Dragonsdawn (36 page)

“Now, dear heart, we’ll be able for what we have to do.” The unknown clearly did not faze Sean anymore.

“But Sean . . .”

“If
we
know where we’re going,
they
will. They’ll see it in our minds. They see everything else. What makes you think directions will be difficult?”

“But we don’t even know how the dragonets do it!”

Sean shrugged, grinning down at her. “No, we don’t. But if the fire-lizards are capable of the teleportation, the dragons will be, too. Kitti Ping did not tamper with that. Let’s not fret ourselves. We won’t fret them.”

She eyed him sourly, then shook her finger at him. “Then
you
stop worrying about it!”

Laughing, his blue eyes sparkling at her shrewd hit, he took her hand and pulled her into his embrace. She nestled there, taking strength from him and returning it. Although Sorka had never before felt so in charge of herself, so dynamic, there were moments when she was assailed with the fear that she might fail Faranth in some small but essential way. She expressed that to Sean.

“No, you won’t,” he said, smoothing her sweat-damp hair back from her face. “No more will I Carenath. They’re ours, and we belong to them.” He turned her face up to look at him, his eyes so intense with love and assurance that her breath caught. Sean embraced her again tightly. “Ever since we dropped to this planet, Sorka, this has been our destiny. Or why else were we the first to find the fire-lizards? Out of all the people exploring the world, why did the fire-lizards come to us? Why did the last of Kitti Ping’s creation search
us
out of the crowd? No, believe in yourself, in us and our dragons.” He held her a moment longer and then released her. “I think we have to give Cricket and Doove to your father. Brian gets along with Cricket very well.”

Sorka had known that some decision had to be made about their horses, both of whom had from the start been terrified of the wobbling dragons. Red and Brian had taken the horses up to the main veterinary barn. Sorka thought briefly of all the grand moments she had experienced on the bay mare’s back, most of them shared with Sean and Cricket. But their dragons had become all-important.

“Yes,” she heard herself saying with no further twinge of regret. “I never thought there’d come a day when I wouldn’t have time for horses.” She looked lovingly at the sleeping figure of Faranth and grinned at the bulge in the golden belly, which would all too quickly disappear. “I’ll fix us something to eat.”

Sean kissed her on the forehead. His new willingness to display affection was one of the fringe benefits from Carenath, and Sorka loved him more than ever. She leaned against him, inhaling his manly smell mixed with the herbal dragon oil.

“Make sandwiches, love,” Sean advised. “Here comes Dave Catarel at the trot. If Polenth’s asleep, the others will be along, too.”

“They’ve got it,” Ongola informed Paul when the admiral answered the comm unit in Emily’s quarters, where he was anticipating one of Pierre’s excellent dinners. Emily had taken pity on him as Ju had gone back to check on their Boca holding the previous day. “Nabhi just called in. Bart Lemos got a scoopful. Although . . .”

“Although what?” Paul asked, exchanging glances with Emily.

“Although it took them a long time,” Ongola finished on a troubled sigh. “They should have been well up in the trail before now.” Ongola sounded puzzled. “They have what we need, that’s the important thing: the pods. The fax are being relayed to the interface right now. Ezra and Jim should have an analysis sometime tomorrow.”

“Are you still at the
Moth
?” Paul asked, frowning. Ongola was not completely recovered from his injuries, and Paul was proprietary in his concern for him. Ongola would be a key man in the coming struggle for autonomy and survival.

“Yes, but Sabra’s brought me dinner.” Ongola was indulging in one of his rare chuckles as he signed off.

“They’ve got what we need,” Paul told Emily as he reseated himself. “Now I can enjoy this dinner.”

The first rumblings occurred the next morning, early enough to rattle many people in their beds. Only the young dragons were unperturbed, sleeping through the commotion made by the excited, frightened humans.

“Will this planet never let up on us?” Ongola demanded as he untangled himself from his bedsack and fumbled for the comm unit set.

“Was that an earthquake?” Sabra asked sleepily. She had left the children with a friend so that she and Ongola could have a few hours together. Sabra felt she needed that comfort almost as much as Ongola must. And she had signed on a charter promising order and tranquility!

