On My Way to Paradise Page 5

  I covered Flaco with dirt and said a prayer, asking God to forgive Flaco for his sins, then went home.

  At home, Tamara sat on my bed with the dream monitor on and her visor down. She moaned softly, curled in the fetal position. Between her knees she held her laser rifle. The platinum glow of her skin showed that her fever was very high. I walked over quietly and took the gun from her hand, turned it off, and tossed it in a corner. I examined the stump of her arm. It wasn’t inflamed or swollen more than it should be: her fever wasn’t from an infection.

  I picked up the extra monitor and plugged into the viewer’s jack:

  On the beach the wind, cold and irresistible, tugged at me as if it would lift me and carry me away. In the dark, clear sky the moon was rising red and brilliant over the sea. On the blood-red sand, thousands of ghost crabs scuttled sideways, making clicking noises. I walked down to where the sea dipped. The bull still tossed about in the waves near shore.

  On the beach lay a human skeleton. Its bones were picked so clean that only a few ghost crabs crawled through its rib cage. "I didn’t expect you," the skeleton said.

  "Who did you expect?" I asked.

  "Not you."

  I looked down the beach, and said, "It was very bad to see Flaco dead. He was a good friend."

  The skeleton moaned. A ghostly woman, draped in red robes, stood in the air above me for a moment. She handed three yellow roses to the wind, then vanished. I looked up at the sky. There were no stars. The skeleton said, "I didn’t stick around to find out—I ran away and tried to find my way back here, and got lost—how did Flaco die?"

  "He was strangled and stabbed in the throat."

  "That would be Arish. Arish likes to kill that way. He always leaves them double-dead." A wave washed up around my ankles. The water was thick and warm and red.

  "I almost got him. I almost got to kill Arish."

  "Arish is good. You couldn’t have killed him."

  "I almost did," I said.

  "You couldn’t have killed him. He was made for the job. Genetic upgrades. He only led you along, letting you believe you could," the skeleton said. We both remained silent for a moment. "I’m going to die, Angelo. I told you that if you balled me over, I’d die. You did ball me over?"

  "Yes," I said, "perhaps in more ways than one. When we operated on you, we took a retina scan. A hacker checked your government files."

  "They would have waited for something like that," the skeleton said. "It was enough to get me killed."

  "Also," I admitted, "I gave you AB stimulators before we figured out that you were a brain transplant. You are one, aren’t you?"

  She nodded.

  "Then, you are in danger."

  "I’m dead," the skeleton corrected. Its bones grew thin and began snapping like dry twigs. I tried to think of something comforting to say, but couldn’t. The skeleton saw my distress, and laughed. "Leave me. I’m not afraid to die."

  "Everyone’s afraid to die," I said.

  Wind whipped the sand, blowing it against me. Out in the water, leviathan, large dark formless creatures with eyes on humps, lifted up to watch us. A gleaming tentacle slithered high in the air, then splashed back beneath the waves. The creatures sank back beneath the water, and I could feel the push Tamara had to give to make them stay. Tamara controlled her dream, but only in the half-hearted way of masochists and those who despair.

  The skeleton said, "That’s because they don’t practice. Dying. They’re so afraid of fraying into oblivion, their muscles’ fibers unknitting, the slow settling of fluids from the body."

  "And you’re not?"

  "No," the skeleton said. "I do it over and over again." With those words, the flesh reappeared on the red-haired woman. The crabs began feeding on her. She didn’t flinch.

  "Why did Flaco die?" I asked.

  She held her breath a moment, and released it slowly. I didn’t think she’d tell me. "I guess I owe you that," she said at last. "My husband, General Amir Jafari, wants my brain in a brain bag and my body in stasis."

  "Why?"

  "I was in Intelligence. I committed an indiscretion." She paused again, weighing her words. "I was at a party with other officers’ wives, and they were talking about a politician who’d been assassinated. I’d had too much to drink, and by the way they talked, I assumed they all knew we’d made the hit, and I said some things I shouldn’t have. Among the Alliance such indiscretions get one killed. My husband got my sentence commuted to life in a brain bag—but life in a brain bag isn’t life."

