Chap. 408 The Morning After

Raylan waited as his division crowded into their conference room.

I’m going to need a larger room, he thought, my division has grown after Admin shuffled everyone during the shutdown. I recognize most of the new folks, but it will take some time for them to assimilate into MY way of doing things.

I’m lucky, most of them want nothing to do with being Chief. Just give ‘em a task and they’re on it. Like K’ndar, obviously talking horses with Francie. Yes, she’s demonstrating a cue for a lead change on a horse she’s training. He has no interest whatsoever in being anything but a biologist and a dragonrider. It’s not like Engineering, those people all seem to spend their time maneuvering their way to being Chief. They’ve gone through at least four Chiefs, in just a short period of time. That would drive me nuts.

I appreciated Admin’s Chief Evvelin spending so much time with me and my folks, shadowing me and talking to my staff, learning what Science Division does, before she re-allocated people. I’ve lost some-sorry to say Stinky Miklos, the microbiologist wasn’t one of them, but I will admit, he seems to have finally taken our insistence on bathing daily seriously. Overall, I think I’ve gained a few top notch people. I got Risal! She needs an apprentice, her last one was Searched and impressed a dragon last year. Her being a geologist as well as a meteorologist, it only makes sense that she was finally moved to Science.

The level of conversations rose as the numbers did. Francie and K’ndar’s fire lizards winked in and out. They still resent not being allowed in the buildings, he thought.

What a strange experience the shutdown was. An entire month without having a drop everything and do this NOW situation popping up. No datalinks pinging with questions, arguments, deals. I was actually able to LOOK at my division and re-align it. I have a feeling I’m going to miss that interlude.

The crowd was animated, all of them relating their experience of The Night of The Butchers. No one had gotten much sleep other than the kids, whose parents had very wisely kept them from knowing more than bad people were coming so don’t even think of trying to use a datalink.

It’s bedlam here, Raylan thought, but it’s best to let everyone talk things out. Everyone has a story to tell, even me, he thought. After a month of wondering what the shutdown meant, and then learning, at the last minute! the horrible WHY it was necessary-oh, Captain Singh, you saved our asses-we all need this chance to talk it out. I wonder what would we have thought had her coded message not been sent. Did the database know? Did Yokohama know?  We obeyed but it was blindly. At first, I thought, we didn’t need to know about the Butchers. But now I think, oh shards, thank the stars we DO.

Listen to my folks. All of them chattering, all having had the same dread, and now allowing it to dissipate like morning fog.  It’s catharsis. It’s like Francie says, after a Thread fall, or something like this, you HAVE to talk it out, otherwise the fear will enslave you, the memories will never stop.

Let’s never mind that it builds cohesiveness.

Someone started to yawn, and of course, everyone in the room began to do so. “For star’s sakes, man, stop that! They’re contagious!!”

K’ndar laughed mid yawn. Why are yawns contagious, he wondered. Even a yawning cat or horse will set me off. I guess I’m not the only one who stayed awake for most of the night. It’s amazing that everyone on the planet seems to have obeyed the shutdown.

Dianath says they saw nothing last night Raventh had been in contact with Coastal Sea Weyr’s queen dragon. Her rider, Marais, had been one of K’ndar’s classmates.

Lord D’nis called me, P’jar and Francie to his cavern after we read Captain Singh’s message. I was so scared when Lords T’balt and D’nis said we had to be prepared to fight the drones. Only five of us, against the drones? Without our knowing how many would hit us, let alone what we could have done to fight them. With firestone? But it takes time for a dragon to build up a crop full of gas and we…

His stomach turned. We wouldn’t have had a chance. 

“I would bet my boots those drones are armed,” Lord D’nis said, “but we will have to do SOMETHING, only because we’re dragonriders. That’s what we do.” I felt terror but I also was glad all I needed to do was obey their orders. Funny how they immediately resumed their stature as leaders, accustomed to assessing a situation and deciding on strategy. Riding bronzes must be a heavy burden. I know they were scared too.

So were we dragons.  Even Corvuth and Mondevuth were afraid Raventh said. I saw the pictures in your mind of those drones. They would have killed us.

How long would we have lasted? Even had we called in other dragons? Would firestone have even fazed them? They looked metal, but acted like living things.

Lord D’nis said, even if we took them all out, a starship that size isn’t going to have just a handful of drones. “I guarantee you, we’d have lost dragons and their riders and still lost people,” he’d said.

