For the first time, they tasted what life might be like if their secret scheme succeeded. Although they were humbly dressed, some vars they encountered stepped aside for them in automatic deference, as if they were winter-born. “I knew it!” Leie whispered. “Twins are rare enough that people simply jump to the wrong conclusion. Our plan can work!”
Maia appreciated Leie’s enthusiasm. Yet, she knew success would count on filling in countless details. They shouldn’t spend their free moments playing games, she insisted, but combing the port for useful information.
Unfortunately, the town was a babble of strange tongues. Whenever clone-sisters met on the street, they often spoke an incomprehensible rasp of family code, handed down by hive mothers and embellished by their daughters for generations. This frustrated Leie at first. Back in easy-going Port Sanger, common speech had been the norm.
Then Leie grew enthusiastic. “We’ll need a secret jarg too, when we start our own clan.”
Maia neglected to remind her sister that as little girls they had experimented with codes, cryptograms, and private jargon, until Leie grew bored and quit. Privately, Maia had never stopped making anagrams or finding patterns in letter blocks scattered on the crèche floor. It might even have been what first triggered her interest in constellations, for to her the sparkling stellar patterns always seemed to hint at the Creator’s private code, one that was open to all who learned to see.
Strolling the grand plaza in front of Lanargh’s city temple, the twins watched a group of kneeling sailors receive blessing from an orthodox priestess wrapped in burgundy-striped robes. Raising her arms, the clergywoman called for intercession from the planet spirit, its rocks and air, its winds and waters, so that the men might reach safe haven at their journey’s end. The singsong benison finished with a favorite passage about the sanctity of comradeship amid shared danger. Yet, the holy woman’s quavering delivery showed that clerics, too, had a “language” all their own, especially when quoting the mysterious Fourth Book of Scriptures.
“Soto their ships ontime ofneed kaul uponthat whichishidden …”
No wonder Book Four was popularly known as the Riddle of Lysos. It even had its own eighteen-letter alphabet, which used to bring Maia pleasurable diversion during long weekly services in the Lamatia chapel, silently puzzling over cryptic passages incised on the stone walls.
Leie glanced at the clock set in the Temple’s face and sighed. “Oops, sorry. Gotta get back to work now.”
Maia blinked. “What? On first day?”
“Ain’t it var’s luck? Mop an’ pail duty. Our chief wants ol’ Zeus to get more customers than Wotan, even though it all goes to the same owners and guild.” She grimaced. “Are your bosuns as awful as ours?”
Maia wouldn’t have used that word. “Hard,” maybe, and quick to catch when you were inattentive. But she was learning a lot from Naroin and the others, and growing stronger by the day. Anyway, Leie was clearly fibbing. Maia bet her sister was on punishment detail, probably for mouthing off when she should have kept quiet.
Despite that, Maia grunted sympathetically. “Unloading coal for a living. Huh. I guess the mothers’d be proud of us for starting at the bottom.”
“Not for long, though!” Leie answered. “Someday we’ll sail back into Port Sanger with enough coin sticks to buy the place!” She laughed, and her cheerfulness forced Maia to smile.
It felt different walking through town alone, and not simply because no one stepped aside for her anymore. Maia had enjoyed pointing things out to Leie, sharing the sights. It had been comforting knowing another person in this sea of strangers was an ally.
On the other hand, the town seemed more vivid this way. Sound and smell and vision felt sharper as she grew more aware of the downside of city life. Sweating var laborers, dragging loads on creaking carts. Beggars, some crippled, shaking tithe cups bearing wax temple seals. Sly-looking women who leaned against the corners of buildings, eyeing her speculatively, perhaps wondering how well her purse was tied on.…
It was right for us to take separate ships, Maia thought, feeling both wary and alive. We needed this. I needed it.
There were placards she had never seen before, denoting clans she didn’t know, offering goods she had never heard of. Some shop floors were shared by a dozen midget enterprises, each with a pretentious, hand-painted heraldic device, run by single women pooling together for the rent, each hoping to begin the slow rise to success. At the other extreme, the city hospital seemed both modern and colorless, the white-jacketed professionals within having no need to advertise their family affiliations.
