Chap. 125 An Ethical Dilemma

Chap. 125 An Ethical Dilemma

K'ndar looked over the scribbles in his field notebook. They'd spent so much time doing actual surveying and field work that he was woefully behind on his transcribing. Not that he'd actually done any transcription into the new notebooks he'd gotten from Raylan at Landing. He'd originally planned on doing that when at Observatory, but as he was learning, good intentions sometimes go awry. This time he'd not even brought them with, they were still safe in his weyr at Kahrain.

After removing the animal's skeleton from what they immediately called "Greta's Cave", he'd asked her to take soil samples from where it had lain. 

"I'm betting there will be some DNA from the thing in the soil," he'd explained. 

She, D'nis and D'mitran were packing up their dragons. K'ndar made his way to the top of the outcropping were he'd built the cairn.

Memorizing the rock itself, he broke up the cairn. He wasn't quite sure why, but there was a problem lurking in his mind that he wanted to discuss with the rest of the team.

And he wanted to discuss it HERE. Here, where they were the only humans for a thousand kilometers. 

"Um, before we go, I have something I'd like to discuss with you," he said to them.

D'nis was annoyed. He was tired, and wanted nothing more than a hot dinner and a bath. 

"It's about this cave."

They'd shown their samples to the two men. Both were amazed, and had promptly gone into the cave to gather a few rocks themselves.

"?"

"Our mission is to survey this island continent for a suitable place for a second observatory, correct?" he said.

"Yessss…."

"I'm no engineer, but I would say this spot here is NOT a good candidate for any building or activity whatsoever."

"I'd agree to that," D'mitran said. "There's nothing here that would work. We're too far inland for any ship. Dragons can land here, but the  building materials…never mind the telescope..just aren't conducive for dragons to ferry in."

"Makes you wonder, then, why we're going to all this effort when the telescope, ideally, should be near the coast," Greta said.

"That's what surveying is, lassie. A lot of time consuming work for no obvious reason. Only later does someone make some sense of the data, " D'nis said, laughing, and added, "For instance, that caisson still hasn't explained itself. That thing has been bothering me for a week." 

"Speaking as the biologist, I have gotten a LOT of good data. I think it's been worthwhile if a bit…tedious," K'ndar said. 

"Still, I can say that my lidar shows no water table. No aquifer. Just like at the coast, it's a thin skin of soil/sand/mud over solid rock for a thousand meters down to sea level. That lake over there, I think it's ephemeral, it's here solely because of the rains and they go away for six months at a time." 

K'ndar nodded. "That's exactly the case. If we come back in six months it will be knee high in vegetation and probably not an avian to be seen."

"That, and the mud…and these bloody insects," D'nis said, swiping irritably at the biting insects that just wanted a little taste, just a nibble, please?

"This is not suitable for anything, to be honest, other than a watering spot for wildlife."

K'ndar nodded.

"Personally, I would hate to see this spot turned into anything other than a haven for wildlife. Just like the steppe, this should be left alone."

"Your point is?" D'nis said, wanting K'ndar to get to the point. Why couldn't we discuss this back at Observatory? He reined in his irritation. K'ndar wasn't one to bring up points without good reason. 

"If we find artifacts from the ancients, we turn them into Landing. That's non-negotiable. Other than that caisson on the other island's coast, we've not found a thing."

"True." Come on, kid, get to it.

"But what about valuable things, like these opals? They're not artifacts. They're things. Things that can make money. I don't like the idea of having to have money, but Pern culture is changing, and it seems that whether we like it or not, it's based on money. We've already seen what people like Toric will do just based on the possibility of us finding something valuable. He stuck a spy in amongst us. T'ovar! Toric didn't do that for the betterment of Pern. He did it to make money for himself. Can you imagine what would have happened if we'd had T'ovar here, with us? And what did he do to me? Made me so suspicious of everyone else that I wanted to talk this out HERE rather than where someone might overhear us."

Hm.

Hm.

"Someone other than us hears of this place, and gets the coordinates, it will be crawling within minutes," D'mitran said. He'd disliked T'ovar from the first, and felt a bit of satisfaction that his suspicions had been spot on. 

"No, I think not," Greta said. "I think T'ovar would have kept it secret until he could report it to Toric. I bet he would have tried to cut a deal with Toric, and Toric…from what I've heard, he doesn't DO that.  He might even have done something to T'ovar, like…um…have him killed? once Toric had found this place. We've already seen what he's willing to do to get rich. Richer.

Huh. What's ironic is that, whether we wanted to or not, we may have saved T'ovar's life."

"Huh." was all the rest could say. 

