Enemy Papers Read online

  Estone Nev leaned over the clerk. “Let me look at the records, insect.” The clerk passed the dot file and a reader to Nev, and, after studying them, Estone Nev looked up at Toccvo Leint and said, “It is obvious that Jeriba Zammis has been, on several occasions, beaten almost to death.”

  The clerk began waving its arms in embarrassment. “According to the case investigators, Jeriba Zammis’s condition was due to harm it inflicted upon itself, and some injuries incidental to those it attacked defending themselves.” As the records clerk said it, it didn’t look as though it believed a word.

  I moved forward until I, too, towered over the clerk. “I have a question.” The clerk surveyed the three of us and nodded at me.

  “I will be pleased to answer it, if I can.”

  “When Zammis fell into your hands, why wasn’t the Jeriba line notified? Why was it kept a secret?”

  The clerk looked away from me as though its answer was beyond my ability to comprehend. Instead, Toccvo Leint appealed to Gothig with its response. “It was kept from you, Jeriba Gothig, to protect you and your line from the terrible scandal. Certainly you understand.”

  Jerry’s parent looked at the clerk for a bone-chilling moment, and then said in an icy voice, “I do not know where the talma of justice will wind, Toccvo Leint, but depend on the wealth of my line keeping all paths open. For now, have us taken to see Jeriba Zammis.”

  We entered the outdoor patient pens, feeling sick. All around us, Dracs stared with vacant eyes, or screamed, or foamed at the mouth, or were curled up in a corner somewhere trembling at unseeable terrors. The rather beefy guard took the three of us to a pen on the edge of the compound where the warden-director of the Sa Ashzhab Kovah met us. The warden frowned at me and shook its head at Gothig. “Turn back now, while it is still possible, Jeriba Gothig. Beyond this gate lies nothing but pain and sorrow.”

  Gothig grabbed the director by the front of its wraps. “Hear me, kizlode: If Jeriba Zammis is within these fences, bring my grandchild; else, I shall bring the might of the Jeriba line down upon your pointed head!”

  The director lifted its head, twitched its lips, then nodded. “Very well. Very well, you pompous Kazzmidth! We tried—to protect the Jeriba reputation. We tried! But now you shall see.” The director nodded and pursed its lips. “Yes, now you shall see.” The director nodded at a guard, and the over-muscled creature opened the gate to the pen and stood aside to allow us to enter.

  Among trees and grass, Jeriba Zammis sat upon a stone bench, staring at the ground. Its eyes never blinked, its hands never moved. Gothig frowned at me, but I could spare nothing for Shigan’s parent. I walked to Zammis. “Zammis, do you know me?”

  The Drac retrieved its thoughts from a million warrens and raised its yellow eyes to me. I saw no sign of recognition. “Who are you?”

  I squatted down, placed my hands on its arms and shook them. “Dammit, Zammis, don’t you know me? I’m your uncle. Remember that? Uncle Davidge?”

  The Drac weaved on the bench, then shook its head. It lifted an arm and waved to an orderly. “I want to go to my room. Please, let me go to my room.”

  I stood and grabbed Zammis by the front of its hospital gown. “Zammis, it’s me!”

  The yellow eyes, dull and lifeless, stared back at me. The orderly placed a yellow hand upon my shoulder. “Let it go, Irkmaan.”

  “Zammis!” I turned to Nev and Gothig. “Say something!”

  The Drac orderly pulled a sap from its pocket, then slapped it suggestively against the palm of its hand. “Let it go, Irkmaan.”

  Gothig stepped forward. “Explain this!”

  I looked at Zammis but addressed the guard. “What have you bastards done to Zammis? A little shock? A little drug? Rot out its mind?”

  The orderly sneered at me, then shook his head. “You, Irkmaan, do not understand. This one would not be happy as an Irkmaan vul—a human lover. We are making it possible for this one to function in Drac society. You think this is wrong?”

  I looked at Zammis and shook my head. I remembered too well my treatment at the hands of my fellow humans. “Wrong? No. I just don’t know.”

