Dragonsblood

TWO

With another wordless cry, Wind Blossom rolled out of her dreams into the new day. It was always the same dream. Only-different this time. Something had woken her early.

Even with the dream interrupted, as if against her will, Wind Blossom remembered her mother’s last words: “Always a disappointment you were to me. Now you hold the family honor. Fail not, Wind Blossom.”

Wind Blossom had had the same dreams for the last forty years.

The sound repeated itself: a dragon bugling in the sky above.

Her mother, Kitti Ping, had created the dragons. Kitti Ping, famed Eridani Adept, who had saved Cetus III from the ravages of the Nathi War was also Pern’s savior with the creation of the great, fire-breathing, telepathic dragons.

Wind Blossom was credited with-blamed for-the creation, through similar genetic manipulation, of the photophobic watch-whers. On the starships’ manifests Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom had been listed as geneticists. That title conveyed only a small portion of the full Eridani training Kitti Ping had received and had passed on to her daughter, Wind Blossom.

“Always a disappointment you were to me,” her mother’s calm, controlled voice came to Wind Blossom’s mind-a memory over forty years old.

They had come to Pern fifty years earlier, thousands of war-weary people seeking an idyllic world beyond the knowledge of human and Nathi alike. They had been led by such luminaries as Emily Boll, famed Governor of Tau Ceti and heroic leader of Cetus III, and Admiral Paul Benden, the victor of the Nathi Wars.

Instead of finding rest and a pastoral, agricultural world, they discovered that their lush planet Pern had an evil stepsister-the Red Star. Its orbit was wildly erratic, coming through the solar system on a cometary 250-year cycle, dragging with it the mysterious peril of Thread.

Eight years after the colonists landed on Pern, the Red Star came close enough to unload its burden on its sister-planet. The Thread, mindless, voracious, space-traveling spores, ate anything organic-plastics, woods, flesh. The first Threadfall on the unsuspecting colony was devastating.

Galvanized by this new threat, Kitti Ping, Wind Blossom, and all the biologists on Pern dropped their work in adapting terran life-forms to life on Pern to concentrate instead on creating a defense against Thread.

From the native flying fire-lizards, barely longer from nose to tail than a person’s arm, Kitti Ping created the huge fire-breathing dragons, able to carry a rider, telepathically bound to his mount, into a flaming battle against Thread. And so humankind on Pern was saved.

It was the sound of a dragon’s bugle that had disturbed Wind Blossom’s dreams. Through the unshuttered windows, she could make out the beat of the dragon’s wings and heard it land in the courtyard outside the College.

Shouts and cries reached her window with emotions intact but words incomprehensible. The dragon alone was indication enough of something extraordinary, and the voices confirmed that there was some sort of emergency.

The voices in the courtyard moved inside.

Her room smelled of lavender. Wind Blossom took a long, deep lungful of the smell and turned to look at the fresh cutting on her bedside table. Her mother’s room had always smelled of cedar. Sometimes of apple blossoms, too, but always of cedar.

Perhaps some arnica would help, Wind Blossom thought as she summoned the strength to ignore the pain in her old joints and the weakness of her muscles as she sat up in bed and slid her feet into her slippers. Arnica was good for bruises and aches.

And some peppermint tea for my thinking, she added with a bittersweet twinkle in her eyes.

She walked to her dresser and looked impassively at her face reflected in the still water of the wash basin. Her hair was still dark-it would always be dark-as were her eyes. They stared impassively back at her as she examined her face. Her skin had the same yellowish tinge of her Asian ancestors; her eyes had the Asian almond shape.

Wind Blossom completed her inspection, noting once again that the muscles around her face, which had slackened thirty years before, pulled the corners of her lips downward.

Opening her dresser, she saw the yellow tunic at the bottom of her drawer and sighed imperceptibly as she had done at the sight of it every day for the past twenty years. Once, an accident at the laundry had left one of her white tunics with a distinctly yellowish tinge. No one had remarked on it. When the day was over, Wind Blossom had carefully put the yellow tunic away in her drawers. She had worn it again, years later-and no one had noticed. Now, as always, she carefully pulled out one of her scrupulously white tunics. From the lower drawer she pulled out a fresh pair of black pants.

