Tizbe didn’t give a damn about me. I’m just an irritant, to be stored away and forgotten.
It was just one more blow to Maia’s pride, confirming what she already knew about her insignificance in the world.
So it wasn’t me that brought her all the way out here, but something “urgent.”
Maia realized with sudden certainty—It’s Renna!
The possibility of danger to her friend terrified Maia. She rushed to the wall, where the game board was already plugged in, but then made herself stop. The distance between their cells was not great. Tizbe could be at Renna’s door by the time Maia tapped a warning, and if Tizbe heard the clicking, it would let on that the prisoners had a way of communicating. Maia imagined what life might be like, if she found herself cut off yet again. The gaping sense of threat and emptiness felt like when she had first come to realize that Leie was gone.
Sitting in front of the game board only enhanced Maia’s feeling of impotence. She got up and climbed her pyramid of boxes to crawl into the window, where she poked her head beyond the rocky lip to peer toward the front gate. There Maia glimpsed several figures tending a string of tethered horses. The Beller’s escorts, presumably.
She clambered down again. To avoid pacing uselessly, Maia sat down and resumed plaiting her rope, keeping her pencil handy nearby and anxiously hoping for the clicking sounds that would tell her Renna was all right. The long, hard quiet stretched on and on, until a rasp of keys caused her to throw a rug over her work once more. She stood up as the guards entered and put her dinner on the rickety table. Maia ate silently, hurriedly, as eager for her jailers to leave as they were to be gone.
When they left, she hated the return of solitude.
What if Tizbe has already taken Renna away?
Several times, Maia interrupted her work to go to the window. The third time she looked, the horses and escorts were gone. A panicky chill arrested when she saw no traffic on the road. As twilight settled and temperatures dropped, they must have all gone inside, where the empty halls offered plenty of room for women and mounts.
Maia climbed down and resumed worrying, while her fingers plaited fibers together. Tizbe said they’d be leaving tomorrow, but she never said whether or not they—
The first clicks from the wall plate sent her heart leaping.
Renna! She’s safe!
Maia threw her weaving aside and picked up her notebook. Soon it was clear that Renna wasn’t sending any ornately planned Game of Life scenario, but a rushed series of simple Morse dots and dashes. The message ended. Concentrating, Maia had to guess at meanings for several of the letters and words. Finally, she cried out. “No!”
MAIA. DONT ANSWR. THEY R TAKNG ME AWAY. WILL REMBR U ALWYS. GOD KEEP U SAFE. RENNA.
• • •
It can get bitterly cold on the high plains, especially on early winter evenings, to one lying perched up high along a precipice, exposed to the wind.
There was barely room to stretch prone in the window niche, whose gritty, chill surface rubbed Maia’s shoulders on both sides. Using a plank from the broken box as a sort of fishing rod, Maia still had to lean out so the rope hung properly, to keep its burden from scraping against the rough cliff face. The leverage helped as she rocked the plank gently left to right, back and forth, pumping gradually until the rope began to swing like a pendulum.
It took concentration not to let her shivering interfere. Nor was the shaking due entirely to the cold. By moonlight, the ground looked awfully far away. Even if she had a rope long enough—one made by master craftswomen, not hand-twined by an inexperienced fiver—she would never have been able to get herself to climb down all that distance.
Yet, look what you’re trying to do, instead!
After getting Renna’s message, there had passed over Maia a wave of utter panic. It wasn’t just envisioning months, perhaps years, stretching ahead in loneliness. The loss of this new friend, when she had still not gotten over Leie, felt like a physical blow. Her first impulse was to curl up under piles of curtain material and let depression take her. There was a sick, sweet-sour attraction to melancholy, as an alternative to action.
Maia had been tempted for all of thirty seconds. Then she got to work, searching for some way to solve her problem, reevaluating every possibility, even those she had previously discarded.
