On My Way to Paradise (38 page)

The patients began dying rapidly. We were able to
document their deaths: we learned all the symptoms of the
illness—the rise in temperature followed by dehydration,
destruction of the liver and arteries, followed by death.

We were able to calculate how many copies the virus
made of itself each time it reproduced, and to discover that it
would take an average of twenty-eight hours from the time of the
victim’s first exposure to death.

With that information we computed exactly the hour
the bio-cache had been poured into the water, and found that the
Greek technician who’d moved between modules had missed
contaminating the rest of the ship by only minutes. We learned
everything except how to stop the plague.

As far as the capacity for destruction to human life
went, the virus was as effective as a hydrogen bomb.

We followed many dead-end leads over the next
twenty-four hours. Over three thousand people died while we
labored, and then we found something: we found a family of prions
that would work as vectors to sterilize the virus, but we also
found that the body’s own defense mechanisms destroyed our nice
little creations.

In order to get the subviruses to work, all we needed
to do was to shut down our patient’s production of antibodies long
enough for the subvirus to infect the patients.

On top of this, we needed to breed a culture of the
subviruses so we could infect our patients with them. We began
growing the cultures immediately, but our next problem became
evident: it would take a minimum of six hours to manufacture one
dose of the subvirus, and in seven hours we could manufacture four
hundred doses, but by calculating the spread of the illness we
found that the patients would be too far gone by then for anyone to
be saved.

We found a way to conquer the virus, but not in
time.

We decided to go ahead and produce the antidote and
manufacture four hundred doses in hopes that we might save someone.
If anyone was alive in six hours, we’d have the ship’s maintenance
robots carry the antidote down to the cryotanks and inject it into
the tanks.

Five and a half hours later, Mavro called me on com
link. It was nearly noon.
"Hola, muchacho,
how are you
doing?" he said.

"Oh, fine," I answered wearily.

"Did you hear that I killed that punk Samora last
night?"

 "No," I said.

"
Sí, we chased Lucío and his compadres all
around, and we finally got Samora. The fucker cut my arm, though.
It is not too bad. We looked for Lucío this morning before
breakfast, but we couldn’t find him. Now Kaigo says we can’t kill
Lucío after all, because of the bad things that are happening on
module B. They want every man alive. They have some big samurai
guarding Lucío, and they’re waiting for the plague to run its
course so they can transfer him over to module A."

"Oh," I said.

"Did you hear the other good news?"

All the news I’d heard lately was bad. I told him
so.

"Garcia’s team beat the samurai last night! They won
over half a million IMUs. Then we went to the simulators this
morning and instead of fighting the samurai we are fighting other
Latin American combat teams now. We lost all four of our fights
this morning, but that was just because we were two men down. When
you and Zavala get back, we will do much better. I have been
watching The Horror Show with Perfecto, learning who is good and
who is not. Some friends and I have been gambling on the outcomes
of the battles this morning. I made twelve thousand pesos already."
He’d been speaking as if he was in high spirits, but his tone
became desperate. "And, anyway, I was thinking: you have a lot of
money. Would you like me to invest some of it for you in the
fights?"

He may have made twelve thousand pesos already this
morning, I mused, but I was sure he’d lost them all again. I was
disappointed to hear that he only called me so he could borrow
money.

"No," I said. "I want to watch the teams, see who my
favorites are first."

"Oh. Okay. Tell me, are things on module B as bad as
they say?"

"Worse," I said.

"Oh. Well, I’m sure an intelligent person like
yourself will come up with something.
Adios."
He clicked
off.

I thought about what he’d said. I weighed the good
news against the bad. Lucío was out of our hair and we no longer
had to battle samurai. But four thousand of our compadres were dead
or dying. It wasn’t a fair trade.

It seemed to me that if a good man worked hard, he
should at least be allowed to break even in life. We weren’t
breaking even. I had another realization: during this entire trip,
we had been looking at the Motoki samurai as if they were our
enemy, or at Lucío and his men as if they were our enemies.

I had not understood that the Yabajin were our true
enemy.

