Burning Paradise

But the sims ignored them in their rush to the launch tower. The faces of the sims were slack and indifferent—they're not pretending to be human anymore. She looked back and saw with horror that they were converging on the burning van, trying to smother the fire with their bodies. But the van was burning fiercely and the sims who threw themselves on it were instantly engulfed: the flames took their clothes, their limbs, the human and alien skin of them, the payload of green matter inside.

  Uncle Ethan managed to start the engine. Cassie checked her watch. "It's time."

  "I know."

  "Nothing's happening."

  Her uncle didn't answer.

  "They might have disarmed the igniters."

  "I know, Cassie."

  "But—"

  She felt the detonation before she heard it. The ground bucked and threw a haze of dust into the air. The sound of the explosion was muffled and prolonged, like thunder. A second explosion followed. Sirens wailed throughout the compound, then fell silent. The streetlights flickered and went out. The sudden darkness concealed everything but the flicker of fire from the burning van behind them. Then the wind began to clear the haze, and Uncle Ethan drove by a faint but brightening glow in the eastern sky.

  They reached the berm as the fire ignited the last incendiary charges. Cassie saw the explosion: a blinding white starburst followed by a shock wave that rocked the pickup. Uncle Ethan braked. "Keep your head down," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Shrapnel."

  Fragments of metal and glass peppered the roof. Something big hit the glass of the windshield and rolled smoking off the hood. Cassie squeezed her eyes shut and gripped her uncle's hand until the hail of debris stopped.

  Behind them, the launch tower stood at the foot of a thickening plume of smoke. Its mirrored petals were skewed; one was missing; another shattered and collapsed as she watched. And the sims had fallen down again. The sky was light enough now that she could see the bodies where they lay, a dense drift of them (she thought of autumn leaves) close to the base of the launch tower. There were only a few here on the rim of the embankment, but one had fallen close to the truck. Uncle Ethan surprised her by getting out of the van and crossing a few yards of gravel and industrial debris to the inert body.

  She scooted out and stood behind him as he knelt and put his hand on the sim's throat, checking for a pulse.

  "Is it dead?"

  "Not yet."

  Not yet. But it was clearly dying. The sim gasped and arched its spine, and Uncle Ethan stumbled back a pace. The creature took three deep, stertorous breaths. Its eyes opened but the pupils were motionless and huge. Another breath. Another. Then it exhaled through clenched teeth, a tuneless whistling. No inhalation followed.

  Almost dawn, and the desert had taken on a pale clarity. Salt basins and a horizon buckled by black basaltic hills. The wind plucking at this ridge of trash.

  We're alone now, Cassie thought.

  Her uncle bent over the sim once more. There was something almost tender in the way he touched it. She guessed by the expression on his face that the creature was truly dead. What ever had inhabited it was gone for good and all.

  But her uncle looked grim, even mournful. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

  And Cassie was shocked. "Are you apologizing to it?"

  He stood and brushed his hands together. "I'm not sorry for them." He stared at her— or no, Cassie thought, through her, as if at something terrible that no one else could see. "I'm sorry for all of us." Behind him, the burning compound raised flags of smoke. "Now let's get out of here. And, Cassie? You know we can't talk about this. No one can ever know we were here."

  The last unspeakable truth, she thought.

  33

  ANTOFAGASTA

  NERISSA CAME AWAKE IN THE CHAIR where she had slept. It was only just dawn, faint light seeping through the window of the hotel room. The television was on— she had neglected to turn it off— but all it showed was empty static. There had been a sound, she was sure of it, here in the room, half- heard, indistinct but loud enough to wake her. "Thomas?" she said.

  She was not even sure the sound had come from him. A cough, a gasp? She stood, still groggy. There were faint voices from the corridor beyond the door, one of them a woman's voice repeating something like I've tried and tried and I can't get through. Nerissa took a tentative step. Her left leg was numb, the ankle tender where she had fallen on it. She limped to the side of the bed where Thomas lay.

  What she saw there made no sense: Thomas lying on his back, not breathing. His spine in an arch. His small hands crumpled into fists. His eyes open and unblinking. His pupils as big as two black pennies.

  For one lunatic moment it all seemed simply unreal, as if someone had stolen her nephew and replaced him with a crude, distorted replica. She heard herself saying his name. She put her hand on his forehead but his skin was cold. And now began the first wave of comprehension, the first approach of the grief and rage that would embrace her like pitiless, implacable giants. Some part of her wanted to call for help— to pick up the phone and demand a doctor. But the saner part of her knew that no doctor could help Thomas now. Her legs lost their strength. She slid to the floor next to the bed.

  She lay there until a patch of sunlight from the window found her. Were there things she should be doing? Yes. But she wasn't able to think clearly about that. She managed to stand up without looking at the bed. She didn't want to see what was on the bed.

