On My Way to Paradise

by David Farland

  While the resin bandage was wet, I opened the osteoporosis rehab packet and inserted the catheter of a hormone fusion pump into her flesh about five centimeters above the wrist and began pumping in calcitonin, collagenates, SGH, and mineral supplements. When the resin bandage dried it would seal around the catheter, preventing any chance of infection.

  Meanwhile, Flaco had brought in the retina scanner and had been fiddling with it by the electrical outlet. I looked up at him. I expected him to have one of the little hand-held models policemen sometimes carry, but he had a large industrial model. Its corners were dented where he’d pried it free from someone’s wall, and the screws that were supposed to hold it to the wall dangled in their sockets; little bits of white paint and plaster still clung to the screws. Flaco had cut the electric cord to get the scanner free, so now he was splicing on a plug.

  "Where did you get the scanner?" I asked.

  "I stole it from the checkout desk at the public library," Flaco answered.

  "Why didn’t you just rent one?"

  "I don’t know. I thought you wanted to keep this private—no records."

  "It’s not that important," I said.

  "If it will make you feel better, I’ll take it back tomorrow."

  "Good," I said.

  Flaco finished splicing the wires and plugged the scanner in, then I turned off the fluothane and pried open one of Tamara’s eyes. Flaco aimed the scanner at her eye, but it rolled back and we couldn’t see her retina, so Flaco started calling to her, saying "Oh, Spider Legs! Oh, Spider Legs. Wake up! We have nice flies to eat!" and things like that. I patted her cheek a little. After a few minutes her eyeball rolled forward and Flaco scanned it. For all practical purposes she was still asleep, but I turned the fluothane back on to put her under, just to be sure she wouldn’t remember we’d scanned her. Then Flaco jacked in a call to his hacker and read off her ID number: AK-483-VO-992-RAF.

  I cleaned up the room and gave the thin woman an injection to make her sleep for the night. Flaco went to the bathroom. Five minutes later he came out and said, "I’ve got my hacker on line. Are you sure we got her ID right?"

  The scanner was still on, so I read the number to him again.

  Flaco stood in the corner, listening to the comlink in his head. "According to records," he said, "she’s Tamara Maria de la Garza. Born 2-24-2267 on Bacchus 4 in the Ceti star system. She left at age eight, and spent seventeen years in-flight back to Earth. Two years ago, she joined the Allied Earth Marines and went with a peace-keeping force to the Epsilon Eridani system." Flaco’s eyes remained unfocused as he listened to the voice in his head, and he laughed at something the hacker said. "According to her military records, she’s been in-flight two years. Expected to reach Epsilon Eridani in 2313."

  "Oh," I said. I flipped off the fluothane on her gas mask. According to Flaco, this woman was nearly a light-year from Earth. Apparently, she had either jumped ship or never left—but then if that were true she would be listed as AWOL. Obviously, the military had falsified her files. I started thinking of reasons the military would falsify her files, and came up with many, but I realized it would be just like them to falsify her records for the hell of it.

  Flaco stood in the corner for a moment. "Also," he said. "My friend didn’t bother to mention earlier that two months ago the man who owned the crystal, Amir Jafari, was made a Class D General in the Federated Earth Marines—he’s in charge of Cyborg Intelligence." Flaco smiled; he was still on line.

  At first I thought that explained Jafari’s interest in brain storage. The cyborg command was once notorious for shanghaiing draftees, placing their brains in brain bags, and jacking them into reality programs—convincing them they were just living through their daily affairs until they could be transferred to mechanical bodies. But why would the computer crystal be registered to Jafari, not the Alliance? He wouldn’t be holding it as a commodities investment—the price of crystals drops daily as better crystals come onto the market.

  Flaco tapped the subdural comlink switch behind his left ear; his eyes suddenly focused as he went offline. "My hacker says he doesn’t want to know me anymore. He just got tagged. He’s going on vacation."

  "Did they trace to us?"

  Flaco tried to sound confident. "No, I don’t think so. I’d called him. They won’t trace back to us." He sat on the floor and sighed. I knew he was wrong. I knew that if they took the initiative, they could check the hacker for incoming calls and get back to us. But it would take time, perhaps days. "So, what do you think?" Flaco asked.