At the end of the seven hours we found that 113
people were still alive in the cryotanks. The intercom had quit
sending audio signals. No one was left wandering the other module.
No one in the infirmary was coughing.

A maintenance robot carried the antidote to the men
and injected it into the cryotanks along with the necessary
antibody inhibitors. But three hours later our patients were all
dead.

When the last man died, the ship’s AI blew the seals
on the module and flushed the corpses into space. The freezing void
sterilized that part of the ship better than all our drugs ever
could.

In our first battle with the Yabajin we lost more
than we could ever have imagined.

I was able to take a small nap before battle
practice, the only hour of sleep I’d had in two days.

 I dreamt that we were descending in our
shuttles to Baker. From my window I saw a shining paradise of blue
and green, an iridescent disk in the sky. We were falling, falling,
and my heart raced with joy.

We’d be in paradise soon. I’d taste the honeyed
fruits that hung thick on the trees! I’d swim in warm oceans and
take my ease staring into the sky!

We flew in low over the planet, over well tended
gardens. Japanese farmers waved and shouted greetings. They called
to children and put them on their shoulders so whole families could
watch our shuttles thunder overhead, coming in low for the
landing.

On a city street, an old Japanese gentleman waved to
us, carrying a small girl on his shoulders, a pale-faced European
girl, the one I’d named Tatiana.

They were both smiling and waving. Then they looked
above us and their mouths opened in surprise and shock.

I could read the girl’s lips as she said,
"Grandfather, you didn’t take care of them!"

Something was wrong. I looked up and saw bodies
falling from the sky, thousands of limp bodies—the corpses of the
plague victims we’d flushed into space. We’d forgotten our
trajectory when we flushed those bodies: they’d kept traveling
beside the ship all the time, and naturally they were falling
toward Baker with us. I realized some of the viruses would be
frozen but intact in those bodies, and everyone on Baker would die
because of it.

On our thirteenth day depression at our losses to the
plague hung in the air like a thick dark smoke. I walked the halls
in the morning to ease a cramp in my legs, and even my bare feet
padding over the plastic floors seemed muted. At breakfast people
whispered their concern at the deaths of our compadres, and though
the words were different from man to man, always the talk went
something like this: "Too many of us have already died from the
plague for the war to continue. We cannot even beat the samurai in
practice now, how will we beat the Yabajin on Baker? How can we
hope to win the war now?"

There was electricity in the air. My hair stood on
end and my mouth was dry. There was too much silence on the ship,
the cautious silence of mice. It was as if every heart beat in
unison. I felt I was about to break. I felt that everyone else was
about to break.

Mavro confronted a man at breakfast who said he
wanted to go home. "You
steer
! Where are your balls?" Mavro
shouted. "Give us a few more weeks of practice and the samurai will
shit in fear of us!"

We returned to battle practice as if nothing had
changed. Yet depression clung to me. I was exhausted in body and
spirit, and only wanted to shake my emptiness.

In our first simulation we met five compadres from
module A who appeared to wear red armor as if they were Yabajin.
Yet I knew they saw us in the red of the Yabajin. Their fighting
style had evolved differently from ours. And because Zavala was
still out with his wound, we lost. We beat our second team soundly.
It was my first taste of victory in the simulator. I should have
been elated, but I felt empty and dissatisfied.

We jacked into a third simulation, and were thrust
into a landscape near the sea, shooting over rows of dunes where
stinging flies were the dominant life form. My prosthetic eyes
picked up wisps of silver among the leaves of small bushes, and
everywhere I looked, gulls seemed to be hovering in the air. I knew
I’d meet Tamara, and my heart raced at the thought. We met the
Yabajin and a lucky shot removed me from action quickly, but
instead of jacking into the battle room I tumbled off the
hovercraft and skidded in the sand at the bottom of a hill. The
hovercrafts raced away.

I took off my helmet and Tamara’s great black bull
ambled up over the hilltop, its belly lazily swaying from side to
side as it walked, swishing its tail. Tamara rode comfortably on
its back, dressed in a yellow robe. The sun beating on the fabric
blinded me.

"I’ve been ... looking for you."

