The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall Read online

  Both dolphineers had scrapes and bruises where their bodysuits hadn’t adequately protected them, but neither had sustained the serious injuries Theo had.

  “I’m cook,” Anna went on, “but I’ve orders not to wake you for breakfast, so it’ll be laid out in the wardroom whenever you do get up.”

  When the Venturer arrived, she dropped anchor near the Southern Cross and Kaarvan rowed over to pay his respects to Jim Tillek, who was trying to schedule repairs and set the next day’s duty roster. Kaarvan stood in the doorway for a long look, then grunted when he saw what Jim was doing.

  “As I heard it, you’re supposed to be convalescing. You don’t look even that fit.”

  Jim laughed. “Old sailors never die . . .”

  “But they fade away, my friend.” Deftly, without offense, Kaarvan removed the notepad from the desk. “This is my job for now.”

  Since even the minor decisions he’d had to make to get halfway through the schedule had tired him, Jim threw up his hands and grinned cheerfully up at the swarthy skipper. It was only sensible to let Kaarvan take over. But each evening, the unsmiling Kaarvan came on board the Cross to report the day’s achievements and how much the dolphin teams had retrieved from the seabed, and to discuss the next day’s schedule of repair. Jim appreciated that: he felt less a supernumerary and somewhat involved in the restoration of his command.

  During the day, he went topside to watch the antics of the working dolphins and to peer through binoculars at the temporary shipyard. Since Theo said the sun and fresh sea air promoted healing, she somehow managed to get herself on deck and stretched out on the cockpit, trailing a hand over the side for Dart, whom Theo had talked into “cooperating temporarily” with Anna, to nudge from time to time.

  The dolphins were tireless, finding netted matériel and pallets that had been rolled considerable distances away on the ocean floor by the tide, and coming back to ask for harnesses to haul their finds back to the beach.

  “They’re wearing us out,” Efram told Jim one evening, so tired that raising his fork to his face was an effort.

  “You all need some time off,” Anna said severely. “Give us apprentices a chance to see how the dolphins do underwater salvage. They know. We should.”

  Jim raised that point with Kaarvan that evening, and immediately all the regular dolphineers were given three days’ shore leave. Not being affected by that order, since she was a substitute swimmer, Anna continued to berth on the Cross when the others went ashore, but Jim took over the cooking and prided himself on being able to make a decent meal out of their limited supplies.

  “How come you know how to cook so well?” Theo asked, having complimented him once again on the stuffed fish roll-ups he had served her. “You were married?”

  “Me? No, that’s why I know how to cook.” He grinned at her.

  He enjoyed those days, fishing for their dinner to supplement the provisions and the fresh fruit that Dart brought them in her net. He also enjoyed Theo’s undemanding company, especially after she asked him for the loan of his reader and the historical tape that mentioned the Dunkirk Evacuation.

  “I think we’ve sort of turned it all around, the flotilla being rescued by men and dolphins,” she said, “but those troops must have experienced the same sense of amazed wonder that they survived!”

  Jim grinned down at her, knowing exactly what she meant. In fact, he was beginning to half wish that their convalescence could last a long time. But he was getting stronger, able to do several laps around the Cross even though the gelicast arm was awkward. Beth remarked that he was putting a little flesh on his old bones and the break was knitting nicely. At Theo’s insistence, the medic reinforced the sealants on her wounds and let her join Jim in their laps, Dart now squee-eeing joyfully to accompany her partner.

  “Dart’s better than the Cross,” Theo remarked one day after she had carefully and slowly climbed the rope ladder. The rake wounds made her movements stiff on land; in the sea she regained some of her usual grace.

  “How so?” Jim replied, surprised.

  “Dart talks back,” Theo said with a grin as she gingerly arranged herself on the cockpit cushion.

  “And you think my ship doesn’t communicate with me?”

  “Does she?”

  “In her own fashion. Like right now,” he said, feeling the alteration of the waves under her. He leaned across and tapped the barometer. Just then the comunit buzzed.

