On My Way to Paradise (52 page)

I asked, "Do you think they’ll swallow such a
tale."

"We don’t know. All the men you saw in Motoki’s
office are dead, so there won’t be any nay-sayers to rebut us. Our
real problem is that Garzón is only a military leader, so the
Japanese don’t see him as having equal status with a corporate
official. But we’re building Garzón’s image—giving him royal
ancestry, making him a direct descendant of Cortes; on his mother’s
side he comes from a family of industrial barons. We’re also
boosting the image of pre-industrial Spain—giving it steel swords
that rivaled those of the Japanese, making the Italian artists
honorary Spaniards."

I snorted at the idea.

"I know, it sounds stupid," Tamara said, "and the
whole idea disgusts me. But these people have absolutely no idea
what’s happened on Earth over the last 2000 years, so they’re ripe
for just about anything we want to tell them. We’ll start airing
these tapes in the morning. It may not work, but I’ll bet it
smothers a few fires."

Tamara’s co-worker rose and crossed the room, leaving
Tamara alone. She asked, "What can I do for you?"

I told Tamara, "You said once that you’d build a
dreamworld for me. I’ve been stacking dead bodies into piles all
day. I want to sleep in peace. I want—" I suddenly realized I had
no idea exactly what I wanted. Escape. Peace of mind. No—release. I
thought of how I’d been sickened by stacking dead bodies all day,
how I felt soiled after the dirty business with Lucío. I needed the
internal fortitude to look upon such ugliness dispassionately. I
held my breath and resolved to take a step into the darkness. "Once
you stimulated my emotions directly. I know such technology exists.
You can do it again; you can program what you want into the
computer on my monitor. I want you to record an emotional state
that will let me learn to kill without remorse. "

The next tape came on, another meeting of Motoki with
his officials. Tamara didn’t move for several seconds. "The streets
are full of people who can do that already," she said sadly, "Why
would you want that?"

"Until I gain their power, I am at their mercy!"

Tamara considered my answer. "I won’t."

It was late and I was tired. I didn’t have the will
to argue. I raised my laser rifle level to her nose. She looked
down the barrel. "You’d be surprised at how close I’ve come to
feeling such callousness already," I whispered quietly. "Perhaps I
don’t need your help. Perhaps all I must do is wait. Perhaps even
now I could pull the trigger on you and I’d feel nothing. Shall we
see if I can?"

Sweat broke out on her forehead. She stared into my
eyes, afraid. She feared her own powerlessness. She said, "You’ve
been practicing violence when I told you to practice
compassion."

"When? When did you tell me that?"

"In the simulator," she said. "When I told you to
become fluent in the language of the heart. Yet you continue to
practice violence."

I hadn’t understood her words. Perhaps because of my
training in medicine I’m predisposed to view the human animal as a
complex set of biochemical reactions. I tend to think of people as
reacting toward situations only on the basis of genetic
programming.

Tamara had been telling me to practice compassion as
one would practice kicking a soccer ball, and I hadn’t understood.
I was predisposed to be deaf to such advice. And I saw that she was
afraid because she saw that practicing violence and compassion were
mutually exclusive. As you enhance your capacity for one, you
diminish the capacity for the other. She was afraid I really would
pull the trigger. I confirmed her fears with my words, "That’s
right," I said. "I think I will pull this trigger."

Tamara laughed calmly. "If you were past feeling, you
wouldn’t ask for dreams to make you evil. When I first came to you,
I told you that I’d die if you balled me over. I threatened you
with guilt. I tell you again, old man, if you hurt me: guilt!"

She stared at the gun, and I knew she was right. I
wanted to pull the trigger. I wanted to slap her. I did
nothing.

"I’ll build you a world of my choosing, old man. Jack
me in," she said. I unplugged the computer cord from her cranial
jack, and then shoved the plug from my monitor into her socket. It
took her thirty seconds to build a world.

"Thank you," I said when she was done, wondering just
what she’d chosen. I went down to the street where some forty
compadres, including Captain Esteves and my own combat team, camped
behind a barricade of dirt.

