“You’re talking about Vietnam. Something had to be done to halt the spread of communism.”
Menzel’s face sours. “You speak, but you don’t listen. Even the French, the country’s former colonial masters, begged America not to send troops to the war, to stay out of it. You can’t save people by killing them. You burn down villages and kill thousands of innocent people. Better to call them all communist than yourself a murderer.”
“It’s way more complicated than that.”
“With every village you burn, three more rise against you,” Menzel replies. “Still your leaders ignore the voices of reason, telling them they can never win, that you should never have been there to begin with. And never are the people told what your leaders themselves believe. Donald Menzel — the man in whose image you made me — has seen a Top Secret report declaring the main reason persisted with the Vietnam war was to avoid the humiliation of defeat. That, I’m sure you’ll agree, places a very high price on American pride. A price being paid in blood, and one that can never be paid in full.”
There’s a knot in Borman’s chest and he really doesn’t know what to say in response.
“Where America goes,” says Menzel, “death follows. You’ve treated all of Vietnam as your enemy, the bodies of friend and foe alike stacked in piles because you cannot tell them apart. Yet still, you have the arrogance to be shocked as more and more of those people turn against you. This is Vietnam’s own war of independence and they have been fighting for a hundred years. But God is on your side… and the little yellow man must be made to see his place.”
Skioth says, “This year of yours that just passed, 1968 — tens of thousands killed in the Tet offensive.”
“We won that battle,” says Borman.
“Yes,” says Skioth. “And afterward, your government told the North Vietnamese you want a peace deal. But still you bomb them and still they fight. Your own young people take to the streets to demand a halt to the war… And your police beat them with clubs and kick them to the ground.”
“The great man of peace, Martin Luther King,” says Menzel, “—shot dead because of the color of his skin.”
Borman puts his head in his hands. “I’m a pilot. An engineer. What do you want me to tell you?” If they are expecting a verbal defense of US foreign and domestic policy, they picked the wrong guy. He knows in his heart America should never have become bogged down in Vietnam. The entire war is one colossal mistake, impossible to defend at home, let alone to the people of another world.
“Enough,” Holtz declares. Borman feels her hand on his arm and looks up at her in despair.
“You’re right,” Borman finally tells them. “Is that what you want to hear? You’re right. About all of it.”
“Donald Menzel is angry,” says Holtz. “Also confused. Like you, his memories are jumbled — because he is a product of your mind. Many conflicting emotions and ideas battle inside his head for supremacy. He is from Earth, yet he has never been to your world. It is Martian blood coursing through his veins, and he sees us as we are now, not as we were. Long ago, we chose to walk a different path for our own survival.”
Borman asks her, “Are you saying there used to be wars between your people?”
“Many wars, much killing,” she admits. “This is the inevitable consequence of the growth of civilizations. But it was only when facing a war threatening the very existence of our species that we finally realized peace required a fundamental change within us. We had to vanquish all fear of ‘the other.’ Only by the unification of the Martian mind are we still here with you today.”
Menzel says, “Which, Frank old boy, brings us to the fundamental issue. Your ongoing presence is a problem, on many levels. We have to know why you’re here. We need to make you remember.”
“How is it you know so much?” Borman asks him. “If I brought you to life from my imagination, you should be nothing more than a vague caricature. The Menzel back on Earth, I don’t know him well at all. Yet you have his memories, his knowledge. You didn’t get that from me.”
Menzel frowns. Finally, he defers to Holtz. “I hardly know where to start, could you?”
Holtz says, “When humans interact, though you’re not aware of it, your minds meet on many levels. There is a connection at a fundamental junction point at the place you call the collective unconscious. It is from here this version of Donald Menzel was drawn, partly by you and in part by our world, which strives toward the perfect creation of all things. But he is likewise afflicted by your selective memory. He cannot recall what you yourself do not remember.”
Borman scratches his head. “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Skioth says, “Martians have always known humans would arrive here, that you would answer our call — as strongly as we knew our enemy must never be allowed to do so. The orbiting Monument was created as a beacon for the people of Earth when they were ready. But to the Befalyn, it is a call to death. They have tried to enter the portal, as we knew they must. Each time, they have failed.”
“That beacon,” says Menzel, “is also an antenna. Every TV broadcast, every signal transmitted from Earth gets drawn right in and analyzed by teams of people in the Martian capital.”
Borman tries to imagine what the folks back home would make of that little newsflash. But bizarrely, he also has a dim recollection of hearing similar words before.
“The same pictures beamed to all of America have travelled through space to us,” says Skioth. “Mars has watched the debates, heard the impassioned cries for peace that fell upon deaf ears as your president kept sending more and more men to their deaths, condemning the millions of Vietnamese who haven’t died to lives of horror and desperation, knowing all the while it was in vain. We, of all people, know that when one American comes, others may quickly follow.”
Borman gets it now. There’s no arguing against that sort of logic. If he tries, his words will sound hollow. “It’s quite something, that beacon of yours. I can’t help wondering though… If the Befalyn are as terrible as you say, why haven’t they destroyed it out of sheer frustration?”
A sly grimace flickers across Skioth’s face. “We too have pondered this. It was always a risk, but we have always believed they would leave the portal intact because they place a high value upon this world of ours and it is the only point of entry. They value this Mars even more than the one they destroyed.”
Holtz says, “It is they who brought you to us, we are certain of that now. You did not come here alone, nor with any Russian assistance.”
Borman shakes his head. “If that’s true, I remember none of it.”
She says, “Humans have an odd relationship with the truth. You value it, yet at the same time you hide from it.”
Menzel says, “The Befalyn have visited Earth. They’re still visiting Earth. Our name for them is the Anunnaki. But they don’t call themselves that. They call themselves the Ryl.”
Hearing those two names spoken aloud triggers something buried deep in Borman’s subconscious. He rises to his feet, seeing the alien ship and himself standing before it, ready to enter. The memory sets the room spinning. Anunnaki and Ryl reverberate inside his head, like they’re bouncing around in an echo chamber, until finally the door to all his memories swings open.
Events begin to fall into place. Fragments and half-formed ideas take shape around one another. Synaptic sparks arise from the deepest recesses of his subconscious. Ideas and sensations, kept hidden from one another, unite and coalesce and gather force, until the events of his recent past return in a flood for the first time since his arrival on Mars. He starts shaking, both from the pleasure of sudden realization and from the electric convulsion of the shock to his senses. It’s too much to process at once. Dimly, he hears sounds leaving Menzel’s mouth. He grabs Borman by the arm. His lips are moving, but Borman can’t hear what he’s saying. Memories wash over him in waves, like a recurring nightmare long forgotten, revealing itself in full horrific Technicolor and finally making sense.