Chap. 194 Aggravation and Irritation

Chap. 194 Aggravation and Interruption

They came out of between in the bright morning sunshine over Honshu Weyr.

It was far larger than he'd expected. A sheer rock wall, riddled with what seemed countless weyrs, towered over the remains of a caldera. A river sparkled at it's foot.

Rider K'ndar and Raventh of Kahrain Steppe Weyr K'ndar heard Raventh reporting to the watch dragon. Almost at the same moment, he heard the dragon's call, reporting them to the humans on watch.

It's big. Lots of room for dragons. Look, there's Golanth Raventh said.

That dragon, having been crippled by an attack of predators, was on the ramp built for him by his rider, F'lessan. He'd have to look closer at the dragon's injuries, but from this altitude, and despite having healed, still...they looked dreadful.

They soared in a circle until Raventh received notification on where to land.

K'ndar felt his excitement soar. He'd been itching to see Honshu for what seemed years, and finally found the time to do so.

"I want to see the murals," he'd said to D'mitran before he left, "and just look around. Do you think they'll mind, me just dropping in?"

"I don't think so," his wing leader said, "it is, after all, a weyr for all dragonriders, not a Hold, not a Hall, but still...I'd stick with customary protocol. Tradition, you know."

"Yes sir. Care to come along?"

"Don't tempt me, laddie, I've got a dozen tasks to do, never mind that we've half our riders out, scouring for Candidates for Mirth's clutch. I don't know what it is about today's kids, they don't want to be dragonriders. It's worrisome," his wingleader said.

"That's odd," K'ndar said, "considering there's no longer thread to fight."

D'mitran nodded. "Aye, maybe that's the point. Brave dragonriders, teasing death and flaming it out of the sky-and now we're merely...transport." He sounded dejected.

K'ndar put his hand on the rider's shoulder. "It'll be okay, sir, I'm sure things will turn around. We may be just transport but until they come up with something better, it's all Pern's got. That and horses," he said.

"And ships..."

"Which I will never again set foot on," K'ndar said, laughing at himself.
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The murals were astounding.

"How did they make the colors so brilliant and clear, even after all this time?" he asked.

His docent, a boy of about 15, said,"the database says it's a certain type of pigment and a certain process. When they first opened it up, the murals were covered with a layer of dust, but once F'lessan and the crew got up to them, cleaning them off was almost too easy. It was basically wipe and go."

He shook his head in wonder, craning his neck to see them. "I wish they'd put them a bit closer to see the details," he said.

"They've been copied into the database. Do you know what a datalink is?" the boy asked, all innocence-but there was just the faintest taint of condescension.

He looked down at the boy, restraining himself from telling him how he'd come about knowing what a datalink was. Instead, he nodded, saying, "There're two at my weyr."

"Huh! I didn't think outlying places had anything as advanced as a datalink! Anyway, just type in 'Honshu murals' and you'll see them in full detail. I've looked at them about a million times so I know where the little details are. You see that one, the one in the far right, over there?" he asked, pointing in the general direction of the far side of the arched building. There were at least six of them in that area.

"Which one?" he asked.

"THAT one, over there, up on the wall," the kid said, testily.

K'ndar said, "I see several."

"Don't worry, they're all the same really, just different topics," the boy said.

"Not quite," K'ndar started, but the kid cut him off.

"That one, right there? The one with the people are standing next to a fellis tree, a big one? You can't see them from here, but there's little tiny insects in the leaves. That's how detailed they are. I think the Ancients who painted these took photographs...you know what a camera is?"

"Yes," he said, growing irritated by the increasingly patronizing tone in the boy's voice. This was just a kid, after all, probably feeling the testosterone in his veins for the first time. While he didn't consider himself an alpha male, still...this youngster seemed to feel as if K'ndar was just a subordinate. Odd, he thought, that this would bother me.

"I think they took photographs, displayed them on the walls and then painted them. They're too perfect in detail just to have come from the painter's imagination," he said.

K'ndar pushed the kid's tone out of his mind and focused his attention on the murals. Yes, this was worth the trip, he thought. I have all day!

The boy horned in on his thoughts.



"Okay, I'm sure you've had enough of these, honestly, they're boring. I see them every day," he said. He took K'ndar's arm and tried to tug him towards the main entry.

He didn't like being dragged. Shaking his arm free, he said, "Actually, no. I have planned this visit for a very long time, and I don't find them boring at all," he said. This kid was annoying.

