Glory Season (15 page)

“ ‘… Currently, all men of virile years are banished from the valley each hot quarter, and kept away until the end of rut season.…’ ”

Maia’s fellow traveler lay atop a pile of coarse gunny-sacks, her blonde hair tied in a simple bun. Tizbe’s clothing, ragged-looking from a distance, proved on closer inspection to be soft and well-made, clashing with the girl’s claim of utter poverty. As Maia’s assistant, she was supposed to pay for her passage by helping sling freight all the way to Holly Lock. So far, Maia was unimpressed.

Don’t be hasty to judge
, she thought.
Mother Kalor wouldn’t approve.

Before departing Grange Head, Maia had given the orthodox priestess a letter to deliver to any young woman passing through who resembled her. After all, Church doctrine held that miracles were possible, even in a world guided by chance and molecular affinities.

“
Must you go inland, child?
” Mother Kalor had asked. “
Long Valley is Perkinite country. They’re a lock-kneed, fanatical bunch of smugs, and don’t much care for men or vars.
”

“
Maybe so
,” Maia had replied. “
But they hire vars for all sorts of jobs.
”

“
Jobs they won’t do themselves.
”

“
I can’t turn down steady work
,” Maia had answered, ending all argument. One thing for certain, if Leie ever did show up, she’d dish out hell if Maia hadn’t been busy during their separation, using the time profitably.

What luck that a railroad clan was just then looking for someone with a knack for figures. The work didn’t involve differential calculus, only simple accounting, but Maia had been pleased to find some part of her education useful. Leie, too, would have been a cinch, with her love of machines. If only …

Fortunately, Tizbe broke Maia’s gloomy thought-spiral.

“Listen to this!” The young hitchhiker lifted a finger and changed to a deep, somewhat pompous tone. “ ‘Of special interest to travelers is the system of freight and passenger carriage used in Long Valley, ideally suited to a pioneering subculture. The solar railway, operated jointly by the Musseli, Fontana, and Braket clans, should get you to your destination without excessive delays.’ ” Tizbe laughed. “That Fontana train was four hours late yesterday! And this Musseli clunker isn’t doing much better.”

Maia felt compelled to return a wry smile. Yet, Tizbe’s contempt seemed unfair. Musseli Clan ran their trains on time during the cool seasons, when men of Rail Runner Guild helped drive the engines. Most males were banished each summer, though, and the long-limbed, flattish-faced Musseli were left short-staffed. They might have hired female engineers just as good as men—itinerant vars, or even a hive-clan of specialists. That would put the enterprise solely in the hands of women year-round, like everything else in Long Valley. But the region’s leaders were caught between their ideology of radical separationism on the one hand and biological needs on the other. In order
to produce clone-daughters, they must have men around from autumn to spring, to perform the vital “sparking” function. Keeping ample numbers of men occupied between brief sparkings meant giving them work. Here on the high plains, locomotives served the same secondary function as ships along the coast: to keep a small supply of men available, in compact, mobile, easy-to-manage groups.

Hence the dilemma. If the notoriously touchy male engineers took offense over the hiring of summer replacements, they might not return at all next year. Which would be catastrophic, like leaving the orchards unpollinated. So, each summer, the rail clans just made do.

Now, with its young men home from coastal sanctuaries, Rail Runner Guild was coming back to strength. Soon schedules would be met again. But Maia didn’t bother trying to explain any of this. Tizbe seemed smugly certain she and her book had all the answers.

“ ‘The three rail-clans operate competing freight lines, each in partnership with a male guild, with shared ownership of capital approved by an act of the Planetary Council in the year.…’ ”

A surprisingly close working relationship between the sexes, Maia pondered. Yet, hadn’t Lamatia Hold once welcomed the same ships and sailors, year after year? Those flying the Pinniped banner? Preserving for them rights of all kinds, ranging from commerce to procreation? Who was she to say what was normal, and what aberration?

Perhaps the heretic in Lanargh is right. These may all be signs of changing times.

The solar-electric locomotive sped along, faster than the swiftest horse or sailing ship. At each stop, out swarmed Rail Runner maintenance boys, toting tools and lubricants, and Musseli girls armed with clipboards and crate hooks, hurrying to service the machines and expedite cargo under the scrutiny of older supervisors. Maia
had noticed that many of the orange-clad males bore faces strikingly similar to the female clones in maroon overalls.

