Chronicles of Pern (First Fall)

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I guess it would. Tell me, how do they shorten Sean?”

  Torene shook her head, bouncing her curls. “They don’t. He’s always ‘Leader,’ and I’d say they capitalize the 1, too.” She shot Sorka a sly grin.

  “Oh, g’wan with you, now.”

  “No, honest, Sorka, they’re always respectful of Sean. And you’re always a full ‘Sorka.’ ”

  “Are you buttering me up, young woman?”

  “Now, why would I do a thing like that?” Torene made her eyes rounder. “Just because I’ve asked you to be softly persuasive. . . .”

  Sorka laughed again. There was no other young woman in the Weyr quite like Torene: so refreshingly herself, without guile and yet exceedingly clever in her directness. “Now, who else is in your select bunch that’s dropping over to the site all the time?”

  “Sevya and Butoth, R’bert and Jenoth, P’ter and Siwith, Uloa and Elliath. . .”

  “That makes three queens. . .”

  “The new Weyr could accommodate four at least,” Torene said, “and we’ve got interest from six more bronze riders, one a Wingleader and two Wingseconds; fifteen brown riders, three Wingseconds among them; and ten blue and eight more green riders.”

  “How long has this been going on?” A faint unease about the activities of the younger riders replaced amusement. Torene was far too candid in her dealings to be plotting a subtle mutiny of sorts. Sorka did a quick figuring‑‑but forty‑seven riders? Who were all eager to start fresh in a new location? That was unsettling. She was certainly going to speak to Sean if this was the scale.

  “Oh, nothing’s been going on, Sorka,” Torene said, genuinely alarmed. Making immediate eye contact, she laid a reassuring hand on Sorka’s arm. “We’d just‑‑basically‑‑like to have more space. Except for Nyassa and Uloa, we’re all younger riders, stuck upstairs or downstairs or wherever we can be fitted in. Sevya says her mother has a bigger cupboard in Tillek than she and her dragon have here.” A tinge of dissatisfaction did color the girl’s voice, and she bit down on her lip, flushing at having spoken criticizingly.

  What she said was fair enough, Sorka knew. Sevya and Butoth, just graduated from the weyrling barracks, were in embarrassingly tight quarters. Though Torene had not mentioned herself, Alaranth did not even have proper head room in the weyr she and her rider shared. In fact, they did not have two parts to their quarters as most partnerships did, and unlike most of the dragons, Alaranth had to go to the Rim to do her daily sunbathing. Soon enough the young queen would be fully mature, and there was no question that by then she could not continue in such a cramped accommodation.

  “We haven’t wanted to rock the boat, Sorka, but really, we can’t afford to lose the chance at this place.” Torene tapped the diagram. “See here? Just above ground level where there are three natural caverns, one after the other? Made‑to‑order Weyrwoman’s quarters. . . and with a little bit of alteration, these‑‑here, here, and here‑‑would be spacious enough for the other queens. And over here, opposite what would be great domestic areas, is a series, of caves just right for weyrlings, instead of having to cram them side by each. Why, the place would be wasted on holders.” She laid a slightly disparaging stress on that noun.

  “It would and it won’t be,” a voice said, startling both women.

  Torene turned a dull red under her tan as Sean appeared from behind them and sat down at their table, a cup of klah in his hand. He had obviously just returned, for only the top of his flight jacket was undone, and hat and gauntlets were still clutched in his free hand. A quick glance at the Weyrwoman assured Torene that Sorka was just as surprised to see him.

  Sean placed riding gear on the table beside his cup as he shrugged out of his heavy fleece‑lined jacket. He finger‑combed sweaty silvering red hair back from his forehead and craned his neck so he could see the plasfilm. At Torene’s anxious look, he smiled slightly.

  “Glad there’s more than one copy.”

  “Mother‑‑” Torene began in explanation, and then couldn’t go on.

  Sean’s grin broadened. “Mothers have their uses.”

  Torene gulped and, seizing this amazing opportunity, plunged right in. “ ‘It would and it won’t be,’ you said. We’ll get the place? Ierne Islanders won’t grab it?”

