The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [79]
He saw her eyes reflecting shadowy doubts, but he sensed his arguments were beginning to reassure her.
“You felt constrained to believe in me once before,” he went on in a milder voice, “when I suggested that you could be Weyrwoman. You believed me and . . .” He made a gesture around the weyr as substantiation.
She gave him a weak, humorless smile.
“That was because I had never planned what to do with my life once I did have Fax lying dead at my feet. Of course, being Ramoth’s Weyrmate is wonderful, but”—she frowned slightly—“it isn’t enough anymore, either. That’s why I wanted so to learn to fly and . . .”
“. . . that’s how this argument started in the first place,” F’lar finished for her with a sardonic smile.
He leaned across the table urgently.
“Believe with me, Lessa, until you have cause not to. I respect your doubts. There’s nothing wrong in doubting. It sometimes leads to greater faith. But believe with me until spring. If the Threads have not fallen by then . . .” He shrugged fatalistically.
She looked at him for a long moment and then inclined her head slowly in agreement.
He tried to suppress the relief he felt at her decision. Lessa, as Fax had discovered, was a ruthless adversary and a canny advocate. Besides these, she was Weyrwoman: essential to his plans.
“Now, let’s get back to the contemplation of trivia. They do tell me, you know, time, place, and duration of Thread incursions,” he grinned up at her reassuringly. “And those facts I must have to make up my timetable.”
“Timetable? But you said you didn’t know the time.”
“Now the day to the second when the Threads may spin down. For one thing, while the weather holds so unusually cold for this time of year, the Threads simply turn brittle and blow away like dust. They’re harmless. However, when the air is warm, they are viable and . . . deadly.” He made fists of both hands, placing one above and to one side of the other. “The Red Star is my right hand, my left is Pern. The Red Star turns very fast and in the opposite direction from us. It also wobbles erratically.”
“How do you know that?”
“Diagram on the walls of the Fort Weyr Hatching Ground. That was the very first Weyr, you know.”
Lessa smiled sourly. “I know.”
“So, when the Star makes a pass, the Threads spin off, down toward us, in attacks that last six hours and occur approximately fourteen hours apart.”
“Attacks last six hours?”
He nodded gravely.
“When the Red Star is closest to us. Right now it is just beginning its Pass.”
She frowned.
He rummaged among the skin sheets on the table, and an object dropped to the stone floor with a metallic clatter.
Curious, Lessa bent to pick it up, turning the thin sheet over in her hands.
“What’s this?” She ran an exploratory finger lightly across the irregular design on one side.
“I don’t know. F’nor brought it back from Fort Weyr. It was nailed to one of the chests in which the Records had been stored. He brought it along, thinking it might be important. Said there was a plate like it just under the Red Star diagram on the wall of the Hatching Ground.”
“This first part is plain enough: ‘Mother’s father’s father, who departed for all time between, said this was the key to the mystery, and it came to him while doodling: he said that he said: ARRHENIUS? EUREKA! MYCORRHIZA. . . .’ Of course, that part doesn’t make any sense at all,” Lessa snorted. “It isn’t even Pernese—just babbling, those last three words.”
“I’ve studied it, Lessa,” F’lar replied, glancing at it again and tipping it toward him to reaffirm his conclusions. “The only way to depart for all time between is to die, right? People just don’t fly away on their own, obviously. So it is a death vision, dutifully recorded by a grandchild, who couldn’t spell very well either. ‘Doodling’ as the present tense of