Burning Paradise

by Robert Charles Wilson

  So all radio and television was modulated by the radiosphere, as everyone knew. What everyone didn't know was that the radiosphere was the distributed body of a living entity, and that the signals passing through it didn't necessarily pass unaltered.

  Three years ago Cassie had discovered a box of Correspondence Society monographs buried in the hallway cupboard where Aunt Ris kept the things she couldn't bear to throw away but never looked at. The papers had belonged to Cassie's parents; perhaps they had come to Aunt Ris after the murders, as a macabre heirloom, much like Cassie herself. Therefore she had had no compunction about rooting through the box and reading anything that captured her attention.

  Most of the monographs had been incomprehensible to her, with titles like "Intracellular Signaling in Isolated Etheric Cell Cultures," and these she quickly set aside. But one of the papers concerned TV broadcasting, and she had understood almost every word of it. The author, a television engineer, had compared studio recordings of nightly news programs with his own recordings of the same programs as they appeared after they had been broadcast. (Cassie imagined him poring over the footage frame by frame, with the sort of fanatical attention Thomas brought to the puzzles in his puzzle books—find five differences between these pictures.) In each case, the changes he discovered were numerous but dauntingly subtle. The most blatant example was a glitch (a momentary blackout) that obscured the spoken word "hatred" in a report about ethnic tension in Uganda. The least obvious were countless small but measurable modifications of the image and voice of the news hosts and reporters. What these subtle alteration of expression and inflection were meant to achieve the author couldn't say, though he noted "a general softening of emotional affect." It was really just one more data point in what Cassie had come to think of as the mysteries of the hypercolony (which was what Society documents called the collection of tiny living cells that comprised the radiosphere), but it helped explain her aunt's distrust of television and radio. What emerged from the speaker or appeared on the screen was tainted, poisonous, a subtle and insidious lie.

  Cassie understood and agreed, but Aunt Ris's absolutism had still annoyed her. TV couldn't be trusted, but did that mean it shouldn't be watched? The shows people talked about at school sounded interesting, and Cassie was treated as slightly dim for not having seen them. Thomas's exposure to television had been the same: it was a rare treat, forbidden for reasons he didn't entirely understand and often resented.

  Thomas looked at the motel- room TV, then at Cassie. Cassie sighed. "Go ahead," she said. "Turn it on." (It wasn't as if it watched you.) Moments later Thomas was sitting cross-legged on the bed, smiling at the dumb jokes on Piggy's Island, a sitcom about a group of shipwrecked British schoolboys.

  On the dresser next to the TV was a telephone, white plastic gone the color of old bone. It was another device less useful to Cassie than to ordinary people. An ordinary person could pick up the receiver and make a call without a second thought, not caring that all calls, even local ones, were routinely routed through the radiosphere. If she were an ordinary person Cassie could have tried to call Aunt Ris. But such a call would be insanely risky, endangering both parties. Better not to think about Aunt Ris at all, if she could help it.

  Leo and Beth retreated to the back of the room, talking in tones too low for Cassie to hear. Beth shot periodic aggrieved glances at Cassie, while Leo spoke slowly and showed her the palms of his big hands. Cassie ignored them.

  Eventually Leo grabbed his jacket. "Beth and I are going out to pick up some food. Anything you guys need while we're out?"

  Not really. Cassie's emergency suitcase was well and wisely packed. "Let me chip in," she said, going for her purse.

  "To night's on me. Save your money. We might need to pool our resources later."

  Moments later Cassie was alone with her little brother. She forced herself to pay attention to Piggy's Island. The two protagonists, Piggy and Ralph, had discovered a parachutist stuck in a treetop. Their attempts to get him down somehow involved pelting him with coconuts. Thomas watched somberly and laughed only once, a sound Cassie found startling in the wintry silence.

  After an hour of television Thomas started to look drowsy, but the sound of voices as Beth and Leo came in— not to mention the smell of the pizza— brought him back to ready alertness. He grabbed two slices from the box and settled back in front of the TV.

  Beth ate a little, then announced she wanted a shower. As soon as she had locked herself into bathroom, Leo asked Cassie to step outside. Cassie was surprised and immediately apprehensive. Bad news, she suspected. Maybe Beth convinced Leo to dump her and Thomas at the nearest bus depot. And if so, she thought, so be it. She left Thomas to his pizza and joined Leo in the darkness just beyond the door, her woolen jacket draped over her shoulders. She waited stoically for the dismissal.

  Leo took a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. He lit it, shook out the match, gazed at the pine tops silhouetted against a moon- blue sky. "Don't mind Beth," he said, breathing smoke into the November air. "She's dealing with what happened to her father. What might have happened to him. No love lost there, but . . . you know."

  "I guess," Cassie said.

  For most of her adolescence Cassie had been aware of Leo and Beth. They had been part of the older contingent of Society offspring, not quite in her circle. The Society survivors who had come to Buffalo were like family: quarrelsome, not always close, bound by shared secrets. Leo usually ignored her at the periodic gatherings, but she had made a careful study of him.

