On My Way to Paradise (18 page)

Kaigo commanded the holo to start and we watched
ourselves get massacred.

We each raised a weapon and tried to aim. The enemy
snapped off shots. Kaigo pointed to our slowness. "Practice
targeting and firing weapons some more.
Shuyo
, practice,
polishes off the rust from the body, makes you good fighter,
ne
? This is battle. This is actual battle the way it will
be. When you die on Baker, you can die only once. Remember, if you
kill samurai in the simulator, he will feel pain, not you!

"Also, stand right." He stood up and held a laser
rifle in front of him, then squatted so his knees were bowed.
"don’t sit in chair or stand rigid like you are shooting on land.
This is big different. Knees must always be moving, always flexible
to absorb little shocks of movement. Make for steady aim." He
demonstrated the action and, like a sailor on a boat at sea, showed
how he could counteract the movement of the vessel, absorbing the
minor pitches and rattling movements of the hovercraft with his
knees. This made great sense, and I admired his technique until I
remembered that he was showing us these things just so we could
commit genocide.

"Go now. Go train for combat tomorrow: Imagine you
hold gun and visualize shooting. Practice all movements. Practice
in imagination. Five hours," Kaigo dismissed us with a wave of his
hand. We removed our armor; I was covered with sweat. The hard copy
of the files on the men who boarded at Sol Station was soaked, so I
waved the papers in the air, trying to dry them. The thought of
entering the corridor unnerved me—anyone could have been an
Alliance assassin, so I thumbed through the papers, memorizing
faces, and walked out last. Everyone hung their heads because we
had been beaten so soundly—everyone but Mavro.

He put a cigar in his mouth. His hands trembled
slightly as he struck his lighter and held it to the cigar. "Do not
worry about these punks," he said. "My mother gave me worse
beatings when I was a child. As long as these samurai are living,
breathing, pieces of meat—and not some damned simulations—we can
beat them! No?"

We all nodded in agreement.

We stood in the hall a moment. Zavala, the young
cyborg, shivered, and his breath came ragged. Mavro put an arm
around him and asked, "Are you okay, compadre?"

Zavala nodded and sniffed. He fumbled with the sleeve
of his kimono, pulling it up to expose the base of his prosthetic
arm, which ended just above the elbow. He examined his skin around
the prosthesis. He said with wonder, "It’s burning. I can feel my
arm burning."

"It was just the simulator," Abriara said. "It
doesn’t take your upgrades into account."

"No. I can feel it, now. It’s the rot. It’s on the
stump of my arm. It’s active again. I can feel it burning."

"Let me see!" I said.

"Sí," Perfecto urged, "let Angelo look. He’s a
doctor."

"The rot," or L24, is a bacterial variant of leprosy
developed for germ warfare. It can take an arm off in a matter of
days. In the cities it doesn’t cause much damage, since it can be
treated quickly. But when it’s dumped over the guerrillas in the
jungles it can be devastating, since they are often unable to
return to a village in time for treatment. And though the damage
can be halted, the L24 bacteria are infiltrated with a virus that
makes it impossible to regenerate the damaged limbs.

Zavala held out his arm for me to see, and I checked
the stump around the prosthesis. The skin color was completely
normal and healthy; no white flakes showed at all. I poked around
the base of the prosthesis, searching for abscesses, but found
nothing.

"It looks fine to me," I said. Zavala frowned at the
news, so I added, "but we should watch it closely for a few days,
just to make sure. I’ve got some antibiotics in my medical bag that
can kill anything."

I didn’t tell him that I only had a handful of
antibiotics to use in emergencies—not enough to treat him. I
normally didn’t deal in such mundane drugs back in Panamá. Any
pharmacy on a street corner carried them.

Abriara started to leave, and Zavala’s face
brightened. He said, "Wait a minute." Then he opened the door to
the battle room and shouted. "Master Kaigo. Tigerlilies have crept
ugly through the hall. People are hurt! Downstairs! Quickly, come
quickly!" We all smiled at this, and the big samurai hurried from
the room.

But instead of running down the hall to the ladders,
he grabbed Zavala and lifted him in the air, like an ogre lifting a
child. In halting Spanish he said, "When you ... speak to me, speak
Japanese. Is the duty of the weak to learn the language of the
strong, no?"

