He tried to suppress the relief he felt at her decision. Lessa, as Fax had discovered, was a ruthless adversary and a canny advocate. Besides these, she was Weyrwoman: essential to his plans.
“Now, let’s get back to the contemplation of trivia. They do tell me, you know, time, place, and duration of Thread incursions,” he grimied up at her reassuringly. “And those facts I must have to make up my timetable.”
“Timetable? But you said you didn’t know the time.”
“Not the day to the second when the Threads may spin . down. For one thing, while the weather holds so unusually cold for this time of year, the Threads simply turn brittle and blow away like dust. They’re harmless. However, when the air is warm, they are viable and … deadly.” He made fists of both hands, placing one above and to one side of the other. “The Red Star is my right hand, my left is Pern. The Red Star tarns very fast and in the opposite direction to us. It also wobbles erratically.”
“How do you know that?”
“Diagram on the walls of the Fort Weyr Hatching Ground. That was the very first Weyr, you know.”
Lessa smiled sourly. “I know.”
“So, when the Star makes a pass, the Threads spin off, down toward us, in attacks that last six hours and occur approximately fourteen hours apart.”
“Attacks last six hours?”
He nodded gravely.
“When the Red Star is closest to us. Right now it is just beginning its Pass.”
She frowned. He rummaged among the skin sheets on the table, and an object dropped to the stone floor with a metallic clatter. Curious, Lessa bent to pick it up, turning the thin sheet over in her hands.
“What’s this?” She ran an exploratory finger lightly across the irregular design on one side.
“I don’t know. Fnor brought it back from Fort Weyr. It .was nailed to one of the chests in which the Records had been stored. He brought it along, thinking it might be important. Said there was a plate like it just under the Red Star diagram on the wall of the Hatching Ground.”
“This first part is plain enough: ‘Mother’s father’s father, who departed for all time between, said this was the key to the mystery, and it came to him while doodling: he said that he said: ARRHENIUS? EUREKA! MYCORRHIZA… .’ Of course, that part doesn’t make any sense at all,” Lessa snorted. “It isn’t even Pernesejust babbling, those last three words.”
“I’ve studied it, Lessa,” F’lar replied, glancing at it again and tipping it toward him to reaffirm his conclusions. “The only way to depart for all time between is to die, right?
People just don’t fly away on their own, obviously. So it is a death vision, dutifully recorded by a grandchild, who couldn’t spell very well either. ‘Doodling’ as the present tense of dying!” He smiled indulgently. “And as for the rest of it, after the nonsenselike most death visions, it ‘explains’ what everyone has always known. Read on.”
” ‘Flamethrowing fire lizards to wipe out the spores.
Q.E.D.’?”
“No help there, either. Obviously just a primitive rejoicing that he is a dragonman, who didn’t even know the right word for Threads.” F’lar’s shrug was expressive.
Lessa wet one fingertip to see if the patterns were inked on. The metal was shiny enough for a good mirror if she could get rid of the designs. However, the patterns remained smooth and precise.
“Primitive or no, they had a more permanent way of recording their visions that is superior to even the well-preserved skins,” she murmured.
“Well-preserved babblings,” F’lar said, turning back to the skins he was checking for understandable data.
“A badly scored ballad?” Lessa wondered and then dismissed the whole thing. “The design isn’t even pretty.”
F’lar pulled forward a chart that showed overlapping horizontal bands imposed on the projection of Pern’s continental mass.
“Here,” he said, “this represents waves of attack, and this one” he pulled forward the second map with vertical bandings “shows time zones. So you can see that with a fourteen-hour break only certain parts of Pern are affected in each attack. One reason for spacing of the Weyrs.”
“Six full Weyrs,” she murmured, “close to three thousand dragons.”
“I’m aware of the statistics,” he replied in a voice devoid of expression. “It meant no one Weyr was overburdened during the height of the attacks, not that three thousand beasts must be available. However, with these timetables, we can manage until Ramoth’s first clutches have matured.”
She turned a cynical look on him. “You’ve a lot of faith in one queen’s capacity.”
He waved that remark aside impatiently. “I’ve more faith, no matter what your opinion is, in the startling repetitions of events in these Records.”
“Ha!”
“I don’t mean how many measures for daily bread, Lessa,” he retorted, his voice rising. “I mean such things as the time such and such a wing was sent out on patrol, how long the patrol lasted, how many riders were hurt. The brooding capacities of queens, during the fifty years a Pass lasts and the Intervals between such Passes. Yes, it tells that. By all I’ve studied here,” and he pounded emphatically on the nearest stack of dusty, smelly skins, “Nemorth should have been mating twice a Turn for the last ten. Had she even kept to her paltry twelve a clutch, we’d have two hundred and forty more beasts… . Don’t interrupt. But we had Jora as weyrleader, and we had fallen into planet-wide disfavor during a four hundred Turn Interval. Well, Ramoth will brood over no measly dozen, and she’ll lay a queen egg, mark my words. She will rise often to mate and lay generously. By the time the Red Star is passing closest to us and the attacks become frequent, we’ll be ready.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Out of Ramoth?”
“Out of Ramoth and out of the queens she’ll lay. Remember, there are Records of Faranth laying sixty eggs at a time, including several queen eggs.”
Lessa could only shake her head slowly in wonder.
” ‘A strand of silver/in the sky… . With heat, all quickens/And all times fly,’ ” F’lar quoted to her.
“She’s got weeks more to go before laying, and then the eggs must hatch …”
“Been on the Hatching Ground recently? Wear your boots. You’ll be burned through sandals.”
She dismissed that with a guttural noise. He sat back, outwardly amused by her disbelief.
“And then you have to make Impression and wait till the riders” she went on.
“Why do you think I’ve insisted on older boys? The dragons are mature long before their riders.”
“Then the system is faulty.” He narrowed his eyes slightly, shaking the stylus at her.
“Dragon tradition started out as a guide … but there comes a time when man becomes too traditional, toowhat was it you said?too hidebound? Yes, it’s traditional to use the weyrbred, because it’s been convenient. And because this sensitivity to dragons strengthens where both sire and dam are weyrbred. That doesn’t mean weyrbred is best. You, for example…”
“There’s Weyrblood in the Ruathan line,” she said proudly.
“Granted. Take young Naton; he’s craftbred from Nabol, yet F’nor tells me he can make Canth understand him.”
“Oh, that’s not hard to do,” she interjected.
“What do you mean?” F’lar jumped on her statement.
They were both interrupted by a highpitched, penetrating whine. F’lar listened intently for a moment and then shrugged, grinnieg.
“Some green’s getting herself chased again.”
“And that’s another item these so-called all-knowing Records of yours never mention. Why is it that only the gold dragon can reproduce?”
F’lar did not suppress a lascivious chuckle.