SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

Luca wanted to skip this - he had far more pressing things to do than listen to Sinclair-1 yammer. But the man had said he was calling this late meeting specifically to address a security issue. In addition to everything else going on, SimGen security was still his responsibility.

But he didn't have to arrive on time. He was punctual by nature, and his years in Special Forces had reinforced that, so it took considerable effort to force himself to walk slowly down the hall, pacing himself to arrive at least three minutes late.

Luca balled his fists. Coming up empty in the sim crib this afternoon still rankled him. Fury and disappointment had mixed into a combustible compound in his bloodstream. His head felt like a ticking bomb. He'd left four men to watch the building - all sides, all day, all night - but he had a gnawing premonition that the missing sim wouldn't be back.

Then, just fifteen minutes ago, Lister calls, supposedly concerned about the well-being of the sim because he hadn't heard any word on her. Luca had had to eat some bitter crow.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Lister then proceeded to twist the knife: "Someone handed you the address where she was staying and she ducked you? If a monkey can outwit you, how can we expect you to find out who's behind the woman and her lawyer?"

Don't worry, Luca thought as he approached the door to Sinclair-1's office. She's next on my list. And I know just how I'm going to handle her. As soon as I finish with these assholes...

When he stepped into the office he found only two of the usual crew in attendance: Both Sinclairs were present, but Abel Voss was missing.

"Mr. Portero," Sinclair-1 said as soon as the door closed. "We've been waiting for you."

"The wait is over," Luca replied. He wanted out of here as quickly as possible, so he pushed right to the subject, "You mentioned a security matter?"

"Yes, Mr. Portero. Were you aware that we had an attempted break-in this afternoon?"

"Of course." A group of sim huggers had tried to run the front gate. His men had detained them until the State Police arrived. "They're in jail."

"How gratifying that you know. But my question is, Where were you?"

"Busy with other matters."

"Matters more important than the security of this campus? Security here is your number-one priority. There are murderous bioterrorists running around out there, slaughtering humans and sims, and yet when this group tried to attack us, you were nowhere to be found."

"Harmless nobodies," Luca said, allowing a sneer to work its way onto his face. What an old woman he was.

"Lucky for us. But with you hiding out somewhere, there's no telling what damage we might have suffered if they'd been the SLA."

A flash of anger added heat to the pressure pushing against his eardrums. Hiding? Had this empty suit just accused him of hiding?

"Easy, Mercer," said Sinclair-2, turning his head to look at Luca. This was the first sign of life he'd shown.

With difficulty Luca kept his voice level. "But they weren't the SLA."

"But they could have been!" Sinclair-1 said. He pointed over his shoulder at the darkening hills visible through the oversized picture window behind him. "The SLA could be out there now, in the trees, readying an assault."

"They're not, and they never will be." Luca had had just about enough of playing games with these two. "I guarantee it."

Sinclair-1's eyebrows rose halfway to his forehead. "You guarantee it? How interesting. You're clairvoyant?"

"No," he gritted. "I'm the SLA."

Immediately he wished he hadn't said it.

"This is no time for sick humor," Sinclair-1 said.

Luca knew from the dubious expression on the CEO's face that he still had a chance to take it back, but decided against it. Fuck 'em. He stepped up to Sinclair-1's desk, rested his hands on its cool onyx surface, and leaned forward, literally getting in the other man's face.

"That was not any kind of humor."

"What?" The voice from his right, Sinclair-2, on his feet, his face pale. "You?"

"Ellis, he's joking."

Luca fixed Sinclair-1 with his gaze. "Have youever known me to joke?"

The CEO wavered, then took a step back, his eyes wide.

Movement to Luca's right. "Monster!" Sinclair-2 charging, face distorted with fury. Luca pivoted, drove a fist into his gut, and that was all it took. The man doubled over, then dropped to his knees, gasping.

"Dear, God! Ellis! Are you all right?"

The kneeling man, still clutching his belly with one hand while the other clutched the arm of the sofa for support, shook his head. His voice was a half-strangled whisper. "I'll never be all right."

Sinclair-1 stared at Luca. "Why? In God's name,why ?"

"To find your million-dollar sim."

"For what?" Sinclair-2 said as he hauled himself back into the couch. He sat hunched over, rubbing his belly. "To harvest her organs along with the rest?"

"No. To give her to you two."

"Why would we be interested?"

"Because she's pregnant."

A pause as the two brothers glanced at each other, then stared at Luca.

Sinclair-1 snorted. "Impossible!"

"So I've been told." Luca shrugged. "And maybe that's true in theory. But I deal in facts, and everything I've discovered about this particular sim confirms that she is pregnant."

"How on earth did you find out about her?"

Might as well tell them the whole story, Luca thought. Well, most of it.

"It started with a phone call last month. A woman said she had to speak to Mercer Sinclair right away, said she had information that would affect the entire future of SimGen. That sounded like a security matter to me so I took the call and - "

"And pretended to be me?"

"Of course. The woman, whose name I later learned was Eleanor Bryce, a Ph.D. in microbiology, told me she was in possession of a pregnant sim."

