Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 17

With the marks of their footsteps easily visible in the dust, Draycos's guidance wasn't really necessary. A few minutes later, they rounded the last curve in the main tunnel to find Thonsifi and Sefiseni standing together in the entrance. Their faces, at least what Jack could see of them in the faint beam from his light, looked anxious. "It's all right," Jack called. "I'm here."

"We were worried about you," Thonsifi said as Jack emerged into the staging room, relief evident in her voice. "Eithon has been calling from outside. Another air transport has arrived in the canyon."

Jack felt the breath catch in his throat. The Essenay'? "How big was—? Never mind," he interrupted himself. No point quizzing them when he could go look for himself. "Let's get back."

A minute later they were in the air again. Jack eyed the network of stone arches and guy wires as they approached the canyon, hope fading as he realized again that a ship the size of the Essenay could never make it in there.

Sure enough, as they flew over the edge and started down he could see, far below, a small two-man aircar squatting on the landing pit. "Any idea who that could be?" Jack asked.

"I do not know for certain," Thonsifi said, her voice trembling a bit.

Jack peered at her face. Jack was safe, and they were away from the mine. Yet her face was still anxious. "I didn't ask if you knew for sure," he said. "I asked if you had any idea. That means any thoughts or guesses."

She didn't answer. "Sefiseni?" Jack invited. "Eithon?"

"I saw a picture on the side of the transport," Eithon admitted reluctantly. "It is the same as the picture of those who stole the mine from us."

Sefiseni rumbled something in their own language. "Good," Jack said, trying to hide his own sudden uneasiness. Was this the response to Foeinatw's late-night InterWorld call ten days ago? "There are some questions I want to ask them."

As it had been the first time, the flight through the Golvins' aerial obstacle course was interesting to the point of occasional terror. But again they made it safely, and Eithon set them down more or less gently beside the visitor.

And now, up close, Jack could read the name beneath the stylized pick-and-shovel logo on the aircar's side.

Triost Mining Group.

A sudden memory flooded back on him: he and Draycos in the Essenay's dayroom, right after their first meeting and the mad escape from the Iota Klestis ambush.

We dealt with a people called the Chitac Nomads, Draycos had told him and Uncle Virge. They assured us Iota Klestis was available for purchase.

I don't know, Uncle Virge had answered doubtfully. On paper, the place still belongs to the Triost Mining Group.

Carefully, Jack focused his mind as he and the others climbed out of the shuttle. Draycos? he thought toward his shoulder.

Yes, I saw, the K'da's mental voice came back grimly. Are these the same people?

It's the same group, Jack confirmed. Near one of the apartment pillars he spotted a middle-aged man talking with the One and a couple of other Golvins. Probably not the same specific people, though.

Pardon?

I said it's the same group, but probably not the same exact people, Jack repeated. This telepathy stuff took more effort and focus than he'd realized. Keep it down, now—I have to concentrate.

The One's eyes shifted to Jack as he and the others approached. The man caught the subtle movement and turned. He was medium height and build, starting to widen out around the waist, with thinning hair and piercing blue eyes. "Ah," he said, giving Jack a friendly smile. "You must be the Judge-Paladin everyone's talking about."

"I'm Judge-Paladin Jack Melville," Jack confirmed, grabbing a new last name for himself at random. "You?"

"Genie Bolo, survey specialist for the Triost Mining Group," the other said, holding out his hand. His smile took on a slight frown. "I have to say, you look awfully young for your position."

"I've always looked young for my age," Jack explained, shaking Bolo's hand firmly but briefly, in the upper-class professional's style Uncle Virgil had taught him. "Even at twenty-four, a lot of people peg me as only seventeen or eighteen."

"I'd have made it even younger," Bolo admitted. "But don't worry about it. You'll appreciate the effect when you're fifty and still look thirty-five." His smile turned a little rueful as he ran a hand through his thinning hair. "As you see, I've got the opposite problem."

"At least people take you seriously," Jack said. "What brings you here, Mr. Bolo?"

"Survey work, like the job title says," Bolo said. "We've got a petrometal station going in about a hundred miles east of here. I was told to see whether it would be cheaper for us to build a pipeline to the NorthCentral Spaceport for the stuff or to build our own tanker landing area next to the station."

Jack frowned. "I didn't know you could pump metals."

"Actually, we'd be pumping a slurry," Bolo said. "That's a lot of water or other liquid with metals or whatever suspended in it."

"Ah," Jack said. So that was what the tunnel pipes and vats were for that he and Draycos had seen. One pipe would bring water to the mine face, and the ore would be dumped into it in one of the vats. The resulting slurry would then be pumped back to the surface through the other pipe. "Interesting. I presume that in this case the liquid would be the oil part of the petrometal deposits?"

"Exactly," Bolo said. "You know much about mining?"

"Hardly anything," Jack said. "How long will you be in the area?"

"I'll be coming and going over the next few days," Bolo said, looking around. "Frankly, this canyon throws kind of a wrench into the whole pipeline idea. I think the head office must have forgotten it was even here."

Jack smiled tightly. Sure they had. "Well, I wish you luck," he said.

Bolo inclined his head. "Thank you. I must say, it's nice to see a human face out here in the middle of nowhere."

"Indeed," Jack agreed. "Perhaps after you're done for the day, you'd be able to join us for dinner." He caught the One's eye. "One Among Many? Would that be possible?"

"Yes, of course," the One said.

His voice and expression were polite enough. But Jack had lived with these people long enough to have picked up on all the smaller and more subtle touches of face and gesture.

The One was worried. He was badly worried.

"Sorry, but I can't," Bolo said. "I've got a ton of work to do, and not nearly enough time to do it all in." He paused, gazing at nothing as if thinking hard. "But I should be back here in two or three days," he continued. "Maybe we can find time then for a dinner or even just a lunch."

