The Dolphins of Pern (8 page)

Jayge paused in his labors, wiping the sweat that was overflowing the band on his forehead.

“That’s all very well and good, Alemi. I suppose”—Jayge hesitated—“it’s good. We’ve got fire-lizards and dragons, why not intelligent life in the seas? The Ancients
apparently
knew what would combine to make a perfect world, so these doll-fins had their role to play …” He hesitated again.

“But you’re worried about Readis?”

Jayge let out an explosive sigh. “Yes, I am. He’s still talking about his mam’l …”

“They are,” Alemi said, regaining his perspective on the matter, “mam-mals.” He repeated the word carefully, not glottalizing it into one syllable. “Creatures who give birth to live offspring and suckle them.”

Jayge gave him a long incredulous stare. “Underwater?”

Alemi grinned, appreciating his amazement. “Saw moving-picture records of a birth as well as the suckling so I can’t doubt it.”

“Aivas wastes time on such things?”

“I wouldn’t call it wasting time,” Alemi said wryly, “if the result is dolphins ready to rescue the shipwrecked.”

Jayge had the grace to flush and concentrated on honing the edge of his wide blade.

“Look, I’ll keep my findings to myself then. You didn’t mention my interview with Aivas to Readis, did you? No. All right. I certainly won’t, but I’d like your permission, as my Holder, to discreetly pursue a closer association with these creatures. With squalls like the one Readis and I were caught in, those at sea in these waters need all the help available.”

“And these doll-fins would
always
help?”

“According to what I saw and what Aivas said, water rescues are a dolphin’s responsibility and duty.”

“Humph. What does Master Idarolan say to this?”

“I’m only just back, Jayge. Haven’t told him yet, but I certainly shall. Most ships carry bells. If masters know what sequence summons dolphins to their assistance, we’d have just that much more of a chance in the water. You can’t deny that, can you?”

“No.” Jayge had been vividly recalling the storm that had tossed himself and Aramina overboard, and the shipfish who had rescued them. “I can’t. Ah, very well. Just be sure, Alemi, that Readis doesn’t get wind of all this. He’s much too young.”

Alemi nodded, perversely pleased that he could try to establish himself with the dolphins without having to share the experience. After all, they had that jetty now on the sheltered cove just around the headland. He could rig a bell there, and a float like the one he’d seen in the pictures, where he could meet the dolphins on the same level.

“I’ll take some of this heavier bambu away for you, Jayge,” Alemi offered, noting the size of the stalks the Holder was cutting.

“Your doll-fins eat vegetation?”

“No, but I’ve uses for this,” Alemi said, gathering up the lengths that were suitable for his purpose. With air bladders to increase their flotation, he’d have a platform similar to the one that used to ride the water at Monaco Bay—smaller, but adequate for one man. “Have you had any further word from the Benden Weyrleaders as to when we can expect the new settlers?”

“I should hear by the end of this sevenday.” Jayge paused to wipe his brow. “So they’ll probably be grateful for fish to lay in as supplies.”

“No problem there,” Alemi said, grinning. The delicious whitefish were running—and plentiful. They could be salted, pickled, or smoked and retain their flavor.

He knew that Jayge was looking forward to having a new hold farther down the river. He was, too.
Jayge’s boundaries were confirmed; Alemi, Swacky, Temma, and Nazer had helped the dragonriders survey the new hold that would start on the eastern side of the river, below the bend that marked the end of his Paradise River Hold, and continue down to the origin of the river. The best site would be in the foothills, as the new arrivals were farmercraftsmen; they would round up and protect the wild runner-and herdbeasts, and grow the grain crops in the higher lands that did not grow along the coast.

Alemi had met the Keroon leaders, a large family complete with aunties and uncles, who had applied for the holding. Good solid men and women. He looked forward to having them as neighbors. And there was talk of another group interested in settling the southwestern bank of the Paradise.

Alemi didn’t have as much time for his new enthusiasm as he would have liked. He’d have to assign sailors to help ship the settlers’ belongings down the Paradise to the Bend, so his fishing crews would be shorchanded. With the whitefish running, he wanted to net as much as possible. He and his crews were out all the hours of the lengthening days, trawling and long-lining. Alemi was extra mindful of some of the precautions Aivas had mentioned—precautions Fishmen always observed but without knowing why: taking care for the size of the nets, as well as the old warnings of the “sin” of netting a shipfish. Even his father, who hadn’t the imagination to be superstitious, followed those precepts. Now Alemi knew the reason behind those practices, but he doubted his father would ever admit to it—much less admit that dolphins
could talk and were intelligent. One more of the many gulfs between them.

