The Dolphins of Pern (29 page)

The winds were not much calmer at Paradise River, and as Gadareth reentered, all three could see how badly the Hold had fared. Whole swathes of trees were down, the broad-leafed vegetation in shreds, riverbanks deep in mud, and roofs lying everywhere but where they had been built. Readis groaned. Everywhere people were working to clear the storm debris.

Grabbing T’lion’s shoulder, Readis shouted in his ear. “Take us to the harbor. The dolphins’ll need my help more.”

“Oh, Readis, I
must
get home. Just look!” Kami
was in tears as she pointed to their once neat hold. The porch roof was awry, mud and storm wrack covered the place, and the chimney had fallen down. The net racks were splinters on the ground, and they could see several nets festooned in high limbs of trees.

“The dolphins first. You won’t be far from
your
home there.”

Readis also fretted about the fishing ships. Maybe, and surely Alemi would have gone to inspect them as soon as he could, the dolphin injuries had been attended to. That way he could go home to help. His mother might not even realize that he’d gone to the dolphins first.

Gadareth had trouble finding enough clear space to land in, for the pier had been demolished to a few lengths, the dolphin float and the bell gone. With a sinking heart, Readis saw that the two smaller ships had been beached and lay on their sides, masts and rigging gone, hulls broached. The
Fair Winds
was not in much better shape, but he could see figures working on her deck, cutting away the sheets and the splintered mainmast; the second one was still upright even if the rigging had been torn away. The schooner also looked low in the water. Had she sprung a leak, or merely taken on a lot of water?

There were no dorsals visible and that worried Readis even more. How many injuries had there been? And with no bell to summon the dolphins, how was he to call them?

As Gadareth gingerly settled on the beach, pushing splintered tree trunks out of his way to do so, T’lion turned to Readis. “No bell. Gaddie can call them underwater.
He’s done it before. Haven’t you, my fine fellow?” And T’lion affectionately slapped Gada-reth’s neck.

I
call They come. My bugle is as good as their bell.

When his passengers had dismounted, Readis looked around and shook his head at the devastation. So much to do. Kami was sniffling; she knew that Readis disliked her showing indecision or emotions, but she wanted to cry on seeing the destruction of the smaller boats. Father would be so upset!

Gadareth walked into the water, holding his wings up high at first until he was buoyant. Then he lowered his head in the water. Those watching heard nothing, but they could see the bubbles of his call boiling to the surface. He raised his head, looking out to sea to wait for results. Then T’lion and Readis saw someone on the
Fair Winds
waving vigorously. The ship was too far out for voices to be heard. Gadareth was about to repeat his summons when a single dorsal appeared in the water, speeding toward them. Gadareth extended his head toward the incoming dolphin, but it continued in toward the shore as far as it could before it raised its head. It was Kib, bearing fresh marks on his melon.

“Bad bad bad bad blow. Worse! Two calves hurt. Can you fix?”

“We’ll try,” Readis replied. “How’s the ship?”

“Hole full of water. We help ’Lemi.”

“That’s good of you with injured calves.”

Kib blew water out of his hole. “We help. Our duty.”

“Then we’ll help. Our duty,” T’lion added, “Bring in the injured. Gaddie’s very good at holding.”

When the two battered calves were brought in, Readis and T’lion exchanged despairing glances, Both needed stitching to close the gaping wounds. A healer was needed.

“Would your aunt Temma be willing?” T’lion asked Readis. “I think T’gellan will understand me coming here instead of Cove Hold. They’ll have lots of help.”

From his tone of voice, Readis gathered that T’lion wasn’t all that certain of Weyrleader approval of his delay. But they’d need Gadareth to hold the dolphin calves while the stitching was in progress. The dams were alternately squeeing to the humans to help and trying to soothe their offspring. Both dams bore superficial cuts: nothing as bad as the injuries to the lighter and less experienced younglings.

“I’ll understand if you don’t feel you can stay,” Readis said.

“Don’t worry about me and T’gellan,” T’lion added, coming to a sudden decision. “There’re plenty of humans to help other humans, but very few to help dolphins.”

“I thought the dolphins just rode out storms,” Kami said timorously, her pretty face twisted with conflicting worries.

“They usually can,” Readis said.

T’lion shook his head. “That was not any usual sort of storm! Shall I take you to the Hold?”

