Who spurns thy gifts shall give anon;
And whoso loves thee not, whate’er she do,
Shall love thee yet, and soon.
A gift from Leie, she realized. Ever the more verbal of the two, while Maia had been the one attracted to things visual—patterns and puzzles. It could be taken as a peace offering, or a promise, or just an impulsive thing, with no more meaning than a friendly pat on the head.
She flipped through a few more poems, trying to appreciate them. But the gift, however well intended, was spoiled by a lingering sick-sweet odor left by the knockout drug. In her own eyes, Leie might have had good reasons for the act. Nevertheless, it mixed in Maia’s heart with Tizbe Beller’s ambush, the pragmatic betrayals of Kiel and Thalla, and the awful treachery of Baltha’s southerlings. The list invited despair, if contemplated, so she refused,
Instead, Maia turned to the back flyleaf of the book, made of a slick, synthetic material meant to protect the paper pages from moisture during long voyages. She had discovered another use for the wrapping sheet. By spreading it open and weighting the corners with stones, she acquired a flat surface that she’d scribed with thin, perpendicular lines. Between these, with a stick of charcoal taken from the fire, Maia marked arrays of tiny dots, separated by many empty spaces. Wetting a rag with spit, she wiped away the old pattern and redrew a different version.
It’s more than just a matter of shapes, she thought, trying to recapture insights from last night’s fireside contemplation. It had all seemed so clear, then.
There’s another level than just thinking about how an individual group of dots mutates, and moves across the board. There’s a relationship of some sort between the number of living dots per area—the density—and whatever next-neighbor rule you’re using. If you change the number of neighbors needed for survival, you also change …
It was a struggle. Sometimes concepts came at her, like glowing baubles winking at the boundaries of vision, of comprehension. But crippling her was lack of vocabulary. The notions she fought with needed more than the simple algebra she’d been grudgingly taught at Lamai Hold. More and more she resented how they had robbed her of this, arguably her one talent, driving her from math and other abstractions by the simple expedient of making them seem boring.
It gets even more beautiful if you let the rules include cells farther than next-neighbors, she thought, trying to concentrate. Experimenting in her head was a wild process, hard to keep up for long. Yet, she had briefly succeeded in picturing a Game of Life set in three dimensions, whose products had been lattice structures of enticing, complex splendor, not merely marching crystalline rows, but forms that curled into smoky, twisting patterns, impossible to visualize save for bare instants at a time.
Maia closed the book and sank back, laying a forearm across her eyes, drifting in a tidal flux somewhere between pure abstraction and memories of hopelessness. The nearby scraping sounds of Naroin, grinding stone against wood, reminded her of something long ago. Of Leie, grunting and levering a device against a huge, ornate door. Then, too, there had been the sounds of wood and metal rubbing rock.
“It’s my turn to try,” Leie had said, a long year ago and far away, deep under the cellars of Lamatia Hold. “Your subtle stuff didn’t work, so now we’ll try getting in my way!”
Maia recalled the twined snake figures. Rows of mysterious symbols. A star-shaped knob of stone that ought to have turned, clockwise, if the puzzle made any sense at all.…
There was a rustle of footsteps. Real noise, not recollection. A shadow occulted the sun. Maia lifted her arm and looked up to see a trim figure blocking one quarter of the sky. “I found something up there in the ruins,” said a voice, reedy and young. It might have been that of a girl, except that every now and then, it cracked, briefly shooting down a whole octave to a lower register. “You ought to come, Maia. I have never seen anything like it.”
She sat up, shading her eyes. A gangling boy stood looking down at her. “The reavers’ practical joke,” Naroin had called him, and others agreed. Young Brod was a nice enough kid. He was nearly her age, although at five, boys fresh from their mother-clans were childish, almost unformed. This one shouldn’t be here at all.
Officially, Brod was a hostage, taken by the women reavers to ensure cooperation by the sailors of the ship they had hired, the Reckless. But Naroin surely had it right. The young midshipman had been left partly in jest, showing someone’s warped sense of humor. “Enjoy yer next glory fall!” one raider in a red bandanna had taunted as the last winch-load lifted away, leaving the “low threat” prisoners stranded together on this lonely spire.
