Glory Season

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 Head, 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?

Maia no longer meditated wistfully on the missed joy of shared experience with her sibling. The Leie of old would never have understood what Maia now thought and felt. The new Leie, even less so. Maia still missed her twin, but also felt resentment toward her harsh behavior and smug assumption of superiority, when they had last, briefly, met.

Maia longed far more to see Renna.

Does that make me a daddy’s girl? The juvenile epithet held no sting. Or am I a pervert, nurturing hearth feelings toward a man?

Philosophical dilemmas such as “why?” and “what?” seemed less important than “how?” Somehow, she must get Renna to safety. And if Leie chose to come also, that would be fine, too.

“We had better start thinking about putting in somewhere. It’s that or risk hitting rocks in the dark.” Brod held the tiller, constantly adjusting their heading to maintain southward momentum. With his other hand, he rubbed his chin, a common male mannerism, though in his case another distant summer must come before he felt a beard. “Normally I’d suggest putting out to open ocean,” he continued. “We’d lay a sea anchor, keep watch on wind and tide, and rejoin the archipelago at daybreak.” Brod shook his head unhappily. “Wish I didn’t feel so blind without a weather report. A storm could be just over the horizon, and we’d never know in time.”

Maia agreed. “At best, we’d waste hours and come back exhausted.” She unrolled the map. “Look, there’s one large island in this area with a charted anchorage. It’s not too far off our route, near the westernmost line of Teeth.”

Brod leaned forward to read aloud. “Jellicoe Beacon… Must’ve been a lighthouse sanctuary once, like Halsey. Deactivated and deserted, it says.”

Maia frowned, feeling suddenly as if she had heard that name before. Although the sun still lay some distance above the horizon, she shivered, ascribing the feeling to this creepy place. “Uh … so, shall we jibe to a sou’western tack, Cap’n?”

Maia had been half-teasing him with the honorific all day. Grinning, Brod responded with a grossly exaggerated accent. “Thet well bee doin’, Madam Owner. If yell be so kinned as te lend a help wit’de sail.”

“Aye, sir!” Maia took the taut, straining boom in one hand, setting a foot at the kick-strap. “Ready!”

“Coming about!” Brod swung the tiller, propelling the skiff’s bow sharply toward the wind. The sail fluffed and flapped, signaling Maia to haul the boom around from port to starboard, where the sail snapped full with an audible crack, sending them rushing on a new heading, surging up the long shadow of a tall island to the west. The late sun lit a luminous aureole of water vapor, a pinkish halo, turning the rocky prominence into a fiery spear aimed beyond the clouds.

“Assuming we find shelter in the lagoon at Jellicoe,” Brod said. “We’ll resume southward at dawn. Around midafternoon tomorrow, we can strike east, hitting the main channel near Halsey Beacon.”

“The active sanctuary. Tell me about the place,” Maia asked.

“It’s the one citadel still operating in the Dragons’ Teeth, sanctioned by the Reigning Council to keep order. My guild drew short lot to staff the lighthouse, so they sent two ships and crews they could most easily spare—meaning dregs like me. Still, I never expected the captain’d try picking up extra cash by hiring out to reavers.” He frowned unhappily. “Not every fellow feels that way. Some like watching women fight. Gives ’em a summery hot, they say.”

“Couldn’t you get a transfer, or something?”

“You kidding? Middies don’t question captains, even when a cap’n is breaking an unwritten guild tradition. Anyway, reaving’s legal, within limits. By the time I realized Captain Corsh was selling out to real pirates, it was too late.” Brod shook his head. “I must’ve shown how I felt, ’cause he was glad enough to offer me as hostage, while out loud yelling to the reavers what a great loss I was, and they’d better take good care of me!” The boy laughed harshly.

We’re alike, poor fellow, Maia thought. Is it my fault I don’t have any talents right for the world of women? Or his, that he’s a boy who was never meant to be a sailor? Her bitter reflection was unalloyedly rebellious. Maybe it’s just wrong to make generalizations like that, without leaving room for exceptions. Shouldn’t each of us have the right to try what we’re best at?

They were also alike in both having been abandoned by people they trusted. Yet he was more vulnerable. Boys expected to be adopted by a guild that would be their home from then on, while girl summerlings grew up knowing exactly what they were in for—a life of lonely struggle.

“We’d better be careful, then, when we reach Halsey. Your captain may not—”

“Be happy to see me?” Brod interrupted. “Hmph. I was within my rights, escaping with you and the others. Especially after Inanna and her murdering schemes. But you’re right. I don’t guess Corsh will see it that way. He’s probably already worried how he’s going to explain all this to the commodores.

“So we’ll try getting there near nightfall, tomorrow. I know a channel into the harbor. One that’s too shallow for ships, but just right for us. It leads to an out-of-the-way dock. From there, maybe we can sneak into the navigator’s suite and look at his charts. I’m sure he’s written down where the reaver hideout is. Where they’re keeping your starman.”

There was a slight edge to Brod’s voice, as if he felt dubious about something. Their chances of success? Or the very idea of consorting with aliens?

“If only Renna were being held right there, at Halsey.” She sighed.

“Doubtful. The reavers wouldn’t leave a male prisoner where he could talk to other men. They have too much riding on their plans for him.”

On Grimké, Brod had told Maia about the Visitor’s actions, just after Manitou was seized. By Brod’s account, Renna had stomped among the jubilant victors, protesting every violation of Stratoin law. He defiantly refused to move over to the Reckless until all of the wounded were tended. So stern had been his otherworldly countenance, his anger and clench-fisted restraint, that Baltha and the other reavers had backed down rather than be forced to hurt him. Brod never mentioned Renna paying special notice to one victim in particular, but Maia liked to imagine her alien friend’s strong, gentle hands soothing her delirium, and his voice, speaking in low tones, promising her firmly that they would meet again.

Brod had little more to say about Leie. He had noticed Maia’s sister among the reaver band, notable mainly for her eager eyes and intense interest in machines. The motor-room chief had been glad to have her, and hadn’t given a damn what gender a soot-stained crewmate carried under shirt and loincloth, so long as he or she worked hard.

“We only spoke privately once,” Brod said, shielding his eyes as they sailed toward the late afternoon sun. He adjusted the tiller to a change in the wind, and Maia reacted by tightening the sail. “I guess she chose me since no one would care if I laughed at her.”

“What did she want to talk about?”

Brod frowned, trying to remember. “She asked if I had ever met an old commodore or captain, back at my guild’s main sanctuary in Joannaborg. One named Kevin? Calvin?”

Maia sat up quickly. “Do you mean Clevin?”

He tapped the side of his head absentmindedly. “Yeah, that’s right. I told her I’d heard the name. But they shipped me out so quickly after adoption, and so many crews were still at sea that I’d never actually met him. The shipname, Sea Lion, was one of ours, though.”

Maia stared at the boy. “Your guild. It’s the Pinnipeds.”

She stated it as fact, and Brod shrugged. “Of course, you wouldn’t know. We lowered our ensign before the fight. Pretty shameful. I knew right then things were no good.”

Maia sank back down, listening through a roil of conflicting emotions—astonishment topping the list.

“Starkland Clan has known the Pinnipeds for generations. The mothers say it was once a great guild. Shipped fine cargoes, and its officers were welcome in High Town, winter and summer both. These days, the commodores take jobs like staffing Halsey Beacon, and now even hiring out to reavers.” He laughed bitterly. “Not a great billet, eh? But then, I’m no prize, either.”

Maia examined Brod with renewed interest. From what the boy said, he might be her distant cousin, several times removed… only a temple gene-scan could tell for sure. It was a concept Maia had to struggle with, along with the irony that here, after so many frantic adventures, she had finally made contact with her father-guild. The manner wasn’t at all as she’d imagined.

They sailed on quietly, each of them deep in private thought. At one point, a swarm of sleek, dark shapes cruised into view, some meters below their tiny vessel, undulating silently with sinuous power and speed. The largest of the creatures would have outmassed the Manitou, and took several minutes to progress, yet its smooth passage scarcely caused a ripple above as the skiff passed at an angle. Maia barely glimpsed the monster’s tail, then the mysterious underwater convoy was gone.

A few minutes later, Brod shifted forward in his seat, staring as he shaded his eyes with one hand, his body abruptly tense. “What is it?” Maia asked.

“I’m… not sure. I thought for a second something crossed the sun.” He shook his head. “It’s getting late. How close to Jellicoe?”

“We’ll be in sight after that next little spire, ahead.” Maia unfurled the chart. “It seems to consist of about two dozen teeth, all fused together. There are two anchorages, with some major caves noted here.” She looked up and gauged the rate of sunset. “It’ll be close, but we should have time to scout a channel before dark.”

The young man nodded, still frowning in concern. “Get ready to come about, then.”

The maneuver went smoothly, the wind snapping their rugged sail into line as it had all day. Maybe our luck really has changed, Maia thought, knowing full well that she was tempting fate. Once they were cruising steady on the new tack, she spoke again, bringing up another imminent concern.

“Naroin made me promise to try calling her superiors, in case we find a radio at Halsey.”

It wasn’t a vow she relished. Maia personally trusted Naroin, but her superiors? So many groups want Renna for their own reasons. He has enemies on the Council. And even supposing honest cops answer a call, will the reavers let Renna be taken alive?

One disturbing thought after another had occurred to her. What if the Council still has weapons like those that burned Grimké? What if they conclude a dead alien is better than one in the hands of their foes?

Brod’s answer sounded as halfhearted as Maia felt. “We could try for the comm room, I suppose. It might be unwatched late at night. The idea gives me a pain in the gut, though.”

“I know. It’d be awfully risky, combined with burgling the chart room—”

“That’s not it,” Brod cut in. “I’d just… rather someone else called the cops on my guild.”

Maia looked at him. “Loyalty? After the way they treated you?”

“That’s not it,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t stay with ’em after this.”

“Well, then? You’re already helping me go after Renna.”

“You don’t understand. Another guild might respect me for helping you save a friend. But who’s gonna hire a man who’s squealed on his own crewmates?”

“Oh.” Maia hadn’t realized the added risk Brod was taking. Beyond life and freedom, he could lose all chance of a career. Something I never had, Maia almost murmured, but recanted. It takes courage for a person with prospects to gamble them on a hazard of honor.

The skiff began rounding the nearest headland. Beyond, just as Maia had predicted, a large, convoluted island hove gradually into view. To Maia, it looked as if a great claw had frozen in place while reaching out of the sea. Some mysterious geological process had welded the fingerlike talons, joining multiple slender spires in a mesh of stony arches.

Jellicoe Island had been even bigger, once upon a time. Stubby, fused remnants showed where a more extensive network of outlying islets had been blasted apart by an ancient power, presumably the same as excavated Grimké. Linear tracks of seared stone glistened like healed scar tissue across the jutting cliffs, adding contortions to the convoluted outlines ordained by nature. The resulting coastline had the horizontal contours of a twisted, many-pointed star, with rounded nubs instead of vertices and edges. Irregular openings broke the rhythmic outline.

A few minutes later, one of those gaps let Maia glimpse a lagoon within, as placid as glass.

“There it is!” she announced. “Perfect. We can sail right through and set anchor—”

“Shiva an’ Zeus!” Brod cursed. “Maia, get down!”

She barely ducked in time as Brod steered hard, sending the boom flying across the little boat, whistling where Maia’s head had been.

“What’re you doing?” she cried. But the young man did not answer. Gripping the tiller, his hands were white with tension, eyes all concentration. Lifting her head to see, Maia gasped. “It’s the Reckless!”

The three-masted, fore-and-aft schooner bore toward them from the southwest, almost directly out of the setting sun. The sight of its gravid sails, straining to increase a speedy clip, was breathless and dreadful to behold. While Maia and Brod had been wrestling their tiny vessel on a series of sunward, upwind tacks, the reaver ship had already crossed most of the space between two islands.

“Do you think she’s seen us?” Maia felt inane for asking. Yet, Brod was clearly counting on that hope, trying to duck back behind the spire they had just passed. If only the reavers had lazy lookouts…

Hope vanished with the sound of a whistle—a shriek of steam and predatory delight. Squinting against the glare, Maia saw a crowd of silhouettes gather at the bow, pointing. The image might have triggered deja vu, bringing back how the day began, except that this was no little ketch, but a freighter, augmented for speed and deadliness. Smoke trails told of boilers firing up. Maia’s nose twitched at the scent of burning coal. She did a quick calculation in her mind.

“It’s no good running!” she told Brod. “They’ve got speed, guns, maybe radar. Even if we get away, they’ll search all night, and we’ll smash up in the dark!”

“I’m open to suggestions!” her partner snapped. Perspiration beaded his lip and brow.

Maia grabbed his arm. “Swing back westward! We can tack closer to the wind. Reckless will have to reef sails to follow. Her engines may still be cold. With luck, we can dodge into that maze.” She pointed at the corrugated coastline of Jellicoe Island.

Brod hesitated, then nodded. “At least it’ll surprise ’em. You ready?”

Maia braced herself and grabbed the boom, preparing to kick. “Ready, Captain!”

He grimaced at the standing joke. Maia quashed rebellion in her stomach, where the bilious, familiar commotion of fear and adrenaline had come back, as if to a favorite haunt.

So much for that string of luck, she thought. I should have known better.

“All right,” Brod said with a ragged sigh, clearly sharing the thought. “Here goes.”

Everything depended on nearest passage. How tight could the bigger vessel turn? What weapons would be brought to bear?

As expected, the diminutive skiff was far better at drawing a close tack. The Reckless hesitated too long after Brod changed course. When the reaver ship came about at last, it fell short and wound up abeam to the breeze. Brod and Maia gained westward momentum, while seamen struggled aloft, lashing sails so the still-warming engines would not have to fight them pushing upwind. The rest of the reaver crew watched from the railings. Do they recognize the skiff? Maia wondered. By now surely they know something’s happened to Inanna and their friends on the ketch. Lysos, they look angry!

Even with the big ship wallowing, there would come a moment when the two vessels passed by no more than a couple of hundred meters. What would the pirates do about it?

Working hard to help Brod maneuver as tightly as possible, Maia trimmed the sail for maximum efficiency. This meant having to throw herself from one side of the skiff to the other, leaning her weight far out, wherever balance was most needed. She had never sailed a small boat in this way, literally skating across the water. It was exhilarating, and might have been fun if her gut weren’t turning somersaults. In glimpses, she sought to see if, by some chance, Renna stood upon the pirate ship. There were men on the schooner’s quarterdeck, as during the taking of the Manitou, but no sign of Renna’s peculiar dark features.

As the skiff swung broadside to the wallowing vessel, Maia heard furious shouts across the span of open water.

Words were indiscernible, but she recognized the livid, red-faced visage of the ship’s male captain, arguing with several women wearing red bandannas. The man pointed at more reavers wrestling a long black tube at the schooner’s portside gunwale. Shaking his head, he made adamant forbidding motions.

Underneath his outrage, the captain seemed blithely certain of his authority. So certain, he showed no suspicion as more wiry women, armed with truncheons and knives, moved to surround him and his officers… until the man’s tone of command cut off abruptly, smothered under a sudden flurry of violent blows.

From a horrified distance, Maia could not make out whether trepps or blades were used to cut the men down, but the attack continued many seconds longer than seemed necessary. Loudly echoing yips of pleasure showed how thoroughly the women pirates relished a comeuppance they must have long yearned for, breaking a troublesome alliance and the last restraint of law.

“We’re puffin’ away!” Brod shouted. He had been concentrating too hard even to glance at his former shipmates, or hear meaning in the recent spate of shouts and cries. A good thing, for the fall of the officers had been just part of the coup. When Maia next found time to scan the rigging, most of the remaining male crew members had vanished from where they were working moments before.

The Pinnipeds may be suffering hard times, Maia reflected, still in shock from what she’d seen. But they drew the line at deliberate murder. So, they get to share our fate.

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 male-ness—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.

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. Brdd’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.

With difficulty, she found the notch again. Fortunately, the soles of her leather shoes were mostly intact, so Maia only winced, hissing with discomfort as she set one foot in the crevice and reached high above, tightly grasping two clusters of shells. Even through canvas, the things jabbed painfully. Tightening her lips together, she pushed off, using muscles in first one leg and then the other, drawing herself upward with both arms till she stood perched on one foot, pressed against the wall. Now sharp stabs assaulted the entire length of her body, not just the extremities.

Okay, what next?

With her free foot, she began casting for another step. It seemed chancy to ask a cluster of shells to bear her entire weight. Yet it must be tried.

To her astonishment, Maia encountered a better alternative. Another slim, encrusted notch in the wall—and at just the right height!

I don’t believe it, she thought, pushing her left foot inside and gingerly shifting her weight. It can’t be a coincidence. This must mean…

Checking her conclusion, she freed one hand and felt about until, sure enough, it met another notch. One that had to be exactly where it was. The notches are woman-made … or man-made, since this place used to be a sanctuary. I wonder how old this “ladder” is.

No, I don’t. Shut up, Maia. Just concentrate and get on with it!

The notches made climbing easier. Still it was an agonizing ascent, even when her face lifted above the scouring layer of plankton-feeders and she had only to contend with smooth, rectangular cuts in the side of an almost-sheer wall. Maia’s muscles were throbbing by the time her groping hand encountered a ring of metal, bolted to the rock. The rusty tethering collar proved useful as her final handhold before Maia was able at last to flounder one leg, then another, over a rounded lip and onto a stony shelf.

Maia lay on her back, panting, listening to a roar of her own heavy breathing. It took some moments to appreciate that all of the sound wasn’t internal. I can hear. My ears are recovering, she realized, too tired to feel jubilant. She rested motionless, as echoes of each ragged inhalation resonated off the walls, along with a watery susurration of incoming swells.

Her pulse hadn’t yet settled from a heavy pounding when she forced herself up, onto one elbow. Got to get back to Brod, Maia thought, wearily. The re-descent would be hard, and she had not figured out how to drag her friend up here, if it proved impossible to rouse him. As always, the future seemed daunting, yet Maia felt cheered that she had found a refuge. It drove off the sense of hopelessness that had been sapping her strength.”

She sat up, letting out a groan.

More than her own echo came back to her, muffled by reverberations.

“M-Maia-aia-aia?”

It was followed by a fit of coughing. “M-my god-od-od… what’s happened? Where is she? Maia-aia-aia!”

Resounding repetitions caused her to wince. “Brod!” she cried. “It’s all right! I’m just above—” Her calls and his overlapped, drowning all sense in a flood of echoes. Brod’s overjoyed response would have been more gratifying if he didn’t stammer on so, offering thankful benedictions to both Stratos Mother and his patriarchal thunder deity.

“I’m above you,” she repeated, once the rumbling resonances died down. “Can you tell how high the water is?”

There were splashing sounds. “It’s already got me cornered on a spit of sand, Maia. I’ll try backing up … Ouch!” Brod’s exclamation announced his discovery of the wall of shells.

“Can you stand?” she asked. If so, it might save her having to climb down after him.

“I’m … a bit woozy. Can’t hear so good, either. Lemme try.” There were sounds of grunting effort. “Yeah, I’m up. Sort of. Can I assume… everything’s black ’cause we’re underground? Or am I blind?”

“If you’re blind, so’m I. Now if you can walk, please face the wall and try working your way to the right. Watch your step and follow my voice till you’re right below me. I’ll try to rig something to help you up here. First priority is to get above the high-water line.”

Maia kept talking to offer Brod a bearing, and meanwhile leaned over to tie one end of her rope around the metal grommet. It must have been put there long ago to moor boats in this tiny cave, though why, Maia could not imagine. It seemed a horrid place to use as an anchorage. Far worse than Inanna’s tunnel hideaway on Grimké Island.

“Here I am,” Brod announced just below her. “Frost! These bitchie barckles are sharp. I can’t find your rope, Maia.”

“I’ll swing it back and forth. Feel it now?”

“Nope.”

“It must be too short. Wait a minute.” With a sigh, she pulled in the cord. Judging from Brod’s ragged-sounding voice, he wouldn’t be a good bet to make the same climb she had, unassisted. There was no choice, then. Fumbling at the catches with her bruised fingers, she unbuttoned her trousers and slid them off, over her deck shoes. Tying one leg to the rope with two half-hitches, she also knotted a loop at the far end of the other leg, then dropped everything over the side again. There was a gratifying muffled sound of fabric striking someone’s head.

“Ow. Thanks,” Brod responded.

“You’re welcome. Can you slip one arm through the loop, up to your shoulder?”

He grunted. “Barely. Now what?”

“Make sure it’s snug. Here goes.” Carefully, step by step, Maia instructed Brod where to find the first foothold. She heard him hiss in pain, and recalled that his cord sandals had been in worse shape than her shoes, unfit for tackling knife-edge barnacles. He didn’t complain, though. Maia braced herself and hauled on the rope—not so much to lift the youth as steady him. To lend stability and confidence as he moved shakily from foothold to handhold, one at a time.

It seemed to last far longer than her own laborious ascent. Maia’s abused muscles quivered worse than ever by the time his huffing gasps came near. Somehow, drawing on reserves, she kept tension in the rope until Brod finally surged over the ledge in one gasping heave, landing halfway on top of her. In exhaustion they lay that way for some time, heartbeats pounding chest to chest, each breathing the other’s ragged exhalations, each tasting a salty patch of the other’s skin.

We must stop meeting like this, thought a distant, wry part of her. Still, it’s more than most women get out of a man, this time of year. To Maia’s surprise, his weight felt pleasant, in a strange, unanticipated way.

“Uh… sorry,” Brod said as he rolled off. “And thanks for saving my life.”

“It’s no more’n you did for us on the ketch, this morning,” she replied, covering embarrassment. “Though I guess by now that was yesterday.”

“Yesterday.” He paused to ponder, then abruptly shouted. “Hey, look at that!”

Maia sat up, puzzled. Since she couldn’t see Brod well enough to make out where he pointed, she began scanning on her own, and eventually found something amid the awful gloom. Opposite their ledge, about forty degrees higher toward the zenith, she made out a delicate glitter of—she counted—five beautiful stars.

I believe it’s part of the Hearth…

Abruptly reminded, Maia grasped along her left arm and sighed in relief when she found her forgotten sextant, still encased within the scratched but intact leather cover. It’s probably ruined. But it’s mine. The only thing that’s mine.

“So, Madam Navigator,” Brod asked. “Can you tell from those stars just where we are?”

