II A Soldier’s Leave
REI FUKAI WANTED a trip back to Earth, and he was going to do something about it.
From the time he was rescued in his immobile vegetative state till the moment he was awakened aboard Yukikaze, he had been trapped in a nightmare space, consumed at the thought of meeting those human copies created by the JAM. What he obsessed over in particular was the taste of the chicken broth he’d been forced to eat. It held the taste of Yukikaze’s flight officer, Lieutenant Burgadish.
Waiting for Rei upon awakening was a detailed debriefing to collect all of the information he’d gathered on his mission. This wasn’t just conducted by the SAF. Rei had to tell the same story over and over and over to the other air corps and even the FAF Intelligence Forces.
Of most vital concern to the FAF was Rei’s claim that the JAM were able to produce copies of human beings. SAF analysis had concluded that there was at least a possibility that the JAM had perfected the creation of human duplicates with which they had successfully infiltrated the FAF.
The top levels of the FAF had to investigate the possibility that Rei and the SAF itself were now contaminated by the JAM. They also had to consider the possibility that the JAM were manipulating Rei and the SAF in order to lead the Faery Air Force down the wrong strategic path.
Rei didn’t particularly care if the others accepted his personal experiences. Even though he knew well the threat posed by the mysterious alien JAM, he couldn’t recall feeling fear during his encounter with them. In that way, he was similar to the combat intelligences which existed within the FAF’s countless computers, but it was only after the experience that Rei’s true feelings began to make themselves known. What he was feeling and the changes he was seeing in himself became a matter of serious concern.
He was faced with questions: What he was doing on Faery in the first place? Did Yukikaze’s abandonment of him mean that he had no value or worth? Rei wondered if maybe he’d lingered in his coma for so long in order to avoid returning to reality and facing the questions his experiences had raised. He’d dealt with one of them while confronting the threat to Yukikaze in her new body, the power of that moment stimulating him back to consciousness. In that instant, he knew for certain that Yukikaze needed him.
Awakened by his experiences, he didn’t want to go back to the way he’d been. Rei had begun to feel closer to the JAM.
What were the JAM? How did the JAM view him? He used to be able to forget those questions when he flew with Yukikaze, but after encountering JAM weapons that looked human, and having a taste of Lieutenant Burgadish, he couldn’t just ignore his questions anymore.
The JAM’s human duplicates are not a new strategy they adopted suddenly or recently, Rei thought. They’ve been preparing this for a long, long time, perhaps starting work on it immediately after their initial attack on Earth.
Human existence must have seemed a strange thing to them. Doubtless, the JAM perceived it as something they couldn’t understand, wondering why these things called “humans” were always riding around in the Faery Air Force’s planes. As far as the JAM were concerned, their enemy was the planes of the FAF, not the humans. They recognized the combat machines of Earth as their opponents, not the blobs of organic matter inside them. If the combat machines and computers of Earth were the main adversaries, then the humans were weapons they were equipped with, like computers or missiles.
He could see them now, the JAM desperately analyzing their data, searching for the reason for why the enemy planes were always equipped with organic human matter. It had taken them some time, but it was possible that they now saw the humans as some sort of organic computer that supported the actions of the combat intelligence. At any rate, having realized they could no longer ignore these things, the JAM had likely been devising a countermeasure for them since early in the war. They’d undoubtedly concluded that, since these weapons called humans could move around autonomously, they would create a weapon just like it. Perhaps they’d been deployed for some unimaginable purpose or strategy, but the simple fact was that the JAM were making human copies.
They might have been indistinguishable from humans, possessing will and even emotions, but in the end they were weapons. There could be no other purpose for the JAM to make them, that much was certain. They were organic weapons created by an inorganic alien intelligence that might not even be properly termed a life-form. It was exactly the same idea as when humans created their combat machines.
He wondered how these human copies felt, these men and, possibly, women. An SAF investigation had concluded that there was an extremely high probability that the man called Lieutenant Yagashira, who had taken up a post in the SAF, had been a weapon created by the JAM. The original Lieutenant Yagashira had been killed in action during a mission with his previous squadron, and the JAM had created a weapon based on his body and then deployed it to infiltrate SAF forces. The same went for Lieutenant Lancome, who had been killed at TAB-15 by Yukikaze’s gun. However, the SAF couldn’t prove this conclusively, and so the FAF couldn’t accept their conclusion officially. It was being handled as a top secret matter for their squadron alone.
Despite his vegetative state, Rei had a hazy memory of Major Booker bringing Lieutenant Yagashira to visit him in the hospital. He’d said that he wanted to be a top-class Sylphid pilot, just like Rei. He’d said that he wanted to be his friend. He was a JAM weapon, and yet he’d said that.
Rei had never thought of himself as a consumable weapon in this war. He’d never been particularly concerned with whom or for what he was fighting either. But now, when he thought about the weapons the JAM were making, he couldn’t help but think that he was just like them. A weapon was only concerned with its own effectiveness. If it started to wonder for whom it was being effective, its effectiveness would decrease. Since Rei never thought about things like that as he grew to become the best soldier there was, it meant that when a JAM weapon said, “I want to be like you,” it was telling him that he was more like a weapon than a JAM weapon.
No wonder the JAM perceived him as a threat.
He didn’t know if Lieutenant Yagashira was conscious of having been made by the JAM. It was possible that, even if he did, his sense of identity as a human grew stronger than his identity as a weapon, preventing him from exhibiting his true effectiveness as such. Perhaps Yagashira had said he wanted to be like him because, despite his being human, he recognized Rei as being a far superior weapon. If that were true, it also meant that Yagashira had been a far better human being than Rei was. Far better than a man who didn’t care if he was a human or a weapon. And if he was a perfect human, Rei thought, then I must be a perfect combat machine. That was totally the opposite of the way it should have been.