Zavala tried to squirm from Kaigo’s grasp.

Kaigo slammed him against the wall, just hard enough
to jar him, then returned to the battle room.

Mavro nudged Zavala and said, "You were right. You
are
a grasshopper."

We stood outside the battle room a moment, then
Zavala and Mavro took off to explore the ship.

Abriara said to me, "I’ll show you to our room."

Perfecto and I followed her. We met Sakura the
cultural envoy at the ladder; he stopped us with a wave of his
hand. He was all teeth and smiles.

"What do you want?" Abriara asked. The evenness of
voice she’d managed earlier disappeared.

He grinned. "Listen carefully, and I will teach you
the company song," he said. "We will sing it each morning when we
awaken, and we will sing it each night before we go to bed. And if
an envoy meets you in the hall, you will be asked to sing, and you
must sing with emotion—from your heart."

I fidgeted with my biographies, sorry to be delayed
when I wanted to get to my room to study.

Then Sakura sang in Japanese. It came as growls from
the pit of his belly and low wails and shrieks, and he used the
oriental musical scale, so it didn’t sound like real music. Tears
streamed from his eyes, and he waved his hands as he sang. It
started:

Itami de tsukuri,

Itami de uri ...

I lost track. Sakura finished by lowering his head
and weeping as if he’d emptied his heart and was unable to muster
strength to stand. When he’d recuperated, he raised his hands to
lead us in song.

I was stunned. I once saw a magician who put a
prosthetic bill on a chicken and built a microspeaker into the bill
so that when a tape recorder played a little distance away the
chicken could recite scriptures.

He brought his "Chicken of God" to the feria and
fooled many peasants, telling them the chicken had learned to
recite the Sermon on the Mount after drinking water from a holy
fountain. In this way he made much money.

I often went to see the show, since the awe and
astonishment on the peasants’ faces was so amusing. I am sure that
when Sakura asked us to sing the company song, my stunned
expression would have well matched the expressions of those
peasants. Perhaps if I’d been a child, I’d have sung, but none of
us sang.

Sakura stopped singing. "Come now," he urged. "Sing
for me! Itaaaamiiii ..." He stopped, looked from person to person.
"Come now, show your company spirit! Show your gratitude for
Motoki!"

Abriara said, "Here’s my gratitude," and quick as a
serpent she struck him in the ribs, knocking him down the hall.

Sakura sputtered, struggling to get some air in his
lungs. Abriara rushed forward and grabbed him by the hair, lifted
him up, and slammed him against the wall.

Then she pinned him there, taking him by the neck.
"Don’t
ever
talk down to me in front of my men," she said.
"Don’t you ever mock my intelligence or seek to undermine my
authority again." She stared him in the eye; Sakura tried to avert
his gaze.

He gasped for breath. "Let me go, crazy woman, or
I’ll have the samurai execute you!"

Abriara’s eyes watered; she started to weave. Though
her frame was no larger than that of other women, she emanated
power. With her clenched fist poised below his jaw, I imagined that
if she struck him, the blow would land as solidly and powerfully as
a piston, crushing Sakura’s skull.

Sakura looked into her silver eyes, and must have
seen the alien in her. He began to tremble.

Abriara responded: "Let them kill me." There was no
fear in her voice.

She dropped Sakura to the ground, and the little
Japanese stayed where he fell, afraid to move. She stalked down the
hall toward the ladders, her muscles bunched and ready, like a
panther ready to spring.

Sakura watched until she got to the ladder, then he
shouted. "You’re dead! I’ll have you killed for that!" and he began
screaming in Japanese and running back to Kaigo’s battle room.

Perfecto chased Sakura, caught him by the scruff of
the neck after a dozen steps, and pushed him to the floor. Sakura
kept yelling. Abriara didn’t hurry to the ladders, showed no
concern. There were several battle rooms along the hallway, and I
was certain Sakura’s yelling would summon a samurai in seconds. I
pulled a knife, and followed Abriara.

We climbed the ladder. At the 0-hundred level we
stepped off. The ladder continued up, but was chopped off at the
airlock. I glanced at the airlock—Tamara was somewhere beyond it,
and I longed to find her, but I continued following Abriara.

