Norby`s Other Secret

3. Jamya

Norby's personal protective field came on automatically to save them from lethal stress of hyperspace, so Jeff was aware only of gray nothingness. And, since time does not exist in hyperspace, he was no sooner aware of it when he was out of it again, with only a vague memory that Norby had been trying to explain-telepathically-how he had got into the bad zoo.

"Where are we?" asked Jeff. They were sitting on a grassy lawn, facing interesting treelike plants that seemed familiar.

"You again!"

The voice was not speaking in Terran Basic, but Jeff understood, and Norby was already answering in the alien language. Nobody had the advantage of having eyes in the back of his head (except there wasn't any real back to his head; all sides were front).

Jeff turned around. In the other direction was a landscaped hill with a large castlelike structure on it. At the foot of the hill, quite near to Jeff, was a miniature castle with a female dragon standing in the doorway. She was green, her large eyes fringed by eyelashes, and she held a smaller version of herself. Both wore thin gold collars.

Jeff said softly, "You've brought us back to Jamya, Norby. I thought you didn't know how to get here."

"I don't," Norby answered in a low voice. "It's some instinct or something. I just came. Part of me knows the planet of the dragons."

"Well, then, please don't insult the Jamyns this time." He rose and bowed politely. "How do you do, ma'am? And how is your pretty daughter, Zargl, whom I see in your arms?"

"I'm fine," said the young dragon, as she spread her wings and flew to Jeff's shoulder. "I'm glad you came back. You didn't stay long last time. I'm also glad you've learned our language."

Jeff hoped his smile would seem a pleasant expression to the dragons. A gentle dragon bite had established telepathic communication with him when he and Norby had come here once before, and the bite had made it possible for him to learn the Jamyn language telepathically, almost at once. Perhaps the dragons could learn Terran Basic through telepathy.

"I detect your thought," said the mother dragon in Terran Basic. "If you speak your language carefully and think more clearly, then I will learn more quickly." She switched to Jamyn. "It is more important, however, for you to continue to improve your knowledge of our language, which is clearly the more civilized of the two."

Jeff did not think it would be wise to dispute that. He said, "Yes, ma'am," in careful Jamyn.

"I discussed your earlier arrival with the Grand Dragon, and she said you must know the secret of hyperspace travel, which we Jamyn have never been given. We were meant to stay on our own planet."

"Do you have many visitors?" Jeff asked.

"We have had none at all. You were the first. That's why the matter had to be discussed. It was decided that if visitors are approved by the Mentors, they will be permitted to stay for a short period. Do you intend to remain?"

"Do we intend to remain, Norby?" asked Jeff.

"Not exactly." Norby blinked several times in that exasperating way he had when he was debating whether or not to confess that he'd gotten mixed up again. "Part of me seems to want to be here, and knows the way even though the rest of me doesn't. And I do know the language. I just can't quite remember what a Mentor is."

"In Terran Basic, it means 'wise teacher,"' said Jeff.

"It means the same in Jamyn," said the mother dragon. "They are our teachers. We were once a wild and primitive species, but the Others came and left Mentors to help us, as our legends say; and, of course, our legends are inspired and therefore true. By the way, you mustn't think of me as mother dragon. That is quite belittling. My name is Ziphyzggtmtizm."

Jeff knew only so much could be expected of telepathic learning. "May I call you Zi?" he asked.

Ziphyzggtmtizm whispered it several times softly to herself, then said, "Yes. I like it."

"Who are the Others?"

"That is difficult to say. There are no descriptions of them in our legends, and the Mentors have never told us anything about them…Zargl! Stop clawing at the alien's top scales! Mind your manners! Besides all that long, soft tangle may not be clean."

Zargl took her claws out of Jeff's hair and said, "What's your name, alien?"

"I'm Jeff and this is my robot, Norby."

"Odd," said Zi. "Robots are small devices for mechanical labor, controlled by household computers, and are without personality or intelligence. Naturally, they belong to thinking Jamyns, as any machine might. This Norby that you call a robot, however, seems to have personality and intelligence. How can he be owned?"