  I knew he wanted me to venture a guess about who had tapped in. I phrased my words carefully, trying to turn the subject of the conversation. "I think this woman is not Jafari, so perhaps she stole the crystal."

  "Do you know what I think?" Flaco said. "I watched you treat that girl. I think you wasted your money going to school to study morphogenic pharmacology. All you did was read the directions on those boxes. Anybody could have done that. A monkey could have done that!"

  "Yes," I said. "Flaco could have done that."

  "I did fine with the fluothane, no? I’m a fine anesthesiologist."

  "Yes, you’re a fine anesthesiologist," I told him.

  "I am also tired," Flaco said, yawning.

  "Me too."

  "Can I sleep here?" he asked.

  "We should put this woman on the couch, and I have no other bed."

  "I will sleep on the floor—" he said, "a fine floor, very soft, very practical."

  "Good," I said, "you can make sure this thief doesn’t run off with my valuables."

  "I will guard your valuables with my life," Flaco promised. We moved Tamara to the couch; then Flaco lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.

  Although it was late and I had many things on my mind, I went to my room, turned on my computer, phoned Informer 261—the artificial intelligence who services me—and requested a readout of all scholarly articles on morphogenic pharmacology published within the past three days. The AI bartered with me, trying to restructure my payment schedule for the information. He started out asking far too much money; at times it seemed his bartering equations went totally off kilter. He didn’t understand the emotional attachment I had to my money. I talked him down to a reasonable fee, and then he granted access to the information. I studied long into the night.

  In the morning Tamara gave the computer crystal back to me, and I refilled the hormone pump on her arm, told her to eat and drink as much as she could, and left "Doctor" Flaco to watch her.

  I took her dirty bandage to Uppanishadi-Smith for a blood analysis. Tamara’s blood had very low levels of leukocytes and other antibodies, and this seemed very strange. With such a severe injury, her antibody levels should have rocketed. However, people raised in artificial atmospheres often have unresponsive immune systems, so I did not worry so much. But with the high humidity in Panamá and the resultant risk of infections, I thought it necessary to buy a wide-spectrum antibody treatment. Then I went back to my booth at the feria. The day was slow: I sold two lipid and cholesterol flushes to old people and had one soccer player who wanted to get his nerves myelinated so he could speed his reflexes. His was an unworkable plan, and I told him how much better a nerve bypass was, since silver wire conducts electrical impulses much faster than a myelinated nerve, and recommended the doctor who had bypassed my sympathetic and peripheral nervous systems for me. The day was cool, so I walked home before sundown.

  When I got home a gray kitten with white feet was on the roof and Flaco and Tamara were in the front yard throwing a red plastic ball up to the kitten. It would hide on the other side of the roof, and when Flaco threw the ball up it would clatter on the roof’s red tiles, and the kitten would hear it and run over the top, swiping and biting at the ball and chasing it till it rolled off the roof. Then the kitten would hiss and raise the hairs on its back as if surprised to see Flaco and Tamara, and would run back over the rooftop to hide. Tamara enjoyed this as much as the kitten did. She gigg
led when the kitten attacked the ball and acted very excited, often putting her hand over her mouth. I suddenly desired to kiss her; the thought of taking her in my arms and kissing her seemed totally natural. I would have done it, yet I knew that it was inappropriate. After thinking about it, I had a strange realization: the beauty I had seen in Tamara when she showed terror was in her when she laughed. The way emotions played over her face gave her an unusually expressive quality that made her different from the dead-eyed, emotionless refugiadas and merchant women I often met. Flaco must have seen it too, for when he spoke with her his voice took on a mellow, respectful tone.

  I watched Tamara for some time, looking for any signs of the cramping the hormone injections can cause. She wobbled a great deal and clung to Flaco for support, but it was good for her to get the exercise. I remembered the antibody packet I’d bought, so I had her sit on the front porch while I injected the antibodies into her catheter.

  "I have been thinking," I said when I was done, "that I would like to sell that crystal. Would you happen to have a receipt for it?"

