Dragons Dawn

by Anne McCaffrey

  The power of her ringing voice and the sincerity of her fervent phrases had, on that glorious evening, motivated everyone to fulfill that dream. Also a realist, Emily Boll knew very well that there were dissident factors among those who had listened so politely before giving her a cheering ovation. Avril, Lemos, Nabol, Kimmer, and a handful of others had already been tagged as possible troublemakers. But Emily devoutly hoped that the dissidents would become so involved in their new lives on Pern that they would have little time, energy, or occasion to indulge in intrigue.

  The charter and the contracts had incorporated the right to discipline the signatories for “acts against the common good.” Such acts had as yet to be defined.

  Emily and Paul had argued about the necessity for any sort of penal code. Paul Benden favored the “punishment fitting the crime” as an object lesson for miscreants and frequent breakers of the “peace and tranquillity of the settlement.” He also preferred to mete out community discipline on the spot, shaming offenders in public and requiring them to do some of the more disagreeable tasks necessary to the running of the colony. So far that rough justice had been sufficient.

  Meanwhile, the discreet surveillance continued on a number of folk, and Paul and Emily met with Ongola from time to time to discuss the general morale of the community and those problems that were best kept discreet. Paul and Emily also made sure to be constantly accessible to all the colonists, hoping to solve small discontents before they could grow into serious problems. They kept official “office hours” six days of the established seven-day week.

  “We may not be religious in the archaic meaning of the word, but it makes good sense to give worker and beast one day’s rest,” Emily stated in the second of the mass meetings. “The old Judean Bible used by some of the old religious sects on Earth contained a great many commonsensible suggestions for an agricultural society, and some moral and ethical traditions which are worthy of retention” – she held up a hand, smiling benignly – “but without any hint of fanatic adherence! We left that back on Earth along with war!”

  While the two leaders knew that even that loose form of democratic government might be untenable once the settlers had spread out from Landing to their own acres, they did hope that the habits acquired would suffice. Early American pioneers on that western push had exhibited a keen sense of independence and mutual assistance. The later Australian and New Zealand communities had risen above tyrannical governors and isolation to build people of character, resource, and incredible adaptability. The first international Moonbase had refined the art of independence, cooperation, and resourcefulness. The original settlers on First had been largely the progeny of ingenious Moon and asteroid-belt miner parents, and the Pern colony included many descendants of those original pioneering groups.

  Paul and Emily proposed to institute yearly congregations of as many people from the isolated settlements as possible to reaffirm the basic tenets of the colony, acknowledge progress, and apply the minds of many to address any general problems. Such a gathering would also be the occasion for trading and social festivities. Cabot Francis Carter, one of the legists, had proposed setting aside a certain area, midway on the continent, that would be the center for these annual assemblies.

  “That would be the best of all possible worlds,” Cabot had said in a mellifluous bass voice that had often stirred Supreme Courts on Earth and First. Emily had once told Paul that Cabot was the most unlikely of their charter members, but it was his legal guild that had produced the actual charter and rammed it through the bureaucracy to be ratified by the FSP council. “We may not achieve it on Pern. But we can damn sure try!”

  Alone with Emily and Ongola, Paul recalled that stirring challenge as he ticked off names on his long callused fingers. “Which is why I think we should continue to keep tabs on people like Bitra, Tashkovich, Nabol, Lemos, Olubushtu, Kung, Usuai, and Kimmer. The list is, mercifully, short, considering our numbers. I’m not adding Kenjo, because he’s shown absolutely no connection with any of the others.”

  “I still don’t like it. Secret surveillance smacks too much of the subterfuges used by other governments in more parlous times,” Emily said grimly. “It feels demeaning to myself and to my office to use such tactics.”

  “There’s nothing demeaning in knowing who’s agin you,” Paul argued. “An intelligence section has always proved invaluable.”

  “In revolutions, wars, power struggles, yes, but not here on Pern.”

