I thought it a strange question. We’d seen river dragons, the Kawa no Ryu, in simulation several times. They are large purple serpentine creatures, with limbs so small they cannot walk, but must slither. I knew this must be the skull of an extremely large specimen. The teeth were worn and broken with age. I pointed to the fangs behind Zavala’s head and said, "Those teeth are obviously meant for catching and holding prey," then pointed to a tooth by my foot, "and this tooth has long ridges on it, for grinding meat. This animal was obviously a carnivore. "
This frightened Zavala all the more. "Sí, but what does it eat?"
Mavro said, "It is obvious that it feeds on something slow and dumb and fat. It must have eaten Japanese!"
Everyone laughed in low guttural sounds. Mavro went to the hovercraft and got some foil packets of rice and vegetables, a couple bottles of sake. I felt suddenly relaxed, at ease, and was content to remain awake. We cooked dinner and while we ate Zavala said, "Do you know what this reminds me of? It’s like sleeping in the bush with my friends as a youth! Does it not feel the same to your
I hadn’t slept in the open for many years, and I had to agree-there is a feeling of excitement that comes with sleeping in the open.
Zavala said, "Let’s tell scary stories! Have you heard of the vampire brain?" He told the old yarn about a man so wise he lacked companionship of his own mental caliber, so he built an artificial intelligence clever enough to carry a conversation at his own level. When the man died the AI became lonely and constructed a bio-intelligence, a brain that weighed twelve kilos and inhabited its own cymech. But in order to remain alive the brain needed a constant supply of blood, and Zavala related all the bizarre and ingenious ways the bio-intelligence found to feed itself. It was a silly tale that was old when I was young.
"I know a story," Mavro said when Zavala finished.
"And it’s true: when I was a youth in Cartagena, running with the Low-Tech Boys, I had a friend· named Xavier Sosa, and he was born with the Gift. He scored a 991 on the psi tests. In all the galaxy there may not be three hundred men who had the Gift as strongly as he did, and the Alliance watched him closely, waiting for him to mature so they could put his powers to use.
"Xavier spent a great deal of time staring into space at worlds all around us that no one else could see. He said reality is like an onion, with an endless succession of layers beneath the one outer layer we can see. We perceive but one layer of reality in our state, but he’d use the Gift to unwrap reality layer by layer, to see what was beneath, to perceive a whole new level of the universe we cannot comprehend. There are beings and peoples on every level. Some of these beings take different forms in our world and some of them have no form at all. Humans inhabit several universes simultaneously, but most of us are only aware of circumstances on one level of reality. For instance if we were to become aware of the alternative universe the Gifted call sixteen, we’d perceive ourselves much like plants—balls of colored energy with tendrils of light, lacking all volition—not creatures that act, merely creatures that are acted upon.
"Once, Xavier and I were listening to music and I became uncontrollably frightened of nothing at all. Xavier peered at me for a long time then waved his hand and the fear left me. He said a creature had attacked me on level sixteen, and had been feeding on part of me.
"In that universe we’re nothing because we are far from the center of ourselves. But in that same universe the creature we perceive as a simple sea snail is revealed to be a being of rare and glorious intelligence.
"All of you know that in such a universe the Alliance is waging a war. They send all the psychics into battle. Only the Gifted understand the nature of this war, and only they can perceive the nature of the enemy. Only a handful know how to battle on this level."
Mavro paused. I’d heard such tales as this but didn’t know if I believed them. Certainly I’d never heard this rumor stated with as much authority as Mavro’s tone carried.
Mavro sniffed, fired his laser into a rock by his foot, and held his hands out to the warmth of the glowing rock. "Xavier could never explain what he sought to do, but he explained the stakes: he said that if we won the war, a time would come where in an instant all mankind would unite in their minds. They’d perceive the nature of the threat within the other universe, and at the same instant the threat would be abolished. With it, all selfishness and greed would be abolished. He believed that someday this will actually happen. Not in our lifetime, perhaps not in a hundred lifetimes, but it will happen ..
