I had to stop and swallow there. The really awful thing was that as soon as Orm had hold of me, I got a strong picture from his mind: Orm kissing a pretty lady smaller than me, with another dragon, an older, blacker one, looking on from the background. And I recognized the lady as Mother, and I was absolutely disgusted.
“So I hit Orm and got up and ran away,” I said. “And Orm shouted to me all the time I was running up the kyle and catching Nellie, but I took no notice.”
“Question,” said Renick. “What action did the dragon take?”
“They—they always chase you if you run, I’d heard,” Alectis said shyly.
“And this one appears to have been trained to Orm’s command,” Palino said.
“It didn’t chase me,” I said. “It stayed with Orm.” The reason was that neither of them could move. I still don’t know what I did—I had a picture of myself leaning back inside my own head and swinging mighty blows, the way you do with a pickax—and Neal says the dragon went over like a cartload of potatoes and Orm fell flat on his back. But Orm could speak, and he screamed after us that I’d killed the worm and I’d pay for it. But I was screaming, too, at Neal, to keep away from me because I was heg. That was the thing that horrified me most. Before that I’d tried not to think I was. After all, for all I knew, everyone can read minds and get a book from the bookcase without getting up from his chair. And Neal told me to pull myself together and think what we were going to tell Mother. We decided to say that we’d met a dragon in the Reserve and I’d killed it and found out I was heg. I made Neal promise not to mention Orm. I couldn’t bear even to think of Orm. And Mother was wonderfully understanding, and I really didn’t realize that I’d put her in danger as well as Neal.
Lewin looked down at the recorder. “Dragons are a preserved species,” he said. “Orm claims that you caused grievous bodily harm to a dragon in his care. What have you to say to that?”
“How could I?” I said. Oh, I was scared. “It was nearly as big as a house.”
Renick was on to that at once. “Query,” he said. “Prevarication?”
“Obviously,” said Palino, clicking away at his block.
“We haven’t looked at that dragon yet,” Terens said.
“We’ll do that on our way back,” Lewin said, sighing rather. “Siglin, I regret to say there is enough mismatch between your account and Orm’s, and enough odd activity on that brain measure you hold in your hand, to warrant my taking you to Holmstad Command Center for further examination. Be good enough to go with Terens and Alectis to the van, and wait there while we complete our inquiries here.”
I stood up. Everything seemed to drain out of me. I could lam them like I lammed that dragon, I thought. But Holmstad would only send a troop out to see why they hadn’t come back. And I put my oldest dress on for nothing! I thought as I walked down the hallway with Terens and Alectis. The doors were all closed. Everyone had guessed. The van smelled of clean plastic, and it was very warm and light because the roof was one big window. I sat between Terens and Alectis on the backseat. They pulled straps around us all—safety straps, but they made me feel a true prisoner.
After a while Terens said, “You could sue Orm if the evidence doesn’t hold up, you know.” I think he was trying to be kind, but I couldn’t answer.
After another while Alectis said, “With respect, Driten, I think suspects should be told the truth about the so-called lie detector.”
“Alectis, I didn’t hear you say that,” Terens said. He pretended to look out of the window, but he must have known I knew he had deliberately thought lie detector at me as he passed me the thing. They’re told to. Dragonate think of everything. I sat and thought I’d never hated anything so much as I hated our kind, self-sacrificing Dragonate, and I tried to take a last look at the stony yard, tipped sideways on the hill, with our square stone house at the top of it. But it wouldn’t register somehow.
Then the front door opened, and the other three came out, bringing Neal with them. Behind them the hall was full of our people, with Mother in front, just staring. I just stared, too, while Palino opened the van door and shoved Neal into the seat beside me. “Your brother has admitted being present at the incident,” he said as he strapped himself in beside Neal. I could tell he was pleased.
By this time Lewin and Renick had strapped themselves into the front seat. Lewin drove away without a word. Neal looked back at the house. I couldn’t. “Neal—?” I whispered.
“Just like you said,” Neal said, loudly and defiantly. “Behaving as if they own the Ten Worlds. I wouldn’t join now if they begged me to!” Why did I have to go and say that to him? “Why did you join?” Neal said rudely to Alectis.
“Six brothers,” Alectis said, staring ahead.
The other four all started talking at once. Lewin asked Renick the quickest way to the Reserve by road, and Renick said it was down through Wormstow. “I hope the dragons eat you!” Neal said. This was while Palino was leaning across us to say to Terens, “Where’s our next inspection after this hole?” And Terens said, “We go straight on to Arkloren on Nine. Alectis will get to see some other parts of the Manifold shortly.” Behaving as if we didn’t exist. Neal shrugged and shut up.
The Dragonate van was much smoother and faster than a farm van. We barely bounced over the stony track that loops down to Hillfoot, and it seemed no time before we were speeding down the better road, with the rounded yellowish Upland Hills peeling past on either side. I love my hills, covered with yellow ling that only grows here on Sveridge, and the soft light of the sun through our white and gray clouds. Renick, still making conversation, said he was surprised to find the hills so old and worn down. “I thought Eight was a close parallel with Seven!” he said.
Lewin answered in a boring voice, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen Seven since I was a cadet.”
“Oh, the mountains are much higher and greener there,” Renick said. “I was posted in Camberia for years. Lovely spot.”
Lewin just grunted. Quite a wave of homesickness filled the van. I could feel Renick thinking of Seven and Alectis not wanting to go to Nine. Terens was remembering boating on Romaine when he was Neal’s age. Lewin was thinking of Seven, in spite of the grunt. We were coming over Jiot Fell already then, with the Giant Stones standing on top of the world against the sky. A few more turns in the road would bring us out above Wormstow where Neal and I went—used to go—to school. What about me? I was thinking. I’m homesick for life. And Neal. Poor Mother.
Then the air suddenly filled with noise, like the most gigantic sheet being torn.
Lewin said, “What the—?” and we all stared upward. A great silvery shape screamed overhead. And another of a fatter shape, more blue than silver, screamed after it, both of them only just inside the clouds. Alectis put up an astonished pointing arm. “Thraller! The one behind’s a Slaver!”
“What’s it doing here?” said Terens. “Someone must have slipped up.”
“Ours was a stratoship!” said Palino. “What’s going on?”
A huge ball of fire rolled into being on the horizon, above the Giant Stones. I felt Lewin slam on the brakes. “We got him!” one of them cried out.
“The Slaver got ours,” Lewin said. The brakes were still yelling like a she-worm when the blast hit.
I lose the next bit. I start remembering again a few seconds later, sitting up straight with a bruised lip, finding the van around sideways a long way on down the road. In front of me Renick’s straps had broken. He was lying kind of folded against the windscreen. I saw Lewin pull himself upright and pull at Renick. And stop pulling quickly. My ears had gone deaf, because I could only hear Lewin as if he were very far off. “—hurt in the back?”