Chap. 181 The Boatheads

Chap. 181 The Boatheads

"Are there no dragonriders here?" K'ndar asked.

Francie had taken him through the village, meeting several people, all of whom seemed to be in a semi-permanent state of quiet introspection at best and somnolence at worst. Everyone was polite but kept their questions to themselves. Maybe that was just the way they were, he reflected.
There seemed to be no structure, no intensity of purpose, but he had to admit that the village was neat as a pin and the villagers seemed friendly, if not effusive.

"No, despite my being a dragonrider, and, mind you, dragonriders are welcome here, just like anyone else who's willing to abide by the rules, " Francie said, "but dragons or fire lizards will never be able to live here, and I'll show you why."

She led the way to a large barn on the edge of the village. Vast pastures were populated by horses and cattle…and something else.

A young girl was lounging in the shade of a large tree, and stood up when they approached.

"Hello, I’m Francie," Francie said, "and you?"

"Elga, I'm today's shepherd. You're dragonriders, I saw you land. Please don't allow your dragons near my pets," she said.

Francie laughed. "Elga, I grew up here, so I know better. Both our dragons and our fire lizards have eaten, so you needn't worry. We're here to see your boatheads," she said.

"Boatheads?" K'ndar repeated. He wracked his brain, trying to remember if he'd ever heard of such a beast, or read of it.

"Boatheads," Francie repeated.

Elga smiled and standing up, put her fingers to her lips and whistled.

There was a sound of miniature thunder, and from below the brow of a hill came a tide of brown, shaggy beasts.

There were almost thirty of them. They moved quickly with an odd, undulating gait, and soon K'ndar could see why. They had six limbs, but quite unlike any native Pernian animal. The rear four ended in hooves, the front pair were short, more like arms than legs, and had what appeared to be paws. A stout neck rose from the middle set of shoulders and was topped by a broad, almost triangular shaped head.

He could see immediately why they were called 'boatheads'. The top part of the wide, horizontally flattened head, the center from front to rear was ridged, with a shape similar to the keel of a boat. The skull flattened laterally from that ridge and narrowed to a sharp, horned points, one on each side of the head, on the same plane as the eyes. The eyes were the length and shape of a human finger and twice as wide. Under the eyes was a slash that had to be a mouth. He could see, just barely, what might have been nostrils underneath the short hair of the face. The skull narrowed towards the back, ending in yet another horn.

Some of the boatheads rear horns were twice as long as the side ones.They were obviously non natives-but neither were they something from Terra. He'd have to look them up in Walkers "Mammals of the Galaxy"
This has to be the ugliest animal I've ever seen, he thought.

The herd arrived in a rush, making an odd sound that was a combination of gurgling and growling. Several were noticeably smaller. Yearlings, he thought.

Elga stepped in amongst them and began to croon to them. They jostled to reach her, and he was glad he wasn't in amongst them. The size of a horse, they used the lateral horns to push the others away. One particularly large one, with an immense rear horn, stared at him. Herd male? What to call these things to designate sex and age? No stallion, no cow, ever looked like this.

"What-I've never seen anything like them. Where are they from?"

"No one is quite sure. They were imported as frozen embryos from Vulcan, but it's believed they were originally from Aldebaran 4. The Vulcans are master geneticists…far better than any human, and it's theorized they tinkered with the original Aldebaran beast for…well, what else do you notice about them?"

He looked at them, trying to summon his biologist.

"Let's see. Horse sized, but no equine had a head like THAT. A triangular shaped head, flattened horizontally and what I think are horns on the points that stick out sideways. Two what I assume are eyes, long and narrow, filling up a fairly good portion of the front part of the head. I see a third horn but it appears to be pointing back, towards a flattened tail. Paws with claws on the, um, forearms, hooves on the middle and hind legs.

Francie laughed.

"What else?"

"Ummmmmmm'…

Look at the torso just below the front most pair of legs. See a fold there?

He looked. He saw what appeared to be a gash across the midriffs of some of the boatheads.

"Um.."

Just then, he saw the most amazing thing. A small head protruded from the gash on one of them.


"What in the world?" he said, "It's a baby?"

Francie nodded. "Yes. They're 'marsupial'. Meaning, the ones with the pouch on the front, they're females. These animals produce a live baby, directly into the pouch, at a very early developmental stage, and the baby completes its development in the pouch until it's old enough to thermoregulate and move about. There were several species and genuses of marsupials on Terra, but I can't remember any of their names," she said.

"Kroo, that's the one I 'member," Elga said, "but the picture of kroo's didn't look nothing like boatheads."

"Anything, Elga. Double negatives, you know," Francie corrected.

"ANYTHING like boatheads, ma'am," Elga said, not at all resentful for the correction.

K'ndar remembered, vaguely, reading about marsupials, but Pern's animals laid eggs. Only non-native mammals, from Terra and Vulcan, gave birth to live young.

"Not bad, but what else do you see?"


"By the egg, it's fur. What FUR! It shimmers!"

