Dragons Dawn

by Anne McCaffrey

  The chestnut mare heaved again, extruding the foal farther. Since its legs, head, and forequarters were wet with birth fluids, Sean could not distinguish the animal’s color. Then the rest of the body emerged, followed, with a final push, by the hindquarters. There was no doubt that he was not only darkly dappled but male. With a crow of incredulous joy, Sean dropped to the little fellow’s head to mop it dry, even before the mare could form her bond. Tears streaming down her dusty face, Sorka hugged herself in joy. Dimly she heard the excited comments of the other animal midwives sharing the large barn.

  “He’s the only colt,” her father said, returning to Sean and Sorka. “As ordered.” Though the colony actually needed as many female animals as it could breed, Sean’s preference for a colt had been duly considered. And one local stallion would be a safeguard, though there were more than enough varied sperms in reserve. “Grand fellow, though,” Red remarked, nodding his head approvingly. “Make a good sixteen hands, if I’m any judge. A sturdy nine stone, I’d say. Fine good fellow, and she bore him like a trooper.” He stroked the neck of the little mare, who was licking the colt as he suckled her with vigor. “Come now, Sorka,” he went on, seeing her tear-streaked face. “I’ll keep my promise that you’ll have a horse, too.” He gave her a reassuring hug.

  “I know you will, Da,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “I’m crying because I’m so happy for Sean. He didn’t believe Bay, you know. Not for one moment.”

  Red Hanrahan laughed softly, for it wouldn’t do for Sean to hear. Not that the boy was aware of anything but the colt, twisting its stump of a tail as if that would speed its suckling. For once, Sean’s customary wary, often cynical expression had softened with amazed tenderness as he devoured the colt with his eyes.

  After Sorka gave her father a hug for his assurances, she stepped away from him, and her bronze glided down to her shoulder, chattering in a happy social tone as he wrapped his tail possessively about her neck. Then Duke leaned down Sorka’s chest, his eyes sparkling blue and green as he, too, examined the new arrival closely. Encouraged, Sean’s brown pair dropped to the lower rail of the foaling box, exchanging cheeps and chirps with Duke.

  “You approve?” Sean asked them, grinning despite the challenge in his tone.

  Bobbing their heads up and down vigorously, they extended wings, each complaining that the other’s wing was in the way, then they flicked their wings to their backs and assured Sean volubly that they approved. He grinned back at them.

  “He’s a real beauty, Sean. Just what you wanted,” Sorka said.

  Unaccountably Sean shook his head, looking dubious. “Too young to tell if he’ll match Cricket.”

  “Oh, you are the utter limit!” Sorka snapped angrily. She left the box, nearly jamming the door rail as she closed it with considerable vehemence.

  “What’d I say?” Sean demanded of Red Hanrahan.

  “I think you’ll have to figure that one out yourself, boyo!” Red clapped him on the shoulder, torn between amusement and a certain concern for his daughter. “Give the mare her feed before you leave will you, Sean?”

  As Red Hanrahan walked down the aisle, checking on the other new arrivals, he considered Sorka’s behavior. She was thirteen but a well-developed girl who had been menstruating for nearly a year. That she doted on Sean was patent to everyone but Sean. He tolerated her. As did Sean’s family. Mairi and Red had talked it over, wary of the boy’s background though both Hanrahans acknowledged that it was time to discard old attitudes and opinions.

  Sean, too, had made several notable concessions. Whether spurred by competition with Sorka or mere male arrogance, he had improved his reading and writing skills and frequently used a viewer to scan veterinary texts in Red’s office. Red had carefully cultivated the boy’s interest and encouraged him to help with the breeding stock. The boy unquestionably had a way with animals, not just horses, though he ignored sheep altogether.

  “Sean says sheep are for stealing, trading, and eating,” Sorka told her father when he had remarked on that exception.