The halls on this level were a bit wider than those
downstairs, the rooms farther apart. When we got to our room it
didn’t look so good. It was a simple cube with a low ceiling;
cushions on top of plastic lockers doubled as couches and lined all
three walls. My teak chest sat atop one such trunk, its lid open,
overflowing with boxes of cigars and bottles of liquor. A small
doorless restroom with a toilet bordered the hall on the right as
we entered, a water spigot and computer-jack outlet bordered the
door on the left. Five small bunks were suspended from bolts in the
ceiling, and pictures of the popes covered the walls. Abriara
climbed to a top bunk, and lay with her eyes closed. I ducked
around the corner of the bathroom and raised my knife, poised to
strike anyone who might enter the room to attack Abriara.

Abriara opened one eye.

"Are you just going to lie there?" I asked, angered
that she was unwilling to save herself.

"I think so," she said.

I leaned my head against the wall, listening for
pursuit.

She watched me a moment. "Angelo, put that knife
away," she said with concern. "You’re scaring me."

"And if Sakura comes back with help?" I asked, wiping
sweat from my forehead.

"He won’t," she said, sitting up. She watched me a
moment longer. "Besides, I can handle myself. I’m not in
danger."

When she said she wasn’t in danger, something strange
happened. I felt a great sense of relief. It was as if something in
my arm had sprung, allowing me to release the weapon.

"I ... I thought I was protecting you. I made a fool
of myself. I’m sorry."

She closed her eyes and turned away. "Thank you. No
one has ever tried to do that before. No one has ever protected
me."

There was such pain in her voice that I wanted to
apologize for all the men who had never protected her. I wondered
what kind of life she had led, being the lowest of the low, less
than an Indian even. I imagined how she had been ravaged by that,
how she had been forced to assert herself and become strong. I
remembered news reports showing how chimeras were mistreated in
Chile, Ecuador, and Peru even before the socialists took over: In
places where Indians were paid a starvation wage of 50 pesos for a
hard day’s labor, a chimera would be paid 25. Police would often
shoot or beat chimeras that stayed out after dark. But these were
only minor inconveniences compared to what happened after each of
those countries became absorbed into the Estados Unidos Socialistas
Del Sur: chimeras lost all their rights, since the socialists
claimed chimeras were not human and were therefore not entitled to
legal protection. It was legal to kill chimeras, to enslave them if
one dared try. It is even said that after Argentina’s General
Espinoza conquered Chile, he bragged that he dined on the liver of
a chimera and claimed it was better than the finest Argentine
calves’ liver. These were only a portion of the things Abriara must
have endured at the hands of humans.

"What was it like, in Chile, when the people began
killing chimeras, began hunting you?" I asked. It was a personal
question, perhaps too personal. I put the knife back in my
wrist-sheath and sat on the floor, watching Abriara.

She didn’t answer for a moment. "Angelo, in the
simulators everything looked strange. The colors were all washed
out, and nothing gave off warmth. It was like the whole world had
gone cold. There were clouds in the sky, and I couldn’t see the sun
through them. It was as if they were a barrier to light. Is that
the way humans see things?"

It was a trite observation, an attempt to steer our
conversation to safe ground. But it seemed obvious that she had
very strong vision in the infrared and ultraviolets. With my
prosthetics I could see some of that, but it was translated into
normal colors. To her each color had its own value. "Sí. The clouds
and fog, they can be a perfect barrier to sight," I said. "Humans
cannot see the stars blazing in the sky on a cloudy night."

"Hmmm. I knew their eyes were poor, but I never
guessed how bad their vision is. This is a weakness we can exploit
when we get to Baker."

"Have you never coupled with a human on a dream
monitor, or jacked into an educational tape made by humans?"

"No. In Chile, educational tapes are shown in full
spectrum. I’ve seen exact duplicates of old paintings in museums—Da
Vinci, Rembrandt. All the whites in their portraits are tinged with
ultraviolet, making it look as if the subjects bathed in sunscreen
lotion. I understood human’s visual limitations on an intellectual
level. But I didn’t really know till today."