  “Squall’s on its way, Jim,” Kaarvan said when Jim checked in. “Estimate it’ll arrive in an hour, give or take five minutes. Need any help?”

  Suddenly Dart breached the water, walking on her tail and talking so agitatedly that Jim didn’t understand her. Theo did.

  “She said”—Theo grinned—”sea is changing and will get rough. Storm coming.”

  “Now we know it’s true.” Jim grinned back. “I’ll just close the for’ard hatches. We are anchored properly to ride out a squall, so that doesn’t need to be altered.”

  “Need any help?”’

  “No, you get below before we get any choppy water.”

  Theo grimaced but swung her legs around and pushed herself up.

  As he battened down the hatches and checked other gear on the deck, Jim saw that the beach dwellers were also taking precautions. Fins zipped about the area, as the dolphins set about landing partners. An unaccompanied group—and Jim thought it was Kibby leaping at the head of the pod—headed toward the storm to bring a report back to Kaarvan.

  “I’d feel safer out there with Dart,” Theo said, scowling at him when he joined her in the wardroom. She had fixed some klah and laid out some food.

  “You know, Eba Dar remarked on that.” Jim slid in to his usual seat at the end of the table.

  “We were safer because we could just go deeper, to calmer water. I’d plenty of oxygen in my breather.” Theo sipped her klah. Her right arm was regaining flexibility, but she still couldn’t raise it all the way to her mouth. “I knew you lot were having a helluva time topside, but we kept watch below.”

  Jim covered her right hand, soothing fingers that twitched impatiently. “I know you did. The reason we’d no loss of life was you dolphineers!”

  “That’s our job,” she said with a cocky grin and a jerk of her head. She let her fingers lie still in his grasp.

  Under them, the Cross responded to the sea’s agitation. The comunit buzzed.

  “Kaarvan here. Dolphins report it’ll be short and sweet but a bit heavy. You ready for it?”

  “As we’ll ever be.” Jim switched off and turned to Theo, absently catching his cup of klah as it slid toward the raised edge of the table. “Would you be more comfortable in a bunk? It might be rough on that healing skin of yours.”

  She gave him an odd look and an odder smile. “It might at that.”

  She eased her way across the cushions to the end of the table. He joined her, slipping one hand under her elbow as the ship gave a convulsive rock. They could hear the wind rising, and the slap of lines against the mast, and feel waves slamming into the starboard side of the Cross.

  Her good hand balancing her against the increased pitching, Theo made her way to the forward cabin where the double bunk in the space under the bow allowed her just that much more space than the narrower singles. Jim followed, anxious that she not get thrown against the walls. He had his own right arm tucked against his body, his left held up in case he needed to balance himself.

  Just as she reached the cabin, the Cross pitched again and Theo fell against him. Instinctively he grabbed and held her close, a lifetime of experience helping him to balance them both against the erratic movement. She wrapped her left arm about his waist, hugging herself to him. He could feel her trembling and the smoothness of her skin against his, and he tightened his arm, surprised by a number of conflicting and long-forgotten emotions.

  “It won’t be as bad a blow as the other one,” he said to reassure her. Though why Theo would need reassurance . . .


  “I’m not scared, you iggerant old fool,” she said in a taut voice. Switching her left arm to around his neck, she hauled his head down to hers and kissed him so thoroughly that he lost his balance and they both tumbled into the cabin as the Cross pitched them forward. Nor would Theo let go of him even after they had fallen across one of the smaller bunks.

  “Your legs? Your arm,” Jim began without lessening the pressure of his arm around her. “I’ll hurt you . . .

  “There are ways, damn it, Jim Tillek, there are ways!”

  Despite the rolling and pitching of the Cross, which sometimes worked to their advantage, he discovered that indeed there were ways and very little hurting. In fact, Jim decided that the next hour could be termed therapeutic—among other adjectives that he had had no occasion to employ for too long a time.

  “We’re neither of us young,” Theo said when the Southern Cross lay calmly at anchor again, “but you’re definitely not beyond it, my friend.”

