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Jaxom regarded her in puzzled astonishment. "He's more vindictive than F'lar!"
Sharra sighed dejectedly. "I m not sure that we can do what he wants. It's all so very complicated. And we're so limited in our understanding. He may be the machine, but I feel like one, doing this and that without knowing why."
She was more buoyant three days later when she told Jaxom that Aivas had found the appropriate parasitic vector.
"He says that similar life-forms were found in micro-gravity 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."
Jaxom managed a suitably appreciative grin for her enthusiasm. "Who are we to protest an Aivas pronouncement? What next?"
"Well, he's got all the fire-lizards searching the ovoid streams for the springs. Sometimes they're embedded right on the surface of an ovoid. We've had to start up nine more cold capsules to contain the things and infect them with the zebedee-makers."
"Zebedees, the Thread fleas!" Jaxom said, teasingly.
"Well, fleas are parasites, and I could wish we were able to disimprove some of them quickly! As it is, the time we have is nowhere near long enough for the work we have to do."
She had been disgusted to discover canine fleas on Jarrol, who was incurably attached to one of the kitchen-spit animals. "Fleas!" She shook her head. "That will be my priority project, as soon as we're finished with Aivas's: to disimprove fleas."
"Whenever that'll be," Jaxom added. There were so many Aivas endeavors, at various stages of completion, that he wondered if any of them would get finished on time now that the deadline drew nearer.
"Would you and Ruth have time to get me back to the Yokohama tomorrow before you fly Fall?" Sharra asked.
Jaxom groaned. "I thought you'd be here a few days."
Sharra looked properly repentant. "I've been over everything for the Gather with Brand and the other Stewards, and all's ready for our guests. But this is an especially critical time, Jaxom..." Her eyes pleaded for his understanding.
"You'll be exhausted. You won't enjoy the Gather..." he heard himself saying, and then he pulled her into his arms, savoring the feel of her body against his, and the spicy fragrance of her hair. Gathers were always special times for them.
"Please, Jaxom?" Her lips brushed his neck.
"I'm just griping, love. I could never keep you where you didn't wish to be."
"Won't it be wonderful, when this is all over, to be just us again?" she asked. "I want a daughter, too, you know."
That earnest wish elicited a response he was glad to make.
Threadfall was uneventful, though it was not one in which the spaceships' shields had carved tu
"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."
"His knowing when and where he is?" Jaxom asked slyly.
"Precisely. An explanation is needed."
"They usually are, with you!"
"Flippancy has always covered apprehension. Candor is required. There are three engines that must be exploded to push the Red Star out of an of hazardous to Pern. Two of those explosions have already taken place."
"What?" Jaxom sat upright in the comfortable chair and stared at the screen in front of him.
"As you are aware, records from every Weyr, Hall, and Hold were presented and analyzed. Two small entries illuminate an anomaly.
"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."
Stu
"Your perception is acute."
"My fear is also, Aivas!"
"Man is wise to fear: it sharpens the sense of self preservation."
"But what I felt when I saw the first crater was not fear. It was-it had to be-it was as if I knew it had to be there! I discounted such a ridiculous notion at the time. And you, Aivas, would not have me believe that I have been there before?"
"The time paradox has bewildered many. Your presentiment of involvement with the crater is unusual, but similar incidents are reported in the a
"Are they?" Jaxom asked facetiously. "I'm not at all sure I appreciate the position you've put me in-that is, if I understand you correctly."
"How do you understand what has been said?"
"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."
"No, that's wrong," Jaxom said, struggling to understand. "We wouldn't have gone yet. So wed still be here. We won't be here if we fail when we try it. No, no!" He waved one hand irritably at his confusion.
"You have gone. You have been successful, and each of those previous explosions has caused Long Intervals-which are inexplicable by any other rationale-thus setting up the planet for the final orbital dislocation."
"Now wait a minute," Jaxom said, waggling his finger at the screen in an aggravated fashion. "We've done a lot of queer things to propitiate you, Aivas, and we've done them because you've proved to be right..."