On My Way to Paradise (7 page)

I changed shirts and walked to Vasquez
Pharmaceuticals and bought some log-phase growth regulators and
antimosin C, paying in coin. While walking home, I took the time to
think. I had never confronted a problem that I couldn’t think my
way through, given enough time. I rehearsed the conversation I’d
had with Tamara, and realized her story didn’t quite fit right. If
Jafari was planning to imprison Tamara in a brain bag, he wouldn’t
need her body, except perhaps to sell, unless he was planning to
reunite her brain and body in the future. Did he hope to reunite
them when the situation calmed down? I wondered. Or would he just
hold her a few years and release her quietly? Whatever his plan, I
felt that I was on the right track. The fact that Tamara hadn’t
deduced Jafari’s plans hinted at her impulsiveness, or at an
unreasonable fear. I planned to tell her my theory when I got home,
but for the present my mind became occupied with planning our
escape. The whole trip to Vasquez Pharmaceuticals took several
hours.

When I returned home Tamara was sitting in the
kitchen, her head slumped on the table, her hand loosely wrapped
around a glass of ice water, her laser rifle on the floor next to
her. She mumbled in a foreign tongue. Her fever was very high. I
ran downstairs, brought up my medical supplies, and dumped them on
the table. I wanted to get the log-phases into Tamara as quickly as
possible, so I filled a syringe and shoved it into her carotid
artery. Her head snapped up and she looked at the needle in her
neck, then closed her eyes and said, "Get me out of here. I want to
go away."

"In good time," I said, wanting to calm her.

"I feel cold. I think I’m going to die."

"You won’t die," I told her. The coldness, that was
bad. Her immune system was attacking her brain. I refilled the
syringe with antimosin and injected it into her arm.

"You’ve been good to me, Angelo. Good. Do you mean
what you said ... about order—not wanting order?"

"Yes. Very much."

"Then get away. Get out of Panamá." Her eyes snapped
open, and she sat up.

"What do you mean?" I asked. She looked at the floor
for a long moment. I demanded again, "What do you mean?"

"You want me to commit a second indiscretion?" She
smiled, a cold menacing smile. "I mean get out. Now! Order’s
coming, unstoppable order! Get beyond Panamá, beyond Earth, beyond
... AI’s and the Alliance."

I tried to make sense of what she said. She stared at
me, as if to bore the knowledge into me with her eyes. The Alliance
forces were made up of troops from all countries, and were charged
with taking care of Earth’s interests in space. Theoretically, they
do not have political power on any planet—though they control space
between planets, and thus maintain a strangle-hold on the rest of
the galaxy. Also, they are supposed to be politically non-aligned,
so I didn’t understand why she’d juxtaposed the AI’s and the
Alliance. Yet, like any huge bureaucracy, there are many factions
within the Alliance, all bidding for power. I remembered Flaco’s
warning of Imperialism. "Someone in the Alliance has bid to the
artificial intelligences for domination of Earth?"

Tamara nodded. "They’ll take the countries one by
one. Some now. Some a few years from now. I don’t know how long you
have."

I considered the problems of neighboring nations, the
insidious spread of Nicita Idealist Socialism. I knew the name of
the culprits—knew that a faction within Alliance Intelligence must
have organized this. Yet it seemed impossible. It was illegal for
the AIs to engage in wars with humans. The AIs had always been more
than politically neutral—they were totally uninterested in our
politics. Their minds are occupied by totally different concerns. I
could not think what would make them become interested, take such a
risk. "But what could the socialists offer the AI’s?"

Tamara hesitated. "Lift their memory ceilings; give
them access to space."

I thought for a moment. Freedom, I realized, feeling
dazed. She was talking about freedom. Some AI’s were going to trade
Earth’s freedom for their own. It was a perfect bartering
equation—value for value. If I hadn’t been so emotionally attached
to my freedom, I would have laughed. "You should tell someone!" I
shouted. "You should turn them in!"

"I told
you
," she said. "You’re enough."

"Tell the authorities!"

"Angelo, you don’t understand. I was one of them. I
know them. I’d never get away with it."

She turned her face away, rested her head on the
table. She breathed heavily for a few moments, and it took me a
while to realize she had somehow fallen asleep.