  “No,” Jim said in drawl, allowing surprise and pride to color his reply, “and glad to prove it. Especially with you!” And he kissed her tenderly.

  The comunit began to buzz, and with a sigh of resignation, Jim rose to answer it.

  “Dart approves of you, you know,” Theo called after him.

  He let a chuckle answer that sally, but he felt a little taller all the same. Dolphins were extraordinarily good readers of human character and defects.

  Beth Eagles gave Jim the go-ahead to undertake light employment. “And I mean ‘light,’ Jim Tillek, though you do look rested.”

  “I am,” he said with no inflection, and sought Kaarvan to see how he could lightly employ himself to advantage.

  He knew enough of ship design and chandlery so that Kaarvan shared with him the supervision of the repairs. The squall had done little damage to the makeshift boatyard, and it had released a few more errant bundles, which the dolphins brought in close enough to be collected by Joel’s apprentices.

  Theo also complained that inactivity was driving her nuts, so Beth allowed her to come ashore every day and help decipher waterlogged bar codes on the pile of “mystery” cargo.

  If Jim and Theo preferred to row back out to the Cross for their evenings, no one seemed to regard that as odd, especially when Dart followed.

  “Do they think Dart plays the duenna?” Jim asked slyly. When Theo looked puzzled, he explained the term and she laughed.

  “Not her. You’ll notice she doesn’t swim between us,” she said with a sly grin.

  Jim laughed because he hadn’t. “That’s good, because it’d be awful if she came between us,” he said, masking the apprehension he felt at even such a subtle mention of their relationship. He wanted the association to continue but wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.

  “You got the Southern Cross, I got Dart.”

  “We also have each other?” Jim made the sentence not quite a query, certainly not a statement. He was suddenly rather more anxious than he felt a man his age should be to hear her reply.

  “So we do,” she said in the most equable of tones, calmly gazing at the Southern Cross as they neared her.

  Grinning with relief, Jim put his back into the last few pulls on his oars.

  A happy event—the birthing of Carolina’s calf—helped raise the morale of the fleet survivors, tediously repairing storm damage. Malawi and Italia had been her midwives, and the three of them brought the new female close enough into shore to be admired. The dolphin nurses and mother were shouting some name between their chuffs and other excited noises. Theo had to stay on shore, but Carolina’s swimmer got far enough out to be able to identify what the dolphins were trying to communicate.

  “Atlanta! Atlanta!” Bethann called, between strokes back to the shore. “People don’t believe me when I tell them my dolphin knows as much as they do about old Earth.”

  Everyone on the beach then began waving at the dolphins and chanting the name to show their approval.

  “Most appropriate. I’m sort of surprised we haven’t had one named that before now,” Jim said as a grinning Bethann joined him and Theo. “Did you help Carolina pick the name?”

  The girl grinned, wringing out her long hair. “Sort of. Carrie wanted to name her calf after something big and wet.” Jim let out a guffaw, and she smiled again. “Well, it’s close enough to ‘Atlantic.’ I tried to tempt her with a-ending states and countries and stuff because I couldn’t think of any big lakes with a endings. Even the colonies don’t have feminine lakes or oceans.”

  “You made a good compromise,” Jim said with warm approval.

  The next day, a team of dolphins and dolphineers swam the new mast out to the Cross. With much ceremony and a lot of hard work, it was properly stepped, new mainstays put in place, the boom rehung, and the patched canvas threaded onto the sheet and dutifully raised to flap in the light breeze.

  In Jim’s experience, events had a habit of occurring in threes. The third one came from Paul Benden and his almost incoherent account of the reappearance of the seventeen dragons and their riders. After helping in the evacuation of Landing, Sean, Sorka, and the other dragonriders had been asked to fly some supplies across the southern continent to Key Largo, even as Jim’s flotilla was sailing offshore. Contact had broken down somehow, and what had happened to the young riders and their priceless dragons had caused everyone understandable anxiety. Jim took the call at his makeshift beach office, where he was figuring out how and what to load on the ships that would soon be ready to continue their westward journey.