Maia slowly stood up, sighing because the boy had chosen her to befriend, when she would have preferred solitude. I do need the exercise, she told herself. Aloud, she said, “Lead on.”
The youth’s puppy-eager smile was sweet and winter-harmless. She felt sorry for the kid when spectral frost next coated the grass and trees, when the rough sailor women would surely take their frustrations out on him. Even if by chance he was able, that wouldn’t relieve the tension. There wasn’t a scrap of ovop leaf among the supplies.
“This way. Come on!” Brod said impatiently, hurrying ahead of her into the trees. Maia took a deep breath, sighed, and followed.
The sheer island prominence had once been settled. That much had been clear as soon as the last load of internees arrived atop the plateau, hearing the black winch box shut down with an electronic buzz and booby-trapped clank. Early exploration uncovered tumbled, vine-encrusted ruins, remnants of ancient walls. The fringes of extensive edifices could be seen before the summit of the ridgetop was obscured by dense forest.
Brod had taken it upon himself to continue surveying the interior, especially since Maia and Naroin lost the raft dispute. He had tried to cast his vote along with them, only to learn that a boy’s opinion wasn’t solicited or welcome. The women crewfolk figured they knew enough about sailing to dispense with the advice of a raw, city-bred midshipman. At the time, Maia had thought it a needless slight.
“It’s some distance up this way, into the thicket,” Brod told her, pushing and occasionally hacking a path with a stick. “I wanted to find the center of all this devastation. Did it happen all at once, or was this settlement abandoned slowly, to let nature do the work?”
Walking just behind him, Maia felt free to smile. When they had first met, he had introduced himself as “Brod Starkland,” carelessly still appending the name of his motherclan. Naroin knew of the house, prominent in the city of Enheduanna, near Ursulaborg. Still, it was a kid’s mistake to let it slip. The boy was going to have to shuck his posh, Méchant Coast accent and learn mandialect, real quick.
On further thought, perhaps Brod had been left here with the full agreement and approval of his crewmates, to take some starch out of him, or simply to get him out of their hair. Somehow, Maia doubted he was prime pirate material. Maybe he and I are alike in that way. Nobody particularly wants or needs us around.
The trail continued past tall, gnarly trees and tangled roots, mixed with broken stonework. Brod spoke over his shoulder. “We’re almost there, Maia. Get ready for an eye-opener.”
Still smiling indulgently, Maia noted that a clearing was about to open a short distance ahead. Probably a very big ruin, filled with stones so large that trees could not grow. She had seen some like that, during the horseback flight across Long Valley. Perhaps Lamatia Hold would look that way, centuries from now. It was something to contemplate.
Just as the trees ended, Brod stepped to the right, making room for Maia. At the same time, he thrust out a protective arm. “You don’t want to get too close …”
At that moment, Maia stopped listening. Stopped hearing much of anything. A soundless roar of vertigo swelled as she halted, staring over a sudden, sheer precipice.
Steepness, all by itself, wouldn’t have stunned her. The cliffs surrounding this island-prison were as abrupt, and higher still. But they lacked the texture of this deep bo
wl in front of her, which had been gouged with violence out of the peak’s very center. The surface of the cavity was glassy smooth, as if rock had flowed until abruptly freezing in place, like cooling molasses.
What happened? Was it a volcano? Might it still be active?
The material was darkly translucent, reminding her of Stern Glacier’s ancient ice, back in the remote northlands. Here and there, Maia thought she could perceive blocky outlines, as if the rock just behind the fused layer was ordered by levels or strata, subdivided into partitions, catacombs, parallel geologic features from the planet’s ancient past.
Such surfacial contemplations were just how her foremind kept busy while the rest jibbered. “Ah … ah …” she commented succinctly.
“Exactly what I said at first sight,” Brod nodded, agreeing solemnly. “That sums it in a kedger’s egg.”
