The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

by Anne McCaffrey

  Saraidh had let the diamonds drip through her fingers to the table, and now she sighed. “You said there was a volcanic island? Was it active when you were there? That could account for that heat source we noticed,” she added to Benden.

  “Kimmer would stretch the truth every which way,” Shensu said, “to make himself look good. But he desperately wanted to have a larger gene pool—for his own pleasure if not ours.” The last was said with understandable malice. “If only a few more had survived, there’d be that much more future for all of us.”

  That gave both Ross Benden and Saraidh ni Morgana a lot to mull over as Shensu showed them around the additional facilities: the animal barns, the well-supplied storage areas. He paused at a locked door to a lower level.

  “Kimmer keeps the key to the hangar, so I can’t show you my father’s plane,” Shensu said. Then he gestured for them to ascend the stairs to the upper floors. Benden was relieved that these steps were wide and straight.

  When they returned to the main level of Honshu Hold, they found the women busily preparing a feast: certainly a feast for those who had been five years on a mission. Not that the Amherst did not cater well, but ship food was nothing to compare with spit-roasted lamb and the variety of Pernese hybrid vegetables and tubers. The two marines assigned to stand watch on the Erica, despite the slightly sarcastic assurance from Kimmer that no enemies could be lurking on Honshu Cliff, were brought heaping platters and nonfermented beverages by Faith and Charity. Within the Hold, the evening was merry, and Kimmer, after a glass or two of wine, became expansive as a host. He had recovered his composure after a long rest, and tactfully, no mention was made of his collapse.

  As prearranged, Benden, Sergeant Greene, and Vartry, the fourth marine, met Shensu, his two brothers, and the boys, Alun and Pat. Even with nine to tote sacks, it took four trips to top off the Erica’s tanks. The boys, who were short enough to walk upright in the low cave, brought the sacks out to those who waited to haul them down. The marines, using slings, carried eight sacks at a time. Ross Benden decided that he had no reason to challenge the marines: four was quite enough. The Fusaiyuki brothers carried six effortlessly. When the tanks were full, there were still sacks in the cavern.

  The next morning, hearing Nev’s cheerful morning ablutions, Ross Benden stirred, then abruptly stopped. He was uncomfortably stiff and sore from the night’s exertions.

  “Something wrong, sir?”

  “Not a thing,” Benden said. “Just finish up and let me have a chance, will you?”

  Nev took that in good part and shortly was out of the tiny cabin. Moving with extreme caution and hissing at the pain of abused muscles, Ross Benden managed to get to his feet. Bent-kneed, he hobbled to the handbasin and opened the small cabinet above that contained the medical kit. A thorough search revealed nothing for muscular aches. He fumbled for a pain tablet, knocked it to the back of his mouth, and discovered that his neck was sore, too. He took a drink of water. He made a mental note to drain the cistern and fill it with the excellent water of Pern.

  A scratch at the door made Benden straighten up, despite the anguish the movement caused the long tendons in his legs, but he was damned if he’d show weakness.

  “It’s I,” Ni Morgana announced as she entered. She took in at a glance his semicrippled state. “I thought this likely. Just one trip up and down those racks of a stair and my legs are sore. Faith gave me this salve—wanted me to test it to see if it was something of medical value. It’s indigenous. No, lie back down, Ross, I’ll slather it on. Supposed to have numbing properties. Hmm, it does,” she added, eying her fingers and the generous dollop she had scooped out of the jar.

  Ross was crippled enough to be willing to try anything, noxious or bizarre. He could hardly appear before Kimmer in his present shape.

  “Oh, it is numbing. Whee . . . ooh . . . ahh . . . more on the right calf, please,” Benden said, ridiculously relieved by the numbing effect of the salve. The pain seemed to drain out of calves and thighs, leaving them oddly cool but not cold, and certainly free of that damnable soreness.