The door and walls? They would take explosives to breach. She turned over in her mind ways of calling the guards and overpowering them, but that fantasy was also absurd, especially with them at their wariest, and Tizbe’s escorts to back them up.
That left the window. She could just barely manage to squeeze through, but to what purpose? The ground was impossibly far. Turning left, she could make out more storerooms, visible as slit-windows stretching away on both sides. They seemed almost as out of reach as the prairie floor. Besides, why trade one prison cell for another?
Looking about desperately, she had finally twisted around to look upward, and saw the pillared loggia overhead, part of a grand patio girdling the sanctuary, five or six meters higher.
If only somebody would drop a rope down, she had fantasized ironically.
Desperation led to inspiration.
Could I send one up?
It would be a gamble at best. Even if it was possible to swing a rope and bob the way she had in mind, she’d still need something to act as a grappling hook. Yet, it mustn’t interfere as she oscillated the rope back and forth along the wall, giving it momentum to rise and—if all went well—catch on the railing overhead.
She refused to think about the last drawback—trusting her weight to the makeshift contraption. Cross that bridge when we come to it, Maia thought.
Back inside, she had started by ripping apart her supply of notebooks for the springlike clips that bound loose pages inside. Maybe I can rig some of these to pop open when they hit. …
It was difficult to put into practice. First she had to tear the clips out and then use a wooden plank to lever them into the shape she wanted. Tying several together at the end of her rope, she practiced on the sill of the window until she felt sure the improvised hook would catch, two times out of three. The short section of cable used in the trial held her weight, though trusting her life to the improvised gimmickry seemed lunatic, or desperate, or both.
Maia wrapped a single loop of thread around the clips to bind them into a compact bundle, to keep the cluster from clattering and rattling as she swung it back and forth. Ideally, it would come apart on impact with the balcony, and not at some inopportune moment before. Finally, she had crawled back into the window carrying some curtain material for padding, and a plank with a notch in one end, to use as a fishing pole. Once settled in, she commenced laying out rope.
It was hard to even see the cable’s end when it was hanging straight down. Once she set the pendulum in motion, however, she could make out the makeshift grapnel whenever it passed before a small patch of snow on the ground. Soon it rose high enough to occult a low white cloud bank, veiling one of the moons to the east.
Back and forth … rocking back and forth. Despite her arrangements to let the plank take most of the weight, Maia’s arms were tiring by the time the swinging rope rose high enough to point horizontal, level with the row of storeroom windows. Her heart caught each time the bundle of clips tapped or snagged against some protuberance, forcing her to lean even farther to avoid catching it on the backswing.
“Come on, you can hold better than that!” she remembered Leie used to say, back when they were both four and a half, and would sneak out at night to paint mothers blue. After the third time a statue in the Summer Courtyard had been defaced, the clan matriarchs had locked all doors leading to the yard, and sprinkled marker dust around the monuments, to trace anyone who stepped in it.
That did not stop the incidents.
“I’m doin’ as best I can!” she had hissed back at Leie on the night of that final foray, gripping one end of a rope made of bedsheets, the other wrapped around he
r sister’s feet. Lowering Leie from the roof, with paintbrush and bucket in hand, had been easier on prior occasions because there were crenelated battlements Maia could use for leverage. But that last time it had been just her own, preadolescent muscles, battling the insistent pull of gravity.
Now, over a year later, as she struggled to control a distant weight that jerked and fought like a fish caught at the end of her line, Maia moaned, “I’m … doin’ … as best I … can!” Her breath whistled as she held on, letting out and taking up slack, trying to force momentum into a pendulum that seemed reluctant to rise much past horizontal and kept yanking at her burning shoulders on each downward swing.
Under questioning the next day, Leie had insisted she was acting alone. She refused to implicate Maia, even though it was clear she could not have done it without help. Everyone knew Maia had been the one with the rope. Everyone knew she had been the one unable to hold on when a tile broke, loosening her grip, causing Leie to go crashing in a clatter of paint and tracer dust and chipped plaster.
