Well, we were due a little, Maia thought. Despite all the damage wrought by blast, collision, and battle, the ketch showed no sign of taking water. Just as fortunately, the fickle currents now swept it away from the rocky cliffs.
Still, the rigging was a mess. The masthead and fore-stay were gone, as well as the portside spreader. It would take hours just to clear away most of the wreckage, let alone patch together enough sail to get under way. Heaven help them if another reaver ship came along during that time.
Barring that unpleasant eventuality, a head start and favorable winds were what the surviving castaways most wanted now. Even the wounded seemed braced by the thought of imminent escape westward, and a chance to avenge the dead.
Although the reavers had been stunned and wounded by the ambuscade, it would have been madness for four women and a boy to try attacking all alone. But Maia and the rest of the skiff crew had counted on hidden reinforcements, which came from a source the pirates never suspected. Only a few of those who had been aboard the raft when the reaver ship was first spotted had remained aboard to face the brunt of the cannon’s shells. The rest had by then gone overboard, taking shelter under empty crates and boxes already jettisoned—apparently to lighten the raft’s load. In fact, they were tethered to float some distance behind, where the enemy would not think to shoot at them.
Only the strongest swimmers had been chosen for that dangerous role. Once the skiff crew began boarding, drawing all the reavers aft, five waterlogged Manitou sailors managed to swim around to the bow and clamber aboard, using loops of dangling cable. Shivering and mostly unarmed, they did have surprise on their side. Even so, it was a close and chancy thing.
Small-scale battles can turn on minor differences, as Maia learned when she pieced together what had happened at the end. The last two Manitou sailors, those responsible for springing the catapult trap, had been perhaps the bravest of all. With their job done, each took a running start, then leaped feetfirst off the high bluff to plunge all the way down to the deep blue water. Surviving that was an exploit to tell of. To follow it up with swimming for the crippled ketch, and joining the attack in the nick of time … the notion alone put Maia in awe. These were, indeed, tough women.
Before Maia made it back from her own watery excursion, that last wave of reinforcements turned the tide, converting bloody stalemate into victory Now ten of the original band of internees, plus several well-watched prisoners, labored to prepare the captive prize for travel. Young Brod, despite bandages on his face and arms, climbed high upon the broken mast, parsing debris from useful lines and shrouds, eliminating the former with a hatchet.
Maia was hauling lengths of cable overboard when Naroin tapped her on the shoulder. The policewoman carried a rolled-up chart, which she unfurled with both hands. “You ever get a good latitude fix with that toy Pegyul gave you?” she asked.
Maia nodded. After two dips in the ocean, she hadn’t yet inspected the minisextant, and feared the worst. Before yesterday, however, she had taken several good sightings from their prison pinnacle. “Let’s see … we must’ve been dumped on …” She bent to peer at the chart, which showed a long archipelago of narrow, jagged prominences, crisscrossed by perpendicular coordinate lines. Maia saw a slanted row of cursive lettering, and rocked back. “Well I’ll be damned. We’re in the Dragons’ Teeth!”
“Yeah. How about that.” Naroin replied. These were islands of legend. “I’ll tell you some interestin things about ’em, later. But now—the latitude, Maia?”
“Oh, yes.” Maia reached out and tapped with one finger. “There. They must have left us on, um, Grimké Island.”
“Mm. Thought so from the outline. Then that one over there”—Naroin pointed westward at a mist-shrouded mass—“must be De Gournay. And just past it to the north, that’s the best course toward deep water. Two good days and we’re in shipping lanes.”
Maia nodded. “Right. From there, all you need is a compass heading. I hope you make it.”
Naroin looked up. “What? You’re not coming along?”
“No. I’ll take the skiff, if it’s all right with you. I have unfinished business around here.”
“Renna an’ your sister.” Naroin nodded. “But you don’t even know where to look!”