When Rei had targeted Yagashira’s plane and fired his missiles from the cockpit of the new Yukikaze, he had hesitated for a moment, even though there was no doubt at all that he was shooting at a JAM. Why was that? Was it because he had sensed in Yagashira someone who could have understood him?
The thing he didn’t understand, the thing he now feared, wasn’t the JAM. It was himself. He wanted to take a hard look at the changes he was seeing in his heart. He would return to Earth, the planet that had borne him.
Rei told his only friend and commanding officer Major James Booker exactly how he felt, and the major simply replied that it was a good idea. They were in the SAF hangar bay.
The thirteen fighters were lined up, with Yukikaze in the space for Unit 1. The old Yukikaze had been Unit 3.
“It’ll make you more human,” Major Booker said. “You’ve awakened. Yukikaze has been reborn also, into an even more powerful body. She’s Unit 1 in name and reality. The same should go for you as well.”
Her fighter number had been overwritten with 05031. Yukikaze was now the fourth plane to hold the position of Unit 1.
“I don’t think I want to be reborn,” Rei answered.
“You’ve taken a shock to your mind and body,” the major said. “A change of environment will do wonders for you. The SAF’s also replacing its planes. We’re working over the plan we’d suspended before. The plan is to gradually introduce the FRX00, although the Systems Corps is still convinced the FRX99 is better.”
“Why aren’t you accepting the unmanned planes?”
“Because humans are necessary in this war,” the major answered. “The pilots of the SAF are effective counters to the JAM’s strategies.”
“Humans acting as combat machines, you mean.”
“Not quite. Humans are different from machines. The JAM see that as a threat.”
“Jack, what I’m trying to say is—”
“I know, Rei. I know what sort of damage you’ve taken in all this. The way you are now, you can’t fly. You need leave. God knows, you deserve some, even if the authorities won’t authorize a return to Earth for you.”
“You’re saying I won’t get to go back?”
“The Faery Air Force doesn’t want you wandering free. You’re a great pilot and they need you, but they’re also terrified that you might be a JAM.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rei said.
“The nature of the SAF’s mission means that you constantly see those sorts of contradictory sentiments. That’s always been the case.”
“If I were a JAM, I wouldn’t tell you that the JAM were making human duplicates, would I?”
“That’s a good question,” Booker said. “Maybe the JAM’s objective is to drive a wedge between the humans and the machines of the FAF. Maybe they revealed this to you on purpose.”
“Well, JAM or not, I’ve already done the damage, then.”
“True, but nonetheless, there’s no evidence that you aren’t a JAM agent. That’s why the authorities want to keep you under close observation. Come on, you know how hard it is to get authorization to return to Earth. Besides that, there’s never been any instance in the SAF’s history of somebody asking for leave. This unit is full of people who have no interest in visiting Earth or their hometowns. The only people who go back are ones who retire or get drummed out of the service.”
“So if I want to go back to Earth, I have to retire?”
“Well, good news for you, then,” Booker replied. “Your term of service in the Faery Air Force is almost up. In four days. You can renew your contract instead of retiring, of course. According to the terms of renewal, you can request a promotion to the rank of captain. If you say you’re going to retire, the authorities may try to keep you here by offering you a special two-rank advancement. That’s a typical bargaining tactic they use.”
“I don’t care about rank. It doesn’t mean anything here, anyway,” Rei said.
“I don’t know about that,” Booker said. “If you get to be a field officer, you can start meddling with personnel affairs and make yourself a big man in some other squadron.”
“Yeah, and get buried in a ton of miscellaneous crap.”
“Being a captain might be the best position for you, but someone with higher rank can still get in your way. The smart move would be to leave when you get the chance.”
“I have Yukikaze here. I’m not going to retire.”
“Figured you’d say that,” the major said with a nod. “I’ll talk to the higher-ups and try to negotiate a temporary leave for you. You’re going to come back here, no matter what, because Yukikaze’s here.”
Rei looked up at Yukikaze, his face expressionless.
Her airframe carried an air of menace. She was a modified FRX99, a plane developed as an unmanned fighter. Compared to the Super Sylphs on either side of her, there was no softness to the design at all. They at least show some touches that reflect human aesthetics, but Yukikaze’s new airframe engenders a sense of complete strangeness, Rei thought. She had that beauty born of the total efficiency an advanced weapon needs, but the airframe looked threatening, and one could sense a sort of spooky atmosphere around her. In the gloomy light of the hangar, Rei suddenly realized why. Yukikaze was black, just like a JAM fighter. It wasn’t just his imagination. She was shaped like one too.
“She…she looks like a JAM fighter.”
“Because they borrowed the good points of their planes in the design,” Booker explained. “I realized that too. When you just come out and say it, it sounds awful, huh? The JAM planes don’t have cockpits, but we added that onto this design. It’s built to be piloted by humans, but it was designed to be unmanned. She can pull maneuvers that can kill her crew.”
Yukikaze was no longer the FRX00 prototype. As their new tactical combat electronic surveillance plane, she’d been given an official name: the FFR41, nicknamed “Maeve” after the goddess who ruled the wind fairies.
“A pretty wild goddess, this one. It’d be dangerous to piss her off. Even on a Super Sylph, it’s the human pilot who chooses to fly it. This one leaves that all behind. Not just any person can fly her. You’re necessary, Rei. Make sure you come back here, because I don’t want to lose you either.”
Rei silently stroked Yukikaze’s fuselage. Her body felt warm.
While Rei had been making the rounds to his various debriefings, Yukikaze had flown a mission unmanned, one determined to be simple as far as SAF operations went and not a problem for a pilotless plane. Major Booker had thought it was dangerous to have Yukikaze fully exhibit her new abilities without Rei in the cockpit. The likelihood was steadily increasing that she could behave in wholly unexpected ways while in flight, and they’d need a crewman aboard to find out why. Moreover, Rei would probably be the only one who could completely understand her, and Rei knew that perfectly well. Even so, he wanted to leave the battlefield, to leave Yukikaze, and try to find himself.
