The Enemy Papers

by Barry B. Longyear

  The Story of Shizumaat

  (Continued)

  Fragment: Namndas

  That night, first I noticed that the temple lights had not all been raised to the proper height. Then I saw young Shizumaat, its face upraised, dancing in slow whorls upon Uhe's Tomb! I rushed to the center of the temple and came to a stop with my hands upon the stone cover of the vault.

  "Shizumaat! Shizumaat, come down! Come down or I will execute you before the servants can get at you with their rods!"

  Shizumaat stopped its dance and looked down at me. "Namndas, come up here and join me. I have the most wonderful thing to show you."

  "You would have me dance upon Uhe's grave?"

  "Come up here, Namndas."

  Shizumaat returned to its whirling, and I grabbed the edge of the cover and pulled myself up, swearing to break Shizumaat into three hundred pieces. Once I stood, Shizumaat pointed toward the ceiling. "Look up, Namndas."

  The force in its words compelled me to look up, and what I saw was the disarray of temple lights. Their heights were arranged so that the lights were equally distant from a point just above the tomb, forming a hemisphere. And not all of the lamps were lit.

  "Shizumaat, we will both be driven from the temple for this night's work."

  "Don't you see it? Look up, Namndas! Don't you see it?"

  "See what?"

  "Dance, Namndas. Dance. Turn to your right."

  I turned, saw the lights whirl about me, then I stopped and faced my charge. "Shizumaat, this only makes my head swim. We must climb down from here before we are discovered!"

  "Aaah!" cried the youth in disgust. Shizumaat jumped from the tomb and hit the stone floor running toward the eastern wall. I jumped and ran after it. When I reached the top of the great stairs, still stained with Shizumaat's blood, Shizumaat itself was standing far into the dark center of the city square.

  I ran down the stairs, across the square, and stopped in the center as I angrily grabbed Shizumaat's left arm. "I shall gladly take a rod and do the servants' work for them, you fool!"

  "Look up, Namndas! Curse your thick skull! Look up!"

  Still holding onto its arm, I looked up. What I saw were Aakva's children arranged in a pattern similar to the pattern of the temple's lights but tilted toward the blue light of The Child Who Never Moves. "You have reproduced the arrangement of the night sky with the lamps."

  "Yes!"

  "But this will not save your skin, Shizumaat."

  Shizumaat pointed toward that speck of blue light. "Turn your face toward The Child Who Never Moves. Then, Namndas, turn slowly to your right."

  I did so. The implications of what I saw turned my legs to water. I sat with a thump upon the stones of the square. I put out my hands and touched the unyielding, motionless stone. "It cannot be!"

  Shizumaat squatted next to me. "Then you have seen it, too!"

  I nodded. "Yes, I have seen it."

  With the morning's light, the servants of Aakva found both of us dancing upon Uhe's tomb....

  We stood there on the crest of the Akkujah, the mortar drying upon our hands, and Shizumaat pointed at the column of rocks we had built. "You shall wait for me here, Namndas, at this mark. Guard it, allow none of the servants to move it or tear it down." Shizumaat pointed one hand toward the west. "I leave for the Madah, ever to follow Aakva's dying path. If I am correct, I shall meet you again, and at this place." It held up its other arm toward the Morning Mountains. "I will come to you, though, from there."

  I looked from the Akkujah out over the parched lands of the Madah, then back at Shizumaat. "If you do not return? What then, Shizumaat?"

  "Then either I am wrong about the shape of this world, or I did not have the wit and strength to prove myself correct."

  "If you fail, Shizumaat, what should I do?"

  Shizumaat placed a hand upon my arm. "Poor Namndas. As always, it is your choice. You can forget me; you can forget the things we have learned; or you can attempt to prove that which I am attempting to prove."

  Fragment: Mistaan

  You are young, Mistaan. To brave this wall of hate and warriors' iron that surrounds me shows me your youth. When you are older you shall call this youth foolishness.

  The brute is unpredictable.

  If the brute were predictable, though, it would no longer be fearsome. Have the warriors caged you in my pen to die with me? Or would they have you do for them the task that they fear to do? It would please the brute to have Mistaan, the student of Vehya, murder Vehya's teacher.

  I answered Shizumaat by saying: Shizumaat, Aakva's servants would have you condemn yourself from your own mouth. This is why they let me record your words.

  The brute listens, does it? Perhaps the brute can learn. It is possible. This trial might be a talma to such learning.

  Then, Mistaan, I stand before them as I stand before you, and as I stand before all of the ages that follow, for they too shall be my magistrates. Let this be my trial.

  Should I plead my innocence? Since no crime has been committed, I cannot be innocent of its commission.

  By that same truth, though, I cannot plead my guilt. There can be no guilt without a crime.

  It is such a puzzle.

  It thrives on puzzles, Shizumaat.