Dressed, Wind Blossom turned her attention back to the noises that had awoken her. From the sounds outside, she suspected-

“My lady, my lady!” a girl’s voice called. Wind Blossom didn’t recognize the voice. It was probably one of the new medical trainees. “Please come quickly, there’s been an accident!”

Although there was no one in the room to see, Wind Blossom did not let her face show her amusement at being called “my lady.”

“What is it?” she asked, rising and moving toward the door.

“Weyrleader M’hall from Benden has brought in a boy,” the trainee answered, opening the door as she heard Wind Blossom reach for the latch. “He was attacked.”

Wind Blossom’s heart sank. Her face remained calm, but inwardly she quailed. The look on the girl’s face was all she needed to identify the attacker. The youngster continued resolutely, “It was a watch-wher.”

Wind Blossom passed through the door and marched past the apprentice who, though much younger, towered over her. “Bring my bag.”

The trainee paused, torn between guiding the frail old woman down the steps and obeying her orders.

“My bones are not so worn that I cannot walk unaided,” Wind Blossom told her. “Get my bag.”

There was only one clean room in the infirmary. It was too primitive to be considered anything like a proper operating room but it was well scrubbed.

Wind Blossom registered how the people outside it were grouped: Her daughter and a musician were in one group, M’hall and a man she thought she should know were in another group, and two interns were in a third.

The interns looked up when she arrived, but M’hall spoke first. “My lady Wind Blossom, my mother told me that you are the most skilled in sutures.”

When had everyone started with the “my lady” ’s? Wind Blossom thought acidly.

“How is the patient?” she asked Latrel, the nearest intern.

“The patient has severe lacerations on the face, neck, and abdomen,” he answered quickly. Wind Blossom noted but did not comment on his ashen appearance and the way he licked his lips. Latrel had attended a number of major injuries-clearly this was worse. “He is a ten-year-old boy. He’s been dosed with numbweed and fellis juice, and was suitably wrapped against between during the journey from Benden Hold. His pulse is thready and weak; he shows signs of shock and blood loss. Janir is attempting to stabilize-”

Wind Blossom interrupted him with an upheld hand and walked over to the large basin outside the clean room. She pulled back her sleeves. “Gown me, then scrub.”

Latrel nodded, pulling sanitized gowns out of a special closet. Once she was robed, Wind Blossom started carefully scrubbing her arms and hands to clean off as many germs as she could. She motioned for Latrel to continue his report.

“We cannot type his blood-”

“It’s O positive,” the man beside M’hall interjected.

Wind Blossom turned to face him, her expression showing interest.

“I’ve been keeping track of our bloodlines; it can only be O positive,” he repeated.

Wind Blossom matched his face to her memory of a young boy she had spoken with long ago. “Peter Tubberman.”

The man winced at the name. “I am called Purman now,” he corrected. “The boy is my son.”

A crease formed on Wind Blossom’s brows. Ted Tubberman had been considered a dangerous renegade in the early days of the Pern colony at Landing. He had “stolen” equipment to conduct biology experiments, one of which had killed him and orphaned young Peter at an early age. Wind Blossom could understand why Peter Tubberman would want to remove himself from memories of his father.

“Purman. Benden wines,” she said to herself. “Modified vines, no?” She waited only long enough for his body language to answer her before she said to the other intern, “Purman scrubs with us.”

She turned her attention back to Latrel. “The old needles, you kept them, right?” When the intern nodded, she said, “Have them sterilized and bring them in. What about sutures?”

The young trainee-Carelly, Wind Blossom finally put a name to her-arrived, breathless with Wind Blossom’s medical bag. “My lady,” she gasped, and gathered in another breath to say, “there are no more in Stores.”

Wind Blossom grunted acknowledgment. She looked at the Benden Weyrleader. “M’hall?”

M’hall approached the diminutive geneticist. He bent over her when she beckoned him closer.

“I have one set of sutures left. If I use them on this boy, others will die later. Probably dragonriders,” she said in a voice that carried only to his ears.

M’hall nodded his understanding.