Imagine, sisters continuing to know their own brothers, and mothers their sons, long after life has turned them into men.
Maia could think of several drawbacks and advantages to such a close relationship. She recalled sweet little Albert, whom she had tutored for a life at sea, and thought how nice it might have been to see how he grew up. The stray thought reminded her of those childish dreams of someday finding her own father. As if happenstance of sperm and egg meant anything in a big, hard world.

A world capable of snapping stronger bonds than those.

Stop it.
Maia shook her head vigorously.
Let go of the pain. Leie would.

After reading silently for a while, Tizbe looked up from her gunnysack chaise. “Oh, this part’s lovely, Maia. It says, ‘Long Valley retains many quaint features of a frontier region. From your stateroom, be sure to observe the rustic little towns, each with its monotone grain silo and banks of solar cells …’ ”

There was that word
quaint
again. It seemed to refer patronizingly to anything simple or backward, from the viewpoint of a city-bred tourist.
I wonder if Tizbe finds me quaint, too.

“ ‘… between the towns and zones of cultivation, note stretches of native kuourn grass, set aside under ecological rules even stricter than decreed by Caria City.…’ ”

They had seen many such oases—great lakes of waving stalks with purple flowers. The Perkinite cult governing this valley worshiped a Stratos Mother whose wrath toward planet abuse was matched only by her distrust of the male gender. Yet, Maia felt sure much of the plains was off-limits for another reason—to prevent competition.

When Long Valley first opened for settlement, young
vars must have swarmed in from all over Stratos, forming partnerships to tame the land. Affiliations that became powerful, interclan alliances when successful women settled down to raise daughters and cash crops. That, in turn, meant pitching in to build a railroad, to export surplus and import supplies, comforts.

And men.
Despite their slogans, the Perkinite utopia soon began to resemble the rest of Stratos. You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there.

“Oh! Here’s a good part, Maia. Did you know there are more than forty-seven local species of zahu? It’s used for all sorts of things. Like—”

A shrill whistle thankfully interrupted Tizbe’s next eager recounting. It was the ten-minute warning before their next stop. Maia glanced at the wall chart. “Clay Town comin’ up.”

“So soon?” asked the hitcher. Maia threw open her ledger, running a fingertip along today’s bills of lading. “Can’t you hear the whistle blowing? Come on, you read numbers, I’ll fetch boxes.”

She kept her finger by the starting place until Tizbe sauntered over. Then Maia hurried to the single aisle running the length of the car, between tall racks of shelving. “What’s the first number?” she called.

There followed a long pause. “Um. Is it 4176?”

Maia winced. That had been the final entry at their last stop, only an hour ago. “Next one! Start where it says Clay Town on the left.”

“Oh! You mean 5396?”

“Right!” Grabbing a block and tackle that hung from an overhead rail, Maia scanned the shelves. She found the correct box, hooked its leather strap, pulled the chain taut, and swung the package out, hauling it along the track to where she could lower it gently by the door. “Next.”

“That would be … mm, let’s see … 6178?”

Maia sighed and went looking. Fortunately, the awkward
Musseli sorting system wasn’t too hard to puzzle out, although it might have been meant to confuse as much as to clarify. “Next?”

“Already? I lost my place.… Ah! Is it 9254?”

Strictly speaking, it should have been Maia at the ledger and her assistant doing the hauling. But Tizbe had whined about having to do work “suited for lugars and men.” She couldn’t get the gliding winch to work. She picked up a sliver. Maia had a theory about this creature. Tizbe must be a var-child from some big-city clan, so rich and decadent they pampered even their summerlings, kissing them on the brow and sending them off unequipped to survive past their first year. Perhaps Tizbe expected to live off appearance and charm alone.

I wonder why she looks familiar, though.

Despite, or maybe because of, Tizbe’s assistance, the pile by the door wasn’t quite finished by the time the second whistle blew. The locomotive’s flywheel audibly changed tone as the train began braking. Maia hurried the pace. Her hands had callused from hard work, yet the rough chain bit her fingers whenever the car jostled. The last, heavy package almost got away, but she managed to lower it down with just an echoing thump.

