On My Way to Paradise (20 page)

We followed a path in the weight room, moving from
machine to machine. Three big men in front of us discussed with
great excitement the possibility of increasing their salaries by
increasing rank. We had signed on as
heitai
, foot soldiers,
but that if we advanced to the level of samurai we would be paid
three times as much. It gave them something to dream about.

After two hours of weightlifting my muscles were
knotted. I was in a hurry to get to my medical bag to take some
N-relaxin to stop the cramping and some Deraprim to lower the uric
acid levels so my muscles wouldn’t ache.

We headed for the door, Mavro in the lead. Mavro
wound his way among the benches, always stepping slightly to the
right, not heading in a straight line. Ahead of us was the combat
team led by Lucío, the chimera with the long hair who had spoken so
rudely.

Lucío had his back turned. He was sitting up, doing
cable pulls. The cable pull exercise consists of sitting with your
back straight against a pillar, while in either hand you held a
handle. The handles are each attached to cables that run into the
press, and by twisting the dial on top of the machine you can
increase the tension of the cables up to 500 kilograms.

Everyone in Lucío’s group was tired, and none of them
noticed us coming. Mavro attacked without warning.

He grabbed a cable and wrapped it around the Lucío’s
neck, then flipped the handle so the cable twisted around itself
like a noose. At the same time, he set the tension dial on full
power, so the cable abruptly reeled the little chimera to the top
of the post and began strangling him. His arms flailed and his feet
kicked as he tried to catch his footing, yet the whole process
happened in amazing silence, as if I was dreaming and only saw what
happened without hearing it.

I was in shock. Mavro was avenging his honor, but to
me this seemed like madness. Yet I knew that among young gang
members in the ghettoes, a small offense often was avenged in
blood. Men who have nothing—no money, no station, no beauty—will
place an incredible price upon their own honor.

Mavro chuckled and we all started to hurry from the
room, past the other weightlifters. One big man with only one ear
jumped up from a weight machine and rushed to Lucío’s rescue.
Perfecto hesitated just long enough to shove One-Ear backward over
a bench. One-Ear shouted as he fell, and everyone in the room
turned to see what happened as we rushed out.

We hurried up the ladders for two levels, then ran
down a hall, like a bunch of children who’d just broken a window
and were afraid of getting caught.

I kept expecting that at any minute Lucío’s compadres
would rush up behind us. I had not been awake for more than half a
day, and already Abriara had turned the Japanese against us while
Mavro and Perfecto seemed intent on making all the enemies
possible. At this rate we’d never make it to Baker alive.

When we’d run far enough, we stopped, out of breath.
I stood up and rubbed my swollen ankle while everyone else sat down
in the hall to laugh.

"What are you laughing about?" I shouted.

"Did you not see the expressions on their faces?"
Mavro said. "When that motor started strangling the little one, I
thought he was going to cry!"

"You could have killed him!" I shouted. "You could
have broken his neck!"

"No. I don’t think so," Abriara said. "The cable
didn’t tighten fast enough."

"Now they’ll want vengeance!" I said. "Don’t you see?
We’ve been here less than a day, and you’ve started a vendetta!"
The more I spoke the higher my voice got.

"No," Mavro smiled, pulling a cigar from his pocket
and lighting it. It was against the ship’s rules to smoke, but
Mavro didn’t give a damn about rules. "It was not us who started
it.
They
started it when they attacked our honor."

"
To hell
with honor!" I said. "Don’t you see?
People can’t live that way!"

Mavro worked his mouth in amazement and seemed very
agitated. His hands shook and he began looking for a place to set
his cigar on the floor, as if he would fight me. "To hell with
honor?" he demanded.

Perfecto and Abriara exchanged glances and
shrugged.

 Zavala appeared unsure about what was going on.
"Ah, I see. A joke!" he said. He laughed experimentally to see if
I’d smile.

"I mean it," I said, "To hell with honor! So what if
they make jokes and call us names. If you make enemies of every
person on this ship, someone will put a dagger in your back once
you’re on Baker. How would you like to go into battle without their
support? Even if you hate them and consider them enemies, you must
treat them kindly. It seems to me ... It seems to me that the
ability to show compassion toward one’s enemies is what makes one
human!"

