Chap. 26 Quiz Day

Chap. 26  Quiz Day

B'rant, the Weyrlingmaster, was finishing his preparations for the day's class. He frowned.

The large slate chalkboard on the wall behind him was still full of his notes from the last seminar. SOMEONE had neglected to clean it. He dragged the Weyrling task schedule from the corner in his mind. F'mart. Bronze Kententh. 

F'mart had been tasked with cleaning the classroom.  He was conspicuously absent from the knot of his classmates, waiting for class on the broad stone platform just outside. 

F'mart. The boy was beginning to be a problem, arrogant, inclined to argue and surreptitiously testing him when he could. Well, he'd deal with the little braggart after class. His responsibility, right now, was for his weyrlings now filing in. 

Banarth. Please ask Kententh where his rider is

His bronze responded a few moments later.

He is in his weyr. He is very sick. He is still drunk

This was a different level, then. Weyrlings weren't supposed to drink while in training, especially young ones like F'mart, who was just 16. He felt relieved, now he could get on with teaching. 

Ask Corvath to tell D'nis

He reflected how bloody convenient it was to be able to communicate so quickly and efficiently. 

K'ndar sat down in his accustomed spot in the Weyrling classroom.

Sinala, one of the girls in his class, sidled up next to him on the bench.

"Guess what day it is," she whispered to him out of the corner of her mouth.

He groaned, rolling his eyes.

"Quiz day," he whispered back. It wasn't that B'rant's quizzes were long. Well, they were..sometimes they'd take all morning. No, B'rant's quizzes were complicated. He didn't confine himself to last week's topics. Often, he would go way back, posing scenarios that involved one having to not only to remember what had been covered several weeks past, but also made one recall discussions and topics together. All from memory, as well, note taking being confined to small tablets of slate and some chalk.

 Unbeknownst to the weyrlings, he was teaching them to THINK.

 That was harder, and yet K'ndar welcomed the mental workout. He appreciated that he could be wrong and not suffer a consequence other than a little embarrassment. Better to be wrong in the classroom than to be wrong in the sky. It was one reason he liked sitting next to the girls. They were usually so much quicker, reasoning with more clarity, were more willing to help. They worked together, often supporting each other, whereas the boys were more inclined to competing against the others, trying to demonstrate their superiority. 

He noticed F'mart was missing. That was a relief, in a way; F'mart wasn't the brightest of sparks. He could be a bully, was incapable of admitting mistakes or being wrong, and was often argumentive solely for the purpose of showing off.  He never let K'ndar forget his bronze Kententh was going to be very, very large. As if that meant anything to K'ndar.  Raventh might be small for a brown, but he was but he made up for that with a lively mind and an engaging personality.

B'rant cleared his throat and the class quieted.

"Let's say you're out riding sweeps. What should you be paying attention to, and why?"

One of the boys said, "It depends, sir, on what the task is."

"That's a given. I'm talking about what should you be paying attention to ALWAYS?"

"How much firestone you are carrying." 

"Staying in formation when flying thread."

"Looking for banners flown at the Holds."

Sinala piped up. K'ndar was very grateful to sit next to her, because she was almost always right.

"Weather, sir," she said.

B'rant flourished a hand. "Yessss, my lassie! Weather! And why?" He pointed at K'ndar, who really didn't want to be questioned this early, but realized it was a lost cause.

"It affects Threadfall." He said, hoping he was right and B'rant would go for some other victim.  Weather befuddled him. It was incredibly complex, sometimes changed without warning, and he despaired of EVER understanding it. 

"Annnnnnnd…?"

Shards. That was pure B'rant, leading him on, forcing him to think using neurons that were still only half solidified from the class on the topic. OF COURSE there was more. Once again, he'd fallen smack into B'rant's web.

"Well, the weather is going to change. It affects how one must plan for threadfall."

"Come, come, K'ndar, you're dancing around the answer. Let's put it another way," B'rant said. "can you think of what the most dangerous weather there is?"

Three of the weyrlings all called out at once, "A hurricane."

"Would you be flying sweeps in a hurricane?"

They all shut up, dumbstruck. Of course not. Any smart rider would be hunkered down in his or her weyr, grateful to be inside in such weather and even more so, knowing Thread couldn't survive a hurricane. 

"Alright, I'll give you some clues. You had a squall of rain early in the morning, but no more is forecast. You can hear the rumble of thunder far, far off, coming from large towering clouds far off in the distance. You are upwind of them."

Sinala was thinking furiously. Sweeps were flown when no Thread was forecast. Usually flown in good weather, but..but…what was the most dangerous weather? In good weather? It hit her like the proverbial stroke of...

"Lightning!" she shouted. 

