Chapter Text
Last time, Lorana escaped the ship, but ended up in the ocean. She sent her fire lizards away from her to some source of safety. And then we spent more time talking about the collapse of knowledge in the First Pass and the A+ Parenting of Wind Blossom.
Dragonsblood, Chapters 7 and 8: Content Notes: Death of a parent, Discussion of suicide, Abusive parenting,
(Still First Pass, Year 50, AL 58)
Genomics: The study of genetic material and the functions of encodes. See DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
-Glossary of terms, Elementary Biological Systems, 18th Edition
This chapter opens with the information that Sorka Hanrahan, first queen rider of Pern, is dying. Also, Sorka is M'hall's mother, so this is extra traumatic for him.
"Is it her time?" Wind Blossom's voice was calm, flat. She had seen all her friends die, save this one.
This is something worth thinking about. This situation is not unnatural for Terrans who have been gifted (or cursed) with a body that outlives their peers. It's usually portrayed as a situation that requires remedy or companionship or some other situation, with the understanding that a person is at risk for running out of reasons to continue living. If Wind Blossom were a dragonrider, she would probably be on suicide watch, even if nobody really interfered, in the same way they seemed to know about J'trel, but nobody really tried to intervene.
M'hall went back in time to collect Wind Blossom for this conversation, at Sorka's direction. Since it's Sorka's final moments, Wind Blossom is much freer with her praise for M'hall in her presence.
"He has learned wisdom," Wind Blossom said. It was her highest praise, words she had never before uttered to or about anyone. "He is a good man. Like his brothers and sisters. Blood tells. You and Sean have everything to be proud of."
The narrative points out that Sean has been gone to hyperspace for eight years at this point after being hit by an oddly clumped piece of Thread. And that Faranth never rose to mate again after that. Which was not due to her age, but for some secret reason that only Sorka and Wind Blossom know.
[Taking another look at that remark, "Blood tells" seems a lot more essentialist in the same vein as Kitti Ping was about dragon roles and the like. And this is supposed to be genuine, unspoken about anyone praise of M'hall to his mother. It might be to comfort the dying, but the author hasn't established whether Wind Blossom is the type of person to say things that aren't true because someone's dying. (So far, her characterization suggests the opposite of that, really.)]
We don't get that reason, though, instead going through an extended flashback through a deathbed conversation between Wind Blossom and Emily Boll during the Plague Year. Wind Blossom's watch-whers had soured relationships between dragonriders and everyone else, so she went into medicine instead at Benden's request, even as she secretly kept track of all the dragon-related things anyway and Emily knew that the watch-whers were part of the plan. Emily is able to help Wind Blossom a little bit, anyway.
"Wind Blossom," Emily said, gripping her wrist tightly, "you can talk to me. I know all the plans. When we're alone, you can tell me anything. It's not right that you keep everything locked up inside you, and it's not fair. In fact, as Pern's leading psychologist, I say that for your own good." When Wind Blossom said nothing, Emily continued softly, "And I say it as someone who knows how much you've suffered."
For the first time ever, Wind Blossom broke down and collapsed into Emily's arms. For how long she cried, she did not know. Afterward, Emily gave her one last hug and a bright smile, but they said nothing.
Well, that answers one question, at least - psychological practice dies with Emily Boll, and her students apparently didn't get enough of it to make themselves useful people on Pern as toxic mindsets took over.
More questions abound, however, as Wind Blossom tends to Emily, who already knows she won't survive the Fever Year, and is appalled to learn that nearly one-sixth of the colony has already been wiped out by the disease. Dragonrider health and resistance to disease is "Some of that Eridani immune boost" given to them, but not to the general population because there's not enough for everyone and they can't make more. Emily demands that Wind Blossom autopsy her corpse to find the cause of the disease and manufacture a cure for it from there, and volunteers herself to be a test subject for measuring the dosage and strength of fellis mixed with fruit juice, since that's the sort of thing Pern will need in the future to survive.
[That's a casual admission that the genetic manipulation on Pern wasn't limited to the fire-lizards providing the template for both dragons and watch-whers, but that there's been some alteration to the humans as well to make sure the dragonriders don't get as easily sick as the rest of the people. I wonder what kind of unforseen mutations that's introduced when the dragonriders start making children that are part their modified genetic code and part the code of unmodified humans. Like, that's the kind of thing that can make Kellis-Amberlee a reality. At its best, the intermixing between dragonriders and non-dragonriders would pass along the helpful immune-improving mutations to the general population. At its worst, the mixing of the two, well, Kellis-Amberlee.
