Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge by Timothy Zahn Read Free Book Online Page B

again across his
mind. "I actually had one of them for a year or so until Uncle Virgil
found it and took it away."
    "And he told you it was a miner's helmet?"
    "Yes," Jack said, frowning. "But it can't be, can it?"
    "Unlikely," Draycos said. "The material is too soft for protection
against dangerous impacts."
    "Unless it's a topside boss's hat," Jack suggested.
    "It does indeed look like a symbol of authority," Draycos said.
"But you said Uncle Virgil had told you specifically that your parents
were miners."
    "Right, he did," Jack admitted. "Anyway, how could they have been
killed in a mine explosion if they were topside bosses? So Uncle Virgil
lied. Wouldn't be the first time. But if it's not a miner's helmet,
what is it?"
    "We know that the job of Jupa involves decisions of some sort,"
Draycos said. "As well as Golvins in a group speaking their sides.
Could it be some sort of mediator or arbitrator?"
    "That would fit with Onfose's ham-handed attempt to cozy up to
me," Jack agreed. "And if your Golvin naming theory is right, it starts
with Ju and Pa."
    And for the second time in two minutes Jack felt his breath catch.
He held the hat up, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time.
Which, in a sense, he was. " Ju Pa , Draycos. Judge-Paladin .
    "My parents were members of the highest-ranking judicial group in
the entire Orion Arm."

    Draycos stared out through the opening in Jack's shirt, gazing at
the hat with new respect. He had always thought Jack's character was
out of balance with that of the thief who had raised him. The logical
solution was that his parents had instilled their values in him before
their deaths.
    But for Jack to have come from this kind of heritage was a
twist he'd never expected. "That's incredible," he murmured. "How could
Uncle Virgil have kept such a secret from you all these years?"
    "Easily," Jack said, still sounding a little dazed. "All my book
learning came from the Essenay 's computer." Beneath his
flattened body, Draycos felt the boy's muscles tighten again. " Essenay .
'S and A.' Stuart and Ariel."
    "Exactly as Alison suggested back on Rho Scorvi," Draycos reminded
him.
    "I'm sure she'll love hearing she was right about that," Jack
said. "I wonder what my real last name is. Anyway, like I was saying,
everything I ever learned about the Judge-Paladins came from the Essenay 's
computer. It would have been easy enough for Uncle Virgil to delete any
pictures from the ship's encyclopedias."
    "Yes," Draycos murmured. "I know you've mentioned Judge-Paladins
before, I believe in conjunction with the ongoing slave trade. But
you've never told me exactly who and what they are."
    "It's not a secret," Jack said, turning the hat over in his hands.
"They were the Internos answer to the lack of courts and proper judges
in some of the less populated worlds. Kind of like the old circuit
riders they used to have back on Earth. They'd travel from planet to
planet, region to region, dealing with whatever cases had accumulated
since the last time they'd been there."
    "What went wrong?"
    Jack shrugged. "Nothing, as far as I know, except that there
aren't nearly enough of them to go around. It started as just a human
thing, like I said, on just the Internos worlds. But a lot of the alien
governments in the rest of the Trade Association decided they liked the
idea, and the Judge-Paladin project was extended to pretty much the
whole Orion Arm. They fly around in these—"
    He broke off with a snort. "In these really high-class ships with
InterWorld transmitters and high-level P/S personality simulator
computers," he went on. "Blast it all—Alison was right again. The Essenay really is way out of Uncle Virgil's class."
    "Which leads to the question of how he acquired it," Draycos said.
    And immediately wished he'd kept his jaws shut. There was one
obvious answer as to how a thief and con man like Virgil Morgan might
have done that, and at the moment it wasn't a possibility Draycos
really wanted to burden Jack