“I saw this day coming,” she added. “We are losing our tech base. These sorts of wounds are rare enough that soon no one will even know how to treat them.”

“Then let us use these sutures now,” M’hall said, “while there is still someone with your skills.”

Wind Blossom nodded. She turned to Carelly. “Go back to my room, girl, and bring down the orange bag.”

As the girl ran off, Wind Blossom turned to Purman. “The last of the sutures and antibiotics are in my orange bag. Your son will be the last one treated with such medicines on Pern.”

“For how long?” Purman wondered, as if to himself.

“A long time, I fear,” Wind Blossom answered. “There are so few of us who have the skill and the knowledge. And now, without supplies, the skills will become useless.”

In the clean room, Wind Blossom found that the boy’s injuries were every bit as awful as she’d feared. His right forehead, nose, and left cheek had been opened by the three-clawed paw of the watch-wher. The claw-marks continued down the top left side of the boy’s chest, near the shoulder, and into the biceps of the upper left arm.

Wind Blossom leaned closer to the boy’s face. Before the incident, he had been as handsome as his father at the same age. Now… she shook herself and checked his pulse.

“He is in shock,” she announced. Janir nodded, saying, “I’ve been keeping him warm, but he has lost a lot of blood-and going between… “

The doors to the ready room swung open as Latrel, Carelly, and Purman entered.

“He will need blood,” Wind Blossom announced. She looked at Latrel. “Get the other bed set up close by.” She turned to Purman. “He will need at least three units. You can only donate one.” She patted the bed that Latrel brought up. “Get on it-you’ll be first.

“Carelly, find Emorra and tell her we have need of her,” Wind Blossom ordered. “And have someone make me some peppermint tea with a dash of arnica.”

The young apprentice waved an arm over her shoulder in acknowledgment as she sped off on her mission.

Purman’s face was clouded with fear. Wind Blossom explained, “We need to stabilize him, and irrigate the wounds to prevent infection.”

She looked closely at the boy’s nose.

“He has lost a lot of cartilage. Rebuilding the nose will be difficult.”

She gestured for a probe from Janir. Gently, she examined the boy’s cheek.

“The damage to the left cheek is severe. Immobilizing it while it heals will be a major concern.” She continued her examination, adding, “Fortunately, there is no sign of damage to the underlying bone.”

She sighed and looked at the boy’s chest wound. “The chest cavity is intact-that is good. It is a flesh wound. We will have to leave it open and irrigated to ensure that there is no infection.”

She turned her attention to the boy’s arm. “Some of the muscle has been removed here,” she said. She looked at Janir. “You will irrigate with saline solution and bandage here, too.”

“Him? What about you?” Purman asked, sitting up on his bed.

“We need three units of blood,” Wind Blossom repeated in answer. “You will give the first.”

The door opened, and a competent-looking young woman entered the clean room, bringing with her the faint smell of starsuckle, the Pernese hybrid of honeysuckle.

“Emorra”-Wind Blossom nodded to the woman, and Purman was struck by their resemblance-“will donate the second unit, and I, the third.”

“But-” Purman objected.

Wind Blossom silenced him with her upheld hand. “I will stitch his facial wounds before I give the blood.” Her lips curved up in a shadowy grin. “It is fitting. Kitti Ping’s daughter and granddaughter should help Tubberman’s son and grandson.”

“And,” she added as Purman started another objection, “she and I are the only other two suitable blood donors available.”

“You are too old, Mother,” Emorra objected. “I shall donate two units.”

“Who is too old?” Wind Blossom snorted. “What do you know? You never studied medicine.”

“You know better,” Emorra corrected. Carelly arrived with a tray and a cup of tea.

“That was genetics, not medicine,” Wind Blossom said. Emorra’s eyes flashed.

Purman and Janir looked askance at the two women. “Please,” Purman said anxiously. “My son.”

Wind Blossom spared one more moment to glare at her daughter. “Always a disappointment you were to me,” she muttered before she bent over the boy. She worked quickly, starting with the lacerations of the forehead. Gently she teased the open wounds together.

She stitched the dermis and subcutaneous fat together with polydioxanone-a synthetic absorbable suture-and closed the epidermis with synthetic polyester sutures. She made her stitches small and as few as she could; there was even less suture material than she had feared.

