The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

by Anne McCaffrey

  Red knew that Paul would miss Zi Ongola, who had been his second officer and close friend since the two had served together in the Cygnus Campaign. Red was a little surprised that Zi would leave, but he’d be a good leader, and pressures in the Fort had to be reduced. Many dissident voices were quieted only because the admiral was universally admired and the justice of his regime respected as fair and equable.

  Most of the problems afflicting the Hold were due to the cramped conditions. The “good” years when the colony was starting up had allowed people freedom and scope, which they treasured all the more now that it had been denied them by the terrible fall of Thread. During the first few years when Fort Hold had protected them, gratitude for that haven had overcome the discomforts and inconveniences, but as the birthrate soared and the stony corridors resounded with the cries of fretful babies, tempers had begun to rise.

  The establishment of South Boll had been the first major attempt to relieve the congestion, and so far it was successful—for those who had resettled at the new holding under Pierre de Courcis’s leadership. But exploring appropriate premises was time-consuming, and with Thread continuing to fall, any outbound journeys had to be carefully timed and safe layover shelters built along the way. Then some caves were found to be either waterless or too small to shelter enough people to be worth development.

  “Yes, Zi’s got a big job ahead of him, yet we must make the attempts if this colony is to succeed. Threadfall won’t last forever!” Paul brought one hand down with a hard slap on his armrest. “By all that’s holy, Hanrahan, we’ll still make Pern ours, with everyone owning his or her own place, no matter what rains down on us!”

  “Of course we will, Paul. And we Hanrahans will hold our place! And multiply. You can be sure of that!” Red said, grinning smugly. Mairi had just weaned their latest and, he hoped, last child. She’d told Red she wanted to have a dozen offspring, but the repeated pregnancies were beginning to take their toll on her.

  “For Mairi’s sake, I hope you have too much to do for any more of that.” There was a twinkle in Paul’s eye as he regarded the veterinarian. “How many have you fathered now?”

  Red waved his hand, his grin broader. “Nine’s enough to insure our genes will continue. Ryan’s the last I’ll permit her, and I made sure of no more to come.”

  Benden gave a snort. “Especially when your sons and daughters are like to pass you out in production figures in a year or two.”

  “Well, Mairi’s good with children. She genuinely likes them in all stages of their development. More than I do,” Red added with some acerbity.

  “Got a name for this Hold of yours?”

  Red made a disclaiming sound. “Hell, Paul, I’ve been so busy with plans, lists, and contingencies, naming’s a detail I haven’t given much thought to. We’ll think of something appropriate, Mairi and the rest of us.”

  Paul Benden rose then, made an effort to straighten the slump of his shoulders, and held out his hand. “Good luck, Red. We’ll miss you here . . .”

  “Ha! You’ll be glad to see the backsides of us. And so will the Logorides and the Gallianis.”

  Benden gave a genuine laugh. Despite the fact that breeding had clearly had to be kept to an absolute minimum, the Logorides and Gallianis had felt themselves constantly deprived by the restrictions. Pierre de Courcis had taken nine of the scions of the two large families, and a substantial number of their cattle, when he went south to settle Boll, but the two senior men continued to grieve for the “marvelous fine bloodlines and stock” they’d had to leave behind at their southern stakeholds.

  “They enjoyed freedom far longer than most of us. It was harder to give it all up,” Benden said in oblique apology.

  Red cocked his head briefly to one side. “Who hasn’t given up a lot—to stay alive!”

  Paul wrapped Red’s hand in both of his and gave it one final hard shake. “When do you plan to go?”

  “Sean says we’ve got three full clear days come Tuesday. We’ll be organized and ready by then.”

  “So soon?” Benden’s tone was almost wistful.

  “On a good horse, Admiral,” Red said, unable to resist teasing the former naval man, “you could ride the distance in two days. Be good for you to get away now and again.”

  “I’ve never even got as far south as Boll, and that’s nearer.”