“Make the arrangements for me to go back to Earth,” Rei said. “I’m counting on you, Jack.”
“Gotcha,” the major answered, and said nothing more.
AS MAJOR BOOKER had expected, the Faery Air Force authorities didn’t okay Rei’s leaving. The FAF didn’t want him to retire, the major told Rei, who’d been waiting for Booker’s return in the major’s office. And even if he reenlisted, he went on, they’d probably delay his request for temporary leave with the review process. It’d be a minimum of a month’s wait.
“And if we spent a month arguing it, they probably still wouldn’t grant my request, would they?” Rei answered.
“That’s correct, Lieutenant Fukai,” said the man Rei had never seen before.
“Rei, let me introduce you. This is Mr. Chang Pollack, international attorney. He’s here to help us.”
“A lawyer,” Rei replied. “So essentially I’m still a criminal. I’d actually forgotten that I agreed to come here instead of serving time in a Japanese prison.”
“That’s only until you retire from the Faery Air Force,” Pollack said. “You already agreed once before to extend your service here and became a second lieutenant as a result. The moment you did that, you gave up your right to be discharged. That’s why you’re not just being automatically discharged this time around. In order to retire from service, you’ll need to make a formal request. If you choose to extend your contract, your situation won’t change. You were handed down an indefinite sentence, after all.”
Since Rei had never thought of returning to Earth until now, he’d never considered the difference between discharge and retirement.
“In this case,” the lawyer continued, “I’d recommend applying for retirement. You haven’t given up that right. Even though the FAF can try and pressure you to abandon the case, they have no right to just quash a request for it. If you do that, you’ll be free of them. As far as the nation of Japan is concerned, you’ll have fulfilled your debt to society. You’ll be a free citizen once again, with all of your rights restored, including the right to receive help from your government.”
“I think that’s a good deal,” Major Booker said. “When you get back, you can do whatever you want. People who choose to enlist here are automatically given the rank of second lieutenant. In your case, you’d probably make captain.”
“I don’t like it,” Rei said.
“What?” Pollack asked.
“Any of it,” Rei said. “I’m a human being, and I want to return to Earth as a regular human. I couldn’t care less about organizations or some country called Japan.”
“Even so—”
“I understand how you feel,” the major said, cutting in. “But the reality of the situation is that you aren’t just a single, independent human being. You have to make a choice. If you get leave as an FAF soldier, you’ll be bound by military regulations. They’ll control where you can go and who you can see.”
“They’ll be spying on me?”
“On the other hand, you’ll have the FAF as a powerful ally, backing you up. It’s not all bad. Nobody would be able to lay a finger on you, even if you had an entire nation as your enemy. Although the same could be said if you became a civilian. If you retired and the FAF still tried to control you, you could request that the Japanese government assist you.”
“I can’t depend on anyone there,” Rei protested.
“You’ve got me,” Pollack said. “I work to protect the rights of people like you.”
“Would the JAM say something like that?” Rei asked. “Only humans talk about things like ‘rights.’ The JAM don’t play that game. They’re my enemy, and the only person I can depend on in fighting them is myself, except now, I… Dammit, I don’t want to die at their hands the way I am now!”
“Lieutenant Rei Fukai, apply for retirement,” Major Booker said firmly. “Then go and get your head together. This isn’t a problem you can solve by yourself. Having you dicking around here being unsure of everything is just going to make my life difficult. I don’t care how you settle it, just settle it.”
“Just sign these papers,” said Pollack, holding out a pen. Rei took it and signed several pages.
“Good,” said Major Booker with a nod. “This is the only way you can go back. Once you sign these, no matter what the FAF brass says, in three days, you’ll be free. Assuming you live that long.”
“You’re saying they’ll try and kill me?”
“It’s possible,” Booker said. “There’ve already been moves to get you away from the SAF. Our organization is big enough that I think we can protect you for three days. General Cooley doesn’t want to lose you either, and she’s been fighting it too.”
“If you should be killed, your signature is still valid,” Pollack said. “Your honor will be protected. I’ll take care of those for you.”
“I’m not giving these papers to you,” Rei said.
“Major Booker is still a member of the SAF, Lieutenant. You can’t be certain that he won’t rewrite them or try something else. I don’t trust him. You’ll have to trust me.”
“I said I’m not giving these papers to anyone else. I’m going to walk them over to the administration office and hand them in myself.”
“Have it your way,” Pollack said with a shrug. He left the office, not looking particularly disappointed.
“Is he trustworthy, Jack?”
“For what he’s charging, he’d better be. I took it out of your future pay, so you’ll need to work off that debt. Just leave the legal wrangling to him.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You just have to trust him for now,” Booker said.
“No, it’s not that. It was the way he walked around unarmed, like he thinks he has some right not to get killed here. That’s just a delusion.”
“A shared delusion. Pollack operates within the delusion of what Earth society calls common sense. That doesn’t apply here. Not in the FAF or on Faery. Especially to us in the SAF, with the JAM constantly at our throats, the kind of confidence that man has would naturally seem bizarre. Talking to him makes me feel like we live in entirely different dimensions. He walks in the world of Earthly common sense.”
“Earthly common sense,” Rei pondered. “I never was very familiar with that.”
“I know what you mean. It’s the same for me. If you go back to Earth, it’ll probably be even stranger to you. There were always people who said that the JAM invasion was some giant hoax, but now there are apparently a lot of people who don’t even believe they exist. The number of people who aren’t conscious of the fact that the JAM threat is real is growing, and to them the war on Faery is just fiction. Everything that happens on this planet is becoming fictional.”
“Fiction. Like a fairy tale.”
