"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Colombia. A village that used to be near Mosquera." Mosquera is a small coastal town in the South of Colombia. And in the poor parts of Colombia, away from the cities, people are not much educated. They rely heavily on witchdoctors in such places, so it made sense for Zavala to believe he could see germs. Most of the ignorant peasants in Panamá had emigrated from villages like Zavala’s during the war.
"Ah, and you bought your fine arm and legs in Mosquera?"
Zavala laughed as if I were an idiot. "Such things do not exist in Mosquera. When the socialists sprayed the plague over our village, I left home quickly and tried to go to Buenaventura, but my feet died too fast and I couldn’t make it. A padre in Guapi took me to a doctor in a camp in the jungle. He gave me the new limbs on the condition that I fight for the resistance."
"Ah, I see," I said. "Well, let me take another look at that arm." I held his arm and looked very closely, brushing my nose on his arm hairs, as if I were trying very hard to see the germs. "I must confess," I said after a long examination, "that I have been practicing medicine for a long time. My eyes are very good, and I have seen many germs in my lifetime! But I cannot find a germ on your arm. Perhaps it has crawled away? Or, more likely, when the fire burned you in the simulators today, maybe it just felt like the rot, so now your mind is playing tricks on you." I had once heard a witchdoctor make a similar statement in the feria, and I hoped my imitation would sound enough like that of a genuine witchdoctor so Zavala would believe me.
He smiled a little and appeared relieved. "Many thanks, don Angelo," he said, and rejoined the others on the floor as they plotted how to destroy the samurai in the simulators.
I watched him for a bit and felt much sadness. He was too stupid and innocent to have to spend his life fighting wars. He was dumb and innocent like a cow. In fact, he had the same droopy, sad, brown eyes as a cow. The four of them were hunched over, eagerly waving their fingers above the floor as they drew imaginary battle plans. I pitied them. For beneath the talk of winning wealth and glory by beating the samurai, their real goal was to escape the pain and shock of dying in the simulators each time they lost a battle. They were four people uniting to avoid pain. And it occurred to me that these four people constituted a society. Perhaps not a society like the one in Panamá, since they lived by different rules, but a society nonetheless. I imagined living with them in the jungles of Baker, raising corn and beans and coffee outside a little hut. Mavro and Perfecto would be my neighbors, and Tamara, she would be my closest friend. And I realized that although it was no longer possible for me to be a servant of the society in Panamá, it was possible for me to serve the society I was living in.
Without considering the consequences of my decision, I slid off my cot and joined my combat team in planning our next conquest.
Chapter 10
Tamara’s eyes opened, and she held up the stump of her arm for me to see. I was tied to a chair, and though I desperately wanted to go to Tamara, to help her, I was unable to move.
A little girl with a familiar smile came into the room and poured water from a blue ceramic pitcher onto Tamara’s wrist. A nub appeared on the stump of her arm. Like a film where irises and daisies grow and bloom in fast motion, she sprouted a palm; fingers shot up like vines seeking sunlight. Amazed, I watched the till the hand became whole, complete. When she was done, Tamara tapped the side of her head with a new-grown finger, and the finger seemed flawless, perfectly formed, like that of a newborn child.
"You see, don Angelo, you forget," she said, "I don’t need a comlink to speak to you. I don’t need your medicines. You forget: I’m a witch."
I woke from my dream of Tamara on the ninth morning and looked about the bedroom. Perfecto and Abriara stood facing the wall at the edge of the bunks; the wire leads of cranial jacks led from the computer outlets to the bases of their skulls. The jacks let us view only one program—Mavro called it "The Horror Show"—we could watch the Yabajin samurai slaughter our mercenaries in simulation. The view showed tiny holos of battle teams racing over various terrains. Messages on screen announced each team leader. You could hear the mercenaries speak in the simulators just as if you’d joined them in battle. The computer only revealed glimpses of each battle—the assault tactics used by the doomed team. At three minutes per battle, we got to witness the deaths of many mercenaries. In nine days of practice no one had beaten the Yabajin. I was beginning to believe no one ever would. Yet Abriara and Perfecto studied tactics during each spare moment, concocting new schemes for conquest. The strain of their efforts left them pale, washed out, unable to smile.
