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 post-traumatic 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 asTotuus ; 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?”
“Right.” The memory twisted his insides. “You think there’s a connection between the SLA and—?”
“I guess not. But listen to this: The report says the Totuus was administeredbefore they were tortured.”
“I don’t get it,” Romy said. “Why use torture when you’ve got a truth drug?”
Patrick wandered to the window overlooking Henry Street and watched the traffic. The same question had been bothering him.
“Maybe for fun. I don’t know what’s driving these SLA characters, but it’s pretty clear now they’re a vicious bunch.”
“And if they want to ‘free the sims’ as they say, where are the ones they ‘liberated’?”
“I was wondering the same thing. If they—”
A black Mercedes limo stopped and double parked on the street below. In this neighborhood that could mean only one thing.
“They’re here,” he said. “Fashionably early.”
He watched as two dark-suited, briefcase-toting figures emerged, one male, one female; he noticed the woman lean back into the car and speak to someone still in the back seat.