Burning Paradise

by Robert Charles Wilson

  He had begun by introducing the foreign cells to cultivars of yeasts, fungi and bacteria, without any useful result. Tissue samples from metazoans were slightly more responsive, but the cultures quickly became necrotic.

  When Wyndham injected the pseudochondritic cells directly into living mice, the effect was quickly lethal— a simultaneous eruption of multiple aggressive tumors. (The file contained a photograph of a euthanized mouse on a dissection board: the tumors with which its body was riddled looked to Ethan like bloody raspberries.) But when Wyndham dosed the creatures with the same cells in an aerosol preparation— when he put the mice in a sealed chamber and allowed them to inhale dry, extracted spores— they showed no obvious ill effects over weeks and even months.

  Not that they were unaffected. Wyndham's dissections revealed that the foreign cells had migrated to the reproductive system of the mice. Gametes of both sexes were significantly altered. Under the microscope (and here was another, thankfully less visceral photo), haploid cells appeared fatter and included new and unusual organelles. "But the truly significant effect," Beck said, "was on the next generation."

  Another photo of a dissection— a messy one. Nerissa made a disgusted sound and recoiled. Ethan was queasily reminded of what he had seen after the raid on his farm house.

  Once again the dead mouse had been splayed on a dissection board. It possessed what appeared to be a complete set of internal organs, reduced in size and displaced to the borders of the abdomen. The bulk of the body cavity was occupied by a gelatinous green mass, some of which had already liquefied and begun to drain away as the photograph was taken. Tendril of this mass passed into and among the otherwise normal organs. A partial dissection of the skull revealed a hollow sphere of neural matter surrounding the same gelatinous green core.

  "God, enough!" Nerissa said, grimacing.

  Beck gathered up the photographs. "This would appear to be how sims are created. Pseudochondritic cells are shed by the orbital mass of the hypercolony. Some fraction of them survive entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Counting the enclosures in the ice cores lets us estimate the number of spores reaching the Earth's surface in an average year. Inevitably, some small fraction of those spores will be inhaled by animals or human beings. Assuming even a single aspirated cell is able to alter all the gametes in a given individual, and given the density and distribution of fertile adult humans across the globe, there can't be more than two or three hundred sims in all of North America— maybe four thousand altogether on the planet. Plus a population of altered animals, probably irrelevant but worth taking into consideration."

  Ethan said, "And the sims . . . are they fertile?"

  "Do they breed more sims? No. Wyndham's mice were sexually functional but genetically sterile. So were his dogs and other higher mammals. There are more photos—"

  "No," Nerissa said.

  "Wyndham refused to work with primates, but we have every reason to believe the results would have been the same."

  "And these animals were otherwise normal?"

  "Functionally and behaviorally. There was no way to tell a normal mouse from a sim, except with a scalpel."

  "Then Mrs. Bayliss wasn't lying," Nerissa said. "She really did give birth to that thing."

  Beck took two more photographs from his files. Ethan was relieved to see that they were micrographs, not images from a dissection table. "We've learned more about how the spores operate on the cellular level— this should interest you, Ethan."

  Whoever had produced these images must have had access to some very sophisticated equipment, maybe one of the new scanning electron microscopes, a technology that had only just become available when Ethan began to isolate ice- core specimens. "It's a busy little factory," Beck said. "But it would have to be, wouldn't it, when you consider what these things are capable of. Some of its chemical constituents are familiar enough. The so- called genetic molecules: nitrogen, carbon, phosphorous. Purines, pyrimidines. Plus arsenic, some trace metals. But what stands out is the level of organization in the cell. These unfamiliar filamentous structures, you see them? Fractally folded threads of conductive carbon embedded in a sub- membrane, with dendritic extensions that seem to affect every part of the cell in some fashion—"

  "Some of us aren't biologists," Nerissa said. "If you want me to understand this, you'll have to dumb it down a little."

  "The details don't matter as much as the function. Think about what these cells do. They travel immense distances through the vacuum of space. They duplicate themselves— at least so we surmise— by absorbing minerals and trace elements from the rocky or icy surface of asteroids, comets, planetesimals. They do this at temperatures far below the freezing point of water and with no driving force apart from faint sunlight and slow catalytic chemistry. They communicate with one another over enormous distances by generating microbursts of narrow- band radio- frequency energy. Which would be remarkable enough. But they do something that's even more impressive. In our case, they tacked inward toward the sun and occupied a stable orbit around the Earth. Ethan's research suggests they were present as much as forty thousand years ago, possibly longer. And once their numbers reached some critical threshold, they began to function as a coherent network. Do you understand what that means, Mrs. Iverson?"

  "Only vaguely."

  "Their intercommunication became complex. The pseudochondritic cells interact with each other much the way brain cells do. And as soon as our species began to generate radio signals of its own, the so- called radiosphere started to function as a vast distributed transceiver, relaying radio waves around the globe but also analyzing those signals, making of itself an analytical computer more sophisticated than any such device we've ever dreamed of building."

  "So are they some form of life, or are they machines?"