Elga nodded proudly. "Yes. We raise them for their fur. We don't kill them for their fur, because the older they get, the deeper, and softer, and thicker it gets as they age. We can also shear them, like sheep. When they die, THAT's when we take the entire hide and turn it into sleeping furs. Haven't you ever wondered where the furs on your bunk come from?"

He shook his head, looking down at the girl, who wasn't much older than his sister, Glyena. She had the same self confident air of an incipient alpha mare.

"Elga, where I come from, it's warm. We do get snow on occasion, but only once in a while, and then we use wool for our clothes and our blankets. My cothold, for instance, has sheep that we shear yearly, and tithe the wool to our Holder," he said, thinking of his home cothold and Lord Dorn's Hold.

"A hold? We aren't a hold here, we're a commune," she said. "I don't know what 'tithe' means."

"Haven't gotten that far in Pern economics, Elga?" Francie asked.

"No'm. I get that later, I think. But Aivas, we know about Aivas, he had a whole database meant for teaching kids, so we're learning more 'portant things than economics. I don't know for sure what that means but it sounds like money. I don't care for money, it means math. I don't really like math," the girl said.

K'ndar grinned, feeling the same way about economics. The difference in the culture here was growing ever more evident.

The green rider said, "Boatheads provide the best furs on the planet. At one time, there were a great many more but it seems, especially after the Old Timers came forward, the commune was ostracized. Boathead numbers dwindled, with inbreeding creating problems,so much so that it was thought the entire species would be lost. Only Aivas's advice and training on embryology tweaking, gave us the keys to resurrecting the species. Now, we know better, and in the last, what, Elga? fifteen years? been able to produce more boatheads," Francie said.

Elga nodded in agreement.

It's only been recently that there's been a renewed interest in boathead fur. I hope it continues, these are nice beasts and their fur is fabulous."

He looked at the beasts as they milled about. The fur was long and deep, long guard hairs floating as if stirred by the wind, despite the fact that the air here was calm and still.

"Can I touch one?" he asked.

"Sure. They're gentle. They won't hurt you, but the herd male will keep an eye on you. If you make them mad, they can gore you," Elga said.

Francie said, "K'ndar is a horseman, just like me, Elga. He knows how to handle livestock."

K'ndar hoisted himself over the sturdy rock wall, admiring the way it was fitted together without mortar. Someone knew his masonry, for certain.

One of the yearlings came up to him, twisting its head sideways. Somehow it looked endearing, although K'ndar couldn't shake the feeling it was still a homely animal.

"They like the back of their head scratched," Elga said, helpfully.

Good night, where did the back start and end? But his hand instinctively found a spot just under the rear horn. He had to worm the fingers in through the amazingly deep fur to find the skin. It was soft and warm. He began to scratch, watching..well, he couldn't see the eyes, now could he? They were on the front of the head, not the sides, like those of a horse.

"Oh, there are knobs back here?" he said, feeling soft little lumps.

"Thems his ears, um, THOSE are his ears. He's got four of them, two in back, and two just in front of the horns. Don't scratch them, just stay inside them, towards the middle. Don't let the horns stick you," Elga advised.

His fingers found a safe spot and began to scratch the skin.

The animal immediately began to croon, twisting its head away from him to give him access.

"He'll let you do that all day, iffen …IF you let him," Elga said.

K'ndar grinned. "Sort of like my mum's cat, what?" He gauged how hard he could scratch by the animal's reaction. Apparently, it wasn't hard enough!

Elga looked at him. "Where are you from?" she asked.

"Originally? Or now?" he asked.

"Both."

"I was born in a small cothold, that's a place with just a few families, in my case just my immediate family and several single people who help my family raise cattle and horses. We live on the edge of Kahrain Steppe. Do you know about the steppe?" he asked. He found himself forcing himself to answer, as if he were hearing her voice from a long distance.

She shook her head.

Ah, well.

"Now, I live at Kahrain Steppe Weyr, you know what a weyr is, yes?"

This is odd, he thought, my eyelids feel heavy.

"Yes. It's where dragons and their riders live. In rocks, your cottage is made of rocks. Right?"

Francie grinned. "Not always, and not quite, Elga. Most of the weyrs here on Northern are caverns in old volcanic formations. K'ndar's weyr, is quite a bit different, in that they do live in caverns in volcanic formations, but also have cottages, like yours, here, some entirely of wood! That's because Southern was always protected from thread, by grubs, just like here at Sweet Grass," she said.

She had a weird grin on her face, K'ndar noticed.

The rest of the boatheads closed up around him. He felt no fear, despite how close some of those horns were to his face. They looked exceedingly sharp.

By the way, K'ndar, what are you feeling, right now?" Francie asked, smirking.

K'ndar shook his head, trying to dispel the webs clogging his mind. "Believe it or not, I feel like I could take a nap," he said.

"Stop scratching, then, it's the boathead doing that to you," she said.

"What?" he pulled his hand away. The boathead grumbled in protest. It pushed its head back into his hand, insisting on more scritches.

Pulling away, he clambered back over the stone fence and stood a little shakily. He felt wobbly.