  His tobacco habit, for instance. He smoked, Cassie suspected, for the same reason he carried around paperback editions of bohemian novels, for the same reason he affected an interest in the music played in downtown clubs and coffee houses: it defined him as other in a way that required no explanation. It made his otherness seem like a choice.

  But at least for to night he had dropped the act. He coughed and said, "It's pretty obvious Beth isn't happy about you and Thomas coming along for the ride."

  "Uh- huh."

  "I just wanted to say, you shouldn't blame her. She can't see past her own unhappiness. She'll calm down sooner or later. So don't take it personally." He took more smoke into his lungs and let it seep from his nostrils. A truck rumbled past on the highway. "Do what you want, Cassie, but I think we ought to stick together at least until we get to Ohio."

  Which was slightly surprising. "Until we see your father, you mean."

  "Right. Because it's different this time. If the sims are going after people like your aunt, they must be going after everybody who knows anything at all about the Society. You, me, Beth— even Thomas. Do you have a plan to deal with that?"

  "I have two sets of ID and I'm of legal age. I have enough cash to get by for now. I can find work somewhere and just . . . blend in."

  "Blend in," Leo repeated, with a smile Cassie found irksome. "Are you sure the ID hasn't been compromised?"

  She shrugged. "Can't be sure of anything."

  "Which is why I think we're better off watching each other's back. At least until Ohio."

  "I guess. Okay, so what happens in Ohio? What do you expect to find when you knock on your father's door?"

  Leo dropped the cigarette and ground it under his heel, then parked his hands in his jacket pockets. "You know my father's reputation."

  "Just that he has deep pockets. And some strong ideas."

  "Of all the people who lived through '07, he was the only one who wanted to do something more than turn tail and hide. He told me once, the sims wouldn't have come for us if they weren't afraid of us. And if they're afraid of us that means we must have the power to hurt them. Hurt it." He turned his face to the sky. "That thing. Wouldn't you like to hurt it, Cassie?"

  "If I thought we could. Sure. But—"

  "What?"

  "Well, I have Thomas to look after. Also, no offence, but I'm not sure you know what you're talking about."

  Leo's sharp look morphed into a smile. "You're right ab
out your little brother. But stick with us, Cassie. I mean it. Stick with us at least until we're sure we're not being followed. Maybe until you get a chance to talk to my father, if . . ."

  "If he's alive."

  "If he's alive. After that you can find yourself a job in one of these dumb little towns. If that's really what you want." He opened the door to the room and held it for Cassie as she stepped back inside.

  They're not dumb little towns, she thought. If saying so made Leo feel superior to the people who lived in them, so be it. But he was wrong. And at the root of the wrongness was envy.

  All those little towns out there in the dark, she thought, and all those cities, too, all the people behind their yellow windows taking for granted the sanity and predictability of things in general. It would be easy and satisfying simply to hate them. But Cassie remembered too well the time when her own life had been like that, when she had been unambiguously proud to stand up on Armistice Day and salute the flags of the United States and the League of Nations and everything they seemed to represent: the century of peace, the inexorable advance of freedom and prosperity. Things she still wanted to believe in.

  Thomas sat slumped on the bed, his eyes drifting closed though they were still fixed on the television screen. A news broadcast had come on, a woman in a neat blue suit talking about crop failures in Tanzania. Massive shipments from the International Grain Reserve had arrived at the port of Dar es Salaam. The newscaster's expression conveyed her sympathy. But that could have been an adjustment performed by the hypercolony, a subtle enhancement, what movie people called a special effect.

  Beth came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, water dripping from her hair to her shoulders. "Turn that shit off," she told Cassie. "And get your brother off the fucking bed. I need some sleep."

  6

  RURAL VERMONT

  ETHAN GRABBED HIS PISTOL— FULLY loaded apart from the round he had already fired into the leg of the creature in the cellar— and hurried to the door. He was in time to see a grimy blue Ford Elektra bumping down the unpaved access road. It pulled up nearly at his doorstep, the rear end fishtailing in a cloud of dust. The driver's side door flew open and a woman stepped out. A shock of recognition left Ethan blinking.

  Nerissa.

  Seven years since he had last seen her. Even then, in the months before the murders, they had been living separately, only technically husband and wife. And even now, the sight of her provoked an upwelling of nostalgia and longing that was hard to suppress. He lowered the pistol and stepped onto the porch.

  Her taste in clothing hadn't changed, though she'd obviously dressed in a hurry. She wore blue jeans, a plaid cotton shirt, and a wide orange scarf that dangled to her hips. A pair of glasses— those were new; she used to favor contacts— amplified her already large eyes. She was older now, of course, but apart from a few trivial lines she looked pretty much the way she had when he first met her at a faculty party in Amherst.

