Thanks to Ginnystar for mentioning that F'lessan knew about solar energy. I still maintain that Pern, in this reincarnation, had less technology than I have imagined for Terrvert, but I hope everyone can visualise a certain amount of, let's say, manually operated technology despite the Lord Holders and Weyrleaders still being very conservative in their outlook.
Saska could not stop that dragon's remark reverberating through her mind. She did not know which dragon had spoken, but over the next two days as she explored Honshu she kept returning to that simple concept.
Exploring Honshu meant finding the deepest cellars with Aselan, learning how the Pernese had managed for so long without electrical refrigeration; learning how they had preserved food and drink during the long turns of a Pass; learning what plants could be grown in pots over a short Northern summer.
"Is it different on your worlds?" H'rat asked when he found her copying recipes.
Saska looked up at him. H'rat always seemed to find her, and was amenable to flying her around the holdings on Noreth, his blue dragon. They usually flew in the afternoon or early evening, and it gave Saska a chance to order her thoughts from the work programme she had set herself.
"Yes, but only because we didn't lose contact with AIVAS," she replied to the blue rider, wondering if he was actually interested, or just making conversation. "The technology is the same, and the restraints are the same, someone has to learn how to make the machines that make the implements, if you see what I mean?"
He nodded. "Much like us, I suppose. We didn't have paper until AIVAS directed the Printers Hall to make it. Then, once the youngsters had learned how to use the limited computer power left behind, we could begin to use the Dawn Sisters as a template for the dragon-ship concept."
"Yes. Those Dawn Sister ships must have been too big for the dragon minds to fly?"
H'rat picked up the recipe books she had finished with and shelved them neatly, lining up their spines, leaving just a fraction of the wooden shelf showing.
"I don't know," he confessed. "I don't get dragon-ship training, of course, because Noreth is a blue, but I do get to listen to the chat. I think it was deemed better to make the dragon-ships from scratch, and once the metal ores began to come in from the asteroid belt, it was a lot easier."
"In that, Terrvert is the same," Saska replied. "The original colonists used the shell of the transporters to get out to the asteroids and mine them."
"Are you free this evening?" H'rat asked, seemingly at random. "There's a star-gazing party on the terrace - apparently a rare conjunction of something or other."
"I daresay I can find time for that," Saska replied with a smile, and H'rat nodded and left the room. Saska frowned after him; he was a pleasant enough individual but she had no idea why he was spending time with her.
Aselan, when asked, shook her head.
"Blue riders," she said darkly. "Oversexed, the lot of them."
Saska gave a rather shocked laugh, and Aselan smiled at her.
"You don't want any attention, you tell them so, m'dear," she said. "Did the Daybook help you at all?"
"I think so. Tai and Zaranth discovered how to move model ships, and it was from those ideas that the dragon-ships developed. When that happened, the dragons were bigger. Now they're smaller."
Aselan spread cakes out on a cooling rack, moving them into rows, frowning as she thought that through.
"They won't be able to fly the ships?"
"That - I don't know. I need to speak to the Weyrlingmaster and the trainers at Respite."
"Good luck with that, m'dear," Aselan said and Saska agreed with that as she left the kitchens for her own room.
Opening her notes, Saska turned her attention to the mechanics and operation of the dragon-ships.
Modeth was the largest bronze and always flew alone. Sosteth and Baleth flew in tandem, as did many of the other dragons. Sometimes a bronze, such as Vorenth, would team up with a brown, either more or less experienced, and they would fly in tandem.
Looking at her notes, Saska shook her head. However reluctant she was, she was going to have to return to Respite to test out her ideas, and speak to the dragons directly.
Standing up and closing the computer programmes, she made her way up to the outer reaches of Honshu to sit on the terrace and bask in the late afternoon sunshine.
"Can I sit with you?"
Saska looked up as Harper Belso hovered by her chair.
"Of course."
Chirrup, the blue fire lizard, transferred himself from Belso's shoulder to the table, minced along it and climbed onto the arm of the chair where Saska was sitting, so that she could scratch his eye ridges. His eyes half closed, he hummed gently as she did it, and Saska smiled at Belso.
"Is he always this friendly?"
"Strangely enough, no. He always joins me in lessons, but he hardly ever goes to strangers. He says you give strong pictures, although he doesn't like the red ones."
"Red ones? Benden World orbits a red dwarf sun, and I grew up there, so I never knew anything different until I went to University."
"Is that the same as Harper Hall?"
