Dragonseye (5 page)

“He
has
relatives?” Bridgely asked, mimicking surprise and consternation.

“I believe so,” Franco said, “beyond his children. An uncle . . .”

“If they’re of the same Blood as Chalkin, would that be an improvement?” Tashvi wanted to know.

“They do say a new broom sweeps clean,” Irene remarked. “I heard that Chalkin did his uncle out of succession by giving him an isolated hold . . .”

“He got him out of the way fast enough, that’s sure,” Bridgely said. “Some mountain place, back of beyond.”

“All of Bitra is back of beyond,” Azury of Boll remarked, grinning.

“A replacement is not the most immediate concern,” Paulin said, taking charge again, “if we can persuade Chalkin that all of us can’t be wrong about Threadfall.”

Zulaya this time snorted at that unlikelihood. “He’ll admit he’s wrong only when Thread is eating him . . . which might solve the problem in the most effective way. Bitra’s in the path of the First Fall.”

“Remiss as Chalkin appears to be,” Jamson said, “Bitra Hold may be better off
with
than without him. You don’t learn the management of a hold overnight, you know.”

Paulin gave the High Reaches Lord a long look. “That is very true, but if he hasn’t even told his people that Thread is coming . . .” and he opened up his hands to show dismay at such an omission. “That’s a dereliction of duty right there. His prime duty and the primary reason for having a Leader during a crisis. As a group we also have a responsibility to be sure each of us is performing duties inherent to our rank and position.”

Zulaya shrugged. “It’d serve him right to be caught out in the First Fall.”

“Yes, well,” and Paulin rattled papers. “I’ll accept reports of malfeasance and irregularities in his conduct of Bitra Hold. We’ll do this properly, gathering evidence and making a full report on the problem. Now, let’s finish up today’s agenda. Kalvi, you wish to broach the subject of new mines?”

The lean, hawk-nosed engineer sprang to his feet. “I sure do. We’ve got fifty years of Fall and we’re going to need more ore: ore that’s closer to the surface than the Telgar deposits.”

“Thought they would last us a millennium,” Bridgely of Benden said.

“Oh, there’s certainly more ore down the main shafts, but it’s not as accessible as these mountain deposits, which could be worked more efficiently.” He unrolled an opaque plastic map of the Great Western Range where he had circled an area beyond Ruatha’s borders. “Here! High-grade ore and almost waiting to leap into carts. We’ll need that quality if we’re to replace flamethrower equipment. And we’ll have to.” He said that with a degree of resignation. “I’ve the personnel trained and ready to move up there—which I’d like to do to get the mines going before Threadfall starts. All I need is your okay.”

“You’re asking to start a hold up there? Or just a mine?” asked Paulin.

Kalvi scratched the side of his nose and grinned. “Well, it’d be a long way to travel after the shift is over, especially if the dragons are all busy fighting Thread.” He unrolled another diagram. “One reason I’ve backed this site is that there’s a good cave system available for living quarters, as well as coal nearby for processing the ore. The finished ingots could be shipped downriver.”

There were murmurs among the others as the project was discussed.

“Good thing Chalkin left,” Bridgely remarked. “He’s got those mines in Steng Valley he’s been trying to reactivate.”

“They’re unsafe,” Kalvi said scornfully. “I surveyed them myself and we’d have to spend too much time shoring up shafts and replacing equipment. The ore’s second rate, too. There isn’t time to restore the mine much less argue with Chalkin over a contract. You know how he can be, haggling over minor details for weeks before he’ll make a decision.” He contorted his long face into a grimace. “If you,” and he turned to the others at the table, “grant this permission, I’ll have a chance to noise it about the Gather this evening and see who’d be interested in going along in support capacity and necessary Crafts.”

“I’ll second it,” said Tashvi magnanimously, raising his hand.

“Good. Moved and seconded. Now, all in favor of the formation of a mining hold?” Hands shot up and were dutifully counted by Paulin.

