The Skies of Pern Page 2

  If he kept to the water, he’d leave no bloodstains or scent to be tracked. Eventually this stream would reach the river and then the Southern Sea. He’d have to keep holding the bandage on his cheek until the blood clotted. He was still a bit woozy from his fall. He’d find a stick to help him keep his balance and to check the water’s depths. He spotted one farther down the bank, sturdy and long enough to be useful. A few cautious steps forward in the stream and he reached for it. He gave it a pound or two to be sure it wasn’t rotten. It would do.

  He walked through a moonless night, slipping occasionally in muddy spots or dropping into unexpectedly deep pools, despite using the stick to avoid them. When his cheek stopped bleeding, he shoved that bandage in a pocket. The one on his forehead was adhered to the dried blood, so he left it in place.

  By dawn, his feet were so cold and clumsy in the soaked heavy mining boots that he stumbled more frequently and his teeth began to chatter with the chill. When the stream broadened and he was more often up to his waist than his knees, he could go no farther. Seizing hold of shrubs that lined the stream, he clambered out of the water and hid himself in the thick vegetation, curling up to preserve what warmth remained in his body.

  Nothing disturbed him until the ache of an empty belly finally roused him. It was far into the morning for the sun was well up. He had come much farther than he had thought possible. His rough work clothing had partially dried but the minehold emblem woven into shirt and pants would mark him as a fugitive. He needed food and new clothing in whichever order he could get them.

  Carefully he emerged from the bushes and, to his utter astonishment, saw a small cothold directly across the stream that was now wide as a river. He watched the cothold a long time before he decided that there was no one working inside or nearby. He waded across the river, his bruised feet feeling every rock, and hid again in the bushes until he was sure he heard no human sounds.

  The cothold was empty but someone lived here. A herder, perhaps, for there were hides pushed back on the rough sleeping platform made supple by long usage. Food first! He didn’t even wash the tubers he found in a basket by the hearth. Then he saw cold gray grease in the iron skillet, set a-tilt on the hearth. He dipped the raw vegetables into it, relishing the salt in the grease as flavoring. The worst of his hunger momentarily assuaged, he searched for more to eat and a change of clothing. As a younger man he would never have filched so much as a berry or an apple from a neighbor’s yard. His circumstances were as much altered now as the tenets of conduct his father had beaten into him. He had a duty to perform, a wrong to right, and a theory he must confirm or forget.

  His stomach churned with the raw, greasy food he had eaten. He had to eat more slowly or lose everything. Vomit was a hard smell to hide. In a tightly covered container that would protect its contents from vermin, he found three quarters of a wheel of cheese. He thought how long such food would sustain him in his escape—but the fewer traces of his passing were noticeable, the better. While the cotholder might not notice the loss of a few tubers and grease in a pan, the disappearance of too much cheese would be a different matter. So he found a thin old knife blade in the back of a drawer and sliced off a section of cheese, enough to provide him a small meal but, he hoped, not enough to be instantly noticed. Almost as if his restraint were being rewarded, he found a dozen rolls of travel rations in another tin box and took two. He would surely find more food if he was not greedy now. He believed in that sort of justice.

  He removed the bandage on his forehead, a painful task even when he had soaked his face in the cold stream water. One or two spots bled a little, but as no blood trailed down his face, he left the wound open to the clean mountain air.

  He went back to the cothold to look for clothing but found none. He did take one of the older hides. He could not count on finding shelter, and though this was the fifth month, the nights could still be chilly.

  Leaving the cothold, he investigated the tracks that led off in several directions. A flash of sunlight on something metallic caught his eyes and he whirled toward the river, afraid that he had been discovered. It took him much longer to locate the source of the reflection: the oarlocks of a small boat. Under the thick shrubbery along the bank, the boat was almost invisible, tethered to a branch with a rope so worn by constant rubbing against a half-submerged stone that the slightest pull would part the last strands.

