Chap. 221 Frustration

Chap. 221 Frustration

"K'ndar of Landing. K'ndar of Landing."

He clutched the quilt in sudden terror, his heart racing.

"Who's there?" he said. Where was he?

Then he realized, it was his datalink. Of course, he'd left it on the table in the kitchen.

He could see it flashing.

He jumped out of bed, stumbling over the boots he'd left by its side. It was dark as the inside of a pig. He blundered into a wall, stubbed his toe and, cursing, reached for the datalink-just in time for it to go dark. Where the shaff was a light...

I don't like living in a box, he thought, at least in a weyr I had glows.

The datalink lit up again. The eerie voice said, "K'ndar of Landing. K'ndar of Landing"

He grabbed it, hopping on one foot to ease the pain from his stubbed toe. How did one stop the voice?

"Hello?" he shouted at the datalink.

"K'ndar of Landing. K'ndar of Landing. K'ndar of..."

The data link went dark.

He resisted the urge to throw the datalink across the room. Shaff, but it was black, he couldn't see a thing. There had to be lights somewhere in this place, how to get it to work?

He saw one of the door control panels glowing softly in the Stygian darkness. Making his way to it, he moved a hand over it. The door into Raventh's bay opened.

"Noooooooooo, I want the lights to come on!" he shouted in frustration.

Every light in the building came on.

What's wrong? Your foot is hurting? Raventh asked, awakened by the door opening.

"K'ndar of Landing. K'ndar of Landing."

He waved a hand over the screen.

The voice stopped.

"K'ndar? You there?" It was Marsh.

He released his frustration in a sigh.

Is something wrong?

No! Yes! I..sorry...

"K'ndar! It's Marsh!"

"Yeah. I wanted to turn on the lights and don't see a panel, this one opened the bay door! How do you turn the lights on in this place?" he shouted.

"No need to shout, K'ndar, I hear you just fine. Just say, "Bedroom lights" or wherever you are."

What's wrong? Why are you awake? Raventh asked, looking at him. His eyes glowed green in the darkness.

Never mind, I..this whole place is confusing.

Siskin chipped and flew into the room.

He wants to sleep with you, like back at the weyr.

No problem.

Siskin swirled around the room and then landed on his bare shoulder. The lizard's talons were just a little too sharp for comfort, but he was too distracted to protest.

"ARRG, everything's going all at once," he grumbled to the datalink.

He waved a hand over the panel to shut the bay door, and stumbled back to the bed and sat on it.

This was new, too, he'd never had a bed, just a bunk.

Siskin looked at the rumpled quilt, then hopped down onto it. He liked the feel of it and began to knead it, as if making a nest.

"Are you okay? What's happened?" Marsh asked.

"Oh, I've just...never mind, at least I have light now."

"Okayyyyyyy. Anyway, I said I'd call to show you how to use the datalink. Sorry I'm late, I was reading. Do you need anything?"

"I'd like to know how to answer this thing," he said.

"Just like you did...wave a hand over the screen."

"That was bloody luck," he said, heated.

"I told you how to work it."

"Well, it scared me spitless, calling me in the dark, and then I had no idea how to make it talk."

"It's called "answering".

There was something scornful in Marsh's tone, but K'ndar was too flustered to react to it. He knew disdain when he heard it, though.

"What if I want to talk to someone?"

"Say, "Data", and then the name and place of who you want to talk to," Marsh said.

His heart rate was beginning to slow.

"Who's voice is that? It sounds creepy."

"Yeah, I know, it's the default voice. Do you want someone else's voice? Or a sound? Some people have music. The datalink can play music, anything that is recorded in the database."

"Umm..what do you have?"

Marsh laughed. "My girlfriend's voice. But I've changed it a couple times, depending on which one of them I like best at the moment," he said, boasting just a bit.

"Where do you get the voice?"

"Someone has to have spoken on the datalink, at least once, for the database to store it. But there's other sounds, like the ocean, or thunder, all sorts of sounds. You can even have your own voice, now that you're talking to me. It's already in the database, now. Really, all you need to do is ask the datalink for information. If it's in the database, the computer will respond. For instance, if I want to know the circumference of a circle, all I have to do is ask the datalink, what is the circumference of a circle? And listen to what my datalink says:

A girl's voice said, "The circumference of a circle equals 2 pi r."

K'ndar was dumbfounded. He also remembered trying to figure out geometry and remembering how he much he hated math. This datalink would have made Math so much easier...

"My wingleader had a datalink and it never did stuff like this," he said.

"Probably not. These datalinks, they've been improved, a lot. The ones we had before, some dragon rider found the first one on a beach next to a shipwreck. That one, we copied but once we had the plans for it, the computer came up with improvements, a LOT of them. This new version is much better," Marsh said.

Gossip again!!

"Found it on a beach next to a shipwreck?"

"That's what I heard."

"That's crazy, Marsh. And wrong. I was the dragonrider who found the first artifacts, to include the datalink, I found them on the steppe. Nowhere near a beach."

"You found it?" the boy sounded doubtful.

"Yes. I found it. And the molecular camera, and the vacuum tube, and the notebook, the binocular, all that stuff. If you don't believe me, ask Raylan, or Jansen," he said.

"Whoa," Marsh said, "I had no idea. I would love to go out nomading like that. I like it here, don't get me wrong, but it gets boring. You had to sword fight with raiders to get them, right?"

