Emily did not even pause to take a breath. “Just what Paul and I have been discussing. There’s enough fuel, I believe, to transport some of the heavier equipment by shuttle. Then we can use the metal in situ. Jim, the Pern Navy is about to be commissioned.”
Paul grinned at Emily. It was much easier when people made up their own minds to do what their leaders had decided was best for them.
PART THREE. Crossing
11.18.08 Pern
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“Holiest of holies,” Telgar murmured respectfully as he held his torch high and still could not illuminate the ceiling. His voice started echoes in the vast chamber, repeating and repeating down side corridors until finally the noise was absorbed by the sheer distance from its source.
“Oh, I say, mate, this is one big bonzo cave,” Ozzie Munson said keeping his voice to a whisper. His eyes were white and wide in his tanned, wind seared face.
Cobber Alhinwa, who was rarely impressed by anything, was equally awed. “A bleeding beaut!” His whisper matched Ozzie’s.
“There are hundreds of ready-made chambers in this complex alone,” Telgar said. He was unfolding the plassheet on which he and his beloved Sallah had recorded their investigations of eight years earlier. “There are at least four openings to the cliff top which could be used for air circulation. Channel down to water level and install pumps and pipe – I came across big reservoirs of artesian water. Core down to the thermal layer and, big as it is, this whole complex could be warmed in the winter months.” He turned back to the opening. “Block that up with native stone and this would be an impregnable fort. No safer place on this world during Threadfall. Further along the valley, there are surface-level caves near that pasture land. Of course, it would have to be seeded, but we still have the alfalfa grass propagators that were brought for the first year.
“At the time there was no need to investigate thoroughly, but the facilities exist. As I recall when we over flew the range above us, we discovered a medium-size caldera, well pocked with small cliffs, about a half-hour’s flight from here. We didn’t think to mark whether it was accessible at ground level. It might be ideal for dragon quarters, so accessibility isn’t a problem, provided they do fly as well as dragonets.”
“We seen a couple old craters like that,” Ozzie said, consulting the battered notebook that habitually lived in his top pocket. “One on the east coast, and one in the mountains above the three drop lakes, when we was prospecting for metal ores.”
“So,” Cobber began, having recovered from his awe, “the first thing is cut steps to this here level.” He walked to the edge of the cave and looked down critically at the stone face. “Maybe a ramp, like, to move stuff up here easy like. That incline over there’s nearly a stair case already.” He pointed to the left-hand side. “Steps neat as you please up to the next level.”
Ozzie dismissed those notions. “Naw, those Landingers will want their smart-ass engineers and arki-tects to fancify it for them with the proper mod cons.”
Cobber settled a helmet on his head and switched on its light. “Yeah, else some poor buggers get all closet-phobic.”
“Claustrophic, you iggerant digger,” Ozzie corrected him.
“Whatever. Inside’s safest with that farking stuff dropping on ya alla time. C’mon, Oz, let’s go walkabout. The admiral and the governor are counting on our expertise, y’know.” He gave an involuntary grunt as he settled the heavy cutter on his shoulder and strode purposefully toward the first tunnel.
Ozzie put on his own helmet and picked up a coil of rope, pitons and a rock hammer. Thermal and ultraviolet recorders, comm unit and other mining hand-units were attached to hooks on his belts. Lastly, he slung one of the smaller rock cutters over his shoulder. “Let’s go test some claustrophia. We’ll start left, right? I’ll give ya a holler in a bit, Telgar.”
Cobber had already disappeared in the first of the left-hand openings as Ozzie followed him. Alone, Telgar stood for a long moment, eyes closed, head back, arms slightly away from his body, his palms turned outward in supplication. He could hear the slight noises of disturbed creatures and the distorted murmur of low conversation from Ozzie and Cobber as they made their way past the first bend in the tunnel.
There was nothing of Sallah in that cave. Even the place where they had built a tiny campfire had been swept bare to the fire-darkened stone. Yet there she had offered herself to him, and he had not known what a gift he had received that night!
