Dragonsblood

TWELVE

M’hall leaned back on Brianth and gazed up into the darkening sky. Nothing. Some stars had started twinkling and the Red Star, which had been invisible for months in daylight, was definitely fading in intensity.

Torene wants to know if that’s it, Brianth relayed, adding an echoing rumble of his own.

We haven’t seen any more signs of Thread for the past hour, M’hall replied. I think that’s it. Have Torene assign a watch rider and tell the rest to go back to the Weyr.

Torene wants to know if you’re coming, too, Brianth said.

M’hall pursed his lips in thought. Might as well, between won’t get any warmer while I’m waiting.

It was hard to imagine that Thread would not return. That he would not be called upon to fight them day after day, again and again. That finally, he and all his surviving dragonriders could rest.

Rest, M’hall thought with a snort of amusement, I wonder what that’s like. He patted his hardworking bronze partner on the neck and thought, Come on, Brianth, let’s go home.

Brianth had obligingly dropped M’hall off near the Caverns before retiring to his weyr. M’hall waited for his Wingleaders to assemble, patting them on the back or exchanging words as they arrived. Ghosts of lost riders ringed them: M’hall could bring up many faces, scarred or young, bitter or thrilled, that were no longer seen in the Weyr.

I wonder how Father would have handled this, he mused. Or Mother.

“So that’s the last of it, M’hall?” G’len called out.

“As far as I can tell,” M’hall replied. “And right on schedule.”

“Well that’s something to be grateful for,” young M’san said.

“Wine all around!” a voice bellowed from the background. M’hall roared in hearty agreement. The cold of between filled the air as another dragon returned. Without looking, M’hall knew it was Torene and Alaranth.

“Mugs tonight,” Torene declared. “You’ll all just break the glasses.”

They waited patiently while the wine was passed around. Soon the Cavern was filled to overflowing with riders and weyrfolk.

“I didn’t know we had this many mugs,” Torene remarked in surprise.

“I didn’t realize we had this many people,” M’hall returned with a smile. He looked out at the people of Benden Weyr, survivors of the First Pass of the Red Star, and bellowed in a voice so loud that the dragons roared, “To absent friends!”

“Absent friends!” The shouted response shook the very rocks of the Weyr.

“Come down and join the celebration,” Emorra called to the drummers on the tower.

“We can’t, we’re on duty.”

“Suit yourselves, then,” she called back to them. She was drunk and she knew it. She hadn’t been drunk in-she couldn’t remember how long. She must have been drunk once before, or she wouldn’t have recognized it now.

She turned back to the College, watching her feet to keep from stumbling. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the tower behind her, realizing that the voice that had answered her wasn’t Tieran’s. Where was he? She hadn’t seen him for a while. Emorra pursed her lips, wondering exactly why she cared.

The celebrants in the courtyard of the College had dispersed, some going back to their rooms and others settling down for quieter revelries right there. Emorra startled when her ears picked out Tieran’s voice. He was in one of the classrooms. She headed toward it.

Partway there, Emorra paused. She heard a woman’s voice talking to him. Well, maybe I should leave them alone, she thought sadly to herself. The voice spoke again, passionately, and Emorra recognized it.

She charged into the room, yelling, “Just what do you think you’re doing? You’re old enough to be his grandmother!”

Her agitation took her all the way into the room. Tieran was seated at one of the tables. No one was seated in his lap. No one was muttering sweet nothings into his ear.

Instead, Wind Blossom was in front of the chalkboard, scribbling genetic coding sequences on it. Of course, Emorra thought to herself with slowly dawning comprehension, I’ve never heard her use that tone unless she was talking genetics.

Tieran and Wind Blossom were startled by her bold entrance. Wind Blossom recovered more quickly, giving her daughter an inscrutable-even to Emorra-look. Tieran just looked puzzled. The brown fire-lizard had leapt into the air, but did not go between.

“I was explaining the sequencing differences between the dragons and the fire-lizards,” Wind Blossom told her daughter calmly. After a pause, she added with only the slightest hint of a purr in her voice, “Were you enjoying the end of Pass festivities?”

