Энн Маккефри - The Second Weyr

There was a long pause when she thought that her dragon was too sleepy to answer.

Don’t worry. The voice was not Alaranth’s.

Brianth?

He’s right. Too late now was Alaranth’s not too reassuring reply.

“Where did Torene go?” David’s voice rose above the other conversations.

“I’m here,” she said, and allowed the alacrity with which the riders parted to let her back in soothe her frustration and self-accusation.

The next morning, having asked the watchdragon to wake her at daybreak, Telgar time, Torene arrived at her parents’ cavern just as Sonja was pouring klah. To her daughter’s astonishment, she was pouring it into three cups, and there was a third bowl of steaming porridge set at the table.

“How did you know I was coming?”

“How could we not know?” Sonja said, clasping her daughter to her ample bust and joyfully, proudly, embracing her with arms well muscled from a lifetime of mining. “Telgar announces to us there will be four Weyrs, and one of them here.”

“Up there,” Volodya corrected his wife, pointing north-east, but he rose from his seat and kissed his daughter, hugging her nearly as enthusiastically as his wife had but with some consideration for Torene’s ribs. “And you are named to be at the east coast one.”

“At Benden Weyr,” she said, hoping that at least the name would be a surprise.

“Ah!” Her mother’s face lit up and she embraced her daughter again before she mopped a tear from each eye

“As it should be. As it should be,” Volodya said, sittig down at the table and beginning to spoon his porridge into his mouth. “Sit! Eat! You will need it.”

“So, how many copies do you come for me to make for you?” Sonja asked slyly, giving Torene a little push toward the spare place.

“Oh, Mother!”

“And why shouldn’t you, dushka?” Sonja was unperturbed. “Always you are putting yourself behind. And where else is there a replicating machine that works? You will want enlargements, too, of each elevation? How many in all?”

“Mother. . .” Torene began in protest, and then burst out laughing.

“Sit! Eat!” her father repeated and gestured firmly for her to take her seat. “Copies we can talk of later. Now you will have breakfast with us and tell us news we don’t get to hear at Telgar.”

When she finally left, stuffed with two bowls of porridge and more klah than she liked to have swirling in her belly going between, she was carrying a plastic tube full of copies and enlargements-more than she would have had the nerve to request. Sonja had blithely replicated four copies of each and every possible angle of the original and secondary surveys of Benden Weyr. Torene reckoned that one reason they were so willing to go over the top was because they were so pleased with that naming.

“No, is for you, dushka,” Sonja said, giving her daughter a hard kiss on her cheek in farewell. “We are proud to have queen rider daughter. Keep her safe, Alaranth!”

With her many-faceted eyes gleaming in the shadows cast by Telgar’s high mountain peaks, Alaranth turned her head and lowered her forequarters to the ground, as much to aid her rider to mount as to acknowledge the parting.

Who else is to keep you safe? Alaranth said as she turned and dropped off the ledge into the valley below.

Torene laughed at her phrasing, the speed of their descent snatching the sounds away. You sound just like my mother!

We go now to Benden Weyr?

Torene squeezed her eyes, which had filled slightly with tears of pride at the grand sound of the name, and the concentrated on the image of the double-cratered bowl-the bowl of Benden Weyr.

Yes!

She was certain that all that klah and porridge would turn to ice in her belly, but then they were out in the warm spring sunlight, gliding down the Weyr toward the lake.

Good morning to you! Torene recognized Brianth’s voice though she didn’t see him below, nor any sign of Mihall.

He’s on the rim behind us, sunning, Alaranth told her, well pleased that she and Torene had started their own errand earlier than this pair.

Torene’s mouth felt dry as Alaranth swung back to the upper crater and lost altitude. She had a view of Brianth, sunning himself on the heights. Backwinging, Alaranth landed neatly on the surface, the breeze from her pinions making the gravel rattle. A man’s head peered out from the nearby opening to what Torene thought would be the Hatching Ground. Mihall still wore his flying gear, so he couldn’t have been here long, Torene thought.

He didn’t rush, but his stride covered the distance between them so that he was at her side when she reached the ground.

“You’ve been busy this morning, I see.” He nodded at the tube.

Keeping a stern grip on her tongue, she smiled pleasantly. “Their daybreak, not ours,” she said, opening the tube.

He looked into the tube’s contents and whistled, grinning down at her with approval. That was the first time she had seen him smile so openly, and she wondered why he didn’t more often. It would have improved his reputation.

Then she could see his fingers twitching, eager to see every sheet she had brought. Was that why he had gotten here so early? How could he have been certain she’d do her errand so promptly?

Brianth told him we’d left.

This time she was careful to keep her immediate response to herself. Had Brianth slept with one eye open?

The watchdragon will speak to anyone who asks politely. This came from Brianth, and although she knew dragons couldn’t laugh, there was amusement of that quality in the bronze’s tone.

“Here,” Torene said, perversely irritated now by both rider and dragon. Why did Mihall have the ability to disturb her with so many conflicting emotions? She tapped the tube so the roll would fall out.

Mihall was that much quicker and had the films in his hands before she could catch them.

“It’s less windy inside here,” he said, impatient to unroll the sheets but not willing to risk their damage.

When she got inside the vaulted chamber, she saw that he had been there long enough to make a small fire, set far enough in the shelter of the front wall to be protected from the wind, and secure in a neat circle of stones. A klah pot balanced close enough to keep its contents hot. A bulging sack was propped up against the wall, along with an opaque sheet of plastic wrapped around a number of finished plastic shafts.

“The klah’s ready if you’d like a cup,” he said, noting her surprise. “If not, help me put the table together. It’s easier with two.”

Torene shook her head at the first offer and started to untie the bundle. When assembled, the table was exactly the same size as the largest of the replicated elevations. Mihall produced pushpins and a narrow strip of plastic. He worked deftly, and before she knew it, one full set of the drawings was secured to the table with the plastic strip holding down the top edges so that the diagrams could be flipped over without being torn.

“You are handy,” she said, pleased and somewhat amused by his preparations.

“I know the largest size that replicator can print,” he said, shrugging off her implied compliment. “Ah, this is the one I wanted to see.” He turned to the side elevations of the upper crater.

There are more coming now! Brianth and Alaranth said almost in unison.

“About time,” Torene and Mihall said, also in chorus. Catching each other’s eyes, they both laughed: blue dominated the gray in the bronze rider’s eyes.

For Torene, that marked the beginning of the most intense period of activity she had ever experienced, even when she was first learning how to care for Alaranth. David Caterel had borrowed Ozzie from Telgar, although the old prospector insisted that everything he and Cobber had discovered in these craters was already written up or symbolized on the plasfilm they had in their possession.