The Natal Center - intellectually she'd been prepared for it, but emotionally...

Anne Twerlinger, associate director of the center, was a reed-thin middle-aged redhead who stank of cigarettes, wore retro pointy-framed glasses, and spoke with what Romy could only describe as a sniff in her tone, as if convinced that at any moment her nostrils might be assailed by a noxious odor.

Portero had stayed behind in Twerlinger's office, making phone calls, while she started the tour by leading Romy down a narrow corridor. The right wall was glass from waist to ceiling, and looked in on the natal center's cloning lab.

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you about the sim genome," Twerlinger said, then proceeded to do just that. "As everyone knows, it consists of twenty-two chromosome pairs - one fewer than humans, two fewer than chimps; much of the junk and non-functioning genetic material has been removed, leaving it one of the cleanest mammalian genomes in existence. Sims don't mate, mainly because we've genetically reduced their sex drives to nil; but even if they did, no offspring would be produced because their ova cannot be fertilized."

"Why not have just one sex?" Romy said.

"Because we're all conditioned to view work as gender specific: We're comfortable with females cleaning houses, males loading trucks. And SimGen is nothing if not sensitive to the marketplace."

"Why should the females have ovaries at all?"

"We'd rather they didn't, of course, but we've found that a regular hormone cycle is necessary to their accelerated maturation process." She waved tobacco-stained fingers at the masked and gowned workers on the far side of the glass. "New sims are cloned by nuclear transfer from a bank of identical cells, and implanted in a special class of females we call breeders. Breeder sims are as sterile as their sisters, but exist for one purpose: to incubate new sims."

They came to the end of the corridor. Twerlinger pushed through into a much larger space: wide, long, its low ceiling studded with recessed fluorescents. The place was huge - the size of a football field at least, and filled with beds. It might have been the world's largest homeless shelter except that it was filled with sims instead of humans.

Pregnant sims.

"My God," Romy said. "And you have three floors like this?"

"And two more identical buildings with a fourth under construction. We can't keep up with the demand. We've begun building natal centers abroad now. The one in Poznan is almost complete."

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.