Emorra thought that over before responding. “I’m drunk,” she declared.

“So I had gathered,” Wind Blossom said frostily.

“What’s it like?” Tieran asked, eyes wide with interest. “I’ve never been drunk,” he admitted. Hastily, he added, “Yet.”

“I think it’ll hurt in the morning,” Emorra admitted, her face still red. Why in the world would I ever have thought that my mother and Tieran were… ardent about anything, Emorra berated herself. “Why worry about the sequencing?” she asked, trying to sound normal.

“We’re looking for common immune system limitations,” Tieran explained.

Emorra blinked, thinking. “The infection?”

“I was hoping we could prove that it couldn’t cross to dragons,” Tieran said.

Emorra cocked her head, questioningly.

“We are still working on it,” Wind Blossom added pointedly.

“It’s the end of the Pass-haven’t you got anything better to do?” Emorra blurted. “Alcohol blunts inhibitions and slows reasoning,” she remembered as her brain processed the words her mouth had just uttered.

“Like what?” Wind Blossom asked.

“Like-like… well, you’re too old!” Emorra said. Clasping her hand to her head in frustration at her own stupidity, she turned around and stomped away.

“Alcohol reduces sexual function,” Emorra recalled with infuriating clarity as she strode away. Hmmph!

“It was bacterial in nature,” Wind Blossom repeated. “The general spectrum antibiotic knocked it out.”

“Didn’t you teach me not to jump to conclusions?” Janir asked. “Isn’t it also possible that the bacterial infection was a secondary infection that took advantage of the compromised immune system, just like Tieran said?”

“So you’re arguing that we only knocked out the secondary infection, giving the fire-lizard’s immune system a chance to handle the primary infection,” Emorra suggested. They were gathered in one of the classrooms at Wind Blossom’s invitation.

“Exactly,” Janir agreed.

“Wind Blossom and I agree that it really can’t be proved either way,” Tieran said, with an apologetic look toward the old geneticist. “But what can be proved is that the antibiotics saved Grenn’s life.” The little brown fire-lizard gave Tieran an approving chirp.

“Grenn?” Janir asked.

“That’s what he’s named the fire-lizard,” Wind Blossom explained, waving a hand toward Tieran.

“No, that’s the name that was on his bead harness,” Tieran corrected. “It’s the name he was given by his original owner.”

Emorra’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have that harness?”

Tieran nodded. He drew it out of the pouch he had hanging over his shoulder. “Right here.”

“May I see it?” she asked, extending a hand. Tieran handed it over, not without misgivings. He didn’t know if he was more afraid that Emorra would be immediately able to identify Grenn’s owner by the beads, or that she wouldn’t. Emorra was studying the beadwork carefully.

“This symbol here-do you see it?” she asked, holding the harness up to the others. “What do you make of it?”

“There’s the caduceus of Aesculapius,” Janir said. “The standard symbol for medicine-”

“Or a doctor,” Emorra interjected. She peered more closely at the beadwork. “But what’s beneath it?”

“It looks like some sort of animal,” Tieran suggested tentatively.

“But it’s hard to tell,” Janir complained.

Emorra looked at them all. “I just received a message from Igen, detailing a plan to begin a beadworks,” she told them. “To my knowledge, there were no beads brought over from Landing, nor any that landed with the original settlers.”

She fingered the small beads sewn into the fire-lizard’s harness.

“These beads should not exist.”

“Really, Mother,” Emorra said, “you and that boy!”

“He is not a boy,” Wind Blossom countered. “He is nineteen!”

Emorra tossed the correction off with a wave of her hand. “Are you so desperate to make amends with him that you’d deprive someone else of their fire-lizard?” she sniffed. “That’s beneath you, you know.”

“Emorra, it’s been two months since the fire-lizard appeared,” Wind Blossom replied. “I would have thought that if anyone was missing a fire-lizard, we would have heard of it at the College by now.

“You can’t deny that the fire-lizard was sick with an illness we haven’t seen before,” she continued.

