The overall construction was poorly done, too. Not all the boards seemed to fit right, and there were gaps in places where the boards had been too short, or else had rotted away.
The car turned a little to the left as they approached the cluster of buildings. Its headlights swept across and then steadied on a group of what looked like three metal packing crates set out in the middle of a wide circle of sand.
One of the Brummgas sitting behind Jack tapped his shoulder with a finger the size and weight of a wrench. "Pick a number," he said.
Jack frowned. "Two hundred seventeen."
The Brummga made a disgusted sound. "Pick a number from one to three."
In the privacy of the darkness, Jack made a face. Like he was supposed to have known that. "Three."
"Number three," the Brummga told the driver.
The car angled a couple more degrees, and a moment later came to rest with its headlights centered on the packing crate on the far left. "Get out," the first Brummga ordered.
Jack obeyed, the aliens piling out alongside him. While the other two stood guard, the driver stepped to the box and crouched down. There was a large handle near the bottom of the crate, just above a narrow horizontal slit, with a keyhole at one end.
The Brummga fumbled a key into place and turned it. Getting a grip on the handle, he straightened up again, swinging the whole front of the box upward. "Get in," he ordered, gesturing inside with his free hand.
Steeling himself, Jack did so.
From the outside, the box had seemed pretty small. From the inside, it seemed even smaller. He had to duck low to keep from whacking his head on the ceiling as he stepped in, and if he'd tried waving his arms around he would have dislocated both elbows. There was a small pan in one corner; from its lingering aroma, it probably served as the toilet facilities.
The driver didn't give him much chance to study his new quarters. Jack was barely inside when the wall swung shut behind him, throwing a brief gust of air at the back of his neck and plunging him into darkness. There was another click from the lock, the sound of plodding footsteps in the sand, and the hum of the car as it pulled away and headed for home.
Leaving him alone in the darkness.
Well, not entirely alone. "Are you all right?" Draycos asked quietly from his shoulder.
"Oh, just dandy," Jack growled as he turned around to face the door and carefully sat down. The floor was plain sand, gritty against the palms of his hands, and through his shirt the metal wall felt icy cold against his back. Odd for a place that Gazen had called a hotbox. "This wasn't exactly how I'd planned to spend the evening. You have any idea where we are?"
"We are in the slave colony nearest the river," Draycos said. "Approximately one-half mile from the edge of the Chookoock family grounds, within the edge of the forest and near a large patch of the bushes Uncle Virge noted."
"How wonderful it is to be here, too," Jack said, digging at the sole of his left shoe. The molded rubber looked solid enough; but a little prodding at the proper place found the secret catch and popped it open.
There was a soft thud as the spare comm clip he had hidden inside dropped onto the sand. His eyes were adjusting now, enough to see a sliver of starlight seeping in through the crack beneath the door. Retrieving the comm clip, he clicked it on. "Uncle Virge?"
"I'm here," Uncle Virge's voice came back instantly. "Careful, lad. Not too loud."
"Don't worry, no one's going to hear me," Jack told him. "They've got me stashed out in the slave quarters."
There was a brief silence. "Not in the mansion?"
"The echo you're hearing isn't from a walk-in closet," Jack said. "They've got me in a tin room the size of the Essenay's freezer."
"Very strange," Uncle Virge said, his voice frowning. "Gazen just transferred a hundred and ten thousand into my service account at the spaceport."
Jack blinked. "That much?" he asked, feeling oddly pleased at the number.
"That much," Uncle Virge assured him. "For a sum that size, he ought to be taking better care of you."
"Maybe not having me beaten to a pulp qualifies as gentle handling in his book," Jack said. "What do you mean, he transferred it into your service account? He didn't fork over real cash?"
"No, but that's okay," Uncle Virge said. "It's not like we were planning to actually spend it. But I'm a little concerned about your situation. This was supposed to be a quick updown hop, with you in the main house the whole time."
"I guess Gazen didn't read the script," Jack said with a grimace. At his right shoulder, Draycos's snout rose up from his skin, poking into the air like a submarine periscope. "Just means we're going to have to find a way back, that's all. I figure another day or two—"
"Quiet," Draycos cut in suddenly. "Someone is coming."
"I'll call you back," Jack whispered, and clicked off the comm clip. He hadn't heard anything himself, but after two months of living with Draycos he knew better than to question the dragon's ears. Tucking the comm clip back into its hiding place, he hurriedly smoothed over the sole.
He could hear the footsteps now, sloshing through the sand around the hotboxes. They seemed slow and lumbering, rather like a Brummga's. Uneasily, he wondered if Gazen had decided to send someone to beat him to a pulp after all. A shadow crossed the light coming in from under the door.
"Hello?" a gravelly voice called softly. "Anyone there?"
Not a Brummgan voice, he decided. That was a hopeful sign. And despite the low pitch, he also had the odd impression it was female. "Yes, I'm here," he called back. "Who are you?"
"My name's Maerlynn," the voice answered. "I'm sort of the welcoming committee."
"I've already met the welcoming committee, thanks," Jack said sourly, rubbing his shoulder where the Brummga had tapped him. "Large, friendly sorts with big fingers."
"Are you hurt?" Maerlynn asked. "I may be able to get you some bandages or salves."