“Go back to sleep,” Ongola told her as he dialed. “What does Patrice say, Jake?” he asked his efficient assistant.

“He says the gravity meters have all been registering a disturbance in lava chambers along the island ring. He doesn’t know what’s going to blow, but the display suggests that something has to. He’s trying to guess the most likely escape point.”

Ongola’s next call was to Paul, at home.

“No rest for the weary, huh?” Paul asked in a resigned tone.

“Volcanic disturbance all along the chain.”

“Chain, my foot! That rumble was right under my ear, Ongola, and we do have three volcanoes looming over us.”

Ongola was so accustomed to the great peaks that he had forgotten that they, also, could pose a threat; though the experts had all agreed that the last eruption of Mount Garben had occurred a millennium ago.

By midmorning Patrice relieved the worst fears by his announcement that a new volcano was erupting out of the sea beyond the eastern tip of Jordan Province. Young Mountain, which had been monitored for the past eight years, was throwing up a cloud of smoke, gas, and some ash, but magma pressure did not seem to be building there.

A second underground churning startled people midafternoon. When Patrice arrived, parking his sled in Administration Square and going in to consult with Paul and Emily, an anxious crowd quickly gathered to await the result of that meeting. Finally the colony’s two leaders appeared on the porch with Patrice, who was smiling and waving fax in both hands.

“A new volcano to be named. Like Aphrodite rising from the sea, but I don’t necessarily insist on that name,” he shouted.

“Where?”

“Beyond the easternmost tip of Jordan, safely away from us, my friends.” He held up the largest photo so that the roiling seas and the protruding tip of the smoking peak could be seen by all.

“Yeah, but that’s still the same little tectonic plate we’re on, isn’t it?” one man shouted. He pointed back over his shoulder at the lofty peak of Mount Garben. “That one could go again. Couldn’t it?”

“Of course it could,” Patrice answered easily, shrugging his shouders. “But it is very unlikely in my opinion. It shot its head off thousands of years ago. There has been no evidence of activity here. It’s an old one, that volcano. The young ones have more to say, and are saying it. Do not panic. We are safe at Landing.” He sounded so certain that the anxious murmuring abated and the crowd dispersed.

All through the day there were sporadic growlings, as Telgar called them. Wandering at random through Landing, he had made himself available to anyone who wished to be reassured. It was the first time since Sallah’s death that Telgar had circulated socially. That night, a large proportion of Landing’s population gathered in Bonfire Square, and the blaze was built up to an unusual, almost defiant size.

“Our beautiful Pern has popped a pimple on her face,” Telgar said with a hint of his former joviality, talking to a group of young people. “She’s not so old that her digestion is perfect. And we have been disturbing her with our borings and diggings.”

When he moved off, one of the apprentice geologists followed him. “Look, Tar-Telgar,” the young man began earnestly. “We’re not on basement rock here in Landing.”

“That is very true,” Telgar replied with a slight smile. “Which is why we are rocking a little. But I am not concerned.”

The apprentice flushed. “Well, there’s a wide, long strip of basement rock in the northern continent, along the western mountain range.”

“Ah, how well you have studied your lessons,” Telgar commented. He nodded equably to Cobber Alhinwa and Ozzie Munson, who had just joined them. “An, have a glass with us.”

Embarrassed by having stated the obvious, the young man hastily excused himself.

“So people are talking of basement rock,” Cobber said, and beside him Ozzie smirked.

“I know, you know, and he knows, but we have had enough of insecurity today. The basement rock will not shift. As you know, I have given my opinion to Paul, Emily, and Patrice.” Telgar looked beyond the big miner to a distant view that only his eyes saw. Cobber and Ozzie exchanged meaningful glances. The set, pained look on Telgar’s face meant that he was remembering something about Sallah.

Cobber nudged Ozzie and leaned conspiratorially toward Telgar. “Are we all to go look at some basement rock now, Telgar?”

The next morning a rumble of a different kind finally roused Paul as Ju reached across him for the handset.

“For you,” she mumbled sleepily, dropping it on the bedsack and rolling over again.

Paul fumbled for it and cleared his throat. “Benden.”

“Admiral,” Ongola said urgently, “they’ve begun reentry, and Nabhi’s on a bad course.”