  “ ’Tisn’t, with those hills to climb,” Red protested. “I’ll send you a special hand-engraved invitation, Paul Benden, and you’ll come for the good of your sanity! I’ll sic Sean and Sorka on you. A-dragonback’s the shortest way to come,” he added as he paused at the door.

  Benden laughed. “You talk Sean into letting someone else ride his precious Carenath and I’ll come!”

  “Good!” Red gave a brief sharp nod and grinned. “Then we’ll show you what we’ve done with the new Hold when we’ve done it!”

  Nearly a third of the Hold’s population managed to be on hand when the Hanrahans’ expedition moved off. Every passenger-carrying animal was laden as well with some bundle or other. The sleds were carefully packed; the largest, with the Hold door, was drawn by six teams of oxen, beasts Red had carefully picked for their docility and trained for such work. He’d bred them himself from a genetic pattern Kitti Ping had produced for him: slightly adjusting weight, strengthening bone, thickening hide, and enlarging both heart and lungs to encourage a disease- and fatigue-resistant hardy animal, much stronger and more adaptable than the Terran beasts that had been brought in vitro.

  Safely stored in an insulated crate were the special fertilized eggs with which Red Hanrahan hoped to develop varieties of equines more suitable to Pern’s needs: a heavyweight animal of Percheron proportions for the plow; a swift, lean racing type that could carry messengers long distances on little fodder; and a comfortable riding animal, a pacer like the ancient Paso Fino, which had been a mountain breed of great agility and endurance, and, more important, possessing the easiest possible long-distance riding gait.

  He would make his Hold the place where all others would come to buy their burden beasts and racers. His most private dream was of founding a racehorse line to rival that which Earth had once possessed. There was no reason, once Thread had passed, that they couldn’t revive the sport of kings. The practical could coexist with the exotic. Let Caesar Galliani develop meat animals if that was his passion, but Red would go for horses.

  Now, astride his bay stallion, King, the best of the fine animals he had bred from the fertilized ova he had brought with him, Red ranged up and down the line, encouraging his people and rectifying small errors in the order.

  He had positioned one of the heavier sleds to break trail, with teams of his strongest youths to widen the way whenever necessary. The way north through the main Fort valley was easy enough, but soon they would come to the less-traveled ground. Not that he didn’t know the track like the back of his hand, he’d been up and down it so often, but a lot of it wasn’t geared for wide traffic.

  There were people waiting for them, too, at the new premises: the four fostered youngsters who were old enough to help; Egend Raghir and David Jacobsen, who were supervising the mechanical apparatus in the Hold; Madeleine Messurier, in charge of the domestic arrangements; and Maurice de Broglie, who, along with Ozzie and Cobber on loan from the specialists’ work pool, was still checking rock formations and the tunnels. Soon they would move on to investigate other possible sites for holdings.

  As soon as the wagon train was around the bend and Fort was out of sight, Red sent his fire-lizard, Snapper, to Maddie to announce that they were on their way. Useful creatures, the fire-lizards, though there seemed to be fewer of them about these days.

  Sorka said it was because they were going back to their native sands in the South to lay their eggs. The little golden queens, being more responsible, remained to see them safely hatched before coming back to their humans. The green females laid their eggs and then forgot about the matter and, being shatter-witted, probably forgot that
they had once had human friends. Sorka’s Duke remained faithful, as did Sean’s two browns and Snapper, another brown. Slowly, though, there were fewer and fewer of the winsome creatures in and out of Fort Hold.

  “They may mind the cold and dreary winters more than we do,” Sorka suggested. “We could go back to Landing and see if there’re any clutches about to hatch.”

  Red had caught Sean’s frown. The lad—and Red corrected himself with a private grin, because “lad” no longer applied to this confident adult—Sean, rider of bronze Carenath, was known as the Weyrleader. And, if he had certain traits of the martinet, they were needed to shape up his growing dragonrider contingent. In any case, his orders were strictly obeyed and, to Red’s thinking, were sensibly formulated. There would be little spare time for the dragonriders to go looking for fire-lizard nests. In fact, they had made only one return journey.