Secondly, how does creating the watch-whers sour the relationship between dragonriders and the rest of the population? Watch-whers aren't competing for the same niche that dragons and dragonriders are, and they're designed to basically be invisible, out at night, and efficient at what they do. Unless the dragons want to take on night flights and the associated risks that come with them (risks and difficulties that will be spelled out explicitly in later books), watch-whers should be seen as a net good. Unless the soured relationship is the dragonriders getting huffy about the fact that their smaller and more effective cousins are physically ugly and they're worried that the burnished image of the heroic dragonrider will somehow be replaced with the watch-wher and people will stop having the proper respect for dragonriders. Which wouldn't be too far-fetched, given the egos of some dragoniders, but making fun of them is risking that they're going to call bears from the woods to eat you in retaliation.]
In the middle, though, there's more about the Eridani Way and their philosophy on life, and why Wind Blossom thinks they've failed so spectacularly, as Emily tries to get more information out of Wind Blossom (and has a revulsion at the idea of a "pain-induced block" being possible so that Wind Blossom wouldn't be able to tell certain secrets. There isn't such a thing in Wind Blossom, but it's apparently something that could happen.)
"In the Eridani Way we are taught that harmony is everything. A good change is invisible, like the wind. It belongs—it seems like an obvious part of the ecosystem.
"You remember the ancient tailors' saying: Measure twice, cut once?" she continued.
Emily nodded.
"The Eridani Way would say measure a million times, then a million times more and see if you can't possibly find a way to avoid the cut. 'A world is not easily mended', they say.
[…more talk about how this way was drilled into Kitti Ping, Wind Blossom, and her sister, who is back on Tau Ceti, watching that world…]
"No," Wind Blossom corrected. "Every time an ecosystem is altered there must be those that watch it and bring it back into harmony."
"More than one?" Emily asked.
"Of course."
"But here, on Pern—Tubberman?" Emily was surprised. Then she grew thoughtful. "I'd always wondered why it was so easy for him to gain access to such valuable equipment. I realized that the Charter permitted it, but it had seemed odd at the time that no one had been guarding the equipment more zealously."
Wind Blossom agreed, secretly relieved that the conversation had turned in this direction. She discovered, in talking with Governor Boll, that she was not ready to reveal all her secrets.
Which makes it sound like Ted Tubberman was not one of the Eridani Adepts sent to bring the place back into harmony, or that he was, but that Wind Blossom doesn't want to confirm that to Emily. I can't tell if the author is trying to slide some retcons in there and keeps having to couch it in ambiguity, or if these are supposed to be deceptions thrown our way so that we don't find out who the other ecosystem-harmonizers are (or were.)
[No, this is definitely a retcon of earlier books, meant, though, to make it so that Tubberman was authorized to get the resources he did and use them, rather than having broken into the Stores without permission and created abominations with that information and knowledge. But grubs first, which are, again, based on what's in this chapter, far more in line with the Eridani way than what Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom have done in creating the dragons and the watch-whers. (The felines are definitely not in line, and the reading audience of today has more information about how much cats are basically a bad idea for any environment they're introduced into, since they tend to hunt and kill without regard for sustainability and breed up large litters of similar predators to do the same. Cats are an invasive species in so many ecosystems.)]
I'm also thinking that Wind Blossom is holding herself to an impossible standard. The Eridani Way might work in a high-tech galactic society with all those resources and knowledge available, but Pern is deliberately playing pastoral and has an unexpectedly hostile part of living on the planet. But if Kitti Ping tried to hold her daughter to those standards, then I can see why the resentment. And a little bit of why Wind Blossom thinks that discouraging her own children from trying to discover the secrets of the Eridani Way is a good idea. Her methods are still utter shit, though.
Emily dies, and after her death, there's another segment that I desperately would like to read queerly. And link to Wind Blossom and Sorka's knowing of the secret why Faranth never rose to mate again as another queer thing. (Not that it will happen, because queer women don't exist on Pern textually.)
After a moment, she [Wind Blossom] spoke. "When I first saw her, she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She would light up the room, lift the spirits of everyone who met her. She did not allow even the threat of total annihilation to upset her."
"When the Nathi were bombing Tau Ceti day and night, it was Governor Boll who pulled everyone together. She worked tirelessly, always there, always ready—"
"I had heard," Pierre [Emily's husband] interrupted, "but never like this."
