On My Way to Paradise (30 page)

"Ah, here is your defensive training!" Zavala said.
"But it appears your samurai forgot to train the children how to
fire a rifle!"

So much for our theory that children fought beside
adults. Children were merely victims here. Being raised indoors,
they would perhaps be socially inept, shy, and even afraid of
strangers. Yet at the same time, they’d be survivors. They didn’t
touch candy left on the ground, they didn’t smell chrysanthemums,
and they slept with their weapons. They had to be cautious. Perhaps
overly cautious—afraid to act in a new way.

But that seemed ridiculous. If anything, the samurai
adapted quickly to any new curve we threw them. I was walking up a
dead-end street, learning nothing, and I knew it.

"I do not think these tapes will be of any help,"
García admitted. "The propagandists have gone over them too
carefully. I’ll bet these are the tapes Motoki showed the Alliance
delegates on Earth when they sought permission for a full-scale
war. We will find nothing."

The last three tapes provided more of the same
information. One map showed the demographics of Baker. Motoki
settlement was separated from the Yabajin by six thousand
kilometers of desert and canyons. Motoki estimated the Yabajin
population at 95,000—a scant 18,000 more than Motoki. Populations
should have been higher, much higher. Motoki had obviously launched
attacks of its own. Knowing my luck, I was fighting for the wrong
side—if there was a right and wrong side.

Nothing in the tapes indicated why the samurai always
beat us. I’d expected evidence of a protracted, bloody
war—permanently scarred bodies, cyborged citizens, strong defensive
perimeters, war machines—things that would explain the samurai’s
facility with weapons. But even after reviewing the background in
the tapes, the only war machine was a bulky black cybertank putting
through an orchard, a minor part of the Alliance-approved
defense.

I sighed and turned off the monitor.

García had watched over my shoulder. He leaned back
against the wall. With a total lack of conviction he said, "Then
the samurai must be cheating in the simulators. We will have to
attack one of them, test his abilities."

I drummed my fingers on the control panel of the
monitor. It had seemed like a fun idea when we were drunk. Now it
only sounded stupid. "That may be risky. Even if we lose the
battle, the samurai may consider it an act of rebellion. What might
they do to us?"

Zavala spoke up. "You idiots! You’ll get us in
trouble. You know the samurai don’t cheat. Why don’t you just admit
the samurai beat us by the power of their spirit!"

García and I looked at each other. García smiled
grimly; his eyes held no defeat. And I smiled in return. We’d
somehow pushed the right button on Zavala; he was terrified of the
samurai. Though our proposed action sounded stupid, the plan was
worth discussing if only to see Zavala squirm.

"We won’t give up, because you’re wrong," García
said, looking for a place to put his hands. He finally just hooked
his thumbs under the belt of his kimono. "Give up, Zavala! Just pay
me my million pesos and we won’t have to fight the samurai." García
licked his lips and watched Zavala, enjoying his game.

Zavala began shaking like a cornered rabbit.

"Ah, so what if they kill us?" I said as if to
discount the threat.

Zavala raised his cymeched hand, palm outward. "Wait!
Wait!" he said. "I cheated you. I know something you don’t!"

The thought crossed my mind that Zavala had stolen
some tapes from the library—tapes showing children practicing with
the hovercrafts and laser rifles. He stood there a moment.

"Well?" García demanded.

Zavala stood up straight. "I know ..." he said, as if
to bear his innermost soul, "I
know
—that the world is
magical, that there are spirits!" We must have appeared
incredulous. "I have proof!" he said.

"Let us see this proof," I asked.

Zavala said, "I know it’s hard to believe, but I was
once like you—always seeking answers to questions that have no
answers, seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible universe." He
waved his hand as if to display the universe in one simple
gesture.

"This was before the socialists attacked Colombia,
back when I was sixteen. I wanted to marry a girl from Tres Rios,
and I wanted to make some money so we could buy some land. I went
to Buenaventura and got a job on a ship, a Chinese plankton
harvester.

