The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

by Anne McCaffrey

  Sean gave his father-in-law a wry smile. “As I understand it, Red, this river marks the boundary between Fort Hold and your place. You’re not obliged to ground-crew . . . if any of you were up to it. Just push on and get under cover tonight. That’s the best way to help Sorka and me!”

  “We’ll do just that,” Mairi said, handing over a well-wrapped sleeping Ryan to Sean while she mounted Pie.

  “So this is my son’s youngest uncle,” he said, pushing back the blanket to peer at the little face.

  “Definitely his youngest,” Red said. “Hand him up to me,” he added as he swung up on the stallion. “King’s that bit higher above the water, Mairi. You’ll get a soaking as it is.”

  Mairi gave a little laugh. “Not if I hike my knees up,” she said. “Give my dearest love to Sorka, will you, Sean? And our deepest sympathy to all at the Weyr.”

  “I will indeed, Mairi. And . . . my thanks!”

  The Weyrleader stepped aside then as she kicked her mare forward. The piebald was one of those rare placid beasts and stepped from land to cold water with neither hesitation nor so much as a twitch of her well-shaped ears when water swirled around her fetlocks and then up to her knees.

  “We all grieve with the Weyr, Sean,” Red said, raising his hand in farewell. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Carenath uncover his brilliant eyes as Sean returned to him, sorrow displayed by the droop in his broad shoulders. Red sighed.

  Then he couldn’t help but notice how closely King was following the mare, needing no urging at all to wade into the river once more. The stallion stretched his neck out to sniff at her tail, which she clamped tightly to her rump as she picked up her legs into a splashing trot. Red grinned as he felt the sprightly lift in the tired stallion’s step, pursuing a mare who was apparently about to come into season. And this year, Red thought, he could breed every mare he had!

  As the swifter current of the still-rising river tugged avidly at the stallion’s legs, Red held his son more tightly in the crook of his arm. He could see that Mairi had brought her knees up nearly to her chin as the water rose up the mare’s side, but Pie kept her footing and trotted sturdily forward. Red heaved a sigh of relief in unison with King when they climbed the far bank for the last time.

  “Let’s leave Sean’s news until tomorrow, Mairi,” he said before they reached the others.

  “Yes, of course. Hearts are weary enough without being sorrowful, too. And I don’t want anything to spoil our arrival.” Then, after a brief pause, she said, “Is that selfish of me, Peter?” She only used his Christian name when she was uncertain.

  “No, kind. We’ve had sadness in full measure. We can wait to add this one.”

  With those from the Hold to share the tasks of the weary travelers, Red let himself be persuaded to sit on one of the carts and lead King from the back of it. In the darkness, he even permitted himself to lie back. But the cart seemed full of crates and parcels of hard edges, pointed corners, and nonyielding surfaces. He twisted and pushed and finally formed a backrest that wouldn’t dislocate a rib or poke his kidneys too hard. He regretted that he hadn’t paused long enough to find some dry clothes, but he wrapped himself in the blanket Mairi had thrust at him, and that kept the chill off. Snapper reappeared and burrowed into his shoulder, wrapping his tail around Red’s neck, and Red stroked the little beast, sensing its sorrow and need to be comforted. But soon enough, Red hadn’t the energy for more caresses and, instead, propped his head against the lithe warm body, a substitute pillow so soothing that, despite every good intention, Red Hanrahan was fast asleep when the cart pulled into the brightly lit circle in front of his Hold.

  “Mairi was all for leaving you asleep in the cart,” Brian told him when the wail of a tired child roused him, “but it’s only got two wheels and we’d nothing to prop it with.”

  Futilely Red roared at everyone for depriving him of the sight of a triumphal entry, but he resisted every effort to get him inside and to his bed until he had seen all his livestock safely ensconced in “a proper-style barn.”

  “Sean said there’s Thread across the river tomorrow morning early,” he told those who tried to get him to go to bed, “and he’s usually right about where it’ll fall, but I want everything under cover. Just in case for once he’d be wrong!” And he stormed down to the animal hold.

