“I don’t like it,” Rei said.
“What?” Pollack asked.
“Any of it,” Rei said. “I’m a human being, and I want to return to Earth as a regular human. I couldn’t care less about organizations or some country called Japan.”
“Even so—”
“I understand how you feel,” the major said, cutting in. “But the reality of the situation is that you aren’t just a single, independent human being. You have to make a choice. If you get leave as an FAF soldier, you’ll be bound by military regulations. They’ll control where you can go and who you can see.”
“They’ll be spying on me?”
“On the other hand, you’ll have the FAF as a powerful ally, backing you up. It’s not all bad. Nobody would be able to lay a finger on you, even if you had an entire nation as your enemy. Although the same could be said if you became a civilian. If you retired and the FAF still tried to control you, you could request that the Japanese government assist you.”
“I can’t depend on anyone there,” Rei protested.
“You’ve got me,” Pollack said. “I work to protect the rights of people like you.”
“Would the JAM say something like that?” Rei asked. “Only humans talk about things like ‘rights.’ The JAM don’t play that game. They’re my enemy, and the only person I can depend on in fighting them is myself, except now, I… Dammit, I don’t want to die at their hands the way I am now!”
“Lieutenant Rei Fukai, apply for retirement,” Major Booker said firmly. “Then go and get your head together. This isn’t a problem you can solve by yourself. Having you dicking around here being unsure of everything is just going to make my life difficult. I don’t care how you settle it, just settle it.”
“Just sign these papers,” said Pollack, holding out a pen. Rei took it and signed several pages.
“Good,” said Major Booker with a nod. “This is the only way you can go back. Once you sign these, no matter what the FAF brass says, in three days, you’ll be free. Assuming you live that long.”
“You’re saying they’ll try and kill me?”
“It’s possible,” Booker said. “There’ve already been moves to get you away from the SAF. Our organization is big enough that I think we can protect you for three days. General Cooley doesn’t want to lose you either, and she’s been fighting it too.”
“If you should be killed, your signature is still valid,” Pollack said. “Your honor will be protected. I’ll take care of those for you.”
“I’m not giving these papers to you,” Rei said.
“Major Booker is still a member of the SAF, Lieutenant. You can’t be certain that he won’t rewrite them or try something else. I don’t trust him. You’ll have to trust me.”
“I said I’m not giving these papers to anyone else. I’m going to walk them over to the administration office and hand them in myself.”
“Have it your way,” Pollack said with a shrug. He left the office, not looking particularly disappointed.
“Is he trustworthy, Jack?”
“For what he’s charging, he’d better be. I took it out of your future pay, so you’ll need to work off that debt. Just leave the legal wrangling to him.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You just have to trust him for now,” Booker said.
“No, it’s not that. It was the way he walked around unarmed, like he thinks he has some right not to get killed here. That’s just a delusion.”
“A shared delusion. Pollack operates within the delusion of what Earth society calls common sense. That doesn’t apply here. Not in the FAF or on Faery. Especially to us in the SAF, with the JAM constantly at our throats, the kind of confidence that man has would naturally seem bizarre. Talking to him makes me feel like we live in entirely different dimensions. He walks in the world of Earthly common sense.”
“Earthly common sense,” Rei pondered. “I never was very familiar with that.”
“I know what you mean. It’s the same for me. If you go back to Earth, it’ll probably be even stranger to you. There were always people who said that the JAM invasion was some giant hoax, but now there are apparently a lot of people who don’t even believe they exist. The number of people who aren’t conscious of the fact that the JAM threat is real is growing, and to them the war on Faery is just fiction. Everything that happens on this planet is becoming fictional.”
“Fiction. Like a fairy tale.”
“Exactly. We and the JAM are just characters in a story. If this collective delusion continues to hold sway, it’s possible that humanity wouldn’t understand what was happening if the JAM broke through the Faery defense line and invaded Earth. If it gets to where we can’t recognize the JAM anymore, will fighters and combat intelligences like Yukikaze who are fighting against the JAM even recognize them as the enemies of humanity? Maybe we wouldn’t be able to tell what the real threat was without Yukikaze flying overhead to keep an eye out for it.”
“The ones suffering from that delusion are happy to get killed off without ever sensing a threat or feeling fear,” Rei said, carefully folding the documents he held. “It makes things easier for the JAM, doesn’t it? If the JAM are making those human duplicates with the thought of using them as anti-personnel weapons, their strategy is wrong.”
“I doubt that’s what the JAM have in mind. For now, they’ve only made a small number of duplicates exclusively for gathering intelligence. I think they’re using them in the same way that we use Yukikaze. They’d need to mass-produce them if they were to be used as anti-personnel weapons, and it would require a lot of resources to maintain a squad. Just producing food for them would be a huge problem. I doubt they’d adopt such an inefficient strategy. If the JAM are creating human copies, it means they’ve studied the human body thoroughly. If they know enough to make a human body, it stands to reason that they could easily engineer a virus to wipe us out. It’d be child’s play to spread—an autonomous, infectious, self-propagating micro-weapon. That would be the most efficient way to kill us.