"I was young, still a girl," Wind Blossom continued. "My mother was often away, unavailable. When I did see her, it was for my lessons—and my scoldings." She sighed. "Governor Boll always found the time to say something encouraging to me. Even when cities were being obliterated, she would still find the time to talk to to a young girl."
"I did not know," Pierre said.
"I did not tell anyone," Wind Blossom confessed. "My mother would have been furious, and I was too embarrassed to tell Governor Boll myself."
It's more likely that it's hero-worship and someone making a positive, possibly maternal, impression in the life of a young woman who desperately needed good role models while all sorts of chaos was raining down around her, but it could also equally well read as an unrequited crush on Emily Boll, especially with the idea that Kitti Ping would be furious if she knew. [Here's another one of those places where the setting that already exists could be used to provide some useful queerness or representation without it seeming like it's been shoved into the space for the purposes of representation. Yes, Wind Blossom has a daughter. No, we don't know who the father is. But there's nothing that says that Wind Blossom could have been bisexual, and crushing hard on Governor Boll and Sorka, who is a dragonrider, after all, and while Sorka very clearly loved Sean and had his children, there's nothing past Anne's rules about gender and sexuality, as codified by Kitti Ping, that says Sorka has to be 100% heterosexual. Even if Wind Blossom and Sorka never actually acted on a mutual attraction, it could just be there, as part of this setting, and given that we already have canonically gay and bisexual men in this setting, it's not that hard to extend that outward to lesbians and bisexual women. (We'll get lesbians and pansexual women when we get to Fiona, Xhinna and Taria, even if the execution is pretty cringey on all three of them.)
Emily's donation of her body to science turns out to be the key to breaking the fever: the cause of the illness is a hybrid bacteria formed of Terran and native Pernese elements. The people who were trying to figure out the disease were looking in all the wrong places, based on the correct symptom data they had been working with. Wind Blossom is able to isolate the mutated parts, sequence their genes, and then develop a vaccine that everyone eventually gets. And that stops the epidemic, although the great cost has already been paid.
Then comes a decision that can only be described as "catastrophically unintelligent."
In private conversations first with Pierre and then with the recovered Paul Benden, it had been decided that it was better to ascribe the epidemic to a "mysterious" illness rather than a crossover infection—at least until Wind Blossom could train enough medical personnel to combat any future crossovers. Because the vaccine had been introduced along with a course of treatment, it was easy to convince most people that the treatments were only palliative and that only those with natural immunities had survived, leaving the survivors unconcerned about future recurrences.
[A What-The-Fuck Cocowhat.]
I can understand not wanting to cause mass panic, and perhaps even not wanting to cause people to despair about the superbugs that could develop at any time and wipe the rest of them out, but tell me again why the current path is chartering itself to remove as much of this learned knowledge and technique as it can? Much earlier on in publication (if later chronologically), the knowledge of vaccination through immune transfer survives and is resuscitated. And if the danger really is that mutations will develop that the Pernese can't adapt to fast enough before they all die out completely, then the survey team that said this world was a-okay doesn't get a whole lot of cookies for recommending, say, a long-term experiment was possible as a pilot. (They were also down personnel, on a mission that could have/should have been aborted once they weren't able to perform their functions adequately, so they shouldn't be blamed.)
All of this Emily data is to establish that Emily wrote a note when she died, told Wind Blossom to give it to Sorka, and Sorka and Wind Blossom eventually became good friends, so much that Emorra is a portmanteau of Emily and Sorka's names, and Pierre and Sorka were her godparents.
On the nonreligious world, we might note. Because godparents are supposed to be people who have the same religious faith and promise to bring up the child in that faith and be there for them in relation to that faith. (At least, that's how I learned it.) Yet another example of "it's actually really hard to get rid of religion, people!" that the authors haven't noticed, much less put any effort into excising. [Commenters on the original point out that "godparent" has lost a lot of its religious connotations in 21st century Terra, so this could be unexamined culture coming through, but the Hanrahans were patterned after Irish Catholics, I suspect, and so they wouldn't have been using "godparent" in a secular sense. Which again goes to show how hard it is to get rid of religion entirely, because there's always something there that either has its origins in religious practice or could be bent to the purpose of religious practice.]
