days, he knew, people had thought other races of people to be inferior breeds. Sims did that much, at least, to stop man's inhumanity to man, by showing what an inferior breed was like. A security man stuck his head into the office, breaking Howard's chain of thought. 'Outside greencoats are here to l see you, sir,' he said.
'Send them in,' Howard sighed. Normal y, Terminus's regular constabulary stayed away from the DRC. Normally, Howard thought, he would not get to use that word again any time soon.
No sooner had the greencoat, actually, the fellow was in ordinary clothes, blue breeches and a yellow tunic, come in than the phone chimed.
'Excuse me,' Howard said, thinking, everything happens at once. The greencoat nodded.
Howard picked up the phone. An excited voice said in his ear, 'This is Butler, at the Terminus Constitution.
I’ve had a report that a sim with AIDS has been taken out of the Disease Research Center, Hello? Is that you, Dr. Howard? Are you there?'
“l'm here,' Howard said. No point in breaking the conection. Like the greencoat in his office, this Butler was only the first of many.
Matt was confused. Dealing with people often left him feeling that way, but he had lived in his old home in the tower for a long time, and mostly knew what to expect.
With these new people, he had no idea what was coming next.
Shaking his head, he got out of bed, the third new, strange, not quite comfortable bed he'd had in as many nights, and used the toilet.
He had to strain to make the urine go through his penis, which was stiff with a morning erection. Stiffer than usual, even; he missed the females with whom he'd been living.
He flushed the toilet, sat down on it to comb his red brown hair.
That was another reason he missed the females: there was a big patch on his back that he could not reach. In the towers, sims by twos and threes would speed a lot of time combing each other all over. It was something to do.
He sniffed, and felt his broad nostrils expand with pleasure.
Breakfast was cooking, sausages today, from the smell. He liked sausages.
He went out to the kitchen. The man and woman who had taken him from the tower were there, along with the strange man and woman whose house this was. They we al drinking coffee. They looked up as he came in.
Good morning, he signed.
'Good morning,' the people replied, with mouths a hands. 'Help yourself,' added the woman who lived here. Emily was her name, Matt remembered.
He nodded his thanks. Along with the sausages were sweet rolls and slices of apple. He fil ed his plate, took a glass of water (he did not care for coffee).
Behind him, Emily's mate Isaac whistled and said,' 'Certainly nothing wrong with his appetite now.'
'We've noticed that,' replied Ken, one of the ones who had taken him away. 'Hope it won't put you to too much trouble. '
'Don't worry,' Isaac said.
Matt sat down at the table and started to eat. Were proud to help keep him out of the DRC, folks, and taking him was a grand gesture. But do you know what you'll do with him in the end?'
'We were thinking of getting him to one of the preserves and setting him loose there,' Ken said, 'but, ' His voice wailed away.
'With the AIDS virus still in him, we can't do that, ' Melody finished for him. 'Not without spreading AIDS among the wild sims.'
People often talked around sims as if they could not understand spoken words because they could not say them. Watt put down his fork so he could sign, Feel good.
'We know you do, Matt,' Melody said gently, touching his hand for a moment with her small hairless one. 'But no matter how good you feel, you aren't well. The sickness is inside you.'
She and Ken had said that before. It made no sense to Matt. If he did not feel sick, how could he be sick? Feel good, he repeated.
He watched the humans roll their eyes and shrug. He shrugged too.
'There's another problem,' Ken added. 'He'll feel well only as long as we have HIVI for him.' He looked down at his hands. 'Maybe we should have thought a little longer about that, for his sake.'
We did the best we could,' Melody said. 'He's out now. they can't do any more experimenting on him. He's free, for as long as we can keep him that way.'
Matt had heard almost identical talk every day since he left the towers. It was about him, he knew, but it did not fil to connect to him.
Then Isaac said something new: 'I don't think we can keep him free. We can keep him away from the doctors, sure, but only he can make himself free.'
Dixon scowled; Melody rose abruptly from the table. I'II be taking off soon, I think.' Even Matt, who did not use speech himself, could hear the anger in her voice.
He ate another sausage. Free was one of the many words they used that gave him trouble. Ideas like bread or cat or green or jump or sideways were easy enough to deal with. He could even count, though sometimes he had trouble remembering which number went with how many things or whether he had attached a number to each of the things in the group he happened to be counting.
