The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (27 page)

Saraidh let out a thin, high whistle. “And those other regular mounds are—were—the settlement. Neatly, if not aesthetically, laid out. Must have built well, for nothing seems to have collapsed from the weight of ash and dirt. Lava’s cooled. Ross, got a reading of how deep that ash is over the ground?”

“We do indeed, Saraidh,” Ross replied. “A metallic grid is present a half meter below the surface. No problem landing—it’ll be nice and soft.”

Which it was. While waiting for the disturbed ash to settle, both officers and marines suited up, checking masks and breathing tanks, and strapping on the lift belts that would convey them safely above the ash to the settlement.

“What’re those?” one of the ratings asked as the landing party assembled to hover a meter above the ash-coated ground outside the
Erica.
He pointed to a series of long semicircular mounds, bulging up out of the ash. “Tunnels?”

“Unlikely. Not big enough and don’t seem to go anywhere,” Ni Morgana said, deftly manipulating her attitude and forward jets. She hovered to one side of the nearest mound and pushed with her foot. It collapsed with a dusty implosion and a stench that the filters of their masks had to work hard to neutralize. “Faugh! Dead organism. Now, why didn’t that puddle?” She took out a specimen tube and carefully gathered some of the residue, sealing it and putting the tube away in a second padded container.

“It fed on ash or grass or something?” Ensign Nev asked.

“We’ll check that out later. Let’s look at the buildings. Scag, stay by the gig,” Benden ordered one of the marines. He gestured for the others to follow him up to the empty settlement.

“Not empty,” Ross said an hour later, increasingly pessimistic about finding any survivors. Contact with a cousin or two would have been something to write home about! So he clutched at a vain hope: “Emptied. They didn’t leave a thing they could use. Nasties would have obliterated any trace of humans.”

“That’s true enough,” Saraidh said. “And there’s no evidence of Nasties at all. Merely an evacuated settlement. There is that second beacon to the southwest. There’s certainly nothing here to give us any explanations. Your point about everything being emptied is well taken, Benden. They closed shop here, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t open it up elsewhere.”

“Using the three missing shuttles,” Nev added brightly.

Airborne again in the
Erica,
heading directly toward the beacon, they overpassed the rest of the settlement, taping the one smoking volcano crater and the melted structures below it. No sooner were they over the river than the landscape showed another form of devastation. The prevailing winds had minimized the dispersal of volcanic dust, but oddly enough, there were only occasional stands of vegetation and large circles of parched soil.

“Like something had sprinkled the land with whopping great acid drops,” Cahill Nev said, awed at the extent of the markings.

“Not acid. No way,” Benden replied. He keyed the relevant section of the report he knew so well. “The EEC survey team found similar circular patches, and they also reported that botanical succession had started.”

“It has to be the Oort organism,” Nev said enthusiastically. “On the cruiser it died of starvation. It had plenty to eat here.”

“The organism had to get here first, mister,” Ni Morgana said bitingly. “And we haven’t established how it could cross some six hundred thousand miles of space to drop on Pern.” Ross, glancing at her set expression, thought she was rapidly considering improbable transport media. “Terrain’s flat enough here, Mister Benden. Try a low-level pass, and give us a closer look at that—that diseased ground.”

Benden obliged, noting once again how responsive the
Erica
was to the helm as it smoothly skimmed the often uneven terrain. Not that he expected something to pop up out of those polka dots, but one never knew on alien worlds—even ones thoroughly surveyed by Exploration and Evaluation teams. They might not have found any predators, but something dangerous had put in an appearance nine years after the settlers took hold. And the Tubberman appeal hadn’t mentioned a volcanic eruption.

Klick after klick, they passed over circles and overlapping circles and triple circles. Ni Morgana remarked that some succession was visible on their peripheries. She asked Benden to land so she could take more samples, including clods of the regenerating vegetation. Across a broad river there were swaths of totally unharmed trees and acres of broad-leafed and unscathed vegetation. Over one wide pasture they caught sight of a cloud of dust, but whatever had stirred it up disappeared under the broad leaves of a thick forest. They spotted no trace of human habitation. Not even a dirt-covered mound that might be the remains of a building or a wall.

The second beacon signal became stronger as they neared the foothills of a great barrier of mountains, snow-clad even in what must be high summer in this hemisphere. Gradually the pips altered from rhythmic bleeps to a sustained note as they homed in on the beacon.