  Tamara looked up at me in surprise, and then burst out laughing until tears formed in her eyes. Flaco started laughing too. I felt very foolish for asking about a receipt, but now I knew for sure she was a thief. Tamara struggled up and went into the house to rest.

  I sat on the porch next to Flaco. He wrapped his arm around me. "Ah, Angelo, I like you. Promise me you’ll never change."

  I sighed, and wondered what to do. It would be wrong to sell stolen property, no matter how much I would make from it. Once again I wished that I had not taken Tamara into my care, and I wondered if I should send her to the hospital, let the police arrest her if she was a criminal. "How is she doing?" I asked.

  "She slept much in the morning," Flaco said, "and I made sure she ate a good lunch. After that she spent much time in your bedroom, hooked up to your dream console. She didn’t like it. She said it didn’t have enough memory to make a large world seem solid. Also, she erased all the old worlds you had in it. I hope you’re not angry."

  "No, I never use it," I said truthfully.

  "You should get a new one," Flaco said. "I have a friend who steals only from other thieves. He can get you a nice one, cheap. And it isn’t as if it will have been stolen from a Padre."

  "No," I said.

  Flaco got up, walked into the house, and got some beer. When he came back, we sat on the porch and drank while the sun set. Just as it got dark we heard a distant explosion—a deep booming one—and howler monkeys in the forests on the south side of the lake began howling in fear.

  "Chepo?" I asked, wondering if the socialists were bombing refugiados on our side of the border. Prime Minister Montoya had been spewing rhetoric all week—talking about how the ‘Progressive Ideals’ of Nicita Idealist Socialism could never take firm root while the dogma of the capitalists to the north continued to pollute his ‘New Society’—all of which simply meant that he was tired of his people listening to our radio stations or accessing our dream networks. He had reaffirmed his vow to either absorb or eradicate all other Latin American nations, so I’d been waiting all week for a new offensive.

  Flaco shook his head, and spat on the ground. "Guerrilla artillery. Synchronous barrage; they’re trying to blow up that new Colombian neutron cannon. They’ll do it, too. Those chimeras have been giving the Colombians hell." Flaco started to rise, as if to go in the house.

  "Wait here for a moment," I told him. "You will see something strange."

  Flaco sat back down and waited. Soon, an old grizzled spider monkey came walking up the street, away from the jungle south of the lake, heading north. The monkey was very nervous, being away from the trees, and he often stopped, raising his head to look for the perros sarnosos—junkyard dogs that ran loose in the streets. Flaco saw him and laughed, "Ha! I’ve never seen a spider monkey leave the jungle like that."

  "The fighting and people in the jungle scares them," I said. "I see them every night now. Usually there is just one or two, sometimes bands. They are always heading north."

  "Perhaps this old spider monkey is smarter than you and me. Perhaps he is a sign," Flaco said, reaching down to pick up a rock. He threw it, hitting the monkey’s chest. "Go on; get up to Costa Rica where someone can make a good stew of you!"

  The monkey lurched back a few meters, clutching his chest, then ran in a circle, and finally took off as fast as he could past my home. I felt bad to see the old monkey in pain. "You did not need to do that," I told Flaco. Flaco was staring at the ground, angrily, and I knew he was thinking about the threat of the Colombians to the south and Costa Ricans to the north. It would not be long until the two countries would invade us, try to force us to refuse the capitalists access to our canals.

  "Ah, piss on him if he can’t take a joke," Flaco said. Then he laughed and we went into the house.

  I sat on the porch a while and thought. The monkeys leaving, that was a bad sign, but all my life people had been seeing bad signs. My own country of Guatemala had been invaded by Nicaragua, overtaken by a dictator, passed through a revolution, and ended up where it began, as a free democracy—all in less than fifty years. I’ve always believed that no matter how bad things become, they somehow even out eventually. And the problems with the socialists would be no exception. I went into the house to eat. Flaco and Tamara had eaten all the fresh fruit and I do not like to take a meal without it, so we decided to eat at La Arboleda, a nearby restaurant. I went to get Tamara.

  She lay on my bed, with the dream monitor plugged into the interface socket at the base of her skull and her visor down. She was curled so that her knees touched her chin, and she had her hand in her mouth, biting it. Her tightly drawn face hinted at pain.

