On My Way to Paradise

by David Farland

  The hovercraft’s forward engine seemed damaged; it whined badly and the nose of the craft tilted in the air. There were eighteen small air-intake holes for the turbos around the sides of the hovercraft, and several air intakes had somehow taken plasma into them, ruining the blades.

  The air intakes are mounted at an angle so this won’t happen, but when plasma first comes from a turret it’s so hot it actually exists in gaseous form. In this form at close range the air intakes must make good targets. The hovercraft sucks in gaseous metal and ruins the props as the metal cools. The hovercraft’s body was heavily plated with teflex, more so than the old-model crafts.

  They had a dozen unfamiliar flashing lights on the instrument panel. When the two men had repaired their armor, they began shooting their plasma turrets in the air and they dumped their compadre into the water.

  I got up and asked a gambler, a chimera with metallic blue eyes who was unusually tall, "What are they doing?"

  He looked at me as if I were an idiot, with a contempt I’d only seen in the eyes of the samurai, and I wondered just how much my people really had learned from the samurai.

  He saw my white kimono and his expression quickly turned to one of pity. "You just got thawed, no? Well, I’ll tell you, sir: they’re gearing up for the puff mines, emptying their turrets of ammunition so they won’t be carrying extra weight. If you keep these new hovercrafts light, you can reach an altitude of three meters. At top speed you can pass over most puff mines without detonating them."

  "Ah," I said, feeling like a fool. I had no idea how much weight they might need to unload, never having floated over a puff mine before. "Won’t they need some ammunition in the plasma turrets to continue the assault after passing through the mine fields?"

  He gave me a sad look. "No, they can try to use lasers to fry off the sensors on the ANCs and cybertanks. Once they get through to Hotoke no Za, they’ll be overwhelmed by the Yabajin. Watch them, and you might learn enough ..."

  He didn’t need to say the rest. I might learn enough to stay alive. He believed that I was a dead man. The weapons I’d practiced with had been upgraded over the past forty years, and I was unfamiliar with the new models. I had no idea what skills or strategies I’d need to get past these defenses. I’d seen the little black weasel missiles, but didn’t know how to defend myself from them. As Zavala had said, I’d only be excess baggage in this war.

  I nodded toward the men in the simulator who suddenly lurched off through the trees in their hovercraft. "Those men, no one fought like them in the simulators. No one."

  "We’ve learned much," the chimera said. "You were frozen before training really began. You did not spend time studying your own individual kinesthetics through the holographs, learning not to waste a move, learning the spins and throws and drops necessary to defeat the weapons of the Yabajin. You were still studying how to achieve munen, the state of no mind, the state of the living corpse. You did not progress into the higher mental states necessary for battle—Instantaneity or Perfect Control. The great genius of the samurai comes from their knowledge of these states of being—"

  "Pardon me, but what do you mean by Instantaneity?" The chimera looked at me thoughtfully. "Perhaps you have had a moment in your life, a moment of great fear when your life was in jeopardy, and time seemed to stop. I once lived such a moment. In an alley in Temuco during the riots a human came and put an ancient revolver in my face and pulled the trigger. The hammer was cocked, and when he pulled the trigger it began to fall. Time seemed to stop. A car passed on the street before me, and a woman was looking out the window and watching. I remember her face perfectly, her ruby lips shaped in a circle of surprise. I saw the steam rising from a sewer grate across the street, and a man in a store there was turning out the lights. I looked into the frightened eyes of the young man who planned to murder me and knew he could not be more than fifteen. And all this time the hammer was falling and I thought, ‘When the hammer drops, I die.’

  So I reached up and put my finger in front of the hammer and it never dropped. That is Instantaneity, living life in a moment. It is a state of mind a warrior can learn to induce at will. It is one secret of the samurai. Beyond this lies Perfect Control—the ability to achieve a measured heartbeat, to stop one’s breathing, to put all muscles under voluntary control."

  He stopped speaking. Someone tapped my shoulder. I turned.

  Abriara hugged me in a friendly embrace and said, "It’s good to see you."

