Burning Paradise

by Robert Charles Wilson

"Uh- huh. I was afraid of that. I dislike having a stolen vehicle on my property. Bring it inside where it won't be so damn obvious. Can you prove you're who you say you are?"

  "I think so."

  "Well, we'll talk about that. All you lot get inside too."

  "Is there a bathroom?" Cassie felt compelled to ask.

  Eugene Dowd gazed at her. "Toilet around the back. It's nothing fancy."

  No doubt, Cassie thought.

  Leo had first mentioned Eugene Dowd during the night's drive. Cassie had asked whether he had learned the name from the papers stashed under the floor of his father's house.

  Leo had nodded. "The name, not much else. His instructions were to take the key to Eugene Dowd, at a certain location in Kansas."

  Typical Correspondence Society subterfuge. Aunt Ris had once described this kind of reasoning as "paranoia—necessary paranoia, maybe, but still, a kind of mental illness." And Leo's father, Werner Beck, was even more systematically paranoid than most Society members.

  "So what else is in those papers?"

  "A lot of it is statistics he compiled, plus photocopies of newspaper and journal articles . . ."

  "Like what?"

  "All kinds of things. Statistics on mining in China, shipping in the Pacific. Imports and exports of minerals and rare earths. Newspaper clippings from the last twenty years, some of them about un explained deaths. Technical articles. Notes from his studies of simulacrum biology. Maps."

  "Maps of what?"

  "Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru."

  "Why, what's there?"

  Leo shrugged. "I think it's in case something happened to him, maybe somebody else in the Society could make sense of it."

  Beth had somehow found the courage or the insensitivity to ask, "Do you think your father's dead?"

  Leo kept his eyes on the road. Night on the turnpike, empty prairie, nothing to see but the periodic glare of passing headlights. "There's obviously some reason he left the house in a hurry. As for whether he's still alive, I don't know. There's no way to know."

  "So maybe Eugene Dowd can tell us," Beth said.

  "The first thing I got to do," Dowd said to Leo, "is make sure you're the real deal. I will admit, you kind of resemble your old man. But that's not proof one way or another. You might not even be a human being."

  The interior of the garage consisted of a complexly stained concrete floor under a cavernous arched roof. A sort of second- story balcony running along one wall had been partitioned into crude rooms— maybe Dowd lived up there, though Cassie found the thought depressing. The workspace was equipped with hand tools and power tools, large and small, none of which she could identify, and a trestle table of rough- cut two- by- fours on which a partially disassembled automobile engine sat. Chains and pulleys dangled from overhead beams. The air smelled of gasoline and of the chemical toilet out back, which she and Beth had hurriedly used.

  She sat next to Leo on a torn leather sofa apparently rescued from a trash yard. Beth and Thomas squeezed in beside them. Eugene Dowd pulled up a wooden chair and straddled it.

  Dowd was no Society member, Cassie thought, or at least he was unlike any Society member she had ever met. Obviously, he obviously wasn't a scholar or a scientist. He sounded exactly like what he appeared to be: a rural- route auto mechanic with a chip on his shoulder, unimpressed by the four city- bred young people who had arrived uninvited on his doorstep.

  "How am I supposed to prove I'm human?"

  "Well, we could stick a knife in you and see what color it comes out. That generally works."

  "Very funny."

  "Or you could show me a certain key."

  Leo stood up, fumbled in his pocket—What if he lost it? Cassie wondered for one terrifying moment— then produced the key from his father's safe.

  "Okay, let me see," Dowd said.

  With obvious reluctance Leo put the key in Dowd's open hand. The lines in Dowd's palm were etched with motor oil. His thumb was calloused, his nails cut clinically short.

  "Good enough?" Leo asked.

  "Not yet it isn't. We'll see if it opens what it's supposed to open. Come on."

  Dowd led them to the rear of the garage. He pulled away a tarp that covered a white unmarked delivery van, some years old. The dust released by this gesture hung in the air and tickled Cassie's throat.

  Dowd applied the key to the driver's-side door of the van. It slid into the lock and turned. He pulled the door open.

  "Well, then," he said. "Well, then."

  The van hadn't been open in quite a while. Stale air with tang of vinyl upholstery gusted out. "It looks like any old van," Cassie said.

  "It's what's in back that matters."

  "So what's in back?"

  Eugene Dowd pocketed the key. "We'll talk about that later."

  Dowd escorted them up a flight of stairs to the loft he used as an office and bedroom— a few chairs, a table, an ancient refrigerator, sink and hot plate, a mattress on the floor— and asked if they wanted lunch. Cassie looked at the unwashed plates stacked on a sideboard. "Don't worry, girl," Dowd said. "All's I got to offer you is canned chili and some wrapped sandwiches from the 7- Eleven in Galatea. Fresh enough you won't poison yourself, if that's what's worrying you."

  Thomas said he was hungry, and Cassie had to admit that she was, too: hungry enough to accept a chicken salad sandwich, as cold as Dowd's wheezing refrigerator could make it. Thomas took the same, as did Leo and Beth. Dowd offered them Cokes and took a bottle of beer for himself.