The sudden high-pitched keening of the stone cutter shattered all thought and sent Telgar about the urgent business of making the natural fort into a human habitation.
The hum roused Sorka and she tried to find a more comfortable position for her cumbersome body. Fardles, but she would be grateful when she could finally sleep on her stomach again. The humming persisted, a subliminal sound that made a return to sleep impossible. She resented the noise, because she had not been sleeping at all well during the past few weeks and she needed all the rest she could get. Irritably she stretched out and twitched aside the curtain. It could not be day already. Then, startled, she clutched the edge of the curtain because there was light outside her house – the light of many dragon eyes, sparkling in the predawn gloom.
Her exclamation disturbed Sean, who stirred beside her, one hand reaching for her. She shook his shoulder urgently.
“Wake up, Sean. Look!” Whichever way she turned, she felt a sudden stab of pain in her groin so unexpected that she hissed.
Sean sat bolt upright beside her, his arms around her. “What is it, love? The baby?”
“It can’t be anything else,” she said, laughter bubbling out of her as she pointed out the window. “I’ve been warned!” She could not stop giggling. “Go look, Sean. Tell me if the fire-dragonets are roosting! I wouldn’t want them to miss this, any of them.”
Grinding sleep out of his eyes, Sean struggled to alertness. He halv glared at her for her ill-timed levity, but annoyance was replaced by concern when her laughter turned abruptly into another hissing intake of breath as a second painful spasm rippled across her distended belly.
“It’s time?” He ran one hand caressingly across her stomach, his fingers instinctively settling on the band of contracting muscle. “Yes it is. What’s so funny?” he added. She could not quite see his face in the dim light, but he sounded solemn, almost indignant.
“The welcoming committee, of course! All of them. Faranth, love are all present and accounted for?”
We are here, Faranth said, where we should be. You are amused.
“I am very amused,” Sorka said, but then another contraction caught her, and she clutched at Sean. “But that was not at all amusing. You’d better call Greta.”
“Jays, we don’t need her. I’m as good a midwife as she is,” Sean muttered, shoving feet into the shoes under their bed.
“For horses, cows, and nanny goats, yes, Sean, but it is expected for humans to assist humans . . . oooooh, Sean, these are very close together.”
He rose to his feet, pausing to throw the top blanket across his bare shoulders against the early morning’s chill, when there was a discrete knock at the door. He cursed.
‘’Who is it?” he roared, not at all pleased at the idea that someone might have come to summon him for a veterinary emergency right then.
“Greta!”
Sorka started to laugh again, but that became very difficult to do all of a sudden, and she switched to the breathing she had been taught, clutching at her great belly.
“How under the suns did you know, Greta?” she heard Sean ask his voice reflecting his astonishment.
“I was called,” Greta said with great dignity, gently pushing him to one side.
“By whom? Sorka only just woke up,” Sean replied, following Greta back to their room. “She’s the one who’s having the baby.”
“Not always the first to know when labor commences,” Greta said in a very calm, almost detached manner. “Not in Landing. And certainly not with a queen
dragon listening in on your mind.” She flicked on the lights as she entered the room and deposited her midwifery bag on the dresser. She had been a gangly girl who had turned into a rangy woman with hair and skin the same coffee color and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, very brown in her kindly face, missed few details.
“Faranth told you?” Sorka was astonished. A dragon speaking to someone outside of their group was unheard of.
“Not exactly,” Greta replied with a chuckle. “A fair of fire-dragonets flew in my window and made it remarkably plain that I was needed. Once I got outside, it wasn’t hard to figure out whose baby was coming. Now, let me see what’s going on here.”
I told them to get her, Faranth told Sorka in a smugly complacent tone of voice. You like her.
As Sorka lay back for Greta’s examination, she tried to figure that out. She liked her doctor, too, and had no qualms about him attending her delivery. How had Faranth sensed that she really had wanted Greta in attendance? Could Faranth possibly have sensed that she had always been friendly with Greta? Or was it some connection the golden dragon had made because Sorka had assisted Greta in the birth of Mairi Hanrahan’s latest, Sorka’s newest baby brother? But for Faranth to recognize an unconscious preference . . .
