The Felines of Pern Chapter 3
When we went hunting the next day, I did not fare well. The late night and the long walks from last night sapped my stamina, and I caught nothing. My failed hunt did not leave my belly completely empty, though. Hunter Kur took a young male horned beast that had incautiously stayed out in the forest all night, and after making doubly sure that her cubs had eaten their fill, she allowed me a few bites. It was not so many days ago that our roles were reversed; it was Kur who had come back empty, and I had a large enough kill to share with her and her cubs. This is what separates us from the wild animals: even though our existence is sometimes precarious, we still care for one another.
Later that morning, as we all rested, Hunter San heard approaching footsteps and awakened all of us. If there were intruders in our hunting grounds, we would have to fight them off. The land did not have enough prey to support two hunting bands. This land between the hills and the river was ours and had been ours forever. Trespassers would be forcefully ejected.
But there was just one… a male. For a moment, I didn't recognize him. He carried himself with a pride and strength that I hadn't seen when we met on the trail, but it was definitely him. We gathered silently in a half-circle around him.
"I am Oclo," he said without a trace of hesitation. "I have traveled far to find you. The males have competed for the privilege of becoming the Ted for this valiant band of hunters, and I am the victor. I willingly accept you as my own, to guide, to protect, and to sire the next generation. Will you have me?"
He knew the ceremonial words well enough, but would he pass the inspection of every hunter in the band? I stepped forward first and examined him with eyes and nose, pretending I had never seen him before. I still could find no fault in him. I stepped back, sat down facing him, and said, "I accept this one." If anything, he now stood even prouder. Now it was the others' turn to check him out.
It was unlikely that any of us would find fault in him; he was a fine specimen. But we all had the right to accept or reject him as our future leader and mate. If more than half of us rejected him, he would have to slink back to the males' band in disgrace, and they would choose another possible Ted in his place. Each of the others took their turn examining him, and each one sat and said, "I accept this one" in turn. It was done. Our band had a new Ted. He would lead us if we had to fight another band, he would supply leadership in any other area if it was needed, and he would sire our cubs for as long as he was fit to do so. We would provide a share of our kills to him, and we would take his orders as long as it made sense to do so. We could remove him only due to physical inability to lead, or due to incompetence, as had happened to his predecessor.
"Welcome to our lands. Do you require food?" I asked him.
"Thank you, but I have eaten recently," Oclo answered. "I had the good fortune to find a middle-sized flyer last night. It was quite tasty, and it was useful in other ways as well." His tail twitched slightly. So he had found my offering, and used it to win the competition! That made me feel good. My kill had not gone to waste; it had accomplished my intended goal.
As the others returned to their resting places, he remained with me, asking questions about the land he now ruled and the other hunters. He wondered about the wound on my flank, so I told him about the failed attack on the great flyers and the humans. He lashed his tail in displeasure when he heard about that.
"Even if you had succeeded, some of you would have been killed or injured in a straight-up fight against an enemy of that size," he said in short, clipped syllables. "No hunting band can survive on those terms. Your previous Ted completely misjudged your enemies. That's a mistake that I will not make. I promise you that."
"Then what is your plan for dealing with those 'dragons' when they hunt on our grounds?" I asked.
"I'll think about that," he decided. "I will need to know more about these creatures, and if we can learn more about the humans as well, it will help me make a wise decision. Also, I will need to spend time in my new band, learning how each of you hunts. A wise ancestor of mine, named Sunsu, once said, 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.' I mean to put that advice into practice."
"I do not wish to fight a hundred battles," I said hesitantly.
"Nor I," he reassured me. "If we can persuade the dragons and the humans that our lands are too dangerous for them, then they will leave us alone. We can do that in one battle, or perhaps two, if we do it correctly. Each time we fight and lose, they will grow bolder; when we fight and win, they will fear and respect us. I will find a way for us to fight and win, and then our lands will be uncontested."
It was good, the way he spoke of "we" and "us" and "our lands" when he had just joined us. He was already thinking of himself as one of us. That was very good. I had chosen wisely.
"In the meantime," he went on, "I will make no changes in your way of living. I will watch you hunt and I will learn more about each of you. I will begin with you, Rit, for I think you will soon come into season, and then I will do my first duty to my new band."
What a typical male – mating was uppermost on his mind. But that was, indeed, one of the main functions of a Ted. I had influenced the males' choice, in part, because this one intrigued me, and I would soon get my wish. Would he sire strong, healthy cubs on me, or weak ones who could not survive their first year? I would soon find out.
