These reavers were fanatics. She had known that, and had it reinforced during this morning’s ambush. But this? To deliberately and cold-bloodedly attack and slay men? It was as obscene as what Perkinites constantly warned of, the oldtime male-on-female violence that once led to the Founders’ Exodus, so long ago.
Renna, she thought in anguish. What have you brought to my world?
Maia cast a brief prayer that her sister, part of the engine crew, hadn’t been involved in the spontaneous bloodletting. Perhaps Leie would help save any men belowdecks, though realistically, the pirates seemed unlikely to leave witnesses.
Right now, what mattered was that the mutiny had won Maia and Brod seconds, minutes. Time that they exchanged for badly needed meters as the shouting reavers reorganized and finished turning the ship. “Ready about!” Brod cried, warning of another jibe maneuver. “Ready!” Maia answered. As her partner steered, she slid under the boom and performed a complex set of simultaneous actions, moving with a fluid grace that would have shocked her old teachers, or even herself a few months ago. Practice, combined with need, makes for a kind of centering that can increase skill beyond all expectation.
The next time she glimpsed the Reckless, it cruised several hundred meters back but was picking up speed. The gunners kept having to reposition their recoilless rifle each time the schooner shifted angle to track the fugitives. They could be seen shouting at the new helmswoman, urging a steady course. Straight-on wouldn’t do, as the larger vessel’s bowsprit blocked the way. Eventually, Reckless settled on a heading that plowed thirty degrees from the wind. It reduced the closing rate, but finally allowed a clear shot.
Shall I warn Brod? Maia pondered, more coolly than she expected.
No, better to let him stay focused every possible moment.
She watched her friend flick his gaze to the trembling sail, to the choppy water, to their destination—the rapidly nearing cluster of vast, stony monoliths. Using all this data, the boy made adjustments too subtle to be calculated, based on a type of instinct he had earlier denied possessing, seducing speed out of an unlikely combination of sailcloth, wood, and wind.
He’s growing up as I watch him, Maia marveled. Brod’s youthful, uncertain features were transformed by this intensely spotlit exercise of skill. His jaw and brow bore hardened lines, and he radiated something that, to Maia, distilled both the mature and immature essences of maleness—a profound narrowness of purpose combined with an ardent joy in craft. Even if the two of them died in the next few minutes, her young friend would not leave this world without becoming a man. Maia was glad for him.
A booming concussion shook the air behind them. It was a deeper, larger-caliber growl than the little cannon of this morning. “What was that?” Brod asked, almost absentmindedly, without shifting from the task at hand.
“Thunder,” Maia lied with a grim smile, letting the hot glory of his concentration last a few seconds longer. “Don’t worry. It won’t rain for a while, yet.”
Water poured down from the heavens, soaking their clothes and nearly swamping the small boat. It fell in sheets, then abruptly stopped. The cascade, blown into the sky by another exploding shell, sent Maia with a bucket to the bilge, bailing furiously.
Fountains of falling ocean weren’t their only trouble. One near miss had spun the skiff like a top, causing the hull to groan with the sound of loosening boards and pegs. All Maia knew was that her bailing outflow must exceed inflow for as long as it took Brod to single-handedly find them a way out of this mess.
The gun crew on the Reckless had taken a while settling down, after their mutinous purge. They shot wide, frustrated partly by the skiff’s zigzagging, before finally zeroing in amid the deepening twilight. For minutes, Maia nursed the illusion that safety lay in view—an open channel leading to the anchorage of Jellicoe Lagoon. Then she glimpsed a familiar and appalling sight—the captured freighter Manitou, anchored within that same enclosure of towering stone, its deck aswarm with more crimson bandannas. All at once, she realized the awful truth.
Jellicoe must be the reaver base! I led Brod straight into their hands!
“Turn right, Brod, hard!”
A sudden, last-minute swerve barely escaped the fatal entrance. Now they skirted along the convoluted face of Jellicoe itself, alternately drenched by near misses or the more normal ocean spume of waves crashing against obdurate rock. There were no more delicate, optimizing tack maneuvers. They were caught in a mighty current, and Brod spent all his efforts keeping them from colliding with the island’s serrated face.
