The Enemy Papers

by Barry B. Longyear

  TWENTY-NINE

  Aakva Muta, assistant to the Ovjetah, comes on screen. "Jeriba Shigan apologizes for not conveying this information to you itself, but at present the Ovjetah is on board its ship heading for Friendship to be with Estone Nev."

  "I understand," I answer, a sinking feeling in my middle. If I am wrong I will have troubled a great many persons for nothing. But if I am wrong, Jeriba Shigan would not be going to Friendship to support its nameparent's sibling.

  "In answer to your queries, on the seven votes concerning the acceptance of the Koda Nusinda by the Jetai Diea, Estone Falna voted against the acceptance motion the first six times and voted for acceptance on the final ballot. The initial motion was voted on by absentee ballot from Earth, where Falna was in residence at the University of Nations Hospital. The subsequent six motions, including the final vote, were voted on by absentee ballot from Timan, where Estone Falna was attending the Ja Nuos Tavii. That is Timan's most advanced and prestigious school of medicine. Falna's course of study there was exclusively on Timan mind fusion techniques, research, and applications."

  Muta leans toward the screen, makes an adjustment, and says, "The Ovjetah conducted the investigation you suggested. These are the recordings of the interviews. As the hard copies are being transmitted, I can give you a summary, if you wish."

  "Go ahead, Muta. Give me the summary."

  As the Ovjetah's trusted assistant looks at its notes, Muta appears as though someone offscreen is surgically removing its heart. "In the interview with Jetah Tumach Jortiz, leader against the acceptance of the Koda Nusinda, Jortiz revealed that Estone Falna was one of the opposition's chief strategists in the fight to vote down the human-written book. It was through Falna's efforts that the process dragged out to seven votes."

  Muta looks up from its notes. "Falna's favorable vote on the final motion that passed should not be mistaken for support. Under the rules of the Jetai Diea, only those who vote in favor of a motion are eligible to make a new motion to rescind it. Because Estone Falna voted in favor of acceptance, it is now eligible to move to throw out the Koda Nusinda."

  "I see."

  Muta returns its gaze to its notes. "Tumach Jortiz eventually admitted that Falna had alluded to taking some action outside the Jetai Diea to erode support for the Nusinda, but Jortiz claims to believe Falna was referring to things such as further investigation and publicity―"

  I hear an involuntary laugh come from the shadows, and I say to the Ovjetah's assistant, "I think I have enough, Muta. Thank you."

  "May you find the peace you seek, Yazi Ro."

  "I am far away from that, Muta," I say to the Timan Nisak symbol. I look to the corner of the chamber. "It seems you have made some rather startling advances in mind fusion techniques, Falna. Turning good humans and Dracs into murder-suicides, getting a very happy, self-confident Jeriba Ty to end its own life. Are you planning on publishing a paper on your research?"

  "I think not," says Falna as it emerges from the shadows, a smile on its lips, a glittering knife of some sort in its hand. "That fool Jortiz. Did you see how it attempted to distance itself from me? Publicity, indeed." There is a long silence, then Falna speaks, its voice dead calm. "When did you begin to suspect, Yazi Ro?"

  "It is not that simple," I answer. "A part of me that I usually do not acknowledge noticed from the beginning a difference―a strange coolness―between you and Davidge. Still you must have some affection for him. Michael Hill's bungled attempt with the thermal drill shows that. Perhaps it is only affection for Estone Nev and the Jeribas who would be distressed at Davidge's death. You were trying to scare him off the talma, am I right?"

  "Keep going, but deenergize the equipment first. We wouldn't want some tech wandering in here to see why it's on and not in use."

  I lean forward, cut off the link, and slump back in my chair. "Your affection did not extend to me, though. The attempt on my life was quite genuine."

  "Yes. I am very impressed with your reaction time. I didn't think anyone could run faster than one of those marker missiles could turn."

  I nod. "That explains it. It confused me why the killer would go to such trouble to keep Davidge alive yet recklessly fire a missile at the cave in hopes of hitting someone. We all had markers. When I was in the cave by myself, Davidge and Kita well away, your mind-fused killers in the hovercraft fired the missile."

  "I still can't see how you outran it."

