“Others? Where are they?”
“Probably hunting. The dragons still like to hunt, you know. It’s instinctive. But once they’ve made the kill, they don’t even bother to blood it. There were a lot of fine cattle that had to be let loose for the Second Crossing. Not enough room for any but the prime breeding stock on the boats going to the new settlement. They’ve multiplied, and the cats—”
“Cats?” Moreta exclaimed nervously.
“Yes, cats. The big felines that Ted Tubberman bred and let loose down here. ”
“Oh! But they’re the creatures that brought us the plague. Don’t let any of them come near you! ”
Marco laughed, and the knot of tension gripping Moreta’s innards gently dissolved. “Not ruddy likely, Moreta. For one thing, they’re usually scared of dragons; and two: We have no weapons”—he opened his hands wide—“so we keep our distance. How could they spread a plague?”
Moreta said, “Believe me, they can. I don’t know how many people have died. But Healers managed to develop a vaccine. ”
“How did cats get to the north?” Marco wondered.
Moreta clicked her tongue. “Some seamen who’d been shipwrecked on the coast found the animal and brought it back, thinking they’d make a mark or two displaying it at Gathers. Before we traced the disease back to the cat, too many people had been infected. ”
“Don’t your people know about quarantines?” Marco asked, taken aback.
“Of course we do, but the plague spread too fast. At first no one knew what had started it. We get contagious diseases now and then, but they’re usually just seasonal and only affect a small number of folk. This plague affected almost everyone. ”
“Riders and dragons died, too?”
“Yes,” she replied sadly. “How did you know that?”
“I saw quite a few of them,” he said, grimacing. “Far more than would have been accounted for in a heavy Threadfall. ”
“But if you saw them in between, then you must have seen where they went!” Moreta felt a rush of hope.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know where they went. I haven’t been there yet.” A curious expression touched his face as he talked. Duluth warbled gently to his rider.
Moreta stared at him, having figured out that he and the first riders had all been about nineteen or twenty Turns at the time they Impressed those first dragons. Why, he must be more than fifteen hundred Turns old! That is, if he really existed at all! She wanted to reach out and touch him.
“I still don’t understand. ..” Her voice quavered with uncertainty and she felt fresh tears behind her eyes.
“How I could be here and between?” He shook his head. “I don’t understand either, but demonstrably I am. Cogito, ergo sum. ”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s a very old Earth language, called Latin. It translates as ‘I think, therefore I am. ’ ”
“Oh. ”
“A double big oh, Moreta. What year—I mean, Turn—is this?”
Moreta stared at him for a moment even as she said the words. “Fifteen hundred and forty-three. We’re nearly through the Sixth Pass. ”
He nodded, staring at some far distant spot on the horizon. A gentle sigh passed his lips.
“But how have you survived?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve decided that time must be different in between. Which supports my notion that it’s another dimension or level, or something. ”
“Aren’t you—” Moreta stopped, reluctant to hurt this gentle young man with her prying. “—lonely?” she asked.
“I have Duluth.” He looked toward his dragon, lounging next to Holth on the sand. As he made mental contact with his life partner, Moreta saw his eyes shining with the bond that all dragonriders knew. It made her long even more for Orlith.
Duluth rumbled with affection for his rider, and Holth stirred briefly as she lay in the warm sands.
“What happened to you and Holth?”
“Bad luck, bad imaging. Ours, I can candidly say, was due to fatigue and too many time changes. ”
“Time changes?”
Moreta took a deep breath, composing herself before she began her story. As she recounted the events of the last few days, the pervading calmness that had overcome her faded. With the conclusion of her tale, her emotions welled up.
“All I said to her was ‘we only have to take one last jump between, Holth, that’s all.’ And then we were stuck until you found us.” Moreta broke down in tears at her failure to give a clear picture of where she and Holth should have gone. Through sobs she cried, “I never said goodbye to Orlith. ”
“This is where I help,” Marco said gently, as he shifted his position so he could put an arm around her shoulders. He rocked her slightly until she was calm again. “You delivered parcels to forty different places in the space of an afternoon?” He couldn’t help sounding incredulous. “But taking off and landing take up a lot of time. ”
“Well, we made each hour work for two, or maybe three. Dragons can go between time, too, you see. ”
“Dragons can go between time?” Marco asked, astonished.
“Well, as you can see, it can be very dangerous and totally disorient the rider. I’ve done it before, and even gone to the future, but only because the necessities of fighting this plague made that unavoidable. But we were short of riders. Since I was the most familiar with Keroon plains and holds, I offered to make the circuit. I used the position of the sun to guide me, but in order to get the medicine to everyone today, as promised, I had to backtrack. We were both exhausted by the time we made the last delivery. ”
He touched her shoulder, studying her face with such a look of understanding that she blinked in surprise.
“Marco, why have you been here so long?”
He shrugged. “No place else we can go or come back to. ”
“But haven’t you tried to follow any of the other dragons and riders when you see them in between?” she asked.
“Yes, we’ve tried. But it’s all just endless grayness. We’ve flown for hours, no, days! But it’s always been the same. At first, I thought I could see an end to it, and tried to get to it, but I never could. It always receded as fast as Duluth and I approached. ”
He took another breath and said in a rush, “Sometimes, though. .. I see dragons, usually with their riders, just heading away—sometimes heading up. ..” He waved his hand in some inexplicit overhead direction. “They aren’t heading for between, because they are already between. They are aiming for some destination ... beyond between.”
“Beyond between?” A shiver ran down her spine. “But there’s nothing beyond between.”
A heavy silence fell over them and it was quite some time before either one spoke.
“Are you sure?” Marco asked quietly.
“You should know. You arrived here in a spaceship, so you should have seen all there was to see of Pern. ”
“You better believe it.” His tone was nostalgic. “They put the forward view up on all the screens so we could watch it getting closer. Most of us were awake, preparatory to landing, and I don’t think many of us bothered to eat or sleep. We couldn’t get enough of watching.” His eyes glowed. “Prettier than Earth, beautiful blue seas and green lands, and some desert spots, too. But beautiful—and ours!”
“And did you see between?”