Maia shrugged. “Brod will come. He knows where the man sanctuary is, at Halsey Beacon. From there, we may spot some clue. Find the hideout where Renna’s being kept.” Maia did not mention the uncomfortable fact that Leie was one of the keepers. She shifted her feet. “Actually, that chart would be more useful to us, since you’ll be off the edge just a few hours after …”
Naroin sniffed. “There are others below, anyway. Sure, take it.” She rolled the vellum sheet and slapped it gruffly into Maia’s hands. Clearly she was masking feelings like the ones erupting in Maia’s own breast. It was hard giving up a friend, now that she had one. Maia felt warmed that the woman sailor shared the sentiment.
“O’ course, Renna might not even be in the archipelago anymore,” Naroin pointed out.
“True. But if so, why would they have gone to such lengths to get rid of us? Even as witnesses, we’d not be much threat if they’d fled in some unknown direction. No, I’m convinced he and Leie are nearby. They’ve got to be.”
There followed a long silence between the two women, punctuated only by the sounds of nearby raucous chopping, hammering and scraping. Then Naroin said, “If you ever finally reach a big town, get to a comm unit an’ dial PES five-four-niner-six. Call collect. Give ’em my name.”
“But what if you aren’t … if you never … I mean—” Maia stopped, unable to tactfully say it. But Naroin only laughed, as if relieved to have something to make light of.
“What if I never make it? Then if you please, tell my boss where you saw me last. All the things you’ve done an’ seen. Tell ’em I said you got a favor or two comin’. At least they might help get you a decent job.”
“Mm. Thanks. So long as it has nothing to do with coal—”
“Or saltwater!” Naroin laughed again, and spread her small, strong arms for an embrace.
“Good luck, virgie. Keep outta jail. Don’t get hit on the head so much. An’ stop tryin’ to drown, will ya? Do that an’ I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”
PART 3
Peripatetic’s Log: Stratos Mission: Arrival + 53.369 Ms
Today I told the heirs of Lysos all about the law. A law they had no role in passing. One they cannot amend or disobey.
The assembled savants, councillors, and priestesses listened to my speech in stony silence. Though I had already informed some of them, in private, I could still sense shock and churning disbelief behind many rigid faces.
“After millennia, we of the Phylum have learned the hard lesson of speciation,” I told them. “Separated by vast gulfs of space, distant cousins lose their sense of common heritage. Isolated human tribes drift apart, emerging far down the stream of time, changed beyond recognition. This is a loss of much more than memory.”
The grimness of my audience was unsettling. Yet Iolanthe and others had counseled frankness, not diplomatic euphemisms, so I told the leaders accounts from the archives of my service—a litany of misadventure and horror, of catastrophic misunderstandings and tragedies provoked by narrow worldviews. Of self-righteous ethnic spasms and deadly vendettas, with each side convinced (and armed with proof) that it was right. Of exploitations worse than those we once thought jettisoned in Earth’s predawn past. Worse for being perpetrated by cousins who refused to know each other anymore, or listen.
Tragedies that finally brought forth Taw.
“Till now, I’ve described how renewed contact might prove advantageous. Arts and sciences would be shared, and vast libraries containing solutions to countless problems. Many of you looked at me, and thought, ‘Well, he is but one man. To get those good things, we can endure rare visits by solitary envoys. We’ll pick and choose from the cornucopia, without disrupting our ordered destiny.’
“Others of you suspected more would be involved. Much more. There is.”
I called forth a holographic image to glimmer in the center of the council hall, a glistening snowflake as broad as a planet, as thin as a tree, reflecting the light of galaxies.
“Today, a second service links the Phylum worlds, more important than the one provided by peripatetics. It is a service some of you will surely loathe, like foul-tasting medicine. The great icecraft move between ten thousand suns—more slowly than messengers like me. But their way is inexorable. They carry stability. They bring change.”
A Perkinite delegate leaped up. “We’ll never accept them. We’ll fight!”
I had expected that.
“Do what you feel you must. Blow up the first icecraft, or ten, unmindful of the countless sleeping innocents you thus consign to die. Some callous worlds have murdered hundreds of snowy hibernibarges, and yet, finally surrendered.
