Glory Season

  Maia shook her head, unsure what to think. Later, when happenstance appeared to bring her alongside Renna’s mount, the man turned to her and said in a low voice, “Actually, these animals aren’t much different than ones I knew on Earth. A bit stockier, and this weird striping. I think the skull’s bigger, but it’s hard to recall.”

  Maia blinked in surprise. “You’re … from Earth? The real …?”

  He nodded, a wistful expression on his face. “Long ago and far away. I know, you thought maybe Florentina, or some other nearby system. No such luck, I’m afraid.

  “What I meant, though, is that your friends back there are wrong. Half the worlds in the Human Phylum have horse variants, some much stranger than these. Women ride more often than men, it’s true. But this is the first time I’ve heard it said males aren’t built for it!” He laughed. “Now that you mention it, I guess it does seem strange we don’t hurt ourselves.”

  “You heard all that?” Maia asked. At the time, she’d thought he was too far ahead.

  He tapped one of his ears. “Thicker atmosphere than my birthworld, by far. Carries sound better. I can hear whispers quite some distance, though it also means I get splitting headaches when people shout. You won’t tell, will you?”

  He winked for the second time that night, and Maia’s sense of alienation evaporated. In an instant he was just another harmless, friendly sailor, on winter leave after a long voyage. His confidential disclosure was natural, an expression of trust based on the fact that they had known each other and shared secrets before.

  Maia looked up at the starry vault. “Point to Earth,” she asked.

  Rising in his stirrups, Renna searched the sky. At last he settled back down. “Sorry. If we’re still awake near morning, I should be able to find the Triffid. Sol is near its left eye-stalk. Of course, most of the nearer stars of the Phylum are hidden behind the God’s Brow nebula—what you call the Claw—just east of the Triffid.”

  “You know a lot about our sky, for someone who’s been here less than a year.”

  Renna let out a sigh. His expression grew heavier. “You have long years, on Stratos.”

  Maia sensed it might be better for the moment to refrain from further questions. Renna’s face, which had appeared youthful on first sight, now seemed troubled and weary. He’s older than he looks, she realized. How old would you have to be, to travel as far as he has? Even if they have freezers on starships, and move close to the speed of light.

  She couldn’t put all the blame for her ignorance on Lamatia’s selective education. Such subjects had always seemed far removed from matters she had expected to concern her. Not for the first time, Maia wondered, Why did we virtually abandon space? Did Lysos plan it that way? Maybe to help make sure no one found us again?

  If so, it must have only made for a worse shock to the savants and councillors and priestesses in Caria, when the Visitor Ship entered orbit, last winter. They must have been thrown into utter chaos.

  This has to be what that old bird was talking about, on the tele in Lanargh! Maia realized. Renna must have already been kidnapped then. They were putting out feelers, trying to find him without disturbing the public.

  Maia knew what Leie’s thought would be, at this point. The reward!

  It must be what Thalla and Kiel and the others are after. Of course Thalla had been lying, back in the sanctuary corridors. They hadn’t come for her, after all. Or at least not her alone. Their main objective must have been Renna all along, which explained the sidesaddle. Why else bring such a thing all this way, unless to fetch a man?

  Not that she blamed them. Maia was accustomed to being unimportant. That they had bothered to spring her, as well, was enough to win her gratitude. And Thalla’s attempt to lie about it had been sweet.

  The open plain ended abruptly when they arrived at broken ravine country similar to the type Maia remembered, where Lerner Clan dug their ores and spilled slag from their foundry. She guessed this was much farther north and east, but the contours were similar—tortured eroded canyons crossing the prairie like scars of some ancient fight. Carefully, the party dropped into the first set of narrow washes, descending past nesting sites where burrower colonies made vain, threatening noises to drive the humans and horses away. The chirruping sounds grew triumphant as their efforts seemed to work, and the threat passed.

  Baltha took over navigating the increasingly twisty maze where, at some points, only the topmost sixty degrees or so of sky were visible, making for slow going even after two oil lanterns were lit.