Maia shook her head seriously. “Too little data. Besides, we know where we are. If there were more to see, I might be able to tell the time—”

She cut short, tensing as Brod laughed aloud. Then, noting only affection in his gentle teasing, Maia relaxed. She laughed, too, letting go as the fact sank in that they would live awhile longer, to struggle on. The reavers hadn’t won, not yet. And Renna was nearby.

Brod lay back alongside her, sharing warmth as they watched their sole, tiny window on the universe. Stratos turned slowly beneath them, and there passed a parade of brief, stellar performances. Together, they feasted on a show neither had expected ever to see again.

By day, the cave seemed less mysterious… and far more so.

Less, because dawn’s filtered light revealed outlines that had seemed at once both limitless and stifling in pitch darkness. A mountain of rubble blocked what had been a generous cave entrance. Sunlight and ocean tides streamed through narrow, jagged gaps in the avalanche, beyond which the two escapees made out a new, foamy reef, created by the recent barrage.

There would be no escape the way they’d arrived; that much was clear.

Increased mystery came associated with both hope and frustration. Soon after awakening to the new day, Maia got up and followed the ledge to its far end, where it joined a set of stairs chiseled deep into the cave wall. At the top there was another landing, cut even deeper, which terminated in a massive door, over three meters wide.

At least she thought it was a door. It seemed the place for one. A door was desperately called for at this point.

Only it looked more like a piece of sculpture. Several score hexagonal plates lay upon a broad, smooth, vertical surface made of some obdurate, blood-colored, impervious alloy.

Impervious because others had apparently tried to break through, in the past. Wherever a crack or chink hinted at separable parts, Maia noticed burnished edges where someone must have tried prying away, probably with wedges or crowbars, and succeeded only in rubbing off a layer of tarnish. Soot-stained areas told where fire had been used, presumably in efforts to weaken the metal, and striated patches showed signs of acid-etching—all to no avail.

“Here are your pants,” Brod said, coming up from behind, startling Maia from her intense inspection. “I thought you might want them,” he added nonchalantly.

“Oh, thanks,” she replied, taking the trousers and moving aside to slip them on. They were ripped in too many places to count, and hardly seemed worth the effort.

Still, she felt abashed without them, last night’s fatigued intimacy notwithstanding.

While struggling into the pants, gingerly avoiding her worst cuts and contusions, Maia noticed that her arms were pale once more, as well as what hair she could pull into view. Without a mirror, she couldn’t be sure, but recent multiple dunkings appeared to have washed out the effects of Leie’s makeshift dye job.

Meanwhile Brod perused the array of six-sided plates, some clustered and touching, some standing apart, many of them embellished with symbols of animals, objects, or geometric forms. The youth seemed oblivious to his physical condition, though under his torn shirt Maia saw too many scratches and abrasions to count. He moved with a limp, favoring the heels. Looking back the way he had come, she saw specks of blood on the floor, left by wounds on his feet. Maia deliberately avoided cataloging her own injuries, though no doubt she looked much the same.

It had been quite a night, spent listening to tides surge ever closer, wondering if the assumed “high-water mark” meant anything when three moons lay in the same part of the sky. Surges of air pressure had made them yawn repeatedly to relieve their abused ears. The shelf grew slippery from spray. For what felt like hours, the two summerlings held onto each other as waves had lapped near, hunting them with fingers of spume…

“I can’t even figure what the thing’s made of,” Brod said, peering closely at the mysterious barrier. “You have any idea what it’s for?”

“Yeah, I think. I’m afraid so.”

He looked at her as she returned. Maia spread her arms before the metal wall. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before,” she told her companion. “It’s a puzzle.”

“A puzzle?”

“Mm. One apparently so hard that lots of folks tried cheating, and failed.”

“A puzzle,” he repeated, mulling the concept.

“One with a big prize for solving it, I imagine.” “Oh yeah?” Brod’s eyes lit. “What prize do you think?”

Maia stepped back a couple of paces, tilting her head to look at the elaborate portal from another angle. “I couldn’t say what the others were after,” she said in a low voice. “But our goal’s simple. We must solve this … or die.”

There had been another riddle wall once, a long time ago. That one hadn’t been made of strange metal, but ordinary stone and wood and iron, yet it had been hard enough to stymie a pair of bright four-year-olds filled with curiosity and determination. What were the Lamai mothers hiding behind the carven cellar wall, inset with chiseled stars and twining snakes? Unlike the puzzle now before her, that one had been no massive work of unparalleled craftsmanship, but the principle was clearly the same. A combination lock. One in which the number of possible arrangements of objects far exceeded any chance of random guessing. One whose correct answer must remain unforgettable, intuitively obvious to the initiated, and forever obscure to outsiders.

Shared context. That was the key. Simple memory proved unreliable over generations. But one thing you could count on. If you established a clan—your distant great-great-granddaughters would think a lot like you, with similar upbringing and near-identical brains. What had been forgotten, they would recover by re-creating your thought processes.

That insight had opened the way, after Maia failed in her first attempts in the Lamatia Hold wine cellar, and Leie’s efforts with a small hydraulic jack threatened to break the mechanism, rather than persuade it. Even Leie had agreed that curiosity wasn’t worth the kind of punishment that would bring on. So Maia had reconsidered the problem, this time trying to think like a Lamai. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

She had grown up surrounded by Lamai mothers, aunts, half sisters, knowing the patterns they exhibited at each phase of life. The cautious enthusiasm of late three-year-olds, for instance, which quickly took cover behind a cynical mask by the time each towheaded girl turned four. A romantic outburst in adolescence, followed by withdrawal and withering contempt for anything or anyone non-Lamai—a disdain that intensified, the more worthy any outsider seemed. And finally, in late middle-age, a mellowing, a relaxation of the armor, just enough for the ruling age-group to make alliances and deal successfully with the outer world. The first young Lamai var, the founder, must have been lucky, or very clever, to reach that age of tact all by herself. From then on, matters grew easier as each generation fine-tuned the art of being that continuous single entity, Lamatia.

Pondering the problem, Maia had realized she knew nothing of how individual Lamais felt, deep within. Mentally squinting, she pictured a Lamai sister looking in the mirror and using words like integrity… honor… dignity. They did not see themselves as mean, capricious, or spiteful. Rather, they viewed others as inherently unreliable, dangerous.

Fear. That was the key! Maia had not been able to speak after that flash of intuition, on realizing what drove her mother clan.

It was more than fear. A type of dread that no amount of wealth or security could wipe out, because it was so woven into the personality matrix of the type. The genetic luck of the draw, reinforced by an upbringing in which self perpetually reinforced self, compounding and augmenting over and over again.

It was no crippling terror, or else the offshoots of that one var could never have turned themselves into a nation.

Rather, Lamatia rationalized it, used it as a motivator, as a driving force. Lamais weren’t happy people. But they were successful. They even raised more than their share of successful summer progeny.

There are worse, Maia recalled thinking on the day she had had that insight, while turning a crank to lower the dumbwaiter into that crypt below the kitchens. Who am I to judge what works?

Her mind afroth with possibilities, Maia had approached the wall with new concepts in mind. Lamais aren’t logical, though they pretend to be. I’ve been trying to solve the puzzle rationally, as a series of orderly symbols, but I’ll bet it’s a sequence based on emotion!

That day (it felt like ages ago), she had lifted her lantern to scan familiar patterns of stone figures. Stars and snakes, dragons and upturned bowls. The symbol for Man. The symbol for Woman. The emblem of Death.

Picture yourself standing here with an errand to perform, Maia thought. You’re a confident, busy, older Lamai. High-class daughter of a noble clan. Proud, dignified, impatient.

Now add one more ingredient, underneath it all. A hidden layer of jibbering, terror. …

One long year later, and a quarter of the way around the globe, Maia tried the same exercise, attempting to put herself in the shoes of another type of person. The kind who might have left a complex jigsaw of hexagonal plates upon a metal wall. An enigma standing between two desperate survivors and their only hope of escaping a death trap.

“This place is old,” she told Brod in a soft voice.

“Old?” He laughed. “It was a different world! You’ve seen the ruins. This whole archipelago was filled with sanctuaries, bigger than any known today. It must’ve been the focus, the very center of the Great Defense. It might even have been the one place in all of Stratos history where men had any real say in goings on … till those King fanatics got big heads and ruined it all.”

Maia nodded. “A whole region, run by men.”

“Partly. Until the banishment. I know, it’s hard to imagine. I guess that’s how the Church and Council were able to suppress even the memory.”

Brod was making sense. Even with the evidence all around her, Maia had trouble with the concept. Oh, there was no denying that males could be quite intelligent, but planning further than a single human lifespan was supposedly beyond even their brightest leaders. Yet, here in front of her lay a counterexample.

“In that case, this puzzle was designed to be solved by men, perhaps with the specific purpose of keeping women out.”

Brod rubbed his jaw. “Maybe so. Anyway, standing around staring won’t get us much. Let’s see what happens if I push one of these hexagon slabs.”

Maia had already stroked the metal surface, which was curiously cool and smooth to the touch, but she hadn’t yet tried moving anything, preferring to evaluate first. She almost spoke up, then stopped. Differences in personality… one providing what the other lacks. It’s a weakness in the clan system, where the same type just amplifies itself. Maia no longer felt a heretical thrill, pondering thoughts critical of Lysos, Mother of All.

Brod tried pushing one hexagonal plate with a circle design etched upon it, standing by itself on an open patch of metal wall. Direct pressure achieved nothing, but a shear force, along the plane of the wall, caused movement! The piece seemed to glide as if being slid edgewise through an incredibly viscous fluid. When Brod let go, Maia expected it to stop, but it kept going in the same direction for several more seconds before slowing and finally coming to rest. Then, as she watched in surprise, the hexagon began sliding backward, in the exact opposite direction, retracing its path unhurriedly until at last settling precisely where Brod had first found it.

“Huh!” the young man commented. “Hard to imagine accomplishing a lot that way.” He experimented with more plates, and found that about a third of them would move, but only directly along one of six directions perpendicular to the hexagonal plate-edges. There was no sign of any sort of rail system holding the slabs in track, so the queer behavior must be due to some mechanism behind the plane of the wall itself, utilizing, forces beyond anything Maia had been taught as physics.

It’s not magic, she told herself while Brod pushed away, trying variations. Maia experienced a shiver, and knew that it wasn’t due to awe or superstitious fear, but something akin to jealousy. The gliding interplay of matter and motion was achingly beautiful to behold. She hungered to grasp how and why it worked.

Renna says the savants in Caria still know about such powers, but won’t release anything that might “destabilize a pastoral culture.”

If this was a more benign use of the same power that had fried Grimké, and many other islands in this chain, Maia could well understand why Lysos and the Founders chose such a path. Perhaps they were right, on some grand, sociological scale. Maybe the hunger she felt within was immature, wrongheaded, a dangerous, flaming curiosity like the madness Renna had spoken of—the sort that drove what he had called a “scientific age.”

Maia recalled the wistful longing in Renna’s eyes as he recalled such times, which he had said were rare among human epochs. She experienced a pang deep inside, envying what she had missed and would never know.

“The plates seem to always go back where they started,” Brod commented. “Come, Maia. Let’s see if we can push two at once.”

“Airright,” she sighed. “I’ll try this one with a horse etched on it. Ready? Go.”

At first she thought her chosen plate was one of those that wouldn’t budge, then it began gliding under her hand, building up momentum in response to her constant pushing. She let go after it had crossed three of its own body lengths, but it drifted onward, now slowing with each passing second, until it collided at an angle with the hexagon Brod had pushed, carrying the image of a sailing ship. The two caromed off each other, moving in new directions for several more seconds before coming to a stop. Then each of them reversed course, and the pair went through a negative version of the same collision. Finally both of the plates drifted back to rest at their starting positions. Two minutes after starting the experiment, the wall was back as they had found it, a jumble of hexagons laid out in a pattern that made no immediate sense. Maia exhaled heavily.

There’s got to be a logic to it. An objective. The Game of Life looks like a meaningless mass of hopping pieces, too, until you see the underlying beauty.

Also, like the game, the men who designed this might have thought it alien enough to keep out women. That could be an important clue, especially with Brod here to help.

Unfortunately, there was a problem inherent in her “shared context” insight. For all she and Brod knew, the puzzle might be based on some fad current a thousand years ago, and now long forgotten. Perhaps a certain drinking song had been popular at the time, featuring most of these symbols. Almost any man of that era might have known the relationship between, say, the bee rendered in one plate and the house etched on another. One clever inscription seemed to show a slice of bread dripping globs of butter or jam. Another showed an arrowhead, trailing fire.

Maia changed her mind. It had to be based on something longer lasting.

Whoever put so much care into this obviously meant it to endure, and serve a purpose long after he was gone. And men aren’t known for thinking ahead?

Clearly, all rules had exceptions.

A growling sound distracted Maia, accompanied by an unpleasant churning in her stomach. Her bruised body wanted to be fed, the sooner the better. Yet, in order to have a chance of doing so, she must ignore it. Somehow, she and Brod would have to make it through what had apparently stymied countless interlopers before them. The only difference being that those others—hermits, tourists, explorers, pirates—had presumably come by boat in peace, able to leave again. For Maia and Brod, the motivation was stronger than greed or curiosity. Their only chance of surviving lay in getting beyond this wall.

“Sorry there’s no sauce, or fire to cook it, but it’s fresh. Eat up!”

Maia stared down at the creature that lay on the ground in front of her crossed legs, still flopping slightly. Emerging from a trance of concentration, she blinked at the unexpected sight of a fish, where none had been before. Turning to look at Brod, she saw new lacerations that bled fine lines across his chest and legs and arms. “You didn’t climb back down, did you?”

The boy nodded. “Low tide. Saw some stranded critters on the bar. Anyway, we needed water. Here, tip your head back and open wide.”

Maia saw that he carried in the crook of one arm a sodden ball of fabric, made of bits of canvas and his own rolled-up shirt. These he held out, dripping. With sudden eagerness arising from a thirst she hadn’t recognized till now, Maia did as told. Brod wrung a stream of bitter saltwater, tanged with a faint hint of blood, into her mouth. She swallowed eagerly, overlooking the unpleasant taste. When finished drinking, she picked up the fish and bit into it ravenously, as she had seen sailors do.

“Mm… fank you, Broth… Mm del-ishush …”

Sitting beside her, Brod chewed a fish of his own. “Pure self-interest. Keep up your strength, so you can get me outta here.”

His confidence in her safecracking abilities was inspiring. Maia only wished it were well-founded. Oh, there had been progress, the last ten hours or so. She now knew which plates would move and which wouldn’t. Of the stationary ones, some served as simple barriers, or bumpers against which moving tokens might bounce or reflect. A few others, by a process she was never able to discern clearly, seemed to absorb any plate that ran into them. The moving hexagon would merge with or pass behind the stable one, and stay there for perhaps half a minute, then reappear to reverse its path, returning the way it came. Each time one of these temporary absorptions occurred, Maia thought she heard a distant, low sound, like a humming gong.

Unfortunately, there weren’t direct shots from movable hexagons to all the rigid ones. Nor would all combinations produce the absorbtion plus gong. Maia soon realized the solution must entail getting several plates going at the same time, arranging multiple collisions so that pieces would enter certain specific slots during the brief interval allowed.

For a while, I thought there was a clue in the fact that the puzzle is reversible… that everything returns to the same starting condition. The variant Life game that Renna used to send his radio message was a “reversible” version. But, as I think about it, that seems less likely. It’s got to be simpler, having to do with those symbols inscribed on the plates.

There she counted on Brod. He knew many of the emblems from their use as labels in shipboard life. Box, can, and barrel, were tokens for containers, written, appropriately enough, across several of the static, “target” plates. Quite a few food items were included on movable ones. Beer was portrayed by a stein with foam pouring over the sides. There were also biscuit, hardtack, and the bread-and-jelly symbol she had seen earlier. Other insignia Brod identified as standing for compass, rudder, and cargo hook, while some still eluded interpretation. He had no idea what the fire-arrow stood for. Nor the depictions of a bee, a spiral, or a rearing horse. Still, Maia felt reinforced in her notion. This puzzle was meant to be easy for men to understand.

Or easier. I don’t imagine all men were welcome, either. You’d still need to have been told some trick. Something simple enough to pass on from master to apprentice for generations.

Refreshed by food and drink, though not fully sated, they resumed experimenting for as long as the dim light lasted. That wasn’t very long, unfortunately. Outside, it might remain day for several more hours. But even with their irises slitted wide, too little illumination pierced cracks in the cave wall to allow work past late afternoon, when Maia and Brod had to stop.

In darkness, huddled together for warmth, they listened to the tide return. Lying with her head on Brod’s chest, Maia worried about Renna. What were the reaver folk doing to him? What purpose did they have in mind for the man from the stars?

Baltha and her crowd definitely had reason to make common cause with Kiel’s Radicals, back when Renna languished in Perkinite hands. Perkinism preached taking Stratoin life much farther along the track designed by Lysos, toward a world almost void of variation, completely dedicated to self-cloning and stability. It suited the interests of both groups of vars to fight that.

Rads wanted the opposite, a moderation of the Plan, in which clones no longer utterly dominated political and economic life, and where men and vars were stronger, though never as dominant as in the bad old Phylum. Their idea was to sacrifice some stability for the sake of diversity and opportunity. That made the Radical program as heretical as Perkinism, if not more so.

Ironically, Baltha’s cutthroat gang of reavers had a goal far less broad in scope, more aimed at self-interest. As Baltha hinted back on the Manitou, she and her group wanted no change in the way of life Lysos had ordained, only to shake things up a little.

Maia recalled the var-trash romance novel she had read back in prison, about a world spun topsy-turvy, in which stodgy clans collapsed along with the stable conditions that had made them thrive, opening fresh niches to be filled by upstart variants. She also remembered. Renna’s comments on Lysian biology—how it had been inspired by certain lizards and insects, back on Old Earth. “Cloning lets you keep perfection. But perfection for what? Take aphids. In a fixed environment, they reproduce by self-copying. But come a dry spell, or frost, or disease, and suddenly they use sex like mad, mixing genes for new combinations, to meet new challenges.”

Baltha and the reavers wanted enough chaos to knock loose some ancient clans, but solely in order that they might take those heights. It was a scheme more classically Lysian than either of the Perkinite or Radical dogmas. The Founders included vars like me because you can never be sure stability will last. They must have known it would mean some vars plotting to help nature along.

In fact, it must happen more often than she had imagined. Whenever such a scheme succeeded, it would be toned down in the histories. No sense encouraging other vars, downstream, to try the same thing! If Baltha managed to whelp a great house, she would not be depicted as a pirate by her heirs. It made Maia wonder about those embroidered tales told about the original Lamai. Had she, in fact, been a robber? A conniver? Perhaps Leie had it right, choosing such company. If Maia’s twin had tapped a ruthless side to their joint nature, should she be cheered, rather than reproved?

How does Renna fit into all this? Maia wondered. Do the reavers plan to provoke some sort of war among factions on the Reigning Council? Or retribution from the stars? That would shake things up, all right. Perhaps more than they realize.

She worried. What is Renna doing, right now?

Earlier, while twilight settled, Maia had spoken to Brod about these quandries. He was a good listener, for a man, and seemed genuinely understanding. Maia felt grateful for his company and friendship. Nevertheless, after a while she had run out of energy. In darkness, she eventually lay quietly, letting Brod’s body warmth help stave off the night chill. Breathing his male musk, Maia dozed while an odd sensation of well-being pervaded within the circle of his arm. Half-dreaming, she let images glide through her mind—of aurorae, streaming emerald and blue-gold sky curtains above the glaciers of home. And Wengel Star, brighter than the beacon of Lighthouse Sanctuary, at the harbor mouth. Those summertime themes blended with a favorite memory of autumn, when men returned from exile, singing joyously amid swirls of multicolored, freshly fallen leaves.

Seasons mixed in Maia’s fantasy. Still asleep, her nostrils flared in sudden, unprovoked recollection—a distant scent of frost.

She awakened, blinking rapidly, knowing too little time had passed for it to be dawn. Yet she could see a little. Moonlight shone through cracks in the cave entrance. The whites of Brod’s eyes were visible.

“You were quivering. Is something wrong?”

She sat up, embarrassed, though she knew not why.

Within, Maia felt an odd stirring, an emptiness that had nothing to do with hunger for food.

“I… was dreaming about home.”

He nodded. “Me too. All this talk about heretics and rads and Kings, it got me thinking about a family I knew, back in Joannaborg, who followed the Yeown Path.”

“Yeown?” Maia frowned in puzzlement. “Oh, I’ve heard of them. Isn’t that where… it’s the clone daughters who go out to find niches, and the vars who stay behind?”

“That’s right. Used to be some of the cities along the Mediant had whole quarters devoted to Yeown enclaves, surrounded by Getta walls. I’ve seen pictures. Most boys didn’t go to sea, but stayed and studied crafts along with their summer sisters, then married into other Yeown clans. Kind of weird to imagine, but nice in a way.”

Maia saw Brod’s point of view. Such a way of life offered more options for a boy—and for summer girls who stayed where they were born, living with their mothers. …

And fathers, she supposed, finding it hard to conceive.

Without her recent studies, Maia might not have perceived how, unfortunately, the Yeown way ran counter to the drives of Stratoin biology. There were basic genetic reasons why time reinforced the tendency to need a winter birth first, or for mothers to feel more intense devotion to clone-daughters than their var-offspring. Humans were flexible creatures, and ideological fervor might overcome such drives for a generation, or several, but it wasn’t surprising that Yeown heresies remained rare.

Brod continued. “I got to thinking about them because, well, you mentioned that book about the way people lived on Florentina World. You know, where they still had marriage? But I can tell you it wasn’t like that in the Yeown home I knew. The husbands…” He spoke the word with evident embarrassment. “The husbands didn’t make much noise or fuss. There was no talk among the neighbors of violence, even in summer. Of course, the men were still outnumbered by their wives and daughters, so it wasn’t exactly like a Phylum world. With everyone watching, they kept real discreet, so as not to give Perkie agitators any excuse …”

Brod was rambling, and Maia found it hard to see what he was driving at. Did the lad have his own heretical sympathies? Did he dream of a way to live in one home year-round, in lasting contact with mates and offspring, experiencing less continuity than a mother, but far more than men normally knew on Stratos? It might sound fine in abstract, but how did the two sexes keep from getting on each other’s nerves? Clearly, poor Brod was an idealist of the first water.

Maia recalled the one man she had lived near while growing up. An orthodox clan like Lamatia would never condone the sort of situation Brod described in a Yeown commune, but it did offer occasional, traditional refuge to retirees, like Old Coot Bennett.

