SIMS 09

FAR HILLS, NJ

"When I returned after six months away in France," Ellis told his audience of three, "refreshed, renewed, ready to work, I discovered that Mercer had made a staggering leap in our research. He presented me with six surrogate mothers, all recently implanted with human-chimp hybrid embryos. We hired obstetricians to watch them carefully through their pregnancies, but to our dismay, one after another miscarried until only one was left. But her fetus was a tough cookie. It held on, and in her thirty-eighth week she delivered a living hybrid infant: Sim Zero."

Patrick said, "By any chance was her name Alice Fredericks?"

"Why, yes," Ellis said, startled to hear that name after so many years. "I believe it was. How on earth  - ?"

"We've met." He turned to Zero. "We've spoken to your mother, Zero."

"She's not my mother," he snapped without looking up. "I don'thave a mother."

"He's right, Patrick," Ellis said. "Zero was grown by cloning techniques from a recombinantly hybridized nucleus. But when Mercer saw Zero he said that he'd overdone it: He'd swapped in too much human genetic material.

"He explained to me how, among many other changes, he'd deleted the two chimp chromosomes that millions of years ago fused to form human chromosome 2, and replaced them with a human chromosome 2. He'd also 'cleaned up' the hybrid genome by removing loads of junk DNA - deleting AT-rich regions, shortening CpG islands - along with codons and minisatellites; he even managed to remove an entire chromosome that may have performed some useful function in the past but was now just taking up space.

"So Zero wound up with a largely junk-free twenty-two-pair genome - one shorter than human, two shorter than the chimp's. Mercer told me he did it to make the splicing easier, but I later learned he had a more sinister reason.

"However we both agreed that Zero was too human. The public would never accept the merchandising of something that looked so much like themselves. To make a commercially viable laborer, we'd have to swap back some of the chimp genes he'd removed."

He noticed Romy's hate-filled look. "I fully deserve your opprobrium, Ms. Cadman. But please understand, I was a different person then: young, drunk with the egomaniacal power to shape and create, never looking beyond the next splice. That was why I went blindly along with Mercer's solution to work backward from Zero: Use his cells as a starting point and swap back some of the chimp genes he'd removed. I was ablaze with excitement at the possibilities opening before me. And because I trusted my younger brother, I didn't ask the questions I should have.

"So we worked back from Zero with great success. Seeing that success, and realizing that its own future was tied to SimGen's, SIRG started gathering information on any public official who might have a say in the legalization of sims. When we introduced the species, SIRG contacted those who voiced opposition. When blackmail wasn't an option, SIRG's field operatives went to work using intimidation and violence. It was SIRG's behind-the-scenes manipulations that resulted in the classification of sims as neither humans nor animals but property - SimGen's property.

"And I confess that I knew all this - not all the details, but the general plan - and I approved, thinking, Why should we allow these small minds to block the road to the future? Mercer and I were like gods, leading the way to a new world. To hell with anyone who dared stand in our way."

Ellis stopped, took a breath. "I believe I was crazy then, suffering from some sort of monomaniacal mental derangement. But eventually I sobered. When all the legal hurdles had been cleared and the labor markets across the globe were clamoring for sims, sims, and more sims, when my personal net worth exceeded that of some small nations, when I finally had time to look back and reflect on how I arrived at my position, I became suspicious.

"Something was gnawing at my subconscious and wouldn't let up. So I went back to the source, to Zero, who was still alive; the basic research center's only permanent resident. I took an oral scraping of his cells and started checking his DNA. Mercer's 'cleaning up' of Zero's genome may have made the splicing easier, but I realized then that it also removed links back to the source DNA. After exhaustive efforts, working in secret, I eventually traced Zero's DNA back to its origin."

Ellis looked around at the three faces fixed on his. Yes, even Zero had lifted his head for this.

Could he say it? Could he push these words past his lips? He had to. He'd come too far to turn back.

"That source DNA didn't belong to a chimpanzee. It belonged to me."

Romy's voice was barely audible. "Oh...dear...God!"

Patrick was speechless, staring in slack-jawed shock.

And Zero had closed his eyes.

Ellis spoke past the lump in his throat. "I confronted Mercer and, after strident initial denials, he reluctantly confirmed it: Zero had been fashioned from one of my cells. My brother had lied to me about adding too many human genes to a chimp genome to make Zero; the truth was he'd swapped chimp genes intomy genome. And from there I unwittingly helped him in further devolving Zero's genome to create the sims."

"You're telling me," Patrick said, sputtering, "tellingus ...that...that a sim is not a recombinantly evolved chimp...it's a recombinantlyde volved human being? Tome is a human being who's been genetically adulterated and then farmed out as a slave? I...I..." He raised his hands, then let them drop.

Ellis understood. There were no words for what he and Mercer had done.

Romy was silent, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at Zero.

"Then I am - or was - a man?" Zero said, eyes open now, his too human features tortured. "But I'm reallynot a man, am I. I'm a thing. A freak!"

"Zero, don't!" Romy sobbed.

