Chap. 409 Disguises

Chap. 409 Disguises

P’jar was surrounded by several people, all talking about his idea of planting Landing’s commons areas in order to disguise it.

“Where we will get the plants?”

“Um…” P’jar looked over the crowd’s heads to catch K’ndar’s eye.

K’ndar recognizing it, joined him. And soon regretted it.

“K’ndar, here, he’s met people all over Pern, he might be able to find plants for the disguise,” P’jar said.

K’ndar felt the ugly baby land in his lap. “Gee, thanks,” he said.

Everyone looked at him expectantly. He sighed and waded in.

“I’ve met the Master Farmer, Tomas, at Igen Weyr, as well as a man in the jungles. The thing is, our climate and soil here isn’t tropical jungle or arid and sandy, like at Igen.  I’m not a botanist, like P’jar. Before I was a biologist, I was a herd boy, on the steppe.”

“So, you’re not qualified to do this, is that what I’m hearing?” said a woman.

“Precisely,” K’ndar said, glancing at P’jar. Don’t try that again, his eyes said. P’jar avoided the glance.

“It will be one shaff of a job,” one person said, “Who’s going to do all the harvesting of seeds, shrubs, all that?”

“Or the planting or minding or weeding?” added a woman.

K’ndar glared at P’jar. The big man relented.

“That wasn’t fair to K’ndar,” he said, “We will have to find plants that are suitable for our climate here, at Landing. It’s late winter, so the vegetation is dormant. And transplanting trees and shrubs is done best in early winter.”

“We’d have to find an awful lot of seeds, bulbs, starts, maybe rhizomes.”

“Yes, so maybe that farmer at Igen can supply them?”

K’ndar put up his hands. “I’m sorry, but I’ve only met Igen’s Master Farmer. I have no idea how to arrange for anyone to supply plants. And frankly, I’m not going to do it. This sounds to me to be in the same vein as tithing or supplying a place like Landing. That’s Logistics division.”

“Well, you’re no help,” grumbled a man.

He looked at the man. “You’re right.  If you remember, I wasn’t the originator of the concept. Your name tag says you ARE in Logistics. You are far better qualified to do this than I am. What do you suggest? I’m sure you have a better idea? A plan?”

The man backed off. “Forget I said anything,” and under his breath, K’ndar distinctly heard “lout.”

P’jar grimaced.

“But isn’t the idea to make it look natural? Not a farm, just a forest, a meadow, even a marsh? Have you thought of a marsh?” a woman asked, breaking the tension.

“I hadn’t!” P’jar exclaimed, suddenly realizing that this would not only be a huge project, but a fun one. “You’re right. It needs to look as wild as most of Pern.”

“But with sidewalks,” someone snarked. They all laughed.

“Which means, we might not have anything to plant for the first half of the coming year.”

“But that will give us time to plan.”

“And WHO will do the work? None of us here at Landing are merely residents.”

The man from Logistics, instinctively hearing that someone would soon be volunteered, hurried away.

P’jar found himself needing to be four people. I should have kept my mouth shut until I had this idea vetted.

Lord Cecilia came to his rescue. They bowed to her in respect.

“P’jar,” she said, “I absolutely LOVE your idea of planting Landing.”

“Thank you, my lord,” he said, feeling vindicated. I’ve never spoken with her before, she’s a Master Harper AND a Council member, and I’m just a dragonrider. I feel this odd sense of humility right now, as if she’s a Weyrwoman. The only thing she’s missing is a gold dragon.

“My lord, forgive me, but my mouth shouted the idea out before my brain began to think.”

She grinned. “I’ve done that myself a time or two. I think that’s how I ended up as a Councilman.”

“And a good one!” someone said.

K’ndar found himself saying, “My lord, something of this level is far above us. Just the acquisition of plants and such would be something that the Holders and the rest would have to arrange.”

She smiled. “No need to go further, K’ndar. This would have to be proposed to Halls and Holds by one of the Council.” Probably ME, she thought.

K’ndar nodded in relief.

“But that is part of my current job. The big thing would be deciding what to plant where.”

Lord Cecilia said, “I know the person who might be able to help with that information.”

“Who?”

“Elene, Chief Librarian, has the historical database from Yokohama and, as one enthusiastic young man named Alfred, noted, the encyclopedia as well as accumulated records, reports, you name it. Unlike most people, I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Elene’s library and trust me, there is more data on plants than you can ever imagine.”