We all went hunting the next day. Oclo stayed behind me, saying nothing. I knew (or rather, I hoped) that this wasn't out of rudeness, but out of a desire to not frighten away any prey that might hear him. I could not fault his hunting style; I could barely hear his footsteps, even though I knew exactly where he was.
Then I heard a thud to my left. We were under a large tree, big enough for the feathered flyers to build a nest there, and one of their young had fallen out of the nest. It saw me and tried to scramble away, flapping its wings to give it extra speed, but nothing on the ground can outrun me! I overtook it, pounced, and scored my kill in a cloud of feathers. It was far from fully grown, but it would make a reasonable meal for one of our kind.
I turned to Oclo. "Will you take the first bite?" I asked politely, hoping that his answer would be "no."
"Let the successful hunter take the first bite of her own kill," he replied, just as politely. "I will take what is rightfully mine, and no more." I sighed inwardly in relief. Our new Ted was not a greedy tyrant who would demand the best portions of each hunter's kill, as the Ted before this one's predecessor had been. I took a good-sized bite, then stepped aside and allowed him to share my food. He bit, swallowed, and stepped back.
"I will now follow another hunter of my band," he decided. "You made your kill quickly, but it isn't big enough to feed two. Enjoy your meal." He listened for a few seconds, then walked silently away. Apparently, he had heard one of the other hunters and meant to follow that one for a while. He had probably found Hunter San, whose injury made it difficult for her to walk quietly. I enjoyed my meal as best I could. I have never liked eating the feathered ones when they are small; the flesh is tasty enough, but the tiny feathers keep getting stuck between my teeth. When I was done, I continued hunting in hopes of finding something more, but today, luck favored me only once. Still, it was far better than being hungry and empty.
When we gathered at high noon and compared our stories, everyone had caught something. That was an auspicious beginning to our new Ted's rule. If too many of us had come back empty, he might have asked himself if he had joined a band of failures. But because all had hunted well, he, too, was full and content, without burdening any of us with his appetite. He had even scored a kill of his own; he had found a burrow of the long tunneling creatures and snared one with his paw. Those creatures are not fit to eat, and he knew it, but it was good to see that he had some hunting skills to go along with his good looks.
"We should rest now," he decided. That was a useless comment, probably born of his desire to be seen as a leader. We all knew that sunshine and a full belly were the twin signals for rest. We found our chosen sleeping spaces, Oclo found a place of his own, and we were soon fast asleep. It had been a good day.
o
D'ram and Lytol hosted their weekly meeting for the principal projects going on at Landing. Anyone was free to attend these regular meetings and seek solutions to the problems they were facing. Most of those problems involved too many people trying to use the same resources at the same time. Today was no different.
"We need more computer time!" the Starsmith journeyman insisted, thumping the table with his finger for emphasis. "Even with the limited use we can get out of the Yokohama's telescope, there are untold wonders in the sky whose locations and orbits need to be plotted exactly. It's not enough to say, 'This star is usually right overhead.' If our Fishercraftsmen are going to use the stars to accurately navigate and explore our whole world, then we need precision, and we need the computers for that. It would also be a help to figure out what the ancients called those stars, so we can name them consistently. We need the computers for that as well."
"The ships and their crews have been getting along without that kind of precision for thousands of Turns," the Plasticcraft journeyman countered. "You can probably wait a few days, or even a few weeks, and it won't affect anything that matters. But if we are going to get our new Crafthall fully running, then we need more than just a few formulas for plastic. Do you have any idea how complex some of those formulas are?" He glanced at the others around the table; they all shook their heads "no."
"I'll make it clear in simple terms," the Plasticcraftsman went on. "Master Hamian couldn't get to a computer for a special project of his, so he wrote out the formula by hand. He thought it would save time. It took him half a day just to write it! We can't function that way. Our new Craft simply has to have more computer help."
"You said the same thing last week, and the week before that," the Beastcraft journeyman protested. "Both times, you got more computer time, largely at our expense, and now you're back for more? When will it end?"
The Starsmith shook his head. "I don't understand why Beastcraft needs computer time at all. What are you trying to do – engineer a runnerbeast that's half alive and half machine, so you can finally beat the Ruathan beasts in a race and win a bet?" The others chuckled or tried to suppress smiles.
"No," the Beastcrafter said, irritated. "We've been tasked with finding an anti-fertility drug so we can cut down the population of the wild felines. It's all very well to say, 'We'll drop carcasses all over Southern, treated with this drug.' I think the formula for the drug in question is every bit as complicated as the formulas that the Plasticcraft needs. To actually make the stuff, in the quantities that we're going to need, is going to require a dedicated building, some very fancy equipment, and some specially trained people. We need computer power to arrange all of those things."