  She wore the midnight blue kimono of the samurai, and it was wet with sweat.

  "It looks as if you’ve been promoted." I studied her face. It had been such a pulp when I’d seen her last I was surprised not to see some bruise greened with age. Her hairline was a bit irregular where the swath of chocolate-brown hair had been ripped from her forehead. But she was smiling as if genuinely happy, and nothing on the surface indicated how troubled she might be beneath her facade.

  Her hair appeared brittle and lusterless: Her cheeks had sagged, her skin folded and wrinkled. She held herself bent slightly forward. Perhaps the two years of heavy gravity caused some of these things, but it pained me to think how a single incident must have devastated her.

  Yet she appeared muscular and she carried herself with grace.

  She laughed. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  ‘‘I’m looking for scars."

  She closed her eyes, pointed at a white scar atop one eyelid. "This is where Lucío ground the cigar butt in ..." She held out her left hand. I took it. "And this is where he burned off my fingers." A thick scar ran across her palm. Four skin-toned metal fingers were connected to the flesh. I’d had no idea she’d endured such torture. When I’d seen her sprawled on the table, she’d been hidden behind other people.

  I grabbed her shoulders roughly and tears of rage filled my eyes. "Abriara," I said, "I swear to you and God that I’ll make a gift to you of a silver platter piled high with the testicles of the men who did this."

  She smiled as if she’d break into a laugh. Her hand touching mine seemed almost a caress. I couldn’t understand how she could smile in the face of such horror. Such a smile could only be the ebullient affectation of a Chilena. "What makes you think I’d want such a gruesome gift? You’ve done enough. Besides, it all happened long ago. "

  It may have seemed years to her, but for me it had happened only hours before. I looked into her eyes to read what message they held, and saw only joy. Never before had I seen anything in her eyes but cool calculation, an occasional flash of anger. But now her eyes were bright, fierce, happy, alive—like one raised from the dead.

  No one changes that much. I shuddered, and began trembling. I felt as if the ground moved beneath me.

  She pulled me toward the door. "Let’s get your things."

  Abriara hustled me into the night. A brisk breeze was building, the scent of a rising storm. Around the back of the building sat a parked truck, and in it was a few plastic bags filled with possessions. Two bags had my name on them. One was a suit of battle armor; the other contained an old crystal knife, Tamara s little folding laser rifle, my medical bag, and a single box of cigars.

  From the building down the road came the continual chant of "Let’s go home! Let’s go home!"

  My mind felt numb. No one could change as much as Abriara had.

  "You’d better put the armor on," she said, "and don’t take it off until this war is over. It’s slightly different from the old stuff—heavier, not as well balanced. You’ll get used to it."

  I stripped off my kimono and shoes. Abriara helped snap the pieces together gently, as if dressing an invalid or lover. She bent close as she put on my chest plate, and I smelled her hair, her sweat. Warm and musky.

  I felt the beginning of an erection and was thankful it remained hidden beneath the armor. My young body was responding to her in ways an old man forgets.

  Abriara opened a compartment at my hip; it contained several resin canisters. "You’ll need to learn to repai
r your own armor. Just paint any over furrows till they fill. When you’re done patching a hole, you’ll want to put a layer of this stuff from the green canister on. It’s called flare. I’ll show you why ...”

  She pulled the telescoping barrel out on my little laser rifle and fired across my leg. A brilliant green flame shot up wherever the laser touched.

  "In back you paint with the blue canister." She shot the back of my leg; a piercing whistle erupted momentarily. Her intonations were forceful like those of a samurai. "It’s called scream. If you ever see a flash of light come off you or hear that whistle, it means a sniper has hit you. You block immediately. Understand?"

  "Yes, I understand."

  "Good. Later on, we’ll try to teach what you need to know to stay alive." She sounded concerned. She folded up the laser rifle and put it in a compartment at my knee. Along my right leg was a sheath containing a thin but sharp machete. She removed it and considered putting my crystal dagger in its place, but decided it wouldn’t fit. She checked a couple of compartments at my waist and found no place for the dagger. I took it from her and began strapping the old wrist sheath to her arm. She smiled, pleased at the gift.

