The Reel Stuff

by Brian M. Thomsen

  "Get in!" I helped the Drac through the door and didn't wait for it to get out of the way. I piled in on top of Jerry and latched the door just as the second wave hit. I could feel the capsule lift a bit and rattle against the overhang of the one rock.

  "Davidge, we float?"

  "No. The rocks are holding us. We'll be all right once the breakers stop."

  "Over you move."

  "Oh." I got off Jerry's chest and braced myself against one end of the capsule. After a bit, the capsule came to rest and we waited for the next one. "Jerry?"

  "Ess?"

  "What was it that you were about to say?"

  "Why I stay?"

  "Yeah."

  "About it hard me talk, gavey?"

  "I know, I know."

  The next breaker hit and I could feel the capsule rise and rattle against the rock. "Davidge, gavey 'vi nessa'?"

  "Ne gavey."

  "Vi nessa… little me, gavey?"

  The capsule bumped down the rock and came to rest. "What about little you?"

  "Little me… little Drac. From me, gavey?"

  "Are you telling me you're pregnant?"

  "Possiblemaybeperhaps."

  I shook my heard. "Hold on, Jerry. I don't want any misunderstandings. Pregnant… are you going to be a parent?"

  "Ae, parent, two-zero-zero in line, very important is, ne?"

  "Terrific. What's this got to do with you not wanting to go to the other island?"

  "Before, me vi nessa, gavey? Tean death."

  "Your child, it died?"

  "Ae!" The Drac's sob was torn from the lips of the universal mother. "I in fall hurt. Tean death. Nasesay in sea us bang. Tean hurt, gavey?"

  "Ae, I gavey." So, Jerry was afraid of losing another child. It was almost certain that the capsule trip would bang us around a lot, but staying on the sandbar didn't appear to be improving our chances. The capsule had been at rest for quite a while, and I decided to risk a peek outside. The small canopy windows seemed to be covered with sand, and I opened the door. I looked around, and all of the walls had been smashed flat. I looked toward the sea, but could see nothing. "It looks safe, Jerry…" I looked up, toward the blackish sky, and above me towered the white plume of a descending breaker. "Maga damn sienna!" I slammed the hatch door.

  "Ess, Davidge?"

  "Hang on, Jerry!"

  The sound of the water hitting the capsule was beyond hearing. We banged once, twice against the rock, then we could feel ourselves twisting, shooting upward. I made a grab to hang on, but missed as the capsule took a sickening lurch downward. I fell into Jerry, then was flung to the opposite wall, where I struck my head. Before I went blank, I heard Jerry cry "Tean! Vi tean!"

  * * *

  …the lieutenant pressed his hand control and a figure— tall, humanoid, yellow— appeared on the screen.

  "Dracslime!" shouted the auditorium of seated recruits.

  The lieutenant faced the recruits. "Correct. This is a Drac. Note that the Drac race is uniform as to color; they are all yellow." The recruits chuckled politely. The officer preened a bit, then with a light wand began pointing out various features. "The three-fingered hands are distinctive, of course, as is the almost noseless face, which gives the Drac a toad-like appearance. On average, eyesight is slightly better than human, hearing about the same, and smell…" The lieutenant paused. "The smell is terrible!" The officer beamed at the uproar from the recruits. When the auditorium quieted down, he pointed his light wand at a fold in the figure's belly. "This is where the Drac keeps its family jewels— all of them." Another chuckle. "That's right, Dracs are hermaphrodites, with both male and female reproductive organs contained in the same individual." The lieutenant faced the recruits. "You go tell a Drac to go boff himself, then watch out, because he can!" The laughter died down, and the lieutenant held out a hand toward the screen. "You see one of these things, what do you do?"

  "KILL IT…."

  * * *

  ...I cleared the screen and computer sighted on the next Drac fighter, looking like a double x in the screen's display. The Drac shifted hard to the left, then right again. I felt the autopilot pull my ship after the fighter, sorting out and ignoring the false images, trying to lock its electronic crosshairs on the Drac. "Come on, toad face… a little bit to the left…." The double cross image moved into the ranging rings on the display and I felt the missile attached to the belly of my fighter take off. "Gotcha!" Through my canopy I saw the flash as the missile detonated. My screen showed the Drac fighter out of control, spinning toward Fyrine IV's cloud-shrouded surface. I dived after it to confirm the kill… skin temperature increasing as my ship brushed the upper atmosphere. "Come on, dammit, blow!" I shifted the ship's systems over for atmospheric flight when it became obvious that I'd have to follow the Drac right to the ground. Still above the clouds, the Drac stopped spinning and turned. I hit the auto override and pulled the stick into my lap. The fighter wallowed as it tried to pull up. Everyone knows the Drac ships work better in atmosphere… heading toward me: on an interception course… why doesn't the slime fire… just before the collision, the Drac ejects… power gone; have to deadstick it in. I track the capsule as it falls through the muck, intending to find that Dracslime and finish the job....

