Abriara said, "Angelo, your doubts might have dramatic consequences in this situation. Think of Perfecto—he follows you blindly. If he senses your uncertainty, he may hesitate to act in a crucial moment. You must not show doubt! That would not only be stupid, it would be dangerous. We need to strike first. To hell with Kaigo’s orders—we must strike!"
I tried to make sense of this mess. I didn’t agree with her, but arguments for restraint wouldn’t mesh with my previous actions. I’d sliced up Lucío, but Abriara was asking me to commit murder. It seemed too cold-blooded. Abriara saw my frustration, my unwillingness to follow her plan.
"On the first day you got here I asked you to speak to Perfecto for me so I could hope for his obedience. You haven’t done it. Within hours you spoke against a vendetta against Lucío. Now you see where your actions have taken us? You never spoke to Perfecto for me, did you?"
"No," I said. "The time never seemed right."
She waved her hand as if to dismiss it, and sat down beside me. "I don’t blame you. Such words must come from the heart. You’re too old to indiscriminately follow me.
"But, Angelo, I need your full support in this."
I nodded. I tried to say I’d support her. Yet the words stuck in my throat.
Abriara shook her head and left off the argument. "Angelo," she said softly, "I’ve never loved a man. I’ve never given myself to a man. But I have been raped by men three times. The first time was when I was nine years old. I was outside the genetic engineering compound in Temuco. An old man caught me and choked me, forced his penis into my mouth. It was at a time when the public was raising an outcry about Torres creating true nonhumans instead of upgrading regular people. This old man knew I was a chimera and was therefore not protected by the laws that protect human girls. I went to the police and they insisted on seeing my genome before deciding whether to prosecute. They saw my genome, and I’ve always thought I must be a true chimera, for the man was never brought to justice." She stopped and breathed heavily. I knew she was seeking to convince me to fight by use of an emotional argument. It was a blatant attempt at manipulation.
"The second time I was raped was four years ago: After the war in Chile, I tried to do something useful with my life. I got a job screening software for teaching programs in Peru. One day I was walking down the street where some young men were playing baseball. As I walked past the batter, he swung the bat and hit me in the head. I still bear the scars—" she pulled her hair back, showing me an ugly scar at hairline above her left ear.
"They tied me to a table in an abandoned shack for three days. They came many times to rape me. Sometimes they brought friends.
"I broke free in the middle of the afternoon on the fourth day and went to the police. They did nothing. They promised to do nothing—for I was a chimera in Peru, and in some ways it was worse than being chimera in Chile. I knew the young men would come back for me in the evening, so I returned to the shack with a hatchet and waited.
"When they returned, I killed them. I delivered their penises to the desk of the police chief, and then spent four years at the women’s correctional facility in Cajamarca."
She hesitated a moment. "The third time I was raped was today, in the simulator. And though it wasn’t real, it hurt as much as the first two times—perhaps more, because it brought back all the memories of the first two attacks—all the frustration, all the rage, all the hate.
"But this time was different—because for once, someone did something. You slashed Lucío’s face open, and for that I thank you." She smiled at me. "You win: If you do not want to initiate an attack, we will simply arm ourselves and be very cautious, okay? I will ask nothing more of you."
She leaned forward and lightly kissed my temple, as if kissing a friend, a kiss of simple gratitude, then she got up and walked away.
She’d surprised me. I’d thought she’d try to manipulate me into fighting, to plead with me to avenge her. She had that right. Perhaps more than anyone I’d ever met, she had the right to a little justice. She hadn’t realized I was still undecided as to my course of action. She’d given up too easily. If she’d demanded that I join a Quest to kill Lucío, I’d have refused. But Abriara had been more persuasive than she knew.
I thought of Lucío’s words: "I will kill you and fuck your woman," and I knew he would carry it through if he could. I decided to do my best to send Lucío and his men to hell if they caused us any heartache, then got up and walked to my room.
García came to visit us moments later. He was very pale and shaken, and he fidgeted with his hands more than normal. He’d come to pay Zavala a million pesos and seemed eager to be done with it. He watched nervously as Mavro sharpened a wooden knife.
