On My Way to Paradise

by David Farland

  We followed a path in the weight room, moving from machine to machine. Three big men in front of us discussed with great excitement the possibility of increasing their salaries by increasing rank. We had signed on as heitai, foot soldiers, but that if we advanced to the level of samurai we would be paid three times as much. It gave them something to dream about.

  After two hours of weightlifting my muscles were knotted. I was in a hurry to get to my medical bag to take some N-relaxin to stop the cramping and some Deraprim to lower the uric acid levels so my muscles wouldn’t ache.

  We headed for the door, Mavro in the lead. Mavro wound his way among the benches, always stepping slightly to the right, not heading in a straight line. Ahead of us was the combat team led by Lucío, the chimera with the long hair who had spoken so rudely.

  Lucío had his back turned. He was sitting up, doing cable pulls. The cable pull exercise consists of sitting with your back straight against a pillar, while in either hand you held a handle. The handles are each attached to cables that run into the press, and by twisting the dial on top of the machine you can increase the tension of the cables up to 500 kilograms.

  Everyone in Lucío’s group was tired, and none of them noticed us coming. Mavro attacked without warning.

  He grabbed a cable and wrapped it around the Lucío’s neck, then flipped the handle so the cable twisted around itself like a noose. At the same time, he set the tension dial on full power, so the cable abruptly reeled the little chimera to the top of the post and began strangling him. His arms flailed and his feet kicked as he tried to catch his footing, yet the whole process happened in amazing silence, as if I was dreaming and only saw what happened without hearing it.

  I was in shock. Mavro was avenging his honor, but to me this seemed like madness. Yet I knew that among young gang members in the ghettoes, a small offense often was avenged in blood. Men who have nothing—no money, no station, no beauty—will place an incredible price upon their own honor.

  Mavro chuckled and we all started to hurry from the room, past the other weightlifters. One big man with only one ear jumped up from a weight machine and rushed to Lucío’s rescue. Perfecto hesitated just long enough to shove One-Ear backward over a bench. One-Ear shouted as he fell, and everyone in the room turned to see what happened as we rushed out.

  We hurried up the ladders for two levels, then ran down a hall, like a bunch of children who’d just broken a window and were afraid of getting caught.

  I kept expecting that at any minute Lucío’s compadres would rush up behind us. I had not been awake for more than half a day, and already Abriara had turned the Japanese against us while Mavro and Perfecto seemed intent on making all the enemies possible. At this rate we’d never make it to Baker alive.

  When we’d run far enough, we stopped, out of breath. I stood up and rubbed my swollen ankle while everyone else sat down in the hall to laugh.

  "What are you laughing about?" I shouted.

  "Did you not see the expressions on their faces?" Mavro said. "When that motor started strangling the little one, I thought he was going to cry!"

  "You could have killed him!" I shouted. "You could have broken his neck!"

  "No. I don’t think so," Abriara said. "The cable didn’t tighten fast enough."

  "Now they’ll want vengeance!" I said. "Don’t you see? We’ve been here less than a day, and you’ve started a vendetta!" The more I spoke the higher my voice got.

  "No," Mavro smiled, pulling a cigar from his pocket and lighting it. It was against the ship’s rules to smoke, but Mavro didn’t give a damn about rules. "It was not us who started it. They started it when they attacked our honor."

  "To hell with honor!" I said. "Don’t you see? People can’t live that way!"

  Mavro worked his mouth in amazement and seemed very agitated. His hands shook and he began looking for a place to set his cigar on the floor, as if he would fight me. "To hell with honor?" he demanded.

  Perfecto and Abriara exchanged glances and shrugged.

  Zavala appeared unsure about what was going on. "Ah, I see. A joke!" he said. He laughed experimentally to see if I’d smile.

  "I mean it," I said, "To hell with honor! So what if they make jokes and call us names. If you make enemies of every person on this ship, someone will put a dagger in your back once you’re on Baker. How would you like to go into battle without their support? Even if you hate them and consider them enemies, you must treat them kindly. It seems to me ... It seems to me that the ability to show compassion toward one’s enemies is what makes one human!"