“Ma’am,” K’ndar said, “Last season, I met a dragonrider who’d done an enormous amount of surveying all over Pern. He turned in his records to Elene and I bet my boots she’s scanned them into the database,” K’ndar said, thinking of the time jumping L’chen. “I’m certain his data from here will be both informative as well as encompassing.”

“Where is he now?”

Do I say that we think he came from our future? Which means, the planting we’re discussing right this very minute may possibly be in his records. K’ndar thought. Time travel is forbidden. I really don’t want to say he was timing it.

“My lord, I haven’t the faintest idea. He was pretty much a nomad when I met him. He didn’t claim a weyr.”

Lord Ceclia saw it immediately. He’s got some secret that he doesn’t want to reveal to all of us, but I’m certain if I pull him aside, he will tell me, she thought.

She nodded to him. Yes, she thought, it has to be that dragon rider Elene mentioned was suspected to be time jumping. Risky business, as we all know. The less everyone knows of this man the better. His data, she said, was outstanding. We’ll work with that.

“I imagine he’s out of contact at the moment, K’ndar,” the Harper said, smiling, “I’ll get with you later, but for now, I’m glad to hear the library has it. P’jar, do you know of this dragon rider’s work?”

“I confess, my lord, that I haven’t been in the library yet,” P’jar said, feeling even more lowly. I’m not a researcher. I’m just a plant freak.

“I understand. Chief Raylan and the Council have kept you dragonriders busy. Just like myself, I never would have believed that being a Lord Councilman would take up all my time, but it does.”

She looked at the crowd around her. It would be far more fun working with these people, not to mention the kids, than sitting on the Council to listen to someone complaining about his tithes being too onerous.

“My job has always been that of teaching. Until now, of course. But still, I’m a teacher to my bones. I have one harper assigned to Landing, but like others, they are rotated in and out. That’s what we do. And the kids are separated by age groups. What I suggest is planting and tending to commons should be the job and focus of the school kids, along with anyone who wants to get their hands dirty planting.”

Would I want to give up my position on the Council in order to go back to teaching? she wondered. Yes. I could really enjoy doing this, having the children begin to use their brains instead of allowing a database to do it for them.

Yes, but. How I hate yes buts. For the moment, this is my task. The Council needs to be balanced. Holders, Halls and Weyrs, and I’m the only female. For now.

The crowd began to make suggestions.

“I LOVE to garden,” a woman said, “I have a lovely little patch of vegetables outside my quarters but something comes in the middle of the night and eats all the blossoms.”

“Fence it out,” someone else said.

Lord Cecilia saw the discussion beginning to veer off topic. “A side benefit to this idea,” she said, “is that the shutdown weaned kids off of datalinks. They returned to reading books, and also, get outside to do things by hand, like we did, growing up.”

“Except there were no books then, just harpers,” someone said.

“I’m sorry, my lord, but the Teaching Songs seldom taught me practical things, like how to grow crops, or keep an animal from eating them.”

Cecilia nodded. “You’re right.  We knew that, from the beginning. Which is why it was so important that kids learn from doing.”

“My lord, we could make it a class project. Each commons that has a suitable number of kids living there could do the planning, the planting, the caring. At the end of the season, we could..”

“Have a harvest festival, like the Holds do, if they planted crops!!” someone interrupted with a shout.

“Or nuts, or apples, or raised cattle on the pasture!”

“Flowers!! Plant flowers and herbs for dyes or medications! And let’s be honest, everyone loves flowers, just for their beauty.”

“Flowers attract trundlebugs, you know.”

“Whew, they can stink.”

“Trundlebugs are the most important insect pollinator on Pern,” P’jar said, “We absolutely need them. Everyone knows not to mistreat a trundlebug.”

“Well, after the first time.”

Everyone laughed.

“I really think this is not only doable, but necessary.”

“I’d do that just for fun, never mind for a purpose of hiding Landing.”

K’ndar backed up, enjoying the sudden flow of ideas. This group has taken this bit in its teeth and is running with it. I don’t know enough about farming, but I can take P’jar to Igen to meet Tomas, and to the jungle to meet Rand, and Lord Dorn, his cotholders planted cheznut trees, redtrees, and klahtrees, and doesn’t Honshu specialize in papergrass? How does it get it here, never mind to the Printing Hall up North? We Landers go to Singing Waters Hold to harvest klah bark, berries, all sorts of things. How to get all those plants here?

