Although Sorka’s parents had acquiesced, Porrig Connell still treated her formally as a guest he wished to see less often. His wife had never ceased in her efforts to bring her son back to his proper hearth. She had chosen another daughter-in-law for Sean and sometimes embarrassed all concerned by pushing the girl at Sean on every opportunity.
“I won’t breed so close, Mam,” Sean had informed her when she had nagged him once too often. “It’s bad for the blood. Lally Moorhouse’s father was your first cousin. We need to spread the gene pool, not enclose it.”
Sorka had overheard, but she knew Sean well enough by then not to be hurt that he had said no more about choosing. Perhaps he had not known then that he loved fifteen-year-old Sorka Hanrahan, who was already certain where her heart had been given.
She had been seventeen before he had touched her with any kind of passion, and that had been a night to remember. Their roles had become reversed; she, the wanton; he, the hesitant, tender lover. Her ardent response to his gentle overtures had surprised and pleased them both, but they had not moved to separate quarters until she had passed her eighteenth birthday. It had become a custom in their generation to have a trial period prior to a formal declaration before the magistrate.
Sorka wanted Sean’s child badly. Ever since that hideous half hour, treading water under a stone ledge, she had been aware of their mortality. She wanted something of Sean—just in case. Not that he was wild or incautious, but the Lilienkamp boys had not been reckless, and certainly poor Lucy Tubberman had not. So many people had been wiped out in that First Fall.
Sorka did not want to be left with nothing of Sean. She had not tried before to conceive, because pregnancy would have interfered with their plans for Killarney Stake: they needed the work credits for every acre they could purchase. She worried that there was something wrong with her that she had not gotten pregnant before, with all the incautious fooling around that she and Sean had enjoyed. But she was no longer fooling. That night she had meant business.
Wind Blossom opened the door to Paul Benden, Emily Boll, Ongola, and Pol and Bay Harkenon-Nietro. Gracefully inclining her head in welcome, she held the door wide for them to enter.
Kitti Ping was seated on a padded chair that, Paul decided, must be raised off the ground under its cover, giving it the semblance of an archaic throne. She looked imposing, a feat for someone half his height. A beautiful soft woven rug had been tucked about a frail body, and a long-sleeved tunic with elaborate embroideries also increased her general look of substance and authority. She raised one delicate hand, no larger than his oldest daughter’s, and indicated that they were to be seated on the stools set in an irregular circle in front of her.
As Paul doubled his long legs to sit, he realized that she had achieved a subtle advantage over her visitors. Amused by the tactic, he smiled up at her and thought he could detect the merest hint of an acknowledgment.
Only a few strong ethnic traditions had survived the Age of Religions, but the Chinese, Japanese, Maori, and Amazon-Kapayan were four that had retained some of their ancient ways. In Kitti’s Pernese house, which was exquisitely furnished with heirlooms from her family, Paul knew better than to disrupt a hospitality ritual. Wind Blossom served the visitors fragrant tea in delicate porcelain cups. The little plantation of tea bushes, grown to sustain the lovely ceremony, had been a casualty in the First Fall. Paul was poignantly aware that the cup of tea he sipped might be the last he would ever taste.
“Has Mar Dook had a chance to inform you, Kitti Ping, that he had several tea bushes in reserve in the conservatory?” Paul asked when everyone had had time to savor the beverage.
Kitti Ping inclined her head in a deep bow of gratitude and smiled. “It is a great reassurance.”
Such a bland reply gave him no opening wedge. Paul moved restlessly, trying to find a comfortable position on the stool, and he knew that Pol and Bay were bursting to discuss the reason for the interview.
“All of us would be more reassured, Kit Ping Yung”— Abruptly he modulated his voice which sounded so much louder after her delicate response—“If we had . . . some form of reliable assistance in combating this menace.”
“Ah?” Her pencil-thin eyebrows rose, and then her tiny hands made a vague gesture about the armrests.
“Yes.” Paul cleared his throat, annoyed at himself for being so gauche, and more annoyed that he could be so disconcerted by a trivial seating arrangement. She must know why he had arranged the private conference. “The truth is we are very badly positioned to defend ourselves against Thread. Bluntly, we will run out of resources in five years. We do not have the equipment to manufacture either sleds or power packs when what we brought are worn out. Kenjo’s attempt to destroy Thread in space was only partially successful, and there isn’t much fuel left for the Mariposa.
“As you know, none of the colony ships carried any defensive or destructive weaponry. Even if we could construct laser sweep beams, there isn’t fuel enough to move even one ship into an effective position to annihilate the pods. Nevertheless the best way to protect the surface is to destroy this menace in the air.
“Boris and Dieter have confirmed our worst fears: Thread will sweep across Pern in a pattern that will denude the planet unless we can stop it. We cannot entertain much hope that Ezra Keroon’s probe will bring us any useful information.” Paul spread his hands with the hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm him.
Kitti raised her delicate eyebrows in unfeigned surprise. “The morning star is the source?”
Paul sighed heavily. “That is the current theory. We’ll know more when the probe returns its survey.”
Kitti Ping nodded thoughtfully, her willow-slender fingers tightening on the armrests.
“We are, Kit Ping Yung,” Emily said, sitting even more erect on her stool, “in a desperate situation.”
Paul Benden was heartened in an obscure way to see the governor as much like a nervous schoolchild as himself. Pol and Bay nodded encouragement. Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom, who stood slightly behind her grandmother’s left side, waited patiently.
“If the dragonets were only larger, Kitti,” Bay broke in, her manner unusually brusque, “intelligent enough to obey commands, they’d be an immense help to us. I was able to use mentasynth to enhance their own latent empathies, but that’s a relatively simple matter. To breed large enough dragonets— dragons—we need them big—” Bay stretched her arms full length and flicked her fingers to indicate room size. “—intelligent, obedient, strong enough to do the job needed: flame Thread out of the sky.” She ran out of words then, knowing very well how Kitti Ping Yung felt about bioengineering beyond simple adjustments to adapt creatures to new ecological parameters.
Kitti Ping nodded again while her granddaughter regarded her with surprise. “Yes, size, strength, and considerable intelligence would be required,” she said in her softly audible voice. Hiding her hands in the cuffs of her long sleeves and folding them across her stomach, she bent her head and was silent for so long that her audience wondered if she had nodded off in the easy sleep of the aged. Then she spoke again. “And dedication, which is easy to instill in some creatures, impossible in others. The dragonets already possess the traits you wish to enhance and magnify.” She smiled, a gentle, faintly apologetic smile of great sadness and compassion. “I was the merest student, though a very willing and eager one, in the Great Beltrae Halls of Eridani. I was taught what would happen if I did this or that, enlarged or reduced, severed that synapse or modified this gene pattern. Most of the time what I was taught to do worked, but, alas,” she added, raising one hand warningly, “I never knew why sometimes the modification failed and the organism died. Or should have. The Beltrae would teach us the how but never the why.”