Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 3

They'd been flying for nearly an hour, and Jack was developing a serious crick in his neck from the shuttle's low ceiling, when they finally started down.

Their destination seemed to be a wide canyon cutting through the buttes and rock pillars and sand of the desert around them. As they flew closer, he could see that there were more rock pillars dotting the floor of the canyon, some of them reaching all the way up to the level of the surrounding desert surface. The canyon's pillars also had slender stone archways and guy wires linking them, creating a spiderweb of connections between them and the canyon's steep walls on either side.

Near the center of the canyon was a long, flat structure that seemed to straddle the river itself. From the air, it looked like a cross between a meeting hall and a covered bridge. At a dozen places north and south of the structure, the river had been spanned by narrow bridges.

The canyon floor, in contrast to the light brown sand of the desert around them, was a patchwork of vibrant green. Plants of some sort, probably crops. Along both sides of the canyon floor, the areas farthest from the river, were numerous clusters of trees.

I need to see more to the right.

Jack winced. Draycos should know better than to talk to him in such close confines.

But if the Golvins pressed against him on either side had heard the K'da's murmur, they gave no sign. Carefully, Jack turned his torso a little to the right.

He felt the subtle movement as Draycos eased along his skin to where he could look through the open shirt collar. Jack looked that direction, too, wondering what exactly the dragon was looking at. Aside from the canyon, all of the desert looked pretty much the same.

"We have returned," the driver said, pointing at the canyon below. "You will be ready to begin at once?"

"Let's first see what kind of accommodations you have for me," Jack improvised.

"We will provide the best," the Golvin seated beside the driver assured him. "Low down by the river, near to the Great Assembly Hall and the Seat of Decision."

"Ah," Jack said, a sinking sensation in his stomach. Low down in the canyon and surrounded by all that rock would severely limit the range of the spare comm clip in his shoe. Alison and Uncle Virge would pretty much have to fly directly over the place in order to pick up his signal.

And flying over it was the best they were going to manage, too. With all the archways and guy wires connecting the rock pillars, there was no way a ship the size of the Essenay would be putting down inside the canyon itself anytime soon.

In fact, the shuttle driver himself nearly didn't manage it. With the shifting wind currents along the canyon's edges buffeting the shuttle, Jack had a few very bad moments as they worked their way through the guy wires toward the landing pit by the river a couple hundred yards south of the big building.

But they made it, the engines sending ripples through the tall plants surrounding the landing pit as the pilot shut them down. More Golvins were starting to gather, Jack saw, all of them wearing the same long, pocketed vests as his kidnappers. Some of the outfits were differently cut, though, while others had colorful bits of decoration sewn onto them. By the time Jack maneuvered his way out of the shuttle there were at least fifty of the creatures standing silently watching him.

"I don't suppose it would do any good to tell them I'm not this Jupa you're looking for, would it?" Jack suggested as the driver and the other front-seat passenger joined him.

"You are the Jupa," the driver said firmly. "As indeed they can now tell for themselves."

Jack looked back at his audience. Sure enough, the entire crowd had that fluttering-nose thing going. Something about him apparently smelled really tasty.

He just hoped it wasn't going to be in the culinary sense.

"You wished to see your accommodations," the driver continued. "Come. I will show you."

"And I need to talk to your leaders, too," Jack added as the Golvin started along a path leading from the landing pit toward one of the taller stone pillars a hundred yards away. Aside from the various paths and the landing pit itself, Jack noted, the entire canyon floor seemed devoted to cropland. The trees along both sides, he suspected, probably produced fruit or nuts as well as wood.

"The One will see you shortly," the Golvin assured him. "Come."

Jack followed, the other Golvins from the shuttle coming behind him like an honor guard. There was a doorway in the base of the pillar, he could see, leading into a shadowy room or series of rooms. The doorway itself was decorated with multicolored streamers on both sides and a long colored fringe hanging from the top most of the way to the ground. Twenty feet above the opening, offset a little to the right, was another doorway, a little less lavishly decorated. Above it were more doorways, extending nearly to the pillar's top, most of these with only a sheet of plain cloth covering them. The other pillars were similarly honeycombed with doorways. Apparently, the Golvins liked to live up off the ground.

He was still looking around when his guide reached their destination. Without pausing, the alien spread his hands out onto the stone and started to climb.

