Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

She moved her legs over the edge of the bed, letting her feet touch the cool softness of the floor. The bed was very low. She leaned forward, pushed on the bed, and stood.

Her head reeled, her legs threatened to collapse, and her stomach radiated warning signals. But she was standing and could feel the coolness of the air upon the sores of her back.

Pur Sonaan’s heavy tread raced into the room. "Joanne Nicole, what are you doing?"

"I am standing."

"This you should not do. You are not well."

"If I stay on that bed like a piece of meat in a butcher shop, I will never get well; I will die."

An exasperated silence ensued. Then Pur Sonaan spoke: "Vunseleh gave me your requests. You cannot wander the corridors at will. I must think of the other patients. Also it would not be safe for you. You cannot see. And you are still a human."

"I’ll risk bumping into a few things, Pur Sonaan. I don’t bruise easily."

"But you are still a human, Joanne Nicole. We have patients and staff in this institution that would attack you for that fact alone. You are guarded here, and everyone in this area knows that you are under Tora Soam’s protection. You must stay in this room."

She felt like flopping back upon her bed, but something forced her to remain standing. "I can move about this room?"

"… Yes. But only in this room."

"And I want some noise. Anything. Can I have a…" Nicole couldn’t think of the Drac words. "I want some way to hear the news. Radio… radio pictures."

"Impossible! Patients do not have such things." Pur Sonaan moved a step closer to her. "Your demands test the boundaries of Tora Soam’s influence."

"I want to hear news-something-anything!"

"Joanne Nicole… I will see what can be done." Thoughtful silence. "A receiver is impossible, but I can have Leonid Mitzak talk to you very quietly about current events. Read to you… perhaps some other things."

Pur’s footsteps left the room and Nicole collapsed upon her bed. After a few moments of sitting, she fell over onto her left side and slept.

"…Your name?"

"Joanne Nicole."

"The name of the father?"

"Mallik Nicole."

"And where does he reside?"

"He’s dead."

"Were you married?"

"Yes,"

"Under what jurisdiction’s laws?"

"Planet Baina Ya, United States of Earth,"

"I see."

Dull eyes watching line-filled screens as fat fingers scratched with scribers at the glass. "Now let me explain the legal circumstances regarding abortion. It-"

"I’m not here for an abortion. I want the child to be born. I simply never want to see it. It is to be put up for immediate adoption."

"I see. You plan to relinquish all rights to your child?"

"Yes."

"And what would your husband think about this?"

"He’s dead."

"But if he were alive-"

"He’s dead…"

…Mitzak, reading the news out loud, interrupted himself with a fit of laughing.

"What’s so funny?"

"The Ninth Quadrant Federation’s study committee will vote soon on the question of whether or not to extend membership invitations to the Dracon Chamber and the United States of Earth-as if either would join if asked. It says here that the proposal is not expected to pass the committee. No kidding." Again he laughed.

Nicole sat up on her bed and stretched her arms. "Perhaps, Mitzak, this war could have been avoided if we were members of the Quadrant." She relaxed her arms, letting them fall to her lap.

"A big if, Nicole."

Mitzak continued reading…

…the weight had left her. It was as though a tumor had been removed, or a gangrenous limb amputated.

She sat on the grass of the campus and watched the other students. Her face looked no different from their faces. But the way they talked, what they said, the blind confidence of never having experienced any part of life, set them apart.

She risked telling one of them her story.

"Oh, I don’t think I could stand not knowing what the child was, or what it would be."

"You would be surprised what you can stand."

"Joanne, sometimes you seem so heartless…"

Heartless.

It was never a lack of heart; it was a lack of guts…

Awake, and again Nicole sat up and moved around until her feet were on the floor.

The darkness. Damn the dark. She stood up, swallowed to keep down her chow, then held out her left hand and took a timid step forward. Beneath her feet was the same cool softness; her searching fingers could find nothing. One step from the bed. Another step, and far to her left she felt a metal table.

Nicole went to it-one step, left turn, one step-and began to examine the objects on the table. There were small, capped containers; and she opened each one in turn and sniffed. The ointment used on her after Tokyo Rose’s visit and that odor of flowers were the only two that she could identify.

A turn to her right, arms extended, and she moved three steps. Her hands came into contact with the spongy, honeycombed surface of a wall. It was designed to deaden sound, at a time when her ears and mind craved stimulation.

Keeping her hands in contact with the wall, she moved to her right until the wall curved toward her, the room had no comers. Farther to the right, and she felt a row of handles recessed into the wall’s surface.

She reached in, pulled on the first handle, and the surface pulled out. It was a drawer. She felt inside and found it empty. The next two drawers were the same. With difficulty she squatted down and opened the fourth drawer.

The smell!

She recoiled at the odor-an odor that whipped all of her carefully hidden nightmares into the open. The fourth drawer contained her uniform.

She touched the familiar cloth and let the feelings rage through her as she smelled the filth from her body, the dried mud of Catvishnu, the smoke from the burning school, and that Drac bum ointment that had blinded her.

That chasm of self-pity yawned before her again, and she sat on the floor and let herself tumble in. She felt the tears run down her cheeks and splash on her lap. She touched the place where the tears had fallen and told herself that she was naked. She was naked and didn’t care.

The footsteps of Pur Sonaan and Vunseleh Het entered the room to her right. Pur Sonaan’s voice spoke sharply to Vunseleh.

"Empty head! Find her a robe to wear!"

"Yes, Jetah."

Vunseleh’s footsteps left the room. Pur Sonaan stood silently for a moment. Then it moved, and Nicole felt a cloth in a hand drying her lap, drying the tears from her face.

"Why did you keep my uniform? Why?"

"It belongs to you. We need your permission to dispose of it."

"Throw it out! Throw it out!"

Nicole pushed the drawer shut and let her hands fall to her lap. "Pur Sonaan, you are a Drac. You have to hate humans, don’t you?" She let the words hang in the air as she let her mouth form for the first time the words her mind would not allow herself to think. "Give me something."

"Something, Joanne Nicole?"

"Anything that will kill me."

She sensed the Jetah stand upright. Pur said nothing for long, strained moments; its breath coming in rapid hisses. Then it answered. "You think this to be a small favor you ask? You ask me to soil myself, Joanne Nicole! Never do so again!"

She felt its hands beneath her shoulders as it easily lifted her to her feet and led her to the bed. Nicole sat on the bed, her feet on the floor, her eyes dribbling more tears. "Pur Sonaan?"

"Yes?"

"If I am so important to this Tora Soam character, why does it never come to see me?"

Pur Sonaan snorted out a brief laugh. -"Tora Soam is Ovjetah of the Talman Kovah. The demands on its time, especially because of the war, are tremendous. But Tora Soam asks about you when it can… as does Sin Vidak, the child you saved. Did you know… that Sin Vidak has now entered training for the Tsien Denvedah?"