Maia felt a shiver, recalling the last time she had looked in Bennett’s rheumy eyes. Demi-leaves had swirled in autumnal cyclones, just like the image in her recent dream—as if subconsciously she had already been thinking about the coot. I used to wonder if he was the only man I’d ever know more than in passing. But Renna, and now Brod, have got me thinking peculiar thoughts. Keep it up, and I’ll be a raving heretic, too.

This was getting much too intense. She tried returning things to an abstract plane.

“I imagine Yeownists would get along with Kiel and her Radicals.”

Brod shrugged. “I don’t think the few remaining Yeowns would risk trouble, making political statements. They have enough problems nowadays. With the rate of summer births going up all over Stratos, making everybody so nervous, Perkinites are always looking for var-loving scapegoats.

“But y’know, I was thinking about the people who once dwelled here in the Dragons’ Teeth. Maybe they started out as Yeowh followers, back at the time of the Defense.

“Think about it, Maia. I’ll bet these sanctuaries weren’t originally just for men. Imagine the technology they must’ve had! Men couldn’t keep that up all by themselves. Nor could they have ever managed to beat the Enemy alone. I’m sure there were women living here, year-round, alongside the men. Somehow, they must’ve known a secret for managing that.”

Maia was unconvinced. “If so, it didn’t last. After the Defense, there came the Kings.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Later it corrupted into a fit of patriarchism. But everything was in chaos after the war. One brief aberration, no matter how scary, can’t excuse the Council for burying the history of this place! For centuries or more, men and women must’ve worked together here, back when it was one of the most important sites on Stratos.”

The temptation to argue was strong, but Maia refrained from pouring water on her friend’s enthusiastic theory. Renna had taught her to look back through a thick glass, one or two thousand years, and she knew how tricky that lens could be. Perhaps, with access to the Great Library in Caria, Brod’s speculation might lead to something. Right now, though, the poor fellow seemed obsessed with scenarios, based more on hope than on data, in which females and males somehow stayed together. Did he picture some ancient paradise amid these jagged isles, in that heady time before the Kings’ conceit toppled before the Great Clans? It seemed a waste of mental energy.

Maia felt overwhelming drowsiness climb her weary arms and legs. When Brod started to speak again, she patted his hand. “That’s ’nuff for now, okay? Let’s talk later. See you in the mornin’, friend.”

The young man paused, then put his arm around her as she lowered her head once more. “Yeah. Good rest, Maia.”

“Mm.”

This time it proved easy to doze off, and she did sleep well, for a while.

Then more dreams encroached. A mental image of the nearby, blood-bronze metal wall shimmered in ghostly overlay, superimposing upon the much-smaller, stony puzzle under Lamatia Hold. Totally different emblems and mechanisms, yet a voice within her suggested, True elegance is simplicity.

Still more vivid illusions followed. From those Port Sanger catacombs, her spirit seemed to rise through rocky layers, past the Lamai kitchens, through great halls and bedrooms, all the way up to lofty battlements where, within one corner tower, the clan kept its fine old telescope. Like the wall of hexagons, it was an implement of burnished metal, whose oiled bearings seemed nearly as smooth in action as the flowing plates. Overhead in Maia’s dream lay a vast universe of stars. A realm of clean physics and honest geometries. A hopeful terrain, to be learned by heart.

Bennett’s large hand lay upon her little one. A warm, comforting presence, guiding her, helping Maia dial in the main guide stars, iridescent nebulae, the winking navigation satellites.

Suddenly it was a year later… and there it was. In the logic of dreams, it had to show. Crossing the sky like a bright planet, but no planet, it moved of volition all its own, settling into orbit after coming from afar. A new star. A ship, erected for traveling to stars.

Thrilled at this new sight, wishing for someone to share it with, this older Maia went to fetch her aged friend, guiding his frail steps upstairs, toward the gleaming brass instrument. Now dim and slow, the coot took some time to comprehend this anomaly in the heavens. Then, to her dismay, his grizzled head rocked back, crying into the nigh—

Maia sat bolt upright, her heart racing from hormonal alarm. Brod snored nearby, on the cold stone floor. Dawn light crept through crevices in the rubble wall. Yet she stared straight ahead for many heartbeats, unseeing, willing herself to calm without forgetting.

Finally, Maia closed her eyes.

Knowing at last why they had sounded so familiar, she breathed aloud two words.

“Jellicoe Beacon…”

A shared context. She had been so sure it would turn out to be simple. Something passed on from master to apprentice over generations, even given the notoriously poor continuity within the world of men. What she had never imagined was that luck would play a role in it!

Oh, surely there was a chance she and Brod would have figured it out by themselves, before they starved. But Coot Bennett had spoken those words, babbling out of some emotion-fraught store of ragged memory, the last time she heard him speak at all. And the phrases had lain in her subconscious ever since.

Had the old man been a member of some ancient conspiracy? One that was still active, so many centuries after the passing of the Kings? More likely, it had started out that way, but was by now a tattered remnant. A ritualized cult or lodge, one of countless many, with talisman phrases its members taught one another, no longer meaningful save in some vague sense of portent.

“I’m ready, Maia,” Brod announced, crouching near one blank-featured hexagon. She placed her hand on another. “Good,” Maia replied. “One more try, then, at the count of three. One, two, three!”

Each of them pushed off hard, setting their chosen plates accelerating along the wall on separate, carefully planned, oblique trajectories. Once the first two were well on their way, Maia and Brod shifted to another pair of hexagons. Maia’s second one bore the stylized image of an insect, while Brod’s depicted a slice of bread and jam. It had taken them all day to get launching times and velocities right, so that their first pair would arrive in just the right positions when these later two showed up for rendezvous. Ideally, a double carom would result—two simultaneous collisions at opposite ends of the wall—sending the inscribed hexagons gliding from different directions toward the same high, stationary target.

It seemed simple enough, but so far they had failed to get the timing close enough to test Maia’s insight. Now daylight was starting to fade again. This would have to be their last attempt. Maia watched with her heart in her throat as the four moving hexagons approached their chosen intersections, collided, and separated at right angles… exactly as intended!

“Yes!” Brod shouted, grinning at her.

Maia was more restrained. So far, so good.

Gliding on across the bright metal expanse, the selected pair of plates converged from opposite directions toward a single static platter, whose surface bore the etched design of a simple cylinder—the symbol used on ships to denote a kind of container.

“Bee-can!” Old Coot had shouted, that fateful night when she showed him Renna’s starship. Even then, Maia had guessed the phrase stood for “Beacon,” since many sanctuaries doubled as lighthouses. The rest of his babble made no sense, however. Without context, it could make no sense.

But it wasn’t garbled man-dialect, as she had thought. No random babble, it had been a heartfelt cry of desperate faith, of yearning. An invocation.

“… jelly can! Bee-can Jelly can!”

There had been other prattled syllables, but this was the expression that counted. Whatever Bennett had thought he was saying that night, originally it must have meant “Jellicoe.”

Jellicoe Beacon, of the Dragons’ Teeth. The same reasons that had drawn Maia here with Brod, that had caused the reavers to choose its defensible anchorage, had conspired to make this isle special in ages past. One of the linchpins of the Great Defense, and of the ill-fated man-empire called “the Kings.” A place whose history of pride and shame could be suppressed, but never entirely hidden.

Two moving hexagons glided before her, one bearing the image of a bee, the other the common shipboard symbol for stored jam … or jelly. Maia held her breath as both plates cruised toward the same target at the same time.

The most elegant codes are simplest, she thought. All they ask here is for us to say the name of the place whose door we’re knocking at!

That is, she thought, clenching her fists, providing we aren’t fooling ourselves with our own cleverness. If this isn’t just one layer of many more to solve. If it works.

Please, let it work!

The plates converged upon the target with the can symbol inscribed on its face. They touched… and the stationary hexagon simply, cleanly absorbed them both! At once there followed a double gong sound, deep-throated and decisive, which grew ever louder until the tolling vibration forced Brod and Maia back, covering their ears. They coughed as soot and dust shook off the great door and its jamb. Then, along seams too narrow heretofore to see, a diagonal split propagated. The humming, shivering portal divided, spilling into the grimy vestibule a flood of rich and heady light.

23

Maia had been in trouble before. Often more immediately life-threatening. But nothing like this.

Trouble seemed to loom all around the two young vars, from the moment they nervously forsook the known terrors of the sealed cave to walk into that blast of mysterious brilliance, hearing only the massive door shutting behind them with an echoing boom. A long hallway had stretched ahead, with walls of almost-glassy, polished stone, illuminated by panels that put out uniform, artificial light unlike any either of them had known, save coming from the sun. An even layer of fine dust soaked up bloody specks left by Brod’s torn feet. To Maia, it felt as if the two of them were trespassing delinquents, tracking mud into the home of a powerful, punctilious deity. She kept half-expecting to be challenged at any moment by a resounding, disembodied woman’s voice—a stern, stereotypical alto—as in some cheap cinematic fantasy.

That first stretch of hallway wasn’t straight, but took several zigzag turns before arriving at another door, similar to the first one, covered with more of the same burnished hexagons. The fivers groaned aloud at the prospect of tackling yet another enigmatic combination lock. But this time, as if in response to their approach, several of the plates abruptly began moving on their own! By the time Maia and Brod arrived, the portal had already divided, opening onto another series of brightly lit twists and turns. They passed through quickly, and Brod sighed with relief.

Did a prickly corner of her mind feel just a momentary touch of cheated disappointment? As if it had actually been looking forward to another challenge? Just shut up, Maia told the mad puzzle-freak within. Meanwhile, her direction sense said they were plunging ever deeper into the convoluted mountain that was Jellicoe Isle.

The next barrier almost made the entire journey pointless. Upon turning a corner, the youths were bluntly disconcerted to suddenly confront a heap of broken stone and masonry filling the passageway before them. The ceiling had collapsed, spilling rubble into the hallway. Only a glimmer of artificial light showed through a gap near the top, suggesting a possible path to the other side. Brod and Maia had to scramble up a slope of rocky fragments and start pulling aside heavy chunks of debris, digging to create a passage wide enough to crawl through. It was a queer feeling, to burrow with bare hands, deep underground, your life depending on the outcome, and yet working under such pure, synthetic radiance. One conclusion was unmistakable.

If anyone else ever came this way since the tunnel collapsed, they’d have left traces here, as we’re doing. All those others who tried to get past the door… and we’re the first to make it!

Or, the first since whatever calamity had caused the avalanche. Whether that had been natural or artificial remained to be seen.

At last the two young vars broke through, sliding downslope into what seemed a rubble-strewn basement. What might have once been crushed barrels lay in rusty heaps along the walls. The only exit was a half-ruined iron staircase, missing many risers, which appeared to have slumped from an encounter with high temperatures. It was climbable… with great care. Helping each other to the topmost landing, Brod and Maia turned the handle of a simple metal door. Together, they pushed hard to force the warped hinges, and finally squeezed anxiously into a hallway twice as wide as the earlier one.

Terrible heat must have passed through the zone nearest the tortured cellar, once upon a time. Several more metal doorways were fused shut, while at others, Maia and Brod glanced into chambers choked with boulders. No hint remained of whatever purpose they had served, long ago. Even the sturdy tunnel walls bore stigmata where plaster had briefly gone molten and flowed before congealing in runny layers. The sight reminded the two summerlings of their awful dehydration.

Limping beyond the affected area, they soon traversed the most pristine and majestic stretch of corridor yet, which coursed beneath lofty arched ceilings, higher than any Maia had ever seen. Her shoulders tightened and her eyes wanted to dart in all directions at once. She kept expecting to hear footsteps and shouting voices … or at least mysterious whispers. But the place had been emptied even of ghosts.

As on Grimké, there were signs of orderly withdrawal. Most of the rooms they peered into were stripped of furnishings. This whole corner of the island must be honeycombed, she thought. At the same time, Maia recalled her promise to Brod—that getting through the mystery gate might offer their key to continued survival. So far, this was all very grand and imposing, but not too useful for keeping them alive.

Maybe some future explorer will find our bones, she contemplated, grimly. And wonder what our story was.

Then, Brod cried out, “Hurrah!” Accelerating, he hobbled ahead, leading Maia to a room he had spied. Lights flickered on as he rushed inside, limping toward a tiled basin while murmuring, “Oh, Lord, let it work!”

As if answering his prayer, a bright metal faucet began spilling forth clear liquid—fresh water, Maia scented quickly. Brod thrust his head under the stream, earnestly slurping, making Maia almost faint with sudden thirst. In ravenous haste she bumped her head against a porcelain bowl next to his, slaking her parched throat in a taste finer than plundered Lamatian wine, slurping as if the flow might cut off at any moment.

Finally, dazed, bloated, and gasping for breath, they turned to peruse this strange, imposing room.

“Do you think it’s an infirmary? Or some sort of factory?” Maia asked. She cautiously approached one of several broad, tiled cubicles, each with a glass door that gaped ajar. “What are all these nozzles for?”

Leaning inside to look at a dozen ceramic orifices, she yelped when they suddenly came alive, jetting fierce sprays of scorching steam. “Ow, ow!” Maia cried, leaping back and waving a reddened arm. “It’s a machine for stripping paint!”

Brod shook his head. “I know it seems absurd, Maia, but this place can only be—”

“Never!”

“It is. That really is a shower stall.”

“For searing hair off lugars?” She found it doubtful. “Were the ancients giants, to need all that room? Did they have skins of leather?”

Brod chewed his lip. Experimentally, he leaned against the doorjamb and began inserting his arm. “Those little, thumb-size windows—I saw a few in the oldest building of Kanto Library, back in the city. They sense when someone’s near. That’s how the faucets knew to turn on for us.”

More steam jetted forth, which Brod carefully avoided as he waved in front of one sensor, then another. Quickly, the stream transformed from hot to icy cold. “There you are, Maia. Just what we needed. All the comforts of home.”

Maybe your home, she thought, recalling her last, tepid shower in Grange Head, carefully rationed from clay pipes and a narrow tin sprinkler head. At the time, she had thought it salaciously luxurious. Back in Port Sanger, Lamatia Hold had been proud of its modern plumbing. But this place, with its gleaming surfaces, bright lights, and odd smells, was downright alarming. Even Brod, who had grown up in aristocratic surroundings on Landing Continent, claimed never to have imagined such expanses of mirrored glass and ceramic, all apparently designed to service simple bodily needs.

“Laddies first,” Maia told her friend, citing tradition and motioning for him to go ahead of her. “Guest-man gets first privileges.”

Brod dissented. “Uh, we’re in a sanctuary—or what must’ve been one, long ago—so strictly speaking, you’re the guest. Go on, Maia. I’ll see if I can find something to patch my feet.”

Maia frowned at being outmaneuvered, but there was no point in further argument. They both badly needed to clean their many wounds, lest infection set in. Later, they could worry other matters, such as how to feed themselves.

“Well, stay in shouting range, will you?” she asked, tentatively moving her hand toward the controls. “Just in case I get into trouble.”

Maia soon learned the knack of waving before those dark circles in the wall. She adjusted the shower to a temperature between tepid and scalding, and texture between mist and needle spray. Then, on stepping under the multiple jets, she forgot everything in a roar of bodily sensations.

Everything save one triumphant thought.

Those cheating murderers and their guns… they think I’m dead. Even Leie probably does. But I’m not. Brod and I are far from it.

In fact, she was sure none of her enemies had ever experienced anything remotely like what she luxuriated in now. Even when it came time to scrub and pry embedded grains of sand out of her wounds, that stinging seemed no great price to pay.

Sitting before a mirror broad enough for dozens, Maia touched her unkempt locks, which for weeks had grown out tangled, filthy, uncombed. It was, indeed, free of the dye her sister had hastily applied while Maia squirmed, helplessly bound and gagged aboard the Reckless. I ought to hack it all off, she decided.

Brod sang while finishing his shower. His voice seemed to be cracking less, or perhaps it was the astonishing resonance lent by that tiled compartment—no doubt a wonder of technology, designed into the cleaning chamber for some mysterious purpose lost to time. Nearby, on the countertop, Maia saw the bloody needle and thread the boy had used to stitch his worst gashes. Maia had not heard him cry out even once.

The little medical kit he had found behind one of the mirrors was woefully ill-equipped. A good thing, since that had made it small enough to overlook under wadded trash when this place was evacuated. There had been a few sealed bandages, which hissed and gave off a funny, emphatically neutral smell on unwrapping, plus a tiny bottle of still-pungent disinfectant, which they decided to leave alone. And finally a pair of scissors, which Maia lifted after all other matters had been attended to, taking a few tentative, uncertain swipes at her hair. There had been nothing else useful to find amid the litter.

Behind her, the clamor of water cut off, and the same nozzles could be heard pouring hot air over her companion’s body. Brod whooped, as noisy in pleasure as he had been stoical in pain. “Hey, Maia! Why not use this machine to do our clothes, too! Clean and dry in five minutes. Toss me yours.”

She bent to pick up her filthy tunic and breeches between a thumb and forefinger, and threw them in his direction. “All right,” she said. “You’ve convinced me. Men are good for something, after all.”

Brod laughed. “Try me out next springtime!” he shouted over the renewed roar of jetting steam. “If you wanna see what a man’s good for.”

“Talk, talk!” she answered. “Lysos shoulda cut all the talk-talk genes off the Y chromosome, an’ put in more action!”

It was the sort of easy repartee she had envied of Naroin and the men and women sailors, devoid of real threat, but carrying a patina of stylish daring. Maia grinned, and her smile transformed her appearance in the mirror. She sat up straight, using her fingers as combs and shaking her trimmed bangs. That’s, better, she thought. Now I wouldn’t scare a three-year-old on the street.

Not that her scars were shameful in the least, but Maia felt glad that most of the knocking around had spared her face. A face that was, nevertheless, transformed by recent months. Some adolescent roundness still hemmed the cheekbones, and her complexion was clear and flushed from scrubbing. Nevertheless, privation and struggle had sculpted a new firmness of outline. It was a different visage than she remembered back when sharing a dim table mirror with her twin, in a shabby attic room full of unrealistic dreams.

“Here they are,” Brod announced, putting two folded garments on the counter next to her. Like Maia herself, the clothes looked and smelled transformed, though badly in need of mending. The same held for Brod, Maia thought, upon turning around. The young man shrugged into his own shirt and trousers, grinning as he poked fingers through long gashes. “We’ll take along some thread, and maybe sew ’em later. I say we move on now, though. Who knows? We may strike it lucky and find someone’s apartment, with a full wardrobe.”

“Plus three bowls of porridge to swipe, and three beds to sleep on?” Maia yawned as she stood, stealing one last glance at the mirror.

I used to see Leie—whenever I looked at my reflection—as well as myself. But this person before me is unique. There is nothing else like her in the world.

Strangely, Maia found no disappointment in that notion. None at all.

Clean and partially rested, they resumed exploring and soon found themselves traversing another zone of ruin, where powerful upheavals had wracked every plastered wall. In places, damage had been rudely patched, while elsewhere, lesions exposed bare, cracked stone. Maia and Brod stepped carefully where the floor canted or faulting had driven a corridor in two. Some of this harm might have come from age—the natural action of millennia since this refuge was evacuated. But to Maia another hypothesis seemed more likely. Blows from space, the marks of which still scarred Jellicoe and other isles, must have come near to toppling even these mighty halls.

Grimké was just an outpost, she realized. This must have been a main fortress.

Maia and Brod soon found that not everything had been taken away when the inhabitants were banished. They came upon a region packed full of complex machinery, room after oversized room, stuffed with devices. Some clearly dealt with electricity—distant relatives of the useful little transformers and generators she knew—but on a magnitude vastly greater than anything used in today’s Stratoin economy. The scale of things staggered her. There was more metal here than existed in all Port Sanger! Nor was it probable she and Brod had more than scratched the surface.

One chamber stretched a hundred meters across, and seemed to climb at least three times that height..Almost filling the entire space towered one massive block consisting of an amber, translucent material she had never seen before, braced by heavy armatures of the same adamant, blood-red metal that had made up the puzzle door. Dim flickerings within the outlandish gemstone told that its powers were quiescent, but hardly dead. It made them both want to creep away on tiptoe, lest the slightest noise waken whatever slept there.

The sanctuary-fort seemed endless. Maia wondered if their doom would be to wander forever like damned spirits, seeking a way out of a purgatory they had striven so hard to enter. Then the corridor spilled onto a broader one, with walls more heavily reinforced than ever. To their left stood another massive, crimson-metal door, this one almost a meter thick and resting on tremendous hinges. It gaped open. On this side, someone had set up a wooden easel, bearing a placard on which were printed bold, unfriendly letters.

So anomalous was the message, so out of the blue, that Maia could only think, in response, Don’t speak nonsense. Whoever you are, you never warned us of a thing.

As if we care.

“Do you think the reavers left it?” Brod asked. Maia shrugged. “It’s hardly like them to admonish. Scream ’n’ leap, that’s more their style.” She bent toward the lettering, which looked professionally done.

“It must be an important room,” Brod said. “Come on. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

Following close behind, Maia considered. If it’s so important, why do they use signs? Why didn’t they just close and lock the door?

The answer was obvious. Whoever they are, they can’t close the door. If they do, they’ll never get it open again. They don’t know the combination!

The long, tubelike chamber spanned forty meters, lined all the way with adamant red-metal and triple-braced buttresses. Presumably to resist even a direct hit … though a hit of what Maia still couldn’t imagine. She did recognize computer consoles, many times larger than the little comm units manufactured and distributed by Caria City, but clearly relatives. It all had the look of having been used just yesterday, instead of over a thousand years ago. In her mind’s eye, she saw ghostly operators working at the stations, speaking in hushed, anxious voices, unleashing horrific forces at a button’s touch.

“Maia, look at this!”

She turned around. Brod was standing before another placard.

“Your entry was noted,” Brod read aloud. “Do you think they’ve wired all the doors? Hey, maybe they’re listening to us, watching us right now!” His eyes widened, turning and peering, as if to see in all directions at once. But Maia felt oddly detached.

So, the Council knows about this place. It was naive to think they didn’t. After all, this was the heart of the Great Defense. They wouldn’t have left such power lying around, unsupervised. It might be needed again, someday.

But then, what about my idea—that old Bennett said what he did because he had inherited some mysterious secret?

Perhaps there had been a secret, left over from the glory days of Jellicoe. Something that survived the shame and ignominy following the brief episode of the Kings. Or perhaps it was only the stuff of legend, a yearning for lost home and stature, something carried on by a small coterie of men through the centuries of their banishment, losing meaning though gaining ritual gravity as it passed on to new men and boys, recruited from their mother-clans.

