Oh dear, I do hope I'm not putting all of them in danger! Don't you just hate it when a story decides to take on a life of its own?
Saska looked around at all three of them, Lord Jaxom stubborn and prideful, Tai horrified, and F'lessan wistful.
"You wouldn't risk yourself and your heritage," Tai said again.
"I have children and grandchildren," Lord Jaxom replied.
"And a wife you loves you, and all those children and grandchildren who do as well," Tai snapped. "It's out of the question! F'lessan - tell him - "
"Well - actually - I can't," F'lessan said apologetically. "I'm just running through in my mind the active dragon riders of this moment, and trying to find someone who is flexible enough, clever enough, and determined enough, to make such a jump."
Tai stood up with enough force to rock the table and spill her drink.
"No! You can't upset the fabric of time like this, not again."
"Do the histories tell you I vanished suddenly, never to return?" Lord Jaxom asked Saska.
"I won't reply to that, because I can't say I studied them closely," she said. "But I have no idea who is going to get me home to the future, and that is all I have to say on the subject."
"The loop of time will get you back to your own personal time line, and you don't know the outcome," Lord Jaxom agreed. "Just as mine will go forward into the histories, I hope."
"And if you're stuck in the future?" Tai asked.
"How can I be, unless Ruth is incapacitated?" Lord Jaxom asked reasonably. "If I can't remember the stages, he will."
"Stages?" F'lessan asked.
"I wouldn't go in one jump. I'd time it by the waning of the Red Star as they did when Lessa and the Old timers came forward. Except in this case, it will be a case of determining how far from Pern orbit it has travelled in three hundred turns."
"That can be determined using AIVAS and my own observations," Saska admitted reluctantly. "I've stored several images of the Base in my notes, and the night skies as well, of that time."
"There you are then," Lord Jaxom said with satisfaction.
"But you don't need to risk yourself," Saska said. "Any competent bronze rider, surely, will do?"
"Ruth always knows where and when he is," Lord Jaxom replied, as if that argument was irrefutable. "And he's a lot more mature than the last time we made such a mad venture."
"He's fifty turns older, as you are," Tai snapped.
F'lessan straightened in his chair and looked around at them.
"You can't go without permission," he said at last. "You'll need to consult with the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman, with the Lady Sharra, and possibly the Masterharper as well."
"You think Sebell would be able to stand in my way? I'm the Lord Holder of Ruatha."
"And a damned fool!" Tai cried, and flung away from the terrace, and they clearly heard the slam of an inner door.
F'lessan winced and shook his head.
"I think you could have been a bit more diplomatic about it," he said.
"Sorry."
"It's not up to us, but as Tai said, you must get permission before you risk such a thing. Saska, how far from Landing is this Base you keep talking about?"
"It's below the Western Continent," she replied. "It must be about as far west of here as Landing is to the east. The land's good for farming, and there are several natural coves now turned into harbours."
"And you have images of it in your time?"
"Yes. A lot of images because I was impressed by the buildings."
"Ruth could go straight, except that it would be dangerous for him," Lord Jaxom said thoughtfully. "No, I'm not going to mention it again. I'm going to Southern Hold to visit, as I said, and I'll be back this evening to take you to Landing. Word of honour, F'lessan, we won't suddenly attempt the flight then!"
Saska watched Ruth circle the Hold and then wink out of existence. F'lessan had also remained on the terrace, watching his friend go.
"He's right, which is very annoying," he said gloomily. "I can't think of anyone else bold enough to do it. As he grows older, I'm told, he's starting to resemble his late unlamented father in very unexpected ways."
"Autocratic and overbearing?" Saska asked with a smile, and F'lessan laughed as he stood up.
"Yes! What do you want to do this afternoon?"
"I'd like to see a lot more of Honshu, but I really think I'd be better in my room with a good book," she replied. "That way, there would be fewer images to overlay what I'll need to envision."
"Good idea. I think there are some books somewhere. I'm not much of a reader myself, I prefer to be doing."
Saska nodded her agreement to that, and took herself back to the bedroom they had assigned to her. She spent some time recording the wall hangings before opening her text reader and finding her collection, scrolling through to find an old and tried favourite. At the same time, she tried not to think of Honshu as it was at present, tried to put the terrace, fields and gardens back to her own time, but she recognised that might be impossible; she had been here for a Gather when it was overflowing with people, and extra buildings had been put up to accommodate them.
Could Ruth take that from her mind, she wondered, and knew the White Dragon could do so; even in the histories which were supposed to be a sober round up of facts and figures, the abilities of Pern's most unusual denizen had filled rather a lot of pages. Aided by his rider, Saska admitted to herself. Where Ruth went, the most daring of the Lord Holders went also.
As the hours of the warm afternoon passed, Saska could still hear the buzzing in her mind that denoted dragons. She had been afraid that would have been lost, or that it would be different in a past where dragons were unaccustomed to "speaking" to anyone other than their own rider.
- we can hear you but you are faint...
- you have very strong images...
- you are so strange to us...
- that weyrling is riding too high, warn him to come down...
- there is nothing left of that Threadfall on any lands...
- the fishermen have gone out...
- must we patrol everywhere so often...
It was like a party, Saska decided, where everyone was talking to someone else and those standing at the edges could hear bits and snatches of conversation, but not connect them to any of the individuals in the room. She could sense the fire lizards as well, the confusing jumble of images, sometimes from rooms, sometimes out in the open, and wondered if the wild fair had hatched and prospered. In this uncrowded part of history, there was plenty of room for fire lizards, but she had picked up in her own time the concern that competition for land was beginning to impinge on those places the fire lizards liked to congregate.
"Open parks," she murmured, and automatically made a note for herself. "Safe havens where no one can build."
No one had suggested fire lizards should travel, she remembered. It was assumed they could only live and breed on Pern, but she supposed if one was attached to a bronze rider, as Ting was attached to S'lul, they might travel on the dragon ships. That image she put away very resolutely, thinking instead of an image of surf rolling up on a sandy beach, rolling the tiny pebbles, making a back wash and an undertow.
- I would like to visit that beach...
- she can see places that are not real...
- true visioning must always be reinforced by the memory of the places...
- weyrlings must visualise the Star Stones, always, before anything else...
Saska decided that unlike the previous snatches, that exchange had been between two specific dragons, ones loaded with experience and knowledge.
She switched off her book and put it to one side, linked her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. It was an unconventional pose to meditate, but she had never had any problem with it, raising and lowering her elbows to inflate her lungs as she began a series of exercises to clear her mind and try and reach an inner calmness. The dragon speech faded back to an accompanying buzz as she concentrated on each and every muscle, blood vessel, blood corpuscle, running an inventory of who and what she was before reaching a state where she could sleep without dreams.