On My Way to Paradise (45 page)

From the shuttle-port terminal issued a dozen large
trucks. Fifty samurai wearing black armor hustled alongside the
trucks and lined up outside our door.

The hatch popped open and our men began filing down
the steps. A sweet husky alien aroma entered the ship, like the
smell of sugar cane drying in the sun. The smell of Baker.

We exited and found the trucks were full of
clothing—shoes and loose pants, heavy kimonos and jackets. We were
given plastic bags with welcoming kits—combs, bars of soap,
toothpaste, maps of the planet, lists of rules.

Those of us who’d been sitting in the "security risk"
section of the shuttle each had a small monitor taped to our
wrists, like those felons wear while on parole so the police can
track them. The device showed a map of the city and told us to
reach a certain building before 5:00 P.M.

The ocean roared nearby and a sea wind blew over the
airfield, licking up dust. Hornets seemed to be everywhere—buzzing
our heads, smelling the hair on the backs of our arms.

The samurai had us form a line, and led us away from
the airfield. My legs felt as if they’d suddenly become two
centimeters too short—each step carried me slightly higher in the
air than I wanted to go.

I’d only been subjected to the heavy gravity of the
ship for two weeks, but the cryotechs had kept my muscles
well-tuned.

I bounced when I walked. We traveled single-file
along a road that bordered a low fence of bamboo, past house after
house.

The plums were throwing their blossoms, forming a
carpet for our feet. All the doors and windows in the houses were
closed.

We passed through a business district where colored
kites shaped like carp hung from lamp poles, and a small Japanese
boy came running up toward us from a side street. He nearly bumped
into the man in front of me, then stopped and looked up at us and
shrieked,
"Tengu!"

I smiled at him and he backed away in horror. The
child’s eyes were slanted at a remarkable angle, the epicanthic
folds enhanced until his eyes were mere slits.

The man behind me laughed. "I guess he’s never seen
anyone handsomer than the Japanese."

I laughed too, and wondered how it would be for a
child who’d never seen a man of another race. Could he recognize us
as human?

A samurai down the line shouted, "No talking!"

In silence we trudged up the road and into a large
building, a circular stadium.

Inside hundreds of pictures of Regional Company
President Motoki Tomeo stretched from wall to wall, and a large
stage like those in kabuki theaters filled the far end of the
building.

When we seated, speakers blared out
"Motoki Sha
Ka"
and the samurai led us in the company anthem, then a giant
holograph of a twenty-meter-tall President Motoki appeared on
stage.

Like the child, his eyes were outrageously
slanted—more Japanese than the Japanese had ever been. He
ceremoniously welcomed us to Baker and thanked us for coming to
help rid the land of the "machines of the Yabajin."

When finished, twenty young girls hustled on stage
and gracefully danced with fans and umbrellas while an old woman
sang to the accompaniment of a koto. The dancers came forward and
with both hands offered each of us a plate that held a tiny bottle
of sake, a chrysanthemum, and a bowl of cooked rice. Then we were
escorted from the building by the samurai.

The sun was setting. With the gray overcast skies
there was no beautiful sunset, only a grim gradual dimming of the
light. The rice-paper walls of the homes glowed from inside like
giant paper lanterns.

We marched a kilometer from town and came to a large
compound in a small valley resting between the arms of a
pine-covered hill. Hundreds of Latin Americans dressed in the faded
green battle armor of Motoki soldiers wandered about the hill,
exercised, and wrestled.

At the foot of the valley, chanting issued from a
large wooden structure that could have been an old barn—the
thunderous shout of. "Let’s go home! Let’s go home! Let’s go
home!"

The samurai marched my compadres up to the barn, but
my wristband began beeping and warned me to head for another
section of camp. The map on my wristband showed the hut I was
supposed to sleep in.

I headed toward it. From town came the deep gong of a
temple bell, and behind me, my three hundred
compañeros
raised their voices in the chant, "Let’s go home!"

