Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

I pause and think for a moment. I only have one. "The ship you own, captain, the Edmund Fitzgerald . Why did you name your ship after an old wrecked ore freighter?"

Moss is silent, balancing his aversion at sharing himself with his desire for conversation. "It’s not named for the ship. It’s named for an old Gordon Lightfoot song, which was named for the ship. Do you know it?"

"No."

I see the reflection of the panel lights in his eyes as he recites: "'Does ,anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" He leans back on his couch. "Have you learned anything from The Talman ?"

For no reason I can think of, I feel that I am under attack―that my choice of suspension learning materials is under attack. "A few things," I answer. "I have yet to absorb what I have completed."

He holds a hand out toward the stars. "What is the point of it, Yazi Ro? What is the purpose of it all?"

"The universe?" Moss nods in response as he lowers his hand. I can remember nothing that was in The Talman , and have no answers of my own. In response I ask, "Does it have to have a purpose?"

The captain examines me with his liquid brown eyes. He breaks eye contact, faces the stars, and leans his head against the couch’s backrest. "I suppose not. It would make it easier, though."

"Easier?"

"Easier to tell if I am aiding that purpose or attempting to defeat it."

There is a strange supply of questions and answers within me. "Which would you prefer, Captain Moss?"

The dark man grunts out a laugh and swings his feet to the deck, his back toward me. "Answering that I would prefer to defeat it would sound bitter, wouldn’t it?"

"Yes," I answer. "Although one person’s bitterness is another’s realistic appraisal."

Moss ignores my tired joke. "There are worse things than sounding bitter," he says.

I sit on the edge of the acceleration couch and watch as our pilot rubs the back of his neck, rolls his head around to stretch the muscles, and twists his torso to look out of the front port at the stars. Perhaps some think of Eli Moss as a man with a bad attitude, I see a tower of pain that makes the human my sibling. It is easier to recognize such from my own heights. "As I understand The Talman , captain, each of us is free to choose its own purpose, yet there is a larger purpose, as well,"

Moss swings around until he is facing me. "And what if this larger purpose crushes my individual purpose out of existence?" Without waiting for an answer he turns his head until he is facing away from me. "I had a friend, Yazi Ro, who was sent to his death to accomplish nothing."

"Max Stearn," I guess. "The Buldahk Insurrection."

"Quite a security check you people do." The captain is silent for a long time. When he at last speaks there is a choking sound in his voice. "Do you understand the love of a man for a man?"

"No."

His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. "Who in the hell are you to judge, Drac?"

An enormous sadness fills me. "I make no judgments, captain. You ask me if I understand the love of a man for a man and I do not. Neither do I understand the love of a man for a woman, the love of a woman for a woman, nor the love of a Drac for a Drac. Love of any kind is something outside my comprehension. What I need to have in order to understand was burned out of me."

The man stares at me for a moment, his eyebrows raised. As he gets to his feet he says, "Hell, Drac, you’re riding a nightmare bigger than mine." He places a gentle hand on my shoulder, looks at me for a moment, and leaves the cockpit. I am left alone with the stars.

Later, as Reaper adjusts the controls to the suspension pod, I look to see if the captain is getting into his pod. No other pods are open. "When does the captain go into suspension?"

Reaper shakes his head. "He doesn’t. Not ever." The big man holds up a player button. "That Davidge was finished with this when Yora did the maint on his box. He said you might want to wrap your lobes around it."

"What is it?"

Reaper looks at a wrinkled scrap of paper. "I can’t make this out too good. Timan something. Surviving , I think. It’s by a Drac. You want me to switch it?"

"Yes." While Reaper is inserting the new button in the player, I ask, "When you were in that mercenary unit with Captain Moss, who were you fighting?"

Reaper looks up, pursed his lips, then looks back at the player. "Dracs in the two rebellions in the Lota System; Dracs, humans, and Vikaans when we went after the Nadok Rim Pirates; and humans in the Freeholder Invasion on Earn."

"Thank you. Although you seem to be unusually free with your answers―for an Ilcheve."

Reaper shrugs and says with a big smile. "I got nothing to hide, and neither do you. When you people get ready to go to Amadeen, let me know." His smile turns into a big grin. "I don’t do suspension, either, Ro. Gives me all the time I need to go through everybody’s things. Happy dreams."

I glance at Falna, close my eyes, and try to relax as the pod is again sealed and the new words and strange thought patterns begin playing in my mind. As they play, a detached part of my awareness wonders if Reaper was joking.

There is a joke the Timans tell. A human, a Drac, and a Timan are locked in a chamber. The human’s task is to stab the Drac. The Drac’s task is to stab the human. The Timan’s task is to befriend both the human and the Drac and supply the cutlery.

Their jokes are teachings that prompt the young to witness and understand certain truths. The principal truth is: to survive, the Timan must turn force against itself, the Timan never revealing its own role.

As a civilized species the Timans are younger even than the humans and much younger than the Dracs. Even so, each one of their "jokes" has undergone many transformations. Before the human and the Drac stabbing each other, the joke read: "There was a Rilgian, a Khirat, and a Timan locked in a chamber…" That was eleven hundred standard years ago. The Rilgians no longer exist. The few remaining Khirats are little more than curiosities on a number of Timan-administered planets.

The reaction of Timans to one of their own jokes, no matter how many times and in how many variations they have heard it, is the same. Massive gray heads nod in approval at the wisdom while a diminutive sucking of wide purplish lips perform the Timan equivalent of smirking. Timans do not laugh nor do they have an equivalent reaction. Neither do they cry, display anger, or show pain or disappointment. It is not that they are incapable of such displays. Such are repressed, however, as being too revealing. The Timans are divided into two castes: the teachers, who are addressed by name followed by "'do Timan," which means "for Timan," and everyone else. The 'do Timan is awarded by a teacher to an especially excellent student, making the student himself a teacher. The most respected academic institute on Timan is the Ri Mou Tavii, the school where Estone Falna earned its 'do Timan.

Timans live in nests of genetically related groups of thirty to forty containing one to three females whose only functions, and abilities it appears, are to eat and make little Timans. The organization of the home nest has been carried into all social institutions. Timan males are obsessed with puzzles, which is reflected in their games, their art, their music, and their behavior in business, government, and diplomacy.

The Drac who wrote the book Timan Survival is named Vigas Thorm. Thorm is an academic on Draco who has never been to Timan.

Once more the resurrection, this time administered by Yora Beneres. Something different this time. I am not the only one out of suspension. We are close to Timan and all of the pods are open. After the gunk is removed from my eyes, I see Falna sitting up in its suspension pod, working its neck muscles to loosen them. "Falna?"