“Chalkin’s going to say this was rigged,” Bastom remarked caustically, “and we drove him out of the meeting before the subject came up.”

“So?” Paulin said. “No one asked him to leave, and he has a copy of the agenda same as everyone else.” He brought his fist down on the table. “Motion carried. Tell your engineer he may start his project. High Reaches Weyr,” and he turned to G’don, “Telgar,” and he included K’vin now, “can you supply transport?”

Both Weyrleaders agreed. If a new hold was to be established, as many riders as possible from their Weyrs should become familiar with its landmarks.

“There won’t be that much extra to protect against Threadfall,” Kalvi said with a grin for the dragonriders. “It’s all underground or within the cliff caverns. We’ll use hydroponics for fresh food from the start.”

“Any more new business?” Paulin asked.

Clisser raised his hand, was acknowledged and stood, glancing at the assembled: falling into his lecture mode, K’vin thought.

“Lord Chalkin’s attitude may not be that unusual,” he began, startling them into attention to his words. “At least, not in times to come. We, here and now, are not too distanced from the events of the First Pass. We have actual visual records from that time with which to check on the approach of the rogue planet.
We
know it is a rogue because we know from the excellent and exhaustive reports done by Captains Keroon and Tillek that the planet was unlikely to have emerged from our sun. Its orbit alone substantiates that theory since it is not on the same elliptical plane as the rest of Rukbat’s satellites.

“I am assiduous in training at least six students in every class in the rudiments of astronomy and the use of the sextant, as well as being certain that they have the requisite mathematics to compute declension and ascension and figure accurately the hour circle of any star. We still have three usable telescopes with which to observe the skies, but we once had more.” He paused. “We are, as I’m sure we all must honestly admit, losing more and more of the technology bequeathed us by our ancestors. Not through mishandling,” and he raised a hand against objections, “but from the attritions of age and an inability, however much we may strive to compensate, to reach the same technical level our ancestors enjoyed.”

Kalvi grimaced in reluctant agreement to that fact.

“Therefore, I suggest that we somehow, in some fashion, with what technology we have left at our disposal, leave as permanent and indestructible a record as possible for future generations. I know that some of us . . .” Clisser paused, glancing significantly to the door through which Chalkin had so recently passed. “. . . entertain the notion that our ancestors were mistaken in thinking that Threadfall will occur whenever the Red Planet passes Pern. But we can scarcely ignore the perturbations already obvious on the surface of our planet—the extreme weather, the volcanic eruptions, the other cosmic clues. Should it so happen in centuries to come that too many doubt—not wishing to destroy a flourishing economy and happy existence—that Thread will return, all that we have striven to achieve, all we have built with our bare hands,” and dramatically he lifted his, “all we have around us today,” and he gestured toward the music faintly heard outside the Hall, “would perish.”

The denials were loud.

“Ah,” and he held one hand over his head, “but it could happen. Lord Chalkin is proof of that. We’ve already lost so much of our technology. Valuable and skilled men and women we could ill-afford to lose because of their knowledge and skills have succumbed to disease or old age. We must have a fail-safe against Thread! Something that will last and remind our descendants to prepare, be ready, and to survive.”

“Is there any chance we could find that administration building then?” Paulin asked S’nan.

“Too close to Threadfall now,” M’shall answered. “And it’s going into the hot season down there, which makes digging anything enervating. However, I most emphatically agree with Clisser. We need some sort of a safeguard. Something that would prove to doubters like Chalkin that Thread isn’t just a myth our ancestors thought up.”

“But we keep records . . .” said Laura of Ista Weyr.

“How much plasfilm do you have left?” Paulin asked pointedly. “I know Fort’s stock is running low. And you all know what happened to our Repository.”

“True. But we’ve paper . . .” and she looked over at the Telgar Holders, Tashvi and Salda.

“Look, how can we estimate how many forestry acres will survive Threadfall?” Tashvi asked, raising his hands in doubt. “I’ve the timberjacks working nonstop, cutting, and the mill’s turning out as much lumber and pulp as it can.”

