I remembered the holo of President Motoki thanking us for coming to fight the machines of the Yabajin. "But that’s not so hard—not from what I’ve heard."
"Not hard for us, because we’re not technophobes," Perfecto said. "The defense networks unnerve the samurai. These settlements were founded because the Japanese saw themselves losing technological supremacy. To them, the machine symbolizes their one great failure."
"Ah!" I asked, "have you noticed how they shun cybernetic upgrades?"
Perfecto nodded vigorously. "They shun a thousand other technological advances, too. The Alliance has placed some strict offensive weapons restrictions upon us, but we could easily design legal weapons to defeat the Yabajin defenses—rifles that fire corrosive liquids rather than solid projectiles, multiple-layer ceramic-based armor. But Motoki is obstinate: if they won because of a technological advantage, they believe it would negate the whole reason for fighting the war. They must win because they are superior people, not because they have superior weaponry. "
"These people are crazy!" I said.
"I agree," Perfecto said. "Still, they pay good money. " He shuffled his feet. "Besides, every culture seems a little crazy if you view it from outside. General Tsugio’s aides have requested that we come to a special meeting in the morning. I think General Tsugio will want to address us about the morale problem. Tsugio-san is a great believer in singing company songs and offering impassioned speeches." He looked back at the house. "Do you want to go in and listen to some music, watch the fights?"
There was nothing better to do. We went inside and chatted about inconsequential things and watched simulated battles most of the evening. Zavala fought in one. He and some others vanquished four combat teams and entered Hotoke no Za. I was impressed to see how skilled he’d become. Much had changed.
Yet in a world where I had to study constantly to keep up with the advances in my own small field of medicine, I’d become adept at change.
I could handle change, even bad changes. My friends had taken my body and made it young again; I could accept that. It was a common procedure.
The samurai had kept me in cryogenic suspension for two years, and that was harder to accept. They’d cheated me of training that would help me stay alive on Baker—and as I watched the simulations, seeing our men battle the patrols, weasels, ANCs, and cybertanks while trying to negotiate mine fields—I began to realize just how dangerous my ignorance was. I had never beat the samurai in the simulators, and could not do it now. Also, my compañeros had changed; I could almost accept that. But I was terrified by what I’d seen in Abriara’s eyes: she was happy, serene.
I searched my mind and tried to discover why this disconcerted me, and I remembered when I was young I once went to a strange church with my mother. In this church people pretended to receive great spiritual manifestations. They spoke in tongues, babbling nonsense, and rolled on the floors and praised God while they frothed at the mouth—all to impress one another with their feigned holiness.
Because I was young they terrified me with the same unnamable fear I felt now, and I thought they were under the influence of the devil. I believed Satan was in that church.
As I grew older I realized it wasn’t the devil that had terrified me—it was the strangeness.
Now when I watched Abriara singing with the crowd or looked upon her as she studied the battles I beheld the face of the alien once again. She was alive inside and I was dead.
She’d witnessed great horrors and lived a life of desperation. Like the countless refugiados I’d met, she’d been emotionally dead inside. She’d been brutalized and broken beyond repair, and it was right for her to be dead inside.
But here she was suddenly brought back to life, and the flame inside her seemed to burn like some magic tallow candle in the wind, obstinately refusing to extinguish no matter how fierce the storm. No one should have the power to change that much.
I tried to imagine what influences could have altered her: she was a chimera. She wasn’t human, not in the way r m human. Could her engineers have created a new being with an emotional resiliency rivaling anything believed possible?
I doubted it. Not by design anyway. No one understands the biochemical mechanisms that control emotional resiliency that well. I’d read precious few articles on the topic, and those had been written a hundred years before when sociologists were studying those who best coped with the nuking of Europe.
Another thought came to mind: Zavala’s speech patterns had shifted toward those of the samurai. Given his respect for their doctrines it seemed only natural that he’d ape them.