Maia wasn’t sure why neither she nor Brod mentioned his discovery to the others. Perhaps the unspoken consensus came from their being the two youngest, least-influential castaways, both recently jettisoned by those they were supposed to think of as “family.” Anyway, it seemed doubtful any of the castaways would be able to shed light on the origins of the startling crater. The women seemed intimidated by the thicket, and avoided going any deeper than necessary to cut wood.
Naroin delved some distance during hunting forays, but the older woman gave no sign of having seen anything unusual. Either the former bosun had lousy eyesight, which seemed unlikely, or she, too, knew how to keep a good poker face.
Since last talking with Naroin, Maia had begun dwelling on dark, suspicious thoughts. Even her refuge in the chaste, ornate world of game abstractions grew unsettled. It was hard paying attention to mental patterns of shifting dots, when she kept remembering that Renna languished somewhere among those scattered isles, perhaps one visible from the southern bluffs. And then there was a long-delayed talk to be had with Leie.
One day followed another. By snaring and shooting small game to supplement the dry-tack larder, Naroin eased some of the tension that had followed the raft-building vote. That project surged and stalled, then plunged forward again with each difficulty met and overcome. Several solidly built platforms of trimmed logs now lay drying in the sunshine, their bark-strip bindings well lashed and growing tauter by the hour. Maia had begun wondering if Inanna, Lullin, and the others might know what they were doing, after all.
Charl, a stout, somewhat hirsute sailor from the far northwest, managed to use a long pole to snag the cable hanging below the locked winch mechanism. Believing the reavers’ warnings of booby traps, the var delicately managed to loop the heavy cord through a crude block and tackle of her own devising. In theory, they could now lower things halfway down before having to switch to handmade vine ropes. It was a clever and impressive feat.
None of the escape team’s competence at construction seemed to impress Naroin. But Maia, despite her doubts, tried to help. When asked by Inanna to prepare a rutter—a rough navigational guide—Maia tried her best. Ideally, the escapees had only to get out of the narrow archipelago of narrow islets and then head northwest. The prevailing currents weren’t perfect, this season. But the winds were good, so if they kept their sail-made-of-blankets properly filled, and a good hand on the tiller, it should be possible to reach Landing Continent in less than two weeks. Maia spent one evening, assisted by Brod, reviewing for the others how to sight certain stars by night, and judge sun angle by day. The women paid close attention, knowing that Maia herself had no intention of leaving the island chain. Not while both Leie and Renna were presumably just a few leagues away.
There was one more thing Maia could do to help.
Brod found her one day, as she walked the latest of a long series of circuits of the island, dropping pieces of wood into the water at different times and watching them drift. The boy caught on quickly. “I get it! They’ll have to know the local currents, especially near the cliffs, so they won’t crash up against them.”
“That’s right,” Maia answered. “The winch isn’t located in the best place for launching such a fragile craft. I guess the site was chosen more for its convenient rock overhang. They’ll have to pick the right moment, or wind up swimming among a lot of broken bits of wood.”
It was a chilling image. Brod nodded seriously. “I should’ve figured that out first.” There was a hard edge of resignation in his voice. “Guess you can tell I’m not much of a seaman.”
“But you’re an officer.”
“Midshipman, big deal.” He shrugged. “Test scores and family influence. I’m lousy at anything practical, from knots to fishing.”
Maia imagined it must be hard for him to say. For a boy to be no good at seamanship was almost the same as being no man at all. There just weren’t that many other employment opportunities for a male, even one as well educated as Brod.
They sat together on the edge of the bluff, watching and timing the movement of wood chips far below. Between measurements, Maia toyed with her sextant, taking angles between various other islands to the southwest.
“I really liked it at Starkland Hold.” Brod confided at one point, then hurriedly assured her, “I’m no momma’s boy. It’s just that it was a happy place. The mothers and sisters were … are nice people. I miss ’em.” He laughed, a little sharply. “Famous problem for the vars of my clan.”
“I wish Lamatia had been like that.”
“Don’t.” He looked across the sea at nowhere in particular. “From what you’ve said, they kept an honorable distance. There’s advantages to that.”
