On My Way to Paradise (34 page)

Then he sat on the floor while the others went to
bed. He peeled the paper from the back of a whiskey bottle and took
Perfecto’s blue paint and began painting a picture of men in a
hovercraft. He took great pains to get the details perfect. From
time to time he’d chant in an Indian tongue as he painted, and I
kept looking at him as I prepared the false medications. His eyes
became glazed as he lost himself in a trance, and he sweated
vigorously.

When I was finished making up the anesthetics, I got
in bed and tried to sleep. Zavala’s continual chanting kept me
awake long into the night, until I began to think that in a war of
spirit, perhaps Zavala would be a ferocious adversary.

In my dream the sun setting over Lake Gatun threw
orange-yellow light through my kitchen window to reflect against
the far wall. A kitten meowed plaintively just outside the kitchen
door in the bushes by the lake. I remembered the blue bowl on the
porch. It should have been filled with milk. When had I last filled
the kitten’s bowl? I could not remember. The task had slipped my
mind. It had been weeks since I’d fed the kitten. It would be
starving.

No doubt it can fend for itself, I thought.

There were plenty of insects, dead fish left by
fishermen, small things a kitten could scavenge to keep alive.

The kitten meowed, its cries emanating from deep
within the pit of its stomach, a yowl of pure hunger, and I opened
the sliding glass door.

There on the porch lay a gray-and-white kitten so
thin that I could easily discern the shape of every bone in its
tail. Its hair was falling out, and its green eyes were filmed and
sunken. It was nearly dead. It couldn’t even rouse itself to move.
It just meowed from the pit of its belly in a last desperate effort
to get food. And then I saw a hand in the grass, stretched out as
if to grasp the kitten-a pale hand, emaciated, just beside the
kitten, reaching out from behind a bush. I stepped forward and
pulled a limb aside and looked in the bushes.

Flaco was stretched out on the grass, his eyeless
skull staring skyward, a bit of rainwater pooled in his empty
sockets. Impossibly thin. Starved.

"Grandfather!" the little girl spoke, startling me.
She crouched just at my elbow. "Grandfather, you didn’t take care
of them! You let them starve!"

And I realized that I’d forgotten to feed more than
the kitten. I’d forgotten to feed my friends. My mouth yammered of
its own accord, "I ... I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was supposed
to tend them."

I bolted upright. It was deep in the night, and
Zavala hunched over his paintings, snoring lightly. My heart beat
wildly, and I sweated. The dream disturbed me more than any
nightmare I’d ever had. I tried to grasp its meaning, and went over
each detail.

I focused on the little girl with the pale face and
dark eyes who’d haunted so many of my dreams. Had she been someone
I’d seen in the feria? The child of a neighbor? I pondered for a
long time, and became certain she was a child from our
neighborhood, a girl who’d lived down the street from my house in
Panamá. I couldn’t imagine which house she’d lived in. Yet I must
have seen her when I walked to the feria in the mornings.

As an experiment, I closed my eyes and tried to
picture her, recall any memory I could dredge up. Almost
immediately an image jumped into my mind. She stood before me
holding the gray and white kitten, pressing it toward me so I could
take it in my hands. "It’s wild, just a little," she said, "can you
take care of it for me?"

The image seemed totally accurate, yet I knew I’d
never seen that kitten until the day I’d come home to find Flaco
and Tamara tossing a ball to it upon my roof. Obviously my dream
had tainted the memory. Because I dreamt of the girl and the kitten
in the same dream, my subconscious had linked the two together.

I drove the thought from mind and struggled to
remember the child’ s name. It was on the tip of my tongue and I
felt I had to but speak and it would come clear. My face perspired
and my head felt it would burst. I struggled to recall. Her name
seemed all-important.

"Tatiana," I said aloud in a flash of insight, and I
knew that I’d spoken the right name. Her name had been Tatiana.

I felt elated, but the more I considered it, the more
certain I was that I could remember nothing about her but a
name.

You
are a madman,
I thought, yet I
congratulated myself for having found a name for the imaginary
companion of my dreams.

Early on the morning of the eleventh day, I was
awakened by bodies moving in the darkness, the shushing of kimonos
sliding over skin.

