I Read What?!

And we're back! Sorry for the delay.

Last time, we learned about a plot against Robinton, and I continue to boggle at Jaxom's insistence on hiding things from his wife.

Whatever, dude. I still like F'lessan better than you.



We start off being told that, by the end of summer, there's still no sign of any would-be abduction. Brestolli does get rescued from Bitra, still adamant about what he heard. While a visit from Benden's Weyrleaders get the "contagious" Harpers released from Lord Sigomal.

Hey, wait a sec. I thought the Weyrs weren't allowed to get involved in Hold matters. Wasn't that the excuse for letting Thella up and try to murder Jayge and Aramina? But NOW, they can get involved.

Oh yeah, because the Harpers are Robinton's people. And Robinton matters more than a trader and a failed Impression Candidate, I guess.

We're told that a number of Crafts have withdrawn from Bitra (and Nerat) outright. Interestingly, the Crafts do NOT withdraw form Keroon, because, even though he's become more vocal in his dislike of Aivas, Lord Corman has not been trying to interfere with the Crafthalls and is distancing himself from the other two.

...wait, an obnoxious dude with loud opinions that go against the main characters is actually NOT being a total fuckhead in every direction but is reacting reasonably in other ways? Is this a McCaffrey book?

Anyway, apparently every Weyrwoman "kept her queen on her mark", while the harpers track down every whisper of anything clandestine. And I'm a little fascinated by this newly revealed aspect of a queen's significance. It's been how many books, and this is the first we've heard of the queen dragons somehow being able to ferret out secrets or control the other dragons.

But anyway, security is increasing all around, and everyone's working hard. The dragonriders continue to drill in space, Hamian and his men work overtime to make protective clothing, and special material to protect dragon hind-paws (I've never heard them referred to as paws before - at least not that I've noticed) from contact with very cold metal. Studies on the ovoid are continuing.

Because she's not a douchebag, Sharra actually talks to Jaxom about what she's doing. And I'll include this for any biology minded folk reading this:

“We had one marvelous day when Mirrim discovered the beads under the microscope. Aivas was excited, too, for he feels certain that the beads are the genetic information of the Thread organism.” She grinned as she remembered that moment of triumph. “The microscope was at sub-high for maximum magnification, so we could all see these tiny, tiny beads strung along one of those long wires I told you Thread has. Not the springs, but the wires, which are coiled ever so tightly in a volume no bigger than the tip of my finger. Aivas says these ring beads use the material of the Thread ovoid to reproduce themselves.” She made a face, indicating her ignorance of how that was done. “What he wants us to find now is a bacteriophage to infect the beads and then discover just the right one that will replicate itself fast before it uses up all the Thread material. We’ve done something of a similar nature, you know, when we located bacteria from wounds and learned how to disimprove their symbiotic bacteriophages so that they would kill their hosts. Our ancestors could certainly do marvelous things biologically to heal people. I hope we can begin to do as well as they did. This exercise could heal our planet.”

Jaxom asks why the ancients didn't do it then. And that's probably a good question, but since I hate Jaxom, I imagine it being very petulant.

Sharra, smug for some reason, points out that it's because they have dragons and fire-lizards who basically can replace shuttles and grab ovoids out of space. Which is fair.

Sharra also muses a bit about Aivas's feelings, for lack of a better term, when Jaxom asks why their work is necessary given what the dragonriders will be doing:

Sharra was silent a moment, considering that. “Aivas hates Thread, inasmuch as an inanimate machine is capable of hatred. He hates what it did to his captains and Admiral Benden. He hates what it’s done to us. He wants to be sure it can never menace us again. He wants to kill it in the Oort Cloud. He calls the project ‘Overkill.’ ”

Jaxom regarded her in puzzled astonishment. “He’s more vindictive than F’lar!”

Sharra's not sure if they can actually do what he wants. I wonder if they should. Obviously the Thread is destructive, but are they really endangering any other planet? And if Pern becomes safe, then what harm is there in letting them live?

Though I do remember reading a fan theory that the planet eating species in the Acorna series might be a more sentient/mature version of Thread. (Found it in the Pern wiki here.) They do sound pretty awful, so maybe Aivas is right?

A couple of days later, Sharra tells Jaxom that Aivas has found the "parasitic vector" that they need. And here's another explanation for the bio folk:

“He says that similar life-forms were found in microgravity conditions in the asteroid belts. It’s very like the one found in the ecology of the Pluto/Charon pair in the original Earth Solar system.” Sharra frowned in perplexity. “Well, that’s what he says. He has named the springs ‘zebedees.’ And zebedees are what we will now use to make our tailored parasite, like a virus, jump from one Thread ovoid to the next . . . once the parasite has disimproved itself as a symbiont and became really destructive! We’ve got to culture it now, though.”