“Exactly. We and the JAM are just characters in a story. If this collective delusion continues to hold sway, it’s possible that humanity wouldn’t understand what was happening if the JAM broke through the Faery defense line and invaded Earth. If it gets to where we can’t recognize the JAM anymore, will fighters and combat intelligences like Yukikaze who are fighting against the JAM even recognize them as the enemies of humanity? Maybe we wouldn’t be able to tell what the real threat was without Yukikaze flying overhead to keep an eye out for it.”
“The ones suffering from that delusion are happy to get killed off without ever sensing a threat or feeling fear,” Rei said, carefully folding the documents he held. “It makes things easier for the JAM, doesn’t it? If the JAM are making those human duplicates with the thought of using them as anti-personnel weapons, their strategy is wrong.”
“I doubt that’s what the JAM have in mind. For now, they’ve only made a small number of duplicates exclusively for gathering intelligence. I think they’re using them in the same way that we use Yukikaze. They’d need to mass-produce them if they were to be used as anti-personnel weapons, and it would require a lot of resources to maintain a squad. Just producing food for them would be a huge problem. I doubt they’d adopt such an inefficient strategy. If the JAM are creating human copies, it means they’ve studied the human body thoroughly. If they know enough to make a human body, it stands to reason that they could easily engineer a virus to wipe us out. It’d be child’s play to spread—an autonomous, infectious, self-propagating micro-weapon. That would be the most efficient way to kill us.
“Maybe they haven’t perfected it,” Booker continued, “or they don’t want to for some reason, but the fact remains that we don’t know what the JAM are after. We may never be able to communicate with them. We operate under the assumption that, given enough effort, a means to understanding an opponent with a rational mind can be found, but that may simply be a human delusion. I think it’s a conceited notion. We humans don’t really know what Yukikaze and the FAF computers think, and we made them.”
“The same goes for strangers. We make enemies of other people.”
“True understanding may be impossible,” the major said, “but we can believe. Humans have that capacity.”
“I believe in you,” Rei said, slipping the folded papers into his pocket. “And in Yukikaze. And in the JAM as well.”
“Then why are you so eager to return to Earth? Do you even know, Rei?” The question was so unexpected that Rei was flummoxed. He just looked at his old friend for a long moment, wondering if his silence was proof that he really didn’t know.
“I think I know why,” the major said at last. “I understand, because I get the same feeling a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“You want to see for yourself that Earth still exists, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You should go. You’re free now. Nobody can tell you what to do. I’ll wait for a week after your retirement is finalized. If I don’t hear from you in ten days, I’ll reorganize the SAF without you.”
“I understand.”
“That is all, Lieutenant Fukai.”
“Roger, Major.”
Rei straightened up and saluted. Major Booker sat up in his seat and returned the salute with a casual wave, like he always did. It was an attitude that said that, true to their nickname, a Boomerang soldier would return without fail. If the boomerang hit its target, he would go out to recover it. That was Major Booker’s role to play. It’s thanks to him that I was rescued, Rei thought. From one viewpoint, Booker was just doing his duty, but from another, it was confirmation that the major didn’t simply see Rei as a weapon. Had it not been for his faith in his friend, Rei wouldn’t have wanted to return from the void in which he’d been trapped.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Rei said as he lowered his hand. “I’d better get to the administration office.”
“I’d hate to see you not come back to the SAF, but you do what you have to do,” the major replied. “This is a gamble I’m taking, Rei. Drastic action. It’s the only thing I can offer you so that you’ll be a soldier again. There’s a chance I’m going to lose this bet.”
“I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen,” Rei said.
“Since you’re going back to an Earth you don’t really know anymore, anything could happen. I’d feel better if you had a navigator to help you out. I contacted Lynn Jackson and made a private request. That was me acting as an individual, not as a major asking a favor.”
“Lynn Jackson, huh?”
“The FAF Intelligence Forces are probably already moving and may refuse, but that has nothing to do with me. Lynn Jackson is a first-rate journalist. She’ll keep you out of trouble.”
“It sounds like Earth is more dangerous than the JAM.”
“In your naively fragile state, it definitely is. I’m praying you don’t have a total nervous breakdown there.”
As Rei turned to leave, Major Booker wished him luck. Rei left his friend’s office without another word.
THREE DAYS LATER, Rei was safely retired from service. The process had been complicated and mysterious, but apparently Chang Pollack had earned his hefty fee, sparing Rei from having to deal with any annoying contingencies. Once his confiscated Japanese passport was returned to him, it was all over. Rei Fukai was no longer a soldier in the Faery Air Force. He was a civilian, with all debts to society paid.
Just as he had when he’d first arrived at base, Rei walked through the tunnel which connected the surface to the underground, though this time he was going up instead of down. Carrying only his jacket and a Boston bag he owned, Rei headed for the exit. As he neared it, the outside light growing brighter, Rei felt as if he were awakening from a dream.
No one was there to see him off. There were about twenty other people who, like him, were making the trip back to Earth, along with four others still in uniform, going back on temporary leave. The guys in uniform were mainly jovial, but the expressions of ex-servicemen varied, sullen frowns outnumbering smiles considerably.
Emerging from the tunnel, Rei looked up into the light of Faery’s twin suns.
A huge eddy of gas jetted out from one side of the binary stars, forming a reddish belt that resembled the Milky Way. The Bloody Road, as it was called, was more diffuse than when seen from a plane at high altitude. Normally, it wasn’t visible from the ground at noontime. Perhaps, Rei thought, finding yourself forced to see something that you normally wouldn’t is the essential nature of homesickness. A formation of FAF tactical fighters crossed the sky overhead. Opposite them stood a huge, white pillar of clouds—the Passageway that connected Earth and Faery. Rei thought the scene looked like some sort of painting.
A United Nations transport plane bound for Earth sat at the end of the runway. This was the shuttle that made the trip through the hyperspace Passageway from Faery to Earth. Generally, FAF planes never went there.