"When he was fourteen, he told me he’d learned to perceive the place the Gifted call Ten-sell, and there he’d watched our warriors battle the enemy. His gift was not mature, and the Alliance did not plan to recruit him for many years, but he told me he’d gone to this place and challenged a creature to combat. He planned to engage this being. I asked him many questions about it, and he could only explain that it looked like a large black piece of twisted metal, and that it too was not at the center of itself in this place; it too was at the limit of its ability to perceive him.
"I asked him about the danger to himself, and he explained that to do battle he must leave his body and travel to Ten-sell, carry the center of himself to a place where time does not exist. If he lost the combat, he’d forfeit his lives in several universes. Parts of him would die. But his greatest fear was that if he became thus damaged, he’d not find his way back to his body. He’d have no way to guide himself home, and part of him would be forever lost.
"He asked me to watch his body while he was gone, to stand guard with the rest of the Low-Tech Boys. We were supposed to stand over him and call his name.
"So we went to his house and sat beside him on his bed. He closed his eyes and stopped breathing and we called to him and administered CPR. But he never returned to his body. We buried him.
"A week later I felt him nearby. I did not see or hear him, but I felt him. Whatever part of him was left was searching for the rest—for that lost body. I’ve felt it many times over the years. I tell you this story now because he is here, standing just down the hill."
Goose pimples rose on my arms. Mavro’s tale struck a chord deep inside me, making me uneasy, perhaps because his description of Xavier so closely paralleled my feeling when I thought I’d encountered the ghost of Flaco. Perhaps because his story about a man who’d lost a part of himself so closely mimicked my own feeling that I’d lost part of myself. I felt haunted once again and I got up. I asked, "Does anyone want a drink of water?"
No one did. "Don’t use the bottled water," Abriara said. "Drink from the stream."
I went down to the stream. It was ten meters wide and perfectly bowl-shaped, as if it had been dredged—a look typical to streams that the river dragons inhabit. Apparently they widen and deepen the channel as they wriggle over it many times. However, this creek had many bushes along the bank. The dragon that lived here had been dead for several years.
I looked down into the water and considered drinking it. The thought was too revolting, and I decided I wasn’t really thirsty. Besides, I’d only used my thirst as an excuse to get away from Mavro. As I recalled his tale, chills shook me.
I began wandering along the creek bank thinking of Xavier doomed to forever search for a part of himself. I was exhausted, physically, emotionally. After all my years of living I was still searching for a passion that should be strong and vital. What did I feel? A creeping sense of hollowness?
It is not the mere presence of violence that makes one become hardened, I told myself.
I’d lived with violence all around in Panamá and never been hardened.
It is my battle armor, I thought. It cuts off the senses, makes everything untouchable. I was exhausted, nearly hallucinating. It seemed wise to trade a little sleep in the hope of feeling something. I decided a cold bath would help.
My balance was off. I stumbled as I stripped my armor. I left it by the shore, then waded into the cold stream. The water was deeper than it looked, and I found my
self over my head after only two paces. I swam a bit, thinking of nothing, till some large creature as hard as stone brushed my leg. I hurried to shore and dressed in my pants. I drew my machete and leaned against a tree, closed my eyes, tried to rest.
The bath had done no good. The cold water had numbed me and I couldn’t feel the machete handle in my hand. I’d sought to feel something, but all I felt was cold, an occasional pellet of rain dropping on me, the wind playing over my chest, tightening my nipples. It wasn’t enough. I didn’t crave physical sensation.
I craved the depth of passion I’d felt when Tamara shoved her tiny dog’s heart in my chest. I’d felt more alive, more vital, than at any other single moment in my existence.
Become fluent in the gentle language of the heart. Her words formed the core of an argument I couldn’t agree with. One couldn’t practice compassion the way one practices to kick a soccer ball. At least, the idea seemed absurd. But her sentiments were sound. The feeling she’d given me, I craved as an addict craves drugs.