A blatting sound, a horn and crashing cymbals, caused the street crowd to divide for a new disturbance. Onlookers laughed as a short parade wound its way downhill. The male membership of a secret society, dressed in flamboyant outfits and carrying mystery totems, wove across the cobblestones to applause and good-natured catcalls from the throng. Some of the men seemed sheepish, lugging ornate model ships and wooden zep’lins on their shoulders to the beat of thumping drums, while others held their chins out, as if daring anyone to make fun of their earnest ritual. Only a few spectators seemed unfriendly, such as when one cluster of frowning women pointedly refused to step aside, forcing the procession to wind around them.
Perkinites, Maia thought, moving on. Why don’t they leave the poor men alone and pick on someone their own size?
Lanargh offered a wider range of services than she had ever imagined, from palmists and professed witches all the way to esteemed phrenologists, equipped with calipers, cranial tapes, and ornate charts. Maia considered having a reading done, till she saw the prices and decided nothing could be done about the shape of her head, anyway.
Glancing through one expensive glass window, Maia watched three high-browed redheads consult with customers over leather-bound folders. Perusing gilt posters, Maia gleaned that this was a local branch of a farflung family enterprise, one offering commercial message services. On a separate chart, the redheads advertized a local sideline—designing private languages for up-and-coming houses.
“Now there’s a niche,” Maia murmured admiringly. Success on Stratos often lay in finding some product or service no one else had mastered. This was one she might have enjoyed exploring herself. She sighed. “Too bad it already seems pretty well filled.”
“They’re all filled, sister. Don’t you know? It’s one of the foretold signs.”
Maia spun around to face a young woman about her own age and height, wearing a cowled robe with the embroidered stripes of some religious order. The priestess, or dedicant, clutched a sheaf of yellow pamphlets, peering at Maia through thick spectacles.
“Um … signs of what, sister?” Maia asked, overcoming surprise.
A friendly, if fervent, smile. “That we are entering a Time of Changes. Surely you’ve noticed, a bright fiver like yourself, that things are on edge? Clan matrons have long complained about the climbing summer birthrate, but do they act to stop it? A force within Stratos Herself wills that it be so, despite all inconvenient consequences.”
Maia overcame her accustomed reaction to being accosted by a clergywoman—an impulse to seek the nearest exit. “Mm … inconvenient?”
“To the great houses. To the bureaucracy in Caria. And especially to those selfsame hordes of summerlings, for whom there’s no place on this planet. No place save one.”
Aha! Maia thought. Is this a recruitment drive? The priesthood was even less selective than the Port Sanger city guard. By taking vows, any var might guarantee a full meal bowl for the rest of her days. If it also meant forsaking childbearing, or ever establishing a clan of one’s own, how many summerlings achieved that anyway? Abjuring sex someday, with a sweaty man, was no decision-stopper. All Stratos was your lover when you took the robe, and all Stratoins your children.
Still, why go recruiting? In Lanargh, a stone thrown in any direction would pass over some priestess or deacon. More were choosing that route to safety every day.
“Meanin’ no disrespect,” Maia said, backing away. “I don’t think the Temple is my place.”
The priestess seemed undismayed. “My child, that’s obvious from the look of you.”
“But … then what …?” Maia suddenly found her hand filled with a printed broadsheet. She glanced down at the first few lines.
The Outsiders—Danger or Challenge?
Sisters in Stratos! It should be obvious by now that the sages and councilwomen of Caria are concealing the truth about the spaceship in our skies, said to contain emissaries from the Hominid Phylum, which our ancestors left so long ago. Why have they told the public so little? The savants and officials make excuses, talking about “linguistic drift” and careful “quarantine procedures,” but it is growing apparent to even the lowliest that our great ones, sitting on lofty seats within the Council, Temple and University, are in their deepest hearts cowards.…
It was hard to follow the run-on screed, but a tone of antagonism to authority was stridently clear. Maia looked again at the dedicant, seeing that the stripes of her robe were broken with colored threads. “You’re a heretic,” she breathed.