“We could follow the antenna to the entrance they normally use.” Brod motioned to the comm unit mentioned in the announcement, a completely standard unit, attached to cables crudely stapled to the walls. Those cables would be severed if the great door ever sealed. “You know, I’ll bet they don’t even know about the route we took! Maybe they don’t know we’re here, after all.”

Good point, Maia thought. Next to the comm unit, another item caught her interest. A thick black notebook. She picked it up, scanned several pages, and sighed.

“What is it, Maia?”

She flipped more pages. “They not only know about this place, they train here … every ten years or so, it seems. Look at the dates and signatures. I see three, no four, clan names. Must be military specialist hives, subsidized in their niches by council security funds. They come out here once a generation and hold exercises. Brod, this place is still in business!”

The young man blinked twice in thought, then exhaled heavily. Resigned resentment colored his voice. “It makes sense. After the Enemy was beaten, the tech types who lived here must’ve gotten uppity—both men and women—and demanded changes. The priestesses and savants and high clans got scared. Maybe they even concocted the Kings’ Rebellion, to have an excuse to kick out all the folk who used to live here!”

Brod was doing it again, reaching beyond the evidence. Yet he spun a convincing scenario. “But it would be stupid to forget the place, or dismantle it,” he went on. “So they chose women warriors suited to the job and gave them permanent sinecures, to keep trained and available in case of another visit by the Enemy.”

Or by unwelcome relatives? Maia wondered. The most recent entry in the logbook was off-schedule, dated about the time Renna’s ship would have been seen entering the system. That drill had lasted five times normal duration. Until, she noted, his lander departed the peripatetic vessel to alight at Caria Spaceport. Nor was there any guarantee the fighting clans would stay away. With the Council in an uproar over Renna’s kidnapping, they could return at any time.

It might have been a cheering thought—offering a surefire way to overwhelm the reavers with a single longdistance call—if only Maia hadn’t grown wary. Renna might be even worse off in the clutches of certain clans.

The comm unit lay there, presumably ready for use. The quandary was no different than it had been before, however. Whom to call? Only Renna knew who his friends were and who had betrayed him in Caria, a quarter of one long Stratoin year ago.

Every time it seems I’ve gotten myself in as deep as anyone can, don’t I always seem to find a hole that goes down twice as far? Compared to this, Tizbe’s blue powder is a joke, a misdemeanor!

Maia knew what she had to do.

It proved simple to trace the path used by the warrior clans. Maia did not even have to follow the antenna cable. The main entrance could be in only one place.

From the control room, she and Brod followed the main corridor as it climbed several more ramps and stairs, passing through a series of heavy, cylindrical hatches, each propped open with thick wedges to prevent accidental closure. At one point, the youths paused before a shattered wall that appeared once to have carried a map. A portion was still legible in the lower left, showing a corner of the convoluted outline of Jellicoe Island. The rest of the chart was burned so deeply that not only the plaster was gone, but the first centimeter or so of rock.

“That’s okay,” Maia told Brod. “Come on. This must be the way.”

There followed more stairs, more wedged blast shields, before the hallway terminated at a closed set of rather-ordinary-looking steel doors. A button to one side came alight when Maia pressed it. Soon, the aperture spread open with a faint rumble, revealing a tiny room without furniture, displaying an array of indicator lights on one wall.

“Well, I’m tied down an’ Wengeled,” Brod exhaled. “It’s a lift! Some big holds in Joannaborg had ’em. I rode one at the library. Went up thirty meters.”

“I suppose they’re safe,” Maia said, not stating it as a question, since there was no point. She did not like there being only one entrance or exit, but the two of them must use the conveyance, safe or no. “I’ll leave it to your vastly greater experience to pilot the smuggy thing.”

Brod stepped inside gingerly. Maia followed, watching carefully to see how it was done. “All the way to the top?” the boy asked. She nodded, and he reached out, extending one finger till it touched the uppermost button. It glowed. After a beat, the doors rumbled shut.

“Is that all there is to it? Shouldn’t we—”

Maia cut off as her stomach did a somersault. Gravity yanked her downward, as if either she or Stratos had suddenly gained mass. There are advantages to not having eaten, Maia thought. Yet, after the first few seconds, she found perverse pleasure in the sensation. Indicators flickered, changing an alphanumeric display that Maia couldn’t read because the bottom half had gone dead. What if another, more critical part fails while we’re in motion?

She quashed the thought. Anyway, who was she to question something that still worked after millennia? The passenger, that’s who I am!

There came another disconcerting-exciting sensation. The pressure beneath her feet abruptly eased, and now she felt a lessening of weight. An experience not unlike falling or riding a pitching ship-deck down a swell. Or, Maia supposed, flight. Involuntarily, she giggled, and slapped a hand over her mouth. The other hand, she discovered, was wrapped tightly around Brod’s elbow. “Ow!” he complained succinctly, as the elevator car came to a halt and they both stumbled in reaction.

The doors slid apart, making them blink and shade their eyes. “Will they stay open?” Maia asked hastily, while staring onto a stony plateau capped with a fantastic, cloud-flecked sky.

“I’ll wedge my sandal in the door,” Brod answered. “If you’ll let go of my arm for a minute.”

Maia laughed nervously and released the boy. While he secured their line of retreat, she stepped further and regarded a vista of ocean surrounding the archipelago known as the Dragons’ Teeth. Sunlight on water was just one sparkling beauty among so many she had not expected to see again. Its touch upon her skin was a gift beyond words.

I knew it! The military clans from Caria wouldn’t arrive by boat. They’re too high-caste, too busy. Besides, they wouldn’t risk someone seeing them, and noticing a pattern. So they come here only rarely to train, and only by air.

The flat surface extended several hundred meters to the south, west, and east. Here at the northern end of the plateau, the elevator shed sheltered machinery that included a substantial winch, probably for tethering and deploying dirigibles. Maia also noted huge drums of cable.

The Dragons’ Teeth were even more magnificent when seen from above. Tower after narrow stony tower stretched into the distance, arrayed like staggered spikes down the back of some armored beast. Many bore forested tips or ledges, like Grimké, while others gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, bare and pristine products of extruding mantle forces that long predated woman’s tenure on Stratos.

No tooth in sight reached higher than this one, at the northern edge of Jellicoe. Because of its position, she couldn’t see due south, where lay other giant island clusters, such as Halsey, the sole site officially and legally inhabited. No doubt the war clans counted on this shielding effect, and timed their rare visits to minimize chances of being seen. Still, Maia wondered if the men who staffed Halsey ever suspected.

Perhaps that’s why they rotate the station assignment among low-ranked guilds. Less chance of a rhythm being noticed, even if men did happen to spy a zep, now and then. Especially with visits only three times in a lifetime.

She turned and marched to the right, where more than two score monoliths could be seen clustered close at hand—some of the many peaks which, welded together, made Jellicoe the chief molar of this legendary chain of Teeth. When Maia got close enough to see how vast the collection was, she realized how even the extensive tunnel network below could easily be hidden in this maze of semicrystalline stone.

Maia had to descend a rough, eroded staircase in order to reach a lower terrace, and then crossed some distance before at last nearing the vista she wanted. Brod cried out for her to wait, but impatience drove her. I’ve got to know, she thought, and hurried faster.

At last, she stopped short of a precipice so breathtaking, it outshadowed Grimké as a gull might outsoar a beetle. Her pulse pounded in her ears. So good was it to be in open air, breathing the sweet sea wind, that Maia forgot to experience vertigo as she edged close and looked down at Jellicoe Lagoon.

The anchorage already lay in dimness, abandoned by the sun after a brief, noontime visit. Her gaze bypassed still-bright stony walls, readjusting until at last she found what she had hoped to see. Two ships, she realized with a thrill. Reckless and Manitou.

I was afraid they’d change hideouts. They should, since their ketch was captured. Maybe they’re planning to, soon.

Maia realized, with not a little disbelief, that the escape from Grimké with Brod and Naroin and the others had only been three or four days ago. That may mean we still have time.

She felt Brod’s presence as he came alongside, and heard his ragged sigh of relief. “We’re not too late, after all.” He turned to regard her, a glitter in his eye. “I sure hope you’ve got a plan, Maia. I’ll help rescue your starman, and your sister. But first, there’s a band of unsuspecting reavers down there with a pantry to raid. If I don’t get food soon—”

“I know,” Maia interrupted with a wave of one hand, and quoted,

Brod grinned, showing a lot of teeth. When he spoke, it was in thick dialect.

“Aye, lass. Ye don’t want me reduced to bitin’ the nearest thing at hand now, do ye?”

She laughed, and so did he. Such was her trust in his nature and friendship that it never occurred to Maia, as it might have months earlier, to take him at his literal word.

24

Maia lowered her sextant and peered at the little calibrated dials a second time. The horizon angle, where the sun had set, fixed one endpoint. The other, almost directly; overhead, fell within the constellation Boadicea.

“You know, I think it may be Farsun Eve?” she commented after a quick mental calculation. “Somewhere along the way, I lost track of several days. It’s midwinter and I never noticed.” She sighed. “We’re missing all the fun, in town,”

“What town?” Brod asked, as he knotted thick ribbons of cable at the edge of the bluff. “And what fun? Free booze, so we don’t notice the whispery sound of clone-mothers stuffing proxies into ballot boxes? Getting pinched on the streets by drunks who wouldn’t know frost from hail-fall?”

“Typical man,” Maia sniffed. “You grouches never get into the spirit of the holidays.”

“Sometimes we do. Throw us a party in midsummer, and we might be less grumpy half a year later.” He shrugged. “Still, it could help if the reavers are celebrating tonight, wearing paper hats and going all moony. Maybe the pirates won’t notice gate-crashers droppin’ in while they’re busy harassing male prisoners.”

There’s an idea, Maia thought, folding away her sextant. Providing the men are still alive. After the massacre aboard the Reckless, the reavers’ next logical step would be to eliminate all other witnesses, before moving on to a new hiding place. That included not only the men of the Manitou, but also the rads, and perhaps even recent recruits, such as Leie. Renna was probably still too valuable, but even his fate would be uncertain if Baltha’s gang were ever cornered.

Such dire thoughts lent urgency to their wait as Maia and Brod watched full darkness settle over the archipelago. With twilight’s fading, the many spires of Jellicoe Island merged into a single serrated outline that cut jagged bites out of a starry sky. Below, in the inky darkness of the lagoon, tiny pale pools of color encircled lamps stationed on the narrow dock where the two ships were moored. Now and then, clusters of smaller lanterns could be seen moving quickly, accompanied by stretched, bipedal silhouettes. Faint, indecipherable shouts carried up to Maia’s ears, funneled by the narrow, fluted confines of the island’s cavity. “Looks like they’re in a festive mood, after all,” Brod commented as a company of torch-bearing shadows trooped off the larger vessel, filing down the pier and into a wide stone portal, set in the base of the cliff. “Maybe we should wait. At least till they’ve turned in?”

Maia also would have preferred that, but two moons were already rising in the east, and another was due soon. Within hours, they would be high enough to illuminate the lagoon and its surrounding cliffs. “No.” She shook her head. “Now’s the time. Let’s get on with it.”

Brod helped her arrange the harness he had made by using their salvaged scissors to slice the warning placards so graciously left by the Reigning Council. Maia wrapped her buttocks and thighs in strips of threatening phrases, and stepped into a double loop of cable meant for tethering and reeling transport zep’lins. The system was old, and might even predate the banishment, going back to days when men were said to have sailed the skies, as well as the seas, below. Maia only hoped the warrior clans who now used the equipment kept it in good condition.

Next Brod handed her two patches of heavy cloth—the calf portions of his own trousers, which he had cut off for her to use as gauntlets. With these wrapped around her hands, Maia gripped the rough cable. “You’re sure you’ve got the signals down?” she asked.

He nodded. “Two yanks will mean stop. Three means reel you back. Four stands for wait. And five means I should come on down.” The boy frowned unhappily. “Listen, Maia, I still think I should be the one to go first, instead.”

“We’ve been over this, Brod. I’m smaller and a lot less banged up than you are. Once I’m down, I might pass as one of the band in the dark. Anyway, you understand the winch machine. I’m counting on you to haul me out when I come back to the cable, after scouting around.”

Ideally, that would be with Renna in tow, rescued from right under the reavers’ noses. But to count on such a miracle would be like believing in lugar savants. Still a long shot, but more conceivable, was the possibility of getting close enough to whisper to Renna through the bars of his cell, or to exchange brief taps in Morse code. Given just a few minutes of surreptitious contact, Maia felt sure she could sneak back with valuable information—the names of officials on the Council whom Renna trusted, for instance. The fivers might then use the secret comm unit with some hope they weren’t just inviting another band of more aristocratic thugs.

That is, providing the comm wasn’t bugged, or set to call just one location. There were a dozen other malign possibilities, but what else could they do? The best reason of all to seek Renna was the near certainty he’d come up with a better plan.

“Mm,” Brod grunted unhappily. “And what if you’re caught?”

She grinned, shoving his shoulder playfully. “I know, you’re worried about getting fed.” Maia was also supposed to snatch any food she came across. But Brod looked hurt by her joke, so she spoke more gently. “Seriously, dear friend, use your own judgment. If you feel strong enough to wait, I suggest holding out till tomorrow night, before dawn. Lower yourself and try to steal the dinghy that’s tethered to the Manitou’s stern. Head for Halsey. At least there—”

“Abandon you?” Brod objected. “I’ll not do anything of the—”

“Sure you will. I’ve been in jail before; I’ll manage. Besides, if they catch me sneaking around the sanctuary tonight, their guard’ll be up for more of the same. The only way you can help is by trying something different. Tell your guild how Corsh was murdered. Surrounded by witnesses, and with an unbugged comm, you can call the cops and every member of the Lyso-damned Council. It’s still risky, but any conspirators may think twice about pulling dirty stunts with the Pinnipeds around as bystanders.”

“Mm. I guess it makes sense.” He shook his head, scuffing gravel with his sandals. “I still wish… Just be careful, okay?”

Maia threw her arms around him.

“Yeah, I will.” She squeezed, feeling him tense briefly in typical winter withdrawal, then relax and return her embrace with genuine intensity. Maia looked into his face, briefly glimpsing moistness in his eyes as Brod released and turned away without another word. She watched him cross the broad terrace and then disappear beyond the stone steps. It would take several minutes, as they had rehearsed, for her partner to reach the winch house. Meanwhile, she went to the edge of the plateau and pulled the line taut, bracing her feet and backing up until most of her weight hung over the precipice.

I should be terrified, but I’m not.

Maia seemed to have progressively lost her fear of heights, until all that remained was a pulse-augmenting exhilaration. Funny, since Lamais are all acrophobes. Maybe it was growing up in that attic. Or perhaps I take after my father… whoever the vrilly bastard was. Despite Brod’s revelations, a name was still all she had of him. “Clevin.” No image formed in her mind, though someone midway in appearance between Renna and old Bennett might do.

Always alert for possible niches, Maia wondered if this calmness at the edge of a cliff might hint a useful talent. I must talk it over with Leie when I get a chance, she vowed. Maybe I’ll put her in a cage, suspended from a great height, to see if it’s genetic, or simply the result of environmental influences I’ve been through, since we parted.

Of course, Maia would do no such thing. But the fantasy discharged some tension over the possibility of encountering her twin again. At Maia’s waistband she felt the pressure of a wooden cudgel she had made from the leg of a broken placard easel. If necessary, she would use it even on her sister. The tiny scissors, bound in cloth, finished Maia’s short inventory of weapons.

It had better not come to a fight, she reminded herself. Stealth was her only real chance.

A sudden vibration transmitted down the cable, starting her teeth chattering. Maia set her jaw and braced. At a count of five, cable started unreeling at a slow, steady pace. Maia overcame a momentary instinctual pang, allowing her weight to sink with the makeshift saddle. Her feet began walking backward, first over the edge, then in jouncing steps along the sheer face of the cliff. The plateau rose past her eyes, cutting off the faint, distant glimmer of the elevator shed.

All that remained of the sky was what Jellicoe chose to let within its ragged circle—a cookie-cutter outline that narrowed with each passing moment. Only a wedge of reflected moonlight colored silver the tips of the highest western monoliths. Maia dropped into starlit gloom.

Despite the darkness, she listened for any sign she’d been spotted. Her wrapped hands were ready to jerk hard at the cable, signaling Brod to throw the mechanism into reverse. Neither of them felt certain the crude signals would work, once a great length of cord had played out. Not that it made that much difference. Forward lay all their hopes. Behind lay only starvation.

As her eyes adapted during the descent, Maia surveyed her surroundings. The lagoon was larger than it first appeared, since several small bays extended past partial gaps in the first circle of soaring spires. The wharf and ships lay some distance south and east, near the harbor entrance she and Brod had glimpsed while desperately evading the pirates’ shelling. The pier led to a shelf of rock that rimmed part of the island’s inner circumference at sea level. Bobbing lanterns could still be seen hurrying to and fro, mostly destined for the large stone portal lit on both sides by bright sconces. Interior illumination glowed through other openings, flanking the main entrance.

That’s the old residence sanctuary. The portion of Jellicoe the Council didn’t seal off, she realized. As far as history is concerned, it’s the only part anyone knows about. Long-abandoned ruins of a lost era, free to he used by any band of derelicts that happens along.

Neither the ships, nor the ledge, nor any windows lay conveniently beneath her. She was headed for a swim. Not my best sport, as I’ve well learned. Maia didn’t look forward to it, but her confidence was bolstered by experience. I may not swim well, or fast, but I’m hard to drown.

Distance was difficult to gauge, since only a few warbled lamplight reflections distinguished the inky lagoon surface. As she descended, Maia fought a crawly sensation of vulnerability. If she was spotted now, she would be easy meat for reaver sharpshooters before ever climbing out of range, even if Brod read her signal at once and reversed traction. Maia consoled herself that any lookouts would be posted to watch for ships approaching from sea. Besides, reliance on lanterns only ruined a woman’s dark-adaptation. Old Bennett had taught her that long ago, when she first learned to read sky charts by starlight.

I’m no more visible than a spider dropping at the end of a web. True or not, the mental image cheered Maia. To protect her eyes’ sensitivity, she resisted the temptation to look at the lanterns, even as shouting voices could be distinguished, floating past like smoke up a chimney. Maia looked away, allowing her gaze to stroke the outlines of two score mighty peaks, looming like the outstretched fingers of Stratos-Mother, pointing at the sky.

Pointing specifically at a dark nebula known as the Claw, which lay overhead as Maia looked up. It was a fitting symbol, of both obscurity and mystery. Beyond that great, starless sprawl lay the Hominid Phylum. All the worlds Renna knew. All that Lysos, and Maia’s own fore-mothers, by choice left behind.

It was their right, she thought. But where does that leave your descendants? How far do we owe loyalty to our creators’ dream? When have we earned the right to dream for ourselves?

Time once more to check her progress toward the water’s chill surface. As she lowered her eyes, however, she caught a flicker. Faint as a single star, it gleamed where no star should—amid the sable blackness of Jellicoe’s inner flank, where an expanse of dark stone should block light as adamantly as the Claw. Maia blinked as the dim, reddish spark shone briefly, then went out.

Did I imagine it? she wondered afterward. It had been across the lagoon, far from either her own towering peak, which concealed the Council’s defense base, or the adjacent one containing the old public sanctuary. Peering at a now-unrelieved wall of blankness, it was easy to convince herself she had seen nothing but a mote in her own eye.

Much closer nearby, the sheer cliff was a blank enigma that occasionally reached out to brush Maia’s feet or knees. Her arms were starting to hurt from holding on to the cable for so long. Diminished circulation set her legs tingling, despite Brod’s improvised padding, but she could only shift gingerly, lest the makeshift, knotted harness loosen and drop her toward the inky surface below.

Seawater smells rose to greet her. Shouts that had been garbled resolved into spoken words, surging in and out of decipherability as echoes fluttered against the cliff, meeting Maia’s ears at the whim of random rock reflections.

“…callin’ for ever’body …”

“…quit that an’come help! I tol’y a-there’s no …”

“…wasn’t my dam’ fault! …”

It didn’t sound all that festive to Maia—certainly not like the normal, whooping frenzy of Farsun Eve. Maybe her calculations were wrong. Or, since there was no frost, and the only males present were presumably hostile, the reavers might be in no mood to celebrate.

In that case, all this nighttime activity worried Maia. Perhaps the pirates were packing up, getting ready to leave. A sensible move, from their point of view, but a damned nuisance—and possibly fatal—from Maia’s.

Other sounds reached her. A soft rippling, the lapping of gentle waves against rock. I must be getting close. She peered straight down, trying to gauge the remaining distance to a vague boundary between shades of black.

Her waving feet abruptly touched frigid liquid, breaking surface tension with ripples that sounded oily and loud. Maia drew in her knees and yanked hard, perpendicular to the taut cord, repeating the motion to let Brod know to stop. There was no response; cable kept rolling off the drums, high overhead. Once more, Maia’s legs met water and sank into a chill embrace, sending tremors of shock up her spine. Thighs, buttocks, and torso followed, slipping into an icy cold that sucked both heat and breath out of her with gasping speed. Frantically, Maia overcame muscle spasms to worm out of the constraining harness, awkwardly kicking free with a relieved sense of release. Only when she felt sure of not being reentangled did she flounder back, searching for the cable in order to try again signaling Brod.

She was surprised, on snagging it at last, to find it motionless. Brod must have noticed a change once my weight was gone. We should’ve expected that. Anyway, it worked.

She grabbed the cable in both hands, and yanked four times to confirm that she was all right. Her friend must have picked up the vibrations, for power flowed into the winch again in two rapid, upward jerks. Then it was still.

Maia held on for a while longer; shaking sleep out of her legs. The initial shock of contact faded. With her free hand, she pulled on the slack until her former seat reappeared. Pieces of placard came loose and she retied them to float near the surface. If all went well in the period ahead—or very poorly—she would need this marker to find the hanging cord again. Maia felt sure no casual onlookers would notice it till morning, and Brod was to retract well before that, whether or not she had returned.

In the course of turning around, memorizing landmarks, she looked up at the narrow patch of sky directly overhead, toward where Brod must be standing, peering down. Although there was no chance he could see, Maia waved. Then she cast off and started swimming as quietly as possible toward the dark shadow of the unlucky ship, Manitou.

