq., occupied the fourth floor of an ancient, five-story Lower East Side building; gray carpet, just this side of industrial grade, white walls and ceiling—the latter still sporting its original hammered tin which he'd decided he liked. His degrees and sundry official documents peppered the walls between indifferent prints he'd picked up from the Metropolitan Museum store. And of course he had his books and journals scattered on shelves and in bookcases wherever there was room.

He heard the hall door open. Romy. He called out, “Back here!” but the woman who came through the door was not Romy.

“Mr. Sullivan?”

An older woman in an ancient tan raincoat, frayed at the sleeves and at least three sizes too big for her.

He recognized her: the space-alien-abducted-and-impregnated lady whose sim child had been stolen and given to Mercer Sinclair. He remembered everything about her except her name.

“Alice Fredericks,” she said. “Remember?”

“Yes, of course. How are you, Miss Fredericks?”

“I could be better. I still haven't found a lawyer yet.”

“To sue SimGen about the space aliens?”

“Yes. And for taking my sim child. I looked you up and learned you'd
opened a new office, so I came straight here. Will you take my case now, Mister Sullivan?”

How to let this poor lady down easy?

He gave her an apologetic shrug. “I'm afraid my schedule's rather full now.” He glanced at his watch. “And I'm expecting a client for an important conference in just a few minutes and—”

“Oh, I'm so sorry. I should have made an appointment.”

“That's okay.” He pushed a legal pad and a pen across the table to her. “But I'll tell you what. Leave me your number and I'll call you when my schedule opens up.”

“Then you're not afraid?” she said, scribbling on the sheet.

“Of SimGen? Never.”

“I meant the space aliens. You're not afraid of the space aliens?”

“Never met one I couldn't take with one hand.”

“Thank you,” she said, puddling up again. “You don't know what this means to me.”

“I'm sure I don't.”

“That's the number of the phone in the hall outside my room. Just ask for me and someone will get me.”

Patrick nodded. He felt a little bad, giving her the brush like this, but it was the gentlest way he knew to get her out of his office.

Romy entered as Alice was leaving.

“Who was that?”

“A poor soul with a crazy story about SimGen.” Patrick shook his head. “If she's representative of my future clientele, I'm in big trouble. But never mind her.” He spread his arms. “What do you think of my new office?”

“Not bad,” she said, looking around as she seated herself at the mini conference table.

She was being generous, he knew. “I know what you're thinking, and I agree: I need a decorator.”

“Not really.” She smiled faintly as she gazed up at the patterned ceiling. “I kind of like the anti-establishment air of the place.”

“So do I. Gives me a feeling of kinship with the likes of Darrow and Kuntsler.”

She smiled. “Darrow, Kuntsler and Sullivan. What a firm.”

“Better than my old firm, Nasty, Brutish and Short.”

He studied her across the table as she smiled. She looked good. The wicked shiners she'd developed after the Great Injury had faded from deep
plum to sickly custard yellow. The sutures were gone from her scalp; she'd been able to hide the angry red seam by combing her short dark hair over it, but today she'd left it exposed for all the world to see.

“Want some coffee?” he said.

She shook her head. “I'm tense enough, thank you.”

“How about decaf? I can have my legal assistant perk up a pot in no time.”

“Assistant? I didn't know you'd hired anyone.”

“You don't expect a high-powered attorney like me to stoop to filing my own papers, do you?” Patrick turned toward the file room and called out, “Assistant! Oh, assistant! Can you come here a minute?”

Tome, who'd been waiting quietly and patiently behind the door as instructed, said, “Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

Romy's eyes fairly bulged. “That sounds like—”

And then Tome, ever so dapper in his new white shirt, clip-on tie, and baggy blue suit, stepped into the room.

“It is!” she cried. She leaped to her feet and crossed the room in three long-legged strides. She threw her arms around Tome and hugged him as she looked at Patrick with wonder-filled eyes. “But how? You couldn't . . . you didn't . . .”

“Kidnap him? Not quite.”

She kept her arms around the old sim as Patrick explained Tome's posttraumatic depression and the arrangement with Beacon Ridge. Because she was taller than Tome, Romy's bear hug pressed his head between her breasts.

Hey, that's where I should be, Patrick thought as Tome grinned at him.

Nothing salacious or suggestive in that smile, just pure happiness. Being away from the barracks had worked wonders on the old sim. Within two days he was up and about, eating with gusto. And once Patrick had taught him the rudiments of filing, Tome took to the task with religious zeal.

Romy barraged Tome with questions about how he was feeling and what he'd been doing since the tragedy. Patrick had things he needed to discuss with Romy so he gave them a little time to catch up, then interrupted.

“Tome, would you mind doing some more filing before our guests arrive?”

“Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

After Tome disappeared into the file room, Romy turned to him. “Does he bunk here?”

“No. We're roomies.”

“Roomies?” She gave her head a slow shake. “Am I hearing and seeing things? I've heard hallucinations can be an aftereffect of head trauma.”

“It's not so bad.” The apartment he rented in an upgraded tenement not far from here was plenty of room for the two of them. “He keeps pretty much to himself. I got him one of those compact TV-DVD combinations for his bedroom and he spends most of his time there.”

Her eyes were bright as she stared at him. “What a wonderful, wonderful thing to do.”

“He's a riot,” Patrick said, grinning. “I bought him that suit and he's absolutely in love with it. I had to go out and buy an iron and a board because he insists on ironing it every night.” She was still staring at him. “Hey, no biggie. I figure it's only for a month or so, till he gets back on his feet.”

“Still, I never would have imagined . . .”

“I'm told I'm full of surprises.” He pulled a packet of folded sheets from an inside pocket of his jacket and slid them across the table to Romy. “But I'm not the only one.”

“What's this?”

“A report from the Medical Examiner's office on the three floaters from the Hudson.”

“The globulin farmers? How'd you get it?”

“It arrived by messenger this morning, no return address, but I can guess.”

Romy nodded. “So can I.” They'd decided not to mention Zero if there was any chance of a bug nearby. “He has contacts everywhere.”

“I can save you the trouble of reading it,” Patrick said as she unfolded the pages. “Remember how the bodies showed signs of torture? Well, toxin analysis revealed traces of a synthetic alkaloid in the tissues of all three. I won't try to tell you the chemical name—it's in there and it's a mile long—but the report says it's known in the intelligence community as
Totuus
; developed in Finland as a sort of ‘truth' drug, and supposedly very effective.”

“Totuus,” Romy said, her face a shade paler. “I wonder if that's what they planned to use on me.”

“When?”

“When they drove us off the road. Remember I said one of them had a syringe and said something about ‘dosing' me up and getting a recorder ready?”