Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

What can permanent conscious suspension be like? Unlike the pods on board ship, where time, even conscious time, is compressed, months seeming like hours, suspension in Timan’s Karnarak cells is in real time, every instant filled with endless repetition: the trial, the trial notes and materials, lectures and object lessons on morality, the trial, over and over until the only hiding place is madness. Falna is strong-minded, though. Perhaps it will not quickly give into insanity. It might take years, decades. It might only take a few months, though. A mind as brilliant as Falna’s needs stimulation. The monotony coupled with the prospect of forever being imprisoned in a cell the exact size of its own body―Falna might be screaming in silence this very moment. Falna is so young. If it lives as long as its parent’s nameparent, Estone Nev, it will be suffering for another five decades.

I look at the darkness around me and suddenly it no longer provides a hiding place. Instead a thousand invisible threats lurk in the shadows. I rise from the meditation dais, go to the door, and step into the main salon of the suites Estone Nev arranged for us. The aged Drac has done much for us. After hearing the talma from Jeriba Shigan, Nev added something to the cargo for us it accompanied to the A’ja Cou Station. In addition to the computers and the supplies, tools, and equipment for repairing and manufacturing computers, are eight power platforms packaged together in a stack. Separated and assembled, each platform can carry up to sixty soldiers in full battle gear. More important than that, however, it can carry an equal weight of tools and equipment. Nev had said, "Remember the words of our old deceased enemy, Hissied do Timan: 'The enemy who believes it has an investment in a particular site will fortify that location, and in so doing fashion its own trap. " Our entire operation, including Ghazi Mrabet’s small computer factory, is air mobile.

Davidge and Nev are seated in plush couches facing each other. Kita is in third couch looking at one of the hand-portable comm-linked computers the crew of the Aeolus was having loaded into the ship’s cargo bays. Kita sees me and smiles. "You must see the computers, Ro. They are exactly what we need."

"Good." I sit next to her, and as Davidge and Nev discuss the Amadeen talma, I look at the instrument and am surprised how small and light it is. While Kita points out the features, Davidge asks the old Drac, "Why are you here, Nev? Anyone could have supervised delivery of the cargo."

"Well, there were the power platforms, and some special equipment."

"Orin or any cargo agent could have handled that."

Nev’s eyes search Davidge’s for a moment, then they look elsewhere. "This thing you plan to attempt on Amadeen, it is very dangerous."

"Granted."

"Will, would you begrudge me a last meeting and embrace with you?"

Davidge sighs and looks down guiltily. "Of course not. I am very glad to see you." His gaze slowly rises until he is once more looking into Nev’s eyes. "That isn’t all, though. You…you’re going from here to Timan, aren’t you?"

Nev wrestles with a thought, then discards it. "Yes, I am."

"Why?"

Estone Nev shows its palms and says, "It is not sufficient that my namechild’s child is being held there?"

Davidge leans forward, his expression one of fear and concern. "Don’t do this, Nev. An army couldn’t break Falna out of the Karnarak security center."

"I have no such plans," answers Nev. "To attempt to do that I would have to disagree with the Timan verdict, and I do not. Falna is a murderer and among its murders is dear Ty, the child of Jeriba Zammis." The old Drac seems stunned for a moment by its own words.

"Why go to Timan, then?"

"I know about conscious suspension, the way they are keeping Falna." Nev nods toward Kita. "Her partner at Aakva Lua, Mirili Sanda, told me that according to the Timan law, there is an alternative to permanent suspension. I had the estate’s attorney investigate the matter, and it is true. There is an alternative."

Estone Nev looks up and its eyes are haunted by its chosen mission. "Falna may be put to death. As its sole living ascendant, according to the law, only I have the right to take Falna’s life." It raises its hands and looks down at them. "With these," it whispers. "I am allowed no medications, weapons, or surrogates. I must use these." Nev looks up and its gaze meets mine. "I am traveling to Timan to strangle the life from my namechild’s child."

There is another embrace between Nev and Davidge, Kita standing next to them, her arms around them both. I hurry from the salon, horrified by the torture Estone Nev has chosen for itself and enraged at Falna for placing Estone Nev in the position of having to make such a choice.

"Where is happy paste when you need it?" Min had said as it lay dying in that shell hole near Douglasville. The words come to me as I walk the endless colored corridors and ways of the transient quarters' level, looking for someplace to put my head, some event in which to bury my feelings. There are some shopping pavilions selling things I neither want nor need. I find myself in an entertainment kiosk lined with books, buttons, disks, decks, vids and viewers. I soon realize that I do not have the calmness necessary to read a book, listen to a disk, or watch a vid.

As I try to make up my mind where to go to explode, a vid viewer behind me ends its sample program and fades to a news program. Leading the news from Vikaan, the eleven-day truce between the Amadeen Front and the Mavedah ended six hours ago, reports the USE-DC Quarantine Force, when a Black October assassination team attacked the relatively untouched Drac community of Namdas in the Silver Mountains of the Southern Shorda, slaying all the inhabitants, including the children.

A face fills my view and it belongs to Reaper. "Great! I found you."

"Yes." At this moment a human face is not what I want to see. I seem paralyzed, stretched between the desire to kill every human within reach and the knowledge that Reaper is on my side.

"I did a name search and out popped a couple of old friends of mine from the Tsien Denvedah. If we can get them to come along, they’d be important additions to the team. I posted a message and they’re hanging out at the end of one of the incomplete spokes. Want to come along and do the selling?"

"I do not feel much like selling anything right now, Reaper."

The former assassin studies me for a moment, then smiles. "You heard about the truce falling through. I know what you need, Ro." He cocks his head toward the tram landing. "C’mon. These guys hang out with a rough crowd and I need someone to watch my back."

My good sense calls to me to go back to my quarters and go to bed, but it is such a small voice. I join Reaper on his quest to renew old friendships and perhaps to pick a fight.

Up and down are twisted at the station. The wafers at the ends of the spokes seem to be up because that is the way the artificial gravity points our heads. The hub seems like down, because our feet are pointed in that direction. Beyond down, however, are seven more ups. After consulting a directory at the hub, Reaper and I take the uncompleted Niym spoke out to the farthest completed wafer. Niym 44. On the tram car our fellow passengers seem divided equally between Vikaan Police Security and miscreants bound for excitement, chaos, and destruction. I number myself, of course, among the latter.

Beginning with the Niym 44 platform, the eight main corridors are jammed with establishments selling drugs, sex, games, and exotic items of every kind and combination. Flashing colored lights share the strange-smelling corridors with darker stretches illuminated with illusion lights that haze and randomly delay photons making a dreamy multi-dimensional oasis before the next set of blinding lights and ear-shattering sounds.