I really don’t want this job but there’s something tantalizing in the concept that I can’t define yet, he thought.

The group surrounding P’jar and Lord Cecilia began to grow in both size and enthusiasm.

“We’ll need one person who can manage the whole thing,” said someone.

The crowd cringed, all of them realizing what a mammoth job it would be, and none wanting the job.

“It would sound like fun, but I don’t have the time,” someone said.

“None of us do.”

Lord Cecilia nodded. “That’s true. My harper couldn’t do it, and as you say, all of us here are here due to having full time jobs. Elene can’t do it, and …” she looked at P’jar.

P’jar lifted his hands in defeat. “Begging your pardon, my lord, as I said earlier, I’ve not thought this completely through. I’m a botanist, not a manager, that’s what we’d need. Someone whose sole job was to herd a bunch of kids, one who knew where to get the information they’d need. I would have to see what Raylan says, it would be an entirely new position, honestly.”

“Yes. Pern’s dragonriders are already double tasked, as we learned the other day,” Lord Cecilia said.

“I’d be willing to work as consultant, ma’am,” he said, realizing that he DID want a hand in the choices of plantings, but feeling triple tasked.

“Agreed, P’jar, we need to sit down with Admin, the Council, and Chiefs to sort things out. This is all just preliminary,” she said.

K’ndar laughed behind his eyes. The one group that’s not here to defend itself against what sounds to be an immense and time consuming project is the kids. But it would be best for them. Sitting in a classroom behind a datalink is not a good way to learn.

“No one’s asked the kids yet,” he said, “but I bet they’ll like it. If they’re like I was, Teaching Songs were completely unrelated to what I needed to learn. Classroom was boring and all I wanted to do was get outside and DO things with my hands.”

Lord Cecilia’s eyebrows raised.

K’ndar felt them. Did I just slam the efficiency of the harpers who came to our cothold twice a year? Did I just piss off a Master Harper?

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, I, uh, I’m not saying your harpers were bad teachers,” he stumbled.

Lord Cecilia laughed. “Not the best of students, were you?”

He flushed. “Ma’am, if it didn’t involve horses or biology, I didn’t give a rip. I can’t do math to save my life.”

“We could arrange for a tutor,” someone snarked.

“Hey, K’ndar, what’s 2x-4=20?”

“Um…7?” he said, KNOWING it was wrong, but it was a way out.

“Damn, he got it right,” someone else said. The crowd laughed.

Cecilia grinned. “You’re an excellent biologist, K’ndar. We have plenty of people here who can do math. But in this project, it will require some one who can interact with the kids, inspire them, and still manage to instill knowledge without it being rammed down their throat,” Lord Cecilia said. “I’d need more than Landing’s harper. Someone with a vast database in their heads and what they don’t know they know how to find it.”

“Never mind keeping from throttling the inevitable little shite who wants nothing more than to incite mayhem instead of work.”

The crowd laughed.

The auditoriums’ crowd was breaking up, everyone tending to a demanding datalink or discussing the storm, the Butchers, what they did last night as they left. The chiefs were herding their crews to their various divisions. K’ndar caught Raylan’s eyes from across the room and elbowed P’jar to see Raylan gesturing to them to ‘come on.” P’jar extended both hands, fingers extended. Ten minutes?, his hand signal asked, wondering if Raylan understood dragonrider hand signals. He IS married to one, after all.

Raylan did. Shaking his head, he flashed ‘five exclamation point.”

P’jar backed up to just behind Lord Cecila to point at her head.

Raylan shrugged and relented. I’m outranked, he thought. You don’t shut up a Councilman.

K’ndar, though, wanted only to extricate himself before he was assigned a job. He flashed a single hand. Five minutes. Raylan thumbed up.

How I love being a dragonrider, both men thought. Not only can I communicate with other riders through my dragon, I can also do so with my hands to a human too far to hear me speak.

“Forgive me, ma’am,” K’ndar said, “But duty calls.”

“Thank you, K’ndar,” Lord Cecilia said, then continued, “I’ll have to get with Admin and see if Evvelin can suggest someone who might be able to take this on.”

One person wasn’t leaving the auditorium. He was heading right for their group, his face registering a joyous enthusiasm.