"Yes, in a way I suppose it is. Now I've finished there, I need paying jobs to pay back the Terrvert Committee for my education."
"Is this project part of that?"
"I hope so. I heard you playing the teaching ballads yesterday. Do you still use those?"
"Oh yes, they're all part of teaching the youngsters how it was in the past. I wonder though, with contact with Terrvert, whether they'll forget."
Saska stared out over the brilliant green landscape.
"Everyone forgets, eventually," she said. "Your way of teaching is better, in a way, than relying on words stored on a computer, because people can sing the songs."
"Give me a potted history of Terrvert and I'll compose you a teaching ballad," Belso said with a grin.
"I might take you up on that! There is a body of poetry about the founding of the worlds, I could let you have that to set to music."
"It's a deal. That could be interesting, to see if I can match the rhythms of a different culture."
"We all came from Old Earth, and both our AIVAS systems stored a selection of the more memorable bits of literature and music from there."
Belso frowned at her. "Did they? I didn't know that. AIVAS shut itself down before the end of the Ninth Pass, so that we could carry on with our way of life without as much technology as Terrvert, so they say."
"You have enough technology to keep up a decent standard of living, and move out into the stars," Saska pointed out.
"Solar energy and some computing know-how," Herat said with a nod. "With the dragons moving the ships, our space voyages are different to those of Terrvert?"
"Very different. I'd like more people to go from Terrvert to the Pern colony worlds - I think it would do them good - living under a free sky like this one."
Belso squinted up into the blueness of the sky. "I take your point, and I could include it in my next report to Harper Hall? It might get as far as a Council meeting and be discussed."
Saska nodded, and Belso collected Chirrup and left her side. Saska watched him walk away, and wondered if her report would go to the High Council and be discussed, or be put away as Pern continued in its own way of life. She was also conscious, as K'var had been so quick to deduce, that she was not speaking of all the technology Terrvert had available, which was only a fraction of the centuries and millennia of knowledge that Old Earth had possessed.
It seemed everyone wanted to speak to her that afternoon, to ask how she was progressing, what she thought her next move might be, even to offer to take her in to the evening meal. Since that offer was from a bronze rider, she refused it with a smile, and came to sit at the top table with Karela and her partner Toron. Neither of them were dragon riders, but they ensured the smooth running of the Hold and the provision of supplies for the visiting dragons and their riders from all over the Southern Continent.
"Don't riders from the north ever come here?" Saska asked.
"Oh yes, in their winter," Toron said with a smile. "Each of the historic Weyrs maintains a couple of hundred dragons, still, and takes a small tithe from the Holders. But with the conquest of Thread, the Weyrs can cultivate their own lands and be equal shareholders, if you like, in the future of Pern."
"And its colonies," Karela murmured. "Our son Laron is on Ruatha World, farming more land than is decent for one man."
Toron laughed. "He has the advantage of being able to send us regular updates."
"I thought Ruatha World didn't want a permanent dragon population?" Saska asked, but quietly. Toron looked sharply at her.
"There's a Port, and supplies go in and come out," he responded at last. "But no Weyr, as someone must have told you? I don't know the politics of it, and Laron doesn't mention it in his letters. How did you find out?"
"I was told," Saska replied, unwilling to name G'rat. "Is the High Council just going to let that situation continue?"
Toron shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not privy to their deliberations, and truth be told I'm not overly concerned."
Saska noted that slight hesitation. The situation on Ruatha World was not something she needed to know about, but it sounded as if the colony was on a collision course with the High Council at some point in the future.
Toron turned the talk to other things and Saska followed his lead, and when Belso struck up some music, joined in with the choruses.
"That's a nice singing voice," Karela said. "You might have trialled at the Harper Hall if you'd been born on Pern."
"Or its colony worlds?"
"Yes, they can still trial - they send a recording of their voice."
"That's useful."
"Yes. If you want to return to Respite tomorrow, I'll ask H'rat to take you? Noreth is out of sorts, and I think a quiet spell at Respite would do both of them good."
Saska glanced around, only then realising H'rat was not in the dining hall.
"Is Noreth all right? Not injured?"
"No, no, I wouldn't ask him to fly if he was injured! I know H'rat has been making himself useful to you?"
Saska sipped at her fruit juice before answering, wondering why the question had been couched in just that way.
"He's certainly been willing to show me around Honshu, and explain the way it works," she said at last.
"He's a good man, for all that he rides a blue, and I know he admires you."
Saska nodded. "I'd already realised that. Thank you, I'll be ready."