"They project some sort of, well, it's not telepathy like in our dragons, or even our fire lizards. It's, I guess the best word is a mental soporific. It's theorized that, when you do something nice to a boathead, like scratch between its ears, it matches it's brainwaves with yours, to make you continue," she said. "You do it long enough, you'll feel as if you've been on a two day drunk, but without the sickness," she said.

"Clever, it works, for certain," K'ndar laughed, shaking the sleepiness out of his head.

"No one has problems with insomnia, not here!" Francie said, "What else did you feel?"

K'ndar reflected. "That fur…it's soft. So SOFT, like, well, like nothing I've ever felt before."

"Yes," Elga said, "It's the softest and lightest fur on all Pern. It is the warmest, too. It doesn't matter how cold it gets, the boatheads stay out in the snow, the ice, they are warm. It sheds out in the spring and we collect it, and make things out of it."

His fingers remembered the incredible feel of the fur.

"Strange," he said, now fully recovered, "they have fur. Most herbivores-I'm assuming they're herbivores?"

Francie and Elga nodded.

"Most herbivores have hair, not fur. I know, it's merely the difference in number of hairs, and the texture. These are different," he said.

"My mum, and my grandmum make sweaters and bedthrows out of the hair. We collect it in the spring, clean it, and make it into things. Not me, I don't do that, I'm not interested in doing things like that. Me, I want to be outside, like now," Elga said. "My sister, she likes knitting and weaving but not me. I want to be out with the boys, doing fun things."

"I am just like you," Francie said. Then, she said, 'Come on, K'ndar, I'll show you some other things. Thank you, Elga, for your time," Francie said.

"You're welcome and nice to meet you, K'ndar," Elga said.

They walked off. "Nice kid, well behaved, courteous," K'ndar said.

"That's how we raise 'em here, K'ndar."

"Makes me wonder, why boatheads aren't more common, why only here?"

Francie was leading him back to the dragons, he noticed.

"They don't do well, not at all, in warm climates. They want it cold and snowy. People tried raising them further south, on North, of course, and they just couldn’t take the heat. That's one thing the genetic tweaking couldn't accomplish. So for now, it seems, Sweet Grass has a monopoly on their fur," Francie said.

"I wonder, how they'd do at the southern end of Kahrain Steppe? It gets cold there, too," he asked.

"I don't know. I'm not sure how they'd adapt, if at all, to a steppe environment," she said after several moments.

"By the way, you said it wasn't advisable for dragons to be here?" K'ndar asked. Dragons could handle the cold, he knew.

"I said, they don't do well here, and the boatheads are the reason," she said.

"How?"

"Well, let's mount our dragons for the best demonstration. Besides, I believe you wanted to see snow tigers?"

"YES."

"Well, it takes some flying, but I know where we can see one. Seen enough of the village?"

"For today, I guess, but I'd love to see the snow tigers, and now that I have the coordinates to Sweet Grass, I can come back," he said.

"Just as long as you park Raventh far away," she said.
________________________________________________________________________
Their dragons leaped into the air, and, catching the southbound wind, gained altitude. Francie set a northern course.

"This is a good height, and we shouldn't tarry, I don't want to get the livestock too upset," Francie called.

Beneath them, the cattle and horses bolted as they approached. K'ndar always felt bad when his dragon caused such fear in animals not used to them, so he knew to make it quick.

"There's the boatheads," Francie called.

The boatheads, he noticed, had been intermingled with the other livestock, but stood their ground when the other livestock had fled. They all stared at the dragons.

They looked so ugly, he thought, that triangular head, that flattened tail…


IT HURTS! Raventh shouted, cringing.


Siskin screeched and cowered on Ravenths neck, as if trying to keep from hit by rain. He could feel pain coming from both of them.

What hurts? Then he felt pain in his inner ear, a searing, burning sensation. What the shaff? It was part Raventh, part himself? He'd never felt anything like this. He felt a non-existant sharp edged wire being pulled through his skull, ear to ear.

It hurts! Those animals down there…I have to get out of here Raventh said, and without urging, he beat his wings hard to gain altitude and speed. Motanith bolted and was soon far ahead of them.

Francie's fire lizards were shrieking.

Raventh shook his head. Make it stop!

I don't know what it is!

"See that peak, oh, I'll have Motanith push it to Raventh, we need to head to that point, then we'll be out of range," Francie yelled.

The wind whistling in his ears made him miss some of her words, but Raventh heard and sped even faster.

Within a few moments, K'ndar felt the pain in his head subside.

That hurt. It's better now. I don't ever want to go near those animals again Raventh said, with a mental sigh from the release of pain.

They were near the peak when Siskin and Francie's trio finally stopped crying.

"What the shaff was THAT?" he called to the green rider alongside.

"THAT was from the boatheads, reacting to our dragons. It's the boatheads way of attacking predators, see? They scream at an ultrasonic level, far above our hearing limits but other animals hear it, and are repelled by it," she called.

"No doubt! It sure repelled ME!" he said, shaking his head.

"That's why we use boatheads to protect the livestock from predators like wherries or snow tigers," she said.

"Thanks for the warning. That's something I won't ever forget," he called.

Me neither Raventh said.