Janir monitored the boy’s vital signs, while Latrel supervised the direct transfusion of first Purman’s and then Emorra’s blood.

When both units had been transferred to the boy, Wind Blossom said, without looking up from her work, “Carelly, take Purman and Emorra out of here, make sure they both have wine and cheese, and take some rest.”

An hour later, Wind Blossom laid aside her tools and walked wearily to the other bed. “My turn now, Latrel.”

Janir and Latrel exchanged worried looks. “The boy is-” Janir began.

Wind Blossom cut him off. “He needs the blood. I don’t.”

Latrel pursed his lips. “Emorra may not have studied medicine, but I have. A unit of blood at your age is not a good idea.”

Wind Blossom looked up at the young intern. “Latrel, there is nothing more I can teach you to do with the supplies we have left,” she said slowly. “The boy’s wounds came from a watch-wher, my ‘mistake.’ If it’s to be, then nothing would suit me more than for my blood to redeem my error.” When she saw that the intern still looked unconvinced, she added, “And it’s my choice, Latrel.”

“Very well,” he replied, his tone resigned but his face showing his worry.

Wind Blossom winced as he inserted the needle into her vein. As her blood began to flow into the mutilated boy, she sighed, and remembered nothing more.

It was always the same dream.

“How could you say that the Multichord songbird of Cetus III is my greatest success?”

That honors had been heaped upon Kitti Ping for her work in developing the hybrid, which had so neatly averted the worst ecological disaster of the Nathi Wars, was not answer enough.

“When are we done?” Kitti Ping prodded when Wind Blossom would not answer her first question.

“Never,” Wind Blossom heard herself dully repeating.

“Why is that?”

“Because today is the mother of tomorrow,” Wind Blossom said, spouting another of her mother’s sayings.

Kitti Ping’s eyes narrowed. “And what does that mean, child?”

“It means, my mother, that our work today will be changed by what happens tomorrow.”

“And only those who anticipate tomorrow will find rest in their labors,” Kitti Ping concluded. She sighed, her symbol of utmost despair in her daughter. “The Multichord was nothing compared to the leechworm.”

Wind Blossom schooled her face carefully to hide any trace of her thoughts: Here it comes again. Aloud she said, “I consider the Multichord the obvious representative of the entire symbiotic solution you created, my mother.”

Kitti Ping allowed her gaze to soften-a little. “You are in error. The leechworm, the ugly eater of unwanted radiation, was the true solution to the problem. The Multichord was a felicitous symbiont embodying both a guardian for Cetus III’s pollen-spreading systems, and a suitable predator for the leechworms, allowing us to quickly concentrate the deleterious radioactives in a controlled sector of the biosphere.”

Wind Blossom nodded dutifully. Behind her eyes she remembered the awards citing the Multichord of Cetus III as the First Wonder of the Universe. They had been such an elegant solution to the radiation left by the nuclear horror that the alien Nathi had rained down upon Cetus III in their attempt to eradicate all humanity-an attempt that would have succeeded if not for Admiral Benden.

Wind Blossom remembered the marvelous multitonal choruses that had thrilled the night air and brought smiles to all the survivors of that horrible war, the sheer beauty of the rainbow-colored birds, built upon the original hummingbird genotype, as they flitted like the little bees they protected from one plant to another, pausing occasionally to eat any stray leechworm that threatened to transport radioactives into those areas already reclaimed.

The dream changed. “Why did you make the watch-whers?”

Mother, Wind Blossom thought, you know why I made the watch-whers. They were part of the original plan.

“Why did you make the watch-whers, Wind Blossom?” The voice was not Kitti Ping’s: It was deeper.

Wind Blossom opened her eyes. Sitting beside her was Ted Tubberman’s son, Purman.

She sat up slowly. She was in her room. Purman was seated beside her bed, looking intently at her.

“Your son, how is he?” she asked.

Purman’s eyes lightened. “He is recovering. Your Latrel had to dose him with fellis juice so that he wouldn’t talk and dislodge the sutures in his cheek. His chest and arm wounds are healing nicely.”

Wind Blossom raised an eyebrow.