The hut I entered was so smoky it could have been a
bar. Five Latin Americans in the blue of samurai played guitars and
sang while a sixth blew furiously on a trumpet. Sixty gamblers had
gathered in a circle and shouted bets as if at a cock fight while
they watched a holo of three men in a simulated combat.

The three men were in a large, powerful hovercraft
racing through the jungle, trying to beat back an attack by four
Yabajin craft. The whole point of the exercise seemed to be to see
how many kills the combat team could make before they got wasted.
Yet the three men were marvelous, graceful, powerful: they swirled
in the air to fend laser attacks, and they seemingly dodged the
plasma as it rushed toward them. They returned fire and made kills
while they zigzagged through the brush. Their antics as they evaded
the Yabajin drew great gusts of laughter. I heard a buzz like the
drone of giant wasps. Three black projectiles the size of a man’s
arm zipped toward the mercenaries at tree line, following the
contours of the forest, dodging branches.

Someone shouted, "Five to three Xavier doesn’t hear
the weasels!" Everyone began shouting their bets.

Another fifty people were seated on the floor in
corners of the room. Few were smiling or sharing tales. An air
melancholy hung over the crowd: dead eyes everywhere and stern
faces with fatalistic smiles.

I could feel it in the air—the electric cobwebs
brushing my face, a knot of tension in the pit of my stomach, the
anxiety of a crowd who struggled for control. The crowd was barely
holding it in—as if the riot aboard ship had never occurred. As if
my two years in the cryotanks had never passed.

A man in battle armor stubbed up to me. At first I
didn’t recognize Zavala, since he stood with a slightly bent
posture, as if still struggling against heavy g forces.

"Ah, it’s you! It’s been a long time," he said,
forgetting my name.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Good. Everyone’s good. Abriara will be glad you’re
awake,
ne?"

I was surprised to hear the Japanese
ne
,
meaning
correct,
from his lips. But then
he’d been among the samurai now for two years. People can change
much in two years.

"Where is she?" I asked. The thought of seeing
Abriara again filled me with the kind of pain one feels upon
passing the graveyard where a relative is buried.

"Probably running a solo gauntlet through the
simulators. Or maybe exercising. She’s been very worried for you.
She’ll probably be in a simulator somewhere. Battle helps steady
the mind,
ne?
She’ll want to see you. She’ll want you to
fight with us, to sit in our hovercraft like we were amigos. But
things have changed since you chickened out and helped start the
riot. You won’t be any help in a fight, just dead weight. If you’re
a true friend, you won’t fight on our battle team.

Zavala’s voice was the same as ever, but his
undertones defied reason. His small rounded mouth twisted down in
contempt. His stupid cow eyes stared dully.

I felt angry that he spoke to me that way, but to
placate him I said, "I don’t think she’ll want me on the team. When
did Abriara feel anything for anyone? I’m nothing to her. And if
I’m a burden, she’ll keep me off the team." And I realized my words
were a truth I understood with my heart but would never have dared
speak to myself. Hadn’t she disarmed me during the riot, leaving me
to die?

Zavala snorted in disgust. "That shows what you
know—the great doctor. God must have run out of everything but
guano when he was putting your head together!"

I didn’t immediately know what to say. He acted as if
I’d attacked Abriara’s character, but I’d simply stated the
truth.

Zavala stubbed out the door as if one of his metal
legs had suddenly shriveled too short. I waited for a long time,
till it appeared he wouldn’t return.

I found a corner and, since I was still holding my
gift of rice and sake, I sat down on the floor to dine and watch
the holo fights. There was a lull in the battle and no one was
betting for the moment. The combat team had lost one man, but
astonishingly they’d defeated the Yabajin. They were hovering
motionless over a stagnant river whipped to froth by their engines
in a dense jungle where trees and bushes shone a hundred thousand
shades of green and purple. Their bulky bug suits were pocked and
furrowed from laser and plasma hits. They were hastily repairing
the damage to their armor with a resin paint.

The hovercraft’s forward engine seemed damaged; it
whined badly and the nose of the craft tilted in the air. There
were eighteen small air-intake holes for the turbos around the
sides of the hovercraft, and several air intakes had somehow taken
plasma into them, ruining the blades.

