On My Way to Paradise (23 page)

"Gracias," García said.

I lay in the snow and counted the seconds. My helmet
began buzzing intermittently as if a bee were caught inside, and I
began to worry, but I suddenly felt the helmet warm, defrosting the
snow that had covered my goggles. After sixty seconds, the smallest
of footsteps crunched the snow near the base of the cliff.

The Yabajin stood motionless a second.

They moved again; I could hear them breathing. One
began ascending the steepest side of the cliff. Another crept past
me, following the false trail I’d left in the snow.

Two minutes later he came back, retracing my steps.
In the darkness he missed me and walked back to the base of the
cliff. I figured I’d waited close to four minutes.

I quietly arose and shook my head. Snow slid from my
helmet as I flipped on my targeting laser. Two Yabajin waited at
the base of the rock, looking up. They were backlit by fire from
the burning hovercraft, and as I followed their gaze I saw that the
igneous rock above was shaped like the face of a deformed ogre. A
third Yabajin scaled the cliff, perching on the ogre’s nose. One
samurai on the ground held a laser rifle and covered the climber,
while his compadre next to him was empty-handed. I took the sniper
on the ground, aiming the blue dot of my targeting laser on the
back of his head, and fried him. He dropped with a grunt. His
compadre turned, yelled in surprise and charged.

Down the valley García announced over his helmet
mike, "Here they come."

I aimed for the samurai’s face and shot. A white
glowing circle appeared on his helmet just above the nose. He was
running at me, and I stepped backward and screamed "One down,"
afraid the laser wouldn’t burn through his armor in time for me to
notify the others of my first kill. Then the samurai stopped and
held up his hand as if to catch my laser beam with his armored
palm.

The effect was almost magical: my targeting computer
was designed to hold on target—but as soon as the target was
covered, the laser quit firing. I pulled the trigger a second time,
aiming at his chest. He kept charging, but he jumped in the air and
spun. The laser switched off a second time as the target was
covered by motion.

I pulled off a third shot to his kidneys as he
reached me. He leapt and kicked. I stepped back and held my gun
out, trying to let the beam cut through his armor. He brought his
foot down on the rifle barrel, knocking it to the ground. I turned
and ran.

He followed me three paces and fell to the ground,
sliding face-down in the snow. I turned to attack.

"Make that two dead," Caesar said over his helmet
mike.

The samurai lay in the snow, steam rising from a hole
in the back of his helmet, his legs twitching.

I searched for the third samurai. He was on the
cliff, near the top. He’d found a perch—and a target. He’d
unstrapped his rifle and a pink dot shone on the armored torso of a
chimera. Before I could yell, the chimera slumped forward. His
armor let him glide on the snow like a sled, and he skidded five
meters down a steep slope then dropped over the cliff.

"Noel’s down," Caesar said.

I ran back for my rifle, scooped it up, and raised
it.

The Yabajin sniper had disappeared into a crevice. I
studied the area where he should have been, but couldn’t find
him.

"Caesar, do you see a Yabajin up there?" I
yelled.

Caesar didn’t answer.

I couldn’t expect him to answer. If he spoke, he
might give away his position. I flipped off my targeting laser and
trudged to the base of the cliff, and everyone down in the valley
began yelling at once: "One down! One down! Felipe’s down! García’s
down! One down!" so fast I couldn’t keep track of the kills to
learn who was winning.

I circled the cliff face and came to the wrecked
hovercraft. A few tenacious flames still crackled, sending up a
wisp of black smoke. The crumpled bodies of Miguel and two Yabajin
were there. I circled over to the mountain side of the rock and
stood beneath an overhang while I searched for a way to climb. A
few chunks of ice rained down from the cliff above me, and I looked
up. A body came falling out of the darkness to crash at my
feet.

A chimera in a green bug suit.

"Caesar’s down," I told the rest of the company.