  Half of the beasts were already down on the sandy flooring, fast asleep, while others dozed as they stood. Red made straight for King’s stallion box at one end of the equine stabling. The horse, dark eyes glittering in the soft light, whuffled slightly and then closed his eyes.

  “Even the horse has more sense . . .” Mairi began in as close to a scolding tone as she had ever used on him.

  “I had to see ’em, Mairi,” Red muttered wearily. “I had to see ’em safe where I’ve seen them in my mind ever since I knew this place was right for us.”

  “And righter for them,” she said, steering him out of the cavern and toward the Hold proper.

  She half pulled him up the ramp to the as yet wide-open entrance—but only after he had made sure that the big sled-wagon carrying the door had been parked nearby—and into their Hold.

  “And if you think you’re going to prowl about and see if we’ve made any progress during your absence,” Maddie said, fists planted on her belt, “you’ve another think coming. Furthermore, Ozzie has offered his rubber mallet to knock you out if you don’t get straight to your quarters and sleep!”

  His quarters, for now, were currently the office to the left of the main entrance, and he reeled slightly in that direction. Candlelight showed him that the room had been altered—and he grabbed at the doorframe to steady himself, his tired mind trying to cope with the difference.

  “Well, a bed big enough for both you and Mairi wouldn’t fit in here with all your clutter,” Maddie said, “so we moved that next door. Now, that there is a next door.” She gave him a push and Mairi, still holding his hand, got him into the room.

  The door was closed firmly and then Mairi was opening jacket and shirt, deftly pulling the sleeves off him before she pushed him backward to the bed. Out of a marriage-long habit, he lifted one leg so she could remove first one, then the other boot as he managed with fumbling fingers to undo his belt and trousers.

  A long time later, he woke.

  He roared at first, annoyed that he had been deceived and cosseted when there was so much to be done, but Brian pretended to take umbrage that his own father wouldn’t trust him to see to the care of his precious stock. Mairi set before him a steaming mug of klah and fresh bread with—his eyes gleamed at the sight—a knob of butter he wouldn’t have to share with anyone. So he forgave the conspiracy and demanded to know if people were settling in: if they weren’t, he’d have their complaints that very evening.

  A communal kitchen, with everyone taking turns at food preparation for the main meal, had been established, and the main hall, bare though it was, was large enough to seat five times the numbers that sat at the trestle tables that night.

  Before the meat was served, Red Hanrahan rose from his seat at the T junction of the two long tables.

  “Many of you may already know from your fire-lizards that Alianne, gold Chereth’s rider, died in childbirth and her dragon soon after.” He paused to let those who hadn’t known absorb the shock of such a loss. “We will all stand and have a moment’s silence in tribute to them.”

  While the announcement put a damper on the beginning of what would have been a more convivial evening, by the time the splendid cakes Madeleine had made for the occasion were brought in, most people had recovered.

  “You don’t think of the dragons as being that attached to their riders,” Kes Dook remarked, just down the table from Red. “I mean, I know the Impression is lifelong . . . but the queen was so young. Surely someone else could have taken over?”

  “Not as we understand it,” Red said, toying with his mug of quikal. He did miss a decent drop of wine and wondered if Rene Mallibeau would ever find hi
s south-facing slopes to grow the precious vines still tended in the hydroponics shed. “Once Impression is made, that’s it, and the dragon is unable to function without that special human partner.”

  “But the Weyr keeps looking for likely candidates. Surely one of them could have filled in,” Kes continued.

  “Perhaps it all happened too fast,” Betty Sopers suggested, her eyes red. She’d known Alianne very well. “So few women die in childbirth . . .” She looked hopefully down the table to the two medics.

  Kolya looked properly sympathetic, while Akis Andriadus nodded his head encouragingly.

  “I haven’t heard what went wrong with Alianne,” Kolya said. “She’s—she had two children, but I’ll certainly ask for a report.”