The air intakes are mounted at an angle so this won’t
happen, but when plasma first comes from a turret it’s so hot it
actually exists in gaseous form. In this form at close range the
air intakes must make good targets. The hovercraft sucks in
gaseous metal and ruins the props as the metal cools. The
hovercraft’s body was heavily plated with teflex, more so than the
old-model crafts.

They had a dozen unfamiliar flashing lights on the
instrument panel. When the two men had repaired their armor, they
began shooting their plasma turrets in the air and they dumped
their compadre into the water.

I got up and asked a gambler, a chimera with metallic
blue eyes who was unusually tall, "What are they doing?"

He looked at me as if I were an idiot, with a
contempt I’d only seen in the eyes of the samurai, and I wondered
just how much my people really had learned from the samurai.

He saw my white kimono and his expression quickly
turned to one of pity. "You just got thawed, no? Well, I’ll tell
you, sir: they’re gearing up for the puff mines, emptying their
turrets of ammunition so they won’t be carrying extra weight. If
you keep these new hovercrafts light, you can reach an altitude of
three meters. At top speed you can pass over most puff mines
without detonating them."

"Ah," I said, feeling like a fool. I had no idea how
much weight they might need to unload, never having floated over a
puff mine before. "Won’t they need some ammunition in the plasma
turrets to continue the assault after passing through the mine
fields?"

He gave me a sad look. "No, they can try to use
lasers to fry off the sensors on the ANCs and cybertanks. Once they
get through to Hotoke no Za, they’ll be overwhelmed by the
Yabajin. Watch them, and you might learn enough ..."

He didn’t need to say the rest. I might learn enough
to stay alive. He believed that I was a dead man. The weapons I’d
practiced with had been upgraded over the past forty years, and I
was unfamiliar with the new models. I had no idea what skills or
strategies I’d need to get past these defenses. I’d seen the little
black weasel missiles, but didn’t know how to defend myself from
them. As Zavala had said, I’d only be excess baggage in this
war.

I nodded toward the men in the simulator who suddenly
lurched off through the trees in their hovercraft. "Those men, no
one fought like them in the simulators. No one."

"We’ve learned much," the chimera said. "You were
frozen before training really began. You did not spend time
studying your own individual kinesthetics through the holographs,
learning not to waste a move, learning the spins and throws and
drops necessary to defeat the weapons of the Yabajin. You were
still studying how to achieve
munen,
the state of no mind,
the state of the living corpse. You did not progress into the
higher mental states necessary for battle—Instantaneity or Perfect
Control. The great genius of the samurai comes from their knowledge
of these states of being—"

"Pardon me, but what do you mean by Instantaneity?"
The chimera looked at me thoughtfully. "Perhaps you have had a
moment in your life, a moment of great fear when your life was in
jeopardy, and time seemed to stop. I once lived such a moment. In
an alley in Temuco during the riots a human came and put an ancient
revolver in my face and pulled the trigger. The hammer was cocked,
and when he pulled the trigger it began to fall. Time seemed to
stop. A car passed on the street before me, and a woman was looking
out the window and watching. I remember her face perfectly, her
ruby lips shaped in a circle of surprise. I saw the steam rising
from a sewer grate across the street, and a man in a store there
was turning out the lights. I looked into the frightened eyes of
the young man who planned to murder me and knew he could not be
more than fifteen. And all this time the hammer was falling and I
thought, ‘When the hammer drops, I die.’

So I reached up and put my finger in front of the
hammer and it never dropped. That is Instantaneity, living life in
a moment. It is a state of mind a warrior can learn to induce at
will. It is one secret \ of the samurai. Beyond this lies Perfect
Control—the ability to achieve a measured heartbeat, to stop one’s
breathing, to put all muscles under voluntary control."

He stopped speaking. Someone tapped my shoulder. I
turned.

Abriara hugged me in a friendly embrace and said,
"It’s good to see you."

She wore the midnight blue kimono of the samurai, and
it was wet with sweat.