The Renegades of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  Her smile had a touch of mischief as she turned with her tray to serve others. ‘Fandarel!’

  ‘Hey, Jancis, come back!’ Piemur shot to his feet, spilling soup over his hands.

  ‘Ah, Piemur,’ the Harper said, appearing before him to catch his arm and thwart his pursuit. ‘When you’ve finished eating—What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Fandarel has a granddaughter?’

  The Masterharper blinked and then focused a kindly gaze on his journeyman. ‘He has several that I know of. And four sons.’

  ‘He has a granddaughter here!’

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, when you’ve finished eating… now what was it I wanted you to do?’ The Harper placed his fingers on his forehead, frowning in concentration.

  ‘Sorry, Master Robinton.’ Piemur was sincerely contrite. He knew that the Harper hated his lapses of memory; Master Oldive had explained that they were a natural part of the aging process, but Piemur found such reminders of his Master’s mortality distinctly unsettling.

  ‘Ah!’ the Harper exclaimed, remembering. ‘I wanted to get back to Cove Hold. Zair has gone off with a multitude of other bronzes, chasing some queen, and I’ve really had quite enough excitement today. Would you, in the light of your new acquaintanceship, care to accompany me?’

  Piemur did not, but he went. Two could play a disappearing game, he thought wryly.

  The next morning, a fire-lizard brought an urgent message for the Harper from Master Esselin.

  ‘Well, it seems that between the rains and the earth-shake, an interesting subsidence has occurred, and it looks as if an entrance to those caves has been revealed,’ Robinton said cheerfully. ‘I think we’d better ask V’line to come as soon as possible.’ He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

  A large depression in the ground, along with a substantial fracture of the surface, had been noticed early that morning by the ever observant Breide. Master Esselin had assembled a crew at the site, but no one had been permitted to descend into the cavern until Master Robinton arrived. In preparation, Esselin had tested the safety of the fissure’s edge and found it solid enough. Glows had been collected and a sturdy ladder lowered and settled firmly on the cave floor. When Robinton arrived, he found Breide in a sweat, arguing vehemently with Master Esselin, who was guarding the ladder with his own body.

  ‘I’m in charge of the Plateau,’ the Harper said, sweeping both Breide and Esselin out of the way when he realized that the contention was about who should take ‘dangerous’ step of entering first.

  ‘But I’m more agile than you, Master,’ Piemur said. ‘I’ll go first.’ He slipped on to the ladder and was down the rungs so fast that the Harper had no time to argue the point. Someone began lowering glowbaskets on ropes to illuminate his way. Not wasting a moment, Master Robinton eagerly followed him down, then Esselin, and then Breide after him.

  ‘This is amazing!’ the Harper exclaimed as Piemur helped him over the broken earth where the ceiling had collapsed. They seemed to be in a narrow aisle. Piemur held a glowbasket above his head and turned slowly around.

  Within the circles of light cast by the glowbaskets was an astonishing clutter of crates, boxes, and transparently wrapped items, some heaped haphazardly and some more neatly stacked along the irregular walls of the cavern. The cavern had a vaulted ceiling and seemed to be one of several interconnecting chambers. All four explorers peered around in a daze of wonder.

  ‘All these Turns, they’ve been here, waiting for their rightful owners to reclaim them,’ the Harper murmured, almost reverently touching one finger to a crate. He stepped carefully over a box to peer into the shadows beyond the light. ‘An immense storehouse of artifacts.’

  ‘I’d say they’d been in a hurry,’ Breide remarked, ‘if you compare the relative order of things along the walls to the disorder here. Ah, and this seems to be a doorway.’ He gave the door panels a couple of stout blows, but he could not find any latches or handles with which to open it.

  ‘Boots,’ Piemur said, picking up a pair and brushing the dirt off the transparent envelope that had protected them. He tried to pinch the film, but it resisted. ‘Feels like the same stuff that coated the maps.’ His low voice was awed. ‘All sizes of boots! Sturdy ones. They don’t look like leather.’

  Master Robinton was on his knees, trying to figure out how to open a crate that seemed to be sealed tight. ‘What does this say?’ he asked, pointing to lines of differing widths and shadings on one corner of the lid.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Piemur replied. ‘But I do know how to open it!’ There had been identical crates at Paradise River Hold. He took hold of two metal flaps centered on the short sides, pulled them sharply to fold down, and the lid came free.