Short of breath, Maia rolled open the sliding door as rows of towering kilns and brick ovens grew like termite mounds around the train, enveloping it in an aroma of glazed, baked earth. “Welcome to Clay Town, hub of Argil County,” Tizbe sang with false enthusiasm. For a while, everything was red or dun-colored. Stacks and crates of ceramics swam past in a blur.

Abruptly, the aromatic kiln district gave way to residences, row after row of petite houses. Here in Long Valley, important matriarchies built their citadels near their fields or pastures, leaving towns to small homesteads, sometimes derisively called microholds. From the decelerating train, Maia watched a woman stroll by, holding the
hand of a little girl who was obviously her clone-daughter. Half the population of the valley apparently lived this way—single women, winter-born but living varlike existences, with jobs that barely paid the bills and let them raise one winter child, exactly the way their mothers had, and grandmothers, and so on. One identical next-self to inherit and carry on. A thin but continuing chain.

It seemed a simpler, less presumptuous sort of immortality than the binge-or-bust cycles of great houses.
You could do worse
, Maia thought. In fact, there seemed something terribly sweet and intimate about the solitary mother, walking alone with her child. Ever since her own grand dreams shattered, Maia had begun thinking in more modest terms. The Musseli were beneficent toward their employees, treating several score singleton women almost like full members of their commune. Perhaps, if she worked hard at this job, Maia might win a long-term contract. Then, after saving up to build a house.…

Even after all that, there remained the problem of men. Or a man. You had to start off with a winter birth. It was rare to be able to conceive any other time of year, till you’d had a clone. But getting pregnant in winter wasn’t as simple as going into the street and calling. “Hey, you!”

Well, don’t think of that now. Take care of things one step at a time.

The train slowed into the Clay Town railyard with a hiss and squeal. Passengers began alighting. From two cars back came bumping sounds as men and lugars wasted no time hauling heavy farm machinery off a flatbed car. Nearer at hand, Maia saw the local Musseli freightmistress approach, clipboard in hand, striding ahead of a towering lugar laden with packages.
Smile
, Maia told herself.
Try not to act like you’re only five.

“Is this all of it?” the woman snapped, pointing to the pile by the door.

“Yes, madam. That’s all.”

As Maia handed over the bills of lading, Tizbe sidled alongside, muttering “Excuse me” in a low voice. The young blonde squeezed past carrying her travel bag. “Think I’ll go have a look around,” she drawled casually.

Maia called after her. “It’s only a forty-minute stop! Don’t get los—” She cut off as Tizbe turned a corner and vanished from sight.

“
If
it’s convenient for you, right now?”

Maia jerked back to face the freightmistress. Her face flushed. “Sorry, madam. I’m ready when you are.” Bending over the ledger, while carefully cross-checking the packages, Maia chided herself for worrying about a stupid hitchhiker.

She’s just another silly var. None of my concern. Maia, you’ve got to try thinking more like Leie.

Leie certainly wouldn’t have bothered. Leie would have said “good riddance.”

But with the freightmistress grudgingly satisfied, and ten minutes to go before departure, Maia went looking for her errant assistant. She had reached the far end of the platform, with no sign yet of the irritating blonde, when a whistle blew some distance beyond the kiln district—another train approaching the station.

A young man could be seen holding a lever that would magnetically transfer the oncoming locomotive to one of three sets of rails. Several young women stood nearby, giggling, perched on a wooden walkway in front of a tall house with red curtains. As she neared, Maia saw two of them open their blouses and lean over the youth, shaking their well-proportioned torsos. His color, already flushed, grew redder by the minute. Maia wondered why.

“Not now!” He muttered at the women. “Go back inside an’ wait a minute!”

The young man was trying to concentrate on the approaching
train, still half a kilometer away, its flywheels squealing as it began to brake. The young women seemed to relish the effect they were having. One pointed in glee, causing the others to laugh uproariously. The youth’s taut trousers barely concealed a stiffening bulge. He looked up, saw Maia watching, and turned away with an embarrassed moan. This only brought more gales of hilarity from the local women.