Glory Season (6 page)

Maia and Leie looked at each other. Their private scheme involved taking
advantage
of that natural reaction—the assumption that two identicals were likely to be clones. Now the irony sank in, that their boon could also be a drawback.

“I dunno about splitting up,” Leie said, shaking her head. “We could change our looks. I could dye my hair—”

Maia cut in. “Your vessels convoy together all the way down the coast, right?” The captains nodded. Maia turned to Leie. “Then we wouldn’t be separated for long. This way we’ll get recommendations from two shipmasters, instead of just one.”

“But—”

“I won’t like it either, but look at it this way. We double our experience for the same price. Each of us
learns things the other doesn’t. Besides, we’ll have to go apart at other times. This will be good practice.”

The startled expression in her sister’s eyes told Maia a lot about their relationship. There was a soft pleasure in surprising Leie, something that happened all too seldom.
She never expected me to be the one accepting a separation so easily.

Indeed, Maia found she looked forward to the prospect of time by herself, away from her twin’s driving personality.
This should be healthy for both of us.

Hiding her brief discomfiture behind an upraised beer stein, Leie finally nodded and said, “I don’t guess it matters—”

At that instant, a flash whitened their faces, casting shadows from the direction of town. A sparking, spiraling rocket trailed upward from the harbor fortress, arcing into the sky and then exploding, lighting the docks and clanholds with stark, crawling patterns of white and dark. Silhouettes revolved around pedestrians stunned motionless by the abrupt glare, while a low growling sound rapidly climbed in pitch and intensity to become an ululation, filling the night.

Maia, her sister, and the two captains stood up. It was the seldom-heard wail of Port Sanger’s siren … calling out the militia … alerting its citizens to stand to the defense.

W
hat should be our desiderata, in designing a new human race? What existence do we wish for our descendants on this world?

Long, happy lives?

Fair enough. Yet, despite our technical wonders, that simple boon may prove hard to deliver. Long ago, Darwin and Malthus pointed out life’s basic paradox—that all species carry inbuilt drives to try to overbreed. To fill even Eden with so many offspring that it ceases to be paradise, anymore.

Nature, in her wisdom, controlled this opportunistic streak with checks and balances. Predators, parasites, and random luck routinely culled the excess. To the survivors, each new generation, went the prize—a chance to play another round.

Then humans came. Born critics, we wiped out the
carnivores who preyed on us, and battled disease. With rising moral fervor, societies pledged to suppress cut-throat competition, guaranteeing to all a “right to live and prosper.”

In retrospect, we know awful mistakes were made with the best intentions on poor Mother Terra. Without natural checks, our ancestors’ population boom overwhelmed her. But is the only alternative to bring back rule by tooth and claw? Could we, even if we tried?

Intelligence is loose in the galaxy. Power is in our hands, for better or worse. We can modify Nature’s rules, if we dare, but we cannot ignore her lessons.

—
from
The Apologia,
by Lysos

A
n acrid scent of smoke. A fuming, cinder mist rising from smoldering planks. Distress flags flapping from the singed mizzen of a crippled ship, staggering toward asylum. The impressions were more vivid for occurring at night, with the larger moon, Durga, laying wan glimmers across the scummy waters of Port Sanger’s bayside harbor.

Under glaring searchlights from the high-walled fortress, a dry-goods freighter, Prosper, wallowed arduously toward safe haven, assisted by its attacker. Half the town was there to watch, including militia from all of the great clanholds, their daughters of fighting age decked in leather armor and carrying polished trepp bills. Matronly officers wore cuirasses of shiny metal, shouting to squads of identical offspring and nieces. The Lamatia contingent arrived, quick-marching downhill in helmets crowned with gaeo bird feathers. Maia recognized most of the full-clone winterlings, her half sisters, despite their being alike in nearly every way. The Lamai companies briskly spread along the roof of the family warehouse before dispatching a detachment to help defend the town itself.

