Dragonseye (22 page)

Despite the more northerly position, Telgar Weyr got only a hand’s span of snow and made do with that. The young dragonets were fascinated by the stuff and by having to crack the ice of the lake to bathe. Bathing a dragon had become a hazard, but T’dam allowed the weyrlings to suds up a dragonet and allow it to rinse itself off in the frigid water. But daily washings resulted in some distress for the rider.

“I’ve chilblains again,” Debera complained to Iantine, showing him her swollen fingers when he came out to watch her tend Morath.

The little green was a favorite subject of his because, he told Debera, “She has a tremendous range of expression on her face and gets in the most incredible positions.”

Debera was far too besotted with her dragon to disagree with such an impartial opinion. If she herself figured in every sketch Iantine did, she did not wonder about it. But the other green riders did.

“You should get some of Tisha’s cream. It stopped my fingers from itching,” Iantine snapped his fingers, “like that!”

“Oh, I have some of that,” she replied.

“Well, it doesn’t do you any good in the jar, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, ducking her head, her tone low and apologetic.

“Hey, I’m not scolding,” he said gently, putting one finger under her chin and lifting her head. “What’d I do wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said and pushed his finger away, giving him a too-bright smile. “I get silly notions sometimes. Don’t pay me any mind.”

“Oh, I don’t,” he replied so blithely that she gave him a startled look. “Just go on with lathering up that beast of yours . . .” He turned to a new page and removed the pencil from behind his ear. “Go on . . .”

“Iantine’s gone on you, Debera,” Grasella said, eyeing her barrack mate shrewdly.

“Iantine? He’s sketch mad. He’d do his big toe if he had nothing else to pose for him,” Debera replied. “Besides, he’ll leave soon for Benden . . .”

“Will you miss him?” Jule asked, a sly look on her face.

“Miss him?” Debera echoed, surprised at the question.

I will miss him,
Morath said in such a mournful tone that the other dragonets turned toward her, their eyes whirling in minor distress.

“What did she say that’s got them all upset?” Jule demanded.

“That she’d miss him. But, love, he’s not Weyrbred,” Debera told her dragon, stroking her cheek and then her headknob. “He can’t stay here indefinitely.”

“If anyone asked me, I’d say Iantine would like to,” Sarra put in.

“No one’s asked you,” Angie replied tartly.

“Has he ever done anything . . . I mean, beyond sketching you, Deb?” Jule asked with an avid glint in her eyes.

“No, of course not. Why would he?” Debera said, annoyed and flustered. That was the trouble with having to sleep in with the others. They could be terribly nosy, even if they weren’t as mean as her stepmother and sisters had been. She didn’t pry into where they were when they were late in at night.

“I give up on her,” Jule said, raising her hands skyward in exasperation. “The handsomest unattached man in the Weyr and she’s blind.”

“She’s Morath-besotted,” Sarra put in. “Not that any of us are much better.”

“Most of us . . .” and Jule paused significantly, “know that while dragons may now be a significant factor in our lives, they are not
everything
, you know. Even ol’ T’dam-damn-him has a weyrmate, you know.”

“We don’t have weyrs yet,” Mesla said, speaking for the first time. She took everything literally. “Couldn’t have anyone in here with you gawking.”

Debera knew she was blushing: her cheeks felt hot.

“That hasn’t held
you
back, I noticed,” Sarra said to Jule, cocking her head knowingly.

Jule smiled mysteriously. “From the only Weyrbred resident in this barracks, let me assure you that our wishes can influence our dragons’ choices.”

“They won’t rise for another eight or ten months,” Angie said, though she had obviously taken heed of Jule’s remark. “But, Jule, suppose your dragon fancies a dragon whose rider you can’t stand?”

“You mean, O’ney?” and she grinned at Angie’s discomfort.

The girl overcame her embarrassment and snapped back quickly enough. “He’s impossible, even for a bronze rider. Have you ever
heard
him go on about how his wing is always tops in competitions! As if that was all that mattered!”

“To him it probably does,” Grasella said, “but, Jule, I’m more worried about the blue riders. I mean, some of them are very nice guys and I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings, but they don’t generally like girls.”