“You know we’ll do our best to protect the forests,” K’vin said, though privately he wondered how good their best could be since even one Thread burrow could devastate a wide swath of timbered land in minutes.

“Of course you will,” Salda said warmly, “and we will stockpile as much paper as we can beforehand. Old rags are always welcome.” Then her expression sobered. “But I don’t think any of us can know what will or will not survive. Tarvi Andiyar’s survey when he took hold indicated that most of the slopes were denuded. Ten years before Threadfall ceased, he had seedlings in every corner of the hold, ready to plant out. We were just lucky that natural succession also occurred in the three decades after the end of First Pass.”

“That is yet another item we must record for future generations,” Clisser said.

“The ultimate how-to,” said Mari of High Reaches.

“I beg pardon?”

“What to do when Threadfall has Passed is even more important than what to do while it’s happening,” she said as if that should be obvious.

“We’ve got to first survive fifty years—” Salda began. “Let’s get back to the subject,” Paulin said, rising to his feet. “The chair concurs that we ought to have some permanent, indestructible, unambiguous, simple way to anticipate the rogue planet’s return. Has anyone any ideas?”

“We can engrave metal plates and put them in every Weyr, hold, and Hall, where they’re too obvious to be ignored,” Kalvi said. “And inscribe the sextant settings that indicate the Pass.”

“So long as there’s a sextant, and someone to use it accurately,” Lord Bastom said, “that’s fine. But what happens when the last of them is broken?”

“They’re not that complicated to make,” Kalvi said.

“What if there’s no one trained in its use?” Salda put in.

“My fleet captains use sextants daily,” Bastom said. “The instruments’re invaluable on the sea.”

“Mathematics is a base course for all students,” Clisser added, “not just fishermen.”

“You have to know the method to get the answers you need,” said Corey, the Head Medic, speaking for the first time. “And know when to use it.” Her profession was struggling to maintain a high standard as more and more equipment became unusable, and unusual procedures became erudite.

“There has to be some way to pass on that vital information to future generations,” Paulin said, looking first at Clisser and then scanning the faces at the table. “Let’s have a hard think. Etching on metal’s one way . . . and prominently placing tablets in every Weyr and hold so they can’t be stored away and forgotten.”

“A sort of Rosetta stone?” Clisser’s tone was more statement than query.

“What’s that?” Bridgely asked. Clisser had a habit, which annoyed some folk, of dropping odd references into conversations: references with which only he was familiar. It would lead to long lectures from him if anyone gave him the chance.

“On Earth, in the late eighteenth century, a stone with three ancient languages was discovered which gave the clue to translating those languages. We shall, of course, keep our language pure.”

“We’re back to etching again,” Corey said, grinning.

“If it’s the only way . . .” Clisser began and then frowned. “No, there has to be some fail-safe method. I’ll investigate options.”

“All right, then, Clisser, but don’t put the project aside,” Paulin said. “I’d rather we had a hundred sirens, bells, and whistles going off than no warning at all.”

Clisser grinned slowly. “The bells and whistles are easy enough. It’s the siren that will take time.”

“All right, then,” and Paulin looked around the table. Toe-tapping dance music was all too audible and the younger holders and Weyrfolk were plainly restless. “No more new business?” He didn’t wait for an answer, and used the gavel to end the meeting. “That’s all for now. Enjoy yourselves, folks.”

The speed with which the Hall emptied suggested that that was what all intended to do.

CHAPTER II

Gather at Fort

“C
LISS, WHAT ON EARTH
possessed you?” Sheledon demanded, glowering. He was head of the Arts faculty at the College and constantly jealous of what free time he had in which to compose.

“Well,” and Clisser looked away from Sheledon’s direct and accusing glare, “we do have more records and are more familiar with the techniques of assessing them than anyone else. Information and training
are
what this College was established to provide.”

