SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

OCTOBER 3

"And I tell you, my brothers and sisters, that SinGen is doing the work of the devil his own self. Yes! The devil's work! As surely as I am standing here, Satan himself sits in those corporate offices, guiding the hand of the SinGen researchers, inspiring them to fashion beings that the Creator never intended to exist, creatures that are an abomination in the sight of God. It must be stopped or we all - and Idomeanall,not just the SinGen sinners, but all of us who abide that company's evildoing - will be called to account on the day of Final Judgment!"

Mercer Sinclair, a tall, lean, youthful-looking fifty-two with dark eyes and dark hair that had yet to show a trace of gray, sighed in disgust as he turned away from the plasma TV screen hanging like an Old Master on his office wall. He jabbed theOFF button on his desktop and banished the Reverend Eckert's florid face.

Stepping to the tinted window that took up most of the western wall of his top-floor office, he gazed out at the green rolling hills, mist-layered and glistening with morning dew. All SimGen's, as far as the eye could see.

Using proxies and dummy corporations, buying up little parcels here and there, Mercer had accumulated this massive chunk of northwest New Jersey for damn near a song. He could have bought more land for less in the Sunbelt, but that would have placed him too far from the action. Yes, he was in the boonies here, but these boonies were only a twenty-minute helicopter ride from Wall Street, while the isolation afforded a form of natural protection from prying eyes.

Closer in, nestled in this tight little valley, stood the gleaming glass and steel offices, the labs and natal and nurturing centers that fed the world's ever-growing need for sims. Here they were bred and housed until ready to be shipped to training centers all over the globe. Here beat the heart of SimGen's -  Mercer's - far-flung empire.

He opaqued the window and turned to the three other men in his office.

"'SinGen'? I wonder who thought that up for him."

His brother Ellis, two years older, taller, grayer, and almost gaunt, slouched on one of the black leather sofas to the left, far from the desk. Mercer expected no reply from Ellis, and received none.

Luca Portero, SimGen's chief of security, remained silent as well. Compact, muscular, in great shape for a man in his early forties, he stood with feet apart, arms behind his back; despite the blue blazer and tan slacks, he looked every inch a soldier.

Mercer hadn't picked Portero. He'd beenassigned to SimGen as security chief. But he'd looked into the man's background. A self-made sort, starting off as a street urchin with an Italian first name in a mostly Mexican border town in Arizona, father unknown, mother of very dubious reputation - oh, hell, why not say it? The town whore. As soon as he was old enough he joined the Army and apparently found his metier.

And like a good soldier, he rarely spoke unless spoken to. That was the only thing Mercer liked about the man. Portero had always struck him as more snake than human. He didn't walk, he glided. On the rare occasions when he spoke, it was barely above a whisper. And those cold dark eyes...always watching...like a snake. Mercer often wondered if Portero had indulged in a trans-species splice or two before joining SimGen...something reptilian. The heart, perhaps?

"Don't underestimate Eckert," the third attendee said in a thick Alabama drawl.

Mercer glanced at Abel Voss, SimGen's general counsel. In his mid-fifties, with longish silver hair and twenty extra pounds packed around his waist, he filled the seat on the other side of the desk. Which didn't mean he was close - a string quartet could have set up and played on the vast gleaming ebony surface of Mercer's desktop. Only two colors here: furniture either black leather or ebony, carpet and curtains all a uniform light gray.

"You know him?"

"No, but a few years ago nobody'd even heard of that boy, and now he's a household name."

Voss liked to come on as a slow-witted, somewhat bemused good ol' boy. He used it to lull opponents until he sprang and crushed them with one of the sharpest corporate law minds in the world. Mercer liked that. The crushing part.

Mercer grunted. "And he galloped there onmy back."

"Yourback?" Ellis said. "How about my back as well? I wind up being painted with the same brush as you, something I donot care for."

Well, well, well, Mercer thought. Look who's speaking up.

He couldn't understand why his brother bothered with these meetings. He'd arrive, slump in a chair without saying a word to anyone, stare into space without participating, then leave.

