Enemy Papers

by Barry B. Longyear

  “Know what?”

  Jerry smirked, then stood and went into the shack. After a moment it returned and threw a two-meter long metal rod at my feet. It was the one the Drac had used to bind my arms. “Davidge, I know.”

  I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. “What are you talking about? Didn’t that come from your capsule?”

  “Ne, Irkmaan.”

  “I bent down and picked up the rod. Its surface was uncorroded and at one end were arabic numerals—a part number. For a moment a flood of hope washed over me, but it drained away when I realized it was a civilian part number. I threw the rod on the sand. “There’s no telling how long that’s been here, Jerry. It’s a civilian part number and no civilian missions have been in this part of the galaxy since the war. Might be left over from an old seeding operation or exploratory mission…”

  The Drac nudged it with the toe of his boot. “New, gavey?”

  I looked up at it. “You gavey stainless steel?”

  Jerry snorted and turned back toward the shack. “I stay, nasesay stay; where you want, you go, Davidge!”

  With the black of the long night firmly bolted down on us, the wind picked up, shrieking and whistling in and through the holes in the walls. The plastic roof flapped, pushed in and sucked out with such violence it threatened to either tear or sail off into the night. Jerry sat on the sand floor, its back leaning against the nasesay as if to make clear that both Drac and capsule were staying put, although the way the sea was picking up seemed to weaken Jerry’s argument.

  “Sea rough now is, Davidge, ne?”

  “It’s too dark to see, but with this wind…” I shrugged more for my own benefit than the Drac’s, since the only thing visible inside the shack was the pale light coming through the roof. Any minute we could be washed off that sandbar. “Jerry, you’re being silly about that rod. You know that.”

  “Surda.” The Drac sounded contrite if not altogether miserable.

  “Ess?”

  “Ess eh Surda?”

  “Jerry remained silent for a moment. “Davidge, gaveynot certain not is?”

  I sorted out the negatives. “You mean possible, maybe, perhaps?”

  “Ae, possiblemaybeperhaps. Dracon fleet Irkmaan ships have. Before war buy; after war capture. Rod possiblemaybeperhaps Dracon is.”

  “So, if there’s a secret base on the big island, surda it’s a Dracon base?”

  “Possiblemaybeperhaps, Davidge.”

  “Jerry, does that mean you want to try it? The nasesay?”

  “Ne.”

  “Ne? Why, Jerry? If it might be a Drac base—”

  “Ne! Ne talk!” The Drac seemed to choke on the words.

  “Jerry, we talk, and you better believe we talk! If I’m going to death it on this island, I have a right to know why.”

  The Drac was quiet for a long time. “Davidge.”

  “Ess?”

  “Nasesay you take. Half ration bars you leave. I stay.”

  I shook my head to clear it. “You want me to take the capsule alone?”

  “What you want is, ne?”

  “Ae, but why? You must realize by now there won’t be any pickup.”

  “Possiblemaybeperhaps.”

  “Surda, nothing. You know there isn’t going to be a pickup. What is it? You afraid of the water? If that’s it—”

  “Davidge, up your mouth shut. Nasesay you have. Me ne you need, gavey?”

  I nodded in the dark. The capsule was mine for the taking; what did I need a grumpy Drac along for—especially since our truce could expire at any moment? The answer made me feel a little silly—human. Perhaps it’s the same thing. The Drac was all that stood between me and utter aloneness. Still, there was the small matter of staying alive. “We should go together, Jerry.”

  “Why?”

  I felt myself blush. If humans have this need for companionship, why are they also ashamed to admit it? “We just should. Our chances would be better.”

  “Alone your chances better are, Davidge. Your enemy I am.”

  I nodded again and grimaced in the dark. “Jerry, you gavey loneliness?”

  “Ne gavey.”

  “Lonely. Being alone, by myself.”

  “Gavey you alone. Take nasesay; I stay.”

  “That’s it… see, I don’t want to. It’s—”

  “You want together go?” interrupted the Drac. A low, dirty chuckle came from the other side of the shack. “You Dracon like? You me death, Irkmaan.” Jerry chuckled some more. “Irkmaan poorzhab in head, poorzhab.”

