"Also, of course," the doctor finished, "sims have advantage of being able to report symptoms to us, somthing of which shimpanses are incapable." He pointed to another reporter. "Yes?"
"Isn't that part of the problem, Dr. Howard?" the she asked.
"How do you feel about deliberately subjecting twenty-eight intel igent creatures to the grim, lingering death AIDS brings?"
"I had hoped some of you might perhaps be interested in the success, or at least the partial success, of HIVI, rather than in the failures that preceded it," Howard said "I am, Dr.Howard," the reporter said,
"but that's not l question I asked."
Howard scowled out at the audience, but saw several nodding along with the reporter. If some of these people had their way, he thought with sudden hot anger that he did his best to conceal, he'd be lucky to be able to work shimpanses, let alone sims.
He chose his words with care; he had not come to Philadelphia to antagonize the press. "I always regret the death of any, ah, creatures in the laboratory but, particularly in the case of what is, as you say, a grim diseases as AIDS, I feel justified in doing whatever I must to people's lives."
"But sims, " the reporter persisted.
Howard cut him off. ", are not people. The law never regarded them as such. They are different from animals, true, but they are also very different from us.
sims in my research project were purchased with an appriation from the Senate for that express purpose. Everything I have done has been in accordance with all applicable regulations. And that is all I have to say on that; He looked toward another reporter.
"Yes?"
What is it that makes HIVI more effective against AIDS than er drugs?"
Howard nodded to her and smiled his thanks. At last, a sensable question.
"We're stil not entirely sure, Mistress, ah.. " Reynolds. " Mistress Reynolds, but we believe that the chief achievment has to do with the way HIVI interacts with the cel s outer membranes and strengthens them, making them more resistant to penetration by the AIDS virus. HIVI developed from, "
Round and round, round and round, Ken Dixon was sick of carrying his picket sign. He also did not like half the greencoats that were gathering in front of the Hall of Popular Assembly. He could not read their faces, not the mirrored visors on their helmets. But their body language said they were going to break up the demonstration soon.
Kil ing sims is murder he chanted. He'd been cal ing for a couple of hours now, since before Dr. Howard's conference convened. His throat felt sore and scratchy.
A man walking on the part of the sidewalk the demonstration wasn't using caught his eye. "Not under the law, it's not” he said. He looked prosperous and well-fed, nothing like a sim who'd been given AIDS on purpose.
Probably a lawyer himself, Dixon thought scornful y; Philly was lousy with them. While the chant went on Old the young man, he broke it to say, "The law is g e probable lawyer fell into step beside him.
"Why?" he "Sims aren't people. If using them will help us rid Ives of this terrible disease, why shouldn't we?" Dixon frowned. At the planning meeting for this protest, He'd worried out loud that people would say just what this this jumped up fellow was saying, that the threat of AIDS would let them justify the horror of the Terminus labs.
He'd been talked down then, and now gave back the reasoning the rest of the steering committee had used against him; "Howard's AIDS research is just a fragment of what were talking about here. If you al ow it, you set a precedent fame al owing all the other cruelty that sims have suffered since people first came to America: everything from working them to death on farms and in mines to hunting them and kil ing them for sport." He screwed up his face to show what he thought of that kind of sport. "Sims were here," the plump man shrugged. "We use them to do the work we didn't care to do for ourselves. stil do. why not?" The man's question grated on Dixon all over again, he thought before he answered; the fellow was not a fooll "In the old days we needed them, I admit. I'm not saying what we did then was right, far from it, but it understandable. It isn't anymore, not with machines to do sim-work, and do it better, Easter, and cheaper than sims
"You'd send them al to the preserves, then?" "That would be the ideal solution," Dixon said, seriously. Most of the people marching with him would given the plump man a yes at once. Three big track’s of land, together they were as large as a fair-sized commonwealth state, one in the Rockies, one on the plains, and one in the northwest woods, gave wild sims and their way of life a last stronghold in the FCA.
Trouble was, even a smal band of wild sims needed a large territory on which to forage. There wasn't enough land to accommodate the subhumans who now lived in civilized country, even assuming they wanted to trade modern lives for ones like those of their ancestors. "And in this not-so-ideal world?" the plump man asked All his raised eyebrow telling Dixon he knew all the objections that had popped into the demonstrator's mind. "As much freedom as they can handle," Dixon said. He jerked his chin at the Hall of the Popular Assembly. "at least freedom from being made into lab animals because they're too much like us."
That eyebrow, damn it, climbed higher. "'As much freedom as they can handle,' " the plump man echoed. "I –can’t imagine a more dangerous gift, for either the sims or the people who give it to them." His eyes followed Dixon's stubborn chin to the portico of the Hal . Someone was handing the greencoat chief a rolled-up piece of paper. The fellow resumed, "I would say, for example, that our esttemed constabulary has just been granted al the freedom they can handle."
“Yes," Dixon said unhappily. He knew a writ when he the. Somebody on the committee had fouled up; the side was supposed to keep the greencoats off people's backs until the protest broke up by itself.
He turned to say that to the man who'd been walking him. The fellow wasn't there anymore. Dixon spotted him walking purposefully down the street in the direction he’d been going before he fell in with the demonstration. In the plump man's perspective, that made good sense. He was tempted to disappear himself.
The greencoat chief put a hailer to his mouth. The static belched from it as he turned it on made everybody look ray who hadn't already.
One of his assistants ceremonously unrolled the writ.
'h-oh, trouble," Melody Porter said from in front of them. They'd been in a lot of the same classes at the Philadelphia Collegium since they were both freshmen four years now, he thought, bemused. They'd been to lots of demonstrations together, too. Melody was even more Strongly committed to justice for sims than he was. She came by it honestly; she was the great-great-grandaughter of Henry Quick, the trapper who'd really founded the sim justice movement.
Kiln an altogether different vein, Dixon thought marching with her was one of the things that made protests while.
After a few more seconds of fumbling, the boss greencoat got the hailer working. His aide handed him the paper. "Pro bono publico," he intoned, his amplified voice filling the square with formality. Dixon wonderes how many horrors had been perpetrated "for the publi "Pro bono publico," the greencoat repeated for the sake of the record and for the benefit of everyone this side a complete nerve-dead deafness. Then he got down to business:
"A court has declared this rally a danger to public order.
Those who do not disperse in the next five minute will be liable to arrest."
His blunt demand jerked the protesters out of thei chant. People shouted back at the greencoat: "We're peaceable! Why aren't you?"
"Can't stand to hear the truth, eh. And a cry that started a new chant:
"Justice for sims, and for people tool" Even so, Dixon noticed that the marcher’s picket signs, which had been steady, began to jerk as if pelted by hailstones.
People were having second thought Few were leaving, though.