The battle lulled at the mouth of the valley. No one
spoke of a new kill or exchanged commands for two minutes. Someone
down in the valley began coughing into his helmet mike, making a
sound I normally associate with pneumonia. I waited for the samurai
to come down the slope. The snow had drifted deep near the cliff,
so I sat down and pulled more snow on top of my legs, hiding
myself, and watched the hillsides for movement. I didn’t think I’d
stand a chance with that last samurai if I tried to sneak out of
the canyon. The coughing stopped, and Zavala spoke through the mike
in a deep groggy voice.

"Don’t leave me for the samurai to burn. I don’t want
to die by burning." He said it very quietly, very matter-of-factly.
His slurred speech made it sound as if he had a concussion. He
began to weep. I hoped someone would break his neck.

Zavala’s crying annoyed me. In the past nine days
we’d each been killed over fifty times. You’d have thought he’d
begin to adjust to it. At first when I got burned it often felt as
if someone had peeled the skin from the back of my head, pried off
my skull cap, and exposed my brain to flames. For hours the pain
left my face numb, and my teeth would ache. But my endorphin levels
were building up, and I was adjusting to the continual shocks. Each
wave of pain was the same as the last. Each threatened to bowl me
over. But now when the wave hit it didn’t move me so much as move
through me. At least that is how I experienced it. I could
withstand the pain. I’d have thought Zavala would begin to feel
that way, too, but he didn’t. He believed his hands were rotting
all the time now, and each time he’d gone to the ship’s dispensary
they’d refused to give him antibiotics.

I was tempted to humiliate Zavala, call him a baby so
he’d stop crying. But then I realized I’d never before in my life
considered humiliating anyone. Since my youth I’d planned to be a
doctor and struggled to empathize with the plight of others. I
pretended not to hear Zavala’s whining, not wishing to embarrass
him by acknowledging his weakness.

No sound other than Zavala’s weeping disturbed the
night. "Is anyone else alive?" I asked over the mike.

Perfecto panted, "Ah, Angelo, it is good to hear
you’re doing so well!"

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Chasing two Yabajin back to you."

"What if I don’t want them?"

"Then you’ll have to pray that I catch them
first."

"Are you alone?" I asked.

"No," Perfecto panted. "I’ve got three compadres
behind me."

"Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get here," I
said. "We’ve still got one samurai here somewhere up on the
hillside, plus the one up the valley."

 Perfecto said, "I’m over the north rim. I’m
going to try to cut off these two before they reach you. Which rim
is your sniper on?"

"I don’t know. Which way is north?"

"Facing down the valley, it’s the side on your
left."

"Then he’s on the south—"

"Do you have any extra rifles near?" Hector cut
in.

"Yes, why do you ask?"

"One of the samurai we’re chasing isn’t armed. Your
friend may try to get a rifle to him."

I looked at Caesar dead on the ground. His rifle was
gone. I jumped up and ran around the cliff, looking back down the
valley. In the distance, along the hillside near the south ridge
top, a man jogged through the snow with his back turned to me.

I flipped on my targeting laser and aimed it on the
ground behind him, then moved it up quickly till I had him in the
back. I flipped on the image magnifier so I could see my target
more clearly. At this distance, I couldn’t hold my beam steady. My
dot bounced around the entire length of his body. My breath was
ragged, uneven. I inhaled, then released the air slowly, held the
light on the center of the samurai’s back, and squeezed off a shot.
A white flower burst into flame at the bottom tip of his left lung,
and he went down.

"One down," I said.

"Bueno, Amigo!" Perfecto said. "How easy you make it
soun—"

"Vasquez is down!" Hector cried over the speaker.

"Did you see where the shot came from?" one of his
compadres, a woman, asked.

"He took it in the forehead, so it must have come
from somewhere ahead of us."

Hector said, "Angelo, gather up any extra guns you
have there and throw them off in the deep snow where no one will
find them. Then sit down with your nose pointing up the canyon. I
want you to get that man up there. We’ll get these two."

I searched the ground and retrieved two
weapons—Noel’s rifle, which had slid down the cliff, and the
samurai’s. I tucked them under the wrecked hovercraft and took my
place beneath the overhang, burying myself in the snow again. I
didn’t dare return any farther back up the canyon: My tracks would
have revealed my presence; whereas the snow by the hovercraft was
so beaten no one could tell I’d been there.