I have no intention of letting this young buck chivy me out of the place, he thought.

"Lad, don't push me," K'ndar growled.

The boy scowled. It was obvious he hadn't wanted this task in the first place and wanted nothing more than to be rid of his responsibility.

"I'm telling you, you can see them much better on a datalink. Really. MOST people are done looking after just a minute or two," he said, whining.

Going to have to dragon up, he thought. He showed the boy his dual action binocular.

"Most people don't have a dual binocular. I don't need a datalink, I can stand right here and look at them at the closest possible resolution. I will look at these murals on MY time schedule, not yours. If you have somewhere else to be, I don't mind if you leave me here," he said, encouragingly. He really hadn't wanted a minder, especially a diffident teen aged boy.

"In fact, I'd prefer you leave me alone. I'm going to take all the time I want looking."

Opposing emotions swept the boy's face. One was relief that he was being allowed to run off and do what he wanted to do, the other was that someone higher up the chain would question where his assigned guest was.

"I'm...I'm not sure if that's allowed, most people are done in a few minutes, why do you need to take so long just to look at pictures on the wall?"

K'ndar looked at the teen. Same age as Harve, the boy he'd rescued from an island, yet the two boys were worlds apart in maturity. Harve was a man despite his age. This kid was obviously someone's pampered child, unused to actually having to do even this small semblance of work.

"It's your job, then? To show the murals to interested men and women?" He emphasized the word 'men'.

The teen got it.

"We get kids here all the time!" he protested.

"I'm certain of that. But there are none here, at the moment, and if you please, boy, leave me be. I promise I won't touch the murals. Not that it's possible, even if my dragon could fit in here," he said, and stood solid as a rock.

"But..."

"Okay, 'docent'. Tell me when they were painted, and by whom. Who are the people in the murals? At least make it worth my while and give you something to do other than just trot me through this nave like a pony on a lead," he said.

The kid was stymied.

"I..no one knows when. Or who. I'm just here to make sure gawkers don't harm the murals," he said, then gasped at his slip.

Amusement flashed on his face.

""Gawkers"", eh? Okay, I'll own it. I'm a gawker. I've been called far worse. So leave this gawker be. Go. Leave me," he ordered.

Defeated, the boy shrugged. "Fine. Better not touch the murals. Good bye," he said, and turned and stalked out.

The sigh of the automatic door closing behind him was like music. Now he could stand and gawk, in solitude.

He raised the binocular and focused on the nearest one, showing the Rukbat planetary system. By the egg, the boy had been right. The details were incredibly precise. There was the Red Star, a large canyon visible on its face. Belior and Timor, the moons, racing in tandem around Pern. He could see that Timor, especially, was merely a rock, covered with craters....

The doors slid open again.

He turned to see an older woman shepherding a herd of young children into the nave.

"Come along, poppets, we're going to have a history lesson today!" she said in that preternaturally high pitched tone of voice that women use with babies and puppies.

Oh, SHARDs, K'ndar thought. Can I not have a few minutes of solitude?

"Oh, children, pay your respects to the dragonrider," the woman said in her syrupy voice.

The children bowed, all saying, "Welcome to Honshu, dragonrider," in unison.

Well, at least SOME of the kids here had manners.

"He's here to see the murals, too!" their teacher said. Her voice grated on his ears. "He doesn't mind if we look, too, does he??" she said, looking at him with an expression that said, Of course you don't mind, aren't these tots just adorable?

Forcing himself, he said, "No...I don't mind." He minded very much.

One of the slightly older children stood with her hands on her hips. "We already seen these, auntie, they's just pictures. I want to go back outside," she said.

"Me too, these are boring, let's go outside," said another.

"I wanna see the pictures," another said.

"How come they don't move, auntie? Like on the datalink?"

"They're pretty!"

"No they're not they're just pictures," yet another said.

"My mum brought me here so I don't need to see them again."

"I'm hungry!"

"Let's go, this is borrrring," the original rebel said, loudly.

The woman looked at K'ndar, hoping for reinforcement.

"Maybe the dragonrider can tell you about them?" she asked, looking at K'ndar for reinforcement.

Instead, his eyes rolling, he shook his head in an emphatic NO.

She bridled at the unspoken rejection.

"No? No? Fine. Let's go, children, the dragonrider doesn't want to teach future dragonriders. We'll go elsewhere," she said. "We'll leave this dragonrider all to himself," she said, trying to shame him.

"Not me, I'm not going to ride a dragon," was the last comment he heard as she was shepherding the mob out the door.