  The orderly turned to Gothig. “Please understand, Jeriba Gothig. We could not subject the Jeriba line to this disgrace. Your grandchild is almost well and will soon enter a reeducation program. In no more than two years, you will have a grandchild worthy of carrying on the Jeriba line. Is this wrong?”

  Gothig only shook its head. I squatted down in front of Zammis and looked up into its yellow eyes. I reached up and took its right hand in both of mine. “Zammis?”

  Zammis looked down, moved its left hand over, and picked up my left hand and spread the fingers. One at a time Zammis pointed at the fingers of my hand, then it looked into my eyes, then examined the hand again. “Yes…”

  Zammis pointed again. “One, two, three, four, five!” Zammis looked into my eyes. “Four, five!”

  I nodded. “Yes. Yes.”

  Zammis pulled my hand to its cheek and held it close. “Uncle… Uncle. I told you I’d never forget you.”

  We brought Zammis back to the estate. Then came a revealing challenge: trying to find a mental health jetah who didn’t think Gothig and Nev were crazy for tolerating me. It took three days, but one was found. It prescribed a regimen of withdrawal from the drugs they had Zammis on at the Sa Ashzhab Kovah. It would be two days before the jetah would arrive, and I spent the entire time with Zammis in its apartment, sitting next to it on its sleeping pallet. Zammis stayed quiet, trembling, crying silent tears, and holding onto my arm with both hands. Physically Zammis was a fullgrown adult, but what I saw before me was a sick, terrified child.

  I looked for monsters, people, cultures to blame, someone I could kill and make everything all right. There was nothing except my memories of Zammis’s parent and myself trying to kill each other on that cold, wet sandbar.

  “Nu gejh, Irkmaan!”

  You die, Earthman.

  “Kiz da yuomeen, Shizumaat!”

  Yeah, and Shizumaat eats it.

  How did I get from there to here? I thought of the hellish winds and deadly winters on Fyrine IV and realized what brought Jerry and me together, and then left Zammis to make my life whole. It wasn’t that we were all driven together by the unforgiving planet. It was that Fyrine IV was clean. There wasn’t anyone else there. I wondered how the galaxy could be given a mental enema to make it half as clean. A problem for someone smarter than me.

  I looked down at Jerry’s child and said, “Zammis. Zammis?” I placed my free hand against its cheek. “Zammis?”

  “Uncle, don’t leave me,” it whispered.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Zammis, when were you the most happy?”

  “Happy?”

  I nodded. “Yes. When the nightmares begin crowding you, where do you go to hide? In your mind, where do you go to be safe?”

  Zammis looked away from my face and its gaze moved over the cut stone walls of the apartment. I could see it went to its safe place and then smiled at the same time fresh tears came to its eyes. “The cave, Uncle. I hide in the cave.”

  I patted its cheek and nodded. “Me, too. How would you like to go back?”

  “Go back?”

  “To the cave, to Fyrine IV. How would you like to go back?”

  Zammis sat up and smiled hopefully for a moment, then frowned at me. “Uncle, you always said you hated it there.”

  “I was a fool. I want to go back. Do you want to go back?”

  “Together, Uncle?”

  “Of course, together.”

  Zammis buried its face in my neck and held on to me as it hadn’t done since it was little. God, how many tears are there left to cry?

  I never counted the years that passed. Mistaan had words for those who count time as though their recognition of its passing marked their place in the Universe. Mornings, the weather as clear as weather gets on Fyrine IV, I would visit my friend’s grave. Next to it, Estone Nev, Zammis, Ty and I burie
d Gothig. Shigan’s parent had taken the healing Zammis, liquidated the Jeriba line’s estate, then moved the whole shebang to Fyrine IV. When told the story, it was Ty who named the planet “Friendship.”

  One blustery day I knelt between the graves, replaced some rocks, then added a few more. I pulled my snakeskins tight against the wind, then sat down and looked out to sea. Still the rollers steamed in under the grey-black cover of clouds. Soon the ice would come. I looked at my scarred, wrinkled hands, then at the grave.