  “I’ve got plenty for later, and Faith says they have buckets of the stuff. Make it fresh every year. Doesn’t smell half-bad either. Pungent and . . . piney.”

  When she finished doctoring Benden, she washed her hands thoroughly. “I’d say don’t shower today or you’ll lose the relief.” Then she turned back to him with a puzzled expression. “Ross,” she began, settling against the little handbasin and crossing her arms. “How much would you say Kimmer weighed?”

  “Hmm . . .” Benden thought of the man’s build and height. “About seventy-two, seventy-four kilos. Why?”

  “I weighed him in at ninety-five kilos. Of course, he was clothed, and the tunic and trousers are rather full and made of sturdy fabric, but I wouldn’t have thought he carried that much flesh.”

  “Nor would I.”

  “I didn’t judge the women correctly, either. They all weighed in a little under and a little over seventy kilos, and none of them are either tall or heavyset.”

  Nev mumbled figures under his breath. “All of ’em, even the kids?”

  “No, the three brothers are seventy-three, seventy-two, and seventy-five kilos, which is about what I thought they’d be. But the girl and the boys are also two or three kilos more than I’d have thought them.”

  “With a full tank, we can afford a few extra kilos,” Benden said.

  “I was also asked how much they could bring with them,” Saraidh went on, “and I said we had to calibrate body weights and other factors before we could give them an exact allowance. I trust that wasn’t out of line.”

  “I’ll get Nev to calculate in those weights and let me know how much fuel we’ll have in reserve then,” Benden said. “And what we use as padding and safety harness so no one bounces all over the gig during takeoff.”

  Folding out the cabin’s keyboard, Benden ran some rough figures against the lifting power of the full tank. “D’you have a total on their weights?” Ni Morgana gave him the figure. He added them in, plus kilos for padding and harness, and contemplated the result. “I’d hate to be considered mean, but twenty-three-point-five kilos each is about all we can allow.”

  “That’s as much as we’re allowed for personal effects on the Amherst,” Ni Morgana said. “Is there room for another twenty-three-point-five kilos in medicinals? I gather this stuff is effective.”

  “It certainly is,” Benden said, flexing his knees and feeling no discomfort.

  “I’ll just get some of this on the marines as well, then,” Ni Morgana said.

  “Ha!” was Benden’s scoffing reply.

  “I don’t know about that,” Ni Morgana said with a sly grin. “But then, you didn’t catch sight of Sergeant Greene making for the galley. I think—” She paused reflectively. “—that I’m doing some empirical tests of this junk and they just got lucky to be chosen as test subjects. Yes, that should save face admirably. We can’t give Kimmer any reason to be suspicious, now, can we?” Then she left, chuckling.

  At 0835, when Benden left the galley and proceeded to the Hold, he found Kimmer and the women in the main room, none of them looking too happy.

  “We’ve done the calculations, Kimmer, and we can allow each of you, the children included, twenty-three-point-five kilos of personal effects. That’s what Fleet personnel are generally allowed to bring on voyages, and I can’t see Captain Fargoe objecting to it.”

  “Twenty-three-point-five kilos is quite generous, Lieutenant,” Kimmer surprised Benden by saying. He turned to the women chidingly. “That’s more than we had coming out on the Yoko.”

  “And,” Benden said, turning to Faith, “that wouldn’t include medicinal products and respective seeds to a similar limit. Lieutenant Ni Morgana is of the opinion that they could well be valuable commodities.”

  “For which we’d be reimbursed?” Kimmer asked sharply.

  “Of course,” Benden said, keeping his voice even. “We have to allow
for the weight of padding and harness to keep you secure during our drop into the primary’s gravity well.”

  Charity and Hope emitted nervous squeaks.

  “Nothing to worry yourself over, ladies,” Benden went on with a reassuring smile. “We use gravity wells all the time as a quick way to break out of a system.”

  “Be damned grateful we’re getting off this frigging forsaken mudball,” Kimmer said angrily, rising to his feet. “Go on, now, sort out what you’ve got to bring but keep it to the weight limit. Hear me?”