  “And I’ve had nine,” Mairi said in a no-nonsense tone, “so don’t you be fretting, Betty Sopers.”

  “Especially if you aren’t even preggers,” Jess Patrick said, with a slightly hopeful leer, for he was quite friendly with his fellow student.

  “Of course I’m not,” she replied firmly, although a blush colored her face under her tan. Then her expression clouded. “But she was so young and dragons are so . . . strong.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that opinion expressed in this Hold,” Red said firmly. “Without the dragons and those who ride them, we wouldn’t be here today.”

  “How did Sean get those bullocks to move?” Kes asked. “It was too bloody dark to see anything by then.”

  Red laughed, glad to be able to turn the evening’s conversation to a lighter vein. “The oxen may be stubborn, but stupid they’re not. They made tracks as fast as they could from the dragon behind them!”

  “How did Sean get them to go in the right direction then?” Peter Chernoff asked. “I could barely keep up with them, much less keep them left or right.”

  “As I said, Sean was behind them, but slightly to their right, so of course they stampeded left,” Red replied. “And we are here, safe and sound. Pat, son, run get my fiddle and your mother’s bodhran. D’you know where your flute is, Akis? I know your dad taught you.”

  “I’ve got a good jug,” Ozzie said, and rose from the table as Pat, getting explicit directions from his mother on where to find the instruments, ran from the hall, Akis following.

  It took no time at all to clear and dismantle the tables and set the chairs and benches along the walls and provide a happy ending to the first official day in Red Hanrahan’s Hold.

  The next morning was different. Red was up at first light, rousing Betty, Jess, Fyodor, and Deccie to feed the animals. By the time they returned to the kitchen, Licia Dook, Emily Schultz, and Sal Wang were starting breakfast under the watchful eyes of Madeleine.

  With breakfast eaten and a fresh mug of klah, Red called a meeting of the various supervisors and discussed the day’s priorities. That set the pattern for the spring weeks to come, establishing pastures, crops, and garden, but still making the most use of the heavy equipment that would improve and enlarge the cave system. Hanrahan had never shirked hard work and did as much time on the stonecutters or the borer—the hardest of the machines to use—as he did in the fields or the breeding yard. He could and did leave a lot of the general management of his precious stock to Brian, Jess, and Betty, with whichever fosterlings could be spared from building. But he was sensible that reasonable rest and relaxation were as vital as a good day’s work.

  Even that he used somewhat to his own advantage, since he made outings to map the holding a special treat—certainly a change from the unremitting labor of turning a cliff into a human habitation or the sheer drudgery of plowing, sowing, and weeding. First he had to be assured by the Weyr that there were a few safe days in hand; then he set directions and goals for his teams. The extent of his legitimate stake, combined with the acreage of those who had joined him in the enterprise, added up to a considerable hunk of real estate, as Brian put it. Now what had been delineated on probe cartographic surveys had to be thoroughly explored, posted, and assessed for potential.

  In form, the Hold land was slightly pie-shaped, the most northern point the thinnest part of the wedge, and the high and very cold mountain tarn lake the blunt point. The holding widened out from the lake, bordered on both sides by rivers: on the southern side, the river they had so perilously crossed; on the northeast, the next large one, two days’ steady ride from the first riverine boundary. Red needed to know how many more possible cave sites were available for when his present population multiplied itself out of these facilities.

  With material excised from the interior, stone cottages were to be erected along the foot of the ramp all the way to the animal accommodations. In his master plan, those ultimately would be workshops for the various crafts needed in a large and prospering community.

  He was fond of Brian, got along well with him, and hoped to do the same with the younger ones, but his sons would need land of then own, where the da wasn’t sitting over every decision. And the stake was large enough to support many separate establishments. There should be room for future generations to expand, too. When this Fall was past, even though Red might not live to see that glorious time, his kin could spread out, all over the Hold. In his mind’s eye, Red saw that even more clearly now, as magnificent a dream as he had ever envisioned when he and Mairi had decided to join the Pern colony.