  ‘Sheets!’ Master Esselin shrieked, the noise echoing through the tunnels beyond them. ‘Sheets of the ancients’ material! Master Robinton, just look! Sheets of it!’

  Master Robinton lifted out a flattish transparent envelope, a handspan wide and two long and two fingers thick. ‘Shirts?’

  ‘Sure looks like one to me,’ Piemur said, briefly shining his glow over it, and moved on to search for something less prosaic.

  Later, when they had recovered from the initial excitement, Master Robinton suggested that records be made of the contents of the storehouse, listing at least those objects that were easily identifiable. Nothing must be removed from its protective covering, he said. The Benden Weyrleaders and the Mastersmith would have to be informed… and perhaps the Masterweaver, since clothing was his Craft.

  ‘And Masterharper Sebell,’ Piemur added teasingly.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. And…’

  ‘Lord Holder Toric!’ Breide put in, indignant at having to remind them.

  ‘Oh, this is truly amazing,’ Master Robinton said. ‘A major discovery. Untouched for who knows how long…’ And then his face fell.

  ‘Well, maybe they stored away duplicate records here, too,’ Piemur said encouragingly. He took the Harper’s arm and gently pushed him down to a large green crate. ‘It’s going to take a long time to sift through this lot.’

  ‘I don’t think we should touch anything more,’ Breide said nervously, ‘until everyone has gathered here.’

  ‘No, no, you’re quite right. They should all see it as we just have,’ the Harper agreed, his expression slightly dazed.

  Piemur scurried up the ladder, popping his head out of the hole and surprising those trying to peer down. ‘Jancis?’ he called, looking impatiently around. The throng parted as she came up to him. ‘Get some wine or klah for the Harper, please.’

  She nodded and dashed off, returning moments later with someone’s belt flask. Piemur gave her a thankful grin and slid down the ladder to revive the Harper.

  ‘What do you mean? Denol and his kin have taken possession of the island?’

  ‘What I said, Lord Toric,’ Master Garm replied unhappily. ‘He and all his kin have crossed the channel to the island and plan to hold it themselves. Denol says that you’ve got more than enough for one man, and the island can easily be an independent, autonomous hold.’

  ‘Independent? Autonomous?’

  Master Garm had had occasion to remark to Master Idarolan that Lord Toric had mellowed over the past few Turns since he had achieved his ambition. Clearly that tempering did not extend enough to accept mutiny calmly.

  ‘That’s the message, Lord Toric. And those left at Great Bay Hold are the most shiftless, indolent lot I’ve ever seen.’ Garm did not hide his disgust.

  ‘That is not allowed!’ Toric exclaimed heatedly.

  ‘I agree, sir, so I sailed directly back here. No sense leaving good supplies for those lazy lugs. I knew you’d want to take appropriate action.’

  ‘Indeed I do, Master Garm, and you will reprovision your ship immediately for an afternoon sailing.’ Toric stalked to the magnificently embellished map of his Holding, which now took up one whole wall of his workroom.

  ‘As you say, sir.’ Garm knuckled his brows and
exited hastily.

  ‘‘Dorse! Ramala! Kevelon!’ Toric’s roar echoed down the corridor after Master Garm.

  Dorse and Kevelon arrived at a run, to find the Lord Holder writing a note, his fury evident in the bold, hurried letters scrawled across the narrow sheet.

  ‘That ingrate, Denol, has mutinied on the Great Bay and is claiming my island as an independent, autonomous holding,’ he told them. ‘This is what comes of assigning lands to any rag, tag, or scum. I am informing the Benden Weyrleaders of the course I intend to take, and I expect their cooperation.’

  ‘Toric,’ Kevelon said, ‘you can’t expect dragonriders to take punitive action against people—’

  ‘No, no, of course not. But this Denol will soon see that he cannot maintain his position on my island!’

  Ramala entered the room. ‘A message just in from Breide at the Plateau, Toric.’

  ‘I don’t have time for him right now, Ramala.’

