Silence ruled the van. Zero leaned forward as Patrick piloted them toward the freeway.
"Follow the signs toward the Goethals Bridge," he told him.
He glanced at Romy, huddled against the passenger door at the far end of the front seat, staring dead ahead without blinking, looking as if she were in a trance.
I've really done it now, Zero thought. I've lost her. She'll never trust me again.
Meerm whimpered at his side. She was curled next to him on the rear seat. He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Tome and Kek hunched behind them in the open rear section.
"Goethals," Patrick said. "Got it. But I think...I think we..." He seemed to run out of words.
"You think you deserve an explanation," Zero said. "Of course you do."
"I mean," Patrick said, "I feel as if the world just tipped ninety degrees."
Zero glanced again at Romy who still hadn't moved. She'd known him so much longer than Patrick. Her world must feel even further out of kilter.
"You're not human?" Patrick said.
"No."
"I heard you tell Meerm that you're a sim."
"I am."
"But how come you don't...?"
"...look like the average sim? I'm one of the earliest, so early that you'll find no UPC tattoo on the nape of my neck. Plus I'm a mutant - bigger and paler than my brother sims - too big and too human- looking for the workforce. So they kept me separate. I was raised in SimGen's basic research facility and after a while I became a mascot of sorts. My only contacts growing up were the Sinclair brothers and their most trusted techs. Later, when Harry Carstairs arrived to take over sim training, he took a special interest in me."
Harry...how he'd loved Harry Carstairs. The man's daily visits had been the high point of his adolescence.
"He was impressed by my linguistic skills so he tested my intelligence; when he found it to be not only far above sim average but above human average as well, he and - "
He cut himself off. Better not mention Ellis.
"He got permission to see how far they could take me. I learned to read, and built up my own library; I was never allowed out of basic research, but television gave me a window onto the rest of the world. Harry and I...I guess you might say we bonded. He taught me to play chess and we spent hours hovering over the board."
He missed Harry, especially their chess games. Every so often Zero would give in to a compulsion to see the man. He'd sneak by Harry's house at night and watch him as he sat and played chess against his computer; he'd longed to knock on the window and challenge him to a game. But Harry believed him dead, and had to go on believing that.
Patrick said, "But how did you graduate from SimGen mascot to Zero, SimGen nemesis?"
"I've always been called Zero. I imagine it's derived from part of my serial number when I was an embryo. As for my 'graduation'...I believe I became inconvenient. Here I was, this man-size sim who was an evolutionary and commercial dead end. Somewhere along the line, a corporate decision was made to terminate me."
"Jesus," Patrick whispered. "Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"What were they going to do - shoot you?"
"An injection. They drew blood from me at regular intervals. This time they were going to put something in instead of take something out."
Zero saw Romy glance quickly over her shoulder, then return to her thousand mile stare.
"Scumbags," Patrick muttered, shaking his head.
Only one, Zero thought. Mercer Sinclair had made the unilateral decision.
He looked down at Meerm who'd closed her eyes and seemed to be dozing. Termination would have been her fate if Portero had found her first.
Patrick asked, "How'd you manage to escape?"
"I found I had a highly placed ally in the company who arranged to fake my death."
Ellis again. He'd told his brother that he didn't want a stranger terminating Zero, that he'd do it himself. But he injected Zero with a sedative instead of poison, cremated another dead sim in his place, and spirited him out of SimGen. He told Zero everything, and set him up with a steady flow of cash and data aimed toward one purpose: to stop SimGen and free his brother sims.
"This ally is the source of all your inside information, I take it," Patrick said.
"Yes."
Patrick shook his head again. "A high-up inside SimGen working against it. Is he nuts or does he have a personal beef with the Sinclairs?"
"Both, I think. But it's also a moral issue with him."
All true. But Zero had always sensed something else driving Ellis Sinclair, almost as if he felt he had to atone for something. Something "unspeakable," perhaps?
Patrick laughed. "Put a sim in charge of bringing down the makers of sims. I've got to say, it has a nice symmetry to it. And now that we've got Meerm, it looks like your job is just about over. Congratulations, Zero. They chose the right man. I mean sim. I mean - hell, I don't know what I mean. All I can say is I never had an inkling you weren't human."
And now we come to the crucial junction, Zero thought.
"Does it bother you that I'm not?" He directed the question at Patrick but he was watching Romy. He thought he saw her flinch.
"I don't know. You're not like Tome or any other sim I've met. In fact, you're more human than some humans I know. Smarter too. What a world! But you haven't steered me wrong yet. So I guess the answer is no. To tell the truth, every day I'm getting less and less sure about what exactly 'human' means."
Bless you, Patrick, he thought, then looked at Romy. He couldn't bear her silence any longer. This had to be dragged out in the open now.
"And you, Romy?" he said. "You haven't said a word."
For a few seconds, she didn't move, then she twisted swiftly in her seat and faced him. Angry tears streaked her cheeks.
"You lied to me!"
"I never told you I was human."
"You pretended to be!"
"I never pretended to be anything other than who I am. I didn't even change my name."
"You hid yourself - that was a lie!"
"No, I had to. Would you have joined me if you'd known I was a sim? A mutant sim?"
Her angry expression faltered, then she turned away again.
"Think, Romy. When was I ever untrue to you? Were the goals of our activities against SimGen ever other than what I said they were? Have I ever misled you into doing something that you didn't want to do, or worked you toward an end that wasn't your own as well?"
She replied in a tiny voice. "No."
"Then can I ask you why you're so angry at me?"
"Who says I'm angry at you?" she said in that same small voice. "Maybe I'm angry at me."
Baffled, he replied, "I don't - "
She held up a hand. "Can we just leave it be? I've got some adjusting to do and I need some time. Okay?"
"I understand, but I need to know: Are you still with us?"
She nodded without speaking, without looking around.
Zero leaned back and closed his eyes to hold back the tears.
After a while Patrick said, "Goethals Bridge dead ahead. Why do we want that?"
"Because it's the quickest route out of Jersey."
"But where are we going?"
"Dr. Cannon's." He took one of Meerm's hands in his. "We're bringing her the most important patient of her career."