Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

I feel a strange longing: a glaring emptiness against a painful jealousy of the Drac children who learned line and Talman before this man. It is a bottomless well of anguish that always begins with: things should have been different. Haesni, wiping its face with its hand from having eaten something, sneaks into its bed after waving a hand at me. Before I can respond, the child is under its leather quilt, its head covered. The favored child sleeping in the heart of its uncle’s love.

I rest my head against the back of my chair and study the human as he reads. I have seen humans before. In battle, as my prisoners, before my knife, torturing my friend to death, and at least one holding a little Drac baby. I see no human woman in Davidge’s cave; not even another man. There is a lot to mistrust in a man who forsakes all that there is in being a man to live in a cave and bring up Drac children. As the sleep tugs at me, I ask myself, why are you here, Willis E. Davidge? Before I can ask my question aloud, Davidge lowers the manuscript and faces me.

"Ro, tomorrow morning I want you to ask Ty to show you how the subspace link at the house works. It’s about time you learned your line. Before you can learn it, you must assemble the information." Without waiting for an answer, he returns to reading.

I see the warden, feel the irritation at being told what to do without being asked or even told why. I smile as I acknowledge the human’s wisdom in providing a talma along which childish retribution may be exacted. I close my eyes, settle into the chair before the fire wrapped in my warm cloak, and say, "Sleep in peace, Uncle Willy."

The next morning, after a peculiar breakfast of root cakes and roast snake in the cave, Davidge returns to the manuscript, Haesni washes the shells and griddle, and I make my way to the estate, the day warm enough that I can walk the path without fear of my eyeballs shattering. From the ice-sheathed trees and rocks, I can see meltwater dripping.

Later, in Ty’s office, I sit facing the screen of the link. Jeriba Ty establishes contact with the Talman Kovah on Draco, runs the line probe, explains the controls, and says to call when I have completed entering what I can. Ty leaves and I enter the information for which the line probe asks.

My own name is Yazi Ro. My parent’s name was Yazi Avo. I know from what my parent told me of its parent that its name was Yazi Tahl. Tahl’s parent was named Itas, although I am uncertain of the spelling. If I ever knew the name of my nameparent’s child, it has left my memory. I have no choice but to leave the five-name sequence incomplete.

The line location, what I know of it, is on Amadeen, Northern Shorda, City of Gitoh. The occupations of myself and my forebears, those that I know of: Yazi Ro, Mavedah soldier; Yazi Avo, with its crippled foot, did whatever it could find to provide food and shelter for its infant child. Mostly it taught battlefield English to Mavedah soldiers; Yazi Tahl, another Mavedah soldier; Yazi Itas, I do not know, and there it ends. I call for Jeriba Ty and in moments it is there reviewing the information.

After reading it, Ty looks down at me and places a hand on my shoulder. It must have been very difficult growing up without the knowledge of your line."

I am confused by my host’s pity. "I do not know, Jeriba Ty. I have nothing with which to compare it." I point at the screen. "Is that enough information ?"

"It is all we have," Ty answers as it reaches forward and touches the screen which changes immediately to the main catalog.

"How long will it take?"

Ty opens its mouth to answer, but before a word escapes, the results of the line probe appear. I nod my thanks to Jeriba Ty and sit back to discover part of myself.

The data links from Amadeen were cut off when the quarantine isolated Amadeen from the quadrant. There is, nevertheless, only one line on Amadeen whose names fit the sequence I entered. The full sequence is: Ro, Tomas, Itah, Tahl, Avo. There is a message to note the difference in the spelling of the center sequence name. The original line archives were registered in Gitoh.

I find that I had a nameparent, and my nameparent had a nameparent. Yazi Ro, third child of Stiyima Bahn of Aakva Benabi on Draco, left its home to found its new line on Amadeen years before the war. The founder was an explorer and entrepreneur who became partners in a business venture with a human named Tomas Muñoz. The Drac and the human began providing food and other supplies to the prospectors in the mountains above Gitoh. The business was prosperous, and the pair expanded their activities into various other retail enterprises.

When Yazi Ro had its first child, the founder named its child for its partner, Tomas. In turn, Tomas Muñoz named his new son Ro. The two children grew together until Tomas was no longer a child. Yazi Tomas maintained a close friendship with Ro Muñoz, though, until the war started on Amadeen. No one seems to know why it started, or how. Something about land and an unjust decision made by some court. The only thing certain was that members of the other species were responsible. The Yazi-Muñoz business venture struggled along for another year, but it eventually was consumed by the widening war. The partnership ended along with the friendship when Ro Muñoz was slain by an angry mob of Drac miners and Tomas Muñoz returned to Earth.

Yazi Tomas attempted to keep a much smaller foodstuff supply business going by itself, but war respects no contracts and soon Tomas was pressed into service by the newly organized Shorda Continental Defense Force, which later changed its name to the Mavedah. Tomas’s only child, Itah, went directly into the Mavedah, as did its child, Tahl. As my parent’s nameparent was born, the quarantine was placed on Amadeen, and there the information ends, The cycle of names is there, though, and the probe fills in the missing names. I am the eleventh of my line. If I should ever conceive, my child would carry this human’s name: Tomas.

"Ro, did your parent ever tell you about this Tomas Muñoz, and about their business?"

I glance at Ty, only part of my mind on its question. "I do not remember. I was so young when Avo was killed. I may have been told, but I do not remember."

"You have an information notice aid. May I see what it is?"

I look and there is a spot on the screen blinking between white and blue. I get up from the link and go to the office’s window wall as Jeriba Ty sits before the link and gives the probe some new instructions. The window looks out upon a distant chain of mountains, the tops black with cliffs too steep to hold ice or snow. My eyes see the mountains but my mind is on Amadeen and a time when a Drac and a human could become business partners and name their children after each other. How did we move from such a place to Douglasville where that man, that human, took its captured energy knife and cut poor Lota Min into screaming pieces?

The wounds on Amadeen are so many, so deep, so ghastly, how can there be an end to it? How can we live in a world where we cannot kill humans, where there is nothing left to do but feel the pain of our many losses while staring at the shattered remains of so many futures?

"Yazi Ro, do you know a human named Michael Hill?"

My thoughts touch the passenger lounge of the Venture and the man who told me about the danger of looking at the stars alone. "I met him on the ship." I turn to face Ty. "He is a representative for Earth IMPEX."

Jeriba Ty is frowning as it looks at the screen. "It seems that Michael Hill is very interested in anyone carrying the line name of Yazi." Ty shakes a finger at the screen and says, "More specifically, he’s interested in anyone who has an interest in a Yazi line name. Hill has entered an automatic call request that his message station be notified of the names of everyone who does a probe on any of the Yazi lines."