“You
go to the Hold, T’lion, and ask Temma to come. She’s good at suturing. Had enough practice, Uncle Nazer says. And you go with him, Kami,”
Readis said, deciding that the girl would fret too much over the conditions of her home to be useful here. “I’ll stay with the patients.”

“Can you manage?” Kami asked, vacillating again between showing Readis how helpful she could be and worried about not being with her mother in this emergency.

“Sure,” Readis said blithely, standing waist deep in water, a wounded dolphin floating on either side of him, surrounded by the dams and the nurse dolphins.

Temma was too busy with human injuries to leave off her duties for dolphins. She said she’d come when she could. T’lion thanked her and asked Gadareth to take him back to Eastern Weyr. They had weathered the three days of storm much better than anywhere else. He’d get Persellan to come.

But Persellan had been collected and taken to Cove Hold.

“Does he need more supplies? How bad was it there?” Mirrim asked, her brows knotted with concern.

“It’s bad all along the coast, Mirrim,” T’lion said. “I’ll just bring what’s needed with me,” he added and, since Mirrim didn’t challenge him further, he entered the healer’s hold and helped himself to the items he knew he and Readis would need. There was more than enough and he’d tell Persellan later. He also took the book that was Persellan’s treasured compilation from Aivas’s medical files. T’lion had watched Persellan work on dolphins often enough to have a good idea of how to proceed, but it would be reassuring to have printed words to refer to.

He didn’t think he’d been very long, but the wait
must have seemed like Turns to Readis, who called out frantically as Gadareth landed.

“What took you so long? I’ve had all sorts of trouble keeping the bloodsuckers from attaching themselves to the calves. Temma isn’t with you?” Readis’s face turned whiter and his expression bordered panic.

“I took what we need from Persellan’s hold, and his book,” T’lion explained as he stripped off his riding gear and clothes down to his clout. Shivering a bit, for the wind still had traces of storm chill, he waded out, book and sack of supplies held above the rippling surface of the water. “C’mon, Gaddie, we’ll need you, too.” Gadareth followed him, moving very carefully, one eye on the dorsal fins and heads protruding above the surface.

“What about Temma?” Readis fretted. “I’ve never sewn up anything. Have you? And I had to stuff Angie’s guts back in.” Angie was the older of the two injured calves. Cori was younger, just born that spring.

“Ooooo. Wonder if you should’ve …”

“I had to, T’lion,” Readis said, his tone a bit strident with anxiety. “Couldn’t let any bloodsuckers get attached to her guts. They’d eat her inside out.”

“Wait a minute. I’m looking …” T’lion riffled through the pages of the book, which he kept well above the water and any splashes. “Oooo! Ugh!” He paused, lowering the book slightly to peer at something. “Ah, here. Human intestines.” He bent to peer down at the injured Angie. “Gaddie, hold her for me, will you? C’mon now, Angie, Gaddie won’t hurt you.”

The calf’s squeeing was agonized, but, with her
mother and Afo pushing her with their noses, she had no option. Gaddie’s talons cradled hen

“Tip her slightly, huh, Gaddie?” And the bronze dragon, head cocked to see for himself, tilted the little body sideways. “Oooo.” T’lion shuddered at the raw sight of the cords of visible intestines poking out of the wound.

T’lion tucked the sack on the dragon’s upper arm where the angle was just enough to keep it secure but to hand, then tentatively fingered the extruding loops. Referring to the book again, he read with his lips moving, sounding out the more technical words by the syllables. Then he shrugged at the anxious Readis. “Well, the book doesn’t give any directions other than ‘reinsert the colon in the reverse order of removal.’ Hmmm. That’s a lot of help.”

“I did sort of loop them back in,” Readis said. “I’ve seen runners with their bellies opened. Dad would just put them back in, sew ’em up, and hope. Mostly they lived.”

“Then we’ll hope dolphins, being mammals like us and runners, will survive, too,” T’lion replied, rolling up his sleeves. “All right, start spreading this”—he handed Readis a big pot of numbweed—“around the wound. It seemed to help Boojie, and he didn’t squirm when Persellan sewed him up.”

Readis liberally slathered on the numbweed.

“I’ve watched Persellan sewing up dragons often enough, and I helped him with Boojie,” T’lion began, taking out a needle and threading it with the fine strong suture that Aivas had suggested to the Healer Hall. “I’ve even got the hang of how he ties his knots.”