García said, "I hope you’re still not thinking of starting a fight with the samurai!"
Mavro said, "I don’t want to fight one so much as just put a hole in one!"
García licked his lips and said, "A few minutes ago Emilio Vasquez wanted to celebrate our victories in South America, and didn’t report to the simulators. A samurai came to the room and ordered him to practice, and Emilio and another man attacked the samurai. I saw the whole thing! Emilio is one of the strongest men I know, and he tried to strangle the samurai, but the samurai broke his grip as if Emilio were a child, then he kicked Emilio’s friend in the head, crushing his skull, and strangled Emilio—and Emilio could not break the samurai’s grip! If you don’t believe me, go down and see Emilio’s head yourself! It’s hung from a hook in the ceiling by the ladder to level six!
"If I wanted proof that the samurai are as strong and quick as they seem in the simulators, I got all the proof I need!"
García transferred a million pesos to Zavala’s account, then paid me 200,000 IMUs for my antibiotics and left quickly.
Zavala came and stood beside me and patted my back. "I’m sorry I had to take your drugs from you this way. I would have preferred to have you give them to me as a friend. At least now you see the truth: the samurai beat us by the power of the spirit. Yet I am glad we learned the truth, for there are spells that can weaken the spirit of an enemy."
Mavro laughed, "Good idea! You cast some spells while I sharpen a knife!"
I looked into Zavala’s eyes. His round face and thin lips would normally give him the look of a stupid youth, but he had a determined gleam in his eye.
I got my medical bag and looked through the antibiotics. I keep my drugs in plastic containers that look like small suitcases. Each thin suitcase can carry a few grams each of several thousand medicines. I have a tiny machine that can then add individual dosages to base tablets for oral consumption or to a base liquid for injection. It allows me to keep a wide inventory in a small space. But as I sat staring at my plastic cases, each filled with hundreds of multicolored drug compartments, it didn’t seem right for me to give the antibiotics to Zavala, since I knew they’d only make him sick. I’d have healed him if I could, but there was nothing physically wrong with him.
I fumbled with my medications a while, and a brilliant thought struck me: Zavala had nothing physically wrong with him. He simply thought he was ill because in the simulator he experienced pain. But I could dim the pain with a neural pain blocker. The burning would go away and he’d think he was cured! I had several potent pain killers that didn’t have very bad side effects and I began making up tablets. Zavala rubbed his shoulder at the base of his prosthetic arm as if it burned and quickly swallowed the first pill.
Then he sat on the floor while the others went to bed. He peeled the paper from the back of a whiskey bottle and took Perfecto’s blue paint and began painting a picture of men in a hovercraft. He took great pains to get the details perfect. From time to time he’d chant in an Indian tongue as he painted, and I kept looking at him as I prepared the false medications. His eyes became glazed as he lost himself in a trance, and he sweated vigorously.
When I was finished making up the anesthetics, I got in bed and tried to sleep. Zavala’s continual chanting kept me
awake long into the night, until I began to think that in a war of spirit, perhaps Zavala would be a ferocious adversary.
Chapter 18
In my dream the sun setting over Lake Gatun threw orange-yellow light through my kitchen window to reflect against the far wall. A kitten meowed plaintively just outside the kitchen door in the bushes by the lake. I remembered the blue bowl on the porch. It should have been filled with milk. When had I last filled the kitten’s bowl? I could not remember. The task had slipped my mind. It had been weeks since I’d fed the kitten. It would be starving.
No doubt it can fend for itself, I thought.
There were plenty of insects, dead fish left by fishermen, small things a kitten could scavenge to keep alive.
The kitten meowed, its cries emanating from deep within the pit of its stomach, a yowl of pure hunger, and I opened the sliding glass door.
There on the porch lay a gray-and-white kitten so thin that I could easily discern the shape of every bone in its tail. Its hair was falling out, and its green eyes were filmed and sunken. It was nearly dead. It couldn’t even rouse itself to move. It just meowed from the pit of its belly in a last desperate effort to get food. And then I saw a hand in the grass, stretched out as if to grasp the kitten-a pale hand, emaciated, just beside the kitten, reaching out from behind a bush. I stepped forward and pulled a limb aside and looked in the bushes.
