Enemy Papers Read online

  And that was the sadness that made me cry. I was frightened, too.

  In two days I was up in the shack trying my legs, and in two more days Jerry helped me outside. The shack was located at the top of a long gentle rise in a scrub forest; none of the trees was any taller than five or six meters. At the bottom of the slope, better than eight kilometers from the shack, was the still-rolling sea. The Drac had carried me all that way.

  Our trusty nasesay had filled with water and had been dragged back into the sea soon after Jerry pulled me to dry land. With it went the remainder of the ration bars. Dracs are very fussy about what they eat, but hunger finally drove Jerry to sample some of the local flora and fauna—hunger and the human lump that was rapidly drifting away from lack of nourishment. The Drac had settled on a bland, starchy type of root, a green bushberry that when dried made an acceptable tea, and snakemeat. When I was well enough, Jerry taught me where to find the snakes and how to catch them.

  The snakes stick their heads out of holes near mudpools and you have to grab them before they can pull themselves back in, and it’s a serious tug-of-war to get one of them out. Then there is the rather unpleasant task of driving off the critter’s spirit. Using our skills acquired on the sandbar, you take one rock and smack it down on top of another, with the snake’s head in between. The real trick is trying to wrestle one of those things down long enough for the scalp treatment. The things were like greased fire hoses on steroids.

  Exploring, Jerry had found a partly eroded salt dome. In the days that followed, I grew stronger and added to our diet with several types of sea mollusk and a fruit resembling a cross between a pear and a plum. The one fish I caught from the ocean was so scary looking neither of us wanted to risk eating it. Besides the teeth, claws, and spines, it had long trailing purple appendages that secreted some sort of green pus. The smell was enough to gag a sewer rat. The next morning, on the sand where I had left the fish from hell, I saw the tracks of something else that had come from the sea, grabbed the dead fish, and dragged that tasty morsel back into the water. The Drac and I decided that seafood was not going to be one of the planet’s big export items.

  At night, as we chewed on the rubbery mollusks, I said to the Drac, “It’s getting colder, Jerry.”

  “Warm some tomorrow morning.”

  I shook my head. “I mean colder, day-by-day. Every night now it freezes and it takes longer every morning to melt off.”

  Those yellow eyes stared at me for a long time, then it said, “Ice season?”

  “I think we have to face it. This planet has a winter.”

  “How long? How cold?”

  I held out my hands. “Unknown.” I pointed with my thumb toward the door. “Some of those trees out there are losing their leaves now, though. The protection they give us from the winds is going with them. If it snows, we’re going to have to have food and firewood stored up.”

  The Drac looked around at the interior of the shack it had built. “Another place, we find. Need .” The Drac bent forward and scooped a handful of dirt from the ground and pointed at the hole its scraping had left. “Cudall, ne?”

  “Cave,” I answered. “You’re right. We need a cave.”

  Food was first. When dried next to the fire, the berrybush and roots kept well, and we tried both salting and smoking snakemeat. With strips of fiber from the berrybush for thread, Jerry and I pieced together the snake skins for winter clothing. The design we settled on involved two layers of skins with the down from berrybush seed pods stuffed between and then held in place by quilting the layers.

  It took three days of searching to find our first cave, and another three days before we found one that suited us. The mouth opened onto a view of the eternally tormented sea, but was set in the face of a low cliff well above sea level. Around the cave’s entrance we found great quantities of dead wood and loose stone. The wood we gathered for heat; and the stone we used to wall up the entrance, leaving only space enough for a hinged door. The hinges were made of snake leather and the door of wooden poles tied together with berrybush fiber. The first night after completing the door, the sea winds blew it to pieces; and we decided to go back to the original door design we had used on the sandbar.

  Deep inside the cave, we made our living quarters in a chamber with a wide, sandy floor. Still deeper, the cave had natural pools of water, which were fine for drinking but too cold for bathing. We used the pool chamber for our supply room. We lined the walls of our living quarters with piles of wood and made new beds out of snakeskins and seed pod down. In the center of the chamber we built a respectable fireplace with a large, flat stone over the coals for a griddle. The first night we spent in our new home, I discovered that, for the first time since ditching on that damned planet, I couldn’t hear the wind.

