Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

"There must be a way! There must be an end to this."

"I would like to think so, young one," Abi says in a mocking tone. "Still, there is nothing that raises your fervent must to the level of scientific possibility."

I see Abi’s amused face and ask myself: is the world nothing but bloody games played with pain-filled living pieces? My frustration overcomes any pretense at old-fashioned courtesy. "You and your blue stripe have had thirty-two years, you old wheeze! What have you been doing all this time?" I find our faces only a handlength apart and feel something poking me in my middle. I look down and Abi is holding one of the human projectile hand guns. It is pointed at me. I stand and take a step back.

"Sit down in the chair, Yazi Ro. You will find it much more comfortable." I do not move, "Very well, I will find it more comfortable. Sit!" commands the Jetah, brandishing the pistol. I sit in the chair, my gaze on Abi’s eyes. The Jetah smiles, aims the gun at his own head, and pulls the trigger. A click, and nothing. "Out of ammunition," it says in apology. "To answer your question, what I have been doing for the past thirty-two years is trying to keep myself and a few friends alive. We’ve spent the decades one step ahead of the agents of the Mavedah, the Amadeen Front, and their unruly siblings hiding in places such as this."

"I found you easily enough."

Abi smiles and says, "If you will invoke your vast powers of memory, Yazi Ro, you will, I think, recall that it was I who found you."

Abi gestures with its gun at the walls of the cave. "As for my work, Yazi Ro, where do I hang my charts? Where are my screens, my computers, my colleagues and assistants, my subspace link to the Talman Kovah? All of this time, young one, you had a better chance at achieving peace than did I."

"Peace?" I ask, even more confused.

Abi nods as it tucks the useless weapon within its jacket. "You could have put down your weapon and stopped killing. That would have decreased the number of dead bodies you have been generating. I couldn’t even do that because I wasn’t killing anyone. What is the second thing you heard?"

The rumors my comrades would pass among one another as we would sit talking around a faltering glow disk at night. Are they all only words? Audio blips with which we fill time until the next mission? Is this the monster, the thief of victory, of our discussions? "I heard, Zenak Abi, that you know a way through the blockade. You know how I can get off Amadeen."

Finally I get the old fool’s attention. It clasps its hands and crosses its legs after the manner of a human. "If I could perform such a miracle, Yazi Ro, where might you go? What would you do? A vacation? Go on rides at a theme park? Perhaps some shopping in Sendievu?"

The answer came to me as I spoke the words. "I would go to Draco, stand before the Jetai Diea at the Talman Kovah, and demand they find an end to war for this sorry world."

"Ah, peace is it? And would you kill to achieve this, little Niagat?"

Again I feel the heat coming to my face. "I am not here to trade myths from The Talman , you old…one. What I will do to achieve peace is my concern alone."

Again Zenak Abi mocks me with its smile. "There are many who would be clean of Amadeen, Yazi Ro. Parents, both human and Drac, who want their children safe. There are the wounded who cannot get the treatment they need. There are all of those who are starving, multitudes who no longer want to wallow in death. Supposing that I can perform this miracle, why should I ignore their pleas in favor of yours?"

"Zenak Abi, the danger, the wounding, the starvation will all end come the peace."

"Come the peace." Abi stands and walks until it is standing over me, its face no longer mocking. "And you, young killer, the blood of humans still on your hands, are you the one to convince the Ovjetah and the gentle masters of the Talman Kovah that they are mistaken? That their years of study, training, and experience are for nothing? That they simply overlooked a path that you in your youthful ignorance and brash pride have found? The Talman Kovah advises the political, business, military, scientific, and philosophical institutions of hundreds of worlds, and here comes a ragged Mavedah killer, barely an adult but bereft of adulthood, to demand that they accomplish that which they already know to be impossible. Tell me, Yazi Ro, why they would even allow you within sight of the front entrance?"

I turn my face away from the Jetah and look into a deep shadow. A thousand times I am the fool. In the center of my being there is this conviction that the horror on Amadeen is so wrong, in itself that should force a path into existence, a talma along which Amadeen can achieve peace.

A thousand times a fool.

On the edge of my lips is the word "unfair." This war, the horrors, the impossibility of peace, unfair, unfair. I do not say this aloud, for doing so would invite another little homily from The Talman. I do not remember the story or from which koda it comes. Something about one of Maltak Di’s little games. One of the lessons of the story, though, is that a belief in fairness is evidence of either brain damage or stupidity.

Tears again. Perhaps there is no end to this. My parent, my friends, my comrades are dead, in a parade of corpses with many regiments yet to follow. Do I rejoin the parade or hide like Zenak Abi on some mountaintop? Can I live knowing so many are dead, so many are dying?

My ghosts would sing too loudly in a place as peaceful as this cave. It is from the humans we learned about ghosts. No kovah, steeped in scientific path detection, would accept a fancy such as ghosts. Yet I have heard them. I see them now. I care for no one’s opinions on what I know until that one has carried its own blade on Amadeen.

Abi places its hand upon my head, and it is warm. "Lean back," he commands. "Lean back and relax. I’ll introduce you to a little something I picked up from a human."

I lean away from the Jetah’s hand and frown at its smiling face. "What are you going to do?"

"There is a problem with you. Perhaps I can help."

"A disease?" I ask.

Abi laughs, thinks for a moment, then says, "Perhaps something worse, Ro. First, I am going to relax you. Next I may find a way for you to achieve your greatest wish. Somewhere along this path I will probably get you killed. Now lie back and relax."

Peace or death. Either one is more attractive than the present. I lean back, close my eyes, and allow the soft strokes of the Jetah’s hand to lull me toward a strange sleep. Long before I get there I hear a strange noise: a motion of leather across paving stones. I try to move, to place myself at the ready, but I cannot move. I am helpless before my own thoughts.

There is a gray light that becomes a mist swirling around the trunks of trees, reaching upward toward me. It surrounds me and the features of everything fade into oblivion. I try to call out, but there is no sound. There is a smudge of yellow deep within the mist. I stare at it and watch it grow until a horizon appears, the outlines of humble dwellings etched against the clouds.

I am back in Gitoh, watching as the blades of green light reach to burn another human gunship from the sky. The grating sounds of the alarm blocks seem to vibrate my bones. "Ro! Ni tean! Ro!" My parent rushes into the room and jerks me away from the window. In the center of our home, Yazi Avo cries and speaks angrily to me. It pulls me to its chest, squeezes me tightly, and nuzzles my neck. "I am sorry, Ro. I was so frightened. Please listen. When the alarm blocks sound, you must stay away from the windows and doors."

I tell Avo that I am all right and nothing will happen to me. The fighting was far off. I will not get hurt in my own home. Later I learn that my friend Idoh watched almost the entire battle from its window before a stray pulse from the gunship turned Idoh into pulp.