  When Ezra Keroon had been fretful with the fever that racked him, Sean had very willingly gone back to Landing on Carenath. Sean had returned—almost as soon as he’d left, Sorka had remarked—to reassure the old captain that the Aivas building, which Ezra had so carefully shielded with shuttle tiles against Garben’s eruption, remained intact and unscathed. Later Sean had reported more fully to Paul that the old settlement was just so many mounds under a thick carpet of gray volcanic ash. However, the knowledge that the interface with the Yokohama was still intact had soothed the querulous Ezra, and he’d gratefully subsided into a sleep from which he never woke: another victim of the undiagnosed fever.

  The new place could quite easily be named after Ezra Keroon, Red thought. Certainly the man had been one of the heroes of the Evacuation—in fact, the last man to leave Landing, bar the admiral and Joel Lilienkamp. And even before the trip to Pern, he’d been a hero of the Nathi War, too. Yes, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to name his Hold “Keroon.” Or “Kerry.” That was a good way to keep long-lost but well-loved places, or people, alive.

  A request for his presence at the head of the caravan interrupted his ruminations. His mind back to the journey at hand, Red cantered King to see what the problem was.

  They made camp the first night where Red had often done so, in a rocky cleaning by one of the streams that fed into the bigger Fort River. All the stock was hungry enough to munch happily on the dried shredded seaweed that some of the fussier eaters tended to refuse.

  A campfire is a cheerful affair, even when made of dried animal dung. Someone had contrived a solution that, when used to immerse the dung, replaced any lingering unpleasant odors with that of apple wood. The nutritious dinner stew was even seasoned appealingly so that, if you didn’t think about the fact that it had been processed from offal, seaweed, and wild herbs and grains, you could relish the meal. Red was too hungry to be the least bit finicky, and let the hard travel bread soften in the leftover juices.

  Snapper returned with a note from Maddie attached to his leg.

  The welkin will ring when we sight you. River’s high with last week’s rain. Don’t let the sleds bog down. M.

  Mairi had made their bed under one of the sleds. She had insisted that her bones required a certain amount of padding. Red wouldn’t admit that his own did, too, and was grateful to lie down with only her and Snapper near him. He was thinking of the absolute wealth of three good-sized rooms at . . . Keroon Hold—naw, that didn’t sound right—just for Mairi and himself.

  The morning brought an unexpected delay. Some of the beasts, mainly those hauling sleds, had to be treated for harness galls. The harness had been new, but Red had thought it had been softened enough not to rub. Mairi dug about in their household belongings and brought out some well-cured sheep fleeces and some of the cotton that she had saved from the last crop at Landing. Red first applied the numbweed salve that was now in everyone’s first-aid kit, then padded the abraded spots to prevent further friction. They also redistributed the lighter items from the sleds of the galled teams to ease their burden, and Red himself made certain that all harnesses were flexible enough and fitted perfectly. One thing sure, Red announced: He’d personally inspect every strap of harness that evening after it had been cleaned.

  The delay cost them several hours, but when they finally moved out, it was in good heart, with smiles on faces that had grown unused to smiling. Almost, Red thought, as if the sheer joy of being out on their own, away from the burden of so much imprivacy—was that a word? he wondered, but it sounded exactly right—outweighed any minor snag. He was relieved and glad for many reasons to see this attitude adjustment. Considerable hard work would still be needed to complete the new place and make it livable, not to mention comfortable. For a while, there’d be other inconveniences and makeshifts. While they carved out their new habitation from the basic cavern system, everything would be covered with stone dust. He had brought as many masks as Joel would allow him, but there weren’t enough for more than the people right at the work site. And rock dust had an insidious habit of permeating and clinging to objects well away from the actual excavation. Mairi had complained about the state of Red’s clothing after his first long stay at the Hold cave.

