When we finished, Abriara said, "Come with me over the dunes. I have a surprise to show you."
We began walking over white dunes, taking it slow. The sand was heavy and wet after the rain, and the walking was easy. The sea smelled crisp, less of decay and dying than the oceans of Earth, and Abriara took my hand.
I fantasized that she planned to throw me on the ground and make passionate love, and the thought made me uneasy.
"You’re thinking painful thoughts again," Abriara said. "What are you thinking?"
"I’ve decided to leave Baker on the Chaeron," I said, "so that I can search for my family. The ship leaves in three weeks. I will miss you."
Abriara clasped my hand fiercely. "You can’t go back! You don’t know how much things will have changed. You have no future there. What can you be thinking?"
"I cannot see a future here," I said. "There are too many bad memories."
"We can make good ones," Abriara said; she held my hand roughly. I remembered the night I’d had an intimation of what life would be like with a grasping Chilena who was a chimera to boot.
"It is more than the memories, more even than my family," I said. "I have always sought to serve society, but now I find that my society is not as good as I believed it to be. I do not think Baker will be a nice place to live. Once the Japanese men have been deported, our men will mate with their wives. It may not happen today, but in a few years. When this happens, our two societies will become hopelessly mingled. Our love for murder, with their love of suicide. I do not think it will make a good mix. I do not think I can serve a society I so strongly disapprove of."
"But ... but," Abriara gasped. "But you can change society, make it better. In fact, it is your moral obligation! Remember San Miguel de Madrid?"
I said, "I am not familiar with the pantheon of Catholic saints. "
"He lived in the twenty-first century. He was a survivor of the bombing of Madrid. After the nuclear bombs dropped, he crawled from the rubble and his hands were burned to a crisp. All around him people were giving up; people were dying because they were convinced it was the end of the world.
"But Saint Miguel believed it was his moral obligation to make sure that he lived, to make sure he built a world where such a thing could never happen again. He only lived a few weeks, but his courage saved many people. He too saw an evil society, but he did not serve society, he served the future."
The conviction in her words struck home. If I followed don José Mirada’s teachings I’d be serving society for the rewards it offered. All my morality would be a sham. But if I served a society that didn’t yet exist, what rewards could I hope to gain?
My only possible reward would be that possibly someday the society I hoped to create would spring into being. Her choice was the only right choice.
"Ah, now I see you are smiling. You like my idea?"
"Sí," I said.
"Then you will stay? We will need someone like you. We will need someone with silver hair for Perfecto’s children to bond to. We will have our own home, a mansion, and you will be a great influence on people ..."
She talked on and on, making her plans for me.
No, you are a morphogenic pharmacologist, I thought, and you can find the gene that controls the bonding in chimeras. In a week this land will be swept with a virus to destroy that gene. And you can create a virus to wipe out the chimera’s sociopathic bent and give them a greater chance for peace.
Since you live on a world distant from other worlds, you are free to create a society of your own choosing through social engineering.
I did not know who I was—the Angelo of Tamara’s dreams, the Angelo who killed Arish.
I still do not know if I can ever become the man I desire to be. But I believed that whether the sources of evil were genetically linked to territorialism, or whether they were defects in the chemical thought processes, or whether they were perpetuated and flourished within our society because of deep programs built up as we learned to think, I had the tools to destroy them.
Yet I had to wonder at the morality even of that. To use the tools of social engineering to twist the minds of others as the engineers of Baker had done—the idea repulsed me on a basic level. I wondered why, and connected it immediately to Perfecto’s theories of the nature of evil: To try to twist the ideals of another is a violation of the territories of the mind.
Yet no one consulted you before they created your deformed world. I thought. And you cannot consult the unborn as to their desires. You must do what you feel is right.
We came over the last sand dune and peered out over the jungle. There was a white mountain in the distance, as if it had been carved of salt, and behind it was a row of purple mountains.
"Abriara, when I was leaving Earth, I saw a picture of that white mountain! I was so insane with fear and shock I was jabbering. I told Tamara I’d take her there, and I believed we were going to paradise!"
Abriara said, "All the travel posters show that mountain on their advertisements. It is the mountain Hotoke no Z, the Throne of Buddha. If you like it, we can go to the land office and stake a claim for it. You’re entitled to much land, and it’s still early enough that you can get whatever you want.
The sight of that mountain thrilled me. I felt that I really was standing at the gateway to paradise. And suddenly a voice inside me said, "Remember, remember: whatever good things have happened to you, the best is yet to come." My hair raised on end, and I felt an overwhelming excitement.
My heart began to race and in that moment I achieved Instantaneity, that state of mind where one can live a lifetime in a moment, and I saw all my plans and all my dreams and the twisted path I would walk as I sought to live a life of passion, to change the world. At the end of the path was the old Angelo, the man I could become again. Someday there would be peace. Someday I would forgive myself.
We stood on the hilltop, and Abriara pointed down to the bottom of the dunes. A river entered the ocean there and the tide was out. There were many rocks, and on the rocks was thick blue moss, and among the moss were thousands of giant midnight blue crabs a meter across the back at the carapace.
I recognized them as manesuru onna,mimicking women.
Abriara laughed and said, "Let me speak the first word."
We ran down the sand dune toward the mimicking women, swooping upon them. They began clacking their carapaces as they picked up shreds of seaweed and held them in front of them as if to hide.
Abriara shouted, "Happy!"
And a thousand mimicking women whispered, "Happy! Happy! Happy!" as they clacked and rattled and retreated into the sea.
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On My Way to Paradise Page 53