  I smile and face the last of the Estone line. "I did not outrun it. It was still warm in the cave. I took off my coat―"

  "―and left it in the cave," completed Falna, nodding as one of its own mysteries resolves. "The marker was in the coat."

  "What happens now, Falna? Another suicide?"

  With its free hand, Estone Falna reaches to its Talman. Falna works the catch, but instead of its line's book of The Talman, a silver cube set with four tiny blue lights drops out. "This is a remarkable piece of engineering," says Falna. "Mind fusion was invented by the Timans. Did you know that?"

  "No."

  "You still haven't told me when you knew it was me. Was it before last night? Before we loved?"

  "It was when I heard that Jeriba Ty was dead."

  "Before we made love?" Falna frowns as it cocks its head to one side. "I don't understand this. On Earth they would say that you are from the sticks. Straight off the farm. A rube. You're not that devious. You love me."

  I look into Falna's beautiful brownish-yellow eyes and say, "I am, after all, Yazi Ro 'do Timan, graduate of the Ri Mou Tavii."

  "I'll take that, Falna," says Davidge from the doorway. Stunned, Falna allows Davidge to take the strange knife and the mind-fusion instrument from its hands. Kita and the human Nisak security officer are behind Davidge and they move in. The Nisak security man takes Falna's arms and shackles them. Kita has a pistol in her hand and it is trained on Falna.

  Davidge faces Falna and shakes his head. "I don't know what to say to you. The loss. My god, Falna, the loss. To Estone Nev, to your line, to the entire Jeriba line, to yourself, medicine, the Jetai Diea, the Dracon Chamber."

  "Uncle, it is impossible for you to understand what drives those who would make sacrifices to keep The Talman pure, free from human corruption."

  His face sad, I see Davidge's shoulders slump as the human leans against the link console to steady himself. "I think I do understand, Falna. Remember, thirty years ago Jeriba Shigan's nameparent and I were on Fyrine IV to kill each other. I understand very well. What I don't understand," he holds up his hands showing the knife and the miniature mind-fusion instrument, "is this! You and this. That's what I don't understand." He lowers his hands and steps closer to Falna. "Out of all the children I've loved and taught, I gave you more than any of the others, yet you resisted at every turn. Why?"

  Falna turns its back on Davidge and spreads its three-fingered hands, "Count the fingers, Uncle. Remember my parent and count the fingers." With that Falna leaves the chamber followed by the Nisak security guard. Kita places a hand on Davidge's arm.

  "I better keep an eye on Falna."

  Davidge nods and, as Kita hurries after the Nisak security officer and his prisoner, he turns, leans his back against the wall, and slides down until he is squatting. He stares for a long time at the floor until at last he says, "For the first time in my life, I feel old."

  "Feeling like a failure?" I ask him.

  He snorts out a laugh and looks over his right shoulder into the shadows. "You wouldn't?"

  "No, Will, I would not. I have met some of your successes."

  Davidge stares into the shadows for a long time. When he at last faces me, his eyes are glistening. "Thank you, Ro." He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall. "Will you answer me a question?"

  "If I can. And," I add, "if you will answer a question for me."

  Davidge nods and asks, "Is Falna right? Do you love it?"

  "Falna is correct about that." I feel the breath catch in my throat, that ache in my middle
. To put my focus elsewhere, I say to Davidge, "Now it is your turn."

  "Okay."

  "On Friendship, when we were preparing for the voyage to this planet, you took a day off to go skiing. Why?"

  "Kita makes great company." He looks at me, a touch of guilt in his eyes. "Okay, no flip comments." He looks down at his hands and thinks for a moment. "There's a trail out at Hidden Valley that I've never been able to do without falling down. I keep trying, though, because it's a way of measuring myself." He shrugs and begins rubbing his eyes.

  "There was a moment after reading the Koda Nusinda when I got this feeling." He lowers his hand from his eyes and straightens his legs until he is standing. "It's like somehow I knew that I was never going to see Friendship again. I can't put my finger on why. It was a feeling. I had to give that trail one last try. Does that seem crazy?"

  "Did you beat it?"

  He grins and shakes his head. "No. I went down it a good bit of the way on my butt, a little bit of the way on my face. But the failure is in not trying, right?"

