Chap. 60 Futuristic talk

Chap 60 Leaders talk of the future

It was a day after a strenuous fight against Thread. M'rvin, the new Weyrleader, had had little difficulty in predicting its fall. However, two riders had been scored, not badly, but enough to make them unable to fly the next fall.

He sat with D'nis, B'rant, and D'mitran, nursing a mug of ale, in the weyrleader's office.

"No, I feel completely at fault, D'nis. It's NEVER okay if someone gets hurt, here I am, first flight out as Weyrleader and two people are hurt."

D'nis sipped his beer. "This is the pain of leadership, M'rvin. You will never NOT feel responsible. Don't make the mistake thinking that earlier weyrleaders didn't have casualties.  Me, for instance-I am forever sorry that people and dragons were hurt on my watch. Fighting thread has always been dangerous. I never got used to the idea of losing anyone, rider or dragon."

Outside, a rain fell gently. It promised to pick up in intensity after dark, but for the moment, it made the atmosphere muggy and close. "Where were you yesterday, rain, when we needed you," M'rvin groused at it. 

"Ach man, in a few months, maybe this will just be rain, rather than a hoped for thread killer," B'rant said.

"I dunno, " D'mitran said, uncomfortably,"I could do with  a little less humidity, I could." He reached over to turn on a small fan. I'll never get used to the idea of a fan, he thought, but I like them.

"I hope it be sooner, truth be told," B'rant said.

D'nis took another sip. "This is very good ale, he said, "do you know who made it?"

M'rvin grinned. "As a matter of fact, I do. I did."

"Is that a fact!! When did you start making ale?"

"Not too long ago. Started trying my hand at it when I read a book in the new library that Rendel is building. It is called a 'cook' 'book'. It had 'recipes',  instructions on how to make beer, bread, cheese, pies, even baby food. It had more advice on what NOT to do making ale, but I followed it to the letter and…well, this is the fourth or fifth batch I've made. I'm glad you like it," he said, proudly. "I think, after thread stops, I'll be a beer maker."

"Well, you'll have my business, sure as dragon wings," D'nis said. 

"What do you want to do AT? After Thread?" M'rvin asked. 

"Like everyone else, I've been giving that long thought," D'nis said, contemplating the lowering level in his mug, "I think I want to…um, survey. Fly about the continent, establishing where the mountains end and the steppe begins, maybe find how far the rivers go. It's amazing that this continent, as large as it is, has hardly been explored. Maybe it's because where we live, it's so rich in everything we need that there's been no need to go further. But as more people move here from the North, I see a need for room for them. Problem is, most of the continent appears to be empty steppe."

He reached for a meat roll on a plate between them. "These are Hariko's special meat rolls. No other weyr ever had them like this. It's because of the meat they're made from and Hariko's special touch. Our cattle are steppe bred. It's apparent that the grass grows excellent cattle. Where is the dividing line between keeping good grazing lands and still having room for more people to live? I think, if I can designate the spots that should be kept open for cattle and horses and the spots where people can settle, that hopefully will balance." 

He leaned back, stretching old muscles that seemed to take longer and longer to ease after a hard flight.

D'mitran said, "I'm thinking of how to make paper and books. The library…what a wondrous thing it is. Ours is so small! Landing is printing books as fast as possible and probably will never have enough. Once I have the time, I think I'll start using it, going to ours AND Landing's," he said, "and make it grow. Big. With lots of books, for everyone."

"That's another thing I'm wondering about my new job as Weyrleader. Where do I find the time to do …anything?" M'rvin said, "I've not had a chance to even test my latest batch of beer."

D'nis laughed. "You don't, my man. You don't. It's like a ravenous dragon; it eats up every bit of your life. But I can tell you, if you continue to make ale this good, maybe I'll help take some of the load off your back as long as I get some of it." They all laughed.

B'rant said, "It's a sad thing, our world."

The others looked at him, wondering.

"Think of it. The only way M'rvin was able to make this wondrous ale was because he JUST NOW had a book that taught him how to do it. Before, we've had to depend on men at Holds, making it from memory that someone else had memorized or learned from his grandfather, and his, and his before him, from secret knowledge. They don't share that knowledge! Why? Why so…secretive?"

"Like Lord Toric, keeping his people under a thumb, if they find an Ancient artifact, give it to him rather than share it," D'mitran said. "Or Jenmay, dying with the knowledge of an herb that heals a skin rash on children. How…how just is that? What does it get them, to keep these secrets?"

""Knowledge is Power,"" D'nis quoted. "And to some people, power is everything. Me, I couldn't be happier that I'm no longer Weyrleader. But, to people like Toric, or Jenmay, or, by the egg, Fax, nothing was more valuable to them. It's like a fight between two people. If you know what your opponent is going to do, even before he does, you win."