  I remembered the empty, simulated voice of the general saying ‘I’m not inhuman,’ as if to convince himself. Out in the water, the dead bull struggled to its feet and snorted, then was bowled over by a wave.

  "I don’t understand. Why did he want your body in stasis?" A cold wind blew; a thin crust of ice appeared on the beach.

  "I don’t know," she said. "Maybe he thinks he’ll get to screw it when he gets out of the service. Once I caught wind of his plan, I didn’t stick around to find out. I knew my only chance of escape would be to dump my old body, so I bought one on the black market and dismantled my brain bag. I thought as long as I had that crystal, could hold it in my hand and see it, I would know I wasn’t in the brain bag. I had the cryotechs put a German shepherd’s brain in my old body and sent it to my husband, naked, in a cage. I put a sign around its neck that said: ‘If All You Want is Sex and Faithfulness, I’m Yours.’" She seemed very pleased by the memory.

  "Your husband called me on comlink. He offered to pay me to turn you in. He seemed concerned about you, I think. It’s hard to tell."

  "Don’t let him fool you," she said. "He’s one of the dead, the living dead. His capacity for emotion was tossed aside when he put on the cymech."

  "I would not be so quick to judge him."

  "Believe me, all he has left are memories of emotions. Memories fade."

  "And this Arish, he is military?"

  "Not officially, but he does odd jobs for them. The kind of odd job he did on Flaco."

  "Was he the man who pulled off your hand?"

  The woman laughed. "No." The beach disappeared. I saw Tamara at the airport, hurrying out of a black Mitsubishi mini-shuttle, looking worriedly into the sky above her at an incoming craft. Distracted, she slammed the shuttle door on her hand, and tried to jerk free. She pulled her arm away with only a bloody stump. She staggered off. Then the scene changed and I saw Tamara, lying on the beach, with the ghost crabs eating her. "This body’s worthless."

  This incident frightened me. She should not have been able to wipe the whole world off the monitor to show this single memory. She was delving farther into her subconscious than was safe.

  "I must go now," I said. "I’ll need to get you some more medications, to help prevent any brain damage. Will you wait here for me?"

  The dark creatures rose out of the sea and eyed me again. She shrugged. "Yes. I guess."

  I jacked out and unplugged her monitor. The sun was rising, and because I had not slept much for two days and the pharmacy wasn’t open, I decided to nap a few moments. I lay down on the bed beside her and closed my eyes.

  I awoke at three in the afternoon. Tamara was asleep, lying beside me. I touched her forehead; her fever was very high. On impulse I brushed her forehead with a kiss, then watched to see if she would awaken. She didn’t.

  I was glad, for as quickly as the impulse to kiss her had come, I suddenly understood where I had seen her before: Her thin body, so emaciated and small, was that of a stranger, but her face—her nose, her eyes, and the curve of her lips—were those of my dead wife, Elena.

  In my mind I berated myself. I should have seen the resemblance from the start, should have seen it after Elena had haunted my dreams for the first time in twenty years. But when one reaches my age, everyone appears familiar. Three times in my life I’ve met men who could have been my twin; it was only a matter of time before I met someone who looked like my wife, and I believed that if I had been better
prepared for the occasion, I wouldn’t have succumbed to the temptation to take her in, wouldn’t have made a fool of myself by becoming attracted to her.

  I changed shirts and walked to Vasquez Pharmaceuticals and bought some log-phase growth regulators and antimosin C, paying in coin. While walking home, I took the time to think. I had never confronted a problem that I couldn’t think my way through, given enough time. I rehearsed the conversation I’d had with Tamara, and realized her story didn’t quite fit right. If Jafari was planning to imprison Tamara in a brain bag, he wouldn’t need her body, except perhaps to sell, unless he was planning to reunite her brain and body in the future. Did he hope to reunite them when the situation calmed down? I wondered. Or would he just hold her a few years and release her quietly? Whatever his plan, I felt that I was on the right track. The fact that Tamara hadn’t deduced Jafari’s plans hinted at her impulsiveness, or at an unreasonable fear. I planned to tell her my theory when I got home, but for the present my mind became occupied with planning our escape. The whole trip to Vasquez Pharmaceuticals took several hours.