"That is a good question, come to think of it," said Norby.

"Norby and I are partners," Jeff said before Norby could work over the question.

The baby dragon left Jeff's shoulder and flew down to perch on Norby's hat.

"Get off, get off," shouted Norby, waving his arms. "Won't," said Zargl. "You're not a Mentor."

"I am, too," said Norby. "I am a teacher. I've been teaching that human boy languages, history, and-uh-galactic travel."

Jeff sighed. Could you call it galactic travel when you were never sure where you were going, or how you would get away, or if you would return home when you did get away?

"Would you care to have something to eat in my house?" asked Zi, courteously. "It was rude of me to chase you away last time and I would like to make amends. The Mentors know you are here by now, but they may not get round to you for a while because, as far as we know, they spend most of their time meditating. They are trying to tune in to all parts of the universe so they can find the Others. We will have time to eat."

"I'm not sure I can eat your food," said Jeff, trying to sound apologetic so as not to give offense.

"I'll test it first," said Norby.

"You being so accurate?"

"Yes, indeed," said Norby, extending his legs to their longest and putting his hands on the sides of his barrel. "Testing the structure of foodstuffs is absurdly simple for a genius robot like me." Norby stalked into the dragon's home and Jeff followed.

Norby passed the food as safe. "Good protein," he said. "High in fiber, lower in cholesterol. It will do you good, Jeff."

Except for something blue and mushy that he decided not to try, Jeff thought it was delicious.

The dragons' furniture was another thing. It was not built for human dimensions and angles and almost nothing looked the least bit comfortable. The exception was something in one corner that looked like a battered old green hassock.

"May I sit on this, Zi?" Jeff asked.

"Certainly. It's an antique tail rest that has been in our family for generations. It's still quite useful. Of course, you don't have a tail, you poor thing, but you are certainly welcome to rest the place where the tail ought to be."

Jeff sat down and found it comfortable enough. It had a small design on top that resembled a diamond-shaped figure on the dragons' collars. A more interesting design of complicated wiggly patterns circled the sides of the hassock.

Jeff said, "Where is your husband, Zi?"

"What is a husband?"

"Well, the male of the species who-that is…"

"Male? Oh, you mean a different variety of a life form? I've read that such a phenomenon occurs on other planets. We don't travel, as I told you, but the Mentors have provided us with good galactographies. When I read about the peculiar customs and habits of other worlds I can only be grateful that we Jamyns live on a civilized planet."

"But if you don't have males, how do you have children?"

"Ah-you need males for that on other worlds, don't you? I've never really understood that. We bud, you know, and I don't see how it can be done conveniently any other way. Zargl was such a cute bud, right here under my wing. You should have seen her. But actually," she brought one wing forward and covered her eyes with it briefly, "we don't really talk about budding among ourselves. It's private. You're not Jamyn, of course, so you don't matter."

"But if you bud," said Jeff, a little argumentatively, "there's very little alteration of inherited characteristics, and you can't evolve. In our species, the genes always get mixed up so that children aren't exactly like their parents and we evolve quickly."

"See," whispered Norby to Jeff, "it's good to be mixed up." Jeff glared at him, and Norby closed his eyes and pretended he hadn't said anything.

"According to our traditions, the Others helped us to stay the same. I suppose, since the universe itself is changing, that there should be creatures that change. I wish you and your species well, for while we Jamyn contribute stability, perhaps you Terrans contribute exciting change."

"Exciting, indeed," said Norby, bouncing up and down slightly. "You have no idea how mixed-up all the Terran life forms are"-he glanced quickly at Jeff as he emphasized the word-"especially human beings. Their history has all the excitement of nasty wars and wicked persecutions and foolish plots and..,."

"Norby! How can you say such things about your own world?" Jeff asked. "You're just ashamed of being mixed up yourself."