  "Shizumaat seems to think so," I answer.

  He stands next to me and places a friendly hand on my shoulder. "Are you about ready to go?"

  "Go?" I frown at the human. "Go where?"

  "Amadeen," he answers as he points with his thumb toward the door. "We're done here, and as Captain Moss pointed out, the war is thataway."

  We walk together to the quarters. In my bed chamber, alone, I cry for yet another love lost. Davidge, I fear, cries for much more.

  THIRTY

  Amadeen.

  Yazi Ro is going back to Amadeen.

  There are a hundred good solid reasons and at least a thousand plausible excuses for not going back. Here I am, nonetheless, riding my rocket back to hell.

  Two days were taken up by the Karnarak. There will be a trial and our depositions were needed. The Karnarak District Master says that he is convinced Falna will be found guilty of Ty's murder, which draws the heaviest penalty: endless sleep. It is much like a permanent state of alert suspension with the trial charges, records, evidence, and testimony interspersed with Timan lectures on morality, responsibility, consequences, and remorse, all repeated again and again. I think about this as little as possible.

  Another day was spent preparing and packing the ship. On the day we leave a call comes to me and I have a visitor. The call is from Estone Nev over the subspace link. Nev says that it is grateful I caught the child of its namechild before Falna killed anyone else. Nev also makes it clear that I am welcome at the estate at any time.

  The visitor is Lahvay ni 'do Timan, Dakiz of the Ri Mou Tavii. He comes to my quarters in the Keu Vac Ount wearing an environmental suit, an unprecedented honor to me, as the Nisak representative Atruin 'do Timan is quick to point out. In the bubble top of the suit, Lahvay's face appears distressed. When we are alone, I offer the Dakiz one of the comfortable chairs in my greeting room.

  "My great thanks, Yazi Ro 'do Timan, but forgive me." His suited hands pat his rather wide girth. "In one of these suits I find it much less painful to stand. It has been years since I wore one. I had to borrow this ensemble from one of my students, whom from now on I will refer to as Slim."

  I hold out my hands. "I would have been happy to meet you on the other side of the lock, Dakiz. In fact, if you prefer we can go there now."

  "Again my great thanks, Ro, but what I have to say is brief. I am here to ask you a favor."

  "I will grant it, if I can, Dakiz."

  Lahvay ni 'do Timan raises a hand and holds up a cautionary finger. "Do not be in such haste. It is a considerable favor I would ask." He glances at the chair I offered him, decides against it, and aims his white-eyed gaze at me. "With Amadeen, as I understand it, you are going into a solution test without the benefit of a solution to test."

  I feel my eyebrows climb as I nod. "You have put it quite well, Dakiz."

  His suited hands flip up and down in a gesture of either helplessness or frustration. "Are you and your companions going to dance among the energy bursts and disrupter beams hoping that something will simply turn up?"

  I think about the Dakiz's question for a moment, then nod. "In essence," I answer. "Perhaps it might sound less insane if I say that we do not have all the information we need. The information is on Amadeen, and that is why we must go there."

  "And then," says the Dakiz, "you hope something will turn up."

  "We hope something will turn up."

  The Dakiz snorts in disapproval, half sits on the chair, then changes his mind. Upright once again, he looks into my eyes and says, "I approach you in peace with no motive or weapon hidden."

  "I meet you in the same manner, Dakiz."

  "I have thought long and hard about the problem you brought before the nests, Yazi Ro 'do Timan. I do not have a solution, but I very much want to see such a solution. Our small corner of the universe is changing and it is time that the Ri Mou Tavii added ending armed conflicts to its discipline. I ask you to record your efforts upon Amadeen and the results. Whether you and your comrades are successful or not, please send the results to the Ri Mou Tavii so that we may begin building this new field of study. Should you survive this experiment on Amadeen, I and the Ri Mou Tavii would be honored if you would come to Timan and become a nest master at the school long enough to share your knowledge with us."

  "The honor would be mine, Dakiz. If I survive and can get off Amadeen, I will come to the Ri Mou Tavii."

