He saw her eyes reflecting shadowy doubts but he sensed his arguments were beginning to reassure her.
“You felt constrained to believe in me once before,” he went on in a milder voice, “when I suggested that you could be Weyrwoman. You believed me and…” He made a gesture around the weyr as substantiation.
She gave him a weak, humorless smile.
“That was because I had never planned what to do with my life once I did have Fax lying dead at my feet. Of course, being Ramoth’s weyrmate is wonderful but”—and she frowned slightly—“it isn’t enough anymore either. That’s why I wanted so to learn to fly and then…”
“…That’s how this argument started in the first place,” F’lar finished for her with a sardonic smile.
He leaned across the table, urgently.
“Believe with me, Lessa, until you have cause not to. I respect your doubts. There’s nothing wrong in doubting. It sometimes leads to greater faith. But believe in me until spring. If the Threads have not fallen by then…” He shrugged fatalistically.
She looked at him for a long moment and then inclined her head slowly, in agreement.
HE TRIED TO suppress the relief he felt at her decision. Lessa, as Fax had discovered, was a ruthless adversary and a canny advocate. Besides these, she was Weyrwoman: essential to his plans.
“Now, let’s get back to the contemplation of trivia. They do tell me, you know: time, place and duration of Thread incursions,” he grinned up at her reassuringly. “And those are facts I must have to make up my timetable.”
“Timetable? But you said you didn’t know the time.”
“Not the day to the second when the Threads may spin down. For one thing, while the weather holds so unusually cold for this time of year, the Threads simply turn brittle and blow away like dust. They’re harmless. However, when the air is warm, they are viable and…deadly.” He made fists of both hands, placing one above and to one side of the other.
“The Red Star is my right hand, my left is Pern. The Red Star turns very fast and in the opposite direction to us. It also wobbles erratically.”
“How do you know that?”
“Diagram on the walls of the Fort Weyr Hatching Ground. That was the very first Weyr. So, when the Star makes a pass, the Threads spin off, down towards us, in attacks that last six hours and occur about fourteen hours apart.”
“Attacks last six hours?”
He nodded gravely. “When the Red Star is closest to us. Right now, it is just beginning its Pass.”
She frowned.
He rummaged among the skin sheets on the table and an object dropped to the stone floor with a metallic clatter.
Curious, Lessa bent to pick it up, turning the thin sheet over in her hands. “What’s this?” She ran an exploratory finger lightly across the irregular design on one side.
“I don’t know. F’nor brought it back from Fort Weyr. It was nailed to one of the chests in which Records had been stored. He brought it along, thinking it might be important. Said there was a plate like it just under the Red Star diagram on the wall of the Hatching Ground.
“This first part is plain enough: ‘Mother’s father’s father, who departed for all time between, said this was the key to the mystery, and it came to him while doodling. He said that he said: ARRHENIUS? EUREKA! MYCORRHIZA…’ Of course that part doesn’t make any sense at all. It isn’t even Pernese; just babbling, the last three words.
“I have studied it, Lessa. The only way to depart for all time between is to die, right? People can’t just fly away on their own, obviously. So it is a death vision, dutifully recorded by a grandchild, who couldn’t spell very well. ‘Doodling’ as the present tense of dying!” He smiled indulgently. “And as for the rest of it, after the nonsense; like most death visions, it ‘explains’ what everyone has always known. The second part says simply: ‘…flame-throwing fire-lizards to wipe out the spores. Q.E.D.’ No, this is no help in our researches, just a primitive rejoicing that he is a dragonman, who didn’t even know the right word for Threads.”
Lessa wet one fingertip to see if the patterns were inked on. The metal was shiny enough to be a good mirror. However, the patterns remained smooth and precise. “Primitive or no, they had a more permanent way of recording their visions than well-preserved skins.”
“Well-preserved babblings,” said F’lar, turning back to the skins he was checking for understandable data.
“A badly-scored ballad, perhaps,” said Lessa, dismissing it. “The design isn’t even pretty.”
F’LAR PULLED FORWARD a chart that showed overlapping horizontal bands imposed on the project of Pern’s continental mass.
“Here,” he said, “this represents waves of attack and this one,” he pulled forward the second map with vertical bands, “shows time bands. So you can see, that with a fourteen-hour break, only certain parts of Pern are affected in each attack. One reason for the spacing of the weyrs.”
“Six full weyrs,” she murmured, “close to three thousand dragons.”
“I’m aware of the statistics,” he replied in a voice devoid of expression. “It meant no one weyr was overburdened during the height of the attacks, not that three thousand beasts must be available. However, with these timetables, we can manage until Ramoth’s first clutches have matured.”
She turned a cynical look on him. “You’ve a lot of faith in one queen’s capacity.”
He waved that remark aside impatiently. “I’ve more faith, no matter what your opinion is, in the startling repetitions of events in these Records.”
“Ha!”
“I don’t mean how many measures for daily bread, Lessa,” he retorted, his voice rising. “I mean such things as the time such and such a wing was sent out on patrol, how long the patrol lasted, how many riders were hurt. The brooding capacities of queens, during the fifty years a Pass lasts and the Intervals between such Passes. Yes, it tells that. By all I’ve studied here,” and he pounded emphatically on the nearest stack of dusty, smelly skins, “Nemorth should have been mating twice a Turn for the last ten. Had she even kept to her paltry twelve a clutch, we’d have two hundred and forty more beasts…Don’t interrupt. But we had Jora as Weyrwoman and R’gul as Weyrleader and we had fallen into planet-wide disfavor during a four hundred Turn interval. Well, Ramoth will brood over no measly dozen and she’ll lay a queen egg, mark my words. She will rise often to mate and lay generously. By the time the Red Star is passing closest to us and the attacks become frequent, we’ll be ready.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Out of Ramoth?”
“Out of Ramoth and out of the queens she’ll lay. Remember, there are Records of Faranth laying sixty eggs at a time, including several queen eggs.”
Lessa could only shake her head slowly in wonder.
“‘A Strand of silver
In the sky.
With heat, all quickens.
All times fly!’” F’lar quoted to her.
“She’s got weeks more to go before laying and then the eggs must hatch…”
“Been on the Hatching Ground recently? Wear your boots. You’ll be burned through sandals.”
She dismissed that with a guttural noise. He sat back, outwardly amused by her disbelief.
“…And then you have to make Impression and wait till the riders…” she went on.
“…Why do you think I’ve insisted on older boys? The dragons are mature long before their riders.”
“Then the system is faulty.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly, shaking the stylus at her.
“Dragon tradition started out as a guide…but there comes a time when man becomes too traditional…too—what was it you said the other day—too hidebound. Yes, it’s traditional to use the weyrbred, because it’s been convenient. And because this sensitivity to dragons strengthens when both sire and dam are weyrbred. That doesn’t mean weyrbred is best. You, for example…”