“Yes, he’s there all right if he weren’t a Lord Holder—” and N’ton shrugged.
“Why? Does he say why?”
N’ton shrugged again. “He says he’s looking for coordinates. But so are we. There aren’t any features distinct enough. Just shapeless masses of gray and dark gray-greens. They don’t change and while it’s obvious they’re stable, are they land? Or sea?” N’ton began to feel the accusatory tension in the room and shifted his feet. “So often the face is obscured by those heavy clouds. Discouraging.”
“Is Meron discouraged?” asked F’lar pointedly.
“I’m not sure I like your attitude, Benden,” Larad said, his expression hard. “You don’t appear eager to discover any coordinates.”
F’lar looked Larad full in the eyes. “I thought we’d explained the problem involved. We have to know where we’re going before we can send the dragons.” He pointed to the green lizard perched on Larad’s shoulder. “You’ve been trying to train your fire lizard. You can appreciate the difficulty.” Larad stiffened defensively and his lizard hissed, its eyes rolling. F’lar was not put off. “The fact that no Records exist of any previous attempt to go there strongly indicates that the ancients—who built the distance-viewer, who knew enough to plot the neighbors in our sky—did not go. They must have had a reason, a valid reason. What would you have me do, Larad?” F’lar demanded, pacing in his agitation. “Ask for volunteers? You, you and you,” F’lar whirled, jabbing a finger at an imaginary line of riders, “you go, jump between to the Red Star. Coordinates? Sorry, men, I have none. Tell your dragons to take a long look halfway there. If you don’t come back, we’ll keen to the Red Star for your deaths. But men, you’ll die knowing you’ve solved our problem. Men can’t go to the Red Star.”
Larad flushed under F’lar’s sarcasm.
“If the ancients didn’t record any intimate knowledge of the Red Star,” said Robinton quietly into the charged silence, “they did provide domestic solutions. The dragons, and the grubs.”
“Neither proves to be effective protection right now, when we need it,” Larad replied in a bitter, discouraged voice. “Pern needs something more conclusive than promises—and insects!” He abruptly left the Rooms.
Asgenar, a protest on his lips, started to follow but F’lar stopped him.
“He’s in no mood to be reasonable, Asgenar,” F’lar said, his face strained with anxiety. “If he won’t be reassured by today’s demonstrations, I don’t know what more we can do or say.”
“It’s the loss of the summer crops which bothers him,” Asgenar said. “Telgar Hold has been spreading out, you know. Larad’s attracted many of the small Holders who’ve been dissatisfied in Nerat, Crom and Nabol and switched their allegiances. If the crops fail, he’s going to have more hungry people—and more trouble—than he can handle in the winter.”
“But what more can we do?” demanded F’lar, a desperate note in his voice. He tired so easily. The fever had left him little reserve strength, a state he found more frustrating than any other problem. Larad’s obduracy had been an unexpected disappointment. They’d been so lucky with every other man approached.
“I know you can’t send men on a blind jump to the Red Star,” Asgenar said, distressed by F’lar’s anxiety. “I’ve tried to tell my Rial where I want him to go. He gets frantic at times because he can’t see it clearly enough. Just wait until Larad starts sending his lizard about. He’ll understand. You see, what bothers him most is the realization that you can’t plan an attack on the Red Star.”
“Your initial mistake, my dear F’lar,” and the Harper’s voice was at its drollest, “was in providing salvation from the last imminent disaster in a scant three days by bringing up the Five Lost Weyrs. The Lord Holders really expect you to provide a second miracle in similar short order.”
The remark was so preposterous that F’nor laughed out loud before he could stop himself. But the tension and anxiety dissolved and the worried men regained some needed perspective.
“Time is all we need,” F’lar insisted.
“Time is what we don’t have,” Asgenar said wearily.
“Then let’s use what time we have to the best possible advantage,” F’lar said decisively, his moment of doubt and disillusion behind him. “Let’s work on Telgar. F’nor, how many riders can T’bor spare us to hunt larval sacks between time at Southern? You and N’ton can work out coordinates with them.”
