On My Way to Paradise (70 page)

She sat in her wheelchair, imprisoned in a wasted
body, destroyed. In a few days, Garzón would imprison her in a
cymech, bring about her greatest fear. All her scheming had brought
her to nothing.

She said, "So. You don’t need to kill me. You have
your vengeance."

"I have my vengeance." I nodded. "From the time I met
you, you’ve always believed that death was the answer to all life’s
problems. How pitiful!"

"You don’t know what Garzón can do to me! You don’t
know what cyborging will do to me!" Tamara cried.

"I’ve known Body Purists before. Your fears are
unjustified. You will only be put in a cage where you can harm no
one!" I turned to go.

"You’ve never sifted through another person’s
memories. You’ve never been intimate with their thoughts. You live
under the delusion that everyone thinks like you. But I’ve been
into many minds, I have witnessed thought patterns that would
horrify you. Twice I’ve been within the minds of military cyborgs.
The surgeons cut out parts of the hypothalamus, chemically block
certain hormonal secretions, cut them off from the world of
emotion. Because they cannot feel, ‘cannot empathize; they lose all
semblance of a conscience."

I turned. I’d been living too close to sociopathy for
too long not to be disturbed. I suddenly understood why she was so
horrified by the thought of imprisonment in a cymech, why she’d run
from Jafari, why she’d made paranoid accusations about me being a
cyborg.

"It’s true," Tamara said. "The military prefers them
that way. It makes it so much easier for them to get on with their
jobs. When you delivered me to Garzón he promised me freedom. He
promised to let me go if I’d helped him for just a while. But
you’ve seen the way he clings to me. He’ll never let me go. And
he’s constantly complaining about my annoying tatters of morality.
I’ve turned him down on too many jobs. If he puts me in a cymech,
he’ll make me a military model. I’ll learn not to care. I’ll see
human minds and emotions only as something to manipulate. I’ll
become infinitely more evil and powerful than you believe me to be
now."

I considered her words. Motoki’s military training
had struck at my own fragile morality. Two weeks of it and I’d felt
as if I’d forever lost the ability to feel. What would happen if
that capacity were surgically removed? How long would Tamara or
anyone last?

"Then," I said, "I must find a way to free you if I
can.

"And if you can’t," Tamara begged, "I would rather
die."

"I understand," I said, knowing that I would have to
be the one to kill her. "How many people know of your role in
Intelligence?"

Tamara gave me six names, Garzón’s closest advisers.
I walked to the door. A final thought struck me. I realized that
someone else had fallen under her knife: "But in payment you must
give Abriara Sifuentes back her memories!"

Tamara blinked in surprise but made no other sign
that she understood me.

I thought that she’d deny removing anything from
Abriara.

"Why?" Tamara asked.

I shouted, "Who do you think you are to steal her
past?"

"I took only her pain," Tamara objected. "If you had
a patient with cancer, you’d cut out the cancer. No one should
suffer what she suffered!"

"You and Garzón are not so different. Give you a
little power, and you set yourself up to be gods!"

Tamara said, "If I set myself up to be god, let me be
a gentle god. You want me to give her back her pain? You want to
watch her die inside?"

The thought revolted me.

I backed out the door and wandered the streets. Was
Tamara right? I wondered. I wanted Abriara to be whole, but it was
too cruel to contemplate.

The sky was hazy, reddened by clouds of dust. I
needed a plan to free Tamara. I wanted to be certain that it would
work. The most direct solution would be to kill Garzón and the
technicians who knew of Tamara’s gifts.

But I did not want more blood on my hands.

I had seen the general’s fear of what Tamara could
do, and that suggested a more moderate approach. Why not immobilize
the men and let Tamara carve away their memories of her?

I checked a clock. The quickness with which Tamara
had operated on me suggested that it could be done in only a few
hours. Afterward, Tamara would be free to live on Baker like anyone
else.