It was quite a show. Maia and her sister watched in fascination from a perch on the jetty wall. Not since they
had been three years old had there been an alert like this. Nor were the commanders of the clan companies pleased to learn that a jumpy watchwoman had set off this commotion by pressing the wrong alert button, unleashing rockets into the placid autumn night where a few hoots from the siren would have been proper. An embarrassed Captain Jounine spent half an hour apologizing to disgruntled matrons, some of whom seemed all the more irascible for being squeezed into armor meant for younger, lither versions of themselves.

Meanwhile, rowboats threw lines to help draw the limping, smoldering Prosper toward refuge. Maia saw buckets of seawater still being drawn to extinguish embers from the fire that had nearly sent the ship down. Its sails were torn and singed. Dozens of scorched ropes festooned the rigging, dangling from unwelcome grappling hooks.

It must have been some fight, she figured, while it lasted.

Leie peered at the smaller vessel that had the Prosper in tow, its tiny auxiliary engine chuffing at the strain. “The reaver’s called Misfortune,” she told Maia, reading blocky letters on the bow. “Probably picked the name to strike terror into their victims’ hearts.” She laughed. “Bet they change it after this.”

Maia had never been as quick as her sister to switch from adrenaline to pure spectator state. Only a short time ago, the city had been girding for attack. It would take time to adjust to the fact that all this panic was over a simple, bungled case of quasilegal piracy.

“The reavers don’t look too happy,” Maia observed, pointing to a crowd of tough-looking women wearing red bandannas, gathered on Misfortune’s foredeck. Their chief argued with a guardia officer in a rocking motor launch. A similar scene took place near the prow of the Prosper, where affluent-looking women in smoke-fouled finery pointed and complained in loud voices. Farther aft on
both vessels, male officers and crew tended the tricky business of guiding their ships to port. Not a man spoke until the vessels tied at neighboring jetties, at which time Prosper’s master toured the maimed vessel. From his knotted jaw and taut neck muscles, the glowering man seemed capable of biting nails in two. Soon he was joined by Misfortune’s skipper, who, after a moment’s tense hesitation, offered his hand in silent commiseration.

A rumor network circulated among dockside bystanders, passing on what others, closer in, had learned. Leie dropped off the jetty in order to listen, while Maia stayed put, preferring what she could decipher with her own eyes.
There must have been an accident during the fight
, she surmised, tracing how fire had spread from a charred area amidships. Perhaps a lantern got smashed while the reavers battled the owners for their cargo. At that point, the male crews would have called a truce and put both sides to work saving the ship. It looked like a near thing, even so.

Reavers were uncommon in the Parthenia Sea, so near the stronghold of Port Sanger’s powerful clans. But that wasn’t the only curious thing about this episode.

Seems a stupid idea, hiring a schooner to go reaving this early in autumn
, Maia thought. With storm season just ending, there were plenty of tempting cargoes around. But it was also a time when males still flowed with summer rut hormones, which might kick in under tense circumstances. Watching the edgy sailors, their fists clenched in rage, Maia wondered what might drive the young vars in a reaver gang to take such a risk.

One of the men kicked a bulkhead in anger, splintering the wood with a resounding crack.

Once, on a visit to a Sheldon ranch, Maia had witnessed two stallions fight over a sash-horse herd. That struggle without quarter had been unnerving, the lesson obvious. Perkinite scandal sheets spread scare-stories
about “incidents,” when masculine tempers flared and instincts left over from animal times on Old Earth came to fore. “
Wary be you women
,” went a stanza of the rhyme oft quoted by Perkinites. “
For a man who fights may kill
 …”

To which Maia added privately,
Especially, when their precious ships are in danger.
This misadventure might easily have tipped over into something far worse.

Militia officers led the band of reavers, and
Prosper
’s passengers, toward the fort where a lengthy adjudication process would begin. Maia caught one shrill cry from the pirate leader: “… they set the fire on purpose ’cause we were winning!”

The owners’ spokeswoman, a clone from the rich Vunerri trading clan, vehemently denied the charge. If proven, she risked losing more than the cargo and fines to repair Prosper. There might even be a boycott of her family’s goods by
all
the sailing guilds. At such times, the normal hierarchy on Stratos was known to reverse, and mighty matrons from great holds went pleading leniency from lowly men.

But never from a var.
It would take a true revolution to reverse the social ladder that far. For summer-born women ever to sit in judgment over clones.

