'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.
Jack 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.' 'I am,' the Jantri with the pitcher said as he set it down in front of Jack.
As he did, a few drops of water sloshed out onto the table.
'They're twins, by the way,' Maerlynn said, taking the cup from Grib and filling it halfway from the pitcher. The sound of the splashing water made Jack's mouth feel even drier. 'Now be careful,' she warned as she handed him the cup. 'You don't want to shock your stomach with too much all at once.'
The water seemed a little oily, with a variety of mineral and chemical flavors and odors. Jack had never tasted anything so good in his entire life. He gulped it down, spilling some of it over the edge of the cup and down his cheeks in his haste.
He set the cup down, panting slightly. 'Can I—?'
'Of course,' Maerlynn said, already starting to refill it. 'Just be careful.'
He drained three more cups before Maerlynn called a halt. 'All right, that should do for a bit,' she said. 'Let that get into your system, then you can have some more.'
She beckoned. 'In the meantime, you're probably pretty hungry.'
Noy popped into view at Jack's elbow, holding a rectangular piece of wood with a
fat, folded green leaf on it. 'It's stuffed cabbage,' the boy told him as he set down the board. 'We saved it for you from dinner.'
'For me?' Jack asked, his stomach growling. Between the fatigue and thirst, he hadn't realized just how hungry he really was. His mouth would probably be watering if he'd had any liquid in his body to spare. 'How did you know I was going to be let out tonight?'
'We didn't,' Noy said. 'But if you were, Maerlynn wanted to be ready.'
'We don't have any flatware or plates, I'm afraid,' Maerlynn said. 'We have to leave all that in the meal hall. But I'm sure you won't mind eating with your fingers just this once. Well, go ahead—eat up.'
Cautiously, Jack tried a bite. The cabbage leaf was a little soggy, and the rice and diced vegetables inside were of course stone cold. And like the water, it tasted better than anything he'd ever eaten in his life.
Also like the water, it vanished quickly. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I needed that.'
'I knew you would,' Maerlynn said. 'The Brummgas don't take very good care of people they put in the hotboxes.'
'Of course not,' Jack said with a snort, retrieving the three grains of rice that had escaped onto the table and licking them off his fingers. 'What's the point of punishing someone if you're going to pick them up and dust them off afterwards. I'm surprised they even let you save me some food.'
The twin Jantris exchanged glances. 'Well, they didn't exactly let us,' Noy said. 'We sort of sneaked it out.'
Jack blinked. 'How?'
'That's enough talking for now,' Maerlynn said before Noy could answer. 'Jack needs to drink a little more water, then get himself to bed. Morning starts early around here, Jack, and I imagine you'll be put out on the line tomorrow.'
'Out on what line?' Jack asked, pouring himself another cup of water.
'Picking rainbow berries with us,' Maerlynn said. 'They grow on thorny bushes along the edges of the forest.'
Jack grunted as he drank. Probably the bushes he and Uncle Virge had seen on the flight in. 'Sure, why not? They've got all these slaves anyway. Might as well give us something to do.'
Below the mop of white featherines, Maerlynn's forehead wrinkled. 'You're wrong if you think it's just make- work. Rainbow berries are a valuable commodity, and you can't use robotic harvesters on them.'
'You have to look at the colors to see if the berries are ripe,' Greb explained.
'Machines can't read it good enough.'
'Well enough,' Maerlynn corrected him. 'Actually, you probably could make a robot harvester that could do it. But even if you did, you'd have the problem of giving it a soft enough touch to pick them without damage. And you'd have to make the whole thing small enough and flexible enough to get between the branches without knocking off all the unripe ones.'
