Sims by F. Paul Wilson Page A

time.
    â€œDon’t need any to realize it’s an unavoidable emotional fallout from being repeatedly separated from their children.”
    â€œRidiculous.”
    â€œChimps, orangutans, gorillas—all mourn the loss of a child. Why should sims be any different? In fact they’d be
more
likely to mourn.”
    Twerlinger sniffed. “Do animal emotional states fall under OPRR’s aegis?”
    They didn’t. They both knew that.
    Disappointed, Romy followed Twerlinger back to her office. She hadn’t found a thing. Maybe the full-team inspection would come up with something, but she’d struck out.
    She found Portero waiting for her.
    â€œFinished here?” he said.
    â€œFor now. Research next.”
    His smile tried to look sympathetic as he shook his head. “As I told you, research is scheduled for this afternoon. The dormitories and training centers are next on the list.” He gave a helpless shrug.
    Somehow, helpless didn’t fit with Luca Portero.
    As she followed the security chief back to the Jeep she wondered if the judge had lowered the boom on the sim union yet.

15
    WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY
    Patrick felt no tension, no sense of suspense as Judge Boughton prepared to make his judgment. He’d been in a blue-black mood since he and Maggie Fischer, his secretary, had entered the federal courthouse in White Plains. As far as anyone was concerned, it was a done deal. Tony Hodges, the attorney for Beacon Ridge, had submitted well-researched motions that would have swayed a neutral judge; for a union hater like Boughton, they were like tossing gasoline on a bonfire. Add to that the amicus brief filed by SimGen on the club’s behalf, and the opposition had a slam dunk. The company’s legal howitzer, Abel Voss himself, looking like a cat about to be served a plateful of canaries, was seated two rows behind the defense table.
    Maggie gave him a reassuring smile. A matronly forty-five, with curly brown hair and a hawklike nose, she sat straight-spined with her pen poised over her yellow pad. She was a
great
legal secretary and he hoped her two boys stayed in college forever so she’d never be able to quit.
    â€œIt will all be over soon,” she said, sounding like a dental assistant before an extraction.
    That was what the firm wanted, and so that was what Maggie thought he wanted. And as much as Patrick loathed the idea of defeat, a traitorous part of him was looking forward to Judge Boughton’s inevitable ruling. It didn’t know why he’d got himself into this, and now it wanted out.
    But losing didn’t sit right. Never would.
    The donation hotline already seemed to have called it quits. It had experienced a nice twenty-four-hour spike after his Ackenbury appearance, but then dropped to barely a trickle.
    Then he’d had a call from his father after the Ackenbury show—a long message on his answering machine he hadn’t returned yet—that could be summed up as:
My son wants to unionize monkeys!?!?!?
    And the cherry on the soured whipped cream of this unwieldy concoction was the precarious state of his relationship with Pamela. She hadn’t found his stunt on
Ackenbury at Large
the least bit amusing—“You made an ass out of yourself, Patrick!” She wanted him out of the sim case too. She’d decided to sleep at her own place last night. He hoped to coax her back tonight. After all, the window was fixed, and the cops were keeping an eye on the house.
    He tried to imagine how things could get much worse.
    He looked up as he heard the judge clear his throat. Boughton’s wrinkled hatchet face reminded Patrick of an aged Edward Everett Horton stripped of any trace of humor.
    â€œI’ll make this short and sweet, gentlemen, since we all have busy schedules.”
    Here it comes, Patrick thought.
    â€œI have read the arguments, such as they are, that have been presented to the court, and although my personal