On My Way to Paradise (49 page)

"Angelo, after the first riot, things really calmed
down for a long time.

"The Japanese put all those they held responsible
into the cryotanks and never mentioned the riot again. They
imagined it was a few individual acts of cowardice, and that most
of us would be humiliated if we were reminded of the deed.

"But now the cowards are all locked up and Motoki
still can’t figure out why we won’t fight. So they’re grasping at
straws. Maybe they invited us to their homes because they realize
that they’ve offended us. They treat us as if we’re as low as the
eta,
the lowest of their people. Now, I think, maybe they’ve
decided foreign samurai should be given a slightly higher
status—that of a low-level corporate worker.

"That’s the only reason I can imagine that they’d
invite us to their homes—unless they just want to burden us with
another debt of
on."

She mused, "And if that’s what they’re after, it just
might work. "

I looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean? Who’d
care about that?"

"Zavala, for one. Didn’t you see his eyes glow?
Dinner and a bath with the samurai! He was in heaven. It’s
something he’s wanted for two years. Mavro and Perfecto wanted it,
too. That’s why they’re at the baths now. Hell, even I wanted
it."

"I don’t understand? What did you want?"

Abriara sighed and looked at the ground. "I want ...
respect. I want to feel like I belong. You know, all the time we
were on the ship the samurai avoided us. They’re arrogant. Even
when some of us began to acquire the rank of samurai, they still
didn’t fraternize: it’s part of the cultural engineering program,
you understand. For their social engineering program to work they
must isolate themselves from any society that would contaminate
them. It’s the first law of social engineering. I’m surprised they
let us into their homes tonight. It means they’re desperate,
they’re willing to risk all they’ve accomplished in the hope that
we’ll help them."

"So you think some of us will join them just because
we want respect?" I asked. "I was afraid you’d say something worse.
I was afraid you’d say some of us would join them because we’re
becoming like them."

"Cultural pollution works both ways," Abriara said.
"You’ve got a point: for a long time the samurai have been training
us to ‘live as one already dead.’ It’s a mystic phrase, and they
apply the philosophy to more than just battle. It doesn’t mean
simply to be willing to give up one’s life for a cause—It means
that one should be dead to one’s own will, to one’s own
desires.

"In some ways, the inhabitants of Motoki have learned
to be like sheep, to act without thought simply because it is the
will of their leaders.

"Angelo, I’ve seen that type of passivity growing in
some of our compadres. Some of our men may fight simply because
they don’t give a damn about their own welfare."

We were walking back to camp, past a house with an
immaculate lawn decorated with large, odd-shaped rocks.

Three men were walking toward us—all Latin Americans
wearing white kimonos, laughing about some private joke. I stepped
off the walk to let them pass, and I suddenly realized the rioters
had been released from their barn. The man closest to me was Daniel
Sosa, one of the men who’d raped Abriara.

The recognition of Daniel and his death seemed
instantaneous.

My body knew where to find the hilt of my machete
even if my mind did not. I ripped the machete from its scabbard and
swung down into his neck and through his rib cage. Such was the
quality of the steel that it sliced cleanly through his vertebrae.
Daniel was human and didn’t have infravision. I think in the
darkness he didn’t recognize me, never saw it coming.

I grabbed a man he’d been speaking to, a short man
with the wide nostrils of an Indian, and held the machete to his
throat. "Where is Lucío?"

He’d died so many times in the simulator he didn’t
fear my blade. He regarded me coolly. "Daniel’s sergeant? I
haven’t seen him for half an hour, not since dinner. He was going
to go to the bathhouse with the others."

Abriara drew her machete and stood by me.

The city was full of public bath houses. I demanded,
"Which one?"

He shrugged.

"Where did you dine?"

"At Master Tanaka’s, up the street, third house on
the left."

I shoved him away, and he didn’t seem inclined to
fight. He was no one I’d ever seen before. I jacked in a call to
Perfecto and warned him the Lucío was free and was heading for a
bathhouse. He thanked me and promised to join the hunt
immediately.

I looked at Daniel lying in a bloody heap on the
ground. I felt ecstatic that he was dead. I charged up the street
toward the business district—a cluster of simple wood buildings
with no garish signs denoting the nature of business inside.