After taking her punishment stoically, Leie never brought up the subject, not even in private. It was enough that everybody knew.
Grimly, Maia held on. Renna, she thought, gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain. I’m coming. …
The grapnel had now reached the stone balustrade in its highest rise. Frustratingly, it would not go over the protruding lip, though it touched audibly several times. Maia tried twisting the plank so that the rope would come closer to the wall at the top of each swing, but the curve of the citadel defied her.
Obviously the idea was workable. Some combination of twists and proddings would make it. If she took her time and practiced several evenings in a row …
“No!” she whispered. “It’s got to be tonight!”
Two more times, the grapnel just clipped the balcony, making a soft, scraping sound. In agony, Maia realized she had only a couple more attempts before she would have to give up.
Another touch. Then a clean miss.
That’s it, she realized, defeated. Got to rest. Maybe try again in a few hours.
Resignedly, with numbness spreading across her shoulders, she began easing off on the rhythmic pumping action, letting the pendulum motion start to die down. On the next swing, the bundle did not quite reach the level of the balustrade. The one after that, its peak was lower still.
The next cycle, the grapnel paused once more … just high enough and long enough for someone to quickly reach over the balcony and grab it, in a one-handed catch.
The surprise was total. Throbbing with fatigue, shivering from the cold, for a moment Maia could do nothing else but lay in the stone opening and stare along the rough face of the citadel, looking upward toward an unexpected dark silhouette, leaning outward, holding onto her rope, eclipsing a portion of winter’s constellations.
Maia’s first thought was that Tizbe or the guards must have heard something, come to investigate, and caught her in the act. Soon they would arrive to take away her tools, boxes, even the curtains she had unraveled to make rope, leaving her worse off than before. Then she realized the figure on the loggia was not calling out, as a guard might. Rather, it began making furtive hand motions. Maia could make no sense of them in the dark, but understood one thing. The person gesturing at her was as concerned for silence as she was.
Renna? Hope flashed, followed by confusion. Her friend’s cell lay some distance beyond and lower down. Unless her fellow inmate had also come up with an inspired, last-minute plan …
The shadowy figure began moving westward along the balustrade, handing Maia’s rope around pillars along the way. On reaching a spot directly overhead, the silhouette made hand gestures indicating Maia should wait, then vanished for a few moments. When it returned, something started snaking downward along Maia’s hand-woven cable toward her.
Ah, Maia realized. She didn’t like the looks of my workmanship. Well, fine. I’ll use her store-bought one instead. See if I care.
In fact, Maia was relieved. She paused to consider going back inside her cell to get … what? There were only four books and the Game of Life set, none of which she cared much about. Except for the sextant, strapped to her wrist, she was free of the tyranny of possessions.
After tying the new rope under her shoulders, Maia inched outward until most of her weight hung from the taut cable. At that point it occurred to her that this could be a trap. Tizbe might be toying with her, while arranging for her death-fall to appear part of an escape attempt.
The thought passed as Maia realized, What choice do I have?
She braced her feet against the wall, legs straight, and prepared to start climbing, stepping upward while pulling hand over hand. Then, to her surprise, the rope tautened rapidly and she found herself being hauled straight up, directly and swiftly. There must be a whole gang of them up there, Maia thought. Or a block and tackle.
As the balcony drew near, she composed her face so as not to show the slightest chagrin if it turned out to be Tizbe and the guards, after all. I’ll fight, she vowed. I’ll break free and take them on a chase they’ll never forget.
Arms reached down to haul her over the side … and Maia’s composure broke when she saw who had helped her.
“Kiel! Thalla!”
Her former cottage-mates at Lerner Hold beamed while freeing her of the rope. Kiel’s dark features split with a broad, white grin. “Surprised?” she said in a whisper. “You didn’t think we’d leave you to rot in this Perkinite hole, did you?”