There I jacked into the dream monitor, and at first
was lulled by the waves lapping the hull of a tiny sailboat that
rode through an endless sea.

It seemed a relaxing place, a fine place. I set the
little dream monitor on automatic so that it would immediately flip
on when it registered the REM associated with the beginning of a
dream. I wanted to be lulled by this dream, to live in the dream
only.

But as I slept, Tamara’s dreamworld changed. I
remained on the boat, but I entered a nightmare world where I was
filled with a love for all men. I was on a tiny boat still, but I
knew that on in the ocean on the horizon many were in need.

Two hours later I was awakened by screams and
flechette fire. I’d heard reports of samurai raids in diverse parts
of town. I was so bone weary I wanted to sleep again. But I looked
around at my compadres and saw everyone awake, tense, talking
softly without helmet mikes. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep
while they were in danger. I erased the program Tamara had given
me.

After several moments, Captain Esteves said, "We just
lost another thirty-two amigos up by the temple. Samurai with laser
rifles came out of a false wall and surprised a whole bunker.

"We’ve got men up there now, checking the situation
out. Apparently a tunnel catacombs the city. No telling how many
people may have taken refuge there, and some of them are armed. So
keep your eyes open. How many casualties does that make now?"

"About 600 altogether," someone said.

Esteves sighed, "¡Huy! We can’t continue to sustain
these losses. We can’t allow even a ten-to-one casualty ratio.

"This city is too spread out; we need four thousand
men to occupy it for any amount of time. Garzón should have penned
them all up on the north end of town. And those Japanese know it.
If we get below our critical numbers, they’ll start tearing holes
through us fast. What if the southern samurai come from the farming
towns to brave our defenses? We can’t fight them off and control
our citizens at the same time."

Someone beside me spoke without engaging his helmet
mike. His voice sounded distant, "I don’t understand. Why don’t
they give up? You’d think after this many casualties, they’d just
lie down for a few weeks and be glad when we leave."

A man beside him said wistfully, "They’re all crazy.
Do you know, it has become the custom that when Motoki samurai
patrols meet Yabajin in the desert, their leaders strip off their
armor and duel with swords for the right to continue their
missions.

"The winner gets to continue his mission, and the
losing team returns home. I heard a friend say they videotape these
battles and show them on the evening news. Their warriors have
become incredibly quick and graceful, like dancers. They call it
‘the beautiful style’ of war. That is how crazy they are. They
think war is beautiful."

"No, that’s not the reason they refuse to surrender,"
I said. I wanted to understand, so I grasped at straws. "It’s
President Motoki. If Garzón hadn’t killed Motoki, everything would
have worked out all right. They’d have let us live. I saw it in
their faces when they watched the murder."

Zavala broke in. "It’s because we all owe Motoki,
everyone on this planet—you, me, them. He was our employer. The
only way to repay that debt is to kill Garzón."

I knew his guess was right. He’d given an answer I’d
never have been able to fathom. Zavala with his cultural shift. I
asked, "Do you believe we owe a debt of honor?"

Zavala’s helmet swiveled. "If I was certain, I’d kill
Garzón myself."

He was torn. I suddenly realized that he felt that he
owed Garzón, too. After all, he’d led them in battles in South
America long before they signed on here.

"Garzón was only killing a political rival," I said,
hoping to placate Zavala. "I have a friend in Intelligence who
admitted as much. They’re trying to come up with an explanation
that will satisfy the Japanese. It was an accident."

"It was no accident," Perfecto said. "Garzón knows
his enemies."

"There was a general in Guatemala once who said all
wars are an accident," Abriara mused. "He said humans were not
built for war, that their territorialism was only meant to be
expressed in the way of herd animals, through ritual nonlethal
combat."

"You mean the way sheep or cattle do, by butting
heads?" Mavro laughed.

"Exactly," Abriara said. "Throughout history, most
human combat has been ceremonial—among the ancient Greeks, one or
two champions fought while armies watched. Among African tribes the
victors of wars were elected on the basis of spear-throwing
contests.