"Give that girl a bubbly pie!" B'rant cried, proud of the girl. Secretly, he preferred teaching girls and women. They listened. They reasoned, they cooperated and worked together. Even gold riders were most concerned with learning how to care for their queen and be a Weyrwoman, seldom if ever pulling rank on everyone else.  Oh, not always-the Oldtimer, gold rider Jenmay, being a painfully obnoxious exception, but usually, girls lacked the arrogance and competitiveness that was the hallmark of most boys. He couldn't remember a girl challenging him solely for the purpose of trying to prove his manhood.  Like that bloody F'mart…

K'ndar, chagrinned, slapped his forehead. Of course. Lightning. That was what was so admirable about Sinala, she could see these things. She was as quick as her green.

"From now on," he said to her, "I'm flying next to you."

She smiled at his compliment. 

"Think of it, my weyrlings. Can you imagine anything worse than being struck by lightning while flying? I imagine you die instantly, dead before you hit the ground. You-and your dragon! are burnt to a crisp like that," he said, snapping his fingers. "The reason I bring up the scenario as I did is because it DOES happen. Lightning can strike from a clear blue sky, without warning. 

I've been told you might feel your hair stand on end, or you may even get stings from the metal in your riding straps. So I've been told, and the men who told me this were NOT flying at the time."

One of the girls said, "My dad says it likes anything metal."

B'rant nodded. This was how you taught people…by getting them to think, to add their personal experiences, and to teach each other. 

"And tall things. Like trees," K'ndar added. "If there's a tree on the steppe, it's going to get hit."

"Trees aren't metal," someone said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

B'rant glared at the boy. By now, they knew what THAT look meant.

"He's absolutely right. Now apologize for your unnecessary and unhelpful remark."

The sarcastic one flushed and said, "Sorry," to K'ndar. K'ndar could see it wasn't heartfelt, but it was satisfying to see the other boy obey.

 "Lightning does seem to go for tall things.  I've seen two meter thick trees blasted to stumps from lightning. Any fisherman will tell you the same thing, metal or not, the tallest mast gets hit," B'rant added.

"Sir," asked B'rost, a blue rider, "What IS lightning? What makes it happen, why does it come in storms and blue sky?"

"That, my lad, is something I cannot tell you because I don't know. It is called 'electricity' but what electricity is, I don't know. We are just now beginning to renovate the weyr, installing 'solar panels' that will make electricity, but we can thank Aivas for that. Up until now, that knowledge of what electricity is was lost to us. At least, to THIS dragonrider," he added. 

He was almost ashamed to admit it, but it was common knowledge that much of what the early settlers had known had been lost to them, much of it due to later generations keeping records on hides. Hides were dreadfully poor at maintaining any sort of history, or explanation, but paper was unheard of for most of the 2500 years since colonization.

  Sometimes just a word  in the Pern language, like 'electricity', was all that was left, like a leaf fallen from a dead tree. 

It was why Harpers came into being: singing was a method of retaining-and teaching-history and knowledge. But no song that he'd ever learned ever mentioned electricity. Nor, for that matter, did they teach technology. One learned to build things or create things by learning from the masters, or your parents.

K'ndar wondered if Rahman, the star smith, might know. But he was a star gazer, not a weatherman. The stars obeyed laws.  They didn't change. You knew, if you saw a constellation in a certain part of the night sky, when..and where..you were. Weather? Weather was as capricious as, well, the weather. Hmmph.

For the rest of the morning, they discussed many topics taught earlier in the year.  B'rant enjoyed tuning their quick minds. The end of the morning came all too swiftly, and he dismissed them for lunch, followed by their week's tasks.

D'nis walked in as they were leaving. This was not at all unusual, but this time it was fairly obvious why-the missing F'mart. They all hailed him with the respect due their Weyrleader. They left, but stayed just out of sight, shamelessly eavesdropping. They were not disappointed.

"Sir?" B'rant asked. He met the Weyrleader's eyes with a flip of his head. They both knew his weyrlings would be eavesdropping. They'd done it themselves as Weyrlings, and actually, considered it an excellent way of teaching-in a surreptitious way. Sometimes the best way to teach a lesson was for the student to learn from the consequences of another's actions.

"I had a little chat with your truant, F'mart," D'nis said. 

"Hopefully you knocked some responsibility into his hammer head?"

"Unnecessary. Our grown fighters did it for us. Yesterday, they were in the dining hall after flying Thread, F'mart elbowed his way into their midst, strutting like a courting wherry."

B'rant, knowing the boy, knew what was coming next.

"Let me guess. He sat down without invitation, all full of gas and ash because he's a bronze and was actually in the sky for a threadfall, and they took him down a few pegs. Beer?"

D'nis grinned. "AND wine…the women led him on like a fire lizard decoying a tunnel snake and the men encouraged him to finish himself off. He didn't have a chance. He's sick as a dying dog right now. I told the healers to NOT give him anything but the time of day, not even sympathy. Let him empty his guts out and beg for death. Perhaps he'll be more responsible in the future." 

"I'll give him two weeks on latrine duty, as well."

"Make it a month. I want this young wherry to remember to respect his elders."