  ‘I think you’d better, Toric. They’ve discovered storage caves full of ancients’—’

  ‘Ramala,’ Toric snapped, frowning irritably at his wife. ‘I have present concerns. That wretched crop picker from South Boll has occupied my island and intends to make it his. The Weyrleaders…’

  ‘The Weyrleaders will be at the Plateau, Toric. You could combine—’

  ‘In that case, I shall send this message to them there. Ramala—’ Toric thumped the table with his fist. ‘This is far more important that any scraps and shards left behind by the ancients. This is an arrant challenge of my authority as Lord Holder and cannot be permitted to continue.’ He turned to Dorse. ‘I want all the single men aboard the Bay Lady by midday, with suitable supplies of weapons, including those barbed spears we’ve been using against the big felines.’ Then, waving Dorse out, he rolled up the two messages, which he handed to Ramala. ‘Give these to Breide’s fire-lizard and send it back to him. Kevelon, you remain here in Southern to manage things. I can trust you.’ Toric gave his brother a warm embrace and then returned to study the map, focusing on the threatened island.

  Never had Toric expected to be challenged in his own Hold, and by a jumped-up drudge of a crop picker. He would pick him over, so he would!

  * * *

  ‘Denol, you say?’ the Master Harper exclaimed. ‘A crop picker from South Boll?’

  There was such amusement in his voice that Perschar, who was busily sketching the scene around the collapsed cave roof, looked up in surprise.

  Breide gave him a quelling stare. ‘My remarks were addressed to Master Robinton,’ he said haughtily, gesturing with his free hand for the artist to go back to his business. He handed Toric’s message to the Harper.

  ‘Well, that’s a facer for Lord Toric, to be sure,’ Perschar went on, ignoring Breide.

  The Harper grinned. ‘I don’t think Lord Toric will be over-faced, however. A man of his infinite resourcefulness will soon put matters right. And the diversion at this particular moment in time is fortuitous.’

  ‘Yes,’ Perschar replied, a speculative gleam in his eye. ‘You may be right at that.’ He resumed his deft quick lines, a broad smile on his face.

  ‘But Master Robinton,’ Breide went on, mopping the sweat running down his temples. ‘Lord Toric has to be here.’

  ‘Not when matters of Hold importance come up abruptly.’ Robinton turned to Piemur, who had listened with great interest, especially since Breide was so patently distressed. ‘Ah, here comes Benden,’ the Harper added, pointed skyward. ‘I’ll see that the Weyrleader gets his message from Toric.’ He nipped the other roll from Breide’s hand before the man could protest, then walked across the well-trampled field to greet F’lar and Lessa.

  More ladders had been lowered and a quantity of glowbaskets placed below to enable the Weyrleaders and Craftmasters to explore easily. A number of people were already doing just that, and the Masterharper and the Weyrleaders joined them.

  It was then that Piemur noticed Jancis coming down. ‘Hi, there,’ he said. ‘We’re not supposed to go off on our own, so how about I go with you?’ He helped her down the last step.

  ‘I’m here officially,’ she said with a grin. She opened her shoulderbag to show him a board and writing materials. ‘To measure and diagram the corridors before you get completely lost.’ She handed him a folding measuring stick. ‘You just got seconded to help.’

  Piemur did not mind in the least. ‘The door’s back this way,’ he said. ‘I think that would be a good starting point.’ He cupped his hand under her elbow and guided her in the right direction.

  While she was diligent about measurements, both took time to peek into crates and examine a variety of the stores.

  ‘Mainly things that they either had plenty of or didn’t immediately need,’ Jancis remarked, looking through a large case of encrusted soup ladles and jumping back as one disintegrated in her hand.

  ‘You always need boots!’ Piemur replied. ‘And they’re in an excellent state of preservation. I make this chamber twenty paces by fifteen.’ They had moved some distance from the original chamber, through interconnecting caves, some of which showed evidence of having been reshaped and squared off.

  ‘How could they manage to shear through solid rock like a carver through roast wherry?’ Jancis asked, running one hand over an archway.

  ‘You’re the smith. You tell me.’

  She laughed. ‘Even Grandfa can’t figure that one out.’

  ‘You haven’t actually worked metal, have you?’ Piemur finally blurted out, unable to contain himself any longer. She was not a fragile-looking girl, but neither did she have the bulging muscles of most male smiths he knew.