  Mairi did worry occasionally that Sorka was inevitably partnered with Sean when they were assigned together to the zoological expeditions. But, as Sorka blithely explained, she got along with Sean, and they were both more used to handling animals and wildlife than urban-bred young people. As long as they did their obligatory share of work for the colony, and enjoyed it, they were ahead of the game. Sean was also making more of a contribution to Landing’s efforts than most of his people. It was just that Sean and Sorka were becoming linked together in the collective Landing mind, Mairi wistfully remarked one evening to Red. To his surprise, Red found himself in the position of devil’s advocate. But then, like Sorka, he had grown accustomed to Sean’s ways and knew what to ignore.

  Sorka’s exhibition of female exasperation that morning was the first of its kind, to Red’s knowledge, and he wondered ruefully if her patience with Sean’s obtuseness was exhausted, or if their relationship was merely entering a new phase. Sorka had been given an appropriate theoretical education in sexual relationships but until today had shown only a patient acceptance of Sean’s behavior and eccentricities. He would have to talk with Mairi. When he got the chance.

  “Red! Reeeeddd!” another veterinarian called in alarm.

  Red ran to consult. It was not until much later that night that he remembered the problem of Sorka and Sean, but Mairi was already long asleep and, as well as being in the second trimester of a pregnancy, she was working hard enough in the creche to deserve her rest.

  The westward jutting finger of the northern continent pointed directly at the big island, which loomed lavender above the gray of the morning sea. Avril had lifted off from the desert camp well before dawn, leaving a message that she was taking a day off. The others would not mind, and she was as tired of Ozzie Munson and Cobber Alhinwa as they were of her.

  Yesterday, the two miners had found some really good turquoise and refused to tell her where, tantalizing her with brief glimpses of the very fine sky-blue-banded rock. She had known when they came into camp the previous evening that they were excited about the hunk that they were tossing back and forth. She had merely asked to see it, and had allowed herself to become irritated when the two miners had responded with secrecy. She would have to be very cautious with those two, she thought. They thought themselves so clever. Anyhow, turquoise, though valued for its rarity on Earth, was not really worth the trouble of ingratiating herself to those two jerks.

  Then, at supper, when they were still whispering between themselves and glancing at her with sly smiles, she began to wonder if they had heard something in particular to make them react as they had to her polite and diffident query.

  She tried to remember if they had ever teamed up with Bart Lemos. But he was at Andiyar’s ore mountain. He must, for once, have kept quiet about the gold nuggets that he had been panning out of a mountain stream above the camp. Obedient to the pact they had made on the Yoko, he had given them to her to hide in her cache at Landing. She had not confided much of her scheme to him, for, given a few mugs of quikal, Bart Lemos would give anyone his life history.

  Maybe Stev Kimmer was not as good a choice of ally as she had initially thought, hearing his sly and witty complaints during the last year of that interminable journey to this god forsaken planet. He was more attractive than the others; in fact, he was extremely attractive and, more importantly, lusty, with a willingness to experiment that the much vaunted Admiral Benden had never displayed. A bit of a bore in bed, our dear admiral. Damn Paul Benden. Why had he turned so cool toward her? After all those protestations of admiration and devotion. She had been so certain that she had felt the marriage contract in her hand. Then, a scant year away from their destination, when Rukbat had grown from a spark to a gleam in the blackness of space, Benden had altered. He suddenly had had no time for her at all. Well, he would find out what Avril Bitra was made of. And then it would be too late.

  Colonizing had seemed like a goo
d idea back on Earth when the excitement of the Nathi War had died down. Any alternative, save First Centauri, which everyone knew was controlled by the First Families and founding companies, was no better than Earth or moldering at grade on a lumbering merchantman. She had even toyed with the challenge of navigating mining ships within the Belts until the Roosevelt Dome had exploded for no apparent reason, killing all but a handful of the ten thousand inhabitants. The chance to rule a new world had drawn her. Over the years, she had had enough experience with psycho profiles to know how to control her pulse and what answers to give to the asinine questions that were supposed to separate truth from fiction. And so she had been accepted as astrogator for the Pern expedition.