Paul pulled loose the fasteners of the bedsack and sat bolt upright. “How could he be?”

“
He
says he’s green, Admiral.”

“I’m coming.” Paul had an irrational desire to slam the handset down and go back to sleep beside his wife. Instead he dialed Emily, who said she would join him at the met tower. Then he alerted Ezra Keroon and Jim Tillek.

“Paul?” Ju asked sleepily.

“Sleep on, honey. Nothing to worry you.”

He had tried to keep his voice low and was sorry to have disturbed her. In the second semester of a new pregnancy, Ju needed more sleep. They had stayed up late talking, regretfully aware that they must set the example and close down their stake. The constant drain of Threadfall was having a devastating effect on supplies and resources. Joel particularly fretted over the dwindling efficiency of the power packs. According to Tom Patrick, the psychological profile of Landing’s population was, in the main, encouraging, although therapy and medication were increasingly required to keep distressed people functioning. Somehow Paul could not bring himself to hope that Nabhi Nabol and Bart Lemos had brought back something as vital as encouragement.

Yesterday Ezra and Jim had produced the latest analysis of the eccentric’s orbit. It was as wayward, in Jim Tillek’s phrasing, as a drunken whore on a Saturday night at a space facility in the Asteroid Belt. What had looked to be a reasonable, predictable elliptical orbit through Rukbat’s system proved to be even more bizarre, at an angle to the ecliptic. The planet would wobble into the vicinity of Pern every two hundred and fifty years, though Ezra had made extrapolations that provided some variations of its course, due to the effect of other planets in the system. During some of it orbits, it looked as if the eccentric and its cloud of junk would miss Pern.

“The most singular planet I’ve ever tried to track,” Ezra had said apologetically, scratching his head as he summed up his report.

“Natural orbit?” Jim had asked, with a sly grin at the astronomer.

Ezra had given him a long scornful look. “There’s nothing natural about that planet.”

Although Thread had shifted five degrees to the north in the current—third—round of Falls, the admiral no longer held much hope for Ezra’s theory that the Falls were deliberate, a softening-up procedure by some sentient agency. If that had been the case, he argued, the Falls ought to have accelerated in frequency and density after the wild planet swung to its nearest spatial point to Pern. But Thread had continued to drop in mindless patterns, each consistent with the northern shift. Mathematical calculations, checked and double-checked by Boris Pahlevi and Dieter Clissmann, concurred with Ezra’s depressing conclusion. The eccentric would swing away from Pern and the inner system, only to swing back again in two hundred and fifty years.

The fax Bart had flashed back to Pern had shown the trail of debris to be endless.

“All the way to the edge of the system,” Ezra declared in total capitulation. “The planet pierces the Oort cloud and drags the stuff down with it. Hoyle and Wickramansingh’s theory has been vindicated in the Rukbat system.”

“Aren’t we lucky?” Jim added. “The junk could still be just ice and rock. We won’t know for sure until we see what Bart Lemos scooped up out there.” Jim was not at all happy that his theory was right. He would almost prefer a sentient intelligence somehow surviving on the eccentric planet. You could usually deal with intelligence. His theory made it tough on Pern.

In the cold light of a new morning, Paul dressed quickly, toeing his feet into his boots and closing the front of his ship-suit. He combed his hair neatly back and then stumbled into the predawn light. He used the skimmer—it would be quieter than him puffing and jogging down to the tower. He tried to practice what he preached in matters of conservation, but that morning he did not wish to be heard passing by.

The last few days, with the
Moth
overdue, had been hard on him. Waiting had never been his forte: decision and implementation were where he shone. Emily had proved once again the staunch, unswerving, resolute governor of herself and her subordinates. She was the best sort of complement to his strengths and flaws.

He saw lights over in Irish Square and, through the lines of dwellings, he caught a glimpse of fluttering wings as the young Connells gave their dragons the early morning meal. In the next square, Dave Catarel was up, too, feeding his young bronze.

At the thought of those young people committed to survival on Pern, Paul felt a sudden surge of confidence that he and Emily would bring everyone through. By all that was holy, they would! Had he not gone through bleaker days before the Battle at Purple Sector? And Emily had been blockaded for five years, emerging with a healthy functioning population despite a shortage of raw materials.