The Enemy Papers Read online

  For lack of a better term, I called the ice-melting season "spring." It would be a long time before the scrub forest showed any green or the snakes ventured forth from their icy holes. The sky maintained its eternal cover of dark, angry clouds, and still the sleet would come and coat everything with a hard, slippery glaze. But the next day the glaze would melt, and the warmer air would push another millimeter into the soil.

  I realized that this was the time to be gathering wood. Before the winter hit, Jerry and I working together hadn't gathered enough wood. The short summer would have to be spent putting up food for the next winter. I was hoping to build a tighter door over the mouth of the cave, and I swore that I would figure out some kind of indoor plumbing. Dropping your drawers outside in the middle of winter was dangerous. My mind was full of these things as I stretched out on my mattress watching the smoke curl through a crack in the roof of the cave. Zammis was off in the back of the cave playing with some rocks that it had found, and I must have fallen asleep. I awoke with the kid shaking my arm.

  "Uncle?"

  "Huh? Zammis?"

  "Uncle. Look."

  I rolled over on my left side and faced the Drac. Zammis was holding up its right hand, fingers spread out. "What is it, Zammis?"

  "Look." It pointed at each of its three fingers in turn.

  "One, two, three."

  "So?"

  "Look." Zammis grabbed my right hand and spread out the fingers.

  "One, two, three, four, five!"

  I nodded. "So you can count to five."

  The Drac frowned and made an impatient gesture with its tiny fists. "Look." It took my outstretched hand and placed its own on top of it. With its other hand, Zammis pointed first at one of its own fingers, then at one of mine. "One, one." The child's yellow eyes studied me to see if I understood.

  "Yes."

  The child pointed again. "Two, two." It looked at me, then looked back at my hand and pointed. "Three, three." Then he grabbed my two remaining fingers. "Four, five?" It dropped my hand, then pointed to the side of its own hand. "Four, five?"

  I shook my head. Zammis, at less than four Earth months old, had detected part of the difference between Dracs and humans. A human child would be—what—five, six, or seven years old before asking questions like that. I sighed. "Zammis."

  "Yes, Uncle?"

  "Zammis, you are a Drac. Dracs only have three fingers on a hand." I held up my right hand and wiggled the fingers. "I'm a human. I have five."

  I swear that tears welled in the child's eyes, Zammis held out its hands, looked at them, then shook its head. "Grow four, five?"

  I sat up and faced the kid. Zammis was wondering where its other four fingers had gone. "Look, Zammis. You and I are different. . . different kinds of beings, understand?"

  Zammis shook his head. "Grow four, five?"

  "You won't. You're a Drac." I pointed at my chest. "I'm a human." This was getting me nowhere. "Your parent, where you came from, was a Drac. Do you understand?"

  Zammis frowned. "Drac. What Drac?"

  The urge to resort to the timeless standby of "you'll understand when you get older" pounded at the back of my mind. I shook my head. "Dracs have three fingers on each hand. Your parent had three fingers on each hand." I rubbed my beard. "My parent was a human and had five fingers on each hand. That's why I have five fingers on each hand."

  Zammis knelt on the sand and studied its fingers. It looked up at me, back to its hands, then back to me. "What parent?"

  I studied the kid. It must be having an identity crisis of some kind. I was the only person it had ever seen, and I had five fingers per hand. "A parent is ... the thing ..." I scratched my beard again. "Look ... we all come from someplace. I had a mother and father—two different kinds of humans—that gave me life; that made me, understand?" Zammis gave me a look that could be interpreted as "Mac, you are full of it." I shrugged. "I don't know if I can explain it."

  Zammis pointed at its own chest. "My mother? My father?"

  I held out my hands, dropped them into my lap, pursed my lips, scratched my beard, and generally stalled for time. Zammis held an unblinking gaze on me the entire time. "Look, Zammis. You don't have a mother and a father. I'm a human, so I have them; you're a Drac. You have a parent—just one, see?"

  Zammis shook its head. It looked at me, then pointed at its own chest. "Drac."

  "Right."

  Zammis pointed at my chest. "Human."

  "Right again."

  Zammis removed its hand and dropped it in its lap. "Where Drac come from?"

