I was lying by my side on dark ultraviolet grass that twisted in coral shapes, looking over a small pond with steep banks almost round in shape. Abriara, Mavro, and Perfecto were drawing water from the pond in a pail and drinking. My lips felt parched and cracked.
A creature walked out of the trees on the far side of the pond—a dark oily green animal with a long segmented body and small claws. It walked close to the ground and may have been no taller than a cat, but it was as long as a man. I tried to discover what it reminded me of —a scorpion with no stinging tail, a crab that had been pulled out of shape. I tried to pin it down as herbivore, predator, or scavenger, but had no data. It skittered into the water. And I realized it was itself. Alone.
I didn’t know if it had an analog on Earth and couldn’t describe it as being like anything at all, for there was nothing on Earth like this creature. To make simple associations, to pretend Baker’s life-forms were like anything on Earth, would be unjust. It would leave me confused as to their true nature and might ultimately, prove dangerous.
Abriara gave me a drink and I was very dizzy. "Are you feeling much better?" she asked. She sat beside me and laid my head in her lap.
"Some. "
"What can I do to help?"
"Talk. Occupy my mind with pleasant things," I said.
"Then let’s find something comforting," he proposed. "I’m curious, what’s it like to have a family? Your mother is dead—so tell me about your father, brothers, and sisters?"
"My father?" I said. "My father is ..." and I could think of nothing. My father. I could remember my father sitting in the chair crying over my mother’s death while Eva’s children climbed over him. And I could remember nothing after that. Nothing. Not only had I never seen or heard from him again, I couldn’t remember ever having wondered where he was. The feeling was totally inexplicable, as if I’d entered a classroom to take an exam and found a professor who insisted on testing me on a subject I’d never even heard of. My father. I backtracked. I could remember all about my father from before my mother’s death. "My father," I shouted, "was a weak and cynical man. He was hopeless, frustrated. Quitting one job after another. He used to say, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living, but the examined life is no better.’ After my mother died, he ... he ..."
I was stunned. After my mother died he ceased to exist for me. I stood up and a terrible fear took me. I could think of only two explanations: either I’d suffered brain damage or something so terrible had happened to my father I’d blocked it out completely. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run. I worried greatly and ended up taking an overdose of painkillers to help me sleep again.
We crossed over some great plains and came to a small canyon of packed dirt. And in this canyon we passed through a series of large worn stones that were sculpted perfectly round, like globes. Each stone stood some eight meters high and they were arranged in the valley in a huge spiral, like the paintings left on the caves of some Australian aborigines. The circular stones had sunk a bit into the ground over many hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. Yet the sight of them filled me with awe.
They were very much like the tiny stones the desert lord had thrown at us, yet these were immense—and the fact that they were arranged in a spiral seemed to hint that they’d been created as part of an effort by an organized community. I kept expecting to see caves or stone doors leading into the hillside, paintings on rock walls. But I could discover no hint of who or what had fashioned these stones.
We made the coast that afternoon. I tried to dredge up memories of my father, yet I could think of nothing. I wondered why I could have blocked out my memories.
Had I found that it was actually he, who had killed my mother? Had he killed himself in a cowardly manner just after my mother’s funeral? I thought that if I envisioned a scenario that was close to the truth, perhaps I’d suddenly remember him. And I became aware that there was another hole in my memory—the hole where Tatiana, the child in my dreams, would fit.
Why had she been so important that I continued to remember only her face and her name? I couldn’t say.
The wind continued to rage. We camped that evening and my compadres propped me against a tree. My arms and legs refused to respond as they should. I had barely enough energy to feed myself, and my arms and legs felt weak like those of an infant. I wondered about my father long into the night.
I woke the next morning in the hovercraft, whizzing over the ground. I was lying on my back and could no longer hear the roaring surf. I felt dissociated from everything. From my past, from my friends, from my world.