  “Here as well as everywhere else in the galaxy, Em,” Paul replied forcefully. “Mankind, not to mention Nathi, and even the Eridanites to some degree, prove in many ways that greed is universal. I don’t see the bounty of Pern changing that trait.”

  “Forgo that futile old argument, my friends,” Ongola said with one of his wise, sad smiles. “The necessary steps have already been taken to defunction the gig. I have, as you recommended – ” He inclined his head to Paul. “ – stripped the gig of several minor but essential parts in the ignition system, the effect of which would be obvious early on, and substituted two dud chips in the guidance module, something that would not be so obvious.” He gestured out the window. “Sleds are allowed to park any which way, effectively but surreptitiously blocking the gig from taking off. But I don’t really know why she would.”

  Paul Benden winced, and the other two looked away from him, knowing that he had allowed himself to be too intimate with her for an injudicious length of that outward voyage.

  “Well, I’d be more worried if Avril knew about that cache of Kenjo’s,” Paul said. “Telgar’s figures indicate that there’s half a tank’s worth for the Mariposa.” He grimaced. He had found it hard enough to believe that Kenjo Fusaiyuko had scrounged so much fuel. Paul had a grudging admiration for the sheer scope of the theft, even if he could not understand the motive, and especially for the risks that Kenjo had gotten away with during all those fuel-saving shuttle trips.

  “Avril favors us so seldom with her company that I don’t worry that she’d discover the hoard,” Emily said with a wry smile. “I’ve also managed to have Lemos, Kimmer, and Nabol assigned to different sections, with few occasions to return here. ‘Divide and conquer,’ the man said.”

  “Inappropriate, Emily,” Paul replied, grinning.

  “If, and I do stress that improbability, Avril should discover and use Kenjo’s purloined fuel,” Ongola began, holding up a finger for each point, “manage to find the missing pieces, and fly the gig out of here undetected, she would have a half-full tank. She would not then drain the ships’ reserves to a danger point. Frankly, we would be well rid of her and whoever she deigns to take with her. I think we dwell too much on the matter. Those seismic reports from the eastern archipelago are far more worrying. Young Mountain is smoking again and twitching its feet.”

  “I agree,” Paul said, quite willing to turn to the more immediate problem.

  “Yes, but for what purpose did Kenjo take so much fuel?” Emily asked. “You haven’t answered that question. Why would he risk the safety of passengers and cargo? And he is a genuinely eager colonist! He’s already chosen his stake acreage.”

  “A pilot of Kenjo’s ability risked nothing,” Paul replied smoothly. “His shuttle flights were without incident. I do know that flying is his life.”

  Ongola regarded the admiral in mild surprise. “Hasn’t he done enough flying for one lifetime?”

  Paul smiled with understanding. “Not Kenjo. What I do completely appreciate is that flying a mere power sled is a come-down, a loss of prestige, face, considering the kind of craft he’s flown and where he’s been. You say that he’s chosen his acres, Emily? Where?”

  “Down beyond what people are beginning to call the Sea of Azov, as far away from Landing as he can get but on rather a pleasant plateau, to judge by the probe report,” Emily replied. She hoped that the meeting would conclude soon. Pierre had promised her a special meal, and she found that she was enjoying those quiet dinners more than she had thought she wo
uld.

  “Howinell is Kenjo going to get those tons of fuel there?” Benden asked.

  “I suspect we’ll have to wait and see,” Ongola replied with the trace of a smile on his lips. “He’s got the same right as everyone else to use power sleds to transport his goods, and he’s done some close trading with work units at the commissary. Shall I have a word with Joel about Kenjo’s requisitions?”

  Emily glanced quickly at Paul, who was adamant in his defense of Kenjo. “Well, I don’t like unsolved riddles. I’d prefer some sort of explanation, and I think you would, too, Paul.” When Benden nodded reluctantly, Emily said that she would speak to Joel Lilienkamp.

  Which brings us back to that third tremor,” Paul Benden said. “How’s work progressing on buttressing the stores warehouses and the one with all the medical supplies?

  We can’t afford to lose such irreplaceable items.”