M'rvin shook his head. "I knew when I impressed Arcturuth that I'd someday be a Weyrleader. I was fine with that because, well, this is what we Pernese do. But after learning from Aivas, I began to wonder, why, if the ancients could fly across the stars, we can't fly across the bowl without a dragon. Aivas at Landing taught us so much, computers. Books. Printing presses. Making paper. Making electricity from sunlight, and things that use it, like that fan. Then I come back to the weyr, and Hariko is making meat rolls from memory, and we're still using dead sheep to record births and deaths, or I fly over a Hold and see a man walking behind an ox pulling a wooden plow. Why didn't we grow smarter? Why did we fall so far behind what we used to be?"

"When you put it that way," B'rant said, "it makes it sound as if everyone is…well, selfish. Lord Toric being a prime example. When he tried to make it so that he had ALL of southern continent to be his Hold alone? That, to me, is selfish."

"Well, we dragonriders aren't tarnish free, remember, once we found out just how big Southern is, we DID let him think he was snookering us." D'nis reminded. They all laughed, a bit sheepishly.

"Aye, but he had it coming, he did," M'rvin said.

"No doubt, and it's a sad thing that we HAD to snooker him." 

"Sort of makes you understand the Abominators. They are murderous, ruinous vandals that should be banished, but in a way, I understand them. When I see an Aivas invention, sometimes I find it scary. Is it because I don't understand it? Is it because I'm too stupid and that hurts my feelings? Rather than admit that I might not be as smart as I think I am, I react by destroying what I fear? Is that fear coming from powerlessness?" B'rant said.

"I think it comes from something a bit deeper," D'nis said. "Things we know, that we grew up with knowing, like you, M'rvin, knowing that you had a better than even chance of being a Weyrleader because you impressed a bronze, that's comfortable. You know the path before you take the first step. But what if, from now on, for instance, women could impress bronzes? Men impress golds? Or greens could produce fertile eggs?"

"Well, that would make things confusing….and I know plenty of men who'd absolutely refuse to follow a female Weyrleader," D'mitran said, "men like that, my mum used to say, were all horns and balls, like a scrubby bull."

"I see what you mean, D'nis. I think that's it, or at least part of it. I don't know how I'd react to a female Weyrleader. I keep coming up with reasons why I WOULDN'T, and I KNOW better. I've seen how good girls are.  I know from experience that Danelle knew her thread charts just as well as you, and she was ferocious when it came to fighting thread. Like all my green riding girls…they go harder than the men." M'rvin said.

"Because they have to. Danelle said  green and gold riders always work extra hard at everything because the men, otherwise, don't respect them. That's unfair, but it's a fact."

B'rant snapped his fingers. "Got it. It's been snagging along in the back of my brain."

They all looked at him.

"Why are we so, backward? Why have we lost so, so much and only now see the depth of that loss? It's because…well, here it is. We have threadfall charts. They are vitally important and have made planning flights so much easier and exact. But F'lar had to create them. Before him there were no threadfall charts. Why?"

The others thought for a few moments. 

"No Threadfall. It was the end of an Interval." D'nis said.

"RIGHT. For how many years? 400? 250? See, even I have forgotten, charts weren't necessary because there was no thread. DRAGON riders weren't necessary, because there was no thread. We almost lost US! If you don't use knowledge, if you don't share it, it gets lost. We don't fly across the stars because there was no need for it. Now we don’t know how, and we still have the starship in our sky."

They all nodded.

"When you go to Landing, you see these youngsters, from all three branches of Pern society, going at their studies hammer and tongs. It's almost as if they're starving, dying to learn more and more. Even here at the weyr, the kids in school, they WANT to be there. I never saw such fear in their eyes as when Jenmay ran the girls out of school. They were in tears. They don't want to be baby makers. They want to be contributing citizens of Pern.

Why is it we stop learning when we're grown? I admit it's because adults have jobs to do. We raise kids. We raise crops. We fight Thread. We build things, hunt things, we have work to do. We don't have the time, like the kids do. 

D'nis looked at his empty mug, regretfully. M'rvin reached over with the jug, but D'nis put his hand over it to signify no more, thank you.

"But in the future, we dragonriders won't have the constant task of fighting thread. We'll still do sweeps, of course, there's still work for us! But…but I propose, my friends, something like school for adults. We needn't stop learning new things just because we're grown. I bet my boots the colonists had school for adults. I would like to see us…not just us here in this office, but all adults in the weyr to…if they want to!..go to school. Call it Adult School.  Teach each other skills, like making beer, from M'rvin. Have Hariko write down her ress ihpees so that, once we lose her, Rukbat forbid, someone else knows how to make her special meatrolls." He leaned forward, enthusiastic.

"We can learn from books and computers and teach others. I'd love to know how the ancients carved such perfect caverns from solid rock, and how they arranged them to make good air flow through it. Maybe we can recreate that process rather than beat on rock with a hammer. There's no end to the things I want to learn! And then we teach each other, we don't keep secrets, we share the knowledge. Go to Landing, read books, learn to use a computer! Stretch our brains so that we don’t fall back into what Pern was before Thread returned. Maybe, someday, someday, one of our great grandkids or theirs will be able to repair the Yokohama  to where they can fly across the stars.  Again."