SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

Ellis Sinclair sat in his office in the basic research complex and searched for calm while he waited for Harry to bring in the sim. He toyed idly with the ExecSec plant on his desktop, brushing his pen against the leaves and watching its tendrils whip around the shaft and hold it in place. Then he'd tug on the pen and the tendrils would release it. Back and forth, give and take, noting with pleasure how the plant rotated use of its tendrils to avoid fatigue.

He sighed and let the plant keep the pen as he leaned back in his chair. The ExecSec had been a modest success back in the days before SinclairGen became SimGen. He wished they'd stuck to harmless little gimmicky products like this instead of going for the killer app. They wouldn't be fractionally as wealthy, but how much money can you spend?

And there'd be no sims wandering the earth.

He rubbed his cold palms together. The artificial sunlight streaming through the frosted panes at his back did nothing to warm him. More and more lately he craved a real window. Just one. But that was out of the question. Basic research's windowless design was his own doing, for he knew as well as anyone that a window to the outside was also a portal in. So he had allowed not a pinhole through the walls of this lead-lined box of steel-reinforced concrete.

To keep the place from looking too much like the Berlin Wall, mirror-glass panes had been set into the exterior to simulate windows and, perhaps, to tempt industrial and media spies to bounce the beams of their snoop lasers off the glass in vain attempts to hear what was being said on the other side.

Ellis could not allow anyone to know the reasons behind what he was doing here. Not even his assistants knew. Only Mercer. And then there was the sealed section, with its separate staff who were ferried in and ferried out with no one ever seeing them. If the truth about either ever leaked...

He shuddered.

He heard the door open and looked up to see Harry step through, followed by a handler leading a young male sim by the hand. He'd asked Harry to bring in the highest scoring sim from the latest batch of the special breed.

"Here he is," Harry said. "F27-63 - at your service. We call him Seymour." He turned to the handler. "I'll take him now." The handler stepped out.

Harry Carstairs, chief of sim education, had trained more of the creatures than anyone else presently with the company; a big man, six-four at least, and probably weighing in at an eighth of a ton. He towered over the sim.

Ellis glanced down at his desktop memo screen. F27-63 - yes, that was Seymour's serial number. He had longer arms and looser lips than the average commercial sim. Smaller too.

"All right," he said. "Let's see what he can do."

"Sit in the red chair, Seymour," Harry said gently. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, staring straight ahead as he spoke, allowing the sim no hints or cues from his body language.

The sim looked around, spotted the dark red leather chair against the wall, and loped over to seat himself.

"Good. Now turn on the lamp on the opposite side of the room."

The sim rose, crossed in front of Ellis's desk, and stopped before the lamp. He looked under the shade, found the switch, and turned it on.

"Very good," Harry said. "Now - "

"I'm satisfied with his comprehension," Ellis said. Comprehension had never been the problem; he was anxious to cut to the chase. "What about his speech?"

"It's getting there."

"Gettingthere?"

"He's a great signer."

"I'm sure he is."

Sims started ASL lessons in infancy because signing stimulated development of the speech cortex; this helped enormously with vocalization later on.

"Want to see him sign?"

"No," Ellis said, balling a fist in frustration. "I want to hear him speak." He turned to the sim. "What is your name?"

The creature looked at Harry who nodded encouragement.

The sim's thick pink tongue protruded between his yellow teeth as he said, "Thee..." in a low-pitched voice.

Ellis was about to say that "Thee" wasn't a name when the sim continued, laboriously pronouncing, "Mmmm...mmmm..." And then he seemed to run out of gas.

He glanced uncertainly at Harry who smiled and nodded. "You're doing good. Go on."

"Mmmm...," said Seymour, picking up where he'd left off. But he seemed stuck on the sound.

Ellis held up a hand. "All right. He can't say his name. Whatcan he say?"

Harry turned to the sim. "Did you have breakfast?"

The sim nodded. "Eth."

"Are you hungry now?"

A head shake. "Oh."

Ellis waited but gathered from the look on Harry's face that the show was over.

"That's it? He's your best and his entire vocabulary consists of two incomplete words and half his name?"