  Sean snorted. “They had notions, but I persuaded them that the other cliff site was far more viable and only slightly less scenic. There’s a valley with good soil for cultivation, a river for access to the coast, and south‑facing slopes that are just what Rene Mallibeau’s been screaming for, complete with the shale he insists he needs. I’ve been hoping to get back and go over this place”‑‑he tapped the plasfilm with his forefinger‑‑”with Ozzie, if Telgar could spare him.”

  “Mother made me take him with us when she gave me this,” Torene said, casting a quick glance at Sorka, who was, as usual, all eyes for her husband. Torene was scarcely the only female in the Weyr who envied them their double bonding.

  “Starting your own splinter group with Alaranth, are you?” Sean asked, his expression carefully bland. But his cheek muscle didn’t twitch the way it usually did when he was about to chew out an erring weyrling or rider.

  Torene chose quickly between the options that bland question gave her and smiled brightly at Sean‑‑not over‑brightly, because that would annoy him, but brightly enough to make him believe that she wasn’t that much of a fool. Good thing the table concealed the shaking of her knees.

  “Well, you know how big Alaranth’s getting, and honest, Sean, we just don’t fit where we are anymore, and it isn’t as if there’s anywhere here we could switch to. I’ve just been daydreaming, really.” She let her voice dwindle down to an apologetic whisper.

  As she spoke, Sean sipped klah, looking neither at her nor at Sorka.

  Yes, she’s telling you truly, Torene heard Carenath tell his rider. She is very excited about the place and has been over every inch several times. So Alaranth says.

  Torene did not let her expression change, but she saw Sorka peer at her with a slight frown.

  “Sean, have you forgotten that I can hear Carenath?” Torene spoke almost plaintively, as she felt she should remind him since it amounted to inadvertent eavesdropping. “He’s got a strong thought to him, you know.”

  Sean gave her one of his quietly thoughtful looks, neither accusing nor accepting. “Yes, even though it proves to your advantage.”

  Torene let herself smile now with less anxiety. “Either way I’d’ve heard him.”

  “I think that can prove to be an asset, young Torene,” he said. His words surprised her almost as much as the total approval she heard from Carenath. Was the bronze dragon merely echoing his rider’s thoughts, or was that his sentiment, too?

  His and Sean’s, Alaranth said in her very quiet way. But he’s not thinking of Carenath right now.

  Sean was indeed thoughtful as he ran fingers along the shadowed “open” areas within the crater walls shown on the plasfilm, finally laying his hand on the lake site. He nodded once, gulped down the last of his klah, and rose.

  “Have you finished, love?” he asked Sorka with a brief apologetic nod to Torene.

  “Yes, actually, I have.”

  “Keep the diagram handy, would you please, Torene?” Sean added. Then one hand under the elbow of his weyrmate, he walked away with Sorka.

  Torene let out a whooshing breath of relief and, dipping a piece of bread in her soup, began to eat, more out of a release of taut nerves than from hunger. The appearance of Sean Connell had taken away her appetite. The sop of bread was cold, but she ate it. One didn’t waste food, and even cold the soup tasted good.

  “She’s brought matters to a head, Sean,” Sorka said when they arrived at their apartment, a series of five adjoining caverns that had needed only minor alteration and addition to be a comfortable, and private, living space. “There’s a group of forty‑seven young people who dream of occupying that place.”

  “Probably more,” h
e said, hanging his riding gear on the pegs near the entrance.

  “You knew?”

  He shrugged, once again smoothing back his now‑dry hair. “It’s honest speculation, according to Dave Caterel, Paul, and Otto. It would come sooner or later‑‑a need to split into separate groups to cover the ground that’s going to be cultivated and keep it Thread‑free. Red had a go at me last time Thread fell on Ruatha lands.” He shrugged again and, taking a seat, held up his right leg. Sorka straddled the leg, braced herself for his push, and hauled the boot off; automatically, she repeated the process for the left boot while they talked. “Torene would have done better getting your dad to intercede for them.”

  “Now, Sean. . .” Sorka began, ready to defend Torene.

  “Don’t ‘now, Sean’ me, woman,” he said. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to test his mood and decided that she could speak bluntly. “She’s right, for all I think she’s a tad young to be so. . . so beforehand.”

  “There isn’t an ounce of malice in Torene Ostrovsky,” Sorka said staunchly.