Kimai ‘no Ji was small enough that one could learn
the nature of a business by word of mouth. One could discern the
bathhouses by the loud laughter that came from within, by the steam
that fogged the windows and boiled out when a door opened.

I could tell one simply by glancing at it with my
artificial eyes, for the steamy air inside radiated a platinum
glow.

I rushed toward the first bathhouse I saw and Abriara
shouted, "Wait! Wait for the others!"

I ran in. My teeth began chattering. Lucío wasn’t
there.

Four doors down the street was a larger, more ornate
establishment. I lunged through the brightly lit
genkan,
the
entrance where clothes and shoes were stored. Several white kimonos
hung on pegs along with the fine silk kimonos of the samurai.

Voices and the smells of warm water and cedar issued
from a darkened doorway. I stepped through and looked into the
bathhouse. The only light came from a series of large aquariums
that circled the room, where giant white carp drifted among lilies.
Perhaps forty naked men sat in a huge, brimful tub of cut stone and
cedar. Hot water from an artificial spring in one wall poured down
over igneous rocks to land in the tub. I didn’t see Lucío at first.
His hair had been cut and was no longer arranged in the snake-dance
style. The scar on his face had nearly disappeared.

And he didn’t see me, standing in the lighted
doorway, my white hair shining brightly. He had never witnessed me
back-lighted before, and so he saw only a silhouette, an icon.

He recognized the ghost of General Torres.

Lucío’s face collapsed into expressionless putty, and
his jaw dropped. His pupils dilated as wide as coins. He didn’t
move.

I stood waiting for the bonding to complete. Abriara
rushed into the
genkan
behind me.

A samurai looked at my dripping machete and said in
flawless Spanish, "Take your fight into the street. Don’t bloody
our bathwater."

Lucío’s arms began to twitch and he began to shake.
His pupils constricted and he became cognizant of where he was.
Even then he did not recognize me.

"Get out of the tub!" I commanded. He gasped in
horror, "Angelo?"

"Get out of the tub!"

He stood up and climbed over the lip of the tub.

"Angelo, what do you want with me? What will you do
with me?" he asked in confusion. He was naked, skin dark as an
Indian. He tensed as if to strike, then looked at my feet; his face
filled with sorrow, as if he couldn’t bear the guilt of his own
thoughts. "You plan to kill me," he said, more statement than
question. He reluctantly raised his fists and cocked his knees,
taking a defensive stance.

I stepped forward carefully, searching for an
opening.

"Angelo, no!" Abriara shouted. She lurched through
the doorway and grabbed at my elbow, holding me back.

All the Japanese modestly ducked down into the tub.
They became heads floating on the water.

"Don’t you see? He’s not Lucío anymore! He doesn’t
have a personality of his own. He’s like Perfecto and Miguel and
all the rest. He becomes what he thinks you want him to be!"

"I know! I don’t want him. He’s hurt you too much. I
want him dead!"

Lucío’s mouth became a little 0 of grief, the grief
of a would-be saint rejected by God. "I can never please you?"

I watched him closely. I didn’t answer.

He leapt forward, grabbed my machete by the blade,
ripped it from my hand and turned it on me. "Look," he said,
nostrils flaring, "Look! We don’t have to fight! I don’t have to
kill you, and you don’t have to kill me! They’ve already done it to
us—" He nodded toward the samurai in the tub. "We go fight their
battle, and we don’t have a chance!" Lucío licked his lips and
watched me nervously, trembling.

He pressed the machete forward so its tip pressed my
throat. His hand shook uncontrollably. He could have hacked me to
pieces.

I reached up and pushed the blade aside, and he
didn’t resist.

He just stood trembling. I wanted to kill him. I
drove my knee up into his groin. He plummeted backward without a
sound and slammed into the floor on his back. I’d planned to let
him go at that, but my anger did not subside. The punishment was
not enough.

"Indio!"
I screamed, and kicked him in the
ribs. He did not resist. I kicked his face, then dropped to my
knees and slugged him in the ribs, trying to break bones that felt
as hard as rock. I found myself screaming at the top of my voice
and I ran to the corner and grabbed my machete and yelled, "Get up!
Defend yourself so I can kill you!"