  There was a tentative knock at the door— the maid, perhaps, though Nerissa had put out the DO NOT DISTURB sign. Of course she couldn't let anyone in. She left the chain latch engaged but opened the door an inch. She saw a woman she didn't recognize—middle- aged, well- dressed, probably American. "I'm sorry," the woman said. "Were you sleeping?"

  Nerissa shook her head.

  "I was wondering, is your telephone working? Because mine isn't, and I need to get a call through to Indiana."

  "You should ask the hotel staff."

  "I have! All they do is apologize. No phone, no radio, no television, no anything. Not here or anywhere. Or so they say. I thought this was a civilized country!"

  "I can't help you," Nerissa said.

  She eased the door shut and leaned against the jamb, trying to correlate these new data points. The failure of communication. The death of her nephew. The floral smell she noticed when she turned back to the room.

  On the bed, Thomas's body had shrunken. It had, Nerissa thought, deflated. Under the rucked- up T-shirt he had slept in, Thomas's rib cage was prominent over an empty sack of sagging skin. Watery green matter had begun to escape from the openings of his body. The bed was damp with it. An emerald- colored drop formed in his left nostril as she watched.

  This was not Thomas. There was no Thomas. There had never been a Thomas.

  "Ethan," she whispered. "What have you done?"

  She could not, of course, remain in the room. Not a second longer than necessary. Which clarified things.

  She had no luggage. Just the contents of her purse. Without looking again at the bed, she double- checked to make sure nothing was left behind. Nothing was. Nothing human.

  She replaced the DO NOT DISTURB / SILENCIO POR FAVOR sign as she left the room. Inevitably, the hotel staff would discover the body of the sim. But by then, perhaps, very little would be left of it.

  The concierge— a young woman in freshly- pressed hotel livery— approached her as she crossed the lobby to the door. "Are you going out?"

  "Yes," Nerissa said.

  "You might want to be careful. There's something bad going on. No radio, no television— the phones don't work. We can't even call a cab! You're American, yes?"

  "Yes."

  "I saw you come in last night. Are you all right? If you don't mind me asking."

  "I'm all right. Thank you."

  "What about your little boy— is he with you?"

  "No. His uncle took him away."

  "Oh, you have family in town?

  "No,"
Nerissa said. "I have no family."

  E P I L O G U E

  THE LAST UNSPEAKABLE TRUTH

  Biological mimicry blurs the distinction between a monster and a mirror.

  —Ethan Iverson, The Fisher man and the Spider

  CASSIE LISTENED TO THE CAR RADIO AS she drove to her uncle's apartment. Early dusk and a January blizzard had turned the streets of Buffalo into a maze of ski runs and slalom courses, and visibility was down to half a block. "If you don't need to go out," the newscaster said, "then by all means stay inside and bundle up." Good advice, Cassie thought. But she couldn't follow it. Not to night. And she hoped Aunt Ris wouldn't use it as an excuse to stay home.

  For almost ten years now Cassie's uncle Ethan had lived in a two- bedroom walkup on Antioch Street, in what she still thought of as the old Society neighborhood. For three of those years Cassie had lived with him. Nowadays she rented a small house in Amherst, close to her job in the human resources department of an aviation- parts wholesaler, but far enough from the city that she didn't see Uncle Ethan as often as she would have liked— even in decent weather.

  At least she was able to find a parking space reasonably close to his building. The newscaster was talking about the global crisis as she switched off the radio. The Ceylon summit had broken up without a concession from the Chinese or the Atlantic powers; India's ultimatum had not been withdrawn; and it was anyone's guess what the gunboats might do. Her boots left tracks in fresh snow all the way to the lobby door.

  Uncle Ethan met her at the door of his apartment. "Come in," he said. "Your aunt's not here yet."

  How tired he sounded, Cassie thought. How old.

  It had taken them almost a month to get from Chile to the United States in the midst of the global communications blackout. During that time, across the world, thousands had died for lack of emergency services; thousands more had been killed in urban fires that spread catastrophically before they could be reported or controlled. Worst of all was the terrifying absence of information: the panic of not knowing what was happening or why.

  But the practical problems had been resolved relatively quickly, or at least it seemed that way, looking back from ten years later. Once it was established that the radio-propagative layer was no longer amplifying and reflecting signals, solutions were available: short- and long- wave direct broadcasting, a system of relay towers, a landline telephone grid. Building and installing the new infrastructure, though costly, had even helped sustain employment through the economic crisis.

