Our men swept in upon the southeast side of the city, and I thought it odd. They should have been coming in from the northeast, from the river, and I wondered if perhaps the river turned south around the mountain.
Perfecto shouted, "Abriara!"
Our hovercraft began to crackle and scream. Abriara vaulted into the air, and Perfecto grabbed my right arm and nearly ripped it from its socket as he leapt from the craft.
We’d taken a hit from an automatic neutron cannon. I clamped onto my flechette rifle. We hit the warm water and our hovercraft forged ahead a hundred meters and exploded in a fireball.
I gasped. Water began seeping into my armor. I stripped off my leg pieces and unbuckled my chest plates with one hand, still holding my rifle. The others were doing the same. The chest plates dropped away and the laser rifle slipped from my back and bobbed to the surface like a cork. I grabbed the strap to the laser rifle and the flechette and held them in one hand, kicked off the ankle locks and pulled off my left hip pad. My right hip pad still had three loaded clips in a pocket. I tried keeping it on. I kicked toward the south bank, but my armor dragged in the water.
Perfecto swam to me holding a laser rifle in front of him like a life jacket and grabbed my arm and pulled.
"Hold onto my rifle a minute," I said, pushing the flechette into his hands, "I’ve got to get my ammunition." Perfecto took the weapon and I opened my leg pouch and pulled out my clips, wrapped them in my shirt.
Perfecto swam closer and grabbed my right arm, twisting it. He looked in my eyes and whispered, "Tell the others you are injured! Tell them you can’t go on! Don’t risk assaulting— the hill, Little Brother, or I will be forced to hurt you!
Perfecto’s eyes were dilated, spooky. He twisted my arm again and pain lanced through my shoulder. He was intent on protecting my life even if it meant wounding me.
I gasped. "All right!" I dropped the empty leg piece and kicked to shore slowly, conserving energy, protecting my injured arm. I was still very weak from my illness. The river flowed sluggishly and the water smelled brackish. Abriara got to shore first and sat for a long moment, studying the bushes along the riverbank ahead of us. Then she flipped on her targeting laser and aimed. A moment later a thin ray of smoke boiled up as paint burned off a well-camouflaged ANC pylon.
We swam up beside her. She was breathing heavily. "My fault," she said. "Garzón must have turned off into the brush. He knew this river would be riddled with ANCs and cybertanks up ahead."
"Sí" Perfecto said. "I saw the trail they left just before the ANC hit us, but you were looking up at the city. The trail is back here! But I think Angelo is hurt on his gun arm. I don’t think he can go on!" Perfecto helped pull me from the river.
Abriara studied me with obvious concern.
I rubbed my shoulder. "I’m all right," I offered.
Perfecto stared at me a moment with great sadness. His fists clenched and I thought he’d hit me, do anything to stop me from going forward. He took my flechette and said, "Follow me! I’ll take point."
He began limping upriver through the tangled brush. I didn’t like this. He was placing himself in jeopardy for me, offering his life the way that Lucío had done for me.
We soon found the trail that the others had blazed. Plasma had rained through the forest as they forged ahead, knocking out puff mines.
The ground was burned and scarred, the foliage annihilated. Just inside the brush line a dozen hovercrafts were down, blown to scrap by an ANC. Broken bodies littered the trail, but the tangled foliage was so amazingly thick that you never noticed a corpse until you had to stumble over it.
Perfecto walked fifty yards ahead of Mavro. Abriara and I followed at fifty-yard intervals behind.
We scavenged the broken bodies of our comrades, piecing together armor as best we could. Neither Mavro nor I could find helmets that would seal, and I soon gave up. We were only five kilometers from the front.
Every dozen meters we’d cross a pit where a puff mine had blown, and twenty times we found downed hovercrafts, empty of occupants. A dozen black cybertanks lay scattered by the wayside, and I am sure that for every one I saw, four more must have been hidden in the jungle, for I often saw gaping holes in the foliage scarred by intense gunfire.
The sound of gunfire raged in the distance. All of us remained quiet. We concentrated on our tasks—watching the ground before us, studying the foliage for any signs of movement.
