Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave (6 page)

"You are welcome," Draycos said. "I agree with Maerlynn, that you
should sleep if you can. It will help pass the time, and the
temperature may become much colder later."

"Good point," Jack said, swiveling his shoulders and hips into the
most comfortable positions he could. "See you in the morning."

Between all the preparation, the long walk from the spaceport, and
the burglary itself, it had been a long, hard day. Despite the
uncomfortable position the hotbox forced on him, Jack soon fell into a
deep sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night he woke up again, shivering,
to find that his gold-scaled K'da blanket had vanished. Draycos had
reached the end of his six-hour limit and had returned to
two-dimensional form against Jack's skin. Wrapping himself in his
blanket, thinking unkind thoughts about K'da endurance, he huddled in
the cold and tried to get back to sleep.

He awoke again to find a bright edge of sunlight streaming in
under the hotbox door. The chill of night was gone, and the temperature
in his prison had become quite comfortable.

But that relief turned out to be as short-lived as Uncle Virgil's
temper in a card game. Within minutes, or so it seemed, the hotbox went
from cozy to warm to uncomfortably warm.

And it got worse. Soon the thin metal behind his back grew hot
enough to burn skin that lingered against it for too long. Once again
he pressed Maerlynn's blanket into service, folding it between his back
and the wall.

Sometime around noon he drifted off into a restless sleep, full of
strange and feverish dreams. Old memories mixed with images from past
and present. He saw Uncle Virgil, tall and arrogant, wrestling with
Draycos as he shouted out safecracking lessons to Gazen and a group of
Brummgas.

The dream faded away and was replaced by another, this one
featuring some of the mercenaries he'd met in the Whinyard's Edge.
Under Sergeant Grisko's shouted direction, Jommy Randolph and Alison
Kayna recited one of Draycos's poems, getting half the words wrong.

At one point he was back aboard the
Star of Wonder
, only
it also seemed to be the
Essenay
's dayroom. Seated across the
table from him, Cornelius Braxton and his wife were arguing about Orion
Arm history, the future of Braxton Universis, and the price of mangoes
in Sumatra. On the table between them was a huge pitcher of water, an
inch out of Jack's reach.

Once, he thought he woke to hear voices calling to him from
outside the box. But by then his brain was so blurred that he couldn't
tell what was real and what wasn't.

It was all so foggy, in fact, that when the hotbox door finally
swung open and a Brummga ordered him out he assumed it was just another
dream. He had slogged across the sand, and was stumbling through a
patch of clover-grass before it finally dawned on him that he really
was out.

"How do you feel?" a familiar voice asked quietly from his side.

Jack blinked the sweat out of his eyes and looked at the
pineapple-skinned Ysanhar walking beside him. That was why his arm felt
odd, he realized suddenly. Maerlynn was walking beside him, holding
that arm in a steadying grip. "I'm okay," he croaked, trying to pull
away from her.

"Just relax," she told him, not loosening her grip in the
slightest. "You're not in any shape to walk on your own."

"I can do it," Jack insisted. Privately, though, he had to admit
she was right. Hazy patches were chasing each other across his vision,
and every couple of steps he briefly lost track of which way was up and
which was sideways. The sun had disappeared behind the trees of the
nearby forest, and he shivered violently every time a breeze cut
through his sweat-drenched clothes.

But he was human, and he had his pride. More than that, he was
Jack Morgan. He could do this on his own.

Maerlynn was having none of it. "Oh, come on," she chided. "Give
your pride a rest, all right? Besides, if you fall on your face I'm the
one who'll have to pick you up."

Jack's knees buckled briefly, and the flicker of pride faded away.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Okay."

She led him into one of the long buildings. Just as the outside
had looked like a broken-down version of a Whinyard's Edge barracks, so
too did the inside. Most of the space was taken up by a single room,
with rows of narrow cots lining the walls on both sides. At one end, in
the direction Maerlynn was leading him, there was a small open area
with a couple of dilapidated tables and a few rickety chairs. At the
other end was what appeared to be a small washroom.

And packed into the room were slaves.

Jack found himself staring as Maerlynn led him between the rows of
beds. There were at least a dozen different species represented, he
saw, from thick-scaled Doloms to feather-covered Jantris to even a
handful of humans.

