Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

"I was a fool. I want to go back. Do you want to go back?"

"Together, Uncle?"

"Of course, together."

Zammis buried its face in my neck and held on to me as it hadn’t done since it was little. God, how many tears are there left to cry?

I never counted the years that passed. Mistaan had words for those who count time as though their recognition of its passing marked their place in the Universe. Mornings, the weather as clear as weather gets on Fyrine IV, I would visit my friend’s grave. Next to it, Estone Nev, Zammis, Ty and I buried Gothig. Shigan’s parent had taken the healing Zammis, liquidated the Jeriba line’s estate, then moved the whole shebang to Fyrine IV. When told the story, it was Ty who named the planet "Friendship."

One blustery day I knelt between the graves, replaced some rocks, then added a few more. I pulled my snakeskins tight against the wind, then sat down and looked out to sea. Still the rollers steamed in under the grey-black cover of clouds. Soon the ice would come. I looked at my scarred, wrinkled hands, then at the grave.

"I couldn’t stay in the colony with them, Jerry. Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice. Damned nice. But I kept looking out my window, seeing the ocean, thinking of the cave. I’m alone, in a way. But it’s good. I know what and who I am, Jerry, and that’s all there is to it, right?"

I heard a noise. I crouched over, placed my hands upon my withered knees, and pushed myself to my feet. The Drac was coming from the colony compound, a child in its arms.

I rubbed my beard. "Eh, Ty, so that is your first child?"

The Drac nodded. "I would be pleased, Uncle, if you would teach it what it must be taught: the line, The Talman; and about the life on Friendship."

I took the bundle into my arms. Chubby three-fingered arms waved at the air, then grasped my snakeskins. "Yes, Ty, this one is a Jeriba." I looked up at Ty. "And how is your parent, Zammis?"

Ty shrugged. "It is as well as can be expected. My parent wishes you well."

I nodded. "And the same to it, Ty. Zammis ought to get out of that air-conditioned capsule and come back to live in the cave. It’ll do it good."

Ty grinned and nodded its head. "I will tell my parent, Uncle."

I stabbed my thumb into my chest. "Look at me! You don’t see me sick, do you?"

"No, Uncle."

"You tell Zammis to kick that doctor out of there and to come back to the cave, hear?"

"Yes, Uncle." Ty smiled. "Is there anything you need?"

I nodded and scratched the back of my neck. "Toilet paper. Just a couple of packs. Maybe a couple of bottles of whiskey—no, forget the whiskey. I’ll wait until Haesni, here, puts in its first year. Just the toilet paper."

Ty bowed. "Yes, Uncle, and may the many mornings find you well."

I waved my hand impatiently. "They will, they will. Just don’t forget the toilet paper."

Ty bowed again. "I won’t, Uncle."

Ty turned and walked through the scrub forest back to the colony.

I lived with them for a year after Zammis regained its health and we all stood before the archives to witness Zammis recite line and book. Soft sleeping pallets, vids, tutors, health jetahs, and a chef. Too soft, too easy, too far from what Shizumaat called the universe. I moved out and went back to the cave. I gathered the wood, smoked the snake, and withstood the winter. Zammis gave me the young Ty to rear in the cave, and now Ty had handed me Haesni. I nodded at the child. "Your child will be called Gothig, and then," I looked at the sky and felt the tears drying on my face. "And then, Gothig’s child will be called Shigan." I nodded and headed for the cleft that would bring us down to the level of the cave.

The preflight literature of every race of which we know posits the existence of otherworld races, and describes the expectations all placed upon their first encounters with other races. The perfection of individual and society all could envision, but none could achieve, each race hoped to find in another.

The encounters happened, each race finding in the other little more than a distorted reflection of itself. Intelligence and stupidity, aggression and suffering, insight and blind allegiance-the universals of life and reality-replaced the hope with cynicism as each race fought for its own advantage by creating rules, tactics, and institutions intended to enclose and defeat the goals of those who were perceived as threats.

Against the stronger powers, the technologically and militarily inferior races formed coalitions, becoming by combination stronger powers themselves. Inside the coalitions, the members intrigued and plotted for control. Outside of the coalitions, the great military and economic powers warred and expanded.

The coalitions rapidly evolved to become the present system of federations known as the United Quadrants. In the area of the Galaxy encompassed by the Ninth Quadrant Federation, only a few of the great powers had not become members of the federation. Of these, the two strongest in numbers, wealth, and military might were the United States of Earth and the Dracon Chamber. Between them, these two powers ruled three hundred worlds.

Late in the Twenty-first Century neither Dracs nor humans speculated in giddy wonder about alien races. They were at war.

Joanne Nicole sat in the mud of Planet Catvishnu and watched through the haze and drizzle as the distant speck took form, growing to become the bat-winged blackness of a Drac assault lander. It flew low and slow over the denuded landscape like a bloated carrion-eater picking and choosing among countless dead.

She looked at the remains of her command. Soldiers. They sat in holes, leaned against rocks, unmindful of the wet chill of the air and the dark grey of the overcast. She almost smiled as she looked back at the approaching lander.

The Dracs only needed, one. The forty-odd scraps of demoralized humanity waiting in the mud for that ship could hardly fill a quarter of the craft’s capacity. Forty-odd future prisoners of war; the remainder of a defensive command of twenty thousand.

There was no way of knowing, but millions of civilians must have been slaughtered, as well. The reports that had managed to get through said that Catvishnu’s cities on all six continents were but smoking ruins.

A figure splashed to a halt next to her. "Major Nicole; they’re coming."