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?"
I felt a tap on my back. "Do you speak English?"
I turned and saw the other customs clerk, a man with a big black mustache, a potgut, and a pension. My upper lip curled. "Surda; ne surda. Adze Dracon?"
His eyebrows went up as he mouthed the word "Drac." He turned to the other clerk, took my passport from her, then looked back at me. He tapped the booklet against his fingertips, then opened it, read the ident page, and looked back at me. "Come with me, Mister Davidge. We must have a talk." He turned and headed into a small office. I shrugged and followed. When I entered, he pointed toward a chair. As I lowered myself into it, he sat down behind a desk. "Why do you pretend not to speak English?"
"Why do you have that poster on the wall? The war is over."
The customs clerk clasped his hands, rested them on the desk, then shook his head. "The fighting is over, Mister Davidge, but for many the war is not. The Draggers killed many humans."
I cocked my head to one side. "A few Dracs died, too." I stood up. "May I go now?"
The customs clerk leaned back in his chair. "That chip on your shoulder you will find to be a considerable weight to bear on this planet."
"I’m the one who has to carry it."
The customs clerk shrugged, then nodded toward the door. "You may go. And good luck, Mister Davidge. You’ll need it."
"Dragger suck."
As an invective the term had all of the impact of several historical terms—Quisling, heretic, fag, nigger-lover—all rolled into one. That, though, was only the beginning of my problems. Ex-Force pilots were a drag on the employment market, with no commercial positions open, especially not to a pilot who hadn’t flown in four years, who had a gimpy leg, and who was a Dragger suck.
Transportation to North America, and after a period of lonely wandering, to Dallas. Mistan’s eight-hundred-year-old words from The Talman would haunt me: Misnuuram va siddeth; Your thought is loneliness. Loneliness is a thing one does to oneself.
Jerry shook his head that one time, then pointed a yellow finger at me as the words it wanted to say came together. "Davidge… to me loneliness is a discomfort—unpleasant, and a thing to be avoided, but not a thing to be feared. I think you would prefer death to being alone with yourself."
Of course, I had a special gift: right in the center of the biggest crowd anyone ever saw, I could find loneliness.
Mistan observed: "If you are alone with yourself, you will forever be alone with others." A contradiction? The test of reality proves it true. I was out of place on my own planet, and it was more than a hate that I didn’t share or a love that, to others, seemed impossible—perverse. Deep inside of myself, I had no use for the creature called "Davidge." Before Fyrine IV there had been other reasons—reasons that I could not identify; but now, my reason was known. My fault or not, I had betrayed an ugly, yellow thing called Zammis, as well as the creature’s parent. "Present Zammis before the Jeriba archives. Swear this to me."
Oh, Jerry…
Swear this!
I swear it…
Forty-eight thousand credits in back pay, and so money wasn’t a problem. The problem was what to do with myself. Finally, in Dallas, I landed a job in a small book house translating manuscripts into Drac. It seemed that there was a craving among Dracs for Westerns:
"Stick 'em up naagusaafi"
"Nu geph, lawman." Thang, thang! The guns flashed and another kizlode shaddsaat bit the dust.
I quit.
There were a lot of us on Earth, and scattered throughout the rest of the quadrant as well, I suppose. Discharged vets, stumbling around, trying to make sense of things, trying to find where they fit, or if they fit. A news report on the vids said that newly discharged vets had the highest suicide rate among the groups studied.
Yay, team.
"You know how much yellow blood I got on my hands?" a vet asked me in a bar. I didn’t venture a guess, but the guy, a USEF assault force warrant officer, didn’t notice. He sat at the bar, staring at his hands and muttering something about having more in common with the Dracs than he did with the street slime back on Earth.
I finally called my parents. Why didn’t you call before, Willy? We’ve been worried sick. We thought you were dead.
Had a few things I had to straighten out, Dad.
Things?
I can’t explain right now.
Well, we understand, son… It must have been awful—