Shame me? Pfft. Leave. It's not my fault you can't ride herd on a bunch of kids.

But he also acknowledged that he couldn't, either, and had no desire to learn.


Ah. Silence returned. He sighed in relief.

He scanned the murals with the nocs. Fascinating. Look at the detail. Wow. Look at the..the sled. It was the machine the Ancients had used to move between the starships and the planet, he knew now. Several people were depicted standing outside of it. He had plans to go see the one here at Honshu. It was merely a relic, now, there being no fuel for it, and even more, not a soul on Pern knew how to pilot it. It hadn't been flown in over 2500 years. It was......

Something pinged, deep in his memory. Some connection..something about the sled...

He concentrated, trying to drag the connection up from the depths of his mind. It proved slippery, not wanting to come out. It was something, something he'd seen, but he'd never seen the sled, just in pictures...

The door whisked open, breaking his concentration. SHARDS NOW WHAT he shouted in his mind.

"By the egg, is that you, K'ndar?" he heard a familiar voice say.

Fuzzily, he dragged himself back to the present and turned towards the voice.

A dragonrider, like himself, her name, um...she was in my class...

Rondair, gold Moth's rider Raventh prompted.

Ah, Raventh, thank you

"Rondair, what are you doing here? It's been a long time, what..."

She laughed and coming up to him, gave him a hug.

"I THOUGHT I recognized Raventh! I just flew in, and Moth is chatting with him as we speak! She quite fancies him, even though he's just a brown. Not that there's anything wrong with brown dragons! Remember, they're clutch mates! And he's got a blue fire lizard on his back. You finally got one?" she said. "Raventh is looking very fit, K'ndar, he's just perfect. Not too big, not too small. You have to tell me about the fire lizard, too,"she said.

"How...when..." he stumbled, overwhelmed by the torrent from Rondair.

"I know!! Where have I been? I signed out of Kahrain, oh, long ago. A year? Oh, longer than that."

K'ndar shook his head.

"Rondair, I am so sorry, I have to admit, I never knew it, I didn't know," he said, embarrassed.

She laughed again.

"Didn't notice I'd gone?"

He nodded, flushing.

"It's okay, it's not as if I tracked you down to tell you I had decided to leave. It was a spur of the moment decision, well, not really, but when I decided to leave, it was "Up, Moth, let's go," Rondair said. "And K'ndar, you've been busier than a one winged wherry in the middle of a wing of dragons. I bet you've not spent more than a week in your weyr since we graduated. Don't think we've not heard of your adventures! But never mind, I ended up here when Jenmay kicked us girls out, I just remembered the first dragonstone I could think of and pushed it to Moth, and that's how I got here. Those were some sad days, K'ndar, being here after being banished was like going through homesickness all over again. I was alone, well, not really, but you know how bad it was with Jenmay. Then I began to realize that I liked it here."

By the egg, she's like my sister, can talk without breathing, K'ndar thought, and grinned.

"We all came back, of course, oh, when Moth got the call from Corvuth to 'come home', I couldn't harness her fast enough! Even so, I signed out a few months after the hurricane. What a mess! It was a good experience, cleaning up the weyr, and such a relief that Jenmay was gone, but oh, poor Danelle..."

She drew breath, then continued, "I almost had to leave. Moth was getting old enough to rise, and I..well, I didn't want to compete with Siena. She's a lovely person, and a fabulous Weyrwoman and I didn't want the job. Here, it's different. I don't have to do the job of Weyrwoman even if Moth has clutched. Tai rides a green and bronze Golanth can no longer fly without help, but Tai and F'lessan are Honshu's 'weyrleaders' no matter what they ride," she said.

She put a hand on his arm. "We have to talk, K'ndar, come on, you don't want to stay in here, it's a beautiful day outside!"

No, I'll probably only have to listen, he thought, but that was ungenerous. Rondair had always been kind and respectful no matter how lowly one's origins. She'd proven to be ferocious when fighting thread, and had always been fun to listen to. She had an inexhaustable trove of stories. Her razor sharp wit and jokes had kept the Weyrlings laughing even through Jenmay's reign of terror.

Now he was truly torn, he did want to reminisce with Rondair, and..the thought hitting him, find out why she chose to leave Kahrain Steppe. Would he consider doing the same? He had to ask her. But he wanted to see the murals!

The doors whisked open and he reluctantly followed Rondair out.

He wasn't going to get to really examine the murals, he realized. Not this trip.