It signaled something I hadn’t anticipated—a cultural shift that might have affected our entire crew. Perhaps by living among the samurai we were becoming like them.
Certainly the way Zavala asserted that "Battle steadies the mind" indicated he was falling into their way of thinking. I’m sure that Motoki’s social engineers would have been proud of the fine job they’d done of twisting Zavala’s brain.
Yet it didn’t seem probable that Abriara’s contact with the samurai could have initiated her internal change. The samurai tried to veil their emotions, but I’d noticed on several occasions how they overcompensated in expressing them. It seemed to me they feigned passion poorly because they, like the refugiados, were emotionally emasculated. Dead inside. So the answer had to lie elsewhere.
Inside I watched the holos, met Mavro. He’d found someone to tattoo a new tear on his cheek and he’d shaved his mustache; otherwise he was the same. The simulators went off early and I wasn’t tired, but everyone else found spots on the floor and began to sleep, a hundred people to a small building. There was barely room to turn over.
I went outside to look at the stars and Perfecto followed. The opal kites in the atmosphere baffled my view. Their platinum sheen was like gauze or cobwebs reflecting sunlight. The men in the barn continued chanting, but it now seemed muted, deadened by the night air. I could barely distinguish the samurai in black armor circling the barn beneath the trees. Perfecto dropped his codpiece and let his penis hang out. I thought he’d urinate but for several minutes nothing happened.
"What are you doing?" I asked, nodding toward his penis.
Perfecto looked down at his member and said, "I thought I’d let it out for a breath of fresh air, but now that it’s out, all it wants to do is play." He waited a moment more, then began urinating on a sapling. "Aaah, it comes—finally. "
I hadn’t peed on a bush since I was a child in Guatemala. Somehow it made me feel nostalgic, so I joined him.
When I finished I asked, "Perfecto, was Abriara really making soft eyes for me?"
He laughed. "Yes. She makes soft eyes whenever talking about you—ever since you saved her from getting raped by Lucío."
I was shocked. "I didn’t save her from getting raped! I There was nothing I could do!"
Perfecto frowned. After a long silence he hissed through his teeth. "I thought not. She told an improbable story, saying you’d wrestled a rifle away from someone in the nick of time and saved her. "
"Why would she say such a thing? How does she think she’ll get away with it? Didn’t Lucío and his compadres spread the truth?"
Perfecto frowned. "Two of Lucío’s com padres died under the crush of bodies when the ship was spinning. The rest were put in the cryotanks as punishment for breaking into the ship’s armory, so they haven’t said anything. But I think she tells this lie because she believes it. All one must do is look into her eyes when she speaks. She believes she was not raped. Perhaps Abriara was not strong enough to handle what happened to her. Maybe her mind snapped. I’ve spoken with her about unpleasant incidents from her childhood, and she now claims that they too never happened. "
"The rape by the mestizos?"
"For one. She says she got the scar above her ear from an accident while playing baseball. She doesn’t seem to remember her three years in prison."
I felt like vomiting. I couldn’t believe what Pe
rfecto was telling me. All that health, all the joy I’d seen in her eyes was just the sign of greater sickness.
"What have you done about it?" I demanded. "How can we help her?"
"Just leave her alone. Angelo, since that day, Abriara has changed. She seems to be at peace for the first time in her life. Perhaps ... perhaps her only chance for happiness lies in her ignorance. Her deeper mind knows this."
"We must confront her with the truth!" I said. "We must help her to face it!"
"Maybe someday she’ll come to the truth on her own. I’ve tried to confront her many times, to hint at the truth, but she just blocks it out."
I put my hands on my hips and looked up at the sky. I felt as impotent as when I’d witnessed Abriara’s rape. A sudden violent resolve filled me. "Perfecto, I’m going to kill Lucío."
He was silent for a moment. "I agree. We can’t risk going into battle with him. We should do it soon."