Perfecto moaned in anger at something he saw on the holo. Neither he nor Abriara wore visors or helmets to cut down on sensory leak, so they stared at the wall, faces slack, eyes twitching in choreographed motion as they viewed the program.
Their blank faces staring at the wall reminded me of Tamara lying in the teak chest, endlessly gazing at the ceiling. I still hadn’t heard from her. Even if her condition had deteriorated to the point where she’d needed neural growth stimulator, she’d have shown major improvement by now.
She should have wakened, though it might take a few days to discover how much brain damage she’d sustained. Ideally, she’d get by with minimal memory loss. But if the damage were severe, she might lose motor skills, forget how to speak or walk. I wanted to find her, see for myself how she was recovering. My hands itched from the compulsive desire to touch her, to treat her ailments until she healed.
I sat up in bed and practiced pulling my knives from their wrist sheaths and slicing the air as if hacking at enemies. The heavy crystal felt good in my hand. They were flawless, perfect, such knives as I’d have believed could only exist in Plato’s dreams. I’d not made any more progress in learning for certain who my assailant would be, and I was becoming anxious to confront him. My hands itched to do more than treat Tamara.
Perfecto made a snorting noise and, as one, he and Abriara jacked out. "Even with the help of God, that Yabajin baboon couldn’t have dodged that shot!" he shouted.
"So he hid behind a rock before his armor melted. What can you do?" Abriara asked. She was mad too. She brushed back a strand of chocolate-brown hair.
Perfecto said, "But that can’t be right. I timed the samurai’s reaction from when our man dropped from the tree: one-fifth of a second! No one can aim and fire so fast."
Perfecto was right. I couldn’t imagine any way for the samurai to become so good—at least not without years of practice. I envisioned Baker as a planet torn apart. Cities would be desolate, dirty, with clumps of blasted cement left where skyscrapers had been. Children would endlessly scour the wastes in their hovercrafts, learning by hard practice how to fry the Yabajin. Old scarred cyborgs would sit around campfires at night and tell stories of past victories while children envisioned their enemies exploding into fireballs.
Abriara turned to me, "So, Angelo, you are ready for breakfast?"
"Yes," I said.
"Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to fry some Yabajin and eat them in the simulator. You overslept. It’s time for battle practice."
I wasn’t disappointed about breakfast. Processed algae in any form—flavored to taste like sausage, as ice cream, or even as cereal—made my stomach turn. I rummaged through my chest, searching through the rapidly declining stock of liquor and cigars, and found a nice bottle of brandy and downed a swig, hoping it would suffice for breakfast. But the spectacle of battle practice made me queasy. In nine days 27 people had died of shock during simulations. Rumor said Motoki Corporation had drugged the water in an attempt to halt the problem. I didn’t believe it. Those who’d die from such things had been allowed to die—the company couldn’t afford to have so much as a medical droid waiting by the simulators to care for the injured. Such luxuries cost too much to transport between stars. I guzzled some brandy. Then we met Mavro and Zavala at the battle room.
Kaigo was giving one of his typical lecture
s to five tired soldiers, uttering incomprehensible maxims. "You must rid yourself of the interference of the interfering self. Learn the act of supreme concentration. See this one, see how the sweat of mugga shines upon him," he indicated a sweaty and crazed looking chimera—a man you would not care to meet in an alley— "Be like him! Learn to live as one already dead! Do not think of pain or death, glory or dishonor. This path leads to the state of munen, no mind, where the will and the act become one." The men gave Kaigo sour expressions. Only Zavala took the samurai’s advice seriously. The formula for success was close enough to folk magic to satisfy him.
