On My Way to Paradise (55 page)

We stuffed the crevices under the skull with dry
grass and twigs, making our shelter air-tight, then got a large
rock and gradually warmed it with short bursts from my little
laser. We removed our helmets and the air was crisp and pure. We
were all very cold by then, and we just sat and rested our eyes
while the sun set, trying to get up enough energy to cook dinner. A
day on Baker is only twenty hours long, so when the sun sets, it
sets a bit more rapidly than on Earth, especially if one is in the
mountains on a cloudy day. It almost seems that the world tilts
away from the light instantaneously. That is the way the sun
set.

After a long while, Zavala grunted and said somewhat
nervously, "I wonder what kind of animal this was? I wonder what it
ate?"

I thought it a strange question. We’d seen river
dragons, the Kawa no Ryu, in simulation several times. They are
large purple serpentine creatures, with limbs so small they cannot
walk, but must slither. I knew this must be the skull of an
extremely large specimen. The teeth were worn and broken with age.
I pointed to the fangs behind Zavala’s head and said, "Those teeth
are obviously meant for catching and holding prey," then pointed to
a tooth by my foot, "and this tooth has long ridges on it, for
grinding meat. This animal was obviously a carnivore. "

This frightened Zavala all the more.
"
Sí
,
but what does it eat?"

Mavro said, "It is obvious that it feeds on something
slow and dumb and fat. It must have eaten Japanese!"

Everyone laughed in low guttural sounds. Mavro went
to the hovercraft and got some foil packets of rice and vegetables,
a couple bottles of sake. I felt suddenly relaxed, at ease, and was
content to remain awake. We cooked dinner and while we ate Zavala
said, "Do you know what this reminds me of? It’s like sleeping in
the bush with my friends as a youth! Does it not feel the same to
your

I hadn’t slept in the open for many years, and I had
to agree-there is a feeling of excitement that comes with sleeping
in the open.

Zavala said, "Let’s tell scary stories! Have you
heard of the vampire brain?" He told the old yarn about a man so
wise he lacked companionship of his own mental caliber, so he built
an artificial intelligence clever enough to carry a conversation at
his own level. When the man died the AI became lonely and
constructed a bio-intelligence, a brain that weighed twelve kilos
and inhabited its own cymech. But in order to remain alive the
brain needed a constant supply of blood, and Zavala related all the
bizarre and ingenious ways the bio-intelligence found to feed
itself. It was a silly tale that was old when I was young.

"I know a story," Mavro said when Zavala
finished.

"And it’s true: when I was a youth in Cartagena,
running with the Low-Tech Boys, I had a friend· named Xavier Sosa,
and he was born with the Gift. He scored a 991 on the psi tests. In
all the galaxy there may not be three hundred men who had the Gift
as strongly as he did, and the Alliance watched him closely,
waiting for him to mature so they could put his powers to use.

"Xavier spent a great deal of time staring into space
at worlds all around us that no one else could see. He said reality
is like an onion, with an endless succession of layers beneath the
one outer layer we can see. We perceive but one layer of reality in
our state, but he’d use the Gift to unwrap reality layer by layer,
to see what was beneath, to perceive a whole new level of the
universe we cannot comprehend. There are beings and peoples on
every level. Some of these beings take different forms in our world
and some of them have no form at all. Humans inhabit several
universes simultaneously, but most of us are only aware of
circumstances on one level of reality. For instance if we were to
become aware of the alternative universe the Gifted call sixteen,
we’d perceive ourselves much like plants—balls of colored energy
with tendrils of light, lacking all volition—not creatures that
act, merely creatures that are acted upon.

"Once, Xavier and I were listening to music and I
became uncontrollably frightened of nothing at all. Xavier peered
at me for a long time then waved his hand and the fear left me. He
said a creature had attacked me on level sixteen, and had been
feeding on part of me.

"In that universe we’re nothing because we are far
from the center of ourselves. But in that same universe the
creature we perceive as a simple sea snail is revealed to be a
being of rare and glorious intelligence.

