CHAPTER IX
Afternoon at Southern Weyr: Same Day
IT WAS a long flight, the straight way, from the western swamps to Southern Weyrs headland. At first, Fnor rebelled. A short hop between would not affect his healing arm, but Canth became unexpectedly stubborn. The big brown soared, caught the prevailing wind and, with great sweeps of his wings, sped through the cooler air, high above the monotonous terrain.
As Canth settled down into long-distance flying, the rhythm began to soothe Fnor. What ought to have been a tedious journey became the blessing of uninterrupted time for reflection. And Fnor had much to think about.
The brown rider had noticed the widespread Threadscoring. He had turned back bush after bush, heavily pitted by Threadmark, to find no trace of burrow at all in the swamp mud around them. Not once had he used his flame thrower. And the ground crews told him they had so little to do they wondered the Weyr called them at all. Many were from the fishing settlement and they were beginning to resent being taken from their labors, for they were trying to complete stone holds against the winter storms. They all preferred Southern to their old homes, though they did not complain against Tilleks Lord Oterel, or Lord Warbret of Ista.
It had always amused Fnor that people he had scarcely met were willing to confide in him, but he had found that this was often an advantage, despite the hours hed had to spend listening to maundering tales. One of the younger men, the ground-crew chief, Toric, informed him that hed staked out a sandy cove near his hold. It was almost inaccessible from the landside, but hed seen certain fire-lizard signs. He was determined to Impress one and positive that he could, for hed been lucky with watch-whers. Hed tried to convince Fort Weyr that he should have a chance at Impressing a dragon, but he hadnt been given the courtesy of seeing Tron. Toric was quite bitter about weyrmen and, knowing (as everyone seemed to, Fnor had discovered) about the belt-knife fight, Toric expected Fnor to be disaffected, too. He was surprised when Fnor brusquely cut off his carping recital.
It was this curious ambivalence of Holder feeling toward dragonmen that occupied Fnors thought. Holders claimed that weyrfolk held themselves aloof, acted patronizing or condescending, or plain arrogant in their presence. Yet there wasnt a man or woman, Holder or Crafter, who hadnt at one time or another wished he or she had Impressed a dragon. And in many this turned to bitter envy. Weyrmen insisted they were superior to commoners even while they consistently exhibited the same appetites as other men for material possessions and nubile women. Yet they did indeed refute the Crafter contention that dragonriding was a skill no more exacting than any craft on Pern, for in no other craft did a man risk life as a matter of course. And far worse, the loss of half his life. Reflexively, Fnors thought sheered sharply away from any hint of threat to the great brown he rode.
The little queen stirred inside the heavy arm sling where he had been carrying her.
Young Toric, now, would lose some of his bitterness if he did Impress a fire lizard. He would feel that his claim was vindicated. And if fire lizards did take to anyone, and could carry messages back and forth, what a boon that would be. A lizard for everyone? That would be quite a battle cry. Fnor chortled as he thought of the Oldtimers reactions to that. Do them good, it would, and he chuckled at the vision of Tron trying to lure a fire lizard which ignored him to be Impressed by a lowly crafterchild. Something had better pierce the Oldtimers blind parochiality. Yet even they, at a crucial moment in the sensitive awareness of adolescence, had appealed to Dragonkind; they endured cold and possible death to fight an endless and mindless enemy. But there was more to living than that initial achievement and that eternal alert. Adolescence was only a step of life, not a career in itself. When one matured, one knew there was more to living.