Enemy Papers

by Barry B. Longyear

  Her footsteps and a set of the soft footsteps left the room. One of the Dracs had remained behind. It was silent for a long time, then its footsteps left the room, stopped, and returned. “Joanne Nicole.” It was the voice of the older Drac, Jetah Pur Sonaan. “Joanne Nicole.”

  “Yes?”

  “The surgeon who treated you in V’Butaan… it had no way of knowing. Everyone has been warned now, but then… it had no way of knowing.” Pur Sonaan’s footsteps faded from the room.

  “Mitzak, are you here? Mitzak?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not in V’Butaan?”

  “No. The nearest city is Pomavu. You are on the home planet. Draco.”

  Draco? On the opposite side of the Drac empire from Ditaar? Why? “Why?”

  “You have been made the ward of Ovjetah Tora Soam, first Master of the Talman Kovah. The Talman Kovah is here, near Pomavu.”

  “I… I don’t understand.”

  “In the fire at the V’Butaan kovah; one of the children you saved was the Ovjetah’s third child, Sin Vidak.” The footsteps began leaving.

  “Mitzak?”

  The footsteps paused. “Yes?”

  “The others that were with me in the Madah on Ditaar; Where are they?”

  “Do you remember me telling you that all of your soldiers were killed?”

  “Yes… I remember it. Benbo?”

  “I don’t know. I left Ditaar with you.”

  “Mitzak, what are you doing here?”

  “The Ovjetah insisted that you have some human company; I’m it.”

  “Are you happy in your work?”

  Mitzak moved a few footsteps toward the door. “The Ovjetah is a very powerful person. And, as you know, rank has its privileges.”

  Mitzak’s footsteps left the room.

  …That humming again…

  Nicole continued smiling as dizziness lowered her into a non-caring half-sleep. The smile wasn’t an expression of anything; it was just left over from something before…

  SIX

  As do all creatures, we seek the comfort and the security of the safe path, its direction to be found through eternal knowns and indestructible 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.

  The Talman

  The Story of Shizumaat. Koda Nuvida

  Blind.

  With the reduced anesthetic, awareness returned. Awareness and pain.

  Joanne Nicole began to have a sense of time-the eternal slowness of it-monotony. The limitations on her universe.

  Blind.

  It was an affliction from the previous century-harnessed dogs, bumpy paper, and red-tipped canes attempting to fill in the chasm left by the removal of sight. She would lie on her bed, her heart waiting for someone to turn on the lights; to wake her from the nightmare. But no one turned on the lights. No one awakened her from the nightmare.

  Anger.

  It was, first, anger; rage that would have blinded her if blindness had not already become her reality. There were other concerns. She was almost totally helpless, at the complete mercy of the Dracs. What would the Dracs do? How far did the protection of this Tora Soam extend? Who was it anyway?

  Deep within her seclusion was a hard knot of rapidly rising fear. If she could only see them. The visible is so much easier to fight, to deal with. She didn’t even know what her room looked like-what she looked like. If she could only see them.

  …At the Kidege ed center on Baina Ya.

  She was thirteen, and that gawky, rawboned Mallik Nicole would run after her as she headed toward the Ndugu Wawili transit tube.

  “Joanne! Joanne! Wait!”

  “What should I wait for, Mallik Nicole? You?”

  “Who else? Do you see anyone else chasing you?”

  “And why do you chase me? Tell me that.”

  “You are beautiful, Joanne. That’s why.”

  “Liar.”

  “I never lie!”

  “Do you really think I’m beautiful?”

  “Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror? Of course you’re beautiful! Perhaps not very smart, but beautiful.”

  “I am not stupid!”

  “Asking me if I think you are beautiful is a stupid question.”

  …That night she looked into her mirror and saw a different persona stranger-someone who was beautiful…

  …now burned; now blind. Blind…

  Days would pass, but she had no way of telling when. Her sleepiness lied; her stomach lied; the pattern of the kovah’s routine lied. Empty time became an enemy more dreaded than death.

  She would lie on her back, only the sound of her heart beating in her ears, exploring with her fingers the hard bed, the spongy covers, her naked body, and the empty air around her.

  She was alone in the room, and if she remained still, she could just make out the sounds of fluid running rapidly through piping. From the area outside the room came only the hush of a robe brushing a wall, a whisper, footsteps.

  She discovered that there is nothing in reality to compare with the horrors of the world of imagination. Given the choice between thinking and listening, Joanne Nicole listened.

  The soft footsteps separated in her mind and became as recognizable as fingerprints.

  Mitzak walked slowly, with regular, measured steps. The heavier tread; that was Pur Sonaan. The light, slow footsteps belonged to Vunseleh Het. It was the one who came regularly to administer medications and read the health monitors.

  Food was a nameless, brisk step.

  Cleaning dragged its heels and smelled like flowers.

  Bedpan had a slow, heavy step and smelled like fish.

  The slow measured tread.

  “Mitzak?”

  “Yes.”

  He walked to the side of the bed and sat upon some kind of platform. “It’s companionship time, Nicole. What do you want to talk about?”

  “What were you, Mitzak? Before you took on the blue robe?”

