Glory Season (35 page)

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 remembered 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.

Maia saw Renna consider. Would the women try to stop him if he turned around by himself? A male’s strength might not compensate much for the world-wise ferocity of Baltha, who looked like a born fighter and was never far from her effective-looking crowbar. The match was doubly dubious in winter, when male tempers ebbed toward nadir. Renna’s odds would improve with Maia by
his side, but she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to fight Thalla and Kiel.

Anyway, suppose he did turn around. Tizbe wouldn’t have waited long to set out on their trail. Even if the prison-citadel was taken by Carian forces, Renna and Maia were likely to stumble into the Beller and her guards on the open prairie. They’d only be captured and taken to another hole, probably far worse than the one they had just left.

We really haven’t got much choice
, Maia realized.

Still, in that moment her loyalties crystallized. She moved to stand next to Renna, ready to support whatever he decided. There was a long pause while the drone of engines faded gradually to a whisper, and then nothing. At last, the man shrugged.

“All right, let’s ride.”

C
y complained about having to use archaic codes to guide my shuttle down the ancient landing beam. I was too nervous to be sympathetic. “Who had to learn an entirely new language?” I groused, while white flame licked the viewing ports and a heavy atmosphere tried to crush my cocoon like a grape in a vice. “It’s supposedly a dialect based on Florentinan, but they have parts of speech nobody’s seen before—feminine, masculine, neuter,
and
clonal … with redundancy cases, declensions, and drift-stop participles …”

I was jabbering to stave off raw terror. Even that diversion vanished when Cy asked me to shut up, letting her
concentrate on getting me down in one piece. That left nothing to do except listen to the shrieking-hot wind against the hull plates, centimeters from my ear. Normal landings are bad. But I had never heard sounds like these. Stratoins breathe air thick enough to swim in.

It being summer when the Council finally voted permission to land, aurorae followed me down—curtains of electricity tapped into magnetic coils streaming off the red sun’s dwarf companion. I was headed for low latitudes, but even so, ribbons of ionic lightning caused sparks to crackle along a console, uncomfortably near my arm.

Ballistic crisis passed. Soon the lander was cutting tunnels through vast water-vapor clouds, then turning in a braking swoop over a quilt of dark forests and bright meadows. Finally, a riverside gleam led to clear signs of habitation and industry. For most of a Terran year, I had looked on this terrain from space, half-dead from the ennui of waiting. Now I pressed the window, drinking in the loveliness of Stratos … the somber luster of native vegetation and more luminous greens of Earth-derived life, the shimmer of her multicolored lakes, the atmospheric refraction which gives every horizon a subtle, concave bend. Hills rose to surround me. With a final stall that set my stomach spinning, Cy set the shuttle rolling across twenty hectares of pavement, split here and there by shoots of intruding grass. By the time the shuttle cooled enough to let down a narrow ramp, a welcoming party was already waiting.

I imagine their embroidered gowns would have fetched magnates’ prices on Pleasence, or even Earth. Of
the five middle-aged women, none smiled. They kept their distance as I descended, and when we exchanged bows. No one offered to shake hands.

I’ve had warmer receptions … and far worse. Two of the women identified themselves as members of the reigning council. A third wore clerical robes and raised her arms to make what sounded like a cautious blessing. The remaining pair were university dons I’d already spoken with by videx. Savant Iolanthe, who seemed cautiously guarded, with sharply evaluating gray eyes, and Savant Melonni, who had seemed friendly during the long negotiations, but now kept well back, regarding me like a specimen of some rare and rather dubious species. One with a reputation for biting.

During the months spent peering in frustration from orbit, I’ve seen how most settlements rely on wind and solar and animal power for transport—fully in line with what I know of Lysian-Herlandist ideology. Industrialized regions make some use of combustion-powered land craft, however, and I was shown to a comfortable car equipped with a hydrogen-oxygen engine. To my amazement, nearly everything else, from chassis to furnishings, was crafted out of finely carved wood! I later surmised that this doesn’t just reflect the planet’s comparative poverty in metals. It is a statement of some sort.

I sat alone in one compartment, isolated from the others by a pane of glass. Which was just as well. My intestines complained noisily from prelanding treatments and, despite having spent several megaseconds acclimatizing to a simulated Stratos atmosphere, my lungs labored audibly
in the heavy air. An assault of strange odors kept me busy stifling sneezes, and the carbon dioxide partial pressure triggered recurrent yawns. I must have been a sight to behold.

Yet, none of that seemed to matter in my elation to be down at last! This seems such a sophisticated, dignified world and folk, especially in comparison to what I met on Digby, or on godforsaken Heaven. I’m certain we can reach an understanding.

As our vehicle reached the edge of the landing field, escorts fell in ahead and behind … squadrons of finely-arrayed
cavalry
, making a splendid show in glittering cuirasses and helmets. The impression of uniformity and discipline was enhanced when I saw that the unit consisted entirely of tall women from a single family, of Stratoin clones, identical down to each shiny button and lock of hair. The soldiers looked formidable. My first close view of clan specialization in action.

On leaving the landing area, we passed the other part of the spaceport, the launching facility, with its ramps and booster rails for sending cargoes skyward, which must eventually carry my own shuttle, when the time comes to depart.

I saw no sign of activity. Through an intercom, one of the scholars explained that the facility was fully functional. “Carefully preserved for occasional use,” she said with a blithe wave of one hand.

I could not imagine what the word “occasional” meant to these people. But the word left me uneasy.

O
cean surrounded her, threatening to engulf her. She clung to a splintered, oily timber, bobbing and jerking as contrary waves fought to possess it. Rain fell in blinding sheets, angled by gale-driven winds. In the distance, she watched a sailing vessel glide away, slicing through towering swells, ignoring her calls, her pleas to turn back.

On the deck of the departing ship, a girl stared in her direction, blindly, unseeing.

The girl had her own face.…

Dread welled up. Maia wanted to escape. But dreams had a way of trapping her by making her forget there was a “real” world to flee to. It took a whisper of true sound intruding on the dreamscape, to provide something to follow upward, outward, toward consciousness.

She wondered muzzily how she came to be lying here, wrapped in a scratchy woolen blanket, stretched upon gritty ground. Stone canyon walls felt like her jail cell, cold and enclosing, and the low clouds hung overhead like a dour ceiling. She propped up on one elbow, rubbing her eyes, looking at the leftover embers of a tiny campfire, then at the tethered horses, browsing shrubs down to bare
twigs over by the stream. Two curled forms lay close enough to offer warmth on one side. From glimpses of unkempt hair poking from the blanket rolls, she recognized Thalla and Kiel and relaxed a bit, recalling she was among friends. Maia smiled, thinking once more about what they had done, rescuing her from the pit where Tizbe Beller and the Joplands and Lerners had consigned her.

Turning to her other side, Maia saw two empty blankets that had been thrown back, their occupants gone. The nearest bedroll was still slightly warm to touch. That person’s departure must have been what vexed her sleep, pulling her from disturbing dreams and memories of Leie.

Oh, yes. Renna
. The Outsider had been a welcome heat source in the chill before dawn, when they had collapsed in exhaustion from their hard ride. Sight of his blue pouch and Game of Life set reassured her that he wasn’t gone for good.

The big blonde, Baltha, had been sleeping just beyond. Maia lay back, staring at the sky. Why would both of them get up at the same time? Did it matter? It wouldn’t be hard to slip back into slumber … and hopefully dream better dreams.…