Flaco was stretched out on the grass, his eyeless skull staring skyward, a bit of rainwater pooled in his empty sockets. Impossibly thin. Starved.
"Grandfather!" the little girl spoke, startling me. She crouched just at my elbow. "Grandfather, you didn’t take care of them! You let them starve!"
And I realized that I’d forgotten to feed more than the kitten. I’d forgotten to feed my friends. My mouth yammered of its own accord, "I ... I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was supposed to tend them."
Chapter 19
I bolted upright. It was deep in the night, and Zavala hunched over his paintings, snoring lightly. My heart beat wildly, and I sweated. The dream disturbed me more than any nightmare I’d ever had. I tried to grasp its meaning, and went over each detail.
I focused on the little girl with the pale face and dark eyes who’d haunted so many of my dreams. Had she been someone I’d seen in the feria? The child of a neighbor? I pondered for a long time, and became certain she was a child from our neighborhood, a girl who’d lived down the street from my house in Panamá. I couldn’t imagine which house she’d lived in. Yet I must have seen her when I walked to the feria in the mornings.
As an experiment, I closed my eyes and tried to picture her, recall any memory I could dredge up. Almost immediately an image jumped into my mind. She stood before me holding the gray and white kitten, pressing it toward me so I could take it in my hands. "It’s wild, just a little," she said, "can you take care of it for me?"
The image seemed totally accurate, yet I knew I’d never seen that kitten until the day I’d come home to find Flaco and Tamara tossing a ball to it upon my roof. Obviously my dream had tainted the memory. Because I dreamt of the girl and the kitten in the same dream, my subconscious had linked the two together.
I drove the thought from mind and struggled to remember the child’ s name. It was on the tip of my tongue and I felt I had to but speak and it would come clear. My face perspired and my head felt it would burst. I struggled to recall. Her name seemed all-important.
"Tatiana," I said aloud in a flash of insight, and I knew that I’d spoken the right name. Her name had been Tatiana.
I felt elated, but the more I considered it, the more certain I was that I could remember nothing about her but a name.
You are a madman, I thought, yet I congratulated myself for having found a name for the imaginary companion of my dreams.
Early on the morning of the eleventh day, I was awakened by bodies moving in the darkness, the shushing of kimonos sliding over skin.
Zavala sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched over a piece of paper. His face was careworn, eyes glazed from lack of sleep and from the painkillers I’d provided. He chanted in little throaty croaks that rose and dipped in volume like the sound of wind gusting through dry grass.
Perfecto and Mavro stood ready by the door, tense, expecting an attack. Mavro was tying his obi, the belt to his kimono, holding a wooden dagger in his teeth. The knives were really only sharpened stakes, each about half a meter long, little good for cutting, but they’d suffice for stabbing. Abriara was dressing in the tiny bathroom. They all breathed in ragged gasps, which they released slowly. I found my own chest tightening with anticipation.
I slid off the cot and adjusted my kimono. I took my knife from my wrist sheath. I could feel my nostrils flaring as I breathed. "What’s going on?" I asked, stepping around Zavala.
"We could not sleep," Perfecto said. "So it is certain that Lucío’s men also could not sleep. They’ll be here soon."
"How do you know?’"
Mavro said, "I just called the duty nurse on comlink. "She says Lucío’s being checked by the doctor now. He’ll be leaving the infirmary in ten minutes."
The news surprised me more than I’d have expected. Until this moment, a fight with Lucío seemed only a possibility. Now it seemed imminent. My heart started pounding in a sudden attack of panic.
Abriara came out of the bathroom.
Zavala raised his painting so we could see it—Lucío and his men, each portrayed in intimate detail, like a painting done by an architect: Each man in the painting was stabbed with multiple wounds. Knives in the belly, knives in the throat, knives in the face.