“You have been unconscious for nearly two days,” Purman told her. “You really were too old to be a donor.”

“My daughter?”

Purman’s face took on a gentler expression. “Emorra did not leave your side until she collapsed into sleep herself. I had Carelly take her to her rooms.” His expression changed. “I think you treated her harshly. Was Kitti Ping like that?”

Wind Blossom examined his face before slowly nodding. “It is a great honor the Eridani bestowed on us.”

“It’s a curse,” Purman growled. “This whole planet’s a curse.”

“How did your son come to be mauled by the watch-wher?” Wind Blossom asked, sidestepping his outburst.

Purman glared at her before answering, his lips pursed tightly.

“Tieran loved that thing. He played with her, and spent all his time with her,” he replied. He sighed. “She was sleeping and Tieran came over to her and tried to scratch her head, like he’d seen M’hall do with his dragon.”

Wind Blossom sat upright and tried to get out of bed, but Purman stopped her, looking at her questioningly. Her fatigue did not diminish the fire that fanned in her brown eyes, as she said, “That one must be destroyed. Immediately.”

Purman recoiled. Instead of asking her why, he furrowed his brows in thought.

“An instinctive reaction?” he guessed. “Why?”

The door to her room opened and M’hall and Emorra entered.

“An instinctive reaction,” Wind Blossom agreed. “I thought I had bred it out.” She turned to M’hall. “That watch-wher must be destroyed before she passes on the trait.”

M’hall shook his head. “Bendensk went between already, Wind Blossom.”

Wind Blossom sighed. “She was very old.” She looked at Purman. “Perhaps if she had been younger, she could have controlled herself.” She looked up at M’hall. “How is the wherhandler?”

M’hall crossed the room and seated himself, frowning. “That may have been part of the problem, too,” he said. “Jaran-now J’ran-had been Searched and Impressed the week before.”

“The watch-wher would have been confused and seeking out a new wherhandler,” Wind Blossom said to herself. She looked at Purman. “Probably your son.”

“How is the boy?”

“He is doing well,” Emorra replied. “Janir has him in a fellis-laced sleep.”

“We shall have to wake him soon,” Wind Blossom said, making a face. “And we must keep his jaw as immobile as possible.”

“That will be hard on him,” Purman said, flashing a smile. “He is a talker.”

“Then someone who can outtalk him should be at his side when he wakes,” Wind Blossom replied. She looked at her daughter. “Emorra, see to it.”

“My lady!” M’hall protested, “Emorra is the administrator here. She should not be ordered about-”

“She is my daughter,” Wind Blossom replied, as if that were enough. Emorra bit off a bitter response, nodded curtly to her mother, and left.

“Mother or not-” M’hall’s indignation suffused his face.

Purman was unmoved. “Why did you send her out?”

Wind Blossom stared at M’hall until the Weyrleader let out an angry sigh. “How much has your mother told you, M’hall?”

M’hall shot a pointed glance at Purman. Wind Blossom motioned for M’hall to continue. The Benden Weyrleader relaxed, looking only at Wind Blossom.

“My mother,” M’hall said, giving the second word slight emphasis, “has told me everything she knows.”

“About what?” Purman asked, turning from one to the other, realizing slowly that the conversation was for his benefit.

“About the dragons, the watch-whers, and the grubs,” the Benden Weyrleader replied.

“And now, Purman’s vine-grubs,” Wind Blossom added.

“Don’t forget the felines in the Southern Continent,” M’hall countered.

Wind Blossom cocked her head toward Purman. “How much can you tell us about the felines?”

Purman shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“The dragons, watch-whers, and grubs are all modifications to Pern’s ecosystem,” Wind Blossom said, as if that were explanation enough.

Purman pursed his lips in thought. “The dragons fight Thread from on high, and the grubs catch it down low,” he said after a moment.

“But the grubs do more than that, don’t they?” Wind Blossom prompted.

Purman nodded slowly.

“My mother made the dragons and I made the watch-whers,” Wind Blossom said. M’hall snorted derisively at her, but she held up a restraining hand. “That is what everyone has been told, M’hall.”

