Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

I threw down the splinter. "Damn, I hate this place!"

"Ess?" Jerry’s head poked around the edge of the opening. "Who talking at, Davidge?"

I glared at the Drac, then waved my hand at it. "Nobody."

"Ess va nobody ?"

"Nobody. Nothing."

"Ne gavey, Davidge."

I poked at my chest with my finger. "Me! I’m talking to myself! You gavey that stuff, toad face!"

Jerry shook its head. "Davidge, now I sleep. Talk not so much nobody, ne?" It disappeared back into the opening.

"And so’s your mother!" I turned and walked down the slope. Except, strictly speaking, toad face, you don’t have a mother—or father. "If you had your choice, who would you like to be trapped on a desert island with?" I wondered if anyone ever picked a wet freezing corner of Hell shacked up with a hermaphrodite.

Half of the way down the slope, I followed the path I had marked with rocks until I came to my tidal pool that I had named "Rancho Sluggo." Around the pool were many of the water-worn rocks, and underneath those rocks, below the pool’s waterline, lived the fattest orange slugs either of us had ever seen. I made the discovery during a break from house building and showed them to Jerry.

Jerry shrugged. "And so?"

"And so what? Look, Jerry, those ration bars aren’t going to last forever. What are we going to eat when they’re all gone?"

"Eat?" Jerry looked at the wriggling pocket of insect life and grimaced. "Ne, Davidge. Before then pickup. Search us find, then pickup."

"What if they don’t find us? What then?"

Jerry grimaced again and turned back to the half-completed house. "Water we drink, then until pickup." He had muttered something about kiz excrement and my tastebuds, then walked out of sight.

Since then I had built up the pool’s walls, hoping the increased protection from the harsh environment would increase the herd. I looked under several rocks, but no increase was apparent. And, again, I couldn’t bring myself to swallow one of the things. I replaced the rock I was looking under, stood and looked out to the sea. Although the eternal cloud cover still denied the surface the drying rays of Fyrine, there was no rain and the usual haze had lifted.

In the direction past where I had pulled myself up on the beach, the sea continued to the horizon. In the spaces between the whitecaps, the water was as grey as a loan officer’s heart. Parallel lines of rollers formed approximately five kilometers from the island. The center, from where I was standing, would smash on the island, while the remainder steamed on. To my right, in line with the breakers, I could just make out another small island perhaps ten kilometers away. Following the path of the rollers, I looked far to my right, and where the grey-white of the sea should have met the lighter grey of the sky, there was a black line on the horizon.

The harder I tried to remember the briefing charts on Fyrine IV’s land masses, the less clear it became. Jerry couldn’t remember anything either—at least nothing it would tell me. Why should we remember? The battle was supposed to be in space, each one trying to deny the other an orbital staging area in the Fyrine system. Neither side wanted to set foot on Fyrine, much less fight a battle there. Still, whatever it was called, it was land and considerably larger than the sand and rock bar we were occupying.

How to get there was the problem. Without wood, fire, leaves, or animal skins, Jerry and I were destitute compared to the average poverty-stricken caveman. The only thing we had that would float was the nasesay. The capsule. Why not? The only real problem to overcome was getting Jerry to go along with it.

That evening, while the greyness made its slow transition to black, Jerry and I sat outside the shack nibbling our quarter portions of ration bars. The Drac’s yellow eyes studied the dark line on the horizon, then it shook its head. "Ne, Davidge. Dangerous is."

I popped the rest of my ration bar into my mouth and talked around it. "Any more dangerous than staying here?"

"Soon pickup, ne?"

I studied those yellow eyes. "Jerry, you don’t believe that any more than I do." I leaned forward on the rock and held out my hands. "Look, our chances will be a lot better on a larger land mass. Protection from the big waves, maybe food."

"Not maybe, ne?" Jerry pointed at the water. "How nasesay steer, Davidge? In that, how steer? Ess eh soakers, waves, beyond land take, gavey? Bresha," Jerry’s hands slapped together." Ess eh bresha rocks on, ne? Then we death."

I scratched my head. "The waves are going in that direction from here, and so is the wind. If the land mass is large enough, we don’t have to steer, gavey?"

Jerry snorted. "Ne large enough, then?"

"I didn’t say it was a sure thing."

"Ess?"

"A sure thing; certain, gavey?" Jerry nodded. "And for smashing up on the rocks, it probably has a beach like this one."

"Sure thing, ne!"

I shrugged. "No, it’s not a sure thing, but, what about staying here? We don’t know how big those waves can get. What if one just comes along and washes us off the island? What then?"

Jerry looked at me, its eyes narrowed. "What there, Davidge? Irkmaan base, ne?"

I laughed. "I told you, we don’t have any bases on Fyrine IV."

"Why want go, then?"

"Just what I said, Jerry. I think our chances would be better."

"Ummm." The Drac folded its arms. "Viga, Davidge, nasesay stay. I know."

"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, gavey not certain not is ?"