"Whoa," Jack said. "Excuse me?"

The Golvin paused five feet up and looked quizzically back over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"I can't do that," Jack told him. "I'll need another way to get up."

"Strange," one of the other Golvins said. "The other Jupas had no problem climbing the grasses."

The grasses? "I already told you I wasn't a Jupa," Jack reminded him, looking more closely at the pillar. Sure enough, there was a crisscrossed mesh of ivylike plants growing out of the rock. Was that what the Golvins' sticky hands were holding onto? "How about giving me the ground-level room instead?" he suggested.

"Impossible," the Golvin beside him said, the skin of his face suddenly wrinkling all over. "That is the dwelling of the One."

"Then you'll need to find me a ladder," Jack said. "I can't climb the way you can."

"Who is this you have brought?" a new voice demanded from behind him.

Jack turned to find an older Golvin striding toward him. His vest was the most elaborately decorated yet, with streamers like those of the ground-floor doorway attached to both shoulders and a matching fringe along the vest's bottom. The implication was obvious. "I gather you're the One?" Jack hazarded.

A ripple of excited murmuring ran through the crowd at Jack's deduction. The leader himself, however, didn't join in. Silently, he continued forward until he was only a couple of feet away from Jack. Then, with a double flick of his wrist, he gestured to the three Golvins still standing beside Jack. Hastily, they backed up a half-dozen paces. "I am the One Among Many," the leader said, his voice stiff and formal as he studied Jack's face. "You claim to be the Jupa?"

Jack looked over the One's shoulder at the crowd. They'd gone silent again, their faces intent as they watched the confrontation. "To be honest, I have no idea what they're talking about," Jack admitted, lowering his voice. "But I can't seem to convince them of that."

For a moment the One eyed him. Then, leaning forward a little, he gave Jack a gingerly sniff. "You do smell like the Jupa Stuart," he admitted with clear reluctance as he leaned back again. "But he is dead."

"As is the other Jupa, I hear," Jack agreed. "Look, I know you're not crazy about me being here. Me, neither. So let's see if we can find a way to make me quietly go away."

The One's face wrinkled. "Go away?" he repeated, his voice suddenly sounding strange.

"I mean leave and go home," Jack said, frowning at the other's reaction. "So how about you give me another sniff, tell them that I'm close but no holiday prize, and they can take me back to the spaceport."

"But you are here," the One said thoughtfully. "And they are right, you do smell like Jupa Stuart. And there is much work to be done."

"You wouldn't like the quality of my work," Jack warned, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"You are a Jupa," the One said, all the hesitation gone from his voice. "You are the Jupa."

And before Jack could say anything, the One turned toward the crowd and lifted his arms. "The Jupa Stuart will not return," he called, his voice echoing across the canyon. "But he has sent another Jupa. The Jupa—" He turned a quizzical look toward Jack.

Jack sighed. "I'm Jack," he said.

"The Jupa Jack," the One intoned, turning back to the crowd. "Welcome him to your lives and his duty."

The entire crowd exploded into a cacophony of whistles, shrieks, and birdcalls. "Look, there's been a mistake," Jack called, trying one last time. "I'm not—"

"Let a bridge be constructed to the Jupa's new home," the One ordered.

The crowd surged forward, the whistles and birdcalls louder than ever. Jack took an involuntary step backward, half expecting to be trampled.

Fortunately, the flow split apart before it reached him. Some of the Golvins headed for the pillar, while the rest swarmed toward a pile of large flagstones stacked at the base of one of the other pillars. Grabbing stones half as big as they were, they staggered their way back to the pillar.

And as Jack watched in amazement, they proceeded to build a bridge.

Not just a stack of stone, but a real bridge. They started the project some twenty feet out from the pillar, manhandling the stones together into an arch curving upward. Jack wondered how they were holding the stones together, and gradually realized that they were using nothing but their own spit.

Within minutes the arch was high and curved enough that it was threatening to tip over. But other Golvins were standing ready, putting in vertical supports beneath the far end as the rest continued working on the bridge itself.

Fifteen minutes later, it was finished: a climbable archway leading from the ground to the second-floor doorway the Golvins had indicated was to be Jack's new home.