  I said, "I saw some men fighting in the simulator three. How much can you teach me of what they know, of the mental states? Munen. Instantaneity. Whatever else you’ve learned?" ,

  She glanced at my feet. "You were watching our chimera samurai fighting humans. I can’t teach what they know. You’re too ... human. Understand?"

  "You mean that I don’t have the genetic potential. But the samurai who taught you are no better genetic specimens than I. They must have taught you something. None of you could fight so well two years ago. I could learn what they know!"

  "In time, perhaps, but we don’t have access to the biofeedback monitors necessary to teach you a high degree of precision or Perfect Control. We took a drug that helps to induce Instantaneity, something from the Eridani system. I’ll get you some. In a couple of weeks you might build up to where the state comes naturally when faced with danger. You won’t be able to train yourself to initiate it in that time."

  I smiled wistfully. Garcia had kept trying to prove to Zavala the that the samurai had superior genetics or training. Now it all came clear: their battle drugs were superior to ours. I

  The chanters kept up their shout of "Let’s go home! Let’s go home!"

  I looked into Abriara’s eyes. "What are my chances if I go through with this? Without training. What does the computer say?"

  "Not good."

  "How good?"

  Abriara shrugged. "One in a hundred—but you’ll do better if you stick with us. Think positive. Wasn’t it you who once said, ‘The future looks bleak only to those who refuse to dream in color?’"

  "It wasn’t me who said that." I nodded toward the old barn where my compadres were building toward another riot. "I think I should join them. I do not think I’ll fight the Yabajin with you. I’m sorry."

  Perfecto said from behind me, "If Motoki Corporation gets its way, you won’t have a choice." I hadn’t heard him coming. He was twenty meters away, beside the building. Miguel was with him. They ambled over and hugged me, patted me on the back, smiling. He said, "Ah, it is good to see you, my amigo. It has been a long time."

  "Too long," I agreed.

  Abriara picked up my cigars, my kimono. "I’ll go find you a place to sleep." She walked back toward the hut and I was painfully conscious of the way her hips rolled beneath her silk kimono.

  Perfecto kept his arm around me till after she rounded the corner and gave me a strange look, almost angry, that quickly turned to a smile.

  Miguel held back a laugh. He asked, "Did you see the soft eyes she was making at you?"

  "Ah," Perfecto agreed, "and the don here looks as mournful as a cat in heat! I think both of them have raised the temperature in this valley by a good two degrees. It must be the don’s new youth. He looks very aristocratic, very handsome, don’t you think, Miguel?"

  "Ah, yes. If I were a woman, my heart would he fluttering like a caged bird!"

  "It’s a good thing we came when we did," Perfecto said. "I’d hate to have found them love-wrestling on the ground."

  They both chuckled and I hung my head in embarrassment. When the air had cleared, Perfecto said, "As I was saying before, don Angelo, I don’t think those men will be able to stay here in Kimai no Ji. Despite your incredible new handsomeness, most of the Japanese think we are ugly. They don’t want to look at us, and they call us tengu, demons."

  "That’s right," Miguel added. "The people don’t like us. They put this camp way outside town so they won’t have to look at us—so we can’t pollute their culture."

  "Yes," Perfecto added. "They wanted to leave you all asleep up in the cryotanks till the war is over, but the owners of the ship made them take you.

  "But the officials at Motoki don’t want you down here, and they especially don’t want to leave you while we’re making the assault—so I think you’ll all end up having to come. Garzón will probably just have you hang back behind the samurai."

  "That does not sound so bad," I said. I nodded toward the building where the men kept up their chant. "You’d think they’d be willing to go along for the ride."

  "Oh, they’re not upset about that," Perfecto said.

  "Motoki Corporation docked them for pay while they were in the cryotanks—twenty-two years of lost pay." His voice was bitter, very emotional. "Many of those men had families like mine that depended on that pay.