  A halt was called by a shallow, gurgling stream and everyone dismounted, some gingerly. None more so than the man, who hissed and rubbed his legs, walking out stiffness. Baltha’s colleagues nodded knowingly. In fact, though, only embarrassment kept Maia from hobbling about just like him. Instead, she stretched surreptitiously, behind her horse. Nearby, the leaders gathered round a lantern.

  “This must be the place,” Kiel said, jabbing a map sketched onto lambskin, so much tougher than paper. Baltha shook her head. “Another stream, a klick or so on. I’ll tell ya when.”

  “You’re sure? We wouldn’t want to miss—”

  “Won’t,” the tall blonde said, curtly. “Now let’s mount. Wastin’ time.”

  Maia saw Thalla and Kiel look at each other dubiously after Baltha left. “Comes off knowin’ the place like her own back-hand.” Thalla muttered. “Now how would that be? Only Perkinites grow up ’round here.”

  Kiel made a cautioning sign to her friend. “One thing for sure. That’s no damn Perkinite.”

  Thalla shrugged as Kiel rolled up the map. “There’s worse,” she said under her breath. When the two of them walked past Maia, Thalla gave her a tousle on the top of her head. The gesture would have seemed patronizing if there hadn’t been something like genuine affection in it.

  With the elation of escape starting to fade into physical fatigue, Maia realized, There’s more going on here than I thought. I’d better start paying closer attention.

  Half an hour later, they reached another stream under looming canyon walls. This time, Baltha signaled for everyone to guide their mounts into the shallow watercourse before she spoke.

  “We split up here. Riss, Herri, Blene, an Kau will go on toward Demeterville, making tracks and confusing the trail. Maia, you’ll go too. The rest’ll wade upstream about two klicks before heading west, then south. We’ll meet sou’west of Clay Town on the seventh, if Lysos guides us.”

  Maia stared at the strangers she had been told to accompany, and felt a frisson course her spine. “No,” she said emphatically. “I want to go with Kiel and Thalla.”

  Baltha glowered. “You’ll go where you’re told.”

  Panic welled and Maia’s chest was tight. It felt like a repetition of her separation from Leie, when they parted in Lanargh for the last time, on separate ships. A certainty overwhelmed her that once out of sight, she would never see her friends again.

  “I won’t! Not after all that!” She jerked one hand in the direction of the prison tower that so recently held her in its grip. Maia turned to her friends for support, but they wouldn’t meet her eyes. “The upstream party ought to be small as possible …” Kiel tried to explain. But Maia learned more from the woman’s uneasy demeanor. This was arranged in advance, she realized. They don’t want me along while they escape with their precious alien! A heavy resignation swarmed into Maia’s heart, overwhelming even her burning resentment.

  “Maia comes with us.”

  It was Renna. Maneuvering his horse next to hers, he went on. “Your plan counts on our pursuers following an easy trail to the larger party, while we others make our getaway. That’s fine for me. Thanks. But not so good for Maia when they catch up.”

  “The girl’s just a larva,” Baltha retorted. “They don’t care about her. Probably aren’t even looking for her.”

  Renna shook his head. “You want to risk her freedom on a bet like that? Forget it. I won’t let her be taken back to that place.?
??

  Through surging emotion, Maia saw a silent interplay among the women. They had thought of Renna as a commodity, but now he was asserting himself. Men might rank low on the Stratos social ladder, nevertheless they stood higher than most vars. Moreover, most of these vars must have served on ships, at one time or another. It surely influenced matters that Renna had a well-cultivated “captain’s voice.”

  Kiel shrugged. Thalla turned and grinned at Maia. “Okay by me. Glad to have you with us, virgie.”

  Baltha cursed lowly, accepting the swing of consensus, but not gracefully. The rangy blonde brought her mount over near her friends, who were taking the other route, and leaned over to clasp forearms with them. In a similar manner, Thalla and Kiel embraced Kau. The parties separated then, Baltha carefully swiveling her mount down the center of the current. Taking the rear, Maia and Renna called farewell to their benefactors, who had already begun climbing a thin trail up the next canyon wall. One of them—Maia couldn’t make out who—lifted a hand to wave back, then the four women disappeared around a bend.