“Maybe they haven’t perfected it,” Booker continued, “or they don’t want to for some reason, but the fact remains that we don’t know what the JAM are after. We may never be able to communicate with them. We operate under the assumption that, given enough effort, a means to understanding an opponent with a rational mind can be found, but that may simply be a human delusion. I think it’s a conceited notion. We humans don’t really know what Yukikaze and the FAF computers think, and we made them.”
“The same goes for strangers. We make enemies of other people.”
“True understanding may be impossible,” the major said, “but we can believe. Humans have that capacity.”
“I believe in you,” Rei said, slipping the folded papers into his pocket. “And in Yukikaze. And in the JAM as well.”
“Then why are you so eager to return to Earth? Do you even know, Rei?” The question was so unexpected that Rei was flummoxed. He just looked at his old friend for a long moment, wondering if his silence was proof that he really didn’t know.
“I think I know why,” the major said at last. “I understand, because I get the same feeling a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“You want to see for yourself that Earth still exists, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You should go. You’re free now. Nobody can tell you what to do. I’ll wait for a week after your retirement is finalized. If I don’t hear from you in ten days, I’ll reorganize the SAF without you.”
“I understand.”
“That is all, Lieutenant Fukai.”
“Roger, Major.”
Rei straightened up and saluted. Major Booker sat up in his seat and returned the salute with a casual wave, like he always did. It was an attitude that said that, true to their nickname, a Boomerang soldier would return without fail. If the boomerang hit its target, he would go out to recover it. That was Major Booker’s role to play. It’s thanks to him
that I was rescued, Rei thought. From one viewpoint, Booker was just doing his duty, but from another, it was confirmation that the major didn’t simply see Rei as a weapon. Had it not been for his faith in his friend, Rei wouldn’t have wanted to return from the void in which he’d been trapped.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Rei said as he lowered his hand. “I’d better get to the administration office.”
“I’d hate to see you not come back to the SAF, but you do what you have to do,” the major replied. “This is a gamble I’m taking, Rei. Drastic action. It’s the only thing I can offer you so that you’ll be a soldier again. There’s a chance I’m going to lose this bet.”
“I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen,” Rei said.
“Since you’re going back to an Earth you don’t really know anymore, anything could happen. I’d feel better if you had a navigator to help you out. I contacted Lynn Jackson and made a private request. That was me acting as an individual, not as a major asking a favor.”
“Lynn Jackson, huh?”
“The FAF Intelligence Forces are probably already moving and may refuse, but that has nothing to do with me. Lynn Jackson is a first-rate journalist. She’ll keep you out of trouble.”
“It sounds like Earth is more dangerous than the JAM.”
“In your naively fragile state, it definitely is. I’m praying you don’t have a total nervous breakdown there.”
As Rei turned to leave, Major Booker wished him luck. Rei left his friend’s office without another word.
THREE DAYS LATER, Rei was safely retired from service. The process had been complicated and mysterious, but apparently Chang Pollack had earned his hefty fee, sparing Rei from having to deal with any annoying contingencies. Once his confiscated Japanese passport was returned to him, it was all over. Rei Fukai was no longer a soldier in the Faery Air Force. He was a civilian, with all debts to society paid.
Just as he had when he’d first arrived at base, Rei walked through the tunnel which connected the surface to the underground, though this time he was going up instead of down. Carrying only his jacket and a Boston bag he owned, Rei headed for the exit. As he neared it, the outside light growing brighter, Rei felt as if he were awakening from a dream.
No one was there to see him off. There were about twenty other people who, like him, were making the trip back to Earth, along with four others still in uniform, going back on temporary leave. The guys in uniform were mainly jovial, but the expressions of ex-servicemen varied, sullen frowns outnumbering smiles considerably.
Emerging from the tunnel, Rei looked up into the light of Faery’s twin suns.
A huge eddy of gas jetted out from one side of the binary stars, forming a reddish belt that resembled the Milky Way. The Bloody Road, as it was called, was more diffuse than when seen from a plane at high altitude. Normally, it wasn’t visible from the ground at noontime. Perhaps, Rei thought, finding yourself forced to see something that you normally wouldn’t is the essential nature of homesickness. A formation of FAF tactical fighters crossed the sky overhead. Opposite them stood a huge, white pillar of clouds—the Passageway that connected Earth and Faery. Rei thought the scene looked like some sort of painting.
A United Nations transport plane bound for Earth sat at the end of the runway. This was the shuttle that made the trip through the hyperspace Passageway from Faery to Earth. Generally, FAF planes never went there.
IDs were checked prior to boarding. The note on Rei’s passport that he was retired from service and was no longer a Faery soldier was checked and verified by a crewman, who then demanded that everyone except those in uniform present their boarding passes. You paid your own way home, although there were no first class seats on this plane.
The shuttle plane’s pilot seemed like a veteran. Without any hesitation, he entered the hyperspace Passageway in the cloud pillar from the proper course and altitude. The plane emerged on the Earth side with barely any turbulence. When the clouds cleared, they were greeted by the sight of the Antarctic skies spreading out around them. One of the seating rows broke out in cheers. The blood red river of the Bloody Road was nowhere to be seen in Earth’s skies. I’m home, thought Rei.
