Zammis propped itself up on an elbow. "Go back to being a fighter pilot?"
"Sure. That's about all I know how to do."
"And kill Dracs?"
I put my own sewing down and studied the Drac. Things had changed since Jerry and I had slugged it out— more things than I had realized. I shook my head. "No. I probably won't be a pilot— not a service one. Maybe I can land a job flying commercial ships." I shrugged. "Maybe the service won't give me any choice."
Zammis sat up, was still for a moment; then it stood, walked over to my mattress and knelt before me on the sand. "Uncle, I don't want to leave you."
"Don't be silly. You'll have your own kind around you. Your grandparent, Gothig, Shigan's siblings, their children— you'll forget all about me."
"Will you forget about me?"
I looked into those yellow eyes, then reached out my hand and touched Zammis' cheek. "No, I won't forget about you. But, remember this, Zammis: you're a Drac and I'm a human, and that's how this part of the universe is divided."
Zammis took my hand from his cheek, spread the fingers and studied them. "Whatever happens, Uncle, I will never forget you."
* * *
The ice was gone, and the Drac and I stood in the windblown drizzle, packs on our backs, before the grave. Zammis was as tall as I was, which made it a little taller than Jerry. To my relief, the boots fit. Zammis hefted its pack up higher on its shoulders, then turned from the grave and looked out at the sea. I followed Zammis' glance and watched the rollers steam in and smash on the rocks. I looked at the Drac. "What are you thinking about?"
Zammis looked down, then turned toward me. "Uncle, I didn't think of it before, but… I will miss this place."
I laughed. "Nonsense! This place?" I slapped the Drac on the shoulder. "Why would you miss this place?"
Zammis looked back out to sea. "I have learned many things here. You have taught me many things here, Uncle. My life happened here."
"Only the beginning, Zammis. You have a life ahead of you." I nodded my head at the grave. "Say good-bye."
Zammis turned toward the grave, stood over it, then knelt to one side and began removing the rocks. After a few moments, it had exposed the hand of a skeleton with three fingers. Zammis nodded, then wept. "I am sorry, Uncle, but I had to do that. This has been nothing but a pile of rocks to me. Now it is more." Zammis replaced the rocks, then stood.
I cocked my head toward the scrub forest. "Go on ahead. I'll catch up in a minute."
"Yes, Uncle."
Zammis moved off toward the naked trees, and I looked down at the grave. "What do you think of Zammis, Jerry? It's bigger than you were. I guess snake agrees with the kid." I squatted next to the grave, picked up a small rock and added it to the pile. "I guess this is it. We're either going to make it to Draco, or die trying." I stood and looked at the sea. "Yeah, I guess I learned a few things here. I'll miss it, in a way." I turned back to the grave and hefted my pack up. "Eh-derva sahn, Jeriba Shigan. So long, Jerry."
I turned and followed Zammis into the forest.
* * *
The days that followed were full of wonder for Zammis. For now the sky was still the same, dull gray, and the few variations of plant and animal life that we found were nothing remarkable. Once we got beyond the scrub forest, we climbed a gentle rise for a day, and then found ourselves on a wide, flat, endless plain. It was ankle deep in a purple weed that stained our boots the same color. The nights were still too cold for hiking, and we would hole up in the tent. Both the greased tent and suits worked well, keeping out the almost constant rain.
We had been out perhaps two of Fyrine IV's long weeks when we saw it. It screamed overhead, then disappeared over the horizon before either of us could say a word. I had no doubt that the craft I had seen was in landing attitude.
"Uncle! Did it see us?"
I shook my head. "No, I doubt it. But it was landing. Do you hear? It was landing somewhere ahead."
"Uncle?"
"Let's get moving! What is it?"
"Was it a Drac ship, or a human ship?"
I cooled in my tracks. I had never stopped to think about it. I waved my hand. "Come on. It doesn't matter. Either way, you go to Draco. You're a noncombatant, so the USE forces couldn't do anything, and if they're Dracs, you're home free."
We began walking. "But, Uncle, if it's a Drac ship, what will happen to you?"
