. . .
Mr. Enemy pulls half a sandwich out from under his pillow. It’s covered in greasy saran wrap. It’s a peanut butter sandwich, so it’s not clear where the grease came from. He bites deep.
“What do you need me for?” he says.
“What does it mean to you,” Melanie asks, “that you’re Jeremiah Clean’s enemy?”
Mr. Enemy gestures with the sandwich. Now there’s peanut butter on the cell wall. It’s a horribly artistic Rorschach smear.
“There’s an obstacle in everyone’s path,” Mr. Enemy says. “There’s a stumbling block. Someone or something who gets in the way. Someone who is the antithesis of what you believe in. Someone who means, just ’cause they exist, that you can’t have what you want. That’s what it means to be an enemy. That’s what it means to be bad, you know, in someone else’s world.”
. . .
“Not everything has an enemy,” Melanie says.
“If we didn’t have enemies,” says Mr. Enemy, “we’d be as gods. Look.”
He holds up the saran-wrapped sandwich.
“Thon-Gul X is the warlord of a distant star. He is the incarnate body of the wicked god of space, and he wants to destroy the world. He would do it, too. He’d destroy everything, if he had to, just to get at us. He would make himself into the warlord, the beginning and the ending, wrapped around space and time. But —
. . .
“Saran wrap clings between Thon-Gul X and his plans. If he could destroy it, then he would be unlimited. But he cannot, because — well, ultimately, because saran wrap is another aspect of himself.”
Melanie squints at him.
“It was invented on Earth,” she says.
“‘If only it did not thus cling!’” Mr. Enemy quotes in satisfaction. “But it is clinging. Thus is the lament of Thon-Gul X.”
– 5 –
Jane makes an enemy. Well, more of a potato pancake, really. She fries it up in a pan.
It has two ears. It has two eyes. It has a nose. “It’s Johnny Pancake!” she says.
She doesn’t eat it, though.
“It’s not that it’s too cute,” she says. “I’m just not hungry. I made too much!”
So she leaves Johnny Pancake on the sink.
It’s about ten years before Mr. Enemy. Fifteen, before the jaguars’ll come down.
. . .
Jane sleeps. She goes to school. Then she comes home. She invites a young girl named Emily over. Then she and Emily play.
“Ew,” says Jane, looking at Johnny Pancake. “I think he’s going bad.”
Emily grins a little. Emily’s been taught by a dwarf-smith. She’s a girl with superior knowledge! “You know,” she says, “food doesn’t have to go bad like that.”
“Oh?”
“The reason food goes bad,” Emily says, “is the entropy. But if you feed the food, that balances the entropy out!”
“That’s true!” Jane realizes. “It’s adding energy usable for work from outside the system!”
. . .
Jane tries feeding Johnny Pancake some cheese food. He doesn’t eat it, because he isn’t cheese. She tries feeding him some pizza food and some fish food. Then she bonks herself on the side of her head. Duh! She takes down the big box of potato pancake food and pours some on Johnny Pancake.
“See?” Emily says. “He’s less rotten already!”
She tickles Johnny Pancake under the chin.
“There’s a good potato,” she says.
“That’s so,” Jane agrees.
“You gonna eat him now?” Emily says.
“Nah,” Jane says, giggling. “I ate his whole family for dinner yesterday.”
They play, instead.
. . .
Jane sleeps. She wakes up. She goes to school. She comes home. She looks at Johnny Pancake.
“You gonna throw that out?” Martin asks. He’s her brother. Well, her adoptive brother. Well, the guy who found her in the pantry. Really, there is no good way to summarize their relationship.
“No,” she says. “Silly! That’s Johnny Pancake.”
“No?”
“He’s not going bad,” Jane says, “so I won’t eat him.”
“Hmm,” Martin says. He pokes at Johnny Pancake. “Looks pretty bad to me.”
But he shrugs. He takes down the potato pancake food. He tosses the box to Jane. Then he goes off to his room to do whatever it is boys actually do.
(Jane isn’t quite sure. It’s mysterious!)
So she feeds Johnny Pancake and puts the box of potato pancake food away.
. . .
Days pass.
Eventually Martin moves Johnny Pancake to a special spot on the dining room table, in a little glass pan just his size, with a little ribbon by his head.
“I can’t tell if you’re teasing me or being nice to my potato pancake,” Jane says.
“I’m not inclined to specify,” Martin says.
. . .
It seems to Jane that she should probably eat Johnny Pancake sometime. But it’s never a good time. She doesn’t want him to go bad, either, so she feeds him every day.
. . .
One day, as Jane is working on her homework, she feels a strange presence in the room.
“You’ve done that problem wrong,” says the voice of Johnny Pancake.
Jane beams. “You woke up!”
She looks up. Johnny Pancake is motionless. His voice is a psychic projection.
. . .
“Common wisdom says that you shouldn’t feed food more than a few times,” Johnny Pancake says, “lest it grow too strong.”
“My wisdom is of the uncommon variety,” says Jane. “That’s why this geometry problem’s so hard!”
“It might help to remember that triangles have three sides.”
“Yes,” agrees Jane.
She erases the problem and starts over. After a moment, she says, “Is it okay that I haven’t eaten you yet?”
“Yes. I would in fact rather that you not eat me. But please, Jane, bear in mind that I must not grow rotten; for I am awake now, and if I rot, I shall take a horrible vengeance on your civilization.”
“It’s a deal!” says Jane.
. . .
Jane is happier now that Johnny Pancake is awake. He helps her with her homework. Once he develops basic telekinetic abilities, he helps her with chores. Eventually, Martin finds out.
“Jane,” Martin says, “this floor appears to have been vacuumed by a telekinetic potato pancake.”
“What an interesting observation!” Jane declares.
Martin narrows his eyes suspiciously. “If your potato pancake has woken up, it’s a terrible threat to human civilization.”
“Is that a problem?”
Martin considers this for a time.
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