  During the long nights, we would sit at the fireplace making things—gloves, hats, packbags— out of snake leather, and we would talk. To break the monotony, we alternated days between speaking Drac and English, and by the time the winter hit with its first ice storm, each of us was comfortable in the other’s language.

  We talked of Jerry’s coming child.

  “What are you going to name it, Jerry?”

  “It already has a name. See, the Jeriba line has five names. My name is Shigan; before me came my parent, Gothig; before Gothig was Haesni; before Haesni was Ty, and before Ty was Zammis. The child is named Jeriba Zammis.”

  “Why only the five names? A human child can have just about any name its parents pick for it. In fact, once a human becomes an adult, he or she can pick any name he or she wants.”

  The Drac looked at me, its eyes filled with pity. “Davidge, how lost you must feel. You humans—how lost you must feel.”

  “Lost?”

  Jerry nodded. “Where do you come from, Davidge?”

  “You mean my parents?”

  “Yes.”

  I shrugged. “I remember my parents.”

  “And their parents?”

  “Sure, I remember my mother’s father. When I was young we used to visit him.”

  “Davidge, what do you know about this grandparent?”

  I rubbed my chin. “It’s kind of vague… I think he was in some kind of agriculture. I don’t know.”

  “And his parents?”

  I shook my head. “The only thing I remember is that somewhere along the line, English and Germans figured. Gavey Germans and English?”

  Jerry nodded. “Davidge, I can recite the history of my line back to the founding of my planet by Jeriba Ty, one of the original settlers, one hundred and twenty-nine generations ago. At our line’s archives on Draco, there are the records that trace the line across space to the racehome planet, Sindie, and there back seventy generations to Jeriba Ty, the founder of the Jeriba line.”

  “How does one become a founder?”

  “Only the firstborn carries the line. Products of second, third, or fourth births must found their own lines.”

  I nodded, impressed. “Why only the five names? Just to make it easier to remember them?”

  Jerry shook its head. “No. The names are things to which we add distinction; they are the same, commonplace five so that they do not overshadow the events that distinguish their bearers. The name I carry, Shigan, has been served by great soldiers, scholars, students of philosophy, and several priests. The name my child will carry has been served by scientists, teachers, and explorers.”

  “You remember all of your ancestors’ occupations?”

  Jerry nodded. “Yes, and what they each did and where they did it. You must recite your line before the line’s archives to be admitted into adulthood as I was twenty-two of my years ago. Zammis will do the same, except the child must begin its recitation,” Jerry smiled, “with my name, Jeriba Shigan.”

  “You can recite almost two hundred biographies from memory?”

  “Yes.”

  I went over to my bed and stretched out. As I stared up at the smoke being sucked through the crack in t
he chamber’s ceiling, I began to understand what Jerry meant by feeling lost. A Drac with several dozens of generations under its belt knew who it was and what it had to live up to. “Jerry?”

  “Yes, Davidge?”

  “Will you recite them for me?” I turned my head and looked at the Drac in time to see an expression of utter surprise melt into joy. It was only after years had passed that I learned I had done Jerry a great honor in requesting its line. Among the Dracs, it is a rare expression of respect, not only of the individual, but of the line.

  Jerry placed the hat it was sewing on the sand, stood and began.

  “Before you here I stand, Shigan of the line of Jeriba, born of Gothig, the teacher of music. A musician of high merit, the students of Gothig include Datzizh of the Nem line, Perravane of the Tuscor line, and many lesser musicians. Trained in music at the Shimuram, Gothig stood before the archives in the year 11,051 and spoke of its parent Haesni, the manufacturer of ships…”

  As I listened to Jerry’s singsong of formal Dracon, the backward biographies—beginning with death and ending with adulthood—I experienced a sense of time-binding, of being able to know and touch the past. Battles, empires built and destroyed, discoveries made, great things done—a tour through thousands of years of history, but perceived as a well-defined, living continuum.