Chapter 24
That night as I lay shivering on the floor in my armor. I dreamed of Tamara in her wheelchair. Garzón had pulled her microspeaker from the jack at the base of her skull so she couldn’t speak. Garzón stood over her, stroking her hair and watching her intently. His hands slowly petted her neck, her shoulders, crept down to press firmly on the nipples of her breasts. I could tell he was going to rape her. I could see the excitement in his eyes, the tenseness in his arms. Tamara’s eyes were wide with hysteria.
I woke to the sound of nearby thunder that shook the room as if it would split the building. Rain drummed on the roof. I was shivering cold and Abriara was spreading a white kimono over the top of me, though I don’t think it did much good. The room was cramped with sprawling, snoring bodies. I turned to look at her.
"Go back to sleep," she whispered. "This will keep you warm."
"Why doesn’t someone turn up the heat?" I asked.
"There isn’t any." She began to move away, gingerly picking her way through sleeping bodies, her battle armor clacking softly. Never had I seen her do something unselfish before.
She is alive inside, I marveled. I wanted to thank her, but thanks did not seem enough. "Abriara," I whispered. She turned. "I want only good for you!"
She grinned and found herself a place to lie down a few meters away.
I wondered if I was crazy. A few weeks ago I’d imagined I was falling in love with Tamara. My feelings for her were still strong. Now I found my affection for Abriara growing, and it doesn’t take a great mind to realize both women were horribly damaged. I wondered if what I felt was love, or was it the pity one feels for an injured animal? And if it was pity, should I pursue a relationship with either woman?
One wouldn’t be particularly inclined to buy damaged merchandise in the market. Certainly I’d never consider buying a shirt that had one sleeve longer than the other. Yet I found myself drawn to Abriara in spite of the horrible scars on her body and on her heart. I told myself nothing but trouble could come from such affection.
I told myself, Robles was seeking to create a perfect breeder when he created Abriara. Combined with this, nothing is so grasping as a Chilean woman (except perhaps a Bolivian), so if Robles has given her a stronger desire to breed, she’ll cling to you forever. You’d become her prisoner. You wouldn’t be able to step from the house without her demanding where you’re going. You won’t look across the street without her worrying if you’re admiring another woman! Besides, as emotionally scarred as she is, she’ll probably ax-murder you someday!
Ah, but if I could just once gaze into her silver eyes and stroke her chocolate hair! I’d be lost forever! If I could but once taste those honeyed lips and run my hand beneath the curve of her breasts!
One doesn’t successfully remain a bachelor for thirty years without developing a great capacity to fall out of love.
I dreamed of living with her in a small house, a few chickens in the yard. If Robles truly had created a breeder, Abriara wouldn’t be satisfied with less than a dozen children.
Ai ya yi! I imagined the headaches their screeching and fighting would cause. Then I weighed all this against the potential for happiness and finally decided it was better not to get involved with a probable ax-murderess.
The morning sun burned the clouds away the next morning and I found Fernando Chin, the xenobiologist, in the front yard collecting bodies of oparu no tako that had been electrocuted during the night’s thunderstorm. He had perhaps fifty different species, ranging through many different sizes and shapes, and he was freezing samples of genetic tissues. I stood beside him and watched the barn where Lucío was kept.
The men had quieted during the night, but with morning they began chanting anew, "Let’s go home! Let’s go home!" I counted sixteen samurai guards around the barn, and I couldn’t see how to get to Lucío.
Fernando Chin kept looking up at me, and he began to explain how he was going to determine the ages of the species through means developed by genetic paleontologists.
I didn’t really listen to him. The task of getting to Lucío occupied my mind. I pretended to help Fernando and watched the barn. There was no way to sneak in. I casually sauntered toward the barn to see how the samurai reacted. Two detached themselves from the shadows under a tree and walked toward me. I stooped as if to examine a shiny rock and picked it up—an irregular white crystal sprouted a small cauliflower head of brilliant red. One samurai studied the crystal a moment.