“Smart lass. Not many where you’re from?”
Maia found herself smiling faintly. “We’re a bit out of the way. We had Perkinites—”
“Everyone has Perkinites. Specially since the Outsider Ship gave ’em an excuse to spread boogie-man stories. You know the ones.… Now that Stratos is rediscovered, the Phylum will send fleets of ships full of drooling, hairy, unmodified males, worse than the Enemy of old.”
“Well”—Maia grinned at the image—“that may exaggerate what they say.”
“And your local Perkies may be milder than ours, O virgin from the frozen north!” The heretic laughed sardonically. “At any rate, even the temple hierarchy’s in a lather over alien humans barging in, possibly changing Stratos forever. It never seems to occur to the silly smugs that it might be the other way around. That this may be the moment Lysos was planning for, from the very start!”
Maia was confused. “You don’t see the starship as a threat?”
“Not my order, the Sisters of Venture. In early days, restored contact might’ve been harmful. But now our way of life is proven. Sure, we have problems, injustices, but have you read about the way things were back on the Old Worlds, before our founders’ exodus?”
Maia nodded. It was favored fare in books and on the tele.
“Animal chaos!” The woman waxed passionate. “Picture how violent and uncertain life was, especially for women and children. Now realize, it’s probably still going on out there! That is, on whatever worlds haven’t been destroyed, by the Enemy, or by aggression among male humans.”
“But the Outsider proves some colonies still—”
“Exactly! There may be dozens of surviving, battered worlds, crying out for what we can offer—salvation.”
Maia had backed away until a gritty wall jabbed her spine. Yet she felt torn between flight and fascination. “You think we should welcome contact … and send missionaries?”
The dedicant, who had been hunching forward in pursuit, now stood straighter and smiled. “I was right about you being a sharpie. Which brings up my original comment about there being a reason for everything, including the surge in summer births, even though niches seem so few.” She raised one finger. “Few here on Stratos! But not out there.” The finger jabbed skyward. “Destiny calls, and only timid fools in Caria stand in the way!”
Maia saw fervor in the young woman’s eyes, a belief transcending logic and all obstacles. Suppose you find yourself insignificant in the world, dwarfed by the mighty. How to feel important after all? All you need is a convenient conspiracy. One that’s keeping you from taking your rightful place as a leader toward the light.
Only there are so many lights.…
Maia withheld judgment on the Venturist’s actual idea, which had a grand sound, and might even be worth discussing. “I’ll give it a read,” she promised, holding up the pamphlet. “But …”
Her voice trailed off. The priestess was staring past her shoulder. In a distracted tone, the young dedicant said, “Very good. But now I must go. To the stars, sister.”
“Eia, sister,” Maia replied conventionally to the unusual farewell, watching the striped robe vanish into the crowd. She turned to see what had spooked the heretic, and soon caught sight of four sturdy women pushing through the throng, nonchalantly swinging walking sticks they didn’t seem to need … not for walking, at least.
Temple wardens, Maia realized. There were priestesses and then there were priestesses. Although heresy was officially no crime, the temple hierarchy had ways of making it less comfortable than following classical dogma. Of the fringe groups, only Perkinism was strong enough that no one dared rough up its adherents.
Oh, I guess there are still niches, Maia thought, watching the stern women move along, causing even members of the city watch to step aside. Vars with muscle can always find employment in this world.
Which suddenly reminded her, she was due back at the Wotan before dusk. Kitchen duty. And there’d be patarkal hell to pay if she was late!
Maia stuffed the heretical tract into a pocket, to show Leie later. Giving the Temple warders a wide berth, she found her bearings and hurried through the market crowd toward the unmistakable aroma of the docks.
