Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

I could see the tears on Shizumaat’s face, and was not surprised to feel them on my own. My surprise was saved for when I saw tears on Ebneh’s face, and saw Shizumaat go and embrace the old servant. Pity, forgiveness, putting the past to rest, these too are talmas to a better future. I joined in the embrace, and remembering Varrah and the freedom of a thought were the lessons for the day.

Fragment: Namndas

That night, first I noticed that the temple lights had not all been raised to the proper height. Then I saw young Shizumaat, its face upraised, dancing in slow whorls upon Uhe’s Tomb! I rushed to the center of the temple and came to a stop with my hands upon the stone cover of the vault.

"Shizumaat! Shizumaat, come down! Come down or I will execute you before the servants can get at you with their rods!"

Shizumaat stopped its dance and looked down at me. "Namndas, come up here and join me. I have the most wonderful thing to show you."

"You would have me dance upon Uhe’s grave?"

"Come up here, Namndas."

Shizumaat returned to its whirling, and I grabbed the edge of the cover and pulled myself up, swearing to break Shizumaat into three hundred pieces. Once I stood, Shizumaat pointed toward the ceiling. "Look up, Namndas."

The force in its words compelled me to look up, and what I saw was the disarray of temple lights. Their heights were arranged so that the lights were equally distant from a point just above the tomb, forming a hemisphere. And not all of the lamps were lit.

"Shizumaat, we will both be driven from the temple for this night’s work."

"Don’t you see it? Look up, Namndas! Don’t you see it?"

"See what?"

"Dance, Namndas. Dance. Turn to your right."

I turned, saw the lights whirl about me, then I stopped and faced my charge. "Shizumaat, this only makes my head swim. We must climb down from here before we are discovered!"

"Aaah!" cried the youth in disgust. Shizumaat jumped from the tomb and hit the stone floor running toward the eastern wall. I jumped and ran after it. When I reached the top of the great stairs, still stained with Shizumaat’s blood, Shizumaat itself was standing far into the dark center of the city square.

I ran down the stairs, across the square, and stopped in the center as I angrily grabbed Shizumaat’s left arm. "I shall gladly take a rod and do the servants' work for them, you fool!"

"Look up, Namndas! Curse your thick skull! Look up!"

Still holding onto its arm, I looked up. What I saw were Aakva’s children arranged in a pattern similar to the pattern of the temple’s lights but tilted toward the blue light of The Child Who Never Moves. "You have reproduced the arrangement of the night sky with the lamps."

"Yes!"

"But this will not save your skin, Shizumaat."

Shizumaat pointed toward that speck of blue light. "Turn your face toward The Child Who Never Moves. Then, Namndas, turn slowly to your right."

I did so. The implications of what I saw turned my legs to water. I sat with a thump upon the stones of the square. I put out my hands and touched the unyielding, motionless stone. "It cannot be!"

Shizumaat squatted next to me. "Then you have seen it, too!"

I nodded. "Yes, I have seen it."

With the morning’s light, the servants of Aakva found both of us dancing upon Uhe’s tomb…

We stood there on the crest of the Akkujah, the mortar drying upon our hands, and Shizumaat pointed at the column of rocks we had built. "You shall wait for me here, Namndas, at this mark. Guard it, allow none of the servants to move it or tear it down." Shizumaat pointed one hand toward the west. "I leave for the Madah, ever to follow Aakva’s dying path. If I am correct, I shall meet you again, and at this place." It held up its other arm toward the Morning Mountains. "I will come to you, though, from there."

I looked from the Akkujah out over the parched lands of the Madah, then back at Shizumaat. "If you do not return? What then, Shizumaat?"

"Then either I am wrong about the shape of this world, or I did not have the wit and strength to prove myself correct."

"If you fail, Shizumaat, what should I do?"

Shizumaat placed a hand upon my arm. "Poor Namndas. As always, it is your choice. You can forget me; you can forget the things we have learned; or you can attempt to prove that which I am attempting to prove."

Fragment: Mistaan

You are young, Mistaan. To brave this wall of hate and warriors' iron that surrounds me shows me your youth. When you are older you shall call this youth foolishness.

The brute is unpredictable.

If the brute were predictable, though, it would no longer be fearsome. Have the warriors caged you in my pen to die with me? Or would they have you do for them the task that they fear to do? It would please the brute to have Mistaan, the student of Vehya, murder Vehya’s teacher.

I answered Shizumaat by saying: Shizumaat, Aakva’s servants would have you condemn yourself from your own mouth. This is why they let me record your words.

The brute listens, does it? Perhaps the brute can learn. It is possible. This trial might be a talma to such learning.

Then, Mistaan, I stand before them as I stand before you, and as I stand before all of the ages that follow, for they too shall be my magistrates. Let this be my trial.

Should I plead my innocence? Since no crime has been committed, I cannot be innocent of its commission.

By that same truth, though, I cannot plead my guilt. There can be no guilt without a crime.

It is such a puzzle.

It thrives on puzzles, Shizumaat.

The brute thrives on puzzles, does it?

Know this, Mistaan: the brute derives its nourishment by making puzzles; not by solving them. Once the puzzles are solved, the brute’s excuse for existence is lost. Only by continued strife and suffering can the brute justify its existence.

Let us rise to the challenge of this puzzle, Mistaan. Let us decide how I should plead.

The stonewood poles surround us. The fire makes the night clouds red. These are preparations for criminal punishment. Perhaps I am being suspicious, but I suspect that the matter of my guilt is already settled.

Do you hear the death chant?

They beg their god to turn its hand against this criminal once the flames have left nothing but ash and spirit. Does Aakva listen to such prayers? I ask Uhe’s spirit, is it possible that Aakva is that imperfect a god?

To some it might appear to be in bad order to prepare for the execution before the trial, and to have the trial before the crime. But the brute rules this insignificant patch of time, and this is the order that the brute calls efficiency.

We shall follow in kind, then, Mistaan. I shall make my plea at the end of my trial.

Are you ready with your skin that speaks? Then let us begin.

Fragment: Shizumaat

"The first given is existence; its fact, not its form, nor its manner of change, nor the purposes ascribed to its aspects by its creatures."

Fragment: Shizumaat

"Instead believe this: question everything, accept the wholeness of no truth nor the absolute rightness of any path. Make this your creed and in it you will find eventual comfort and security, for in this creed is your right to rule the lower creatures of the Universe, for in this creed is your right to choose your talma, for in this creed stands your right to freedom."

Fragment: Shizumaat

"With neither my agreement or permission, you take your words and place them on my tongue. It is not my belief that talma is The Way, as you put it. There are an infinite number of paths from any existence to any imagined future. The Madah servants had a way. Uhe’s way was superior. There were ways superior to Uhe’s, and further ways superior to those. Some paths we know, some we do not know. Some paths we can imagine and bring into being. Some paths we can imagine we cannot bring into being until other paths have been traveled. Some paths we can imagine but cannot be brought into being because to do so the universe would have to be shattered.