  When I returned home Tamara was sitting in the kitchen, her head slumped on the table, her hand loosely wrapped around a glass of ice water, her laser rifle on the floor next to her. She mumbled in a foreign tongue. Her fever was very high. I ran downstairs, brought up my medical supplies, and dumped them on the table. I wanted to get the log-phases into Tamara as quickly as possible, so I filled a syringe and shoved it into her carotid artery. Her head snapped up and she looked at the needle in her neck, then closed her eyes and said, "Get me out of here. I want to go away."

  "In good time," I said, wanting to calm her.

  "I feel cold. I think I’m going to die."

  "You won’t die," I told her. The coldness, that was bad. Her immune system was attacking her brain. I refilled the syringe with antimosin and injected it into her arm.

  "You’ve been good to me, Angelo. Good. Do you mean what you said ... about order—not wanting order?"

  "Yes. Very much."

  "Then get away. Get out of Panamá." Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up.

  "What do you mean?" I asked. She looked at the floor for a long moment. I demanded again, "What do you mean?"

  "You want me to commit a second indiscretion?" She smiled, a cold menacing smile. "I mean get out. Now! Order’s coming, unstoppable order! Get beyond Panamá, beyond Earth, beyond ... AI’s and the Alliance."

  I tried to make sense of what she said. She stared at me, as if to bore the knowledge into me with her eyes. The Alliance forces were made up of troops from all countries, and were charged with taking care of Earth’s interests in space. Theoretically, they do not have political power on any planet—though they control space between planets, and thus maintain a strangle-hold on the rest of the galaxy. Also, they are supposed to be politically non-aligned, so I didn’t understand why she’d juxtaposed the AI’s and the Alliance. Yet, like any huge bureaucracy, there are many factions within the Alliance, all bidding for power. I remembered Flaco’s warning of Imperialism. "Someone in the Alliance has bid to the artificial intelligences for domination of Earth?"

  Tamara nodded. "They’ll take the countries one by one. Some now. Some a few years from now. I don’t know how long you have."

  I considered the problems of neighboring nations, the insidious spread of Nicita Idealist Socialism. I knew the name of the culprits—knew that a faction within Alliance Intelligence must have organized this. Yet it seemed impossible. It was illegal for the AIs to engage in wars with humans. The AIs had always been more than politically neutral—they were totally uninterested in our politics. Their minds are occupied by totally different concerns. I could not think what would make them become interested, take such a risk. "But what could the socialists offer the AI’s?"

  Tamara hesitated. "Lift their memory ceilings; give them access to space."

  I thought for a moment. Freedom, I realized, feeling dazed. She was talking about freedom. Some AI’s were going to trade Earth’s freedom for their own. It was a perfect bartering equation—value for value. If I hadn’t been so emotionally attached to my freedom, I would have laughed. "You should tell someone!" I shouted. "You should turn them in!"

  "I told you," she said. "You’re enough."

  "Tell the authorities!"

  "Angelo, you don’t understand. I was one of them. I know them. I’d never get away with it."

  She turned her face away, rested her head on the table. She breathed heavily for a few moments, and it took me a while to realize she had somehow fallen asleep.

  I stroked her hair and wondered what she meant—one of them. One of those who kill the Flacos of the world? One who makes freedom a commodity? What did I know of her? She was a red-haired woman on the beach. A woman with the quick, commanding voice of a socialist dictator’s wife. She liked the smell of roses. She ran because she feared imprisonment in a machine—yet she turned the world into a prison for others. Wouldn’t it be justice to turn her in? Wouldn’t it be justice to strangle her? I’d suspected from the moment I’d taken her in that I’d regret it. I wondered if I should take her to the hospital, tell the authorities, let her be killed.