As Sorka is dying, Wind Blossom is concerned that the practical knowledge contained in doing, rather than studying, hasn't yet been fully transferred from the oldest generation to the youngest. Sorka's more sanguine about it, saying that lost skills can be rediscovered, but Wind Blossom points out that rediscovery usually comes at a cost, and for certain parts of the collective knowledge, that cost can be incredibly steep. The two then discuss what their fears are about how Pern is going to turn out.
"But it disturbs me because it shows that people are beginning to adopt a caste system."
"And how does that affect the Charter?" Sorka mused.
"Sociologically, I can see why this 'elevation,' this endowing of the old lord and lady titles, makes sense in our young population," Wind Blossom said.
[…Sorka says they've been over this before…]
"The youngsters needed to relinquish a lot of control to the older colonists simply because we older people had learned the skills needed to survive. And survival on Pern is still touch and go—as these young people who do not heed their elders discover with the forefeit of their lives."
[…Sorka wants Wind Blossom to get to the point…]
"So Pern's going to have a bunch of lords and ladies in the form of Weyrleaders, Weyrwomen, and the men and women who run the holds," Sorka supplied when Wind Blossom's silence stretched.
[…Torene nearly interrupts the conversation with her annoyance at M'hall not informing her of Sorka's impending demise…]
"So our society will ossify and stratify at least until the end of this Pass."
"And then?"
Wind Blossom shook her head. "Then population pressures will force an expansion of the Holder population and the creation of new Holds across this continent. The lack of Thread should allow the dragonriders several generations in which to increase their numbers and recover from this first Pass; the dragonriders in the next Pass should be much more able to handle the onslaught. There will be pressure in both the Weyrs and the holds to consolidate what they have and to build conservatively. Any skills not directly needed in expansion or retention will atrophy."
"That's already happening."
"By the next Pass the skills needed to maintain our older, noncritical equipment will have been lost."
It's an interesting commentary from this author that when faced with an existential threat, what humans do is revert to feudal social structures and ruthlessly prune any knowledge not deemed immediately useful to survival. The older people who know how to survive are going to be pushed into leadership roles, yes, because they theoretically have the wisdom and experience to be able to lead. Then again, Admiral Paul Benden and Governor Emily Boll might know a thing or two about how to get large groups of people to do what you want them to do and things like logistics and infrastructure and public health. It is entirely possible that the colonists could have adhered to their libertarian form of governance, held together by Charter and other agreements drafted and enacted as cooperative entities. They could have decided on a democratically-elected oversight and governance body. They could have assented to a temporary dictatorship to be dissolved at the end of the Pass. They could have elected two consuls, each with veto power over the other, and then had their decisions promulgated by an administrative staff that also served as peacekeeping officers.
The possible governance situations on Pern in the face of the disasters didn't have to be "vassalage feudalism in the style of Terran Europe, 400-1700 C.E.", and the explanations given here by Wind Blossom and Sorka don't give any reasons why this form of government, guild specialization, and mounted military is actually better than any other. It is going to be this way because the author has to make sure that it goes this way, or his mother won't approve of what he's done with the place. I have heard many an author say that restrictions sometimes help make the stories come out better and stronger, but it didn't seem to help here.
[I'll admit that I'm laughing a lot more now at the possibility of a libertarian utopia managing to hold itself together long enough to fight back against thread, when such things in the small scale, like cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other blockchain-related material that was supposed to be a libertarian utopia turned out to be breeding grounds for grifters and other unscrupulous people. Turns out that either libretarianism carries a certain amount of amorality toward the society that it tries to build or there are a lot of people who think libertarians are easy marks. Could be both.
It's still not adequately explained how the Charter, with its mostly libertarian, everyone is an autonomous individual who can freely enter into and break alliances with everyone else, ideas ends up calcifying into an authoritarian system of vassalage feudalism for some, serfdom for others, and a clear caste ranking that everyone is supposed to intuitively understand and respect at all times, even in their own minds. I say "adequately explained," rather than how it's possible, because I can see how it happened. From the perspective of 2022, after the attempted insurrection and the sycophantic judiciary and the obstructionist legislatures trying to prevent things, while the sympathetic legislatures attempt to enshrine in law the discrimination they want to exercise, it's not that hard to see how a document like the Charter could have led to such an authoritarian state. And, probably, how after a few generations of reality not living up to the hype in the Charter, there are some people who are in positions of power that want to consolidate that and set themselves up as Dictator-for-Life for their specific area. Which gets other people to do the same, since they're afraid of losing their power to someone else, and then we've landed here. I would have liked to believe that the colonists were smarter than this and would have decided on a different means of governance, but these are the colonists we are talking about, who sometimes appear to have trouble finding their way out of a wet paper bag.]