“So do it,” Readis said impatiently, “before she loses any more blood. That’s definitely not good for her.”

With a decisive exhalation, T’lion reached for the needle and thread. Numbweed worked really quickly, deadening any flesh, human, dragon, and, he hoped, dolphin.

Doing, he found, was by no means the same as watching. Even getting the sharp needle to penetrate the tough and slippery flesh of the dolphin was different than sewing up clothes or repairing his flying straps, The muscles along Angie’s side rippled since he had to jam the needle in her pretty hard. But she wasn’t squirming, which would have worried him. The other dolphins were making some sort of soothing noises that, in some mysterious way, seemed to vibrate in the water around his legs. Gaddie, careful to keep the rest of her under the rippling water, held her steady enough so that the jabbing needle didn’t go into the wrong places.

“She knows you’re helping her,” Readis said as he kept up a reassuring rhythm of caresses. That helped his nerves and she seemed to lean into the motions. He also kept checking the reassuring beat of the big heart in her chest. It struck him as significant that dolphins had hearts on the left sides of their bodies, just as humans did.

Cori, the other injured baby, wasn’t more than a few months old, and the wound was serious for so young a calf. When T’lion was finishing the last of Angie’s stitches, he asked Gaddie to take Cori in hand so that Readis could smear her with numbweed. The baby made odd noises and swished her tail
around, but Afo told them that Cori was only relieved to have the pain gone.

“Goodee man goo,” she said quite clearly. “Nummmmm weeeed?” she asked.

Readis laughed, as much from relief of the strain as because he was pleased to know the pods were using more words. “Yes, numbweed,” he said. “They’ve learned a lot from you, T’lion.” He tried to keep envy out of his voice.

“They didn’t learn it from me—I don’t think,” T’lion said, frowning as he concentrated on tying the last few stitches in the complex knot. “Maybe Persellan used the word when he was doing Boojie. But Afo wasn’t at Eastern when we did that. There! That’s closed now. Wheeee.” T’lion wiped his forehead on his arm, cleaned the needle, and returned it to the little case that held Persellan’s needles.

“Good mans … men,” Afo said and rubbed against their legs, prodding them gently in their genitals as a mark of extra affection.

“Hey, don’t
do
that, Afo,” Readis said.

T’lion laughed at his reaction. “Don’t forget to thank Gaddie, too, Afo,” he said, and Afo responded by blowing a spout of water up against the bronze dragon’s chest Gadareth rose out of the water, the wave he made swamping the two young men.

“Watch that! I’m soaked, and this water’s not so warm today,” Readis complained. “I’m also water-riddled.” He looked at the shriveled skin on his fingers. “Anyone else need help, Afo?”

“No, t’ank you. We go now, work holes in ships.
‘Lemi grateful Afo grateful, Cori, Angie, Mel grateful and happy.”

“Bring the calves back in three days, three sunrises, Afo. So we can take those stitches out.”

“Hear you,” Afo said as she swam away, ahead of the little group of four, moving off westward and more slowly.

The two friends made their way to the beach, moving wearily after the unaccustomed mental and physical strain.

“I sure hope we did it right,” T’lion said, shaking his head. “What we need is a manual on animal treatment. I heard tell that Masterfarmer Andemon finally asked for—Shards!” T’lion stopped, pawing through the sack. “Where did the book go?” His hands came up empty and he looked about frantically, hoping to see the book on the water. He couldn’t even remember when he had last seen it, save that he had propped it up on Gaddie’s forearm. “Gaddie, where did the book go? Readis, call Afo back. Did we come straight out? How far were we from shore?”

“Don’t panic, T’lion,” Readis said as he began retracing his steps. “I was in up to my belt … which is probably so salt-logged it’ll never soften up …”

“You’re worried about a belt?” T’lion roared. “When I may have lost Persellan’s book …”

“We were about here, I think,” Readis said, and then dove beneath the surface.

“Gaddie, put your head under, too. See if you can see it?”

The waters were still dark from the storm where the sea bottom had been churned up.

I
see little
, Gadareth responded, though it was obvious
from the movement of his neck that he was looking all around.
What do I look for?

“The book! The book I used. I put it on your arm. You know what the book looked like.” Really upset, T’lion framed the size of the book in his hands, although his dragon still had his head underwater and could not have seen him.