"One down!" Hector said. "The other is just heading
around the bend."

"Which bend?" Perfecto called.

Hector said, "The first bend that sharply turns
north, by the big standing pine."

"Then I’m in front of him!" Perfecto shouted.

I sat and watched the snow for several minutes.
Zavala had quit sobbing. He still coughed on occasion. The largest
crescent moon had nearly dipped below the skyline—its light
silvered the needles of a pine—and visibility was poor. A shadow
moved over the rim of the canyon in the distance: something with
four legs and a bushy tail—larger than a deer or jaguar, more the
size of a small horse. It moved easily over the snow from tree to
tree, sniffing at the air, slinking my way. I couldn’t place it: It
had the shape of a wolf, only it was larger and bulkier—more like a
large bear. I couldn’t think what kind of animal it might be. Then
I realized it was something I’d never seen on Earth. A local
carnivore thrown into the simulator. The samurai had done this once
before, pitting us against the Kawa no Ryu, the river dragons. I
flipped my targeting laser on and shot twice before I hit the beast
in the belly. It hissed and whined and growled and spun in circles,
kicking up snow and snapping the air. Then it lunged through the
snow and back over the hilltop. It will probably come back with a
dozen hungry friends, I thought.

I flipped off my targeting laser.

Nothing moved in the canyon in front of me.

Perfecto yelled, "Yabajin!" over the helmet mike, and
he sounded so close I sprawled forward. I looked up. No one was
even near. I figured they must only be a few hundred meters
away.

"I’ve got him!" Hector yelled.

"He’s cheating!" Perfecto said.

Someone got hit in the head and a helmet mike
crunched. "Hit the
verga
!" Hector yelled. Someone grunted
several times.

"Okay, you can stop hitting him now," Hector
said.

Perfecto said, "Damn him to hell. How’s Juanita?"

"She’s dead. Her neck is broken."

"Damn these samurai!" Perfecto said.

I was surprised. Perfecto never swore, never even
used mild obscenities. "What happened?" I asked.

"We had him from both sides," Perfecto said. "All
three of us were shooting him. He just kept spinning in circles so
the imaging computer would lose its target before the laser could
burn through his armor, then he kicked Juanita in the head."

"I had one do that to me just a few moments ago," I
said.

"How did you beat him?" Perfecto asked.

"Caesar shot him in the back when he wasn’t looking.
"

"These samurai are very frugal," Hector said. "They
only teach you a new trick when they’re forced to. We should be
proud that they felt compelled to reveal one of their secrets. This
will come in handy."

"You know what this means? It means we’ll have to
shoot them with the plasma turrets first, so we can force them to
lie down for a second. Then we’ll have to finish them off with the
lasers before they can get up."

"I hate these damned weapons restrictions—" Hector
said, "it takes all the fun out of trying to kill a man."

"
Sí
,"
Perfecto said. "But look at the
bright side—we’ve only got one Yabajin left to kill, and we’ll be
rich men."

Hector said, "Where are you, Angelo?"

"I’m beside the wreck," I said. Zavala coughed in a
huge wracking burst, trying to expel fluid from his lungs.

"Hold your place. We’ll go back for a hovercraft.
We’ll be there in a few minutes."

"
Sí
,"
I said. "Kill Zavala while
you’re at it. Put him out of his misery."

"Okay," Perfecto said.

I hadn’t noticed how warm I’d stayed during combat,
but suddenly I realized I was cold again. Snow had crept through
the chinks in my armor, and now my legs felt as if they’d freeze.
My hands started to stiffen, and I flexed them methodically. I
looked longingly at the fire sputtering among the wreckage of the
hovercraft, wondering if I should warm myself by its side.

I watched its red glow and realized something was
wrong: though the smoke and fire looked real, and small cinders
drifted into the sky, there was no ash, no gray or black soot
falling onto me. There should have been ash falling.

Occasionally the ship’s artificial intelligence made
such mistakes, neglecting tiny matters. One could look into a
handful of soil and find no trace of insects or worms. The ship’s
AI couldn’t create an illusion that complete, not with images it
developed based on maps and fractal equations and the faulty
memories of samurai.