Without thinking, I set out for Tamara’s camp, toward the hill where Garzón’s surveillance balloons hovered. I took only my machete and wore only my pants and crept through the dark woods alone, guiding myself by my faint infravision. The ground was wet and thick with pine needles. I moved almost soundlessly. I walked to the base of a hill and found a small clearing thick with fern and Baker’s own short grasses. Leaves rustled at the hilltop and I froze in position. A shaggy deer-like creature came running toward me over the hilltop, pursued by a larger creature-half dog, half bear. I’d seen that particular carnivore in the simulator, hunting in a snowfield. In the simulator my laser had only angered the beast.
They were running through the glen, and there was no cover. I gripped my machete. The shaggy herbivore rushed past, brushing my left arm. Its head and mouth were shaped something like that of a deer.
Now the carnivore will turn and attack you, I thought, and I prepared. But the carnivore was intently watching its prey and didn’t even roll its eyes toward me. At the last moment I decided not to attract its attention rather than risk a thrust with my machete. It thundered past, stinking of mud and garlic.
The beasts crashed into the water of the creek down the hill, then thundered through the brush on the other side. I waited a long moment. I didn’t know how common these big carnivores were, didn’t want to meet one farther up the hill. Such a creature wouldn’t be able to digest me, couldn’t process my protein and fat. Still, a creature of instinct wouldn’t know that.
I decided it would be best to speak to Tamara in the morning, and sneaked back through the trees toward my armor. My eyes felt gritty and heavy. Half an hour later I neared the creek where I’d left my armor. The ground was brushy and I crept. Over the gurgling water I heard twigs snapping in the brush. I was so sleepy I couldn’t be sure of the noise. I didn’t want to go nearer, yet felt I must retrieve my armor.
I shouted, "Who’s there?" thinking to frighten any creatures hiding in the dense brush, and immediately a soft feminine voice with a foreign accent shouted, "Who’s there?" in return, and many women said, "Who’s there? Who’s there? Who’s there?"
I thought crazily that somehow several Japanese women had followed us and were stealing my armor. I leapt through the brush and came face to face with a creature that could have been a giant spider or crab. It was black in the dim light and stood a meter tall at the shoulders, though its carapace was twice as wide. It had two immense claws as thick as my body. Each claw held a small bush which the creature waved as if to frighten me away. The creature said in its soft feminine voice, "Who’s there? Who’s there?" Holding branches between us, it backed toward the creek.
There were dozens of these giant crabs and they all held bushes in their claws and said, "Who’s there?" as they slowly backed into the water.
I was so astonished that I couldn’t move. Each crab had an organ, like a collection of tubes at the base of its mandibles, and the voices issued from these.
I shouted, "Angelo!" at the last few creatures. In return they parroted, "Angelo! Angelo! Angelo!" as they dropped over the bank into the creek.
My armor was strewn all over the place. The giant crabs had dragged pieces everywhere. I picked up the armor and went back to camp. Abriara was awake, sitting at the mouth of the skull. I told her of the giant crabs.
"The Japanese call them manesuru onna, the mimicking women," Abriara said. "They’re very common near coastal waters." She looked at me for several seconds. I was still wet from my swim, dirty from my walk. She said, "Angelo, are you in pain?"
They were the first soft words she’d said since I’d mutilated Lucío. "No," I said. "I was just thinking."
"You were thinking painful thoughts. What were they?"
Only a few days before I’d told myself that I didn’t want her affection. Yet after fighting Lucío I’d became afraid that I’d lost it. I found myself revealing my deepest feelings. "When Master Kaigo died he accused us of loving murder. I wonder if his words are true. When I fought Lucío I wanted with all of my heart to put the machete down, to stop tormenting him—yet I could not. Do I love murder? And when I saw the dead women outside of town—I keep thinking such a sight should destroy a person. Such a sight should make it impossible to live. Yet I feel myself hardening to it. I feel myself becoming numb. And I wonder: do I love murder?