...I find the description of Pluto/Charon pair pretty interesting. All the Weys or Pern was published in 1991, fifteen years before Pluto would be officially declared "not a Planet". I suppose McCaffrey was keeping up on scientific discussions, at least more than I've given her credit for. (And honestly, more than I have.)

So anyway, we get more technobabble, with Jaxom as the irreverent peanut gallery. And it'd be cute, but I hate Jaxom, so there you go.

We're also told that the existence of "canine fleas" inspire Sharra to want to work to "disimprove" fleas next. I have some ethical concerns there. But also, I realize that we've never seen dogs on Pern. Presumably they exist in some form.

So anyway, Sharra wants to go back to the Yokohama, and Jaxom whines about it because the Gather is coming up and she won't be able to enjoy it. Maybe partially answering my question about who rules Ruatha, she tells us that she'd already been over everything for the Gather with Brand and the other Stewards.

So what does JAXOM do?

But anyway, Jaxom does agree so I can't bitch about that. And it occurs to me that his comment about "what the dragonriders are doing" may be an indicator that he's finally told her about what they're doing. I hope so. It's a stupid fucking secret.

We fast forward a bit, past an uneventful Threadfall, and a new glove for Ruth to test, Jaxom and Ruth get a chance to talk to Aivas about Project Overkill.

“Aivas, just why are you so obsessed with this zebedee project?” Jaxom asked when he had delivered his message to Hamian. “Sharra says you call it Overkill. Why isn’t blowing the Red Star out of orbit sufficient?”

“You are alone?” Aivas asked.

That was an unusual question, as Aivas usually unerringly sensed additional presences.

“Yes, I’m alone. Are you going to come clean?” Jaxom asked, half joking.

“This is as good a time as any,” Aivas replied, startling the young Holder.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“On the contrary, it is all to the good to know what has been expected of you since this facility learned of Ruth’s unusual abilities.”

Of course, because Jaxom is special and Ruth is special, and thus he gets to be the secret keeper as to Aivas's secret motivations.

And you know, honestly, I'm STILL not sure what about Ruth's abilities ARE so special. He "always knows when he is". But we've never seen any dragon really express any confusion when they time travel. The riders, sure, but the dragons seem fine with that.

(It's possible that one of the reasons I like Skies of Pern so much is that we see characters kind of likely mock Jaxom's pretention about Ruth, and at the climactic cat attack, Ramoth pulls off a bit of timing it herself that's definitely as impressive as anything Ruth's done.)

And indeed, it's Ruth's always "knowing when and where he is". Which again, is something we've heard a lot about, but never really SEEN in practice.

But the explanation is interesting:

“Flippancy has always covered apprehension. Candor is required. There are three engines that must be exploded to push the Red Star out of an orbit hazardous to Pern. Two of those explosions have already taken place.”

Dun-dun-dun.

But clever indeed! I really like this reveal, no snark at all.

“Based on the position of the Red Star when Mankind first landed on Pern, that planet is not now in the orbit it should be tracking at this point in time. Repeated calculations were made during the First Fall by captains Keroon and Tillek. Eccentric it might be, but its current position differs from an extrapolation of those original calculations. Its path shows that it has suffered a perturbation of nine-point-three degrees off its original elliptical orbit. That is not consistent with the extrapolated position. Therefore, something has already altered its path. Substantiation occurs in two minor references found in Istan and Keroonian records in the Fourth and Eighth Passes, which were each prior to a long Interval. During each Pass, bright flashes were observed when the Red Star was at apogee in reference to Pern. Bright enough to be remembered and noted.”

So we have a retroactive explanation for why we had such a long Interval before Dragonflight. Namely, it was Jaxom's fault. Hah.

Jaxom realizes that this is the reason for the two craters that they found on the Red Star. Jaxom tells us that what he felt when he saw the first crater wasn't fear but the certainty that he knew it had to be there.

I don't remember that, but I'm not going back to look. Okay. Fine.

Aivas relates it to psychic phenomenon. Which irrationally annoys me. Jaxom gets to be implicitly psychic when Lessa's own son doesn't. But okay, fine whatever.

So anyway, Jaxom does understand and explains it to us:

“That somehow I, on Ruth, with enough dragonriders to perform the task, took an engine back in time and deposited it in that Rift? Where it blew up to form the crater I find on my initial trip to the Red Star some eighteen hundred Turns in the later?”

“You have done it twice. The second time was six hundred Turns ago. It is the only explanation. Furthermore, you know that you’ve done it.”

“I don’t want to do it,” Jaxom protested, thinking how far back he would have to ask Ruth to take him and the others. Yet Aivas had been accurate in so many other unlikely things. “What if something went wrong?”

“True to the time paradox, if something had, you wouldn’t be here, and there would be some thirty or forty dragons missing from this time.”

