On My Way to Paradise (44 page)

"But—" he began to say.

"But in the meantime," Garzón added, "Baker is a very
dangerous planet. You know why we’re here.

"Within a few weeks—one way or another—the
government here on Baker will be globally consolidated and you’ll
be free to end this peacekeeping mission and fly home. But many
people will get killed in the battles to come. Who knows? Maybe
even Mr. Osic will be one of the unfortunates?

"If that were to happen, you could then send back a
message to your superiors saying ‘Mission accomplished’ before you
desert this dust ball."

Garzón’s tone held promise, promise that I’d die in
battle. The little captain nodded pensively, relieved, then
motioned to his troops. They let me up.

Garzón looked at me, reached up and stroked my silver
hair. I flinched involuntarily.

He spoke to a samurai. "Put him in the rear of the
shuttle. Security risk C."

I hurried toward the shuttle and a samurai followed
at my elbow. Tamara’s wheelchair blocked the hallway and I looked
at her dark eyes, her dark hair. She’d filled out a little and
didn’t appear so emaciated as before. Her hand had grown back
perfectly. So much of her appearance was unchanged. Without moving
a muscle she began backing the wheelchair down the hall, as if to
let us pass.

The electric motor whirred softly. In her eyes was
fear, a plea.

I asked, "What has happened to you?"

The samurai tapped me on the elbow and spoke in
Japanese; his translator spat, "No talking. You will speak to no
one aboard this shuttle."

I looked in Tamara’s eyes. She was afraid to speak in
the open. The samurai led me past Tamara to the front of the ship,
to a small room with plush chairs and a bar. Two men dressed like
myself sat there under the eye of a samurai guard.

I took a seat. The shuttle held perhaps three hundred
passengers. Out the window I saw one of Baker’s small moons—flat,
blue, and pitted with ten thousand craters. A worthless little
rock. The stars shining steadily were piercing. I was shaking and
wanted to kill the Alliance captain and his superiors and I wanted
to help Tamara in spite of the fact that I didn’t know how.

Garzón himself entered our room a moment later. He
patted me on the shoulder like an old friend. He was smoking a
cigarette. "I’m sorry to put you up here, don Angelo. I hope you
don’t feel too uncomfortable, but you see—God, you look like old
General Torres. I almost feel I should salute you! I’d prefer to
keep you away from the chimeras."

"I understand," I said.

He gauged me with his eyes. "How many of them have
bonded to you now?"

"Five," I said.

He looked relieved. "So few? We can spare five. We’ll
consider it repayment. I owe you a great deal for rescuing Tamara.
Her information was invaluable in helping the resistance defeat
Argentina."

He must have seen my surprise.

"Oh yes, we got the details several months ago. The
last of the Nicita Socialists were wiped out of Latin America only
two years after we left. And much of the credit goes to Tamara." He
spoke as if he were praising an idiot child. "She’s quite a
talented lady. She’s become-indispensable to the future of my
Intelligence organization. "

Tamara seemed to have a gift for becoming
indispensable. I remembered how Jafari had tried to imprison her
in a brain bag. Garzón was doing the same; in fact, he’d succeeded
where Jafari had failed. Tamara was sitting in a nice little
prison—a body she couldn’t manipulate. Oh, her speech was no longer
impaired when she talked through her simulator. Garzón had
obviously reseeded part of her brain with cloned neurons, had
administered neural growth agents—but only to a portion of her
brain, only to sections that controlled her higher functions.

"Why do you keep her imprisoned?"

Garzón smiled at me, a tight-lipped little smile.
"Because she’s dangerous. Because I couldn’t sleep if I knew she
was mobile." There was genuine concern in his eyes. I couldn’t
imagine Tamara, thin little Tamara, causing such disquiet. "I know
that keeping her like this looks bad. A living body is such a messy
thing. I’ve been toying with the idea of having a cymech made for
her after this job with the Yabajin—something small, portable, but
without the means of manipulating objects."

I must have raised an eyebrow. Tamara was terrified
of cymechs to the point of paranoia. She’d never agree to be housed
in one. I knew this on a gut level and realized Garzón wouldn’t be
deterred by her reticence. He really did fear her. He waited for me
to speak, but I said nothing. I furiously considered methods to
save her.

