There are moments with my parent, reading and reading again our few books, an embrace, sleeping safe in the arms of Yazi Avo. On the edge of the new spring comes the Battle of Gitoh, so many Amadeen Front soldiers cutting through us because only a few Mavedah were there to serve the air defense weapons. The smoke, screams, and flames. The silence. Pushing Avo’s lifeless body off my own. Only a charred corner from one of Avo’s books remains.
I cry my cries and I cannot understand how anyone, Drac or human, can listen and not take pity on the children. Long after my cries end, a soldier of the Mavedah comes and takes me to a track wagon. There are other children in it. All of us are alone. When the track begins moving, taking us out of Gitoh, no one says anything to us. A few of us huddle together and cry. Most of us, though, sit watching, waiting for the next horror, hoping the next time to be better prepared.
The kovah for lineless children, the Selector before us. The terrors of training, the endless battles, fights, attacks, ambushes, maimed and dead comrades, the few I know and the multitude I do not. I carry my own knife into the cries of human children. I see them, their large dark eyes filled with tears, their faces twisted with grief. They cry their cries and they cannot understand how anyone, human or Drac, can listen and not take pity on the children. There is nothing to be served by trying to explain to them. Those who live will have to learn for themselves.
There is a broken doll in the dust before the burning fortifications at Butaan Ji. A little girl a step away, her dead eyes staring up at the sun. A man sitting next to her, singing strange words in a cracked voice. The pain in the song’s words need no translator. He turns his head and looks at me, his eyes wet, pleading, his voice forcing out the song. He is not wounded and he has a weapon. The weapon remains on his lap. I lift my knife and give him a splash through his chest. He falls to the ground dead and I wonder why he did not try to save himself. In my mind I still hear the song he sang.
The night mission to attack Steel Town on the Dorado, looking down from the exit bay of the ancient combat flyer. The surface below is covered with clouds. The clouds illuminate here, there, and here again as explosions below make the clouds glow with whites, oranges, and reds. In the distance there are other glows, and still more. Wherever I look down upon Amadeen it is exploding or burning, and we are to go into that. As we begin our dive, Pina reaches out and holds my hand. The nameless commander of another unit sees us and looks away, something guilty in its eyes.
The woman at the bunker and her Drac infant. A field of death and destruction, a killer of the Mavedah who can no longer kill for a continuation of this madness. The infant’s name is Suritok Nan. The woman did not tell me her name. I let her go, no longer able to see what I had to see to kill. What will her little Drac infant become? Perhaps it will be the key to a future peace between the Dracs and humans. Perhaps it will invent a potion that renders all species into the same family. More than likely it and its human mother were killed within moments of leaving me.
In my center I see things of mine. Love is a small thing. Pity smaller still. Hate is larger. It is a mountain, its crest black against a sky of fire. Towering above it, though, is this thing that makes me sick, the thing that makes me stupid, less than an adult. It is a lumbering, clumsy, raging monster bellowing, "Look at the suffering, the waste! Things should not be this way! It is unfair!"
This is what makes Yazi Ro a fool. If I get to Draco and stand before the Talman Kovah, putting this planet’s pain on display for the masters, is there anything I can achieve other than laughter or impatience? I will only howl at reality and thrash myself bloody upon its disinterested plane.
What can there be left, then, for Amadeen?
The mist clears, returning me to Zenak Abi’s cave. There is an ache in my eyes, the taste of dust in my mouth. There is a man before me. He is short and very serious-looking. He stands next to the Jetah, both of them warming themselves at the fire. They are discussing me, yet their words come from very far away.
A feeling fills my throat. The human. There is something very wrong with Zenak Abi talking with a human as if they are old comrades. The Jetah holds a small package. The human holds a smaller package.
I sit up as the wrongness of what I see becomes clear. The human is standing there without guilt. He is not cowed, apologetic, filled with remorse, wary, nothing to suggest the weight of the crimes he carries or the awful debt he owes to the Dracs in the chamber.
A part of my intellect knows that it is possible that this particular human might be innocent of any crimes. This particle of reason, though, cannot weigh against the universe of my hate. And still they talk. The sense of their words has to do with sending Yazi Ro―me―to Draco. There must be a confusion, but they repeat it: Yazi Ro to go to Draco.
"Why?" I try to ask, but my word is slurred, sounding like the whimper of one of the dogs the humans brought to Amadeen. Abi faces me,
"Eh, you are back on Amadeen, are you? Take a few deep breaths, Ro. Work your muscles. You’ve had a sedative."
"Sed―?" I push myself up from the chair, my arms and legs strangely heavy and slow to respond to my commands. "What sedative?" I grasp the back of the chair as the chamber seems to whirl. The feeling passes and soon my head clears.
"This should be plenty," says the man holding the smaller package, a thick envelope. "The price has been going down as the demand falls off."
"Yazi Ro," says Abi, "this is Thomas. He is going to arrange for you to go to Draco."
The world takes on another spin and I drop back into the chair. "Draco?" The things that went through my mind are still with me. "Why?" I gesture with suddenly numb fingers toward my head. "This thing that happened, the dream, it showed me what a useless gesture going to Draco is." I look around feeling that perhaps my head is none too clear. "What happened to me?" I point at the brown thing with the serious expression. "Why this human? What is he doing here?"
"In answer to one of your questions," says the human, "it’s called mind fusion. In an electro-chemical sense Zenak Abi’s brain and yours became one for a moment." He removes a small silver disk from his jacket pocket and shows it to me. "This is the gadget. It’s a neural field amplifier." Replacing the disk in his pocket, he says, "The sedative should wear off in a couple of minutes."
"I took nothing. No sedative."
Abi holds up its hand. "I applied it when I stroked your head."
I should feel outraged but I am too tired, too confused. The Jetah of peace carries a gun and drugs those who seek its help. When I want to go to Draco, I cannot. Now that there is no purpose, I can. Perhaps this is a test; some sort of examination to see if I am worthy to join their cult. If I pass the test I get to join some secret society of the fungus-brained.
Abi and the human shake hands and upon the completion of the human ritual, Thomas leaves the chamber. The Jetah adds some wood to the small fire and speaks to me. "I apologize, Yazi Ro, for administering the sedative without your permission. It was necessary for me to see as you see. I needed to know if I can trust you."
"Trust me? For what? A voyage to Draco? There is no reason to go to Draco." I hold my hands to my head. "Is that not the lesson in this dream you and the human thrust into my brain?"
Abi turns from the fire and studies me for moment. As the Jetah thinks, it walks to its chair and sits. Abi clasps its hands together and leans forward, resting its elbows on its lap. "We put nothing into your head, Ro. The process does allow you to have singularly instructive dreams, however. What the amplifier allowed me to do was to take your neural event field and place it within mine. It enabled me to remember, see, and feel as do you. As to your question, it is pointless for you to go before the Talman Kovah and threaten to throw a tantrum if they don’t discover a path to peace. That is what your own brain told itself, and I agree."