“Won’t that weaken Southern’s protection?” asked Robinton.
“No, because N’ton keeps his eyes open. He noticed that a lot of sacks started in the fall get blown down or devoured during the winter months. So we’ve altered our methods. We check an area in spring to place the sacks that survive, go back to the fall and take some of those which didn’t last. There were a few wherries who missed a meal but I don’t think we disturbed the balance much.”
F’lar began to pace, one hand absently scratching his ribs where the scar tissues itched.
“I need someone to keep an eye on Nabol, too.”
Robinton let out a snort of amusement. “We do seem beholden to the oddest agencies. Grub life. Meron. Oh yes,” and he chuckled at their irritation. “He may yet prove to be an asset. Let him strain his eyes and crick his neck nightly watching the Red Star. As long as he is occupied that way, we’ll know we have time. The eyes of a vengeful man miss few details he can turn to advantage.”
“Good point, Robinton. N’ton,” and F’lar turned to the young bronze rider. “I want to know every remark that man makes, which aspects of the Red Star he views, what he could possibly see, what his reactions are. We’ve ignored that man too often to our regret. We might even be grateful to him.”
“I’d rather be grateful to grubs,” N’ton replied with some fervor. “Frankly, sir,” he added, hesitant for the first time about any assignment since he’d been included in the council, “I’d rather hunt grubs or catch Thread.”
F’lar eyed the young rider thoughtfully for a moment “Think of this assignment then, N’ton, as the ultimate Thread catch.”
Brekke had insisted on taking over the care of the plants in the Rooms once she was stronger. She argued that she was farmcraftbred and capable of such duties. She preferred not to be present during the demonstrations. In fact she went out of her way to avoid seeing anyone but weyrfolk. She could abide their sympathy but the pity of outsiders was repugnant to her.
This did not affect her curiosity and she would get F’nor to tell her every detail of what she termed the best-known Craft secret on Pern. What F’nor narrated the Telgar Lord’s bitter repudiation of what the Weyrs were trying to accomplish, she was visibly disturbed.
“Larad’s wrong,” she said in the slow deliberate way she’d adopted lately. “The grubs are the solution, the right one. But it’s true that the best solution is not always easy to accept. And an expedition to the Red Star is not a solution, even if it’s the one Pernese instinctively crave. It’s obvious. Just as two thousand dragons over Telgar Hold was rather obvious seven Turns ago.” She surprised F’nor with a little smile, the first since Wirenth’s death. “I myself, like Robinton, would prefer to rely on grubs. They present fewer problems. But then I’m craftbred.”
“You use that phrase a lot lately,” F’nor remarked, turning her face toward him, searching her green eyes. They were serious, as always, and clear in the candid gaze was the shadow of a sorrow that would never lift.
She locked her fingers in his and smiled gently, a smile which did not disperse the sorrow. “I was craftbred,” she corrected herself. “I’m weyrfolk now.” Berd crooned approvingly and Grall added a trill of her own.
“We could lose a few Holds this Turn around,” F’nor said bitterly.
“That would solve nothing,” she said. “I’m relieved that F’lar is going to watch that Nabolese. He has a warped mind.”
Suddenly she gasped, gripping F’nor’s fingers so tight that her fingernails broke the skin.
“Wh
at’s the matter?” He put both arms around her protectively.
“He has a warped mind,” Brekke said, staring at him with frightened eyes. “And he also has a fire lizard, a bronze, as old as Grall and Berd. Does anyone know if he’s been training it? Training it to go between?”
“All the Lords have been shown how—” F’nor broke off as he realized the trend of her thought. Berd and Grall reacted to Brekke’s fright with nervous squeals and fanning wings. “No, no, Brekke. He can’t,” F’nor reassured her. “Asgenar has one a week or so younger and he was saying how difficult he found it to send his Rial about in his own Hold.”
“But Meron’s had his longer. It could be further along . . .”
“Nabol?” F’nor was skeptical. “That man has no conception of how to handle a fire lizard.”
“Then why is he so fascinated with the Red Star? What else could he have in mind but to send his bronze lizard there?”