On My Way to Paradise (8 page)

"Tamara!" I yelled, and she looked back at me,
weakly, with hatred in her face. She opened her mouth and breathed
darkness at me. And when the cold and antiseptic darkness rushed
over me, all I wanted was to whimper once before I died.

I got up and staggered from room to room, searching
through a fog for something—I didn’t know what it was—that I
couldn’t seem to find. I would look in a room and see something and
wonder "Is that what I’m looking for?" Then I would realize I was
looking at a lamp or table, and it was not what I wanted. I went to
an open door, which seemed like all the others, and sunlight struck
my face. I wandered in my front yard, looking at orchids and trees,
wondering if they were what I wanted, and found myself at my
neighbor’s door. I opened it.

Rodrigo De Hoyos sat in a chair in his living room.
He looked at me, "Don Angelo, what is wrong? What has happened?" he
cried as he rose and crossed the room. He took my hand and led me
in, forced me down into a large, soft chair. I tried to stand and
he pushed me back down. "Are you ill?" he asked.

I sat for several seconds, thinking, but my mind
raced down pathways that always came to a dead end. I grasped
Rodrigo’s shirt. "Something terrible has happened!" I told him, and
began sobbing. Then I remembered: All I want is away. I yelled,
"You must get me a shuttle!"

Rodrigo stared at me, as if to calculate my sanity.
He folded his hands and stared at them, made a sucking noise with
his teeth, and looked at the clock. After what seemed a very long
time, he jacked in a call to Pantransport and asked for a
minishuttle as soon as possible.

He turned away for a moment, and I got up and headed
out the door. He came and tried to force me to sit back down, but I
pushed him aside and he didn’t stop me.

I went home, opened my door, and found Arish still at
the bottom of the stairs, gasping for breath through the gas mask.
One of his lungs must have collapsed to make him gasp that way. The
air was filled with the scent of gastric juices and charred flesh
and hair. I marveled that I didn’t remember passing him when I had
gone outside, and I stumbled over him on my way back to my
bedroom.

Tamara sat on the bed, slumped slightly forward,
perfectly motionless. I reached up and touched her neck, feeling
for a pulse. She had none. I put on the dream monitor to see if any
brain activity registered—knowing it meant nothing since as random
neurons fire people often have dream flashes up to forty minutes
after death. Such flashes are called the "dreams of the dead." But
the monitor remained blank. I pulled her to the floor and initiated
CPR, massaging her heart and breathing into her, but she didn’t
respond.

I knew the shuttle would come soon, so I ran to my
medical bag and got a slave—a small, computerized device that does
the work for the reflexive nervous system—and shoved its prongs
into the base of her skull at an angle, just above the atlas
vertebrae, so that it penetrated her brain stem. I switched on the
slave and Tamara gasped for air; then I adjusted the slave’s dials
till her pulse beat steadily and her breathing evened. It meant
nothing—the slave could keep her body functioning even if her brain
were dead or removed.

For a long time I checked the monitor: it remained
blank—no sign of brain activity at all, not even a dream of the
dead. So I turned off the slave and she stopped breathing
immediately. There was a chance she could live, a very slim chance,
if she were taken to the hospital. But I didn’t have the heart to
do it. The probability that she’d suffered major brain damage was
too high, and even though I could have generated new brain cells,
they wouldn’t carry her memories, her identity. She would have to
spend her life running from people she didn’t remember.

I pulled her visor up to take a last look. Her eyes
were rolled back. Her face was very pale, perfectly still. One tear
had seeped from her left eye, slowly finding its way down her
cheek. I brushed it away, surprised to feel how high her fever had
become in the end. I closed her eyes and whispered the words the
refugiados spoke over their dead comrades, "Free at last."

I couldn’t stand to see her sitting perfectly still,
so I switched the slave back on, just to hear her breathing. She
sounded alive, even if it was only an imitation of life.