  He levered the cap from the bottle. "So, Leo— I bet you could have opened the door of that van even without a key, isn't that right?"

  "I don't know. What do you mean?"

  "Don't be bashful. Your daddy told me you got hauled into juvie court one time for vehicle theft, attempted."

  "It was stupid. I was showing off."

  "That's why they let you go with a fine and a lecture?"

  "I guess my father told you that, too. Is he here?"

  "Your old man? No."

  "Then where is he?"

  "Werner Beck doesn't post his whereabouts with me, at least not on a regular basis. But since you showed up without him, I doubt the news is good. I was told you wouldn't come here without him unless something unexpected happened."

  "So how do you know my father? And what's so special about that van?"

  "Well, Leo, it's a kind of a long story. Which I expect you need to hear. It was your father who come to me, by the way, not the other way around. I was living in Amarillo, this was most of ten years ago. Had a little one- room apartment, making ends meet with federal Work and Welfare checks. Your old man just knocked at the door one day and introduced himself. He said he'd seen a story about me in a local paper and he wanted to know if it was true."

  "If what was true?"

  Dowd ran his thumb along the label of the beer bottle and looked off into the dim cavern of the garage. "I need to start at the beginning. But I guess you got time. We'll talk a little. Then we'll do some work on that car you stole, so it won't be so easy to identify. Because pretty soon we need to leave here, and we won't all fit in the van."

  "Leave and go where?"

  "A place I dearly hoped I'd never see again. But life shits on hope." He took a long drink. "Isn't that the truth?"

  14

  MONTMORENCY, PENNSYLVANIA

  INTERSTATE 80 PASSED THROUGH THE college town of Montmorency, Pennsylvania. The Federal College at Montmorency— one of the colleges established by the Wallace administration in the 1930s— was the town's biggest business, apart from a couple of manufacturing plants and a limestone quarry. The town was peaceful in the long light of an end- of- November afternoon, many of its neat wood- frame houses flying American flags from front- porch stanchions. It looked like a nice place to live.

  But the town had another distinguishing feature: Montmorency had been the home of the late Winston Bayliss, according to the ID Ethan had collected from the dead sim's wallet.

&nbs
p; He had been surprised when Nerissa suggested they drive by the address listed on Bayliss's driver's license. "It'll take us out of our way."

  "Only a little."

  "I thought you wanted to get to Werner Beck as soon as possible."

  "I do. But this might be important."

  "Why? What's the point?"

  She shrugged and looked away.

  "It might also be dangerous," he added.

  "Everything we're doing," she said, "is dangerous."

  Last night he had talked to Nerissa— more or less for the first time— about their plans.

  She had left Buffalo in a furious but unfocused state of mind, determined to enlist Ethan in the hunt for Cassie and Thomas. He understood that. And he understood the guilt she must be feeling. The careful precautions she had put in place after the murders of

  2007 had backfired, badly. Cassie and Thomas had left home under the impression that a full- scale second- wave attack was underway. Following protocols, they had gone to the nearest Society member, who happened to be Leo Beck. Leo (and Leo's girlfriend, a young woman named Beth Vance) had left town, most likely to find Leo's father. Nerissa was tormented by the idea that Cassie and Thomas might believe she was dead, and she was reasonably afraid that connecting with Werner Beck might put them in even greater danger.

  Ethan also knew she had never cared for Werner Beck. She had met him at a couple of Society gatherings. "Even in a community of paranoids," she said at one of those meet- ups, "this guy is scary- paranoid."

  "He's right about a lot of things," Ethan had said. "He's produced more valuable research than anybody else."

  "He thinks the Society is the vanguard of some kind of human insurgency. We'll be lucky if he doesn't get us all arrested."

  "Maybe he is a little crazy. But he's smart, and he has deep pockets."

  "And you think that's a good combination?"

  So Nerissa was worried about Cassie and Thomas coming under the influence of Werner Beck, more so since the sim's baleful confession. And Ethan more or less agreed with her. Find Cassie and Thomas, let Nerissa protect them, leave Beck to fight his own wars— fine. Ethan was on board with that. But afterward?

  Everything had changed. The dead sim was hardly a reliable source of information, but the attack at the farm house suggested that at least some part of what it had said was true: there was internal conflict in the hypercolony. And although the Society survivors had tried to remain hidden, they had self- evidently failed: the simulacra had obviously known exactly where to find them. So going back into hiding wasn't an option. They had never really been in hiding.

  So, even assuming he and Nerissa successfully reconnected with Cassie and Thomas, what then? Nerissa had been living on the inheritance she had received after the death of her parents in 1998. Ethan had cashed out all his investments in 2007 and had been spending frugally (apart from a few high- dollar weapons and security purchases) ever since. Between the two of them, their resources amounted to very little. Both of them would have to find new ways of making a living and of defending themselves (and Cassie, and Thomas) from future attacks.

