by Jane Yolen
***
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