  * * *

  It could have been for seconds or years that I groped into the darkness around me. I felt touching, but the parts of me being touched seemed far, far away. First chills, then fever, then chills again, my head being cooled by a gentle hand. I opened my eyes to narrow slits and saw Jerry hovering over me, blotting my forehead with something cool. I managed a whisper. "Jerry."

  The Drac looked into my eyes and smiled. "Good is, Davidge. Good is."

  The light on Jerry's face flickered and I smelled smoke. "Fire."

  Jerry got out of the way and pointed toward the center of the room's sandy floor. I let my head roll over and realized that I was lying on a bed of soft, springy branches. Opposite my bed was another bed, and between them crackled a cheery campfire. "Fire now we have, Davidge. And wood." Jerry pointed toward the roof made of wooden poles thatched with broad leaves.

  I turned and looked around, then let my throbbing head sink down and closed my eyes. "Where are we?"

  "Big island, Davidge. Soaker off sandbar us washed. Wind and waves us here took. Right you were."

  "I… I don't understand; ne gavey. It'd take days to get to the big island from the sandbar."

  Jerry nodded and dropped what looked like a sponge into a shell of some sort filled with water. "Nine days. You I strap to nasesay, then here on beach we land."

  "Nine days? I've been out for nine days?"

  Jerry shook his head. "Seventeen. Here we land eight days…" The Drac waved its hand behind itself.

  "Ago… eight days ago."

  "Ae."

  Seventeen days on Fyrine IV was better than a month on Earth. I opened my eyes again and looked at Jerry. The Drac was almost bubbling with excitement. "What about tean, your child?"

  Jerry patted its swollen middle. "Good is, Davidge. You more nasesay hurt."

  I overcame an urge to nod. "I'm happy for you." I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the wall, a combination of wood poles and leaves. "Jerry?"

  "Ess?"

  "You saved my life."

  "Ae."

  "Why?"

  Jerry sat quietly for a long time. "Davidge. On sandbar you talk. Loneliness now gavey." The Drac shook my arm. "Here, now you eat."

  I turned and looked into a shell filled with a steaming liquid. "What is it, chicken soup?"

  "Ess?"

  "Ess va?" I pointed at the bowl, realizing for the first time how weak I was.

  Jerry frowned. "Like slug, but long."

  "An eel?"

  "Ae, but eel on land, gavey?"

  "You mean 'snake'?"

  "Possiblemaybeperhaps."

  I nodded and put my lips to the edge of the shell. I sipped some of the broth, swallowed and let the broth's healing warm
th seep through my body. "Good."

  "You custa want?"

  "Ess?"

  "Custa." Jerry reached next to the fire and picked up a squarish chunk of clear rock. I looked at it, scratched it with my thumbnail, then touched it with my tongue.

  "Halite! Salt!"

  Jerry smiled. "Custa you want?"

  I laughed. "All the comforts. By all means, let's have custa."

  Jerry took the halite, knocked off a corner with a small stone, then used the stone to grind the pieces against another stone. He held out the palm of his hand with a tiny mountain of white granules in the center. I took two pinches, dropped them into my snake soup and stirred it with my finger. Then I took a long swallow of the delicious broth. I smacked my lips. "Fantastic."

  "Good, ne?"

  "Better than good; fantastic." I took another swallow, making a big show of smacking my lips and rolling my eyes.

  "Fantastic, Davidge, ne?"

  "Ae." I nodded at the Drac. "I think that's enough. I want to sleep."

  "Ae, Davidge, gavey." Jerry took the bowl and put it beside the fire. The Drac stood, walked to the door and turned back. Its yellow eyes studied me for an instant, then it nodded, turned and went outside. I closed my eyes and let the heat from the campfire coax the sleep over me.

  * * *

  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. 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. 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.

  As the days grew colder, the Drac and I were forced to realize that Fyrine IV had a winter. Given that, we had to face the possibility that the winter would be severe enough to prevent the gathering of food— and wood. 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.

  We agreed that the house would never do. 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?"

  "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 ninety-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 the 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 many years had passed that I learned I had done Jerry a great honor in requesting his line. Among the Dracs, it is a rare expression of respect, not only of the individual, but of the line.

  Jerry placed the hat he 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 included Datzizh of the Nem line, Perravane of the Tuscor line, and many lesser musici
ans. 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 twelve thousand 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 raised my eyebrows. "That's why I shot your tail feathers off, huh?"

  Jerry shrugged, frowned, and continued sewing on the scraps of snake leather. "Why do the Earthmen invade this part of the Galaxy, Davidge? 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 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 two 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. Enough! We don't want you here!"

  "Well, we're here, and here to stay. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

  "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—"