The Enemy in the Mirror

by Sandra Miller

Table of Contents
Part 3 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

* * *

If I had felt things were bad the morning I sat by the lake and thought about drowning, it was only because I had not realized how much worse they could still have been. Sitting alone in the cold, dark jail cell, I began to get a feeling for what bad really was. I had not heard any of the news reports Ronald had mentioned, so I had no idea what these policemen must have heard about me, but their opinions were clear enough. They taunted me, humiliated me, and denied me the basic rights of food and privacy. And who would care? It was clear enough that to them I was public enemy number one.

I sat there in that cell, in the dark that seemed to my Allacore eyes as bright as daylight, and thought about everything that had happened to me in the past weeks. I looked at my gloves, at my cloak, at my bare, tough feet, and thought about all that I was hiding.

I pulled off the gloves, and extended my talons. I had only recently learned how to do that consciously, and oddly enough, I was proud of the skill. Holding out my hands, I watched the moonlight from the single barred window play across the surfaces of my talons, surprised to find that I thought it beautiful. And they were my talons — no longer strange after the weeks I had spent with them. I had found them surprisingly useful on occasions, from scaring away the government agent in Charlie’s Diner, to digging holes, to cutting twine.

I dropped my cloak and spread my wings. There almost wasn’t room to extend them fully in the small cell, but it felt undeniably good to stretch them. Perhaps I wasn’t doing myself any favors keeping them curled up all the time, trying to hide what everyone knew. In the moonlight, the feathers had a soft glow. I reached around and stroked at them. They were soft! I had spent so much time trying to deny the changes I had gone through, I had never even noticed the feathers on my wings had such a wonderful texture. And those feet — there was something to be said for the ability to wander the wild barefoot.

Somehow, even though I wished these changes had never happened, they had come to be a part of my definition of me. As the grandmotherly lady in the blue house had shown me, it was possible to have these Allacore features and still be very human. Which made me wonder about the Allacores themselves. They had shown up literally out of the blue three months ago, attacking and raiding and capturing. Why? I had never before concerned myself with their motives, being too busy despising them on a gut level that had nothing to do with their actions. Trevyn had been right. I was a xenophobe.

Revelation struck me like lightning, that I could change so much and yet still be me. In that new light, I wondered why my first response had been to run away. That in turn brought me to another realization: I couldn’t do this alone. I had been trying, and failing, to handle it on my own for a month now. Every time someone tried to help me, I ran away — from Trevyn, from LaVerne, from others I had never even given a chance. On my own, I could never hope to be more than I was right now; a fugitive running from town to town, frightening folks who didn’t know any better. I needed friends — I needed a “normal” person to vouch for me that other people would trust, to make the world take a closer look at me. And from there, who knew what I might be able to do?

I was really in a unique position to be of help with the Allacore situation, it finally occurred to me, *because* of the metamorphosis I had undergone. I was no longer completely human, nor was I completely Allacore, but somewhere in the middle. I was something that both sides could relate to, which was something that had been missing.

Until now. In an odd way, being in jail was the best thing that had happened to me since I left Trevyn’s apartment a month ago. For the first time I could look past my loss and see the possibilities. For the first time I was master of my own destiny. And for the first time I knew clearly where I was headed.

I was going back to Trevyn Blaine.

That night, I did something I had not done for four weeks. I concentrated, and summoned a ball of light. Standing as far away as I could, with my back pressed against the bars, I hurled it at the outside wall of the cell.

Jail cells were built tough, but they were not built to withstand miniature suns. A gaping, smoldering hole had opened in the wall, taking a good portion of the ceiling of my cell with it. The noise probably awakened the whole town, but I didn’t care. Before the dust had begun to settle, I was gone.

* * *

“Ellena!” Trevyn’s gasp was involuntary, the joy on his face genuine. I had worried about what sort of reception I might receive, how his feelings might have changed after I left without a word. I had worried enough that, though I had located his new apartment within two hours of arriving in Washington, D.C, I had waited until almost midnight to actually ring the doorbell. If he had turned against me, I wanted to be able to escape.

But apparently I needn’t have worried. Despite the late hour he was dressed and seemed awake, and the lights in the apartment were on. He hugged me hard and pulled me inside.

“I can’t believe it’s really you! Oh, Ellena, when I saw the news reports about your escape, I knew you would be coming. I don’t know how, but I knew. Sit down, I’ll get you something to eat, to drink. Things must have been rough for you.”