Watching his sad eyes, Maia found herself able to believe it. A tendency runs strong in human nature to feel sentiment toward the children of your womb, even if they are but half yours. Maia knew of clans in Port Sanger, too, that bonded closely to their summer kids, finding it hard to let go. In those cases, parting was helped by the natural, adolescent urge to leave a backwater port. She imagined the combination of a loving home, plus growing up in an exciting city, made it much harder to forsake and forget.
That did not ease a pang of envy. I wouldn’t have minded a taste of his problem.
“That’s not what bothers me so much, though,” Brod went on. “I know I’ve got to get over that, and I will. At least Starkland throws reunions, now and then. Lots of clans don’t. Funny what you wind up missing, though. I wish I never had to give up that library.”
“The one at Starkland Hold? But there are libraries in sanctuaries, too.”
He nodded. “You should see some of them. Miles of shelves, stuffed with printed volumes, hand-cut leather covers, gold lettering. Incredible. And yet, you could cram the whole library at Trentinger Beacon into just five of the datastore boxes they have at the Enheduanna College. The Old Net still creaks along there, you know.”
Brod shook his head. “Starkland had a hookup. We’re a librarian family. I was good at it. Mother Cil said I must’ve been born in the wrong season. Would’ve done the clan proud, if I’d been a full clone.”
Maia sighed in sympathy, relating to the story. She, too, had talents inappropriate for any life path open to her. There passed several long minutes in which neither spoke. They moved on to another site, tossing a leafy branch into the spuming water and counting their pulses to time its departure.
“Can you keep a secret?” Brod said a little later. Maia turned, meeting his pale eyes.
“I suppose. But—”
“There’s another reason they keep me mostly ashore … the captain and mates, I mean.”
“Yes?”
He looked left and right, then leaned toward her.
“I … get seasick. Almost half the time. Never even saw any of the big fight when you were captured, ’cause I was bent over the fantail the whole time. Not encouraging for a guy s’posed to be an officer, I guess.”
She stared at the lad, guessing what it had cost him to say this. Still, she could not help herself. Maia fought to hold it in, to keep a straight face, but finally had to cover he
r mouth, stifling a choking sound. Brod shook his head. He pursed his lips, tightening them hard, but could not keep them from spreading. He snorted. Maia rocked back and forth, holding her sides, then burst forth with peals of laughter. In a second, the youth replied in kind, guffawing with short brays between inhalations that sounded much better than sobs.
The next day, a vast squadron of zoor passed to the north, like gaily painted parasols, or flattish balloons that had escaped a party for festive giants. Morning sunlight refracted through their bulbous, translucent gasbags and dangling tendrils, casting multicolored shadows on the pale waters. The convoy stretched from horizon to horizon.
Maia watched from the precipice, along with Brod and several women, remembering the last time she had seen big floaters like these, though nowhere near this many. It had been from the narrow window of her prison cell, in Long Valley, when she had thought Leie dead, had yet to meet Renna, and seemed entirely alone in the world. By rights, she should be less desolate now. Leie was alive, and had vowed to come back for her. Maia worried over Renna constantly, but the reavers weren’t likely to harm him, and rescue was still possible. She even had friends, after a fashion, in Naroin and Brod.
So why do I feel worse than ever?
Misery is relative, she knew. And present pain is always worse than its memory. This softer captivity didn’t ease her bitterness thinking of Leie’s actions, her angst for Renna, or her feelings of helplessness.
“Look!” Brod cried, pointing to the west, the source of the zoor migration. Women shaded their eyes and, one by one, gasped.
There, in the midst of the floating armada, emerging out of brightness, cruised three stately, cylindrical behemoths, gliding placidly like whales among jellyfish.
“Pontoos,” Maia breathed. The cigar-shaped beasts stretched hundreds of meters, more closely resembling the fanciful zep’lin on her sextant cover than the surrounding zoor, or, for that matter, the small dirigibles used nowadays to carry mail. Their flanks shimmered with facets like iridescent fish scales, and they trailed long, slender appendages which, at intervals, dipped to the waves, snatching edible bits, or siphoning water to split, with sunlight, into hydrogen and oxygen.