Sean slid cautiously onto the other side of the bed and reached for her hand. Sorka gave him a squeeze, laughter still bubbling up in her. She had so hated the last few weeks when her body had not seemed to be her own, when all its controls seemed to have been assumed by the bouncing, kicking, impertinent, restless fetus that gave her no rest at all. Her laughter was sheer elation that all of that was nearly over.
“Now let me have a look . . . another contraction?”
Sorka concentrated on her breathing, but the spasm was far more painful than she had anticipated. Then it was gone, pain and all. She felt sweat on her forehead. Sean blotted it gently.
You are hurting? Faranth’s voice became shrill.
“No, no, Faranth. I’m fine. Don’t worry!” Sorka cried.
“Faranth’s upset?” Keeping her hand tight in his, Sean crouched to see out the window to the dragons waiting there. “Yes, she is! Her eyes are gaining speed and orange.”
“I was afraid of that!” Mutely Sorka appealed to Sean. Expressions flitted across his face. If she read them correctly, he was annoyed with Faranth, indecisive – for once – about what to do, and anxious for her. Then tender concern dominated his face as he looked down at her, and she felt that she had never loved him more than at that moment.
“A pity we can’t have your dragon heat a kettle of water to keep her out of mischief,” Greta remarked, her strong capable hands finishing the examination. She gave Sorka’s distended belly a gentle pat. “We’ll take care of her fussing you right now. Can you turn on one side? Sean, help her.”
“I feel like an immense flounder,” Sorka complained as she struggled to turn. Then Sean, deftly and with hands gentler than she had ever known, helped her complete the maneuver. She had just reached the new position when another mighty spasm caught her, and she exhaled in astonishment. Outside Faranth trumpeted a challenge. “Don’t you dare wake everyone up, Faranth. I’m only having a baby.
You hurt! You are in distress! Faranth was indignant.
Sorka felt a slight push against the base of her spine, the coolness of the air gun, and then a blessed numbness that spread rapidly over her nether region.
“Oh, blessed Greta, how marvelous!”
You don‘t hurt. That is better. Faranth’s alarm subsided back into that curious thrumming of dragons, and Sorka could identify her voice in the hum as clearly as she heard the noise intensify. Oddly enough, the humming was soothing – or was it simply that she no longer had to anticipate that painful clutching of uterine muscles?
“Now, let’s get you to your feet for a little walking, Sorka,” Greta said. “You’re already fairly well dilated. I don’t think you’re going to be any time delivering this baby, even if you are a primipara.’
“I’m numb,” Sorka said by way of apology as Greta got her to her feet. Then Sean was on her other side.
He had gotten dressed, but Sorka, trying to watch where her nerveless feet were going, noticed that he did not have his socks on. She thought that endearing of him. Odd the difference between his hands and Greta’s – both caring, both gentle, but Sean’s loving and worried.
“That’s a girl,” Greta said encouragingly. “You’re doing just fine, three fingers dilated already. No wonder the fairs were alerted. And you’re not the only one exciting them tonight.” Greta chuckled as they began to retrace their steps across the lounge, up the short hall and into the bedroom. “It’s the walking that’s important . . . ah, good another contraction. Very good. Your breathing’s fine.”
“Who else is delivering?” Sorka asked because it helped to concentrate on things other than what her muscles were doing to her.
“Fortunately, Elizabeth Jepson. A new baby will help her get over the loss of the twins.”
Sorka felt a pang of grief. She remembered the two boys as mischievous youngsters on the Yoko, and recalled how she had envied her brother, Brian, for having friends his own age.
“It’s funny that, isn’t it?” Sorka said, speaking quickly. “People having two complete families, almost two separate generations. I mean, this baby will have an uncle only six months older. And be part of an entirely different generation . . . really.”
“One reason why we have to keep very careful birth records,” Greta said.