Master Kaigo’s expression was strange—angry, hopeful, concerned? Perhaps none of these. I often found his body language incomprehensible. When thinking, he’d wrinkle his face and frown as if mad. He never looked us in the eye. I knew he liked us, for when he laughed at our mistakes he politely covered his mouth with his hand—something other samurai neglected. Yet when we spoke he pretended we weren’t there and looked off in another direction, then answered our questions without looking at us, as if he were some religious fanatic responding to queries from God. When he spoke about himself he’d unconsciously touch his nose with his forefinger, and when he told us we’d done poorly he’d emphasize it by putting his hand by his face and making little karate chop movements in the air. Observing him was like observing a strange beast for the first time. I couldn’t understand the motives behind his actions. I felt no kinship with him as a human being.
When I was a child my friends and I pretended sticks were guns, and we fought aliens on other planets. But if Kaigo accurately represented the people of Baker, then in a way I’d never quite expected I’d grown up to find that I would be fighting aliens on another planet.
The men left and we fought two inconsequential battles in rapid succession and were slaughtered in both. Zavala performed well in the second battle and was last man to die. When Kaigo saw that Zavala had jacked out, he immediately thrust us into a third scenario. The illusion settled over us like a cool but heavy fog.
Scenario 59: Mid Patrol
And the hovercraft roared up a mountain through a deep bed of snow in a great pine forest by the light of double moons. Abriara steered with little flicks of the wrist, dodging wind-fallen trees and standing pine, swerving with such violence I could barely hold on. Abriara had traded Zavala position as driver, since he was taking too much psychic damage in battle. Drivers tended receive the brunt of the plasma-fire. It relieved the eyes to be in a scenario where the land was completely terraformed. Usually the alien landscape jarred me, but this felt much like a joyride through a frozen pine forest on Earth. The chill, blustery wind brought bits of ice and frozen raindrops to drift from the sky into the hovercraft. As we roared along, plumes of snow raised and hung in the air behind us. Ahead loomed a great white glacier. Two other hovercrafts intersected us from either direction, but no warning buzzer went off.
We’d decided that only sergeants should speak over the helmet mikes when more than one combat team was present.
"This is Hector Vasquez commanding team one," said the man to our right. "Who do we have here?"
"Abriara Sifuentes in team two."
"Paco García in team three," said the man to our left. I glanced left. Many men had praised García over the past few days, affirming that if anyone from our module could beat the samurai, he could. García’s team looked like any other. Judging by size, two humans and three chimeras, all dressed in bug suits that looked black in the darkness.
Abriara said, "Right. You’re in charge."
García said, "Form a V, two hundred meters to the side. First team to hear a buzzer, call out and swerve toward your compadres on the other side of the V. Then we’ll all veer directly away from the incoming craft. I want them on our tails. Abriara, I want you in the lead. Just circle this mountain. I want plenty of snow on the ground when they find us."
"Sí," Abriara and Hector said in unison. We took the lead. Abriara kept driving at full speed, and the other drivers—both humans—had difficulty keeping up.
We circled the base of the mountain for half an hour. The two moons overhead were smaller than Earth’s moon and shed little light. We had no headlights—just the colored lights of the instrument panels. Kaigo had once told us that the headlights were removed for our own safety—a vehicle traveling with headlights on was too easily spotted by the Yabajin. Only the moonlight reflecting on snow let us guide the hovercrafts in the dark. We’d never fought a scenario at night before, nor had we fought in snow.
Zavala spoke through his helmet mike, panting between words. "I dreamed of this place last night. I dreamed we fought the samurai here. We tricked them, but I can’t remember how."
His words gave me an eerie sensation. I couldn’t think what would make Zavala dream such a thing.
"Try to remember," Mavro said. "It could be important. It could save us all." His cheery voice was encouraging on the surface, but held an undertone of contempt. Zavala had begun recording a journal of dreams, believing them important. He spent his days trying to recall his dreams of the night before.
"I’ll try," Zavala said. And after several moments he continued, "It had something to do with our armor. We put something on our armor, making it impenetrable. The Japanese shot, but couldn’t hurt us."
"Ah, if only you could remember, I’m sure it would be a boon!" Mavro said. "As for myself, my dreams are useless. I only dreamed I made love to a giant woman. She cooed from the pleasure I gave. She was ecstatic. She looked just like Abriara, only bigger."
"Shut up," García said over the head mike, and Mavro quieted.