There's a hole in Aivas's logic, and to his credit, Jaxom points it out: they haven't left yet They wouldn't be missing if they hadn't left.

Aivas points out that the Long Intervals are a matter of history, so clearly Jaxom HAS succeeded.

Honestly, I can't bitch about Jaxom for once. His reluctance is completely understandable. He points out that Lessa almost died going back four hundred years, and Aivas wants them to go back EIGHTEEN hundred. But Aivas points out that they'll be carrying their own oxygen supplies and will be aware already of the "sensory-deprivation syndrome."

THIS is actually an interesting character beat:

Jaxom kept shaking his head. “You can’t ask bronzes to do that, even if they are able to. I don’t think F’lar times it. In fact, the only one I do know who has is Lessa.”

We know that F'lar has done it once. Back in Dragonflight, after Lessa has her own visit to Ruatha, F'lar goes back to see his despondent young self after his father's death.

But also, this is idiotic, Jaxom. SOUTHERN WEYR was founded this way, which absolutely included bronze dragons. Kylara's dragon had to have a HATCHING back then as plan B to shore up numbers.

Bullshit aside, Aivas points out that Ruth will be able to supply coordinates. Jaxom thinks the riders won't stand for this...

WHY? The riders risk their lives every fucking Threadfall. Lessa was the only one to go back 400 years, sure, but she was the only one who realized it was possible. Why WOULDN'T dragonriders be willing to do it?

But Aivas has a different solution:

“They will not know!”

Jaxom stared straight at the screen for another long moment. “How,” he asked at last in a very patient, saccharine tone, “will they not know?”

“Because you will not tell them. And since you now have been to the Red Star on several occasions, and since the distance in terms of travel between will not be appreciably longer than what they would expect, they will not know that they have been transported back in time and to the Red Star in the position required by the equations that cover the two disparate explosions.”

This seems unnecessarily stupid.

But we learn about the logistics of the teams:

“Hamian will not have sufficient space suits for the three hundred beasts required to shift all three engines at the same time. You will lead two of the three groups. F’lar will, as planned, head the third. He will be the only one depositing an engine in this time. As you know,” Aivas went on, overriding Jaxom’s protest, “the locations chosen are not in sight of each other. Since F’lar will think that you are at one end of the Rift, N’ton at the other, he will not know what you are doing.”

“The timing’s wrong, Aivas. I cannot be in two places at once. Nor doing that kind of timing without a respite. Ruth doesn’t have auxiliary oxygen.”

“You missed the point about insufficient space suits. Your team will have to get out of their suits and turn them over to the members of the second unit. That should allow Ruth sufficient time to regain energy. You will, of course, be certain that he eats well beforehand and can feed immediately afterward to restore himself.”

If life were fair, Jaxom would go the way of Moreta in all this. But he'll be fine. And I resent that these people who are already expected to risk their lives are going to be lied to. What in N'ton's characterization has ever implied that he'd flinch at this?

Anyway, Aivas bullies Jaxom into agreeing, eventually, and I'd have more sympathy for Jaxom except that no one else in the group is going to ever have the opportunity to object. So what the fuck ever, McCaffrey.

Jaxom does redirect the moment to ask why Aivas is so obsessed with Sharra's project. So we get that explanation too:

“It is extrapolated by the closer examination of the Thread ovoids that there is life, not as you know it, and not even as we see it brought here by the Red Star, but a whole ecology of life-forms throughout the Oort Cloud. Some of them are probably quite intelligent, judging by the complexity of their nervous systems; but when they arrive here, they have lost most of their liquid helium and so can be termed only ‘rude mechanicals.’ It is these degenerate, warmth-tolerating forms that make it to the surface of Pern; they don’t live long enough to replicate themselves there, of course, or on the Red Planet. It is only these ‘mechanicals’ that can reproduce without helium in Pern’s orbit. But if these mechanicals could be contaminated, infected with our disimproved parasite, they would carry it with them to destroy all similar life-forms in the Oort Cloud itself, probably including the more intelligent ones, too. Then, no matter what happens, Pern will forever be freed of this menace. That is why there were Long Intervals: The disimproved zebedees that you will establish—have established long ago—on the surface of the Red Planet, twice in the past and once in the future will infect the Cloud when the Red Star cuts through it twice in every orbit.”

So that's the other part of what Jaxom is doing. They're not just knocking the Red Star out, they're going to seed it with the ZBDs.

Jaxom points out they didn't see ovoids on the surface, just the orbit. Aivas asks if they were looking for them. I think they'd notice?

But okay, fine. Aivas also shows them the diagram of the Red Star's orbit. And then decides to send Ruth FORWARD in time fifty years, using the digital time piece.

Okay, this actually IS interesting. And maybe, MAYBE, I can buy this being something that only Ruth can do. Jaxom's assignment is to go forward, call up the orbit and print it out, return here "after a safe interval" and compare the graphs.