  Much worse were the consequences that followed from the world's discovery of the truth about the hypercolony. Surviving remnants of the Correspondence Society had supplied long- suppressed research to the League of Nations; the Atacama site had eventually been discovered and analyzed. What had been unspeakable truths for Cassie's family had become common knowledge. The result was an age of unreasoning anxiety. There were no more sims in the world, but schoolchildren and job applicants were still routinely tested for the presence of green matter. The Department of Defense was funding the construction of astronomical observatories. Amicability and peace- making were increasingly seen as tainted impulses; what seemed most authentically human was everything the hypercolony had suppressed: bellicosity, cynicism, suspicion, aggression. And the price was being paid in blood— in countless small regional conflicts, and now the threat of a larger war. The Chinese had built aircraft that could carry bombs to America, some claimed. And the bombs themselves had grown more deadly as the great nations competed to arm themselves. Cassie sometimes allowed herself to wonder if this was the outcome the hypercolony had wanted all along. We served our purpose, and now we're being allowed to drive ourselves to extinction.

  Falling in love with Josh had changed her mind about that. Josh was a sweet man, and his sweetness was merely and purely human. It justified much. But he needed to know who she was. She needed to tell him what she had done.

  Uncle Ethan had put out a tray of crackers and dip, which made Cassie smile. "Like a party," she said.

  "I know it's not a party. But I thought— it's at least an occasion. Seeing Ris again. Telling your aunt you're getting married."

  "Getting her permission," Cassie said.

  "You don't need her permission to get married."

  No—not permission to get married. Permission to speak, Cassie thought.

  She went to the window. Antioch Street was empty, veiled in snow, a page without words.

  "Any sign of her?"

  "Not yet."

  "Well. Don't be too disappointed if she doesn't show up."

  "Thank you for letting me invite her here."

  "To be honest?" her uncle said. "I never thought she'd agree to come."

  It was nine o'clock when a car turned the corner and parked as close to the curb as the mounded snow permitted. From the window Cassie saw her aunt get out, stand up, tug her cloth cap over her ears, trudge to the building.

  Cassie met her at the door of Uncle Ethan's apartment. "Thank you," Cassie said breathlessly. "Thank you for doing this."

  Aunt Ris embraced her. Cassie pressed her cheek against her aunt's shoulder, the cloth coat wet with melting snow.

  "Ethan," Aunt Ris said neutrally.

  "Hello, Ris. Would you like something to drink?"

  "No. I want to hear what Cassie has to say. But I can't stay long."

  "Of course," he said, wincing.

  Cassie and her uncle had searched Antofagasta for weeks before they returned to the States, and for six months after that Cassie had made increasingly frantic inquiries among Society survivors, until a letter from her aunt arrived.

  I am so sorry, it began. I spoke to Beth's father— I thought I should tell him what he needed to know— and he said you had already been in touch. He gave me this address. I'm afraid I have bad news. The letter went on to describe the death of Thomas. Of the thing they had called Thomas. One more belated horror from what had been, for Cassie and her family, an age of horrors, and in many ways the most devastating of them all.

  Later—when it became possible to re- read the letter without staining the page with her tears— Cassie noticed how often her aunt had used the word "sorry." Seven times in two handwritten pages. She also noticed that her aunt had neglected to include a return address.

  Which did not deter her from trying to get in touch. After another six months Cassie received a letter asking her to stop. A meeting wouldn't be good for either of us, I think. And Cassie ignored it. And in the summer of that year Aunt Ris finally consented to see her.

  They had lunch together in a cafeteria in Delaware Park. Cassie had been prepared to confront her aunt's unhappiness, but she was surprised by the coldness that came along with it— as if all the kindness in her had drained away like water from a holey bucket. "I'm sorry," Aunt Ris had said (again) at the end of it. "But I can't do this. Be around you people, I mean. There are parts of my life I can't get back. I don't want them back. I just want to forget them. And you're only making it harder."

  Still, Cassie hadn't given up. Aunt Ris had agreed that Cassie could write to her, "If you really need to." And that was what Cassie had done. She composed small, careful, impersonal notes and mailed them at irregular intervals. She hoped her aunt felt obliged to read them, if not to respond.

  Most recently Cassie had written to Aunt Ris about Josh. Cassie had met Josh through her membership in the Albright- Knox Art Gallery. A spontaneous conversation about French impressionism had turned into a first date: thank you, Henri Matisse. Josh was single, thirty years old, an engineer at a Cheektowaga tool- and- die firm that had managed to survive the communications crisis. He had no connection with the Correspondence Society.

  Last week Josh had asked Cassie to marry him. And Cassie had agreed. But she didn't want to import a lie into their marriage. That was why she needed to speak to her uncle and her aunt.

  Cassie talked a little about Josh, about how much he meant to her and how important it was not to lie to him even about w
hat happened in the Atacama—especially about what happened in the Atacama. But she had promised her uncle never to share that secret. That was why she needed his permission . . . and her aunt's permission, too, since Aunt Ris was an essential part of the story.

  Cassie would not, of course, speak publically about any of this. The existence of the Correspondence Society had become common knowledge, but their role in it was known only to themselves. That wouldn't change. She just needed to be able to speak freely to Josh.

  "And how do you suppose he'll react," Aunt Ris said, "when you tell him you're responsible for the state of the world today?"