  There was a silence, then Mitzak cleared his throat. “Before the war my home was on Akkujah. When the war started, I offered my services to the Dracon Fleet.”

  “Why?”

  “Is protecting one’s home too complicated to understand?”

  His fingers tapped against something hard. The tapping stopped. “I was a member of the Christian Mission Council-”

  “A minister?”

  “Priest… Our mission was invited there by the Jetai Kovveda on Akkujah. A sharing of philosophies. We instructed the Jetai, and, in turn, we were entered into Akkujah’s Talman Kovah. I had been there three years before Amadeen flared up and the war started. By that time we had been in the kovah long enough to read and understand Talma. After studying the diagrams, most of the mission chose to serve the Dracs.”

  -Diagrams. In that flaming library in the kovah in V’Butaan; on the walls, complicated diagrams, logic circles, flow. charts-

  “Mitzak, you gave up your religion for this?”

  “A simplistic way to look at it. Yes.” He was silent for a moment, then he laughed. “Can you give up yours, I wonder.”

  “I have no religion.”

  He laughed again.

  …A lull in the fighting, and she had heard Taiseido talking to Sergeant Benbo: “What they say about there being no atheists in foxholes; its true.”

  For an instant Benbo turned away from staring down the sights of his rifle and glanced at Taiseido, his right eyebrow raised. He turned back to look for Dracs to kill. “What about foxes?”

  “You don’t believe in a god?”

  “I believe in this rifle, in those yellow bastards down there, and in Amos Benbo…”

  Besides Mitzak, the only two that talked to her were Pur and Vunseleh; and their conversations were limited to her health. And, after a while, Pur stopped coming. Eventually her hands and face stopped hurting and began to itc
h.

  Between the silence, the dark, and the itch, her mind felt as though it were beginning to bend.

  Mitzak would speak, his voice devoid of sarcasm.

  “Now is when the priest would tell you to pray for strength, or to think of those who are injured more severely than you. Perhaps he would call up the image of the crucified Christ, describe in graphic detail the saviour’s suffering, and then demand to know what in the hell you’ve got to bitch about.”

  “The Dracs have something better?”

  “They have talma.”

  “What is talma?”

  A bitter laugh. “talma to a human is like relativity to a cockroach. Even if you could understand it. I doubt that you could use it.”

  She played every mental game that she could remember a thousand times over. She searched her mind for memories and the memories she could find-Mallik’s corpse, the burning Drac children, the thundering defeat at Storm Mountain-chased her from the past.

  She dropped down a bottomless well of self-pity, then shot back up again with an anger so intense that it made her vomit. In the midst of her wretched mess, she passed out…

  …“What is Talma. Mitzak?”

  “It took me months to understand, Nicole.”

  “Try.”

  “Nicole, you are in a place. There is a place that you want to be. Your task is to get from the first to the second.”

  “How?”

  “You must know where you are; you must know where you want to go; you must know the limits on the paths between the two… “

  After cleaning had dragged its heels out of the room, Vunseleh entered.

  “Joanne Nicole, was there something wrong with the food?”

  “Why?”

  “Your digestive tract threw it”

  “Vunseleh, why won’t the ones who clean, bring the food, and bring the bedpan talk to me?”

  “Talk to you! Why… why. they are forbidden. “

  “Do you think I’ll sneak bedpan secrets off to the USEF?”

  Vunseleh was silent, then Nicole heard its robe rustle as its hands moved.

  “I do not understand. They may speak to none of the patient here. The patients would not stand for any talk or other noise. Healing is a time for quiet-meditation.”

  “Meditation?”

  “Joanne Nicole, most of that which we call healing is conducted and performed by the mind.”

  “Drac, I am just about all meditated out!” She sat up for the first time, her stomach doing flip-flops. “Me! I want talk! I want noise!” Her left hand hung onto the edge of the bed while her right hand fumbled trying to hold the spongy cover to her breasts. How much clout do I have as the ward of Tora Soam? She was in that half-way. I-don’t-give-a-damn state between desperation and prudence. “And, Vunseleh, I want to get up.”

  “Get up? Walk?”

  “Yes; I still have legs. I want to get up and walk around. If I lie here much longer, I’ll turn into a plant.”

  “This is a joke… of course.” Vunseleh made a nervous clicking sound with its mouth. “I can’t have you among the other patient; but I shall tell the Jetah. Pur Sonaan must give its permission.”

  “Then get it.”

  Vunseleh’s footsteps left the room.

  Nicole remained seated until her stomach stopped heaving. Pulling the spongy cover from the bed, she wrapped it around her shoulders, and gingerly moved her legs to the edge of the bed. She grunted with the effort. How long have I been in bed?

  She moved her legs over the edge of the bed, letting her feet touch the cool softness of the floor. The bed was very low. She leaned forward, pushed on the bed, and stood.

  Her head reeled, her legs threatened to collapse, and her stomach radiated warning signals. But she was standing and could feel the coolness of the air upon the sores of her back.

  Pur Sonaan’s heavy tread raced into the room. “Joanne Nicole, what are you doing?”