"It is complete," the One said with clear satisfaction as a pair of aliens at the top spit-glued the whole thing to the pillar wall. "Unless you will require handrails?"

"No, this will do fine," Jack assured him, wondering what their spit would do to human flesh if it happened to get on him. Best to make sure he never found out. "Thank you. I'd like to rest a bit, and then you can explain my duties."

The One's face wrinkled. "You do not—? But of course. You wish to see the lists of sides and uprights."

"That would be a good start," Jack agreed. "I'll be out presently." Stepping to the archway, he got a grip on the edges and started climbing.

At first he went carefully, not quite ready to believe the thing was as solid as it looked. But there was no give or jostle at all to the structure, and by the time he reached the top he was convinced. Pushing aside the hanging fringe, he went inside.

The apartment turned out to be brighter than it had looked from outside. Though there were no actual windows, there were a half-dozen waist-high openings in the inner walls where slabs of white rock angled against the outer walls sent a soft glow into the room. Between that and the light filtering in through the doorway fringe, there was enough for him to see that the room was furnished with a couch, two chairs, a small table, a battery-powered light, and a small self-contained galley setup that looked like it had been pulled straight out of an old cargo hauler. Through another pair of doorways in the back he could see what looked like a bedroom and a bathroom. The bathroom's inner workings also seemed to have been scavenged from a spaceship.

"The light must be streaming down onto the stones from above," Draycos murmured from his shoulder.

"Keep it down, buddy," Jack warned quietly, walking around the room and making a quick check of the walls and furnishings. He couldn't imagine a simpleminded people like the Golvins bugging the room of their great and glorious Jupa, whatever the blazes that was. But surrounded by unknown aliens in a canyon three hundred feet deep was no place to take chances.

As it turned out, his first gut feeling was right. The living area wasn't bugged, nor were the bedroom or bathroom. "And so here we are," Jack said, dropping tiredly onto the bed. The mattress felt a little stiff, but not too bad. "Wherever in the name of vacuum sealant here is."

With a brief pressure of paws against Jack's shoulders, Draycos leaped out of the boy's shirt and landed with his usual silent grace on the stone floor. "We are approximately four hundred miles east of the NorthCentral Spaceport," the K'da said, stepping over to one of the white-stone openings and twisting his neck to peer upward into the gap between inner and outer walls. "The western edge of the desert is approximately seventy miles away."

Jack winced as he lay back onto the mattress and closed his eves. Seventy miles. So much for any chance they could simply walk out of here. "Any other helpful tidbits?" he asked, more sarcastically than he'd really intended.

"Possibly," Draycos said calmly. "There are the remains of a mining operation less than a mile to the southeast."

"I already told you there was some mining out here."

"Yes, you did," Draycos acknowledged. "You also told me your parents had been killed in a mine accident."

Jack opened his eyes, frowning at the K'da. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"And," Draycos added, "the people here seem to recognize your scent."

For a long moment the room was silent. Jack listened to the sudden thudding of his heart, the vague and half-formed memories of his parents flooding back through his mind. "Are you saying," he said at last, "that this is where they died?"

"I don't know for certain," Draycos said, padding to the bed and resting his upper body on the mattress beside Jack. "But the facts seem to point that direction."

Jack's gaze darted around the room, a sudden inexplicable panic flooding into him. Get away! was his first reflexive reaction. Run, before they get you, too.

He took a careful breath, forcing down the panic. He wasn't three years old anymore, after all. "Let's assume you're right," he said. "What do they want from me?"

"That may depend on how they remember your parents," Draycos said. "Fortunately, they seem to hold Jupas in great esteem."

"Only I'm not a Jupa," Jack reminded him.

"Perhaps there is some task your parents were attempting when they died," Draycos suggested. "They may hope you'll complete it."

"I hope they don't want me to reopen the mine," Jack muttered, a sudden lump rising into his throat. "I don't know the first thing about mining."

"Yet you learn quickly," Draycos pointed out.

Jack snorted. "I hate to tell you, symby, but a hundred feet underground is no place to start learning a trade. Mining is a lot trickier than it looks."

"We'll take it slow and easy," Draycos assured him. "And we'll do it together."

"Terrific," Jack countered. "How much do you know about mining?"

The whiplike tail arched thoughtfully. "It involves digging," he said helpfully.