"When I was a child I used to access the dream networks. Always I admired it when the good man killed the bad man out of vengeance—and I realize now that I may indeed have been trained to love murder. And maybe that is why I could not stop killing Lucío. Because I’ve been trained to believe that good men can kill bad without consequence. But I feel the consequences inside me. I’m dying. And I think maybe it is this society that has done this to me. Maybe this society is evil. And if it is evil, I should remove myself from it. I feel a need to escape the way a man feels a need to escape prison."
Abriara looked at me a moment. "Every man must believe in his own innate goodness," she said. "No matter how loathsome a person is, he will hold up his good points to himself and look at them and say, ‘I am a good person.’ And because of this need to believe in one’s own innate worth, all people obey nearly all the strictures placed upon them by their society. You do not paint your face with sunsets, eat popcorn for breakfast, or walk down the sidewalk backward simply because you know your society does not condone such behavior.
"Now you have committed murder and wish to blame your act on society so you can continue to believe in your own goodness. And certainly some would agree that your society is at fault. As you say, we were raised on violence in every form and we consider it worthy entertainment. But according to the social engineers, all societies seem evil and insane when viewed from the outside: a socialist looks at us and sees how we are brainwashed into believing we need objects to make us happy. He sees our society riddled with corruption due to commercialism. Yet we look at the socialists and are shocked that their society does not help them attain the labor-saving devices we worship. The socialists live a hard life. Who is more evil, the socialist or the capitalist? Both societies are equally evil in the eyes of a social engineer, and from the outside we can see the evil in all societies, yet each sees itself as being correct. Yes, you do live in an evil society. Yet we could look down through history and find a hundred societies that loved murder more than ours does. Kaigo’s society loves murder as much as ours does. As you said, they love suicide, too. You say you feel a need to escape your society. But don’t you see that in order for you to see the evil in your own society, to some degree you must have escaped it already?"
Abriara watched me steadily. "You may find a society that doesn’t love violence. But even if you find such a society, from the outside it will appear evil to you in some way. You are too much of an individual to fit comfortably into a society that was created by another."
I thought about it for a moment. I’d never heard Abriara discuss such ideas, and it somehow seemed inco
ngruous. I asked, "Where did you learn about these philosophies?"
"I studied social engineering in Chile. After all, one must know the enemy," she said, referring to the Nicita Idealist Socialists in Argentina. Everyone had known for years that the Idealists would start a war. Their philosophy demanded it.
I dressed in my armor, went to our shelter, and lay down. Perfecto was awake, watching me with half-closed eyes. I said nothing. If Abriara was right, I considered, I’d never find a better society to serve than the one I already belonged to. Yet it seemed that somewhere there should be a society I could serve without feeling repugnance. I considered the anarchists of Tau Ceti, the skeptics of Benitarius 4, the Justinians of Mars. And Abriara was right—all of the cults disturbed me at some deep level.
I dreamed that I strolled over a stone bridge where clear water poured through a narrow channel. By the banks of the stream were the great dark crabs, the mimicking women, gathering rushes. The grass on the hillsides was the color of jade, and everywhere was the sweet smell of Baker.
In the distance I glimpsed a man, an old white-haired man dressed in a fine gray suit, who carried himself with dignity and grace. He furtively glanced back at me over his shoulder, then stepped behind a hedge. My heart quickened. I felt I knew that man, but could not quite place him. I thought if only I could see his face, I’d be sure. I hungered for his presence.
And I, I was dressed in sweaty, muddied battle armor, for I’d been practicing in· the fields. I chased after that man, ran to the hedge shouting, "Señor, señor! May I have a word with you?"
But when I reached the spot where he’d been, he was gone. I cast about, searching for him, and saw him farther on, speaking to a young lady, admiring a thicket of plums where boughs of pink blossoms cascaded from the trunks like water from a fountain. I called after him, and he stepped into the trees. The young lady looked about, searching for the cause of the gentleman’s unease, and I gave chase.
On My Way to Paradise Page 41