  "At the chemical level all living things can be construed as machines. We have no evidence that anyone designed these objects, though it's possible. The likeliest scenario is that they evolved over an immense span of time and gradually acquired the characteristics they now possess. On the cellular level they're immensely sophisticated; more importantly, the network they form is itself a unitary entity. The hypercolony. The hive, to borrow Ethan's description. It's the hypercolony that has learned to comprehend and manipulate human society, and it's the hypercolony we have to destroy."

  If that was even remotely possible. Ethan inspected the micrographs. Cyberneticists had estimated that just one of these tiny cells was capable of faster and subtler calculations than even the massive transistorized computers operated by insurance companies or the Internal Revenue Service. The Society's physicists thought the processing must operate at a deep, fundamental level of reality— the "quantum" level, a term Ethan didn't entirely understand. But a more immediate question was vexing him. "Why haven't I seen these micrographs before?"

  "Why should you have?"

  "Well, the Society—"

  "Ethan, this isn't the work of the Society. Wyndham is an independent researcher. I underwrote his work myself."

  "Nevertheless, I would have liked to have seen them."

  "I chose to limit the exposure of this information."

  "Why?"

  "In order to protect it. Isn't that obvious? For years we assumed the precautions the Society took were good enough to hide our work from the hypercolony. But the events of 2007 proved that theory disastrously wrong. We have no secrets and probably never did. The only conclusion I can draw is that the Society itself has been corrupted and infiltrated."

  "So you set up another circler of researchers."

  "More than one, and I've put up firewalls between them. If one

  circle is compromised, the others remain secure. And where the Correspondence Society was basically a club for frustrated scholars, my people are better motivated."

  "Why, what motivates them?"

  "Anger," Beck said. "Fear."

  Beck repeated his promise that he would take Ethan and Nerissa to rendezvous with Leo (and
presumably with Cassie and Thomas). But he refused to say anything more specific, except that it would be "a long trip." Nerissa continued to press, which made for a sullen evening meal, after which she and Ethan retired to the upstairs bedroom.

  The room was as spare as every other room in this barely- inhabited house. A single bed, muslin curtains over the window, a layer of undisturbed dust on the uncarpeted parquet floor. "He's insane," Nerissa said.

  "He's been right in the past."

  "I notice that's not a denial."

  "If he's paranoid, is that so hard to understand? Given the life he's led?"

  "A ridiculously privileged life. Heir to millions."

  True, but the whole story, at least as Ethan understood it, was more complex. Yes, Beck's parents had been wealthy. Beck's father had immigrated from Poland in the 1960s with a degree in engineering, some experience at the Nagórski plant in Starachowice, and an ambition to work with aircraft. Within a few years he had generated three modestly profitable patents and owned a small manufacturing facility in Portland that supplied parts to Boeing. He had married an American woman who died of pancreatic cancer after giving birth to their only child, Werner, and he had never remarried.

  Beck's father had been frugal by nature and had raised his son that way. When he died at the age of fifty- seven, he left Werner Beck a staggeringly diverse portfolio of investments, sole ownership of a successful company that was about to go public, and a work ethic only slightly less demanding than the disciplines practiced by Tibetan monks.

  The fortune hadn't diverted Beck from his academic career, which he had conducted with the same Spartan intensity. When Beck discovered the Correspondence Society he had immediately diverted some of his wealth to the support of clandestine research. And if Beck felt his generosity entitled him to a certain amount of deference, a little centrality in an otherwise decentralized organization, who could say he was wrong?

  In 1990 Beck had married a former student who gave birth to one child, Leo, and who had little to do with the Society. She died in a car accident when Leo was very young. Her death must have been traumatic for Werner, but that was pure surmise on Ethan's part: Beck had never spoken about his feelings and had seemed reluctant even to mention the loss. But it was after the death of his wife that Beck severed all contact with conventional academia and began to devote himself exclusively to the Society's business.

  "And the only reason you know any of this," Nerissa said, "is that Beck told you. He could have been lying."

  "Why would he lie?" The money was real, Ethan thought. The work was real.

  "He may not be clinically paranoid, but he's almost certainly narcissistic. He needs to feel special, like he's fulfilling some grandiose destiny. On bad days, he probably suspects his own inadequacy."

  "And you're making that diagnosis based on what exactly?"

  "Jesus, Ethan, think about it! He wants us to think he's fighting a clandestine war, that he has a cadre of secret soldiers, that he's figured out the hypercolony's weaknesses . . ."

  "Maybe it's true."

  "It doesn't feel true. It doesn't even feel likely. What are you saying, you think he's completely sane?"

  "No. But I'm not sure any of us rises to that standard." There was nothing left to do but sleep. Ethan turned down the bed, stripped to his underwear and lay down. Nerissa curled up beside him and adjusted the blankets. Within minutes her breathing steadied into a gentle burr.