High tide had come close to being fatal, back in the collapsed cave. Now it proved convenient, as Maia sought a way to reach dry land.

She breaststroked amid the pier’s thick pilings, coated with pointy-shelled creatures up to the water’s lapping edge. Plank boards formed a ceiling not far over Maia’s head as she made for the dark bulk of the larger sailing vessel. There were no more excited shouts. Apparently, most of the reaver crew had entered the mountain sanctuary on some urgent errand. All was not silent, however. She could hear a low murmur of conversation—muffled voices coming from an indistinct location nearby.

Maia swam past the dinghy she had spotted from high above. It bobbed gently, tethered to the Manitou’s stern, and seemed to beckon, offering an easy way out of this calamitous adventure. First a silent drift to the lagoon’s exit, then step the little mast and set sail … All she’d have to deal with after that would be pursuit, possible starvation, and the wild sea.

The thought was alluring, and Maia dismissed it. The dinghy was Brod’s, should it come to that. Anyway, she had other destinations, other plans.

Manitou’s scarred flank drifted past as she swam quietly, searching for a way up. The pier was equipped with a ladder, over near the ship’s gangplank. Unfortunately, one of the bright lanterns hung directly above that spot, casting a circle of dangerous illumination. So Maia tried another location. One of the lines tethering the freighter to the wharf stretched overhead amidships, far enough from the lantern to lie in darkness.

Maia trod in place underneath the hawser, where it drooped closest to the water. She let her body sink, and then kicked upward, stretching as far as possible. Despite high tide, however, she came up short by half an arm’s length and fell back with an unnerving splash. Maia stroked back under the pier and waited to be sure no one had heard. A minute passed. All appeared quiet. The low voices continued undisturbed in the distance.

She undid the remaining buttons of her ragged shirt and struggled free of the sopping cloth. When in need, use what’s at hand. It seemed she was getting more use of her clothes as tools than as coverings. Maia wrapped one sleeve around her right wrist and balled the rest into her palm, then she stretched her arm behind and, with all the force she could muster, threw the loose mass so that it draped over the rope. By flicking the end she held, Maia was able to cause the other sleeve to flop down. This time, when she surged upward, she had something to grab onto. Yanking on both sleeves, she lifted herself out of the water. The Manitou seemed to cooperate, the rope bowing a little farther under her weight while Maia tensed her stomach muscles and threw her legs around the cable.

She hung there, breathing heavily for half a minute, then began inching along the hawser toward the ship. The struggle soon became as much vertical as horizontal. Maia was working so hard, she barely noticed the fierce chill as water evaporated from her skin. She gripped the rough, scratchy rope with her feet, knees, and hands, fighting bit by bit toward the railing overhead.

The hull bumped her head. Maia turned and saw a dark vista of wood stretching in both directions. She also spied a row of portholes, each no wider than two outspread hands, running along the length of the ship, below the level of her knees. They were too small to enter, but the nearest lay open and within reach. Tightly clutching the rope with both hands, Maia let go with her legs so they swung toward the tiny opening. Second try, she hooked one foot inside and swung her center of gravity after it. Now she could rest nearly all her weight on the ledge, offering respite to the hands still clinging the rope. Waves of fatigue washed out of her arms and legs and back, until her pulse and breathing settled to a dull roar.

So far so good. You’ve only got another couple more meters to climb.

Something touched her foot. It settled around her ankle and squeezed. Maia very nearly screamed. Biting her lip fiercely, she forced herself to unwrap the knot of panic in her breast and open her tightly shut eyes. Fortunately, surprise was the only demon to overcome, since the presence below wasn’t hurting her, yet. For now, it seemed content to rhythmically stroke the top of her foot.

Maia inhaled and released a shuddering breath. She managed to turn her head, and saw a hand emerge through the small porthole. A woman’s hand, making beckoning motions.

What, no shouts of alarm? Maia wondered blankly.

Wait! That’s the upper cargo level. Would reavers live here? Not likely.

A far better place to keep prisoners.

It took an awkward contortion to pull the hanging rope so that she could hold on with one hand while squatting closer to the porthole. As she bent over, the wooden cudgel dug into Maia’s belly. Her right foot started to hurt from bearing all her weight.

With her free hand, she stretched down to touch the wrist of whoever was silently calling, which went rigid for an instant, then withdrew. Near the opening, Maia saw a dim outline press close… the outline of a human face. There lifted the faintest of whispered words.

“Thought I recognized my spare set o’ shoes. How ya doin’, virgie?”

The murmur lacked all tonality; still, she knew the speaker. “Thalla!” Maia hissed. So this was where the radical var partisans were being kept! There came a faint clanking of chains, as the prisoner pressed closer to the porthole.

“It’s me, all right. In here with Kau an’ the others.”

“And Kiel?”

There was a pause. “Kiel’s bad off. First the fight, then from arguing with our hosts.”

Maia blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. Good to see ya, varling. What’re you doin’ here?”

Surprise and pleasure at this discovery were rapidly being replaced by pain, from both her twisted posture and fear that even whispers might carry elsewhere. She knew nothing of the conditions, of Thalia’s imprisonment, and did not relish finding out firsthand.

“I’m going after Renna. Then to get help.”

Another long pause. “If we got broke out of here, we could help.”

Yeah, like a lugar in a porcelain store, Maia thought. The idealistic rads were no match for the reavers. That had already been proven, and this time they’d be fewer and weaker still. Besides, I don’t owe you lot anything.

Still, Maia wondered. Did she have a better plan? If a rad breakout accomplished nothing more than casting the two ships loose, it could make even an abortive rebellion worthwhile. “You’d do as I say?” she asked.

If there hadn’t been a moment’s hesitation, Maia would have known Thalla was lying. “All right, Maia. You’re the boss.”

“How many guards are there?”

“Two, sometimes three, just outside the door. One of ’em snores somethin’ awful.”

There was more she might ask, but the quaking in Maia’s right leg was getting worse. Any longer and she might land in the lagoon, right back where she started. She sighed heavily. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though!”

There was a tremor in Thalia’s grateful squeeze. Maia shifted her weight in preparation for resuming her climb. The pressure of the wooden cudgel eased and she exhaled in relief, only to wince as something else jabbed her thigh. With her free hand, Maia fished under her belt and pulled out the cloth-wrapped scissors. On impulse, she bent once more and tossed it through the small, dark opening. The touch on her ankle vanished.

Maia wasted no more time. While her right leg and back throbbed, her arms felt refreshed, so they did most of the work at first. Soon she was shinnying almost vertically, with the hull stroking her back. It was a journey she could never have imagined making as a newly fledged fiver, stepping out of her mother-hold. Now she thought no further ahead than the next straining pull, the next coordinated slither of hands and knees and ankles. When, at last, one leg floundered over the side, Maia rolled onto the ship’s lower deck and quickly sought shelter behind the mainmast, panting silently with a wide-open mouth, waiting for the pain to dull. Waiting till she could listen once more to the sounds of the night.

There was a faint creaking as the ship rocked gently at anchor. The lapping of wavelets against the hull. A soft murmur of conversation. Maia lifted her head to look across the wharf toward the smaller pirate vessel, the Reckless. A pair of women in red bandannas crouched next to an upturned barrel with a lantern set upon it. Although they were playing dice, no coinsticks lay in sight, which explained the desultory nature of the game. The players seemed not to keep score as they alternated rolls of the ivory pieces, talking quietly.

Turning around, Maia realized with some shock that Manitou looked deserted. Of course, from Thalia’s description, there would be a brace of beefy vars on duty below, just outside the cargo hold. Still, whatever had pulled the rest of the reavers away must be awfully important.

Sound and sight were vital for warning of danger. Once she felt more secure, however, Maia felt a sudden wash of other sensations, especially smell. Food, she realized suddenly, acutely, and hurried aft quick as she could scuttle silently. Just below the quarterdeck, she found where supper had been prepared and eaten. Stacks of grimy plates lay within a stew pot, soaking in a swill of brine. The resulting goulash was hardly appetizing, even in Maia’s state, so she kept looking, and was rewarded at last in a far corner when she found a small pile of hard biscuits atop a rickety table and an open cask of fresh water nearby.

She drank thirstily, alternately moistening baked crusts into a feast. While devouring voraciously, Maia searched for a sack, a piece of cloth, anything to stuff and take back to Brod. At least she could leave a stash of food for him in the little boat.

There was nothing in sight to use as a bag, but Maia knew where else to look. With biscuits in each hand, she hurried to a row of narrow doors at the rear of the main deck. Opening one, she looked down a slanted ladder into the selfsame room where she herself had lived, up to a few weeks ago, along with a dozen other women, amid bunk beds stacked four high. Maia descended quietly, eyes darting till she verified by close inspection that no bed held sleeping reavers. It hadn’t seemed likely, with everyone called off on some mysterious errand.

She had entered in search of a bag, but now Maia noticed she was shivering. Why not swipe fresh clothes, as well?

She started with her old bunk. But somebody several sizes larger, and much smellier, had taken over occupancy since the battle on the high seas. She moved on, sorting in near darkness until at last she found a shirt and well-mended trousers roughly her size, neatly folded at one end of a bunk. Still munching stale bread, Maia wriggled out of her own tattered pants and slipped into the stolen articles. The rope belt had to be cinched extra tight, but everything else fit. A clean, if threadbare, coat finished her accoutrement, though she left it unbuttoned, in case it became necessary to dive back into the water. The thought made her shudder. Otherwise, Maia felt better, and a little guilty about poor Brod, cold and hungry, almost half a kilometer overhead.

What next? she wondered, picking up her cudgel and sticking it in her new waistband. The rads might be imprisoned on the Manitou, but Maia doubted Renna would be kept anywhere so insecure. Probably, he was deep inside the sanctuary. Did she dare try to brazenly walk in, looking for him? The more she thought about it, the idea of springing Thalla and the others made sense. If the rads could take over Manitou, then lay doggo while Maia snuck near the sanctuary entrance, they might at a chosen moment create enough distraction to let her slip inside.

First task is eliminating their guards. Sounds simple. Only, how am I supposed to do it?

She pondered possibilities. I could go to the cargo gangway and pretend to be a messenger… shout down some made-up call for help. When one emerges, I’d knock her out and then … try the same thing again? Or go down after the other one?

What if there are three? Or more?

It was a lugar-brained scheme… and Maia felt fiercely determined to make it work. At least once that phase was over, she wouldn’t be alone anymore. Maybe the rads would have an idea or two of their own to offer. Maia cast around the room one last time for weapons. She only found a small knife, embedded in the wooden post of one of the bunk beds, which she wrestled out and slipped into the coat pocket.

She was halfway up the ladder when the door suddenly swung aside, spilling light upon her face and outlining a large figure. Maia could only stare upward in dismay.

“Thought I heard someone down here,” a gruff woman’s voice said. “Come on, then. No duckin’ work. I won’t cover for ya, next time!”

The silhouette turned, leaving Maia blinking in surprise. Hurriedly, she followed, hoping to catch the reaver from behind while they were still out of view from the Reckless. At the doorway, however, Maia’s heart sank upon spying four other women on deck. They were wrestling open a sealed box, pulling out long gleaming objects.

Rifles, Maia realized. They seemed well-supplied, this bunch. Even the Guardia at Port Sanger wasn’t better armed. Maia was past being shocked, however. It is the victors who write history, she now knew. If Baltha and her gang succeed amid the chaos they want to create, no one is going to quibble over a few extra crimes.

“Well? Come on!” The first woman called to Maia, who shuffled forward unwillingly with her head averted, eyes downcast. She concealed her surprise when three of the slender, heavy weapons were thrust into her arms, and clutched them tightly, not knowing what else to do.

“Don’t forget to bring enough ammo, Racila,” the leader told a slight, scar-faced pirate, who pounded the crate shut again. “All right, you lot, let’s get back, or Togay’ll have us eatin’ air for a week.”

Maia tried to take up the rear, but the leader insisted that she go ahead, tromping with the others down the gangplank, onto the pier, and then along thumping, resonant wooden slats toward where bright sconces cast twin pools of brilliance on both sides of the sanctuary entrance.

Loaded rifles, shouted calls, groups of anxious women hurrying through the night. This was surely no Farsun Eve celebration. What in the name of the Founders was going on? For Maia, the worst moment came as they climbed spacious, cracked steps and passed under the fierce electric dazzle of the sconces. When she wasn’t denounced on the spot, she realized it hadn’t been darkness that saved her, back at the ship.

Either there are so many women in the gang that they don’t all know each other—which seemed highly unlikely—or else they think I’m Leie.

The possibility of playing such a ruse—pretending to be her sister—had naturally occurred to Maia. Only it had seemed too obvious, too risky. All Stratoin children, whether clone or var, learned to notice subtle differences among “identical” women. Leie no doubt wore her hair differently, carried distinct scars, and would acknowledge with a thousand disparate cues that she knew these people who were utter strangers to Maia. Besides, what to do when Leie herself showed up?

Maia had finally chosen to try the subterfuge only if stealth utterly failed.. Now there was no choice. She could only try brazening it out.

“This dam’ hole is big as a scullin city!” One short, rough-looking var in the group told Maia sotto voce as they marched up the broad, splintered portico, then between tall, gaping doors. “We must’ve sniffed a hunnerd rooms already. Can’t blame ya for duckin’ out to catch a snore.”

Shrugging like an unrepentant schoolgirl caught playing hooky, Maia muttered in mimicry of the other woman’s sour tone. “You can say that again! I never signed up for all this runnin’ around. Had any luck yet?”

“Nah. Ain’t seen beard nor foreskin o’ the vrilly crett since watch shift, despite the reward Togay’s offered.”

That confirmed Maia’s dawning suspicion. They’re searching for someone. A man. Her chest pounded. Renna. She suppressed her feelings. You can’t be sure of that, yet. It might be another prisoner. One of the Manitou crew, for instance.

The entrance showed signs of that long-ago battle that had shaken Jellicoe with blasts from outer space. A rough-cut, makeshift portal of poorly dressed and buttressed stone led from the shattered steps into a vestibule that might once have been beautiful, with finely fluted pilasters, but now bore jagged cracks. Rude cement repairs had peeled under attack by salt and age.

These effects ebbed as the group passed into the sanctuary proper, where thick walls had sheltered a grand entrance foyer. From there, broad hallways stretched north, south, and east. Strings of dim electric bulbs cast islets of illumination every ten meters or so, powered by a hissing, coal-fired generator. Beyond those light pools, each passage faded into mystifying darkness, broken by brief glimpses of occasional bobbing lanterns. Distant, echoing calls told of feverish action, nearly swallowed by the chill obscurity.

At first sight, the place reminded Maia of her first imprisonment—that smaller, newer sanctuary in Long Valley—another citadel of chiseled passages and thick, masculine pillars. Only here, the scent of ages hung in the air. Soot streaks and daubed graffiti on the walls and ceilings told of countless prior visitors, from hermits to treasure hunters, who must have come exploring over the centuries, torches in hand. By comparison, the pirates were well-equipped.

There was another difference. In this place, the walls were lined with a deeply incised frieze, running horizontally just above eye-level. As far as Maia could make out, the carved adornment ran the length of each hallway, snaking into and out of every room, and consisted entirely of sequences of letters in the eighteen-symbol liturgical alphabet.

Taking the center route, which plunged deeper into the mountain, Maia’s party passed through a stately hall where flames crackled in a spacious, sculpted hearth, underneath gothic vaulting. There was no furniture, only a few rugs thrown on the ground. Bottles lay strewn about, along with mugs and gambling equipment, all abandoned in apparent haste. “Seems an awful lot o’ trouble,” Maia probed, choosing the nearby short var who had spoken before. “I don’t s’poze anyone’s suggested we just set sail, and leave the vril behind?”

A wide-eyed glance from the husky little reaver told Maia volumes. The spoken response was barely a hiss. “Go suggest it yerself! If Togay ’n’ Baltha don’t quick make ya swim like a lugar, I may say aye, too.”

Maia hid a smile. Only loss of their chief prize would provoke such wrath. Although this would make Maia’s own task of finding Renna harder, it was nevertheless great news to hear that he had given them the slip. Now to reach him before they get really desperate.

Abruptly, Maia recalled what she was carrying in her arms—long, finely machined articles of wood and metal and packaged death. The weapons gave off a tangy smell of bitter oil and gunpowder. Apparently, after hours of searching, someone had decided that which cannot be recaptured must not be lost to others.

The anomalous frieze helped distract Maia from her nervous dread. As the group passed room after empty room, they were accompanied by that row of stately, engraved letters, punctuated by occasional, ill-repaired cracks. Now and then, she recognized a run-on passage from the Fourth Book of Lysos, the so-called Book of Riddles. Other stretches of text seemed to parrot nonsense syllables, as if the symbols had been chosen by an illiterate artist who cared more how they looked next to each other than what they said. The effect, nevertheless, was one of grand and timeless reverence.

Certainly males were welcome to worship in the Orthodox church, which even attributed them true souls. Still, this wasn’t what you expected to find in a place built solely for men. Perhaps, long ago, males were more tightly knit into the communion of spiritual life on Stratos, before the era of glory, terror, and double-betrayal leading from the Great Defense to the toppling of the Kings.

The group continued past gaping doorways and black, empty rooms, which must have already been searched hours ago. Finally, they arrived at another vast foyer, encompassing six spacious stone staircases, three descending and three ascending, again divided among the directions north, south, and east. It was a monumental chamber, and the running frieze of enigmatic psalms expanded to glorify every bare surface, seeming all the more mysterious for the stark shadows cast by a few bare bulbs shining angularly across deeply incised letters. All this grand architecture might have impressed Maia, if she did not know of greater vaulting wonders that lay just a kilometer or two from here—secret catacombs containing power unimaginable to these ambitious reavers. The reminder of her enemies’ fallibility cheered Maia a little.

Two bored-looking fighters stood watch at this nexus point, armed with cruelly sharpened trepp bills. They spoke together in low voices, and barely glanced at the passing work party. Which suited Maia just fine. She averted her face anyway.

The string of electric lights continued down only one staircase to the right, while Maia’s group plunged straight across the open foyer to the dark center steps, leading upward and further into the heart of the dragon’s tooth. Two lantern-bearers turned up the wicks of their oil lamps. As Maia and the others climbed, she glanced down, and caught sight of several figures, two levels below, landing at the start of the illuminated hallway. Four women were exchanging heated words, pointing and shouting. Maia felt a chill traverse her back, on hearing one harsh voice. She recognized a shadowed face.

Baltha. The erstwhile mercenary stood next to one of the other Manitou traitors, a wiry var Maia had known as Riss. They were debating with two women she had never seen before. Emphasizing a point, Baltha turned and began waving toward the stairs, causing Maia to duck back and hasten after her companions. High on her list of priorities was to avoid contact with that particular var, not least because Baltha would recognize her in a shot.

Maia’s group plunged deeper into the mountain. Since leaving the last electric light, stiltlike shadows seemed to flutter from their legs and bodies, fleeing the lanterns like animated caricatures of fear. To Maia, the effect seemed to mock the brief, earnest concerns of the living. Each time a black silhouette swept into one of the empty rooms, it was like some prodigal spirit returning to exchange greetings with shades of those long dead.

If experience had taught Maia to endure water, and even enjoy heights, she felt certain her habituation to deep tunnels would never grow beyond grudging tolerance. She could stand them, but would never find confines like these appealing. Of late, she had begun wondering if men did, either. Perhaps they built this way because they had no other choice.

Maia leaned toward the woman warrior she had ex-changed words with, earlier. “Uh, where are they… er, we … looking for him, now?” She asked in a low voice. Her words seemed to skitter along the walls.

“Up,” the short, husky pirate replied. “Five, six levels. Found some windows lookin’ over both sea an’ lagoon. We’re to skiv anyone comin’ or goin’, them’s the orders. We also look for any signs the vril’s been that high. Footprints in the dust, and such. Cheer up, maybe we’ll get th’ reward, yet.”

The ruddy-faced var leading the party glared briefly at the one talking to Maia, who grimaced a silent insult when the leader’s back was turned once more.

“What about the room where he was kept?” Maia whispered. “Any clues there?”

A shrug. “Ask Baltha.” The reaver motioned with a vague nod behind them. “She was still checkin’ out the cell, after everyone else had a turn.” The reaver shivered, as if unhappy to remember something weird, even frightening.

Maia pondered as they walked on silently. Clearly, this expedition was taking her farther from any useful clues. But how to get away?

At last, the group arrived at the end of the long hallway, where a narrow portal introduced a spiral staircase set inside a cylinder of stone. The women had to enter single file. Maia hung back, shifting from one leg to the other. When the boss woman looked at her, Maia acted embarrassed and pushed the rifles into the older woman’s arms. “I have to … you know.”

The squad leader sighed, holding a lantern. “I’ll wait.” Maia feigned mortification. “No. Really. Climbing’s simple. No way to get lost, and there’s a rail. I’ll catch up before you’re two levels up.”

“Mm. Well, hurry then. Fall too far behind th’ lantern, and you’ll deserve t’get lost.”

The leader turned away as Maia ducked into a nearby empty room. When the footsteps receded, Maia emerged and, with only a distant glow to guide her, swiftly retraced the way they had come. Could I have gotten away with holding onto a rifle? she wondered, and concluded this had been the right choice. Nothing would have been more likely to elicit suspicion and alarm. Under these circumstances, the weapon would have been a hindrance.

Soon she arrived back at the great nexus hall and cautiously looked down. Two guards still kept watch where the string of light bulbs made a downstairs turn.

Maia would have to get by them, and then past Baltha and Riss, in order to reach the site where Renna had been kept, and vanished. That was clearly the best place to look for clues.

Do I dare? The plan seemed rash, more than audacious. Maybe there’s another way. If all passages end in spiral stairs, there may be one at the far end of the south hall—

Sounds of commotion reached her ears. Maia crouched next to the stone banister and watched as women converged on the guard post from two directions. Climbing from below came Baltha, Riss, and two tall vars, one carrying an air of authority to match Baltha’s. At the landing, the foursome turned and looked west, toward the sanctuary entrance, where a single figure appeared, a slender shadow marching before her. Maia felt a numb frisson when she recognized the silhouette.

“You sent for me, Togay?” the newcomer asked the tallest reaver, whose strong-boned features stood out in the harsh light.

“Yes, Leie,” the commanding presence said in an educated, Caria City accent. “I am afraid it’s out of my hands, now. You are to be kept under confinement until the alien is found, and thereafter till we sail.”