"That's what I think," K'ndar said, "I don't want him, or anyone else, to know about this cave. I think it should be kept secret amongst us four. Is that fair?"

Oh, K'ndar, D'nis thought, you certainly know a hard nut to crack when you find it.

"I've heard about fights breaking out when someone finds a new mine with gemstones," Greta said.

"You have no idea, Greta. Our night baker, Oscoral, was a miner. He can tell you stories about what men will do for gems that will curl your hair," K'ndar said.

"It's already curly," she smiled. 

They laughed, but the problem was a thorny one. 

"Is it honest? Or is it ethical?"

"To do what?"

"To keep this cave secret amongst ourselves."

"Well, why not?"

"Because…well, this opal, if I'm correct, can make us money. Maybe not rich, but it can make money, and right now we're not making any. But in the future, we'll need to. Do we keep this cave secret amongst ourselves and make money? And I bet my boots this cave won't be secret for long if we start bringing in opals."

They all looked hard-at themselves.

D'mitran was the first to voice it.

"I always prided myself on being above the greedy people I've known. Like T'oric, or Tovar, or Jenmay. People who do things, selfish things to other people in order to make themselves richer..they disgust me. I've never been able to let others suffer so that I am better off.  But now…now I feel the value of these rocks, and I find that I am not so moralistic as I thought."

"I know," said Greta, "I was already thinking of how I could use the money. But it's not for something frivolous, it would be..well, just to make my life a little easier. I could use a new harness. In the past, when we had Thread to fight, that was provided by the Holds and Crafters without thought of recompense. But now, …now I have to negotiate. I have to give something of myself, like this survey, in order to hope that someone will give me a new one out of the kindness of his heart. And I haven't met too many people like that."

"I can get you a new harness, Greta. No problem. My sister is a dab hand at it," he said.

She smiled. "Thank you, K'ndar, I'll take you up on it."

D'nis was nodding, as the same things had run through his mind.

"The problem is," he said, "is that WE know of its existence, and how it can make us rich. How often do you go to this well? It's like someone who is trying to wean himself from alcohol, he says to himself, this will be the last time I drink. But later on, he bargains with  himself into taking another."

They all were silent. They'd all thought that, should they absolutely need it, they'd come back, alone, to get an opal. They were dragonriders, after all, people with highly trained memories, vitally necessary in order to travel between safely. Their brains had no delete function.

D'nis looked at the sun. It was getting late. He didn't want to part with the opalescent rock. Either.

They instinctively looked at him. He was team leader. He'd been Weyrleader.

"This is what I suggest. You may keep one rock, each, to do with as we please. Sell it, keep it, but we do not tell anyone where we found it. D'mitran, you and I must erase all our data on this specific benchmark. Tomorrow, we will redo the readings from a site away from here. As far as anyone will know, we never found this cave."

"But…what about the skeleton?" K'ndar said, unwilling to let THAT go. 

That was easy.

"You can say, truthfully, that you found it in a cave. There are caves everywhere on Pern, that’s what we live in, for stars' sake. One cave amongst thousands? That data point will be relevant only to the skeleton itself. There's no context with just one data point. 

 But I suggest that we keep honor amongst ourselves. We don't tell anyone about this cave. I don't want people coming here to fight and kill for a bunch of pretty rocks, but it's happened far too often, both here and on Earth, for me to think it won't happen."

Shards, D'mitran thought, a day's work for nothing. But he took out the datalink, and after looking in it a few moments, found the erase function. After a moment's fearful hesitation, he completed the function.

"I just hope I didn't erase everything we've done so far," he groaned.

"You upload to the Yokohama and Landing every night, yes?"

"Of course, except for today." From now on, he thought, I upload in the field, often.

Regretfully, Greta made the first move. She took her laden collecting bags, entered the cave, and dumped them, reserving one rock for herself. 

The others did the same.

K'ndar kept the first rock she'd given him. It was beautiful, and he wanted it just to look at.

"I'm ready to swear," D'nis said, sticking out his fist. The others met his fist with theirs. They didn't pinky swear…that was for children. But they swore to each other to keep the cave secret.

D'nis sighed. He'd never liked doing work over again, but it couldn't be helped.

He looked at K'ndar.

"Lad, you certainly bring up some issues," he said, ruefully. 

K'ndar looked stricken. "I thought it was the right thing to do," he protested.

"Nay, sir, it is precisely the right thing to do, and I admire you coming to the concept first. I meant that as a compliment," D'nis said, hurriedly. "It was wise."

"Thank you," K'ndar said, mollified.

"Now, before we head back for the night, I want you to break up the cairn you made."

"Already done, sir."

Ah.

It was the right thing to do. But each kept the location deep in their soul.