“There’s nothing here but a sheer cliff,” Ross said, disgusted as he let the gig hover over the destination, the single note grating on his nerves.

“That may well be, Ross,” Saraidh said, “but I’m getting body-heat readings.”

Nev pointed excitedly. “That plateau below us is too level to be natural. And there are terraces below it. See? And what about that path down into the valley? And, hey, this cliff has windows!”

“And is definitely inhabited!” Saraidh exclaimed, pointing to starboard, where a doorway appeared in the cliff face. “Put her down, Ross!”

By the time the
Erica
had settled to the smoothed surface, a file of people were running down the plateau toward it; their cries, piped in via the exterior sensors, were of hysterical welcome. They ranged in age from early twenties to late forties—except for one white-haired man, his mane trimmed to shoulder length, whose lined face and slow movements suggested a person well into his eighth or ninth decade. His emergence halted the demonstrations, and the others stood aside to allow him a clear passage to the gig’s portal, where he halted.

“The patriarch,” Saraidh murmured, straightening her tunic and settling her beaked cap straight on top of her braids.

“Patriarch?” Nev asked.

“Look it up later—if the term is not self-explanatory,” Benden shot at him over his shoulder, operating the airlock release. He glanced warningly at the marines, who replaced their drawn hand weapons.

As soon as the airlock swung open and the ramp extruded, the small crowd was silent. All eyes turned to the old man, who pulled himself even more erect, a patronizing smile on his weathered face.

“You finally got here!”

“A message was received at Federated headquarters,” Ross Benden began, “signed by a Theodore Tubberman. Are you he?”

The man gave a snort of disgust. “I’m Stev Kimmer.” He flicked one hand to his brow in a jaunty parody of a proper Fleet salute. “Tubberman’s long dead. I designed that capsule, by the way.”

“You did well,” Benden replied. Inexplicably, he suddenly did not care to identify himself. So he introduced Saraidh ni Morgana and Ensign Nev. “But why did you send that capsule to Federation headquarters, Kimmer?”

“That wasn’t my idea. Ted Tubberman insisted.” Kimmer shrugged. “He paid me for my work, not my advice. As it is, you’ve taken nearly too damned long to get here.” He scowled with irritation.

“The
Amherst
is the first vessel to enter the Sagittarian Sector since the message was received,” Saraidh ni Morgana said, unruffled by his criticism. She had noted that Ross had not given his name and assumed he had his reasons. She hoped that Ensign Nev had also noted the omission. “We’ve just come from the site on record.”

“No one came back to Landing, then?” Kimmer demanded. Benden thought his habit of interrupting Fleet officers could become irritating. “With Thread gone, that’d be the place they’d return to. The ground-to-ship interface’s there.”

“The interface is inoperative,” Benden said, careful not to betray his annoyance at the old man’s arrogance.

“Then the others are dead,” Kimmer stated flatly. “Thread got ’em all!”

“Thread?”

“Yes, Thread.” Kimmer’s palpable anger was tinged with deep primal emotions, not the least of which was a healthy fear. “That’s what they named the organism that attacked the planet. Because it fell from the skies like a rain of deadly thread, consuming all it touched, animal, man, and vegetable. We burned it out of the skies, on the ground, day after fucking day. And still it came. We’re all that’s left. Eleven of us, and we only survived because we have a mountain above us and we hoarded our supplies, waiting for help to come.”

“Are you positive that you’re the sole survivors?” Ni Morgana asked. “Surely the colony grew in the eight or nine years you had before this menace attacked you.”

“Before Thread fell, the population was close to twenty thousand, but we’re all that’s left,” Kimmer said. “And you cut it mighty fine getting here. I couldn’t risk another generation with such a small gene pool.” Then one of the women, who bore a strong resemblance to Kimmer, tugged at his arm. He made a grimace that could be taken for a smile. “My daughter reminds me that this is a poor welcome for our long-awaited rescuers. Come this way. I’ve something laid by in the hope of this day.”

Lieutenant Benden gestured for Sergeant Greene and one other marine to accompany the landing party, then followed Ni Morgana down the ramp, Nev treading on his heels in his eagerness.

