Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

I remember the thirty or so Front prisoners that I was guarding shortly after the battle of Stokes Crossing in the Southern Shorda. Three human children, very young, were in the compound with the other prisoners. A woman was entertaining the children by making things appear and disappear.

Her hands were very quick. She took a pebble from the ground, put it in her pocket, then pulled the pebble out of one of the children’s ears. As the children laughed, she threw the pebble away then pulled it out of her own mouth.

I had never seen anything like it before. I moved closer to the wire to get a better view. She held the pebble between two fingers, placed it in the palm of her other hand, closed her fingers around it, then opened it. The pebble had vanished. She opened both hands and there was no pebble. She clapped her hands together, then slowly parted them to reveal three pebbles in the palm of the bottom hand.

I heard a shout from a Mavedah soldier on the other side of the compound. A sickening feeling in my middle, I looked up to see three humans running toward a group of rocks. They had escaped while I was distracted by the woman. I raised my knife and cut through the three of them, killing two and wounding the third. I lowered the knife and looked at the woman, wanting to cut her in half because she was as much a part of the escape attempt as the three who ran the wire. Everything pointed at the right hand while it was the left hand doing all the business.

I look at Davidge and the others seated around the table and think again about where the fingers are pointing. Kita is explaining to Davidge some obscure procedure in police recordkeeping. When she is finished, Davidge asks her to get together with Ernst Brandt to pick his brain. Once she agrees, he faces me. "Are you a part of this?"

I look up at him. "What do you want?"

"You’ve just been sitting there staring into space. Do you have any suggestions; a thought or two?"

I glance at Falna. Its eyes urge me on. I look at the floor and nod. "Davidge―Will, all of the fingers are pointing at humans and Timans. Earth IMPEX because of Michael Hill’s involvement, and Timan Nisak because of the weapon he used, in addition to the things revealed in the Koda Nusinda," I stand, look around at the faces, and say, "There are no fingers pointed at Dracs. Look for a Drac."

Kita frowns at me and says, "But Ro, we have absolutely no evidence of any Drac involvement at all."

"Exactly."

Back in my quarters I think about my answer, exactly. It means trust no one, nothing. The knife can come from any direction. There is a part of me that seems to find meaning in doing nothing more than being a witness and understanding that which passes before me. Living beings moving through their relationships of war and love are exercises of interest primarily to see how the relationships resolve. This is the manner of the Timan nest master. This is also the manner of the Drac Jetah Talman.

Detached, emotionally removed. A very safe place. All of the advantages of being dead with none of the rot. The existence of this place, my ability to occupy it, as well as its attraction, make me despair.

I look up and see Falna standing in the doorway. Two steps, three steps, and it is at my side. Falna’s hand brushes my cheek. "You are filled with such pain, Ro. Have you no one? No one at all?"

I look up at its face, its image blurred by the tears in my eyes. "I have the dead."

Falna encircles me with its arms and slowly pulls me toward its breast. I lose myself and my pain in Falna’s touch as the scent of it fills my awareness.

A history lesson on The Last War:

The few remaining Timan Ka were huddled in their mountain stronghold as the Rappani Ka, filling the Steppe of Irnuz before them, prepared to finish the extermination begun generations before. Bahtuo, nestmaster of the Timan Ka, looked down upon its people at their defense positions. There was hardly a one who was not wounded or scarred. In the center of the compound, protected by stone walls, were the females, their fat tails teeming with unborn who would never see life.

"We can withstand one or perhaps two more assaults," said Ashab the war leader to Bahtuo. "We will kill perhaps another hundred or hundred and fifty of their warriors, then the Rappani will overrun us. They will kill the females and we will be no more." Bahtuo looked at the war club in his hand and let it fall to the ground. "We surrender, then, Bahtuo?"

The nest master looked beyond his defenders and let his gaze fall upon the fires of the Rappani Ka. "We surrender, Ashab, but with a condition."

Later that night, Lord Nuba, eldest surviving son of King Jax, ruler of all the Rappani Ka, was entertaining his generals in the long hut. As they feasted the generals boasted about whose warriors would first storm the Timan birthing ring, crushing the females, cutting off their tails, splashing the Timan Ka larvae underfoot. In the midst of this revelry, a guard entered and whispered to Nuba that an emissary from the Timan Ka begs for an audience. Lord Nuba ordered the Timan brought before him and his generals.

The Timan emissary was Ashab the war leader and he groveled before Nuba and said, "Great lord, I have come at the behest of my master, Bahtuo, to beg you to take our surrender."

A great cheer erupted in the long hut. When it quieted, Lord Nuba said, "This is most excellent news and I shall pass on your request to my father, the king."

Ashab rose to his feet and held out his hands. "We surrender only to you, Lord Nuba. It has been your warriors we have fought and we know you to be fierce in battle, but merciful and just in peace. Your father is without mercy, killing even his own brother to take the throne of the Rappani Ka. We have seen your father’s work and we will not surrender to the king. Rather we would go to our deaths and bring as many of the Rappani Ka with us as we are able."

Now, it is true that the king was cruel, but no more so than his son, Lord Nuba. It is true that the king killed his own brother. However, Lord Nuba had killed both of his own brothers, and for spite rather than mere gain. It is true that the king was a leader without mercy, but it was no accident that, behind his back, Nuba’s own generals and warriors referred to him as Nuba the Terrible. Yet Bahtuo’s words brought many of King Jax’s crimes back to the minds of Nuba’s generals.

To Lord Nuba’s mind, Bahtuo’s offer brought something different. Nuba the Just, not King Jax, would take the surrender of the Timan Ka. It would be Nuba the Merciful, not King Jax, who saved the hundreds of warriors' lives that would have been lost storming the Timan stronghold. It would be Nuba the Magnificent, not King Jax, who cleverly eliminated the Timan Ka, for the lord intended to kill every last Timan upon entering the stronghold.

"Go in safety, Bahtuo," Nuba said to the emissary, "Tell your master that I will take the surrender of the Timan Ka and that those who surrender will be under Lord Nuba’s personal protection."

Now, there were a number of Nuba’s generals who were, at one time, generals of Nuba’s elder brother, Yiva. When Nuba murdered their Lord Yiva, they did nothing, for, by the time they learned of the affair, all was done and sanctioned by the king. Yet the words of their oaths to their former lord were still sharp. These generals got word to King Jax about his son’s actions.

Jax was incensed and sent a courier to Lord Nuba with orders to stay in place. If there is to be a surrender, Jax, King of the Rappani Ka, will take it. As the courier ran off, Jax called in his generals to prepare the warriors beneath his command to enforce his wishes. Still, when Lord Nuba learned that his father’s army was facing his own position, he ordered his own generals to respond appropriately. No one knows who loosed the first shaft. Perhaps one of Jax’s archers, perhaps one of Nuba’s. Perhaps it was a lone Timan warrior hidden in a cleft between the two armies―