Mavro stared at me strangely, then smiled, "And all
this time I thought it was only opposing thumbs and the ability to
communicate that separated us from the animals!" Everyone laughed.
Mavro arched his eyebrows as if a great thought had struck him. He
blurted, "But, ah, yes—I see what you mean! Show compassion to your
enemies. Like when you gave anesthesia to Hustanifad before you
slit his throat!"

Everyone laughed and Zavala said in wonder, "Did he
do that? Did he really do that?"

Part of me inside said, "Yes, yes!" and I saw how
true his words were and terrible sense of guilt washed over me. Had
I really anesthetized Arish as an act of compassion before
murdering him? Certainly, it seemed I had done so subconsciously,
and I was hopelessly mixed up. I felt disoriented, and once again
it struck me that I no longer knew who I was. I began breathing
heavily and coughing, becoming hysterical. I wanted to explain to
them how it had been. To tell them that somewhere, somehow I had
lost my mind. I was crazy and therefore not responsible. I buried
my head in my hands.

Everyone quieted and Perfecto got up and wrapped a
huge arm around me. "I’m sorry, don Angelo," he said. "We didn’t
mean to hurt your feelings." He turned to the group. "Did we?"

"No," Mavro said as if the idea of hurting my
feelings were unthinkable. "It was nothing. I was just joking. I’m
terribly sorry."

"I think don Angelo makes sense, no?" Perfecto said.
"We should be making friends instead of enemies. Building instead
of tearing down. Is that what you mean?" It was plain from his tone
of that he didn’t understand. He was trying to please me, and any
sense of victory I’d have felt by convincing him of my argument was
cheapened by the knowledge that he agreed because of his genetic
programming. He had no choice in the matter.

"Sí," I said, wiping my eyes.

Mavro drew a deep puff on his cigar. His gaze held an
appearance of thoughtfulness. "Perhaps you are right ... . You
certainly bring up a good argument. There would be many advantages
to having a ship full of allies. I had not considered the political
consequences of this scenario before I acted. The loyalty of others
on the ship would be most useful ... both for survival and for
gaining promotions ..."

I wondered if he was trying to humor me, but as I
watched I could almost see gears in his mind turn as he considered
ways of winning the loyalty of others on ship. I’m sure he
envisioned a vast network of friends, all eager to die at his whim,
sacrificing themselves to save his life. He obviously craved power,
yet had no avenue to gain it. Because of his small size, he could
not compete with the chimeras. On ship he’d never be the strong man
everyone admires.

"You’re right," Mavro said. "It does make sense.
Maybe I like the idea."

"You’re not serious!" Abriara said. "What can we
gain?"

"Friends," Mavro said.

"Peace," I said. "If everyone would live that way, we
could have peace."

Abriara shook her head in disbelief. "It won’t
work—not with us chimeras. You’re talking a bunch of idealistic
crap. People respect the strong and the brave, not politicians.
Besides, we’re committed to a vendetta with that punk Lucío. We
can’t stop it! He won’t accept an apology!"

"Why not?" I asked

Abriara didn’t answer. Perfecto said, "She’s
right."

"Why?" I said.

Perfecto tilted his head to the side and shrugged. "I
cannot explain it. It is an emotional thing. I just know by
instinct that Lucío cannot let the matter rest. He is younger than
me, younger than Abriara even, and therefore the engineers made him
less human. He is chimera. We have assaulted him. His anger cannot
be washed away except by blood. He will initiate a Quest."

"A Quest?" I asked, never having heard the term.

"Sí. He will not be satisfied with killing us. He
will also want to mutilate us. A man who is on a Quest seeks more
than revenge."

Mavro drew a puff on his cigar. "Really? How
interesting ...” he said. "Still, Angelo’s plan will work if others
don’t realize what we’re doing. Angelo isn’t so much saying ‘To
hell with honor,’ as he is saying that honor should take second
place to wisdom. No? So I think we can have it both ways. We should
become political animals for a while. We should be as friendly as
puppies and see what it gets us. And at the same time we can keep
lists of all the people we don’t like. Then, if our plan doesn’t
work, we kill them.

"Even Lucío might come to his senses if we pay him
off with a bottle of whiskey."

