4 The Clever Man
"The theory that I wish to postulate is this" began H'llon, pompously. "We know that the place-we-don't mention is a world like this, well, not very much like this, but still a world. So, if we also suggest that stars are suns, as I believe Master Wansor has speculated, so far away as to seem as small as points, then they might have worlds too."
"Reasoning?" T'lana looked up from her stick-weaving with which she was making Sagarra a new belt.
"Because Holmes and Watson refer to 'THE moon as though it were self evident that there was only one" was the reply. "We have two, Timor and Belior, that we refer to by name to differentiate them. Therefore Holmes lives – lived – elsewhere. The strange technologies described or mentioned in passing as normal refer not merely to a different, more advanced, age but to a different place."
"Argument sustained" T'lana pushed back the weaving from the five short sticks onto the long yarns that were tied to each, packing each row tightly against her earlier work and shifting it all a little further down the yarn. "Can you extrapolate enough between the incomprehensible bits to make it useful?"
H'llon nodded.
"The main thing is that human nature doesn't change. For example, the story 'The Red Headed League'; the idea of someone giving profitable make-work to another just because of the shade of his hair is quite laughable: but not to a gullible man sensitive about his unusual colouring. The criminal in the story relies on that reverse pride and gullibility to keep this man out of his own cothold whilst he, the criminal, uses it to dig into what appears to be the main storehouse for marks and valuables for the community. Incidentally, another clue to this place not being Pern is that there is no reference at all to Thread: and even allowing for it being in an interval there is no mention of dragons or weyrs. The worst natural hazard I have found mentioned is a form of choking fog that appears to be tainted; it may be near a hot spring, perhaps, that gives off sulphurous fumes. But even commons can travel in conveyances that go at sixty miles an hour, if you an credit that!"
"Fascinating" said T'lana. "I'm glad you're able to learn from it; those of us with red hair may have taken a bit of teasing when we were young, but we ARE smug about our distinctiveness."
"Oh I can learn a great deal. I gain the impression that Holmes was, like us, a pioneer of his craft. He calls it 'detection' and himself a 'detective'."
"That was then. The word 'detect' is a little imprecise, it suggests merely discovering. We apply logic to our problems so Logicators we are and shall duly stay" said T'lana firmly. "Does Holmes use Boolean charts and statistical studies?"
H'llon shook his head.
"No. He uses observation and a personal understanding of how people think and act. He seems to be a genius, but with less method than you have taught us to apply, and with less willingness to get the views of experts in a particular field."
"Heh, he sounds a bit full of gas and ash" said T'lana. "Still, if he was a pioneer I suppose he had to be a bit of a blowhard to be taken seriously if he didn't have so fine a Weyrleader behind him as we have. Well, with his examples and our tables we can even improve upon what the ancients had – providing we're always ready to learn new things."
The conversation was interrupted by the sudden eerie noise of hundreds of keening dragons!
The logicators looked at each other, shocked as always by the terrible sound that marked the unnatural passing of a dragon.
"WHO?" T'lana demanded of Mirrith.
"Tanumeth. His rider was killed deliberately" the little Queen was indignant. T'lana leaped to her feet, eyes sparking with anger.
"B'red has been murdered!" she declared, remembering with difficulty Tanumeth's rider's name. The Green Rider was one of the Oldtimers who had elected to stay at High Reaches under T'bor's leadership. He was almost fanatical about honour to make up for the ill deeds of his erstwhile colleagues.
T'bor and Pilgra precipitated out of their respective weyrs; and seeing the logicators where they had been lounging about in the thin Spring sunshine, the Weyrleaders altered course towards them, Pilgra almost bouncing up and down with rage.
T'lana held up a placatory hand.
"We'll do our best, T'bor" she answered the question before it was spoken. "I'll need to know where he was, what he was doing. Then we'll be on our way." T'bor nodded, calming down.
"He was at Three Rivers Hold, south of Nabol. It's at a confluence of rivers that run down the Esvay Valley. It's a major trade route. He told me last time he was on Search that he'd seen something that needed checking out. He went to see."
"Did he give any indication what it was?"
T'bor shook his head and spread his hands helplessly. T'lana tutted.
"Drat these stiff necked types that don't share information before getting themselves into hot water!" she declared.
"Naming no names" said Pilgra "But I recall a weyrlings borrowing an unconscious man's dragon with the best of motives and not telling anyone…"
T'lana had the grace to blush; and T'bor managed a laugh.
"Gave me several grey hairs that did" he said. "Well, I'll leave t to you; I've much faith in our logicators."
"Thank you sir" said T'lana seriously and with unwonted formality. "We all appreciate that so very much!"
oOoOo
Holder Priarish was flattered to be visited by a Queenrider; but he was by no means a stupid man, and noticed the martial light in T'lana's eyes before he started mouthing platitudes. Instead he asked,
"What can I do for you, Weyrwoman?"