Ah, Lord Cecilia thought, he must have read my mind. Here comes the one person in Landing who has boundless curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, an encyclopedic mind, and is younger than the rest of us. What a Harper you would make, but I’m betting you can’t sing a note.

“I’ll have to talk to him”, she said to the crowd, “but I believe we have just the man for the position.”

Alfred.

__________________________________________________________

Raylan’s datalink pinged. He was about to click ‘ignore’ when it said, “Data  calls, may I enter?”

Data? He said, “Of course.”

The door swooshed open to allow Data’s Chief to enter.

“Chief Raylan?” someone called from Science.

“Later,” Raylan said. The door shut behind Data.

“Have a seat, sir. Need something to drink?” Raylan seldom kept anything but klah or water in his area, but the last month had been extremely stressful. “I’ve got some wine here, for once.”

Data flumped wearily into the chair.

“Anything alcoholic would lay me low, Raylan, what I need is a nap. Badly. But there’s a ton of work to do, now. I came to thank you for rescuing me. I absolutely hate those briefings, there’s always one person who desperately needs someone to hold his hand or worse, wants to joust and argue.”

“You’re welcome, you did look beat.”

“I am. I didn’t get a bit of sleep last night. All I could envision was a horde of those dreadful drones pouncing on us.”

“I’m glad you are here. Did I lie to that crowd?”

“About the emissions? The Butchers? No.”

“I wasn’t ready to teach astrophysics, that’s Master Rahman’s specialty.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway. I think you did a great job simplifying it into hunting wherrys. Didn’t that twit back up?”

Raylan laughed. “Thanks. I didn’t know if I was making it up as I went along. Have you looked at Yoko’s data?”

“You must be joking, Raylan. It will take a week just to categorize it. We were lucky.”

“It wasn’t luck, Data, it was the only thing to do. Shut down and shut up.”

“Aye. But we were lucky in another sort. The Yokohama disguised herself.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know until this morning, when she told me. I had worried about what would happen if she were scanned by the Butchers.”

“Was she?”

“Absolutely hammered.  Those beasts were smart. Despite their listening for us for a month, still, they went immediately to the Lagrange points, looking for spacecraft.”

“They knew we’re out here?”

“I believe so. It makes sense, honestly. Nothing shouts ‘advanced civilization’ louder than spacecraft. There’s a lot of civilized planets in this sector of the galactic arm. Parking one’s starship in a Lagrange point is just smart.  It’s stable and doesn’t take any energy to maintain a position. WHY in the world the colonists didn’t park the Bahrain and the Buenos Aires there, too, I don’t know.

Maybe they knew that these monsters would be coming along eventually, and three starships is a pretty good indication that people live here. I still don’t believe those two ships were sent into Rukbat because their orbits were degrading. Maybe their engines did what Aivas said about kicking the Red Star into a different orbit, the cessation of Thread fall is a good indication that it worked. But I wish Aivas had kept at least one ship capable of interstellar travel. Pern’s a good place to live, but I still can’t help but feel marooned. The only reason we are here in the first place was because several thousand people managed to escape Terra.” He sighed. “It is what it is, aye? I’m not going to second guess Aivas. He is the mind of the database and the shutdown saved our butts.”

“If Yoko still had her stardrive, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking. We’d be hanging in a freezer,” Raylan said, that cold fear touching his mind again. “A radioactive signature is damned hard to hide.”

They both reflected for a moment.

“So Yokohama said she hadn’t been seen?” Raylan asked.

Data laughed. “I didn’t say that. She said that she’d been scanned, along with everything floating in space alongside her. But she’s a clever ship,  she is. Or maybe I should give the Nathi credit? Or someone?”

“What, man? Tell me.”

“I pinged her for a health check the moment I got into my office.  She-well, the moment she put us on shutdown, she also disguised herself.”

“What?”

Data laughed. It felt good to talk it out like this, he felt that fear melting like ice in a heat wave.

“I pinged her the moment I sat down at my own terminal. She reported going into ‘stealth mode.”

“Stealth mode.”

“Aye. I had to have her explain what it meant.  I’ll have to have the Engineers look at the data, but what she did was so clever I have to thank SOMEONE.