  Against this: I, Willis of the Davidge line, stand before you, born of Sybil the housewife and Nathan the second-rate civil engineer, one of them born of Grandpop, who probably had something to do with agriculture, born of nobody in particular. Hell, I wasn’t even that! My older brother carried the line; not me. I listened and made up my mind to memorize the line of Jeriba.

  We talked of war:

  “That was a pretty neat trick, suckering me into the atmosphere, then ramming me.”

  Jerry shrugged. “Dracon fleet pilots are best; this is well known. I saw a Vikaan pilot once. He was very good, but Dracon fleet pilots are best.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “That’s why I shot your tail feathers off, huh?”

  “Lucky shot.”

  “And ramming my ship with a crippled fighter at five times the speed of sound with no pilot wasn’t a lucky shot, is that it?”

  Jerry shrugged, frowned, and continued sewing on the scraps of snake leather. “Why do the Earthmen invade this part of the galaxy, Davidge? All this horrible business on Planet Amadeen. We had thousands of years of peace before you came.”

  “Hah! Why do the Dracs invade? We were at peace too. What are you doing here? We didn’t start things, you know.”

  “We settle these planets. It is the Drac tradition. We are explorers and founders.”

  “Well, toad face, what do you think we are, a bunch of homebodies? Humans have had space travel for less than a hundred years, but we’ve settled almost twice as many planets as the Dracs—”

  Jerry held up a finger. “Exactly! You humans spread like a disease. Ashrak—criminals! Enough! We don’t want you here!”

  “Well, we’re here, and here to stay until every last Drac is off Amadeen. Now what are you going to do about that?”

  “You see what we do, Irkmaan, we fight!”

  “Phooey! You call that little scrap we were in a fight? Hell, Jerry, we were kicking you junk jocks out of the sky—”

  “Haw, Davidge! That’s why you sit here sucking on smoked snake!”

  I pulled the little rascal out of my mouth and pointed it at the Drac. “I notice your breath has a snake flavor too, Drac!”

  Jerry snorted and turned away from the fire. I felt stupid. I mean, what’s the point in trading macho shots with a hermaphrodite? Anyway, we weren’t going to settle the problems of war in between snake snacks. Also, I wanted to have Jerry check my recitation. I had over a hundred generations memorized. The Drac’s side was toward the fire, leaving enough light falling on its lap to see its sewing.

  “Jerry, what are you working on?”

  “We have nothing to talk about, Davidge.”

  “Come on, what is it?”

  Jerry turned its head toward me, then looked back into its lap and picked up a tiny snakeskin suit. “For Zammis.” Jerry smiled and I shook my head, then laughed.

  We talked of philosophy:

  “You studied Shizumaat, Jerry; why won’t you tell me about its teachings?”

  Jerry frowned. “No, Davidge.”

  “Are Shizumaat’s teachings secret or something?”

  Jerry shook its head. “No. But we honor Shizumaat too much for talk.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Do you mean too much to talk about it, or to talk about it with a human?”

  “Not with humans, Davidge; just not with you.”

  “Why?”

  Jerry lifted its head and narrowed its yellow eyes. “You know what you said… on the sandbar.”

  I scratched my head and vaguely recalled the curse I laid on the Drac about Shizumaat eating it. I held out my hands. “But, Jerry, I was mad, angry. You can’t hold me accountable for what I said then.”

  “I do.”

  “Will it change anything if I apologize?”

  “Not a thing.”

  I stopped myself from saying something nasty and thought back to that moment when Jerry and I stood ready to strangle each other. I remembered something about that meeting and screwed the corners of my mouth in place to keep from smiling. “Will you tell me Shizumaat’s teachings if I forgive you… for what you said about Mickey Mouse?” I bowed my head in an appearance of reverence, although its chief purpose was to suppress a cackle.