Darkness might have helped, if all three major moons weren’t high, casting pearly luminance upon the fivers’ imminent demise. It was a beautiful, clear evening. Soon, Maia’s beloved stars would be out, if she lasted long enough to wish them goodbye.
Again and again she filled the bucket, spilling it seaward so as not to watch the glistening nearness of the “dragon’s tooth,” which towered nearly vertically like a rippling, convoluted curtain. Its rounded fabric folds seemed to hint a softness that was a lie. The adamantine, crystalline stone was, in fact, passively quite willing to smash them at a touch.
Maia couldn’t face that awful sight. She poured bucket after bucket in the opposite direction, which fact partially spared her when the reavers tried a new tactic.
A sudden detonation exploded behind Maia, bouncing the skiff in waves of compressed air and near vacuum, pummeling her downward to the bilge. To her own amazement, she retained full consciousness as concussions rolled past, fading into a low, rumbling vibration she could feel through the planks. Reflexively, she clutched at a stinging pain in the back of her neck, and pulled out a sliver of granitic stone, covered with blood. While purple spots swam before her eyes, Maia stared at the daggerlike piece of natural shrapnel. While the world wavered around her, she turned to see that Brod, too, had survived, though bloody runnels flowed down the left side of his face. Thank Lysos the rock fragments had been small. This time.
“Sail farther from the cliff!” Maia shouted. Or tried to. She couldn’t even hear her own voice, only an awful tolling of temple bells. Still, Brod seemed to understand. With eyes dilated in shock, he nodded and turned the tiller. They managed to open some distance before the next shell struck, blowing more chunks off the promontory face. No chips pelted them this time, but the maneuver meant sailing closer to the Reckless and its weapon, now almost at point-blank range. Looking blearily up the rifled muzzle, Maia watched its crew load another shell and fire. She felt its searing passage through the air, not far to the left. An interval passed, too short to give a name, and then the cliff reflected yet another terrible blast, almost hurling the two fivers from the boat. When next she looked up, Maia saw their sail was ripped. Soon it would be in tatters.
At that moment, the convoluted border of the island took another turn. Suddenly, an opening appeared to port. With quaking hands, Brod steered straight for the cul-de-sac. It would have been insanely rash under any other circumstance, but Maia approved wholeheartedly. At least the bitchies won’t get to watch us die at their own hands.
One side of the opening exploded as they passed through, sending cracks radiating through the outcrop, blowing the skiff forward amid cascades of rock. The next shell seemed to beat the cliff with bellows of frustrated rage. Cracks multiplied tenfold. A tremendous chunk of stone, half as long as the Reckless itself, began to peel away. With graceful deliberateness, its looming shadow fell toward Brod and Maia.…
The boulder crashed into the slim gap just behind the tiny boat, yanking them upon the driving fist of a midget tsunami, aimed at a deep black hole.
Maia knew herself to have some courage. But not nearly enough to watch their ruined boat surge toward that ancient titan, Jellicoe Beacon. Let it be quick, she asked. Then darkness swept over them, cutting off all sight.
Dear Iolanthe,
As you can see from this letter, I am alive … or was at the time of its writing … and in good health, excepting the effects of
several days spent bound and gagged.
Well, it looks like I tumbled for the oldest trick in the book. The Lonely Traveler routine. I am in good company. Countless diplomats more talented than I have fallen victim to their own frail, human needs.…
My keepers command me not to ramble, so I’ll try to be concise. I am supposed to tell you not to report that I am missing until two days after receiving this. Continue pretending that I took ill after my speech. Some will imagine foul play, while others will say I’m bluffing the Council. No matter. If you do not buy my captors the time they need, they threaten to bury me where I cannot be found.
They also say they have agents in the police bureaus. They will know if they are betrayed.
I am now supposed to plead with you to cooperate, so my life will be spared. The first draft of this letter was destroyed because I waxed a bit sarcastic at this point, so let me just say that, old as I am, I would not object to going on a while longer, or seeing more of the universe.
