by Timothy Zahn
"All three groups of you?" Jack asked. "K'da, Shontine, and Dhghem?"
"That was our hope," Draycos murmured. "But for the Dhghem, sadly, the time of peace was all too short. Too many of them were lost in the final battle aboard the Cark ship, and there were no females left among them."
Jack winced. "Oh."
"Those who remained lived out their lives among us in peace and great honor,"
Draycos went on. "But when they died, it was the end of their line."
Jack felt a tightness in his throat. "So you and the Shontine made yourselves a
a
"
"Yes," Draycos said. "Still, we had many centuries of peace there. And though we now have been forced to flee, we also found friends and allies during our stay.
In balance, we have no cause to complain."
"If you say so," Jack said. " 'Course, that's never stopped anyone else."
Draycos seemed to draw himself up. "Perhaps not," he said firmly. "But a poet-warrior of the K'da must hold himself to higher standards. We must learn from our past, but we must not allow our history to write itself over the present. Our task is to create the future."
"Right," Jack said, deciding to take the dragon's word for whatever it was he'd just said. Did all K'da warriors talk like that, he wondered, or was it just Draycos? "So what part of the future did you want to create tonight?"
"We can only control that part immediately before us," Draycos said. "And our first task to that end is to rest and gather our strength."
"I was hoping you'd say that," Jack said, yawning. "You going to sleep, too, or haven't you finished pacing yet?"
"I have finished," Draycos said. Stepping to Jack's side, he slipped up his sleeve. "Thank you for listening. And thank you, too, for your words of wisdom."
"You're welcome," Jack told him, wondering what words of wisdom the dragon was talking about.
Maybe later he would ask about it. For now, any further conversation would have to be in the form of sleep-talking. "Pleasant dreams," he said, and scooched himself down to lay flat on the bed again.
Draycos might have said something back to him. But Jack was asleep long before he ever could have heard it.
CHAPTER 16
Her Thumbleness woke up five hours later, as preparations for the noon meal were underway in one of the smaller dining rooms. Naturally, she woke up bellowing for her new pet human.
Heetoorieef himself came to fetch Jack, getting a grip on the collar of Jack's harlequin outfit and hauling him up into a sitting position on his cot. He shoved a cup of something hot into his hands, ordered him to drink it, then crouched down and pushed the boy's shoes onto his tired feet.
That task completed, he half pulled, half guided Jack to the stairs. The slave quarters were buzzing with the mealtime preparations, but Heetoorieef managed to move him through the controlled chaos without getting either of them run down.
The stuff in the cup was bizarre, tasting like a mixture of Brussels sprouts, coconut, and apricot jam. It was a combination even Draycos might have turned up his long snout at, and that was saying a lot.
But taster's nightmare or not, the concoction did its job. Even before Heetoorieef got him to the stairs, Jack could feel his brain kicking into gear again. By the time they reached the main floor, and the Wistawk took the cup from him with a muttered "good luck," he was wide awake.
The day started like a rerun of the night before. Her Thumbleness's friends ran around playing loud Brummgan games and activities, mostly ignoring Jack as he stood silently by, against a wall. Every once in a while someone would suddenly notice him, or Her Thumbleness would decide she needed to show off her new toy again, and he would be called on to perform.
But as the afternoon wore on, he could see the signs of fatigue starting to build in his audience. Even Brummgas couldn't keep up this pace forever, and the children had already pushed themselves way too far. The demands on Jack became sharper, and the slaps and shoves more frequent, sometimes even when he'd done exactly as he'd been ordered. A couple of hours more of this, he knew, and Her Thumbleness would collapse into a Brummga-sized heap whether she liked it or not.
The only question was which of them was going to crack first. With only five hours of sleep under his own belt, Jack wasn't exactly at the top of his game, either. Moreover, Her Thumbleness had probably spent the night before her party snoozing lazily in that wide, soft bed she and her playmates had been wrestling on in the early hours of the morning. Jack, in contrast, had spent that night in the hotbox.
But Her Thumbleness was a Brummga, and a child Brummga at that. Jack was human, and fourteen years old. Pride alone insisted that he outlast her.
He did, but just barely. She was halfway through the evening meal when she threw a tantrum over absolutely nothing Jack could figure out. Apparently even her father had had enough of her for one day, and summarily dismissed her back to her room.
Even in his anger, though, Crampatch showed himself to be a tower of jelly as far as his daughter was concerned. When she demanded that she be allowed to take her new toy upstairs with her, he gave in with only a token protest.
Her Thumbleness was still mad when they reached her bedroom. But if her spirit was eager to play punching bag with her slave, her flesh was already halfway to dreamland. She picked on him for a few minutes, demanding a trick and then loudly declaring it wasn't good enough. But she was fading rapidly. She made only a single half-hearted attempt to hit him, and even there the gesture evaporated along the way as she apparently decided it wasn't worth the effort.
Ordering him to lie down on the floor at the foot of her bed, she trudged to the small artificial swamp off the sleeping area for her bedtime preparations.
Ten minutes later, the room dark except for a softly glowing starscape set into the domed ceiling, she was snoring peacefully.