He sat next to me, snubbed his cigarette into the
cushion of the seat in front of us. "I’ve been wanting to ask you,
Señor Osic: during the riot you strangled a man and he stabbed you.
Very curious. Flakes of your skin were found on his neck. Traces of
his body oils were found on your clothing near the wound. Why did
you kill him?"

"He was an Alliance assassin. I learned about him
only slowly, over the weeks aboard ship. He accidentally tipped off
his presence to me."

"Why didn’t you speak to me about it? It would have
been so much easier."

"I wanted to do him myself. To kill him myself."

Garzón looked off at the moon. "I see-a rugged
individualist trying to set the universe right. You realize he’s
the second Alliance agent you’ve killed? Few men fare so well
against them. You somehow make them appear ... inept? I find it
quite surprising. I think it’s your disarming nature. You generate
an aura of concern for others, of innate morality. No one would
suspect you to be capable of violence. You have an interesting set
of qualities. Have you ever considered putting these qualities to
work for you, perhaps by going into intelligence work—as an
assassin?"

I looked at him, surprised. "No."

He smiled charmingly. He had a great deal of charisma
and knew how to use it. I felt unaccountably grateful to him. He
didn’t need me really. He could have just fed me to the lions. Yet
he’d saved me out of pure gratitude. Few qualities are so
endearing. I liked him despite the fact that he was keeping Tamara
prisoner, in spite of the fact that at some basic level I suspected
that we were enemies.

"Tamara has talked of you often," Garzón urged. "She
would like to work with you. When this is over, you and I should
talk—terms of employment."

"No," I said.

"Think about it."

I peered out the window. It was best not to argue too
strongly. I considered his offer. People like Arish, Juan
Carlos—someone needed to kill them. Why not me?

The last passengers boarded the shuttle and we
departed. From space Baker looked like a great clouded ruby shot
through with bands of azurite and emerald. Brilliant red ochre
marked the central deserts while water vapor hung over its small
blue seas and single large ocean. It had ice caps nearly as small
as those on Mars.

Yet the entire planet seemed hazy and indistinct,
like a blurred photo. A band of platinum formed a corona around the
rim of the planet—caused by the sun reflecting off the wings of
billions upon billions of opal kites.

We dropped near the upper atmosphere. The planet’s
ocean, Aki Umi, took up most of our field of view.

We passed the terminus where day became night and
buzzed over the western edge of the continent Kani, the crab, in
twilight. Below us the brilliant white lights of Hotoke no Za, the
Yabajin capital, shone as if a single star had fallen on that vast
dark planet and taken fire.

A tinkling noise sounded, like urine squirting into a
toilet bowl.

Several men jumped from their seats yelling, "We’re
hit!" then our craft lurched and accelerated up away from Baker and
everyone became frantic.

A Japanese announced over the speakers, "Some of you
realize the Yabajin have fired on us with neutron cannons. However
this was foreseen, and we remain high above the danger zone. Our
superior shielding held. Even now we file protest of this ruthless,
unprovoked attack with the Alliance ambassador!"

I snorted in disgust. Truly we hadn’t attacked the
Yabajin—yet. But if I were them, I’d fire upon our shuttles,
too.

The samurai inched forward. "No talking. No noise,"
he said, referring to the snort I’d made.

We passed Hotoke no Za and continued over the dark
planet.

Garzón took a microphone and explained the situation
on Baker: we’d lost 4100 mercenaries during our trip from
Earth—30l2 to the plague, 129 in fights during the riot, and 644
crushed when the samurai spun our ship. The rest died in the
simulators, were murdered, or perished from natural causes.