Ellis had been in an emotional tailspin for years. Mercer had heard that only a complex antidepressant cocktail enabled him to get out of bed these days. Somehow he dragged himself to meetings, and managed to maintain a decent work schedule in his lab, but his productivity was zilch.

Today he'd actually offered a comment. Hallelujah. Maybe Ellis had finally found a combination of drugs that worked.

Mercer turned toward his brother. "That's what happens when you're the co-founder."

"ButI'm the co-founder who has kids. What's said about me reflects on them. They go to school and have to hear that their father's in league with the devil!"

Ellis's kids...Robbie and Julie. Good kids. But Ellis didn't get to see them much since the divorce. Truth was, they seemed to prefer their Uncle Mercer to their downer dad. Mercer liked playing uncle, but he lived alone; always had, always would. Robbie and Julie were the closest he ever intended to come to parenthood.

But the divorce hadn't caused Ellis's depression - no, it had been the other way around. Who could live with someone in Ellis's state of mind?

"Don't blame me, bro. Blame Eckert."

"I know who to blame," Ellis said with a glare.

"Gentlemen," Voss said, "this can be saved for another time."

Mercer turned toward the lawyer. "I didn't call you here about the Eckert matter, but we might as well address it. It seems every time I turn on the damn TV I see his face."

"That's because the boy's syndicated. He does one show a day and it's farmed out to local stations all over the country. The local station managers plug it into a slot where they think they'll draw the most eyeballs."

"I can't believe people watch him day after day. He's got one goddamn issue and he beats it to death."

Voss shrugged. "Them Bible humpers've had it in for you two since sim one. Eckert is just more aggressive in grabbing the reins of that wagon."

"And he's been riding it for all it's worth ever since." Mercer rapped his knuckles on his desktop. "Can't we get anything on him?"

"Tried that. Took a look-see into his business affairs and personal life. Lives high but not too, too high. No bimbos, or if there are, he hides 'em well. On the surface he appears clean. No obvious belly- crawlin like Swaggart or Baker. Sockin away all those contributions until he's got enough to set up his own satellite network to - as he likes to put it - 'spread the word to the world about the sin of sims.'"

"So let's probe a little deeper," Mercer growled.

"Gotta be careful with that sort of thing. The Rev's got a bunch of real loyal eggs around him. You try to crack one of them, you could wind up with yolk on your face. I'm talkin a tar-and-feather overcoat in the PR department. I say give it time. These preacher boys, most of them got this sort of arc, y'see -  they rise fast, then they fall back. And meantime, if he's like most other preacher boys I've seen, all that money he's pullin in will somehow find its way into his own pocket instead of being used to mess with us. You just be patient, son."

Usually Mercer didn't mind when Voss called him "son" - just one of the man's Alabamisms - but today it irritated him. With his mother dead since his Yale days, and his father DOA with a cardiac arrest two years ago, he was now no one's son. His own man, answering to no one.

"Patient! Do you know he's scheduled to be on Ackenbury tomorrow night?Ackenbury at Large ! Millions who've never even heard of the creep will see him do his anti-SimGen rant. What's Ackenbury thinking? Don't we buy enough time on his lousy show?"

"Hey, it's all show biz, you know that. That boy gets hold of the most controversial folks he can find. That's why he's rackin up better numbers than Leno and Letterman. I know we got a buncha cow flop flyin at us at once now, what with Eckert, the unionization thing, and havin to open our doors for an OPRR inspection, but I wouldn't let this rattle you."

"I'm not rattled," Mercer said.

But he wasn't particularly comfortable either. He didn't mention his growing uneasiness, a sense of malevolent convergence. If he believed in fate or astrology, he might have said he felt the stars aligning against him.

Utter nonsense, of course. You made your own destiny. You grabbed what you could and then did your damnedest to keep it. And if you lost it, that was because someone else outsmarted you. Flaming gasballs floating millions of light-years away had nothing to do with it.

But if the stars weren't aligning against him, then who?

