The Skies of Pern (2 page)

T
he Journeyman on duty in the prisoners’ quarters at Mine 23 in the western foothills was the first one to see the bright, almost bluish streak in the sky. It was coming from a southwesterly direction. It also appeared to be coming straight at him, so he shouted a warning as he scrambled down the steps of the guard tower.

His yells attracted the attention of other miners, just coming up from the shafts, tired and dirty from a long day of digging iron ore. They, too, saw the light—coming straight at the hold. They scattered, yelling, diving for the nearest shelter under ore carts, behind the raw mounds of the day’s tips, the gantry, back into the shaft. There was a rushing noise of thunder rumbling from the sky—and not a cloud in sight. Some insisted that they heard a high-pitched shriek. Everyone agreed on the direction from which the object came: southwest.

Suddenly the high stone wall that surrounded the prison yard was breached, showering pieces of rock that rained down on the other sections of the minehold and causing miners to fall flat, covering their heads against the fragments. A second explosive noise followed the first, punctuated by screams of terror from those in
the prison quarters. There was the stink of very hot metal, a familiar enough smell in a place where iron ore was smelted into ingots before being shipped to Smithcrafthalls—only this stink had an unusual acidity that no one could later accurately describe.

In fact, from the moment the journeyman shouted his warning, only one man of the several hundred in the minehold kept his head. Shankolin, imprisoned in the Crom mines for the past thirteen Turns, had waited for just such an opportunity: a chance to escape. He heard the wall shatter, of course, and saw a moment’s reflection of the blue-white light in the small window of the heavy door that was the only entrance to the building. He threw himself to the left, diving under a wooden bunk just as something large, hot, and reeking pierced the wall where his head would have been. It hissed as it plowed down the main aisle and buried itself in the far corner, dropping through the wood planks, smashing a corner pillar, buckling the wall, and causing part of the roof to collapse. Someone was screaming in pain, pleading for help. Everyone else was howling with fear.

Wriggling out from under the bunk, Shankolin took just one look at the opening made by the meteorite—for that was the only thing that could have caused the damage just done—and, realizing that he could see straight across the yard to the shattered wall, he reacted instantly. He dove out of his prison and sprinted to the broken wall. On his way, he made certain that there was no one on the guard walkway or in the end turrets. They must all have abandoned their posts as the meteor streaked toward the minehold.

He heaved himself up and over the broken wall and ran down the hill as fast as he could to the nearest cover of straggly bushes. Crouching behind them, he caught his breath while he listened to the continued sounds of confusion from the minehold. The injured man was still howling: the guards would have to tend to him before they did a head count. They’d probably want to have as close a look at the meteorite as possible. The metal types were valuable. Or so he’d heard, once his deafness had lifted. He didn’t hear everything, but he heard enough. He had never let on that he had recovered from the skull-ripping sound that that abominable Aivas had emitted when Shankolin had led men, picked by
his father, Master Norist, to destroy the “abomination” and end its evil influence on the people of Pern.

Having caught his breath, Shankolin rolled down the slight incline until he felt it safe to rise to a crouch and make his way to the sparse forest. He kept turning his head this way and that, listening for any sound of men coming after him. Crouching, he ran as fast as he could down the dangerous inclines. He could hear the pebbles and stones rattling and bouncing ahead of him.

One thought dominated: this time he would make good his escape. This time he had to be free—to halt the progress that the Aivas Abomination was inexorably making, destroying the Pern that had survived so long, as his father had told him in a hushed and fearful voice. Master Norist had been horrified to learn that the Weyrleaders of Pern believed that this disembodied voice could actually instruct them on how to turn the Red Star from its orbit and prevent it from ever swinging close enough to Pern to drop the avaricious and hungry Thread. Thread could eat anything, herdbeasts, humans, vegetation—it could even consume huge trees in the time it took a man to blink. He knew. He’d seen it happen once when he’d been part of the ground crews assembled by the Glasscrafthall. Thread truly was a menace to bodies and growing things, but the Aivas Abomination had been a more insidious menace to the very minds and hearts of men and women, and from its disembodied words a perfidious treachery had been spread. His father had been amazed and disheartened by all the impossible things the Abomination had told the Lord Holders and Craftmasters: of the machines and methods that their ancestors had used; equipment and processes—even ways to improve glass—all of which would make living on Pern much easier.

