Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (22 page)

“So I’ve heard,” I say, “although one never knows what to believe and what is just rumor.”

“That is 
so
 true,” he says, as though I’ve said something he’s often thought himself. “Come in, come in. We’ve been expecting you—Machiko contacted me of course. There’s food inside, a room for you if you need to rest.”

He leads the way back to the compound and we enter through the door from which he emerged.

Inside the compound I find that the interconnected buildings form a labyrinth. My initial view is of a large empty courtyard. The walls of the buildings which border it are decorated with elaborate murals. The paintings are very well executed—very realistic and created with a truly imaginative, artistic touch—but their subject matter is a mixture of the ecstatic and the grotesque. Mural painting has a long and honorable tradition in Mexico, but here it has simultaneously been lifted to new heights of beauty in its execution and plunged into new depths of horror for its subject matter.

In one long, all-encompassing panel of images, beautiful young men and women hover over the injured and dying, the protoplasm of 
suerte
 flowing from victim to murderer. The faces of those who receive the gift have the expressions of saints transported to heaven. The faces of the dying wear the abysmal aspects of men and women suffering their first foretaste of hell.

This drama is repeated again and again, while in the background the slums of Mexico City are rendered in great detail: the wrecked buildings, the poverty… crime, celebration, sex… the hungry street dogs, beggars, and preachers. Street toughs lounge on corners smoking marijuana while ogling young women. Mothers huddle their infants close to their bodies, as though they could somehow shield their offspring from the dangers around them with nothing but their arms.

The background is, I realize, not merely a setting, but an essential part of the work. It is only against the backdrop of poverty that the murders in the foreground can be seen in their proper context: as the desperate measures resorted to by a lucky few to escape the terrible, anonymous fate of the many. The 
Suerte
 are drawn from this ghetto, and while they might be ruthless, their primary reason for doing what they do is the same desperation that causes some people to rob or kidnap. The others do it for money while the 
Suerte
 do it to steal their victims’ good fortune, but the monsters they’re running from are the same: poverty, hopelessness, and fear.

Suarez leads me from the courtyard through narrow, winding alleys amongst the buildings, and the murals follow us, seemingly unending, their portrayal of both the city outside and the triumph of the 
Suerte
 over their victims repeating endlessly. I notice, too, that each figure, no matter how minor, is clearly an individual. Each face, whether of the 
Suerte
, their victims, or the general population, is characteristic and unmistakable. I suspect that they are, in fact, modeled on real people, perhaps on real events. My suspicion turns to certainty when I recognize the face of the girl who led me here. In the painting she is looking idly out a window, her shoulders bare, as a man dresses—or perhaps undresses, I can’t tell which—in the room behind her.

“You are admiring our murals,” Suarez says. “Or perhaps admiring is not quite the right word.”

“I’m impressed by them.”

He stops and runs his fingers over the face of a dying woman.

“Every person you see here is real, every event happened, every death is a real death, and every transport of 
suerte
 from the dying to the living is genuine.” He looks at me. “You find it disconcerting, I think.”

“Yes, I do,” I answer honestly.

“You’ve seen death before. You served in Tijuana.”

“How did you know that?”

I’ve been careful to wear long sleeves while in Mexico, despite the heat, to cover up my tattoos. Suarez smiles lightly.

“Lucky guess.” He pauses a beat, then laughs. “I’m joking. Did you think I let you into my home without researching your background a little?”

“I served there, but I don’t remember much. What I do remember makes me sick, to be honest.”

“The taboo against death, yes. What you have to realize is that death, to me and to everyone in this compound, is a constant presence. It is something as close as our own skin, as intimate as our lovers, and at times as hated as our own faults. To us, death is ordinary, part of the world. You Californians are no strangers to death—you deal it out easily enough—but you don’t like to see its face. You try to forget it, to banish it from your thoughts, but death won’t be banished, you know. That’s why you remember some of what happened at Tijuana, despite the Brace and Erase.”