  ‘Yes, the Crafthall required me to, but not the heavy stuff,’ she answered absently, more intent on measuring the archway than on his questions. She gave him the measurements. ‘There’s a lot more to smithing than working hot metal or glass. I know the principles of my Craft, or I’d not have walked the tables.’ She cocked her head at him, the dimple appearing with her grin. ‘Can you craft every instrument a harper plays?’

  ‘I know the principles,’ Piemur said with a laugh and then held up the glowbasket to see into the next chamber. ‘What have we here?’

  ‘Furniture?’ Jancis added her glows to his, and the dark shadows took on form, light shining off smooth metal legs. ‘Chairs, certainly, tables, all of metal or that other stuff they used so much of.’ She was running knowledgeable hands down legs and across surfaces.

  ‘Hey, drawers!’ Piemur exclaimed, wrestling with a tier down one side of a desk. ‘Look!’ He held up a handful of thin cylinders with pointed ends. ‘Writing sticks? And these?’ He held up clips and then a transparent stick, a nail thick, a finger wide, and more than a handspan long, both edges covered with fine lines and numerals. ‘What standards were they measuring by?’

  He gave her the stick, and she turned it over and over. ‘Handy enough, since you can see through it,’ she remarked and then put it in her shoulderbag, making a notation on her diagram. ‘Grandfa will want to see it. What else have you found?’

  ‘More of those useless thin placques of theirs. If all the drawers are full of th—’ He stopped complaining as he opened the deepest drawer and saw the neat arrangement of hanging files. He removed one. ‘Lists and lists, on that film of theirs. And color-coded—orange, green, blue, red, brown. Numbers and letters that don’t mean a thing to me.’ He passed the file to her and picked up another one. ‘All red and all crossed out. Records my Master wants, and records I can now give him! For all the good it does.’

  ‘Aren’t there these sorts of bandings, numerals, and letters on those crates?’ Jancis asked.

  Piemur groaned, thinking of the piles of crates and boxes and cartons they had seen. ‘I have no wish to cross-check. Couldn’t they have left anything in plain language for us?’

  ‘What upsets Grandfa,’ Jancis went on, exploring more of the accessible drawers, ‘is that we’ve lost so much of their knowledge over the hundreds of Turns. He
calls that criminal.’

  ‘Not just inefficient?’ Piemur grinned, hoping no unexpected summons would interrupt them and that somehow he could get her mind off their main reason for being here.

  Jancis had just opened the wide shallow drawer in the center of the desk and removed some very thin loose sheets of the same durable material on which the maps had been printed. She peered at the letters across the top. ‘E-V-A-C-U-A—funny shape to these letters… Ah, evacuation plan. More numbers.’ She folded the top sheet back and gasped. ‘A plan of the Plateau, with names, and—HOS-PI-TAL, WA-RE-HOUSE, VET, LAB, ADMIN, AIVAS. They have everything named as to function.’ She turned to him, her eyes glowing as she passed the sheets to him. ‘I think this is an important document, Piemur.’

  ‘I think you’re right. But let’s see what else we can find.’

  The furniture was packed so carefully that in the end they were able to reach only a few more drawers without unstacking things—and there was no space for that. Not all the drawers were as full as the one Piemur had first opened, but each contained interesting detritus in the form of brief notes, more obscure lists, and the thin rectangular placques that appeared to have no obvious function. Jancis made the final discovery: an oblong of black material with raised buttons, twelve bearing numbers and four arithmetic signs, all flanked and topped by buttons, which they both agreed that her grandfather should see. Most of the furniture was in remarkably good condition as the cave complex was dry and the material impervious to penetration by tunnel snakes, though excretal evidence of those creatures marked the surfaces.

  ‘Poor hungry critters,’ Jancis said in mock sympathy. ‘All this for centuries and not one thing edible!’

  ‘Or long since consumed.’ Piemur noticed that their glow-baskets were getting dim. ‘How long have we been down here?’

  ‘Long enough for me to get hungry,’ she replied, her dimple showing.

  They had already started on their way back to the entrance when they heard their names echoing down the corridors. When they got back to the entrance, they found Master Esselin halfway down one ladder in an urgent discussion with F’lar, who was a few rungs up another, peering more at the sky than at the man he was talking to.