Ellis tried to keep the anger from his voice - none of this was Harry's fault - but still he heard it slip through. Because damn it, hewas angry. When was he going to see some results? The sim sensed his emotion and shrank back a step.

Harry rested a reassuring hand on the creature's shoulder. "Seymour's doing the best that he can."

Ellis wanted to beat his fists on his desk and scream,It's not enough! Notnearly enough! Instead he sighed and leaned back in his swivel chair.

"You don't work them hard enough." Maybe Harry had been around sims too long. An inherently gentle man, maybe he was identifying with them too much, cutting them too much slack. And maybe Harry was thinking about another sim, a special long-ago sim who was gone. "You're too easy on them."

"What do you want me to do?" Harry said, his face darkening. "Whip them?"

"No, of course not." What an awful thought.

"Not Seymour's fault if his hyoid's not up to par with the main breed's."

The hyoid - always the damn hyoid. The little arch of bone that supported the tongue and its muscles was crucial to human speech. Ellis's new lines all lacked a fully developed hyoid bone.

That wasn't the only thing not up to par. "Ever hear of evolutionary synergy, Harry?"

The big man's brow furrowed. "I don't recall..."

"You wouldn't have. It's a new theory I've developed as a result of my recent work. It's the subtle, as yet unquantifiable cooperation between genes that have evolved together. It's so subtle that I can't prove it, but I know it's there, I know it's true."

"What's that got to do with Seymour?" Harry said.

"Everything."

"I don't understand."

"I know."

He saw Harry glance at the plastic pill organizer on his desk - three compartments labeledAM ,AFT, andPM . Ellis always left it in plain sight, to maintain his image as a heavily medicated eccentric. But the pills were for show. He'd been off medication for quite some time now.

Harry led the sim to the door, signaled for the handler, then closed it after them.

"Mr. Sinclair," he said, approaching the desk. "I work your new breeds harder than the main breed, and  - "

"I know you do, Harry." Ellis stared at his hands, bunched into fists. "It's just that it's so damn frustrating."

"Youthink it's frustrating? How about for me and my staff? We slave with these new breeds day after day and get nowhere. And we keep asking ourselveswhy ...why does the company keep developing breeds that are inferior to the one we already have?"

Not the company, Ellis thought. Me. Just me.

"I can't go into that, Harry."

"Then can you tell me what's wrong with the main breed that you want to correct?"

Everything!Ellis wanted to shout.Every fucking thing!

"I'm afraid I can't go into that either."

"It has something to do with the sealed section then." A statement.

The sealed section...only a handful of employees in the basic research building knew it existed, and even they didn't know that most of it was underground. No access through the main areas; the only entry and exit was through an enclosed loading dock on the northwest corner of the building. Sealed staff never mixed with other employees; they ate and slept where they worked, leaving only on weekends in enclosed trucks.

This he could answer truthfully. "No, Harry. It does not."

Harry stood silent a moment. "Then what? I would think that I've proven myself loyal enough by now to be entrusted - "

"Please, Harry," Ellis said, holding up a hand. "It's not a question of trust. It's a matter of..." Of what? What could he say? "A matter of deciding which way the company should go in the future. We haven't agreed - haven't decided on which way that will be. But when we do, I assure you, you'll be the first to know." Ellis noted that this seemed to salve Harry's wounded pride.

"But until then," he added, "bear with the frustration. I promise you, it will be well worth it in the end."

IfI succeed.

Harry's smile was lopsided. "I'll trust you on that."

Harry left and Ellis was alone with the chrome-framed faces of his children staring at him across the desktop. Robbie and Julie...God, he missed them. Somewhere along the course of his consuming monomania he'd forgotten about them. He didn't know exactly when he'd metamorphosed from husband and father to something other, something distant...obsessed...a shadow...a ghost drifting through their lives, through his own life as well.

But Judy and the kids hadn't been able to live with what he'd become, and so he'd lost them.

He wasn't bitter though. Just lonely. Didn't blame Judy. He'd deserved to lose them. But he was working toward getting them back - earningthem back.

And when he deserved to have them call him father again, he knew he'd win them back.

But not until he'd fixed SimGen.