“Oh,” and Jule shrugged indolently, “that’s easier still. You make an arrangement with another rider to be on hand when your green gets proddy. Then the blue rider gets his mate, if he’s got one, or anyone else who’s willing—and you’d better believe that anyone’s willing when dragons are going to participate. So you bed the one you like, and the blue rider his choice, and you
all
enjoy!”

The girls absorbed this information with varying degrees of enthusiasm or distaste.

“Well, it’s up to yourselves what you do, you know,” Jule went on. “And we’re not limited to this Weyr, either. Oh!” and she let out a gusty sigh. “I’ll be so glad when we can fly out of here anytime we want.”

“But I thought you were arranging matters with T’red?” Mesla said, her eyes wide with consternation.

“Well, so I am, but that doesn’t mean I might not find someone I like better at another Weyr. Greens like it, you know.”

“Ah, but can we go to other Weyrs?” Sarra said, waggling a finger at Jule. “In four, five months, we’ll have Fall and
then
we’ll really work hard, ferrying firestone sacks to the fighters.” Her eyes gleamed brightly in anticipation and she hugged herself. “We’ll be doing
something
a lot more exciting than having just one mate and plenty of kids.”

Debera averted her face, not wanting to take part in such a ridiculous discussion.

Something bothers you,
Morath said and slowly lowered her head to her rider’s lap.
I love you. I think you’re wonderful. Iantine does, too.

That confidence startled Debera.
He does?

He does!
And Morath’s tone was emphatic.
He likes your green eyes, the way you walk, and the funny crackle in your voice. How do you do that?

Debera’s hand went to her throat and she felt really silly now.
Can you talk to him, too? Or just listen to what he’s thinking?

He thinks very loud. Especially near you. I don’t hear him too good far away. He thinks loud about you a lot.

“DEB’RA?” and Sarra’s loud call severed that most interesting conversation.

“What? I was talking to Morath. What’d you say?”

“Never mind,” and Sarra grinned broadly. “Have you got your Turn’s End dresses finished yet?”

“I’ve one more fitting,” Debera said, although that subject, too, caused her embarrassment. She had tried to argue with Tisha that the beautiful green dress was quite enough: she didn’t need more. Tisha had ignored that and demanded that she choose two colors from the samples available: one for evening and another good one for daytime wear. Everyone in the Weyr, it seemed, had new clothes for Turn’s End. And yet, something in Debera had delighted in knowing she’d have two completely new dresses that no one had ever worn before her. She had, she admitted very very quietly to herself, hoped that Iantine would notice her in them. Now, with Morath’s information, she wondered if he’d notice at all that she was wearing new clothes.

“Speaking of weyr . . .” Mesla said.

“That was half an hour ago, Mesla,” Angie protested. “Well?”

“There aren’t that many left, and the bigger dragons would have first choice, wouldn’t they?” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Jule said, “some’ll come free by the time we need them.” Then she covered her mouth, aware of what she had just implied. “I didn’t mean that. I really didn’t. I mean, I wouldn’t think of moving in . . .”

“Just shut up, Jule,” Sarra said in a quiet but firm voice.

There was a long moment of silence, with no one daring to look at anyone.

“Say, who has the salve?” Grasella asked softly from the bunk beyond her, breaking the almost intolerable silence. “My fingers are itching again. No one told me I’d have to cope with chilblains dealing with dragons.”

Angie found it in her furs and passed it on.

“After you,” Debera said softly as she gave it to Grasella.

The easy laughing chatter was over for the night.

“I haven’t had much time,” Jemmy told Clisser in his most uncooperative tone of voice when Chisser asked how he was coming on the last of the history ballads. “Had to look up all that law stuff. Why’d you have to take so much trouble with those fragging guards? They shoulda all been dropped on the islands, right away. None of this trial farce.”

“The trials were not farces, Jemmy,” Clisser said, so uncharacteristically reproving that Jemmy looked up in a state of amazement. “The trials were necessary. To prove that
we
would not act in an arbitrary fashion . . .”

“You mean, the way Chalkin would have,” and Jemmy grinned, his uneven teeth looking more vulpine than ever in his long face.

“Exactly.”

“You’re wasting too much time on him,” and Jemmy turned back to reading.

“What are you looking up?”