 His heart began to pound again. He forced himself to take deep breaths to calm himself. We need to talk this out. This is what it was like after the hurricane, K’ndar remembered. For three days, as they worked to clean up, rebuild and discover what had been lost or saved, the weyrfolk related their individual experiences of surviving the hurricane.

The wave of voices filled the room.

“I don’t think I’ve ever welcomed a thunderstorm so happily in my life.”

“I really, really want to see what Yokohama saw, up there,” someone said.

“I do too.”

“The shutdown saved our lives. Now I don’t mind that I went a month without my datalink.”

“I didn’t miss mine a bit. I finally got a lot of work done.”

It was so wonderful to see the dragon meadow fill up every day with dragons from all over Pern, Francie thought. After all, I AM married to their Chief. Despite not officially being assigned to Science, she was welcomed to the division.

The memory of Landing’s dragonmeadow crowded with dragons had made her feel as if she was back home in a weyr.

 I miss that part of dragonriding, she thought.

I do too, Motanith said, so many males!! And only a queen now and then to tell me to back off.

Oh, you…Francie said to her beloved green.

The voices interrupted her reverie.

“Risal, we owe you one. How did you conjure up such a big thunderstorm? It was a beauty!”

“Aye, just the lightning alone was worth losing sleep.”

The meteorologist laughed and tapped her head.

“I did a secret rain dance,” she said, smirking.

I am so glad they shifted me to Science, she thought. Flight Ops isn’t admin, it’s not engineering, it’s not logistics, its all of them and none. I felt like an orphan. Now I don’t have to be in charge anymore, and I like Raylan and just about everyone here.

“And the dragons-how DID you keep track of them, for a month? Dozens of them, in and out…”

“I ran out of chalkboards before I ran out of dragons,” she said, “it was nice, really. So many dragonriders!”

And some were so handsome! she thought. That one man, he said he’d be back, after things calmed down. I hope so.

“Looks like Pern missed a shot to the brain, didn’t we?” someone said.

“We did.”

“It makes me wonder, though…were they alone? Was it the only one?”

Dread filled K’ndar’s stomach. Again.

“I wish you’d not said that, now my stomach’s in knots again,” someone else responded. 

“I feel the same way, but as my mother used to say, “What have you learned?” We went through one shutdown. We can do it again,” Raylan said.

Yeah, but without the antenna.”

“Do we need one? Yoko warned us once, she’ll do it again.  Even if we’d not had the warning from the captain, we’d have been okay.”

“Only because the database shut everything down. I promise you, someone would have sent a message just out of spite had they been able to.”

“And he’d be the first one I’d offer to the drones.”

“I think we should have the antenna to listen for warnings like that again.”

“But it’s been ruined.”

“Engineers say they can build one. It was broken because the retraction assembly didn’t work. You can’t blame Engineering, they didn’t know. Now they do.”

“That radio antenna was, well, remember, it was hearing not just humans but the stars, too. It’s science, for star’s sakes!”

“I have a mark that says Master Rahman will want what he calls a radio telescope now.”

“That man is telescope crazy.”

“Good thing. He SAW that ship coming.”

“How in the world can a telescope be a radio? Do they hang it from wires?”

“I have no idea but I bet the database will have plans.”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Master Astronomer Rahman!”

“Knowing him, still on Far Western, looking at stars.”

“Well, duh? So what?”

“You know, that woman who asked if Landing could be seen from space? She was right. If you ask Yokohama, she can show you standing outside your quarters.”

“If it hadn’t been for the thunderstorm…”

“They were too high up, and going too fast to see it. If they’d heard us, you bet they would have been on us like a wherry on a sick calf.”

“Gads, just thinking about those drones, I can’t get the images out of my mind.”

What we need to do is hide Landing,” P’jar said, loudly enough to be heard over the crowd.

There was a long moment of silence.

“Hide it? How? Hang a great big canvas sail over the whole thing? There’s not enough canvas in all Pern to cover Landing. And it would just as noticeable as it being uncovered.”

“No,” P’jar said, “I should have said disguise Landing. With trees. With plants, with pastures, shrubs, and flowers. Vegetation, just like the rest of Pern.” Just the idea tickled his botanist’s soul. “We need to make Landing look like just another overgrown volcanic field. We need to break up the lines, make it look natural.”