"Good," Voss said. "Glad to hear it. 'Cause there's nothin here to get rattled about. Take this damn fool unionization thing, for instance. You have to be human to be in a damn union, sores ipso loquitur , the suit can't succeed. It's a sham, a PR stunt for this nobody shyster who - "

"PR," Mercer said. "That'swhat I'm worried about. PR that's good for him and bad for us. We can't have people thinking of sims as anything more than brighter-than-average animals. Nobody talks about unionizing race horses or seeing-eye dogs. But start connecting the word 'union' to sims and you open a Pandora's box. I can just see this shyster - what's his name?"

"Sullivan," Voss said. "Patrick Sullivan."

"I can see this Sullivan character portraying sims as some poor mistreated underclass, when it's just the opposite. We've never sold a sim, we lease them. Why? So we can limit how they're used and oversee how they're treated."

"And, coincidentally, maximize profits," Ellis said acidly.

"Nothing wrong with profits," Mercer replied through his teeth without looking at his brother.

"You're preachin to the choir, son."

"No, I'm telling you the message we need to get out: We are a humane corporation that looks out for these creatures. We created them and we feel responsible for them."

"Humane," Ellis said in that same tone. "Now there's a concept."

Mercer wheeled on his brother. "Are you going to contribute something or just sit there and snipe?"

"Thatwas a contribution, Merce," Ellis said, leveling a soulful gaze at him. "A very relevant one."

Mercer turned back to Voss. He couldn't stand Ellis's holier-than-thou stance. "We can't take any chances with this, Abel. I've heard of crazy things coming out of these NLRB hearings - especially where the regional office in Manhattan is involved. The wrong kind of decision and you'll be using your stock options for toilet paper."

"Don't have to worry about no labor relations shenanigans. Sullivan thinks he's got an edge because the director of NLRB's Region 2 is a maverick. Well, I've already seen to it that he never gets to the NLRB."

Mercer abruptly felt his mood lighten. "How did you manage that?"

"Had myself a talk with Beacon Ridge's attorney - bright kid named Hodges - and told him to seek a declaratory judgment in Federal court. He'll argue that since Congress has designated sims as property, they cannot be humans. And if they're not humans, then they're not employees, and therefore not protected by the statutes of the NLRB."

"Ilike the argument," Mercer said. "But what if the judge doesn't?"

Voss puffed out his chest. "He will. I've seen to it that the case comes up before Judge Henry Boughton."

"Is he one of ours?"

Voss shook his head. "We don't own this one. Don't have to. He's our kinda guy - least so far as this union thing goes. Conservative with a capitalC . Hates unions. Probably one of Reverend Eckert's loyal listeners to boot. He'll toss this case in two seconds flat."

"Abel..." Mercer shook his head, grinning. "You are amazing."

"That's what you boys pay me for - to be amazin."

"That leaves the OPRR inspection."

"We've been discussing that," Luca Portero said.

The sound of the security chief's soft voice never failed to rattle Mercer. "Really. All by yourselves?"

Portero went on as if Mercer hadn't spoken. "We decided that I'll be the tour guide."

Good idea. OPRR would get nothing out of Luca the snake.

"Excellent choice."

Voss rose and straightened his suit coat. "Knew you'd like that. Matter of fact, Mr. Portero and me are gonna have us a little sit-down right now in my office. I'm gonna lay out the legalities we're up against, and how we're gonna slide around 'em."

"What about my lab?" Ellis said. He'd come out of his crouch now, sitting up with a rigid spine. "I won't allow them in my lab. And as for the sealed section - "

"Hey, ain't no one from OPRR or anywhere else gonna be anyplace we don't want 'em to be. Mr. Portero will see to that."

Portero only nodded.

"Thank God," Ellis said.

Voss and Portero headed for the door. "Talk to y'all later," Voss said.

When they were gone, Mercer turned and found his brother on his feet, a small smile playing about his lips as he approached the desk.

"Hear them?" Ellis said.

"Hear what?"

"The trumpets. They've started to blow. And the first cracks are starting to show in the walls of your Jericho. Soon this will all come tumbling down. And then where will you be?"

"Nothing's going to happen. You heard Abel - everything's under control."