He continued, "We estimate the Yabajin defenders at
50,000 or more. Motoki will only be able to muster 39,000 samurai.
And though the numbers look bad for an offensive engagement, our
chimeras are better fighters than Motoki bargained for. Because of
our prowess in battle and recent changes in equipment design,
computer projections look pretty good. We can win this war—but we’d
lose sixty-two percent of our men. This is unacceptable! Right
now," Garzón said, "I’m demanding that Motoki rectify this
violation of our contract by allowing us one month to produce new
weapons and practice further. In addition, 467 of you were put in
the cryotanks after the riot. Frankly, you’d be almost worthless to
us in a real fight because of inadequate training. I’d leave you
aboard ship until this is over, but the owners of the
Chaeron
need to re-outfit the ship for its return to Earth.
Now, the locals are afraid of us and there is some resistance to
the plan, but I’m going to demand that you men be left in Kimai no
Ji until this war is over! All right?"

His little speech brought cheers from the men. But
his promises sounded hollow.

For two hours there was no more sign of civilization
on the planet. No lights. Though Baker was smaller than Earth, its
emptiness made it seem vast.

My thoughts kept returning to Tamara in the room
behind me. I’d invested so much to free her from Jafari that her
captivity by Garzón distressed me. I’d never saved her at all, only
led her to a new prison cell.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing was that I still
had no idea why she was imprisoned. Garzón wasn’t wringing useful
information from her. Any intelligence secrets she knew were well
out of date.

Yet her mind was of inestimable worth to Garzón, as
it had been to Jafari. I couldn’t smuggle her off Baker. We
couldn’t hide on Baker. To even consider trying to save her was a
waste of time when my own future hung in the balance.

We left Baker’s shadow and returned to daylight. We
passed great red deserts. The dark ultraviolet of Baker’s native
plants became more frequent, then the shuttle plummeted toward the
planet, bouncing through thermals. The heat shielding glowed white,
and we slowed and soared at a low angle.

At perhaps fifteen kilometers we descended into a
flock of red opal kites that spanned thousands of meters. I
imagined we’d crash. But though the kites were huge, each was only
a thin membranous waffle the color of cinnamon. The flock undulated
as it rode the top of a thermal, holding to the same elevation,
almost wing tip to wing tip, so that when we sank beneath them it
was as if we dropped below bubbles riding on top of the water and
we were sea creatures viewing them from beneath.

These kites truly resembled giant mantas, and I
finally realized that opal kites were as different from opal birds
as hawks are from butterflies. Below us several flocks of kites
each held to different thermal layers. Cottony clouds hid all but
the tops of a few mountains.

We cruised for several minutes. The ship’s captain
announced that we were coming in upon Kimai no Ji, Motoki’s
capitol.

We descended through clouds toward a rugged coastline
among mountains topped with green-gray fir and pine. I inched
forward, eager to see this place we’d be fighting for.

For a long time saw nothing but rolling green hills
and mist. Then I spotted a low-flying yellow zeppelin traveling
from Motoki’s small farming or mining settlements in the south,
perhaps Shukaku or Tsumetai Oka.

The zeppelin headed for a hamlet near the sea
surrounded by a few fields and a large black stone wall. Farther
out was the forest; and the forest, the wall, and the fields all
held the native flora and fauna at bay.

I imagined the Motoki outpost as an island of
normality in a sea of strangeness. The Japanese have always been an
island people. The city was small, perhaps 40,000 people, a tiny
collection of buildings, two blue crystal domes. My little city of
Gatun back in Panamá was larger. "

Then it struck me how bizarre this enterprise was:
here was a large planet, one that because of its small seas had
more total land surface than Earth, yet two cities the size of
Gatun, Panamá, were fighting a genocidal war to see who won empty
spaces neither of them could use!

The shuttle swooped in for its descent.

The houses were of dark wood beams with white
rice-paper walls as thin and translucent as moth wings. On every
street, in every yard, the landscape was perfectly ordered, as if
the city were a giant garden only casually inhabited by humans.

Bushes were neatly trimmed and the black trunks of
the pink blossoming plums were gnarled into strange surrealistic
patterns, as if they’d been sculpted.

I’d expected some signs of age—dilapidated buildings,
crumbling barns. But the Japanese hadn’t contrived any instant
slums on Baker. Nor was there a sign of extravagance. No
glittering lights, no mansions of crystal. The entire city
displayed a face of practiced austerity. We slowed and hit the
runway and the shuttle shuddered as we skidded to a halt.