I do not know where they are taking me, now that summer is over and travel is unrestricted in any direction. Anyway, if I wrote down clues from what I see and hear around me, they would simply make me rewrite yet again. My head hurts too much for that, so we’ll leave it there.
I will not claim to have no regrets. Only fools say that. Still, I am content. I’ve been and done and seen and served. One of the riches of my existence has been this opportunity to dwell for a time on Stratos.
My captors say they’ll be in touch, soon. Meanwhile, with salutations, I remain—Renna.
22
In near-total darkness she stroked Brod’s forehead, tenderly brushing his sodden hair away from coagulating gashes. The youth moaned, tossing his head, which Maia held gently with her knees. Despite a plenitude of hurts, she felt thankful for small blessings, such as this narrow patch of sand they lay upon, just above an inky expanse of chilly, turbid water. Thankful, also, that this time she wasn’t fated to awaken in some dismal place, after a whack on the head. My skull’s gotten so hard, anything that’d knock me out would kill me. And that won’t happen till the world’s done amusing itself, pushing me around.
“Mm … Mwham-m …?” Brod mumbled. Maia sensed his vocalization more via her hands than with her shock-numbed hearing. Still unconscious, Brod seemed nevertheless wracked with duty pangs, as if at some level he remained anxious over urgent tasks left undone. “Sh, it’s all right,” she told him, though barely able to make out her own words. “Rest, Brod. I’ll take care of things for a while.”
Whether or not he actually heard her, the boy seemed to calm a bit. Her fingers still traced somnolent worry knots across his brow, but he did stop thrashing. Brod’s sighs dropped below audible to her deafened ears.
In its last moments, their dying boat had spilled them inside this cave, while more explosions just behind them brought down the entrance in a rain of shattered rock. Amid a stygian riot of seawater and sand, her head ringing with a din of cannonade, Maia had groped frantically for Brod, seizing his hair and hauling him toward a frothy, ill-defined surface. Up and down were all topsy-turvy during those violent moments when sea and shore and atmosphere were one, but practice had taught Maia the knack of seeking air. Rationing her straining lungs, she had fought currents like clawing devils till at last, with poor Brod in tow, her feet found muddy purchase on a rising slope. Maia managed to crawl out, dragging her friend above the waterline and falling nearby to check his breathing in utter blackness. Fortunately, Brod coughed out what water he’d inhaled. There were no apparent broken bones. He’d live … until whatever came next.
All told, their wounds were modest. If the skiff had stayed intact, we’d have ridden that wave straight into some underground wall, she envisioned with a shudder. Only the boat’s premature fragmentation had saved their lives. The dunking had cushioned their final shorefall.
Maia felt cushioned half to death. Even superficial cuts hurt like hell. Sandy grit lay buried in every laceration, with each grain apparently assigned its own cluster of nerves. To make matters worse, evaporation sucked the heat out of her body, setting her teeth chattering.
But we’re not dead, another voice within her pointed out defiantly. And we won’t be, if I can find a way out of here before the sea rises.
Not an easy proposition, she admitted, shivering. This undercut cave probably fills and empties twice a day, routinely washing itself clean of jetsam like us.
Maia guessed they had at least a few hours. More life-span than she had expected during those final moments, plunging toward a horrible, black cavity in the side of a towering dragon’s tooth. I should be grateful for even a brief reprieve, she thought, shaking her head. Forgive me, though, if I fail to quite see the point.
In retrospect, it seemed pathetically dumb to have gone charging off to rescue Renna—and to redeem her sister—only to fail so totally and miserably. Maia felt especially sorry for Brod, her companion and friend, whose sole fatal error had been in following her.
I should never have asked him. He’s a man, after all. When he dies, his story ends.
The same could be said for her, of course. Both men and vars lacked the end-of-life solace afforded to normal folk–to clones—who knew they would continue through their clanmates, in all ways but direct memory.
I guess there’s still a chance for me in that way. Leie could succeed in her plans, become great, found a clan. She sniffed sardonically. Maybe Leie’ll put a statue of me in the courtyard of her hold. First in a long row of stern effigies, all cast from the same mold.