The Plasticcraft journeyman and the Techniciancrafter next to him both began to object when D'ram raised his hand for silence. "It seems to me," he began, "that we need to set priorities on all of these projects, and assign the computer time based on who has the most pressing need. Lytol and I are going to have to appoint a priority team whose job it will be to set those priorities, unless someone else has a better idea."
"I have a question," the Techniciancraft journeyman said. "Just about everyone on Pern benefits from the computers in some way. How are you going to find men and women who can be impartial about who gets the computers first?"
Lytol had a suggestion. "We could choose people who are known to mistrust anything that our ancestors left to us. Someone like Lord Corman has no use for computers, so he would be an impartial setter of priorities."
"Someone like Lord Corman would drag his feet for weeks before making any kind of decision," the Starcrafter muttered.
"If he was even willing to get involved in such a project," the Beastcrafter added.
"D'ram, why don't you and Lytol set the priorities?" the Plasticcrafter asked. "No one questions your impartiality."
"The problem with that idea," D'ram said slowly, "is that Lytol and I are already overwhelmed with the administration of Landing. The workload only grows with each passing Turn, and since we lost our beloved Robinton, it's becoming too much for two aging men to bear. Adding to our workload… I would like to say we'll do it for the good of Pern, but I'm not at all certain that we can handle it."
"Would it help to add a third administrator, to take Robinton's place?" the Beastcrafter wondered.
"It would help," Lytol nodded, "but it would not solve the problem. The job has become too big for three men, or even four or five. What we really need is a new way of overseeing and governing what happens at Landing."
"What are you suggesting?" the Starcrafter asked. "Are you going to turn Landing into a brand-new Hold, with a Lord Holder to manage it all?"
"It shouldn't be a Hold," the Plasticcrafter disagreed. "Lord Toric would throw a fit if we created another Hold in Southern without clearing it with him first. And if we tried to clear it with him, he'd demand so much influence over it that it might as well become part of his own Holding. No, Landing should be organized like a Hall instead, seeing how the Halls as a group benefit the most from what we do and learn here."
"Another brand-new Hall?" the Beastcrafter burst out. "You'll never get the older Craftmasters to approve of that! Some of them are still grumbling about the last new batch of Halls." The journeymen around the table fell to bickering over the benefits of a new Hall versus a new Hold. D'ram held up his hand for silence again.
"Both Holds and Halls have their advantages, but at least we're agreed on one thing," he said. "If we rearrange the governance of Landing, it won't be done as a Weyr."
Lytol suddenly looked alert. "Actually, D'ram, that's not a bad idea. The dragonriders are famous for being impartial, they derive very little benefit as a group from the computers, and once the current Pass ends, they'll need something to do. Why not create a Landing Weyr and let the dragonriders take over our job?"
Someone murmured, "You're just saying that because you used to be a dragonrider."
Lytol visibly winced. D'ram slammed his fist down on the table. "Who said that?"
After a few seconds of silence, the Computercrafter slowly raised his hand.
"You will retract that comment with an apology," D'ram growled, "or you will give up your place at this table."
"I'm sorry. It was thoughtless. I forgot," the Computercrafter said at last. "But I thought dragonriders were all about action. Can they handle heavy administrative work like this?"
D'ram smiled. "Have you seen the Red Star Lately? I think that the dragonriders have proven that they can do anything they set their minds to do. And I'm not saying that because I'm a dragonrider! I will speak to F'lar and Lessa about this, and see what they think. I suspect that they'll approve, because they are definitely looking for ways to keep the Weyrs busy after they are no longer needed to fight Thread.
"In the meantime, we still need to resolve the question of who gets priority use of our computers. Until we successfully reorganize Landing, here is what I propose: we'll ask an apprentice in the Computercraft to write a simple random-number generator program. I will use that program to select tomorrow's priorities, and we'll write them down. The day after tomorrow, whoever was number two the previous day will become number one that day, number three will become number two, and so on down the line. The previous number one will go to the bottom of the list. This way, everyone gets a fair amount of computer time."
"But what about my high-priority task?" the Beastcrafter pleaded.
"Everyone thinks their task is a high-priority task," Lytol said without a trace of irony. "When we have an organized government for Landing, then whoever is in charge can decide which tasks are really high priority. In the meantime, we'll give everyone the same time slices, day by day. You'll know in advance when you'll have the most computer time, and you can schedule your heaviest work for those days. It may not be optimum, but it is fair."
All of the journeymen at the table showed by their faces that they didn't approve. But no one could disagree with D'ram and Lytol's logic. They all nodded. The meeting was dismissed soon afterward.