  He provided the pull and, stepping carefully into the boat, used his stick to push out into the current of the river. Perhaps he should have tried to find the oars, but he felt an urgency to be away from this cothold and as far down the river as possible. The little craft was just long enough so that if he cocked his knees, he could lie flat and be unseen from the shore.

  That night, when he saw the glowbaskets of a sizeable small holding—not a large enough one to have a watchwher on guard—he propelled himself to the bank and tied up the boat by the tether he had mended with strips of his tattered shirt during his long day afloat.

  Luck was with him. First he found a basket of avian eggs left on a hook outside a side door to the beasthold. He sucked the contents of three, and carefully deposited three more in his shirt, tucked into his waistband. Then his eye caught the shirts and pants drying on bushes by the flat river stones where women would have washed them. He found clothes to fit him well enough and corrected the positions of others to make it appear that what he had chosen might simply have fallen into the river and drifted away.

  In the beasthold for a second look, though the animals moved restlessly in the presence of a stranger, he found bran and an old battered scoop. Tomorrow he would boil the bran and add the eggs for a good hot meal. Suddenly he heard voices and immediately returned to his boat, pushing it carefully out into the current and lying down, lest he be seen.

  The night swallowed the voices and all he heard was the gurgle of the river in which the boat moved so silently. Above him were the stars. The old harper who had taught all the youngsters at the Glasscrafthall had told him the names of some of them. Indeed, the old man had mentioned meteorites and the Ghosts that appeared in bright arcs in Turnover skies. Shankolin had never believed that those bright sparks were the ghosts of dead dragons, but some of the younger children had.

  The brightest stars never changed. He recognized the sparkle of Vega—or was it Canopus? He couldn’t remember the names of the other stars in the spring sky. In trying to recall those names and when he had learned them, his mind inexorably returned to Aivas and all that … that thing … had done to him. He’d only recently heard, in a repetition of very old news, that his father had been exiled to an island in the Eastern Sea with the Lord Holders and other craftsmen who had tried to stop the Abomination.

  Now that the source was silenced, they’d be able to talk men and women into returning to their senses. The Red Star brought Thread. The Dragonriders fought Thread in the skies, and people lived comfortably enough between Passes. That had been the order of life for centuries—an order that should be preserved. When he had heard that the Masterharper of Pern, a personage Shankolin had admired, had been abducted, he had been deeply disturbed. But his ears had been blocked for Turns before he gradually recovered some hearing and learned about that part of the incident. He had never clearly heard why the Masterharper had been found dead in the Abomination’s chamber. But it, too, had been dead—“terminated,” one of the miners said. Had Master Robinton come to his senses and turned off the Abomination? Or had the Abomination killed Master Robinton? He felt eager to discover the truth.

  Once he got down Crom’s river—perhaps Keogh Hold would be far enough—he could make plans and see just how badly the Abomination had interfered with Pern’s traditions and way of life.

  Gathers began in springtime, when the roads dried of winter snow and mud, and he could simply blend into the crowds, and perhaps find more answers. He was hearing more and more these days, even the shrill song of avians. Once he caught up on current news, he would be able to plan his next
moves.

  Surely not everyone on Pern would want tradition degraded or would believe the lies that the Abomination had spouted. He called to mind those whom he knew had been seriously disturbed by the so-called improvements promulgated by Aivas. By now, eleven Turns since the Abomination had terminated, some right-minded, thinking folk would realize that the Red Star had not changed course simply because three old engines had blown up in a crack on its surface! Especially when Thread continued to fall on the planet—as indeed it should, to be sure that all Pern was united against the menace of its return, century after century.

  At a Gather—6.15.30

  “I don’t know why it had to mess up time,” said the first man, morosely fingering a pattern in the spilled gravy in front of him.

  “You’re messing up the table,” the second man said, pointing.

  “He had no call to mess up our time,” the first man insisted, rather more vehemently.