Scan grunted. “We’re all Pernese, that’s what matters!”
Sorka’s water burst then, and outside the humming went up a few notes and deepened in intensity.
“I think I’d better check you, Sorka,” Greta said.
Sean stared at her. “Do you deliver to dragonsong?”
Greta gave a low chuckle. “They’ve an instinct for birth, Sean, and I know you vets have been aware of it, too. Let’s get her back to the bed.”
Sorka, involved in the second phase of childbirth, found the dragonsong both comforting and soothing: it was like a blanket of sound shimmering about her, enfolding and uplifting and comforting. The sound suddenly increased in tempo, rising to a climax. Sean’s hands grasped hers, giving her his strength and encouragement. Every time she felt the contractions, painless because of the drug, he helped her push down. The spasms were becoming more rapid, almost constant, as if matters had been taken entirely out of her control. She let the instinctive movements take over, relaxing when she could, assisting because she had no other option.
Then she felt her body writhe in a massive effort, and when it had been expended, she felt a tremendous relief of all pressures and pullings. For one moment, there was complete silence outside, then she heard a new sound. Sean’s cry of triumph was lost in the trumpeting of eighteen dragons and who knew how many fire-dragonets! Oh dear, she thought distractedly. They’ll wake up the whole of Landing!
“You have a fine son, my dears,” Greta said, her voice ringing with satisfaction. “With a crop of thick red hair.”
“A son?” Sean asked, sounding immensely surprised.
“Now, don’t tell me, after all my hard work, Sean Connell, that you wanted a daughter?” Sorka demanded.
Sean just hugged her ecstatically.
“Sometimes I feel as if everyone’s forgotten all about us,” Dave Catarel said to Sean as they watched their two bronzes hunting. Sean, his eyes on Carenath, did not reply.
Although all the dragons were well able to fly short distances and had proved capable of hunting down wild wherries, their human partners grew anxious if they flew out of sight. Nor was it always possible to use a sled or a skimmer to accompany them. As a compromise, Sean had talked Red into giving them the culls or injured animals from the main herds. He and the others had rigged a Threadfall shelter for the mixed herd in one of the caves, and each took turns on the succession trays that supplied their fodder.
The yo
ung dragons were strong and flew well. But, erring on the side of caution, the veterinary experts had decided that riding should not be attempted until the full year had passed. Sean had railed privately to Sorka about such timidity, but she had talked him out of defiance, reminding him how much they stood to lose in forcing the young dragons. Fortunately the decision had been reached without consultation with Wind Blossom, which made it easier for Sean to accept what he called ‘sheer procrastination.’ He did not like her proprietary attitude toward the dragons. She continued to exercise Kitti Ping’s program, though without the same success. Her first four batches had not produced any viable eggs, but seven new sacs in the incubator looked promising.
The odds in Joel Lilienkamp’s book favored the success of the first hatching, but only marginally. Sean was privately determined to upset such odds, but he also would not risk official censure or jeopardize the young dragons.
“I really cannot repose the same confidence in Wind Blossom as I did in Kitti Ping,” Paul had told Sean and Sorka in a private conference, “but we would all breathe more easily if we could see some progress. Your dragons eat, grow, even fly to hunt. Will they also chew rock?” Paul began to tick off the points on his left hand. “Carry a rider? And preserve their valuable hides during Threadfall? The power pack situation is getting tight, Sean, very tight indeed.”
‘I know, Admiral,” Sean had replied, feeling grim and defensive. And eighteen fully functional dragons are not going to make fighting Thread all that much easier.”
“But self-reproducing, self-sustaining Thread fighters will make one helluva lot of difference in the long run. And it’s the long run, frankly, Sean, Sorka, that worries me.”
Sean kept his opinion about Wind Blossom to himself. Part of his loyalty to Carenath, Faranth, and the others of the first Hatching; a good deal stemmed from his lack of confidence in Wind Blossom, where he had had every faith in her grandmother. After all, Kit Ping had been trained at the source, with the Eridani.
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