The sky was deep red as if at sunset and there were no clouds. And no bands of oparu no tako weaved across the sky. They’d been decimated by the storms.
We passed under a tree, a battered palm with leaves that rustled like paper, and the sight of something so intimately familiar struck me to the heart.
I am returning to Panamá, I thought with insane glee.
I am returning to Panamá.
The sun shining on battered leaves reminded me of an incident that had long lain dormant in my mind. I can’t remember when it happened, or in what country, but it seemed like something from my childhood: I remember lying on a cot, looking out a window. There was a line of trees between two open fields, and a troop of monkeys was crossing through the trees from one forest into another. The feeling I had at that time was that it was I who was traveling, and the monkeys were standing still.
I lay in the bottom of the hovercraft and the feeling I gained from seeing that one battered palm, the memories it brought back after the strange fauna of Baker, filled me with a sense of ease, of euphoria. Against all knowledge to the contrary, I felt that I was returning home, reentering the borders of my own lost country.
As the day progressed we passed many palms. By noon we reached a land that was totally terraformed and forested. White cockatoos chattered in the trees and feasted on fruit, and there was no doubt we’d reached the land of the Yabajin.
We camped at night and for the next two days followed the coastline south. Day and night the gales blew steadily, rushing from the cool seas into the hot interior, bringing occasional brief squalls. Yet the sea here was a narrow band and the storms dropped little rain. The dust thrown up into the atmosphere from winds in the desert colored the sky a dull yellow-brown during the day and made for spectacular red sunrises and sunsets.
I began to feel stronger, and that night I lay awake beside the campfire and listened to the others.
Abriara had been filled with anxiety that day, stressed and tired. Whenever anyone spoke to her, they had to address her two or three times before she would answer. After Mavro went to sleep, Perfecto said, "What is on your mind, little sister?"
"I am just ... I don’t know. I want it. I want this planet so bad!"
"Yes," Perfecto said eagerly. "I know. I feel it, too."
Abriara said, "When we were children, in Temuco, remember what it was like in the compound? We had nothing! Absolutely nothing that we could call our own! Captain Guerrera would give us our clothing or our toys, but nothing ever belonged to me—just me alone. He gave us shoes, he would always say, ‘Now remember to share.’ I hated it."
"I know," Perfecto said. "I hated it, too. They created us’ to be territorial, then gave us nothing to own. Let us keep nothing."
Abriara laughed. "Remember how we used to hide things under our beds when we were children? And Guerrera would come and clean everything out from time to time. I found a doll in the gutter and hid it for months, moving it, wanting it not because it was beautiful or clean or even a decent toy, but just because it was mine."
Perfecto smiled, "Yes, Do you recall Giron and his sticks. Remember how he used to find sticks and bring them home—nothing special about the sticks, just plain sticks. If he is still alive back on Earth, I’ll bet he has a mountain of sticks in his house."
"That is the way I feel now," Abriara said. "I want this planet the way Giron wanted hi
s sticks. I want a home. I want it so bad I cannot think straight! If we win this war, I think I will die of joy. "
"Ah," Perfecto said. "Would it not be good? To have a whole planet to ourselves. This longing, it is in our bones. I never thought I could want so much. Yet I do not want to kill the Yabajin. I pity them for what will happen when we reach Hotoke no Za."
Chapter 33
On the afternoon of our third day of following the coastline, we came to the first sign of civilization: we found an abutment that jutted into the sea, and on a gray stone cliff was painted a huge white Japanese character, a single word.
I have no idea what the word was, but it seemed a warning. Above the character was painted a gleaming white samurai sword, and in streaming red was a piece of graffiti—a single bloody eye.
We stopped the hovercraft, and stared at the symbols.
"Do you suppose it’s a warning?" Perfecto asked.
"I’m not sure," Abriara said, "but I’ll bet we’re not far from Hotoke no Za. Perhaps not more than a few kilometers. "
"No," Mavro said, "I don’t think so. We can’t be. I studied the maps. We’re not within two hundred kilometers."