  The brute thrives on puzzles, does it?

  Know this, Mistaan: the brute derives its nourishment by making puzzles; not by solving them. Once the puzzles are solved, the brute's excuse for existence is lost. Only by continued strife and suffering can the brute justify its existence.

  Let us rise to the challenge of this puzzle, Mistaan. Let us decide how I should plead.

  The stonewood poles surround us. The fire makes the night clouds red. These are preparations for criminal punishment. Perhaps I am being suspicious, but I suspect that the matter of my guilt is already settled.

  Do you hear the death chant?

  They beg their god to turn its hand against this criminal once the flames have left nothing but ash and spirit. Does Aakva listen to such prayers? I ask Uhe's spirit, is it possible that Aakva is that imperfect a god?

  To some it might appear to be in bad order to prepare for the execution before the trial, and to have the trial before the crime. But the brute rules this insignificant patch of time, and this is the order that the brute calls efficiency.

  We shall follow in kind, then, Mistaan. I shall make my plea at the end of my trial.

  Are you ready with your skin that speaks? Then let us begin.

  Fragment: Shizumaat

  "The first given is existence; its fact, not its form, nor its manner of change, nor the purposes ascribed to its aspects by its creatures."

  Fragment: Shizumaat

  "Instead believe this: question everything, accept the wholeness of no truth nor the absolute rightness of any path. Make this your creed and in it you will find eventual comfort and security, for in this creed is your right to rule the lower creatures of the Universe, for in this creed is your right to choose your talma, for in this creed stands your right to freedom."

  Fragment: Shizumaat

  "With neither my agreement or permission, you take your words and place them on my tongue. It is not my belief that talma is The Way, as you put it. There are an infinite number of paths from any existence to any imagined future. The Madah servants had a way. Uhe's way was superior. There were ways superior to Uhe's, and further ways superior to those. Some paths we know, some we do not know. Some paths we can imagine and bring into being. Some paths we can imagine we cannot bring into being until other paths have been traveled. Some paths we can imagine but cannot be brought into being because to do so the universe would have to be shattered.

  The Way does not exist; only the ways we use and the ways we invent and choose. Talma is not The Way; talma is a way for finding ways."

  Fragment: Shizumaat

  "As do all creatures, we seek the comfort and the security of the safe path, its direction to be found through eternal knowns and indestructibl
e verities. But to be creatures of choice, we must necessarily abandon the comfort and security of instinct, for all our knowns are probabilities, and all our truths are doctrines amendable when truer truths are presented."

  KODA AYVIDA

  The Story of Mistaan

  It was Mistaan who invented writing and who first recorded The Myth of Aakva, The Story of Uhe, and The Story of Shizumaat, as told by Namndas and by Mistaan's own observations of Shizumaat's trial and execution. It was Mistaan who heard Shizumaat's claim of another race existing in a far land; a race different from the Sindie.

  Fragment: Mistaan

  "Talma shows each one its path. But, as beings of choice, we can choose not to see the signs."

  Fragment: Mistaan

  "There are those who would fit the wanderer into a place in this Universe, and one seeking such a place might accept this. Moreover, one might find such a place already constructed and accept this as one's own. However, places that are found are not for creatures such as us. To fit a unique being of choice into roles and places fabricated by others or found by chance is to diminish that being's choices and its individuality. Each being of choice, who would remain so, must forge its own place."

  KODA SCHADA

  The Story of Ioa and Lurrvanna

  The rule of Kulubansu, the overthrow and destruction of the Servants of Aakva, Ioa and the establishment of the first Talman Kovah. Lurrvanna takes over as master of the Talman Kovah. The first invasion of the Orange Ones. The rule of Rodaak the Barbarian, the Talman Kovah destroyed, the persecution of the Talmani.

  Fragment: Ioa

  "Nothingness is a tool of the mind: the useful naught of the mathematician, builder, and accounts keeper. Nothingness is not a state either of mind or of being. All that exists will always exist; all who exist will always exist. All that changes is form and the perception of form."

  Fragment: Ioa

  Consider the one who observes that which is around it then asks "What do these objects and events tell me?" Such is the way and the manner of life; such is the tool of those who would live. Consider, as well, the one who searches only through its mind to determine what is, and what is not, and then looks only to the objects and events that support its conclusions and says "This is truth." Such is the way and the manner of purposeless sacrifice; such is the tool of the mad, the criminal, and those who hunger for power.

  Fragment: Lurrvanna

  Lurrvanna looked up from its bandaged stumps and spoke to its masters and students: "The Talman is forbidden to us. The temple in which we study talma, our Talman Kovah, has been destroyed. The Talmani have been either murdered or frightened into hiding. Our writings earn their authors the loss of their hands. Rodaak and its soldiers would have The Talman disappear from memory.