  She walked steadily toward him as his initial rush of plea sure soured into dread. She came up the steps onto the porch. Then she was inches from him and he had no choice but to take her in his arms.

  "Jesus," he whispered. "Ris, Ris— it's not safe here!"

  She accepted the embrace, then stepped back from it. "I came for a reason, Ethan."

  "You don't understand. You have to leave. The sooner the better. I'm leaving."

  "Then we'll leave together. This is about Cassie."

  Not the first time today his niece's name had come up. He tried to meet her eyes and couldn't. "You'd better come in," he said.

  Her name had been Nerissa Stewart the day he met her, and by the end of the faculty mixer he realized he had fallen in love— if not with her, exactly, since he hardly knew her, then with her quick curiosity and the way she squinted at him as if he were a puzzle she wanted to solve. She was an English instructor specializing in William Blake, an English poet whose work Ethan had not read since a high- school encounter with Blake's Tyger, and Ethan's work in entomology had been equally bewildering to her. Later he would say he could find no truth in poetry and she could discover no poetry in invertebrates. But that was a packaged answer for people who asked about their separation. In fact, during the few years they were together, they had shared more than a few poetic truths.

  And in the seven years since the last time he had spoken to her Ethan had rehearsed their reunion countless times. It was a fantasy he found shameful but couldn't resist, especially when he was locked in by winter snow and helpless before the momentum of his own thoughts. Sometimes these fantasies were erotic: the sex had always been good, a foundation stone in the otherwise flimsy architecture of their marriage, and it was difficult not to replay those scenes when the wind came butting against the walls of the farm house like an angry bull. On easier days he might imagine apologizing to her, forgiving her, being forgiven by her, laughing with her or listening to her laugh. But none of that mattered now. There was urgent business between them. The old business, the inevitable business.

  "Cassie's gone," she said. "I mean, missing. I can explain, but . . . do you have coffee? I haven't had a coffee since yesterday. I drove here without sleep. Could use a bathroom break, too."

  He apologized for the condition of the bathroom, and while she was in it he tried to organize his whirling thoughts. Cassie was missing. Which meant Ethan wasn't the only one who had received a visit. The terror had started again. That fucking thing in the cellar! He had let it live— that had been a mistake, one he would soon correct. But he needed to talk to Nerissa first: listen to her, offer what advice he could, help her get away safely. And quickly.

  She came back to the kitchen table and accepted a cup of lukewarm coffee without looking at it. Before he could assemble his thoughts she said, "I know you weren't expecting me. I could hardly warn you. I wasn't even sure you'd still be here. You gave me this address a long time ago. I was afraid you'd moved on. It's strange for me, too, being here, seeing you. But I came because of Cassie. Let me tell you what happened, what was it, my God, just two days ago. Then we can decide what to do about it."

  "Time is an issue here."

  "Then just let me talk."

  Nerissa told him she had been away from her apartment the night a simulacrum came to Liberty Street. The next morning— arriving home to find the apartment empty and a dire note from Cassie taped to the refrigerator door— she had canvassed the neighbors and reconstructed what had happened. In the early hours of the morning and well before dawn, a man had been killed in a traffic accident directly outside the apartment. The neighbors' halting "you won't believe this" descriptions made it clear that the dead man had been a simulacrum.

  Cassie, always a light sleeper, must have witnessed the event. And Cassie— like all the children of survivor families— had been trained to react instantly to the appearance of a sim.

  "She would have assumed it was coming to kill her. And maybe it was. So she took Thomas and her suitcase and went to the nearest Society contact to warn him. Unfortunately, the nearest contact was Leo Beck."

  "Werner's son?"

  "Leo's twenty- two years old now, and he's as much a contrarian as his father. Society people were all the family he ever really had, but I think he hated us as much as he loved us. He was popular with Cassie's cohort, though. I guess he seemed less, I don't know, passive than the rest of us."

  Werner Beck, Leo's father, had taken a similar position. Werner believed the hypercolony might be vulnerable to human attack, that the Correspondence Society's accumulated knowledge constituted a weapon that could be used against it. And it was an attractive idea, Ethan thought. At least until you began to calculate the potential cost in human lives.

  "When Cassie told him about the sim, Leo must have assumed we were all under attack— that sims had been sent to wipe out every last remnant of the Society."

  "Are you sure that's not true?"

  "Of course I'm not sure. Everyone's terrified. The protocol we set up for thi
s situation was, if you come under attack and survive, you warn one person, then you disappear. I'm guessing the sim who died on Liberty Street was meant for me. So I talked to Edie Forsythe, who convinced me to stay with her until she talked to Sue Nakamura, who talked to— well, it went around the circle. And as far as we can tell, only two sims ever showed up. One was killed outside my apartment; the other was shot in the head by John Vance when it knocked at his door, asking for a conversation, if you can believe that. The sim John shot was unarmed, by the way. The one who was run down, I don't know. All very strange. But Leo bolted, and he took John's daughter, Beth, and Cassie along with him."