Read The Dolphins of Pern for Free Online Page B

until hewas close enough to land to swim. The boat sank the moment he left it.”
    “Do me a favor, Alemi?” Aramina asked, her expression severe.
    “What?”
    “Don’t tell Readis any of those tales.”
    “Ara …” Jayge began in protest.
    She wheeled on him. “I know all too well, Jayge Lilcamp, what can happen to a child who gets its head full of
notions
!”
    Jayge pulled back and gave her a sheepish expression. “All right, Ara, I take the point. Alemi?”
    “Oh, aye, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
    There was an awkward pause and then Aramina relented. “If he asks, tell him the truth. I won’t have him lied to or put off.”
    “You want it both ways?” Jayge asked.
    She gave him a scowl, then relaxed a bit with a rueful smile on her lips. “I guess I do. But he’s only seven and the least said the best as far as I can see.”
    They were all of one mind before Alemi left the house that evening. He arranged for his first mate to take the sloop out the next day to trawl for redfins, which were still running. What he couldn’t sell fresh, they’d smoke, so he didn’t want to lose the day because he was asked to go to Landing.
    Kitrin didn’t wish him to be away from her at all.
    “I’m longer gone on the ship fishing, dear,” he gently reminded his wife. She was well gone in her pregnancy and apt to fret. He took her hand and pulled her into his embrace, stroking her fine dark hair. “And I promise I shan’t even look at those forward girls who work at Landing.”
    They both felt the baby kicking at her belly and smiled at each other.
    “You’ve only to send Bitty after me,” he assured her, nodding at the little bronze fire-lizard curled up in a sunny patch on their veranda. “Returning from Landing is much easier done than from the sea.”
    “I know, I know,” she said, and settled against the curve of him.
    If Alemi were truthful—and this was not the time to be with Kitrin so uneasy in herself—he would have admitted that being asked to visit Landing, to speak to Aivas itself, was an excitement he didn’t wish to miss, and one he would have preferred to share with no qualifications. He could, indeed, understand and appreciate Aramina’s anxieties about Readis. The boy was adventurous enough and sufficiently self-confident, perhaps, to undertake more than he was truly able to. Alemi had planned to tell him all that he had observed on this latest sail of the doll-fins: how he had taken up a position on the prow of the ship to hail the shipfish, to see if others would talk to him, to feed them the fish he had saved as thank-you. He had done this every morning and evening. To his own amazement he had begun to notice differences in the colors, even in the scars on their muzzles, so that they were distinguishable one from another. It occurred to him that doll-fins, like dragons, could be identified once one knew what to look for: like differences in shade and scar tissue.
    Alemi was also delighted at the opportunity to ride a dragon. He hadn’t had that many chances. His initial ride
between
had been at his sister Menolly’s request. She’d heard from her Master, HarperRobinton, of the settlement at Paradise River and thought Alemi might well consider sailing south and founding his own Hold. How well his sister had read his circumstances, had seen him chafing at his father’s conservatism. So he’d been conveyed a-dragonback for the initial meeting with the recently confirmed Holder, Jayge Lilcamp, and they had liked each other enough to take hold on it. He’d been conveyed twice since then to various Fishcraft meetings in the Tillek Masterfishmen Hall. Although Menolly had repeatedly told him that, as a Mastercraftsman, he had the right to call for a dragon to convey him whenever that was needful, he did not abuse the privilege.
    He had often sailed to what was now called Monaco Bay, with tithes for the Weyr and supplies for the growing population at Landing. Excavations were still