I shrugged. "Prisoner of war. The Dracs say they abide by the interplanetary war accords, so I should be all right." Fat chance, said the back of my head to the front of my head. The big question was whether I preferred being a Drac POW or a permanent resident of Fyrine IV. I had figured that out long ago. "Come on, let's pick up the pace. We don't know how long it will be on the ground."
Pick 'em up; put 'em down. Except for a few breaks, we didn't stop— even when night came. Our exertion kept us warm. The horizon never seemed to grow nearer. The longer we slogged ahead the duller my mind grew. It must have been days, my mind gone numb as my feet, when I fell through the purple weed into a hole. Immediately, everything grew dark, and I felt a pain in my right leg. I felt the blackout coming, and I welcomed its warmth, its rest, its peace.
* * *
"Uncle? Uncle? Wake up! Please, wake up!"
I felt slapping against my face, although it felt somehow detached. Agony thundered into my brain, bringing me wide awake. Damned if I didn't break my leg. I looked up and saw the weedy edges of the hole. My rear end was seated in a trickle of water. Zammis squatted next to me.
"What happened?"
Zammis motioned upwards. "This hole was only covered by a thin crust of dirt and plants. The water must have taken the ground away. Are you all right?"
"My leg. I think I broke it." I leaned my back against the muddy wall. "Zammis, you're going to have to go on by yourself."
"I can't leave you, Uncle!"
"Look, if you find anyone, you can send them back for me."
"What if the water in here comes up?" Zammis felt along my leg until I winced. "I must carry you out of here. What must I do for the leg?"
The kid had a point. Drowning wasn't in my schedule. "We need something stiff. Bind the leg so it doesn't move."
Zammis pulled off its pack, and kneeling in the water and mud, went through its pack, then through the tent roll. Using the tent poles, it wrapped my leg with snakeskins torn from the tent. Then, using more snakeskins, Zammis made two loops, slipped one over each of my legs, then propped me up and slipped the loops over its shoulders. It lifted, and I blacked out.
I was on the ground, covered with the remains of the tent, and Zammis was shaking my arm. "Uncle? Uncle?"
"Yes?" I whispered.
"Uncle, I'm ready to go." It pointed to my side. "Your food is here, and when it rains, just pull the tent over your face. I'll mark the trail I make so I can find my way back."
I nodded. "Take care of yourself."
Zammis shook its head. "Uncle, I can carry you. We shouldn't separate."
I weakly shook my head. "Give me a break, kid. I couldn't make it. Find somebody and bring 'em back." I felt my stomach flip, and cold sweat drenched my snake-skins. "Go on; get going."
Zammis reached out, grabbed its pack and stood. The pack shouldered, Zammis turned and began running in the direction that the craft had been going. I watched until I couldn't see it. I faced up and looked at the clouds. "You almost got me that time, you kizlode sonofabitch, but you didn't figure on the Drac… you keep forgetting… there's two of us…" I drifted in and out of consciousness, felt rain on my face, then pulled up the tent and covered my head. In seconds, the blackout returned.
* * *
"Davidge? Lieutenant Davidge?"
I opened my eyes and saw something I hadn't seen for four Earth years; a human face. "Who are you?"
The face, young, long, and capped by short blond hair, smiled. "I'm Captain Steerman, the medical officer. How do you feel?"
I pondered the question and smiled. "Li
ke I've been shot full of very high grade junk."
"You have. You were in pretty bad shape by the time the survey team brought you in."
"Survey team?"
"I guess you don't know. The United States of Earth and the Dracon Chamber have established a joint commission to supervise the colonization of new planets. The war is over."
"Over?"
"Yes."
Something heavy lifted from my chest. "Where's Zammis?"
"Who?"
"Jeriban Zammis; the Drac that I was with."
The doctor shrugged. "I don't know anything about it, but I suppose the Draggers are taking care of it."
Draggers. I'd once used the term myself. As I listened to it coming out of Steerman's mouth, it seemed foreign: alien, repulsive. "Zammis is a Drac, not a Dragger."
The doctor's brows furrowed, then he shrugged. "Of course. Whatever you say. Just you get some rest, and I'll check back on you in a few hours."
"May I see Zammis?"
