Free The Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

forward to having a new hold farther down the river. He was, too.Jayge’s boundaries were confirmed; Alemi, Swacky, Temma, and Nazer had helped the dragonriders survey the new hold that would start on the eastern side of the river, below the bend that marked the end of his Paradise River Hold, and continue down to the origin of the river. The best site would be in the foothills, as the new arrivals were farmercraftsmen; they would round up and protect the wild runner-and herdbeasts, and grow the grain crops in the higher lands that did not grow along the coast.
    Alemi had met the Keroon leaders, a large family complete with aunties and uncles, who had applied for the holding. Good solid men and women. He looked forward to having them as neighbors. And there was talk of another group interested in settling the southwestern bank of the Paradise.
    Alemi didn’t have as much time for his new enthusiasm as he would have liked. He’d have to assign sailors to help ship the settlers’ belongings down the Paradise to the Bend, so his fishing crews would be shorchanded. With the whitefish running, he wanted to net as much as possible. He and his crews were out all the hours of the lengthening days, trawling and long-lining. Alemi was extra mindful of some of the precautions Aivas had mentioned—precautions Fishmen always observed but without knowing why: taking care for the size of the nets, as well as the old warnings of the “sin” of netting a shipfish. Even his father, who hadn’t the imagination to be superstitious, followed those precepts. Now Alemi knew the reason behind those practices, but he doubted his father would ever admit to it—much less admit that dolphinscould talk and were intelligent. One more of the many gulfs between them.
    Armed with Aivas’s confirmation of the intelligence of shipfish/dolphins, Alemi did inform Master Idarolan of his investigations and his plan to renew the partnership to mutual benefit—though he wasn’t sure what benefit the dolphins might derive. As he respected the Masterfishman and did not wish to lower himself in his Craftmaster’s estimation, he qualified his interest by virtue of his and Readis’s escape and the turbulence and unpredictability of these tropical waters. He sent that message off by Tork, his bronze fire-lizard. The creature’s speedy return pleased him: proof of his success at using Menolly’s sensible suggestions to train the fire-lizard. Alemi felt that if he had handled a fire-lizard’s instruction so well, he could certainly deal with the more intelligent dolphins.
    Aware that water magnified sound, Alemi nonetheless felt he would need a larger bell than the one on his ship—which he was borrowing whenever she was at anchor. He wondered if the alarm triangle that Jayge had put up outside his hold after Thella’s invasion would also call the dolphins but quickly discarded that notion. A triangle just didn’t produce the same resonances.
    So he needed a bell. He sent Tork on a second journey that day, to the Smithcrafthall in Telgar Hold, asking them to cast a bell for him, similar to the one at Monaco Bay.
    The Mastersmith Fandarel sent back a message to Masterfishman Alemi that he would be happy to cast a bell of that splendid size, but that the commissionwould have to wait its torn, what with all the other work that the Halls were currently undertaking to the purpose of eliminating Thread. Alemi had to be content with the promise. In the meantime, Masterharper Robinton found him a small handbell, then later sent him a message by his fire-lizard Zair that the harper at Fort Hold thought he’d seen a big bell in the extensive storage area of the Hold’s lower levels.
    Every evening Alemi studied the notes Aivas had given him until he had memorized the hand signals and the basic commands that he hoped had survived in shipfish memories. As he studied, he was occasionally given to fits of incredulous head shaking.
    “Why does reading those sheets