IDs were checked prior to boarding. The note on Rei’s passport that he was retired from service and was no longer a Faery soldier was checked and verified by a crewman, who then demanded that everyone except those in uniform present their boarding passes. You paid your own way home, although there were no first class seats on this plane.
The shuttle plane’s pilot seemed like a veteran. Without any hesitation, he entered the hyperspace Passageway in the cloud pillar from the proper course and altitude. The plane emerged on the Earth side with barely any turbulence. When the clouds cleared, they were greeted by the sight of the Antarctic skies spreading out around them. One of the seating rows broke out in cheers. The blood red river of the Bloody Road was nowhere to be seen in Earth’s skies. I’m home, thought Rei.
REI WAS RELEASED in Sydney, Australia.
Lynn Jackson was waiting for him. The author of The Invader, which dealt with the JAM threat, she had never lost interest in the JAM or the Faery Air Force. She greeted the man returning from Faery—who knew the JAM so well—the way she might an acquaintance she hadn’t seen in a decade. Rei had met her once before, though they hadn’t spoken. She seemed a little older, but her eyes still held their intelligent sparkle.
“Welcome home, Lieutenant Fukai. Congratulations on making it out alive,” she said as she fell into step with Rei at the airport exit.
“What’s the deal?” Rei said. “You gonna follow me everywhere I go?”
“Major Booker asked me to help you out. Do you remember me?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what are your plans? What do you want to do?”
“Travel around the world.”
“You mean until you feel like going back to your homeland?” she asked.
“None of your business.”
“Isn’t it? Lieutenant Fukai, don’t you think you have an obligation to tell all of humanity about the JAM?”
“I’m back here because I’ve fulfilled all my obligations. If you want to know about the JAM, enlist and go to the front yourself.”
“Participating in a war means losing your objectivity.”
“If being human means believing there’s a fair, balanced, and objective position to take on the JAM, then I guess I’m not human. I couldn’t live as a human.”
“In a way, you may be right, Lieutenant, but as for me—”
“I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”
“Does that mean you have no intention of returning to Faery?”
“No comment.”
Amidst the whirlpool of noise and color in the bustling airport, Rei was starting to feel a little seasick.
“Even though we’re alike?”
“Alike how?”
Lynn dropped the professional tone from her voice. “It’s true that there are all sorts of things I want to ask about. You and I both appreciate the threat the JAM pose. We don’t know what they’re after, but if we try to perceive them objectively, human sense and common sense become unreliable. I agree with what you said about not being able to live as a human. That’s you now, isn’t it? That’s how it is for you.”
“Well, if I’m not human, then what am I?” Rei asked as he stopped midstride.
Lynn Jackson looked Rei straight in the eye and answered without any hesitation. “A Faerian.”
“An alien, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly. So, as an alien who’s come to Earth to sightsee, you’ll need to hire a guide. You’re ignorant of human customs, I’m sure.”
“And in return, you want exclusive access to my story, right?”
“This may wound your heroic pride, but I can’t market you as a hero. The war with the JAM isn’t the sensation it used to be,” Jackson said. “Only a very small specialty market exists with any interest in the exploits of returning soldiers. Very few in the media would have any interest in interviewing you.”
“What happened on Faery seems like a dream already,” Rei said. “It feels like I was hooked up to some machine designed to induce nightmares as part of some psychological punishment. Actually, I kinda suspect that the machine they used to force-inject basic fighter piloting skills into my brain was exactly like that.” Rei sighed. “If here on Earth the JAM are now treated like characters from a fairy tale, then you may as well say that it all really was the sort of punishment I just described. There wouldn’t be much difference between trying to convince people they’re real and me just saying it’s not my problem now.”
“As much as I think public consideration needs to be paid to the psychological wounds our returning soldiers have to deal with, you’re still wrong. I just can’t believe that.”
“I’ve had enough of public consideration and the rest of that crap,” Rei said.
“I’m here as an individual.”
“So you have a personal interest in me?”
“I do. I don’t think you can handle human society as it is now. You can’t live here on your own.”
Rei considered what she said and finally gave in.
“I’ll hire you as a guide.”
“I warn you, my fee’s pretty high.”
“I’ve got money,” he replied. “There isn’t a lot to spend it on back at Faery base.”
“If you tell me about that too, I’ll let you pay me in installments.”
“If the balance gets too depressing to look at, I’ll consider that,” Rei said.
“Don’t lose count of what you owe.”
“I’ll expect you to charge me an honest price.”
“Trust me,” she said.
Lynn Jackson started walking toward the airport lobby exit.
“Where are we going?” Rei asked.
“You need a place to relax, right? I’ve booked you into the Meridian Hotel.”
“You’re prepared, aren’t you?”
“I’m living there right now. It’s convenient, being as close to Faery as it is.”
“Nice status you enjoy, huh?”
“I can live comfortably if I economize.”
“You published a best seller, after all. When you write the sequel to The Invader you’ll sell that too, right?”
“I’m just starting to write it now,” Lynn said. “The thing is, my agent’s having to wrack his brains before he can sell it to someone.”
“Why’s that?”
“If we sell it as a work of fantasy fiction, we may be able to find a publisher who’ll buy it. That’s what the times are like nowadays. See, anything having to do with the JAM is fantasy. If the JAM are mentioned anywhere, nobody takes the contents of the book seriously. I wasn’t intending to become a novelist, but my agent’s been telling me he has a feeling that the publisher is going to make me do it that way. If it looks like I’m writing some kind of quickie cash-in job, it’ll damage the trust people have in me as a journalist. So, I’m writing some other ‘hard’-subject books to keep from seeming too far out of my usual line.”
“So how is The Invader viewed now?”
“Probably as nothing but fantasy, like the vast number of books, good and bad, that came out about the JAM for a while. They’re not popular anymore. I’m basically seen as a has-been popular writer. I always saw myself as a journalist and not a pop writer, and that hasn’t changed, but the world doesn’t see me that way. With my insistence on still writing about the JAM, I’m seen as a bit of an anachronism.”