I went back to the hospital and phoned the
Chaeron
, checked its medical records. As I suspected, they
had mysteriously appeared only recently. Her genotype was listed in
her records, an index to her cell structure. I went to the
hospital’s engineering section and fed the data into a gene
synthesizer, and thus began to create her clone. I’d need to seed
her brain with cells from a cloned embryonic cortex if I was going
to get her to walk. I’d need some neural growth stimulator re
repair her brain. It would take several weeks.

Calling up the medical records of those who knew of
Tamara’s situation, I familiarized myself with their faces.

I made up a mild neurotoxin that would knock out
anyone who got it in their bloodstream.

I knew that I’d need help—powerful men who could be
trusted. Four chimeras had bonded to me. I knew how to induce the
bonding if I needed more.

That afternoon I spent in the lab with a cell
specimen from Perfecto. I opened up some cells, created a dozen
fertilized eggs, put them in a broth, and began replicating
them.

That night I went up the hill to a bonfire where some
mercenaries camped. They sat around the campfire and told jokes and
sang songs. I found Mavro, sat next to him.

"I never made it to captain," he said. "Now the war
is over. What will I do?"

"I don’t know," I admitted.

Garzón put in his appearance that night, dragging
Tamara in a wheelchair. He knew the value of sitting in the dark,
the firelight playing on his hair while he waited for a chimera to
bond. He appeared very much at ease with this. I tried not to
stare.

Abriara brought some good beer that she’d found up to
the campfire and sat beside me. I listened to the singing. She’d
washed her hair, and it smelled sweet.

"I didn’t see you much today," she said.

"I was down in the gene lab, making clones of
Perfecto."

"All day? Are you going to build an army? How many
copies do you need?"

I laughed. "I just wanted to watch the zygotes grow,
be certain they formed properly. I think two. I think I’ll make
twins."

"You know there’s a whole wing of the hospital filled
with incubation chambers. It’s been sealed off for eighty years,
but the equipment has been maintained."

"I know," I said.

"If you want any help raising the children, I’ll be
available," she said. She was sitting very close, leaning into my
body space. I understood what that must mean for a chimera to share
something so personal. I reached down and took her hand and she
squeezed mine.

That night I met with Miguel and two of the chimeras
who’d bonded to me, and I didn’t talk of my plans for Garzón.
Instead we talked about their pasts and made friends.

I didn’t feel good about plotting Tamara’s escape. I
felt unsure about why I’d saved that Yabajin woman, why I’d tried
to save them all.

If I’d done it because of Tamara’s programming, then
my morality was a sham. But I wasn’t so certain Tamara’s
programming had caused me to act as I did. When I killed Arish, I’d
done it for Flaco. In my mind I was avenging Flaco, not saving
Tamara.

And when I’d killed Juan Carlos I’d done it only for
myself.

When I stopped trying to kill the Yabajin woman, I
believed that I’d quit because I felt kinship to her as a human, a
factor outside Tamara’s programming. I’d only tried once to kill
for a woman, and that was when I tried to kill Lucío for
Abriara.

I saw that something more had affected my basic
decisions: Tamara’s radical programming convinced me that to some
extent we do program ourselves. We do build up patterns of thought
over a lifetime.

I’d only stopped practicing violence when I realized
how it was destroying me.

I vowed to create a deep program that would affect
the entire way I related to others. I vowed to do it by my
actions—just as a little fifty-kilogram weakling can exercise his
muscles to become the strongest man in the world.

From Abriara’s example, from the way she tried to
nurture me in secret, I recognized that it didn’t matter if one
were not strong in that capacity by nature. It could still be
trained.

I felt as if I were at the top of a hill staring down
at a golden path, and upon the path, in my mind’s eye, I could see
the man I would someday become.

Our society in Panamá glorified the man of
contradictions—men of steel and silk. I’ve known men who try to be
both. In my experience they fail.

I’ll always believe that if I’d continued training
with the samurai, I would have trained away my capacity for
compassion. The way of the warrior is the way of death. I’d have
become as empty as the refugiados, as Mavro, as the samurai
themselves. And so if by myself I’ve attained any level of
morality, then perhaps it is a matter of fortunate circumstance as
much as of choice. I was fortunate to have been put in the
cryotanks after the riot, fortunate to have friends who tried to
help me become something better. Tamara believed I’d run according
to her program, and to some degree it was true. But her view seemed
too simple to explain everything.

