“And when that comes?”
Emorra shrugged. “I can only hope that people on Pern will survive. For all that they had so little time, my mother and grandmother, and all the other medical people, did everything they could to adapt us to life on Pern-even before they arrived.”
“Is that why you quit?” Tieran asked. “Is that why you left your mother? Was it the thought of just having to wait, having to hope that if any epidemic broke out it would come at a time when we could still identify it, still fight it, and come up with a cure before everyone on Pern was too ill to survive?”
“Is that why you quit, Tieran?” Emorra asked, deflecting his question.
Tieran nodded slowly.
“You lasted longer than I did, you know,” Emorra admitted. “I could only handle four years before I fled. You stayed a whole six. After my mother, you are the best-qualified geneticist on Pern.”
Tieran snorted. “That’s not saying much!”
Emorra shook her head emphatically, flinging her braided hair in the breeze. “It’s saying a lot, Tieran. You must know that.”
Tieran brushed her comment off. “Why did you give up?”
Emorra pursed her lips for a long moment of silence, wondering whether she would answer him. At last she said slowly, “I quit because I wasn’t good enough, Tieran. I knew that I couldn’t be the sort of person my mother expected me to be, the sort of person my family traditions demanded that I be.”
She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t wait for the next plague, the next mutation, the next biological disaster, knowing that the tools we needed had either failed already or were going to fail any day-maybe the day before we needed them the most.” She shook her head emphatically, looking miserable. “I just couldn’t.”
Tieran reflected that while Emorra might have fled her responsibilities, she had only gone so far as to become the College’s dean. It seemed to him that she would clearly be dealing with the impact of “the next biological disaster” in that lofty position.
“So how will we survive on Pern?”
“The best we can,” Emorra answered. “When this Pass ends-and that’ll be very soon-people will spread to every liveable corner on the continent. And they’ll have children, lots of children, and those children will eat things they’re told not to.”
Tieran snorted in agreement.
“And some of those children will get sick,” Emorra went on. “Some will die, and others will get better. Over time, people will learn what Pernese plants and animals they can eat, and what they have to avoid. With enough time they’ll be able to develop a whole new list of ills and a pharmacopoeia of the herbals to cure them.
“And if worse comes to worst, then perhaps some isolated group of people will not get infected and the disease will run its course, and the isolated ones will survive and repopulate the planet.
“And that’s what we hope for,” she concluded.
Tieran looked doubtful. Emorra looked away, out toward the College.
“Is that person my replacement?” she asked, pointing to a woman walking briskly in their direction from the entrance of the College.
Tieran peered out, following her finger. “Yes, that’s Kassa.”
“She’s pretty,” Emorra said suggestively.
“She’s seeing someone,” Tieran agreed sadly.
Emorra reached up and ruffled his hair affectionately. “You’ll find someone,” she told him.
Tieran sneered, running a finger over the scar from the top of his right forehead to his left cheek. “Not with this.”
Emorra held back a quick retort with a shake of her head.
The sound of someone climbing the stairs alerted them to Kassa’s approach. Then Kassa arrived, breathless. “Sorry, Dean! I put my head down for a nap and completely lost track of time.”
“No problem,” Emorra said, taking her place on the steps. “I had a lot of fun.”
She gave Tieran a cheerful wave as she left.
“The trouble with this job is that it’s either very boring or very exciting,” Kassa grumbled hours later as she and Tieran lounged under the waning sun.
“We’ve got only a few more hours to go,” Tieran said. The last message they had handled had come in over an hour earlier, and had only been a simple inquiry from the southern Ruatha valley-just a communications check. Kassa had impishly drummed back, “What? You woke us up for that?”
Tieran had groaned when she sent the message, hoping that Vedric wasn’t on duty at the South Tower or she’d get a scathing. Vedric had no sense of humor and didn’t “appreciate levity when engaged in official duties”-as Tieran could attest with well-remembered chagrin.
She’d been lucky and there’d been no further response. They both agreed that the drummer was likely Fella, who still had problems with some of the more complex rolls, which explained why her message was so simple and also why she had made no reply.
After that they had been reduced to gossiping. Naturally, the first topic of conversation was what would happen with the Drum Towers at the end of the Pass, only a few months away. Kassa hoped that with no Thread falling, it would be possible to link up the various towers established at the Holds into a Pern-wide network. Tieran wasn’t so sure and wondered if the dragonriders wouldn’t fill in the gaps? Kassa thought that the dragonriders would be too busy with their own issues to be bothered. They both agreed that it would be far easier to set up Drum Towers than it would be to lay telegraph lines across the continent. “Besides, there are better uses for the metal,” Kassa pointed out.
The conversation moved on to more intimate topics. Kassa admitted that she wouldn’t mind being placed in one of the newer holds after the Pass. She was hoping to marry soon-she blushed in embarrassment-before she was considered a spinster. Mind you, she had said, she wasn’t sure she could handle six kids as well as her mother had. Maybe four or five, but not six.
Tieran tried to steer the conversation in a different direction before he found himself having to deal with embarrassing issues. He had said that while it was important to increase the number of Pern’s settlers until there were enough people to safely live and protect the Northern Continent, he wasn’t sure that everyone absolutely had to have children.
“Are you nuts?” Kassa replied. “Everyone’s got to have at least four kids or we’ll be wiped out-as we nearly were-by the next plague that hits us.” She narrowed her eyes at him and opened her mouth to continue heatedly, then closed it again with a snap.
Tieran flushed in embarrassment. “That number’s an average. Some people don’t have any, look at the dean…”
Kassa snorted derisively at him. “The dean? She just hasn’t found the right person. I’m sure she’ll have six or more when she gets the chance.”
Tieran was shocked.
Kassa shook her head patronizingly, which further infuriated Tieran, as she was a full two years younger than he.
“Really, Tieran, you need to get out of this tower more,” she said. “However are you going to find a mate if you don’t keep up with current affairs?”
His anger inflamed him to respond. “No one,” he said, pointing to his face, “is going to want me with this.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kassa replied soothingly. “I’ll bet there are plenty of girls out there who are willing to lower their sights.”
At that point Tieran had stalked off, getting as far from her as he could.
Kassa didn’t say anything for the next hour. When she finally spoke again it was only to say to herself, “Storm’s coming. I can feel it.”
Tieran heard her, as he knew she had intended. He was still irritated with her but grateful for the warning; early on it had been established that Kassa had excellent weather sense.