Plot-wise, Sorka tries, as Emily did, to pry some secrets and knowledge out of Wind Blossom, to get her to admit that some of her failed watch-wher eggs were deliberately that way to make Wind Blossom look less skilled than her mother. And Sorka's not entirely sure she accepts why Benden and Boll were so willing to fling themselves at Pern when their skills were still needed in the civilized world. We learn that the Eridani usually assign three bloodlines to the task of watching over an ecosystem, and that Pern is the only assignment they made without fully knowing the ecosystem backwards and forwards. Sorka and Wind Blossom agree that dragons and watch-whers are a weak point, because there aren't nearly enough of them to ensure the species survives, even if several individuals get wiped out by a new bacterial or viral strain before the herd can adapt well enough to fight it off or become immune to it.
The rest of Chapter 7 is "Sorka sees her family in turn, expresses her will that her body is to be autopsied by Wind Blossom, echoing Emily Boll from many years before, and dies, surrounded by the people that love her and that she loves. After Wind Blossom makes Sorka's body ready for transport, M'hall takes Wind Blossom and Sorka back to Fort, arriving shortly before his departure." The only thing that's worth mentioning in the entire sequence is this:
"What—" M'hall swallowed, and continued more strongly, "What did you do?" He did not need to say "when your mother died."
Wind Blossom reflected on the question. Then she looked up and answered him honestly: "My mother never loved me. When she died it was my obligation to assume her dishonor, and she savored passing it on to me."
Wind Blossom gestured to Sorka. "She showed me some of her love. I felt like the desert in a cloudburst," she continued softly. Her voice hardened. "For my mother, I could never be good enough."
I'm still not fully cognizant of what this dishonor supposedly is (breaking with the Eridani Way?) nor why Wind Blossom describes Kitti Ping as savoring passing it on. And there's still this continued unwillingness to show any sort of love or affection for Wind Blossom. Is this Kitti deliberately trying to get her descendants to abandon the knowledge they have? Or is Kitti at least as shitty a parent and fully blameable for how Wind Blossom parents, as well? I don't know, and of this is supposed to be a big mystery with a reveal, the author is doing a terrible job of keeping my interest.
[With time and rereading the quoted passages, it does seem more and more like we're supposed to see Pern as odd compared to how the Eridani usually do things, and that there's a strong likelihood that Kitti Ping did not follow the precepts she was taught in creating things, and therefore the dishonor she passes to Wind Blossom is that she's part of the family that did these large sweeping changes that weren't necessary and weren't well-thought out, and that now everyone is stuck with. Wind Blossom seems to understand this, and thinks the best way to handle it is to make sure that none of her descendants or students know enough about enough that the dishonor would also be passed to them, even though there will be talk about whose responsibility looking after everything will be when Wind Blossom dies. Kitti Ping is still a shitty parent, even if the narrative is constructing it in such a way that there's possibly an ulterior motive, one that might even make sense to the reader, as to why Kitti Ping was a deliberately shitty parent to Wind Blossom.]
Proteomics: The study of proteins, typically those created by genetic codes, and how they work.
-Glossary of terms, Elementary Biological Systems, 18th Edition
Chapter 8 is also short, and consists of Wind Blossom's return, collapse from exhaustion due to time travel, cerebral biopsy on Sorka, her inability to use Sorka as a training cadaver for Tieran's facial reconstruction (which was one of Sorka's permissions to Wind Blossom), which leads to Emorra comforting Wind Blossom (and realizing that Wind Blossom never comforted her this way, and neither did Kitti Ping comfort Wind Blossom this way,) and Tieran calling an emergency because two fire-lizards have appeared at his drum tower, one dead, one deathly sick. Tieran wants the fire lizard to get general antibiotic to survive, Wind Blossom tells him there may not be enough to bring the fire lizard back, and if they use it, there won't be any for his facial reconstruction surgery. Tieran thinks about it, and then demands the antibiotic for the fire lizard again, saying "It's the only chance he has, Wind Blossom." And that's really it. One time loop resolved, another started, because I'm betting heavily that the two fire-lizards now on scene in the First Pass came from Lorana. [They do.]
Chapter 9 next week. And also, I'm getting really tired of these definitions as our text for the First Pass segments. They're not really being any sort of helpful in any way.