“Our main function,” said Danja, taking up the complaint—she wanted spare time in which to work with her string quartet, “is to teach youngsters who would rather ride dragons or acquire many klicks of Pernese real estate to use the wits they were born with. And to brainwash enough youngsters to go out and teach whatever they know to our ever-widely-spreading population.”

Dance music swirled about them but Sheledon and Danja were so incensed that they seemed oblivious to the rhythms that were causing the other three at their table to keep time with foot or hand. Danja shot Lozell a peevish look and he stopped rattling fingers callused from harp strings.

“I don’t think it’ll be that hard to find some way to indicate a celestial return,” he said in an attempt to appease the wrath of Sheledon and Danja.

“It isn’t the ‘hard’ that bothers me,” Danja said acidly, “but when will we have the
time?”
She stabbed her finger at the as yet unfinished extension to the teaching facility. “Particularly since there is a time limit,” and she shot another dirty look at Clisser, “Winter Solstice.”

“Oh.” Lozell grimaced. “Good point.”

“We’re all working every hour we can spare from classes on what’s
urgent
right now,” Danja went on, gesturing dramatically and pacing up and down the length of their table. While Sheledon closed in on himself when threatened, Danja exploded into action. Now her nervous movements hit the chair on which she had placed her violin, and she reacted as quickly, to keep the valuable instrument from falling to the cobbles. She gave Lozell a second nasty look, as if he had been responsible.

Sheledon reached across and took violin and bow from her, putting them very carefully on the table, which had been cleared of all but wineglasses. Absently he mopped a wine spill near the precious violin, one of the few usable relics from Landing Days. He gave it a loving pat while Danja continued.

“Like today,” she said, resuming her pacing, “we taught in the morning and managed to eat something before we spent an afternoon painting, so that there will be some finished rooms for the summer term. We had five minutes to change, and even then we missed the fly-past, which I, for one,” and she paused to jab her thumb into her sternum, “wanted to see.

“We’ve played two sets,” she went on earnestly, “and will undoubtedly still be playing when the sun rises, and tomorrow will be a repeat of today except no Gather, so we get a good night’s rest to prepare us for more of the above, except maybe get a little work done on next term. Which starts in a week, and then we’ll have no time at all since we now have to prepare the teachers who’ll be graduated to carry the Word to the outer extremities of the continent.” She gestured eastward in a histrionic fashion, then flounced down on the chair the violin had occupied. “So how are we going to find time to do yet more research, Clisser?”

“We always do find the time,” Clisser said, his quiet rejoinder a subtle criticism of her rant.

“Use it as a history class project?” suggested Lozell brightly.

“There you have the answer,” said Bethany, who had merely, as was her habit, watched the fireworks Danja was so good at sending up. “My juniors could use an independent project.”

“So long as we have power to run the Library,” Danja added sourly.

“We will, we will,” Clisser said, with bright encouragement. “Kalvi had his engineers up on the heights during the fly-past, working on the sun panels. They’ll hook them up to the main banks tomorrow. Other people worked today, you know.”

“Well, that’s a big consolation,” Danja said acidly.

Clisser refilled her glass. “And we’ll need some catchy tunes and good lyrics, too, I should think. Something to teach students from a very early age so that they learn all the signs of a Pass before they learn to ask questions about it.”

“ ‘One and one is two, two and two are four?’ ” Danja sang the old multiplying song, then grinned wryly.

“The song remains an effective teaching aid,” Clisser said, filling his glass. “Shel, would you put on your composer’s hat and whip up some simple effective tunes?”

Sheledon nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve been saying for years that we ought to incorporate more basic stuff into a musical format. Jemmy’s good at little popular airs.”

Bethany’s face lit up with a great smile. Jemmy was a favorite pupil of hers, and she was his staunchest champion. Even Danja looked mollified.

“So,” Clisser went on, having solved one of his immediate problems, “what shall we do in the next set?”

“Just like that?” Danja demanded. “ ‘What’ll we do in this set?’ Clisser, will you get real!”

Clisser looked hurt. Bethany leaned over and patted his hand, smiling encouragingly.