I was amazed that none of them took the situation
seriously. They all nodded agreement with Mavro as if he were some
great sage dispensing wisdom.

We spent the afternoon doing visualization exercises,
practicing targeting skills in our minds, as Kaigo had ordered. By
evening the swelling in my leg had eased, so we marched, performing
the one useless exercise we could still do freely on ship. I
remember in Guatemala, it was holes. I dug thousands of holes in
the Army. Fortunately there was no place to dig on ship. But we
could march in the halls, so we marched. The ship was accelerating
at 1G, but Abriara informed us that within two weeks we’d slowly
increase acceleration till we hit 1.45Gs, the maximum legal
acceleration. This meant each of us would feel as if he were
carrying an extra 25-50 kilos, so when we marched we would have an
added blessing—we wouldn’t have to carry packs.

That night, a little Brazi woman came to our room.
She was the first non-chimera woman I’d seen on board. She asked,
"Did anyone you know die today—in the simulators?"

"Sí," Abriara said. "We all got killed."

"No, I mean die for real. Some people really got
killed from the simulations. So far, I’ve heard of six deaths."

I knew what she meant. I knew a man in Panamá who
often hunted monkeys in the jungles south of Gatún. Each week or so
he would bring in a monkey he’d shot at but missed. However, the
monkey would fall from the tree as if mortally wounded because his
system could not withstand the terror of the attack. In the same
way, those six men died in the simulators.

We were all made uneasy by the news.

"I hear it is nothing to stay alarmed about," the
Brazi said, putting on a brighter face. "Those who are liable to
succumb to such things will all die off by tomorrow."

"That is very comforting," Mavro said.

"Also, I should tell you: no one beat the samurai in
the simulators this morning. So me and some friends thought it
might be a good idea to start a collection for the first winners.
Everyone is putting in five IMUs per day. Do you want to bet?"

I figured quickly in my head. With 10,000 mercenaries
on board, that would be a minimum of 10,000 IMUs for each person on
the team that won. We eagerly presented our credit disks to the
Brazi.

She said, "Also, to make things fair, I must tell you
that some people have found that the plasma guns can be defeated if
you are not hit at close range. When the metallic gases hit the
armor they begin to cool and turn liquid. If you fall on the side
where you took your hit, you can sometimes keep the plasma from
eating your armor. We saw some of the samurai perform this trick in
the simulator."

I thought about it. Our battle armor is a layered
ablative ceramic cast under pressure so that it is riddled with
tiny pockets of liquid nitrogen. Not only does this liquid nitrogen
keep the armor cool and cut down on our infrared signature, but as
the armor heats and becomes molten, the liquid nitrogen explodes
into gas, spewing the molten armor away, as if our battle armor
were reactive armor blasting against a projectile. It only made
sense that if we lay down after taking a hit, the molten material
would be spewed away while the successive layers of the armor would
remain cool. This knowledge would be of great help in battle. We
thanked the Brazi, and she left.

Then we prepared for battle. Abriara set us down and
said, "I’ve been thinking about how we can beat these monkeys. Did
anyone notice if they have the same kind of hovercraft as we
do?"

"Sí, it is exactly the same," Perfecto said.

"Good!" Abriara said. "Then it’s safe to bet they
can’t outrun us." She turned to Zavala. "Which means, Zavala, that
you keep us going full-speed at all times. Understand? We don’t
have to guard our rear if they can’t catch us. So Mavro, you to
flip your turret around and face forward. Always keep all guns
aiming forward. We don’t need to worry about our rear. We’ll need
to practice crab walks and falling forward so we can beat the
plasma guns."

Abriara continued, "Angelo, remember what Kaigo said.
Keep low to present less of a target, and keep your knees flexed so
you can counteract the motion of the craft. Remember, you’ll only
get one shot with that laser before the turrets take you out—so you
must make that shot count. When teflex battle armor was first
introduced, troops around the world suddenly decreased their
accuracy in shooting because they thought they could afford to be
sloppy—but you
must
learn to shoot. The same goes for turret
gunners. If we’re following a curve along the edge of those
coralwood trees and the warning siren sounds, start firing plasma
ahead immediately so the Yabajin run into it.