Oops! Confrontation already! What is it with these bronze riders?
"Doctor Freeman? K'var, rider of bronze Lateth of Respite Weyr."
Saska did not know how to respond. Should she bow? Curtsey? Offer to shake hands?
"Pleased to meet you," she managed at last.
They stood in an awkward silence, staring at each other, assessing each other. K'var was a lot taller than any Terrvertian she had met, Saska realised. There seemed to be a genetic predisposition to small people on those colonies, but here everyone grew to whatever natural height they could manage.
"Well, Lateth says you do hear dragons, but apparently you aren't hearing him," K'var said, with a note of anger and disappointment in his voice.
"I haven't heard any dragons since I left the ship," Saska replied. "Just - a general buzzing in my head as I've always heard, since I was a child."
"Were there dragons on your childhood home? Where were you brought up? Terrvert itself?"
"No. I spent most of my childhood on Benden world, and there's a weyr on that colony. I was born on a space station. I don't remember that very clearly."
"Well, I've brought riding gear for you, because I guessed you wouldn't have anything suitable."
"I was informed - "
"No one goes riding in those flimsy clothes. Here - "
He held out a bundle of jacket and leggings and almost thrust them into her arms.
"Let's get out to Respite and see if you can hear any dragons there."
He turned away and Saska dropped the flight suit at her feet and folded her arms. Lateth was watching her, his great eyes whirling from yellow to red, and K'var swung round and glared at her.
"Are you coming? Doctor Freeman?"
"No, I'm not coming," Saska replied. "My contract is with the High Council of Pern, and does not include being interrogated by a mere bronze rider. I can hear dragons, I have heard Laroth very clearly, but I wonder if the reason I can't hear Lateth is because you are blocking me?"
K'var looked from her back to his dragon, and then back to her. He took a deep breath, unclenched his fists and ran his fingers through his hair, making it curl up into wild confusion.
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute," he said in a more reasonable voice. Saska remained with her arms folded, tapping her foot. She was aware people had paused to look at them, but no one came to speak to them.
"All right," K'var said. "Lateth, would you please ask Doctor Freeman, very nicely, if she would care to mount and come to Respite with us? Please?"
- I have been trying, and I would like the lady who hears dragons to come with us
"I can hear you now!"
K'var grunted and gestured to the clothing.
"Shall we go, Doctor Freeman?"
"Certainly, bronze rider K'var. Thank you, Lateth, I will be pleased to see your Weyr."
Saska ignored the bundle of clothing. She pulled a packet from her bag, unfolded and shook out a coverall which she stepped into, pulled up, and fastened up to her neck, pulling up a snugly fitting hood, before she stepped easily up onto Lateth's foreleg and onto his back, settling herself with her bag over her shoulders, rolling mittens from the suit sleeves and covering her hands. K'var was staring up at her, and now came up before her, and leaned round to finger the jacket.
"What's this? Are you going to be warm enough?"
"This is derived from a spacesuit," she informed him. "It can keep out the absolute cold of deep space, so it should do fine for between."
"Fasten these straps, then and hold onto me if you want."
Saska did not hesitate, gripping him firmly as Lateth bent his hind legs, launched into the air, turned, and then they had gone between. Somewhere in that heart-dropping, breath-stopping pause of nothingness, Saska realised the back of a dragon was a very different proposition from the controlled atmosphere of the cabin of a dragon-ship.
"...80, 90, 100... wow - "
Saska peered down over Lateth's shoulder to see the spread of a north facing coastline with the sunlight sparkling on the sea as the waves curled into a cove of white sand. For a moment she was blinded by the colours and brilliance before she blinked back into focus again.
There were some small ships out on the ocean heading into the cove. From a jetty built in the cove, a road led back through the settlement, and a few vehicles moved along it, to and from a wide open space with a long low building on one side of it, facing south, with a tall flagstaff beside it, and a tower at one side. Saska could see solar panels deployed on the roof and appreciated the way the building had been built to take advantage of all the possibilities of solar power on the sloping roof, and wide eaves to keep out direct sunlight. On the hills and plains around the cove she could see smaller copies of the building but with an open space behind, some of them with dragons resting in what must pass as a weyr in this place. Around the perimeter of the settlement several tall towers showed a watcher, and more flags flying.