Purman cocked an eyebrow at this exchange. “My father bred the felines and the grubs,” he said after a moment. “The grubs protect Pern, so you were wondering if I knew the purpose of the felines?”

Wind Blossom nodded.

Purman shook his head, sadly. “My father never said,” he told them. “He was very excited with them, said that he would show everyone, but I was too little and he never tried to talk to me.” He frowned at old memories.

“I don’t think he trusted me to keep his secrets,” he admitted.

“My mother believes that there are too many secrets on Pern,” M’hall said, looking back and forth between the two of them. “She is afraid that something will happen and that vital information will be lost, to the detriment of all.”

Wind Blossom had been scrutinizing Purman’s face carefully while M’hall was talking. Now she shook her head. “M’hall, I don’t think he knows.”

“Knows what?” Purman asked.

Wind Blossom answered his question with a question: “When does it end?”

“When does what end?” Purman replied, irritated.

He thought he knew M’hall, and was accepted at Benden Hold for his valuable work in adapting the grubs in a tighter symbiosis with Benden’s grape vines, but now he wasn’t sure. He wondered if he was being mocked by these two for being his father’s son. His life had been so hard as a youngster that he’d changed his name, making it more Pernese and less readily identifiable with the rogue botanist.

Wind Blossom sighed, shaking her head. She reached out to take Purman’s hand in her own, soothingly. “I am sorry, Purman. I had hoped that your father had passed on his knowledge to you.”

“He told me some things,” Purman replied stiffly. “Other things I learned on my own.”

M’hall slapped his leg emphatically, exclaiming, “There, you see! That proves Mother’s point. There should be no secrets.”

“I do not disagree, M’hall,” Wind Blossom said. “But some things are pointless to know-like the knowledge of sutures-because the technology cannot support it.”

M’hall nodded reluctantly.

Purman had been thinking while the other two were talking. Now he looked at Wind Blossom. “How similar are the watch-whers to the dragons?”

M’hall snorted and gave Purman a keen smile. “You see, Wind Blossom, Purman lends weight to my point.”

Wind Blossom nodded and turned her head to face Purman. “They are very similar. I started with much of the same genetic base and the same master program.”

“What is their purpose, then?”

She raised an eyebrow in surprise, then sighed. “Your training is sparse, Purman. You should have been taught that there should always be more than one purpose in introducing a new species into an ecosystem.

“In fact, the watch-whers were intended to solve several problems,” she continued. “Dragons, by their nature, would associate only with a select few people. But they must become part of the human ecology, if you will. They must not be feared.”

“So you bred the watch-whers as something that most people could see?” Purman sounded skeptical.

“And they’re uglier than dragons, too,” M’hall added. “If you were to try to tell someone who’d never seen a dragon what they were like, you’d say like a watch-wher but bigger and prettier.”

“So their first purpose is psychological?”

“It is not their first purpose,” Wind Blossom said rather tartly. “Unlike your wines.”

Purman grunted in response and gestured for her to continue.

“I designed their eyes to be excellent in low-light situations,” Wind Blossom said, choosing her words carefully, “and particularly tuned to infrared wavelengths.”

“Don’t forget that you designed them to be more empathic than telepathic,” M’hall interjected. Wind Blossom gave him a reproving look. “Sorry,” he said, chastened.

“I altered the design of their dermis and epidermis to incorporate more of their boron crystalline skeletal materials-”

“She tried to make them armored,” M’hall translated. Wind Blossom nodded.

“It didn’t work,” M’hall added. Wind Blossom sighed. M’hall waved a hand toward her in conciliation, saying, “But it was a good idea.”

“Yes, it was,” Purman agreed, “but why? Why not incorporate those changes directly into the dragons?”

“Two different species are safer,” Wind Blossom said. “Greater diversity yields redundancy.”

Purman nodded but held up a hand as he grappled with his thoughts. Finally he looked up at the two of them. “The watch-whers fight Thread at night?”

“By themselves,” M’hall agreed, eyes gleaming in memory. “I’ve seen them once-they were magnificent. I learned a lot about fighting Thread that night.”

“They breathe fire?”

“No,” M’hall said. “They eat Thread, like the fire-lizards. They don’t need riders, either-the queens organize them all.”