Space is full of junk, Raylan. It’s not this clean empty space, there’s all sorts of stuff, from tiny micrometeorites no bigger than your eyeball to asteroids the size of our moons. In fact, our moons ARE asteroids, they’re termed “shepherd moons” but they’re just asteroids, caught in Pern’s orbit. They’re not even close to Earth’s Moon in size, which is why we don’t have the tides I’ve read about on Earth. We have ‘em, of course, but not like  Terran ones. “

“Aye, that’s true, and I can learn you ‘bout tides, if you want. When I’m not a Division Chief I’m an oceanographer. So how does a ship with no hands, and I mean both types, disguise herself?”

Data almost giggled in his delight. “I have no idea what her hull is made of. The engineers will have to interpret that for us.

She’s parked in Lagrange point L1, they’re stable gravitional ponds, if you will, that collects all sorts of space junk. Space isn’t this clean empty area with a few stars and planets. It’s full of rocks and asteroids. Asteroids are hunks of iron and iron ore, oh, and rock dust, my word, the dust apparently is bad.

Yoko took advantage of all that iron by magnetizing her hull, attracting hunks and rocks of iron. She covered herself, nose to truncated tail, with bits of iron ore and dust. A scan of the area was diffused by all the different angles of rock and ore. Instead of returning a signal of a sleek starship, she presented an image of a medium sized asteroid in a field of medium sized asteroids.”

Raylan laughed in delight. “Who thought of that one? What brilliance!”

“Aye. Was it the Nathi? I don’t know. Maybe when the Terrans remodeled her to suit humans, they did that.”

“Whatever, what a clever, clever ship!” Raylan laughed, tickled, “But, how did she hear your ping?”

“I haven’t a clue, Raylan, I’m thinking it’s because she was peeping through her disguise and either felt the scans stop, or watched the starship leave.”

“She lifted the shutdown on her own accord?”

“I’m thinking yes.”

“Whoa.”

“And not just that, Raylan. Not just that. It worked, the shutdown worked, and we lucked out in another way.”

“?”

“I’ll give Risal credit, she was smuck on in the timing of the storm. But it wasn’t necessary. The Butchers, after scanning our system, after listening for us for a month or more and not hearing a thing, they accelerated. After passing her, Yokohama saw the starship accelerate and leave the system on their original course. And they left it in MINUTES.”

“They gave up.”

“Aye. But by doing so, they passed us, a day and a half before they were scheduled to. Remember, yesterday the sky was clear and open. They passed us high, high up, at noon the day before yesterday. Noon, Raylan, broad daylight. Had they had been looking for signs of civilization, we’d have been attacked. No doubt.”

Raylan’s heart skipped a beat.

“We would have been caught flat footed.”

“No doubt. I have to say, though, that Commo lied, there in the auditorium.”

“What?”

“Someone did try to ping Yoko after the shutdown commenced.”

Raylan felt fury rise. “The shithead. Lord Toric?”

Data shook his head. “No. I thought the same thing. Commo came and told me and it needs to be kept quiet until we find him.”

“How shaffing selfish, how, how outrageous!  One person could have doomed all of Pern. Did he think they’d leave him whole? I’m pissed. You’re sure it wasn’t Toric?”

“No. I don’t know, yet. Commo is going through their records as we speak.  But whomever did it, knew how to rig the chips or the database, I’m still not sure how or which. But it failed. The database caught it, just as we’d programmed it to. It never even got to Yoko.”

“This reeks of Toric, Data. You’re sure it wasn’t one of his yobs?”

“I’m sure. I do know that it wasn’t sent from Southern Hold. It was sent from HERE. From Landing.”

Shocked, Raylan’s mouth went dry.

“Here. And with all we knew and know about what could have happened.”

“Aye. Commo will be working with my folks. We’ll find him. I imagine the Council will have something to say in determining punishment.”

A thought went ringing in Raylan’s mind.

“This sort of stunt, it makes no sense. Everyone here knew the risk. Everyone. I want to see this lout held accountable but, you know, Data, what if it was a kid?”

Data gasped, stunned. “Whoa. I didn’t think of that,” he said,“I ..I didn’t think of a kid. Even though my own daughter is three times the geek I am.”

Raylan made a fist. “I’m not apologizing for him if it was a kid, but he definitely needs to be held accountable for this risk. And his datalink taken from him.”

“Aye. But if it was a kid, it’s one who knows a datalink better than I do.”

He stopped, then said, “Thanks for the check rein, Raylan. Keep this under your belt until Commo has it defined, and then we’ll go to the Council.”

“If it’s a kid, what will you do?”

Data laughed. “I’ll hire him.”