Chap. 252 Pacing the Thought Out

Chap. 252 Pacing the Thought Out

Jansen turned the corner on her lunch time walk to see K'ndar pacing back and forth in front of his work building.

She watched for several moments. It was obvious he had something on his mind.

Do I interrupt him? she wondered. He didn't seem unhappy, just...oh, shards, Jansen, just go ask him.

He is really deep in thought, she thought, as she approached.

Siskin had left his usual perch on K'ndar's shoulders to perch atop the building.

She stopped at the corner of his building and cleared her throat.

"Oh!" K'ndar said, stopping. "I'm sorry, I'm thinking, I didn't mean to ignore you."

"You didn't. I just got here, I see you walking kilometers in a few meters. Are you okay?"

He stopped.

"I'm okay. I've got this thought stuck far back in my mind that just refuses to come out, and it's driving me crazy," he said. He realized he had been pacing for a fairly long time.

"And walking back and forth helps?"

"Sometimes I make it come out by doing this. Pacing. What's even odder is, you know how sometimes you enter a room or a weyr and forget why you did so?"

"Arrgh, yes, I do that all the time!"

"I seem to be doing it more often as I get older. I figured out how to remember what it was. I walk backwards through the doorway or portal."

"Backwards," Jansen said, muffling a laugh.

"Aye, backwards. It's odd, but it usually works. But this? I've got this thing twitching in the back of my mind, it's demanding I think of it but it Won't Come Out."

Jansen nodded, grimacing. "I know the feeling. What I do is try to figure out the pathway to the thought. Or I'll get into the shower! The water pounding on my head? It's where I do my best thinking, and I don't know why."

"It's too early for my shower, but I'll try that. Are you busy? How do you like your new office?"

"I have to walk at lunch time. I sit too much, I'm getting fat! It's nice to get outside at least once in a day's work. I like the new office, it's not as cozy as the old one, but I have a lot more room for all my stuff. I've been working on getting the museum going, I think you know? And there's stuff EVERYWHERE. I just hope I get it all properly labeled. THEN I have to find room for it. At least I didn't have to find room for the deep diver, that is being assembled in front. It was just too big."

Siskin, seeing his mount had stopped pacing, dropped from his perch to land on K'ndar's shoulder. He absent mindedly reached up to give the fire lizard a head scritch.

"He's so pretty, K'ndar," she said. She idly contemplated the idea of getting a fire lizard, and then returned to her same argument..no time. But she had time for a cat, why not a fire lizard?

"How do you like your new quarters?" she asked, to distract herself.

"They're nice," he said, "but sometimes I miss living high in the air, with the ocean as my front ledge. And Raventh liked being able to just drop into the air from it rather than having to launch. But I will admit, I like the toilet, and the little kitchen. I sometimes feel guilty, knowing people like my family are still using a pit latrine, a well, and cooking over a hot fire."

She nodded. "It didn't take me long to get used to these amenities.I'd have made a pitifully sad colonist," she said.

He laughed. "They did have to start from scratch, eh? I can't imagine what a shock it must have been, to leave Earth with what had to have been the best technology, sleep for years aboard the starships, then come here to nothing but wilderness? You're right, I wouldn't have managed, either."

"I read a book from thousands of years ago. I didn't understand most of it, but it was called "Giants in the Earth". It was about colonists on Earth. These people left their home hold and moved out to the steppe. They had a wagon pulled by an ox, and the husband had a horse. All of their belongings were on the wagon. They walked beside it, there was no room for them to ride. Except for a baby, I think the baby got to ride in the wagon. They went a long ways out onto the steppe, it was called 'prairie' and then the husband said, stop, we're here. And there was NOTHING but grassland. Nothing, not a soul, not a tree, not even water," Jansen said.

"Why did they leave their hold? What was the giant? A giant what?"

"I don't know. There was nothing about giants. I'm not even sure what the author meant by 'giant'. They left their hold, I think, because they wanted to start their own hold. Like Wanderers, they didn't get along with others, there were too many people where they lived."

"And they just stopped? They went out a hundred kilometers onto the steppe and then decided this is where they were going to live?"

"Yes."

"They lived in the wagon? But you said they had no room in the wagon?"

"They slept underneath it. Then they dug up pieces of the prairie, they called it 'sod' and piled it up into a little hut, I guess, and lived in that."

K'ndar shook his head. "That's primitive! Even the Wanderers have nice little caravans to live in. What did they eat? Was the wagon big enough for a year's supply of preserved food? Unless they had a giant ox to pull a big wagon? Maybe that was the giant?"

