Norby

This time the ship itself seemed to shiver.

"There's a miniature dragon outside," Fargo said. "I tell you again. Everything will be tame.:'

9. Not So Tame

"Hello," said Zargl. "You're back. You shouldn't be."

Jeff waved at her as he left the Hopeful, followed by Norby and Fargo. Then he waved at Zi, who was coming out of her home rather hurriedly at the sight of the ship.

"This is my sibling, Fargo," he said to mother and daughter dragon, pronouncing the name carefully. He hesitated before choosing the Jamyn word to describe Fargo's relationship to him. There was no Jamyn word for "brother," of course.

Jeff then asked, with a fine air of casualness, "How long have we been gone?"

"Fourteen day/nights," said Zargl. "Ever since you left, the Jamyns have been arguing about what to do if you returned. The Mentors sent word that you are to be captured and taken to the castle if we ever see you again. Isn't that exciting? Of course, they didn't expect you to come with a ship and reinforcements."

"Which probably makes it even more exciting," muttered Fargo, as Norby translated softly for him. "Maybe things won't be so tame at that. Ask this Pseudoreptile to bite me so I'll be able to understand her language."

"Good idea," said Jeff. "Then if things don't live up to your notions of danger and adventure, you'll at least be able to tell Albany that you were bitten by a dragon. And you, Norby, you can tell her how you missed by a couple of weeks again."

Norby said haughtily, "Can you do better, Jeff?"

Jeff, still mindful of his manners, said, "No, I can't. True is true. Zargl, would you bite my sibling, just a little bit. Just a tiny little bit."

Zargl said, "Certainly." She came shyly up to Fargo, and nuzzled his arm. "Your sibling is very attractive," she said to Jeff.

"There you are," said Jeff. "The girls always fall for him."

Fargo smiled. "It's to be expected. No one can resist my devil-may-care attitude and my incredible charm."

"It's the way he shows his little teeth," she said, showing her own much larger ones. Then she nipped a bit of flesh on Fargo's forearm between an opposing pair of her sharp teeth.

Fargo said, "Ouch," and frowned at the tiny droplet of blood that seeped from each of two delicate puncture marks.

"There you are," said Jeff. "The knowledge is transmitted by the blood somehow. The bite is so neatly done, it won't even bruise. In a few minutes, you'll be able to catch the Jamyn words telepathically, and not long after that you will understand them spoken aloud, and be able to speak them yourself."

Fargo waved his arm. "I wish they could teach differential equations that way."

Zi, who had been looking at the Hopeful very carefully, now pointed her right front claw at it and said, "What's that?"

"That's our small scoutship," Jeff explained. "It's ours free and clear; in fact, it was all we had left when the family business failed a few years ago…"

"Look at that"' said Fargo, with sudden energy. "Jeff, do you see what I see?"

Jeff turned to look at the Hopeful and there in the open airlock was a green creature peering up at the castle, and panting.

"Oola!" cried out Jeff in astonishment. "I'll bet she automatically joined us when we went forward in time past the point when we opened the hassock."

"She seems to know the castle," Fargo said. "Look at her reacting to it."

Zi said, "I have never seen a creature like that before. How can she know the castle if I have never seen her?"

"Oola was inside your hassock," said Jeff, "the one you let us have. She was bioengineered by a particular Mentor named First."

"First?" Zi scratched her tail. "He is an important part of our legends. The great Mentor named First organized the construction of the buildings on Jamyn, and carried out the instructions of the Others for the civilizing of the Jamyn and, as you see, did a very good job of it. All Jamyn are in awe of First and feel great respect for him."

"And where is First, now?"

"No one knows. Perhaps he is still at the castle. Perhaps he was the one that spoke to you on my computer screen."

"That can't be," said Jeff. "The Mentor who spoke to me, and who saw me in the castle, was malevolent."

A bell chimed in the dragons' house. "Excuse me," said Zi. "Zargl, come with me and begin the preparations of a meal for our guests, while I find out what the Grand Dragonship wants." In a lower-pitched version of her voice, she said to Jeff and Norby "It is a great honor for her to call upon a mere Congressperson such as myself". She seemed to breathe quickly at the thought of it.

Left to themselves for a moment, Jeff said in Terran Basic, "Fargo, things seem no different here than when we left. Zi remembers our previous visit just as we do. Doesn't that mean that our visit to the past of Jamya didn't change anything?"

"Let's hope so," Fargo said.

Norby, however, teetered nervously on his partly extended legs. "I can tell, Jeff, I can tell. I can sense that nothing important has changed. Mentor First must really have had his memories of us wiped out. And that means that the Mentors in the castle right now are still crazy and mean."

"Good," said Fargo. "Maybe that will mean a chance for us to be battling real nasties."

Zi came out of her house carrying a little table, and Zargl followed with dishes of food. "You'll have to sit on the lawn," she said. "Please accept my apologies for that, but I have no furniture in my home that will fit your peculiar bodies-no offense intended. Even my hassock, my tail rest, is gone, for you have changed it into an unknown green animal. Still, it's such a lovely day, I thought you might be willing to have a picnic before the Grand Dragonship arrives."

"A picnic would be very welcome," said Jeff. "And I'm looking forward to meeting such an exalted person."

"And she's my great-aunt, too," said Zargl, holding up her foreclaws and making them quiver. "Isn't she, Mother?"

"She certainly is, my dear child, and my own aunt."

Half an hour later, they were all, including Oola, finishing the meal. Oola kept looking up at the castle and twitching her tail when Norby suddenly shot up on antigrav, his foot catching Jeff's ear on the way.

"What are you doing?" asked Jeff, rubbing his ear hard.

"I want to hurry back to the Hopeful, " said Norby. "I suggest you two bring Oola and join me. Look what's coming."

From over the trees at the left of the castle, came a strange airborne procession. Majestically, a retinue of Jamyn flew toward Zi's home, and from their jeweled claws hung a glittering hammock that supported a dragon considerably larger than Zi.

"It's my aunt," cried Zi, clacking her teeth in excitement and respect. "Please do not leave. I so want you to meet her."

The hammock came overhead and was let down in front of them, dragons hovering about with a great swirl of wings to insure that it landed safely.

"Make way for her Grand Dragonship," shouted all the dragons in a medley of squawks that was totally unmusical.

When the hammock was flat on the lawn, the Grand Dragon stepped off it. She unfurled her wings, each leathery portion brightly painted in contrasting colors, and shook them. A diamondlike jewel adorned each point of the projections that went down her back to the tip of her gilded tail.

"So, my niece," she said, holding herself high with her wings akimbo to make the colors show dramatically, "you make friends with the enemy when I instructed you not to!"

"I'm sorry, Aunt-Your Dragonship-but I do like these humans and their little robot. And Zargl and I had already made friends with them weeks ago, so it was already too late when your instructions came. And see, they have discovered this green creature that was inside my tail rest-which they call by the interesting nonsense word, 'hassock.' "