  “Thank you,” Maia said to Renna softly, as their mounts sloshed slowly along. Her voice still felt thick from that moment of surprise and upset.

  “Hey,” the man said with a smile. “We castaways have to hang together, right? Anyway, you seem like a tough pal to have along, if trouble’s ahead.”

  Of course he was jesting with her. But only partly, she realized with some surprise. He really did seem glad, even relieved, that she was coming with him.

  Traveling single file, they fell into silence, letting the horses pick a careful path along the uneven streambed. Fortunately, they were out of the wind. But the surrounding winter-chilled rocks seemed to suck heat right out of the air. Maia put her hands under her armpits, squeezing the coat tight, exhaling breath that turned into visible fog.

  Anyway, it was reassuring knowing that each minute put more distance behind them. The escape plan was a risky one, counting on panic and excessive haste on the part of their pursuers. True professionals—like the Sheldon clan of hunters back in Port Sanger—wouldn’t be fooled by so simple a trick. Maia hadn’t heard of tracking skill being much famed among Long Valley’s farmers, but it was still an assumption.

  Even if they slipped their immediate pursuers, they remained surrounded by enemies. Few places on Stratos were politically more homogeneous than this upland colony of extremists, with allied Perkinite clans stretching all the way to Grange Head. Once aroused by the news, there would be posses and mobs swarming after them from all directions.

  Maia thought she could now see the big picture … how desperate the Perkinites must be. Much more was involved than their radical plan to use a drug to promote winter sparking. The hive matriarchies of Long Valley had become involved in a far more brazen scheme: kidnapping the Interstellar Visitor—Renna—right out of the hands of the council in Caria City. It was a risky endeavor. But how better to reduce, maybe eliminate, the chance of restored contact with the Hominid Phylum?

  Nothing would make extreme Perkinites crazier than having the sky open up. Spaceships calling regularly from those old worlds of “animal rut and sexual tyranny.” Worlds where fully half of the inhabitants are men.

  Half.

  Despite having read those lurid novels, it was hard to picture. What, in the name of Lysos, did a world need with so many extra males? Even if they were quiet and well-behaved most of the time, which she doubted, there were only so many tasks a man could be trusted with! What was there for them to do?

  Contact would change Stratos forever, polluting it with alien ideas, alien ways. Despite her hatred of those who had imprisoned her, Maia wondered if they might not have a point.

  She found herself reacting tensely again, when Renna maneuvered his mount alongside. But all he had for her was a smile and a question about the name of a species of shrub that clung tenaciously to the canyon walls. Maia answered, guessing it related to a type found at the Orthodox temple in Grange Head. She couldn’t tell him whether it was a purely native life-form or descended from bio-engineered Earth varieties, released by the Founders.

  “I’m trying to get an idea how introduced forms were designed to fit in, and how much adaptation took place afterward. You have some pretty sophisticated ecologists at the university, but figures are hardly a substitute for getting out and seeing for yourself.”

  Although they were hard to make out in the dim starlight, his features seemed revived from the earlier moodiness. Maia found herself wondering if his eyes would shine strange colors by day, or if his skin, which she had only seen in lantern or moonlight, would turn out to be some weird, exotic shade.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to interpret an alien’s facial expressions by past experience, but Renna seemed excited to be here, away from cities and savants and, especially, his prison cell, finally exploring the surface of Stratos itself. It was contagious.

  “All told, it seems your Founders were pretty good designers, making clever changes in the humans, plants, and animals they set down here, before fitting them into the ecosystem. They made some mistakes of course. That’s hardly unusual.…”

  It felt blasphemous, hearing an outsider say such things. Perkinites and other heretics were known to criticize some of the choices made by Lysos and the other Founders, but never before had Maia heard anyone speak this way about their competence.

  “… Time has erased most of the errors, by extinction or adaptation. It’s been long enough for things to settle down, at least among the lower life-forms.”

  “Well, after all, it’s been hundreds of years,” Maia responded.

  Renna tilted his head. “Is that how long you think humans have lived on Stratos?”

  Maia frowned. “Um … sure. I mean, I don’t remember an exact figure. Does it matter?”