  “They just appeared in the skies above Fort, Jim,” Paul said, the astonishment and elation in his voice such a tonic that Jim changed the setting to wide range so that everyone nearby could hear the account. “The dragons were spouting flame, charring Thread, diving into tangles, disappearing, and reappearing. The riders of the queens were carrying flamethrowers. The males chewed firestone and belched flame until they ran out of stone—just about the time Thread got up into the Range, where it can’t hurt rock much.

  “And then,” Paul went on with a ring in his voice, “those devious young rogues landed and demanded numbweed and medical supplies for their dragons before they paid any attention to my orders to report to me on the double.”

  Jim grinned, as did many of the other listeners. The seaman thought of his ship first, his own safety second: the dolphineer of his mammalian partner, the rider his dragon. He exchanged a significant glance with Theo.

  “That done, damned if young Sean Connell didn’t march ’em smartly right up the entrance to the Hold. Then he had the impudence to introduce me to what he called ‘the dragonriders of Pern’!”

  Jim laughed as he leaned toward the speaker unit. “Well, that’s what they are, aren’t they, Paul?”

  “Indeed! Now I’m sure we’ll make it, Jim. I’m sure!”

  “So are we all.” Jim circled his hand to raise three cheers from the audience. “Give them our compliments, too. Such news gives us new heart, as well.”

  He was surprised to see Theo wiping tears from her eyes and, later, when they lay beside each other in the double bunk, asked her why.

  “Look, swimming with Dart is the best thing—well, almost the best thing,” she modified, grinning at him, “that ever happened to me. But I think flying a fighting dragon would be a notch—well, maybe several notches above that, given the fact they’re our equivalent of the battle of Dunkirk. So few against so much.”

  All the work seemed to finish up at the same time, which Kaarvan said was the result of good planning and Jim was equally certain was due to the boost in morale. So they loaded the Pernese Venturer with the last of the more important items and distributed the remainder, unreadable bar codes notwithstanding, among the ships that were to sail west again. The Venturer could make a swift trip north and be ready to sail back to escort Jim across both Great Currents.

  When he finally reached Key Largo, Jim conferred with Paul, who was taking no chances and had sent all four of the large
ships, Pernese Venturer, Mayflower, Maid, and Perseus, to await their arrival at the jump-off point. It had become a matter of honor to the now well-seasoned skippers of the small craft in his flotilla to bring their ships into the new port. But few of them were capable of sailing across the two Great Currents without some assistance, and for that, the four ships with more powerful auxiliary engines would escort them. Jim had thought long and hard on how to maneuver the flotilla past this hazard and was pleased when the other captains agreed with him. The plan was to sail in the quieter coastal water from Key Largo, beyond the point where the Eastern Current was at its closest to the Western one. Then they’d turn bravely in to the Eastern Current and let it carry the vessels a good day’s sail away from their final destination, where they’d slip across the current into the calm dividing waters. Then, using outboard engines and the big ships towing the ones that didn’t have the speed or bulk to cross the Western Current, they’d maneuver that hazard until they reached the safe waters at the end of the Boll peninsula. The coastal sail up to the Fort harbor ought then to be routine.

  They sent dolphins ahead to check on incoming weather. Then, assured of fair weather and decent wind, they set out on the dangerous Crossing. This time luck was with them: they experienced no heart-stopping moments on the Crossing and made the quieter northern coastal waters. Some powered ships even had a little fuel left. Dolphin teams had swum in constant escort in case of engine failure. Then it was plain sailing. Almost anticlimactic, Jim thought, as the Southern Cross slid majestically into the darker northern waters bound for her last port of call.

  Not quite her last, he amended. While stopping at Key Largo, he and the other skippers had had a long talk about plans for the future and how to protect their ships during Threadfall.

  “They built us a sort of boat shed under the wharf,” Kaarvan said, sketching the facility as he spoke. “Masts have to be unstepped, of course, but that’s neither here nor there. Venturer just fits, with two other big ships or four of the smaller ones.”