“What did you mean by that, Danja?” Clisser asked.

“Don’t you realize what a huge responsibility you just so casually . . .” and Danja lifted wide her arms, flinging her hands skyward in exasperation, “laid on us all?”

“Nothing we can’t solve, dear,” Bethany said in her gentle manner. “With a little thought and time.”

“Back to time again. Do we
have
time?” Lozell was back in the discussion. “Especially if the winter’s even half as bad as it was last year—and it’s supposed to be, with that damned Red Planet leering down on us—how are we going to cope?”

“We will. We always do,” Sheledon said with a sigh of resignation. “Paulin will help us out. And certainly the Weyrs do.”

Danja glared at him. “We’ve changed tunes, haven’t we? I thought you thought we didn’t have time.”

Sheledon shrugged diffidently. “I think Lozell’s idea of making a survey a class project will solve that problem. And, if Jemmy can whistle up some lyrics, I can certainly churn out some tunes. Or maybe Jemmy can do both in his spare time.” Sheledon’s face softened into a wry grin. He had had a tussle with himself not to be jealous of Jemmy, whose brilliance was multifaceted. Though he wasn’t officially “graduated” from the Hall, he already ran several smaller study groups and seemed able to do a bit of everything—on a high level. The Consummate Jack of all Trades, Clisser called him.

“And what if, by leaving it to the student body, who are, as most students, indifferent researchers, the best notion is
missed?”
Danja asked.

“That’s why we’re teachers, dear,” Bethany said. “To be sure they don’t miss an obvious solution. They can at least save us having to sort through pounds of material and present us with the most viable options. We can put Jemmy in charge. He reads the fastest and his eyes are younger.”

Just then the instrumentalists on the stage wound up their last number and received an enthusiastic ovation from both the sweating dancers and onlookers drinking at the tables. They filed off the stage.

“All right, what set do we do, Clisser?” Sheledon asked, tossing off the last of his wine as he got to his feet.

“Those seniors did a lot of fast dance music,” Clisser said. “Let’s give everyone a chance to catch their breaths and do some slow stuff . . . the old traditionals, I think. Start with ‘Long and Winding Road.’ Put everyone in a sentimental mood.”

“Hmmm . . . then we can get some supper while the juniors do what they so erroneously call ‘music,’ ” said Danja, who had considerable contempt for the contemporary loud and diatonic musical fad.

“Can’t please everyone all the time,” Clisser said, collecting his guitar. He drew back Bethany’s chair for her and offered her an arm. Smiling in her gentle way at the courtesy, Bethany picked up the flute in its worn hard case, her recorders in their leather sleeves, and the little reed whistle that had won its maker a prize that year. It had a particularly sweet clear tone that young Jemmy had been trying to reproduce with other reeds. Then she limped forward, seemingly oblivious to her clubbed foot and awkward gait, her head high, her gaze directed ahead of her.

Jemmy joined them from his table, automatically taking Bethany’s flute case from her. He was the drummer for their group, though he had been playing guitar with others. Unprepossessing in physical appearance, with pale hair and skin and oversized features, he was self-effacing, indifferent to his academic achievements. While not in the least athletic, he had won the long-distance races in the Summer Games for the last three years. He did not, however, relate well to his peer group. “They don’t think the same way I do,” was his diffident self-appraisal.

That was, of course, accurate, since he had tested off the scale of the standard aptitude tests given prospective scholars. His family, fishers at Tillek Hold, didn’t understand him at all and at one point thought him retarded. At fourteen he had followed his siblings into training in the family occupation. He lasted three voyages. Though he proved himself an able navigator, he had such constant motion sickness—never acquiring “sea legs”—that he had been useless as a deckhand: a source of much embarrassment to his family. Captain Kizan had interested himself in the lad, recommended the boy be trained as a teacher and sent Jemmy to Fort Hold for evaluation. Clisser had joyfully accepted him—finding such an avid learner was a real boost to his morale. And, when Clisser had seen how Jemmy galloped through even the hardest lessons, he set up an independent study program for him. Although Jemmy had perfect pitch, he couldn’t sing, and started playing instruments to make up for that lack in himself. There was nothing he couldn’t play, given a few hours of basic training.