At that time, when everyone was extolling the miracle of this Aivas thing, his father and a few other men of importance had seen the dangers inherent in many of these smooth and tempting promises. As if a mere voice could alter the way a Star moved. Shankolin was firmly of his father’s mind. Stars did not change their courses. He agreed that the Weyrleaders were fools, inexplicably eager to destroy the very reason why the great dragons
were basic to the preservation of the planet! He agreed because he was so close to the end of his journeyman’s time. He was eager to prove himself acceptable to his father, to be the one of his sons to receive the secret skills of coloring glass in the glorious shades that only a Master of the Craft could produce: which sand would make molten glass blue, which powder caused the brilliant deep crimson.

So he had volunteered to be one of those to attack the Aivas Abomination and end its domination over the minds of otherwise intelligent men and women.

He was into the stream before he realized it. His right boot hit a slippery stone and he fell, striking his face on another rock. Dazed by the blow, he was slow to push to his hands and knees. The chill of the water on his wrists and legs helped to revive him. Then he saw the drops of blood landing on the stream and floating pinkly away. He explored the cut on his face, wincing as he realized the slash started at his forehead and continued down one side of his nose to a gouge in his cheek—as jagged a cut as the rock that had made it. Blood dripped off his chin. Holding his breath, he buried his face in the cold water. He repeated the process until the cold water had somewhat stemmed the flow of blood. Even so, he had to tear off the tail end of his shirt to tie a rude bandage to stop the blood running from his forehead. Once he cocked his head, listening for any sounds of pursuit. He couldn’t even hear avians or the slithering of snakes. His running might have startled them away. With water still dripping from his soaked clothes, he got to his feet and sniffed at the slight breeze.

During his long Turns of deafness, his other senses had intensified. His sense of smell had once saved his life, even if he had lost the tip of one finger. He’d caught the rank odor of gas being released just before the mine wall had collapsed. Two miners had been buried alive in that fall.

Blood continued to drip from his cheek. He took another patch from his shirttail and held it to the gouge. He looked this way and that, wondering how to proceed.

There were men in the minehold who boasted about their success in tracking escaped prisoners. Bloodstains would make their
job easier. He looked anxiously about him, but the stream had swept the blood away. It was fortunate that he’d fallen in the middle of the stream: there’d be no blood to be found.

Perhaps the meteorite had delayed pursuit. There’d been more injured and no prisoner count had been made. Maybe that meteorite was of more importance to the miners. He’d heard that the Smithcrafthall paid well for such pieces falling from the sky. Let them waste time sending a message to the nearest Crafthall. Let them give him enough time to reach the river.

If he kept to the water, he’d leave no bloodstains or scent to be tracked. Eventually this stream would reach the river and then the Southern Sea. He’d have to keep holding the bandage on his cheek until the blood clotted. He was still a bit woozy from his fall. He’d find a stick to help him keep his balance and to check the water’s depths. He spotted one farther down the bank, sturdy and long enough to be useful. A few cautious steps forward in the stream and he reached for it. He gave it a pound or two to be sure it wasn’t rotten. It would do.

He walked through a moonless night, slipping occasionally in muddy spots or dropping into unexpectedly deep pools, despite using the stick to avoid them. When his cheek stopped bleeding, he shoved that bandage in a pocket. The one on his forehead was adhered to the dried blood, so he left it in place.

By dawn, his feet were so cold and clumsy in the soaked heavy mining boots that he stumbled more frequently and his teeth began to chatter with the chill. When the stream broadened and he was more often up to his waist than his knees, he could go no farther. Seizing hold of shrubs that lined the stream, he clambered out of the water and hid himself in the thick vegetation, curling up to preserve what warmth remained in his body.