“You know about Brace and Erase?”

“Sure,” he shrugs, as though being aware of California’s military secrets was commonplace to him. “The thing is that you think it protects you, when really it only weakens you. If you’re going to deal in death, you need to accept it, understand it.” He pauses and looks at the murals around us. “Let me tell you something—look at the background figures. Those are the poor people of Mexico City, the people of our slums, but they could be the poor anywhere. Do you think the poor aren’t familiar with death? Here and in places like this throughout the world we have cholera, murder, monkeypox, malaria, sometimes the bubonic plague. We have starvation and suicide. We are steeped in death up to our eyeballs and down to our bones. You Californians, Texans, New Yorkers, even wealthy Mexicans, have hospitals where your people go to die. We don’t. A poor man dies in his bedroom, with the whole family gathered around. Or he dies in the street, with everyone watching. Women die in childbirth, in robberies, in rapes. Nothing is private.”

He runs his hands along the length of a wall, taking in all the deaths portrayed there.

“For the poor there are no big white hospital walls” he spits these words out “between us and death. Nothing hides it or cleans its face before we look at it. For us, death is everywhere, always. When you can’t see it, you can still smell it on the air.  You’re shocked by what you see here,” he spreads out his arms, taking in the paintings, “but no new convert is ever shocked. They come from out there, just beyond those walls, and they’re used to death. What 
they
 notice,” he raises a finger to point, “is that there are some figures here who are 
not
 dying. There are some people who are experiencing great joy, whose lives are made better.”

“And that’s why you have converts.”

He shrugs.

“Don’t you know where you’re standing Mr. Burroughs? This is the edge of the world. Anything beyond this—anything worse, more dangerous, crazier—is a Gray Zone, a black hole. Everything is pressing these people toward the edge, then further, until they fall. The only way not to fall is to climb over others.” He pauses for a moment. “Come on, we’re almost at my house.”

I follow him further down the alley until it opens into another courtyard. As before, the space is surrounded by walls covered in the same type of mural that we’ve seen along the way. Here a group of thirty or so 
Suerte
 wearing the traditional 
gi
 of the martial artist are gathered around the walls, while in the center a young man and woman fight, using moves that are a blend of Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Capoeira, and other arts. Most impressive is that I recognize stances and techniques from Tarantella. To pilfer moves from the Tics is audacious. Still, I don’t understand why they need to master any martial art.

“What is this?”

“Training,” Suarez says simply.

“Training? Why do you need to train? I thought your luck was supposed to take care of you. Why should your people know how to fight?”

Suarez shakes his head, looking amused.

“
One never knows what to believe and what is just rumor
,” he says, quoting my own words back at me. “You see, you have been listening to California propaganda. 
The Suerte steal luck from others, preying on the weak
 he intones, making his voice sound like a sim newscaster. The truth is, it’s not enough to steal luck, you must know how to court it, how to seek it out, how to let it find you. We take good fortune from others, that’s true, but much of the art of luck is learning how to make it yourself, to create it from thin air. You must learn how to read a situation, how to take advantage of it, how to position yourself to benefit from it. That is what they are learning. The combat is incidental, it’s merely an exercise. They are learning how to be in the right place at the right time, how to take an adverse moment and turn it around and make it advantageous instead, how to capitalize on the mistakes of an enemy.”

I watch the couple in the center of the group fight for a moment, their bare feet kicking up puffs of dry dust from the ground. It’s the most genuine sparring I’ve seen since the Forces. Their punches are not pulled, their kicks land hard and make deep thumping sounds when they hit. Both participants are sweating, both are struggling, both are concentrating, but both are smiling. They are enjoying themselves, enjoying the learning process, and perhaps enjoying the violence too, it’s hard to tell.