"You accepted that?" Sinclair-2 said. His color was returning along with his voice, but pure hatred gleamed in his eyes. "Just like that?"

Portero returned his stare. You want another try for a piece of me, fancy man? Next time I spread your nose across your face.

"Of course not. In an involved back-and-forth that took almost two weeks she sent enough information to convince our people that she could be telling the truth."

"Yourpeople!" Sinclair-1 now. "The ones in our Basic Research facility, I suppose. Why not ours?"

"We were going to bring in your people later, but first we had to secure this sim. The Bryce woman made enough slips during our communications to allow me to pinpoint her location. When she presented her ultimatum I decided it was time to move."

"Ultimatum?" Sinclair-1 said.

That's not what you should be asking me, Luca thought. Why aren't either of you asking the right question?

Because he was dying to lay the answer on them...and watch both the Sinclair brothers' hair turn white before his eyes.

Luca said, "She wanted to sell us the sim."

"Sellus? Sell us something that already belonged to us? What did you tell her?"

"Since I was pretending to be you, I said exactly that, then I asked her how much she wanted. She told me to bid. And she warned me not to be 'chintzy' - her word - because there'd be another bidder: the Arata-jinruien Corporation."

Sinclair-1 pounded a fist on his desktop. "Thosebandits? Outrageous!"

"Wait just a minute," Sinclair-2 said, holding up a hand. "Let's take a step back here."

Here it comes, Luca thought. His gut tingled with anticipation.

"Let's just say," Sinclair-2 continued, but he spoke to his brother, as if Luca weren't there, "that this Bryce woman, through hormone treatments or a recombinant patch, did somehow manage to induce a female sim to produce a fertilizable ovum. That will cause SimGen problems because it means people will be able to breed their own sims - and no one on this planet wants that less than I do - but it doesn't invalidate our patent on the sim genome. So - "

Not the question!

"She didn't do anything to the sim," Luca snapped. "She's a microbiologist. Knows nothing about reproductive medicine."

"How can you be sure?" Sinclair-1 said.

"She told me."

Sinclair-1 barked a laugh.

Luca glared at him. "At the time I questioned her she was loaded up with a drug that made her incapable of lying."

"The compound mentioned in the autopsy report," Sinclair-2 said, his tone dripping contempt. "Did you torture them before or after you had your information?"

"That was just window dressing, to muddy the waters while I eliminated everyone with firsthand knowledge about the pregnancy. I didn't know what the sims knew, but I didn't want any loose ends, so they were removed too."

"Dear God, why?" Sinclair-2 said. "A pregnant sim, even if it were possible, opens up a can of worms, but it's not worth the lives of three people and a dozen sims!"

Here's the moment, Luca thought. Time to rock your world.

"It does if the father of the sim's baby is human."

Silence, a moment of glorious, absolute silence in the office as the Sinclair brothers froze. Luca could have been looking at a photograph, or an elaborate sculpture. Then the thump of Sinclair-1 dropping heavily into his chair as if the bones in his legs had suddenly dissolved.

Luca inhaled the mixture of shock and terror filling the air. Moments like this made life worth living.

  He's wrong! Mercer Sinclair thought, fighting a vertiginous sense of unreality. Portero's wrong! He has to be!

...the father of the sim's baby is human...

Those words hung in the air before him, almost visible. He sensed that if he reached out his hand he might touch them.

He looked at his security chief's smug expression and knew that Portero believed it, but that didn't mean it was true. Being a tough guy didn't mean you couldn't be scammed.

Mercer worked his lips, forcing out the words. "A hoax!" he cried, but it sounded more like a bleat.

Portero shook his head. "I have it from all three farmers: They all believed they were in possession of a pregnant sim that was going to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams."

"Then they believed wrong!"

"Wait a second," Ellis said. "They believed. That's important. They may have been morally bankrupt, but they weren't ignorant. A globulin farm requires a fair amount of scientific sophistication. And if they were convinced that one of their sims was pregnant..."

Mercer stared at his brother. Ellis seemed to have shaken off the pain and humiliation of Portero's gut punch. But instead of feeling, as Mercer did, that his lips were encased in lead, Ellis seemed almost...

energized.

And he was thinking the unthinkable.

"Ellis...it can't be. Read my lips: Sims. Are. Sterile. Want me to write it out on a piece of paper for you?"

"But a sim gene can mutate," Ellis said. "Sims can't evolve, but they're as prone to mutations as any other organism. Murphy's Law, Merce: Shit happens, especially when it comes to reproduction. Nature abhors a dead-end species nearly as much as a vacuum."

"Don't talk to me of 'Nature' and what it abhors," Mercer said. "Iabhor teleological concepts. Life is chemicals, pure and simple."

Ellis went on as if Mercer hadn't spoken. "I remember reading years ago about a woman who'd lost her left ovary due to a ruptured cyst and her right fallopian tube due to a tubal pregnancy. She was told she'd never have to worry about birth control, but years later she showed up in her doctor's office with a positive pregnancy test. An ultrasound showed that her left fallopian tube had migrated across her uterus to link up with her right ovary."

