Chap. 118 The Stone Plants

Chap. 118  The Stone Plants

"You're wastin' your time, my lad, they's nothing at Far Western save sand and tunnel snakes," K'ndar had been told by the Oldtimers.

 It had always been bare and barren, it was said,  because of Thread. 

That was the common opinion. Even the books said there was nothing at Western, nothing lived there. 

But, he thought, they have to be wrong. Tunnel snakes have to eat SOMETHING. And Thread took 250 year breaks. Surely something could have evolved in the times when there was no Thread. 

Calling it a continent was stretching things, it wasn't as large as either of the two main ones. However, it had never been attached to either one, so, being an island continent, it had an ecology all its own.

Humans had made only short term incursions. It was said that the Ancients had released cats on the island continent, but had seemingly vanished soon after. It was easy to see why. There wasn't much in the way of habitat, for anything. 

The team composed of D'nis, D'mitran, K'ndar, Greta and T'ovar, departed the observatory after breakfast. As they'd done before, the plan was to fly 50 km, land and take readings, create landmarks and dragonstones, and continue. They would return to the observatory for dinner and rest. 

D'mitran had a new datalink, one created by the techs at Landing. They'd used the datalink from the future to improve the ones that had come to them from the past. The new one was far more reliable, with a strong connection to the Yokohama and with more features.

"It took me almost a week to learn how to use this new one," he said, the night before the beginning of the survey, "but I've got it down, now. I almost don't need to take readings, it fairly well does it all on its own." 

K'ndar had his collection bags and notebooks all packed and ready to go.

Greta, too, had collection bags and a piece of equipment that he had never seen before.

"It's called an 'enhanced lidar," she said, showing the small unit to the team, "it looks underneath the surface of the ground. I can find all sorts of things with this, if there's fossils, or ground water, or minerals, this will show it."

"It can see UNDERNEATH the surface?"

"Aye. For quite a distance, depending on the conditions of the soil. For instance," she switched it on, and within a few moments, a small screen showed an incomprehensible graph.

"This shows that where we are, where this observatory is, is sand for at least fifty meters down. We're near the shore, after all. But it also shows further down, there's solid basalt. This continent is what is known as a 'craton'. A craton is a solid block of continental crust, unlike the rest of Pern which is mostly volcanic in origin. So this place is extremely stable, tectonically speaking."

"Tekkk what?" T'ovar said.

"Tectonic. Our planet is composed mostly of shifting tectonic plates because the core is very active. It's why there are so many volcanos, live, dormant and dead. Where you see weyrs, they're almost all created from blown out volcanic cones. But we still get heat from the interior, so a dormant volcano can sometimes awaken. And, of course, the Eastern Islands have a lot of active volcanoes.  

Volcanic rock is easy to dig, relatively speaking. And virtually all volcanoes are on the leading edge of an overbearing plate.  But here? It's a craton. It's not volcanic. It's a gigantic rock, probably formed at the core of the planet and it just sorta floated up to the surface when the planet was still molten. 

Once we get to the valley that separates the eastern island from the western one, you'll see it's on a fault that split the craton in two but still there is no volcano. I don't think you'll find a better sort of substrate or base for a telescope," she rattled on, oblivious to the glazed expressions of the men on the team. 

Yup, she's a geologist, K'ndar thought, remembering B'rost's enthusiasm and grasp of a most confusing argot and science.  

The observatory, as she'd noted, was on sand. But within a few kilometers of departing the observatory, heading due west, the topography returned to its original, pre-colonization configuration. The ground beneath their wings was green with vegetation, unbroken for as far as they could see. It wasn't grassland, nor forest. He wasn't quite sure of what it was. It was littered with what appeared to be of dead trees.

He'd been advised to carry wet weather gear and was glad of it. It wasn't raining, but the air was heavy with moisture. He even had to wear the goggles that every dragon rider had used when fighting Thread. Here and there were heavy banks of fog. 

It was cold and dank, and yet, there was an odd beauty to it. Far off, he could see immense flocks of birds and wherries. 

No one had spent much time exploring either island of the continent. The Ancients had attempted to colonize it during the Second Pass, but reported that Thread devastated any life on it. 

But…if there were tunnel snakes, if there were birds and wherries, there had to be something for them to eat. And there was, very obviously, live vegetation. 

They'd flown fifty kilometers when D'nis gave the order to land. 

Where? Raventh observed.

It was difficult to see an opening in the vegetation. There was none.

"Not sure how deep that stuff is," D'nis said. 

"Greta, does your…thing tell us how deep that vegetation is?"

She unlimbered it. "I'm not getting a good reading, probably because we're moving."

"I'll send Siskin down," K'ndar called.

"And Roany!" Greta added.

Tell Siskin we want to know how deep the vegetation is

I don't know if he understands 'deep', but I'll try 

Siskin cheedled.

Of COURSE he knows what 'deep' means Raventh said, laughing.