Jack listened to the rhythm of her breathing for another half hour before he decided it was safe to talk. "Well," he whispered to Draycos. "Here we are again."
"Yes," the dragon answered. "I am sorry, Jack. I wish there was something I could have done to prevent this." "Are you kidding?" Jack countered. "This, my gold-plated friend, is as good as it gets."
There was a short silence. "I do not understand."
"Where was I last night?" Jack asked. "Well, this morning, I mean, when I finally got to bed. I was downstairs in the slave quarters, right? Where there are lots of people watching, and probably a few monitors scattered around to make sure the slaves don't wander into places they're not supposed to go."
He smiled tightly in the darkness. "Now where are we?"
"We are in the Chookoock family living area," Draycos said, his voice suddenly thoughtful. "Where there may not be any such monitors."
"Exactly," Jack said. "Once everyone goes to bed, we'll have as much freedom of movement as we're ever likely to get."
He eased himself up and looked carefully across the bed. Her Thumbleness was lying half under the blankets like a dropped rag doll, her flat nose waggling in rhythm with her snores. "Which means tonight's the night," he added as he lay back down on the floor. His pulse was pounding in his ears, his whole body tingling with excitement. For the first time in a long time, he felt really psyched up for a job. "Tonight we hit Gazen's computers." But it was one thing for Jack to be ready for a job. It was something else for the job to be ready for him.
For starters, Her Thumbleness was a kid. That meant that her normal, non-High Day bedtime was earlier than that of the adult Brummgas. And on this particular night, of course, she'd been kicked upstairs early, which gave Jack that much more time to lie around staring at the ceiling.
And then came a twist he hadn't expected. The noise of clumping Brummgas had faded down the hallway; and he was just starting the one-hour countdown he would give them to fall asleep, when he began to hear the soft humming of cleaning machines and the stuttering footsteps of Wistawki feet. Apparently, only now were the house slaves fanning out through t
he Brummgan residential areas to do their house-cleaning duties.
It was about as bizarre a setup as Jack had ever heard of. In every other place he'd visited over his lifetime, that kind of cleaning always took place during the day, while the occupants were out working or busy with other activities.
Here, it seemed, the Brummgas preferred to have it done practically under their feet as they prepared for bed. Apparently, the Chookoock family didn't want anyone, not even their own slaves, poking around when they weren't there.
"Jack?" Draycos's voice said softly in his ear.
Jack jerked silently awake, realizing only then that he'd fallen asleep. The dragon was crouched over him, his green eyes glowing faintly, his red-edged golden scales glittering in the pale light from the ceiling starscape. "What is it?" he whispered back.
"I believe it is clear now," Draycos said. "It is also getting late."
"I'll bet," Jack said, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes. "Any idea what time it is?"
"According to Her Thumbleness's clock, it is just before four in the morning." Jack winced. By six o'clock, he knew from the previous morning, the breakfast staff would be moving around downstairs. That gave him less than two hours to wring that mercenary data out of Gazen's computers. "Then we'd better get cracking," he said.
The corridor outside Her Thumbleness's room was dark and deserted. Jack eased toward the stairway, keeping near the wall and watching for tripwires or other intruder snares. Given the late-night cleaning activity, he had already decided there probably wouldn't be any. But in this line of work, it didn't pay to take anything for granted.
It was just as well he hadn't. The same person who had wired up the gatekeeper's house had apparently had a few gadgets left over after finishing that job.
Jack found a tripwire at the top of the stairway, and a pressure plate four steps down.
Clearly, the Chookoock family was serious about their privacy. Or maybe they just didn't want Her Thumbleness making midnight raids on the kitchen.
But that was all there was, and a few minutes later he was crouched beside Gazen's office door. "There will most likely be security inside," Draycos warned in his ear.
"I know," Jack said, studying the lock carefully. Sturdy enough, but nothing he couldn't handle.
Unless, of course, it held a surprise or two. "How about we take a look?" he suggested, shifting around and pressing his back against the door.
"Certainly." The dragon moved along his skin, and Jack felt him extend his two-dimensional form outward, arching himself "over" the door.
For a minute nothing happened. Jack held position, feeling tiny movements against his skin as Draycos shifted around, studying the door and the office itself. Back when he and Draycos had first met, this little K'da talent hadn't been much more than a curiosity. Draycos had been barely able to speak the language, couldn't read a word of it, and knew absolutely nothing about Orion Arm technology. Sending him to look through locked doors hadn't been much better than giving the job to a trained monkey.
But now, things were different. Draycos was a quick study, and had been eager to learn everything he could about humans and the Orion Arm—
Jack's breath caught suddenly in his throat. For a second there, something about the way Draycos was hanging onto his back had felt different. As if the dragon had somehow been...
He frowned. Slipping was the word that had come to mind.
But Draycos couldn't slip. Could he? In fact, wouldn't sliding off Jack's skin in his two-dimensional form be fatal?
His mind flashed back to their first meeting, when Draycos had been about to die from being too long without a host. If he'd been alone much longer, he would have gone two-dimensional anyway and drifted off into nothingness.
Could something like that be happening now?
He took a deep breath, careful to keep his back pressed firmly against the door.