  The women removed themselves, with Faith casting one last despairing glance over her shoulder at her father. Benden wondered why he had thought any of them graceful. They waddled in a most ungainly fashion.

  “You’ve been extremely generous, Lieutenant,” Kimmer said affably as he settled himself again in the high-backed carved chair that he usually occupied at the table. “I thought we’d be lucky enough to get off with what we have on our backs.”

  “Are you absolutely positive that there are no other survivors on Pern?” Benden asked, favoring a direct attack. “Others could have carved holds out of cliffs and remained secure from that airborne menace of yours.”

  “Yes, they could have, but for one thing, there aren’t any cave systems here on the southern continent. And I’ll tell you why I think the rest perished after I lost the last radio contact with those at Drake’s Lake and Dorado. In those days I was more confident of rescue and I’d enough power left in my sled to make one more trip back to Bitkim Island, where I’d mined some good emeralds.” He paused, leaning forward, elbows on the table and shaking one finger at Benden. “And black diamonds.”

  “Black diamonds?” Benden exclaimed, doing what he considered an admirable job of faking amazement.

  “Black diamonds, a whole beachful of them. That’s what I intend to bring back.”

  “Twenty-three-point-five kilos of them?”

  “And a few pieces of turquoise that I found.”

  “Really?”

  “When I’d enough of a load of stones, I went into a natural cavern on Bitkim’s southeast side. Big enough to anchor ships in, if you stepped the mast. And it was there.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Jim Tillek’s ship was there, mast and all, holes and grooves where Thread had scored it time and again.”

  “Jim Tillek?”

  “The admiral’s right hand. And a man who loved that ship. Loved it like other men love women—or Fussy Fusi loved flying.” Kimmer allowed his malice to show briefly. “But I’m telling you, Jim Tillek wouldn’t have left that ship, not to gather dust and algae on her hull, if he was alive somewhere on Pern. And that ship had been anchored there three or four years. That’s one very good reason why I know no one was left alive.

  “Did you find any sign of human occupation,” Kimmer went on, his voice less intense, his eyes glittering almost mockingly, “when you spiraled down across the northern hemisphere?”

  “No, neither on infra or power-use detection,” Benden had to admit.

  Kimmer spread both arms wide then. “You know there’s no one there, then. No need to waste your reserves of fuel to find ’em. We’re the last alive on Pern and, I’ll tell you this, it’s no planet for mankind.”

  “I’m sure the Colonial Authority will want a full report from you when we return to base, Kimmer. I shall certainly log in my findings.”

  “Then do mankind a favor, Lieutenant, and tag this disaster of a world as uninhabitable!”

  “That’s not for me to say.”

  Kimmer snorted and sat back in his chair.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must join Lieutenant Ni Morgana on her scientific survey. There are sufficient liftbelts, if you’d like to come along.”

  “No, thank you, Lieutenant.” Kimmer flicked his hand in dismissal of such activity. “I’ve seen about as much of this planet as I have any wish to.”

  Benden was just strapping on his liftbelt when Kimmer erupted from the Hold, the whites of his eyes showing in his agitation.

  “Lieutenant!” he cried, running toward the small party.

  Benden held up a warning hand as one of the marines beside him moved to intercept the man.

  “Lieutenant, what power do you use for the belts? What power?” Kimmer cried excitedly as he approached.

  “Pack power, of course,” Benden replied.

  “Regulation packs?” And, without apology, Kimmer grabbed the lieutenant by the shoulder and swung him round, just as the marine took hold of the old man’s arm.

  “As you were!” Ross Benden barked at the marine, but with a nod to reassure him, because he understood what Kimmer, in his excitement, did not explain. “Yes, the standard power packs, and we have enough to reactivate that sled of yours, if it’s in any reasonable working order.”