Yes, Raylan thought. Yes. Disguise. “That’s a terrific idea, P’jar. What I suggest you do is to bring that up in the main meeting which, if my inner clock is telling me, will be convening in a few minutes. Shall we all go over to the Auditorium? Data plans on pinging the Yokohama now that the aliens have, apparently, left our system.”

“What if they’re not?”

Raylan sighed. “It’s a chance Data has to take.”

The comment stopped everyone cold.

A single voice broke the silence. “I wouldn’t have that man’s job for all the marks in the world.”

____________________________________________________________

If anything, the crowd in the Auditorium was even larger.

Data was on the dais. The Council of Six, along with Lord Lytol, were seated in the front row, as this was not an official meeting with pending legislation or a hearing of grievances or petitions.

I prefer it this way, Lord D’nis said. I much rather have my back to the crowd then to have them staring up my nostrils.

The crowd was just as animated as had been the one in Science. The entire auditorium filled with voices relating how they spent The Night of the Butchers, as some dubbed it.

Many of them voiced their fear that the Butchers were still in the vicinity, just waiting to hear a single electronic peep.

Data waited until he believed as many people who were going to attend were there.

Then he motioned for quiet and began.

“Thank you, all, for coming. Last night was nerve wracking, no doubt, and thank you, Risal, for conjuring up that cracker of a thunderstorm!”

Risal, standing with her new teammates in Science, nodded.

“Well done, lassie!”

“In a few moments, I’m going to ping the Yokohama,” Data said. “We are fairly certain that the Butcher’s have left our system.”

“We don’t KNOW?” a man’s voice quavered.

Data shook his head. I really hate these ‘briefings’, he realized, there’s always going to be someone calling me out on the obvious.

“No, we don’t know. For that matter, we don’t know if the starship actually came into our system. Why? Because we were on shutdown.  You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten that we had no communications whatsoever that didn’t involve dragons, fire lizards or personal interactions.”

Commo got up to rescue Data. “Not a peep went out into space, I promise you. Not one message went out from Landing, to anywhere. Don’t worry, okay? My people know what they’re doing, communications wise,” she said. I am lying, she thought, because there was one. One. I will know who, I know the when, and the where? The Yokohama will know when she comes back on line. But these folks don’t need to know that. Right now they need ‘talk it out’ therapy.

“But maybe,” said the voice from the center of the crowd, “maybe they’re still out there, they’re listening behind themselves, just in case. Maybe all they will need to hear is the ping to the Yokohama.”

Data looked at Raylan, silently asking to be relieved from the one person who couldn’t understand. Or wouldn’t.

Raylan nodded and joined Data on the dais.

“I’m pretty sure most of you know me as Raylan, Science Division Chief,” he said.

“There are some of you who aren’t understanding what Data is saying. Let me reassure you, they’re gone.”

“And you know this how?”

Data cringed. There’s always one in the crowd who has to make a briefing into a fight.

“I don’t. But I do understand how intelligent things think. Do you really think that, after traveling over a hundred seventy light years, that they’re parked just the other side of Rukbat, waiting, after we’ve kept mum for a month, that they’re waiting for us to invite them down for a mug of klah?”

The crowd laughed. Many did not.

“These beings, if I understood what the Nathi told Captain Singh, these things are nomads, their home is their starship. They travel the galaxy, and what they do, I don’t know, but they hunt for living creatures to eat.  They eat us, remember, unlike the Nathi. I take it they’re slaves aboard the starship. They scan the universe for electronic emissions that only an advanced, intelligent civilization such as ours produce. It’s the easiest, fastest way to discover where these inhabited planets are. Any civilization with advanced communications, with spacecraft, is going to have a lot of people.

But space is unimaginably big. Think of it. Pern is one hundred and seventy light years from Earth. Between us there’s hundreds of planets and moons circling their stars. These butchers, if they stopped to check every single planet, every moon, for the signs of intelligent life they’d still be whatever part of the galaxy they evolved in. But they’re not. Their ship is traveling at a fairly high speed, certainly not light speed but so much faster than we can understand that it took them only a month, maybe, to reach us. I’m guessing, mind you, I don’t know quite when they reached Earth, or when Captain Singh’s recording went out and no one knows where the butchers came from in the first place. But I do know physics enough to say that, it takes time to slow down a monster like that starship, I’m no astronavigator but I believe they may have circled some of the Earth’s planets to bleed off speed. And they also may have done the same to regain speed, circle a planet or the star to use gravity like a slingshot.

