On My Way to Paradise Read Free

a mean dog that had
snapped at his children. The dog got caught in the trap and
wrenched off his foot in exactly the way this woman had wrenched
off her hand. All her bones from the carpals on down were missing,
though a long ragged piece of flesh from her palm was still
attached. This made my job very easy. I set the bloody scalpel back
in its cellophane wrapper, cocked her arm at a right angle so most
of the muscular tissue pulled away from the exposed bone, and
applied the skeletal regeneration wash.
    Flaco had been watching me, but he got bored and
picked up the thin woman’s left arm and watched it flop to the
floor as he dropped it.
    "Don’t do that," I said.
    "Why?"
    "Her bones might break. I don’t think she was born on
Earth. She’s very fragile."
    "I had a friend who once slugged an off-worlder and
accidentally killed him," Flaco said. He began searching the thin
woman’s bags, removing clothing, a jar of pills that looked like
vitamins. He pulled out a folding, chemical-laser rifle. "Hah! What
do you think, she hunts anteaters with this?"
    I grunted my surprise at the rifle. Flaco put it back
and left the room a moment. I administered the regeneration wash to
the muscles, tendons, and skin, and used Doering clamps to anchor
some torn flexors and brachioradials to their proper places; then I
painted a resin bandage over the whole stump and called it good. Of
course, these regeneration kits never work exactly as they’re
supposed to, and in a few weeks I’d have to reclamp some tendons
and splice some of the new nerve tissue to the old.
    While the resin bandage was wet, I opened the
osteoporosis rehab packet and inserted the catheter of a hormone
fusion pump into her flesh about five centimeters above the wrist
and began pumping in calcitonin, collagenates, SGH, and mineral
supplements. When the resin bandage dried it would seal around the
catheter, preventing any chance of infection.
    Meanwhile, Flaco had brought in the retina scanner
and had been fiddling with it by the electrical outlet. I looked up
at him. I expected him to have one of the little hand-held models
policemen sometimes carry, but he had a large industrial model. Its
corners were dented where he’d pried it free from someone’s wall,
and the screws that were supposed to hold it to the wall dangled in
their sockets; little bits of white paint and plaster still clung
to the screws. Flaco had cut the electric cord to get the scanner
free, so now he was splicing on a plug.
    "Where did you get the scanner?" I asked.
    "I stole it from the checkout desk at the public
library," Flaco answered.
    "Why didn’t you just rent one?"
    "I don’t know. I thought you wanted to keep this
private—no records."
    "It’s not that important," I said.
    "If it will make you feel better, I’ll take it back
tomorrow."
    "Good," I said.
    Flaco finished splicing the wires and plugged the
scanner in, then I turned off the fluothane and pried open one of
Tamara’s eyes. Flaco aimed the scanner at her eye, but it rolled
back and we couldn’t see her retina, so Flaco started calling to
her, saying "Oh, Spider Legs! Oh, Spider Legs. Wake up! We have
nice flies to eat!" and things like that. I patted her cheek a
little. After a few minutes her eyeball rolled forward and Flaco
scanned it. For all practical purposes she was still asleep, but I
turned the fluothane back on to put her under, just to be sure she
wouldn’t remember we’d scanned her. Then Flaco jacked in a call to
his hacker and read off her ID number: AK-483-VO-992-RAF.
    I cleaned up the room and gave the thin woman an
injection to make her sleep for the night. Flaco went to the
bathroom. Five minutes later he came out and said, "I’ve got my
hacker on line. Are you sure we got her ID right?"
    The scanner was still on, so I read the number to him
again.
    Flaco stood in the corner, listening to the comlink
in his head. "According to records," he said, "she’s Tamara Maria
de la Garza. Born 2-24-2267 on