Maia shook her head, overwhelmed that she had been remembered after all. “How did you know where I—”
She cut off, upon seeing that they weren’t alone. Standing behind the two var women, coiling rope over one shoulder, stood … a man! Beardless and slim for one of his kind, he smiled at her with an intimacy she found rather forward and disconcerting.
A man’s participation helped explain how just three of them could lift her so quickly, while it raised other questions even more perplexing … like what one of his race was doing so far upland, involving himself in disputes among women.
Thalla chuckled lowly, patting Maia’s shoulder. “Let’s just say we’ve been searching some time. We’ll explain later. Now it’s time to scoot.” She turned to lead the way. But Maia shook her head, planting her feet and pointing the other direction.
“Not yet! There’s someone else we’ve got to rescue. Another prisoner!”
Thalla and Kiel looked at each other, then at the man. “I thought there were just two,” Thalla said.
“There were,” the man answered. “Maia—”
“No! Come on, I know where she is. Renna—”
“Maia. I’m here.”
She had turned and already taken several steps down the dark corridor when the words cut her short. Maia swiveled, peering past Thalla and Kiel, who stood grinning in amusement. The man moved toward her, on his face a gentle look of irony. He lifted his gaze and shrugged in a gesture and expression she abruptly recognized. Her jaw dropped.
“I should have said something,” he told her in a voice that came across queerly accented. “It slipped my mind that men are the gendered class, here. That you’d naturally assume I was female unless told otherwise. Sorry to have shocked you.…”
Maia blinked. In her astonishment, she could barely speak. “You’re … a man.”
Renna nodded. “That’s how I’ve always seen myself. Though here on—”
Kiel hissed. “Come on! Explain later!”
Maia would not move. “What are you talking about?” She demanded. “How could you have—”
Renna reached out and took one of Maia’s hands. “Truth is, by your standards I’m probably not even human at all. You may have heard of me. In Caria City they call me the Visitor. Or the Outsider.”
A cloud moved out of the way—or a moon chose that moment to suddenly cast pale light upon his face, showing its odd proportions. Not so extreme you would have stopped and stared, on seeing him at a dockside caf
é. Still, when you looked for it, the effect was striking—a lengthiness of jaw and a breadth of brow that seemed somehow unworldly. Nostrils shaped to take in different air. A stance learned walking on a different world. Maia shivered.
“Now or never!” Thalla urged, taking both of them in tow while Kiel skulked ahead, scouting for danger in the shadows. Maia stumbled at first, but soon they picked up the pace and were running past ghostly, empty halls, united by a need to leave this place of stillborn silences. That’s right, Maia realized. Explanations can wait. For the moment, she let a rising exhilaration drive out all other feelings. All that mattered now was the taste of freedom!
Later. Later would be soon enough to worry this puzzle—that her first adult love had turned out to be an alien from the stars.
PART 2
Peripatetic’s Log: Stratos Mission: Arrival + 40.957 Ms
The founders of this colony chose an excellent site to conceal their utopia. Partly hidden by dust nebulae, orbiting a strange multiple-star system where most explorers would not bother looking for habitable worlds … Stratos must have seemed ideal to isolate their descendants from the strife and ferment raging elsewhere in the galaxy.
Yet, the Enemy eventually found them. And now, so have I.…
• • •
It is a testament to their fierce independence that they never tried calling for help when the foe-ship came. The people of Stratos simply fought the Enemy, and won. The colonists have reason to be proud. Without direct aid from the Human Phylum, they countered a surprise attack and annihilated the invaders. Their victory has become the stuff of legends, altering their social structure even while seeming to validate it.
They claim this ratifies their secession, obviating any need for alliance with distant cousins.
So far, in conversations from ship to ground, I’ve refrained from citing our records, which mention that very same foe-ship, describing it as a broken ruin, fleeing the Battle of Taranis to lick its wounds or die. Stratos has never sampled the full terror stalking the stars. Even in ignorance, it has benefited from protection by the Phylum. No part lives but in reliance on the others.