Armed with Aivas’s confirmation of the intelligence of shipfish/dolphins, Alemi did inform Master Idarolan of his investigations and his plan to renew the partnership to mutual benefit—though he wasn’t sure what benefit the dolphins might derive. As he respected the Masterfishman and did not wish to lower himself in his Craftmaster’s estimation, he qualified his interest by virtue of his and Readis’s escape and the turbulence and unpredictability of these tropical waters. He sent that message off by Tork, his bronze fire-lizard. The creature’s speedy return pleased him: proof of his success at using Menolly’s sensible suggestions to train the fire-lizard. Alemi felt that if he had handled a fire-lizard’s instruction so well, he could certainly deal with the more intelligent dolphins.

Aware that water magnified sound, Alemi nonetheless felt he would need a larger bell than the one on his ship—which he was borrowing whenever she was at anchor. He wondered if the alarm triangle that Jayge had put up outside his hold after Thella’s invasion would also call the dolphins but quickly discarded that notion. A triangle just didn’t produce the same resonances.

So he needed a bell. He sent Tork on a second journey that day, to the Smithcrafthall in Telgar Hold, asking them to cast a bell for him, similar to the one at Monaco Bay.

The Mastersmith Fandarel sent back a message to Masterfishman Alemi that he would be happy to cast a bell of that splendid size, but that the commission
would have to wait its torn, what with all the other work that the Halls were currently undertaking to the purpose of eliminating Thread. Alemi had to be content with the promise. In the meantime, Masterharper Robinton found him a small handbell, then later sent him a message by his fire-lizard Zair that the harper at Fort Hold thought he’d seen a big bell in the extensive storage area of the Hold’s lower levels.

Every evening Alemi studied the notes Aivas had given him until he had memorized the hand signals and the basic commands that he hoped had survived in shipfish memories. As he studied, he was occasionally given to fits of incredulous head shaking.

“Why does reading those sheets make you shake your head, Alemi?” Kitrin asked him with a sigh of exasperation.

“Wonder,” Alemi answered, leaning back in his chair. “Wonder that we missed every single clue the dolphins gave us that they wanted to be friends. Shards, they tried to
tell
us and we humans didn’t
listen!”
Kitrin made such a grimace that he laughed. He often knew her thoughts before she spoke them aloud. “Yes, indeed, I can just picture my good father, Yanus, listening to a shipfish!” He snorted.

“Exactly,” Kitrin said with some heat, for a moment abandoning the little wrapper she was hemming for their expected child. “I mean no disrespect—well, maybe I do,” she added with a rueful expression, “but he is sometimes …”

“Always,”
Alemi amended firmly with a smile.

“So set in his ways. You know, neither he nor your mother have
ever
mentioned Menolly. Though your
mother often remarks on ingratitude in my presence.” She sighed. “It’s as if Menolly never existed.”

“I think she prefers it that way,” Alemi said with a wry and slightly bitter grin, knowing all too well the treatment given his talented sister during her adolescence at Half Circle Sea Hold. “Both of them—mother and daughter.”

“Menolly’s never been back? Ever?”

“Not to the Sea Hold. Why should she?”

Kitrin shrugged. “It seems so … so awful … that they cannot accept her accomplishments.” Then she added shyly, “Sebell always remembers to send us copies of her latest songs. Alemi,
when
are we going to have a harper?”

He grinned, for he knew that had been the main reason for this trend of their conversation.

“Hmmm. I’ve asked Jayge and Aramina. Readis is growing old enough to learn his ballads and so are enough other youngsters, including our own, for the hold to have its own harper. Enough for a journeyman surely, and we can offer many benefits here: decent weather and property to develop.”

“Ask if
they’ve
asked,” Kitrin said with unusual force. “I’m not going to have the girls, or our
son”
—and she said this defensively, one hand on her gravid belly—“grow up ignorant of what they owe Hold, Hall, and Weyr.”

Alemi laughed. “Stoutly said.”

He did bring up the matter of a harper for the Hold the very next afternoon when he delivered the Holder’s best of the day’s catch: three grand big redfins.

“I could almost
wish,”
Jayge said with some acrimony,
“that Aivas hadn’t been discovered! Everything depends on what he needs first!”