  At that, Lahvay ni 'do Timan opens his hands, faces the palms toward me, and says, "I wish you and your comrades insight, wisdom, good luck, and a safe and profitable journey." He then bows and waddles from my greeting room.

  THIRTY-ONE

  In the Koda Ayvida of The Talman, it is written that the seeker Mistaan undertook a six-year meditation to join with that part of itself and the universe that had the answer it sought. The seeker's problem was how to keep alive the words of its master Vehya through which the wisdom of its teacher Shizumaat had been carried. Mistaan found a place on a cliff high above the forest floor, stated its problem, then opened itself to the universe. Six years later the meditation ended and Mistan picked up a stick and a lump of flattened clay and invented writing. The first documents written were the Myth of Aakva, the Story of Uhe, and the Story of Shizumaat, the first three Kodas of The Talman. The voyage to Amadeen will take four months, which is all the meditation I am to be allowed. I join Captain Moss and Reaper Brandt in refusing suspension.

  The captain does not undergo suspension because he trusts no one and no thing. Reaper says he enjoys the opportunity to study, reflect, and otherwise add to his knowledge. He also has a trust problem and a denial problem. In my case, I need the time to think. Between The Talman and the lessons of the Ri Mou Tavii, I have much to absorb about my place in the universe, my purpose, and my degree of commitment. There is also the problem of Amadeen.

  With Davidge and Kita in suspension next to Yora Beneres and Ghazi Mrabet, I often go into the suspension bay, look at the four of them, and wonder where they have traveled to reach this place. Mrabet, for all his erudition and calm manner, is in a race with his own memories, losing himself by using sex as a drug, when he can get it, and music when he cannot. The songs and instrumentals he favors are the skull-shattering tempos of Vikaan. My font of information, the eternal seeker, Reaper Brandt, says that Mrabet was an engineer for the Nadok Rim Pirates before he teamed up with Moss. Reaper has not a clue as to the nature of Ghazi's nightmare nor of its origins. He is a mechanical genius, a bloodthirsty and fearless fighter.

  Yora Beneres, according to Reaper, is a hero waiting for a cause worthy of her ideals. After years of looking for some sort of meaning, she had given up her quest and was filling in the time left before death, until we came along seeking an end to war on Amadeen. She is a good pilot and an even better small arms expert. Reaper reports seeing her take out with three rapidly fired shots three guards who were surrounding her with weapons drawn. "Very frugal," Reaper added. "Sh
e hates to waste ammunition." Before joining the USEF to fight in the Buldahk Insurrection, she was a video actress with a fairly impressive list of credits. It was not enough.

  When I study Kita Yamagata's face, I am puzzled about her reasons for being on this ship. With the arrest of Estone Falna, her job with us is over. She has no stake, mental or otherwise, in what happens on Amadeen. Reaper says he and Kita have had long talks about police work, intelligence, and police procedures, and he is seriously impressed with her mind. Reaper is not certain why Kita is riding on this bullet to Amadeen, but the reason, he suspects, is in the next pod: Willis E. Davidge.

  I look through the clear plastic canopy at his face, tiny crystals of ice on his eyebrows and upper lip. Kita Yamagata loves this man and I wonder if he even has a clue. I think I love him, as well, but as a strange sort of surrogate parent. Not a parent. An uncle, in fact.

  His war was over three decades ago with the signing of the USE-Dracon Chamber Treaty. I know that he would not trade those thirty years on that hellishly cold planet for any other being's time or place in the universe. He said once that my comrades and I had helped buy him that thirty years and it was time for him to put something down on account.

  Remembering the old human joke, I said, "On account of what?"

  Without acknowledging the joke, Davidge said cryptically, "I shave my face these days. That still requires a mirror."

  Captain Moss is up in the cockpit, thrashing himself with his losses, Reaper is in his quarters reading, and it is time for me to begin my meditation. In my quarters, I take the kneeling position most Dracs take when meditating, but the unfamiliar position is too distracting. Before the Aeolus left Timan space, Kita had shown me a pose she uses called the lotus position, and I simply stared in horror at that tangle of legs, feet, and ankles.

  After the manner of Mistaan on its ledge above the forest, I lie down on my bunk, my hands at my sides, close my eyes and breathe, opening myself to all of myself, the universe.