Burning Paradise

Something Nerissa used to say: We see through a glass, darkly. From the Bible. The New Testament, if Ethan recalled correctly. Corinthians? Nerissa would know.

In the dark glass of his rearview mirror Ethan saw more headlights coming up fast. He put a little extra pressure on the gas pedal, but the vehicles continued to close with him.

We see through a glass, darkly… Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known…. .There was something on the road ahead, obscured by the moon-shadow of an upright granite outcropping. He slowed until he could make out the obstacle, which he belatedly recognized as the two pickups that had passed him earlier, one in each lane of the highway, both now aimed in his direction, both stationary and dark. He swerved to pass on the verge when their high beams flashed on, blinding him. At which point it became impossible to do anything but stand on the brake or drive off the road.

He managed to stop. The pistol slid from the passenger-side seat to the floor. He was groping for it when a man tapped on his side window with the butt of a flashlight. “Dr. Iverson?”

Ethan’s fingers closed on the grip of the pistol. He straightened up. The man standing outside the car wore jeans, a ball cap, a work shirt, and a bland expression. His eyes glittered in the moonlight. Ethan shot him through the window of the car.

Safety glass exploded in a shower of fragments. By the time Ethan opened his eyes again the man—the sim—had dropped out of sight. But the odor of green matter mingled with the gunpowder stink of the fired weapon, making him think dazedly of chlorophyll, vinegar, bread mold, crushed leaves….

The headlights that had been following him belonged to two more identical pickups. They fishtailed to a stop behind Ethan, boxing him in before he could put the car in reverse. The only way he could move now was on foot. He fumbled through the side door and out, gasping at the thin air.

Another human shape swarmed toward him. Ethan faced it and fired. There was the wet sound of a bullet impacting flesh, but it failed to do critical damage. The sim took Ethan’s right arm above the wrist and twisted the gun out of his hand. Two more sims came out of the darkness and pi

But it didn’t happen. Yet another sim approached, this one in the shape of a slightly-built dark-ski

“Dr. Iverson, I apologize for what happened here. We don’t want to frighten you or hurt you. We want to talk to you.” The sim took a pair of handcuffs from its belt. “I apologize for this, too. Please put your hands behind your back.”

26

CASSIE AND THOMAS AND BETH CAME into the kitchen, staring at the syringe and the disposable needles on the table. Nerissa wanted to stare too, but she forced herself to look away. “What do you mean to do with those?”

“Calm down.” Beck’s expression was impassive, his face the same assembly of clenched muscles and coolly evaluative eyes that had always made him seem so naturally authoritative. “I need to perform a test. It’s not hard to understand. May I explain?”

You’d fucking better! She waited for him to go on.

“After the first round of attacks I had an opportunity to perform an autopsy on a simulacrum. A sim isn’t much more than a human body with a core of green matter ru

“You are not,” Nerissa said, “sticking a needle into me or any child I’m responsible for.”

“I’m afraid I have to. Ethan and Leo were almost ambushed at the mail drop in Mazatlan, even though that location was known to just a few of us. Before we set out into the Atacama—or before you fly back to the United States—I need to know that no one in this room has communicated our plans to the hypercolony.”

“What, you think I’m a sim? Or Cassie? Or your own son?”

“I don’t think so, and I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I just want certainty. Isn’t that worth a little inconvenience? I got the idea from you, Mrs. Iverson.”

“From me!”

“From what you told me about your interview with the mother of the sim in Pe

“We all have long histories with the Correspondence Society, too. Doesn’t that count?”

“Of course it does, but not in the way you’re suggesting. Society researchers have been working with cell colonies ever since Ethan isolated the Antarctic samples. We’ve cultivated them in quantity, and with what seemed like reasonable caution, given that there was no obvious risk of infection. But we were wrong about that. We were almost certainly exposed. Any of us could have been infected, and we might have passed that infection to our families.”

“Ethan and I have no children.”

“No. But your sister did.”

Nerissa saw Cassie’s eyes widen as she worked out the implication. Thomas just looked puzzled.

“You are not doing this.” Nerissa took her niece’s hand, her nephew’s hand. “Cassie, pack what you need and help your brother do the same. We’re leaving.”

“I can’t allow that,” Beck said.

“You think you can stop us?”

“Eugene?” Beck said. “Mind the door.”

Dowd smiled thinly and moved to block the entranceway. He tugged back his shirt to reveal a pistol crammed into the waistband of his jeans, a gesture that looked to Nerissa both laughably theatrical and insanely, creepily threatening. “What, he’s going to shoot us?”

“I surely hope not. There’s absolutely no need for it. But we’re at war, whether you like it or not. Declare your objections, but please cooperate. We’re talking about a momentary discomfort. Do it and have done with it. Then Eugene will drive you and the children to the airport and you can forget about all this.”

“Is this why you sent Ethan away? He would never let you get away with this.”

“If you like, you can watch me perform the test on myself before you submit to it.”

Nerissa thought about Eugene at the door. From what she had seen and heard of Dowd’s behavior toward Beth, he was callous and potentially violent. But she doubted he’d shoot an unarmed woman. Unless he thinks refusing the test means I’m not human. Dowd had killed sims in the desert, according to Beck. And he was anxious to kill more. Was it worth the risk of testing his conviction?

She wished she had even a moment more to think this through. But Beck was already reaching for the box of syringes.

“Aunt Ris?” Cassie said.

Leo stepped forward.

“If you have to do this,” he said to his father, “you can start with me.”

Beck carried the syringe, the disposable needles, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and a package of adhesive bandages into a small room at the back of the house. The room, probably meant for storage, had been fitted with a wooden desk and two chairs. A narrow door, locked, faced onto the alley behind the house. There was no window. A fluorescent ceiling bar washed the room with pale, uncertain light.

Beck took the chair behind the desk and gestured his son into the chair opposite him. He would have preferred to start with the Iverson woman, since she was the main stumbling block. But Leo had volunteered, so Leo it would be. He took a pistol from the top left drawer, examined it to make sure it was loaded and ready to fire, then put it on the desk next to the syringe.