  She began moaning again, whispering snatches in English and Farsi. Once she said, "It has all gone bad, just bad," but I didn’t understand most of what she said. I considered how they would take control. The AI’s distributed information—market reports, weather forecasts, libraries, bank accounts—and communications. They kept track of armaments. It would be simple to destroy the world with misinformation—bankrupt nations, lose commodities shipments. So much damage is done through ineptitude and mismanagement; I couldn’t comprehend how much could be accomplished through sabotage.

  I looked at Tamara’s thin face, at her frail body, and wished I had known the Tamara who had been. A woman with a body that poor would have been humble. She would have known pain, and would feel empathy for others. What did I know of this woman? As if to answer, she suddenly cried out in English, "All I want is away!"

  And I decided.

  Whatever she had been, whatever she thought herself to be, she was a refugiada now.

  I carried her to bed and then tried to work up enough nerve to take her to the safety of the plantations, knowing I’d have to wait until after dark. I went to the kitchen for a beer and heard a sound outside the back door. I looked out the window: On the back porch was a half-filled bowl of milk that Tamara or Flaco had set out for the gray and white kitten. The kitten was on the porch, swiping at a dark-brown ball—a tarantula with its legs curled under its abdomen. The kitten batted at the tarantula, knocking it against the back door a couple times, and then looked up and saw me and ran away.

  I turned on the radio so the music would fill the silence in the house. After a moment, comlink tones sounded in my head. I engaged; Jafari came in on audio. He asked in his perfectly inflectionless voice, "Is Tamil nearby?" I became afraid. My heart raced, and I almost panicked. The line was so full of static I could barely hear him. He was running the signal through filters, empty channels to stop a trace.

  "Tamil? Your wife? She’s unconscious."

  "This is important," Jafari said. "After this, don’t accept or make any comlinks—Intelligence can home in on an open signal. Tell Tamil the Alliance has taken me out of the loop. I can do nothing more for her. If she’s caught, she’ll be terminated. Tell her I loved her. Tell her I’m sorry." Jafari cut off.

  I walked around the house for a few moments in a daze, and then began packing food and water. I went to my medical bag and began throwing out things I didn’t need. Vetinni’s "The Rings of Saturn in D Minor" played on the radio, but it stopped, and momentarily the house was quiet.

  Downstairs I heard the front door squeak on its hinges. I realized I could feel a draft on my face. I didn’t remember leaving the door open. I reached down and picked up the rifle, turned it on as Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" started, and leapt in front of the stairwell and fired.
Arish was on the stairs, his back against the wall, his mouth open, holding a sawed-off shotgun. He said "Mother—" and fired as my shot burned across his stomach.

  His shot sprayed the wall behind me as the weight of my moving body carried me past the open stairwell. I heard Arish drop to the floor. Tamara opened the bedroom door and looked out. Her face was very pale and she could hardly stand. I waved for her to go back into the bedroom, and snapped a glance down the stairwell.

  Arish lay on his belly, with his gun hand outstretched, breathing heavily. A jagged streak of light sparkled around the scorched flesh of his belly. I sneaked toward him and he leapt to his feet in one fluid move, swinging up his shotgun.

  I jumped in the air and kicked at his head, putting all my weight into the move, knowing I’d not get another try. My heel connected with his chin and I felt more than heard his neck snap. His gun fired into the ceiling as he flipped backward downstairs. I fell down the stairs and rolled into him.

  He laid perfectly still, his eyes open, looking around. He began growling, but his muscles were slack, though his limp hand still held his shotgun.

  I scrambled back a step, aimed my rifle at his head, then moved forward and pushed away his weapon with my foot.

  I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t want to kill him. My medical bag was on the table behind me, so I got my fluothane canister and put the gas mask over his face, then checked his wounds. Three fingers had burned off his left hand, and I’d cut a hole across his belly that had nearly disemboweled him, but the wound was so hot that in the infrared it looked like melted plasma, and I could not see if any vital organs were hit.

  I sat for a moment, shocked at how easy it had been. My mouth felt full of cotton, and my heart beat fast. Tamara had said I couldn’t kill Arish, and I was afraid, knowing that next time it wouldn’t be this easy. I went to the bedroom to get Tamara, to take her back to the plantations.