REI WAS RELEASED in Sydney, Australia.
Lynn Jackson was waiting for him. The author of The Invader, which dealt with the JAM threat, she had never lost interest in the JAM or the Faery Air Force. She greeted the man returning from Faery—who knew the JAM so well—the way she might an acquaintance she hadn’t seen in a decade. Rei had met her once before, though they hadn’t spoken. She seemed a little older, but her eyes still held their intelligent sparkle.
“Welcome home, Lieutenant Fukai. Congratulations on making it out alive,” she said as she fell into step with Rei at the airport exit.
“What’s the deal?” Rei said. “You gonna follow me everywhere I go?”
“Major Booker asked me to help you out. Do you remember me?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what are your plans? What do you want to do?”
“Travel around the world.”
“You mean until you feel like going back to your homeland?” she asked.
“None of your business.”
“Isn’t it? Lieutenant Fukai, don’t you think you have an obligation to tell all of humanity about the JAM?”
“I’m back here because I’ve fulfilled all my obligations. If you want to know about the JAM, enlist and go to the front yourself.”
“Participating in a war means losing your objectivity.”
“If being human means believing there’s a fair, balanced, and objective position to take on the JAM, then I guess I’m not human. I couldn’t live as a human.”
“In a way, you may be right, Lieutenant, but as for me—”
“I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”
“Does that mean you have no intention of returning to Faery?”
“No comment.”
Amidst the whirlpool of noise and color in the bustling airport, Rei was starting to feel a little seasick.
“Even though we’re alike?”
“Alike how?”
Lynn dropped the professional tone from her voice. “It’s true that there are all sorts of things I want to ask about. You and I both appreciate the threat the JAM pose. We don’t know what they’re after, but if we try to perceive them objectively, human sense and common sense become unreliable. I agree with what you said about not being able to live as a human. That’s you now, isn’t it? That’s how it is for you.”
“Well, if I’m not human, then what am I?” Rei asked as he stopped midstride.
Lynn Jackson looked Rei straight in the eye and answered without any hesitation. “A Faerian.”
“An alien, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly. So, as an alien who’s come to Earth to sightsee, you’ll need to hire a guide. You’re ignorant of human customs, I’m sure.”
“And in return, you want exclusive access to my story, right?”
“This may wound your heroic pride, but I can’t market you as a hero. The war with the JAM isn’t the sensation it used to be,” Jackson said. “Only a very small specialty market exists with any interest in the exploits of returning soldiers. Very few in the media would have any interest in interviewing you.”
“What happened on Faery seems like a dream already,” Rei said. “It feels like I was hooked up to some machine designed to induce nightmares as part of some psychological punishment. Actually, I kinda suspect that the machine they used to force-inject basic fighter piloting skills into my brain was exactly like that.” Rei sighed. “If here on Earth the JAM are now treated like characters from a fairy tale, then you may as well say that it all really was the sort of punishment I just described. There wouldn’t be much difference between trying to convince people they’re real and me just saying it’s not my problem now.”
“As much as I think public consideration needs to be paid to the psychological wounds our
returning soldiers have to deal with, you’re still wrong. I just can’t believe that.”
“I’ve had enough of public consideration and the rest of that crap,” Rei said.
“I’m here as an individual.”
“So you have a personal interest in me?”
“I do. I don’t think you can handle human society as it is now. You can’t live here on your own.”
Rei considered what she said and finally gave in.
“I’ll hire you as a guide.”
“I warn you, my fee’s pretty high.”
“I’ve got money,” he replied. “There isn’t a lot to spend it on back at Faery base.”
“If you tell me about that too, I’ll let you pay me in installments.”
“If the balance gets too depressing to look at, I’ll consider that,” Rei said.
“Don’t lose count of what you owe.”
“I’ll expect you to charge me an honest price.”
“Trust me,” she said.
Lynn Jackson started walking toward the airport lobby exit.
“Where are we going?” Rei asked.
“You need a place to relax, right? I’ve booked you into the Meridian Hotel.”
“You’re prepared, aren’t you?”
“I’m living there right now. It’s convenient, being as close to Faery as it is.”
“Nice status you enjoy, huh?”
“I can live comfortably if I economize.”
“You published a best seller, after all. When you write the sequel to The Invader you’ll sell that too, right?”
“I’m just starting to write it now,” Lynn said. “The thing is, my agent’s having to wrack his brains before he can sell it to someone.”
“Why’s that?”
“If we sell it as a work of fantasy fiction, we may be able to find a publisher who’ll buy it. That’s what the times are like nowadays. See, anything having to do with the JAM is fantasy. If the JAM are mentioned anywhere, nobody takes the contents of the book seriously. I wasn’t intending to become a novelist, but my agent’s been telling me he has a feeling that the publisher is going to make me do it that way. If it looks like I’m writing some kind of quickie cash-in job, it’ll damage the trust people have in me as a journalist. So, I’m writing some other ‘hard’-subject books to keep from seeming too far out of my usual line.”
Good Luck, Yukikaze Page 10