Uncle Ethan struggled with the initiator. Sweat dripped from his forehead to the dusty concrete floor. Finally the timer light sprang on. He looked at his watch and asked Cassie to look at hers. They agreed that twenty-eight minutes had passed since they left the nursery. He set the timer for thirty-two minutes.
They headed upgrade, and this time there were no vehicles or sims to push out of the way. It was good that Uncle Ethan had known how to find the vulnerable parts of the installation. But that raised another question. One she was almost afraid to ask. “How did you get here?”
He kept his eyes on the corridor ahead. “What?”
“Before you found me. Before I came. How did you get here? What were you doing?”
“They caught me on the road and took me prisoner.”
“Why didn’t they just kill you?”
“They said they wanted my help.”
“What, to protect them?”
“They wanted me not to do what we’re doing now.”
“And they thought you’d agree to that?”
“I guess they thought there was a chance.”
“Why? Did they threaten you? Did they promise you something?”
Uncle Ethan wouldn’t answer. He just drove. And here was the night sky again. The steel and glass flower of the launch mechanism, the crater-rim of industrial waste, the unconscious sims, the scouring wind.
Uncle Ethan parked at the base of the launch tower, under the overhang of the huge mirrored petals. The last of the explosive bricks were in the back of the van. “Do we put them inside?” The tower at ground level appeared seamlessly solid. “There’s no door.”
“And no time.”
Cassie held her wrist up to the roof light of the van and read her watch. He was right. Ten minutes until the underground charges were due to detonate, not long enough to finish rigging the third timer and get clear. “So what do we do?”
“Take a clean vehicle and get out of here.”
They left the van. One of the ubiquitous white pickup trucks was parked a few yards away. Uncle Ethan pulled the limp body of a sim from behind the wheel and started the engine.
Cassie climbed into the passenger seat and waited while Uncle Ethan returned to the van and unscrewed the gas cap. He took off his shirt, twisted one arm of it and used it to wick up a little gasoline. Then he opened the hood and wadded the shirt into the engine compartment. She understood that he meant to set fire to the van: there would be no need for a detonator when the flames reached the dynamite. But he hesitated.
No match, Cassie thought. No cigarette lighter. Uncle Ethan didn’t smoke. Eugene Dowd would have had a lighter. But Eugene Dowd had been shot to death back in Antofagasta.
Her uncle tugged loose an ignition wire and sparked it next to the gas-soaked cloth—once, twice, until a high yellow flame popped out of the darkness. He stumbled back, coughing.
Cassie looked at her watch as he climbed back behind the wheel. Less than five minutes now. But enough. Uncle Ethan put the truck in gear and drove. They had covered maybe half the ground between the launch tower and the mound wall when the sims began to stand up.
Simultaneously, as if they were following some kind of choreography, a nightmarish ballet, the sims rose to their feet and began to run toward the launch tower. Uncle Ethan swerved to avoid a knot of them. The truck fishtailed and stalled; he cursed and began to work the key in the ignition. One of the six-limbed sims vaulted over the pickup, rocking the vehicle on its suspension as it rebounded from the truck bed. We’ll be killed, Cassie thought.
But the sims ignored them in their rush to the launch tower. The faces of the sims were slack and indifferent—they’re not pretending to be human anymore. She looked back and saw with horror that they were converging on the burning van, trying to smother the fire with their bodies. But the van was burning fiercely and the sims who threw themselves on it were instantly engulfed: the flames took their clothes, their limbs, the human and alien skin of them, the payload of green matter inside.
Uncle Ethan managed to start the engine. Cassie checked her watch. “It’s time.”
“I know.”
“Nothing’s happening.”
Her uncle didn’t answer.
“They might have disarmed the igniters.”
“I know, Cassie.”
“But—”
She felt the detonation before she heard it. The ground bucked and threw a haze of dust into the air. The sound of the explosion was muffled and prolonged, like thunder. A second explosion followed. Sirens wailed throughout the compound, then fell silent. The streetlights flickered and went out. The sudden darkness concealed everything but the flicker of fire from the burning van behind them. Then the wind began to clear the haze, and Uncle Ethan drove by a faint but brightening glow in the eastern sky.
They reached the berm as the fire ignited the last incendiary charges. Cassie saw the explosion: a blinding white starburst followed by a shock wave that rocked the pickup. Uncle Ethan braked. “Keep your head down,” he said.
“Why?”
“Shrapnel.”
Fragments of metal and glass peppered the roof. Something big hit the glass of the windshield and rolled smoking off the hood. Cassie squeezed her eyes shut and gripped her uncle’s hand until the hail of debris stopped.
Behind them, the launch tower stood at the foot of a thickening plume of smoke. Its mirrored petals were skewed; one was missing; another shattered and collapsed as she watched. And the sims had fallen down again. The sky was light enough now that she could see the bodies where they lay, a dense drift of them (she thought of autumn leaves) close to the base of the launch tower. There were only a few here on the rim of the embankment, but one had fallen close to the truck. Uncle Ethan surprised her by getting out of the van and crossing a few yards of gravel and industrial debris to the inert body.
She scooted out and stood behind him as he knelt and put his hand on the sim’s throat, checking for a pulse.
“Is it dead?”
“Not yet.”
Not yet. But it was clearly dying. The sim gasped and arched its spine, and Uncle Ethan stumbled back a pace. The creature took three deep, stertorous breaths. Its eyes opened but the pupils were motionless and huge. Another breath. Another. Then it exhaled through clenched teeth, a tuneless whistling. No inhalation followed.
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
ANTOFAGASTA
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.