"No, Merce. Everything's spinningout of control. Can't you feel it?"

"You're breaking with reality, Ellis." The worst of it was that he was echoing Mercer's own inchoate fears. "You need to adjust your meds."

Ellis had reached the far side of the desk where he continued that wide-eyed stare. "Knowing what you know, Merce, how do you sleep at night?"

Not this again.

"I sleep just fine. If you've got such a problem with the company, why don't you simply turn your back and walk away?"

"If it weren't for Robbie and Julie, I would - and go straight to the networks and blow the lid off."

Spicules of ice crystallized in Mercer's veins. Ellis was just unstable enough to do something like that. Probably thought he'd find some sort of redemption in self-immolation. But he couldn't burn alone. He'd drag Mercer into his auto-da-fe. And his children as well. Thank god Ellis loved Robbie and Julie too much for that.

"You wouldn't be blowing the lid off just SimGen, Ellis," he said softly. "It's not like we're in this alone."

"You think I don't know that?" Ellis cried.

"Then you should know that the walls could have ears."

Ellis blanched and leaned against the desk. "I hate this, hate this,hate this!"

"Well, any time you want to sell out, brother, you know my offer."

"We're both multi-billionaires. What would I want withmore money?"

"You could go off, buy yourself an island somewhere, declare yourself king, and - "

Ellis straightened again. "And leave the company under your sole command? Not yet. Not till I've finished what I started out to do."

"Meaning what? Treading old ground we've covered too many times? You should be working on projects that will move the company forward instead of wasting your time on sims."

"It'smy time and I'll decide how I spend it. Once I've perfected a sim - mysim - and we start putting them out there, then I'll sell out to you, Merce - in a heartbeat. But not a second before."

"We'vegot sims, damn it!"

Ellis glared at him. "How do you live with yourself, Merce? How?"

Mercer sighed. "How? By being a realist. By knowing what is and what isn't. By facing the hard cold fact that life is chemistry, nothing more, nothing less. When the chemicals are reacting, life goes on. When the reactions stop, so does life. That's it, and that's all it is. I am a collection of reacting chemicals; so are you; so are sims. To view existence as anything else is mysticism, romanticism, a myriad other isms, but it isn't real. Only the chemistry is real. Everything else is self-delusion."

He felt a pang as he considered his brother's flushed face and blazing eyes. It hadn't always been like this. He remembered their days in New Haven, inseparable, spending late hours in the labs, unafraid, pushing the limits, trying the impossible. Then the university had become too interested, looking for a piece of the action. Forget it: They'd dropped out, started their first venture to market no-shed house pets, and were on their way.

He could still visualize in perfect detail the day the Nakao team decoded the chimpanzee genome. He and Ellis immediately printed out a copy and unfolded it along a hallway; then they synched up a printout of the human genome next to it, and together they walked along, comparing, pointing out the uncanny parallels and match-ups.

Mercer remembered stopping and gazing at his brother, finding Ellis staring back at him across those printouts, realizing that Ellis was thinking what he was, seeing in his eyes the shared rapture of knowing what could be done, and that they could do it.

Heady times, those. The joy of discovery, the sense of the pulse of the world throbbing under their fingertips, the near omnipotent feeling that anything was possible.

And now, the hour-to-hour reality of managing one of the hottest new corporations in the world, of fighting day by day to catch up with the Microsofts and GEs of that world consumed him. He would not rest until SimGen was number one.

But that was his dream, not his brother's. At some point along the road of years he and Ellis had parted ways.

Mercer knew the exact moment. He'd deceived Ellis. Just once. A crucial matter, true, but only that once. He'd hoped to carry the secret to his grave, but truth will out. Ellis had never forgiven him. Or himself.

If I could go back, he wondered, would I do it all over again?

Yes. In a New York minute. Because without that one deception, SimGen would be just another also- ran in the gen-mod field.

"The genie's out of the bottle, Ellis. And now it's grown too big to fit back in. I've accepted that. It's about time you did too."

"No!" He wheeled and headed for the door, yanked it open, and strode through. "Never!"