The daytime sights on our guns would do us no good, so García had us flip on our targeting lasers and practice shooting. Each targeting laser shone in a different color of the spectrum so that we wouldn’t confuse our targeting light with that of someone else. When I pointed my rifle, a pale blue dot showed where my shot would hit.
I fried a few fallen pines, sometimes turning them into torches.
We circled the mountain and climbed the great glacier that covered one face. Our bug suits didn’t protect us from the cold. I shivered violently and my hands soon stiffened inside the armor. I wished I’d spent time in the mountains of Peru with Perfecto.
We were at the bottom of the glacier hurtling toward a dark line of pines when García yelled, "Here they come! Veer right!" The Yabajin were shooting down from the mountaintop at tree line, hoping to intersect us in the open.
We veered right, dropping toward the bottom of the glacier, keeping out of range of their turrets. Beyond the snowfield was a forest on a slope so steep it almost formed a cliff. Just below our line of sight, feathery clouds glowed silver in the moonlight.
The change in direction restructured our formation so that our team was no longer at point. García’s team formed the point of the triangle slightly behind us, closest to the Yabajin, while Hector’s team floated beside us.
"Look for a small valley, no wider than fifty meters. One with steep sides. I want them to funnel in after us," García ordered. "And when you find it, lay down plasma fire in the snow behind you. I want a smoke screen."
Mavro experimentally shot a burst of plasma into the snow beside us. The plasma became a searing white light in the darkness. Sure enough, a small puff of steam rose. We dropped off the edge of the glacier into the sparse forest, and all we did was fall.
Abriara hit the thrusters in full reverse to slow our descent and dodged the black trees while I hooked my feet under my seat and held the rail. One man in Hector’s team started praying, "Madre de Dios ..." and I closed my eyes.
The trip down seemed to last forever.
"Lay down grazing fire!" García ordered. "Maybe one of them will crash into a tree!" Mavro and Perfecto opened up with the plasma turrets, and the guns made their little whuft, whuft sounds. In the darkness the flash from the plasma turrets was bright enough so I could see pinpoints of white even through my closed eyes.
&nbs
p; Abriara jerked the hovercraft controls, pitching it violently as she dodged trees. I opened my eyes just in time to see the ground come up. The hovercraft thudded nose-first into a pile of snow, hurling me to the floor. Then Abriara gunned the engine and the craft broke free. We were in a valley with incredibly steep sides—too steep for the hovercraft to climb out. Hector took the lead, and his hovercraft threw up a rooster tail of snow, blinding us. The valley was full of fallen trees and great black igneous boulders, so every time Hector dodged a tree or boulder he’d shout, "Tree, right!" or "Rock, left!" so Abriara would know where to turn.
"Slow down and continue grazing fire! I want them to follow us!" García called.
He was right. This was a perfect place to set up an ambush, and the Yabajin had no choice but to follow us down the funnel. Perfecto and Mavro fired their turrets ahead and to the sides. With each burst, the path ahead brightened as if struck by lightning, and the black stones and trees threw eerie shadows; then the plasma would hit the snow and mist would rise up and drift down to silently fill the valley behind us. García’s hovercraft pulled up on our tail till he could nearly touch us.
Hector called out, "Rock, right!" At the same time, we passed under a leaning pine. One of García’s chimera turret gunners leapt from atop the turret mount. He grabbed a pine limb and pulled himself up, then was lost in the plume of snow our hovercrafts had raised. We saw the rock ahead in the glow of the plasma arc—the black volcanic stone of a cliff face.
When we rounded the cliff, García’s laser gunners dove from their hovercraft, and I leapt with them and plowed through the knee-deep snow. They scurried up the steep side of the valley, making their way to the cliff top, about ten meters. I tried following but the teflex armor on my boots slipped like plastic. Not only couldn’t I make it to the cliff top, I couldn’t walk up the gentler slope of the valley. Both García’s chimera gunners climbed as if they were half mountain goat. I unbuckled my armored gloves and tried pulling myself up by grabbing the roots of a small pine, but I slid back down as soon as I let go.
On My Way to Paradise Page 16