“But surely harpers …”

“Every harper who’s done his journeyman’s walk wants to have some part in transcribing Aivas’s information, which seems to be inexhaustible on every subject imaginable and
all
of it seemingly has to be done
now!”
The Holder rubbed an agitated hand across the stubble of his close-cropped black hair. He scowled. “I’ve
asked
and asked.”

“Master Robinton?” Alemi suggested hopefully.

Jayge dismissed that hope. “He’s worse than anyone else, stuck up there at the Admin.” Then he gave a snort of amusement. “Still has his finger in most pies! But I no more want Readis ignoring his duties—even if those, too, are apt to change with all these new gadgets and information—than you want your girls growing up untrained. Push comes to shove, the farmcrafters have an elderly harper who might be persuaded to travel up to us now and again, but …”

“If you don’t mind me doing so, I’ll drop a word to my sister,” Alemi offered.

A look of intense relief passed over Jayge’s tanned features. “I didn’t want to impose …”

“Why not?” Alemi grinned. “I haven’t fished for many favors from my well-placed Master of a sister. She’s got a child, too, you know. And another one on the way.”

Jayge gave him a stare and then winked. “Seems she does more than craft all the songs anyone sings these days.”

“It’s one way of being
able
to do just that, according
to her, what with everything else harpers seem to be required to do right now.”

While it was the hot season on the Southern Continent, it was bitter cold in the North, and there were few who would turn down the opportunity to come south. So it came as no surprise that Alemi’s plea to Menolly for a harper to teach the children of Paradise River Hold resulted in the message that one was coming as soon as transport could be arranged. What no one at Paradise River expected was to see Menolly herself and her young son, Robse, carried by the sturdy, loyal, lack-witted Camo, stepping out of Master Idarolan’s longboat onto the beach.

On learning that a harper was being sent, Jayge had organized a work party to put up a neat three-room hold near the old storage shed. The shed could be used as the schoolroom, and the little hold was far enough away from other dwellings to give a harper privacy. When he discovered that the Masterharper Menolly had arrived, he was all set to oust one of the younger settler couples and give her better accommodations.

“Nonsense. It’s not as if I can make Paradise River a permanent home,” Menolly said to an embarrassed Jayge. “I can only stay until the babe is born. And that is solely,” she added wrinkling her nose in disgruntlement, “because even Sebell’s got tired of my complaining about being too cold to compose, much less play. See?” She held out her long fingers. “Chilblains!” She brushed past a dithering Jayge and onto the wide veranda, which had a hammock slung on its “breeze” corner. “Besides, down here you spend
more time outside than in. There’s enough space for a small cot for Robse in my room and a room for Camo; he’s so good with Robse, who adores him, since he’s not much more than an overgrown baby himself. You’ve made a very nice kitchen, and I can always use the store shed, can’t I? If I need space to work in?”

“No problem. Or I can settle Camo in space in the store shed. That way, he’s near but not underfoot all the time.”

“Well, then, we move in here,” she said, turning on the ball of one foot to circle back to the house, hugging herself before she threw her arms out in an expansive gesture. “Oh, it’s so grand to be warm.”

Jayge gave her a cynical smile. “Wait till the hot weather really starts.”

“Whenever,” Menolly responded, tossing her thick mop of hair behind her, “but at least my blood is thawing.” She gave a convulsive shudder. “It’s
never
been so cold.”

Camo arrived then, pushing the barrow with the household effects she had brought with her, Robse perched on the top, hugging a lap harp case. A good third of the baggage consisted of musical instruments and an enormous supply of writing materials. Later Aramina told Jayge that Menolly had brought only two changes of clothing for herself and one long, elegantly embroidered “harpering” gown.

The gown was worn by Menolly the first evening, when Aramina and Jayge hosted her at a quickly organized Gather. Everyone living in or near Paradise River Hold wanted to meet Master Menolly. Only the new settlers at South Bend Holding were unable to
attend—they were too busy raising a big stone beasthold—but two of their aunties came to help with the cooking. Jayge could be proud to host such a large crowd that night, for the inhabitants had increased over the past Turns, each new arrival bringing needed skills or crafts. Jayge had been able to be selective, though there was only one couple he had actually dismissed. So forty-seven Hold residents, adults and children, gathered that night along with the crew of the
Dawn Sisters
, anchored in the bay.