"I don't know, K'ndar!! I said a lot of it didn't make sense to me. It was a very sad book, a sad story," she said. "It was like the prairie was their enemy, they had to fight it, rather than live with it. There were people who lived on the steppe, already, they were um, called indians, I think, they rode horses and hunted and did very well on the prairie. Why these people didn't talk to the indians, or live with them until they learned how to go it alone, I don't know. They would have been better off, I think."

"If it was like our steppe, there was no firewood?"

She thought for several seconds. "No, no firewood, no trees. There were wild cattle out on the prairie called buffalo. I looked them up, they look nothing like our cows. They probably killed them to eat and picked up the dung and burned that. I think."

K'ndar nodded. "I can say that that works. When I'd go out wandering on the steppe, I'd use cattle dung for fire, but it's smoky and everything you cook over it smells like...well, like cattle dung."

Jansen laughed. "If it had been me, I'd have given it a go, but after a while, I'd have said to my husband, I'm done, I'm going back home. But he wouldn't have gone in the first place."

"What else did it say?"

"When I read it, I remembered your report on your steppe survey. Remember, you discovered the locusts?"

K'ndar nodded, remembering that day. The locusts had suddenly appeared in a roiling, malevolent cloud, and had landed near the survey team. Within seconds, they'd eaten up all the grass, even B'rost's boots, as he'd been slower than the rest to jump aboard his dragon and escape into the sky.

"I sure do. There were millions of them, millions. They ate everything. They were like a carpet, they came at us and I'm sure they would have eaten US if we'd stood still long enough."

"I remember reading your report. These people on the prairie, they had locusts, too. Only they didn't call them locusts, they had no idea what they were. The author didn't either, I think, didn't say that word. Just described it as a metallic, hissing thing, a million creatures that ate all the crops. They almost starved."

"Huh. Why do people DO that? Intentionally subject themselves to such privations?"

Jansen shrugged.

"Why did the Ancients come here? To escape a dying earth. They were tired of fighting the Nathi, tired of a poisoned planet, they wanted a clean place to live and raise families. They were lucky, they didn't come with just a wagon. The starships provided an awful lot of equipment, they made these buildings! They built all these very nice homes, and then Mt. Garben decided to make one last eruption before it died for good. They left here and moved to Northern. The eruption was all ash, pretty much, hardly a bit of lava. And now we're removing the last of the ash and finding wonderful buildings to live in. AIVAS helped, so much. I'd never have read the book if it hadn't been in the database's library."

"AIVAS definitely changed the course of our lives. I'm glad I'm alive today, being the last generation of dragonriders to fight thread. The kids coming up now in Weyrlingschool will never know what it was like. And even then, I didn't have too many Falls. Not like some of our older dragonriders. D'nis grew up fighting it from the age of 16."

He regarded the tree line. Landing was so much different than his natal cothold on the steppe. He loved the steppe. It had never been an enemy, just a large thing to learn to live with. Prairie. It was Earth's steppe? Nice word, prairie. Maybe the prairie was the giant. Ours is certainly big.

"Did they ever go back?"

"To their original holds? No, others joined them, from their own people. They all spoke a different language then the rest of the world," she said.

"That's one thing I find confusing. So many languages on Earth! I'm so glad we have only Pernese. I can't imagine what it would be like to meet someone who didn't speak Pernese."

"I think Pernese is a collection of all the languages. The Ancients came from all over Earth. I guess they all spoke the same language on the ships? I don't know, K'ndar."

He looked at the sky over his head. There were many things he didn't know about the Ancients. So much had been lost or forgotten, and only now, in the last fifty years, had the database become available for all sorts of research. What was sad was how Pern's history stopped being recorded ten or fifteen years after Landing. Why did they stop? Thread? The database had more information about Earth, about Vulcan, even, than it had for Pern. How did Thread affect that? It had killed half the population, he remembered reading. Someone had even tried to send a call for help back to earth.

The sneaky thought in his mind went 'ping'. He mentally grabbed at it, but it slipped away again.

"SHARDS!", he shouted.

Jansen startled, the said, "Almost had it?"

"Yes," he said, "something about research, something about sending a message."

"To Earth?"

Frustrated, he pulled at his hair. "Arrgh,it's driving me nuts! Not to earth, something..something to do with Greta. I told you about finding Greta's remains at the base of the Western Straits cliff side?"

"I heard a little about it," Jansen said. "Such a nice girl, but so odd. Very wild, in a way. Feral."