Nothing disturbed him until the ache of an empty belly finally roused him. It was far into the morning for the sun was well up. He had come much farther than he had thought possible. His rough work clothing had partially dried but the minehold emblem woven into shirt and pants would mark him as a fugitive. He needed food and new clothing in whichever order he could get them.

Carefully he emerged from the bushes and, to his utter astonishment,
saw a small cothold directly across the stream that was now wide as a river. He watched the cothold a long time before he decided that there was no one working inside or nearby. He waded across the river, his bruised feet feeling every rock, and hid again in the bushes until he was sure he heard no human sounds.

The cothold was empty but someone lived here. A herder, perhaps, for there were hides pushed back on the rough sleeping platform made supple by long usage. Food first! He didn’t even wash the tubers he found in a basket by the hearth. Then he saw cold gray grease in the iron skillet, set a-tilt on the hearth. He dipped the raw vegetables into it, relishing the salt in the grease as flavoring. The worst of his hunger momentarily assuaged, he searched for more to eat and a change of clothing. As a younger man he would never have filched so much as a berry or an apple from a neighbor’s yard. His circumstances were as much altered now as the tenets of conduct his father had beaten into him. He had a duty to perform, a wrong to right, and a theory he must confirm or forget.

His stomach churned with the raw, greasy food he had eaten. He had to eat more slowly or lose everything. Vomit was a hard smell to hide. In a tightly covered container that would protect its contents from vermin, he found three quarters of a wheel of cheese. He thought how long such food would sustain him in his escape—but the fewer traces of his passing were noticeable, the better. While the cotholder might not notice the loss of a few tubers and grease in a pan, the disappearance of too much cheese would be a different matter. So he found a thin old knife blade in the back of a drawer and sliced off a section of cheese, enough to provide him a small meal but, he hoped, not enough to be instantly noticed. Almost as if his restraint were being rewarded, he found a dozen rolls of travel rations in another tin box and took two. He would surely find more food if he was not greedy now. He believed in that sort of justice.

He removed the bandage on his forehead, a painful task even when he had soaked his face in the cold stream water. One or two spots bled a little, but as no blood trailed down his face, he left the wound open to the clean mountain air.

He went back to the cothold to look for clothing but found none. He did take one of the older hides. He could not count on finding shelter, and though this was the fifth month, the nights could still be chilly.

Leaving the cothold, he investigated the tracks that led off in several directions. A flash of sunlight on something metallic caught his eyes and he whirled toward the river, afraid that he had been discovered. It took him much longer to locate the source of the reflection: the oarlocks of a small boat. Under the thick shrubbery along the bank, the boat was almost invisible, tethered to a branch with a rope so worn by constant rubbing against a half-submerged stone that the slightest pull would part the last strands.

He provided the pull and, stepping carefully into the boat, used his stick to push out into the current of the river. Perhaps he should have tried to find the oars, but he felt an urgency to be away from this cothold and as far down the river as possible. The little craft was just long enough so that if he cocked his knees, he could lie flat and be unseen from the shore.

That night, when he saw the glowbaskets of a sizeable small holding—not a large enough one to have a watchwher on guard—he propelled himself to the bank and tied up the boat by the tether he had mended with strips of his tattered shirt during his long day afloat.

Luck was with him. First he found a basket of avian eggs left on a hook outside a side door to the beasthold. He sucked the contents of three, and carefully deposited three more in his shirt, tucked into his waistband. Then his eye caught the shirts and pants drying on bushes by the flat river stones where women would have washed them. He found clothes to fit him well enough and corrected the positions of others to make it appear that what he had chosen might simply have fallen into the river and drifted away.

In the beasthold for a second look, though the animals moved restlessly in the presence of a stranger, he found bran and an old battered scoop. Tomorrow he would boil the bran and add the eggs for a good hot meal. Suddenly he heard voices and immediately
returned to his boat, pushing it carefully out into the current and lying down, lest he be seen.