Perfecto shouted for us to halt and stood staring ahead. There had been an empty stretch with no sign of puff mines. The Yabajin had chosen to cover the perimeter thoroughly at a certain distance rather than spread the mines out and hope to surprise us, so when we’d gone ten meters without seeing any sign of a mine, it felt like something was wrong.
Perfecto reached down and scooped up a hand of dirt.
He tossed it ahead. A mine exploded under the impact.
Perfecto shouted, a smile in our voice. "It was nice of our compadres to sweep this area so well—very few mines, no weasels."
I looked to Mavro. Sweat was streaming down his forehead and his eyes were blank. The sweat of mugga, of perfect concentration, was upon him.
We exited the jungle at the base of a hill. Rifles still crackled ahead and I could make out the small shapes of men in green bug suits scaling the slope.
Like ants they streamed through a gap blown into a high wall, and on into the city. I was surprised to find myself so close the battlefront. Five black cybertanks lurched out of the jungle, washing the hill with fire. Men with lasers sprawled before them, frying off sensors on attacking tanks.
One tank lurched up a steep incline too swiftly, then flipped on its back. Another putted out of the jungle and spread deadly laser fire, cutting down twenty men in less than a second.
On this vast battlefield lay hundreds of our dead. A great light exploded from town and streamers shot into the air like fireworks, a thousand of them branching at once.
Perfecto shouted, "A tree of death!"
As each streamer neared ground it exploded, sending shrapnel in every direction. Men fell by the hundreds. The Yabajin had upgraded their defenses, and we had no Colombians inside the city to fight for us.
We began to run for our lives, racing to the base of the hill, which was covered in rice paddies, hoping to cross the open ground before another tree of death exploded.
We were still a hundred kilometers from the wall when Perfecto looked to the left. He ducked.
A piercing whine filled the air as five weasels—missiles the length of my arm—sped from the brush to the north. Perfecto let loose with several shots in rapid succession, blowing them apart. But the final weasel exploded only meters from his chest.
Shrapnel plowed into him, demolishing his armor in a shower of green fibers.
He shouted in surprise and staggered, his chest an open wound, and fell.
I rushed to him. He gasped, and air bubbles rose from holes in his lungs. Mavro stooped and grabbed the flechette from Perfecto’s hand, and stood guard over him, watching for more weasels.
"Did you notice," Perfecto said through his helmet, and the feedback made his voice sound like the growling of a dog, "something strange? No mosquitoes. In this whole big jungle, there are no mosquitoes!"
He reached up, pawed my face as if in a caress, then fell back and died.
Uphill people were shrieking, Yabajin yelping and dying in the streets of Hotoke no Za to the explosions of our guns. I looked up and the sun was climbing bitter yellow in the sky.
A terrible wrath filled me. The Yabajin had taken away my friend. I wanted to rush uphill and lay it bare, but I looked down at the mess in Perfecto’s chest and knew I couldn’t leave him, couldn’t bear his nonexistence.
He had given me his life. And I hoped to give it back.
I looked at my hands. They held only a gun. I should have had my medical bag. I studied his wounds. I needed only a pulmonary bag to plug the hole in his lungs, a liter of artificial blood, a resin bandage to cover his ch
est, and a slave to keep his heart beating.
That is all it would have taken to keep him alive. I could have saved him if I’d had my medical bag. I pulled out my machete and slit the foam insulation on the barrel of my laser around the frozen tubes that held the nitrogen coolant, then cut the pinky finger from Perfecto’s left hand and shoved it near the nitrogen tubes.
I slit off a shred of his bloody kimono and wrapped the barrel of the laser rifle, hoping it would. insulate the specimen of Perfecto’s flesh, keep it from spoiling.
"Ah, look at the doctor," Mavro said, glancing back at me. The sweat of mugga was on his face and he watched the ground. "The old man is turning into a: ghoul."
I made no comment. I’m sure he understood what I was doing, but in the ghettos of Cartagena no one took tissue samples of the dead for cloning. In a world teeming with people waiting to be born, each with something unique to add to the gene pool, cloning can only be justified for those whose genetic makeup can be classified as an "irreplaceable treasure."