"I told you I couldn't help the lion. I explained it all to you while we were in hyperspace and you're not helping me in the least with my new secret. It scares me."

What new secret? thought Jeff. He tried to remember and failed.

Just then the dragons' computer made a chiming noise.

"Oh," said Zi. "What an honor! It's a direct signal from the Mentors' castle. I've never been worthy of a direct signal before. How my friends will envy me." She spread out both her wings as far as they would go and bowed deeply in the direction of the chime.

The computer said, "The aliens are summoned for an audience. Only the aliens. They must come at once, and alone."

Norby ran over to Jeff, his hat so low that you could barely see his eyes. "I don't want to go. I'm afraid."

"Why? You think part of you may be from here, don't you? Jamya may be where your alien portions were formed."

"I don't care. Let's go back to Earth and find Fargo…Or maybe we could disguise ourselves and join a circus traveling through the solar system."

"The Inventors Union will find us if we do," said Jeff. "Do you want to be taken apart?"

Suddenly the dragons' computer screen swirled with an eerie color. When it cleared, a cold light shone on a monstrous shape standing in a cavernous space on two thick lower limbs. The figure had four arms, a head that bulged on top, with a slit below the bulge that could have been a mouth, and three iridescent patches on the bulge that could have been eyes.

"Mama! I'm scared!" wailed Zargl, leaping into her mother's arms and folding her wings.

Jeff realized, a bit uneasily, that he felt the same way. And yet he was larger than Zi and, for all he knew, he might be larger than the creature on the computer screen. He flexed his arm muscles to reassure himself that he still had them, and wished he knew as much about karate as Albany Jones did. He grabbed Norby and stood up straight.

"Ouch!" Jeff had forgotten that the dragons' ceiling was low, and, in the process of rubbing his sore head and trying to stoop, he dropped Norby, who fell with a clunk.

"Ouch!" Norby said. "You keep dropping me, Jeff! What kind of an owner are you?"

"Why don't you turn on your antigrav when you feel yourself falling? You would if you weren't so busy retracting." Looking around for allies, Jeff saw with discouragement that Norby was not completely withdrawn into his barrel and muttering ominously. Zargl was cowering in Zi's arms, and Zi had backed as far from her own computer screen as possible.

Zi said with clear embarrassment, "Of course, there's nothing to be afraid of, but I never saw a Mentor before. We only receive verbal messages and there are no pictures of them in our books. This is most unusual…and a gr-reat honor, I think."

"But Zi," said Jeff, "how can you be afraid? We humans have always imagined dragons to be completely brave. It was dragons who terrified others. Dragons could even breathe fire."

"Oh, we can do that." said Zi, not taking her eyes off the apparition on the screen. She breathed out a small blue flame. "That's one of our old, primitive defenses, but it takes a lot of energy to separate the hydrogen from the…"

Jeff had backed away from her. "There! You see! Even though you're small, you shouldn't be afraid."

Zi said, indignantly, "I am not small! Only the Grand Dragonship is larger than I am, and she's my aunt. And I'm not afraid of the Mentor-if that's a Mentor. I'm just overcome by respect and awe."

But she acted afraid.

Jeff shrugged and turned back to the screen. The strange figure was staring at them, if those patches of shimmering color were indeed eyes.

"What do you want?" Jeff demanded, determined that he wasn't going to show fear, whatever the others did.

"Courtesy and respect," said the figure in a kind of creaky voice, as though it were something that was not often used. "I've summoned you to the presence, and you have not hurried. See to it that you come immediately to the Mentor castle on the hill. Alone!" The screen went blank.

Norby's head popped up. "Not without me."

"I thought you were too scared," Jeff said.

"I am, but I'm less scared when I'm with you. Besides, if we're together we can both escape through hyperspace. If we were separated," he added virtuously, "I wouldn't dream of escaping on my own and leaving you in danger here."

"We'll think about escape later," Jeff said, "after we find out what the Mentors want. Come on, partner!"