Most of them were on their beds. Some were sitting on the edges of
the cots, talking quietly with their neighbors or fiddling with cards
or small trinkets. A couple were whittling with what seemed to be
homemade knives.

But the majority of the slaves were lying down. Lying stretched
out on backs or sides, or lying curled around themselves in postures of
fatigue or hopelessness.

A few of them looked up as he and Maerlynn passed. Most didn't
even bother.

"I've made you up a bed with my other children," Maerlynn said as
she led him to the open area and sat him down at one of the tables.
"You'll want to sleep soon—a session in the hotbox drains a person more
than you might think. But first we need to get you something to eat and
drink."

"This him?" an eager young voice asked from Maerlynn's other side.

Jack tilted his head to look past the Ysanhar as the newcomer came
into view around her. It was a human boy, maybe six or seven, short and
thin. His hair was carrot-colored, with a faceful of freckles behind
the deep tan.

"This is him," Maerlynn confirmed as she pulled up one of the
other chairs and sat down diagonally from Jack. "This is Noy, one of my
children. And I believe I heard the guard call you Jack when he let you
out?"

"That's right," Jack said, frowning. A human boy was one of an
Ysanhar's children? "Jack McCoy."

"Nice to meet you, Jack," Maerlynn said. "Officially, anyway. Noy,
where's the pitcher?"

"We've got it," another voice said.

Jack turned his head, fighting a fresh wave of dizziness as he did
so. Coming toward them from the other end of the room were two Jantris,
their greenish-purple feathers glistening in the low glow of the
overhead lights. One of them was carrying a battered metal pitcher
carefully in front of him, while the other held an equally battered
metal cup.

"Thank you," Maerlynn said. "Jack, these are Greb and Grib. Greb
was the one I told you about, who was watching out the window when the
Brummgas brought you in. Be careful with that, Greb."

"I am," the Jantri with the pitcher said as he set it down in
front of Jack. As he did, a few drops of water sloshed out onto the
table.

"They're twins, by the way," Maerlynn said, taking the cup from
Grib and filling it halfway from the pitcher. The sound of the
splashing water made Jack's mouth feel even drier. "Now be careful,"
she warned as she handed him the cup. "You don't want to shock your
stomach with too much all at once."

The water seemed a little oily, with a variety of mineral and
chemical flavors and odors. Jack had never tasted anything so good in
his entire life. He gulped it down, spilling some of it over the edge
of the cup and down his cheeks in his haste.

He set the cup down, panting slightly. "Can I—?"

"Of course," Maerlynn said, already starting to refill it. "Just
be careful."

He drained three more cups before Maerlynn called a halt. "All
right, that should do for a bit," she said. "Let that get into your
system, then you can have some more."

She beckoned. "In the meantime, you're probably pretty hungry."

Noy popped into view at Jack's elbow, holding a rectangular piece
of wood with a fat, folded green leaf on it. "It's stuffed cabbage,"
the boy told him as he set down the board. "We saved it for you from
dinner."

"For me?" Jack asked, his stomach growling. Between the fatigue
and thirst, he hadn't realized just how hungry he really was. His mouth
would probably be watering if he'd had any liquid in his body to spare.
"How did you know I was going to be let out tonight?"

"We didn't," Noy said. "But if you were, Maerlynn wanted to be
ready."

"We don't have any flatware or plates, I'm afraid," Maerlynn said.
"We have to leave all that in the meal hall. But I'm sure you won't
mind eating with your fingers just this once. Well, go ahead—eat up."

Cautiously, Jack tried a bite. The cabbage leaf was a little
soggy, and the rice and diced vegetables inside were of course stone
cold. And like the water, it tasted better than anything he'd ever
eaten in his life.

Also like the water, it vanished quickly. "Thanks," he said. "I
needed that."

"I knew you would," Maerlynn said. "The Brummgas don't take very
good care of people they put in the hotboxes."

"Of course not," Jack said with a snort, retrieving the three
grains of rice that had escaped onto the table and licking them off his
fingers. "What's the point of punishing someone if you're going to pick
them up and dust them off afterwards. I'm surprised they even let you
save me some food."