  Jerry looked up at me, its face pained with guilt. “I have felt bad about that, Davidge. If you forgive me, I will talk about Shizumaat.”

  “Then I forgive you, Jerry.”

  “One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “You must tell me of the teachings of Mickey Mouse.”

  “I’ll… uh, do my best.”

  We talked of Zammis:

  “Jerry, what do you want little Zammy to be?”

  The Drac shrugged. “Zammis must live up to its own name. I want it to do that with honor. If Zammis does that, it is all I can ask.”

  “Zammy will pick its own trade?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t there anything special you want, though?”

  Jerry nodded. “Yes, there is.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Zammis will, one day, find itself off this miserable planet.”

  I nodded. “Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  The winter dragged on until Jerry and I began wondering if we had gotten in on the beginning of an ice age. Outside the cave, everything was coated with a thick layer of ice, and the low temperature combined with the steady winds made venturing outside a temptation of death by falls or freezing. Still, by mutual agreement, we both went outside to relieve ourselves. There were several isolated chambers deep in the cave; but we feared polluting our water supply, not to mention the air inside the cave. The main risk outside was dropping one’s drawers at a wind chill factor that froze breath vapor before it could be blown through the thin face muffs we had made out of our flight suits. We learned not to dawdle.

  One morning, Jerry was outside answering the call, while I stayed by the fire mashing up dried roots with water for griddle cakes. I heard Jerry call from the mouth of the cave. “Davidge!”

  “What?”

  “Davidge, come quick!”

  A ship! It had to be! I put the shell bowl on the sand, put on my hat and gloves, and ran through the passage. As I came close to the door, I untied the muff from around my neck and tied it over my mouth and nose to protect my lungs. Jerry, its head bundled in a similar manner, was looking through the door, waving me on. “What is it?”

  Jerry stepped away from the door to let me through. “Come, look!”

  Sunlight.

  Blue sky and sunlight.

  In the distance, over the sea, new clouds were piling up; but above us the sky was clear. Neither of us c
ould look at the sun directly, but we turned our faces to it and felt the rays of Fyrine on our skins. The light glared and sparkled off the ice-covered rocks and trees. “Beautiful.”

  “Yes.” Jerry grabbed my sleeve with a gloved hand. “Davidge, you know what this means?”

  “What?”

  “Signal fires at night. On a clear night, a large fire could be seen from orbit, ne?”

  I looked at Jerry, then back at the sky. “I don’t know. If the fire were big enough, and we get a clear night, and if anybody picks that moment to look…” I let my head hang down. “That’s always supposing that there’s someone in orbit up there to do the looking.” I felt the pain begin in my fingers. “We better go back in.”

  “Davidge, it’s a chance!”

  “What are we going to use for wood, Jerry?” I held out an arm toward the trees above and around the cave. “Everything that can burn has at least fifteen centimeters of ice on it.”

  “In the cave—”

  “Our firewood?” I shook my head. “How long is this winter going to last? Can you be sure that we have enough wood to waste on signal fires?”

  “It’s a chance, Davidge. It’s a chance!”

  Our survival riding on a toss of the dice. I shrugged. “Why not?”

  We spent the next few hours hauling a quarter of our carefully gathered firewood and dumping it outside the mouth of the cave. By the time we were finished and long before night came, the sky was again a solid blanket of grey. Several times each night, we would check the sky, waiting for stars to appear. During the days, we would frequently have to spend several hours beating the ice off the wood pile. Still, it gave both of us hope, until the wood in the cave ran out and we had to start borrowing from the signal pile.

  That night, for the first time, the Drac looked absolutely defeated. Jerry sat at the fireplace, staring at the flames. Its hand reached inside its snakeskin jacket through the neck and pulled out a small golden cube suspended on a chain. Jerry held the cube clasped in both hands, shut its eyes, and began mumbling in Drac. I watched from my bed until Jerry finished. The Drac sighed, nodded, and replaced the object within its jacket.