  "But memory is the refuge of the Talmani, and it is there where we shall hide The Talman from Rodaak. Fix the words into your minds; then take them, whisper The Talman to others, and have those others pass the words on to still others."

  Fragment: Lurrvanna

  "Time is our friend. In time, Rodaak and its police will no longer be. In time, we shall make known again the value of talma. In time, The Talman will again be written and the walls of a new Talman Kovah will stand upon these broken stones. In time, tomorrow will come."

  KODA ITHEDA

  Aydan and The War of Ages

  The War of Ages between the Orange Ones, called the Lleghis, and the Sindie.

  For over a thousand years the races war for control of the world. The rise of Aydan who turned war, then peace, into sciences. Aydan's army and a peace of complex balances ends the War of Ages.

  Fragment: Aydan

  "Aydan," spoke Niagat, "I would serve Heraak; I would see an end to war; I would be one of your warmasters."

  "Would you kill to achieve this, Niagat?"

  "I would kill."

  "Would you kill Heraak to achieve this?"

  "Kill Heraak, my master?" Niagat paused and considered the question. "If l cannot have both, I would see Heraak dead to see an end to war."

  "That is not what I asked."

  "And, Aydan, I would do the killing."

  "And, now, would you die to achieve this?"

  "I would risk death as does any warrior."

  "Again, Niagat, that is not my question. If an end to war can only be purchased at the certain cost of your own life, would you die by your own hand to achieve peace?"

  Niagat studied upon the thing that Aydan asked. "I am willing to take the gamble of battle. In this gamble there is the chance of seeing my goal. But my certain death, and by my own hand, there would be no chance of seeing my goal. No. I would not take my own life for this. That would be foolish. Have I passed your test?"

  "You have failed, Niagat. Your goal is not peace; your goal is to live in peace. Return when your goal is peace alone and you hold a willing knife at your own throat to achieve it. That is the price of a warmaster's blade."

  Fragment: Aydan

  There will come to you at times a blinding vision that fills your eyes and mind, announcing itself as Truth. Step back and strike down this vision and beat it as though it were a brain-sucking monster.

  Then, with it lying there limp, bent, and tarnished, if it still claims to be Truth, accept it with great caution, remembering that the most dangerous lies arrive in the most highly polished armor.

  Fragment: Aydan

  "Should the goal make honorable the means necessary to achieve that goal? Or does the honorableness of the means employed sanctify whatever goal is achieved through them? Or is right rooted in the honor of both means and ends? One choice makes the leader capable of leading a people at war. The other choice makes the leader capable of ruling a world at peace."

  KODA HIVEDA

  The Story of Tochalla

  Against violent and almost successful opposition, Tochalla begins the movement to reassemble the Talmani and to rebuild the Talman Kovah.

  Fragment: Tochalla

  Tochalla told those who would listen about lessons and a discipline that had been crushed and forbidden five centuries before. In the intervening five hundred years, the surviving memories and fragments of talma had become things twisted by faulty memories and embellished by generations of the ignorant and the imaginative.

  "We will take it all," wrote Tochalla. "We will gather in everything, much as Rhada did with the many versions of the Laws of Aakva, and we will examine, test, discuss, and challenge everything. If we are honest and mean only to serve truth, then what remains will be the truth of it."

  Fragment: Tochalla

  I look at a battlefield and see the combatants twisted in death, seemingly still battling in that existence beyond, and I see this knife before me and see an argument for joining the dead. It is so clear to the Talmanist, this wonderful future of health, prosperity, and freedom, and all that needs to be done is to protect this freedom. "Here is everything you need and want in this little box," I cry to the fighters. "All you need to do is open it!"

  But first there must be a war to determine if the box should be opened, who should open the box, who should interpret the meaning of the contents, who should select the recipients of the gifts, who should distribute them, and who should tax them and at what percentage.

  There is something so deceptively clean about a knife. Suicide is the powerless one's illusion of killing the Universe. It is a powerful illusion, though. Its temptation draws me to the edge, but it is at the edge where I remember the words of my old teacher, Bakkni Liu, now dead these thirty years. "It would be a shame to end your life the moment before the talma you need to achieve your goals appears."

  That is my fear: to open my veins and have revealed to me the answer I seek just as the last drop of my blood hits the ground. I put the knife away, then, and remind myself that the only entity who knows all the paths of talma is the Universe. As a part of the Universe, I will exercise patience and wait for the rest of the Universe to inform this part what the proper path is.
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br />   KODA TAKMEDA

  The Story of Cohneret

  Cohneret who, under the rule of the wise Ponu Li, studied the role of accidents and their uses, and the rules governing love and the other passions.

  Fragment: Cohneret

  "In the past are the mistakes we made. In the future are the mistakes we will make. In the present are the mistakes we are making. Curse the mistakes, rail at them, regret them, learn from them. But do not wish for the perfection of time when mistakes will no longer be made, for that is what we call death."