"Apocryphal garbage."

Ellis looked at Portero. "This Bryce woman who called, this microbiologist, did she tell you how she found out the sim - what was her name again?"

"Meerm," Portero gritted. The name burned like acid on his tongue.

"Did she tell you how she discovered Meerm was pregnant?"

Portero made a face. "What difference does it make?"

"Humor me."

A sigh, then, "When she first called she told me she'd been working up a sick sim - vomiting, pain. Couldn't find out what was wrong so she sent blood out to a commercial lab and ordered a preset battery of tests for abdominal pain. The battery was designed for humans, and one of those tests was for pregnancy. It came back positive. She repeated it at three different labs, and all came back positive. She rented an ultrasound rig and that removed all doubt. She overnighted me copies of the blood work and the ultrasound. I had our people go over them. They said it could easily be a hoax, but there was enough there to be worried about."

Mercer said, "So you made a preemptive strike before the Japanese could get involved."

Portero inclined his head a few degrees. "Exactly."

Had to hand it to the man: His methods might be loathsome, but he got things done.

"But why invent this SLA group?"

"For cover. I didn't want anyone to guess the real reason for the raid, and a bunch of wacked-out sim huggers seemed perfect. The op would have gone down without a hitch if their security guy hadn't decided to take his job seriously. Four of us went in and the jerk started shooting, so we had to take him out. The shots must've spooked the pregnant sim who was being kept separate from the other cows. When I couldn't find her I figured she was hiding somewhere in the building; since I didn't have time to look for her, I fired the place."

"But no sim remains were found," Ellis said. "Which meant she escaped." He shook his head. "I can see the logic, sick as it is, of killing the humans. But why the sims? Even if they somehow knew about Meerm's pregnancy, who'd believe them?"

Portero's eyes narrowed and his tone skirted with a snarl. "First off, I wasn't about to nursemaid a bunch of monkeys. Second, they could identify us. And third, our people over in Basic Research wanted to look at their gonads, just in case they'd undergone any changes like the pregnant one. I covered that by taking hearts and kidneys and livers too - made it look like a harvest."

Mercer clenched his teeth and stared at Portero. You shit! he thought. Just yesterday you stood right there and played all innocent about organlegging and xenografts.

He wanted to throw something at him but feared Portero might return it with interest. Or worse, shove it down his throat.

"What ice-cold womb did you spring from?" Ellis said, still shaking his head.

Mercer feared Portero might react violently, but the insult seemed to roll off him. And Mercer realized that neither of them could insult Luca Portero, because Portero didn't care what they thought.

We're of a different species, and our opinions are irrelevant.

Mercer watched as his brother closed his eyes a moment, took a breath, then said, "How did the globulin farmers know the father was human?"

"They asked the sim and she fingered Craig Strickland, the farm's security guard - "

"The corpse that was found in the fire?"

"Yeah, him. Seemed he'd been spending some of his guard time diddling the livestock. Before he ate a few bullets."

Mercer slumped back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. This can't be happening.

"You realize what this means, don't you, Merce." His brother's voice.

It wasn't a question. Mercer lowered his hands to find Ellis staring at him. Yes, he knew exactly what this meant: the end of SimGen.

But only if somebody else found the sim first.

"Five million dollars," Mercer blurted. "I'm raising the reward to five million for information leading to the successful 'rescue' - and I want that term emphasized - of the missing sim. We'll say the reason we're willing to pay so much is that she can lead us to the killers of the twelve dead sims, and that nobody slaughters and mutilates our sims and gets away with it."

"What if she's dead?" Portero said. "She can't be 'rescued' then."

Mercer thought about that a moment. "I want her to be worth more alive than dead, so we'll offer to pay just one million for her remains. But I want her alive, get it? Alive, alive, alive!"

Yes. Get their hands on this sim before anyone else. And once she's safely tucked away, find out how she became fertile. Then take steps to make sure it never happens again.

Somewhere, out there, walking around, was living, breathing proof that humans and sims could cross- fertilize...Mercer's worst nightmares had never even come close to such an apocalyptic scenario. If news of this ever got out, sims would have to be reclassified closer to human, too close to be property, too close to be leased...

Imagine having to announce that at the stockholders' meeting next week. SimGen shares would crash and burn...they'd be the Hindenberg of the NASDAQ. He'd lose everything.Everything!

And so would SIRG.

"Find her, Portero," Mercer said. "This is as important to your people as it is to me. All that SimGen stock they hold will be toilet paper if someone beats us to her. If you do nothing else in your life, you must find that sim. That is your number one priority."

"Not quite," Portero said softly. "There's another, equally pressing matter that requires my attention."

Looking at the security chief's dark expression, and knowing his ruthlessness, Mercer was glad he was not that other "equally pressing matter." He wondered who might be involved, then decided he'd rather not know.

"But don't worry about your pregnant sim," Portero went on. "I've got a good idea where she is and I'll have men watching the area twenty-four/ seven. You'll have your sim."