Burning Paradise

Thomas had motivated her from a different direction. He had encouraged her to trust Leo, to follow Leo, to defer to Leo, but more than that, he had given her something to protect, an example of courage she felt obligated to live up to.

Would she say these things to Josh? Of course she would. That was the point. Would it change things between them? She hoped not. “I mean to tell him everything.”

“And I’m sure I can’t talk you out of it.” Aunt Ris nodded. “All right. You have my blessing. I hope it works out. And I hope he understands.”

“He will.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Cassie hesitated. “I trust him.”

“Really? I can’t imagine what that’s like. I honestly don’t remember. But I suppose I envy you a little.” Aunt Ris stood up. She hadn’t even taken her coat off. “Have a good life, Cassie. I mean it. I wish you the best. But I don’t want to see you again. And I resent you asking me to come here to conduct business we could have conducted by mail.”

“I needed to talk to both of you…”

“No you didn’t. You were harboring some idea that we might be reconciled. But that’s not possible. What ever there was between us, your uncle took it away.”

“That’s not true!”

“But it is.”

“I’m sure Uncle Ethan didn’t know—”

About Thomas, she meant to say, but her uncle cleared his throat and said, “Stop, Cassie. She’s right.” He was framed by the window that overlooked Antioch Street, the falling snow, frost on glass. His shoulders were braced but his head was bowed. “I knew exactly what would happen. They told me in great detail.”

“Who told you?”

“The sims at the breeding ground. They told me about Thomas. They said they would be able to take control of him soon, since the original hypercolony was in a weakened condition. They promised they would let him continue functioning in every way as a normal child. Only I would know the truth. But if the compound was destroyed, Thomas would die. They were explicit about it.” He lifted his head and looked directly at Aunt Ris: “They told me you’d spend your life grieving. That you would despise me for it. That Cassie’s life would be devastated. That she would blame herself for Thomas’s death, no matter what I said.”

Aunt Ris stared. “And did you believe them?”

“In the end? Yes.”

“But you let the breeding ground be destroyed.”

“Was I wrong?”

“No, don’t ask me that. I can’t absolve you, Ethan. Even if what you did was right—it was inhuman.”

“Of course it was. That was their mistake. They meant to exploit my humanity. The only way to resist them was to do what seemed inhuman. It was the only weapon I had left.”

“What a wonderfully Jesuitical way of reasoning.” She opened the door and stepped into the hall.

Cassie took a step after her. “Please… Aunt Ris. I never meant to make you unhappy.”

“I’m glad you found a way to turn your back on the past. I need to do that too—do you understand? And it will be easier if you stop writing to me.”

“Please don’t say that!”

“But it’s the truth. And it’s better to know the truth than to live in a fool’s paradise. Isn’t that what you believe?”

Her footsteps faded down the stairs.

“She’s mostly right,” Uncle Ethan said. “About what I did.”

“You should have told me.”

“After we destroyed the breeding ground, I thought it didn’t matter.”

She tried to imagine how it must have been for Uncle Ethan during those awful hours in the Atacama, knowing the destruction of the facility would tear the heart out of his family. She said, “I would have burned it down anyway, with or without your help.”

“I knew that, Cassie.”

And maybe he had known it. Maybe he had guessed it when she told him about Leo. Maybe he had not wanted her to bear the entire burden of that choice. Maybe that was why he had insisted on setting the charges himself.

“The way I see it,” her uncle said, “you could get angry and walk out of here, and I wouldn’t blame you any more than I blame your aunt. Or you can stay and have a cup of coffee to set you up for the drive home.”

“I do have to leave before the roads get much worse. But I’m not angry. And coffee sounds good. Maybe with something stronger in it?”

She phoned Josh to let him know she was all right and that she would be leaving her uncle’s place soon. He said he was watching the war news on TV. Threats and negotiations had given way to an ominous silence. “Be careful driving home,” he said. He was hoarse—recovering from a winter cold—but the sound of his voice warmed her.

Buttoning her jacket, she asked Uncle Ethan whether he thought there would be a war.

“I don’t know. Without the hypercolony, there’s nothing to prevent it.”

“Nothing but common sense.”

“With which we’re not conspicuously well-supplied.”

“All the hypercolony ever had of humanity was what it took from us. You taught me that. If it exploited our technology, that’s because we have a genius for making things. If it exploited our economy, it’s because we have a genius for collaboration. And if we made peace, maybe we have a genius for peacemaking.”

“We have a genius for war, Cassie. I see evidence of it every day.”

“And a genius for hatred. Sure. But also a genius for love.”

“Our genius for love almost killed us.”

She tucked her hair under her woolen cap. “It made us vulnerable. But it’s not a weakness. It’s a strength.”

“Is it?” He gave her a tentative smile. “I hope you’re right.”

The temperature had dropped a good ten degrees by the time she got back to the car. The streets were only barely passable. But the snow had stopped falling, the wind had subsided, the sky was clear, and it was possible to see the way ahead.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Informal conversations with friends and family were indispensable to the writing of Burning Paradise. It would be impossible to do justice to them all, but I need to single out old friends John S. Barker (for a discussion about the philosophical concept of qualia, which contributed to my conception of the hypercolony and the simulacra) and Taral Wayne (for countless conversations about cosmology, evolution and the nature of sentience).

Readers might be interested to know that the laser-launch technology I gave to the parasitized breeding ground is a real and potentially practical way of putting small payloads into orbit and is currently under investigation by several agencies and aerospace firms. The Atacama Desert has been suggested as a possible launch site.

As a source on insect behavior and the concept of distributed intelligence, E. O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth and The Superorganism (written with Bert Hölldobler) were useful. For the daunting task of imagining a largely peaceful twentieth-century Europe, Tony Judt’s Postwar was an invaluable resource. And while much has been written on the subject of the Atacama Desert, Lake Sagaris’s Bone and Dream stands out as a deeply thoughtful and wonderfully evocative example.

BY ROBERT CHARLES WILSON

FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

A Hidden Place

Darwinia

Bios

The Perseids and Other Stories

The Chronoliths

Blind Lake

Spin

Axis

Julian Comstock

Mysterium

Vortex

Burning Paradise

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.