They ambled among the beds, arranged in clusters around common areas with sinks and toilets. Twerlinger pointed to partitioning walls rising not quite to the ceiling throughout the space.
“We divide our breeders up by how far along they are. Early, middle, late gestation: eight months overall.” She spread her arms. “OPRR will find nothing to complain about here, Ms. Cadman. Breeders lead lives of pampered ease. They do not do a lick of work their entire lives.”
“But they engage in labor of another sort.”
A sniff. “I suppose you might put it that way.”
Most of the mothers-to-be Romy passed were either napping or lounging together on sofas, watching TV.
“They look bored out of their minds.”
“Breeders are provided excellent nutrition and get adequate exercise,” the assistant director said as if she hadn’t heard.
“And what of labor and delivery?”
“Would you like to see a delivery? I can guarantee that a number are in progress as we speak.”
“I’ll leave that to the team. But how does labor go?”
Twerlinger shrugged. “The breeders rarely need sedation, but if they do, they get it. Our breeder sims receive better obstetrical care than a lot of humans, Ms. Cadman.”
“And after delivery?”
“It’s usually single offspring, but we’re beginning to have some success with increasing the incidence of twins. Once we perfect that we can double output.”
“I’m surprised you don’t simply clone them and incubate them ex-utero.”
“We tried that. Believe me, we tried that every which way imaginable, but the resultant offspring were much less tractable and far less emotionally stable than the ones gestated in utero. That’s the one thing we guarantee our lessees: stable and dependable workers. So…” She smiled here, a fleeting flash of yellowed teeth. “…we do it the old-fashioned way.”
“And you still allow a mother to stay with her child?”
Twerlinger nodded. “For a year; we find the offspring adapt faster in that year when the breeders are around to help train them. And we encourage all breeders to nurse because that seems to make for healthier and more emotionally stable offspring.”
“And then what?”
“We immunize them against the usual diseases. Chimps get polio and hepatitis and HIV, though they don’t develop AIDS. Sims are even more susceptible. Then the offspring are PRC’d and moved on into the dormitories to start their training.”
“Pee-are…?”
Twerlinger touched the nape of Romy’s neck. Her fingers were ice cold. “Tattooed with their serial number bar code. You’ve seen them, of course.”
“Of course.” She’d just never thought of babies being tattooed.
“It’s the only way we can accurately monitor inventory.”
“And the mothers?”
“Breeders, please. It’s tempting to anthropomorphize them, but we discourage it. Counterproductive, you know. Certain segments of the public get all caught up in their superficial human characteristics—”
“Well, they aren’t exactly white rats.”
“True, but when you come down to it, sims arelivestock , nothing more.”
Romy looked around at the bored, hopeless expressions on the…breeders. “Nothing more.”
“As for the breeders, after a year with their offspring, they’re rotated back to be impregnated again.”
Romy ground her teeth, biting back a tirade. She wanted to shout that they were too close to human to be treated as walking, talking incubators, to have their children—not offspring,children! —torn from them and then be impregnated again…and again…and again…
But she couldn’t let on how she felt. Zero had warned her about that: Never let them know, or your status in OPRR could be compromised.
She let out the breath she’d been holding. “That means every twenty months or so—”
“Yes, that’s the cycle. A hearty breeder can go through ten to twelve cycles before she’s retired.”
“Or just plain tired.”
What an existence, Romy thought as she looked around at the lethargic breeders. Most sims in her experience tended to be full of life and energy. These seemed barely able to move. And suddenly she knew why.
“They’re depressed,” Romy said.
Twerlinger arched her thin eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware you had training in sim psychology.”
No, but I know depression, lady—firsthand and big time.
“Don’t need any to realize it’s an unavoidable emotional fallout from being repeatedly separated from their children.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Chimps, orangutans, gorillas—all mourn the loss of a child. Why should sims be any different? In fact they’d bemore 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.
“Finished here?” he said.
“For 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 agreat legal secretary and he hoped her two boys stayed in college forever so she’d never be able to quit.
“It 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 onAckenbury 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.