T'lana looked on him with more approval than first impressions of his appearance would indicate; for he was somewhat overweight and appeared to lead an indolent lifestyle. The eyes that met hers were, however, quit shrewd and intelligent; and she decided to be forthright.
"Holder Priarish, if you don't mind plain speaking, I'll be blunt. A dragonrider has been murdered. His last known location was here."
"Murdered? Are you sure? How do you know?"
The staccato questions came from a man who wanted to know, and was used to being told what he wanted when he asked for it. He was not, T'lana felt sure, trying to shift blame by throwing doubt on her knowledge.
"His dragon communicated this in her grief immediately before she went Between for all time" explained T'lana. "Dragons always know when one of their number die – and the rough circumstances. The weyr to which they are attached keens, and in a great tragedy, like the death of the Queens Prideth and Wirenth, all the dragons on Pern keen. A death by old age is mourned usually only by its clutch mates or any others that felt close to him or her, say if the dragon had been a Bronze or Brown Wingleader's mount." She felt it important to explain, for so many were ignorant about dragons; and a man who truly wanted to know was to be cultivated!
"I see" Priarish chewed his lip. "If a dragonman has been killed in my Hold I feel great shame for such an act. Obviously the best thing to do is to give you a free hand – you know your man better than I. There was a Green Rider who came in to land, but I have not spoken to him; he did not approach the Hold nor seek me out so I assumed he had private business and did not pry. As Threadfall is expected, I thought it might be about that; one of my groundcrews has been rather perfunctory lately, and I thought he might have noticed and gone to check out their area."
"Indeed? That's interesting. I don't know, of course, if he intended speaking to you or not; I'm under the impression he saw something rather irregular and came to investigate more fully. I'm sure if it had been necessary he would have delivered a full report to you before reporting to T'bor: B'red was a most punctilious man."
Priarish looked puzzled.
"I wonder what he could have seen?" he said, then sighed. "Well, Weyrwoman, do whatever you want – my Hold is at your disposal" he waved a languid hand to indicate all his Hold.
"Thank You" said T'lana.
T'lana took Mirrith high above the Hold, not certain what she was looking for through the miserable drizzle that penetrated clothing without being enough to drown the imminent Threadfall. She hunkered down into her wherhide jacket and reflected that if B'red had seen anything irregular it almost had to have been from topsides. A patch of colour caught her eye; the colour was surrounded by the green of vegetation. T'lana took Mirrith down. There was just about enough room to land at the side of a big hop field; and T'lana realised immediately that the patch of colour was entirely hidden at ground level. She traversed the perimeter, and searched for a way in.
It was cleverly hidden and has staggered to hide anything from a casual passer by.
Covering the ground inside the hop fence was a low shrub. The leaves resembled fellis and so did the flowers in shape, but they were a deep rich pink not the usual yellow, and the shape of the plant was subtly different. T'lana was no farmcrafter; her foster father had raised mainly stock, and she had done no more than tend to their little subsistence vegetable patch and help harvest oats and hay for fodder. She took the layman's course and smelled the flower.
Definitely it was a form of fellis; and stronger smelling. This brought back for T'lana the spectre of Wenner and his evil hallucinogenic brew. And as to the groundcrew shirking duty – were they under the influence of something similar? Or were they instead protecting this secret field rather than the proper crops?
T'lana returned to the Hold.
"Threadfall is due in just two hours – leading edge where we pick it up, west of here, that is" she hastily explained as Priarish looked puzzled, not expecting it for longer "- I'll need to be back. But first I'd like a quick word with this inadequate groundcrew of yours. They may be diverting their efforts onto a most unauthorised crop; and I'll explain that later, but I'm not fully sure of all my facts and I hesitate to speculate too far."
Priarish swallowed his impatience and curiosity and nodded.
It took nearly half an hour for the crew to turn up; three men.
"Where's Leko?" asked Priarish sharply.
The men looked at each other. One of them spoke out.
"Look, it's obvious the game is up. Leko said he saw the Weyrwoman round his precious crop, and it was him as killed the other dragonman. There's plenty will tell you that. Reckoned a Green Rider's not be missed. He reckoned wrong. He's gone on the run."
"What 'precious crop' is that, Shiffey?" asked Holder Priarish.
T'lana answered for him.
"The one he has confirmed as being the reason for their laxity; not as I wondered being under the influence of its hallucinogenic effects. It's a variant of fellis and it's stronger. Right, Shiffey?"
"I dunno how you dragonfolk know these things" he said sullenly. "Nothin' to do with us. Leko made us protect his fardling fellis when we should of bin sweepin' elsewhere."
T'lana noted a change in speech patterns; she had thought the man's first speech had sounded rehearsed.
