The acquisition, as Sorka soon discovered, had two sides. Her little dragonet, whom she nostalgically named Duke after her old marmalade tomcat, was voracious. It ate anything at three-hour intervals the first night disturbing the entire square with its hungry keening. Between feedings, it slept. When Sorka noticed that its skin was cracking, her father prescribed a salve, prudently concocted of local fish oils, with the help of a pediatrician and a biologist. The pediatrician was so pleased with the result that she had the pharmacist make up more as an ointment for dry skin in general.
“Duke is growing, and his skin is stretching,” was Red’s diagnosis.
The male designation was arbitrary, since no one had been able to examine the creature closely enough to discover it’s sex, or even if it had any. The golden dragonets had demonstrated a generally more feminine role in egg-laying, though one of the biologists qualified that by reminding people that the males of some species on Earth were the egg-tenders. The dead skin flakes were assiduously collected for analysis. The eager zoologists had not been able to X-ray Duke, for he seemed to know the moment someone had designs on him. On the second day of his advent, the zoologists had attempted to place him under the scope, while Sorka waited nervously in the next room.
“My word!”
“What?”
Sorka heard the startled exclamations from Pol and Bay at the same moment that Duke reappeared above her head, considerably agitated. Dropping to her shoulder with cries of relief and anger, he wrapped his tail firmly about her neck and hooked his talons into her hair, scolding furiously, his many-faceted eyes rippling with angry reds and oranges.
The door behind Sorka opened suddenly, and Pol and Bay burst into the room, their eyes wide with amazement.
“He just appeared,” the girl told the two scientists.
Recovering their composure, the two exchanged glances. Pol’s broad face became wreathed in a smile, and Bay looked remarkably pleased.
“So the Amigs do not have a monopoly on telekinetic abilities,” Bay said with a smug smile. “I always maintained, Pol, that they could not be unique in the galaxy.”
“How did he do that?” Sorka asked, not quite certain as she remembered other instances of perplexingly rapid departures.
“Duke must have been frightened by the scope. He is rather small and it does look menacing,” Bay said. “So he teleported himself away. Fortunately back to you, whom he considers his protector. The Amigs use teleportation when threatened. A very useful capability.
“I wonder if we can discover how the little creatures do it?” Pol mused.
“We could try the Eridani equations,” Bay suggested.
Pol looked at Duke. The lizard’s eyes were still red with anger, and he continued to cling tenaciously to Sorka, but he had folded his wings to his back.
“To try them, we need to know more about this chap and his species. Perhaps if you held him, Sorka?” Pol suggested.
Even with Sorka’s gentle reassurance, Duke would not permit himself to be placed under the scope. After a half hour, Pol and Bay reluctantly allowed their unwilling subject to be taken away. Reassuring him every step, Sorka carried her still-outraged lizard to his birthplace. Sean was there, stretched out in the shade cast by the bushes, his two browns curled up against his neck. They heard Sorka coming and peered up at her, their eyes whirling a mild blue-green. Duke chirped a greeting to which they replied in kind.
“I was just getting some sleep,” Sean muttered petulantly not bothering to open his eyes to see who had arrived. “M’da made me bunk in with the babees to see if these fellers would scare off the snakes.”
“Well, did they?” Sorka asked when he seemed to be falling asleep again.
“Yup.” Sean yawned hugely and swatted idly at an insect. One of the browns immediately snapped it out of the air and swallowed it.
“They do eat anything.” Sorka’s tone was admiring. “Omnivorous Dr. Marceau called them.” She sat down on the rock beside Sean. “And they can go between places when they’re scared. Dr. Nietro tried to scope Duke and made me leave the room. The next thing I knew Duke was clinging to me like he’d never let go. They said he can teleport. He uses telekinesis.” She was proud that she had gotten the words out without stumbling over them.
Sean opened one eye and cocked his head to stare up at her. “What does that mean?”
“He can project himself out of danger instantly.”
Sean gave a huge yawn. “Yeah? We’ve both seen them do the disappearing act. And they don’t do it always because of danger.” Sean yawned again. “You were smart to take only one. If one isn’t eating the other is. What with that and guarding the babees, I’m fair knackered.” He closed his eye again, settled his hands across his chest, and went back to sleep.
“I shall play gold then and guard you, lest a big nasty mottled blunt-nose comes and takes a bite out of you!”
She did not rouse him even when she saw a flight of the lizards in the sky, looping and diving in an aerial display that left her breathless. Duke watched with her, crooning softly to himself, but despite her initial consternation that he might choose to join them, he didn’t even ease his tailhold about her neck. Before she returned home, Sorka left Sean a jar of the ointment that had been made for Duke’s skin.
Sorka was not the only person on Pern watching aerial acrobatics that day. Half a continent to the south and west, Sallah Telgar’s heart was in her mouth as she watched Drake Bonneau pull the little air sled out of a thermal elevator above the vast inland lake that he was campaigning to call Drake’s Lake. No member of their small mining expedition would deny him that privilege, but Drake had a tendency to beat a subject to death. Similarly, he would not stop showing off; he seemed bent on stunning everyone with his professional skill. His antics were a foolish waste of power, Sallah thought, and certainly not the way to her heart and esteem. He had taken to hanging around her quarters, but so far he had met with no great success.
Ozzie Munson and Cobber Alhinwa emerged from the shelter where they had just stored their gear and paused to see what Sallah was staring at.
“Oh, my word, he’s at it again,” Ozzie said, grinning maliciously at Sallah.
“He’ll crash hisself,” Cobber added, shaking his head, “and that bleeding lake’s so deep we’d never find ‘im. Or the sled. And we need that.”
Seeing Svenda Olubushtu coming to join them, Sallah hastily turned and headed for the main shelter of the small prospecting camp. She did not care to listen to Svenda’s snide, jealous remarks. It was not as if Sallah encouraged Drake Bonneau. On the contrary, she had emphatically, publicly, and frequently made her disinterest plain enough.
Maybe I’m going about discouraging him the wrong way, she thought. Maybe if I’d run after him, hang on his every word, and ambush him every chance I get, the way Svenda’s doing, he’d leave me alone, too.
In the main shelter, she found Tarvi Andiyar already marking the day’s findings on the big screen, muttering to himself as he did so, his spidery fingers flicking at the terminal keys so fast that even the word processor had trouble keeping up with him. No one understood him when he talked to himself like that; he was speaking in his first language, an obscure Indic dialect. When asked about his eccentricity he would respond with one of his heart-melting smiles.
“For other ears to hear this beautiful liquid language, so it will be spoken even here on Pern, so that there will be one person alive who still speaks it fluently, even after all these centuries,” he always told those who asked. “Is it not a lovely language, lilting, melodic, a joy to the ear?”