“That’s nuts.”
“It’s the result of the FAF’s success at containing the JAM threat,” Lynn said.
“And there’s a whole bunch of other problems that reality has for people to worry about, right?”
“Right. Humanity’s perennial crises are a much more familiar problem to deal with. Economics, politics, religion, cultures, race, gender issues, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
Rei remembered what Lynn Jackson had written in The Invader.
Back when the JAM first drove through the hyperspace Passageway linking Earth and Faery and invaded Antarctica, humanity hadn’t united to fight them. In the end, humanity saw the JAM as just another race among many to be confronted. On Earth you could find a race called “humans,” but that group couldn’t be properly considered “Earthers.” Humans are basically animals who fight each other for dominance within and between groups, so if a controlling member of one collective loses even a little power, the group fractures. Joining and splitting, over and over. The relationship of the ruler and the ruled. Struggles for supremacy. Even the presence of the JAM did not change this. This desire for confrontation would persevere in humanity until the species finally fell to ruin.
“Just humans with a different skin color, eh?” Rei said to Lynn Jackson as they climbed into a taxi.
“Hm?”
“That was something you wrote in your book. You basically said that humans wouldn’t face reality until the very end.”
“And what do you think?” she asked.
“I think we eat, we sleep, we grow old, and then one day we vanish from this world. Anything aside from that is an illusion.”
“Spoken like an enlightened old Buddhist.”
“The JAM made me that way,” Rei said. He shut the taxi door.
As the taxi drove along, Rei spotted a newsstand out the window and asked the driver to pull over. He bought four different papers. When he returned, Lynn Jackson laughed and told him he could ask the hotel to buy as many as he wished, or else print out all the news stories he could carry from the MT in his room. Rei, however, had no intention of doing as she said.
“It’s easy to forge newspapers or computer data,” he explained.
“Ah, but a paper bought out in the city from a random location would be a little more reliable, is that it?”
“I guess.”
“Who do you think would be trying to forge them?”
“Someone trying to make me laugh,” Rei said.
Lynn Jackson shrugged her shoulders and kept her mouth shut.
After arriving at the hotel and checking in, Rei went his own way after promising to meet Lynn for dinner later.
Lynn offered to take him out to a nice restaurant where he could have a meal fit for a human and plan what he was going to do, but Rei wasn’t used to just relaxing. Major Booker had given him a one-week grace period. For seven days, his posting in the SAF was still guaranteed. The meaning was clear—if he let it pass he’d never fly Yukikaze again, even if he returned to Faery.
Rei doubted he’d find something new to live for in the next week, but he didn’t want to waste his time. He wanted to perceive the JAM with the senses of an Earther, to find out just what it was that he’d been fighting.
The room Lynn had booked for him was a sumptuous suite. On top of the enormous bed, Rei read the newspapers he’d purchased. There wasn’t a single mention of the JAM. Rei couldn’t believe it, but he read them through completely and couldn’t find one anywhere.
Throwing the papers down, he went over to the multimedia terminal on the writing desk. They hadn’t had these before he’d left for Faery, so he experimentally switched it on.
He first searched the major news sites for any information about the JAM, but there were very few recent hits. Particularly shocking was that a keyword search for “the JAM” yielded hardly any information at all. While the word was there, it was treated merely as a special-purpose term or colloquialism used by some. According to the definition that came up for JAM, “It is not known who first referred to them as the JAM, and the mysterious group that invaded Earth still has no official name.”
Thinking this was ridiculous, Rei next ran a keyword search for Faery Air Force. There was information on it, but again, nothing substantial, not even any official reports on the latest war progress. The reports should have been available, but they hadn’t been uploaded for display on the MT.
It was as though an information blackout was in effect. Perhaps there is, Rei thought. In short, somebody was making it difficult to learn about the JAM. It seemed to be taking him forever to find any information about them. There might have been tons of data about the JAM and the FAF, but if it took you a lifetime to search for and find it, the practical reality was that it might as well not exist.
Lynn would say that there were no articles about the JAM in the papers because writers couldn’t sell them. That was probably why she hadn’t yet found a publisher for the sequel to The Invader she was writing. But Rei sensed that the fundamental reason for the paucity of information was due to social manipulation with the goal of changing the minds of the general public. It would have to be a worldwide effort. Assuming there was some group that wanted to propagandize on the JAM’s behalf, Rei suspected that their agents might delete the word JAM as soon as it was entered anywhere, or possibly change the expression to something else in order to make it difficult to search for.
So who was doing it, then?
The ones who would profit from it. The JAM. The JAM were already in control of the network all MTs were connected to.
It was possible that the JAM had quietly slipped undetected past the FAF and invaded Earth, then carefully bided their time in order to realize their plan. Since the change was so gradual, it wasn’t surprising that only someone like Lynn Jackson would notice it. The other possibility, Rei thought as he stepped back from the terminal and sat down on the bed, is that this is all the fantasy of a returning vet from Faery, one of those psychological scars people talk about.
He’d risked his life fighting the JAM, and yet he’d come home to find that they weren’t considered worth discussing. So then, what was the point of the war? Why had he risked his life? Come on, the JAM are right there! It was natural for him to come to that conclusion.
Suppose the JAM were just a virtual threat created by humans? That would certainly make sense in some ways. If you explained Faery as being some international criminal incarceration system, it’d make a lot of sense.
Still, it was unrealistic to claim that the JAM and planet Faery were artificial virtual creations. If you considered the cost of maintaining such a system, you’d eventually have groups who’d refuse to pay for it and the whole thing would collapse. Rei also doubted that you could keep a system like that running for thirty years.
But even if that were all true, and the JAM were originally virtual creations, they weren’t anymore. The JAM were real. Even if the parties responsible for starting the whole charade declared “game over,” the FAF as it was now wouldn’t obey them.