Zavala sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched over a
piece of paper. His face was careworn, eyes glazed from lack of
sleep and from the painkillers I’d provided. He chanted in little
throaty croaks that rose and dipped in volume like the sound of
wind gusting through dry grass.

Perfecto and Mavro stood ready by the door, tense,
expecting an attack. Mavro was tying his
obi,
the belt to
his kimono, holding a wooden dagger in his teeth. The knives were
really only sharpened stakes, each about half a meter long, little
good for cutting, but they’d suffice for stabbing. Abriara was
dressing in the tiny bathroom. They all breathed in ragged gasps,
which they released slowly. I found my own chest tightening with
anticipation.

I slid off the cot and adjusted my kimono. I took my
knife from my wrist sheath. I could feel my nostrils flaring as I
breathed. "What’s going on?" I asked, stepping around Zavala.

"We could not sleep," Perfecto said. "So it is
certain that Lucío’s men also could not sleep. They’ll be here
soon."

"How do you know?’"

Mavro said, "I just called the duty nurse on comlink.
"She says Lucío’s being checked by the doctor now. He’ll be leaving
the infirmary in ten minutes."

The news surprised me more than I’d have expected.
Until this moment, a fight with Lucío seemed only a possibility.
Now it seemed imminent. My heart started pounding in a sudden
attack of panic.

Abriara came out of the bathroom.

Zavala raised his painting so we could see it—Lucío
and his men, each portrayed in intimate detail, like a painting
done by an architect: Each man in the painting was stabbed with
multiple wounds. Knives in the belly, knives in the throat, knives
in the face.

Without removing his eyes from the paper, Zavala
reached into the interior pocket of his kimono and pulled out
Mavro’s lighter. His chanting rose in pitch and he held the paper
in his right hand, his human hand, and set it afire. He let the
flames lick and blister his fingers until the picture burned to
ashes. While his fingers burned, his breathing quickened, but his
hand didn’t shake, and he held the painting firmly until it became
a single black ash with glow worms of fire curling through it. He
reached up with his cymeched hand and crushed the ash.

"We should go quickly, " he said. "Fight while the
spell is still strong." Then his eyes focused, and he jumped up. It
took him only a moment to get a knife.

Perfecto ran into the bathroom and began filling the
tiny toilet bowl with urine. Mavro stood next to the bathroom
door, as if he’d waylay Perfecto when he emerged. I realized that I
too had to urinate, so I got in line.

Abriara began making her bed. She did it quickly,
with nervous energy. She spoke more to herself than to us. "As soon
as you’re ready, I think we need to get down the hall, down to
level two. They don’t have any business coming above that. Don’t
give the
mamónes
any mercy. Cut them quick—as if you were
slaughtering cattle and got paid by the head, then get out."

"Do you really think they’ll come?" Zavala said. He
reached out and cracked the door open to peek down the hallway.

There was a flash of white and the tinkle of metal. A
man in a white kimono who wore chains around his waist instead of
an
obi
shouted, "A gift from the
conquistadores!"
and shoved a metal pipe through the open door. Zavala fell back
with the pipe lodged in his belly. His attacker—a man named
Samora-turned to run. Abriara leapt past me to give chase, and
Samora swung a second pipe. Abriara tried to duck, but the pipe
glanced against the back of her head and she dropped.

I lurched to help her, and Samora sprinted to the
ladders before I made it out the door. I grabbed Abriara. Her eyes
rolled back to show white.

"You’ll be all right," I said. "We’re with you."

Mavro started swearing. He pulled Zavala to his feet,
and Zavala clutched the metal pipe with both hands. A little clear
fluid mixed with blood was running from the end of the hollow pipe,
as if it were a tap someone had neglected to turn off. Zavala’s
face was drained, and he stared at the pipe in fascination.

Perfecto rushed from the bathroom.

"We’ve got to get them to the infirmary!" Mavro said,
and he started shoving Zavala out the door, toward the ladder, and
Perfecto followed.