  So, whenever possible, he sent scouts out to find what other riches—accommodation being the main one—the stake could provide. Sometimes he went himself to check on possible ore sites, for they’d need more coal than the one seam they’d found nearby to run the hypocaust system that Egend had devised for warming the living quarters of caves.

  Egend was an ingenious engineer. He’d been successful at Fort Weyr in drilling into the old, still-hot magma chamber that provided delightful quantities of heat, especially for the hardening of dragon eggs on the sandy floor of the Hatching Ground. It had taken the dragons weeks of hard work hauling in the appropriate sands from the beaches near Boll, but the Weyr now had an approximation of the conditions Kitti Ping had felt the dragons would require. Not that there hadn’t been clutches successfully hatched on makeshift warm beds, but the sand flooring appealed to the queens. Like the babies appearing so continuously at Fort, dragon eggs seemed to be continually in one stage of maturity or another at the Weyr.

  Whenever his duties had permitted him, Red had attended the happy occasions of Hatchings, but Mairi managed to get to them all, and was quite an expert on what color dragon would emerge from what shell.

  Egend had seen no problem in heating Red’s Hold by hypocaust and such hearths as could safely be extended up to the heights. He had unearthed some solar paneling among Joel’s supplies, which would do for heating water. There was nothing like a good bath to soothe a body after a hard day’s work. And, after having to put up with other people’s dirt and grime for so long, having a bath, much less clean clothes when one wanted them, was a real luxury in the new Hold, made possible by the use of the solar panels.

  Of Red’s fostered youngsters, young Ali Arthied had studied enough engineering under his father that he could set up and monitor that system with Jonti Greene’s assistance. They were very clever in adapting and contriving mechanicals, that pair. He planned to send both back to sit their exams with Fulmar Stone, who had been monitoring their studies.

  Educating the young had become a race between the jobs that had to be done to survive and the studies that had to be done to keep skills from dying out.

  Well, maybe, Red thought as he rose the morning they were finally going to hang the airlock door, when that chore was done, they could stop moving at such a hectic pace. Success in their first year here was crucial for many reasons, not the least of which was proving it could be done expeditiously. Grass was up in three of the seeded paddocks; the first shoots of alfalfa, the last of his seed allowance, were pushing through the assiduously fertilized earth. The fruit trees, puny as they were, had been planted in the walled orchard, which could be covered again
st Threadfall by translucent plastic sheets. The vegetable garden, also walled, was coming on with few failures, and the rows could be quickly covered with plastic shields.

  It was a bright, sunny spring morning, too, Red was happy to notice: auspicious, especially since he had coaxed Paul Benden and a few other special guests from the Fort to gather for this momentous occasion—the Dooring of . . .

  “Scorch it,” Red swore under his breath as he jammed his feet into his steel-capped work boots. He still didn’t have the right-sounding name for the place.

  Mairi hadn’t been at all in favor of naming the place Keroon, or even Kerry, which he had thought she’d go for.

  “Oh, it should be something of us, or ours,” she’d said, her face screwed up as she tried to express what she meant.

  “Hanrahan Hold?” he’d asked, almost facetiously.

  “Good heavens, no. That smacks of lord of the manor.” Then she’d given him one of her sly sideways grins. “Though you are, you know. Lord of all this . . .” She’d gestured broadly through the deep-set window of their upstairs bedroom.

  The day they had moved their bed from his old office, which immediately became his office again, to the three-room suite that had been carved out of the cliff face—that had been her day. He was not likely to forget the joy on her face as she had directed Brian and Simon just where her heirloom chest—once more glued together since its dismemberment for the Second Crossing—should be placed. When she’d seen it settled exactly where she wanted it, she’d given such a happy, contented sigh. Then she shooed everyone out so she could polish it to a soft gleam.

  She was so long at that task that Maureen ended up feeding her baby brother.

  “That’s not like Ma,” she told her father as she cuddled Ryan in the crook of her arm.