"Yes. I don't know for certain how she died. I can't figure out why she was there in the Strait. She KNEW how strong the winds are. They're ferocious," he said.

"Was she looking for something?"

The thought emerged. He allowed it come out.

His eyes suddenly wild, he said, "Yessssss! Rahman told me the dolphins report there's something at the bottom of the strait. An artifact, a big one. And I found a bulwark, a bulwark on the very edge of the cliff, and no obvious reason for it. I don't know if it's rock or that substance the ancients created. It's big, big enough for a couple bronzes to land on..oh, and I remember the pictures at Honshu Weyr of the vessels they used to transfer things down here from the starships! That bulwark! It was made for a shuttle! It was MADE FOR A SHUTTLE TO LAND ON!" he shouted.

Jansen covered her ears, protesting, "Too loud, mate!"

"Sorry," he said.

"Why so far out, on Western? Didn't you say there's nothing out there?

"Yes, yes." he deflated, realizing that he was probably wrong. There was nothing out there but the bulwark amidst vegetation. No sign of transport.

"No, it probably wasn't. You're right. There's absolutely no sign of how it got there, how it was made, or even why it would be right THERE. There's nothing on the other side, D'mitran thought it might have been for a bridge. But the winds are terrifying, I can't believe even the Ancients could make a bridge that could withstand those winds. Even if they did, a bridge to nowhere? The southern island is exactly the same-armored willows, rocks and sand," he said.

"You can't farm or raise livestock on Western, it's just too extreme."

The thought was clarifying, though.

"Did Greta.." she asked.

"Shh, please?" he held his hand up to Jansen. He relaxed his mind.

The picture came to him.

Greta, swooping through the strait, trying to find the 'thing' at the bottom, the thing the dolphins said was man made. He'd tried it, on Raventh, when the winds were gentle and manageable. But the waters were too deep, too dark, too violent, keeping the artifact secret from a dragon's height. How in the world did Greta's dragon manage? For he was certain the winds had been howling. Even as good a flier as any green was, they couldn't have been successful in hovering.

He remembered seeing Greta running transects and establishing baselines. Her dragon flying straight and true, Greta would lean over the green's shoulder, holding her lidar. She'd done it every day in the field.

"The LIDAR!! She was using the lidar to see what was on the bottom!"

"Greta?"

"Yes. YES!' he shouted, the realization unfolding like a relaxing origami.

"That's what happened. Rahman told her what the dolphins had seen. She'd been with us when we examined the bulwark. I thought the bulwark was made for a shuttle, but no. It was involved in someway with the thing on the bottom of the seaway!! By the egg, she must have got readings and then..oh, poor Greta, got killed by the winds. Blew her and her dragon right into the rocks. Oh, poor Greta."

"She'd have taken that risk?"

He looked at Jansen.

"Not a doubt in my mind, Jansen. She was afraid of nothing. She could fly like nobody's business."

"But she was killed. The lidar is useless, they've just about given up getting anything out of it. Any data is lost."

Jansen shook her head, then she brightened.

"Didn't you upload data every night?"

"I didn't, I didn't have anything electronic, just my mind and my nocs," he said."I wrote up my notes and data in notebooks. Then when we'd get back home, I'd re-write them neatly, make all the sketches readable, and turn the neat ones in. So I have all my data in my messy notes. But D'mitran and Greta did, they'd upload every evening. It was part of our routine."

"If she uploaded it, it is probably somewhere in the database," Jansen said. "I know the rest of your survey's data has been digitized, even your drawings. I didn't do the digitizing, one of the people in Imaging did. So if she did upload, it's there."

"Maybe," he said. "How would you know? She probably didn't take the time to upload. She died trying to find the thing. I wouldn't dream of trying that strait with those winds. I was lucky to have the hour or so of light winds when I had them."

He sighed. So that's what she did. Greta! What a lion in courage, what a fool in common sense.

"And here we all thought she'd tried to go to the starship," he said, shaking his head.

"What?" Jansen gasped.

"B'rost. He said she'd mentioned she wanted to go to the starship. And Rahman said she'd studied the Yokohama through the old scope."

"That's crazy! And forbidden!"

"I know. You know, she knew. But she would have tried, but why?"

"To use the starship's lidar?"

The epiphany was like a thunderclap.

"What did you say?"

"I said, to use the starship's lidar."

"It has a lidar?"

"Of course. It has everything we have down here, only ours is miniature. Of course the Yokohama has a lidar."

"By the egg, Jansen, that's it!! Even Rahman didn't think of it! If we can access the Yokohama's lidar, we can SEE what's on the seaway floor!"