  “It is, Lieutenant, it is!” Kimmer reassured him, his agitation replaced by immense satisfaction. “So you’ll be able to eyeball the remains of the colony and report honestly to your captain that you followed your orders, Mister Benden, as assiduously as your noble relative would have done.” Ross grimaced, but his relation to the admiral would have become public sooner or later. “I thought you looked familiar,” Kimmer added smugly.

  Benden took Ni Morgana aside for a quick conference, and she concurred that it was Benden’s first obligation to search as far as he was able for survivors. She was quite willing to conduct her own scientific research with Shensu as her guide and two marines as assistants. So she wished the lieutenant good luck and lifted gracefully off the plateau, floating down in the direction of the nearest evidence of Thread, some ten klicks down the valley on the other side of the river.

  That matter settled, Kimmer began to pluck at Benden’s sleeve in his urgency and hurried him, Nev following, back into the Hold. Maps were still spread out on the table from the previous evening.

  “I searched east as far as Landing and Cardiff,” Kimmer said, prodding one map with an arthritic index finger. He dragged the finger back and down along to the Jordan River. “Those stakes were all empty—and Thread-ridden, though Calusa, Ted Tubberman’s old place, wasn’t.” Kimmer frowned a moment, then shrugged off that enigma, moving his finger up to the coastline and west. “Paradise River must have been used as some kind of staging area, because there were netted containers in the overgrowth along the shore but the buildings were all boarded up. Malay, too, and Boca.” He stabbed at those points on the map. “I went north from Boca to Bitkim, but I confess that I didn’t stop at Thessaly or Roma, where they had well-built stone houses and barns. And I didn’t get any farther west. The gauge on the power pack was jiggling too much for me to risk getting stranded.”

  “So there could be survivors to the west . . .” Benden pored over the map, feeling a surge of excitement and hope. Then he wondered why Kimmer was willing to take such a risk: that enough survivors might be found for the colony to be left to work out its parochial problems. Maybe the prospect of leaving so much behind, including being the default owner of a planet, was giving Kimmer second thoughts. If fifty years of his life’s endeavors were going to be crammed into a 23.5-kilo sack, living out the remainder of his life in the comforts he had achieved might indeed hold more charm for the old man than an uncertain, and possibly pauper’s, existence in a linear warren.

  “There could indeed be stakeholders there, but why haven’t they attempted any contact?” Kimmer asked defiantly, and his eyes quickly concealed a flicker of something else. “I got the last communication from the west, but that could have been for any number of reasons. Now, if you’ve got a portable unit that we could bring with us, maybe closer to one of the western stakes, we might rouse someone.”

  “Let’s see this sled of yours.” Benden didn’t mention that they had opened the broadest range of communications on their inbound spiral with not so much as a flicker on any frequency.

  Kimmer led them to the locked door, opened it, and proceeded down to the next level, which proved to be a hangar w
ith wide double doors at one end opening out on the wide terrace below the Hold entrance plateau. The sled occupied the center of the considerable floor space; Kenjo’s little atmosphere underwing craft was not quite hidden in the back. But Benden’s attention was all for the sled, which was cocooned in the usual durable thin plastic film. Kimmer energetically punctured the covering, and all four men helped peel the sled free as Kimmer enumerated his exact shutdown precautions. Although the plascanopy was somewhat darkened with age and the tracks of Thread hits, when Benden touched the release button, the door slid back as easily as if it had been opened the day before.

  This was a much older model than those Benden was used to, so he did a thorough inspection; but the fabric of the sturdy vessel was undamaged. The control panel was one he recognized from text tapes. When he depressed the power toggle, the gauge above it fluttered and then dropped back to zero. He walked aft to the power locker, flipped up the latches on the power trunk, and lifted the big unit out to examine the leads. Liftbelts used much smaller packs, but he could see no difficulty in making a multiple connection of smaller units to supply power. Moving forward again—Kimmer stepped out of his way, exuding a palpable excitement—Benden tested the steering yoke. It moved easily in his grip.