On My Way to Paradise Page 7

  Tamara lay in the chest, staring at the ceiling, blinking. The antimosin I’d injected was taking full effect, reducing her fever, and the log-phases had begun repairing some neural damage, but it was too early to see much improvement. I tried to rouse her, rubbing her skin and saying "Please, Tamara, you have to wake up! I can’t take you any farther. You must stand up and walk for yourself!" My mouth dried from pleading. I resorted to slapping her and yelling, "Wake up! The cyborgs are coming! Cyborgs will put you in a brain bag!" but threats had no effect on her. She had urinated sometime during the trip; her pants were wet.

  It would have been less dangerous to leave Tamara. But the manic joy I’d felt upon deciding to bring her at any cost still held me. Besides, it seemed the brave thing to do. Killing Arish had been cowardly. I tried to salve my conscience by calling it a vendetta, but I’d killed him for the same reason a man kills a rattlesnake in a vast desert: to insure that our paths didn’t cross again. I hoped an act of courage could erase an act of cowardice, so I decided to stick by Tamara as long as possible, to dump her as a last resort. I got out my rifle and prepared to shoot anyone who tried to ambush me in the airlock.

  I hit the release and the door hissed open. The only thing in the airlock was a baggage cart that looked like a large wagon. At the end of the airlock was a windowless door. I closed the lid to the chest, and in a small way was thankful Tamara’s vacant eyes could no longer stare at me. I loaded her on the baggage cart and prepared to lose myself in the bustling crowd of the station.

  But behind the second door was only an enormous hall, quiet as a mausoleum. I panicked. The station should have been full of people preparing to board ship for Baker, but only the smells of sweat and flaking skin—the residue of humanity—remained. I wondered if I’d missed my ship.

  I dabbed sweat from the back of my neck and pulled my baggage cart down the long, empty corridor, watching to make sure my baggage didn’t jiggle or tumble off. The squeak of the cart’s wheels echoed like the squeak of innumerable mice.

  I had an idea where my ship lay. Sol station was shaped like a huge, gray rolling pin that turned slowly, providing artificial gravity; the roller was the station, while the handles of the rolling pin were docks for the big ships. The Chaeron would be hooked to the dock, snuggling against it like a lamprey nuzzling a shark.

  The station was on night cycle; the lights were low. Along each side of the corridor was a line of round doorways, and a dim phosphorescent glow encircled each doorway so that one appeared to be viewing luminous rosettes on the sides of an enormous eel. The station had a cloying, subterranean atmosphere.

  I followed the corridor till it opened into a larger hall lit by shop windows as if it were a market street in a city. Webs of light wound from the neon signs down to the floor. Here and there someone sat at a restaurant, but most shops were either bolted shut or operated by automatic tellers. At the far end of the street a sign over a doorway announced that the Chaeron would leave for Baker in three hours.

  I pulled my baggage cart to the public restroom just inside the concourse that led to my ship, dropped my luggage in a stall, and tried to think of what to do. The Alliance could not arrest me here—Sol Station was considered to be in Earth air space, and was therefore under international civil jurisdiction. The Alliance Military officials could not take me directly, but they could notify the authorities in Panamá that I had committed murder. And if Cyborg Intelligence checked the records under Arish’s name, they would not have difficulty tracking the shuttle I’d rented. The Alliance could notify Panamá of my whereabouts, and the civilian authorities in Panamá could obtain my extradition. Therefore, I could only hope that Cyborg Intelligence would not discover the murder before I left—or if they did discover it, I hoped they wouldn’t be able to track me before I escaped the Solar System. I needed to board the ship at the last minute, making it difficult for Panamá to fill out an extradition order if the authorities learned my location. I didn’t want them to know my whereabouts until I was beyond reach. Yet even that plan was flawed. I didn’t really believe that Jafari’s men would go to so much trouble. If Jafari was a Nicita Idealist Socialist, then he was one of those men who desired to engineer a truly communal society—a society free of the commercialism, a society where people would share goods without thought. Yet, to build this utopia, he was willing to destroy all competing societies. He was willing to murder without thought. And I knew he wouldn’t extradite me. It would be easier to kill me. Easier to get rid of me without legal entanglements. I could only wait, and hope.