"Thanks," Jack said dryly. "That much I knew." Sitting up, he twisted his left shoe around and prodded at the molded rubber of the sole. The secret compartment popped open, and he dug out his spare comm clip. "First things first. Let's see if the cavalry was paying attention back there." He clicked on the device. "Uncle Virge?" he called. "Uncle Virge? Alison? Anyone home?"

There was no reply. "We'll have only limited range surrounded by this much rock," Draycos pointed out.

"I know," Jack said. Getting up, he went out of the bedroom and crossed the living room to the exit door. The crowd had dispersed, the Golvins having apparently gone back to tending various parts of the cropland. Looking more closely, Jack could now see that there was an intricate and efficient-looking irrigation system leading off from the river. Maybe these people weren't as simpleminded as he'd first thought. "Uncle Virge?" he called again quietly.

Still no response. With a sigh, Jack shut off the comm clip and went back to the bedroom.

Draycos was by one of the white stones, peering up between the walls. "The gap is quite spacious," he said. "It would be easily passable."

"And it probably conducts sound like crazy," Jack warned, crossing to his side.

"Perhaps, but not between apartments," Draycos said. "These shafts appear to lead only to this particular set of rooms. There may be other shafts extending downward to other apartments."

Jack craned his neck and looked up. The entire shaft seemed to be made of white stone glowing in the reflected light from the sky above. The shimmer made it difficult to see more than a few dozen feet, but there were certainly no other openings within that distance. "Took a heck of a lot of digging to open these up," he commented.

"True, if they burrowed these rooms and shafts from preexisting stone columns," Draycos agreed. "But having watched them build the bridge, I suspect they constructed the pillars themselves. In that case, they simply designed the structures with these double walls."

"That's almost worse," Jack said, wrinkling his nose as an odd scent drifted down between the two walls. "There must be almost forty of these things scattered around the canyon."

"They have clearly been at this a long time," Draycos agreed.

Jack shook his head as he eased his way out of the shaft. "I don't know," he said. "If push comes to shove, I think I'd rather take my chances holding on to your tail while you climb up the outside."

"For three hundred feet?"

"You're right," Jack agreed. "I may have to tie a knot in it first."

The dragon tilted his head warningly. "What?" he rumbled.

"Kidding," Jack hastened to assure him.

"Good," Draycos said. "I find it interesting that the other Jupas seemed to have had no problem reaching this apartment."

"Probably had climbing gear or lift belts," Jack said. "Unfortunately, all that stuff's back aboard the Essenay."

"They'll come for us," Draycos assured him quietly. "Uncle Virge will not abandon you. He and Alison will somehow learn where we are."

"Or maybe he already knows," Jack said, frowning as a sudden thought struck him. "If this is where my parents died . . ."

He looked sharply at Draycos as some of the pieces fell together. "Why that rotten—" he bit out, a sudden anger flooding through him. "He knew these Golvins were looking for me. That's why he never let me off the ship whenever we were on Semaline."

"That does now seem likely," Draycos agreed.

"Likely, my left foot," Jack growled. "It's a dead cert. Geez. First Neverlin, and now these Golvins. Is there anyone out there who doesn't want a piece of me?"

Draycos flicked his tail. "You're a very popular person."

Jack glared at him. "This isn't funny, buddy."

Draycos ducked his head. "My apologies," he said. "I was trying to lighten the mood."

Jack sighed. "I know," he said, reaching over to scratch Draycos behind his ear. "I'm sorry. I'm just . . . I thought I'd buried all these memories a long time ago."

"Memories are not a bad thing," Draycos reminded him. "They anchor us to the past—"

"And give us a sense of the present, and point the way to the future," Jack finished for him. "Yes, I remember the spiel you gave Noy back in the Chookoock slave quarters."

"It was not a spiel," Draycos said stiffly. "The boy was ill, and I was trying to comfort him."

"I know," Jack said, his mind drifting back to that terrible time. At least these Golvins didn't seem to want him as a slave. "I wonder how he's doing."

"I'm sure he's fine," Draycos said. "He and the others had Maerlynn to look after them. Perhaps Fleck, too."

"Maybe." Jack took a deep breath. "Well, no point putting this off any longer. Climb aboard, buddy. Let's go see what the One Among Many wants with me."