Burning Paradise

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 a

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 a

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 about 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…”