  He hoped that Max Schultz had managed to get his gang to finish the stud fencing. Red had paid his next-to-last credits to have the plastic extruded for enough posts and rails to provide paddocks. He wanted barn-sour animals to spend as much time as possible out-of-doors, even if it would be awhile before any grass could get started. There wouldn’t be that much time to exercise horses at first, but they did have stables and byres inside the immense low cavern that would hold all the beasts. Turn-out paddocks were essential. He’d get Deccie Foley, who had a knack for teaching animals, to train the dogs with a certain call or whistle to round up the animals so that just one person would be needed to help the dogs get them all in under cover when Thread fell.

  Toward afternoon a drizzle began—proper rain, not Thread, though for a moment the grayness of the sky over the western range almost caused a few hearts to stop. But Thread always moved from east to west. Red had prudently built into the eastern face of his precipice, so that every window would give a view of the direction that danger came from.

  To make up lost time, they ate a quick lunch while they watered the animals at one of the many streams they had to cross. Maybe he should put something about streams in the name of the place. His land had almost as many as Fort did, since this eastern side of the High Ranges drained well into the sea.

  A wet nighttime camp meant cold food again, though Mairi contrived enough of a fire under the high sled to boil water for hot drinks all around. She also managed to heat enough warm water to soap and soften the harnesses, which Red personally checked. He also inspected every one of the burden beasts, just to be sure no new wounds had developed.

  Despite the wet chill damp of the early-spring rain, Red was asleep beside Mairi almost as soon as he got himself comfortable. Snapper coiled between their warm bodies, as protected from the cold and wet as he could get, and Red wondered how much longer the little fire-lizard would remain faithful in this inclement land.

  The rain was heavier the next day. Mairi insisted they have a hot porridge in their bellies to keep out the chill, and quantities of hot klah were made for the thermoses. The availability of the warming beverage did make the difference during that very long cold day.

  The trace, for it certainly couldn’t be called a trail, was more mud than dirt now and further slowed them down. Despite that, by the time light was fading from the sky, Red knew they were not that far from the river he had chosen as the border for his stake—the river that Maddie had warned him had risen. The ford they were to cross was a wide basin where the river spread out over a shale rocky bottom.

  He ordered lanterns lit. The mycelium luminescence with which Ju Adjai Benden had been experimenting cast sufficient light in an enclosed space, but suitable shielding to make it useful outside hadn’t yet been developed.

  “We’ve reached the river, Dad,” Brian yowled from the darkness ahead. “And it’s in
spate.”

  Red groaned. He’d wanted to make the crossing as much because the land on the other side was his as because the farther bank was a better site for an overnight camp. He briefly considered waiting for daylight, but discarded the idea almost immediately. The flatter land on this side of the river was already under an inch or so of water. If the river was this high now, then by morning the water would be too high for the wheels of the smaller sleds. They might float away downstream if they got loose. And this was the best ford within klicks—if he could find it in the murky darkness.

  Now, so close to his own private place, he was loath to let high water bar his way.

  He borrowed a lantern from one of the smaller carts and trotted through the mud to the front of the caravan. Reining King in beside Brian, he looked glumly at the swiftly moving surface of the swollen river. Rising up in his stirrups and holding the lantern high over his head, he peered to his left, trying to find the cairn of stones he had placed to mark the upper edge of the ford.

  “Under water, too, damn it,” he muttered.

  “Would we have to worry about an undercurrent here, Dad?” Brian asked, pointing to a large branch floating serenely—and quickly—past them.

  “If it gets too high, that’s a possibility. By tomorrow, it will definitely be high enough to cause us problems with those lower-loadbed sleds. Damn it, we’ve got to try tonight or we might spend days here, just in sight of our destination!”

  “Let’s give it a go then, Dad,” Brian said firmly. “I’ll try to the right. After all, I have been across this ford a couple of times. And Cloudy’s a good swimmer.”

  He kneed his gray into the water, but the animal, head down, snorting at the rushing flow, was not as eager to go forward as his rider had boasted.