Patrick showed her out, then returned to where Zero and Romy were standing.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “What if it wasn’t just the mixture of the two drugs in his bloodstream? What if saying a vital word was what triggered the—what was it?”
“Aphasia,” Zero said, then shook his head. “That sounds even more farfetched.”
“Maybe. But what was he saying at the very instant something tripped the circuit breaker in his brain?”
“I don’t remember,” Romy said, “but it’s easy enough to find out.”
She went to a shelf on the wall and retrieved the recorder. She reversed it for a second, then hitPLAY . Romy’s voice burst from the tiny speaker.
“—op stalling! Tell me now: Who do you work for?”was followed by Parker’s hoarse rasp:“SIRG—” and then strangled noises and cries of alarm.
Romy switched off the player. She looked pale. “Want to hear it again?”
“That’s okay. You heard the word: ‘Surge,’ right?”
Zero shrugged. “I doubt he was talking about a fabric or an electric current. I believe he got out the first syllable of the answer—‘s-u-r’ or ‘s-e-r’ or ‘c-e-r’ or maybe even ‘c-i-r’ for circle—and then the seizure hit and the rest of the word or words were crushed into a guttural mess.”
“But this was in direct response to ‘Who do you work for?’ so it’s got to have some relevance, don’t you think? I mean, at least it’s a start. Question is, how to find out if it means anything?”
“Why don’t we simply ask?” Romy said.
“Oh, sure. I’ll just call up Mercer Sinclair and say, ‘What does the word “surge” mean to you?’ That’ll work.”
A smile played about Romy’s lips, the first since last night. “Why call when you can ask in person?”
8
NEWARK, NJ
Meerm feel ver bad today. So fat belly. Legs swoll. Hard move. Many move inside, like thing kicking. Kick-kick-kick. And dizz. Ver dizz.
Oop. Meerm trip, fall against bunk. Make noise. Loud. Must hide. Benny come.
Climb top closet. So hard climb. More hard squeeze into hole. But Meerm push hard. Push back board and wait in dark. Soon Benny come. Talk self. Always talk self.
“Who’s up here? Goddamn it, I heard you. I been hearing you all week! Now come out!”
Benny come closet. Pull door. Meerm not breathe. Hear Benny voice through wall. Shout-shout-shout.
“Where are you, dammit! You gotta be somewhere! Or maybe I just gone loco! No! I know what I heard, dammit!”
Benny leave closet. Many loud noise in room—dresser move, bunk move, door slam-slam-slam. Then noise stop.
“All right so maybe I am hearing things. Next I’ll be seeing things. That’s it. I’m losing it. I been babysitting these monkeys so long I’m going bugfuck nuts! But I coulda sworn…”
Benny go way but Meerm stay. Too tired. Too scare to move. And hurt. Kick and hurt all time. Poor Meerm. When hurt stop?
9
MANHATTAN
DECEMBER 19
Romy was late for the meeting. On purpose.
For the past few years she’d made a point of keeping a few shares of SimGen stock in her 401(k) for the sole purpose of being invited to shareholders’ meetings. She’d been to a number of these and knew how they went—blather and hype from beginning to end. The only interesting part was the finale when Mercer Sinclair took questions from the audience.
By the time she reached the upper floors of the Waldorf Astoria she already knew from the ecstatic talk in the lobby that SimGen—or “simgee,” as the stockholders liked to call it, phoneticizing its SIMG stock symbol—had come in with earnings of $1.37 per share, beating not only the analysts’ predictions of $1.26, but the whisper number of $1.31 as well.
She walked into the magnificent four-story Art Deco grand ballroom just in time to fill out an index card with her question for the CEO. Instead of passing her card down to the center aisle, she walked it to the rear of the ballroom and personally handed it to the elderly gent who would be reading them.
“I’d really like to know the answer to this,” she whispered, laying a hand on his arm and flashing her warmest smile.
He looked at her over the top of his reading glasses and smiled. “I’ll see what I can do, miss.”
Then she found an empty seat along the side and waited. Mercer Sinclair, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and impeccable in a charcoal gray silk Armani suit, stood behind a podium on the dais and breezed through the usual run of inane questions from the audience about future earnings projections and new product outlooks—all of which were explained in detail in the annual report—and deftly fielded inquiries about the Reverend Eckert’s assertions that the lost sim was pregnant, laughing them off as a crude and transparent ratings ploy.
And then the reader-man got to Romy’s question.
“Mr. Sinclair, a stockholder wants to know, ‘How big a part does surge play in your day-to-day operations?’”
Romy leaned forward, studying Mercer Sinclair’s face as it floated in the glow from the podium. She saw him stiffen as if touched by a cattle prod, watched his eyes widen, then narrow. Even if she were blind she’d have detected his shock from his stammering reply.
“Wh-what? I-I don’t understand the question. What does it mean? Could the person who asked it please identify himself and clarify the question?”
Romy didn’t move.
“Please,” Sinclair said. “I…I’m quite willing to answer any question, but I have to understand it first. Who asked it? If you’ll be kind enough to clarify…”
Romy sat and watched him stumble and fumble, peering into the great dark lake of faces before him.
Finally he fluttered a hand at the reader and said, “Very well…I guess he left…next question.”
He went on responding but Romy could tell his heart was no longer in it. His answers were terse, his manner distracted, as if he couldn’t wait to be done with this.
Before the lights came up, Romy wandered back to where the elderly question reader was winding up the Q and A session, and grabbed the discard pile of cards he’d already read. No sense in leaving any unnecessary traces behind.
She had a bad moment when two men in suits followed her into the elevator down to the lobby, but they spent the ride talking about hockey and got off on the twenty-second floor. She used a side exit and stepped out onto East Forty-ninth. She waited to see if anyone followed, then hurried downhill to sunny Lexington Avenue where Patrick waited. His face was too well known to SimGen stockholders to risk his presence at the meeting, but he hadn’t been able to stay completely away.
“Well?” he said as he took her arm and began walking her uptown. The cold snap had broken and the day was clear and mild. “Did he react?”
“Did he ever,” Romy said. “He just about lost it. Looked as if he’d just been stripped naked and hosed with ice water.”
Patrick grinned and jabbed the air with a fist. “Knew it!”
She had to hand it to Patrick. He had an acute ear for nuances and he’d heard something in that one syllable from David Palmer. He’d been sure it was significant, and he’d been right.
He threw an arm around her shoulders. “Damn, I wish I could have been there.” He waved his free hand in the air. “But forget about that. The question now is, how do we capitalize on this?”
“For one thing,” Romy said, “we know the word itself has meaning. It’s not just part of another word or a phrase.”
“If I’d known that last night I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. I went through an online dictionary and plugged in every spelling of ‘surge’ I could think of to see if it might be the first syllable of another word. Got nowhere. Didn’t do any better when I tried every possible homonym. ‘Surge’ is not a common syllable.”
“For which we should be thankful, I guess. Imagine if he’d said ‘con’?”
“Then we’d be cooked. But ‘surge’ itself doesn’t appear to mean anything.”
“It might if it’s an acronym.”