Maia’s sister had her face turned away from the light. Still, her shock and upset were plain. “But Togay, I explained—”

“I know. I told them you’re among our brightest, hardest working young mates. But since the events on Grimké, and especially tonight—”

“It’s not my fault Maia escaped! Isn’t it enough she died for it? As for the prisoner, he just disappeared! I wasn’t anywhere near—”

Baltha’s companion cut in. “You was seen talkin’ to the Outsider, just like your sister!” Riss turned to Togay and made a chopping motion. “Like seeks as seeks like. Ain’t that what they say? You may be right ’bout her bein’ no clone, an’ I guess she don’t smell like a cop. But what if she wants revenge for her twin? Remember how she was against us tuckin’ in Cojsh an’ his boys? I say drop her in the lagoon, just to be safe.”

“Togay!” Leie cried imploringly. But the tall, strong-jawed woman looked at her sternly and shook her head. With an expression of satisfaction, Baltha motioned at the two guards, who stepped alongside the fiver and took her elbows. Leie’s shoulders slumped as she was led away. All seven women descended the southward set of stairs, leaving behind a dusty, silent emptiness.

Creeping as quietly as possible, wary of the betraying reach of shadows, Maia followed.

A single electric cable continued down to the lower level, bulbs spaced far apart. Maia let the reavers and their captive get some distance ahead before hurrying after in short bursts, ducking into dark doorways whenever any of the women seemed to even hint at turning around. After they passed into a side corridor, she sped at a dead run, stopping at the edge to cautiously peer around.

The group halted at the first of several metal-bound doors, where stood another pair of guards. This time, one of them was armed with a vicious-looking firearm, the likes of which Maia had seen only once before in her life. This was no hunting rifle, being misused in pursuit of human beings. Rather, it was an automatic killing machine, built for spraying death in mass doses.

There was low conversation, a rattling of keys. As the door flung open, Maia glimpsed figures within, stirring in surprise. Her sister was shoved through. A reaver laughed. “Be nice to yer new friends, virgie. Maybe you can shuck your nickname b’fore drownin’ with ’em!”

“Shut up, Riss,” Baltha said, while Togay locked the door. Then, all except for the second pair of guards, they filed twenty meters or so down the hall, into the chamber next door. From an angle, Maia saw ranks of benches lining one wall of the room. Baltha and the others could be glimpsed walking around inside, frustration evident on their faces each time they reappeared in view. Shouts of anger and recrimination could be heard. One time, Baltha’s voice rang out loud enough for Maia to make out clearly, “Back in the city aren’t gonna be happy about this. Not happy t’all! …”

Maia was concentrating so hard, she only noticed the sound of footsteps after they echoed behind her for some time. Her hackles shot up when she realized, turning around quickly, ready to run. A single form could be seen approaching, entering and leaving succeeding pools of light. It soon manifested as a heavyset woman with a pocked complexion, whose reddish hair was bound by a like-colored bandanna. She carried a bucket in each hand, and wore a broad grin along with a stained apron. The smile kept Maia stationary, frozen with indecision.

“Zooks, you don’t haveta perch so close, ya little query-bird. I could hear ’em arguin’ all th’ way to the main hall! What’re they up to now? Found their man o’ smoke, yet? Or do they plan t’keep us up all night, lookin’?”

Maia forced a smile. Pretending to be her sister would work only until word of Leie’s arrest spread … a matter of minutes, at best.

“All night it is, I’m afraid,” she answered with what she hoped was the right note of blithe resignation. “What’s in the buckets?”

The reaver shrugged as she drew near and set the pails down with a sigh. “Supper for th’ vrils. Late ’cause of the excitement. Some say what’s the point, given the luck planned for ’em. But I say, even a man oughta get fed ’fore joinin’ Lysos.”

Maia’s nostrils flared. Time was even shorter than she had thought. As soon as the scullery drudge entered the prison cell and saw Leie, all would be lost.

“I know why yer here,” the older woman confided, moving a little closer.

“Oh yes?” Maia’s hand crept toward her belt.

A wink. “You’re, hopin’ for clues. Peep on th’ boss women, then off quick, after the reward!” The middle-aged var laughed. “S’okay. I was a younger, too—full o’ frosty notions. Ye’ll get yer clanhold yet, summer-child.”

Maia nodded. “I… think I already found a clue. One all the others missed.”

“S’truth?” The scullery wench leaned forward, eyes glittering. “What is it?”

“It’ll take two of us to lift it,” Maia confided. “Come, I’ll show you.”

She gestured toward the nearest dark doorway, motioning the bluff, eager woman ahead. As she followed, Maia’s right hand slipped the cudgel from her waistband and brought it high.

Afterward, despite all her valid reasons for acting, she still felt guilty and mean.

The dim room wasn’t quite empty or devoid of hints at its past life. Bare rock shelves and flinders of ancient wood planking testified that once upon a time, a substantial library might have stood here. Except for curled bits of former leather bindings, all that remained of the books was dust. After dragging the cook’s unconscious body inside, and hurriedly fetching the buckets, Maia swapped coats and borrowed her victim’s bandanna, which she tied low, almost over her eyes. She finished in time to hear muttering voices and footsteps approach. From the shadows, Maia counted figures moving past, back toward the foyer of stairs. Six women, still arguing. From close range, Maia glimpsed seething anger in Baltha’s eyes.

“… won’t be happy to get nothin’ out o’ this but a little box full of alien shit. Some bugs taken from an outsider’s vrilly gut may help knock down a clan or two, but we needed a political deal too, for protection! Without his tech-stuff, it won’t matter how many smuggy clones die…”

Their voices faded. Still, Maia forced herself to wait, though she knew there was little time left. Soon, the first group—that had found her aboard the Manitou—would report “Leie” missing. That would set folk wondering how a fiver could manage to be two places at the same time.

With a pounding heart, Maia pulled the bandanna down further, picked up the food pails, and stepped out of the dim room. She approached the corner, turned, and made herself shuffle at a droopy, desultory pace toward the two burly vars guarding the sealed door. Trying to calm her frantic pulse, Maia reminded herself that she had one advantage. The wardens had no reason to expect danger in the form of a woman. Moreover, her arrival so soon after the leaders’ departure implied she must have passed them on the way here. That, too, should reduce vigilance.

Nevertheless, she heard a wary click, and glimpsed the warrior with the automatic weapon lift it in the sort of tender but firm embrace women usually reserved for their own babes. Maia had only heard rumors of such mass-killing machines, until she was four, when she had first learned how much lay hidden in the world.

Unbeckoned—a brief, recollected image of a stone portal, grinding open at long last to reveal what the Lamai mothers and sisters wanted no one else to see. In light of so many things Maia had witnessed since, what had seemed so awful on that day had been, in fact, dreary, mundane. The irony was enough to make one laugh. Or cry.

Maia had no time or concentration to spare for either. She trudged forward, keeping her head down, and in a low voice muttered, “Grubb stuff for th’ vrils.”

Laughter from the one cradling the gun. “Why’re we still botherin’?”

Maia shrugged, rocking from side to side, as if in fatigue. “Why ask me? Just lemme get rid o’ the stink.”

The second guard laid her trepp bill across one shoulder, and with her free hand took up jingling keys. “I dunno,” she commented. “Seems a shame to waste all these boys. There oughta be frost, sometime soon. We can pass it ’round, then make a big, pretty fire…”

“Oh, shut up, Glinn,” the guard with the assault rifle said, as she positioned herself behind and to Maia’s left, ready to spread fire at anyone who tried breaking out. “You’ll just get yourself all worked up and—”

Maia had been rocking in anticipation. As the door pushed open, she took a step, then swung the righthand pail in an arc, passing in front of her and then toward the guard with the gun. The riflewoman’s eyes barely registered surprise before it drove into her gut, doubling her over without a sound. One down! Maia thought elatedly.

And prematurely. The tough reaver, stunned and unable to breathe, nonetheless steadied on one knee and fought to bring her weapon toward Maia… only to topple when the second pail clipped the back of her head with a deep clunking sound.

Maia accelerated her return swing, releasing the bucket to fly toward the second guard. The second warrior was already swiveling, lifting her trepp bill. With the agile grace of a trained soldier, she dodged Maia’s hurled pail, which struck the door, spewing brown glop like a fountain. Maia charged, taking a glancing blow to her shoulder before plowing into the pirate’s midriff and driving both of them into the room.

Second by stretched second, the fight was a blur of continuous buffets in which her own blows seemed ineffective, while her opponent was expert. Desperately, Maia grappled close but was soon thrown back, giving the reaver room to swing her trepp. Dazzles of exquisite pain swept Maia’s left side. Another lancing coup ripped just below her knee.

Dimly, Maia was aware of figures nearby. Haggard men clutched outward, reaching to help, but were bound by chains to rows of benches lining the sloping walls. Meanwhile, the pirate’s hot breath seared Maia’s face with onion pungency, spraying her with spittle as they wrestled over the trepp. I can’t hold on, she realized despairingly.

Suddenly, another set of hands appeared out of nowhere, wrapping around the reaver’s throat. With a howl, Maia’s foe flung her away. The sharp bill barely missed in a frenzied swing, then flew off as the bandit let go to claw at her new assailant, a much smaller woman who clung to her back like a wild cat. Though her drained body tried to refuse, Maia forced one final effort. Sobbing with fatigue, she launched herself forward, and in a series of fierce yanks, she and her ally finally brought the thrashing, heaving guard within reach of Captain Poulandres and his men.

When it was over, they lay together on the ground, wheezing. Finally, Maia’s sister took her hand and squeezed.

“Okay…” Leie said between gasps, the expression on her face more contrite than Maia had seen in all their years growing up together. “… I guess my plan didn’t… work so good. Let’s hear yours.”

The nearby corner from which Maia had spied on Baltha and Togay would prove a handy enfilade looking the other way. Still, at first Poulandres was reluctant. He and his men were brave, angry, and fully aware of their fate should they be recaptured. Yet not one of them wanted to touch the automatic rifle.

“Look, it’s simple enough. I’ve seen the type before. You just slide this lever”

“I can see how it operates,” Poulandres snapped. Then he shook his head and lifted a hand placatingly. “Look, I’m grateful… We’ll help any way we can. But can’t one of you two operate the thing?” Revolted, he looked away from the metal machine.

Before she had met Renna, Maia might have reacted differently to this display—with incomprehension, or contempt. Now she knew how patterns established by Lysos had been reinforced over thousands of years, partly through myth and conditioning, as well as deep within their genes and viscera, all so that men would tend to loathe violence against women.

Still, humans are flexible beings. The warrior essence wasn’t excised, only suppressed, patterned, controlled. It would take strong motivation to persuade a decent man like Poulandres to kill, but Maia had no doubt it could be done.

Nearby, the rest of the male crew rubbed their ankles, where chains had bound them to rank after rank of stone benches, arrayed in a bowl-shaped, enclosed arena. Three groggy, half-conscious women now languished in their place, mouths gagged. A few of the men were picking distastefully at one of the spilled buckets. Someone ought to get to work conserving the stuff, Maia thought. They might be in for a long seige.

Other matters came first. “I haven’t time for this,” she told Leie. “You explain it to him. And don’t forget to look for other stairs leading to this level! We don’t want to be flanked.”

“All right, Maia,” Leie answered, acquiescent. There hadn’t been time for more than a moment of reunion, while recovering from the fight. Nor was Maia ready for complete reconciliation. Too much had happened since that long-ago storm separated a pair of dreamy-eyed summer kids. In time, she might consider trusting Leie again, providing her sister earned it.

Gingerly toting the horrible firearm, Leie escorted Poulandres and several crewmen down the hall. Maia, too, had an errand. But as she started to go, she was halted by a curt tug at her leg.

“Just a minim!” the ship’s physician commanded as he finished tying strips of torn cloth around her gashed knee. “There, that’s the worst of it. As for the rest o’ your dings …”

“They’ll have to wait,” Maia peremptorily finished the sentence, shaking her head in a way that cut short protest. “Thanks, Doc,” she finished, and hurried, limping, out of the arena-prison. At the doorway, she turned left toward the second large room, where she had earlier glimpsed Baltha and the other reaver commanders, arguing. One male accompanied her—the cabin boy who had been part of the opposing Game of Life team, back on the Manitou. It was his self-chosen job to bring Maia up to date on what had happened since she was marooned with Naroin and the women crew, on Grimké Island.

“At first the starman was kept with us,” the boy explained. “We was all put together in a different part o’ the sanctuary, nearer the gate. But he kept makin’ a fuss about needin’ the game. Always the game! S’prised the scutum outta us, ’specially as he still had that ’lectric game board o’ his! Claimed it wasn’t good enough, tho. He needed more. Wouldn’t eat nor talk to the reavers less’n they moved us all down here, where the old tournament courts were.”

Maia stopped at the entrance to the second room. She had expected another chamber like the first—a large oval amphitheater surrounding an expanse of crisscrossing lines. But this volume was different. There were benches all right, descending in ever-smaller, semicircular arcs from where she stood. Only this time their ranks faced one huge bare wall with a platform and dais in front of it. The chamber reminded her of a lecture or concert hall, like in the Civic Building, in Port Sanger.

“We all thought he was crazy,” the cabin boy continued with his story about Renna. “But we played along, on account of his act vexed the guards. So the cap’n told ’em we also needed the game, for religious reasons.” The boy giggled. “So they fetched our books an’ game pieces off the ship, an’ brought us all down to the arena where you found us.”

“But then Renna was taken over here,” Maia prompted.

“Yeah. After a couple days, he started complainin’ again—about our snorin’, about our company. Actin’ like a real wissy-boy whiner. So he got put next door. Heard no trouble after that, so we figured he must be happy.”

“I see.”

Inwardly, Maia cursed. Upon hearing that Renna had vanished in a fashion none of the reavers could fathom or duplicate, her first thought was that he must have found another of the red-metal sculptures, covered with arcane, hexagon symbols. Such a puzzle door would fit the bill—just the sort of thing to stump pirates, yet allow Renna to escape. And, naturally, her own experience would give her an edge, as well.

But there was no red-metal. No riddle of movable symbols. Just row after row of benches. The only other noticeable feature was more of the carved phrases, covering every wall save the one behind the dais, carrying mysterious epigrams in the liturgical dialect of the Fourth Book of Lysos. Otherwise, it was just a damn, deserted lecture hall. Maia looked around as she descended the aisle between the benches, wondering why Renna went to so much effort to get himself transferred here.

“What is this place?” the cabin boy asked, somewhat awestruck. “Ain’t no Life arena. No playin’ field. Did they pray here?”

Maia shook her head, puzzled. “Maybe, with all this scripture on the walls… though not all of these lines are holy text, I’m sure.”

“Then what—?”

“Hush now, please. Let me think.”

The boy lapsed into silence, while Maia’s brow knotted in concentration.

Renna escaped from here. That’s the key piece of data. We can assume the reavers searched high and low for hidden doors and secret passages, so don’t bother duplicating that effort. Instead, try to follow Renna’s reasoning.

First, how did he know to get himself moved here? He went to great lengths to manage it.

Although Renna, like Maia, had been imprisoned in a sanctuary before, nothing in that earlier experience could have led him to anticipate a place like this. Maia herself would have found it hard to credit, had she not already seen the nearby, separate defense catacomb.

I’ve got to figure this out, and quicker than it took him. The reavers will be crazed when they find out what we’ve done.

Another pang increased her anxiety.

With every hand on war alert, they’re sure to spot Brod when he tries coming down. They’ll drop him like a helpless wing-hare.

Concentrating, Maia tried to view this room with unbiased eyes, to see what Renna must have seen. She spent a few minutes poking through the blankets and piled straw where he must have made his bed, long since torn apart by others searching for clues. Maia moved on, finding nothing else of interest until her gaze once more stroked the chiseled epigrams, running the length and breadth of each side and rear wall. Some she knew well, having learned them by heart during long, tedious hours spent in Lamatia Chapel, singing heavy paeans to Stratos Mother.

Which, transforming into normal letters, translated to

Maia grimaced at the thought. It was an appropriate-enough image, as she might not live to ever again see stars. I wonder what time of day it is, she pondered idly while turning, scanning the walls. Then she stopped, resting her gaze on one anomalous patch. Despite her throbbing wounds, Maia hurried downstairs, then edged past the raised semicircular center stage. Where lines of incised symbols neared the unadorned forward wall, she had spotted what looked like orderly arrangements of brown smudges. They weren’t writing. To Maia’s eye they connoted something much more interesting.

“What does that look like to you?” she asked the cabin boy, pointing at a cluster of stains, just below one of the arcane symbols in the liturgical alphabet. The youth squinted, and Maia wished fervently that Brod were here, instead.

“Dunno, ma’am. Looks like a feller tossed his food. Same guk we been gettin’, I reckon.”

“Look closer,” Maia urged. “Not tossed. Dabbed. See? Carefully painted dots—a cluster of them, under one syllabary letter. And here’s another grouping.” Maia counted. There were a total of eighteen little clusters of spots, none of them alike. “See? No letter is repeated. Each symbol in the alphabet has its own, unique associated cluster! Interesting?”

“Uh … if you say so, ma’am.”

Maia shook her head. “I wonder how long it took him to figure it out.”

She considered Renna’s situation. Imprisoned for a second time on an alien world, bored half to death, despairing and exhausted, he must have stared at the riddle phrases till they blurred with the floating speckles underneath his drooping eyelids. Only then might it have occurred to him to play out a game, using the incised words as starting points. But first, they must be transformed from written letters into—

Sudden shouts floated in from the hallway. Maia turned, and seconds later a man appeared at the back of the arena, waving vigorously.

“Three o’ the bitchies just strolled round the corner, right into our hands! The bad news is, they yelled ’fore we could get ’em gagged. There’s a ruckus brewin’ back at the stairs. Cap’n says there’ll be trouble soon.”

Maia acknowledged with a curt nod, and returned to contemplating the primitive markings on the wall. Renna must have used them as a reference cipher, while working in this room.

But working on what? He still had his electronic game board with him—which the reavers would have seen as no more than a toy—so he could have experimented with countless combinations of point-clusters and rules for manipulating them. All right, picture him fiddling around with the symbols in the room where he and the prisoners were first kept. Let’s assume that from the wall writing he learned something. He learned that, somewhere else within the sanctuary, there was a better place to be … and he managed to wheedle himself into being taken to that place.

Okay, then what?

That still left the question of modality. An intellectual game was one thing. Moving through walls was another matter, entirely. Even the red-metal puzzle door, looming adamantly before Maia and Brod back in the sea-cave, had been an enigma with a clear purpose, a combination lock to open a gate. Scanning this room, she saw nothing like a gate. No way to leave, other than the one she had entered through. Nothing at all.

“Agh!” Maia cried, clenching her fists. Her left side and leg hurt and her head was starting to ache. Yet, somehow she must retrace mental steps taken by a technologically advanced alien, without even having access to the same tools he had possessed.

Groaning, she sat down on one of the benches in the first row, and laid her head in her hands. Even when a savage boom of gunfire rattled the walls above, causing ancient dust to float in soft hazes, she did not lift her tired, salty eyes.

“I’ve got it so Poulandres understands, I think. For the time being he’ll shoot to miss, one bullet at a time. That’s kept ’em back so far. If it does come to a charge, I think he’ll do what’s needful.”

Leie sat down next to Maia, about half a meter away. Her voice was hesitant, as if she felt uncertain of her welcome. Twice Leie started to speak, and Maia felt sure it would be about what had passed between them—about their long separation, and regret over the cavalier way Leie had treated their bond. No actual words emerged, yet the strangled effort alone conveyed enough to ease some of the tension. In her heart, Maia knew it was as much apology as she was likely to get. As much as she should demand.

“So,” Leie resumed in a strained voice. “What’ll it take to figure out what happened here?”

Maia exhaled heavily, at a loss where to start.

She began by summarizing the cipher key Renna had drawn upon the wall, how each cluster of dots probably represented an array of living figures on a Game of Life board. Or, more likely, a variant game, differing in its detailed ecology. Maia could perceive that each configuration dabbed on the wall might be self-sustaining given the right rule system, though it was hard to explain how she knew it.

While she told Leie about this, they were interrupted twice more by loud reports—single warning shots, fired to keep the reavers at bay. There were no cries of full-scale attack, so neither of them moved. Leie’s rapt attention encouraged Maia to accelerate her story, rapidly skimming over the violence, tedium, and danger of the last few months, but revealing her astonishing discovery of a talent—one bearing on a strange, intellectual-artistic realm.

“Lysos!” Leie whispered when the essentials were out. “And I thought my time was strange! After I heard you were ashore at Grange Head, and had a safe job in Long Valley, I decided to stay awhile at sea with—” She stopped and shook her head. “But that can wait. Go on. Does this Life stuff help us figure how Renna got out of a sealed room with no exits?”

Maia shrugged. “I told you, it doesn’t! Oh, the game can carry data, like a language transformed into another kind of symbol system. Renna must’ve translated something out of these phrases on the walls… maybe in context of stuff he learned at the Great Library, in Caria.

“But even when you have information, and know how to read it, you still need a way to act! To apply that data to the real world. To cause physical events to take place.”

“Like breaking out of jail.”

“Exactly. Like breaking out of jail.”

Leie stood up and stepped before the first row of benches, onto the semicircular stage where lay a rectangular dais-podium made of polished stone. “After he vanished, most of us took turns looking over this room,” she said. “Hoping to find secret panels and such. It wasn’t that I was trying to be helpful, not since they killed Captain Corsh and his men… and especially after I thought you’d been blown up…” Leie briefly closed her eyes, memory of pain written on her face. “Mostly, I was searching for a way to follow Renna, to make my own getaway. That’s how I can tell you there aren’t any secret panels. At least none I could recognize. Still, I did notice a thing or two.”

Maia’s dour mood kept her looking down at her hands. “What did you notice?” she asked, sullenly unresponsive.

“Get your butt up here and see for yourself.” Leie rejoined, with a hint of the old sharpness. Maia frowned, then stood and hobbled closer. Leie waited beside the broad dais, where she stooped and pointed at a row of tiny objects embedded in the side of the giant stone block. Some of them looked like buttons. Others were little metal-rimmed holes.

“What are they for?” Maia inquired.

“I was hoping you’d tell me. Each of us tried pushing them. The buttons click as if they’re supposed to do something, but nothing happens.”

“Maybe they were for turning on lights. Too bad there’s no power in the sanctuary.”

For lack of time, Maia hadn’t given any details about the military catacombs that she and Brod had explored, and which still hummed with titanic energies. Maia assumed the two networks of artificial caves were completely severed, so that hermits and treasure-hunters using this part would never stumble across the hidden defense facility, just next door.