The JAM weren’t virtual to the FAF. Real or fake, it was still kill or be killed out there. There was no way that the JAM were phantasms, because the FAF itself had made them real. The JAM would eventually invade Earth. Whether they were real JAM or something created by the humans and combat machines of the FAF didn’t matter, they were still JAM.
Wow, Rei thought, these are some pretty powerful post-combat psych aftereffects. He was basically desperate to make the JAM real by any means. Maybe it was due to the notion that they’d already invaded Earth. Well, if that was true, maybe this wasn’t the real Earth. Maybe the JAM weren’t real, and his sensing them here came from his inability to slip free of the illusion. Maybe some psychiatric treatment could cure him. No, there was no way he’d ever be able to forget the JAM threat. Better to live thinking they were real than to try and force himself to believe they weren’t. He didn’t give a damn what other people thought. The JAM were a threat to him. That made them real enough, no matter what their true nature might be. These Earth people who made the JAM into fairy tales would probably be destroyed without ever knowing what really killed them. They wouldn’t even think it was the JAM who were doing it.
That’s not for me, Rei thought.
As far as the JAM were concerned, media infiltration was a good strategy. There’d be no need to produce human duplicates to use as anti-personnel weapons. They could instead use the complex and advanced information management system humans themselves had created in order to control human thoughts. All the JAM had to do was turn their attention away from the true enemy, themselves, and then give a little push to encourage humans to turn back to their ordinary squabbles. Humans are just the sort of life-form to do that anyway, so there was no need for any out-and-out brainwashing. Their own systems and biological nature would lead to their self-destruction.
To people who were satisfied just to eat and sleep, it wasn’t the JAM they were worried about being trampled by. It was other people or groups who had weapons. Actually, Rei had spotted a few articles in the papers about just that sort of thing. This was stuff humans themselves were doing, not the JAM. All the JAM had to do was wait. A hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand, it didn’t matter to them. The JAM might have been trapped into fighting the FAF because their invasion was premature. The only things that might be able to resist the JAM weren’t human at all. The only defense was autonomous combat machine intelligences like Yukikaze.
Rei lay back on the bed, his arms cushioning his head, and wondered if it not might be for the best if humanity destroyed itself. Even if the JAM’s control over Earth’s computer network was just his own fantasy, he hadn’t changed what he was. Human society would never accept him, so it was all basically the same. Nothing had changed. Coming back to Earth had made him see that clearly, and he hadn’t even been here for half a day.
Rei wasn’t really concerned with being a perfect combat machine anymore, and he was now pretty sure he had acknowledged he wasn’t human. Rei was neither human nor weapon. He’d not known what he was until Lynn Jackson had told him with her all too brief answer:
He was a Faerian.
He fought because the JAM were there, not as a weapon, but as a man trying to survive as a resident of the planet Faery.
Even so, how had he come to be what he was? A person whose personality estranged him from normal human society. A person who couldn’t stand to live his life as just another face in the crowd.
Rei wondered if he was some sort of mutant. Nothing more than something inserted by the program of evolution to ensure the survival of the seed of humanity. They existed in every age. He’d just been born by chance into the age when the JAM were here. He had a feeling that the JAM, despite their desire to eliminate humanity, couldn’t simply wait for it to self-destruct because of people like him.
People like him were more a threat to the JAM than the vast majority of humans on Earth. For their part, the people of Earth saw the JAM as being not too different from themselves. They were certainly living that way now. At any rate, if you left humans alone, they’d probably end up destroying themselves.
But he couldn’t stay here on Earth and hope to fight for his life, especially if the JAM were already here. He had no weapons. He had only just arrived, but Rei made up his mind to call Major Booker tomorrow morning.
He’d have to thank Lynn. Since he’d have to wait for Major Booker to tell him which shuttle flight to take back, he could hang around with her. If time permitted, he might do a little sightseeing. Rei would go wherever he wanted. It was so obvious—the only weird thing being human common sense, which was an obstacle. Humans were the only animals that required passports for moving around.
It was a little early, but Rei decided he’d call Lynn anyway and got up from the bed.
There was a knock at the door. Wondering if she’d been thinking along similar lines, Rei looked out the peephole and saw men in the corridor. Three of them, and from their faces he could tell they were Japanese.
“Who are you?” he asked from behind the door. It had been ages since he’d spoken Japanese.
“Fukai Rei-san, we’re here to greet you,” came the answer through the door. “We’re the welcome party for returning soldiers.”
“Don’t need it,” Rei replied.
“If that’s true, I’m afraid we’ll need you to sign a document saying so. If we don’t follow procedure, we could all be accused of neglecting our duties.”
These guys weren’t going to go away. Rei opened the door.
“Nice room,” one of them said.
“Get to the point,” Rei said.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the man acting as their representative as he took out a business card. Rei read it.
“Japanese naval development division?”
“We need excellent pilots like you for our naval air forces,” the man explained.
Rei suddenly realized it was all a setup. Pack people off to Faery for minor crimes, then exploit the best of the survivors. It was payback for the enormous national expenditures made to keep the Faery Air Force running. Which meant this was an offer he couldn’t refuse. He was obligated.
“I didn’t fight the JAM for the sake of you people,” Rei said.
“Oh?” answered the man. “Then what were you fighting for?”
“So that I could survive.”
“Then please, keep that talent alive. It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.”
“Which is to say,” said another, “that a man with your personal history won’t be able to get a civilian job.”
“Mind your own damned business,” Rei answered, even as he was thinking that resistance was useless. “I’ll live my life gazing at my own navel. Tell your superiors I refuse. I have that right.”
“Then we’ll take you back to Japan at once—”
“No way,” Rei replied. “I promised a pretty lady that I’d meet her.”
“I don’t believe you’ve had contact with anyone aside from Ms. Jackson, which means we can make things very difficult if you don’t accept our offer. We don’t want another country to make use of your talents. If you’re Japanese, you should use them in the service of your country. Aren’t you a patriot?”