I looked down the hall. Lucío’s men would be waiting
near the ladder, and as we tried to drop past their level, they’d
attack us. I was certain. They’d stabbed Zavala simply to lead us
into a trap. Otherwise, according to the code of the Quest, Lucío
wouldn’t have been satisfied with just wounding Zavala—he’d have
mutilated him. Perfecto and Mavro realized the precariousness of
the situation at the same moment.

"Wait," Perfecto said, "I’ll get help!" He ran to the
nearest door and pounded. A samurai opened it and spoke with
him.

I whispered comforting words to Abriara and examined
her face. She didn’t move her eyes when I spoke. Her pupils seemed
dilated wide enough to drink in all the light that had ever shone.
I became worried that she was seriously wounded. I turned her head
to view her wound. There was a dark bruise on the back of her neck
at the base of her skull, right above her cranial jack. The square
platinum socket of the jack was caved-in on one side, and a speck
of blood dripped from surrounding tissue. I inspected the jack, and
found that her bypass grid was shoved forward. It’s a common
problem: there’s a tiny floating grid inside the jack at the base
of the skull, and when the jack is plugged into a computer
terminal, that floating grid is pushed forward, triggering the
bypass to the nerves that control sensory input. In this way, the
computer can send its sensory input to the brain.

The blow to Abriara’s jack had jammed the grid
forward, engaging her sensory bypass. Abriara was conscious, but
she wasn’t receiving any input. She was deaf, blind, and virtually
anesthetized. I put my finger in the bypass and wiggled it, trying
to bend the jack so the grid would pop out.

Several samurai rushed up with Perfecto, grabbed
Zavala, and carried him down the ladder with a great deal of
fanfare and commotion. The hall soon filled with curious samurai,
all in blue flowered kimonos, many with wet hair since they’d just
left their communal baths.

Kaigo forced his way through the crowd and crouched
beside us. "What has happened here?" he demanded.

"Lucío’s men broke their truce," Mavro said. "The
cowards attacked us!"

Kaigo’s brow furrowed. He snarled, "They broke their
oath? They lied to me? They are men who know not honor!" He pulled
his sword and stepped over Abriara. His body language—his furrowed
brow, the expression of disgust on his face—seemed exaggerated,
entirely out of proportion, as if he were some bad actor aping the
expression of someone who was enraged. It was a thing I’d noticed
with other samurai, and it struck me as strange—they spent a great
deal of time attempting to appear entirely stoic, free from
emotion, yet when they expressed emotion they tried to appear
entirely enslaved to passion. He marched off as if heading down to
kill Lucío and his men.

Mavro shouted, "Master, wait!" Kaigo turned to look
at us. In the only humble tone Mavro ever used, he asked, "Master,
Lucío’s men have assaulted us three times now. Permit us to slay
the dogs."

Kaigo grunted his permission, "Hai!"

"We dragged Abriara into our room and pried her
housing back into shape with the point of a wooden dagger. Abriara
immediately regained her senses, and we told her of Mavro’s bargain
with Kaigo. She was pleased at the prospect of vengeance.

Perfecto returned with the pipe Samora had used to
stab Zavala. It was sharpened at one end. "Zavala is not hurt
badly, but the heavy gravity puts so much pressure on the stitches,
he’ll have to remain in bed a few days."

Abriara shrugged. "Then we’ll have to kill Lucío’s
men without him. But first, we need to know where they are."

Mavro and Perfecto began jacking in calls to friends,
offering the last of our cigars for information. Within three
minutes Mavro got a response. "Vasquez says he just saw them in the
hall down on level four, near the showers, having an argument about
whether to come attack us openly or whether they should wait for us
to come after them."

"Tell Vasquez to inform them that he saw us heading
for the infirmary," Abriara said.

Mavro haggled with Vasquez over the price of his
treachery, and ended up promising twenty cigars. Vasquez told us
to take a minute to get into position.

We ran to the ladder and dropped two floors. Perfecto
headed down a corridor that led away from the infirmary. The floor
was still dark, the men here still on night cycle. The silence
seemed strange after so much commotion. We reached the
intersection where the corridor met the outer walkway that circled
the ship, then held tight. Only Perfecto stayed in the open,
watching for Lucío’s men to ascend the ladder.

We waited several minutes. Six times Perfecto snapped
his head back as someone climbed up from level four.