“Thank you,” I said, and sat down on the couch. I had no idea what to say to him. I had not even begun to sort it out when he came back from the kitchen, with a cold cut sandwich and a glass of wine. “Oh, thank you,” I said again. The trip to D.C. had not been as hard for me as the month before it, because I knew at last where I was going, but I had still been a fugitive, eating only what I could find, where I could find it. That sandwich was the best thing I had seen in days.

He waited until I was halfway through it to say anything. “I should shoot you, you know, for running out like you did. Are you all right?”

I looked up at him in surprise. “Are you kidding? Trevyn, you are special advisor to the President on the Allacore situation. Do you think you would have gotten here with me by your side?”

He glowered at me. “Do you think I would have cared?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, humbled. “I was doing what I thought was best. I didn’t want to endanger you.”

“I know. But you haven’t answered me. Are you all right?”

I finished eating and sat back on the couch. “As all right as I will ever be. I am not the same as I used to be. But that’s okay.”

He beamed at me. “I never thought I would hear you say that. I was worried that you would never accept what had happened. Honestly, Ellena, I was afraid you had left to do away with yourself.”

I laughed uncomfortably, brushing away the thought of a time when I had considered just that. “Listen, Trevyn, there is another reason why I had to find you. I want to help with the Allacore situation. Does anyone have any idea why they are invading us?”

He looked at me curiously. “No. We haven’t had much success getting them to talk with us. All we can assume is that they want the planet, and have no particular compunctions against removing us to get it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think we need to find out. Until we know why they are doing what they are, we don’t really know if we have a hope of negotiating with them.”

“Negotiating? You really have changed. How do you propose to get them to talk to us?”

“Me,” I said simply. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might not be the only xenophobe you’ve been dealing with?”

Trevyn goggled at me. “You’re right. It’s that simple. They won’t talk to us for the same reason they attack us — whatever that is. You — you are similar enough to them that you might stand a chance of getting them to talk to you.” He slapped the arm of the chair he was sitting in. “That’s brilliant!”

I smiled and batted my eyelashes at him. “Of course. Some things have not changed.”

* * *

Within days, I was at the Pentagon, sitting in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair in front of a television camera. With Trevyn on my side, it was amazing how quickly the charges against me were resolved. With his testimony about what had happened at the university, and LaVerne’s account of the incident at Charlie’s Diner, and my idea about communicating with the Allacores through me, the justice system was more than happy to overlook the jail building I had damaged in my escape.

So now I faced the blinking red light above the camera’s lens that meant our broadcast was live. This was sent on every frequency possible, in the hopes that the Allacore would receive one of them. Could they even receive television broadcasts? We didn’t know. We could only hope.

“Men and women of the Allacore,” I said, “we of Earth send greetings. I am contacting you this day to ask for communication. I know that you do not wish to talk to the humans. I ask you instead to talk to me. You know who I am; you know what I am. I am willing to meet on whatever terms you name. If this proposal is acceptable, contact us however you wish and name your terms. I will meet them.”

The broadcast was run three times, then the airways were cleared for twenty minutes to await any possible response. The pattern was then repeated. We couldn’t force them to listen, we couldn’t force them to answer.

All we could do was wait.

* * *

Trevyn shook me out of a sound sleep that night. “Wh... what?” I stammered, flustered. “What happened?” I caught sight of the red glowing digits of the alarm clock as I sat up in bed. 2:34 am.

“Hurry and get dressed,” he said. “It’s the Allacore.”

“Oh!” I was out of bed in an instant, and dressed almost as fast. I followed him out into the hallway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the phone. Do we need to leave right away?”

He cast a strange look over his shoulder at me.

In the living room were three Allacores, two females and one male, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “Oh,” I said weakly, finally understanding.

“Greetings, Ellena,” one of the women said. “We have accepted your offer to communicate. I am Commander Gretasa. This is Commander Sothe, and Commodore Liasa.”

“I am honored,” I said. Commander Gretasa’s wore her white hair plaited in long braids that hung down her back. She wore leather armor, and gold earrings. I had never seen an Allacore wear jewelry before. I wondered how many other things about them I had never guessed. Commander Sothe stood slightly behind the two females, also in leather armor. He had a long scar that ran from his right temple down to the corner of his mouth.