  But since she had failed to capture Paul Benden, who would be Pern’s first leader-in her estimation, the less colorful Emily Boll would be over shadowed by the more flamboyant admiral once they landed on Pern – she had decided that living the rest of her life in obscurity at the end of the Milky Way was insupportable. She was, after all, a competent astrogator and, given a ship, charts, and a deep-sleep tank, she could make her way to some other civilized and sophisticated planet that catered to the life-style she wished to enjoy.

  She had begun with Stev Kimmer, partly just to ease the pain of losing Paul Benden. When she had noticed that Bart Lemos managed to attach himself to her whenever Stev was on duty, she encouraged him, too. Nabhi Nabol joined the group one evening, along with several others. Bart and Nabhi were pilots, each with a useful secondary skill: Bart in mining, and Nabhi in computers. Stev was a mechanical engineer with an uncanny ability to diagnose computer failures and rearrange chips to do twice the work they had been designed to handle.

  For the plan taking shape in her mind, she assembled useful cronies. Most were contractors like herself, or small-stake charters beginning to feel that they had been shortchanged on their deals. In the back of Avril’s mind was the notion that it would be fun to see if she could foment sufficient discord to overthrow their benevolent leaders and rule Pern on her own, instead of as Paul Benden’s consort. But that would have to wait for a propitious moment once the colony had been settled in and troubles began.

  So far, except for minor hitches, there had been no trouble of the type that she could use for her purposes. Everyone was too busy scurrying around, settling in, raising livestock, and zipping here and there looking at real estate. She despised the colonists for being so enthusiastic about the ghastly empty wasteland of a world, with its noisy wildlife and the thousands of things that crawled, wriggled, or flew. There was not a decent useful animal native to the entire planet and she was getting very tired of eating fish or wherry, which sometimes tasted more like fish than what came out of the sea. Even tank beef would have been an acceptable substitute.

  More and more her determination to leave this wretched backwater world was reinforced. But she would leave it in style, and the hell with the rest of them.

  Stev Kimmer was essential to that escape. He was constructing an emergency beacon for her from parts he had “found” on the Yokohama; without that essential piece of equipment, her scheme would have to be aborted. Kimmer had to be kept on the mark, too, for when she wanted to appropriate the captain’s gig.

  More important was his willingness to participate in her plan to stake the right sections of the island to prospect for the gemstones that she knew were there. Grandmama Shavva had left her single remaining descendant a legacy that had to be grasped.

  Kimmer was to requisition a sled for seven days in a quite legitimate search for a stake. He was supposed to imply that he was looking about the southern continent. As a veteran of the Nathi War, he had twice Avril’s allotment. That the charterers had more than any contractor, including herself, the astrogator, who had delivered them safely to the wretched place, was a fact that had never set well with her.

  Damn Munson and Alhinwa. They could have told her where they had unearthed the turquoise. Pern was a virgin world, with metal and mineral aplenty, untouched as yet by careless prospectors and greedy merchants. There was plenty for everyone. Back on sophisticated worlds, any large, well-colored hunks of that sky-blue stone would be snatched up by ardent collectors – the higher the asking price the more collectible!

  And why had she not heard from Nabhi? She suspected that he might be trying to run a program of his own, instead of the one she had set. She would have to watch that one: he was a devious sort. Much as she was. In the long run, she had the upper hand, since she was the astrogator, and Nabhi did not have the skills required to get home by himself. He had to have her, but she did not have to have him – unless it suited her. Nabol was not as good overall for her purposes as Kimmer was, but he would do in a pinch.

  She had almost bridged the distance between continent and island and could see waves lashing the granite rock. She veered to port looking for the mouth of the natural harbor where the long-dead survey team had made camp. She had told Kimmer to meet her there. She felt better about being someplace that had already been occupied. She could not stand listening to the idiot colonists going on and on about being “first” to see that or “first” to step there, or the naming arguments that continually dominated conversation night after night around the bonfire. Shit in Drake’s Lake! Fatuous ass! Lousy gravity-ball player!