Emorra grimaced. The fire-lizard had been ill. Both fire-lizards had been ill. Clearly they had caught the disease somewhere. If they could get it, so could other fire-lizards. If the fire-lizards could get it, then perhaps the dragons. Possibly the day of planet-wide disaster she had been fearing was just around the corner. Although, it could be that the disease was rare, or propagated slowly, or its method of transmission…

“Were you asking people if they’d lost one or two fire-lizards?” she asked abruptly.

“Tieran’s drum message asked if anyone was missing a gold or brown fire-lizard,” Wind Blossom answered.

“Did you mention the illness?” Emorra asked, trying to recall the drum messages that had been sent while they were in quarantine.

“Not in connection with the fire-lizards,” Wind Blossom said. “But we had to have a reason for the quarantine. It’s a wonder that more people haven’t been asking, putting two and two together. In fact, I’m rather surprised that-”

The sound of a dragon arriving cut her short.

“I would have expected him sooner,” Wind Blossom said, glancing out the window to confirm the arrival of M’hall from Benden Weyr.

“Maybe he had better things to do,” Emorra said waspishly.

“Maybe he didn’t wish to infect his dragon,” Wind Blossom returned imperturbably. She started out to greet the bronze rider, then turned back to ask Emorra, “Did you want to come along?”

Emorra shook her head. “No, I’ve got a class to teach.”

Wind Blossom met M’hall just inside the archway of the College.

“I was hoping to meet you,” M’hall said as he caught sight of her.

“And I had been expecting you,” Wind Blossom answered with a courteous nod. She gestured toward the kitchen. “Shall we see if Moira has anything for a Weyrleader fresh from between?”

M’hall smiled. “Yes, please!”

Moira did, indeed, have a fresh pot of klah and some scones still warm from the oven. “There’s butter, too,” she said. “Alandro’s gone to fetch it.”

“Many thanks!” M’hall replied, taking the tray and finding a quiet alcove. Once seated, he poured for both of them and waited until Alandro arrived with the butter. They each had a hot buttered scone. That done, M’hall got right to it: “Tell me about these fire-lizards and your medical emergency.”

Wind Blossom repeated the events as best she could. When she was done, M’hall leaned back slowly on his bench and sighed. Then he straightened again, buttered another scone, and ate in thoughtful silence.

“And the beadwork? No one on Pern now could have made it?” he asked at last.

“So Emorra informs me,” Wind Blossom said. She waved a hand in a throwaway gesture. “Of course, beads are such tiny things that they may have come across from Landing uninventoried.”

M’hall snorted. “Not from what I’ve heard of Joel Lilienkamp! Rumor has it that he hand-counted each nail that he came across. I can’t see how he’d miss beads.”

“But it is possible,” Wind Blossom reiterated without conviction.

M’hall nodded in understanding. “It’s particularly possible for those to whom the other explanation is too incredible.”

“Or uncomfortable,” Wind Blossom added.

“And not too many people know about all the capabilities of fire-lizards,” M’hall said. In a lower voice, he added, “Or dragons.”

After a moment of silent reflection, he continued. “So, if they came from the future, what then?”

Wind Blossom shrugged. “Perhaps it was a minor outbreak, and these two were the only ones who succumbed to it.”

“That’s the best-case scenario,” M’hall agreed. His voice hardened. “What about the worst-case?”

Wind Blossom pursed her lips tightly before responding. “In the worst case, the disease could be transmitted to others.”

“Including the dragons?”

Wind Blossom nodded.

“What about the watch-whers?” M’hall pressed.

“Those, too, in the worst case,” Wind Blossom agreed solemnly. “Although I would have greater hopes for them.”

“Why?” M’hall asked.

“I made an effort to differentiate them somewhat more from the original genome than we did with the dragons,” she answered.

“I always knew that dragons were fire-lizards writ large,” M’hall said. “What were watch-whers, then?”

“Dragons ‘writ’ differently,” Wind Blossom told him.

“Could you differentiate the dragons from the ‘original genome,’ too?” M’hall asked.

“Perhaps,” Wind Blossom responded. “But whether it would be enough, I don’t know.”

“Why not work on a cure for all three-fire-lizards, dragons, and watch-whers?”

“Because if I did that,” Wind Blossom responded, “then, judging by those two fire-lizards, I failed.”