  The bathroom stalls were large enough for a Mexican to do a hat dance in, and the doors were fitted so that one could not see between the cracks, allowing a great deal of privacy. Only a small slit at the top and bottom of each stall would allow someone to see in—and then only if that person went to great pains.

  Signs in several languages, accompanied by diagrams, revealed the proper uses of the toilet articles for the uninitiated. These were truly international toilets, built to suit the needs of the most modest traveler. It seemed a good place to hide.

  Tamara’s fever had lowered, and her muscles seemed less rigid. I kept her trunk on the toilet, and each time someone came into the restroom, I stood on the toilet with her, making the stall appear empty. But after a while I realized this was stupid—even Arish wouldn’t have gone into a restroom and randomly assassinated anyone who happened to be sitting on a toilet; I began to just stand with my pants down whenever someone came in, letting people think I was using the facilities. Tamara was still wet with urine; I undressed her, washed her, made a diaper of toilet paper, and dressed her in an extra pair of my pants.

  The tediousness of the task had a calming effect, and I had enough time to wonder why someone would want to pay my fare to Baker. The fare would be enormous, and my benefactor would want much in return. The shuttle’s computer had given me insufficient information to answer such a question, and I had not radioed an inquiry about the job to the station for fear of alerting Jafari’s men to my escape route. The thought struck me that someone on Baker wanted a rejuvenation and would want me to administer it. Only a morphogenic pharmacologist is licensed to administer rejuvenations. Frankly it is the only skill I had that I deemed valuable enough to justify someone paying my fare.

  The thought totally carried me away. Manufacturing the hundreds of component drugs and engineering the vector viruses could take years, would be terribly difficult to carry off. But with the money from Tamara’s crystal and the money I’d taken from Arish, I had enough to buy a rejuvenation already manufactured, and though the station was empty now, once a week it swelled with thousands of people, mostly rich people, who were leaving to places where rejuvenations are not readily available—the pharmacy would surely keep a rejuvenation in stock.

  Even if I was wrong, even if no one wanted a rejuv on Baker, I’d have a great treasure, something more valuable than any other treasure the planet had to offer, and I’d be a rich man.

  An hour before the ship was to leave I was imagining how rich I would be when a man cracked the door to the restroom and said, "Wait out here," as he entered. He walked softly, and I knew something was wrong. I quietly pulled my gun from my medical bag. He walked down the row of toilet stalls, opening each door. He came to my stall and gave the door a slight push. When it didn’t open, he entered the next stall and urinated.

  When he was done he washed his hands and waited by the sinks. I could hear the rustle of his clothes.

  I stood by the toilet and controlled my breathing while sweat trickled down my face. For every minute I waited, the moment of the ship’s departure drew nearer. Arish’s replacement would lose nothing by waiting till the ship left. He began whistling, then walked back to my stall and knocked on the door. Through the crack in the bottom of the stall I could see black combat boots and gray pants.

  "Gomez, are you in there?" he asked in Spanish.

  During my stay in Miami I’d learned to speak English without
much accent. "I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish," I told him.

  The man was quick to switch to English; unlike his Spanish, which was flawless, his English betrayed a slight Arabic accent. "Perhaps you have seen my friend Gomez? He is an older man, perhaps sixty, with graying hair. He’s from Panamá."

  He was describing me.

  "I haven’t seen him. I just got off duty, and I’ve been on the loading dock," I said, mispronouncing the j in just so it sounded like chust. I cringed a little.

  "Ah, thank you," he said, and began to walk off. He stopped. "You have been very helpful. I should commend you to your superiors. What did you say your name was?"

  It was an impolite question, and I thought a true gringo would have told him to go to hell, but I gave the first name I could think of that started with a j. "Jonathan. Jonathan Langford." It was the name of an insane philosopher I’d met in Miami who claimed that most of man’s ills could be traced to inadequate amounts of reptiles in the diet. This time, I pronounced the j sound right.

