On My Way to Paradise Page 6

  She was on the bed, feet tucked up under her butt, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth, visor down, sucking images out of the dream monitor—not like a professional, like a junkie. She kept saying, "All I want is away; All I want is away; All I want is away." Sweat rolled off her as she rocked, and her face was bleached colorless.

  I went to the console and unplugged her monitor. She kept rocking, unaware of what I’d done. I pushed her visor up. Her eyes were rolled back, showing white. She kept whimpering, clenching her teeth. She was deep inside herself. Catatonic.

  I pulled the visor back down, plugged her into the console, put my own visor down, and plugged into the viewer’s jack:

  And on the beach the wind raged in the night, whipping grains of sand as sharp as needles through my skin. I heard a noise like a person hissing through his teeth, and I looked up and saw ghostly sea gulls with the heads of men, and they were hissing through their teeth.

  The red-haired Tamil sat, curled up, rocking on a beach that undulated beneath her, while she watched the humps of dark sea creatures rise and gape at her before she shoved them back into oblivion. She yelled to something out to sea, but the wind carried her words away. The beach was black with scorpions that scuttled over the wet sand and sheltered themselves among gleaming strands of seaweed. The dead bull, bloated now, stood in the shallows and struggled in seaweed as he tried to reach shore, shaking his rotting flesh, lowing in pain. The breakers that washed against him made his penis and testicles rise as they came in, and then left them to hang, wet and dripping, as they receded.

  I called to Tamil. She didn’t answer. I yelled, "Arish is dead," but the wind and crashing waves and the hissing gulls covered my words, so I struggled toward her, leaning against the stinging wind, and picked my way among the huge black scorpions. One of them stung my ankle, and it felt as if a hot iron jabbed into my flesh. I walked a few steps and was hit on the other foot, so then I ran, ignoring the stings.

  Out at sea the leviathans rose, and a huge wave rolled before them as they headed for shore. I reached Tamil. She was yelling at the empty air, "All I want is away!" I pulled her face toward me. She looked up. And though the wind still blew, her world quieted.

  "Arish is dead," I yelled, hoping to comfort her. "Your husband called me. He said he can’t help you. We’ve got to get away."

  She looked at me, searched my face. "My God! You have me! All this running, and you have me!"

  "You’re mistaken," I said. "Come see! Jack out and come see!"

  "See what? Arish dead on the floor? See exactly what you want me to see?" Out in the water, the bull made a bawling noise. Tamil looked me in the eye and hissed through clenched teeth, "I die!"

  I heard a dull thud behind me and began to turn. The bull had struggled free of the seaweed, and he was charging. I didn’t have time to move. His left horn speared through my chest, and he tossed me over his head. I fell face-down in the sand. The pain made me see lights, cramped my muscles, made vomit rise in my throat. I forgot momentarily where I was and thought someone had shot me.

  A hot sting slapped my cheek and another hit my back. A scorpion latched on to my cheek and jerked spasmodically, inserting its stinger farther and farther, as if it would bury itself in my flesh. I pulled it out and threw it away, and heard a thudding noise. The bull was stamping Tamil’s body. Time and time again he reared up his huge front legs, and then dropped on her, pushing her broken body into the sand, cracking her bones. The bull stood over her and snorted as he sniffed at her blood, then he stuck a horn through her belly and lifted her in the air. He paraded her up and down the beach several times, and then galloped into the water.

  "Tamara!" I yelled, and she looked back at me, weakly, with hatred in her face. She opened her mouth and breathed darkness at me. And when the cold and antiseptic darkness rushed over me, all I wanted was to whimper once before I died.

  I got up and staggered from room to room, searching through a fog for something—I didn’t know what it was—that I couldn’t seem to find. I would look in a room and see something and wonder "Is that what I’m looking for?" Then I would realize I was looking at a lamp or table, and it was not what I wanted. I went to an open door, which seemed like all the others, and sunlight struck my face. I wandered in my front yard, looking at orchids and trees, wondering if they were what I wanted, and found myself at my neighbor’s door. I opened it.