Ruth is onboard, so Jaxom is ready to go.

Aivas does make a droll crack about Jaxom being sure to keep the oxygen tanks on the bridge full for fifty years.

--

So they go. Anticlimactically, the view from the bridge hasn't changed. Jaxom uses the console, noting that the paper that prints out is different than what he's used to: much whiter and softer.

And another interesting point, when Jaxom compares the diagram to one on the screen, he starts to talk to Aivas and gets no response.

Ruth is amused, saying Aivas won't be able to hear him fifty years later. But Aivas has existed since Dragonsdawn (retconned in at least), so...why wouldn't he be able to answer now? Especially since he'd know Jaxom was to arrive.

They come back. Jaxom informs Aivas that he must have put the graph up because it was there when he arrived. Jaxom realizes after a bit that he'd left his gloves there when he printed out the graph. That was careless dude.

Jaxom will retrieve them later though, apparenly. He gives the graphs to Aivas, and Aivas notes that the explosions have worked. I note that McCaffrey has basically robbed the rest of the story of suspense, but okay, fine.

Aivas tells Jaxom and Ruth they should eat carbohydrates. And Jaxom finally agrees to Aivas's "mad scheme."

We switch over to Ruatha, and we actually find out something Jaxom did as Lord Holder - he revived Ruatha's breeding of runners. The animals he's been producing have won Gather races even. I'm calling bullshit here. We've sped through a few years now, sure, but Jaxom's only had about five years to do this project. How many could he possibly have bred?

And when would he have time?

But fine. Let's associate Jaxom with a guy that we actually saw manage his realm and pretend that makes Jaxom a competent Lord Holder.

So they snack, rest, at some point Sharra joins him, because he wakes up with her nestled against him.

Of COURSE, he doesn't tell Sharra anything. Because why would he trust his wife with the fact that he's doing something heroic and dangerous?

We do get to see a Gather. And the rare appearance of Jaxom's actual kids: Jarrol and Shawan, who's a toddler now. There's a cameo appearance by bubbly pies, which make me immediately hungry.

There are, of course, musical performances by Robinton, Menolly and Sebell. (Domick conducts an orchestra, woo). Sigomal, Begmon and Corman are absent though, which makes Jaxom remember the abduction plot.

Which is funny because Robinton is HERE.

There are races. And still, exactly how many generations are there, and how long does it take a runner to reach maturity???

Young Pell, whose significance it took me some time to realize, had brought his intended to meet his Lord and Lady. He seems very passionate about being a joiner, proving that he's not a rival for Jaxom.

There's lots of dancing and cameos by familiar faces, and so on. And OH. PLOT.

Robinton seems asleep at his table, but it's NOT Robinton. Piemur discovers dead man in Robinton's Gather suit, and Zair, curled up behind him, is dull in color and barely breathing.

The dude had been dead a long time, apparently which seems to add insult to injury. Who is that guy?

Everyone is horrified and angry, and trying to keep it quiet so as not to panic anyone.

Lytol calms everyone down, commiserating about why it had to be here, where Aivas's tracking device won't reach.

...um...then why did you have the Gather here? Or at least, why did you have him come?

Did you want him kidnapped? I can't blame you, but still.

They determine that Zair's poisoned with Fellis. The wine is dosed too:

F’lar picked up the wine goblet Robinton had been using and carefully sipped. He spat it out immediately. “Fellis in the wine, too. I should have known Robinton wouldn’t pass out from mere wine.” The Weyrleader was disgusted with himself.

Yes, yes, the alcoholism played for laughs.

Lytol suggests announcing it. But Jaxom doesn't like honesty and wants to avoid a panic. And we get search efforts.

Piemur and Sharra will wait for the fire-lizards. No one bothers to wonder about the poor dead man in Robinton's clothes.

Jaxom returns after a bit to get an update. Sebell and Menolly have been informed. Drums have alerted Asgenar and Larad, who want to invade Bitra. Jaxom thinks that they're not stupid enough to hide Robinton there, and Lytol had apparently agreed, but Larad and Asgenar feel guilty.

Everyone's in tears of course, because Robinton is McCaffrey's favorite. We do have good news though: Zair will recover. He's been "purged" and looks very embarrassed. Aw, poor dragon kitty.

He can't help find Robinton though as he's weak and confused, and well, if Robinton is being drugged, Zair might not be able to find him anyway.

Then a gaggle of angry fire-lizards show up. They found him, and Jaxom jumps onto Ruth to get the hero credit. Actually, that's not fair. Lots of dragons end up encircling the ship of the dudes that have my least favorite character captive.

And they find Robinton looking ashen and almost wizened. They get Sharra, who thinks he was overdosed. They get him back to Ruatha, to get him treated.

It's very emotional and the chapter ends here.