There’s something unusual about the fight, though at first I can’t put my finger on it. Then I notice that, even though it looks superficially like any fight, it isn’t. Blows that should land, and that should be crippling or even fatal, are averted or deflected, or simply fail to have the effect they ought to. Sometimes they connect, but far less often than they should, and with far more meager results than I would have expected. I realize that this is exactly what Suarez has described. It’s not just a battle of physical skills, but of strategic ones, and maybe, just maybe, of one combatant’s 
suerte
 against another’s. I start to wonder if it’s true, if it’s their good fortune, amassed through murder upon murder, trained and honed under Suarez’s tutelage, that allows them to dodge blows they shouldn’t be able to dodge, or shake off ones that ought to break their bones. Suarez watches with me for a moment, then starts walking again.

“Well,” he says over his shoulder, “you didn’t come here to see this.”

I hesitate a moment, fascinated by the fight, then move to follow him through another alley. Partway down the lane he opens a door and enters, leaving it open for me to follow him. I do, shutting the door behind me.

As my eyes adjust to the inside light, I see that it’s a computer facility. Twenty or so 
Suerte
 are at work at holo terminals, some apparently gathering information while others are clearly involved in complex programming projects. Suarez is well ahead of me, headed for a door on the other side of the room, but I’m curious.

“You train your people on computers?” I call out, still catching up with him. He stops and looks around the room as though he hadn’t really noticed it when we first came in.

“Well of course,” he says. “We aren’t some backward little 
church
,” a word he pronounces with derision. “We are a community and we take care of our own. Everyone here trains and becomes proficient in computer use. Most are illiterate when they arrive, so they have to be taught to read first.”

Watching the speed with which they carry out their assignments it’s hard to believe that anyone here was ever illiterate.

“I’m surprised the electricity doesn’t go out,” I say.

“We have our own supply. It’s necessary.”

“It’s necessary, so therefore it happens, is that it?”

He smiles.

“Yes, exactly. That is the nature of 
suerte
”

I look around at the multitude of computers, an intent operator bent over each one.

“You scoop?”

“We keep abreast of events,” he says, admitting the fact without actually saying so. “Information is an important resource.”

“Of course.”

“Come,” he says. “We need privacy, I think.”

He leads me through a doorway that leads out of the computer center. On the other side is a set of stairs. He climbs and I follow him. At the top we reach a suite of rooms, apparently his own apartment.

“Please sit,” he says, indicating an armchair. I sit down, taking in my surroundings.

“I’ll get us some iced tea,” he says, and disappears down a hall.

The room is airy and bright. Two of the walls are painted a bright, vibrant green, while the remaining two are a lively yellow. The furniture is mostly wicker, covered in comfortable cushions. There are more cushions on the floor, most of which is covered with a thick rug. I note that it isn’t Mexican, but Iranian or Pakistani—an expensive antique since those nations became Gray Areas. There are extensive bookcases filled with volumes of all kinds: religion, mathematics, languages, engineering, sociology, history. There are windows on two walls, which are open to admit the outside air. A skylight fills the room with bright sunlight. Thanks to several electric fans, however, it is blessedly cool.

One wall was adorned with a series of photographs, paintings, and collages, at least sixty of them, each in a plain glass frame, hung in a grid pattern with military orderliness. Row upon row of images, each one beautiful. They are arranged so that each piece of art complements the ones adjacent to it, and the whole arrangement, when viewed from a distance, makes a single work of art that is as subtly constructed as any of its parts.

Suarez returns with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses. He sets them on the table in front of me and seats himself opposite on a wicker sofa.

“So,” he says, pouring tea into frosted glasses, “you have questions.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I will do what I can to answer. The Ghosts seem to hold you in high regard and we have, they and I, a mutually beneficial arrangement. In deference to them, and because you are my guest, I will try not to disappoint you.”

He smiles and sips his tea.

“If your computer operators are as good as I imagine, then you probably have some idea what I’m here about.”

“Max,” he says simply.

“Yes, Max.”