Burning Paradise

Was any of that true? It was certainly possible—he could think of countless similar models in the invertebrate world.

“I know you don’t entirely believe me. But you can see the mechanism for yourself. I can show you how it works.”

“Why bother?”

“Frankly, because we need your help.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. We hope to convince you to help us.”

“If I understand correctly, you want prolong the life of the colony so you can use it for your own purposes. Why would I help you do that?”

“If you think about it,” the sim said, “perhaps you already know the answer to that question.”

28

THE ALLEY WAS EMPTY. A ROW OF RETAIL businesses blocked the late afternoon sun, their shabby back doors and peeling paint obscured by deepening shadows. Leo looked both ways, then tugged Cassie to the left. She followed wordlessly, gripping his hand so tightly it must have hurt him. Every trivial noise, the scuff of her shoes on the asphalt or the rattle of a trash bin as she brushed it with her hip, sounded both muted and much too loud, like an explosion heard underwater.

She couldn’t think. Why couldn’t she think? There was nothing in her head but a lightning-shot replay of the last few minutes. Her thoughts were like birds blown to sea, frantic and exhausted but with nowhere to settle.

Leo ducked into the building that adjoined the house, a public parking garage. Cassie was conscious of how purposefully he moved, sca

He left the stairwell at the top of the garage, the open-air third story. Wind blowing between the ranks of parked cars carried the faint scent of gasoline. The sun was close to setting and the sky was a surreal shade of blue. Leo still had his hand in hers, or vice versa, and he pulled her toward a particular vehicle, an unmarked white van; belatedly, she recognized it as the rented vehicle Leo’s father had been driving. He let go of her and fumbled a set of keys out of his pocket.

Cassie found herself able to ask, “Where are we going?”

“Just get in.” Leo opened the passenger-side door for her.

“No—wait. Wait! Aunt Ris and Thomas—”

“What about them?”

“They’re still back at the house!” Or had been, moments ago. She tried to sort out the collage of nasty images that comprised her memory. Aunt Ris and Thomas retreating up the stairs. Beth Vance dead behind them. Eugene Dowd dead, too, but not before he had killed two invading sims…. “They’re still alive! Or, I mean, they were when I left. We have to help them!”

“No,” Leo said.

“But—”

“Cassie, no. If they’re alive, they’ll be okay. Listen.” He cocked his head. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

At first all she heard was the ringing that sounded in her ears like an alarm clock with a broken switch. Then, faintly, she registered the yodeling siren of an emergency vehicle, getting louder.

“Two minutes, three minutes, and the house is going to be full of police. Your aunt and your brother can fend for themselves—”

“They’ll be arrested!”

“Maybe, but they’ll be alive. We can’t help them by going back, and we won’t be doing them any favors if we leave a truck full of dynamite parked next door. So get in. Please, Cassie. Get in the van.”

She wanted to do as he asked. She tried to lift herself through the open door. But her legs betrayed her. It wasn’t cowardice, it was physical weakness. She slid down almost to the floor, then forced herself up on wobbling knees. Fucking humiliating.

“You’re in shock,” Leo said. “Here, let me help you.”

Because her head was spi

“I know you’re not. I absolutely know that.”

Not afraid, but she couldn’t suppress the deep sense of wrongness that was coursing through her.

She was only distantly aware of the city as Leo drove out of the garage into a deepening dusk. The sky drained into blackness, traffic lights bloomed like luminous nocturnal flowers. They passed three police cars and an ambulance screaming in the opposite direction. Cassie put her head back and closed her eyes, helplessly and pointlessly afraid for her aunt and her brother. Were they still alive? Would they actually go to prison? Did the Chileans have anything kinder than a jail cell set aside for children like Thomas and women like Aunt Ris?

These thoughts yielded to fragmented visions that weren’t quite dreams, and when she opened her eyes again the city streets had given way to an empty highway cut into a rocky canyon. The cabin of the van was chilly now. And it still smelled rank. The stink of violence had followed them. The smell of blood and green matter and black powder. She wanted a bath. She said, “Where are we going?”

Leo answered slowly, perhaps reluctantly: “Into the Atacama.”

Cassie sat upright. “The desert?”

“Yeah, the desert.”

“Why?”

He gazed steadily down the highway. “Where else is there to go? What else is there to do? We don’t have passports. We don’t have money. We can’t leave the country and we can’t stay in the city. My father could have helped us, but my father’s dead. The only weapon we have is in this van. About half a ton of dynamite and blasting caps and a machine that might help us use them. And your uncle is in San Pedro.”

Cassie tried to process this statement. All she really knew about Werner Beck’s plan was what Aunt Ris had shared with her, and Aunt Ris had also shared her skepticism about it. She remembered Dowd’s description of the breeding colony in the desert, the spider-legged sentries and the columns of mysterious light. “We’ll be killed.”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

“I’m thirsty,” she said.

Leo gestured at the door, where a bottle of Fanta from some previous trip had been abandoned half-full in the cup holder. She unscrewed the lid and took a long gulp. The liquid was flat and sticky but it lubricated her mouth.

“I need to do this,” Leo said. “And it might work. If it didn’t have a chance of working they wouldn’t have sent sims to kill us. And I’m tired of ru

“What would I do then?”

“I don’t know. Hitch a ride to Antofagasta or maybe to Santiago. And then… I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either. And I’m tired of ru

“Pretty brave,” he said.

Wrong. She was a long way from brave. She wasn’t even orbiting brave. But she liked that he thought of her that way.

Three hours out of Antofagasta the road leveled off. Cassie’s exhaustion had caught up with her and she drifted in and out of a dreamless metallic sleep, opening her eyes just long enough to register the barren hills, the ore trucks passing in the opposite lane like moonlit leviathans. Her thoughts circled repeatedly around the day’s atrocities (Eugene Dowd, Werner Beck, poor Beth with her brains spilled on the stairway). She struggled to suppress those thoughts. And when that tactic failed she turned her eyes up to the desert stars.

The smell was becoming unbearable. “Can we crack a window?”