MANHATTAN

Patrick checked the cars on Henry Street outside his office building before stepping out. All looked empty, no plumes of idling exhaust. After the other night, he was spooked, and not ashamed to admit it. You weren't paranoid when they really were out to get you.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk and cried out as he collided with someone. He jumped back, ready to run back inside, when he noticed it was an older woman. He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't looking."

"Did I frighten you, Mr. Sullivan?" she said.

He looked at her face. Uh-oh. Alice Fredericks. The Mother of All Sims.

"Hello, Miss Fredericks. Nice to see you again. No, you didn't frighten me. I just didn't expect anyone there." He made a show of glancing at his watch. "I'm just heading off to a meeting and - "

"You didn't call me, Mr. Sullivan." Her look was reproachful. "You said you would and I've been waiting every day but you haven't called."

"I told you," he said, backing away, "I'll call when my schedule lightens up. It's just that there's been so much going on."

No lie there.

"You're not afraid, are you?"

Maybe he should tell her he was very afraid, that he was terrified. Then she'd look for someone else. But he couldn't make himself say it.

"Not of space aliens." True enough. Too many other truly frightening things going on in his life right now to worry about space aliens. "Not a bit."

"Very well," she said. "I'll be waiting."

He turned and hurried toward Catherine Street to find a taxi.

After a ride during which Patrick spent more time looking out the rear window than the front, the cabby dropped him off at Penn Station. He wandered around Seventh Avenue, going in and out of stores to make sure he wasn't being followed, then headed further west.

Finally he arrived at Zero's garage just behind a middle-aged woman. Despite the parka-like hood cinched tight around her head against the cold, he recognized her.

"Dr. Cannon," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Patrick Sullivan. I don't know if you remember me, but I was - "

"You were helping at the Beacon Ridge atrocity," she said with a smile as she pushed back her hood. He noticed that her long graying mane had been shorn to an almost boyish length. "Yes, of course I remember. And call me Betsy, please."

The door opened and Romy was there, smiling. "A two-fer! Come in, Betsy. So good of you to come."

"No problem. It's easier for me to come to Zero than him to come to me."

"And you cut your hair. I love it!"

Patrick stepped inside and closed the door behind him, remembering Zero's hurried phone conversation with Dr. Cannon last night. She was on staff at Nassau County Community Hospital and, following her instructions to Zero, Patrick and Romy had driven David Palmer out to the hospital and left him in the parking lot for her to "find."

Now, as the three of them trooped toward the rear of the garage, Kek suddenly came bounding down the ladder from his domain in the loft and charged them. Patrick tensed, waiting for Zero or Romy to call him off, but they said nothing. Then Betsy Cannon opened her arms and embraced the beast.

"How is my friend Kek doing?" she said.

Kek signed something to her and Betsy laughed. They had a brief conversation - Betsy speaking, Kek signing, then Kek scrambled back up the ladder to his observation post.

"You nursed him back to health, I'm told," Patrick said as Kek vanished into the ceiling.

"Not really. Zero did most of the nursing. I tried to save his frostbitten fingers but was only eighty- percent successful. As an OB-GYN I have surgical training, but - "

"OB?" Patrick glanced past her at Zero who nodded. "Then if we find this pregnant sim - ?"

"You'll bring her to me, of course. I've lots of experience delivering sims."

"You have?"

"Certainly. I spent six years as medical director of SimGen's natal center. When it finally seeped through to me that I was delivering a race of slaves into the world, I quit. And not long after that I received a call from Zero."

The idea of birthing sims thrust Alice Fredericks's crazy, tortured face into Patrick's mind. "Let me pop you a question out of far left field: Do you know if SimGen ever used human women to bear sims?"

"What?" Romy said. "That's not out of left field, that's from the bleachers!"

"Not while I was there, I assure you," Betsy said. "Why do you ask?"

Patrick told them about Alice Fredericks and her story.

"She certainly sounds delusional," Betsy said.