The doctor smiled. "Dear, no. You're on your way back to the Delphi USEB. The… Drac is probably on its way to Draco." He nodded, then turned and left. God, I felt lost. I looked around and saw that I was in the ward of a ship's sick bay. The beds on either side of me were occupied. The man on my right shook his head and went back to reading a magazine. The one on my left looked angry.
"You damned Dragger suck!" He turned on his left side and presented me his back.
* * *
Among humans once again, yet more alone than I had ever been. Misnuuram va siddeth, as Mistan observed in the Talman from the calm perspective of eight hundred years in the past. Loneliness is a thought— not something done to someone; instead, it is something that someone does to oneself. Jerry shook its head that one time, then pointed a yellow finger at me as the words it wanted to say came together. "Davidge… to me loneliness is a discomfort— a small thing to be avoided if possible, but not feared. I think you would almost prefer death to being alone with yourself."
Misnuuram yaa va nos misnuuram van dunos. "You who are alone by yourselves will forever be alone with others." Mistan again. On its face, the statement appears to be a contradiction; but the test of reality proves it true. I was a stranger among my own kind because of a hate that I didn't share, and a love that, to them, seemed alien, impossible, perverse. "Peace of thought with others occurs only in the mind at peace with itself." Mistan again. Countless times, on the voyage to the Delphi Base, putting in my ward time, then during my processing out of the service, I would reach to my chest to grasp the Talman that no longer hung there. What had become of Zammis? The USESF didn't care, and the Drac authorities wouldn't say— none of my affair.
Ex-Force pilots were a drag on the employment market, and there were no commercial positions open— especially not to a pilot who hadn't flown in four years, who had a gimpy leg, and who was a Dragger suck. "Dragger suck" as an invective had the impact of several historical terms— Quisling, heretic, fag, nigger lover— all rolled into one.
I had forty-eight thousand credits in back pay, and so money wasn't a problem. The problem was what to do with myself. After kicking around the Delphi Base, I took transportation to Earth and, for several months, was employed by a small book house translating manuscripts into Drac. It seems that there was a craving among Dracs for Westerns: "Stick 'em up naagusaat!"
"Nu Geph, lawman." Thang, thang! The guns flashed and the kizlode shaddsaat bit the thessa.
I quit.
* * *
I finally called my parents. Why didn't you call before, Willy? We've been worried sick… Had a few things I had to straighten out, Dad… No, not really… Well, we understand, son… It must have been awful… Dad, I'd like to come home for a while….
Even before I put down the money on the used Dearman Electric, I knew I was making a mistake going home. I felt the need of a home, but the one I had left at the age of eighteen wasn't it. But I headed there because there was nowhere else to go.
I drove alone in the dark, using only the old roads, the quiet hum of the Dearman's motor the only sound. The December midnight was clear, and I could see the stars through the car's bubble canopy. Fyrine IV drifted into my thoughts, the raging ocean, the endless winds. I pulled off the road onto the shoulder and killed the lights. In a few minutes, my eyes adjusted to the dark and I stepped outside and shut the door. Kansas has a big sky, and the stars seemed close enough to touch. Snow crunched under my feet as I looked up, trying to pick Fyrine out of the thousands of visible stars.
Fyrine is in the constellation Pegasus, but my eyes were not practiced enough to pick the winged horse out from the surrounding stars. I shrugged, felt a chill, and decided to get back in the car. As I put my hand on the doorlatch, I saw a constellation that I did recognize, north, hanging just above the horizon: Draco. The Dragon, its tail twisted around Ursa Minor, hung upside down in the sky. Eltanin, the Dragon's nose, is the homestar of the Dracs. Its second planet, Draco, was Zammis' home.
Headlights from an approaching car blinded me, and I turned toward the car as it pulled to a stop. The window on the driver's side opened and someone spoke from the darkness.
"You need some help?"
I shook my head. "No, thank you." I held up a hand. "I was just looking at the stars."
"Quite a night, isn't it?"
"Sure is."
"Sure you don't need any help?"
I shook my head. "Thanks… wait. Where is the nearest commercial spaceport?"
"About an hour ahead in Salina."
"Thanks." I saw a hand wave from the window, then the other car pulled away. I took another look at Eltanin, then got back in my car.