"Marsh! No! How the shaff does stuff like this start? No, there were no raiders on the steppe. It's a long story and I'm tired, Just...well, thanks for helping me get into this weyr but I'd like some more help tomorrow, figuring out how other things work...like the latrine? The lights?"

Marsh laughed, but it sounded like a sneer.

"Okay, K'ndar, I will. I'll come and get you, if you want breakfast we can go to the dining hall and then you have to meet with Raylan," he said.

The datalink went dark.

Humph. That's something he realized he'd heard more here than in his whole life. Not much courtesy in Landing. He'd not been addressed as "dragonrider", or 'sir', Marsh didn't say so much as 'good night'.

He put the datalink down on the bed and headed for the latrine. The sink had been easy to work. He was amazed that all he had to do was wave at the spigot and water came out, warmed by the thermal fires that burned kilometers deep under the entire Southern continent. But the bowl, the little stool next to the sink's counter? It was obviously something one could sit on. There was a small hose on the back of it. Pulling it out of its holder made water come out of it.

He'd been able to figure out what to do in it-but the results were still visible in the bowl. It was empty to begin with, so there was a way to empty it again. Maybe the hose?

He activated the hose, but all it did was add water to the bowl. Don't want it to overflow, K'ndar! He replaced the hose, growing anxious.

How to make the bowl empty?

Maybe you talked to it, like the lights?

"Go away," he said to the stool.

The stool refused.

"Empty!" he said, louder. He felt stupid.

The contents remained.

"Why won't you listen to me, you shaffing piece of technology?" he shouted at it, beside himself with frustration.

It serenely ignored him.

He grabbed two fistfuls of his own hair in utter aggravation...and the toilet flushed.

Only then did he notice a small panel behind it, similar to the ones that controlled the automatic doors. His hand motion had activated it.

"I'm a moron,' he said, mournfully.

Siskin flew in and perched on the counter. He cheeped at K'ndar, obviously concerned at K'ndar's emotional outburst.

"It's okay, I'm okay, little lad, thank you," he said, petting the fire lizard's head.

The fire lizard dropped down to the floor, examining the base of the toilet.

I have to admit, he thought, this is a far better method of disposal than what I grew up with..a shack at the far end of the compound sheltering a hole dug in the ground. Once a year or so you had to fill it in and rope it off for years, and dig a new one. Even the weyr didn't have this sort of amenity, just a natural shaft that dropped hundreds of meters down into the ground. Anything you dropped into it obliterated in the bowels of the planet.

He waved at the panel. The toilet flushed.

Siskin immediately alerted to the sound. He stood up on his hind legs, and was able to peer into the bowl, fascinated by the swirling water.

The water vanished, momentarily. Then the bowl refilled.

He turned to K'ndar and chittered excitedly. K'ndar didn't need Raventh to translate...Siskin wanted a repeat performance of flushing.

Oh, no, if I show him how...I'm betting he'll be activating it all night.

"All gone, little lad. I'm going to wash up and then we're going to bed, okay?"

Siskin whicked, disappointed.

I'll have to shut the door or figure out some way of keeping him from activating it. He's too smart, sometimes.

He returned to the bed. It didn't feel right. I much prefer a bunk, he thought, but for now, it's what I have.

How to shut the lights off?

"Lights OFF" he said, loudly, and was rewarded by the building going black.

"Bedroom light, ON," he said.

The bedroom light came on. WHERE it came from, he could not fathom.

"Brighter!" he said. The lights got bright.

"Darker" he said. The lights went out.

Ummmm...

"Bedroom light dim?"

The lights came on, much dimmer than before.

Okay.

"Lights OFF."

And he was rewarded with comfortable, sleepable darkness.

He could feel Siskin's body, down at the foot of the bed. The fire lizard curled up against his leg.

K'ndar stared up at the invisible, arched ceiling.

His thoughts raced for several minutes, going over everything he'd seen and learned today.

I feel...I feel like I did the first night at the weyr...alone, scared, unsure of the future. Not homesick, this time but unsure. How can I feel that way, this time? I have Raventh and I should be trying to get to sleep, I don't want him awakening with my mind.

Everything is so complicated, so different.

His mind quieted, then noticed something.

It was quiet.

I don't remember it being this quiet the night I slept in the visitor's dorm. But then, I was so beat, I think I lay down and was out in a split second.

The silence was unnerving.

Growing up on the steppe, the night was quiet but still there were sounds-his father's snoring, the night creatures outside, the sounds of horses in the barn, a cock's belated crow, the lowing of cattle, the occasional roar of a wild wher far out on the steppe.

The weyr had never been silent. There had always been the low, eerie woooooo of air currents moving through the tunnels and shafts of the volcanic ridge. He liked to think of it as the entire ridge breathing. You could always tell the wind speed outside the weyr, just from the tone of the moaning.

But here? Utter, profound silence. Was it this way throughout Landing, or was it because his quarters were, as Marsh said, on the outskirts of the village?

Something else was missing. He cast about for a moment. The sea. He'd grown accustomed to the sound of the sea, in all her moods, sometimes roaring, sometimes a soft susurration, just enough to say, I, the Sea, am Here.

I miss the sea.

I miss hearing the sea.

I need to hear the sea.

Something Marsh had said? The data link?

"Data, I want to hear the sea."

For a moment, he felt as if he'd been defeated, again, by a thing he could barely understand.

Then, he heard it. The sound of a peaceful ocean, so softly he had to strain to hear it.

"Louder?"

It came up, just a little, in volume. Just enough, just enough to hear the gentle surf.

He slept.