  “I couldn’t stay in the colony with them, Jerry. Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice. Damned nice. But I kept looking out my window, seeing the ocean, thinking of the cave. I’m alone, in a way. But it’s good. I know what and who I am, Jerry, and that’s all there is to it, right?”

  I heard a noise. I crouched over, placed my hands upon my withered knees, and pushed myself to my feet. The Drac was coming from the colony compound, a child in its arms.

  I rubbed my beard. “Eh, Ty, so that is your first child?”

  The Drac nodded. “I would be pleased, Uncle, if you would teach it what it must be taught: the line, The Talman; and about the life on Friendship.”

  I took the bundle into my arms. Chubby three-fingered arms waved at the air, then grasped my snakeskins. “Yes, Ty, this one is a Jeriba.” I looked up at Ty. “And how is your parent, Zammis?”

  Ty shrugged. “It is as well as can be expected. My parent wishes you well.”

  I nodded. “And the same to it, Ty. Zammis ought to get out of that air-conditioned capsule and come back to live in the cave. It’ll do it good.”

  Ty grinned and nodded its head. “I will tell my parent, Uncle.”

  I stabbed my thumb into my chest. “Look at me! You don’t see me sick, do you?”

  “No, Uncle.”

  “You tell Zammis to kick that doctor out of there and to come back to the cave, hear?”

  “Yes, Uncle.” Ty smiled. “Is there anything you need?”

  I nodded and scratched the back of my neck. “Toilet paper. Just a couple of packs. Maybe a couple of bottles of whiskey—no, forget the whiskey. I’ll wait until Haesni, here, puts in its first year. Just the toilet paper.”

  Ty bowed. “Yes, Uncle, and may the many mornings find you well.”

  I waved my hand impatiently. “They will, they will. Just don’t forget the toilet paper.”

  Ty bowed again. “I won’t, Uncle.”

  Ty turned and walked through the scrub forest back to the colony.

  I lived with them for a year after Zammis regained its health and we all stood before the archives to witness Zammis recite line and book. Soft sleeping pallets, vids, tutors, health jetahs, and a chef. Too soft, too easy, too far from what Shizumaat called the universe. I moved out and went back to the cave. I gathered the wood, smoked the snake, and withstood the winter. Zammis gave me the young Ty to rear in the cave, and now Ty had handed me Haesni. I nodded at the child. “Your child will be called Gothig, and then,” I looked at the sky and felt the tears drying on my face. “And then, Gothig’s child will be called Shigan.” I nodded and headed for the cleft that would bring us down to the level of the cave.

  THE LAST TESTAMENT

  PROLOGUE

  The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are. contemplating the same one at the same moment!…Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?.

  Walden

  Henry David Thoreau

  If Aakva is a great fire circling our universe, and if Aakva’s Children are still more fires but at great distances, is it not possible that they circle other universes? And those other universes, might they not contain their own living beings? For these answers, I would suffer much. To meet those beings, see them, touch their thoughts. I would exchange my life.

  The Talman

  The Story of Shizumaat. Koda Nuvida

  The preflight literature of every race of which we know posits the existence of otherworld races, and describes the expectations all placed upon their first encounters with other races. The perfection of individual and society all could envision, but none could achieve, each race hoped to find in another.

  The encounters happened, each race finding in the other little more than a distorted reflection of itself. Intelligence and stupidity, aggression and suffering, insight and blind allegiance-the universals of life and reality-replaced the hope with cynicism as each race fought for its own advantage by creating rules, tactics, and institutions intended to enclose and defeat the goals of those who were perceived as threats.

  Against the stronger powers, the technologically and militarily inferior races formed coalitions, becoming by combination stronger powers themselves. Inside the coalitions, the members intrigued and plotted for control. Outside of the coalitions, the great military and economic powers warred and expanded.

  The coalitions rapidly evolved to become the present system of federations known as the United Quadrants. In the area of the Galaxy encompassed by the Ninth Quadrant Federation, only a few of the great powers had not become members of the federation. Of these, the two strongest in numbers, wealth, and military might were the United States of Earth and the Dracon Chamber. Between them, these two powers ruled three hundred worlds.

