Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

I felt a tap on my back. "Do you speak English?"

I turned and saw the other customs clerk, a man with a big black mustache, a potgut, and a pension. My upper lip curled. "Surda; ne surda. Adze Dracon?"

His eyebrows went up as he mouthed the word "Drac." He turned to the other clerk, took my passport from her, then looked back at me. He tapped the booklet against his fingertips, then opened it, read the ident page, and looked back at me. "Come with me, Mister Davidge. We must have a talk." He turned and headed into a small office. I shrugged and followed. When I entered, he pointed toward a chair. As I lowered myself into it, he sat down behind a desk. "Why do you pretend not to speak English?"

"Why do you have that poster on the wall? The war is over."

The customs clerk clasped his hands, rested them on the desk, then shook his head. "The fighting is over, Mister Davidge, but for many the war is not. The Draggers killed many humans."

I cocked my head to one side. "A few Dracs died, too." I stood up. "May I go now?"

The customs clerk leaned back in his chair. "That chip on your shoulder you will find to be a considerable weight to bear on this planet."

"I’m the one who has to carry it."

The customs clerk shrugged, then nodded toward the door. "You may go. And good luck, Mister Davidge. You’ll need it."

"Dragger suck."

As an invective the term had all of the impact of several historical terms—Quisling, heretic, fag, nigger-lover—all rolled into one. That, though, was only the beginning of my problems. Ex-Force pilots were a drag on the employment market, with no commercial positions open, especially not to a pilot who hadn’t flown in four years, who had a gimpy leg, and who was a Dragger suck.

Transportation to North America, and after a period of lonely wandering, to Dallas. Mistan’s eight-hundred-year-old words from The Talman would haunt me: Misnuuram va siddeth; Your thought is loneliness. Loneliness is a thing one does to oneself.

Jerry shook his head that one time, then pointed a yellow finger at me as the words it wanted to say came together. "Davidge… to me loneliness is a discomfort—unpleasant, and a thing to be avoided, but not a thing to be feared. I think you would prefer death to being alone with yourself."

Of course, I had a special gift: right in the center of the biggest crowd anyone ever saw, I could find loneliness.

Mistan observed: "If you are alone with yourself, you will forever be alone with others." A contradiction? The test of reality proves it true. I was out of place on my own planet, and it was more than a hate that I didn’t share or a love that, to others, seemed impossible—perverse. Deep inside of myself, I had no use for the creature called "Davidge." Before Fyrine IV there had been other reasons—reasons that I could not identify; but now, my reason was known. My fault or not, I had betrayed an ugly, yellow thing called Zammis, as well as the creature’s parent. "Present Zammis before the Jeriba archives. Swear this to me."

Oh, Jerry …

Swear this!

I swear it…

Forty-eight thousand credits in back pay, and so money wasn’t a problem. The problem was what to do with myself. Finally, in Dallas, I landed a job in a small book house translating manuscripts into Drac. It seemed that there was a craving among Dracs for Westerns:

"Stick 'em up naagusaafi"

"Nu geph, lawman." Thang, thang! The guns flashed and another kizlode shaddsaat bit the dust.

I quit.

There were a lot of us on Earth, and scattered throughout the rest of the quadrant as well, I suppose. Discharged vets, stumbling around, trying to make sense of things, trying to find where they fit, or if they fit. A news report on the vids said that newly discharged vets had the highest suicide rate among the groups studied.

Yay, team.

"You know how much yellow blood I got on my hands?" a vet asked me in a bar. I didn’t venture a guess, but the guy, a USEF assault force warrant officer, didn’t notice. He sat at the bar, staring at his hands and muttering something about having more in common with the Dracs than he did with the street slime back on Earth.

I finally called my parents. Why didn’t you call before, Willy? We’ve been worried sick. We thought you were dead.

Had a few things I had to straighten out, Dad.

Things?

I can’t explain right now.

Well, we understand, son… It must have been awful—

Dad, I’d like to come home for a while.

Home? Why, sure. Sure, son.

Even before I put down the money on the used Dearman Electric, I knew I was making a mistake going home. I felt the need of a home, but the one I had left at the age of eighteen wasn’t it. But I headed there because there was nowhere else to go.

I drove alone in the dark, using only the old roads, the quiet hum of the Dearman’s motor the only sound. The December midnight was clear, and I could see the stars through the car’s bubble canopy. Fyrine IV drifted into my thoughts, the raging ocean, the endless winds. I pulled off the road onto the shoulder and killed the lights. In a few minutes, my eyes adjusted to the dark and I stepped outside and shut the door.

Kansas has a big sky, and the stars seemed close enough to touch. Snow crunched under my feet as I looked up, trying to pick Fyrine out of the thousands of visible stars.

Fyrine is in the constellation Pegasus, but my eyes were not practiced enough to pick the winged horse out from the surrounding stars. I shrugged, felt a chill, and decided to get back in the car. As I put my hand on the doorlatch, I saw a constellation that I did recognize, north, hanging just above the horizon: Draco. The Dragon, its tail twisted around Ursa Minor, hung upside down in the sky. Eltanin, the Dragon’s nose, is the homestar of the Dracs. Its second planet, Draco, was Zammis’s home, if Zammis was there. We called the snake-like string of stars Draco for the Dragon. The Dracs call their planet Draco for an all-but-forgotten Ovjetah. Coincidence! Why not?

Zammis. Where was Zammis?

Commitment. That’s something the Dracs knew how to do. In the Koda Itheda, when Aydan was searching for the warmasters who would lead its armies and the world to peace, it wanted the warmasters to commit to peace. There was Niagat’s little "test."

"Aydan," spoke Niagat, "I would serve Heraak; I would see an end to war; I would be one of your warmasters."

"Would you kill to achieve this, Niagat?"

"I would kill"

"Would you kill Heraak to achieve this?"

"Kill Heraak, my master?" Niagat paused and considered the question. "If I cannot have both, I would see Heraak dead to see an end to war."

"That is not what I asked."

"And, Aydan, I would do the killing."

"And now, Niagat, would you die to achieve this?"

"I would risk death as does any warrior."

"Again, Niagat, that is not my question. If an end to war can only be purchased at the certain cost of your own life, would you die by your own hand to achieve peace!"

Niagat studied upon the thing that had been asked. "I am willing to take the gamble of battle. In this gamble there is the chance of seeing my goal. But my certain death, and by my own hand—there would be no chance of seeing my goal. No, I would not take my own life for this. That would be foolish. Have I passed your test?"

"You have failed, Niagat. Your goal is not peace; your goal is to live in peace. Return when your goal is peace alone and you hold a willing knife at your own throat to achieve it. That is the price of a warmaster’s blade."

Niagat never did get its warmaster’s blade, but Aydan did eventually fill its ranks with warmasters and warriors who placed peace before everything. Where in the universe to find such conviction, to find such commitment.