The two fire lizards flew down to the top of the vegetation. As K'ndar had noted earlier, there was a lot of what looked like dead trees scattered everywhere. Siskin sent a mental image of him intending to land atop one of them.

The riders watched from above. 

The two blue fire lizards swept back and forth across the top of the vegetation, then Roany landed atop one of the fallen tree trunks. Siskin landed beside him.

Roany warbled loudly and plunged into the vegetation, Siskin excitedly right behind him. 

"Roany!!" Greta called, scared.

Then she laughed. Earth and Raventh both reported what had attracted the fire lizards. 

There are tunnel snakes. They're both going for them

For several moments, all the riders could see was a roiling motion beneath the top of the vegetation, then Siskin burst out, a writhing tunnel snake in his talons. Roany was right behind him, with another. They landed atop a large fallen tree and immediately began to tear into the snakes.

Not deep at all. Safe to land, but be careful, there may be more tunnel snakes

K'ndar and Greta both called out in the same time, "It's safe to land, but there may be tunnel snakes."

The dragons landed. The vegetation was thick and tangled, and they were ON it, like a living cushion, rather than in it. But even so, it was no more than knee deep to a human.

Within seconds, the riders saw half a dozen snakes fleeing their dragons, weaving between the thick vegetation to escape. 

"As long as they move away, we should be okay," D'nis said.

"Hey! Look! The leaves on these plants…they fold up!"

It was so. K'ndar noticed that wherever his feet had touched, the leaves…heavy, waxy things..folded up and flattened. The underside of the leaves was tough, almost like leather.

It's hard to walk in this stuff, K'ndar thought. He hadn't really touched the surface. It was like trying to walk through piles of tangled fishing nets, his feet plunging into the interior of the plant and finding no support. He made his way to a fallen tree and found that was easier to stand on.

From his perch on it, he got a better look at the vegetation.

It wasn't grass. The plants were all little, dwarf shrubs, trees in miniature. They were woody, with tangled limbs bearing the sensitive leaves. The tree trunk he was on was most likely the same species. Reaching down to the live plants, he attempted to cut one of the limbs. 

His knife skittered off the surface and almost cut him.

?

The leaves were tightly shut. All it took was the lightest of touches to make them fold.

He felt the bark of the plant. It was hard, and gritty. He tried cutting it again. The knife made barely a score on it. It felt more like concrete than wood. Yet it was definitely a living plant. 

He dug a little deeper, the knife meeting great resistance. I'm going to bugger up the edge, if I'm not careful, he thought.

Then, amazingly, the plant began to weep. From almost invisible pores, water emerged from the plant, soaking his hands within seconds. His knife again slid off the plant's bark. But he felt it reach a softer interior and with some dedicated sawing, he managed to cut a piece of the shrub off. Water oozed from the cut end of the stem. Within seconds, both it and the plant he'd cut if off of began to  'heal' the cut wound, the water turning dark in color and thickening into a sticky sap. 

He wanted to take a plant, rootwad and all. But that was going to be problematic, how to dig when he can't even get through the plant's twisting limbs to the soil?

Duh.

The live plants and dead trees were almost certainly the same species, as he could see nothing else that was different. Several of the dead trees had root wads. He could see one, not far off, that appeared to have fallen over fairly recently, with a fairly large root wad sticking up. Maybe that was the one to take samples from. For today, at least, he could take a dead sample. 

"Note to self," he said, out loud, "Tomorrow, bring something to cut with."

"This is amazing," Greta called out. She, as well as the others, had done the same thing K'ndar had-found a perch on a fallen tree to take readings. 

"What is amazing?"

"My readings show that the water table is guess how deep?"

Shards, he groaned to himself, another person who loves riddles.

"I can't imagine."

"Fifteen centimeters," she said.

"Fifteen?" T'ovar said, "That's all? Fifteen?"

"Yes. It's almost as if we're just sitting on a thin cushion of sand just above the sea."

He shook his head. If the entire continent had that shallow a water table, it didn't look good for a second observatory.

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As he wrote up his notes that evening, K'ndar's mind kept bringing up the puzzling 'don't touch me' plant. 

The leaves close up and flatten? The bark is almost stony?  It cries when you cut it?

He looked closely at the sample he'd taken. The leaves were open and flaccid now.  He sketched them and hoped that D'nis had taken pictures of them before and after. I'll have to sketch the untouched leaves tomorrow, he thought. But why would a plant lose so much water, just from a wound? And why, if it was living in a thin skin of soil above a shallow water table, why would it need to have so much water in its limbs?   

And why…why were all the plants they'd seen today were the same height, and yet there were dead trees all over, some absolutely huge in comparison?  

Something was niggling in his mind, something just on the edge of understanding. It refused to come out and explain itself.

It will come to me, he thought, as he finished writing up his notes. For now, I am going to get some sleep.

Just before he fell asleep, he had a vision of Thread falling from the sky onto the plants. Thank the stars, he thought, that that threat was ended. Forever.