“I altered the design of their dermis and epidermis to incorporate more of their boron crystalline skeletal materials-”
“She tried to make them armored,” M’hall translated. Wind Blossom nodded.
“It didn’t work,” M’hall added. Wind Blossom sighed. M’hall waved a hand toward her in conciliation, saying, “But it was a good idea.”
“Yes, it was,” Purman agreed, “but why? Why not incorporate those changes directly into the dragons?”
“Two different species are safer,” Wind Blossom said. “Greater diversity yields redundancy.”
Purman nodded but held up a hand as he grappled with his thoughts. Finally he looked up at the two of them. “The watch-whers fight Thread at night?”
“By themselves,” M’hall agreed, eyes gleaming in memory. “I’ve seen them once-they were magnificent. I learned a lot about fighting Thread that night.”
“They breathe fire?”
“No,” M’hall said. “They eat Thread, like the fire-lizards. They don’t need riders, either-the queens organize them all.”
“The queens?”
M’hall nodded. “Of course. They’re like dragons, or fire-lizards for that matter.”
“What about their wings?” Purman asked. “They’re so short and stubby, how do they fly?”
Wind Blossom’s eyes lit with mischief. “They fly the same way as dragons. I made the wings smaller to avoid Thread damage.”
“Why keep this a secret?” Purman asked with outrage in his voice. “Everyone should know this.”
“Why?” Wind Blossom asked. “So they’ll never sleep for fear that Thread will fall at night? How many people are content to let only your grubs protect the grapevines?”
“It doesn’t happen often,” M’hall put in. “The oxygen level in the atmosphere shrinks at night, especially in the three thousand- to fifteen hundred-meter range, and the air’s too cold to support the spores. A lot of them freeze and are blown all over the place as dust.”
“But what about those that do get through?” Purman persisted.
“It’s no different than dealing with the small amount of Thread that the dragons miss,” M’hall said. “Hopefully, the ground crews find and take care of them.”
“And they are fewer at night anyway, due to the cold.” Purman pursed his lips thoughtfully. “But on a warm night?”
M’hall recrossed his legs and shook his head ruefully. “That’s how I found out, Purman. I asked myself that same question, wondering how I could get my riders to fight day and night-especially as neither humans nor dragons can see that well at night.”
A look of wonder crossed his face as he recalled the experience. “They swarmed in from everywhere, arranged themselves by their queens, and flew up to the Thread. I was above them, at first, and they came up at me like stars coming out at night. And then they were above, swooping and diving for the still-viable clumps of Thread.”
“They see more in the infrared range,” Wind Blossom said. “They can differentiate between the live Thread and the Thread that has been frozen by the night atmosphere.”
“So they have night vision…” Purman breathed.
Wind Blossom nodded. “That is why their eyes are so bad in daylight: too much light for them.”
“And Benden’s watch-wher-why did it react to tickling?” Purman asked.
Wind Blossom shook her head sadly. “I wanted them to react if they were asleep and Thread fell on them,” she said. “I had hoped to make the watch-whers tough enough to survive Thread and protect Pern… in case something happened to the dragons or their riders.”
Purman sat bolt upright, shocked. He looked to M’hall for confirmation, but the Weyrleader only nodded. Purman asked him, “Do you think this could happen?”
“I’m not a geneticist, Purman,” M’hall answered, “but I certainly hope not.”
Purman gave Wind Blossom a long, searching look. Finally, he said, “I remember not too long ago I had a problem with one of the vineyards. Something I hadn’t seen before. The grapes started going bad. I had to work hard to isolate the problem, and it turned out that the usual fungus that protected the grapes had been replaced by a new, more virulent strain. It took me months to finally develop a variant vine-grub to protect against that fungus.”
While he spoke, he carefully watched Wind Blossom’s reaction. When he finished, he knew. “You fear that something similar might affect the dragons, don’t you?”
Wind Blossom nodded. “The dragons are derived from the fire-lizards. The parasites that prey on the fire-lizards could also prey on the dragons.”
She frowned. “But just as you modified your grubs to aid the grape in fighting off that fungus, so the modifications to produce the dragons have rendered them immune to bacterial and viral vectors that affect fire-lizards… I hope.”
“But time will generate mutations,” Purman said to himself. He looked at Wind Blossom. “How much time? What sort of problems would the dragons have?”
Wind Blossom shook her head. “I do not know.”
She sighed and lay back down in her bed.
“The Eridani like to take centuries to add a new species to an ecosystem,” she continued. “At the least, even with all the urgency of Thread, my mother wanted to spend decades.
“As it was, we did not have time to research more than the most obvious disease vectors affecting the fire-lizards before my mother created the dragons.”
Wind Blossom sighed again. “I had the advantage of somewhat more research before I created the watch-whers, but still…” Her voice trailed off.
“I must rest now,” she told them, gesturing for them to leave. She smiled up at Purman.
“Go look in on your son,” she said. “I would like him to stay here, so I can teach him all that you have not been able to.”
She rolled over in her bed. “He must stay here a while, anyway, for his wounds to heal.”
THREE
The air was cold and moist with sea spray and it pressed Lorana’s clothing tight against her body as she finished her climb to the top of Wind Rider’s highest mast. The sound of the sea and ship beneath her were all that she could hear-she could see little, for the stars were hidden by cloud and the dawn’s light was still a while off.
From the moment Wind Rider had heeled over as it caught the wind and the swells outside of Ista Harbor, Lorana had wanted to do just this-climb to the highest point on the ship, wrap her legs around the mast and hold tight while she raised her arms to the wind and felt the salt air chap her cheeks. She’d had to wait though, until she’d overcome her fear of the heeling ship, and her fear of climbing the ratlines and then beyond the crosstrees to the highest point of the ship, and she’d had to wait until she was sure no one would be watching her, for hanging in the wind was only her first goal.
She dropped her hands to her side and gingerly brought the pouch she’d draped over her shoulder from her side to her front. She carefully pulled the drawing board, already prepared with a sheet of paper, and found the charcoal stick she’d rigged by pulling on the string she’d tied between it and the board. And now, with gray all around her, Lorana quickly sketched.
The light from the rising sun gave Lorana a chance to reappraise the image in differing lights, and to compare her rendering with the sea’s majesty. The sun was just over the horizon when she was finally satisfied that she’d got the best rendering she could. It was just as well, she decided: Her fingers were tingling with the early morning cold.