  He looked at her in a way she found odd. “I suppose not. Still, that fits with the way your calendars …” Renna shook his head. “Never mind. Say, is that the sextant you told me about? The one you used to correct my latitude figures?”

  Maia glanced at her wrist and the little instrument wrapped in its leather case. Renna was being kind again. Her improvements to his coordinates, back in jail, had been minimal. “Would you like to see it?” she asked, unstrapping the sextant and holding it toward him.

  He handled it carefully, first using his fingertips to trace the engraved zep’lin design on the brass cover, then unfolding and delicately experimenting with the sighting arms. “Very nice tool,” he commented. “Handmade, you say? I’d love to see the workshop.”

  Maia shivered at the thought. She had seen enough of male sanctuaries.

  “Is this the dial you use for adjusting azimuth?” he asked.

  “Azimuth? Oh, you mean star-height. Of course, you need a good horizon …”

  Soon they were immersed in talk about the art of navigation, picking their way through a maze of terms inherited from altogether different traditions—his using complex machines to cross unimaginable emptiness, and hers from a heritage of countless lives spent refining rules learnt the hard way, battling the elements on Stratos’s capricious seas. Renna spoke respectfully of techniques that she knew had to seem primitive, in view of how far he had come—from those very lights Maia used as guideposts in the sky.

  Sometimes, when a moon cleared the canyon walls to shine directly on his face, Maia was struck by a subtle difference which seemed suddenly enhanced. The long shadow of his cheekbone, or the way, in dim light, his pupils seemed to open wider than normal for Stratoin eyes. Would she have even noticed if she didn’t already know who, or what, he was?

  They cut short the discussion when Baltha called a break. Their guide indicated a path to take their tired mounts onto a stony beach, where the party dismounted and spent some time rubbing and drying the horses’ feet and ankles, restoring circulation to parts numbed by cold water. It was hard labor, and Renna soon stripped off his coat. Maia could feel heat radiating from his body as he worked nearby. She rememb
ered the sailors on the Wotan, whose powerful torsos always seemed so spendthrift of energy, wasting half of what they ate and drank in sweat and radiation. As cold as she was, especially in her fingers and toes, Renna’s nearby presence was rather pleasant. She felt tempted to draw closer, strictly to share the warmth he squandered so freely. Even the inevitable male odor wasn’t so bad.

  Renna stood up, a puzzled expression on his face. Scanning the sky, his eyes narrowed and his brows came together in a furrow. Only as Maia rose to come alongside did she begin to notice something as well, a soft sound from overhead, like the distant buzzing of a swarm of bees.

  “There!” he shouted, pointing to the west, just above the rim of the canyon.

  Maia tried to sight along his arm. “Where? I can’t … Oh!”

  She had seldom seen flying machines, even by daylight. Port Sanger’s small airfield was hidden beyond hills, with flight paths chosen not to disturb city dwellers. Not counting the weekly mail dirigible, true aircraft came only a few times a year. But what else could those lights be? Maia counted two … three pairs of winking pinpoints passing overhead as the delayed rumbling peaked and then followed the glitters eastward.

  “Cy must’ve heard!” Renna shouted, as the canyon cut off sight of the moving stars. “She got through to Groves. They’ve come for us!”

  For you, don’t you mean? Maia thought. Still, she was glad, intensely glad. This certainly verified Renna’s importance, for Caria to have sent such a force so far, impinging on the sovereignty of Long Valley Commonwealth, and even risking a fight.

  Baltha, Thalla, and Kiel refused to even consider turning back.

  “But it’s a rescue party! Surely they’ve come with enough force to—”

  “That’s good,” Kiel agreed. “It’ll distract the bitches. Keep them off our trail. Maybe they’ll be so busy scrapping and arguing, we’ll have smooth sailing to the coast.”

  Maia saw what was going on. Kiel and her friends had invested a lot in rescuing Renna. Apparently, they weren’t about to hand him over to a platoon of policewomen, who could claim they would have had him free tonight anyway. Far better from Kiel’s point of view to deliver him personally to a magistrate at Grange Head, where their success would be indisputable and the reward guaranteed.