"Welcome to Respite Weyr," K'var called back over his shoulder, as they circled down. A blue dragon on one of the towers bugled, and Lateth answered, the vibration of his call coming through to Saska's body. The watch rider dipped the flag to signal a rider coming in, and Lateth continued his glide down to the central square where he landed neatly and flipped his wings closed. K'var helped Saska down, and held her hand for a moment, looking into her face.
"We'll try and start again, Doctor? No offence meant, back there."
"Of course. None taken, K'var."
K'var smiled and relaxed, and indicated a young boy who had come running up.
"Take Doctor Freeman's gear to the guest quarters, Vorodin," he said, and Saska shed her suit and handed it with her bag to the youth who stared at her as if she had two heads. He ran off and K'var shook his head.
"I don't give that boy enough work to do," he said with a smile. "He'll do well."
"Is he in training?"
"Not as a dragon rider, not yet. He's a touch young for Impression, but he had the effrontery to sail into the cove and demand to be tested in due course. He has a fine singing voice, but refused the chance to go to Harper Hall."
K'var led the way into the large building which was cool and airy after the warmth of the open square.
"This is clever," Saska said, looking around.
"Taken from the original plans at Cove Hold and improved on," K'var replied. "The solar panels on the roof, of course, sloped to catch any rain. The wide eaves - in winter all the light falls into the rooms, in summer with the sun higher it falls on the eaves and the windows are in shadow."
"Yes, very clever. No one will mind if I take some details?"
K'var blinked.
"You mean - you don't have this sort of building on Terrvert?"
"I've never seen any building like this one," Saska replied sincerely. "It's amazing, how it works for you."
"Well - I find that very reassuring - I'll try and call up the original specs for you. Meanwhile -the Weyrleaders are waiting. Do you have any paperwork with you?"
"Yes. That would be P'dar and Myryn?"
K'var nodded as he led her into a further room and a woman rose from a couch to greet Saska, smiling at her, a tall woman wearing a flowing green dress and matching scarf.
"Welcome to Respite Weyr, Doctor. Do we have to use your title all the time, or can we be less formal?"
Saska smiled and relaxed a little.
"I'm called Saska, and that will be fine, thank you. My papers - "
Myryn gestured, and the man standing by the window came over, with a pronounced limp, Saska was startled to see, and took the papers over to a modern complex of machines which duly copied her details. Studying him, Saska decided he was older than either of the other two, an impression strengthened by the lines of experience on his face, and his grey hair.
"That goes straight to AIVAS," P'dar told her as he returned the paperwork. "The main machine is switched off, but we still use the ancillary memory store."
Saska folded the paperwork away and came to sit down at Myryn's invitation, and K'var took another seat as P'dar brought drinks to the low table between the seats.
"Do you know the taste of klah, Saska?" P'dar asked in his soft elderly voice.
"I've not tried it."
"It's the first thing they take to colonies," Myryn said with a smile. "Klah, numbweed and fellis. What does Terrvert export to its colonies?"
"We have a drink we call tea, but which probably doesn't bear much resemblance to Old Earth tea. That goes with all the colonists, and then they try and adapt the plants they find."
"Terrvert didn't lose its AIVAS, did it?" P'dar asked.
"No. I think the two colonies were set up with different aims, though. Pern low-tech, high-level agrarian, Terrvert high-tech agrarian-balanced."
"And no Thread," K'var murmured.
Saska nodded her agreement to that, and answered some more questions on the work she had been doing, but when K'var escorted her to her quarters he looked around at the Weyr and then back at her.
"You were fudging it, weren't you, describing the work you did?" he asked bluntly.
"Of course I was. I know Pern has some laboratories, and the knowledge of its AIVAS, but I'll wait and see what people know before I start spouting off about technical advances."
"I thought so. I expect the technical people will be in touch."
"And you'll excuse me if I say - I don't know whether there's enough scope here for any work I need to do?"
"Oh, I'm not offended. The most of the laboratories are around at Honshu, and then Healer Hall has a lot of advanced stuff. I don't know what work you'll be doing. Do you?"
"No," Saska replied. "No, I've no idea, but I'm hoping there might be someone here who can tell me."