"All of you know that in such a universe the Alliance
is waging a war. They send all the psychics into battle. Only the
Gifted understand the nature of this war, and only they can
perceive the nature of the enemy. Only a handful know how to battle
on this level."

Mavro paused. I’d heard such tales as this but didn’t
know if I believed them. Certainly I’d never heard this rumor
stated with as much authority as Mavro’s tone carried.

Mavro sniffed, fired his laser into a rock by his
foot, and held his hands out to the warmth of the glowing rock.
"Xavier could never explain what he sought to do, but he explained
the stakes: he said that if we won the war, a time would come where
in an instant all mankind would unite in their minds. They’d
perceive the nature of the threat within the other universe, and at
the same instant the threat would be abolished. With it, all
selfishness and greed would be abolished. He believed that someday
this will actually happen. Not in our lifetime, perhaps not in a
hundred lifetimes, but it
will
happen ..

"When he was fourteen, he told me he’d learned to
perceive the place the Gifted call Ten-sell, and there he’d watched
our warriors battle the enemy. His gift was not mature, and the
Alliance did not plan to recruit him for many years, but he told me
he’d gone to this place and challenged a creature to combat. He
planned to engage this being. I asked him many questions about it,
and he could only explain that it looked like a large black piece
of twisted metal, and that it too was not at the center of itself
in this place; it too was at the limit of its ability to perceive
him.

"I asked him about the danger to himself, and he
explained that to do battle he must leave his body and travel to
Ten-sell, carry the center of himself to a place where time does
not exist. If he lost the combat, he’d forfeit his lives in several
universes. Parts of him would die. But his greatest fear was that
if he became thus damaged, he’d not find his way back to his body.
He’d have no way to guide himself home, and part of him would be
forever lost.

"He asked me to watch his body while he was gone, to
stand guard with the rest of the Low-Tech Boys. We were supposed to
stand over him and call his name.

"So we went to his house and sat beside him on his
bed. He closed his eyes and stopped breathing and we called to him
and administered CPR. But he never returned to his body. We buried
him.

"A week later I felt him nearby. I did not see or
hear him, but I felt him. Whatever part of him was left was
searching for the rest—for that lost body. I’ve felt it many times
over the years. I tell you this story now because he is here,
standing just down the hill."

Goose pimples rose on my arms. Mavro’s tale struck a
chord deep inside me, making me uneasy, perhaps because his
description of Xavier so closely paralleled my feeling when I
thought I’d encountered the ghost of Flaco. Perhaps because his
story about a man who’d lost a part of himself so closely mimicked
my own feeling that I’d lost part of myself. I felt haunted once
again and I got up. I asked, "Does anyone want a drink of
water?"

No one did. "Don’t use the bottled water," Abriara
said. "Drink from the stream."

I went down to the stream. It was ten meters wide and
perfectly bowl-shaped, as if it had been dredged—a look typical to
streams that the river dragons inhabit. Apparently they widen and
deepen the channel as they wriggle over it many times. However,
this creek had many bushes along the bank. The dragon that lived
here had been dead for several years.

I looked down into the water and considered drinking
it. The thought was too revolting, and I decided I wasn’t really
thirsty. Besides, I’d only used my thirst as an excuse to get away
from Mavro. As I recalled his tale, chills shook me.

I began wandering along the creek bank thinking of
Xavier doomed to forever search for a part of himself. I was
exhausted, physically, emotionally. After all my years of living I
was still searching for a passion that should be strong and vital.
What did I feel? A creeping sense of hollowness?

It is not the mere presence of violence that makes
one become hardened, I told myself.

I’d lived with violence all around in Panamá and
never been hardened.

It is my battle armor,
I thought. It
cuts
off the senses, makes everything untouchable.
I was exhausted,
nearly hallucinating. It seemed wise to trade a little sleep in the
hope of feeling
something.
I decided a cold bath would
help.

My balance was off. I stumbled as I stripped my
armor. I left it by the shore, then waded into the cold stream. The
water was deeper than it looked, and I found myself over my head
after only two paces. I swam a bit, thinking of nothing, till some
large creature as hard as stone brushed my leg. I hurried to shore
and dressed in my pants. I drew my machete and leaned against a
tree, closed my eyes, tried to rest.