The silence that had held Kimmer’s small group while he had addressed the spacemen relaxed into gestures and smiles of welcome. But Benden took note of the tension evident in the oldest three men. They stood just that much apart from the women and youngsters to suggest they had distanced themselves deliberately. Their faces had a distinctly Asian cast; jet-black hair was trimmed neatly to their earlobes; they were lean and looked physically fit. The oldest woman, who bore a strong resemblance to the three men, walked just a step behind Kimmer in a manner that suggested subservience: an attitude Benden found distasteful as he and his party followed them to the entrance.

The three younger women had mixed-ethnic features, one had brown hair. All were slender and graceful as they tried to contain their excitement. They whispered to each other, casting glances back at Greene and the other marine. At a brusque order from Kimmer, they ran on ahead, into the cliff. The three youngest, two boys and a girl, showed the mixing of ethnic groups the most. Benden wondered just how close the blood bonding was. Kimmer would not have been fool enough to sire children on his own daughters . . . would he?

Exclamations of surprise were forced from each of the officers as they entered a spacious room with a high, vaulted ceiling—a room nearly as big as the gig’s on-ship hangar. Nev gawked like any off-world stupe, while Ni Morgana’s expression was of delighted appreciation. Clearly the main living space of the cliff dwelling, the room had been broken up into distinct areas for work, study, dining, and handcrafts. The furnishings were made of a variety of materials, including extruded plastic in bright hard colors. The walls were well hung with curious animal furs and hand-loomed rugs of unusual design. Above those and all along the upper wall space, a vivid panorama had been drawn: the first scene was of stylized figures standing or sitting before what were clearly monitors and keyboards; other panels showed figures plowing and planting fields, or tending animals of all sorts; the illustrations led around to the innermost wall, which was decorated by scenes Benden knew all too well, the cities of Earth and Altair, and three spaceships with unfamiliar constellations behind them. At the apex of the ceiling vault was the Rukbat system, and one planet that was shown to have a highly elliptical, and possibly an erratic, orbit from slightly beyond the Oort cloud to an aphelion below Pern’s.

Ni Morgana nudged Benden in the ribs and spoke in a barely audible whisper. “Unlikely as it seems, I’ve just figured out one way the Oort organisms might have reached Pern. But I’ll be damned sure of my theory before I mention it.”

“The murals,” Kimmer was saying in a loud and proprietary voice, “were to remind us of our origins.”

“Did you have stonecutters?” Nev asked abruptly, running his hand over the glassy, smooth walls.

One of the older black-haired men stepped forward. “My parents, Kenjo and Ito Fusaiyuki, designed and carved all the principal rooms. I am Shensu. These are my brothers, Jiro and Kimo; our sister, Chio.” He gestured to the woman who was reverently withdrawing a bottle from a shelf in a long dresser.

With a searing glance at Shensu, Kimmer hastily took the initiative again. “These are my daughters, Faith and Hope, Charity is setting out the, glasses.” Then, with a flick of his fingers, he indicated Shensu. “You may introduce my grandchildren.”

“Pompous old goat,” Ni Morgana muttered to Benden, but she smiled as the grandchildren were introduced as Meishun, Alun, and Pat, the two boys being in their mid-teens.

“This stake could have supported many more families if only those who had said they’d join us had kept their promises,” Kimmer went on bitterly. Then, with an imperious gesture, he waved the guests to the table and offered each a glass of rich, fruity red wine.

“Well come, men and woman of the
Amherst!”
Kimmer toasted, and he touched glasses with each of them.

Benden noticed, as Ni Morgana did, that the others were served a paler red by Meishun. Watered, Benden thought. They could at least be equal to us, today of all days! Shensu hid his resentment better than his two brothers did. The women seemed not to notice as they passed dishes of cheese bits and tasty small crackers to everyone. Then Kimmer gestured for the guests to be seated. Benden gave a discreet hand signal to the two marines, who took the end seats at the long table and remained watchful, taking only small sips of the celebratory wine.

“Where to start?” Kimmer began, setting his wineglass down deliberately.

“The beginning,” Ross Benden said wryly, hoping that he might learn what had happened to his uncle before disclosing his identity. Something about Kimmer—not his anger or his autocratic manner, but something less obvious—made Benden instinctively distrust him. But perhaps a man who had managed to survive so long in a hostile environment had the right to a few peculiarities.