  She corrected her course as she spotted the two natural spurs of rock that formed a breakwater to the roughly oval natural harbor. Kimmer would have hid the sled anyhow just in case . . . She caught herself and snorted in sour amusement. As if anyone on this goody-good world is checking up on anyone else! “We are all equal here.” Our brave and noble leaders have so ordained it. With equal rights to share in Pern’s wealth. You just bet. Only I’ll get my equal share before anyone else and shake this planet’s dirt off my boots!

  Just as she passed over the breakwater, she saw the glint of metal under the lush foliage to starboard on a ledge above the sandy shore-line. Nearby was the smoke of Kimmer’s small fire. She landed her sled neatly beside his.

  “You were right about this place, baby,” he greeted her, a closed fist upraised and shaken in victory. “I got here yesterday afternoon, good tail wind all the way, so I did a decco. And see what I found first thing!”

  “Let me see,” she said, displaying a bright breathless eagerness, though she did not at all like his presumptive solo explorations.

  He smiled broadly as he slowly opened his fingers and let his hand drop so that she could see the large gray rock he held. Her eagerness drained with discouragement until he turned the stone just slightly and she caught the unmistakable glint of green, half buried in one end.

  “Fardles!” She snatched the stone from his hand and whirled to the sun, which had risen over the ocean by then. She wet her finger and rubbed at the green glint.

  “I also found this,” Kimmer said.

  Looking up, she saw him holding a squarish green stone the size of a spoon bowl, rough-edged where it had been prized from a limestone cavity.

  She almost threw away the rock with its still-bidden treasure in her eagerness to take the rough emerald from him. She held it to the sun and saw the flaw, but had no complaint about the clear deep green. She weighed it in her hand. Why, it had to be thirty or forty carats. With clever lapidary to cut beyond the flaw, there would be fifteen carats of gemstone. And if that stone was just a sample . . . The idea of apprenticing as a gemstone cutter and using that magnificent jewel to learn on amused her.

  “Where?” she demanded, her breath constricted with urgency?

  “Over there.” He half turned, pointing up into the thick vegetation. “There’s a whole cave of them embedded in the rock.”

  “You just walked in and it winked at you?” She forced herself to speak lightly, amusedly, smiling up approvingly at his beaming face. He looked so bloody pleased with himself. She continued to smile but ground her teeth.

  “I’ve klah for you,” he said, gesturing to the fire where he had rigged a spit and a protecting rock for h
is kettle.

  “That abominable stuff,” she exclaimed. She had a fleet-incurred preference for strong coffee, and the last had been served at that pathetic Thanksgiving shindig – and spilled when the tremor had shaken the urns from their stands. The last coffee from Earth had seeped, undrunk, into the dirt of Pern.

  “Oh, if you use enough sweetening, it’s not all that bad.” He poured her a cup even though she had not said that she wanted one. “They say it’s got as much caffeine in it as coffee or tea. The secret’s in drying the bark thoroughly before grinding and steeping it.

  He had lashed sweetener into the cup and handed it to her, expecting her to be grateful for his thoughtfulness. She could not afford to alienate Kimmer even if he sounded revoltingly like a good little colonist, approving of good colonial substitutes.

  “Sorry, Stev,” the said, smiling apologetically at him as she took the cup. “Early morning nerves. I really do miss coffee.”

  He gave a shrug. “We won’t for long, now, will we?”

  She kept her smile in place, wondering if he knew how inane he sounded. Then, she cautioned herself severely, if she had only been more careful with Paul, she might have been first lady on Pern. What had she done wrong? She could have sworn she would be able to maintain his interest in her. All had gone perfectly right up until they entered the Rukbat system. Then it had been as if she no longer existed. And I got them here!

  “Avril?”

  She came back to the present at the impatience in Stev Kimmer’s voice. “Sorry!” she said.

  “I said that I’ve already got food for the day, so as soon as you finish that we can go.”

  She tipped her cup, watching the dark liquid momentarily stain the white sand. She jiggled the cup to scatter the last drops, put it upside down by the fire like a good little colonist, and rose to her feet, smiling brightly at Kimmer. “Well, let’s go!”