“I said nothing happens,” Leie replied. “That doesn’t mean there’s no power.”

Maia stared at her sister. “What do you mean?”

At that moment, another gunshot pealed, echoing down the hallway to resonate within the chamber, setting Maia’s teeth rattling. Both girls waited in suspense, and sighed when no more shots followed. With the tip of a finger, Leie pointed to a pair of tiny metal rings, about a centimeter apart, set into the edge of the dais near the buttons. The rings surrounded thin, deep holes. Maia pressed her finger against one, and looked up, perplexed. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Have you got a piece of metal?” Leie asked. “Like a coinstick? A half-credit will do.”

Maia shook her head. Then she recalled. “Maybe I do have something.” Her right hand went to her left forearm and unstrapped the leather cover of her portable sextant. Gingerly, she drew the tiny instrument from its padded case.

“Where’d you get that?” Leie commented, watching the brass engraving of a zep’lin pop open. Maia shrugged. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say I found it useful, on occasion.”

She unfolded the sighting arms. One of them terminated in a pointed prong—normally used as an indicator for reading numbers against a measuring wheel—that could be rotated outward. It seemed narrow enough to use as a probe.

“Good,” Leie said. “Now, I don’t claim to be the only one who had the idea, inspecting for electricity. Others tried, and felt nothing. But I figured, maybe the current was too low to detect by hand. Remember how we used to check those pitiful, weak saline batteries Savant Mother Claire had us make, back in silly-ass chem class? Well, I did the same thing here. When no one was looking, I inserted a coinstick and touched the metal with my tongue.”

“Yes?” Maia asked, growing more interested as she slipped the narrow prong into one of the tiny holes.

“Yes indeed! I swear you can taste a faint tickle of…”

Leie’s voice trailed off as she stopped and stared. Maia, too, looked down in astonishment at the little sextant..

Across the center of its scratched, pitted face, a blank window had come alight, perhaps for the first time in centuries. Tiny, imperfect letters, missing corners and edges, flickered, then steadied into a constant glow.

“Great Mother of life!”

The exclamation made both girls look up from the transfixing sight. Still blinking in surprise, Maia saw that Captain Poulandres and one of his officers stood in the doorway at the top of the aisle, staring with dumfounded expressions.

Maia’s initial thought was pragmatic. How are they able to see the sextant from all that way up there?

“I…” Poulandres swallowed hard. “…came to tell you. The pirates say they want to talk. They say…” He shook his head, unable to concentrate on his urgent message. “By Lysos and the sea, how did you two manage to do that!”

It dawned on Maia that the captain couldn’t see the tiny letters glowing on the sextant’s face. He must be looking at something else. Something above and behind her back. Together, as if pulled by the same string, she and Leie turned around, and gasped in unison.

There, spread across the huge, formerly pale front wall of the hall, now lay an immense grid of faint, microscopic lines, upon which danced myriad, multihued particles, innumerable, smaller than specks. An orgiastic, colorful spectacle of surging, flowing patterns panoplied in whirling currents, eddies, teeming jungles of simulated structure and confusion… ersatz chaos and order… death and life.

Despite all trials and experience, some aspects of character might be too deep ever to change. Once more, it was Leie who recovered first to comment.

“Uh,” she said in a dry, hoarse voice, glancing sideways at Maia. “Eureka … I think…?”

The effect was even more spectacular when, a while later, the pirates tried to intimidate the escapees by cutting off the lights. Power no longer flowed to the string of electric bulbs. By then, however, those of the Manitou crew not on guard had already gathered in Renna’s former cell, under the storm of pigmented, convoluted shapes that slowly twisted across the “Life Wall,” as they called it. The men sat in huddled groups, or knelt below the dancing display, spreading open their treasured reference books, riffling pages by the soft, multispectral glow and arguing. Although they had confirmed that the eighteen simple patterns were components of this particular pseudo-world, not even the most expert player seemed able to make any more sense of the vista of swirling shapes.

“It’s magic,” the chief cook concluded, in awe.

“No, not magic,” the ship’s doctor replied. “It’s much more. It’s mathematics.”

“What’s the difference?” asked the young ensign Maia had met on the Manitou, speaking with an upper-clan accent, trying to be blase. “They’re both just symbol systems. Hypnotizing you with abstractions.”

The elderly physician shook his head. “No, boy, that’s wrong. Like art an’ politics, magic consists of persuadin’ others to see what you want ’em to see, by makin’ incantations and wavin’ your arms around. It’s always based on claims that the magician’s force of will is stronger than nature.”

The colors overhead laid lambent, churning reflections across the old man’s pate as he laughed aloud. “But nature doesn’t give a fart about anybody’s force of will! Nature’s too strong to coerce, an’ too fair to play favorites. She’s just as cruel an’ consistent to a clan mother as to the lowliest var. Her rules hold for ever’body.” He shook his head, sighing. “And She has a dear-heart love of math.”

They watched the awesome gyrating figures in silence. Finally, the young ensign complained angrily. “But men aren’t any good at math!”

“So we’re told,” the doctor answered in a heavy voice. “So we’re told.”

Overhearing the conversation, Maia realized the crewmen would be of little help. Like her, they were untrained in the high arts on which this wonder must be based. Their beloved game was a fine thing, as far as it went. But the simple Life simulations they played on ships and in modern sanctuaries were no more than an arcana of accumulated tricks and intuition. It was like a bowl of water next to the great sea now in front of them.

She had tried peering at individual dots, in order to decipher the position-by-position rules of play. At first, she had thought she could make out a total of nine colors, which responded four times as powerfully to nearest neighbors as to next-nearest, and so on. Then she looked more closely, and realized that every dot consisted of a swarm of smaller specks, each interacting with those around it, the combination blending at a distance to give the illusion of one solid shade.

“Maia.” It was Leie’s voice, accompanied by a tap on her shoulder. She drew back and turned as her twin gestured toward the back of the hall, where a messenger could be seen hurriedly picking his way down the stair-aisle. It was a tricky task in the shifting, ever-changing illumination. The cabin boy arrived short of breath. He had only three words for Maia.

“They’re comin’, ma’am.”

It wasn’t easy to tear herself away from the dazzling wall display. She felt sure she’d be more useful here. But after several fits and starts, the reavers were apparently sending their delegation, at last. Poulandres insisted Maia join him to speak for the escapees.

“Why can’t you do it yourself?” she had asked earlier, to which he replied enigmatically. “No voyage lands without a captain. No cargo sells without an owner. It is necessity.”

Poulandres met her at the doorway. Slowly, allowing for her limp, they walked toward the strategic corner. The shifting colors followed and Maia kept glancing backward, as if drawn by a palpable force. It took effort to shake free of the contemplative frame of mind. Their prospects for successful negotiation did not look good, and she said as much to the officer.

“Aye. Neither side can charge the other without taking heavy losses. For now, it’s a stalemate, but with us stuck at the wrong end of a one-way hole. Given enough time, they can flush us out several ways.”

“So it’s a death sentence. What is there to talk about?”

“Enough, lass. The pirates can tell something’s happened down here. They won’t rush us till after trying persuasion.”

Maia and the captain found the ship’s navigator prone at the corner, nursing the rifle, peering along its sights toward a faint glow that hinted the distant flight of stairs. That much light remained so that the reavers could detect any assault staged by the men. Otherwise, a surprise melee in the dark might cost them their advantages of arms, numbers, and position. The impasse held, for now.

Two faint blobs moved against that remote grayness. Even at maximum dark-adaptation, it took Maia’s eyes time to clearly discern twin female silhouettes, approaching at a steady walk.

“Ready?” Poulandres asked. Maia nodded reluctantly, and they set off together with the navigator aiming carefully past them. Now that it was a matter of protecting comrades, she felt certain the officer could overcome his queasiness, if necessary. At the other end, markswomen were just as surely drawing bead past their own emissaries.

The blurry forms took shape, resolving into arms, legs, heads, faces. Maia almost stopped in her tracks when she recognized Baltha. The other delegate was the assistant to the reaver leader, Togay. Maia swallowed and managed to keep walking, half a pace to the captain’s right.

The two groups stopped while still several meters apart. Baltha shook her head, a swish of short, blonde hair. “So. What d’you curly-pecs think you’re accomplishin’?” she asked.

“Not much,” Poulandres replied in a lazy drawl. “Stayin’ alive, mostly. For a while.”

“For a while’s right. You’re still here, so don’t pretend you’ve found a secret way out. What’s your pleasure, Cap’n? Want to see your men die by fire? Or water?”

Maia overcame her dry mouth. “I don’t think you’ll be using either right away.”

“Stay outta this, snip!” Baltha snarled. “No one asked you.”

Poulandres replied in a low voice, icy calm. “Be polite to our adopted factor-owner.”

Maia fought her natural reaction, to swivel and stare at the man, who spoke as if this were a negotiation over some contested cargo. Clearly, his feint was meant to shake up the enemy.

“This?” Baltha asked, pointing at Maia, as incredulous as Poulandres might have wished. “This unik summer trash? She’s even lamer than her dead prissy-sis.”

“Baltha, use your eyes,” Maia said evenly. “I’m not quite dead. Anyway, where does a shit-stealer like you get on, calling others names?”

“…Shit-stealer…?” Strangling on the words, Baltha abruptly stopped and stared. Moving involuntarily forward she breathed, “You?”

Pleasure overcame Maia’s reticence. “Always a fast learner, Baltha. Congratulations.”

“But I saw you blown to—”

“Shall we get back to the subject at hand?” Poulandres interjected, with graceful timing. “Each of our respective sides has certain needs that are urgent, and others it can afford to give up. I, for instance, have a personal need to see every last one of you bitchies put in chains, workin’ like lugars on a temple rehab farm. But I admit that’s a lower priority than, say, gettin’ out of this mess with all my men alive.” He grinned without humor. “Tell me, what is it you people desire most, and what’ll you give up to get it?”

Baltha continued staring at Maia. So it was the other woman who answered in a prim, Mediant Coast accent.

“We seek the Outsider. Less than his recovery is unacceptable. All else is negotiable.”

“Hm. There would have to be assurances, of course.”

“Of course.” The Medianter seemed used to bargaining. “Perhaps an exchange of—”

Baltha visibly shook herself free of the quandaries implied by Maia’s presence. The big var interrupted acidly. “This is crazy. If they knew where the alien was, they would of followed. I’m callin’ your bluff, Cap’n. You got nothin’ to trade.”

The sailor shrugged. “Take a look behind us. See the strange light? Even from here, you can tell we’ve accomplished more than you did in almost two days of searching.”

Baltha glanced past their shoulders at the faint, shifting, multihued glows reflecting off the distant wall. Frustration wrote across her hard features. “Help us get him back, and we’ll leave you livin’, with the Manitou, when we sail.”

Poulandres sucked his lower lip. Then, to Maia’s surprise, he nodded. “That’d be all right … if we thought we could trust you. I’ll put it to the men. Meanwhile, you’d help your case by turning the lights back on. We’ll talk in a little while about food and water. Is that all right with you for now, Maia?”

The hell it is! she thought. Still, she answered with a curt nod. Surely the captain was only buying time.

Baltha started to respond with a snarl, but the other woman cut her off. “We’ll talk it over among ourselves and send word in an hour.” The two reavers turned and departed, Baltha glancing poison over her shoulder as Poulandres and Maia began their own walk back..

“Would you really turn Renna in?” Maia asked the man, in a low voice.

“You’re a varling. You know nothing about what it’s like to have many lives depending on you.” Poulandres paused for several seconds. “I don’t plan on making such a devil’s deal, if it can be avoided. But don’t take it as a promise, Maia. That’s why you had to come on this palaver, so you’d know. Guard your own interests. They mayn’t always be the same as ours.”

Sailor’s honor, Maia thought. He’s bound to warn me that he may have to turn on me, later. It’s a strange code.

“You know they can’t afford to let you go,” she said, pressing the point. “You’ve seen too much. They can’t let their personal identities be known.”

“That, too, depends,” Poulandres said cryptically. “Right now, the important thing is that we’ve won a little time.”

But what happens when no time remains? When the reavers run out of patience? “Fire or water,” Baltha said. And if those don’t work—if they can’t pry us out by themselves—I wouldn’t put it past them to send for help. Perhaps even calling their enemies.

It wasn’t farfetched to imagine the gang striking a deal with their political opposites, the Perkinites, in exchange for whatever it might take to tear this rocky citadel apart. In the end, both extremes had more in common with each other than either did with the middle.

The navigator’s dark young features relaxed in relief when they rounded the corner, and he put the weapon back on safety. Leie embraced Maia, and she felt her shoulders relax a fierce tightness that had gone unnoticed till now. “Come on,” Maia told her twin. “Let’s get back to work.”

But it was hard concentrating at first, when Maia stood once more before the massive stone dais, looking alternately at the little sextant and the vast, ever-changing world-wall. Her task was to find a miracle, some way to follow Renna out of here. Yet, Baltha’s offer and Poulandres’s disturbing answer unnerved her. Suppose she did manage to solve the problem. Might that only doom Renna, and in the end prove futile for them all?

Soon, the fascinating vista of ever-changing patterns overcame her resistance, drawing her in. So much so that she hardly noticed when the string of faint bulbs came on again at the back of the room, evidence that the reavers were at least considering further discussion.

It was Leie who made the next breakthrough, when she discovered that the sextant could be used to change the wall scene. Fiddling with the finely graded dials, which Maia normally used to read the relative angles of stars, Leie turned one while the little tool was attached to the data plug. At once the patterns shifted, left and right! They moved up when she twisted the other wheel, disappearing off the top edge of the display, while new forms crowded in from below.

“Terrific!” Maia commented, trying for herself. This verified what she had suspected, that the great wall-screen was only a window onto something much vaster—a simulated realm extending far past the rectangular edges before them. Its theoretical limits might stretch hundreds of figurative meters beyond this room. Perhaps there were no limits at all.

The eye kept grasping for analogies amid the swirling patterns. One instant, they were intertwining hairy fingers. The next, they collided ecstatically like frothy waves breaking on a seashore. Rolling, convoluted configurations writhed without hindrance across the borders of the display. By turning a little wheel on the sextant, the humans might follow, but only in abstract, as observers. Only the shapes themselves knew true liberty. They appeared to have no needs, to fear no threats, to admit no physical bounds. The thought conveyed to Maia a sense of untold freedom, which she envied.

Did Renna somehow change himself? She wondered. Did he know a secret way to join the world in there, leaving this one of rock and flesh behind? It was a fantastic notion. But who knew what powers the Phylum had developed during the millennia since the Founders established a world of pastoral stability on Stratos, turning away from the “madness” of a scientific age.

On a hunch, Maia tried pushing the buttons they had found earlier, near the little holes in the massive podium. But they proved as useless as before. Perhaps they really had once controlled something as mundane as the room lights.

Then Leie made another discovery. By bending one of the sextant’s sighting arms, another kind of simulated movement became possible. Of the men who had been watching, transfixed, several moaned aloud in awe as the shared point of view suddenly appeared to dive forward, plunging past billowing foreground simulacra, plowing through objects as intangible as clouds.

Maia felt it, too. A wave of vertigo, as if they were all falling together through an infinite sky. Gasping momentarily, she had to turn her eyes away and found that her hands were gripping the stone podium like vices. A glance at the others showed she wasn’t alone. The earlier breakthroughs had been stunning, but not like this. Never had she heard of a Life-like simulation in three dimensions! The rate of “fall” appeared to accelerate. Shapes that had dominated the scene grew larger, revealing minutia of their convoluted forms. The centermost structures ballooned outward, while those at the fringes vanished over the edge.

The falling sensation was an illusion, of course, and with a little concentration, Maia was able to make it evaporate in a sudden mental readjustment. Moving “forward” seemed now to be an exercise in exploring detail. Any object centered before them was subject to expanding scrutiny, revealing ever-finer structures within… and then finer still. There seemed no limit to how minutely a formation could be parsed.

“Stop…” Maia worked hard to swallow. “Leie, stop. Go the other way.”

Her sister turned and grinned at her. “Isn’t this great? I never imagined men had such things! Did you say something?”

“I said, stop and back up!”

“Don’t be afraid, Maia. As you explained to me, it’s just simulated—”

“I’m not afraid! Just reverse the controls and back away. Do it now.”

Leie’s eyebrows raised. “As you say, Maia. Reversing course.” She stopped pushing and started pulling gently at the little metal arm. The appearance of a forward plunge slowed, arrested, and began to withdraw. Now curling patterns in the middle receded, diminishing toward a central vanishing point while more and more bright, complex objects swarmed in from the periphery. The visceral sensation was one of pulling away, of rising up, so that each passing second meant they attained a larger, more godlike view.

It was a briefly glorious sensation, as Maia imagined it might be like to fly. Moreover, she felt a sense of restored contact with Renna, if only by sharing this thing he must also have delighted in.

At the same time, another part of her felt overwhelmed. Renna had explained that the Game of Life was only among the simplest of a vast family of pattern-generating systems, called cellular automata. When the big wall first came alight, Maia had hoped the sailors and their books might help solve this vastly more complex “ecosystem,” despite none of them being savants. But if the men had been as baffled as she by the former intricacy, this addition of a third dimension shattered all hopes of easy analysis.

In her heart, Maia felt certain there were comprehensible rules. Something in the patterns—their diverging yet oddly repetitious sweeps and curls—called this intuition to her. I could solve it, she was sure. If I had the computerized game board to work with, instead of this balky little sextant, and as many hours as Renna had in here, alone. And some of his knowledge of math.

Alas, her list of deficits exceeded assets. In frustration, she pounded the table, jiggering the little tool. “Hey!” Leie shouted, and went on to complain that it wasn’t easy piloting gently enough to keep it all from becoming a vast blur, the sextant’s wheels and arms were old, loose, in need of ample mechanical repair. Someone had let the poor machine go straight to pot, Leie insinuated over her shoulder.

It’s a wonder it still works at all, Maia thought.

At first, she had been awed by the coincidence, that her old, secondhand navigation tool could be used in this way. But then, many older instruments she had seen on shipboard featured diminutive blank windows. In former times, it must have been customary to hook up to the Old Network frequently… although Maia doubted spectacular wonder-walls were ever common, even before the Great Defense. Or the Founding, for that matter.

She leaned forward. Something had changed. Till now, the new shapes swarming in from the periphery had always appeared roughly similar to the smaller patterns vanishing into the center. But now, fingers of blackness crowded from the wings. The curling shapes seemed to roll up ever tighter, taking the form of giant balls that streamed inward as discrete units, not cloudlike swirls. Spheroids flew in from top and bottom, left and right, growing more compact, more numerous, bouncing and scattering off one another while the front wall grew blacker overall.

The last and largest swarm of balls coalesced into a new entity—a thick slab of phosphorescence. The slice of shimmering color seemed to strum like a bowstring as it crossed into sight from the lower right. As their point of view continued its apparent climb, the slab shrank in dimension. More such membranes entered the scene, linking to form a thrumming, vibrating, many-sided cell, like that of a quivering honeycomb. More cells thronged into view, becoming a multitude, then a foam, of iridescent color.

Leie was perspiring, tugging gently at the tiny sighting arm while Maia leaned forward to see the foam scintillate, fade, and in an instant, vanish!

The wall was a terrible, empty blankness. “Uh!” Maia’s twin grunted in dismay, her features glistening by the faint light of the electric bulbs behind them. “Did I break it?”

“No.” Maia assured. “The wall was pale before. The machine’s still on. Keep going.”

“You’re sure? I can go back the other way.”

“Keep going,” Maia repeated, this time firmly.

“Well, I’ll pull a little faster, then,” Leie said. Before Maia could respond, she yanked harder at the little arm. The blackness lasted another fraction of a second, just long enough for an eyeblink swarm of pinpoint sparkles to flash. Then, all at once, the colors were back! Again, the simulated point of view fell backward, climbing imperiously as waves of convoluted rainbow brightness crowded in from the borders. All of this happened in the moment it took Maia to shout, “No! Stop!”

Motion ceased, save the slow, coiling dance of patterns and their constituent particles, merging and separating like entities of smoke. “What?” Leie inquired, turning to stare at her sister. “It’s working again…”

“It never stopped working. Go back,” Maia insisted, suppressing the impatient urge to push her sister aside and do it herself. Leie’s marginally better coordination might make all the difference. “Go back to the black part.”

Sighing, Leie turned around and delicately pushed the tiny lever. Once more, there was the sense of plunging forward, downward … of getting smaller while everything around them grew and loomed outward.

The blackness resumed in a blur, and was gone again, even faster than the first time. They were already across it and amid the foamy, lambent honeycombs before Leie could arrest the motion of her hand. “It’s not easy, dammit!” Maia’s sister complained. “The levers move jerkily. I wouldn’t ever let a machine get in such disrepair.”

Maia almost retorted that Leie never had to carry a tiny device on horseback, trains, ships, while drowning, crashing, climbing cliffs, and fighting for her life… But she let it go while Leie bent over the tool, trying to pull the balky arm in microscopic units. As before, the cell structures became foam and then vanished into blackness.

Blackness that was unrelieved, save for an occasional, sudden blur that crossed the scene too quickly to follow.

“Do you… mind tellin’ me…” Leie grunted. “…what it is we’re looking for?”

“Just keep going,” Maia urged. All around her, she sensed the confusion of the men. Put off by the disappearance of the transfixing patterns, but awed by her intensity, they crowded forward, staring at the blank wall as if peering through dense fog for some miracle light of harbor. Their company was welcome, especially when one of them cried out “Stop!” before she could form words.

This time, Leie reacted quickly. The brush of illumination the man had noticed still lay in the upper left corner. At first glance, it was almost pure white, although there were pale dustings of blue and reddish yellow. Leie moved over to the finely knurled measuring wheels, which controlled lateral motion. Nudging them gently, she coaxed the object into view.

It was a bright, pinwheel shape. A “cyclone,” one sailor identified. A hurricane, or whirlpool, suggested others.

But Maia knew better. Old Bennet would have identified its species on sight. Renna would perceive a friend and signpost.

She stared in wonder at the majesty that spread across the forward wall, a galactic wheel, its spiral splendor filled with shining stars.

25

Captain Poulandres sent word for her to come. There was to be another parley with the foe. Maia’s curt message of reply, carried by the hesitant cabin boy, suggested irritably that the captain choose someone else.

“I need time!” she snapped over her shoulder, when Poulandres came in person. “I was just there for show, last time. All I ask is that you buy us more time!”