  "Does she always do this?" I asked.

  "Does what?" Flaco said.

  "Curl up in the fetal position when she’s hooked to the console?"

  "Feta? Feta?—yes, she always lies like that."

  "Don’t touch her," I told him, then ran next door to Rodrigo DeHoyos’ house to borrow an extra monitor. When I got back, I put on the monitor and plugged into the viewer’s jack of the console—

  And on the beach the wind was still but a sandpiper was running, skirting the water’s edge, darting away from the waves, burying his ebony bill, moving on. Bleached shells of clam, barnacle, and snail tumbled in the shallows and gleamed like bones in the sand drifts. Cool air carried the scent of decaying sea life. A purple sun hung on the horizon and dyed sand, sky, bird, skin in cellophane shades of red and blue. The amethyst sand cut my bare feet, and down the beach a red-haired woman in a white dress fed gulls that screeched and hung in the air, waiting to snap crumbs she tossed. I stopped and inhaled the air, listened to the sigh of the breakers, and looked at the colors. After so long with my prosthetic eyes, seeing the world in variations of only three primary colors felt like coming home.

  I began looking for flaws in her dreamwork. Her world involved all five senses. I could both smell the sea rime and taste it—it felt complete. I could see unity in the starkness of the lines of the jagged stones, the wind-battered birds, and the choppy waves on the horizon. Scarlets and muted tans nicely varied the theme color of purple. Her dreamwork was almost professional quality.

  But I turned around and found a warp: on the beach, a huge black bull lay dead in the water, as if he had washed up from her subconscious. The horizon, the shoreline, the slope of the sand—all converged to emphasize this bull. He lay on his side, with his head toward me and his feet toward the sea. His huge belly was distended, though it didn’t show signs of rot. His knobby legs stuck out, stiff with rigor mortis, and his whole body heaved from moment to moment as waves washed against him, surging against his belly, making his huge testicles and penis float up against his body as a wave came in, then stretch out and away as the wave receded. I focused my attention on the bull and mouthed the word delete. The monitor flashed a message: You Cannot Edit Dreams While in the Viewing Mode.

  I h
eaded toward the red-haired woman. Her beauty was the kind one can only be born with—the elegant lines of her chin were not likely to be the kind a plastique artist would conceive. Yet her lifeless expression revealed the tragic deadness one sees behind the eyes of the refugiados, and I wondered why Tamara had chosen this red-haired woman as an alter ego, and if the emotion I’d seen in Tamara’s face earlier were some trick of her body she could not control.

  "What do you want?" she asked without turning to look at me, tossing a piece of bread to a gull.

  I did not know what to answer. "I came to tell you it’s time to eat," I said, looking back at the bull.

  "He talks to me," she said, as if confiding a secret. She didn’t turn, and I realized it was the bull she didn’t want to see. "Even though he’s dead, he jabbers. He jabbers at me—he says he wants me to ride his back. But I know that as soon as I do, he’ll take me away, across the dark water to a place where I do not wish to go."

  I said as if to a child: "Perhaps you should come with Flaco and me. We’ll have a nice dinner. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?"

  She stiffened, angered by the tone of my voice. "You go on ahead. I’ll finish up here," she said. She tore a huge chunk off her loaf of bread and tossed it to a gull. The gull shrieked and dove, grabbing the bread before it hit the ground. I looked at the gull, with its battered feathers and shrunken stomach. Its dark eyes glared, mad with hunger.

  I walked away from the beach and topped a rise by a rock where a lone gull sat. On the other side of the rise the dream ended in a blurred landscape of rolling dunes. I looked back down at the bull floating in the water and at the woman in the white dress. She fed the last of the bread to the gulls, and then raised her hands. A gull dove and tentatively nipped her finger. Drops of blood splashed from her wound and the gulls cried and dove upon her, shredding her flesh with their sharp beaks.

  The gull beside me cried out, and I looked at it. The light of the setting sun made its white feathers gleam purple. Its dark eyes appeared to glare out of a luminous head. It watched me, cold and prophetic. I jacked out, unwilling to watch the woman be eaten.