  “Who?” Second was confused. “He? It?”

  “Aivas, that’s who or it.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “Well, he did, didn’t he? Back in ’38—which should be only 2524.” The holder scowled, his thick black brows coming together across the wide bridge of his thick nose. “Made us add some fourteen Turns allasudden.”

  “He was regulating time,” Second corrected, surprised at his companion’s vehemence. The holder had seemed a pleasant enough companion, knowledgeable about music and knowing all the words to even the latest songs the harpers were playing. With his third wineskin, his temper had deteriorated. And possibly his wits, if time or how folk numbered Turns was bothering him.

  “Made me older’n’ I was.”

  “Didn’t make you smarter,” Second said with a rude snort. “ ’Sides, Masterharper himself said it was all right on account there were dis- ah- disk—” He paused and used a belch as an excuse while he recalled the exact phrasing. “—there’d been inaccurate timekeeping because of Thread falling only forty Turns once instead of fifty, like it usually did, and people forgetting to account for the disk—”

  “Discrepancies,” the third man put in, regarding them superciliously.

  Second gave a snap of his fingers and beamed at Third for finding the word he couldn’t recall.

  “The problem is not what it did,” First went on. “It’s what it’s continuing to do. To all of us.” He made a flourish that included everyone at the Gather, all laughing and singing, oblivious to the dangers in this continuation.

  “Continuing to do?” A woman who had been standing nearby slipped into a seat several places down the long Gather table, on the opposite side from First and Second.

  “Pushing things on us whether we want ‘improvements’ or not,” First said slowly, eyeing her in what illumination dimly reached their side table. He saw a thin woman, with an unattractive face, a pinched mouth, a recessive lower jaw, and huge eyes that glowed with an inner anger or resentment.

  “Like the lights?” Second asked, gesturing toward the nearest one. “Very useful. Much more convenient than messing with glowbaskets.”

  “Glowbaskets are traditional,” the woman said and her petulant tone carried into the shadows beyond the table. “Glows were put here for us to cultivate and protect.”

  “Glows are natural, and have lighted our holds and halls for centuries,” said a deep, censorious voice. Startled, the woman gasped and put her hand protectively to her throat.

  Certainly First and Second, who had thought they were having a private discussion, were annoyed by the intrusion until the big man stepped out of the shadows. As he slowly walked to the table, the others watched his deliberate advance, noting the size of him. He sat down by Third, bringing the number seated there to five. He wore a strangely shaped leathern cap that hid most of his forehead but did not cover the scar on the side of his nose and cheek. He was also missing the top joint of the first finger on his left hand. Something about his scarred face and his purposeful manner compelled the others to silence.

  “Pern has lost much lately and gained little.” His unmaimed hand lifted to point to the light. “And all because a voice—” He paused contemptuously. “—said to do so.”

  “Got rid of the Red Star,” Second said, shifting uneasily.

  Fifth turned his head toward Second, regarding him so unblinkingly that his scorn was nearly palpable.

  “Thread still falls,” Fifth said in that deep, disturbing voice that seemed to use no inflection.

  “Well, yes, but that was explained,” Second said.

  “Perhaps to your satisfaction, but not to mine.”

  Two men seated at a table opposite the group looked over with interest, and gestured at First to let them join in. First nodded his head at the two, and Sixth and Seventh hastily climbed into vacant spaces among the others.

  “The voice is gone,” First said, when the two newcomers were settled and he was guaranteed the group’s full attention once again. “Terminated itself.”

  “As it should have been terminated before it was allowed to pollute and corrupt the minds of so many,” Fifth went on.

  “And it has left so much behind,” the woman said in a despairing tone, “so much that can be misused.”

  “You mean the equipment and new methods for manufacturing all kinds of things, like the electricity that brightens dark places?” Third could not resist teasing such somber and humorless people.

  “There was no good reason for that … thing to turn itself off like that, just when it was beginning to be useful,” First said resentfully.