  “I haven’t suggested there was, lovey,” he said. Scattering his boots, he pulled her by the waist onto his lap. “But it’s obvious we’ll have to move quickly on this, now that the ball’s rolling.”

  He laid his head between her shoulder blades as he often did, not amorously, but because he was better at using gestures than words and had many ways of expressing his love for her.

  “Have you decided who will lead the new Weyr?” she asked, covering his hands on her waist with hers and leaning into the close embrace.

  “Weyrs,” he said, giving her a final hug before he gently put her back on her feet.

  “Weyrs?”

  “Yes. Plural.” He rose and, stripping off his shirt as he walked toward their bathing room, gestured with his head for her to follow.

  “We’ve more than enough dragons, with three clutches hardening, to populate three, maybe four Weyrs. . .”

  “Torene’s dream site, Big Island, that crater in Telgar’s holding, and where else?”

  He paused on his way through their bedroom long enough to step out of his pants and heavy socks, and ball them up to throw into the laundry basket.

  “We’ve got two other choices, one down on that mid‑eastern peninsula and another up in the High Ranges, the crater with all those spiky peaks. But, to make the necessary improvements even in the east coast place, we’ll need to monopolize the remaining functional stonecutters. . .”

  “Is there enough fuel?”

  “Fulmar Stone’s got all of ‘em rigged to run off generators.” Sean grinned at Sorka as he stepped into the steaming bath. Having a copious supply of thermally heated water was one of the luxuries he enjoyed. The excess water ran off down the pipes that helped keep the Weyr warm. Far underground the water went through a filtering system and returned, cleansed, to the reservoirs, to be pumped up again. Other pipes brought drinking water from the cisterns that were kept topped up by mountain streams.

  “But the actual cutting surfaces are wearing out.”

  “True, but Telgar’s trying to make replacement abrasives that’ll slice rock. There’re enough industrial diamonds near Big Island to give us a fair approximation of the cutting surface. ‘Tany rate, I dealt with the Ierne group. They get the second east coast cave system and give us a workforce to make our own adaptations.” He grinned both with pleasure as he sank to his chin in the warm water and with an understandable pride in the success of his machinations. “With them there, and in a fertile area, they’ll have enough to tithe to the new Weyr.”

  “You thought all this up?”

  He opened his eyes and grinned at her, suddenly boyish. “Hell no, your old man gave me the wink and the nod, and stood by me while I fought it all out with Lilienkamp.” After Paul Benden’s death the previous winter, Joel Lilienkamp had been voted into the management of Fort Hold. He was, in some ways, much harder to listen to in the further disbursement of people‑‑whom he regarded as renewable resources‑‑and of irreplaceable material, which the colony had to conserve.

  “You mean, you weren’t hunting south with the others?”

  He nodded once and then shook his head and began vigorously soaping himself. “Nope. Carenath made do nicely with an injured bullock that had fallen into a crevasse that your father said we could have. I didn’t want any more rumors to circulate than necessary.” He grimaced. “There seem to be enough.”

  She had to wait until he had ducked his head to clear the soap suds from his hair before she asked the next question.

  “Who’re to be Weyrleaders?”

  He gave her an enigmatic smile and she knew why he was going for three new Weyrs: that way he’d avoid any complaint of nepotism. The young people who had been born on Pern, especially those orphaned by the Fever eight years ago, were quick to make that charge when the children of still living fathers and mothers were promoted more often than any from their numbers. Mihall expected to become a Weyrleader. Sorka knew that, and she knew that Sean was aware of those aspirations even though their eldest son never made any allusions to his hope. Indeed, he pointedly did not, scrupulously serving as Wingleader, helping to train weyrlings as part of the duties of his rank, and, except when Brianth lifted in a mating flight, never stepping out of line on any matter, despite his relationship to Sean and Sorka. “Because of it,” Sean had once said to Sorka.

  So Mihall, if Brianth flew a senior queen designate, would reach the objective he had set himself from the moment he had stood on the Hatching Ground at twelve, the youngest ever to Impress a bronze. There had been mutterings about that among older candidates, but Sean’s answer had been firm. “The dragon chooses. Mihall could have been left standing.”

  There’d been a few private words between the new bronze rider and his father, the Weyrleader, but Mihall had never once taken advantage of the relationship. In his group of weyrlings, he had almost been shunned for trying too hard, for always doing more than was necessary and showing up the others.