  Ongola consulted his notes. He wrote with a bold angular script that looked, from Emily’s angle, like ancient manuscript ornamentations. All three of them, as well as most section heads, had made a point of reverting to less sophisticated methods of note-taking than speech processors. The power packs, whose rechargeability was good but not infinite, were to be reserved for essential uses, so everyone was rediscovering the art of calligraphy.

  “The work will be completed by next week. The seismic net has been extended as far as the active volcano in the eastern archipelago and to Drake’s Lake.”

  Paul grimaced. “Are we going to let him get away with that?”

  “Why not?” Emily asked, grinning. “No one’s contesting it. Drake was the first to see it. A community settling there would have ample space to grow, and plenty of industry to support it.”

  “Is it scheduled for a vote?” Paul asked after an appreciative sip of his brandy.

  “No,” Ongola said with another hint of a grin. “Drake is still campaigning. He doesn’t want any opposition, and whatever there might have been is now worn down.”

  Paul snorted, and Emily cast her eyes upward in amused exasperation with the flamboyant pilot. Then Paul pensively regarded the remainder of the brandy in his glass. As Emily went on to the next point on their informal agenda, he took another sip, rolling the liquor around in his mouth, savoring the soon-to-be-exhausted beverage. He could and did drink the quikal but found it harsh to a palate trained to subtleties.

  “We are proceeding well in general terms,” Emily was saying briskly. “You heard that one of the dolphins died, but Olga’s death was accepted by her community with considerable equanimity. According to Ann Gabri and Efram, they had expected more fatalities. Olga was, apparently,” she added with a grin, “older than she said she was and hadn’t wished to let her last calf go into the unknown without her.”

  All three chuckled and followed Paul’s lead as he raised a toast to maternal love.

  “Even our . . . nomads . . . have settled in,” Emily went on, after checking her notepad. “Or, rather, spread out.” She tapped it with her pencil, still unused to handwriting notes but struggling to get accustomed to archaic memory assists. The only voice-activated device still operable was the surface interface with the main computer banks on the Yokohama, but it was rarely used anymore. “The nomads’ve made rather a lot of inroads on clothing fabrics, but when those are depleted, that’s the end of it and they’ll have to make their own or trade, the same as the rest of us. We have located all their campsites. Even on foot, the Tuareg contingent can travel astonishing distances, but they camp for a while, in two separate sections.”

  “Well, they’ve a whole planet to lose themselves in,” Paul said expansively. “Have they posed any other problems, Ongola?”

  The dark man shook his heavy head, lowering the lids of his deep set eyes. He was agreeably surprised by the nomads’ smooth transition to life on Pern. Every week each tribe sent a representative to the veterinary sheds. The forty-two mares brought in coldsleep by the colony were all in foal, and the nomads’ leaders had accepted the fact that a mare’s gestation period was eleven months on Pern as it had been on Earth.

  “As long as the vets keep their sense of humor. But Red Hanrahan seems to understand their ways and deals with them.”

  “Hanrahan? Didn’t his daughter find the dragonets?”

  “She and a boy, one of the travelers,” Ongola replied. “They also provided the corpses which the bios have been clucking over.”

  “Could be useful creatures,” Benden said.

  “They already are,” Emily added stoutly.

  Ongola smiled. One day, Ongola thought, he would find a nest at the critical hatching point and he would have one of those charming and friendly, nearly intelligent creatures as a pet. He had once learned Dolphin, but he had never been able to overcome his fear of being constricted underwater to share their world properly. He needed space about him. Once, when Paul was sharing one of the long watches with him on the journey to Pern, the admiral had argued most eloquently that the dangers of outer space were even more inimical to human life than those of inner sea.

  “Water is airless,” Paul had said, “although it contains oxygen, but when and if the Pure Lives’ hold on human adaptations is broken, humans will be able to swim without artificial help. Space has no oxygen at all.”

  “But you are weightless in space. Water presses down on you. You can feel it.”

  “You’d better not feel space,” Paul had replied with a laugh, but he had not argued the point further.