  “I am standing.”

  “This you should not do. You are not well.”

  “If I stay on that bed like a piece of meat in a butcher shop, I will never get well; I will die.”

  An exasperated silence ensued. Then Pur Sonaan spoke: “Vunseleh gave me your requests. You cannot wander the corridors at will. I must think of the other patients. Also it would not be safe for you. You cannot see. And you are still a human.”

  “I’ll risk bumping into a few things, Pur Sonaan. I don’t bruise easily.”

  “But you are still a human, Joanne Nicole. We have patients and staff in this institution that would attack you for that fact alone. You are guarded here, and everyone in this area knows that you are under Tora Soam’s protection. You must stay in this room.”

  She felt like flopping back upon her bed, but something forced her to remain standing. “I can move about this room?”

  “… Yes. But only in this room.”

  “And I want some noise. Anything. Can I have a…” Nicole couldn’t think of the Drac words. “I want some way to hear the news. Radio… radio pictures.”

  “Impossible! Patients do not have such things.” Pur Sonaan moved a step closer to her. “Your demands test the boundaries of Tora Soam’s influence.”

  “I want to hear news-something-anything!”

  “Joanne Nicole… I will see what can be done.” Thoughtful silence. “A receiver is impossible, but I can have Leonid Mitzak talk to you very quietly about current events. Read to you… perhaps some other things.”

  Pur’s footsteps left the room and Nicole collapsed upon her bed. After a few moments of sitting, she fell over onto her left side and slept.

  “…Your name?”

  “Joanne Nicole.”

  “The name of the father?”

  “Mallik Nicole.”

  “And where does he reside?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Were you married?”

  “Yes,”

  “Under what jurisdiction’s laws?”

  “Planet Baina Ya, United States of Earth,”

  “I see.”

  Dull eyes watching line-filled screens as fat fingers scratched with scribers at the glass. “Now let me explain the legal circumstances regarding abortion. It-”

  “I’m not here for an abortion. I want the child to be born. I simply never want to see it. It is to be put up for immediate adoption.”

  “I see. You plan to relinquish all rights to your child?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what would your husband think about this?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “But if he were alive-”

  “He’s dead…”

  …Mitzak, reading the news out loud, interrupted himself with a fit of laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “The Ninth Quadrant Federation’s study committee will vote soon on the question of whether or not to extend membership invitations to the Dracon Chamber and the United States of Earth-as if either would join if asked. It says here that the proposal is not expected to pass the committee. No kidding.” Again he laughed.

  Nicole sat up on her bed and stretched her arms. “Perhaps, Mitzak, this war could have been avoided if we were members of the Quadrant.” She relaxed her arms, letting them fall to her lap.

  “A big if, Nicole.”

  Mitzak continued reading…

  …the weight had left her. It was as though a tumor had been removed, or a gangrenous limb amputated.

  She sat on the grass of the campus and watched the other students. Her face looked no different from their faces. But the way they talked, what they said, the blind confidence of never having experienced any part of life, set them apart.

  She risked telling one of them her story.

  “Oh, I don’t think I could stand not knowing what the child was, or what it would be.”

  “You would be surprised what you can stand.”

  “Joanne, sometimes you seem so heartless…”

  Heartless.

  It w
as never a lack of heart; it was a lack of guts…

  Awake, and again Nicole sat up and moved around until her feet were on the floor.

  The darkness. Damn the dark. She stood up, swallowed to keep down her chow, then held out her left hand and took a timid step forward. Beneath her feet was the same cool softness; her searching fingers could find nothing. One step from the bed. Another step, and far to her left she felt a metal table.

  Nicole went to it-one step, left turn, one step-and began to examine the objects on the table. There were small, capped containers; and she opened each one in turn and sniffed. The ointment used on her after Tokyo Rose’s visit and that odor of flowers were the only two that she could identify.

  A turn to her right, arms extended, and she moved three steps. Her hands came into contact with the spongy, honeycombed surface of a wall. It was designed to deaden sound, at a time when her ears and mind craved stimulation.

  Keeping her hands in contact with the wall, she moved to her right until the wall curved toward her, the room had no comers. Farther to the right, and she felt a row of handles recessed into the wall’s surface.

  She reached in, pulled on the first handle, and the surface pulled out. It was a drawer. She felt inside and found it empty. The next two drawers were the same. With difficulty she squatted down and opened the fourth drawer.

  The smell!

  She recoiled at the odor-an odor that whipped all of her carefully hidden nightmares into the open. The fourth drawer contained her uniform.

  She touched the familiar cloth and let the feelings rage through her as she smelled the filth from her body, the dried mud of Catvishnu, the smoke from the burning school, and that Drac bum ointment that had blinded her.

  That chasm of self-pity yawned before her again, and she sat on the floor and let herself tumble in. She felt the tears run down her cheeks and splash on her lap. She touched the place where the tears had fallen and told herself that she was naked. She was naked and didn’t care.

  The footsteps of Pur Sonaan and Vunseleh Het entered the room to her right. Pur Sonaan’s voice spoke sharply to Vunseleh.

  “Empty head! Find her a robe to wear!”