"It’s the human equivalent of head-butting. Someone
wins, yet no one gets hurt. It sounds as if the Japanese, with
their ‘beautiful style of war,’ are returning to this method,
pitting champions against each other instead of fighting it out to
the death. However, this general didn’t use historical evidence as
a basis for his argument. He stated emphatically that the best
proof was that humans are not emotionally equipped to kill one
another. If they were, genocide would be the most natural solution
to territorial disputes."

I found myself listening with interest. I thought it
strange that a military general should come to such a humane
conclusion.

"I think this general was stupid," Mavro said. "I
don’t mind killing people."

I suddenly realized I should know this Guatemalan
general, this caballero. But I’d never heard his philosophy. I
asked, "Who was this general you speak of?"

"A man of your own country—" Perfecto said, "General
Gonzalvo Quintanilla."

My head reeled. "You liar!" I shouted. "Gonzalvo
Quintanilla was a murdering despot! He could not have said such
things—not a man who tried to overthrow his own country!"

"You are mistaken, Osic," Abriara said, her voice
barely civil. They were the first words she’d spoken to me that
day. "You confuse General Gonzalvo Quintanilla with General
Gonzalvo "El Puerco" Quinot. Quinot tried to overthrow
Guatemala."

"I know my own history!" I yelled. "Quintanilla’s men
raped and murdered my mother! I hunted them for months! Don’t tell
me about Quintanilla!"

Perfecto touched Abriara’s arm as a sign for her to
humor me, which enraged me even more. Abriara said in mocking
tones, "Ah, forgive me don Angelo, I didn’t mean to anger you. I
must be confused. I had no idea you were old enough to have lived
in Quintanilla’s day."

This seemed a very strange thing for her to say. When
we’d first met, I’d looked as if I’d lived my sixty years. Abriara
was being barely civil to me, and I was angry. I moved away from
the group and watched the street leading down to the river.

I felt confused and frightened that everyone had
contradicted my tale of Quintanilla—so frightened I dared not speak
of it, dared not think of it. Eventually my eyes became heavy, and
I slept.

The sound of gunfire shook me after a few minutes.
Baker’s smaller moon
Shinju
, the pearl, had just risen in a
ball of purple. The fires still sputtered along the hillside as
low-lying timbers continued burning in houses where people had
roasted themselves.

Uphill some fifty samurai were just finishing an
attack. They’d rushed from a tunnel concealed in a hedge so quietly
it could have been a dream. They’d carried white ceramic tiles as
shields, armor plates from hovercraft parts, and our men responded
by shooting the samurais’ legs from under them.

It had been a suicide attack, deaths just waiting to
happen.

But afterward a dozen of our own men lay in crumpled
heaps, their teflex shattered. We rushed forward, dug into the
bodies and found four men dead, another six with broken bones,
bruises and stab wounds. Esteves secured the tunnel, called in a
report.

We were all sobered by the incident.

As the medics left, another forty troops walked down
the hill, dispersed among the nearest houses, and began firing into
nearby homes with plasma rifles and lasers, setting the dwellings
ablaze.

Esteves ordered us to burn ten houses for each man
we’d lost, but I knew it would do no good. We could not force the
people of Motoki to surrender.

In our society, we admire the strong man. We revere
our petty dictators, and we make it easy for them to gain
control.

But the Japanese would not accept us—would not
surrender to Garzón. Master Kaigo had said it long ago: "On Baker,
there is no surrender."

We left our protective position and carried out the
order. At nearly every house, someone tried to bolt through a door
or dive through some translucent paper wall. We let the women and
children leave, but any male more than twelve we fried. My mind
became numb and my hands became numb.

I flipped off my external mike, sealing myself from
the world. I watched what we did from a distance. I couldn’t smell
or touch or feel anything in my armor. Only the sound of distant
shrieking Japanese came through, and everyone appeared to move in
slow motion.

After the first few, the killing became almost
automatic. It was as if the armor moved of its own volition, empty
inside. I was willing to fry them all. I imagined that we’d just
continue the job, finish the whole town. Tamara’s propaganda would
never be able to placate the Japanese. We were locked in a death
grip and neither party could escape, neither could allow the other
to live.