"We were supposed to sail the coasts of Antarctica to
harvest the plankton, but the ship’s intake swallowed everything in
its path—logs, jellyfish, kelp, trash. My job was to separate these
things, put the trash on a conveyer belt and send it back to sea,
rake the small fish onto another belt, and gaff a large fish if we
got one and throw it into the processor.

"We had not travelled for three days, and we were
just south of Chimbote, when I found it ...” Zavala stopped.

"And ...” García said. "You are not going to tell me
you found a spirit?"

"You would not believe me if I told you," Zavala
answered.

"You have not lied to us before, why should we not
believe you now?" I asked.

Zavala considered my words. "Because we ran over a
bed of red kelp. And among the long strands of red kelp I found
something. At first I thought it was a large porpoise, and I was
excited, for no one has found a wild porpoise for many years. It
was long and gray, with a gray tail. But when I uncovered it, I
found that it had the chest and head of a woman! It was a siren.
She had light blue skin, and white hair, and long thin arms with
webbed fingers on her hands. And right here," he drew a finger in a
line under his throat, "were her gills—white gills that fanned out
like those of a salamander!

"She had been dead for several days, and her eyes had
been eaten out by the fishes. In spite of this, she was ...
beautiful. Marvelous. Perfect." Zavala looked back and forth
between the two of us, as if to convince us by his expression. "I
know what I saw!"

García smiled a smile of embarrassment for Zavala.
"So, you found a siren. That may be," he said condescendingly, "but
how does that prove we have spirits?" He obviously didn’t believe
Zavala. Yet Zavala’s sincerity convinced me he was telling the
truth.

Zavala became quite agitated. He swung his arms
wildly as he spoke. "Don’t you see? This proves the Earth is
magical. For if this magical being has really existed all these
thousands of years without us knowing about it, how can we doubt
that greater things exist? Magic is everywhere! But our minds are
too puny to comprehend it, so we make up lies so we can pretend we
understand! All you must do is feel inside you; then how can you
doubt that you have a spirit?"

I said quite calmly, "There is of course a logical
explanation for what you saw."

"What?" He set his jaw.

"What you saw may have been a chimera—after all, you
were near Chilean waters."

"No," Zavala shook his head vigorously. "It was not a
chimera! Nobody could have made something that beautiful!"

"I saw how the engineers designed Abriara. Believe
me, with enough time those men could have made anything—even a
siren. You have seen chimeras who are not quite human, haven’t
you?" I asked. "Did you not hear tales of those little men that
looked like giant bats? And near the genetic engineering compound
at Tocopilla were large aquariums leading directly to sea. Could
not the engineers have created a siren or two?"

Zavala laughed to scorn. "I should have told you
nothing. I should have known better. The great doctor! As soon as I
tell you something, you try to explain it away. You fucking
intellectuals are all alike. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and
attack the samurai! But when they kill you, I’ll rob your corpses
and get my money! You know nothing!"

He stormed out of the room. I felt bad, but didn’t
know what to do.

García sighed. "Then, I guess we’ll have to have our
chimeras fight some samurai tonight. Is there anyone special we
should attack?"

I waved my hand. "They’re all alike to me."

"Me too. They live up in the state rooms on your
level. I suggest we just ambush one in the hall. What do you
think?"

"It sounds like a good plan."

"Then it is settled," García said. "We’ll do it
tonight."

That evening Perfecto came in the room and said quite
matter-of-factly, "There is a dead man in the hall." He said it as
he crossed the room to sit on his trunk, and used the tone one
might use if he were to say, "It is raining outside."

No one bothered to look up at Perfecto, to ask who
the man was or how he’d died.

Mavro rolled off his bunk and said, "I’m getting
tired of this shit." He could have been speaking about our losses
in the simulator, or the steady drag of the heavy gravity, or the
depressing news of a dead man in the hall. Perhaps it was a little
of all these.

We shuffled from our room, down the corridor. Near
the ladder we found the body. Without my prosthetic eyes it would
have looked as if the man was simply injured, since his face was
not discolored. But his body was cooling, and his platinum glow was
soft and diffuse—none of bright spots of heat in the neck or face
where warm blood pumps near the surface. He had thick black hair,
dark brown skin, and a small build. He was lying on his left side,
but his face was twisted up so he stared at the ceiling, and his
right leg was raised at an angle the way a dog would lift its leg
to pee. His lips were contorted into a snarl. Someone had broken
his neck. Though he was small, his body filled the narrow hall,
almost as if it had been wedged in, so it was impossible to walk
around him. Hot platinum air from a ventilator shaft near the floor
blew into the man’s hair, stirring it, as if his hair were being
brushed by shafts of light.

