I realized that this was the time to be gathering wood. Before the winter hit, Jerry and I working together hadn't gathered enough wood. The short summer would have to be spent putting up food for the next winter. I was hoping to build a tighter door over the mouth of the cave, and I swore that I would figure out some kind of indoor plumbing. Dropping your drawers outside in the middle of winter was dangerous. My mind was full of these things as I stretched out on my mattress watching the smoke curl through a crack in the roof of the cave. Zammis was off in the back of the cave playing with some rocks that it had found, and I must nave fallen asleep. I awoke with the kid shaking my arm.
"Uncle?"
"Huh? Zammis?"
"Uncle. Look."
I rolled over on my left side and faced the Drac. Zammis was holding up its right hand, fingers spread out. "What is it, Zammis?"
"Look." It pointed at each of its three fingers in turn. "One, two, three."
"So?"
"Look." Zammis grabbed my right hand and spread out the fingers. "One, two, three, four, five!"
I nodded. "So you can count to five."
The Drac frowned and made an impatient gesture with its tiny fists. "Look."
It took my outstretched hand and placed its own on top of it. With its other hand, Zammis pointed first at one of its own fingers, then at one of mine.
"One, one." The child's yellow eyes studied me to see if I understood.
"Yes."
The child pointed again. "Two, two." It looked at me, then looked back at my hand and pointed. "Three, three." Then he grabbed my two remaining fingers. "Four, five?" It dropped my hand, then pointed to the side of its own hand. "Four, five?"
I shook my head. Zammis, at less than four Earth months old, had detected part of the difference between Dracs and humans. A human child would be—what—five, six, or seven years old before asking questions like that. I sighed. "Zammis."
"Yes, Uncle?"
"Zammis, you are a Drac. Dracs only have three fingers on a hand." I held up my right hand and wiggled the fingers. "I'm a human. I have five.", I swear that tears welled in the child's eyes, Zammis held out its hands, looked at them, then shook its head. "Grow four, five?"
I sat up and faced the kid. Zammis was wondering where its other four fingers had gone. "Look, Zammis. You and I are different. . . different kinds of beings, understand?" Zammis shook his head. "Grow four, five?" "You won't. You're a Drac." I pointed at my chest. "I'm a human." This was getting me no- ; where. "Your parent, where you came from, was a Drac.
Do you understand?"
Zammis frowned. "Drac. What Drac?"
The urge to resort to the timeless standby of "you'll understand when you get older" pounded at the back of my mind. I shook my head. "Dracs have three fingers on each hand. Your parent had three fingers on each hand." I rubbed my beard. "My parent was a human and had five fingers on each hand. That's why I have five fingers on each hand."
Zammis knelt on the sand and studied its fingers. It looked up at me, back to its hands, then back to me. "What parent?"
I studied the kid. It must be having an identity crisis of some kind. I was the only person it had ever seen, and I had five fingers per hand. "A parent is ... the thing ..." I scratched my beard again. "Look ... we all come from someplace. I had a mother and father—two different kinds of humans—that gave me life; that made me, understand?"
Zammis gave me a look that could be interpreted as "Mac, you are full of it." I shrugged. "I don't know if I can explain it."
Zammis pointed at its own chest. "My mother? My father?"
I held out my hands, dropped them into my lap, pursed my lips, scratched my beard, and generally stalled for time. Zammis held an unblinking gaze on me the entire time. "Look, Zammis. You don't have a mother and a father. I'm a human, so I have them; you're a Drac. You have a parent—just one, see?"
Zammis shook its head. It looked at me, then pointed at its own chest.
"Drac."
"Right."
Zammis pointed at my chest. "Human."
"Right again."
Zammis removed its hand and dropped it in its lap. "Where Drac come from?"
Sweet Jesus! Trying to explain hermaphroditic reproduction to a kid who shouldn't even be crawling yet! "Zammis ..." I held up my hands, then dropped them into my lap. "Look. You see how much bigger I am than you?"
"Yes, Uncle."
"Good." I ran my fingers through my hair, fighting for time and inspiration.
"Your parent was big, like me. Its name was . . . Jeriba Shigan." Funny how just saying the name was painful. "Jeriba Shigan was like you. It only had three fingers on each hand. It grew you in its tummy." I poked Zammis's middle. "Understand?"
Zammis giggled and held its hands over its stomach. "Uncle, how Dracs grow there?"
I lifted my legs onto the mattress and stretched out. Where do little Dracs come from? I looked over to Zammis and saw the child hanging upon my every word. I grimaced and told the truth. "Damned if I know, Zammis.
Damned if I know." Thirty seconds later, Zammis was back playing with its rocks.
Summer, and I taught Zammis how to capture and skin the long grey snakes, and then how to smoke the meat. The child would squat on the shallow bank above a mudpool, its yellow eyes fixed on the snake holes in the bank, waiting for one of the occupants to poke out its head. The wind would blow, but Zammis wouldn't move. Then a flat, triangular head set with tiny blue eyes would appear. The snake would check the pool, turn and check the bank, then check the sky. It would advance out of the hole a bit, then check it all again. Often the snakes would look directly at Zammis, but the Drac could have been carved from rock. Zammis wouldn't move until the snake was too far out of the hole to pull itself back in tail first. Then Zammis would strike, grabbing the snake with both hands just behind toe head. The snakes had no fangs and weren't poisonous, but they were lively enough to toss Zammis into the mudpool on occasion.
The skins were spread and wrapped around tree trunks and pegged in place to dry. The tree trunks were kept in an open place near the entrance to the cave, but under an overhang that faced away from the ocean. About two thirds of the skins put up in this manner cured; the remaining third would rot.
Beyond the skin room was the smokehouse: a rock-walled chamber that we would hang with rows of snakemeat. A greenwood fire would be set in a pit in the chamber's floor; then we would fill in the small opening with rocks and dirt.
"Uncle, why doesn't the meat rot after it's smoked?"
I thought upon it. "I'm not sure; I just know it doesn't."
"Why do you know?"
I shrugged. "I just do. I read about it, probably."
"What's read?"
"Reading. Like when I sit down and read the Talman."
"Does the Talman say why the meat doesn't rot?"
"No. I meant that I probably read it in another book."
"Do we have more books?"
I shook my head. "I meant before I came to this planet."
"Why did you come to this planet?"
"I told you. Your parent and I were stranded here during the battle."
"Why do the humans and Dracs fight?"
"It's very complicated." I waved my hands about for a bit. The human line was that the Dracs were aggressors invading our space. The Drac line was that the humans were aggressors invading their space. The truth? "Zammis, it has to do with the colonization of new planets. Both races are expanding and both races have a tradition of exploring and colonizing new planets. I guess we just expanded into each other. Understand?"
Zammis nodded, then became mercifully silent as it fell into deep thought.
The main thing I learned from the Drac child was all of the questions I didn't have answers to. I was feeling very smug, however, at having gotten Zammis to understand about the war, thereby avoiding my ignorance on the subject of preserving meat. "Uncle?"