  “Forget it!” I slid down from the wall, smoothed out the sand, and curled up with my back toward the Drac. The wind seemed to die down a bit and I closed my eyes to try and sleep. In a bit, the snap, crack of the plastic roof blended in with the background of shrieks and whistles and I felt myself drifting off, when my eyes opened wide at the sound of footsteps in the sand. I tensed, ready to spring.

  “Davidge?” Jerry’s voice was very quiet.

  “Yeah?”

  I heard the Drac sit on the sand next to me. “You loneliness, Davidge. About it hard you talk, ne?”

  “So what?” The Drac mumbled something that was lost in the wind. “What?” I turned over and saw Jerry looking through a hole in the wall.

  “Why I stay. Now, you I tell, ne?”

  I shrugged. “Okay; why not?”

  Jerry seemed to struggle with the words, then opened its mouth to speak. Its eyes opened wide. “Magasienna.”

  I sat up. “Ess?”

  Jerry pointed at the hole. “Soaker!”

  I pushed it out of the way and looked through the hole. Steaming toward our island was an insane mountainous fury of white-capped rollers. It was hard to tell in the dark, but the one in front looked taller than the one that had wet our feet a few days before. The ones following it were bigger. Jerry put a hand on my shoulder and I looked into the Drac’s eyes. We broke and ran for the capsule. We heard the first wave rumbling up the slope as we felt around in the dark for the recessed doorlatch. I just got my finger on it when the wave smashed against the shack, collapsing the roof. In half a second we were underwater, the currents inside the shack agitating us like socks in a washing machine.

  The water receded, and as I cleared my eyes, I saw that the windward wall of the shack had caved in. “Jerry!” Through the collapsed wall, I saw the Drac staggering around outside.

  “Irkmaan?” Behind him I could see the second roller gathering speed.

  “Kizlode, what’n the hell’re you doing out there? Get in here!”

  I turned to the capsule, still lodged firmly between the two rocks, and found the handle. As I opened the door, Jerry stumbled through the missing wall and fell against me. “Davidge… forever soakers go on! Forever!”

  “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?”

  “Ae?”

  “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?”

  “No.”

  “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?”

  “Possib
lemaybeperhaps.”

  I shook my head. “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. In sea us bang. Tean hurt, ne?”

  “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 shut.

  “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…”

  The Drac on the screen frightened me, I hated it so much. I hated it because it was so terrible, and what made it so terrible was that I hated it so much. I had seen pictures of aliens before. In school and on the vids. On my way to flight training I even saw a group of Vikaans in Denver on their way from the USE fighter school base outside the city. Tall, thin, pale. They wore their new wings as they hefted their flight bags and filed down the sleeve that would take them to their ship and from there into the meatgrinder that had already cost billions of lives.

  The Vikaans were volunteers fighting on the human side of the war with the Dracs. I had hated them, too.

  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. Eight days ago.”

  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; yellow beads of fat floated on top of the water. “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 warmth seep through my body. “Good.”

  “You custa want?”

  “Ess?”

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

&
nbsp; “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. It 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. Salt in my fatty snake soup. I could just imagine the ship’s dietary staff going into vapor lock.

  “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 and out I drifted, the warmth of the shack at last driving the memory of the cold from my bones. There was a cover over me that was very warm and smelled like cinnamon. Jerry had found some kind of moss that came up off the rocks in sheets. Dried out, it made a terrific blanket, if a little itchy. It took a while, but at last I realized I had no clothes on. That, and my bed was clean. Unless I’d been holding it for a month, the Drac had been cleaning up after me. As squeamish as Jerry was about icky stuff, the Drac cleaning me raised a tangle of emotions: shame, gratitude, an inexplicable sadness that again brought the tears to my eyes.

  Aloneness.

  I thought of being alone. There was a joke among the other pilots in the squadron. Willis E. Davidge, the Lone Buzzard. When attentions turned to getting high or playing cards or talking about loves, battles, or wing gossip, the Buzzard would be somewhere else all by himself, reading stories, listening to music, daydreaming.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to be alone. I just didn’t know how to be any different. And here was a toadfaced alien hermaphrodite doing what I could never do: be there for someone else.

  I dreamed about my father, always gruff and distant, never strong. My mother, as gray and emotionally flat as the Kansas plain where she was born. Never ask for help, they would tell me. They said it as though it were a matter of pride, but I knew, even as a young child, that it was because they were frightened. Frightened of needing help, frightened to ask for it, frightened that it would be refused, frightened to accept it.