"Yes."
He takes a step and squats next to the fire. Adding a stick to the flames, he looks toward the back of the chamber, then faces me. Speaking in almost a whisper, he says, "The name Uncle Willy really doesn’t bother me."
I feel my brow rise in astonishment. "Nearly every member of the Jeriba line that I have met has warned me that you hate the name."
He holds out his hands, looks up at the smoke hole, and grimaces as he looks for words. "Kids need an easy way to score against adults." He looks down at me. "Know what I mean?"
I shake my head. "No."
"Is your parent living?"
The question pounces on my awareness like an emotional predator. I feel my breath growing short. "No. Yazi Avo died before my first year." In a very quiet voice, I tell him my shame. "I never learned my line."
Davidge nods as questions in his face resolve. "I see." He stands, goes to his chair, and lowers himself into it. Staring into the fire, he gathers his thoughts. After a long moment, he frowns and looks at me. "What were we talking about?"
"Uncle Willy."
"Right." He nods, sits forward, and says, "To generations of the Jeriba line, from Zammis’s nameparent to Haesni, as well Estone Nev’s descendants and the children of the line’s retainers, I have been playmate, friend, teacher, and warden. Kids, mostly wanting to do what they want to do, reverse the order. To them I am the warden, the one who stands in the way of their adventures, like trying to fly by jumping off the cliff."
I point toward the ocean. "That cliff?"
"That’s the one. Shiggy even had a set of wings it had designed and built. The only way I could discourage the experiment was to let Shiggy try it, although I got the kid to use a small hill for its first flight rather than the cliff." He smiles in remembrance, then brings himself back to the moment.
"Warden first. Later they regard me as teacher, friend, and playmate. Usually. Still there’s this piece of each kid that remembers, and resents, the guy who spoiled all the fun, who was mostly right when they were mostly wrong."
I nod as I understand. "Letting them call you Uncle Willy and believing that it makes you grind your teeth is an easy, and harmless, way of letting them wreak vengeance on the warden."
"Yes."
"Was it the same sort of thing with Estone Falna ?"
Davidge’s eyebrows go up. "Heard that story, did you?" He grins and shakes his head. "Falna was different. It wasn’t satisfied with mere vengeance. Falna wouldn’t settle for anything less than total annihilation. Strong-minded and smart as a whip. Its parent died on Earth. Did you hear about that?"
"No."
"Estone Oyneh was a part of the Dracon Chamber’s diplomatic delegation. There was a racial incident, a crowd thing that got out of control, and Oyneh was dead. Falna saw it all. It was less than a year old."
I feel the cold fingers of reality clutching my heart. "I too lost my parent before I reached my first year. I saw it die."
Davidge looks at me and I see the compassion in his face. "It is a hard way to grow." He looks at the fire. "Estone Nev had Falna brought here and I took it into the cave. It took five months for its nightmares to stop. I’m awfully proud of Falna. I hated to miss it doing the rites, though." He nods, picks up the manuscript, and opens it. "There’s stuff to eat next to the fire and back in the cave where Haesni went. I better get going on this." He finishes a page and turns to another.
I feel a strange longing: a glaring emptiness against a painful jealousy of the Drac children who learned line and Talman before this man. It is a bottomless well of anguish that always begins with: things should have been different. Haesni, wiping its face with its hand from having eaten something, sneaks into its bed after waving a hand at me. Before I can respond, the child is under its leather quilt, its head covered. The favored child sleeping in the heart of its uncle’s love.
I rest my head against the back of my chair and study the human as he reads. I have seen humans before. In battle, as my prisoners, before my knife, torturing my friend to death, and at least one holding a little Drac baby. I see no human woman in Davidge’s cave; not even another man. There is a lot to mistrust in a man who forsakes all that there is in being a man to live in a cave and bring up Drac children. As the sleep tugs at me, I ask myself, why are you here, Willis E. Davidge? Before I can ask my question aloud, Davidge lowers the manuscript and faces me.
"Ro, tomorrow morning I want you to ask Ty to show you how the subspace link at the house works. It’s about time you learned your line. Before you can learn it, you must assemble the information." Without waiting for an answer, he returns to reading.
I see the warden, feel the irritation at being told what to do without being asked or even told why. I smile as I acknowledge the human’s wisdom in providing a talma along which childish retribution may be exacted. I close my eyes, settle into the chair before the fire wrapped in my warm cloak, and say, "Sleep in peace, Uncle Willy."
SIXTEEN
The next morning, after a peculiar breakfast of root cakes and roast snake in the cave, Davidge returns to the manuscript, Haesni washes the shells and griddle, and I make my way to the estate, the day warm enough that I can walk the path without fear of my eyeballs shattering. From the ice-sheathed trees and rocks, I can see meltwater dripping.
Later, in Ty’s office, I sit facing the screen of the link. Jeriba Ty establishes contact with the Talman Kovah on Draco, runs the line probe, explains the controls, and says to call when I have completed entering what I can. Ty leaves and I enter the information for which the line probe asks.
My own name is Yazi Ro. My parent’s name was Yazi Avo. I know from what my parent told me of its parent that its name was Yazi Tahl. Tahl’s parent was named Itas, although I am uncertain of the spelling. If I ever knew the name of my nameparent’s child, it has left my memory. I have no choice but to leave the five-name sequence incomplete.
The line location, what I know of it, is on Amadeen, Northern Shorda, City of Gitoh. The occupations of myself and my forebears, those that I know of: Yazi Ro, Mavedah soldier; Yazi Avo, with its crippled foot, did whatever it could find to provide food and shelter for its infant child. Mostly it taught battlefield English to Mavedah soldiers; Yazi Tahl, another Mavedah soldier; Yazi Itas, I do not know, and there it ends. I call for Jeriba Ty and in moments it is there reviewing the information.
After reading it, Ty looks down at me and places a hand on my shoulder. It must have been very difficult growing up without the knowledge of your line."
I am confused by my host’s pity. "I do not know, Jeriba Ty. I have nothing with which to compare it." I point at the screen. "Is that enough information ?"
"It is all we have," Ty answers as it reaches forward and touches the screen which changes immediately to the main catalog.
"How long will it take?"
Ty opens its mouth to answer, but before a word escapes, the results of the line probe appear. I nod my thanks to Jeriba Ty and sit back to discover part of myself.
The data links from Amadeen were cut off when the quarantine isolated Amadeen from the quadrant. There is, nevertheless, only one line on Amadeen whose names fit the sequence I entered. The full sequence is: Ro, Tomas, Itah, Tahl, Avo. There is a message to note the difference in the spelling of the center sequence name. The original line archives were registered in Gitoh.
I find that I had a nameparent, and my nameparent had a nameparent. Yazi Ro, third child of Stiyima Bahn of Aakva Benabi on Draco, left its home to found its new line on Amadeen years before the war. The founder was an explorer and entrepreneur who became partners in a business venture with a human named Tomas Muñoz. The Drac and the human began providing food and other supplies to the prospectors in the mountains above Gitoh. The business was prosperous, and the pair expanded their activities into various other retail enterprises.