The shutdown included keeping Yokohama dumb and blind. But Master Rahman was on watch duty the entire month, he watched the starship’s progress, heading our way. His telescopes don’t send electronic messages.  He had a dragonrider on standby to warn us if he saw it slowing down. He said nothing of the sort. Nothing. Had he seen the starship so much as begin to turn, we would have been told immediately. They didn’t. They came on, straight as an arrow.”

“They were listening, right? Listening for electronic emissions?”

“Yes.”

“But they still might be listening, and if you ping the Yokohama they’ll hear and come and kill us all,” The timid man protested.

For one long moment, ice was in everyone’s soul.

Raylan sighed. “Look, I understand your fear, but use common sense. Why should they wait around a planet that hasn’t made a sound? Let’s put it this way. Have you ever hunted in the winter?”

“The giant wherrys? Of course! Their meat is no good in the summer, you have to wait until winter when the rut is over.”

“And now there’s a rule you can’t hunt native wildlife at all. Are you saying you were a poacher?” someone in the crowd pounced.

The timid man eeped. “No! I mean, well, uhhhhhh,”

“You broke the Charter? You’re a poacher?”

“We were hungry, okay? I was a kid! We uh, we um, I grew up Holdless. I haven’t done it since then. I swear it. I don’t even like wild wherry meat, it’s too gamy.”

Raylan grinned behind his eyes. Aha, I had no intentions of flushing out a confession, but this isn’t a bad way to caution everyone else.

He caught the timid man’s eye. It was glaring.

“You know, now, that it is illegal to hunt native wildlife. I can’t see punishing you for something you did as a child, but I would advise you to never do that again.”

He waited for a moment, then said, “But still, the point is, how did you hunt game? It’s winter. There’s snow on the ground. You go out with your bow to hunt. Do you look at the hillsides, or up in the trees? Hope to see a flock flying your direction? Sit down on a rock and hope one wanders past?”

Everyone waited expectantly, then the timid man realized the question was directed at him. Not off the hook yet, Raylan thought.

“No, of course not. I would look for their tracks, and…”

“You don’t have to go on. I know what you did, you’d follow their tracks until you came upon the flock and shoot one. Right?”

“Um..”

“Right. That’s what the Butchers do, track us by our electronic tracks, so to speak. They don’t necessarily have to be voice, although most of ours are. No, all it takes is for them to be able to differentiate between a human emission and a star screaming as it’s being devoured by a black hole.”

The crowd murmured.

“And remember what Master Rahman said. With a trillion choices of direction in this vast universe, they were set on a course for US. Our emissions are so different from anything non-sentient that it’s as unmistakeable as a laser beacon. Which, I’m certain, was also something Earth had. Finding Earth was easy for them, and they’re confident that we are in their path due to our emissions.”

“Do you think they heard the transmissions from the original explorers? Because I remember learning that they transmitted our location back to Earth, just to tell them that Pern is habitable, send the colonists.”

“I can’t say yes, I can’t say no. I don’t know, but twenty five centuries makes for a signal that’s probably on the other side of the galaxy by now. No matter, they came out here, looking for us, looking for anyone, really. I bet they were assuming that we were like those on Earth, their sky full of spacecraft and the planet absolutely noisy with emissions. Thousands of signals, all together, all heading out into space, like a bright cloud that yells HERE WE ARE.

But they didn’t count on us being a low technology planet. I’m willing to bet that they passed right by us, because we kept our ears flattened and our voices silent.”

“Or maybe they were full fed after raiding that place on Earth.”

“Naw, mate. The captain said their starship was enormous. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.”

“Either way, my friends, I am fairly certain that they went right past us without even a sideways glance.”

“Let’s not forget that a laser beacon is the easiest way to find a civilization. Like a bonfire in the middle of the night,” Lord Lytol said.

The entire audience sighed, mostly in relief.

“Can we get to the real thing, now? Can we lift the shutdown?” someone said.

Data cleared his throat. “Yes. Thank you, Science. Now, I would like to make this meeting relatively brief because we all have a lot of catching up to do.”

The crowd was quiet, although several people grumbled under their breath about him not listening to their Very Real Concerns.

“Our main source of information and data transfers were due to our wonderful dragonriders, from all ends and sides of Pern.”

A low cheer rumbled through the crowd.

“All the weyrs report no activity whatsoever from yesterday,” Data said. “They had dispatched dragons to every major Hold, every Hall, and not a single report of anything alien appearing.”

