SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

DECEMBER 7

"So," Mercer Sinclair said, "the missing globulin farmers have surfaced." He'd chosen that word deliberately but his little pun went unappreciated by his audience. So he added, "Literally."

That at least elicited a smile from Abel Voss.

Mercer had invited the usual crew - Voss, Portero, and Ellis - to his office to discuss the matter. He had his agenda for the meeting posted in a corner of the computer monitor embedded in the ebony expanse of his desk while his custom news service scrolled items tailored to his topics of interest.

"Postmortem ain't back yet," Voss said, "but the M-E's on notice to copy us immediately with any and all results."

"I'm told the bodies appear to have been in the river about a week."

Voss nodded. "All three of them shackled together and weighted down. But the Hudson's gotta way of returning some of the gifts it gets. Looks like these SLA boys took 'em for a ride that very night, shot them in the head, then dumped them before sunup."

"But not before torturing them," Ellis said.

Mercer glanced at his brother. Ellis hadn't missed a meeting in months now. Maybe his latest anti- depressant cocktail was working. Mercer knew he should be glad about that but he wasn't. The closer Ellis was to catatonia, the easier he was to deal with.

"Yep, I heard that too," Voss said. "Cigarette burns, fingernails tore off." He grimaced. "Ugly stuff."

"They were globulin farmers, Abel," Mercer said, unable to keep the scorn from his tone. "Somebody improved the gene pool by removing them."

"Don't get me wrong, son. I ain't no fan of their sort. Riddin the world of their kind is all fine and good. But torture? Ain't no call to torture no one, son. No one. I think we're dealin with some real sick puppies here."

"Which segues very neatly into the reason for our meeting: the 'sick puppies' who call themselves the Sim Liberation Army. It's been a week since they raided that globulin farm and no one knows any more about them today than they did then. And where are the sims they supposedly wanted to free?" He turned to his chief of security who had yet to say a word. "Mr. Portero, if the NYPD is at a loss, surely your people have the resources to pick up the slack, don't you think?"

Portero shrugged. "We're looking into it."

"This needs more than mere looking into, Mr. Portero. We need to track them down. It's vitally important that SimGen be recognized as the true guardians and protectors of sims, not some group of murderous radicals."

Portero said, "The longer they go undetected, the lower the odds of finding them. And so far they seem to have pulled off a perfect disappearing act."

"Which means what?"

"That they're probably professionals - well-funded professionals. Which makes me wonder if they might not be connected to that lawyer Patrick Sullivan."

"Why on earth would you think that?" Ellis said.

"It's not a stretch. A quarter of a million dollars appeared out of the blue to keep his unionization case going just when it was ready to fall apart. And I saw him and the Cadman woman outside the globulin farm the morning after this SLA demolished it."

Cadman? Mercer thought. Didn't I just see that name? He'd been about to switch the topic to the annual stockholders' meeting less than two weeks away, but instead he reversed the scroll on his newsclips.

"On the contrary, Portero," Ellis said. "It'squite a stretch. People who try to use the legal system to seek a solution don't suddenly leap to murder and arson."

Portero's face remained impassive as he replied. "Perhaps Sullivan became a bit testy after his clients were put down."

Ellis stared at him. "You lousy piece of - "

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Voss said, shifting his considerable bulk in his seat and raising his hands. "We're not the enemy here. The enemy is outthere ."

"Really?" Ellis said. "Sometimes I wonder."

Cadman...Mercer kept searching his screen. There. Found it. A suit against Manassas. He smiled. He'd long ago embraced his anal-completist nature because it so often paid unexpected dividends. Like now: Years ago, when he'd begun using the service, he'd entered 'Manassas Ventures' as a search string; this was the first hit he'd ever seen. He clicked on the abstract to bring up the full article; he felt a sweat break as he skimmed it.

"Listen to this," Mercer said. "Someone is suing Manassas Ventures."

He noticed a slight stiffening of Portero's parade-rest stance. "Is that so?"

"Manassas is in your people's bailiwick. Why don't you know about this?"

"We have lawyers for legal problems. What's the suit about?"

"Let's see...no dollar amount given, just 'unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.'"

"No, I mean the reason for the suit."

"Lots of things. Here's just a sample: 'physical injury, pain, suffering, mental anguish and trauma, unpleasant mental reactions including fright, horror, worry, disgrace, embarrassment, indignity, ridicule, grief, shame, humiliation, anger, and outrage.'"

Portero snorted. "Probably a stubbed toe. They'll put a check in front of him and he'll go away."

"I doubt it. It's not a him. It's a her named Cadman. Romilda Cadman."

Portero's smug reptile mask dropped and, just for a second, Mercer caught a flash of uncertainty. Portero...unsettled? The possibility turned his stomach sour, like curdled milk.

"The OPRR inspector lady?" Voss said. "The one who funded Sullivan's sim case? What thehell ?"

"Care to guess what attorney is representing her?"

"I don't have to," Voss said. "Gotta be Sullivan."

Mercer noted that Portero's dumbfounded look had surrendered to tightlipped anger. He glanced at Ellis, expecting some sort of comment, but his brother remained silent, his expression unreadable.

"Right," Mercer said. "Patrick Sullivan again. I don't like this."

"This makes no sense." Portero's voice was even softer than usual. "What can they possibly hope to gain? Are they that desperate for cash?"

"Oh, I doubt money's got a thing to do with this," Voss said. "It will take them years to get a decision, and even if they win, more years before they ever see a dime. No, instead of thinking about money, we should be asking why the man who harassed SimGen about unionizing sims is now harassing the venture capital company that helped put SimGen in business. I find that real disturbin."

The question disturbed Mercer as well. "You're the lawyer," he told Voss. "Have you got an answer?"

"I'm bettin he wants to use the discovery procedures of a civil action to dissect Manassas Ventures' workings - its board of directors, its assets and liabilities, the whole tamale."

Mercer's gnawing sense of malignant forces converging on him had receded after the withdrawal of the sim unionization suit, but now it returned with a gut-roiling vengeance.

"Why Manassas? Beyond owning a bundle of SimGen stock, it has no direct link to us."

"Not anymore, but it used to. Obviously he's sniffed out something and he's going after it."

"Maybe it's just a fishing expedition," Mercer said, but he didn't believe it.

"Could be, but why in that particular pond? And let's face it, Manassas is such a well-stocked pond, he just might hook something."

No one spoke then. The idea that anyone would want to lift the Manassas Ventures rock and inspect what was crawling around beneath it had never occurred to Mercer. He'd been assured that Manassas was a dead end. But what if wasn't? What if someone found a trail that led from Manassas to SIRG?

This had to be stopped. Now. Before it went any further.

He looked at Portero. "Your people can handle this, can't they?"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Voss said, holding up a hand before Portero could reply. "Before we start talking about stuff I don't want to hear, why don't you just buy her off?"

Portero stared at him. "Buy her off? You don't know this woman. I spent days with her during the OPRR inspection and let me tell you, she is not for sale."

Voss grinned. "Sure she is, son. I've waded through truckloads of bullshit in my day, but I've learned one thing always holds true: Everybody's got a price tag. Some hide it better'n others, but you look hard enough, you'll find it. Your folks've got pockets deep as a well to China. You have them tell her to name a price, and then you meet it. And that'll be it. You'll see."

But Portero was shaking his head. "I don't think there's enough money in the world."

Mercer was surprised by something in his tone. It sounded like admiration.