“Try what you will. Bloodshed will transform you. Inevitably, guilt and shame will divert your children, or grandchildren, from the path you choose for them. Even passive resistance will give way in time, as curiosity works on your descendants, tempting them to sample from the bright new moons that circle in their sky.
“No brutal war fleets will force compliance. Vow, if you must, to wait us out. Planets are patient; so are your splendid, ancient clans, more long-lived than any single human or government.
“But the Phylum and the Law are even more persistent. They will not have ‘no’ for an answer. More is at stake than one world’s myth of mission and grand isolation.”
The words felt hard, yet it was good to have them out. I sensed support from many on the council who had coached my presentation to shock matters from a standstill. How fortunate that here, unlike Watarki World or New Levant, a strong minority sees the obvious. That solitude and speciation are not human ways.
“Look at it this way,” I concluded. “Lysos and the Founders sought seclusion to perfect their experiment. But have you not been tested by time, and validated, as well as any way of life can be, in its context? Isn’t it time to come out and show your cousins what you’ve wrought?”
A lingering silence greeted my conclusion. Iolanthe led some tardy, uncomfortable applause that fluttered about the hall and fled through the skylights like an escaping bird. Amid frigid glowers from the rest, the Speaker cleared her voice, then dryly called adjournment.
Despite the tension, I left feeling stronger than I have in months. How much of that was due to the release of openness, I wondered, and how much did I owe to ministrations I’ve received lately thanks to Odo, under the sign of the ringing bell.
If I survive this day, this week, I must go back to that house, and celebrate while I can.
21
Dragons’ Teeth. Row after row of jagged incisors, aimed fiercely at the heavens.
I should have realized, Maia thought. On first seeing these islands in the distance, I should have known their name.
The Dragons’ Teeth. A legendary phrase. Yet, on contemplation, Maia realized she knew next to nothing about the chain of seamounts, whose massive roots of columnar crystal erupted from the ocean crust far below, rising to pierce surface waves and bite off hearty portions of sky. Their lustrous, fluted sides seemed all but impervious to time’s erosion. Trees clung to craggy heights where waterfalls, fed by pressure-driven springs, cascaded hundreds of meters, forming high, arched rainbows that mimicked aurorae, and gave Maia and Brod painful neck cricks as they sailed by, staring in awe.
Their gunter-rigged skiff threaded the tropical archipelago like a parasite weaving its way through the spines of some mighty half-submerged beast. The islands grew more densely clustered the deeper the little boat penetrated. Packed closely together, many of the needle isles were linked by natural causeways, even narrow, vaulting bridges. Brod always made a sign across his eyes before steering under one of those. A gesture not of fear, but reverence.
Although Brod had lived among the Teeth for several months before being taken hostage, he only knew the area near Halsey Beacon, the sole official habitation. So Maia took care of navigation while he steered. Their chart warned of shoals and reefs and deadly currents along the course she chose, making the circuitous path just right for folk like them, not wishing to be seen.
Clearly, Maia and Brod weren’t the first to reach this conclusion. Several times they spied evidence of past and present occupation. Huts and coarse, stony shelters lay perched on clefts, sometimes equipped with rude winches to lower cockleshell boats even smaller than the one they sailed. Once, Brod pointed and Maia caught sight of a hermit quickly gathering her nets as the skiff entered view. Ignoring their shouts, the old woman took to her oars, vanishing into a dark series of caves and grottoes.
So much for getting advice from the locals, Maia thought. Another time, she glimpsed a furtive figure staring down at them from a row of open casements, half-collapsed with age, part of a gallery of windows carved long ago, partway up one sheer tower face. The construction reminded her of the prison sanctuary in Long Valley, only vaster, and indescribably older.
Shadows cast by innumerable stone towers combed the dark blue water, all pointing in the same transitory direction, as if the stony pinnacles were gnomons to a half-thousand igneous sundials, tracking in unison the serene march of hours, of aeons.
This was a place once filled with history, then all but emptied of a voice.
