Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

Deep within her seclusion was a hard knot of rapidly rising fear. If she could only see them. The visible is so much easier to fight, to deal with. She didn’t even know what her room looked like-what she looked like. If she could only see them.

…At the Kidege ed center on Baina Ya.

She was thirteen, and that gawky, rawboned Mallik Nicole would run after her as she headed toward the Ndugu Wawili transit tube.

"Joanne! Joanne! Wait!"

"What should I wait for, Mallik Nicole? You?"

"Who else? Do you see anyone else chasing you?"

"And why do you chase me? Tell me that."

"You are beautiful, Joanne. That’s why."

"Liar."

"I never lie!"

"Do you really think I’m beautiful?"

"Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror? Of course you’re beautiful! Perhaps not very smart, but beautiful."

"I am not stupid!"

"Asking me if I think you are beautiful is a stupid question."

…That night she looked into her mirror and saw a different person-a stranger-someone who was beautiful…

…now burned; now blind. Blind…

Days would pass, but she had no way of telling when. Her sleepiness lied; her stomach lied; the pattern of the kovah’s routine lied. Empty time became an enemy more dreaded than death.

She would lie on her back, only the sound of her heart beating in her ears, exploring with her fingers the hard bed, the spongy covers, her naked body, and the empty air around her.

She was alone in the room, and if she remained still, she could just make out the sounds of fluid running rapidly through piping. From the area outside the room came only the hush of a robe brushing a wall, a whisper, footsteps.

She discovered that there is nothing in reality to compare with the horrors of the world of imagination. Given the choice between thinking and listening, Joanne Nicole listened.

The soft footsteps separated in her mind and became as recognizable as fingerprints.

Mitzak walked slowly, with regular, measured steps. The heavier tread; that was Pur Sonaan. The light, slow footsteps belonged to Vunseleh Het. It was the one who came regularly to administer medications and read the health monitors.

Food was a nameless, brisk step.

Cleaning dragged its heels and smelled like flowers.

Bedpan had a slow, heavy step and smelled like fish.

The slow measured tread.

"Mitzak?"

"Yes."

He walked to the side of the bed and sat upon some kind of platform. "It’s companionship time, Nicole. What do you want to talk about?"

"What were you, Mitzak? Before you took on the blue robe?"

There was a silence, then Mitzak cleared his throat. "Before the war my home was on Akkujah. When the war started, I offered my services to the Dracon Fleet."

"Why?"

"Is protecting one’s home too complicated to understand?"

His fingers tapped against something hard. The tapping stopped. "I was a member of the Christian Mission Council-"

"A minister?"

"Priest… Our mission was invited there by the Jetai Kovveda on Akkujah. A sharing of philosophies. We instructed the Jetai, and, in turn, we were entered into Akkujah’s Talman Kovah. I had been there three years before Amadeen flared up and the war started. By that time we had been in the kovah long enough to read and understand Talma. After studying the diagrams, most of the mission chose to serve the Dracs."

-Diagrams. In that flaming library in the kovah in V’Butaan; on the walls, complicated diagrams, logic circles, flow. charts-

"Mitzak, you gave up your religion for this?"

"A simplistic way to look at it. Yes." He was silent for a moment, then he laughed. "Can you give up yours, I wonder."

"I have no religion."

He laughed again.

…A lull in the fighting, and she had heard Taiseido talking to Sergeant Benbo: "What they say about there being no atheists in foxholes; its true."

For an instant Benbo turned away from staring down the sights of his rifle and glanced at Taiseido, his right eyebrow raised. He turned back to look for Dracs to kill. "What about foxes?"

"You don’t believe in a god?"

"I believe in this rifle, in those yellow bastards down there, and in Amos Benbo…"

Besides Mitzak, the only two that talked to her were Pur and Vunseleh; and their conversations were limited to her health. And, after a while, Pur stopped coming. Eventually her hands and face stopped hurting and began to itch.

Between the silence, the dark, and the itch, her mind felt as though it were beginning to bend.

Mitzak would speak, his voice devoid of sarcasm.

"Now is when the priest would tell you to pray for strength, or to think of those who are injured more severely than you. Perhaps he would call up the image of the crucified Christ, describe in graphic detail the saviour’s suffering, and then demand to know what in the hell you’ve got to bitch about."

"The Dracs have something better?"

"They have talma."

"What is talma?"

A bitter laugh. "talma to a human is like relativity to a cockroach. Even if you could understand it. I doubt that you could use it."

She played every mental game that she could remember a thousand times over. She searched her mind for memories and the memories she could find-Mallik’s corpse, the burning Drac children, the thundering defeat at Storm Mountain-chased her from the past.

She dropped down a bottomless well of self-pity, then shot back up again with an anger so intense that it made her vomit. In the midst of her wretched mess, she passed out…

…"What is Talma. Mitzak?"

"It took me months to understand, Nicole."

"Try."

"Nicole, you are in a place. There is a place that you want to be. Your task is to get from the first to the second."

"How?"

"You must know where you are; you must know where you want to go; you must know the limits on the paths between the two… "

After cleaning had dragged its heels out of the room, Vunseleh entered.

"Joanne Nicole, was there something wrong with the food?"

"Why?"

"Your digestive tract threw it"

"Vunseleh, why won’t the ones who clean, bring the food, and bring the bedpan talk to me?"

"Talk to you! Why… why. they are forbidden. "

"Do you think I’ll sneak bedpan secrets off to the USEF?"

Vunseleh was silent, then Nicole heard its robe rustle as its hands moved.

"I do not understand. They may speak to none of the patient here. The patients would not stand for any talk or other noise. Healing is a time for quiet-meditation."

"Meditation?"

"Joanne Nicole, most of that which we call healing is conducted and performed by the mind."

"Drac, I am just about all meditated out!" She sat up for the first time, her stomach doing flip-flops. "Me! I want talk! I want noise!" Her left hand hung onto the edge of the bed while her right hand fumbled trying to hold the spongy cover to her breasts. How much clout do I have as the ward of Tora Soam? She was in that half-way. I-don’t-give-a-damn state between desperation and prudence. "And, Vunseleh, I want to get up."

"Get up? Walk?"

"Yes; I still have legs. I want to get up and walk around. If I lie here much longer, I’ll turn into a plant."

"This is a joke… of course." Vunseleh made a nervous clicking sound with its mouth. "I can’t have you among the other patient; but I shall tell the Jetah. Pur Sonaan must give its permission."

"Then get it."

Vunseleh’s footsteps left the room.

Nicole remained seated until her stomach stopped heaving. Pulling the spongy cover from the bed, she wrapped it around her shoulders, and gingerly moved her legs to the edge of the bed. She grunted with the effort. How long have I been in bed?