"If you are hiding this Leko, you will be taken to be as guilty as him" she warned the three grimly.
Shiffey raised his eyebrows in apparent surprise.
"Oh NO, Weyrwoman, not after he's killed a dragonman. We'd not do that, would we mates?"
"No, of course not!" chorused the other two. T'lana frowned.
"Well I shall be back to search for him after Threadfall – and I hope you're telling the truth" her voice seemed to come from Between.
Shiffey and his cronies were waiting for T'lana when she landed, still grimed from fighting Thread. The drizzle had increased enough to reduce Fall and casualties had been light so R'gar came with her. Shiffey gave the grim looking one-eyed Bronze Rider an uncertain look; T'lana wondered whether he thought R'gar harder to put something over than 'just a girl' as he doubtless saw her! Shiffey started speaking nervously and rapidly as the dragonfolk approached.
"We found Leko, Weyrwoman. He's dead."
"Dead?" T'lana raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, Lady. He must of forgot about Fall; he done hid in his field. Well, o'course we didn't sweep it; he got caught out in Fall."
"Show me."
The corpse was charred, blackened. T'lana rounded on Shiffey and glared at him.
"We hadda burn the stuff off, see?" he gave excuse. "Stop it spreading. You know."
"Hasn't hit the fellis much" commented R'gar cynically.
"Who can tell with Thread?" shrugged Shiffey with an assumption of nonchalance.
T'lana knelt by the corpse and began examining it minutely, rolling it over to check the underside too.
"This man had short brown hair and pale skin that freckled" she said looking at the back of his head and neck. She rolled him back. "He died as a result of a blow to the side of the head, the temple is crushed, I can feel it under the superficial charring. His teeth are quite worn, he has several missing. Hands are too burned to make much out from them. Help me take off his breeches, R'gar"
She examined the lower limbs carefully and pushed up the tunic to examine the chest.
"He was well developed and fit, probably did a lot of walking. He's barrel chested; may have fancied himself as a singer. He had joint-ail in his left knee – see how swollen it is in this wet weather – and if you check the calluses on the side of that foot, he had probably been limping for more than a full turn. Don't you three go anywhere" she added as they began a stealthy retreat. Mirrith's head appeared over the hops as an effective argument to their continued presence.
Back in the Hold T'lana repeated her description of the corpse to Holder Priarish.
"That sounds like the trader – Porraig his name is. He's Ruathan" said the Holder.
"He'd almost have to be with a handle like that" grinned T'lana. "Please place orders to have this Porraig brought to you" she said. The Holder stared.
"But you said he's dead!"
"Indeed he is. But if you give the order you might be surprised at how well rascals can make the dead to live" she said.
The Holder shrugged; and did as he was bid.
Presently his men brought a man before him, dressed in a floppy hat, and protesting in broad, almost exaggerated, Ruathan brogue about ill treatment.
T'lana whipped off the hat.
"Would this be Leko?" she asked.
Priarish could hardly believe his eyes.
"Yes indeed" he said. "This is Leko."
"He knew that I knew about the fellis – and he had already killed B'red because he knew, erroneously supposing that it would be some time before anyone found out, by which time the trail would be cold. Unfortunately for Leko, others saw him kill B'red if his friends are to be believed; and more to the point, I turned up quicker than he would have expected. But he thought fast this precious villain of yours; if it were thought that he was dead and his friends unwilling accomplices, then it would be unlikely that we would jeopardise Weyr-Hold relationships by making too much issue. So he decided to swop identities with the unfortunate Porraig, who was about his build. With the excuse of burning off Thread, the corpse was rendered unrecognisable to a casual glance. But I don't glance casually" she glowered at Leko. "B'red wasn't a particular friend of mine; but he was a man of punctilious honour and rectitude and doubtless got himself killed in his careful wish not to accuse you of anything until he had confronted you. And you, my lad, and your friends, who are as guilty as you through association, can regret killing two innocent men for the rest of your miserable lives on the Eastern Isles. Where, for the killing of a dragonman, we are entitled to take you" she turned to Priarish as the man Leko cried out in horror. "Holder Priarish, I should search the baggage of this supposed trader. Any bottles purporting to be wine may be this evil brew from tainted fellis. I would also advise that Healers and Farmcrafters examine and test this new variant. It might have properties that render it useful as a herb if under correct usage. If so, it may prove a source of wealth to your Hold."
Holder Priarish nodded meekly. It seemed the easiest thing to do to obey the furious little Weyrwoman. And the dragonfolk DID have the entitlement; and he was grateful that in their anger they considered the financial well being of his Hold.
R'gar took the men, bound, to the Eastern Isles. It was no place, he said, for a woman to go, even just visiting.
He was surprised at T'lana's meek compliance.
She liked to do that sometimes to keep him off balance!