  “But it left plans!” And Fourth sounded as if that was suspicious.

  “Too many plans,” Fifth agreed, deepening his voice to a lugubrious and ominous level.

  “What?” Third prompted him. Fourth’s eyes rounded with fear and anxiety.

  “Surgery!” In that expressive deep voice the three syllables were dramatically drawn out as if he spoke of something immoral.

  “Surgery?” Sixth frowned. “What’s that?”

  “Ways of mucking inside a body,” First replied, lowering his own voice to match Fifth’s.

  Sixth shuddered. “Mind you, sometimes we gotta cut a foal out of its dam or it strangles.” When the others regarded him suspiciously, he added, “Only a very well-bred foal we can’t afford to lose. And I saw the healer once remove a pendix. Woman would’ve died, he said. She didn’t feel a thing.”

  “ ‘She didn’t feel a thing,’ ” Fifth repeated, investing that statement with sinister import.

  “The healer could have done anything else he liked,” Fourth said in a shocked whisper.

  Second dismissed that with a grunt. “Didn’t do her any harm and she’s still alive and a good worker.”

  “I mean,” First went on, “there’s a lot of stuff being tried in the Crafthalls, not just the Healers—and when they make mistakes, it can cost a man’s life. I don’t want them fooling around with me, inside or out.”

  “Your choice,” Second said.

  “But is it always ‘your’ choice?” Fourth wanted to know, leaning forward across the table and tapping her finger to stress her point.

  Third also leaned forward. “And what choices are we being given—to decide what we want and need—out of all those files Aivas is supposed to have left us? How do we know we want all this technology and advanced gadgets? How do we know it’ll do what they say it will? Lot of people saying we got to have that; ought to have this. They’re making the decisions. Not us. I don’t like it.” He nodded his head to emphasize his distrust.

  “For that matter, how do we know that all that hard work—and I had to work my arse off some days down at Landing—will work?” Seventh asked with some rancor. “I mean, they can tell us that it’s going to work, but none of us will be alive to see if it does, will we?”

  “Neither will they,” Third said with black humor. “Then, too,” he went on quickly before Fifth could start in again, “not all of the Masters and Lords and Holders are keen to j
ust latch on to all this new junk. Why I heard Master Menolly herself …” Even Fifth regarded him with interest. “She said that we ought to wait and go carefully. We didn’t need a lot of the things that that Aivas machine talked about.”

  “What we do have,” Fifth said, raising his deeper, oddly inflectionless voice above Third’s light tenor, “has worked well enough for hundreds of Turns.”

  Third held up a cautionary finger. “We gotta be careful what new junk gets made just because it’s new and seems to make things easier.”

  “But you have electricity?” Sixth said enviously.

  “It’s done naturally—we use sun panels, and they’ve been around forever.”

  “Ancients made ’em,” First said.

  “Well, as I said,” Third went on, “some things will be useful, but we’ve got to be very careful or we’ll fall into the same trap the Ancients did. Too much technology. It’s even in the Charter.”

  “It is?” Second asked, surprised.

  “It is,” Third said. “And we can do something to keep us traditional and unsullied by stuff we aren’t even sure we need.”

  “What?” First asked.

  “I’m going to think about it,” Fourth said. “I don’t hold with someone hurting people, but devices—things we neither want nor need—can be broken or spilled or got rid of.” She looked to Fifth to see his reaction.

  Third guffawed. “Some folks tried that. Got their ears deafened …”

  “The machine’s dead,” First reminded him.

  Third snarled at being interrupted. “Got exiled for hurting the Masterharper—”

  “I did hear that the MasterHarper died in its chamber. Perhaps the Masterharper had realized how insidious that Abomination was. Could he have terminated it?” asked Fifth.

  The woman gasped.

  “That’s a very interesting idea,” Third said softly, leaning forward. “Is there any proof?”