There were other, more modest possibilities, closer to Maia’s heart. Although the twins’ minor differences had irked them, important things, like their taste in people, had always matched. So, there was a chance Leie might be drawn to Renna, as Maia had. Perhaps Leie would forsake her reaver pals and help the man from outer space, even grow close to him.
That should make me feel better, Maia pondered. I wonder why it doesn’t?
In successive ebbs and flows, the waterline had been gradually climbing higher along the sandy bank where they lay. Soon the icy liquid sloshed her legs, as well as Brod’s lower torso. Here comes the tide, Maia thought, knowing it was time to force her reluctant, battered body to move again. Groaning, she hauled herself upright. Taking the boy by his armpits, Maia gritted her teeth and strained to drag him upslope three, four meters … until her backside abruptly smacked into something hard and jagged.
“Ouch! Damn the smuggy …”
Maia laid Brod down on the sand and reached around, trying to rub a place along her spine. She turned and with her other hand began delicately exploring whatever obdurate, prickly barrier loomed out of the darkness to block her retreat. Carefully at first, she lightly traced what turned out to be a nearly vertical wall of randomly pointed objects … slim ovoids coated with slime. Shells, she realized. Hordes of barnaclelike creatures clung tenaciously to a stone cliff face while patiently awaiting another meal, the next tidal flood of seaborne organic matter.
I guess this is as far as we go, she noted with resignation. Depression and fatigue almost made her throw herself on the sand next to Brod, there to pass her remaining minutes in peace. Instead, with a sigh, Maia commenced feeling her way along the wall, trying not to wince each time another craggy shell pinched or scraped her hands. The thick band of algae-covered carapaces continued above her farthest reach, confirming that full tide stretched much higher than she could.
Still she moved from left to right, hoping for something to change. Shuffling sideways, her feet encountered a gentle slope … alas, rising no more than another meter or so. Yet it made a crucial difference. At the limit of Maia’s tiptoe reach, her fingertips passed beyond the scummy crust of shells and stroked smooth stone.
High-water mark. The ceiling’s above high tide! This offered possibilities. Assume I waken him in time. Could Brod and I tread water and float up with the current, keeping our heads dry?
Not without something strong and stable to
hang on to, she realized with chagrin. More likely, the waves’ flushing action would first bash them against the abrading walls, then suck their fragments outside to join other rubble left by the reavers’ bombardment.
The only real hope was for a cleft or ledge, above. If there’s some way to get up there in time.
She returned to check on Brod, and found him sleeping peacefully. Maia bent a second time to drag the boy up the little hillock she had found. Then she began exploring the cave wall in earnest, working her way further to the right, patting the layer of barnacle creatures in search of some route, some path above the killing zone. At one point she gasped, yanking her hand back from a worse-than-normal jab. Popping a finger in her mouth, Maia tasted blood and felt a ragged gash along one side. May you live to enjoy another scar, she thought, and resumed searching for a knob, a crack, anything offering a hint of a route upward.
A minute or two later, Maia almost tripped when something caught her ankle. She bent to disentangle it and her hands felt wood—a shattered board—snarled with scraps of canvas and sodden rope—fragments of the little skiff they had wrecked without ever giving it a name.
Shivering, she continued her monotonous task, whose chief reward consisted of unwelcome familiarity with the outline of one obnoxious, well-defended marine life-form. A while later, the sandy bank began to descend again, taking her even farther from her goal, and nearer the icy water.
Well, there’s still the area leftward of where I put Brod. She held out little hope the topography would be any different.
On the verge of giving up and turning around, Maia’s hand encountered … a hole. Trembling, she explored its outlines. It felt like a notch of sorts, about a meter up from the sandy bank. It might serve as a place to set one’s foot, to start a climb, but with a definite drawback: the proposed procedure meant using the sharp, slippery barnacle shells as handholds.
Maia turned around, counted paces, and knelt to grope amid the wreckage she had found earlier. From remnants of the shredded sail, she tore canvas strips to wrap around her palms. For good measure, she looped over her shoulder the longest stretch of rope she could find. It wasn’t much. Hurry, she thought. The tide will be in soon.