Chap. 192 What is a Smanda?

Chap. 192 What is a Smanda?

K'ndar looked into the repurposed watering trough. A small smanda was swimming about in it.

He was struck speechless.

"Well, K'ndar, what do you think?" Raylan said, looking supremely satisfied.

"I'm..gobsmacked, Raylan. I don't know what to say, or think. Except, by the egg, they're uglier than I thought," he said.

It looked slimy. It SMELLED slimy, and it looked stupid. But, it noticed them and swam towards them. It placed its fore paws on the straight sided trough, reared up and opened its mouth.

K'ndar leaped backwards in terror. At the same time, Raventh was shouting in his mind.

Siskin sees it. He's panicking, he just went between.

WHAT?

Suddenly, Siskin appeared, hovering, hissing in fury. He took one look at the smanda and dived at it.

"NO!" Raylan shouted, trying to fend off the blue fire lizard.

The smanda dived to the bottom of the trough.

Siskin stopped just above the water's edge and still hissing, swept back and forth, trying to attack the smanda.

After a confused moment, K'ndar shouted, "Siskin, to me, here lad!"

Reluctantly, Siskin retreated to K'ndar's shoulder, his eyes red.

"Siskin. It's okay, he won't hurt me, calm down, little one," K'ndar said. He wondered if he was lying.

Raylan began to hum tunelessly. Siskin twisted his head, looking curiously at Raylan, and K'ndar felt the blue's heart begin to slow.

"Sorry, Raylan, I had no idea he'd react like that, I thought it was going to spit at me," he apologized. A smanda in a water trough was odd but if it was there at all it was for good reason.

Raylan stopped humming. "It's okay, K'ndar, I should have warned you rather than just pop this on you as a surprise," he said.

"What's with the humming?" he asked.

"Francie discovered it some time ago. When one of her fire lizards is afraid or upset, or angry, she hums to it, like a dragon queen will hum to her eggs," he said, and hummed again.

K'ndar, unconsciously, began to hum in harmony with Raylan, and Siskin's eyes slowed their whirling to less than warp speed. They stayed orange, though.

"Good lad," K'ndar said, stroking the lizard's head, "You were so brave to protect me."

Siskin heaved a large sigh, shook his wings out and re furled them neatly along his sides. He kept his eyes fastened on the smanda.

"Any specific tune I should hum?" he asked.

Raylan laughed. "No, I don't think dragons or fire lizards have songs," he said.

"Tell me why you have a live smanda in a horse trough?" he asked.

"In a short word, research. In the long words, I'm sure your Weyrleader told you our initial findings...that the saliva turning into webbing is an excellent water proofing compound. Well, it's not only that. The toxins in it, once they're distilled from the saliva, demonstrates topical and long lasting pain killing properties. The chemistry folks are in the process of trying to produce it synthetically, because obviously, 'milking a smanda' is not for the timid. But it's going to be valuable. We're just now teasing out some innovative uses for the saliva, and as you learned, it's easily handled and stored when dry. It's amazing stuff, K'ndar, and we're going to try and propagate these beasts, and perhaps, one day, they'll be just another barn yard denizen," he said.

"Not at MY hold, I promise you that!" K'ndar said.

"Now, now, K'ndar, I understand your feelings against them, but, allow your scientific brain to think this through. One of my staff has written up a preliminary report of the smanda itself, as well as initial assessment of the many uses we believe the saliva can provide," Raylan said.

"I'd like to read it, but...how did you get a live one?"

"G'alin and a team of unwitting volunteers went out to bring back 14 'pods'. The original one you brought back is being kept in estivation, or 'suspension', because they're not asleep, just torpid. They stay that way, as far as I know, as long as the soil surrounding the pod is dry. They survive the dry season until floodwater awakens them.

After looking at the pods for several days, we put two into this water trough, and this one erupted almost immediately. The second one was dead when we finally dared to open the pod. I think it was killed during between. So we dissected it down to its DNA," he said.

They watched the smanda recover from its fright and began to swim about again.

"Is this the only one you have 'awake'?

"No, there are several others, we didn't want to put all our smandas in one trough. So they're scattered here and there in odd spots on Landing. I believe one or two are in the horse barns, another in the cattle yard.

Lots of folks are always taking a look at them, one has already found out that they don't take kindly to being provoked. He was lucky, he only got webbed, as we are calling it, on his hands. And your antidote, vinegar, took care of that. Now word is out, don't tease the smandas.

The venom, it seems is only marginally detrimental to mammals, although upon application, it stings until it numbs one up.

But dragons, well, dragons are just too big, but tunnel snakes, wherries, birds? They seem to be the preferred prey. The victim is incapacitated, but alive. In every pod we opened, we found a live bird or snake, all wrapped up in netting, their metabolism slowed but not stopped. I think it serves as a food source so that the smanda has had something to eat once it emerges from estivation. Fish are unaffected, which is odd, considering that a fish lives in water all the time," he said.

He shook his head. "You felt bad for the poor prey creature, all wound up and still alive," he said. "We even tried removing the webbing, but the action was too damaging, none survived the attempt. In fact, they all died within a day of being pulled from the pod. Not sure why," he said.

"Did you dissect the prey?" K'ndar asked.

"No! What a good question, K'ndar. What are you thinking?"

"That maybe the prey isn't for the smanda, but for its eggs, assuming it lays eggs, or gives live birth. Perhaps the prey are parasitized, the adult lays it's eggs inside the prey animal, the babies hatch out inside the prey and eat it before they hatch. There were creatures on Vulcan and Terra that had the same sort of behavior. I remember reading about it and thinking, what a ghastly thing to do to the prey, but what a smart thing to do for the creature's progeny," he said.