  Rodrigo De Hoyos sat in a chair in his living room. He looked at me, "Don Angelo, what is wrong? What has happened?" he cried as he rose and crossed the room. He took my hand and led me in, forced me down into a large, soft chair. I tried to stand and he pushed me back down. "Are you ill?" he asked.

  I sat for several seconds, thinking, but my mind raced down pathways that always came to a dead end. I grasped Rodrigo’s shirt. "Something terrible has happened!" I told him, and began sobbing. Then I remembered: All I want is away. I yelled, "You must get me a shuttle!"

  Rodrigo stared at me, as if to calculate my sanity. He folded his hands and stared at them, made a sucking noise with his teeth, and looked at the clock. After what seemed a very long time, he jacked in a call to Pantransport and asked for a minishuttle as soon as possible.

  He turned away for a moment, and I got up and headed out the door. He came and tried to force me to sit back down, but I pushed him aside and he didn’t stop me.

  I went home, opened my door, and found Arish still at the bottom of the stairs, gasping for breath through the gas mask. One of his lungs must have collapsed to make him gasp that way. The air was filled with the scent of gastric juices and charred flesh and hair. I marveled that I didn’t remember passing him when I had gone outside, and I stumbled over him on my way back to my bedroom.

  Tamara sat on the bed, slumped slightly forward, perfectly motionless. I reached up and touched her neck, feeling for a pulse. She had none. I put on the dream monitor to see if any brain activity registered—knowing it meant nothing since as random neurons fire people often have dream flashes up to forty minutes after death. Such flashes are called the "dreams of the dead." But the monitor remained blank. I pulled her to the floor and initiated CPR, massaging her heart and breathing into her, but she didn’t respond.

  I knew the shuttle would come soon, so I ran to my medical bag and got a slave—a small, computerized device that does the work for the reflexive nervous system—and shoved its prongs into the base of her skull at an angle, just above the atlas vertebrae, so that it penetrated her brain stem. I switched on the slave and Tamara gasped for air; then I adjusted the slave’s dials till her pulse beat steadily and her breathing evened. It meant nothing—the slave could keep her body functioning even if her brain were dead or removed.

  For a long time I checked the monitor: it remained blank—no sign of brain activity at all, not even a dream of the dead. So I turned off the slave and she stopped breathing immediately. There was a chance she could live, a very slim chance, if she were taken to the hospital. But I didn’t have the heart to do it. The probability that she’d suffered major brain damage was too high, and even though I could have generated new brain cells, they wouldn’t carry her memories, her identity. She would have to spend her life running from people she didn’t remember.

  I pulled her visor up to take a last look. Her eyes were rolled back. Her face was very pale, perfectly still. One tear had seeped from her left eye, slowly finding its way down her cheek. I brushed it away, surprised to feel how high her fever had become in the end. I closed her eyes and whispered the words the refugiados spoke over their dead comrades, "Free at last."

  I couldn’t stand to see her sitting perfectly still, so I switched the slave back on, just to hear her breathing. She sounded alive, even if it was only an imitation of life.

  I began planning the things I needed to do as I packed my clothes in a small bag. With three dead bodies behind me, I was not about to risk the courts of Panamá. I knew I would have to do something with Arish. I heard the sound of a ratt
le behind me. I turned around—no one was there. I wandered to the kitchen and got my medical bag, filled a specimen bottle with some clear synthetic blood, and spilled most of the blood on the table because my hands shook. I went downstairs to where Arish lay gasping on the floor, removed the gas mask from his face, and then unwrapped a scalpel and inserted the blade under his bottom right eyelid and twisted till his eye popped free. I dropped the eye into the blood and agitated the container a moment before putting it in my pocket. I heard the rattling behind me again, and turned around—no one was there. The rattling kept coming, and I realized my jaw was quivering and my own teeth were rattling. I began breathing heavily and my heart pounded.

  I took the scalpel and slit Arish’s throat from ear to ear.

  "For Flaco, you murderous bastard," I told myself. I watched the blood pump out of Arish’s throat, and as it ebbed away, I could feel something inside me ebbing away. I believed God would punish me. "Piss on him if he can’t take a joke!" I said. And I laughed and cried at the same time.