Abriara said, "Do you want to blunder forward and find out the hard way? We don’t even know if the city will be visible from the coast. I don’t want to hit a puff mine or come sliding in under some hidden neutron cannon mounted in the rocks."
"Maybe there won’t be any defenses left to the city," I said hopefully. "Maybe our compadres have already shut off all the automatic defenses." With the Yabajin we’d met in the desert, the male population seem3e to have left the city. It would be defended only by women, the very old, and the very young. Of course, ten thousand Colombian mercenaries would have shuttled down.
"No, the defenses won’t be down," Perfecto said. "Even if Garzón made it through the desert, he said we’d give battle at dawn on the ninth day after leaving Kimai no Ji. We still have till morning to find them. Even if for some reason he decided to fight the battle early and has won the city, Garzón will get the defenses operating as soon as possible to make sure there are no reprisals from Motoki or the Yabajin."
The thought of trying to run the gauntlet of remote defenses unnerved me. It was a task I hadn’t trained for, one I’d witnessed only in simulation, and that single episode of viewing the city’s defenses had shown my weakness. I did not want to go south.
Abriara suggested, "Let’s head inland, see if we can find sign of Garzón. If they’ve headed into the city, they should have left a trail of blown puff mines and fried ANCs."
Abriara veered through the trees.
It took two hours to navigate through ten kilometers of jungle, but then the jungle thinned into arid grassland.
I was fumbling in my pockets with nothing better to do when I found the stone I’d picked up at Kimai no Ji. I looked at the little cauliflower ear of ruby.
Mavro asked, "What is that?"
"A ruby," I said. He turned his attention to me. "I found it at Kimai no Ji. Apparently, they are very common here. All the metals in the planet. Rubies, emeralds-they’re just quartz crystals with copper and iron in them. They’re nothing here."
"Hah!" Mavro said, "A real ruby? Perhaps there’s gold in every river, rubies in every backyard lot, and we just don’t know!"
As we traveled, I wondered if maybe he wasn’t right.
That night we traveled three hundred kilometers in a great semicircle through bands of jungle, then came to a thick belt of forest that bordered a wide river. We were certain it had to be the river that flowed through Hotoke no Za. We followed it south and east, feeling our way toward the city and its remote defenses. Abriara would often say as if to herself, "We’re going to make it!"
An hour before dawn we came round a wide bend and the river channel before us went straight. No trees impeded our southeast view along the channel and we saw a great light from a city set on a hill, but the lights were red and reflected off clouds of smoke.
The city was on fire.
Chapter 34
Abriara watched the dull red billows above the city. "What’s going on? Did Garzón attack early?"
"Maybe the Colombians accepted Garzón’s offer," Mavro suggested, "and they’re burning the city. Or maybe they’re fighting the Yabajin and the plasma fire has set the city aflame."
The fire was very distant, perhaps eighty kilometers off.
Perfecto said, "There’s no fighting. If there were, we’d see laser flashes in the clouds."
"Then it is the Yabajin women burning their homes," Mavro said. "They know we are coming. They want to leave us with nothing."
His words struck me as truth. They would be burning their homes tonight, just as the people of Motoki had burned their houses and committed mass suicide.
Abriara suggested, "If the Yabajin are burning their homes, then the Garzón must not have been able to convince the Colombians to join us. Otherwise the city would already be ours, or there would be some sign of battle. If Garzón is still preparing to attack, he’ll be downriver."
She pulled back on the throttle. The hovercraft climbed into the air as she brought the speed to full. Mavro and Perfecto began to fire plasma in the air, and the entire river was bathed in light.
Abriara shouted, "Angelo, throw all the food and water overboard—any excess weight. There might be some unexploded mines in the river, and I don’t want to find them the hard way. Pull all the laser rifles out and keep one handy. If we have to take a swim, hold onto your rifles."