  Should there be any such attacks. If the sim was to be believed (which of course it was not), the hypercolony was dying. If the hypercolony's death resulted in a global communications collapse, the consequences would be catastrophic, at least in the short run. And while such a disaster could be overcome, there remained the question of how the world would fare without the hypercolony's subtle suppression of human bellicosity.

  Ethan and Nerissa were facing the same problems, and it seemed to Ethan that they could help each other out, but that was hardly a plan— it was barely more than a wistful thought. He had been married to this woman for five years and physically separated from her for seven. And although in many ways she was still the woman he had loved and married, in other and significant ways she had changed. He no longer knew what to expect from her. Their old, easy intimacy had evaporated. She was nine- tenths a stranger to him.

  Winston Bayliss's house— that is, the house at the address on the simulacrum's license— was a small home on a street of similar homes. Like many of these houses it featured a wooden front porch in modest disrepair. The lawn had turned patchy and yellow with autumn. A faux-rustic peach basket, planted with geraniums that had died in the last frost, substituted for a garden.

  Nerissa had opened the car door before Ethan could say, "Whoa— where are you going?"

  "It looks like somebody's still living here. Maybe it's the real Winston Bayliss. I want to knock on the door and see who answers."

  "Why?"

  But she didn't answer, and he had no choice but to hurry after her as she strode determinedly up the driveway and onto the porch. She rang the doorbell, then pulled back the screen door and knocked.

  Should have brought the pistol, Ethan thought— what if there was another sim inside, what if the house was some kind of sim factory?— but the door creaked open to reveal a stoop- shouldered elderly woman leaning on a walker. She peered at them through bottle- glass lenses and said, "I thought you might be Outpatient Therapy. But you're not Outpatient Therapy, are you?"

  "No, ma'am," Nerissa said, apparently unfazed.

  "No, of course you're not. Therapy comes on Wednesdays. I'm sorry. So what can I do for you folks?"

  "Maybe this is the wrong address. We're looking for Winston Bayliss?"

  "Oh! Well, not the wrong address, but the wrong door. Winston has a separate door around the side. He lives in the basement. He has his own apartment down there. He did the renovation himself."

  "Ah . . . is he home today?"

  "Afraid not. He's at a conference in Boca Raton and he won't be back until next week. Something to do with his work. He explained it, but I don't really understand."

  "You're Mr. Bayliss's landlady?"

  She grinned. "I'm sorry, but that makes me laugh. No! I mean yes, Winston gives me a monthly allowance for the use of the basement. But I'm not his landlady, I'm his mother. Amanda Bayliss. Mrs. Carl Bayliss, though Carl's been gone five years now. What did you want to see Winston about?"

  "We're from the Blue Horizon Insurance Agency. Mr. Bayliss contacted us a while back about the possibility of taking out a policy. We were hoping to follow up on that."

  "Well, that can't be true," Mrs. Bayliss said.

  To her credit, Ethan thought, Nerissa didn't miss a beat. "Really? Why not?

  "I apologize, but it makes me tired to stand . . . will you come in for a moment? Though I don't believe I'll be buying any insurance from you."

  "Of course," Nerissa said.

  "I would offer you coffee, but I don't drink it anymore. My doctor recommends I don't." Mrs. Bayliss frowned. "There might be some instant up in the cupboard. I could boil water, if you like."

  "No, ma'am," Nerissa said. "Thank you all the same."

  Mrs. Bayliss's front room was a time capsule in which no item of furniture appeared to be less than thirty years old. The pictures on the end tables bracketing the sofa featured a man who might have been the late Carl and a child who might have been Winston (if Winston Bayliss had ever really been a child). The room's double- paned windows had been shut and the curtains drawn, enclosing a silence in which the ticking of a mantel clock seemed absurdly loud.

  There was nothing to suggest that the house was anything more than the longtime residence of an elderly woman who had been widowed some years before. But that didn't mean Mrs. Bayliss was necessarily any more human than the creature she claimed as her son.

  "You said you doubted Winston would consider a policy with us," Nerissa said. "May I ask why?"

  Mrs. Bayliss looked at Ethan. "Do you talk at all, mister, or are you just for decoration?"

  "I'm, ah, in training," Ethan managed. "I'll chime in if I'm needed."

  "Just wondered. Anyway, no. No, I can't see Winston wanting to take out insurance. I assume it's life insurance you're selling? But that generally calls for a physical, and Winston won't see a
doctor for love or money. Thankfully, he's healthy as a horse."

  "Well, that's good," Nerissa said. "I hope you're the same, Mrs. Bayliss, although I see . . ."

  "The brace I'm wearing on my leg? That's why Outpatient Therapy comes by every week. I had a knee replaced in September. Arthritis. I think it's wonderful what they can do nowadays. Not that it was such a breeze, the surgery I mean. The physiotherapy's no fun, either. Though I do like the State nurse who helps me with it. She tries to sound tough, but she's a sweetie."

  "Winston didn't get his fear of doctors from you, then."