Commodore Liasa was easily the tallest of the three. She wore bright silver armor, and had her hair cut short, though not as short as the commander I had encountered. Her eyes were bright and intelligent.

“Would you like to sit?” I gestured at the couch. It wasn’t a brilliant opener, but I didn’t know what else to say, and I wanted to be as polite as I could. If there was any chance of stopping this hopeless war, I was sure it would have to come from this meeting.

“Thank you, no.” Commodore Liasa was gracious, but firm. “Your offer of dialogue intrigued us. Though we know you are essentially human, I must admit that we find it easier to converse with someone who looks as one of our own.”

“I can understand that,” I said truthfully. “I wanted to discuss any possibility that may exist of peacefully resolving this dispute. You may not be aware of it, but we actually have no idea why you have attacked us.”

“We attacked you?” Commander Gretasa sounded honestly shocked. “The humans began this dispute. We have only brought it back to your planet.”

“What?” I glanced at Trevyn, but he seemed as confused as I was. “Our hyperdrive ship Intrepid was lost long ago, and we have not judged it worth the risk to try again.”

“Lost?” Liasa leaned closer. “The Intrepid was not lost. We destroyed it.”

Trevyn’s gasp echoed my feelings, but I did my best to remain neutral in my response. “I don’t understand.”

The Commodore began to pace across the small living room. “The Intrepid came out of hyperspace near our home planet. They landed there, without contacting us, without our permission. Our fathers asked them to leave.” She shrugged. “I know the humans have a low opinion of us, Ellena, but all we desire, all we ever desired, was to be left alone. The Intrepid ignored our request, claiming that their situation was such that they had no choice. They had a dying crewman, they said, they must find medical assistance.”

“That sounds excusable,” I said carefully.

“Does it?” Liasa was obviously trying hard to keep her temper in check. “I suppose it would, until one considers that this human was dying of a human disease! Allacores had never been exposed to this illness, had no immunity to it, no defense against it — it ravaged our planet. Half of our people died from it. Those who survived built a ship — our ship — and started toward Earth. They knew the journey was too long to make in a lifetime — or several. But what was there to stay for? They left for vengeance against the human barbarians. Now we, their descendants, have arrived to take it.”

“Oh, my Lord.” I sat down heavily. “I... I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I can plead our innocence to you. You’ve been raised to hate us.”

“No. We have been raised to hate those with no honor. Landing a ship with an alien disease on a thriving planet was a dishonorable action. Did it mean the entire planet the ship came from was dishonorable? We did not know. But when we arrived here, we were fired upon. There was no contact, no attempts to communicate or to discover our purpose. If we had reacted similarly to the Intrepid, our planet might have been spared its destruction.

“But to attack a traveler unprovoked is an action without honor. When some of our people were sent to the surface of your planet to seek dialogue, they were spurned and attacked before they could even speak. These are actions without honor. What could we then assume, but that the entire planet was like this?”

I shook my head. “Those actions were not motivated by blind hate, Commodore. Those people acted out of fear. Fear may be a product of ignorance, but it is not dishonorable. To some, it would seem dishonorable to seek vengeance on people many generations removed from those who did you harm.”

Liasa seemed surprised. “That is a more logical argument than I expected to hear from a human.” She glanced at her companions. “We should leave you now. You have given us much to consider. I must admit we thought of humans as savages, monsters. We weren’t sure the concept of honor would even be understood here.

“Our basis for this war may need to be reconsidered. It seems we have some matters to discuss with regard to our vengeance, and whether it is justified. We shall need more communication, and we shall need it with a larger group of those in command. Will that be possible?”

“Absolutely.” I managed to wait until after they had left to do a victory dance. Contrary to my earlier beliefs, this was an intelligent and logical opponent, and I felt certain that such an enemy could be reasoned with. A dispute that began over a misunderstanding did not need to continue that way if both sides were willing to talk. I was humbled to find that the attitude I had once held toward Allacores was identical to the one they held about me!

Once, when the world around me was chaos, my own life reflected that chaos in terrifying ways. I had fought changes I could not control, I had tried to be an island, and nearly killed myself doing it. What couldn’t be changed must be accepted. I knew that now, and that knowledge had helped me to end my own suffering, and possibly a larger hurt as well. Now that I had brought my life into balance again, it seemed perhaps the world around me was ready to follow my lead.