“The Kings fought their last battle here,” Naroin had explained shortly before parting with the surviving castaways on their captured ketch. Maia and Brod had been about to board the resupplied skiff, in preparation to turning south. “All o’ the united clans an’ city-states sent forces here to finally squash the man-empire. It’s not much talked about, to discourage vars ever thinkin’ again about alliance with men against the great houses. But nothin’ could ever really stop a legend so big.” Naroin had gestured toward the sere towers. “Think about it. This is where the would-be patriarchs an’ their helpers made their last stand.”
Maia had paused to share her friend’s contemplation. “It’s like something out of a fairy tale. Unreal. I can hardly believe I’m here.”
The sailor-policewoman sighed. “Me neither. These parts ain’t visited much, nowadays. Way off the shippin’ lanes. I never pictured anythin’ like this. Kind o’ makes you wonder.”
Wonder, indeed. As she and Brod sailed deeper among the Dragons’ Teeth, Maia considered the unreliability of official history. The farther they went, the more certain she grew that Naroin had told the truth as she’d learned it. And that truth was a lie.
Maia recalled the riddle of the pit—that awful, glassy crater back on Grimké Island, where she and the others had been marooned. Since setting course southward on their separate journey, she and Brod had seen other peaks bearing similar stigmata. Seared tracks where stone had run molten under fierce heat, sometimes tracing a glancing blow, and sometimes …
Neither spoke while the steady wind took them past one ruined spire, a shattered remnant that had been sundered lengthwise by some power beyond anything she could imagine.
I don’t know about Kings and such. Maybe the patriarchists and their allies did make a last stand here. But I’ll bet a niche and all my winter rights they never caused this … devastation.
There was another, more ancient story. An event also seldom spoken of. One nearly as pivotal to Stratos Colony as its founding. Maia felt certain another enemy had been fought here, long ago. And from the looks of things, it had been barely beaten.
The Great Defense. Funny no one in our group made the connection, telling stories round the campfire, but that battle must also have raged here in the Dragons’ Teeth.
It was as if the Kings’ legend served to cover up an older tale. One in which the role of men had been admirable. As if those in power want its memory left only to hermits and pirates. She recalled the ancient, eroded, bas-relief sculpture she’d found amid the buried ruins at the temple in Grange Hea
d, depicting bearded and unbearded human forms grappling horned demons under the sheltering wings of an avenging Mother Stratos. Maia added it to a growing collection of evidence … but of what? To what conclusion? She wasn’t sure, yet.
A formation of low clouds moved aside, exposing the expanse of sea and stone to a flood of brilliant light. Blinking, Maia found herself jarred from the relentless flow of her dour thoughts. She smiled. Oh, I’ve changed all right, and not just by growing tougher. It’s a result of everything I’ve seen and heard. Renna, especially, got me thinking about time.
The clans urged single vars to leave off any useless pondering of centuries, millennia. Summerlings should concentrate on success in the here and now. The long term only becomes your affair once your house is established and you have a posterity to worry about. To consider Stratos as a world, with a past that can be fathomed and a destiny that might be changed, was not how Maia had been raised to think.
But it’s not so hard, learning to picture yourself as part of a great chain. One that began long before you, and will go on long after.
Renna had used the word continuum meaning a bridge across generations, even death itself. A disturbing notion, for sure. But ancient women and men had faced it before there ever were clones, or else they would never have left old Earth. And if they could do it, a humble var like me can, too.
Such thoughts were more defiant than measuring constellations, or even playing Game of Life puzzles. Those had been mere man-stuff, after all. Now she dared to question the judgments of savant-historians. Seeing through maternalistic, conservative propaganda to a fragment of truth. Fragments are almost as dangerous as nothing at all, she knew. Yet, somehow, it must be possible to penetrate the veil. To figure out how everything she had seen, and been through, held together.
How will I explain this to Leie? Maia mused. Must I first kidnap her away from her reaver friends? Haul her, bound and gagged, somewhere to have the meanness fasted out of her?