M’hall stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How long do you think it would be before someone comes up with those beads and uses them to make harnesses?”

“Do you mean, how far in the future do I think those fire-lizards came from?” Wind Blossom asked.

M’hall nodded.

Wind Blossom shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“But sooner in the future rather than later,” M’hall suggested. “I can’t see fire-lizards jumping far between times.”

“They were sick, disoriented,” Wind Blossom pointed out. “I know too little of the breed to say whether they’d jump farther or shorter in such circumstances.”

“Well, they must have been here before: To return here they must have had a good visual image of the place.”

“Perhaps,” Wind Blossom said. At M’hall’s probing look, she expounded, “I recall that fire-lizards can sometimes locate a person they know in an unfamiliar setting.”

M’hall nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard that, too. But usually they go where they’ve been before, looking for someone they already know. Given that they were sick-”

Wind Blossom raised an eyebrow reproachfully. M’hall caught the look and laughed.

“Very well,” he said, “I’ll leave the diagnosing to you. Are you saying they might have gone back in time to a familiar person?”

“I was saying that I don’t know,” Wind Blossom responded.

M’hall nodded and resumed a thoughtful expression. After a moment he stirred. “Is there anything you can do? Is this talk just conjectural?”

“Perhaps I can do something,” Wind Blossom said. “I would need to know more about the problem.”

“And there’s no way to do that,” M’hall said. “Not unless another fire-lizard or”-his voice dropped-“a dragon falls out of the sky.”

“I have considered that, yes,” Wind Blossom replied.

M’hall gave her a startled look. “Is that why you ordered all that agenothree?”

“Do you mean nitric acid, HNO₃?” Wind Blossom asked primly.

The redheaded dragonrider blushed. “Yes, I do,” he said, looking chagrinned. “When you’re flying Threadfall, you tend to slur words, so it becomes agenothree.”

“Mmm,” Wind Blossom murmured noncommittally.

“You’re teasing me!” M’hall exclaimed suddenly with a startled laugh. “I don’t believe it! You’re actually teasing me.”

Wind Blossom lowered her eyes shamefully for a moment and then raised them again to meet his. “It is very rude of me, I know,” she said sheepishly.

“I never even knew you had a sense of humor.”

“My mother would berate me for it,” Wind Blossom agreed. “However, it has kept me company in trying times. I had hoped to keep it under control but apparently it got away from me again.”

“Oh, you enjoyed that all right,” M’hall said, wagging a finger at her. “Don’t deny it, you enjoyed it.”

Wind Blossom nodded. “I do not deny it.”

M’hall sobered suddenly. “You say that your humor surfaces in trying times? Are these trying times?”

“Every day is a trying time,” Wind Blossom answered evasively. M’hall pinned her with his gaze and the old lady accepted his chiding with a nod of her head.

“We have embarked on a great experiment in ecological engineering,” she explained. “Every ecosystem is resilient and conservative in nature. It will always try to maintain the status quo. Adding dragons, watch-whers, Tubberman’s grubs, and, most importantly, all our Terran ecosystem has altered the status quo. It is inevitable that there will be repercussions.”

“And it’s your job to guard against those repercussions,” M’hall said firmly.

“It’s my job for this generation,” Wind Blossom corrected. “I am eighty-one years old, M’hall. I might possibly live to see ninety, but certainly not one hundred.”

“Did you ever determine the cause of the early dementia?” M’hall asked choosing his words carefully.

“No,” Wind Blossom replied softly. “The emergency with the fire-lizard came before I could complete my analysis.”

M’hall shifted uncomfortably.

Wind Blossom noted his unease. “Janir and I have talked about this,” she told him. “We agree that my short-term memory is fading, but my long-term memory, particularly of events in my youth, remains strong.”

“Is there anything we can do?” M’hall asked softly, relieved that Wind Blossom had answered the question he could not bring himself to ask.

“Janir knows to keep an eye on me,” Wind Blossom said. “And now, so do you.”

“And Emorra?”

“I have not told her myself, but I believe she has made her own diagnosis,” Wind Blossom said after a moment. She looked the dragonrider squarely in the eyes. “You know how difficult it is to lose a parent.”