Maia watched the procession march past her vantage point, some of the figures limping, holding bloody gashes from the fight that led to this debacle. Medical orderlies carried stretchers at the rear. One of the burdens lay completely covered.

Perkies may be right about women having less murderous tempers
, Maia contemplated.
We seldom try to kill.
It was one reason Lysos and the Founders had come here—to create a gentler world.
But I guess that makes small difference to the poor wretch under that blanket.

Leie returned, breathless to relate all she had learned from the throng. Maia listened and made all the right astonished sounds. Some names and details she hadn’t
pieced together by observing … and some she felt sure were garbled by the rumor chain.

Did details matter, though? What stuck in her mind, as they left with the dispersing crowd, had been the expression on Captain Jounine’s face as the guardia commander escorted her bickering charges over a drawbridge into the fortress.

These aren’t the peaceful times she grew up in. These are tougher days.

Maia glanced at her twin as they walked toward the far pier where the colliers Zeus and Wotan lay loaded and ready for the morning current. Despite her accustomed bravado, Leie suddenly looked every bit as young and inexperienced as Maia felt.

These are our days
, Maia pondered soberly.
We’d better be ready for them.

The moons’ pull had modest effect on the huge seas of Stratos. Still, tradition favored setting sail with Durga tide. After last night’s excitement, the predawn departure was less poignant than Maia had expected. All these years she’d pictured looking back at Port Sanger’s rugged buildings of pink stone—castlelike clanholds studding the hillsides like eagles’ nests—and feeling a cascade of heady emotions, watching the land of her childhood recede from sight, perhaps forever.

There was no time for dwelling on milestones, however. Gruff-voiced chiefs and bosuns shouted orders as she and several other awkward landlubbers rushed to help haul lanyards and lash straining sheets. Supplementing the permanent crew were more than a dozen vars like herself, “second-class passengers” who must work to supplement their fares. Despite Lamatia’s stern curriculum for its summerlings, a stiff regimen of toil and exercise, Maia soon found herself hard-pressed to keep up.

At least the biting chill eased as the sun climbed. Off came the leather garments, and soon she was working in just loincloth and halter. The sluggish, heavy air left her coated with a perspiration sheen, but Maia preferred wiping sweat to having it freeze on her.

By the time she finally had a spare moment to look back, the headlands of Port Sanger’s bay were disappearing behind a fog bank. The ancient fortress on the southern bluff, at present covered in a spindly shroud of repair scaffolding, was soon masked by brumous haze and lost to view. On the other bank, the spire of the sanctuary-lighthouse remained a mysterious gray obelisk for a while longer. Then it too faded behind low clouds, leaving an endless expanse of ice-flecked sea surrounding her contracted world of wood planks, fiber cords, and coal dust.

For what felt like hours, Maia ran wherever sailors pointed, loosening, hauling, and tying down sections of coarse rope on command. Her palms were soon raw and her shoulders sore, but she began learning a thing or two, such as not trying to brake a lanyard by simply holding on. Fighting a writhing cable by brute force could send you flying into a bulkhead or even overboard. Watching others, Maia learned to wrap a length of hawser around some nearby post in a reverse loop, and let the rope’s own tension lock it in place.

That left the converse problem of
releasing
the damned thing, whenever the mates wanted slack for some reason. After Maia was nearly slashed across the face on two occasions, a sailor took time to show her how it was done.

“Y’do it like these, an’ than these,” a wiry male, no taller than she was, explained without obvious impatience. Maia awkwardly tried to imitate what in experienced hands seemed such a fluid motion. “Ye’ll get it,” he assured her, then hurried off, shouting to prevent another landlubber
from getting her leg caught in a loop of cord and being dragged over the side.

Well, I was hoping for an education.
Maia now understood why a noticeable minority of the men she’d seen in her life lacked a finger or two. If you weren’t careful, a surge of wind could yank a rope while your hand was busy looping a pin, tightening with abrupt, savage force, sending a part of you spurting away. With that nauseating realization, Maia forced herself to slow down and think before making any sudden moves. The shouts of the bosuns were terrifying, but no more than that awful mental image.