  I searched Arish’s pockets and found his bank card, a book called The Holy Teachings of Twill Baraburi, a couple of knives, a screwdriver, and two "Conquistador cocktails"— capsules filled with stimulants and endorphins, meant to be broken between the teeth so the drug can soak through the skin immediately. Soldiers sometimes take the cocktails in battle to relieve tension and speed the reflexes, but several of the drugs in them are addictive and must be taken in increasingly larger doses. They were practically worthless, since I didn’t know the prescription and therefore couldn’t resell them. But I am a pharmacologist, and cannot lightly toss away any medications, so I scooped them up and put them in my pocket along with Arish’s other possessions. I packed my medical bag and folded the laser rifle and shoved it in, then went back to the bedroom to get my bag of coins.

  Tamara still lay on the bed, and her eyes had reopened—a side effect of the slave plugged into her brain stem. As I rummaged through the closet looking for the coins, I got a chill up my spine. I felt as if Tamara was watching me, and my hands began to shake.

  If I leave without her, I thought, I will never be free of her ghost. I didn’t care if she was dead or not. I felt compelled to drag her away. Had she not wanted to get away? I decided to take her with me, even if she decomposed in my arms. And when the decision was made I was filled with a manic joy. I felt I had instinctively made the right decision.

  In the closet was a large teak chest decorated with elephants and tigers; it was large enough to hold Tamara. I lifted her and laid her in, surprised at how light she was; with her small bones and underdeveloped muscles she could not have weighed more than thirty-five kilos.

  I dragged the chest outside and sat beneath the papaya tree to wait for the shuttle. My muscles had become knotted and I was breathing hard, so I stretched out on the grass and tried to still myself. It was getting dark, and two fruit bats had just reached the papayas above me as the shuttle landed.

  Outside the shuttle was a security scanner. As I reached the scanner a mechanized voice said, "State your destination and prepare for identity scan."

  I fumbled for the specimen bottle with the clear synthetic blood, and then pulled out the eye of Arish. Even with the oxygen provided by the blood, the proteins in the eye had begun to whiten. I put it in my palm and held it up to the retina scanner, trembling, and gave my destination. "Lagrange star station, inbound Concourse One."

  The scanner said, "Welcome, Arish Muhammad Hustanifad. Insert your bank card and we will deduct 147,232 international monetary units from your account. We hope you enjoyed your stay on Earth."

  "Thank you," I answered quietly, "I did enjoy my stay. I shall miss Earth very much."

  I fed Arish’s bank card into the computer.

  I heard Rodrigo’s door open as he came out of his house to see me off, and I shoved Arish’s eye back into my pocket. Rodrigo hurried over, embraced me, looked down at the large chest and pointed at it with his foot. He said, "You won’t be returning, will you?"

  "No," I hung my head and whispered, "I cannot come back. You may hear bad things about me, but no one must know where I’ve gone."

  Rodrigo shook his head solemnly, and looked at the ground. "You have always been a good friend, and a good neighbor. If I am asked, I will say I saw you leave for the feria this morning, as you always do. But listen to my warning: Your voice carries a tone of desperation. You’re afraid—perhaps with good reason. But don’t let your fear get in the way of clear thinking, don Angelo."

  "You have also been a good friend," I whispered in his ear. "I cannot tell you more, but you must take your family, get off-planet. Get beyond the Alliance." I looked in his eyes and saw his disbelief, saw that my vague warning would do no good.

  He nodded kindly, as if to a reactionary or a lunatic, and helped me drag the chest aboard the shuttle.

  The shuttle was piloted by computer and had no cockpit, so it was roomy inside. On the flight up I kept the chest open to let Tamara get air. Her eyes had opened, but remained unfocused, staring at the ceiling, zombie-like. I told her jokes and rambling stories from my childhood, and promised to take her far away, to a planet where fish swam in the rivers and fruit trees were as thick as weeds. Sweat was pouring off me, and I began imagining what would happen at the space station when the customs officials opened my trunk and found a zombie inside. I imagined trying to shoot my way out of the station or trying to hijack a ship, and became even more agitated. I knew it was a crazy idea, so I considered my alternatives: the only alternative was to leave the trunk somewhere with Tamara in it—perhaps outside the station’s infirmary—and hope the trunk would not be her coffin. But even if the doctors there managed to save her life, someone else would manage to take it. There was nothing to do but try to smuggle her aboard a starship, and that did not seem plausible.