I began pulling up floor panels and dumping everything we didn’t need—blankets, an extra turbo, water and food. I handed out laser rifles, and we slung them over our backs. It took all of five minutes, and then I stuck my head over the edge of the hovercraft and watched trees go by.
We followed the river; the next half hour passed silently. My heart pounded in my chest and my breathing became dry and ragged.
Perfecto tapped his helmet. "Do you hear that?" he asked. "We must be getting close to the army! I hear chatter over the radio. We’re right behind them. They’re going in!"
Almost immediately I heard gunfire; lasers began flashing over the city, making pinpricks against the clouds, against stone battlements set on the hill. The sun hadn’t yet risen; daylight was imminent. We were twenty kilometers north of the city and Abriara pulled back on the throttle as hard as she could; we picked up speed. Everywhere the sound of distant gunfire crackled in a steady barrage.
"Ten minutes till we hit their defensive perimeter," Abriara shouted. She began shouting a comlink code, jacking in a call to someone I didn’t know. She called her name and asked for a status report.
Perfecto began yelling at me, "Little Brother, I think we will be going in at the tail, so do not have many worries. If you hear the metal squeal or the sound of crackling paper, it means we’re taking a hit from a neutron cannon. You jump out of the hovercraft quick, okay? The ANCs only hit things that move and take up a space that covers .008 degrees on its horizon, so it will choose the hovercraft for a target instead of one of us. If we take a hit, you jump—then look for that cannon, and burn off its sensors. If you land in the water, get out of your armor quick. The insulation on your laser rifle will make your gun float. You swim to your rifle and carry it ashore with you. And if you hear a high whistling sound, it’s weasel rockets. Shoot them from the air. The city’s defenses are spread pretty thin, but when we present a front, all their mobile defenses—the weasels and cybertanks—will pull toward us."
Perfecto made it all sound so easy. But nothing is ever so easy. The Yabajin had been beating us worse than we anticipated all the way—from the plague aboard the ship to the destruction of our defensive perimeters at Kimai no Ji.
Only once had we surprised them with superior weapons, and they’d had five days to remedy that inequality. Even if they had only women fighting, those women would be armed with weapons equal to ours.
Abriara abruptly reversed all thrusters and the hovercraf
t floated slowly over the dark water. "Muchachos, I just got a status report: Garzón’s plan has failed. The Yabajin saw what we did to Motoki, and they never shuttled the Colombians into Hotoke no Za. They didn’t trust them. The Yabajin overthrew what was left of Motoki. Our defenders here shot down six Yabajin zeppelins, but three more were able to bypass our defenses and land yesterday morning. They may have as many as three thousand samurai defending the city, as well as thirty-five thousand civilians. They may have been able to upgrade their weapons. Perhaps even their armor."
"Then what are we to do?" Perfecto asked.
"We have no choice. Garzón chooses not to believe there are three thousand samurai in the city. We must fight to the last man. Take no prisoners."
She was right. We couldn’t back away. If the Yabajin were given time to regroup as a nation, we’d never be able to hold out against them. The only hope was to attack with everything we had.
"Let’s do it," Mavro said.
Abriara jerked back on the throttle and we hummed in. Ten kilometers from the city we came in upon the first ANC—a smoldering pylon hidden behind some logs. A dozen of our craft were floating in the water. There was no sign of our compadres.
Abriara picked up speed. We came to a bend and for a moment could see the city once again: on the sides of the mountain the morning sun struck Hotoke no Za and the whole city gleamed golden. The city was set upon a stately granite hill and all along the hilltop were factories and homes. But these weren’t the thin paper houses of Motoki; they were neat brick domes in earth tones of cinnamon, yellow ochre, and dull green; gracefully curved with palms and green grasses in the yards. Everywhere, smoke poured from the large domes at the interior of the city. Even at ten kilometers we could see hundreds of our hovercrafts, tiny dots, racing to the hilltop to meet the Yabajin.
On My Way to Paradise Page 47