There was a commotion in the
genkan
as
Perfecto ran into the room.

Lucío lay on the floor and sobbed.

I raised my hand to ram the machete into his belly.
"No!" Perfecto shouted, and I looked up. He leapt across the room
and in one swift move grabbed my arm and kicked, striking Lucío’s
face with his foot, snapping his neck.

Lucío began to twitch. Perfecto’s face was a mask of
pain. "I will do it," he said softly. He pulled his own machete and
hacked off Lucío’s head.

Perfecto stood staring at the corpse.

His expression gradually changed from a wistful
sadness to surprise. "He was not fighting! He was one of us!" he
shouted in horror, and stumbled back from the corpse. Grief was
written on his face, in his eyes.

He howled in pain and fell to his knees, as if he’d
just killed his best friend, and then he sat on his knees. Tears
streamed from his eyes and he held up his hands and stared at
them.

I’d seen him kill once before and I’d believed it had
cost him nothing. But this time it cost him much.

I could not bear to hear Perfecto. I staggered back
into the
genkan,
shaken. My hands trembled and my breathing
came ragged. Pinpoints of white flicked before my eyes. I cleaned
the blood off my blade with a white kimono I took at random, then
walked back to camp alone.

Baker’s larger moon lit the way, an orb of dull
blue.

There were still many mercenaries out, laughing from
behind the walls of houses as if they were celebrating.

My fight with Lucío hadn’t been half as gratifying as
I’d hoped. All those nights of my youth in Guatemala when I’d
wandered the streets looking for Quintanilla’s soldiers after
they’d killed my mother, I’d dreamed of fulfillment. I’d imagined
that a steady peace, a gentle and lasting elation would follow the
vengeance. I’d hoped to gain such peace by killing Lucío.

But I felt that I’d sinned.

Once again I’d gone too far, and knew there’d be a
price to pay. When I killed Arish it had cost me my home, my
country. Once again I’d acted rashly, and as a result Perfecto
might well be sitting on the floor of the bathhouse suffering for
hours.

I might lose him as a friend, I thought. If Perfecto
hadn’t bonded to me, he wouldn’t have killed Lucío.

He’d done it because he believed I wanted Lucío dead,
the, way he’d killed Bruto because I’d stamped the act with my
approval.

I couldn’t imagine such mindless devotion from
anything than a dog. Yet I might well have just strayed so far from
what was right that even a bonded chimera would not forgive me.

I reached camp thinking gloomy thoughts and Abriara
soon came behind me. "What do you think you’re doing here?" she
shouted, and her silver eyes blazed with anger in the
moonlight.

Her anger showed that I’d been right, I thought. I’d
lost her as a friend.

She continued, "Perfecto needs you! He’s sick with
guilt! Go to him!"

I turned and went back toward town and met Mavro and
Perfecto halfway. Perfecto was hunched and walking slowly and Mavro
held him by the arm, guiding him. Perfecto was sobbing. I reached
them and took Perfecto’s arm and just by touching him I felt almost
as if his guilt was physically transferred to me.

Perfecto looked up at me. "Why? Why were you going to
kill him?" he asked. "You had nothing to fear." Perfecto’s mouth
was twisted in dismay. His perfectly even teeth gleamed in the
moonlight.

"I don’t know," I answered honestly. "I was so angry,
that I could not put down my machete. I tried to stop. I
couldn’t."

Perfecto nodded and looked down at the ground, as if
such a flimsy answer were sufficient. "He was one of
us,"
he
mumbled. "Lucío was one of us. "

I rushed on, ‘‘I’ve been killing people ever since
the day we met, and I don’t know why! I killed Arish and Juan
Carlos, and I would have killed Lucío, too!"

Perfecto nodded and kept walking. "You killed them
because they violated your territory. You humans do not understand
this. Think about it and you’ll see I am right."

The thought was so strange, so out of place, I was
stunned. Perfecto was a territorial creature, and I could
understand why he’d kill if another person violated his territory,
but I was surprised he’d attribute his own motives to me.