  Mavro stared at me strangely, then smiled, "And all this time I thought it was only opposing thumbs and the ability to communicate that separated us from the animals!" Everyone laughed. Mavro arched his eyebrows as if a great thought had struck him. He blurted, "But, ah, yes—I see what you mean! Show compassion to your enemies. Like when you gave anesthesia to Hustanifad before you slit his throat!"

  Everyone laughed and Zavala said in wonder, "Did he do that? Did he really do that?"

  Part of me inside said, "Yes, yes!" and I saw how true his words were and terrible sense of guilt washed over me. Had I really anesthetized Arish as an act of compassion before murdering him? Certainly, it seemed I had done so subconsciously, and I was hopelessly mixed up. I felt disoriented, and once again it struck me that I no longer knew who I was. I began breathing heavily and coughing, becoming hysterical. I wanted to explain to them how it had been. To tell them that somewhere, somehow I had lost my mind. I was crazy and therefore not responsible. I buried my head in my hands.

  Everyone quieted and Perfecto got up and wrapped a huge arm around me. "I’m sorry, don Angelo," he said. "We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings." He turned to the group. "Did we?"

  "No," Mavro said as if the idea of hurting my feelings were unthinkable. "It was nothing. I was just joking. I’m terribly sorry."

  "I think don Angelo makes sense, no?" Perfecto said. "We should be making friends instead of enemies. Building instead of tearing down. Is that what you mean?" It was plain from his tone of that he didn’t understand. He was trying to please me, and any sense of victory I’d have felt by convincing him of my argument was cheapened by the knowledge that he agreed because of his genetic programming. He had no choice in the matter.

  "Sí," I said, wiping my eyes.

  Mavro drew a deep puff on his cigar. His gaze held an appearance of thoughtfulness. "Perhaps you are right ... . You certainly bring up a good argument. There would be many advantages to having a ship full of allies. I had not considered the political consequences of this scenario before I acted. The loyalty of others on the ship would be most useful ... both for survival and for gaining promotions ..."

  I wondered if he was trying to humor me, but as I watched I could almost see gears in his mind turn as he considered ways of winning the loyalty of others on ship. I’m sure he envisioned a vast network of friends, all eager to die at his whim, sacrificing themselves to save his life. He obviously craved power, yet had no avenue to gain it. Because of his small size, he could not compete with the chimeras. On ship he’d never be the strong man everyone admires.

  "You’re right," Mavro said. "It does make sense. Maybe I like the idea."

  "You’re not serious!" Abriara said. "What can we gain?"

  "Friends," Mavro said.

  "Peace," I said. "If everyone would live that way, we could have peace."

  Abriara shook her head in disbelief. "It won’t work—not with us chimeras. You’re talking a bunch of idealistic crap. People respect the strong and the brave, not politicians. Besides, we’re committed to a vendetta with that punk Lucío. We can’t stop it! He won’t accept an apology!"

  "Why not?" I asked

  Abriara didn’t answer. Perfecto said, "She’s right."

  "Why?" I said.

  Perfecto tilted his head to the side and shrugged. "I cannot explain it. It is an emotional thing. I just know by instinct that Lucío cannot let the matter rest
. He is younger than me, younger than Abriara even, and therefore the engineers made him less human. He is chimera. We have assaulted him. His anger cannot be washed away except by blood. He will initiate a Quest."

  "A Quest?" I asked, never having heard the term.

  "Sí. He will not be satisfied with killing us. He will also want to mutilate us. A man who is on a Quest seeks more than revenge."

  Mavro drew a puff on his cigar. "Really? How interesting ...” he said. "Still, Angelo’s plan will work if others don’t realize what we’re doing. Angelo isn’t so much saying ‘To hell with honor,’ as he is saying that honor should take second place to wisdom. No? So I think we can have it both ways. We should become political animals for a while. We should be as friendly as puppies and see what it gets us. And at the same time we can keep lists of all the people we don’t like. Then, if our plan doesn’t work, we kill them.

  "Even Lucío might come to his senses if we pay him off with a bottle of whiskey."