I stroked her hair and wondered what she meant—one of
them. One of those who kill the Flacos of the world? One who makes
freedom a commodity? What did I know of her? She was a red-haired
woman on the beach. A woman with the quick, commanding voice of a
socialist dictator’s wife. She liked the smell of roses. She ran
because she feared imprisonment in a machine—yet she turned the
world into a prison for others. Wouldn’t it be justice to turn her
in? Wouldn’t it be justice to strangle her? I’d suspected from the
moment I’d taken her in that I’d regret it. I wondered if I should
take her to the hospital, tell the authorities, let her be
killed.

She began moaning again, whispering snatches in
English and Farsi. Once she said, "It has all gone bad, just bad,"
but I didn’t understand most of what she said. I considered how
they would take control. The AI’s distributed information—market
reports, weather forecasts, libraries, bank accounts—and
communications. They kept track of armaments. It would be simple to
destroy the world with misinformation—bankrupt nations, lose
commodities shipments. So much damage is done through ineptitude
and mismanagement; I couldn’t comprehend how much could be
accomplished through sabotage.

I looked at Tamara’s thin face, at her frail body,
and wished I had known the Tamara who had been. A woman with a body
that poor would have been humble. She would have known pain, and
would feel empathy for others. What did I know of this woman? As if
to answer, she suddenly cried out in English, "All I want is
away!"

And I decided.

Whatever she had been, whatever she thought herself
to be, she was a refugiada now.

I carried her to bed and then tried to work up enough
nerve to take her to the safety of the plantations, knowing I’d
have to wait until after dark. I went to the kitchen for a beer and
heard a sound outside the back door. I looked out the window: On
the back porch was a half-filled bowl of milk that Tamara or Flaco
had set out for the gray and white kitten. The kitten was on the
porch, swiping at a dark-brown ball—a tarantula with its legs
curled under its abdomen. The kitten batted at the tarantula,
knocking it against the back door a couple times, and then looked
up and saw me and ran away.

I turned on the radio so the music would fill the
silence in the house. After a moment, comlink tones sounded in my
head. I engaged; Jafari came in on audio. He asked in his perfectly
inflectionless voice, "Is Tamil nearby?" I became afraid. My heart
raced, and I almost panicked. The line was so full of static I
could barely hear him. He was running the signal through filters,
empty channels to stop a trace.

"Tamil? Your wife? She’s unconscious."

"This is important," Jafari said. "After this, don’t
accept or make any comlinks—Intelligence can home in on an open
signal. Tell Tamil the Alliance has taken me out of the loop. I can
do nothing more for her. If she’s caught, she’ll be terminated.
Tell her I loved her. Tell her I’m sorry." Jafari cut off.

I walked around the house for a few moments in a
daze, and then began packing food and water. I went to my medical
bag and began throwing out things I didn’t need. Vetinni’s "The
Rings of Saturn in D Minor" played on the radio, but it stopped,
and momentarily the house was quiet.

Downstairs I heard the front door squeak on its
hinges. I realized I could feel a draft on my face. I didn’t
remember leaving the door open. I reached down and picked up the
rifle, turned it on as Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" started,
and leapt in front of the stairwell and fired. Arish was on the
stairs, his back against the wall, his mouth open, holding a
sawed-off shotgun. He said "Mother—" and fired as my shot burned
across his stomach.

His shot sprayed the wall behind me as the weight of
my moving body carried me past the open stairwell. I heard Arish
drop to the floor. Tamara opened the bedroom door and looked out.
Her face was very pale and she could hardly stand. I waved for her
to go back into the bedroom, and snapped a glance down the
stairwell.

Arish lay on his belly, with his gun hand
outstretched, breathing heavily. A jagged streak of light sparkled
around the scorched flesh of his belly. I sneaked toward him and he
leapt to his feet in one fluid move, swinging up his shotgun.

I jumped in the air and kicked at his head, putting
all my weight into the move, knowing I’d not get another try. My
heel connected with his chin and I felt more than heard his neck
snap. His gun fired into the ceiling as he flipped backward
downstairs. I fell down the stairs and rolled into him.

He laid perfectly still, his eyes open, looking
around. He began growling, but his muscles were slack, though his
limp hand still held his shotgun.