  The man seemed to hesitate. "Thank you, Jonathan," he said, and he hurried from the bathroom.

  I used a piece of toilet paper to wipe the sweat from my face, and realized what a mistake I’d made: Arish had at least two replacements, and I’d missed the opportunity to kill them. All they had to do was watch the outbound ship and wait for me to fall into their hands. In fact, they were probably on their way to the ship now. I packed Tamara back into the trunk, using my medical bag to cushion her head. I took my luggage to the door, checked the corridor and hurried away from the docks, away from where Jafari’s men would congregate, back to the pharmacy in the market.

  A few people were in the market, enough to make me feel safe. I watched their faces and feet. No one in the market was wearing gray slacks. No one was paying attention to me.

  An automatic teller ran the pharmacy, so I fed it my request and shoved in my coins, bills, and bank card. It took nearly everything I had, but I got the rejuvenation. I stopped at a computer terminal and accessed the information for jobs on Baker. The terminal listed my prospective employer as Motoki Corporation, a good Japanese company, and listed the place of employment as Kimai no Ji, on Baker. I fed in my ID number and requested the pharmacologist’s job. The computer took a few minutes to review my life and work history, then flashed a message: "The position you desire is filled; your qualifications are adequate for a secondary position. Would you like more information?"

  I was stunned. Who else would have taken a job as a morphogenic pharmacologist on a planet that had nothing to offer? Yet I knew I’d betrayed my position to anyone who cared to learn it. It was imperative that I leave on that ship. I punched in the command: "Name secondary position."

  The computer responded with an advertisement: "Mercenary. Army private, second class: Motoki corporation seeks mercenaries to aid in Alliance-approved, limited military action. No offensive weapons will be permitted. Applicants must be human (genetic upgrading cannot exceed levels necessary for propagation within the species), with minimal cyborging (23.1% on the Bell Scale, no armoring or inbuilt weaponry)."

  I was too surprised to think straight. I punched in a question: "How am I qualified for this position?" The computer responded by showing a breakdown of my military qualifications: When I was young, every male Guatemalan was required to serve in the military for three years. While there, I had trained as a specialist in neutralizing attackers by interfacing with remote defense systems. But, since it was peacetime, after training I was transferred to a commissary where I purchased fruits and vegetables for salads. The computer provided excerpts from commendations I’d received for excellence in performance in combat training.

  Of course, this was outrageous. I had been trained forty years earlier, under peaceful conditions. Even when we’d fought remotes in training, we’d worn light armor and shot them with harmless scoring lasers that were weighted to feel like heavy assault rifles. It had all been an extravagant game of tag in which the losers played at being dead. I’d long forgotten anything that would be useful in a real battle. Any qualifications I had didn’t justify their job offer; it was almost as if they knew I was in a position where I couldn’t refuse.

  The computer used a point system to weigh my qualifications, and the screen showed a breakdown. The computer had docked me for being at the upper age limit, but I regained many points because of my medical background and good health. I needed 80 points to qualify for the job; I had 82.

  I was still shaken from killing Arish. My head ached and I felt nauseous. I knew I couldn’t be a mercenary, couldn’t kill again, and I knew someone would be waiting for me to try to board the ship, so I prepared to walk away.

  "What luck!" a man said, startling me.

  I turned to look at him. He was tall and broad, with amazingly thick black hair that perched on his head like an animal. His broad nose and high cheekbones were those of an Indian. He was barefoot, and his pants were made of faded blue flour sacks, and he wore a blood-red woolen jacket with white llamas printed on it. He carried a military duffel bag on his back. All in all he appeared to be a yokel from Peru. You wouldn’t have looked at him twice in the market in Panamá, but he was out of place at Sol Station.

  He pointed at the screen and with a faint Castilian accent said, "I’m sorry if I startled you, Señor, but only yesterday they required 120 points. See how fortunate you are? An old caballero like you could never have gotten on yesterday. They must have many positions to fill. I suppose they’re desperate."

