Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

"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.