“I don’t know. I’m looking because I
know
there’s something we
can
use to check on the Red Planet’s position . . . something so simple I’m disgusted I can’t call it to mind. I know I’ve seen it somewhere . . .” Irritably, he pushed the volume away from him. “It’d help a great deal if the people who copied for us had had decent handwriting. I spend too much time trying to decipher it.” Abruptly he reached across the cluttered worktop to the windowsill and plonked down in front of him a curious apparatus. “Here’s your new computer.” He grinned up at Clisser, who regarded the object—bright colored beads strung on ten narrow rods, divided into two unequal portions.

“What is it?” Clisser exclaimed, picking it up and finding that the beads moved stiffly up and down on the rods.

“An abacus, they called it. A counter. Ancient and still functional.” Jemmy took the device from Clisser and demonstrated. “It’ll take the place of a calculator. Most are down now. Oh, and I found the designs for this, too.” He fumbled around his papers and withdrew an instrument consisting of a ruler with a central sliding piece, both marked with logarithmic scales. “You can do quite complicated mathematical calculations on this slide rule, as they called it. Almost as fast as you could type into a digital pad.”

Clisser looked from one to the other. “So that’s what a slide rule looks like. I saw one mentioned in a treatise on early calculators, but I never thought we’d have to resort to ancient devices. And mention of an abacus, too, actually. You
have
been busy reinventing alternatives.”

“And I’ll find that other device, too, if you’ll leave me alone and don’t dump more vitally important, urgent research on me.”

“I’m hoping,” Clisser said at his most diplomatic, “that you can give me something to show before the Winter Solstice and Turn’s End.”

Jemmy shot straight up in his chair, cocked his head and stared at Clisser so that Clisser leaned forward hopefully, holding his breath lest he disrupt Jemmy’s concentration.

“Fraggit,” and Jemmy collapsed again, beating his fists on the table. “It has to
do
with solstices.”

“Well, if you’ve gone back to abaci and slide rules, why not a sundial clock?” Clisser asked facetiously.

Jemmy sat up again, even straighter. “Not a sundial,” he said slowly, “but a cosmic clock . . . a star dial like . . . stone . . . stone
something
. . .”

“Stonehenge?”

“What was that?”

“A prehistoric structure back on Earth. Sallisha can tell you lots more about it if you’d care to ask her,” Clisser said slyly, and was rewarded by Jemmy’s rude dismissal of the suggestion. “It turned out to be rather an astonishing calendar, accurately predicting eclipses as well as verifying solstice at dawn.”

Clisser stopped, looking wide-eyed at Jemmy, whose mouth had dropped open to form a soundless O as what he said astounded them both.

“Only that was a stone circle . . . on a plain . . .” Clisser stammered, gesturing dolmens and cross beams. Muttering under his breath, he strode across to the shelves, trying to find the text he wanted. “We must have copied it. We
had
to have copied it . . .”

“Not necessarily, since you’ve been interested only in relevant historical entries,” Jemmy contradicted him. “I remember accessing it once. It’s only that we’ll have to adapt it to fit
our
needs, which is framing the Red Planet when the conjunction is right.” He was scrabbling among the litter on his desk for a clean sheet of paper and a pencil. The first three he found were either stubs or broken. “That’s another thing we’ve got to reinvent . . . fountain pens.”

“Fountain pens?” Clisser echoed. “Never heard of fountain pens.”

“I’ll do them tomorrow. Leave me to work this out, but . . .” Jemmy paused long enough to grin diabolically up at Clisser’s befuddlement. “. . . I think I’ll have something by Turn’s End. Maybe even a model . . . but only if you leave . . .
now
.”

Clisser left, closing the door quietly behind him and pausing a moment.

“I do believe I’ve been kicked out of my own office,” he said, pivoting to regard the door. His name, which had recently been repainted, was centered in the upper panel. “Hmm.” He turned the sign hung there on a nail to
DO NOT DISTURB
and walked away whistling the chorus from the Duty Song.

He’d catch Sallisha before she climbed up the stairs to his office. That would please her. Well, it might.

He hurried down the steps and met up with her coming in the door.

“I’m not late,” she said, at her most caustic, her arm tightening convulsively on the bulging notebook she carried.

He was in for it.

“I didn’t say you were. Let’s take the more comfortable option of the teachers’ lounge.”