He feels her hand in his. He wills his fingers to move, and they do, they close on hers. She bursts into sobs.
He wants to tell her how he’s loved her. And how, thinking he was a sim, he could have been satisfied to go on loving her from afar. But he doesn’t know how he could bear seeing her and being with her, and ever dreaming about what, but for the violation of a few genes, might have been.
It’s better this way.
The opening in the glittering cloud encircling Romy’s face begins to narrow, brightening as she seems to recede.
A sob builds in what’s left of his chest. Not yet. Let me look at her a little longer.
But the cloud brightens further as the iris closes. And then she’s gone and only the swirling light remains. And Zero wonders if there’s a heaven. For Romy’s sake he hopes so, because he knows that’s where she’ll go when her time is up.
But what about him? Did he retain enough of that transcendent spark to allow him to pass on into another life? Will he be welcomed? Or rejected as unfit?
He never fit anywhere during his earthly life. Just once in his existence he’d like to feel he fits somewhere.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful.
And now the light suffuses him and he’s floating…
Dazed, Patrick dropped to his knees beside Romy where she cradled Zero’s head on her lap. She was bent over his face, weeping. The sound tore at his heart. One look at Zero’s glazed eyes and Patrick knew he was gone. But maybe Romy hadn’t realized that yet. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
“I called the security office, the county sheriff, the state police. Cops and ambulances are on the way.”
“Too late!” she sobbed. “He’s gone!”
“I know,” he said softly. He reached past her arm and closed Zero’s eyes.
She leaned over further and kissed his forehead. “I loved him, Patrick.”
“And he loved you. You should have heard how he talked about you. And it wasn’t just talk. He loved you enough to die for you.”
“I want him back.”
“I know…I know…” Heputa hand on her shoulder. “I do too.”
“Can I…?” she said without looking up. “Do you mind if I just stay here with him alone until…until they come?”
“Sure. Of course.” Patrick was stung, but he understood.
He rose and became aware of a wet slapping sound. He saw Kek kneeling on Portero’s chest. He gripped the man’s ears as he repeatedly smashed the back of his head against the floor. That head, wobbly on an obviously broken neck, was bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth; the gray carpet was red under his skull.
“He’s dead, Kek,” Patrick said. “You can’t kill him any more.”
Kek looked up with tears in his eyes, then, without missing a beat, went back to his work.
Suddenly Patrick remembered Tome. He whirled and found the old sim squatting on the carpet a few feet away, his face buried in the arms folded atop his knees.
“Tome? Are you hurt?”
The sim looked up with tear-filled eyes. “Ver sad, Mist Sulliman. All Tome’s fault.”
“No way, Tome,” he said, feeling a surge of anger. “Weknow whose fault this is, and it’s not yours.”
With that Patrick turned toward the CEO’s desk and saw Ellis rise from behind it. He shot him a question with his eyes, and Ellis shook his head. His expression was grim and sad, but no tears.
Three men dead in less than half a minute. Yes, men. From this day on Patrick swore to remember Zero as a man. Although, considering the two others who’d joined him in death, that might not be a compliment.
As sirens began to wail outside, he wanted to ask Ellis Sinclair where they went from here, but the rhythmic smacking of Portero’s head against the wet carpet was turning his stomach.
“Kek! Stop! Please!” But the mandrilla ignored him. “Can’t somebody stop him?”
“Let him be,” Romy said in a flat tone without looking up. “Let him take as long as he wants.”
Epilogue
“I still can’t believe it,” Abel Voss said.
“Neither can I,” Ellis replied.
The two of them sat in Mercer’s old office. Less than a week now since death had filled this space. Ellis had ordered the carpets cleaned, but the removal of the bloodstains had been only partially successful. He’d expected that, and had declined to order new carpet. Just as he’d declined to repair the cracked picture window. He didn’t want to help anyone, especially himself, forget what had happened here.
He’d attended funerals of two brothers since that day. At Mercer’s he was part of a huge throng of mourners, none of whom shed a tear. At Zero’s he stood among a few select members of the organization—Dr. Cannon and Reverend Eckert among them—all weeping openly. He’d been a central figure at the first; he’d had to invite himself to the second, his presence tolerated only because he claimed a blood relationship.
“Then again,” Voss said, “when you think about it, who else was he gonna leave it to?”
Mercer’s personal attorney had read his will this morning. He’d left all his stock to Ellis, who was still in shock.
“It was an old will,” Ellis said. “If he’d had the slightest inkling he was going to die, I’m sure he would have changed it. But Merce thought he’d go on forever. Or damn near.”
“So now that you’re the absolute head honcho, what’s your first step?”
“I’ve already taken it,” Ellis said, rising and moving to the window. “I’m shutting down the natal centers. No new sim embryos implanted, all unborns aborted.”
Killing unborn sims…the idea sickened him. But it had to stop now.
Voss grunted. “That leaves us a company without a product. But I guess you’re just stayin ahead of the curve, seein as how the government will pretty soon be gettin around to forcin us to do just that.”
How true. News networks around the world had picked up the film of Meerm’s delivery; repeated broadcasts had raised a firestorm of protest: if sims and humans can interbreed, then sims should be members of the human genus.
If they only knew.
But they never would. Romy and Patrick had struck a deaclass="underline" they would never reveal what they knew if Ellis never revealed that Romy would be raising Meerm’s baby, who she’d named Una. She wanted the child—mother a sim, father a pervert—to grow up out of the limelight without ever knowing her origins.
Fair enough. Una and her mother had already done enough to further the sim cause. Ellis would do the rest.
“Okay,” Voss said. “So no new sims. What about all the others out there already?”
“I’m going to start recalling them. I want you to get the ball rolling on building dorms for them on our Arizona land. I want them built as fast as possible. As soon as a block is ready for habitation, I’ll cancel enough leases to fill it. That’s the way we’ll do it: a rolling recall until every living sim is out of the workforce and assured of freedom and comfort for the rest of their lives.”
Voss swallowed. “At least they don’t live too long, but even so, you’re gonna bankrupt the company, son!”
“Most likely.” He looked out at the gleaming buildings of the main campus, and the rolling hills beyond. “But we’ve got lots of hard assets. We’ll sell them all.”
And when that’s not enough, he thought, I’ll use my own funds, every last penny if necessary.
Ellis Sinclair figured he was long overdue to become his brothers’ keeper.