Dragon's Heart (38 page)

"
Danger?
" she sent.

He squatted down beside her. "Not anymore," he said, sending it at the same time. Then he scratched beneath her chin till she began to thrum.

***

THEY ALL ate dinner that evening at Akki's bedside—eggs, salad, a berry pie and a berry liqueur for dessert. Jakkin refused the last. What he had to say was too important to say tipsy.

Likkarn was there, having been fetched by copter. Jakkin had insisted on it. The other nursery folk had stopped by and were told the story of the rescue, then were driven back home to the nursery.

The driver Dikkon was returned to his home in a casket. There was to be a major funeral in a few days. Golden planned to speak at it. Insisted on it, actually. There was to be a widow's pension, larger than Dikkon's salary. Golden was planning to fund it himself.

Senekka was now settled in her own bedroom, much improved. So it was just the five of them at dinner: Jakkin and Akki, Likkarn, Golden and Henkky.

As she sat up in the hospice bed, eyes like bruises, Akki said she felt better. "I'm not tied up and starving, so it's a major improvement."

"Tomorrow I'm going to try you on tea and dry toast," Henkky said.

Golden cleared his throat. "Jakkin, why did you want us all here?"

Jakkin was holding Akki's hand carefully, the one with the torn thumbnail. He'd already discussed with her what he wanted to say. Taking time to look at each of them in turn, he said, "We need your advice."

Henkky leaned forward. "Is it about this dragon problem, the one you alluded to before ... before..."

Akki nodded.

"It's a dragon problem, but a people problem, too," Jakkin said. "We thought it would be simple, but it's not."

Akki put her other hand on top of his. "Just tell it from the beginning, Jakkin."

So he did, going back to the time they'd sheltered in Heart's Blood's egg chamber for warmth, then had emerged in the morning utterly changed. "We could stay out in Dark-After, we could talk to dragons mind-to-mind. And to each other that way as well."

"I have a bit of that, too," Likkarn said.

Henkky and Golden just looked astonished.

Henkky said, "Mind speech?"

"That's rubbish," Golden said.

"Not at all." Likkarn's voice was calm.

Jakkin continued. "In the mountains Akki and I were captured by the very same trogs who came after me just days ago." He spoke quickly about what he'd endured while being captured by them, and how he and Likkarn and Errikkin had killed all four.

Raising his bandaged arm, Likkarn added, "One of them gave me this in the battle."

Jakkin laughed, remembering that the wound had come from Errikkin closing Likkarn's fingers in the door, but he didn't contradict the old man.

"What you need to know is that the trogs also know the secret. They must have discovered it generations ago. They slaughter their hen dragons after the hens give birth, in order to place their own babies in the egg chamber. And they have all but given up speech in favor of sendings."

Akki sat up a bit more in the bed. "I came here to use Dr. Henkky's lab to try to make a vaccine using tissue or blood from a dragon's egg chamber so everyone can have these same gifts. The change has to have happened chemically not magically, and we should be able to reproduce it in the laboratory."

Nodding, Henkky said, "I agree."

"That's not all," Jakkin said. "When my friend Slakk killed a drakk in the incubarn last week, he had a moment when his hand was in her egg chamber and I could hear him," Jakkin said. "Just a moment."

"Drakk blood..." Akki's eyes got wide. "Maybe..."

Golden threw up his hands. "All right, everyone—I believe you. Akki, you can work here. Or we can build you a lab at the nursery. Or ..."

Interrupting them, Jakkin said, "But as I watched the warehouse burn, I suddenly wondered what could have happened if Dark had had the ability to talk to dragons, to force them to blaze away at anyone he didn't like. Look what I did—and I'm not a bad man."

They were all silent for a moment, then suddenly began to talk all at once, assuring him he was actually a hero, telling him that motive made things right.

Jakkin held up his hand to stop them. "I'm not worried about
me
being bad. But who judges motive? Which one of us can make that decision for others? I've been thinking that maybe Akki shouldn't work on such a vaccine now, if men like Dark—who want to rule the planet—could harness it to their own ends."

This time the silence lasted longer. Henkky opened her mouth several times, shutting it without speaking. Likkarn chewed on his lower lip.

Finally, Golden smiled and spread his hands out, palms down. He seemed to be looking at his nails as he spoke. "Jakkin, if we waited on progress until the planet was filled with only good people, we'd never move forward at all. Human beings are a funny combination of good and bad. We work to make the good ones better, to weed out the bad ones. Sometimes we miss. We certainly missed Dark. He killed Dikkon, who was a good, honorable man. He almost killed Senekka and he tortured Akki."