  Sweet Jesus! Trying to explain hermaphroditic reproduction to a kid who shouldn't even be crawling yet! "Zammis ..." I held up my hands, then dropped them into my lap. "Look. You see how much bigger I am than you?"

  "Yes, Uncle."

  "Good." I ran my fingers through my hair, fighting for time and inspiration. "Your parent was big, like me. Its name was Jeriba Shigan." Funny how just saying the name was painful.

  "Jeriba Shigan was like you. It only had three fingers on each hand. It grew you in its tummy." I poked Zammis's middle. "Understand?"

  Zammis giggled and held its hands over its stomach. "Uncle, how Dracs grow there?"

  I lifted my legs onto the mattress and stretched out. Where do little Dracs come from? I looked over to Zammis and saw the child hanging upon my every word. I grimaced and told the truth. "Damned if I know, Zammis. Damned if I know." Thirty seconds later, Zammis was back playing with its rocks.

  Summer, and I taught Zammis how to capture and skin the long grey snakes, and then how to smoke the meat. The child would squat on the shallow bank above a mudpool, its yellow eyes fixed on the snake holes in the bank, waiting for one of the occupants to poke out its head. The wind would blow, but Zammis wouldn't move. Then a flat, triangular head set with tiny blue eyes would appear. The snake would check the pool, turn and check the bank, then check the sky. It would advance out of the hole a bit, then check it all again. Often the snakes would look directly at Zammis, but the Drac could have been carved from rock. Zammis wouldn't move until the snake was too far out of the hole to pull itself back in tail first. Then Zammis would strike, grabbing the snake with both hands just behind the head. The snakes had no fangs and weren't poisonous, but they were lively enough to toss Zammis into the mudpool on occasion.

  The skins were spread and wrapped around tree trunks and pegged in place to dry. The tree trunks were kept in an open place near the entrance to the cave, but under an overhang that faced away from the ocean. About two thirds of the skins put up in this manner cured; the remaining third would rot.

  Beyond the skin room was the smokehouse: a rock-walled chamber that we would hang with rows of snakemeat. A greenwood fire would be set in a pit in the chamber's floor; then we would fill in the small opening with rocks and dirt.

  "Uncle, why doesn't the meat rot after it's smoked?"

  I thought upon it. "I'm not sure; I just know it doesn't."

  "Why do you know?"

  I shrugged. "I just do. I read about it, probably."

  "What's read?"

  "Reading. Like when I sit down and read The Talman."

  "Does The Talman say why the meat doesn't rot?"

  "No. I meant that I probably read it in another book."

  "Do we have more books?"

  I shook my head. "I meant before I came to this planet."

  "Why did you come to this planet?"

  "I told you. Your parent and I were stranded here during the battle."

  "Why do the humans and Dracs fight?"

  "It's very complicated." I waved my hands about for a bit. The human line was that the Dracs were aggressors invading our space. The Drac line was that the humans were aggressors invading their space. The truth? "Zammis, it has to do with the colonization of new planets. Both races are expanding and both races have a tradition of exploring and colonizing new planets. I guess we just expanded into each other. Understand?"

  Zammis nodded, then becam
e mercifully silent as it fell into deep thought. The main thing I learned from the Drac child was all of the questions I didn't have answers to. I was feeling very smug, however, at having gotten Zammis to understand about the war, thereby avoiding my ignorance on the subject of preserving meat. Uncle?"

  "Yes, Zammis?"

  "What's a planet?"

  As the cold, wet summer came to an end, we had the cave jammed with firewood and preserved food. With that out of the way, I concentrated my efforts on making some kind of indoor plumbing out of the natural pools in the chambers deep within the cave. The bathtub was no problem. By dropping heated rocks into one of the pools, the water could be brought up to a bearable—even comfortable—temperature. After bathing, the hollow stems of a bamboolike plant could be used to siphon out the dirty water. The tub could then be refilled from the pool above. The problem was where to siphon the water. Several of the chambers had holes in their floors. The first three holes we tried drained into our main chamber, wetting the low edge near the entrance. The previous winter, Jerry and I had considered using one of those holes for a toilet that we would flush with water from the pools. Since we didn't know where the goodies would come out, we decided against it. I was glad we had.