Few people are genetically worthy of the honor. Perfecto and the other chimeras were perhaps the only people I’d ever met whom I considered worthy to be cloned.
Abriara’s voice was husky. "You’re going to make a copy of him, aren’t you? I think that’s wonderful of you. I love you for that. "
"Fine," I said, and looked uphill. I remembered Perfecto’s words from the first time we’d met: You and I will both die on Baker. His prophecy was becoming fulfilled. He was dead, and I could feel myself dying to compassion, dying to joy, dying to hope.
When all those things are gone, nothing of value is really left.
We were at the bottom of the rice paddies and above us on the plateaus were banana fields. A few hovercrafts had overturned while trying to climb the steep slopes. I could see no sign of defenses. A few cybertanks were putting uphill on our flanks, far away. There may have been more weasels, but most had been taken out by those who went before us. Half a dozen ANC turrets were smoking on the cliffs at the base of the city. There was nothing to stop us from entering Hotoke no Za. The Yabajin wouldn’t have mined the banana fields.
I jumped up and shouted.
I slogged through the fields toward the city, and Abriara shouted, "Wait! It’s still dangerous." She rushed to take a place in front of me.
Mavro’s eyes glinted dangerously. The sun shone brilliantly on the tattoos of his pale blue tears, making them look as if they were etched in light.
I pumped my legs and slogged through rice paddies and tried to be the first of our trio to make it into the city. But Abriara was stronger and quicker than me, and Mavro seemed to just dance through mounds of mud that held me fast.
I stripped off my armor as I ran, not willing any longer to be encumbered by it.
We left the paddies and it was an easy race through some fields. The hill only rose half a kilometer, but the climb was steep. We mounted the hilltop and rushed through the breach, entering Hotoke no Za.
Dead bodies lay everywhere; the sound of flechette fire suddenly became a roar. Abriara directed us to run between two houses, giant igloos cut of pale yellow stone, and there were three Yabajin samurai in red bug suits lying dead on the ground between the houses.
I did not want to ruin my tissue sample, so I slung my laser over my back and took the rifle from a dead Yabajin. Down below us the city stretched two kilometers in a narrow and orderly band, down to the sea, and the city was a wreck: a long black furrow had been raised through the center of town by the crash of an air vehicle, and whole buildings were leveled because of this terrible wreck.
Only a shuttle crashing at high speeds could have wrought such devastation, I realized. A hundred of our hovercrafts wove through the streets, spraying death from plasma turrets, jagged knives of steel from the flechettes. The view was obscured by great clouds of smoke.
We crossed a street, running for our front down by the ocean shore, and there were Yabajin everywhere—little old Yabajin men in white kimonos with skins of leopard spots gutted by flechettes, little old ladies with green tiger stripes scorched by lasers, a toddler with his head bashed in. I saw only one dead mercenary in the city streets. We rushed toward a wall of smoke, and the smoke dyed the whole landscape in shades of old-lace yellow.
I felt the wind on my body, and the sun shined in my face, and heard the booming of our guns nearby, and I was wild with glee.
This is the way it should be, I thought. Fighting without armor. Fighting when every part of you feels alive. This is the way it should be.
Everywhere the houses and buildings were of the same dome design; now and then some large building would sprout buttresses like unwieldy arms. Smoke rose from many domes, and some Yabajin lay in the doorways, their charred remains attesting to the popularity of self-immolation as the preferred form of seppuku.
Make it painful, ladies, I thought. Make it painful.
We scurried up the street where the sounds of battle were particularly fierce, but the strange acoustics of the city played tricks on us. Always the sounds of battle seemed just ahead, just ahead, just a few meters ahead.
A laser flashed platinum in the air before me. I dodged and rolled and shouted with glee. We were only a kilometer from the sea. I jumped up and looked at my attacker—a compadre in a green bug suit who shrugged in apology. Yet I knew I’d reached the outskirts of the battle. There were many large buildings here, domes in earth shades. I was in a business district.