“The queens?”

M’hall nodded. “Of course. They’re like dragons, or fire-lizards for that matter.”

“What about their wings?” Purman asked. “They’re so short and stubby, how do they fly?”

Wind Blossom’s eyes lit with mischief. “They fly the same way as dragons. I made the wings smaller to avoid Thread damage.”

“Why keep this a secret?” Purman asked with outrage in his voice. “Everyone should know this.”

“Why?” Wind Blossom asked. “So they’ll never sleep for fear that Thread will fall at night? How many people are content to let only your grubs protect the grapevines?”

“It doesn’t happen often,” M’hall put in. “The oxygen level in the atmosphere shrinks at night, especially in the three thousand- to fifteen hundred-meter range, and the air’s too cold to support the spores. A lot of them freeze and are blown all over the place as dust.”

“But what about those that do get through?” Purman persisted.

“It’s no different than dealing with the small amount of Thread that the dragons miss,” M’hall said. “Hopefully, the ground crews find and take care of them.”

“And they are fewer at night anyway, due to the cold.” Purman pursed his lips thoughtfully. “But on a warm night?”

M’hall recrossed his legs and shook his head ruefully. “That’s how I found out, Purman. I asked myself that same question, wondering how I could get my riders to fight day and night-especially as neither humans nor dragons can see that well at night.”

A look of wonder crossed his face as he recalled the experience. “They swarmed in from everywhere, arranged themselves by their queens, and flew up to the Thread. I was above them, at first, and they came up at me like stars coming out at night. And then they were above, swooping and diving for the still-viable clumps of Thread.”

“They see more in the infrared range,” Wind Blossom said. “They can differentiate between the live Thread and the Thread that has been frozen by the night atmosphere.”

“So they have night vision…” Purman breathed.

Wind Blossom nodded. “That is why their eyes are so bad in daylight: too much light for them.”

“And Benden’s watch-wher-why did it react to tickling?” Purman asked.

Wind Blossom shook her head sadly. “I wanted them to react if they were asleep and Thread fell on them,” she said. “I had hoped to make the watch-whers tough enough to survive Thread and protect Pern… in case something happened to the dragons or their riders.”

Purman sat bolt upright, shocked. He looked to M’hall for confirmation, but the Weyrleader only nodded. Purman asked him, “Do you think this could happen?”

“I’m not a geneticist, Purman,” M’hall answered, “but I certainly hope not.”

Purman gave Wind Blossom a long, searching look. Finally, he said, “I remember not too long ago I had a problem with one of the vineyards. Something I hadn’t seen before. The grapes started going bad. I had to work hard to isolate the problem, and it turned out that the usual fungus that protected the grapes had been replaced by a new, more virulent strain. It took me months to finally develop a variant vine-grub to protect against that fungus.”

While he spoke, he carefully watched Wind Blossom’s reaction. When he finished, he knew. “You fear that something similar might affect the dragons, don’t you?”

Wind Blossom nodded. “The dragons are derived from the fire-lizards. The parasites that prey on the fire-lizards could also prey on the dragons.”

She frowned. “But just as you modified your grubs to aid the grape in fighting off that fungus, so the modifications to produce the dragons have rendered them immune to bacterial and viral vectors that affect fire-lizards… I hope.”

“But time will generate mutations,” Purman said to himself. He looked at Wind Blossom. “How much time? What sort of problems would the dragons have?”

Wind Blossom shook her head. “I do not know.”

She sighed and lay back down in her bed.

“The Eridani like to take centuries to add a new species to an ecosystem,” she continued. “At the least, even with all the urgency of Thread, my mother wanted to spend decades.

“As it was, we did not have time to research more than the most obvious disease vectors affecting the fire-lizards before my mother created the dragons.”

Wind Blossom sighed again. “I had the advantage of somewhat more research before I created the watch-whers, but still…” Her voice trailed off.

“I must rest now,” she told them, gesturing for them to leave. She smiled up at Purman.

“Go look in on your son,” she said. “I would like him to stay here, so I can teach him all that you have not been able to.”

She rolled over in her bed. “He must stay here a while, anyway, for his wounds to heal.”