  If Sean had been self‑contained and private as a boy, Mihall was doubly so. Her own firstborn and she didn’t really know or understand him, Sorka thought. . . and yet, she did.

  The boy had been mad about dragons as soon as he was old enough to understand what his parents did, and despite being mainly raised by his grandparents and with his own siblings, he spent as many waking hours as he could up at the Weyr, making the long hike by himself if there was no one to escort him.

  “We’ve got twenty mating queens‑‑discounting you, because no one flies Faranth but Carenath‑‑” He cocked a stern finger at her, provoking her to grin smugly. “And the three injured. . .”

  “Porth can fly,” Sorka objected on Tarrie’s behalf.

  “But she doesn’t fly long enough to have a good clutch.”

  “Tarrie’s got experience managing Weyr problems,” Sorka said staunchly, knowing how often she’d relied on her friend during her pregnancies or when the children were too ill for her to cope with all that went to running a Weyr.

  “All perfectly true, but I mean to start the new Weyrs with young leaders who’ll see their group through the rest of the Fall: who can pass on what we had to learn the hard way.”

  “So how will you determine these young leaders?”

  “Figure it out, love,” he said, and slipped once more under the surface of the hot bath water.

  “You would!” she said to the ripples that floated soap down the outtake pipe.

  Three Weyrs? My word, she thought with relief and a certain amount of awe. Jays, when Sean let go, he let to with a vengeance. Young leaders! That made excellent sense, and there were enough. Any one of those who were currently Wingleaders could manage a Weyr: they’d been thoroughly indoctrinated by Sean, with emphasis on safety and tactics. Even the Wingseconds would make good leaders. Too bad the blues simply hadn’t the stamina to keep up with a queen. At that, there were only two Wingseconds. And she didn’t see either Frank Bonneau or Ashok
Kung as Weyrleaders. Nice enough young men, but better as subordinates than leaders.

  But that meant, and she found herself clutching the bath sheet under her breasts in relief, that Mihall would most certainly be one of the new Weyrleaders‑‑one of three, so no one would be able to accuse anyone of nepotism. Besides, as everybody had been told repeatedly, the preference of the queen and her rider had to be reckoned with. Sorka allowed herself a small smug smile. There wasn’t a girl in the Weyr who wouldn’t be proud to have her queen flown by Brianth and to be able to stay in Mihall’s company as his Weyrwoman. Ah, but would her handsome red‑headed son, who had shown himself as willing to bed a holder as a rider, be willing to settle to one? The Weyrleadership had to be stable, or the Weyr would be disrupted. What behavior Sean would condone in his son in his current capacity would alter once Mihall became a Weyrleader. It was time for the boy to settle anyway, she thought firmly, and on the end of that, decided she would not interfere with a word to the wise to him. Mihall was man enough now to recognize a need for fidelity.

  “Well, don’t stand there, woman!” Sean’s voice brought her back, and with an apologetic murmur, she handed her dripping husband his towel.

  “You’re also a very clever man,” she said, then added to keep him from being too smug, “Did you know that dragons elide riders’ names?”

  “Sometimes, during Fall if it’s especially heavy, I’ve heard Carenath slur a name or two,” Sean said, vigorously rubbing himself with the towel. “Why?”

  “It seems to have caught on, at least with some of the younger riders.”

  “No harm in that!”

  “I do have it on very good authority that neither your name or mine, however, are ever slurred.”

  “I should hope not!”

  By the time the southern hunting party made it back that evening‑‑replete dragons did not go between‑‑Torene had had a chance to calm down from the excitement of knowing the double‑cratered place was going to be her Weyr. She decided not to mention her conversation with the Weyr‑leaders. The other members of her group were high enough as it was from their eastern hop: the boys planning which weyr they’d make their own; Sevya and Nya figuring out just how much sand would be needed to give a good deep bedding for hardening eggs. Siglath was hopeful in a wistful way, or so Nyassa told the youngsters. Torene thought the rest of the Weyr should hear the news from Sean‑‑once it was official. Fortunately, her bunch tended not to mouth their enthusiasms near the more conservative older riders, and Alaranth would keep her counsel. Torene grinned. Her queen took her cue from her rider. And sometimes that worked the other way round, too.