  So I turned away and tried to ignore her as I played with the money in my pocket and watched the view outside. The sun had set in Colón, but I could see the shimmering platinum of the banana plantations, among the lights of thousands of cities. A line of shadow marched across Earth; the world darkened beneath me. Comlink tones sounded in my head; I ignored them for a while, and then disconnected. Inside the shuttle was a bank access. I used it to transfer Arish’s money to my account. Then I checked the shuttle’s computer terminal to see if any starships were willing to sign on a pharmacologist. None were. I checked to see if anyone in another star system was willing to pay my fare from their end. Someone from the Delta Pagonis system badly wanted a morphogenic pharmacologist, was willing to pay fare to a planet called Baker. The ship, a Greek ship called the Chaeron, would depart only five hours after I reached the station, and this seemed a great stroke of luck. I began laughing and keyed in visual for Baker: it was a small planet, newly terraformed, population 174,000—not enough people to support a morphogenic pharmacologist. They’d be lucky to get someone. Lucky to get me. The pictures showed white beaches and palm trees, like Panamá. In the background was one single white mountain, like a huge pillar of salt, and behind it were jagged purple mountains. It looked like a place where I could possess myself in peace. A great hope filled me. I was glad to be leaving, leaving the murderous Nicita Idealist Socialists with their plans to destroy all competing societies and reengineer mankind, leaving the sound of bombs dropping in the jungles south of my home, leaving the AIs with their political intrigues, leaving my dead friend. I had no plans for escape. Just the hope of escape. Escape or death. It seemed enough. I told Tamara all about Baker, made up wild stories about how beautiful it would be, and how happy we would be, until my throat went hoarse and my voice sounded like the croaking of a frog.

  I lay down. My muscles were cramping again, and little pinpoints of light flashed behind my eyes. Sometime during the trip I dozed lightly, and unbidden I dreamed that the day had been warm and happy, and that after selling a rejuvenation in the feria, I walked to where Flaco and Tamara built sand castles on an empty beach. I stood and smiled
at them for a long time, not knowing why I was grinning, then began to walk past them.

  "¡Hola! Angelo, where are you going?" Flaco called.

  "I’m on my way to paradise," I said.

  Flaco said, "Hah! Good place! I have a cousin who lives there." Tamara and Flaco smiled at me as I walked past them. I looked up the beach. In the distance was only empty sand, and I knew my legs would tire long before I made it. Above me, sea gulls hung motionless in the air. I stretched out my arms and crouched, wondering if the wind could lift me and make me fly like a bird. My arms sprouted tiny ugly feathers, and I began to rise. I held my arms steady and floated slowly up into the sky.

  Flaco yelled to Tamara, "Watch out, or that big sea gull will crap on you!" I looked down. Flaco was pointing up at me, laughing. I beckoned for Tamara to come with me, and strained down to reach her. She just turned away.

  Flaco pulled a red ball from one pant pocket and a kitten from the other. And as I rose in the air, Flaco and Tamara ran along, playing ball with a gray and white kitten on an empty beach beneath a purple sun that never set.

  Chapter 5

  The shuttle’s door ground against the metal of the airlock, waking me, and the soft rumble of the shuttle’s rockets died. Metal in the rocket engines wailed momentarily as it cooled from a near molten state to far below freezing. I waited. Arish had been dead five hours—plenty of time for his body to have cooled. Plenty of time for his death to have been discovered.

  Anyone who checked his body would notice the eye missing, would know why I’d taken it. I cursed myself for not having mutilated Arish so the eye wouldn’t be missed. I feared that when I opened the shuttle door I’d meet Arish’s protégé or, even worse, security forces that would drag me back to Panamá. I kept the shuttle locked, waited to see if anyone would demand entrance.