Burning Paradise

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

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 pe

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.”

EPILOGUE

THE LAST UNSPEAKABLE TRUTH

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

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.