Mavro looked at the little man and said, "Ah, Marcos,
I see Tomas finally caught you with his woman. Tough luck!" He
climbed over the corpse without stopping. He grunted angrily and
swore. At such a heavy gravity the small man seemed a major
obstacle. I stopped and looked at the body and decided I didn’t
have enough energy to try to move it. Marcos had probably weighed
65 kilos on Earth. In ship’s gravity he’d have weighed 100
kilos—well over my Earth weight. Besides, how could I get him down
the ladder to the infirmary where he could be properly disposed? I
didn’t know him. He was beyond help. It was up to his compadres to
dispose of the body.

I climbed over the corpse and headed down the ladder
to level three.

Master Kaigo jacked us in.

Scenario 69: Deep Patrol

The sky was dark with oparu no tako, flocks of
intertwining bands of yellow, green, brown and blue, spanning from
horizon to horizon. A wet wind blew, swift and sure and powerful.
When it gusted, the hovercraft would lift in the air and we’d
soar.

The land was dotted with huge patches of bare white
stone the color of yellowed bones dotted with occasional dull-red
"desert flowers," tiny thick-leaved plants the size of a child’s
palm. And along the white rock, four-legged creatures like giant
ants with glossy green-black exoskeletons waited near the tops of
burrows a man could fit his fist into. And when the ants smelled
us, they leapt into their burrows.

We glimpsed a mammal the size of a tomcat with bushy
gray fur and one huge, clawed arm, like that of a fiddler crab but
as long as my own arm, lumber from hole to hole, reaching down to
grab ants.

We headed toward a small red hill, but soon the
ground dropped and we came to a basin where thick tussocks of dry
grass and small bushes clung to a thin layer of soil. The
vegetation was nearly all Earth plants. We passed a herd of
gazelles and wildebeest, and five tawny lions panting in the shade
of a small tree. This tiny basin seemed an island of normality
among the strange flora and fauna of Baker.

"We’ve got another combat team off to the left,"
Perfecto said as we shot through the tall lion grass. He waved at
someone I couldn’t see.

"Abriara Sifuentes here in Team One," Abriara
said.

"Paco García here. We spotted two Yabajin craft come
over that hill up ahead just a minute ago. Veer right, and come up
even with us. I want us to go in tandem. New tactic." His
transmission was loud, and his voice rang in my head. At this close
range, the feedback from his external mike made it sound as if he
were a dog growling.

"Sí," Abriara said, veering right. Mavro and Perfecto
boosted to their tiptoes on the turrets and looked out over the
tall grass and brush, trying to spot the Yabajin. We were in a bad
place to find them. If we continued at a fast pace, we could easily
run into an ambush.

We met the second hovercraft and I glanced at them.
They were dressed like us, in their dull green and dusty brown bug
suits. Enlarged eyes seeming to peer everywhere as they nervously
looked towards us. I’d learned to feel comfortably at ease with my
weapon. It hung on me as if it were part of my body. To fight and
even to die was a mindless pastime, something I might soon learn to
do without forethought or calculation. I felt good. We whisked into
a thicket. Two red deer with yellow spots bounded out away, and I
suddenly had a strange feeling.

García’s hovercraft veered close, and everyone on the
craft watched us. I saw what was wrong: The big chimera Miguel
should have been forward turret gunner. Instead, the man in the
green bug suit in front was a tiny man.

I started to aim my rifle, and their hovercraft swept
in and rammed us.

"Fire!" someone shouted, and his command filled my
helmet like the roar of a beast. The men in the hovercraft turned
their turrets on us. Perfecto and Mavro’s armor went "thwack" as it
cracked from taking hits at such close range. I fired at the
nearest laser gunner. He reached out and smacked my gun, knocking
it to the ground, then leapt past me.