“So, I come home and that’s the only value I have now?” Rei said. “Fly a fighter plane as a Japanese so I can kill people from another country? Humans, like me?”
“To protect our national interests. It’s all grounded in international law.”
“Maybe, but what does any of it matter? Winning or losing against fellow humans…Why would I want to do that? What nations need are public service organizations, not political and military power. But you people still haven’t created them. I don’t feel like risking my life for something so primitive. When I fought the JAM, I did it for my own sake, not so that I could be used by you people when I got home.”
“You’re saying you didn’t do it for your country?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you’re under arrest.”
Rei knew it’d do no good to shout about what right they had to do this. Even if he went to trial, no court would ever rule to allow him to go back to Faery. They’d brainwash him to make him fight for his country. He’d be made to walk down the path of self-destruction as a human. That was the only path for humans to take, after all. Humans enjoyed fighting other humans. Manipulating others, even occasionally sacrificing themselves. Even when they didn’t enjoy it, they couldn’t help but do it. It was all part of being human.
Rei stepped back.
“Resistance would not be to your advantage,” said the man.
“Damaging my abilities isn’t in your national interest,” Rei replied.
“If you don’t come along quietly, then we’ll have no choice. Still, I think you’re being a fool. We can guarantee you a position in society, honor, a good living. I guess you were born a traitor.”
The two men behind him drew out weapons that looked like stun guns. Rei could tell they were designed to paralyze. He’d never be able to win in a hand-to-hand fight, but fighting was the only option he had left, he thought as he backed into the room.
“Fukai, get down! Look away!”
The warning had been delivered in English with a Faery accent. Rei reflexively dropped to the floor, sensing dazzling light even through his sealed-shut eyelids. He thought at first someone had thrown a grenade, then realized it was a flashbang.
“Fukai! Out! Hurry!”
In a second, Rei was on his feet and heading in the direction of the voice. His vision was a little dim, but he could see the three Japanese soldiers rubbing their eyes.
He ran down the corridor, finding Lynn Jackson at the elevator bank, holding the door open on one. He threw himself into the car. Inside was a man he’d never seen before. Lynn quickly pushed a button.
“FAF intel, right?” Rei said to the man. “You got into that room somehow. How’d you do it?”
“Right,” the man replied. “FAF Intelligence Forces, combat division.”
“He got in through my room,” Lynn said. “From next door.”
“Oh, living the high life, huh?” Rei said. “You were keeping an eye on me from Lynn’s room?”
“Right,” replied the FAF intelligence agent. He was fairly young.
“Why? I’m retired…or were those documents I signed fakes?”
“They were real, hence the welcome wagon from your home country. I was also kind of surprised by how quickly they moved.”
“What you’re doing is illegal. You’re kidnapping me.”
“No, they were the ones acting illegally. They were attempting to kidnap someone who’d just reenlisted in the FAF.”
“Oh. Now I get it,” said Rei with a sigh. “Well, your timing’s perfect. Reenlistment would be very convenient for me at the moment.”
“That looks like the truth, Rei,” said Lynn.
“It is,” replied the agent. “Your reenlistment request was actually accepted by the FAF authorities the moment you left the airport and bought those newspapers.”
Rei thought about this for a moment.
“Major Booker,” he decided. “He had this all arranged from the start.”
“You mean this isn’t what you want?”
Those men claiming to be from the Japanese navy might have been actors, and the whole thing might have been a hoax set up by the FAF authorities to get him back to Faery. Still, it doesn’t matter, Rei thought. He’d made up his mind to go back well before any of this happened.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You saved me.”
The elevator car stopped at the entrance level, and the agent hustled them out.
“It’s dangerous to stay here, Lieutenant,” he said. “The guys chasing you haven’t received any official documents from us yet that prove you’re back in the FAF. We’ve got to get you on that shuttle. I’ve ordered my subordinate to take care of that. Just sign this and you’ll be good to go.”
If this was real, and not just a show for his benefit, he doubted having that paper was going to stop a nation from flexing its might against him.
“Ironic, eh? It’s safer for me to be on Faery with the JAM,” Rei said.
“Sorry you couldn’t take some time and let me show you the sights, Lieutenant Fukai. But then, I suppose you’re used to being in a hurry,” Lynn said as they left the hotel. Rei wondered what would have happened to him had this woman not been there. Then he suddenly realized that she was probably in as much danger here as he was.
“It’d probably be safer for you to come to Faery,” Rei told her. “You’re not a human, and it’d be dangerous for you to get mixed up in their stupid wars. With your career, you’ve got the civilian qualifications to come to Faery. You can do your work there,” Rei said, just before he got into a waiting car on the street. But Lynn shook her head.
“I also think the wars humans fight amongst themselves are foolish,” she said. “But I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“Because I still have hope. I believe humanity won’t always be this mad. It may be true that, like you, I’m not just a regular human. But in other ways I’m not like you at all.”
“I see,” Rei said. “Damn, this leave ended way too soon, but I’m glad I could meet you.”
“Next time you come, I’d like to play guide for you as much as you’d like.”
“As long as the price is fair.”
“Of course. Trust me,” Lynn Jackson said with a smile.
It’s a nice smile, Rei thought. He’d been lucky to see such a smile on his all too brief sojourn.
Later on, he could look back over all of this at his leisure and wonder what the hell had happened, but he knew some things for certain. First, his misgivings that Earth no longer existed were laid to rest. Second, he’d met a human who recognized the threat posed by the JAM. But if she’s not a regular human, then what is she? he wondered.
An Earther. That was it. He’d seen the smile of an actual Earther.
“May we meet again, Earther. Good luck.”
“And you, Lieutenant Fukai, man from Faery.”
Rei nodded, then climbed into the car and ordered the driver to go as he shut the door. His leave was over. Yukikaze was waiting.