Without removing his eyes from the paper, Zavala reached into the interior pocket of his kimono and pulled out Mavro’s lighter. His chanting rose in pitch and he held the paper in his right hand, his human hand, and set it afire. He let the flames lick and blister his fingers until the picture burned to ashes. While his fingers burned, his breathing quickened, but his hand didn’t shake, and he held the painting firmly until it became a single black ash with glow worms of fire curling through it. He reached up with his cymeched hand and crushed the ash.
"We should go quickly, " he said. "Fight while the spell is still strong." Then his eyes focused, and he jumped up. It took him only a moment to get a knife.
Perfecto ran into the bathroom and began filling the tiny toilet bowl with urine. Mavro stood next to the bathroom door, as if he’d waylay Perfecto when he emerged. I realized that I too had to urinate, so I got in line.
Abriara began making her bed. She did it quickly, with nervous energy. She spoke more to herself than to us. "As soon as you’re ready, I think we need to get down the hall, down to level two. They don’t have any business coming above that. Don’t give the mamónes any mercy. Cut them quick—as if you were slaughtering cattle and got paid by the head, then get out."
"Do you really think they’ll come?" Zavala said. He reached out and cracked the door open to peek down the hallway.
There was a flash of white and the tinkle of metal. A man in a white kimono who wore chains around his waist instead of an obi shouted, "A gift from the conquistadores!" and shoved a metal pipe through the open door. Zavala fell back with the pipe lodged in his belly. His attacker—a man named Samora-turned to run. Abriara leapt past me to give chase, and Samora swung a second pipe. Abriara tried to duck, but the pipe glanced against the back of her head and she dropped.
I lurched to help her, and Samora sprinted to the ladders before I made it out the door. I grabbed Abriara. Her eyes rolled back to show white.
"You’ll be all right," I said. "We’re with you."
Mavro started swearing. He pulled Zavala to his feet, and Zavala clutched the metal pipe with both hands. A little clear fluid mixed with blood was running from the end of the hollow pipe, as if it were a tap someone had neglected to turn off. Zavala’s face was drained, and he stared at the pipe in fascination.
Perfecto rushed from the bathroom.
"We’ve got to get
them to the infirmary!" Mavro said, and he started shoving Zavala out the door, toward the ladder, and Perfecto followed.
I looked down the hall. Lucío’s men would be waiting near the ladder, and as we tried to drop past their level, they’d attack us. I was certain. They’d stabbed Zavala simply to lead us into a trap. Otherwise, according to the code of the Quest, Lucío wouldn’t have been satisfied with just wounding Zavala—he’d have mutilated him. Perfecto and Mavro realized the precariousness of the situation at the same moment.
"Wait," Perfecto said, "I’ll get help!" He ran to the nearest door and pounded. A samurai opened it and spoke with him.
I whispered comforting words to Abriara and examined her face. She didn’t move her eyes when I spoke. Her pupils seemed dilated wide enough to drink in all the light that had ever shone. I became worried that she was seriously wounded. I turned her head to view her wound. There was a dark bruise on the back of her neck at the base of her skull, right above her cranial jack. The square platinum socket of the jack was caved-in on one side, and a speck of blood dripped from surrounding tissue. I inspected the jack, and found that her bypass grid was shoved forward. It’s a common problem: there’s a tiny floating grid inside the jack at the base of the skull, and when the jack is plugged into a computer terminal, that floating grid is pushed forward, triggering the bypass to the nerves that control sensory input. In this way, the computer can send its sensory input to the brain.
The blow to Abriara’s jack had jammed the grid forward, engaging her sensory bypass. Abriara was conscious, but she wasn’t receiving any input. She was deaf, blind, and virtually anesthetized. I put my finger in the bypass and wiggled it, trying to bend the jack so the grid would pop out.
Several samurai rushed up with Perfecto, grabbed Zavala, and carried him down the ladder with a great deal of fanfare and commotion. The hall soon filled with curious samurai, all in blue flowered kimonos, many with wet hair since they’d just left their communal baths.
On My Way to Paradise Page 25