  I was amazed that none of them took the situation seriously. They all nodded agreement with Mavro as if he were some great sage dispensing wisdom.

  We spent the afternoon doing visualization exercises, practicing targeting skills in our minds, as Kaigo had ordered. By evening the swelling in my leg had eased, so we marched, performing the one useless exercise we could still do freely on ship. I remember in Guatemala, it was holes. I dug thousands of holes in the Army. Fortunately there was no place to dig on ship. But we could march in the halls, so we marched. The ship was accelerating at 1G, but Abriara informed us that within two weeks we’d slowly increase acceleration till we hit 1.45Gs, the maximum legal acceleration. This meant each of us would feel as if he were carrying an extra 25-50 kilos, so when we marched we would have an added blessing—we wouldn’t have to carry packs.

  That night, a little Brazi woman came to our room. She was the first non-chimera woman I’d seen on board. She asked, "Did anyone you know die today—in the simulators?"

  "Sí," Abriara said. "We all got killed."

  "No, I mean die for real. Some people really got killed from the simulations. So far, I’ve heard of six deaths."

  I knew what she meant. I knew a man in Panamá who often hunted monkeys in the jungles south of Gatún. Each week or so he would bring in a monkey he’d shot at but missed. However, the monkey would fall from the tree as if mortally wounded because his system could not withstand the terror of the attack. In the same way, those six men died in the simulators.

  We were all made uneasy by the news.

  "I hear it is nothing to stay alarmed about," the Brazi said, putting on a brighter face. "Those who are liable to succumb to such things will all die off by tomorrow."

  "That is very comforting," Mavro said.

  "Also, I should tell you: no one beat the samurai in the simulators this morning. So me and some friends thought it might be a good idea to start a collection for the first winners. Everyone is putting in five IMUs per day. Do you want to bet?"

  I figured quickly in my head. With 10,000 mercenaries on board, that would be a minimum of 10,000 IMUs for each person on the team that won. We eagerly presented our credit disks to the Brazi.

  She said, "Also, to make things fair, I must tell you that some people have found that the plasma guns can be defeated if you are not hit at close range. When the metallic gases hit the armor they begin to cool and turn liquid. If you fall on the side where you took your hit, you can sometimes keep the plasma from eating your armor. We saw some of the samurai perform this trick in the simulator."

  I thought about it. Our battle armor is a layered ablative ceramic cast under pressure so that it is riddled with tiny pockets of liquid nitrogen. Not only does this liquid nitrogen keep the armor cool and cut down on our infrared signature, but as the armor heats and becomes molten, the liquid nitrogen explodes into gas, spewing the molten armor away, as if our battle armor were reactive armor blasting against a projectile. It only made sense that if we lay down after taking a hit, the molten material would be spewed away while the successive layers of the armor would remain cool. This knowledge would be of great help in battle. We thanked the Brazi, and she left.

  Then we prepared for battle. Abriara set us down and said, "I’ve been thinking about how we can beat these monkeys. Did anyone notice if they have the same kind of hovercraft as we do?"

  "Sí, it is exactly the same," Perfecto said.

  "Good!" Abriara said. "Then it’s safe to bet they can’t outrun us." She turned to Zavala. "Which means, Zavala, that you keep us going full-speed at all times. Understand? We don’t have to guard our rear if they can’t catch us. So Mavro, you to flip your turret around and face forward. Always keep all guns aiming forward. We don’t need to worry about our rear. We’ll need to practice crab walks and falling forward so we can beat the plasma guns."

  Abriara continued, "Angelo, remember what Kaigo said. Keep low to present less of a target, and keep your knees flexed so you can counteract the motion of the craft. Remember, you’ll only get one shot with that laser before the turrets take you out—so you must make that shot count. When teflex battle armor was first introduced, troops around the world suddenly decreased their accuracy in shooting because they thought they could afford to be sloppy—but you must learn to shoot. The same goes for turret gunners. If we’re following a curve along the edge of those coralwood trees and the warning siren sounds, start firing plasma ahead immediately so the Yabajin run into it.

  "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.