"Sounds good to me," Jack said. "I guess we'll see you when we see you."

"That you will," Bolo agreed, smiling as he nodded a farewell. He shifted his eyes to the One—"One Among Many," he said, nodding again. Then, brushing past Jack, he headed back to his aircar.

The One stepped to Jack's side. "You should not have invited him back," he said, his voice dark. "We do not want him here."

"I want him here," Jack told him. "I think he's the key to some questions that need answering."

"It will end in death," the One warned.

Jack felt his throat tighten. "It usually does," he said. He gestured to Thonsifi, who had come up silently behind him. "I'll start hearing cases in an hour," he told her. "Can you get the complainants lined up for then?"

She bowed her head. "I will," she said, and headed toward one of the apartment pillars.

"You need to rest after your visit to the mine?" the One asked.

"Actually, I need to walk," Jack said. Stepping around the other, he headed down the path toward the Great Hall.

"Where are we going?" Draycos asked quietly.

Jack took a deep breath. "To find the place where my parents were murdered."

He had reached the nearest end of the Great Hall before Draycos spoke again. "You don't believe anymore that they died in the mine?"

"No, they died right here in the canyon," Jack said, pausing at the base of one of the Great Hall's supporting pylons and looking around. It would most likely be on the far side, he decided, somewhere along the northern part of the river. The area up there was much more open than the part to the south.

And now that he was looking, he could see the hint of where the pathways had once been. Stepping around the river side of the pylon, being careful not to step into the water itself, he headed along the ground beneath the building. "In fact," he added to Draycos, "I'd lay money that it was right in the middle of arguments in the case."

Draycos stirred on his skin. "Apparently, I have missed something."

"No more than I did," Jack assured him, feeling slightly disgusted with himself. "This thing above us is the Great Assembly Hall, right?"

"Correct."

"Why Great?" Jack asked. "Why not just call it the Assembly Hall?"

He felt the K'da's sudden twitch of understanding. "Once there was also a Small Assembly Hall."

"Exactly," Jack said. "Only eleven years ago, it was blown to bits, or at least wrecked enough that it couldn't be fixed. So they tore it down."

"Or they didn't want evidence of what had happened to remain," Draycos said slowly. "Remember what the shuttle pilot, Eithon, said on the way?"

"That there was danger in the mine."

"Only the parts we visited seemed perfectly safe."

Jack shrugged. "Scare tactics."

"Or else the danger wasn't going to come from the mine itself," Draycos said.

The skin on the back of Jack's neck gave an unpleasant tingle. Trying to look casual about it, he glanced over his shoulder.

Bolo hadn't left. He was still standing by his aircar, fiddling with something in the rear storage compartment.

Only what he was really doing was watching Jack. "Oh, boy," Jack murmured.

"He's watching us?"

"Oh, yeah," Jack said, turning back around to face forward. "He's trying not to look like it, but he is."

"Perhaps we should abandon our search until later?" Draycos suggested.

Jack shook his head. "Too late. He already knows I was in the mine—he would have seen the Golvins' shuttle parked at the entrance on his way in. And there's no reason why I should be walking around under here unless I was looking for something that's not here anymore."

"Assuming he knows about that."

"Oh, he knows," Jack said. "I know his type, Draycos— Uncle Virgil hung around with far too many just like him. They're all smooth and polite and professional on the surface, but underneath they're as vicious as anyone you've ever met. Their job is to fix other people's messes and loose ends. Usually by making a few messes of their own."

Draycos seemed to digest that. "I doubt he will take any action right now," he said slowly. "Though if he doesn't fear the Golvins as witnesses against him . . .?"

"No, we're okay for the moment," Jack assured him. "Even if he doesn't mind shooting me in front of everyone, he still doesn't know how much I know or who I might have told it to. He has to worm all of that out of me before he makes his move."

"I suppose that's reasonable," Draycos said, a little doubtfully. "What then is our strategy?"

"Basically, we're going to play the game right back at him," Jack said. "See if we can figure out first who he is and what he knows."

"A dangerous game."

Jack sighed. "Yeah, but it's the only one in town."

They reached the other end of the Great Hall and emerged again into the sunlight. Jack continued along the river, peering into the water and the muddy bank.

A hundred yards from the Great Hall, he found it. "There," he said, squatting down and touching a small piece of blackened wood poking a couple of inches out of the mud at the edge of the river. "See it?"

Draycos shifted across Jack's skin to where he could look through the neck of his shirt. "A piece of wood?"

"A piece of burned wood," Jack corrected. "Very important difference." Carefully, he dug a finger into the mud beside the shard.

And winced as his fingertip ran into something sharp. "There's more under the surface," he said, feeling around. "Feels like more wood . . . yeah. Yeah, there's a whole—feels like a round column of it. Sunk pretty deep, too."

"A supporting pylon," Draycos said. "Like the Great Hall, only for the Small Hall they were able to use wood instead of stone."

"Treated somehow to keep from rotting," Jack agreed, rinsing his hand off in the river.

"Yet a bomb strong enough to destroy any structure this size would have caused serious damage to the entire canyon," Draycos said. "I believe your earlier conclusion was right: the Golvins themselves completed its destruction."

"And have been shaking in their vests ever since, wondering if someone would come looking for the missing Judge-Paladins," Jack said grimly.

"Not all of them, I think, have such guilty consciences," Draycos said slowly. "Otherwise, why would any of them have brought you here?"

"You're right," Jack said, nodding. "Only the One and maybe a few more know the whole truth."

"A truth which we need to learn."

"Oh, we will, buddy," Jack promised darkly. "Trust me. We will."