"I’ve been busy."

"You ... couldn’t ... save them."

"I know."

"Angelo. I heard Garzón ... speaking. To. Advisers.
He ... doesn’t know I can ... talk to you. Your. Situation is.
Desperate. ... I want to ... apologize ... for the mess ... I got
you into."

I was instantly curious. Garzón hadn’t spoken
publicly about how plague on module B would affect us. "What did
Garzón say?"

"Because of ... current losses ... the AI projects.
You’ll. Have 78% ... deaths. Forgive me."

I shrugged. It didn’t sound so bad. We’d all known we
might die when we got aboard ship. We were guaranteed the computer
simulations would give us a 51% chance of survival. So the odds had
gone down. "It makes no difference."

Tamara’s shoulders sagged in weariness. Tears began
to stream down her cheeks. She glowed like an apparition of a
goddess. As if an invisible finger touched me, stimulating my
emotions directly, I beheld a beauty in her so profound it caused
physical pain. "Forgive me," she whispered. "Forgive."

"It’s not your fault," I said. My words were
empty.

"It’s my fault," she said. Her eyes sparkled with
knowledge that defied contradiction.

"Then I forgive you anyway," I said.

She reached out and scratched the head of the bull.
"Reality is ... a pain in the butt. The. Sooner. We. Get. Rid. Of
it. . . the better," she said. "When you ... need ... reprieve.
Come to me. I’ll ... prepare a. World ... for you. Here." She
pointed to her head.

"Thank you," I said and she began to fade. Darkness
gathered as I prepared to jack out, and the old depression
returned.

I jacked out of the last battle for the morning. I
began undressing and hanging my foliage-green bug suit on its pegs.
The backs of my eyes ached from loss of sleep. I wondered how
others in the room would respond to the knowledge Tamara had given
me. Would they want to go home? Certainly not Mavro or Abriara.
Perfecto would patiently wait to learn my intentions. But would
Kaigo consider my words treasonous?

I kept my mouth shut.

We went to the gymnasium and jogged slowly in the
heavy gravity. Two days away from exercise had done me much good. I
felt better than I had in months. As we lifted weights the room was
quieter than usual. Instead of people joking and laughing, there
were only whispers and the soft clank of weight bars lowering and
raising.

Those who spoke, quietly and insistently boasted
their prowess in battle that morning. A few minor victories made
them feel less vulnerable. They bragged that they’d someday beat
the Yabajin as ruthlessly as they beat each other. Many brave
sentiments were expressed, but beneath it I still felt the thrill
of electricity, the fear that made boasts necessary. I lifted
weights next to Giron, a man with little mouse eyes who looked more
nervous than most. For a long while he captured the attention of
others by loudly proclaiming his exploits in Peru. If half his
stories were true, he’d have beaten the socialists
single-handedly.

He stopped doing leg presses momentarily, and I
inserted into the sudden quiet, "It is a shame we’re not back in
Peru now. I’d love to give those socialists a good beating."

"Sí, sí," everyone around us said. At home was a war
that had turned. At home was a battle we could win. I’m sure they
were all thinking that. But only a coward would have dared speak
it. I said loudly enough so those nearby could hear: "Did you know
the ship’s AI forecasts that 78% of us will die on Baker?
Technically, Motoki is violating our contract. I’d not be surprised
if they send us home so we can fight alongside out amigos."

Everyone stared at me in stunned silence. Halfway
across the room García was exercising. His chimera Miguel, who had
his back to me, turned and shouted, "Hola, Angelo, my amigo, where
did you hear that?"

I was surprised that Miguel could be listening from
so far away. "A friend on module A heard it from General Garzón," I
answered.

The name "Garzón" attracted much attention, and
around the room people began asking "What did Garzón say?" and
those nearby answered, "Motoki is violating our contract. He says
78% of us will die on Baker." The noise in the room rose to a soft
rumble. From across the gymnasium someone said, "Is it true?" and I
nodded. Around the room several people worked their jaws as they
jacked-in calls to friends who’d be interested in such news. The
room suddenly exploded into sound as people tried to be heard over
one another.