But Zero went on, glaring at Ellis. "What have youdone to me?"

Ellis could barely hear his own voice. "The unforgivable. The unconscionable. The unspeakable. But I didn't know, Zero."

"That's a little convenient, don't you think?" Romy said, the edge on her voice slashing at him. "'Fess up: You didn'twant to know."

"Maybe you're right. But I do know I've been trying to undo this ever since I found out. Until this moment, Mercer and I have been the only two who've known the truth. Not even Colonel Landon of SIRG knows. What astonished me then, and what I still find incomprehensible, is how Mercer could know all along that the sims he was leasing to the world as slaves were his cloned half brothers, and not be bothered a bit."

"But you didn't go public," Patrick said. "You didn't even quit the company."

"I wanted todissolve the company, but Mercer and SIRG controlled too much stock. I couldn't go public with what I knew because I had children by then and I'd been instrumental in creating the sims. If the truth got out I'd be seen as a monster on a par with Mengele, and my children would be seen as offspring of a monster.

"I was trapped, and SIRG knew it, but just in case I had second thoughts, my daughter Julie disappeared for half a day. She wasn't harmed, in fact she had a nice time with the lady who took her to an amusement park, but the message was too clear. To protect myself I hid a number of computer disks revealing everything; they'll be released to all the media in the event of my death. SIRG and I entered a cold-war state of mutually assured destruction, but it was too much for me. Knowing I'd been instrumental in a monumental atrocity made me unfit for human companionship. And since I couldn't tell anyone, not even my wife, my marriage fell apart.

"So I dedicated myself to the only solution I could think of: a Quixotic quest to develop a true chimp- origin sim to replace the human-origin sims in circulation. But I've found it impossible. I don't think it can be done.

"But all the while, Zero had been growing up in the sealed-off section of basic research. Mercer had forgotten about him until Harry Carstairs casually mentioned him. Mercer decided he was a liability, the Missing Link between sims and humans. He ordered Zero destroyed - sacrificed, put down, like any other lab specimen that had outlived its usefulness.

"When I heard I told Mercer I'd take care of it. But I had no intention of allowing Zero to be killed. I was suddenly energized. In Zero I saw a chance to bring SimGen down. Instead of administering a lethal injection, I spirited him off. I financed him, setting him up as the nemesis of SimGen, a fifth column to turn people against the use of sims. I saw him as a way to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. And Zero was more than willing to help liberate his brother sims.

"Now Meerm's baby will accomplish that. What I'd hoped for was to put SimGen out of business with all of its secrets intact. That might not be possible now, seeing as the baby is a girl."

"Why is that so important?" Patrick said. "I saw Dr. Cannon react when I told her it was a beautiful girl."

"It's too complicated to delve into here. Just let me say that in an X-dominated hybrid genome with a human father and a sim mother, the mother's non-native genes - that is, the minority derived from another species - would be largely suppressed. Even though they're there in the genotype, they don't show up in the phenotype. In other words, if sims had been truly derived from chimps, Meerm's daughter would have retained significant chimp features. But because the substrate of Meerm's genome was human, the chimp genes didn't have a chance. That's why, in spite of all the added chimp DNA, she gave us a beautiful, pink, human-looking baby."

Romy said, "Then I guess your dirty little secret won't be a secret much longer."

"That will be up to you three, of course. The fact that the baby's a girl will cause people who know genetics to question whether there might be more human DNA in sims than anyone ever imagined, but I doubt they'll be able to prove anything. And their questions will be drowned out in the tidal wave of protests against the cloning of more sims. Thanks to Reverend Eckert the world has watched the birth of a baby born of the union of man and sim. And after seeing that, the movement to have them reclassified as Hominidae will gain unstoppable momentum."

He turned to Zero and felt the lump grow in his throat again.

"And you, Zero, are a man. The finest, most noble man I've ever known. And you can live as a man. Whatever you want of mine is yours, Zero. I don't know whether to call you brother or son, but like it or not, I'm part of you. We're related."

Zero stared at the bookshelves, saying nothing.

Ellis stepped closer to him. "I already have a son, Zero, but for a long time now I haven't had someone I've cared to call brother. There's still a lot to be done; years of struggle ahead before this abominable, tragic mess is straightened out. I helped cause it with one brother; I need another brother to help me rectify it. Can you forgive me enough to be that brother, Zero? Please?"

"I'll help you," Zero said, rising and looking him in the eye. "Because I need to finish what I began. But don't call me brother. And don't ask me to forgive you."

The words struck like hammer blows. Ellis briefly had harbored a hope, a vision of Zero and him tearfully embracing and letting the past be past. But he could see now that wasn't going to be. He ached for absolution, but it wouldn't be coming from Zero or the two people with him. Not yet, at least.

"Fair enough," Ellis said. He resisted an impulse to offer his hand. Even that might be asking too much right now. "As a first step I propose arranging a meeting immediately with my brother. We'll lay out the facts for him and make it perfectly clear that SimGen is dead."