“Yes, but not everyone had a thunderstorm like we did last night,” someone said.

“True. Most had clear skies, especially Far Western Continent. The dragon stationed there reported this morning to Mondevuth that Master Astronomer Rahman’s team of astronomers manned both telescopes the entire night, and saw nothing.”

“Did the Yokohama see the starship?”

Data felt anxiety grab his soul.

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m about to find out with a ping.”

“Will she wake up?”

THAT was the biggest fear in virtually everyone’s heart. Data felt it. He shrugged, unwilling to voice his anxiety.

“Let’s see if she’s awake,” he said.

“Sir, are you sure you should ping her?” said the timid man.

An aggrieved voice behind that one said, “For stars sakes, you ninny!  Didn’t you listen to Science? Get the wax out of your brain, they have no reason to hang around!! Man up!”

The crowd laughed nervously at the rude snark, but it was necessary. “It’s time to get back to work,” someone said.

The ninny snorted. “FINE but I don’t want to be eaten.”

“Unlike your poached wherry,” someone snarked.

Data waited for a moment, then said, “Here goes.”

Everyone held their breath as Data completed typing in the command to contact the Yokohama.

Yes, what if it never woke up? What if the Butcher’s gamma rays had destroyed her computers? Were they actually listening behind them? But that made no sense, and Doppler effect works through out the universe. They’re gone. I’m sure of it. But what if…what if what if what if. I could what if myself to death, he thought.

Despite being separated from the crowd by being on the dais, Data felt them breathing down his neck. In a way, he thought, it had been nice, not having datalinks constantly pinging with problems that were seldom anything more than a minor annoyance on the other side of the planet.

But on the other hand, the absence of datalinks made communications with the rest of the planet-never mind just Landing-difficult and in some cases, impossible. 

How far we’ve come, he thought, since the end of Thread and the discovery of datalinks, the constant contact with Yokohama, all of it. I don’t know if it’s for the better. Would I want to go back to the old times?

No. Even without Thread, no. It wasn’t always good times.

“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to the people crammed into the auditorium. “I have the ping all set up. Come on, Yokohama, speak to me.”

It takes five seconds for my signal to reach her, and another five for hers to reach us, he thought. These may be the longest ten seconds of my life.

He pressed the button.

The large screen over their heads was blank. Then script unfolded.

Yokohama responds to the ping. No scanning gamma rays or incoming emissions detected. Entire planetary system is clear of spacecraft. Incognito shutdown is hereby lifted.  All on board systems up and working. Stations on Pern beginning to respond. Download data accumulated by Yokohama during Incognito shutdown?

The crowd cheered. Data, relief flooding him, made the mistake of clicking ‘Yes.’

Downloading data. Download time approximately 22 hours.

“Twenty two hours?” Data shouted, but it was too late.

“Well, she’s been up there collecting for a month,” one of his techs said from her unseen spot in their control room, “I think a day is a fast download.”

“No matter,” someone said, “We were going to have to get it anyway.”

“Did you KNOW it was collecting data?”

“Honestly, no,” Data said, “You know how it was, we all were in controlled panic mode.”

“Controlled my arse. I was absolutely terrified. Especially after that captain’s message.”

“I wonder why she used such an archaic code.”

“I KNEW what it was, right away! I knew it was Morse code!!” Alfred shouted. No one had the heart to shut him up. He had, after all, been the one to immediately recognize the message as a coded one.

“I agree, it will be interesting to hear what Yoko thought of the aliens. Thank the stars she warned us.”

“It will be,” Data said, thinking it through.  It will take a while to digest the whole trove of data. It was clever of Yoko to sneak peeks, what? And how fortunate we are for whomever programmed her to warn us. Incognito was scary and it saved our planet.

Someone’s datalink pinged. Then another. Then there was a complete flood of datalinks clamoring for attention, all beeping with a month’s worth of saved up transmissions.

“They work, too!”

“Yeah,” Data mourned, the cacophony beginning to hurt his ears, “I’d gotten used to it being quiet at work.”

He sighed, then shouted to be heard above the datalinks. “Several people have forwarded suggestions as to how we might prepare for any such attacks in the future. I’m going back to work. You’re all welcome to stay here and discuss things.”

P’jar didn’t want to wait. I want to throw my disguise idea out right now and see who I can get to work with it. He called out, “Sir, may I be first?”

“Carry on, sir!” Data called.

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