  They had grown accustomed to sharing a bed during the drive to Joplin. Given the circumstances, that hardly represented an erotic opportunity. It was, however, a small reminder that they had never been officially divorced. Separated and effectively divorced, divorced in all but name; nevertheless, he was lying here next to his legally- ordained wife, feeling a different uneasiness than he would have felt with a stranger. He couldn't suppress all the memories she provoked. She had changed in seven years. But she smelled the same, and he found himself imagining she tasted the same— her mouth, her skin . . . not a wise thought.

  He rolled away from her, toward the window. Nerissa had opened the curtains before she turned in, a habit of hers. She used to say that a view of the sky made her feel less confined. Apparently that was still true. But all Ethan could see was blackness and a few pale stars. Of course his old enemy was up there, too, ethereal and tirelessly observant, as enigmatic and as perversely fascinating as ever. Did he hate the hypercolony the way Beck claimed to? Of course he did. It had taken away everything that mattered to him. It was relentlessly, tirelessly lethal.

  The difference was that he knew it didn't hate him in return. He didn't believe the hypercolony was capable of that or any other emotion. It had the magnificently indifferent lethality of a poisonous mushroom or a venomous insect.

  He hated it, but he respected it. Maybe even admired it.

  Would he help Beck exterminate it, if that was possible? Yes. And in the unlikely event they succeeded, he would rejoice. But unlike Beck, unlike Nerissa, he would also grieve for the passing of an extraordinary living thing.

  And maybe that made him an unlikely soldier. And maybe Beck had known that about him all along.

  19

  ON THE ROAD

  THEY SET OUT IN A TWO- VEHICLE CONVOY, Eugene Dowd driving the white van and Leo at the wheel of the repainted Ford. Cassie and Thomas chose to ride with Leo, while Beth, to no one's surprise, elected to ride in the van with Dowd.

  Cassie watched the way Leo drove. He was careful to keep the van in sight as they followed the long road from Salina through Great Bend and Dodge City and across the northwestern tip of Texas, out into the dry lands under a flat December sky. If Dowd stopped for gasoline or a bathroom break, Leo would pull in behind him. If Dowd crept too far ahead, Leo would accelerate until the van was back within a comfortable distance. He was as grimly vigilant as a hunting animal.

  At first Cassie wondered whether this was because of Beth— because Leo was jealous, in other words. Their relationship had cooled since they left Buffalo, but Leo might still resent Dowd for moving in on his girlfriend. Which Dowd had done as quickly and gleefully as if she had been gift- wrapped and delivered by a generous providence.

  But it was more likely the gear in the back of the van Leo was concerned about. Maybe because it had seemed so fragile and incomplete, considered as a weapon. Maybe because it was the only meaningful weapon they possessed.

  The highway was one of the flagship federal turnpikes constructed under the Voorhis administration more than fifty years ago, wide and well- maintained. It crossed the desert like a dark ribbon, making silvered oases where hot air mirrored the sky.

  After sunset they stopped at a public campground in Arizona. The December evening was cool— cold, now that the stars were out— but they built a fire in a stone- lined pit and roasted hot dogs they had bought at a convenience store outside Tucumcari. Dowd had supplied himself with a six- pack of beer, which he shared with Beth. He talked incessantly, but not about anything serious, and after a few beers he sang a couple of country- and- western songs and encouraged Beth to come in on the choruses. Then he put his arm over Beth's shoulder and led her toward the canvas tent he had pitched. Beth spared one gloating look for Leo, who refused to meet her eyes.

  Cassie made a bed for Thomas in the car: a sleeping bag on the backseat, windows open a crack to let in some air. Then she went to sit beside Leo, who stirred the embers of the dying fire. "Dowd's an asshole," she said.

  Leo shrugged. "I guess he serves a purpose. My father trusted him. Up to a point, anyway."

  Dowd had expressed his belief that Leo's father was still alive and that they would meet him somewhere in Mexico or farther south. That was the plan, anyway. The plan had been in place for a couple of years, a private arrangement between Dowd and Werner Beck, and Leo's arrival had set it in motion.

  Cassie tried to ignore the faint but unmistakable sounds of Dowd and Beth making love in Dowd's tent. She hoped Leo couldn't see her blushing. To make conversation,
or at least a diverting noise, Cassie talked about her family— her original family, back before '07, and the house they had lived in, what little she could remember of that ancient, fragile world. Leo seemed willing to listen. He even seemed interested. And when Cassie fell silent he stirred the ashes of the fire and said, "I lost my mom when I was five years old. A car accident. I survived, she didn't. The thing is, I can't even remember what she looked like. I mean, I've seen pictures. I remember the pictures. But her face, looking at me, those kind of memories? Not even in dreams."

  Cassie nodded and moved closer to him.

  She shared Leo's tent that night— chastely, but she was conscious of his long body beside her as he turned in his sleeping bag, the warmth and scent of him hovering under the canvas.

  She thought about Beth's defection to Dowd. It wasn't really so surprising. Beth was a Society kid, and one thing that marked Society kids was a heightened sense of personal vulnerability. Maybe for that reason, Beth had always been drawn to guys who seemed powerful or protective. Which was how Leo must have seemed to her, back when he was boosting cars and hanging around with petty criminals. But Dowd was older, had traveled farther, was more persuasively dangerous.