I began planning the things I needed to do as I
packed my clothes in a small bag. With three dead bodies behind me,
I was not about to risk the courts of Panamá. I knew I would have
to do something with Arish. I heard the sound of a rattle behind
me. I turned around—no one was there. I wandered to the kitchen and
got my medical bag, filled a specimen bottle with some clear
synthetic blood, and spilled most of the blood on the table because
my hands shook. I went downstairs to where Arish lay gasping on the
floor, removed the gas mask from his face, and then unwrapped a
scalpel and inserted the blade under his bottom right eyelid and
twisted till his eye popped free. I dropped the eye into the blood
and agitated the container a moment before putting it in my pocket.
I heard the rattling behind me again, and turned around—no one was
there. The rattling kept coming, and I realized my jaw was
quivering and my own teeth were rattling. I began breathing heavily
and my heart pounded.

I took the scalpel and slit Arish’s throat from ear
to ear.

"For Flaco, you murderous bastard," I told myself. I
watched the blood pump out of Arish’s throat, and as it ebbed away,
I could feel something inside me ebbing away. I believed God would
punish me. "Piss on him if he can’t take a joke!" I said. And I
laughed and cried at the same time.

 I searched Arish’s pockets and found his bank
card, a book called The Holy Teachings of Twill Baraburi, a couple
of knives, a screwdriver, and two "Conquistador cocktails"—
capsules filled with stimulants and endorphins, meant to be broken
between the teeth so the drug can soak through the skin
immediately. Soldiers sometimes take the cocktails in battle to
relieve tension and speed the reflexes, but several of the drugs in
them are addictive and must be taken in increasingly larger doses.
They were practically worthless, since I didn’t know the
prescription and therefore couldn’t resell them. But I am a
pharmacologist, and cannot lightly toss away any medications, so I
scooped them up and put them in my pocket along with Arish’s other
possessions. I packed my medical bag and folded the laser rifle and
shoved it in, then went back to the bedroom to get my bag of
coins.

Tamara still lay on the bed, and her eyes had
reopened—a side effect of the slave plugged into her brain stem. As
I rummaged through the closet looking for the coins, I got a chill
up my spine. I felt as if Tamara was watching me, and my hands
began to shake.

If I leave without her, I thought, I will never be
free of her ghost. I didn’t care if she was dead or not. I felt
compelled to drag her away. Had she not wanted to get away? I
decided to take her with me, even if she decomposed in my arms. And
when the decision was made I was filled with a manic joy. I felt I
had instinctively made the right decision.

In the closet was a large teak chest decorated with
elephants and tigers; it was large enough to hold Tamara. I lifted
her and laid her in, surprised at how light she was; with her small
bones and underdeveloped muscles she could not have weighed more
than thirty-five kilos.

I dragged the chest outside and sat beneath the
papaya tree to wait for the shuttle. My muscles had become knotted
and I was breathing hard, so I stretched out on the grass and tried
to still myself. It was getting dark, and two fruit bats had just
reached the papayas above me as the shuttle landed.

Outside the shuttle was a security scanner. As I
reached the scanner a mechanized voice said, "State your
destination and prepare for identity scan."

I fumbled for the specimen bottle with the clear
synthetic blood, and then pulled out the eye of Arish. Even with
the oxygen provided by the blood, the proteins in the eye had begun
to whiten. I put it in my palm and held it up to the retina
scanner, trembling, and gave my destination. "Lagrange star
station, inbound Concourse One."

The scanner said, "Welcome, Arish Muhammad
Hustanifad. Insert your bank card and we will deduct 147,232
international monetary units from your account. We hope you enjoyed
your stay on Earth."

"Thank you," I answered quietly, "I did enjoy my
stay. I shall miss Earth very much."

I fed Arish’s bank card into the computer.

I heard Rodrigo’s door open as he came out of his
house to see me off, and I shoved Arish’s eye back into my pocket.
Rodrigo hurried over, embraced me, looked down at the large chest
and pointed at it with his foot. He said, "You won’t be returning,
will you?"

"No," I hung my head and whispered, "I cannot come
back. You may hear bad things about me, but no one must know where
I’ve gone."

Rodrigo shook his head solemnly, and looked at the
ground. "You have always been a good friend, and a good neighbor.
If I am asked, I will say I saw you leave for the feria this
morning, as you always do. But listen to my warning: Your voice
carries a tone of desperation. You’re afraid—perhaps with good
reason. But don’t let your fear get in the way of clear thinking,
don Angelo."