  The fourth hole Zammis and I tried drained out below the entrance to the cave in the face of the cliff. Not ideal, but better than answering the call of nature in the middle of a combination ice storm and blizzard. We rigged up the hole as a drain for both the tub and toilet. As Zammis and I prepared to enjoy our first hot bath, I removed my snake-skins, tested the water with my toe, then stepped in. "Great!" I turned to Zammis, the child still half dressed. "Come on in, Zammis. The water's fine." Zammis was staring at me, its mouth hanging open. "What's the matter?"

  The child stared wide-eyed, then pointed at me with a three-fingered hand. "Uncle. What's that?"

  I looked down. "Oh." I shook my head, then looked up at the child. "Zammis, I explained all that, remember? I'm a human."

  "But what's it for?"

  I sat down in the warm water, removing the object of discussion from sight "It's for the elimination of liquid wastes . . . among other things. Now, hop in and get washed."

  Zammis shucked its snakeskins, looked down at its own smooth-surfaced, combined system, then climbed into the tube. The child settled into the water up to its neck, its yellow eyes studying me. "Uncle?"

  "Yes?"

  "What other things?"

  Well, I told Zammis. For the first time, the Drac appeared to be trying to decide whether my response was truthful or not, rather than its usual acceptance of my every assertion. In fact, I was convinced that Zammis thought I was lying—probably because I was.

  Winter began with a sprinkle of snowflakes carried on a gentle breeze. I took Zammis above the cave to the scrub forest. I held the child's hand as we stood before the pile of rocks that served as Jerry's grave. Zammis pulled its snakeskins against the wind, bowed its head, then turned and looked up into my face. "Uncle, this is the grave of my parent?"

  I nodded. "Yes."

  Zammis turned back to the grave, then shook its head. "Uncle, how should I feel?"

  "I don't understand, Zammis."

  The child nodded at the gravel "I can see that you are sad being here. I think you want me to feel the same. Do you?"

  I frowned, then shook my head. "No. I don't want you to be sad. I just wanted you to know where it is."

  "May I go now?"

  "Sure. Are you certain you know the way back to the cave?"

  "Yes. I just want to make sure my soap doesn't burn again."

  I watched as the child turned and scurried off into the naked trees, then I turned back to the grave. "Well, Jerry, what do you think of your kid? Zammis was using wood ashes to clean the grease off the shells, then it put a shell back on the fire and put water in it to boil off the burnt-on food. Fat and ashes. The next thing, Jerry, we were making soap. The kid's first batch almost took the hide off us, but the formula's improving."

  I looked up at the clouds, then brought my glance down to the sea. In the distance, low, dark clouds were building up. "See that? You know what that means, don't you? Ice storm number one. By this time tomorrow there'll be five centimeters of ice over everything." The wind picked up and I squatted next to the grave to replace a rock that had rolled from the pile. "Zammis is a good kid, Jerry. I wanted to hate it. After you died, I wanted to hate it. Zammis is pretty hard to hate, though."

  I replaced the rock, then looked back toward the sea. "I don't know how we're going to make it off planet, Jerry—"

  I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my vision. I turned to the right and looked over the tops of the trees. Against the grey sky, a black speck streaked away. I followed it with my eyes until it went above the clouds. I listened, hoping to hear an exhaust roar, but my heart was pounding so hard, all I could hear was the wind. Was it a ship? I stood, took a few steps in the direction the speck was going, then stopped. Turning my head, I saw that the rocks on Jerry's grave were already capped with thin layers of fine snow. I shrugged and headed for the cave.

  "Probably just a bird."

  Zammis sat on its mattress, stabbing several pieces of snakeskin with a bone needle. I stretched out on my own mattress and watched the smoke curl up toward the crack in the ceiling. Was it a bird? Or was it a ship? Damn, but it worked on me. Escape from the planet had been out of my thoughts, had been buried, hidden for all that summer. But again, it twisted at me. To walk where a sun shined, to wear cloth again, experience central heating, eat food prepared by a chef, to be among . . . people again.

  I rolled over on my right side and stared at the wall next to my mattress. People. Human people. I closed my eyes and swallowed. Girl human people. Female persons. Images drifted before my eyes—faces, bodies, laughing couples, the dance after flight training . . . what was her name? Dolora? Dora?