“Work now, gawk later!” Bosun Naroin snapped, late on their fourth day in port.
Maia’s attention had wandered toward a distracting sight at the foot of the wharf. Drawing back quickly, she nodded—“Yessir”—and concentrated on resetting the conveyor belt, making sure that buckets hauling coal out of the ship’s hold did not jitter or spill. Sometimes it took muscle to lever the balky contraption into line. Even after all seemed in perfect order, Maia watched the buckets warily for a while to be sure. Finally, she lifted her head above the portside rail once more.
What had drawn her gaze before was the arrival of a car, cruising with a methane-driven purr down the bayside embankment, toward the pier where Wotan was moored.
A car, she thought. For personal transport and nothing else. There had been two in all of Port Sanger—used on ceremonial occasions or to carry visiting dignitaries. Other motor vehicles had been nearly as rare, since most products entered and left her hometown by sea. In cosmopolitan Lanargh, one might glimpse a motor-lorry down any street, each employing a driver, several loaders, and a guardian who walked in front bearing a red flag, making sure no children fell beneath the rumbling wheels. They were impressive machines, even if their growling, chuffing rumble frightened Maia a little.
For several days, one battered, ugly high-bed had been coming to the pier to fill its hopper with coal from the Parthenia Sea. The unloading crew grew to hate the sight of the thing. But hey, it’s a job, Maia thought as the truck’s bin filled with Port Sanger anthracite, bound for a family-run petrochemical plant for conversion to molten plastic, then used by certain other Lanargh clans for making fine injection-moldings.
Her gaze drifted once more to the foot of the wharf. The car had parked, but no one had yet emerged. Curious.
She turned back to make sure the returning, empty buckets weren’t clipping Wotan’s cargo hatch. If the conveyor jammed, the sweating team below would blame her. “Hold!” Maia cried when the clearance narrowed thinner than she liked. Naroin echoed with a shout. While the saw-toothed buckets rumbled to a halt, Maia kicked free a pair of chocks and set a pry bar under the conveyor’s frame, straining to jigger the massive apparatus several times until the new arrangement seemed right. Finally, she bent to pound the chocks back into place, then called, “Ready away!” Naroin threw a lever and precious electricity poured from the ship’s accumulators, setting the scarred machinery into motion with a rumble of grinding gears.
It was hard work, but Maia felt grateful to be out on deck. Her stints below, shoveling coal into the ever-hungry buckets, had been like sentences to hell. Floating grit stuck to your perspiration, running
down your arms and sides in sooty rivulets. It got into everything, including your mouth and underwear. Finally, like the others, she had stripped completely.
Nor could she complain, for this crew was luckier than most. Half the ships in port used human-powered winches to unload, or doubled-over stevedores, groaning as they dumped gunnysacks onto horse-drawn wagons. Even those freighters equipped with electric or steam-driven gear used it sparingly, relying mostly on muscle power.
“Savin’ wear and tear on the machinery,” Naroin had explained. “Some seasons, var labor’s cheaper’n replacement parts.” This year, it seemed especially so.
Not that summer women worked alone. Clones supervised unloading delicate merchandise, and men appeared whenever their specialized skills were needed. Still, the sailors mostly spent time caring for their precious ships, and no one expected different. What men and vars had in common was that both had fathers—though seldom knew their names. Both were lowlife in the eyes of haughty clones. Beyond that, all resemblance dimmed.
Everything seemed to be running smoothly, so Maia returned to the portside rail, fleeing the dust. Rubbing the back of her neck, she turned and saw that someone had left the motorcar at the base of the pier, and was walking this way. A man, dressed in foppish lace and wearing a wide-brim hat, sauntered toward the Zeus and Wotan, dodging the black plume wafting from the truck bed. Whistling, the male paused to inspect the paint flaking from the Wotan’s aft. He buffed his shoes, then squinted at the sky. So that’s what a person looks like when they’re trying not to look suspicious, Maia observed with amusement. This character was no sailor, nor did he look like the type to be kept waiting.