Raylan slapped his head. "Dolt that I am! I should have thought of that! But we did keep the prey, so I'll have one dissected as soon as..well, it's crazy here these days, but they're refrigerated, so they'll keep. Good question, K'ndar, you're a good scientist," he said.

K'ndar felt a thrill of pride.

"How in the world did someone get webbed by a smanda? What was he trying to do, pet it?" he snorted.

Raylan said, "Exactly!"

He wanted to PET it?" K'ndar repeated, astonished.

"K'ndar, these creatures are intelligent. And relatively friendly. Watch this," and he bent over the trough and kissed at the smanda.

It swam up to where Raylan was standing, reared up again and made a strange sound, like a lamb bawling for it's mother.

Siskin hissed and recoiled. K'ndar put his hand on the lizard's back to reassure him.

He was repulsed by the smanda's eyes. Yet, despite looking flat and dead, there was something in their depths. He felt unnerved when it met his gaze and held it.


Raylan pulled a treat out of his pocket and showed it to the smanda. The smanda mewed again. "Go get it," Raylan said, and he tossed the treat to the far side of the trough. The smanda turned, watched to see where it fell into the water, then swam to it and engulfed it.

"If you've ever played fetch with a dog, you know that most dogs start running before you throw the stick, right? Well, the smanda only does that once. The next time, he watches to see where it lands before he spends the energy searching for it. That's pretty smart for a beast that hasn't had who knows how many thousands of years of domestication dogs have had.

"Huh. Playing fetch with a smanda? That's...bizarre. Sorry, but I don't see them becoming a pet anytime soon. They don't have a lick of cute, not like a colt or a kitten. And anyway, just what IS a smanda?" K'ndar asked.

"Ah, there is the question. It's an animal like no other known Pernese creature. For now, we've decided to catalog it as being in its own class and genus. It's DNA is unique, it's not related to anything that we have here on Pern and it's certainly not from off planet. About the only thing it has in common with other creatures is that is has six limbs, so we're confident it evolved here.

We've yet to come up with a scientific name for it, there's some argument going around about just who gets naming rights; the person who discovered it, meaning YOU, or the person who dissected it, getting smelly and sticky and thoroughly disgusted by the entire process, but gamely wrote up her findings?"

"Umm," K'ndar said, blundering. "I get to name it? Like I named the locust?"

"Yes, I know that's not how it's normally done, but, yes," Raylan said.

K'ndar looked at the smanda. "Who did the dirty work?"

Raylan shrugged. "One of my staff. She volunteered after several people, to include ME, refused to take on the job. Your ordeal with it had a lot of people scared," Raylan said.

"What will I get? I don't want money," he said.

"Biology doesn't pay, K'ndar, not at all. If you want to make money these days, create something or extract something. But the intangible reward is your name in the biology books, a scientific legacy, if you like," Raylan said.

"But, I wasn't the first person to see it. One of our Oldtimers did, before he came forward, he called it a 'smanda' and told us the antidote to the saliva's venom is vinegar."

"Oh. I didn't know that," Raylan said, puzzled. "Maybe he could come out here?"

K'ndar shrugged. "He's old, Raylan, I doubt he'd be interested in coming out here, I don't know if he can tolerate between anymore," he said. "I'd be afraid that his old bronze would just go between and never come out," he said.

His conscience tugged at his mind. "Besides, historically? the person who described it officially does the naming," he said.

"That's correct, K'ndar, and the girl who did the dissection already gets to name the class, as there doesn't seem to be anything quite like it here on Pern. Funny thing, Jansen, ..now there's a smart lass, took it as an personal insult that the database had nothing about smandas. Nothing! She dug and dug without success. So, she decided to try looking at the problem from an etymological point of view. "Smanda" is an odd word, it just doesn't sound Pernese. It had to have come from Terra, as that's where we humans are from, and all our animals. She hit pay dirt. "Smanda" is a corrupted form from the original word 'salamander'. A salamander, on Terra, was from the class Amphibia. Pern never had amphibians, the smanda isn't one. But apparently it resembles a Terran salamander, so whomever saw them, one of the Ancients? thought it was one. The word salamander fell into disuse, because, as we all know, they're uncommon and remote. Until you came upon them, knowledge of their existence had vanished. Had it not been for your Oldtimer's input, we'd have had to create a new name for it. And maybe not learned the benefits of vinegar!" Raylan said.

"Amphibian", K'ndar repeated, "I'll have to research that. I wonder if Terra's "salamanders" did the same things? Spit out venomous webbing?"

"No. Once we had a key word, the database had plenty of information about amphibians in general and salamanders in particular. Seems the salamander, unlike our beast, was a quite benign little creature," he said.

K'ndar nodded, a bit frustrated that now that Library was closing, he had no access to its vast database. Amphibians! Well, wait...he could use the datalink at Kahrain's growing library.

He dragged his mind back to the issue of naming.

"No decision has been made on naming it officially?" he asked.

We've discussed it in amidst the chaos of moving around. But she's willing to allow you to name it," Raylan said.


He struggled in is mind, trying to come up with something, then said, " Ah, never mind. That couldn't have been a nice job, cutting the beast up, so she's earned the right to name it. I'm sure the common name will be 'smanda'. I concede any naming right I have, Raylan, I really don't care," he said, "My compliments to the scientist who did the dirty work," he said.

Raylan smiled. "There's the spirit, K'ndar. Yes, we'll keep the common name, smanda, and when the lass names it, you'll be the first to know."