  There was that one fighter jock in the squadron. Carmia Jackman. Hard as nails, but beautiful. Worshipped her from afar, then there was a date. Dinner along the rec corridor, a walk in the hydroponic gardens, and a vid, then a strange goodnight. There was a kiss, then she held me at arm's length, frowned at me, and then said that very strange thing. "I don't know where you are, Will, but you're not here." Then she went into her quarters. I always thought there would be time for another try. Perhaps another time I would be there.

  I shook my head, rolled over and sat up, facing the fire. Why did I have to see whatever it was? All those things I had been able to bury—to forget—boiling over.

  "Uncle?"

  I looked up at Zammis. Yellow skin, yellow eyes, noseless toad face. I shook my head. "What?"

  "Is something wrong?"

  Is something wrong, hah. "No. I just thought I saw something today. It probably wasn't anything." I reached to the fire and took a piece of dried snake from the griddle. I blew on it, then gnawed on the heat-softened strip.

  "What did it look like?"

  "I don't know. The way it moved, I thought it might be a ship. It went away so fast, I couldn't be sure. Might have been a bird."

  "Bird?"

  I studied Zammis. It'd never seen a bird; neither had I on Fyrine IV. "An animal that flies."

  Zammis nodded. "Uncle, when we were gathering wood up in the scrub forest, I saw something fly."

  "What? Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I meant to, but I forgot"

  "Forgot!" I frowned. "In which direction was it going?"

  Zammis pointed to the back of the cave. "That way. Away from the sea." Zammis put down its sewing. "Can we go see where it went?"

  That was the same direction in which my bird had been flying. I shook my head. "The winter is just beginning. You don't know what it's like. We'd die in only a few days."

  Zammis went back to poking holes in the snakeskin. The winter would kill us. But spring would be something else. We could survive with double layered snakeskins stuffed with seed pod down, and a tent. We had to have a tent.
Zammis and I could spend the winter making it, and packs. Boots. We'd need sturdy walking boots. Have to think on that.

  It's strange how a spark of hope can ignite, and spread, until all desperation is consumed. Was it a ship? I didn't know. If it was, was it taking off, or landing? I didn't know. If it was taking off, we'd be heading in the wrong direction. But the opposite direction meant crossing the sea. Whatever. Come spring we would head beyond the scrub forest and see what was there.

  The winter seemed to pass quickly, with Zammis occupied with the tent and my time devoted to rediscovering the art of boot making. I made tracings of both of our feet on snakeskin, and, after some experimentation, I found that boiling the snake leather with plumfruit made it soft and gummy. By taking several of the gummy layers, weighting them, then setting them aside to dry, the result was a tough, flexible sole. By the time I finished Zammis's boots, the Drac needed a new pair.

  "They're too small, Uncle."

  "Waddaya mean, too small?"

  Zammis pointed down. "They hurt. My toes are all crippled up."

  I squatted down and felt the tops over the child's toes. "I don't understand. It's only been twenty, twenty-five days since I made the tracings. You sure you didn't move when I made them?"

  Zammis shook its head. "I didn't move."

  I frowned, then stood. "Stand up, Zammis." The Drac stood and I moved next to it. The top of Zammis's head came to the middle of my chest. Another sixty centimeters and it'd be as tall as Jerry. "Take them off, Zammis. I'll make a bigger pair. Try not to grow so fast."

  Zammis pitched the tent inside the cave, put glowing coals inside, then rubbed fat into the leather for waterproofing. It had grown taller, and I had held off making the Drac's boots until I could be sure of the size it would need. I tried to do a projection by measuring Zammis's feet every ten days, then extending the curve into spring. According to my figures, the kid would have feet resembling a pair of attack transports by the time the snow melted. By spring, Zammis would be full grown. Jerry's old flight boots had fallen apart before Zammis had been born, but I had saved the pieces. I used the soles to make my tracings and hoped for the best.

  I was doing my nightly reading of The Talman, absorbing the wisdom of Maltak Oi, who wrote its message to me, and to a few others: "The Talman does not contain all truth, and never will it. For this generation, and for all the generations of all the futures, newer and better truths exist. We must keep The Talman open to these truths, or see The Way become another curious myth of the past. To all of those generations and futures, then: if you have such a truth, stand before The Talman Kovah, as did Uhe before the Mavedah, and speak it—"