"Ruby," he said. "Very common in hills. Look for them there. Stay away from here!"
I put the ruby in a pocket, then exercised most of the day, practicing various spins and crab walks that would be useful when hit by laser and plasma fire. I felt strong, and with my nerve bypass and young muscles I was quicker than ever.
But it didn’t seem enough. Abriara introduced me to a medic who gave me several doses of Motoki battle drugs. I asked him for the chemical formula but the patent was still the sole property of Motoki Corporation.
He described how to take them and warned me of dangers. "You won’t have time to train yourself to reach Instantaneity, but you may find that if you become excited then Instantaneity will find you. You may recall a moment in your life when time has slowed, and you may have even noticed this effect when using our old battle drugs. The effect will become much more pronounced with this. You must use great care when the moment of Instantaneity comes: time will stop and you’ll be tempted to do many things at once. However, your metabolic rate will not increase enough for you to do much, understand? If you try to run forward a few steps, you’ll use all the oxygen in your system and you’ll stop. You’ll feel as if you hit a wall, and you could pass out if you overexert yourself. You must take care during Instantaneity to use economic motions, to move as little as possible to achieve your desired goals, understand?"
I understood perfectly.
"One more thing," the medic added. "Once you take this drug, the effects will remain with you for life. Once you begin to achieve Instantaneity, you must learn to control it for your own sake, understand?"
I nodded and took the drug.
Twice that day a truck came from town and dropped off food—tubs of cold rice and seaweed, barrels of pickled eggs and vegetables, fresh raw fish. Sickening things.
Worst of all the coffee tasted weak and musty, as if it had grown in a swamp. The inhabitants of Motoki had a saying, "Luxury is our greatest enemy."
What they considered self-denial, however, I considered self-torture.
Toward evening the men in the barn began shouting and screaming in a frenzied pitch. Their guards sent emissaries to town and soon General Tsugio, a small frowning bald man, showed up and demanded that Garzón quiet the men. Tsugio announced that everyone would be docked wages if the demonstrators didn’t calm down. Being raised in a culture where each individual is a slave to the whims of his society, he couldn’t understand that we had no control over the demonstrators, that they wouldn’t be quiet simply because we were being punished with them.
He believed that we secre
tly sympathized with them, that we were spurring them on. Perhaps he was right.
No truck came with dinner and Garzón quoted one of Tsugio’s aides as saying we’d have to go without food till we "learn that we live by the beneficence of Motoki." Some men grumbled a bit. Some hunted in the fields by the city’s defensive perimeter but brought back only a few rabbits and quail.
Garzón called a meeting with his leaders at sunset, ostensibly to discuss the morale problem, and they closeted themselves away for hours.
When they returned a captain came to our barracks and said, "Things were worse than we’d hoped. A shipload of mercenaries hired by the Yabajin is due to arrive from Earth within five days. Most are homeless Colombians who left Earth three months after us."
"But they couldn’t get here so soon!" One of our company exclaimed.
"Not if they kept their ship’s acceleration rate down to the legal limits," the captain objected. "But of course they elected to pay a fine rather than lose the war. Nearly all of them are refugiados who hired on after kicking the socialists out of their homeland. The chimeras wouldn’t come, not with the war in South America going so well. The Colombians didn’t have samurai to train them, but it’s safe to bet they know what they’re up against. Since they outnumber us two to one, they’ll make good reinforcements for Hotoke no Za.
"Our employers at Motoki demand we move our attack ahead of schedule. We’re to leave in three days so we can assault the Yabajin before the Colombians shuttle down. Also, they demand that all of our men take places at the front lines—even those who missed training. They say it is not their job to fight the machines."
The news didn’t settle well. Men who were sitting beside the holograph, gambling on the outcomes of simulated battles, abruptly quit. Grumbling conversations rose around the room, but there was no argument—only a consensus of opinion.
On My Way to Paradise Page 35