Steady, he ordered himself. After all, Draycos slipped off Jack's body all the time, every time he popped back into his three-dimensional form. It was just a
matter of timing, that was all. A matter of the dragon doing the transition right as he came off Jack's skin. No problem.
So why was it suddenly feeling so strange?
"Draycos?" he whispered. "You all right?"
There was no answer. He was opening his mouth to try again when there was a stirring, and the dragon came fully and solidly back onto his skin. "There are no alarms in the door mechanism that I can see," he reported from Jack's right shoulder.
"What about the rest of the room?" Jack asked. "Cameras or motion detectors?"
"There appears to be a single camera in the upper left corner of the room," the dragon said. "It is pointed at the door, but covers most of the office."
"That's it?"
"That was all I could see," Draycos replied. "But I do not claim to be an expert yet at these matters."
"No, but you're probably right," Jack assured him. "Gazen's got that overconfident attitude we professional thieves love to see. Besides, here in the middle of the mansion, what does he need security for?"
"We will hope you are correct," Draycos said. "What about the camera?"
"Were there wires attached?" Jack asked. "Or did it seem to be wireless?"
"There were definitely wires," the dragon said. "I could see them going into the wall.
Jack nodded. Again, as he would have expected. The signal from wireless systems could be tapped into by someone who knew what he was doing, possibly even from outside the house. And if there was one thing Gazen wouldn't want, it would be strangers looking over his shoulder. "We should be able to get to them though the wall," he concluded. "Anything else?"
"Only a device labeled 'Dropskip Sequencer' built into the lock," Draycos said.
"It does not appear to be an alarm, but I am certain it has some special purpose."
Jack's brief surge of overconfidence vanished. "Oh, it has a purpose, all right," he said with a sigh. "A sequencer keeps track of how many times the door has been opened. Practically foolproof, and practically undetectable. Except by K'da poet-warriors."
"Can it be disconnected?"
Jack shook his head. "Like I said, foolproof. Even if we were able to take it off, Gazen would know it had been tampered with and figure out someone had been inside. Might as well save ourselves the trouble."
"What is our plan, then?"
Jack chewed at his lip. His time was sliding away, he knew, the seconds vanishing like peanuts at an elephant convention. He had to get in, get the data, and get out. And he had to do it without Gazen knowing he'd been there.
Or did he?
He scratched his cheek as a new thought suddenly struck him. Did he really care whether Gazen knew he'd been in here? After all, the minute he got the mercenary data they needed, he and Draycos were going to be out of here. Through the front gate, over or around whatever security the Brummgas had hanging around, back to the Essenay, and off this rock.
But to knowingly reveal himself in the middle of a job went against every cubic inch of training Uncle Virgil had hammered into him. Very unprofessional.
Also very stupid.
Draycos was still waiting. "All right," Jack said slowly. "Compromise. We'll take out the camera, but we won't worry about the sequencer."
"We do not care if Gazen knows someone has been inside?"
"With luck, we'll be long gone before he finds out," Jack assured him, straightening up.
"Perhaps," Draycos said doubtfully. "It does not seem, though, that this thing you call luck has been with us in any great quantity so far."
"Tell me about it," Jack said dryly, straightening up from his crouch. "But it's got to change sometime. Let's get around the other side of that wall and find those camera wires."
CHAPTER 17
Back aboard the Star of Wonder, the wiring for the purser's office security cameras had been hidden inside the walls. Here, in the middle of the Chookoock family stronghold, the designers had
apparently decided not to be so fancy.
The wires from Gazen's camera ran along the outside of the office wall, snugged up close against the ceiling.
It was a place most intruders wouldn't have a hope of reaching without a ladder, Jack included. Fortunately, he had Draycos instead. By standing on Jack's shoulders, the dragon was just able to reach up to the wires. A delicate puncture with one of his claws, and the camera was out of the game.
The lock on the door itself was only a little trickier. With the help of a flat lockpick Jack had hidden in his other shoe, he had it open in under two minutes.
And with less than fifteen minutes gone since they'd sneaked out of Her Thumbleness's room, they were inside Gazen's office.
"Okay," Jack breathed, standing with his back to the door and giving the room a
quick once-over of his own. It looked clean, all right. Gazen definitely liked his privacy. "It should be downhill from here."
"Pardon?"
"It should be easy," Jack translated, crossing the room and sitting down in Gazen's chair. It was a very comfortable chair, soft and smooth and luxurious, and he found himself feeling a twinge of discomfort as he settled against the smooth material. He shouldn't be even touching something this nice, let alone be sitting in it.
He blinked, an ugly shock running through him. I shouldn't even be touching something this nice? What in space was that supposed to mean? Because he'd certainly touched fancier stuff than this. Way fancier. He could remember standing on a carpet once that would have cost Gazen's entire year's salary, in the middle of a room decorated with original da Vincis and Michelangelos and ancient Chinese urns. What was this nonsense about not being good enough to sit in Gazen's lousy chair?
Because he was a slave, that was why. And even in the short time he'd been playing that role, the whole slave mindset had wiggled its way into him.
Quietly, subtly, and a lot deeper than he'd realized.
