On My Way to Paradise (21 page)

"You know, on Earth it’s illegal to train a person in
a simulator like this. It’s considered inhuman. But Motoki doesn’t
give a damn about us. This is Pavlov. Reward and punishment. These
people want us to be fast, and deadly. And Zavala, they don’t give
a damn if your arm was burned off from the rot and the pain of the
simulations reminds you of it. Understand?"

We sat on the floor in the little squares Perfecto
had marked off as individual territories, and the others
passionately discussed ways to fry the samurai the next day. At
first I got excited too, until I remembered we were only practicing
genocide. The thought sickened me. Always I had been a doctor.
Always I had helped others, had been concerned about others. I had
always been concerned about things greater than myself. Yet now I
found myself concerned with nothing greater than self-preservation,
and I felt small and ugly. I did not know who I was anymore. I
asked Abriara for General Garzón’s comlink number.

I stepped into the hall, thumbed the subdural call
button on my comlink, spoke the numbers, and the general
answered.

"Who is speaking?" he said. He sounded weary.

"General Garzón, it’s me, Angelo Osic."

He sighed, "How can I help you, Señor Osic?"

"I called to ask for a transfer into a medical
unit."

"Ah, you and a hundred other people. I’ll tell you
what I told everyone else: You signed a contract with Motoki
Corporation, not with me, and Motoki will hold you to that
contract. They have all the medical personnel they need. What they
really need is people with mercenary spirit—people like
yourself—people whose veins run strong with the blood of the
conquistadores."

"But ... I don’t think I will make a good
mercenary."

Garzón seemed impatient. "You never know what will
happen. The information we have on Baker is 20 years out of date.
By the time we get there, another 20 years real-time will have
passed: the Yabajin may be dead, or Motoki may be destroyed, or
maybe both nations will have settled their differences. There is a
strong chance you won’t have to fight this war."

I didn’t say anything.

"Try it for a month or two," Garzón said. "Many
people find the mercenary life-style rewarding—the joy of battle,
the thrill of victory. Perhaps you’ll be one of them. You did a
good job on Arish. It was a clean kill, and you got to look death
in the face. You can stick this out."

"I don’t think so," I said. I waited a moment.

"Is there something else?" Garzón asked.

"Tamara. How is Tamara?"

"That subject is classified. Don’t ask about it in
the future!" he said. Then, more softly, "don’t get your hopes up.
There have been no changes in the situation. You didn’t bring us
much to begin with." Garzón disconnected.

I stood in the hall and considered: Tamara was no
better, and would not likely recover. A dozen samurai came up the
ladder, laughing and talking to one another. Master Kaigo passed,
staring straight ahead as if he didn’t see me. I bowed and said
"Hello, Master." He glanced at me, disconcerted; nodded
embarrassedly in return; and walked on to his room several doors
down the hall. Apparently it had been a breach of etiquette for me
to speak to him outside the classroom.

In the bedroom everyone was preparing for the
morning’s battle. Zavala broke away from the group during a lull
and came to my bunk. "Señor Osic," he said. "I had hoped you would
give me some of those antibiotics you told me about." He spoke to
me formally, phrasing his verbs in third-person, and this seemed
strange, since we’d been through so much together that day.

I knew he wasn’t suffering from the rot and didn’t
need any antibiotics; his symptoms were only psychological, but I
felt sorry for him. Since my youth I have never been able to walk
into a house where a person keeps a dog without suffering from flea
bites. Logically I know it’s impossible for all dogs to have fleas,
yet my ankles and back and arms turn red and begin itching as soon
as I spot a dog in a house. Zavala suffered with similar
symptoms.

"Let me see your arms, Amigo," I asked informally. I
checked them thoroughly. There was no whiteness or flaking in the
skin, no boils. I said, "I don’t see any sign of illness, and those
antibiotics are very potent. They will give you bad diarrhea and
stomach aches. Perhaps we should hold off for a few days."

"Are you sure?" Zavala asked. "Germs are very small,
and often hard to see!"

This was something a peasant would say, and it
surprised me immensely. Most cyborgs I’ve known have been very
erudite and sophisticated. It takes a great deal of money to buy
limbs such as those Zavala owned.

"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.

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 lectures 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.