  “Now, to more pleasant matters,” Paul said. “How many contract marriages are to be registered tomorrow, Emily?”

  Emily smiled, riffling pages of her notepad to come to the next seventh-day sheet, since that had become the usual time for such celebrations. In order to widen the gene pool in the next generation the charter permitted unions of varying lengths, first insuring the support of a gravid woman and the early years of the resultant child. Prospective partners could choose which conditions suited their requirements, but there were severe penalties, up to the loss of all stake acres, for failing to fulfill whatever contract had been agreed and signed before the requisite number of witnesses.

  “Three!”

  “The numbers are falling off,” Paul remarked.

  “I’ve done my bit,” Ongola said, slyly glancing at the two staunchly single leaders.

  Ongola had courted Sabra Stein so adroitly that neither of his close friends had realized he had become attached until the couple’s names had appeared on the marital schedule six weeks earlier. In fact, Sabra was already pregnant, which had led Paul to remark that the big gun was not firing blanks. He had let his bawdy humor disguise his relief for he knew that Ongola still grieved for the wife and family of his youth. Ongola’s hatred of the Nathi and his implacable desire for revenge had sustained the man throughout the war. For a long while, Paul had worried that his favorite aide and valued commander might be unable to alter that overpowering hatred even in a more peaceful clime.

  “Emily, has Pierre consented yet?” Ongola asked, a knowing grin lighting a somber face that even his present felicitous state did not completely brighten.

  Emily was astonished. She had thought that she and Pierre had been discreet. But she had recently noticed in herself a tendency to smile more easily and to lose the thread of conversations for no apparent reason.

  She and Pierre were an unlikely combination of personalities, but that was half the pleasure of it. Their relationship had begun quite unexpectedly about the fifth week after Landing, when Pierre had asked her opinion of a casserole composed entirely of indigenous ingredients. He administered the mass catering of Landing, and very well, she thought, considering the wide range of tastes and dietary requirements. He had started to serve her special dishes when she ate at the big mess hall. Then, when she would often have to work through the lunch hour, Pierre de Courci would bring over the tray she ordered.

  “If I were the possessive type, I would keep his cooking to myself.” she replied. “Kind
ly remember that I am past child-bearing, an advantage you men have over me. How about it, Paul? Will you do your bit?” Emily knew that her tone had a snap to it, born of envy. None of her children, all adults, had wished to accompany her on a one-way journey.

  Unperturbed, Paul Benden merely smiled enigmatically and sipped at his brandy.

  “Caves. Sallah cried, nudging Tarvi’s arm and pointing to the rock barrier in front of them. Sunlight outlined openings in its sheer face.

  He reacted instantly and enthusiastically, with the kind of almost innocent joy of discovery that Sallah found so appealing in him. The continually unfolding beauties of Pern had not palled on Tarvi Andiyar. Each new wonder was greeted with as much interest as the last one he had extolled for its magnificence, its wealth, or its potential. She had wangled ruthlessly to get herself assigned as his expedition pilot. They were making their third trip together – and their first solo excursion.

  Sallah was playing it cautiously, concentrating on making herself so professionally indispensable to Tarvi that an opportunity to project her femininity would not force him to retreat into his usual utterly courteous, utterly impersonal shell. She had seen other women who made a determined play for the handsome, charming geologist rebuffed by his demeanor; they were surprised, puzzled, and sometimes hurt by the way he eluded their ploys. For a while, Sallah wondered if Tarvi liked women at all, but he had shown no preference for the acknowledged male lovers in Landing. He treated everyone, man, woman, and child, with the same charming affability and understanding. And whatever his sexual preference, he was nonetheless expected to add to the next generation. Sallah was already determined to be the medium and would find the moment.

  Perhaps she had found it. Tarvi had a special fondness for caves; he had at various times called them orifices of the Mother Earth, entrances to the mysteries of her creation and construction, and windows into her magic and bounty. Even though this was Pern, he worshipped the same mystery that had dominated his life so far.