  I was shocked by the enormity of the injustice those men had suffered. The poorest had agreed to fight only because they knew it meant their families—brothers, sisters, widowed mothers, and even their own children—would no longer endure the incredible hardships brought on by the war in South America. For some, leaving their families was an ultimate sacrifice, an act of love.

  Now they found that only two weeks after they’d left Earth their families had been cut off from the boon their sacrifice had represented. For some of those men, I imagined that it meant family members had died in poverty. Young sisters may have been forced into prostitution while invalid mothers starved.

  "All of us sympathize with them," Perfecto said. "All of us are angry. We didn’t learn of this injustice until just a few days ago. I think the ship never would have made it to Baker if people had known. Can you feel the wrath in the air, the electricity?"

  I nodded. I’d felt it when I first entered the room with the gamblers.

  "I have not felt such tension since the riot!" Perfecto said.

  "It’s true!" Miguel agreed. "Things quieted down till a few days ago. After the riot, the samurai treated us like amigos—especially when they saw how well we fight. Most of us advanced to the rank of samurai.

  "But the locals here treat us like dirt. General Tsugio, the head man, laughs at the idea of non-Japanese samurai, and he’s threatened to reduce our pay if we don’t get our compadres to act complacent.

  "Now you look into the eyes of our men and you can see what they think. They think they should never have come. They think they should not fight.

  "But what can we do? We can’t go back, because we can’t pay the Greeks for the ship. We can’t find jobs elsewhere. We must either fight the Yabajin or starve!’"

  "Can’t you go over General Tsugio’s head?" I asked.

  "Can’t you talk to Regional Company President of Motoki? This is not such a big town, he can’t be very busy."

  Perfecto shook his head. "On Baker everyone has his place. They believe in what they call the natural hierarchy: man is better than woman. A corporate executive officer is better than a corporate warrior, who is better than a corporate farmer, who is better than a non-corporate farmer. All Japanese are better than Chinese who are better than Koreans. And somewhere in the dust among all the species of worms are Latin Americans. Mother of God! We are both non-Japanese and non-corporate workers—we don’t have a permanent contract with the corporation. We are so far down
their list even Garzón can’t talk to a company executive. He’s only allowed to speak to General Tsugio and his aides."

  "I don’t understand," I said. "What would they do to you if you tried to talk to a company executive?"

  "Ignore you," said Miguel, "or beat you. It depends on how badly you offend them with your attempt."

  Perfecto nodded, and rushed to explain. "It’s their vertical society. Their vertical society structure caused this war. You see, when both parties settled here their social engineers believed they were each taking slightly different paths to the same goal. They hoped to teach their people basic ethics of work, cooperation, subservience to society, an ideal of austerity. Motoki’s engineers taught the doctrine of isshin, restoration, saying they were simply reverting back to a "natural order" of things, relearning ancient ideals that still lived in their hearts. But the Nationalist engineers believed subservience to society stifled individual creativity, so they modified that aspect of their society. They taught revolution—telling their people they were creating a new tradition, that they were discovering their own strength and beauty as a race. So the nations diverged.

  "But though they have much in common, both Motoki and the Yabajin each has a vertical society. Each believes it’s at the pinnacle of the human hierarchy. Each believes its own members are the finest representatives of humanity in the universe. And the only way they can prove it is to kick out the teeth of their rivals."

  Perfecto seemed quite upset, and I laughed at the idea of the inhabitants of Motoki being the supreme race in the universe. "And what do they think of you chimeras?"

  "The samurai have grudgingly become convinced," Miguel said, "that we chimeras are better fighters than samurai, but we still don’t measure up. We’ve never learned ‘corporate spirit,’ and that proves our weakness."

  "If they are so perfect and we are so useless, why do they need us?"

  "Cannon fodder," Perfecto said. "They need us to fight automated defenses at Hotoke no Za. They do not believe they can win such a battle, so they hire someone to die for them, someone who doesn’t matter. They want us to clear a path so the samurai can get into Hotoke no Za and prove who’s superior."