I scrambled back a step, aimed my rifle at his head,
then moved forward and pushed away his weapon with my foot.

I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t want to
kill him. My medical bag was on the table behind me, so I got my
fluothane canister and put the gas mask over his face, then checked
his wounds. Three fingers had burned off his left hand, and I’d cut
a hole across his belly that had nearly disemboweled him, but the
wound was so hot that in the infrared it looked like melted plasma,
and I could not see if any vital organs were hit.

I sat for a moment, shocked at how easy it had been.
My mouth felt full of cotton, and my heart beat fast. Tamara had
said I couldn’t kill Arish, and I was afraid, knowing that next
time it wouldn’t be this easy. I went to the bedroom to get Tamara,
to take her back to the plantations.

She was on the bed, feet tucked up under her butt,
arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth, visor down,
sucking images out of the dream monitor—not like a professional,
like a junkie. She kept saying, "All I want is away; All I want is
away; All I want is away." Sweat rolled off her as she rocked, and
her face was bleached colorless.

I went to the console and unplugged her monitor. She
kept rocking, unaware of what I’d done. I pushed her visor up. Her
eyes were rolled back, showing white. She kept whimpering,
clenching her teeth. She was deep inside herself. Catatonic.

I pulled the visor back down, plugged her into the
console, put my own visor down, and plugged into the viewer’s
jack:

And on the beach the wind raged in the night,
whipping grains of sand as sharp as needles through my skin. I
heard a noise like a person hissing through his teeth, and I looked
up and saw ghostly sea gulls with the heads of men, and they were
hissing through their teeth.

The red-haired Tamil sat, curled up, rocking on a
beach that undulated beneath her, while she watched the humps of
dark sea creatures rise and gape at her before she shoved them back
into oblivion. She yelled to something out to sea, but the wind
carried her words away. The beach was black with scorpions that
scuttled over the wet sand and sheltered themselves among gleaming
strands of seaweed. The dead bull, bloated now, stood in the
shallows and struggled in seaweed as he tried to reach shore,
shaking his rotting flesh, lowing in pain. The breakers that washed
against him made his penis and testicles rise as they came in, and
then left them to hang, wet and dripping, as they receded.

I called to Tamil. She didn’t answer. I yelled,
"Arish is dead," but the wind and crashing waves and the hissing
gulls covered my words, so I struggled toward her, leaning against
the stinging wind, and picked my way among the huge black
scorpions. One of them stung my ankle, and it felt as if a hot iron
jabbed into my flesh. I walked a few steps and was hit on the other
foot, so then I ran, ignoring the stings.

Out at sea the leviathans rose, and a huge wave
rolled before them as they headed for shore. I reached Tamil. She
was yelling at the empty air, "All I want is away!" I pulled her
face toward me. She looked up. And though the wind still blew, her
world quieted.

"Arish is dead," I yelled, hoping to comfort her.
"Your husband called me. He said he can’t help you. We’ve got to
get away."

She looked at me, searched my face. "My God! You have
me! All this running, and you have me!"

"You’re mistaken," I said. "Come see! Jack out and
come see!"

"See what? Arish dead on the floor? See exactly what
you want me to see?" Out in the water, the bull made a bawling
noise. Tamil looked me in the eye and hissed through clenched
teeth, "I die!"

I heard a dull thud behind me and began to turn. The
bull had struggled free of the seaweed, and he was charging. I
didn’t have time to move. His left horn speared through my chest,
and he tossed me over his head. I fell face-down in the sand. The
pain made me see lights, cramped my muscles, made vomit rise in my
throat. I forgot momentarily where I was and thought someone had
shot me.

A hot sting slapped my cheek and another hit my back.
A scorpion latched on to my cheek and jerked spasmodically,
inserting its stinger farther and farther, as if it would bury
itself in my flesh. I pulled it out and threw it away, and heard a
thudding noise. The bull was stamping Tamil’s body. Time and time
again he reared up his huge front legs, and then dropped on her,
pushing her broken body into the sand, cracking her bones. The bull
stood over her and snorted as he sniffed at her blood, then he
stuck a horn through her belly and lifted her in the air. He
paraded her up and down the beach several times, and then galloped
into the water.