Golden looked up now, talking directly to Jakkin. "He would have killed you, too. But he didn't because you had something he never had. You have beings who love you unconditionally. Who count on you. Who stand up for you. Who know your soul because it is entirely open to them.
He
only had a gun and a black heart."

Likkarn laughed. "A
really
black heart now."

"
Uncle
Likkarn!" Jakkin said.

And suddenly there were other things to talk about, explain, marvel at—like family history.

Henkky finally interrupted. "Now, now. You're tiring my patient. Outside, the three of you. And take the dishes into the kitchen."

***

LATER, WHEN the rest were all asleep, Jakkin walked outside. It was several hours till Dark-After, but he had five more of his "beings" to see. He walked quickly, purposefully, to the blackened and empty warehouse. It took a little time, but time was a resource he now had in plenty. Once there, he waded out into the wort field.

"
I am here
," he sent, "
I am here
."

And suddenly, as he'd hoped, he was surrounded by his dragons.

Sssargon was lying down, munching on fresh plucked wort leaves. "
Sssargon getsss sister. Sssargon good. Sssargon eatsss. Sssargon fliesss
."

"
Sssargon is a hero
," Jakkin sent, picturing a great red dragon in a hind foot rise.

"
No danger
." Sssasha's sending accompanied a picture of a long golden rope curling beneath a dragon's foot.

"
Thou art a hero, too
," he told her, and in his sending, the dragon pulled on a rope, and a boy and girl caught in it are pulled to her heart.

The twittering, indecipherable sounds of the triplets were full of fire.

"
Oh, thou great trinity of heroes
," Jakkin sent to them. "
Thee burned up the enemy
." He didn't try to warn them about ever doing it again. He understood now that they'd only done it to rescue him. And Akki. They weren't ferals, after all.

"
A few more days here
," he sent, "
then we go home
."

"
Home!
" they sent back.

He petted them until they thrummed their pleasure. Then he walked slowly back to Golden's house, the cold of Dark-After spilling across his shoulders like a river in full spate. He slept the rest of Dark-After in the chair next to Akki's bed, just in case she should need him in the darkest part of the night, or even in the full light of the new day.

AUSTAR IV is the fourth planet of a seven-planet rim system in the Erato Galaxy. Once a penal colony, marked KK29 on the convict map system, it is a semiarid metal-poor world with two moons.

A Federation embargo was imposed in the mid 2500s, after disgruntled bond-slaves, understandably angry at their continuing low place in Austarian society, began to foment a revolution. This revolution ended in a series of violent confrontations. The worst of these was the bombing of Rokk Major, the greatest of the dragon gaming pits on the planet. Thirty-seven people were killed outright; twenty-three died later of their wounds. Hundreds of other people, both Austarians and offworlders, were seriously injured.

After a year of further conflict, Austar's senate voted to free the bonders, but by then the embargo was in place for a term of not more than fifty years or until the planet was considered safe again. The embargo kept all official ships from landing, which meant that Austar IV was then without sanctioned metal replacement parts or technical assistance for that period of time, except for the visit by a Federation hospital ship every two years. However, it is known that occasional pirate ships slipped through the embargo lines. (See the holo of
The Golden Deceiver,
one of several such star-class ships, and read its log.)

Another pirate vessel,
Golden's Hope,
managed to report back to the Federation that during the ten years following the start of the embargo, a vaccine was developed by a young researcher, Akkhina Stewart. That vaccine was created from the blood of an indigenous flying lizard, the omnivorous drakk. (See the holo of the vaccine's recombinant DNA structure, in the medical section.) That vaccine was life-altering for the inhabitants of Austar, enabling most of them to live outdoors in the below frigid cold of the period of Dark-After for the first time. Once given, the vaccine proved to last a lifetime, and anyone who has had the vaccine has passed its protection on to his or her children. Offworlders who have recently settled on the planet do not seem to be able to tolerate the vaccine, nor do inhabitants whose ancestors came from the following planets: Mars Colony, Vulcana, the Harris Habitats, and the Centurion Belt.

There have also been rumors that some of the people given the vaccine could thereafter "talk" to the planet's creatures, but it's believed that this is just planetary folklore. (See "Fairy Ointment, Briggs, English, Earth" in the folklore section.)

The Federation concluded the embargo after ten years and offered the planet Protectorate status again, which the senate—under President Durrah Golden—refused. Still, the planet of Austar IV has remained a primary R&R stop for long-haul starships and rocket guards from around the galaxies. Under Federation law, no short-term offworlder is allowed the vaccine.

—excerpt from
The Encyclopedia Galaxia,
thirty-fourth edition, vol. 1: Aaabarker—Austar