Jack frowned in the darkness. Who was this person, anyway? "No, I'm all right," he said. "What are you? I mean, what's your connection here?"
There was soft sound like a glob of mud being thrown against a wall. A chuckle? "Noy's parents used to call me the Den Mother before they died. A human term, I suppose. You are human, aren't you? Greb couldn't see very well when they brought you in, but he thought you were. He said he thought you were young, too. Are you?"
Draycos's head rose again from Jack's shoulder. "Move to the side wall," the dragon whispered into his ear.
Jack nodded and started to ease himself around. "Yes, I'm human," he acknowledged. "And I'm fourteen. I don't know if you count that as young or not. Who's Greb?"
"One of my children," Maerlynn said. "He's sixteen, so he probably does consider fourteen to be young."
"Yeah, I've known some sixteen-year-olds," Jack grunted. "What about you?"
"I'm Maerlynn, as I said," she said. "I'm an Ysanhar. Female. And I'm not going to give you my age."
"I wasn't going to ask," Jack said. He was in position now, with his back pressed against the side wall of his prison. In their two-dimensional forms, K'da had a handy trick of being able to see through walls, provided the barrier was thin enough. From his angle, Draycos might not be able to see Maerlynn where she was right now, but she should come into view as soon as she headed back to the slave buildings.
Assuming she did go back to the slave buildings. He still wasn't convinced this wasn't some trick of Gazen's to get him talking. "Are you a slave?" he asked.
"Everyone on this side of the thorn hedge is a slave," Maerlynn said, an odd sadness in her voice. "You, too, it would seem. Here—take this."
Something poked at Jack's feet through the crack under the door. He reached down a hand, being careful not to pull his back away from the wall. He didn't know what would happen to Draycos if he moved while the dragon was looped over the wall that way, but it wasn't something he wanted to find out the hard way.
His fingers touched an edge of rough cloth. "What is it?"
r /> "A blanket," Maerlynn said. "It's going to get pretty cold in there tonight."
Colder than this? Jack wondered, suppressing a shiver. "So how come Gazen called it a hotbox?"
There was a slight pause, just long enough for Jack to wonder if he'd said something wrong. "You'll find out about mid-morning," Maerlynn said. "How long are you in for? Do you know?"
"He didn't say," Jack told her. "He just said I needed a lesson about what it meant to cross the Chookoock family."
"I see," Maerlynn said. "Do you need anything else right now? Food? Water?"
"No, I'm all right," Jack said.
"Get some sleep if you can," Maerlynn said. "I'll try to come talk to you again later."
"Okay," Jack said. "Thanks."
"You're welcome." There was another slight pause. "By the way . . . if any of the Brummgas ask, I'd rather you not tell them I came and talked to you. We're not supposed to go near people in the hotboxes."
"I won't," Jack promised. Though how she expected him to explain the blanket he wasn't sure. "Thanks again."
"Sure," Maerlynn said. "Good-bye."
The shadow vanished, and there was the sound of fading footsteps. The feel of the dragon shifted again, and his head rose from Jack's shoulder. "Well?" Jack asked.
"She is medium height and of a somewhat round build," Draycos reported. "Her skin looks rough, somewhat like the outer coating of a pineapple. Her head was covered with tendrils of a white substance. Similar to human hair, but it did not look precisely the same."
"They're called featherines," Jack said. "Yeah, that's an Ysanhar, all right. What were her clothes and shoes like?"
"Her clothing was well-worn and patched in several places," Draycos said. "Her shoes were in similar shape."
"And she headed back to the slave quarters?"
"Yes."
"One of the slaves, all right," Jack concluded.
"Was there doubt?"
"There's always doubt when you deal with people like Gazen." Jack shook his head. "She isn't going to have a very pleasant night."
"I do not understand."
"She's probably wondering if I'm some kind of plant," Jack explained. "I shouldn't have mentioned that I'd talked to Gazen. Most of the slaves in here have probably never even heard the name, let alone talked to the guy." He shivered, a violent shake that ran through his whole body. "Geez, it's cold."
Draycos cocked his head. "Put the blanket behind you," he suggested. "Drape it between you and the wall."
Jack did as instructed, folding the blanket in half first to provide the thickest insulation possible. Now his chest was exposed to the air, but at least he wasn't leaning up against the cold metal wall anymore. "Good," Draycos said. "Now hold still."
And with a surge against Jack's shirt, the dragon leaped off his skin. Twisting around in midair, he managed to avoid whacking his head on the low ceiling and landed on Jack's chest and hips.
"Oof!" Jack grunted. Draycos had come down with his paws straddling Jack's chest and legs, but even with most of his weight supported that way there was enough left over for Jack to feel it. "What did you have for breakfast? Cement omelets?"
"I am sorry," Draycos murmured, his breath warm on Jack's cheek. "I was hoping I could help you keep warm."
"I appreciate it," Jack said. Having the dragon three-dimensional certainly made the packing crate more cramped.
But on the plus side, the K'da was radiating a fair amount of heat. Already he could feel the chill starting to leave his skin. "Matter of fact, I appreciate it a lot," he added. "Thanks."
"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."
CHAPTER 6
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.
Jac
k 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."