I heard cries directly ahead, the mewling shriek of a woman in pain, and I rushed under a buttress and through a cloud of smoke. Ahead, Mavro was firing his flechette into a dome. I heard a startled cry to my right, checked the doorway. Smoke was pouring out the doorway, and I could see nothing. I fired once, lancing my beam through the doorway at waist height. Someone shrieked and fell.
I turned. Abriara was watching the street, her pulse laser at ready. Mavro dodged into his dome, still firing. Downhill our men advanced; the dead Yabajin were stacked so thick that in places one would almost have to wade through the corpses. The Yabajin seemed to have no defenses, no three thousand Samurai. They seemed not to have been prepared for us at all!
I couldn’t understand this. I saw three domes downhill explode and collapse as one. The Yabajin were blowing their city.
I was too far behind the others. I was too far behind.
There were no living targets before me. I had to rush forward to find my targets. None of the Yabajin were wearing armor. I fumbled with the burst regulator on my laser, turning it off.
I ran past Abriara and past the building Mavro had entered. Abriara shouted and gave chase.
I raced down the streets past a dozen compadres in green armor who were methodically assaulting two burnt-out businesses, as if the Yabajin would be hiding in there, past a hovercraft full of mercenaries that were firing plasma in an arc so it would rain down on the city half a kilometer away.
I sprinted two blocks, running over the pavement, scraping the skin off my bare feet. Three youths in yellow skinsuits rushed from a building and I strafed them across the back and turned to see where my compadres were.
Suddenly I realized that none of my compadres were before me—I’d reached our front lines alone, with plasma raining in the streets before me.
I could kill all of the Yabajin.
I shouted and looked uphill; suddenly a Yabajin woman ran out the doorway of a dome. She wore a light-blue skinsuit, the color an executive might wear, and her skin was pale yellow with red flowering dots, deep blue under the eyes.
Her epicanthic folds were greatly exaggerated and her dark hair was pulled back. She lowered her eyes and looked down at a laser rifle in her hands. She was fumbling with it, trying to get the safety off and point it at me.
I pulled up my laser and raked silver fire across her rib cage. She opened her mouth in surprise and stared at me, and she knew she was dead.
She fainted, kicking backward as if to get out of my way, sprawling on the street.
In that moment I felt a tinge of vertigo. My heart hammered and I achieved Instantaneity.
She was falling—eyes rolling back for the last time, tossing her rifle in the air in fright. The smoke was blowing up the streets, twisting around the domes as it felt its way up the hill. The sky was nearly free of oparu no tako, washed clean by thunderstorms and. buffeting wind. I could make out only a single yellow-green strand of them, flowing through the heavens; and across the morning horizon were millions upon millions of individual oparu no tako, flashing golden and white in the sunlight, like bits of mica. And nothing else was alien.
The orchids on the tiny lawns, the squat palms and giant ferns in the yards—I’d seen them all my life. The domes, like women’s breasts jutting in the air, were simple houses. And the dying woman, falling to the ground with a grimace on her face and her pale yellow skin with rose-colored blotches, she was a simple woman, not unlike a million women I’d seen. And somehow she fit with the landscape.
It was as if the smoke rolling up these streets, the curling about the earth-toned huts, the sky glittering with golden mica, the woman with golden skin and rose highlights—they were all part of a giant canvas, a perfectly conceived landscape painted by a master artist. I felt what can only be described as a sense of convergence. This woman, this planet, was nothing like Earth. Yet I suddenly felt able to accept the differences. I became part of Baker.
This Yabajin I’d just fried was a person who loved, who felt concern for people I knew nothing about. She was not Yabajin. She was human. She was human not because of her similarities to me, but in spite of her differences from me.
I looked around, startled by the realization, and saw that everything was strange, stranger than I had imagined. Yet everything belonged.
I wasn’t in Panamá anymore. I looked up the streets, along the hills. My compadres were running among the Yabajin, firing into them.
The Yabajin weren’t putting up much resistance. There were not three thousand samurai as we’d been warned. Their zeppelins may never have landed more than a few hundred to defend the city. All of the defenders appeared to be dead.
On My Way to Paradise Page 48