The twin Jantris exchanged glances. "Well, they didn't exactly
let
us," Noy said. "We sort of sneaked it out."

Jack blinked. "How?"

"That's enough talking for now," Maerlynn said before Noy could
answer. "Jack needs to drink a little more water, then get himself to
bed. Morning starts early around here, Jack, and I imagine you'll be
put out on the line tomorrow."

"Out on what line?" Jack asked, pouring himself another cup of
water.

"Picking rainbow berries with us," Maerlynn said. "They grow on
thorny bushes along the edges of the forest."

Jack grunted as he drank. Probably the bushes he and Uncle Virge
had seen on the flight in. "Sure, why not? They've got all these slaves
anyway. Might as well give us something to do."

Below the mop of white featherines, Maerlynn's forehead wrinkled.
"You're wrong if you think it's just make-work. Rainbow berries are a
valuable commodity, and you can't use robotic harvesters on them."

"You have to look at the colors to see if the berries are ripe,"
Greb explained. "Machines can't read it good enough."

"
Well
enough," Maerlynn corrected him. "Actually, you
probably could make a robot harvester that could do it. But even if you
did, you'd have the problem of giving it a soft enough touch to pick
them without damage.
And
you'd have to make the whole thing
small enough and flexible enough to get between the branches without
knocking off all the unripe ones."

Jack nodded as he poured himself more water. "In other words, if
slaves can do it, why bother trying to come up with a machine?"

Grib made a sniffing sound. "One of
those
," he muttered to
his brother.

Greb nodded. "See you tomorrow, Jack," he said, taking Grib's arm.
Circling the table, they headed to a pair of empty cots that had been
pushed together and lay down on them. Jack frowned toward Maerlynn.
"One of those what?"

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "They were born here," she
said. "Slavery is the only life they've ever known."

"So was I," Noy spoke up.

"That's different," Maerlynn said. "Your folks never accepted this
life the way Greb and Grib and their parents did. Yours never gave up
hoping for freedom."

"Are they still here?" Jack asked, glancing over his shoulder at
the other slaves.

"No," Maerlynn said gently. "They're . . ."

"They're dead," Noy said, an odd note of defiance in his voice.
"My dad was beaten to death after he tried to escape. After that, my
mom got a fever and she died, too."

Jack grimaced. "I'm sorry," he said, wishing he'd kept his mouth
shut. "I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't," Maerlynn said. "No need to apologize.
Would you like to clean up any before you go to bed? I'm afraid the
only showers in here are cold water."

Jack shivered. "Thanks, but I'll pass. I think I'd rather sleep
anyway."

"I understand," Maerlynn said. "Noy, would you show Jack to his
bed?"

"Sure," Noy said. "What about his clothes?"

"There's a sackshirt on his bed," she said, getting to her feet.
"He can sleep in that."

"Okay," Noy said. "Come on, Jack."

He led the way down the line of cots to an empty one beside the
two where Greb and Grib were lying, talking quietly to each other.
"This one's yours," Noy said.

"Thanks," Jack said, nodding to the two Jantris as they looked up
at him. They nodded back and returned to their conversation.

"Oh, and this is Lisssa," Noy said, pointing to the cot on the
other side of Jack's.

A Dolom girl lay there, her thick, tile-like scales looking dull
and dingy in the dim light. She was curled up on her side, her back to
Jack and the Jantris, her attention on a crudely carved stick she was
turning around in her hand. "She's a Dolom," Noy added.

"Yes, I know," Jack said. "Hello, Lisssa. My name's Jack."

Lisssa turned her head halfway around. "Hello, Jack," she said,
and turned back to her stick.

"She's kind of quiet," Noy explained. "Sorry."

"That's okay," Jack said. "Quiet is good. Where's this sackshirt
Maerlynn mentioned?"

"Right here," Noy said, pulling a wad of cloth from under the
pillow. "Go ahead and get undressed."

Jack glanced back at Lisssa. He hadn't had much privacy back in
the Whinyard's Edge, either. But at least there he hadn't had any girls
in the barracks. Even if most of the girls here were aliens, the whole
thing felt a little uncomfortable.