  Yes, desperate, I thought. I also am desperate. By buying the rejuvenation and requesting this information, I’d alerted Jafari’s men to my position. I had to get off the station, fast, and even though some of Jafari’s men were on the station, it was a good sign: It meant Jafari’s friends may have decided to handle the situation themselves, without alerting the police. I still had a decent chance of getting off planet.

  Because I had no other choice, I typed in the command, "Position accepted."

  "You should hurry," the Indian said. "They will have to take medical tests, give you vaccinations. And you’ll have to sign a work contract."

  I began to walk down the outbound corridor, and the huge, broad-chested man padded alongside in his bare feet, talking. I thought, Jafari could have sent this man. I watched him. He had a small green bruise on his chin and a cut above one eye. His eyes were intelligent, alert, which seemed incongruous for a man who was obviously so poor. On his neck was a 3-D tattoo of a strange beast: A creature with the heads of both a lion and a goat, the body and claws of a lion, and the wings of a dragon. I was gazing at it when he suddenly glanced at me; I turned away so I wouldn’t appear to be staring.

  "Pardon me, Señor, but you are a lucky man! I can feel it," he said, licking his lips. He was nervous. "My name is Perfecto, and I can feel things like that: Luck." He watched me, calculatingly, as if to beg for money. "You don’t believe me, but I score pretty high on the psi tests. I can feel luck. I feel it on you. Everyone is born with a certain amount of luck, like a bucket filled with water, and some men squander it, pour it on the ground. But others live by their wits and their skill and never dip into their luck. That is the way you do it, right? But today you have found your luck. Am I not right? Just look at how this day has gone and ask yourself, ‘Has not this been my lucky day?’"

  I looked at him and laughed a laugh that was half cry and would have sounded demonic.

  "Well, perhaps not," he said, "since we will both die on Baker." He smiled at me as if it were a melancholy joke. Then he became quiet and his bare feet slapped on the black floor.

  The concourses were long dark tunnels, and our steps echoed loudly. I watched the shadows for the man with the gray slacks, but saw nothing. On the walls between each docking portal were murals. The first mural portrayed the Moors being driven from Europe by the Christians: A dead man with a back that had been shredded by the Padres’ tortures was being dragged toward a ship by two women. In his stiff hands he t
enderly held the Koran, and his children marched behind the grisly procession and cast fearful glances back at a bone-white chapel that bore the sign of the cross. Priests dressed in black dotted the chapel’s yard like crows. A second mural showed the North American Nez Perce Indians dressed in furs, marching through the snow as they tried to escape the cavalry by fleeing into Canada. The cut feet of women and children left a bloody trail in the snow. A third mural showed Jews caught in the act of fleeing Jerusalem by car. The lanes of traffic were all snarled and the procession had ground to a halt. All the faces, frozen in terror, were lit with a brilliant surrealistic light as they glanced back to see the first scarlet, nuclear mushroom clouds blossom over the Dome of the Rock.

  I wondered if someone would someday paint a mural of people like me, desperadoes who streaked away from a darkening Earth in starships. The thought sickened me.

  And the sweat began to creep down my armpits again and my mouth became dry. At any minute the man who called himself "Perfecto" could turn and attack me. His arms were very thick, obviously strong. And my attention was divided between watching him and the halls.

  "Will any other Latin Americans be coming?" I asked.

  "Ah, yes! Many! Mostly Chileans and Ecuadorans, but lots from other places as well. It’s a requirement for all the people to be Latin Americans. The company wants people who know something of guerrilla warfare, and the only place they can get us is South America, since civilized people settle their differences with neutron cannons and atomics," he laughed and looked to see if I was smiling.

  I pointed out the empty hall, "From the looks of it, just you and me will have to fight this war."

  Perfecto smiled, "Ah, no! Everyone is being processed in Independent Brazil so they can get their weapons cleared through customs faster and get a free ride up. Didn’t you read the advertisement?"

  "No," I said.

  Perfecto looked at me strangely. "We’re all leaving, jumping off like fleas from a drowning dog. The ad said we could bring eight kilo’s of personal items—favorite weapons or armor included. Did you bring a weapon?"