"I'm ready to believe that SimGen's connected to almost anything bad," Zero said, "but I draw the line at space aliens. Let's get back to reality, shall we?" He turned to Betsy Cannon. "Any idea yet as to what's wrong with the patient we sent you last night?"

"The more we learn about his condition," she said, shaking her head, "the more mysterious it becomes. He has a form of aphasia that's both expressive and receptive."

"Sorry?" Patrick said.

"He can't understand what's said to him, or even written out for him, and can only jabber word salad when he wants to speak."

Patrick shivered inside. "Sounds like an inner circle of lawyer hell."

"Syndromes like it can occur with strokes or sometimes with tumors that affect the Broca speech area of the brain, but an MR scan showed a perfectly normal brain. We shipped him out to NYU Medical Center this morning where they did a PET scan - that's positron emission tomography. It gives us a functional as opposed to structural view of the brain, and Mr. Palmer's Broca area has been damaged."

"Damaged how?" Romy said.

Betsy shrugged. "Neurology is not my field but I've been asking a lot of questions under the guise of being interested because I found him in the parking lot. The experts' best guess is a toxin."

"Totuus?" Romy said. "You mean I did that to him?"

"No. Totuus was found in his system, but the NYU neurologists believe he had another compound in his bloodstream that combined with the Totuus to form a neurotoxin specific to the Broca area."

"Pretty damn sophisticated," Zero said.

Betsy nodded. "Amazingly sophisticated, according to the experts. All just theory, of course, one they have no way of testing at the moment, but it goes a long way toward explaining his syndrome."

"And it fits with his behavior last night," Romy said. "Remember how he broke down and cried when he found out we'd injected him with the Totuus? He must have known he had the other compound floating through his bloodstream, and knew what was coming."

Zero said, "A failsafe to prevent anyone from using Palmer's own Totuus against him."

"Is it permanent?" Romy asked.

Betsy shrugged. "Who can say? No one I've spoken to has ever dealt with anything like this."

"My guess is it's temporary," Zero said. "I can't see anyone willingly taking something that could cause irreversible brain damage. But temporary can be a long time."

"Talk about covering your tracks," Romy said, shaking her head. "How are we ever going to nail these monsters?"

Betsy smiled and tightened her scarf around her neck. "That I will leave to you. As for me, as long as I'm in the city I believe I'll do some Christmas shopping. Good luck. And you know I'm available anytime day or night if you find that pregnant sim."

Patrick showed her out, then returned to where Zero and Romy were standing.

"I've been thinking," he said. "What if it wasn't just the mixture of the two drugs in his bloodstream? What if saying a vital word was what triggered the - what was it?"

"Aphasia," Zero said, then shook his head. "That sounds even more farfetched."

"Maybe. But what was he saying at the very instant something tripped the circuit breaker in his brain?"

"I don't remember," Romy said, "but it's easy enough to find out."

She went to a shelf on the wall and retrieved the recorder. She reversed it for a second, then hitPLAY . Romy's voice burst from the tiny speaker.

" - op stalling! Tell me now: Who do you work for?"was followed by Parker's hoarse rasp:"SIRG - " and then strangled noises and cries of alarm.

Romy switched off the player. She looked pale. "Want to hear it again?"

"That's okay. You heard the word: 'Surge,' right?"

Zero shrugged. "I doubt he was talking about a fabric or an electric current. I believe he got out the first syllable of the answer - 's-u-r' or 's-e-r' or 'c-e-r' or maybe even 'c-i-r' for circle - and then the seizure hit and the rest of the word or words were crushed into a guttural mess."

"But this was in direct response to 'Who do you work for?' so it's got to have some relevance, don't you think? I mean, at least it's a start. Question is, how to find out if it means anything?"

"Why don't we simply ask?" Romy said.

"Oh, sure. I'll just call up Mercer Sinclair and say, 'What does the word "surge" mean to you?' That'll work."

A smile played about Romy's lips, the first since last night. "Why call when you can ask in person?"