  Late in the Twenty-first Century neither Dracs nor humans speculated in giddy wonder about alien races. They were at war.

  ONE

  The learned student has much to contribute to the game. However, the hard truths, the ones that cannot be manipulated, will be told to us by the players.

  The players have seen and felt the metal; the students have only theorized about it.

  The Talman

  The Story of Zineru. Koda Sinuvida

  Joanne Nicole sat in the mud of Planet Catvishnu and watched through the haze and drizzle as the distant speck took form, growing to become the bat-winged blackness of a Drac assault lander. It flew low and slow over the denuded landscape like a bloated carrion-eater picking and choosing among countless dead.

  She looked at the remains of her command. Soldiers. They sat in holes, leaned against rocks, unmindful of the wet chill of the air and the dark grey of the overcast. She almost smiled as she looked back at the approaching lander.

  The Dracs only needed, one. The forty-odd scraps of demoralized humanity waiting in the mud for that ship could hardly fill a quarter of the craft’s capacity. Forty-odd future prisoners of war; the remainder of a defensive command of twenty thousand.

  There was no way of knowing, but millions of civilians must have been slaughtered, as well. The reports that had managed to get through said that Catvishnu’s cities on all six continents were but smoking ruins.

  A figure splashed to a halt next to her. “Major Nicole; they’re coming.”

  “What?”

  “They’re coming.” The figure pointed toward the lander.

  “I see them.”

  The figure squatted until Joanne Nicole could see its face. Sergeant Zina Lottner; code clerk.

  “We finished the search. There’s nothing down there the Draggers can use.” She held out a silver card. There was dried blood on her fingers.

  “I found this in your quarters.”

  Joanne Nicole took the invitation from the sergeant. The lovely little card sparkled. Amidst the mud, filth, and blood, the card looked obscenely clean, bright, happy. She opened the card and read the raised lettering inside.

  The Officers and Ranks of

  HEADQUARTERS COMPANY

  181 ST FORCE DIVISION, III CORPS,

  PLANET CATVISHNU GARRISON, USEF

  Cordially Invite

  MAJ. JOANNE NICOLE

  to the

  Sixteenth Annual Celebration

  of the

  Noraanka Dima

  to be held at

  1930 HOURS, 21 FEBRUARY 2072

  (2651 HRS. 9/9 LOCAL TIME)

  in the

/>   MAIN AUDITORIUM

  STORM MOUNTAIN

  She closed the card. “Lottner, why did you bring me this?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you might want…” Lottner stood, facing the approaching Drac lander. “I saw what was left of your gown. It must have been beautiful.”

  Joanne Nicole dropped the card into the mud and stepped on it with her boot. Lottner stood silently for a moment, then turned and splashed slowly down the muddy slope.

  It had been a beautiful gown; a silly little puff of silver and white.

  “How long have soldiers been sitting in mud?”

  She turned toward the sound of the rough voice and saw a man sitting cross-legged in the reddish-brown soup. Morio Taiseido, lieutenant, former code officer, present mud soldier, future POW. His companion, infantry sergeant Amos Benbo, kept an enigmatic stare fixed upon the approaching enemy ship.

  Hardly moving his lips, the sergeant answered: “How long have there been soldiers?”

  The ancient infantry joke seemed oddly profound at that moment. Joanne Nicole looked at her knees, lifted her hand, and scraped some mud from them. She cupped her hand and studied the contents.

  Mud. It had the color of blood mixed with excrement.

  Mud. It smelled like blood mixed with excrement.

  Mud. The universal military cosmetic.

  When she raised her head, the Drac ship had grown larger. Does the Drac infantry, the Tsien Denvedah. sit in the mud? Do the Dracs bleed, gripe, or do anything that other soldiers do? Two hours into the battle, Intelligence Chief Colonel Nkruma hadn’t thought so.

  Nkruma.

  She closed her eyes, sending her memory deep into the broken mountain behind her; back to so few hours ago.

  Nkruma’s round, usually impassive face was twisted as though he were in physical pain. And he was. The gleam of sweat upon his dark skin and the shaken voice telegraphed the words no intelligence officer ever wanted to hear.