Энн Маккефри - Dragon’s Kin

There were already two streets dug into the coal seam, both north of the main mine shaft. Natalon’s new street was being dug one-third of the way between the current mine shaft and the newly dug shaft that Toldur’s crew had just finished. What the miners called “main avenue” had been dug following the edge of the coal seam north and south of the first mine shaft. It met and went beyond the new mine shaft toward the very edges of the coal seam. Natalon had ordered the tunneling southward to stop short of the end of the seam as he wanted to avoid the chance of tunneling into water under the lake.

The coal seam was thick, nearly two and a half meters. In making the streets, the miners had to dig out coal. As they progressed in their mining, they would divide the huge coal seam into “rooms,” leaving pillars of coal to support the rock above the seam. Now that the surface seams were all depleted on Pern, this “room and pillar” mining was the only method practical with the tools and manpower available.

Each of the east-west running streets followed the sloping coal seam as it angled deeper into the mountain range. Kindan knew that there were several north-south avenues cut between the older streets, but the miners had not yet started on a connecting avenue to Natalon’s newest east-west street.

“The glows are dim around here,” he said, looking at one flickering glow mounted on a joist.

“Really? I’d hardly noticed,” Nuella replied with a grin. Kindan snorted.

“How come you’re in front?” he asked a few paces later.

Nuella raised her arms slowly to either side. She shook her head. “I don’t know, the tunnel’s wide enough for all of us.”

Kindan bit back a tart reply, shook his head ruefully, and caught up to Nuella’s left side. Kisk poked her head between the two of them.

“Here’s the turn,” he said when they reached the new street.

“I know,” Nuella said.

Kindan didn’t bother to ask her how she knew; he had been around her long enough to guess that she’d either heard the difference in the sound of their footsteps or felt a breeze, or smelled new air, or something. There were times, he admitted to himself, when he had a hard time believing that she was blind.

Nuella turned right, into the new street.

“Wait!” Kindan called.

“Why?” she demanded.

“These supports,” he said. “There are an awful lot of them.” He ran a critical eye up and down the thick timbers that held the huge supporting beam overhead. There were three such joists in close succession, spaced within a meter. He walked past the opening to the new street and saw that there was a matching set of three joists on the far side of the new tunnel. “There are three joists on either side of the entrance.”

“I heard Father say he always puts in extra support when he starts a new tunnel,” Nuella said. She added, “He and Uncle Tarik were arguing at the time, actually. Uncle Tarik said that Father was being too worried and that a single joist would do just as well, but Father said you can never be too careful. Uncle Tarik said that there was no point in taking in all the extra time and effort so it was a waste.”

“I’ll bet he did! Him and his talk of people being ‘lazy’!”

Kindan noted as they went down the new street that there were three more joists on it, too, about two meters beyond the entrance. The glows were slightly brighter there, no doubt because Natalon and his shift would have wanted fresh glows to work with.

Kindan kept pace as he walked down the new street. Just as on the main avenue, tracks ran down the center for the coal carts. Nuella stumbled once on a poorly driven stake but recovered quickly. Her look dared Kindan to say something. He kept quiet.

The tracks ended when they had gone forty-eight meters down the new road. Kindan could clearly see the pick marks in the wall facing them just a few meters beyond.

Nuella continued forward, her right hand held up, palm out.

She stopped when her fingertips stroked the still-trapped coal. She felt the entire length of the wall, grimacing when she couldn’t reach the top.

She turned toward Kindan. “I always wanted to know what it was like where my father works,” she told him shyly. Then she grinned. “It’s not bad!”

Kindan, looking at the dimming light and the dirty coal of the walls, shook his head in disbelief.

Nuella took in deep lungfuls of air. “Smell anything?” she asked after a moment.

Kindan sniffed. “Nope. The air’s a bit stale, maybe.”

“Well, Father said that part of the reason he wanted to make this new road was to see if there might be more of that bad smell Dask mentioned,” she told him. “He was afraid that if there was, it would show that the mine was too dangerous to work. Uncle Tarik said that’s what happened to his mine.” Nuella’s tone clearly showed that she didn’t believe him.

“But the accident was on Second Street,” Kindan protested. Second Street was the northernmost tunnel through the coal seam.

Nuella nodded. “That’s what Uncle Tarik said. But Father said that if the problem was at the west end of the field, it would probably stretch the whole way. If it was only at the northwest end of the field, then we could still work the southern part, unless we got too close to the lake.”

“Well, I don’t smell anything,” Kindan repeated.

“What about Kisk?” Nuella asked.

“What about her?”

“Well, isn’t she supposed to notice those sorts of things?” Nuella suggested.

“I suppose.”

“So,” she replied testily, “why don’t you ask her what she smells?”

Kindan finally understood that Nuella planned to start the watch-wher’s education there and then. With smelling.

“What can you smell, Kisk?”

The watch-wher made an inquiring noise.

“Come on, smell the air. See what you can smell. I smell coal and stale air, how about you?”

“Less talking, Kindan, more thinking,” Nuella snapped.

“What do you know about it?” he snapped back.

“I know just as much about training a watch-wher as you,” she responded. “More, in fact.”

“More?”

“Yes,” she replied, raising her head. “I’ve been playing with Larissa, teaching her.”

“What can you learn from a baby that you can teach a watch-wher?” Kindan demanded angrily.

“Manners, for one thing,” she said bitingly. “And it seems to me that Master Zist needs to work on yours.”

The two traded more barbed comments before Kindan cooled off. He paused, looking shyly at Nuella, whose nostrils were still flaring in anger—until he realized that his breathing was labored.

“Nuella, the air!” Kindan said. “It’s bad. Really bad, not just stale. We need to get out of here.”

Nuella looked up at him, took a deep breath, and nodded. “You’re right. I’ve got this terrible headache and it’s not just from your shouting.” She grinned. “Talk to Kisk.”

“What?”

“Tell her about the air—get her to remember what it smells like,” she said. “I’d been hoping this would happen.”

“Hoping?”

“Yes, so we can teach Kisk,” Nuella said. “Oh, do talk to her. Or must I do that, too?”

Kindan patted the watch-wher on the neck. “Do you smell the air, Kisk?” He took a deep breath by way of example. “It smells stale, doesn’t it?” He took another breath. “Stale.”

The watch-wher took a breath and let it out with a rasp. She looked up thoughtfully at Kindan and chirped, Errwll.

“Stale,” Kindan repeated, taking another breath.

Kisk took another breath. Errwll.

“You’ve learned a word!” Nuella exclaimed.

Kindan gave her a look and was glad that she couldn’t catch it. “I can’t see how you can say that errwll sounds like stale.”