Although his family, and indeed the Lord Holder Bastom, too, had expected him to return to Tillek to teach, Clisser argued hard that anyone could teach the basics to hold children. He would supply a suitably trained candidate, he said, but Jemmy must be allowed to continue at the College Hall, benefiting the entire continent.

What no one at the Hall mentioned beyond their most private sessions was that Jemmy seemed intuitively to know how to fill in the gaps left by improper copying or damaged records. His notations, short and concise, were models of lucidity. The College could not afford to do without his skills and intelligence. He wasn’t a good teacher, being frustrated by mental processes slower than his own, but he could, and did, produce manuals and guides that enhanced the basic texts the settlers had brought with them. Jemmy translated “Earth” into “Pern.”

If his peer group did not enjoy his company, he enjoyed that of his mentors, and was fast outstripping all of them in knowledge and practical applications. It was also well known, if tacitly ignored, that he idolized Bethany. She was consistently kind and encouraging to everyone but refused to accept any partner. She had long since decided never to inflict her deformity on offspring, and refused any intimacy, even a childless one.

Clisser wondered, though, as he and Bethany made their sedate way to the stage, if Jemmy might not breach the wall of her virginity. He was certain that Bethany cared more for the Tillek lad than anyone else in the thirty years he had known her—student and teacher. She was a lovely gentle woman: she deserved to be loved, and to love in return. Since there were ways of preventing conception, her prime concern could be taken care of. Clisser thought the age difference was immaterial. And Jemmy desperately needed the balance that a fully rounded life experience would give him.

Clisser and Jemmy provided support for Bethany to ascend the unrailed steps to the stage, and then, with a swirl of the long skirts that covered the built-up shoe she wore, she settled herself in her chair. She placed her flute case and the recorders where she wanted them, and the little reed flute on the music stand. Not that this group of musicians required printed sheets to read from, but the other groups did.

Danja lifted her fiddle to her chin, bow poised, and looked at Jemmy, who hummed an A with his perfect pitch for her to tune her strings. Sheledon softly strummed his guitar to check its tuning, and Lozell ran an arpeggio on his standing harp. The continent’s one remaining piano—his preferred instrument—was undergoing repairs to the hammers: they had not yet managed to reproduce quite the same sort of felt that had been originally used.

Clisser nodded at Jemmy, who did a roll on his hand drum to attract attention, and then, on Clisser’s downbeat, they began their set.

It was several days before Clisser had a chance to discuss the project with Jemmy.

“I’ve wondered why we didn’t use the balladic medium to teach history,” Jemmy replied.

“It isn’t history we’ll be setting to music.”

“Oh yes, it is,” Jemmy had contradicted him in the flat and tactless way he had. It had taken Clisser time to get used to it. “Well, it will be when the next generation gets it . . . and the next one after that.”

“That’s a point, of course.”

Jemmy hummed something but broke off and sprang across to the table, where he grabbed a sheet of paper, turning it to the unused side. He slashed five lines across it, added a clef, and immediately began to set notes down. Clisser was fascinated.

“Oh,” Jemmy said offhandedly as his fingers flew up and down the lines, “I’ve had this tune bugging me for months now. It’s almost a relief to put it down on paper now that I’ve a use for it.” He marked off another measure, the pen hovering above the paper only briefly, before he was off again. “It can be a showpiece anyhow. Start off with a soprano—boy, of course, setting the scene. Then the tenors come in . . . they’ll be the dragonriders, of course, and the baritones . . . Lord Holders, with a few basses to be the professionals . . . each describing his duty to the Weyr . . . then a final chorus, a reprise of the first verse, all Pern confirming what they owe the dragons. Yes, that’ll do nicely for one.”