The bath had done no good. The cold water had numbed
me and I couldn’t feel the machete handle in my hand. I’d sought to
feel something, but all I felt was cold, an occasional pellet of
rain dropping on me, the wind playing over my chest, tightening my
nipples. It wasn’t enough. I didn’t crave physical sensation.

I craved the depth of passion I’d felt when Tamara
shoved her tiny dog’s heart in my chest. I’d felt more alive, more
vital, than at any other single moment in my existence.

Become fluent in the gentle language of the
heart.
Her words formed the core of an argument I couldn’t
agree with. One couldn’t practice compassion the way one practices
to kick a soccer ball. At least, the idea seemed absurd. But her
sentiments were sound. The feeling she’d given me, I craved as an
addict craves drugs.

Without thinking, I set out for Tamara’s camp, toward
the hill where Garzón’s surveillance balloons hovered. I took only
my machete and wore only my pants and crept through the dark woods
alone, guiding myself by my faint infravision. The ground was wet
and thick with pine needles. I moved almost soundlessly. I walked
to the base of a hill and found a small clearing thick with fern
and Baker’s own short grasses. Leaves rustled at the hilltop and I
froze in position. A shaggy deer-like creature came running toward
me over the hilltop, pursued by a larger creature-half dog, half
bear. I’d seen that particular carnivore in the simulator, hunting
in a snowfield. In the simulator my laser had only angered the
beast.

They were running through the glen, and there was no
cover. I gripped my machete. The shaggy herbivore rushed past,
brushing my left arm. Its head and mouth were shaped something like
that of a deer.

Now the carnivore will turn and attack you,
I
thought, and I prepared. But the carnivore was intently watching
its prey and didn’t even roll its eyes toward me. At the last
moment I decided not to attract its attention rather than risk a
thrust with my machete. It thundered past, stinking of mud and
garlic.

The beasts crashed into the water of the creek down
the hill, then thundered through the brush on the other side. I
waited a long moment. I didn’t know how common these big carnivores
were, didn’t want to meet one farther up the hill. Such a creature
wouldn’t be able to digest me, couldn’t process my protein and fat.
Still, a creature of instinct wouldn’t know that.

I decided it would be best to speak to Tamara in the
morning, and sneaked back through the trees toward my armor. My
eyes felt gritty and heavy. Half an hour later I neared the creek
where I’d left my armor. The ground was brushy and I crept. Over
the gurgling water I heard twigs snapping in the brush. I was so
sleepy I couldn’t be sure of the noise. I didn’t want to go nearer,
yet felt I must retrieve my armor.

I shouted, "Who’s there?" thinking to frighten any
creatures hiding in the dense brush, and immediately a soft
feminine voice with a foreign accent shouted, "Who’s there?" in
return, and many women said, "Who’s there? Who’s there? Who’s
there?"

I thought crazily that somehow several Japanese women
had followed us and were stealing my armor. I leapt through the
brush and came face to face with a creature that could have been a
giant spider or crab. It was black in the dim light and stood a
meter tall at the shoulders, though its carapace was twice as wide.
It had two immense claws as thick as my body. Each claw held a
small bush which the creature waved as if to frighten me away. The
creature said in its soft feminine voice, "Who’s there? Who’s
there?" Holding branches between us, it backed toward the
creek.

There were dozens of these giant crabs and they all
held bushes in their claws and said, "Who’s there?" as they slowly
backed into the water.

I was so astonished that I couldn’t move. Each crab
had an organ, like a collection of tubes at the base of its
mandibles, and the voices issued from these.

I shouted, "Angelo!" at the last few creatures. In
return they parroted, "Angelo! Angelo! Angelo!" as they dropped
over the bank into the creek.

My armor was strewn all over the place. The giant
crabs had dragged pieces everywhere. I picked up the armor and went
back to camp. Abriara was awake, sitting at the mouth of the skull.
I told her of the giant crabs.