"You have also been a good friend," I whispered in
his ear. "I cannot tell you more, but you must take your family,
get off-planet. Get beyond the Alliance." I looked in his eyes and
saw his disbelief, saw that my vague warning would do no good.

He nodded kindly, as if to a reactionary or a
lunatic, and helped me drag the chest aboard the shuttle.

The shuttle was piloted by computer and had no
cockpit, so it was roomy inside. On the flight up I kept the chest
open to let Tamara get air. Her eyes had opened, but remained
unfocused, staring at the ceiling, zombie-like. I told her jokes
and rambling stories from my childhood, and promised to take her
far away, to a planet where fish swam in the rivers and fruit trees
were as thick as weeds. Sweat was pouring off me, and I began
imagining what would happen at the space station when the customs
officials opened my trunk and found a zombie inside. I imagined
trying to shoot my way out of the station or trying to hijack a
ship, and became even more agitated. I knew it was a crazy idea, so
I considered my alternatives: the only alternative was to leave the
trunk somewhere with Tamara in it—perhaps outside the station’s
infirmary—and hope the trunk would not be her coffin. But even if
the doctors there managed to save her life, someone else would
manage to take it. There was nothing to do but try to smuggle her
aboard a starship, and that did not seem plausible.

So I turned away and tried to ignore her as I played
with the money in my pocket and watched the view outside. The sun
had set in Colón, but I could see the shimmering platinum of the
banana plantations, among the lights of thousands of cities. A line
of shadow marched across Earth; the world darkened beneath me.
Comlink tones sounded in my head; I ignored them for a while, and
then disconnected. Inside the shuttle was a bank access. I used it
to transfer Arish’s money to my account. Then I checked the
shuttle’s computer terminal to see if any starships were willing to
sign on a pharmacologist. None were. I checked to see if anyone in
another star system was willing to pay my fare from their end.
Someone from the Delta Pagonis system badly wanted a morphogenic
pharmacologist, was willing to pay fare to a planet called Baker.
The ship, a Greek ship called the Chaeron, would depart only five
hours after I reached the station, and this seemed a great stroke
of luck. I began laughing and keyed in visual for Baker: it was a
small planet, newly terraformed, population 174,000—not enough
people to support a morphogenic pharmacologist. They’d be lucky to
get someone. Lucky to get me. The pictures showed white beaches and
palm trees, like Panamá. In the background was one single white
mountain, like a huge pillar of salt, and behind it were jagged
purple mountains. It looked like a place where I could possess
myself in peace. A great hope filled me. I was glad to be leaving,
leaving the murderous Nicita Idealist Socialists with their plans
to destroy all competing societies and reengineer mankind, leaving
the sound of bombs dropping in the jungles south of my home,
leaving the AIs with their political intrigues, leaving my dead
friend. I had no plans for escape. Just the hope of escape. Escape
or death. It seemed enough. I told Tamara all about Baker, made up
wild stories about how beautiful it would be, and how happy we
would be, until my throat went hoarse and my voice sounded like the
croaking of a frog.

I lay down. My muscles were cramping again, and
little pinpoints of light flashed behind my eyes. Sometime during
the trip I dozed lightly, and unbidden I dreamed that the day had
been warm and happy, and that after selling a rejuvenation in the
feria, I walked to where Flaco and Tamara built sand castles on an
empty beach. I stood and smiled at them for a long time, not
knowing why I was grinning, then began to walk past them.

"¡Hola! Angelo, where are you going?" Flaco
called.

"I’m on my way to paradise," I said.

Flaco said, "Hah! Good place! I have a cousin who
lives there." Tamara and Flaco smiled at me as I walked past them.
I looked up the beach. In the distance was only empty sand, and I
knew my legs would tire long before I made it. Above me, sea gulls
hung motionless in the air. I stretched out my arms and crouched,
wondering if the wind could lift me and make me fly like a bird. My
arms sprouted tiny ugly feathers, and I began to rise. I held my
arms steady and floated slowly up into the sky.