* * *
Six months later, I stood in front of an ancient cut-stone gate wondering what in the hell I was doing. The trip to Draco, with nothing but Dracs as companions on the last leg, showed me the truth in Namvaac's words, "Peace is often only war without fighting." The accords, on paper, gave me the right to travel to the planet, but the Drac bureaucrats and their paperwork wizards had perfected the big stall long before the first human step into space. It took threats, bribes, and long days of filling out forms, being checked and rechecked for disease, contraband, reason for visit, filling out more forms, refilling out the forms I had already filled out, more bribes, waiting, waiting, waiting….
On the ship, I spent most of my time in my cabin, but since the Drac stewards refused to serve me, I went to the ship's lounge for my meals. I sat alone, listening to the comments about me from other booths. I had figured the path of least resistance was to pretend I didn't understand what they were saying. It is always assumed that humans do not speak Drac.
"Must we eat in the same compartment with the Irkmaan slime?"
"Look at it, how its pale skin blotches— and that evil-smelling thatch on top. Feh! The smell!"
I ground my teeth a little and kept my glance riveted to my plate.
"It defies the Talman that the universe's laws could be so corrupt as to produce a creature such as that."
I turned and faced the three Dracs sitting in the booth across the aisle from mine. In Drac, I replied: "If your line's elders had seen fit to teach the village kiz to use contraceptives, you wouldn't even exist." I returned to my food while the two Dracs struggled to hold the third Drac down.
* * *
On Draco, it was no problem finding the Jeriba estate. The problem was getting in. A high stone wall enclosed the property, and from the gate, I could see the huge stone mansion that Jerry had described to me. I told the guard at the gate that I wanted to see Jeriba Zammis. The guard stared at me, then went into an alcove behind the gate. In a few moments, another Drac emerged from the mansion and walked quickly across the wide lawn to the gate. The Drac nodded at the guard, then stopped and faced me. It was a dead ringer for Jerry.
"You are the Irkmaan that asked to see Jeriba Zammis?"
I nodded. "Zammis must have told you about me. I'm Willis Davidge."
The Drac st
udied me. "I am Estone Nev, Jeriba Shigan's sibling. My parent, Jeriba Gothig, wishes to see you." The Drac turned abruptly and walked back to the mansion. I followed, feeling heady at the thought of seeing Zammis again. I paid little attention to my surroundings until I was ushered into a large room with a vaulted stone ceiling. Jerry had told me that the house was four thousand years old. I believed it. As I entered, another Drac stood and walked over to me. It was old, but I knew who it was.
"You are Gothig, Shigan's parent."
The yellow eyes studied me. "Who are you, Irkmaan?" It held out a wrinkled, three-fingered hand. "What do you know of Jeriba Zammis, and why do you speak the Drac tongue with the style and accent of my child Shigan? What are you here for?"
"I speak Drac in this manner because that is the way Jeriba Shigan taught me to speak it."
The old Drac cocked its head to one side and narrowed its yellow eyes. "You knew my child? How?"
"Didn't the survey commission tell you?"
"It was reported to me that my child, Shigan, was killed in the battle of Fyrine IV. That was over six of our years ago. What is your game, Irkmaan?"
I turned from Gothig to Nev. The younger Drac was examining me with the same look of suspicion. I turned back to Gothig. "Shigan wasn't killed in the battle. We were stranded together on the surface of Fyrine IV and lived there for a year. Shigan died giving birth to Jeriba Zammis. A year later the joint survey commission found us and—"
"Enough! Enough of this, Irkmaan! Are you here for money, to use my influence for trade concessions— what?"
I frowned. "Where is Zammis?"
Tears of anger came to the old Drac's eyes. "There is no Zammis, Irkmaan! The Jeriba line ended with the death of Shigan!"
My eyes grew wide as I shook my head. "That's not true. I know. I took care of Zammis— you heard nothing from the commission?"
"Get to the point of your scheme, Irkmaan. I haven't all day."
I studied Gothig. The old Drac had heard nothing from the commission. The Drac authorities took Zammis, and the child had evaporated. Gothig had been told nothing. Why? "I was with Shigan, Gothig. That is how I learned your language. When Shigan died giving birth to Zammis, I—"
The Reel Stuff Page 30