M’hall nodded swiftly in agreement.

“Janir and I have agreed that whatever is reducing mental capacity in the elderly will probably not be a factor in the future,” Wind Blossom continued.

M’hall thought that over for a moment. He could think of no one still alive near Wind Blossom’s age. His own mother had been only seventy when she died, and his father, Sean, had been sixty-two. He did not need Wind Blossom to tell him that the harder life on Pern would mean reduced life expectancies.

He sought a new subject. “What happens after you, Wind Blossom?”

“In the Eridani Way there should be others for the succeeding generations.”

“Do you mean Emorra and Tieran?” M’hall asked. “That smacks of slavery, to expect them to continue blindly in the tradition.”

“It is more of a genetic destiny,” Wind Blossom said. The look in her eyes made M’hall realize that she herself was an example of that “genetic destiny.” “The Eridani Way involves a discipline transcending generations and millennia, a dedication to the good of the ecosystem.”

“I can appreciate their goals, but I don’t like their methods,” M’hall replied.

Wind Blossom nodded. “Neither do I,” she agreed. “And I have better reason than most to appreciate their goals and question their methods. In fact, if we were in contact with the EEC, I’d have some comments to make to the Eridani Council itself.”

M’hall’s eyebrows rose as he considered the image of this tiny old lady berating the prestigious Eridani Council. He imagined the Eridani Council would soon see the error of its ways.

“What would your comments be?” he asked, his eyes dancing humorously.

“I would say that I consider it a mistake to engage an aristocracy in maintaining ecologies-that it should be something that is the inheritance of every sentient being living in the ecosystem,” Wind Blossom told him.

“I see,” M’hall said. “And how would you implement that here, on Pern?”

Wind Blossom shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied. “With an adequate technology base and a larger population, there would be time to teach everyone. But this is a world built on agriculture-we don’t have the tools required to do delicate genetic testing. There are not enough people and not enough food for our expanding population.”

“It would seem that here,” M’hall said, waving his hand around to indicate the College, “would be the place to retain that knowledge.”

“We’re already losing that knowledge,” Wind Blossom said. “Shortly we’ll be unable to perform any invasive surgery. We haven’t got the equipment to monitor the effect of an anesthetic on a person, let alone the people trained to administer it.”

“What about genetics?”

“Genetics is even worse,” Wind Blossom said. “Fortunately the base population is pretty healthy, but there will be mutations-there are about six to seven hundred mutations in every newborn-and some of those will be malevolent.

“We could teach something about basic genetics, plant breeding and so on, but nothing about genome manipulation-how to detect and repair defective genes.”

M’hall grimaced. “So do you see no hope?”

“I didn’t say that. There’s a chance that at some future date-perhaps a thousand years or more-our society will advance to the point where it will be possible to recover what was lost at Landing and re-establish contact with the Yokohama or the other ships in orbit. When that happens, all the knowledge we had will be made available to our descendants,” she said. “What they do with it will be up to them, of course.”

“So you’re worried about the short-term only?”

Wind Blossom shook her head. “My training leaves me worried about our world.”

M’hall nodded sympathetically. “I share your worries, you know,” he told her. He rose and stretched. “I must get back to my Weyr.”

Wind Blossom nodded understandingly.

“There is less to do now, but more than I’d realized,” he added with a rueful grin. “Still, if anything else happens to fall out of the sky-let me know. And if you come up with any ideas on how to solve these problems you worry about, let me know and I’ll do all I can to help.”

“Thank you, M’hall, that’s all I could hope for,” Wind Blossom answered.

As they walked back out through the courtyard to where Brianth was waiting, M’hall looked down at the dimunitive old-timer and said conversationally, “You know, Wind Blossom, you need a break from all this.”

He wagged a finger in response to her shocked expression. “Some time off will do you a world of good. If you want to go someplace, like a warm seaside cottage, you send word and I’ll get you there.”

Wind Blossom opened her mouth to protest, but her expression changed before she could utter a response. A thoughtful gleam entered her eyes.

“Why thank you, M’hall. I think I will.”