Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

"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 take to get there, or 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 upward. "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.

On the ground, covered with the remains of the tent, Zammis was shaking my arm. "Uncle? Uncle?"

"Yes?" I whispered.

"Uncle, I’m ready to go." It pointed to my side. The skins from the tent were covering a lump of something. "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 snakeskins. "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. "Remember me," I whispered.

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?"

"Waa." I opened my eyes, watched the lights swim around for a bit then settle down into 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, ship’s medical officer. How do you feel?"

I pondered the question and smiled. "Like 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."

"How? What about Amadeen?"

"The planet’s quarantined. I don’t know what they’re going to do down on Amadeen, but the USE and the Dracs are out of it." Something heavy lifted from my chest.

"Where’s Zammis?"

"Who?"

"Jeriba Zammis; the Drac that I was with."

The doctor shrugged. "I don’t know anything about it. If there was a Drac with you when you were picked up, 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, ah, Drac is probably on its way to Draco. That’s where he belongs, right?" 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.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

Alien Earth.

As I stepped down the ramp onto the USE field in Orleans, those were the first two words that popped into my head. Alien Earth. I looked at the crowds of USE Force personnel bustling around like so many ants, inhaled the smell of industrial man, then spat on the ramp.

"How you like, put in stockade time?"

I looked down and saw a white-capped Force Police private glaring up at me. I continued down the ramp. "Get bent."

"Quoi?" The FP marched over and met me at the end of the ramp.

"Get bent." I pulled my discharge papers from my breast pocket and waved them. "Gavey short-timer, kizlode?"

The FP took my papers, frowned at them, then pointed at a long, low building at the edge of the field. "Continuez tout droit."

I smiled, turned and headed across the field, thinking of Zammis asking about how humans talk together. And where was Zammis? I shook my head, then entered the building. Most of the people inside the low building were crowding the in-processing or transportation-exchange aisles. I saw two bored officials behind two long tables and figured that they were the local customs clerks. A multilingual sign above their stations confirmed the hunch. I stopped in front of one of them. She glanced up at me, then held out her hand. "Votre passeport?"

I pulled out the blue and white booklet, handed it over, then stood holding my hands as I waited. I could feel the muscles at the back of my neck knot as I observed an old anti-Drac propaganda poster on the wall behind her. It showed two yellow, clawed hands holding a miniature Earth before a fanged mouth. Fangs and claws. The caption read: "They would call this victory" in seven languages.

"Avez-vous quelque chose à déclarer?"

I frowned at her. Ess?"

She frowned back. "Avez-vous quelque chose à déclarer?"