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 camp-fire. "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.
"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 toad-faced 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.