I spent the day thinking upon these things and
cataloging my memories of my family. I wrote them down as much as
possible to make sure that I’d never forget again.

I checked with the ships in orbit and found that I
could get passage back to Earth on the crew’s quarters of the
Chaeron,
thus minimizing the risk of contact with the
Japanese.

I decided to leave Baker forever.

I felt drawn to Tatiana and Victoriano, my sister and
father. I could not bear the thought of staying on Baker—It was
more than the evil memories of the place, it was the evil future of
the place.

The society my
compañeros
were forming was
brutal and corrupt. They’d seized the planet because of greed and
were murdering its inhabitants at every turn. I couldn’t see a
future for the place. After four days we had done nearly nothing.
The city was in rubble and no one was cleaning up. No one was
rebuilding.

The mercenaries strutted around and patted each other
on the back all day, then huddled around bonfires and gambled and
drank beer all night.

All afternoon I thought depressing thoughts. I made
my plans for Garzón. That night I went to the bonfire and drank and
sang and acted like an idiot, the same as everyone else. When
Garzón left the camp for the night, pushing Tamara along in her
wheelchair, I got up and followed, hoping to learn where I could
waylay him. A good dozen chimeras followed him, the same way that
my chimeras followed me.

It would not be easy to subdue Garzón. Everywhere he
went, the eyes of his chimeras were upon him.

We were walking back toward a large home that Garzón
had taken as his own when a hovercraft came roaring over the hill
from the jungles. It was obviously one of ours, since the automatic
defenses let it into the city.

Four ragged mercenaries were on the hovercraft, and
as they came into town one shouted anxiously, "Garzón!" They were
obviously frightened.

I wondered what had happened, if they had spotted
Yabajin in the jungle.

Garzón shouted, "Here!"

The hovercraft veered toward him and stopped just a
few meters away. The chimeras that followed Garzón began jogging
forward, eager to hear the news. A turret gunner on the hovercraft
unsnapped his helmet and pulled it off: he was Japanese.

He shouted, "I am Motoki Hotayo!"

His men opened fire with plasma turrets and
flechettes. Garzón was still pushing Tamara in the wheelchair, and
the samurai fired through her. Plasma set her afire like a blazing
torch; a shot from a flechette nearly took her head off.

I dropped to the ground. Around me the chimeras
unstrapped their rifles. The hovercraft engines whined, and the
vehicle soared back toward the jungles.

Everywhere the chimeras were shouting in fury. The
samurai kept firing as they retreated, creating a rain of
death.

Someone managed to fire two shots at the samurai with
a flechette, but the bullets bounced off their armor. Within
seconds the samurai’s hovercraft retreated beyond the city wall,
and was gone.

I got up. A dozen chimeras that had been close to
Garzón were dead or wounded. Someone was shouting, "They killed
Garzón! It was Motoki Hotayo, the president’s son!"

Everywhere people ran from houses with their armor
and weapons.

Several chimeras grabbed the remains of Garzón—a
charred corpse full of glowing worm holes where plasma had eaten
through, shredded by metal bullets—and rushed it down to the
infirmary.

Others saw that it would do no good.

The chimeras who were bonded to him, who loved him
most, threw themselves on the ground and wept.

I went to Tamara, slowly.

There was nothing left of her—a charred body without
hair, wearing ashes for clothing, too horrible to describe.

I stood by and waited till her body cooled, laid her
on the grass.

Tamara’s eyes stared up into the night sky, as if
watching stars.

The eyeballs were blackened. She had no eyelids left.
People were shouting and carrying the wounded to the infirmary, and
I realized dimly that I should go down to help. A mercenary in
bedclothes raced up with nothing but a rifle in his hand.

"Was she a friend of yours?" he asked.

I had to think. "No, I suppose not. She was my
destroyer."