Maia barely heard his muttered promise to try, “And send your navigator down here, will you?” she added, calling after him. “We can use help from a professional!”

Relieved from guard duty with the rifle, the young, dark-complexioned officer arrived as Leie and Maia managed to pull back from the spiral nebula, revealing its membership in a cluster of gauzy galaxies. And that cluster proved to be but one glittering ripple in a sinuous arch that lay draped across the void, shimmering like a cosmic aurora. The navigator exclaimed upon seeing the wondrous display.

Maia agreed it was a sight, but what did it mean? Was this a clue to whatever path Renna had taken? She had to assume so, since nothing else in the vast game-simulation seemed to make the slightest sense. Were they supposed to find a particular destination amid this macrocosm, and “go” there? Or were the whirlpool entities meant to be guideposts in another sense?

Problems barred progress at many levels. Nudging the controls was like trying to pilot a coal barge through a narrow, twisty channel, a trial of fits and starts and over-compensations. Inertia and mechanical backlash kept jerking the image too large in scale, then too small. Moreover, Maia soon realized that nobody, not even the navigator, had any idea where in the sky they “were.”

“We, don’t use galaxies to chart our way at sea,” he started to explain. “They’re too fuzzy and you need a telescope. Now, if you could show me stars…”

Unable to keep her frustration from spilling out, Maia muttered, “You want stars? I’ll show you smuggy stars!” She took the controls and with a yank caused the point of view to dive straight toward one of the galactic wheels. It ballooned outward at frightful speed, causing some of the onlookers behind them to moan. Suddenly, the wall was filled with sharp, individual pinpoints, spreading out to fill the artificial sky with constellations.

But what constellations? Among the patterns sifted by her mind, no familiar friends leaped forth. No well-known markers flashed out longitude, latitude, and season to a practiced eye.

“Oh,” the navigator murmured slowly. “I get it. They’d be different, dependin’ on … which way we looked, an’ from where…” He paused, struggling with new notions implied by the wall. “It’s prob’ly not even our galaxy, is it?”

“Great insight!” Leie snorted, while Maia’s own irritable mood shifted toward sympathy. These concepts were probably difficult for a man rooted in traditional arts. “We don’t know that any of these galaxies is ours,” she commented. “They may all be just artificial models, arising out of a complicated game, having nothing to do with the real universe. We better hope not, if my idea’s to mean anything. Back up again, Leie. We’ve got to try finding something familiar.”

As the island starscape receded to take its place once more among the others, Maia knew the search might prove impossible. The only intergalactic object she had much hope of recognizing was Andromeda, nearest neighbor to the Milky Way. What were the odds against catching sight of that particular spiral, from just the right angle, however long they searched?

All of this assumes my hunch is right and that maneuvering around inside this fancy pretend reality has something to do with how Renna escaped.

If so, it would have been much easier for him. The Visitor might have programmed his game board to search for traits specific to the Milky Way. A shape to the spiral arms, or perhaps even a color profile. Once specified, the machine would do the rest.

Whereas I don’t have a game board. Nor his knowledge. Nor the slightest idea how any of this relates to escaping from pirates.

“You move around by twiddling that little se’xter?” asked the navigator as he bent over to watch Leie delicately prod the tiny, recalcitrant controls. “Does it have to be this one?”

“I don’t think so. There’s nothing special about it, except that it has a data tap.”

“Lots of old ones do. If only I’d known, I mighta sweet-talked a reaver into fetchin’ mine from Manitou. It’s bigger, and in a whole lot better shape.”

Maia grimaced. Everyone seemed to think she was negligent of her tools.

“What’s it say here in the data window?” He went on. “Some sort o’ coordinates?”

“Nah,” Leie replied without turning. “Puzzle phrases, mostly. Temple stuff. Riddle o’ Lysos.” All of her attention was devoted to nudging the controls, while Maia carefully watched the sweep of galactic clusters, flowing from left to right across the wall, seeking anything familiar. Absently, Maia corrected her sister. “That’s what they appear to be. Actually, I think they’re commands. Starting conditions for whatever game is being played here.”

“Hm,” the navigator commented. “Could fool me. I’d have sworn they were coordinates.”

Maia turned and looked at him. “What?”

His chin rested on the podium top, next to the tiny display, almost brushing Leie’s wrist. He pointed to the row of minuscule red letters. “Never saw anything like this written in a temple. The numbers keep changing as she touches the controls. Seems more like—”

“Let me see.” Maia tried to squeeze in. “Hey!” Leie complained. Politely, the young man withdrew so Maia could see four groups of symbols, glowing across the little array.

Apart from the first enigmatic grouping, the other three clusters of numbers quivered in a constant state of flux. As Maia watched, the “41” became “42,” then briefly “41” again, before jittering further down to “40.” Maia glanced at Leie. “Are you moving anything?”

“No, I swear.” Leie showed both hands.

“Well, go ahead,” Maia said. “Push something, slowly.”

Leie bent to grasp one of the measuring wheels between two fingers. At once the second grouping began to blur. “Stop!” Maia cried. The numbers stuttered, then settled to tiny excursions around the value 12E+18.

“Again. Keep going that way.”

Maia stood up, watching the screen as Leie resumed. Galaxies scrolled from left to right at an accelerating pace.

Only one of the number groups in the tiny window seemed affected.. The “E” shone steady, but Maia watched the “+8” turn into “+7”… and eventually “+6.”

“You’re right,” she told the navigator. “They are coordinates. I wonder why they replaced what was written there before.” She turned the other way. “Leie, let’s try taking down to zero—”

Her words were cut off by shock waves that reverberated through the chamber. Echoing booms spread out from the entrance. This time, it was no single, warning shot, but a rapid series of loud reports, followed by clamoring voices. The men who had been watching from the benches leaped up, scrambling toward the door, rushing to aid their comrades on duty in the corridor. The navigator dithered only a second before making the same choice and joining the pell-mell dash.

Leie looked at Maia. “I’ll go.”

Maia shook her head. “No, I must. If they get past us, though …”

“I’ll smash the sextant.” Leie promised.

“Meanwhile, make all the numbers small as you can!” Maia shouted back as she followed the men, limping. Her knee had swollen and was hurting more than ever. Behind her, the model universe resumed its blurry race across the wall.

Sailors jammed into a tight mob near the hallway’s right-angle turn. All gunfire had ceased by the time she arrived, and the jabber of milling males evoked consternation and fear, not impending combat. Maia had to nudge and elbow her way through an aromatic throng of men. When she reached the front of the crowd, she gasped. The ship’s doctor knelt beside, the prostrate form of the Manitou’s first officer, stanching a flow of blood from a jagged wound. A knife, dripping crimson ichor, lay on the ground nearby. Of Captain Poulandres, there was no sign.

“What happened?” she asked the ensign she had spoken to earlier. The youth seemed distressed, his face as white as the wounded man’s.

“It was a trap, ma’am. Or maybe the reavers just got mad. We heard lots o’ yelling. The cap’n tried to keep ’em calm, but we could tell they were accusin’ him of something. One of ’em pulled a knife while the other kicked the cap’n, real bad.” He winced in recollection. “They dragged him off while guns shot at us from that end, keepin’ us pinned down.”

Damn, Maia thought, quashing her natural impulse toward sympathy for poor Poulandres. She had been counting on him to buy time, not provoke open warfare! Now what remained, but to prepare for Baltha’s threatened assault?

The first officer was mumbling to the doctor. Maia crouched lower to hear.

“… said we must’ve helped the rads…Cap’n tried askin’ how? How an’ why’d we help a buncha unniks do in our own ship? But they wouldn’t listen…”

Maia rode out a lancing shock to her wounded left knee as she dropped to the ground beside the officer. “What did you say? Do you mean the Manitou is—”

“Gone…” The sailor sighed.”…didn’t say how. Just took th’ cap’n, and …” His eyes rolled up in their sockets as he swooned.

A moment’s stunned silence followed, then arguing broke out among the men, many of them shaking their heads with the hopeless passivity of despair.

“Don’t see any other choice. We’ve got to surrender!”

“Cap’n blew it with somethin’ he said. We should send ’nother embassy …”

“They’ll come an’ cut us to bits!”

Somebody helped Maia stand. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone was looking at her.

Just because I broke you halfway out of jail—and got you all into even worse trouble—that doesn’t make me a leader, she thought caustically, seeing incipient panic in their dilated eyes. Robbed of their top officers, they fell back on old habits of childhood, looking for a woman authority figure. The time of year didn’t help. “Wissy as a winter man;” went one expression. Still, Maia knew that seasons alone weren’t decisive. The crew might stand a chance, if someone got them busy, building momentum based on action. She saw an older bosun standing next to the corner, holding the automatic rifle. “Can you handle that thing?” she asked.

The gruff sailor nodded grimly. “Yes, ma’am. I figure. Just half o’ the bullets left, but I can wait an’ make ’em count.”

That fierce statement helped change the mood a bit. Other males murmured tentative agreement. Maia poked her head around the corner and peered down the gloomy corridor. “There’s plenty of old trash and debris in nearby rooms. The quickest of you could dash from one to another, too fast for them to draw a bead in the dark, and toss stuff into the main hall. If not a barricade, the junk might at least slow down a charge.”

The ensign nodded. “We’ll look for planks and stones… things to use as weapons.”

“Good.” Maia turned to the doctor. “What can we do, in case they use smoke?”

The old man shrugged. “Tear pieces of cloth, I guess. Dampen them with—”

A sharp cry interrupted from behind them. It was Leie’s voice, resonating even out here.

“Maia! Come back and see this!”

Torn by conflicting duties, Maia bit her lip. If the men fell apart now, there’d be surrender or worse just as soon as the reavers chose to push. On the other hand, even tenacious resistance wouldn’t do much good in the long run, unless an overall solution was found. All hope for that lay at the end of the hall.

“As senior officer, I should stay,” the navigator told her, and Maia knew he was right, by normal standards. These weren’t normal circumstances.

“Please,” she urged. “We need you below.” She turned to the young ensign. “Can your guild and shipmates rely on you?”

The young man was but a year older than Maia. Now, though, he stood up straighter, and squared his shoulders. “They can,” he answered, and seemed as relieved as Maia to hear the words. “Count on it!” he finished with determination, and swiveled to face the men, snapping orders to implement Maia’s suggestions.

“All right,” the navigator said, reassured. “But let’s hurry.”

When they turned to start down the hall, Maia almost fell as her left leg threatened to give out. The young officer took her weight on one arm, and helped her limp back toward the chamber containing the miracle wall. Behind them, sounds of brisk, organized activity replaced what had verged, only moments before, on outright panic. During the brief walk, Maia fretted. Something’s happened to the Manitou. Something that made the reavers throw out their promise to Poulandres.

Had the first officer mentioned it having to do with the rads? Did Thalla and the other prisoners break out? The possibility gladdened Maia, but in a dry and hopeless way, for anything that made the pirates upstairs more desperate only provoked more dire threat down here.

Maia suppressed her worries as she let the navigator help her toward glimpses of starlight. For a moment, it made a fine illusion. As if the screen were just a great big opening in the wall, she wished. Leading straight into a winter night.

On arriving at the doorway, she and her companion cried out at the same time, in joyful recognition. Before them, splayed across a twinkling firmament like a great blot, lay the multitendriled nebulosity known as the Claw. It grew smaller, incrementally, until familiar patterns of stars crowded in along each side.

“Took you long enough!” Leie chided as they approached. “Look, I just can’t get it any closer than this.”

Maia glanced at the tiny window and saw that the display was greatly changed. The numbers to the right of each letter “E” were much closer to zero.

“It is a coordinate system!” the navigator cried. “And it’s got to be centered on Stratos. Can’t you get them any smaller?”

Leie snapped, “If you’re so smart, you try it!”

“Good idea, Leie.” Maia nodded. “He’s worked with tools like this all his life. Go ahead,” she told the young man, who frowned uncertainly as he took over Leie’s position. Maia’s sister stretched, trying to stand up straight. “Careful, vril,” she said. “It’s touchy as a—”

She yelped as the scene shifted abruptly. The simulated image of the dark nebula swarmed forward, engulfed the scene in blackness, and then swept aside in a blur that made both twins briefly dizzy. The numbers on the display increased. Leie laughed derisively, as the young man grimaced. “It’s a little balky,” he commented. Then he bent closer, concentrating. “I always find I can prevent the wheels jerkin’ if I twist a little while I turn. Cuts down on the backlash.”

Numbers stopped growing and reversed. The constellations, which had started to warp from altered perspective, gradually resumed forms Maia knew. The Claw nebula passed again, taking up its familiar position.

Then, from the left, an object entered the view so huge and radiant the whole room lit up. “It’s our sun!” the navigator called. A moment later, he gasped as another, smaller entity merged from the right. Its sharp, biting hue of blue-tinged white stabbed Maia’s eyes, triggering a tingle that flowed straight down her spine. The effect was doubtless minor next to what it did to the young lieutenant. He staggered, shading his eyes with one hand, and softly moaned. “Wengel Star!”

The light spread past them, through the open door and into the hall. There was no uproar, so perhaps no one consciously noticed. Still, Maia wondered if remnant traces of wintry male indecision washed away under that shine, to be replaced by a hormonal certitude of summer. Conceivably, the stream would energize the men for what was to come.

Maia watched the sextant’s diminutive display whirl rapidly as the navigator moved back and forth among the three controls.

“We’re gettin’ close to the limit of what I can manage,” he grunted, concentrating on the glowing digits. Suddenly, the sextant emitted an unexpected sound, an audible click. The tiny numbers froze in place and the window winked.

The midget number display went blank for an instant. When it lit again, the old symbols were replaced by a new set…

“What does it mean—?” Leie began, only to be cut off as the navigator shouted. “Hey! Something’s changed in the controls, too!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the response is different. I touch ’em, and the stars barely budge now. Watch.” He pushed one of the knurled wheels, and the constellations moved, but only slightly. A minute earlier, such a turn would have sent them reeling across the galaxy. Maia looked down at the sextant screen, and saw that the new reading was utterly unchanged. Realization came in a flash.

“I get it!” she cried. “It’s a test!”

“A what?”

Maia spread her arms. “A test. You have to pass each phase to get to the next. First we had to figure out how to turn the machine on. Then how to find a model universe inside the huge Life game. Next step was to find our own solar system. Now we must figure out how to maneuver within the system.” She didn’t add that these were all skills currently rare on Stratos. At any point they might run into a barrier beyond their meager abilities.

The navigator was breathing hard, despite the hand he kept upraised to block the cutting light of Wengel Star. “Well … in that case,” he said. “The next stage oughta be easy. We both know these stars. It’s Farsun time right now. Midwinter. So Wengel’s on the opposite side of the sun from where we want to be.” He started to bend over the sextant again.

“Let me,” Maia said, realizing the light had him distracted. He stepped back to give her access to the controls. Maia took her little astronomical tool in hand and made a few tentative turns. The sun’s tiny blue-white companion slipped aside, vanishing over the screen boundary. The young man breathed a ragged sigh, half regretful, half relieved.

They commenced a steep dive straight toward the larger, familiar fireball, which loomed outward in a rush, its reddish surface growing in both apparent size and mottled minutia with each passing second. A thrill coursed Maia’s body as a sense of swooping motion overcame her.

Imagined heat flushed her cheek as the sun blazed by to the right, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. Leie gasped.

In an instant it was gone, vanished “behind” them. At nearest passage, Maia had noticed that the level of detail seemed washed out, as if the simulation was never meant to represent every flicker in the star’s chromosphere. That fit with her best guess, that the universe within the wall computer wasn’t a perfect copy of reality.

Close enough, though. As if suddenly unleashed, constellations burst forth across the simulated heavens. Hello, friends, Maia greeted them. While seeking the known patterns of winter, she kept watch for the blue glitter of a planet, her homeworld. Soon all star positions were proper. She slowed, circled, and performed a spiral sweep. But however she hunted, no blue marble swam into view. “I don’t get it. Stratos should be somewhere about here.”

They stared together at the empty patch of sky. Maia dimly heard a messenger come and mutter to Leie that the tense status quo was holding in the hallway, but signs of bustling activity at the far end were making the men nervous and worried. Clearly, something was going to happen, soon.

Meanwhile Maia struggled with frustration and pride. Once upon a time, at least some folk on her world had felt comfortable enough with spaceflight to simulate it, use it in games and tests. Probably, now and then, they even ventured out—at least in order to remain able. It meant that Lysos never insisted that her heirs stay forever grounded. That must have been a later innovation.

The navigator, too, seemed puzzled, thwarted. Then, suddenly, he pointed. “There! A planet!” He frowned. “But that’s not Stratos. It’s Demeter.”

Maia saw he was correct. The gas giant was a familiar sight, dominant member of the planetary system. “It’s Demeter, all right. Sitting smack dab in the middle of the Fishtail. Oh, Lysos,” she groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Leie asked. “Can’t you use Demeter to fine-tune—”

“It’s in the wrong part of the sky!” Maia cut in. “As of a few days ago, Demeter was in the Trident. That must mean—”

“Time,” the navigator agreed, looking at Maia. “We’re displaced in time.” His eyes widened, apparently sharing Maia’s thought. They almost knocked heads bending to look again at the sextant’s little display. “Sidereal? That’s a word used by astronomers, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Maia replied. “It has to do with measuring time by the stars. Then the number must be—”

“A coordinate,” he finished. “A date? But it’s a negative number.”

“The past, then. With a date set in decimals, instead of years and months. Let’s say it’s based on the same calendar. There’s only a small fraction after the decimal, which implies—”

“—that the date’s just after New Year, with the sun at the vernal equinox.”

“So we’re a quarter of an orbit and ninety degrees off! We should be looking for a springtime sky!”

This time the man took the controls, while Maia guided him. They were getting the hang of it, and things sped quickly. “Steady… steady… Port ten degrees… down five…” Stars and planets swept by, until Leie cried out in joy. The sun and Wengel Star were gone from sight, but their combined light was seen once more, reflecting off a blue-, brown-, white-, and green-hued globe that swelled rapidly into view, its continents and seas punctuated by polar caps and gauzy films of stratospheric clouds. A retinue of silvery moons swept past as the scene drove steadily toward the great azure ball.

This must be what Renna saw, when he approached in his starship, Maia realized. Envy had never flowed so strongly within her veins. I never imagined it so beautiful. My homeworld.

For the soul, it was a feast that satisfied hungers more yearning than the one in her belly. Despite the preachings of orthodox and heretic temples alike, the maternal deity, Stratos Mother, was but a lovely abstraction in comparison. How, Maia wondered, could anyone know or appreciate a world without looking on its face? One didn’t ask such absurdity of human lovers.

How could we ever have abandoned this? Maia marveled, recognizing features from globes and atlases, minus all the lines and labels that made human presence seem so urgent. In fact, the vast reaches of mountain and forest and desert seemed barely touched. The view was an instant cure for vain conceit.

The approach slowed as a subjective transition took place. Formerly, they had seemed to move horizontally, heading toward the planet. Now, with ocean and islands covering the entire scene, all sensation of motion abruptly turned vertical. They were falling.

The outline of Landing Continent enlarged, sweeping to the left. The Mediant Coast gleamed. Maia briefly caught sight of checkerboard farmlands and silver rivers arched by spidery bridges, before the landmass fled at an angle and southern seas filled the scene, scintillating with profuse sunlight reflections, brushed by phalanxes of heavy clouds. To the southeast loomed a chain of narrow, pinpoint peaks which, from a distance, were detectable more by how great currents split into a thousand ruffled streamers in their wake. The combed sea changed color downstream from those jutting spires.

Maia recognized the outline of this very archipelago—the Dragons’ Teeth—from the chart she and Brod had used to sail from Grimké Isle.

“How can you control the approach so fine?” Leie asked the navigator. In reply, he stepped back from the dais, raising his hands. “I felt another click, a few seconds ago. Since then, it’s not been me at all. Maybe we set off a homing program, or something.”

Maia sought Grimké, at the northern tip of the island chain. That monolith, where she and Naroin and others had been interned, fought, and escaped, showed no sign of a crater. No blasted, glazed hole in its center. Rather, she briefly glimpsed buildings, shimmering in a morning glow just before the isle fell off the upper border of the screen. In the center, meanwhile, a great cluster of connected stony towers loomed toward them.

Jellicoe.

And yet, not Jellicoe. Not the Jellicoe of today. What surged larger with each passing second was a thing of unmarred beauty. A hollow star-shaped glory of both nature and artifice. Every spire was adorned with edifices of polished stone or the metallic glitter of sleek, tethered airships. Within the lagoon, she counted three great cruisers, with sails not of dingy canvas but some black, filmy material that seemed to drink in sunlight, reflecting none.

All three watchers quailed as one of Jellicoe’s easternmost teeth plunged toward them. There was a breathtaking rash of rock and vegetation, and instantly the scene was enveloped in a blurry stream of dark stone, flowing past like rushing fluid. “Ack!” Leie commented. No one exhaled. This is some damn simulation, Maia thought numbly.

Someone shouted terse words that were tense and excited, from the back of the room. But she had only regard for the swarming motion, decelerating in front of them.

Light returned and motion ceased with an abruptness that caused them all to stagger. The youths found themselves staring, as if through a window, into a room that was a clone to this one. A younger, better-attired clone. Reddish-colored cushions graced the benches, and the walls were uncracked, polished to a glistening sheen and rimmed with cheery banners.

“Long ago,” Maia said. “It’s showing what this place was like, a long time ago.” She coughed behind her fist, and leaned over the sextant.

“The fourth coordinate.” The navigator cleared his throat. “Time must be the next step.”

Leie spoke hastily. “If we could move forward to the present, would it be possible to see what’s going on outside, right now?”

“Might it show what happens in the future!” the man added, in a hushed tone.

Maia’s thoughts whirled. Leie’s question implied a machine that kept records, and was still monitoring events, as they spoke. To tap such real-time inputs would be a huge asset, in their present straits. Yet she doubted it was like that. What about all those galaxies and such? She couldn’t imagine a machine capable of monitoring the universe, constantly, over thousands of years.

The navigator’s idea was even wilder. Yet, in a weird way it made more sense. Maia still believed this was all a simulation, a vast, godlike cousin to the Game of Life. If so—if the facsimile took into account every variable—might it be able to project likely events, into the future? The implications were staggering, affecting everything from their present predicament to the temple’s teachings about free will.

“Let’s try to do something about that fourth coordinate,” Maia suggested, rubbing her scratchy eyes.

The young navigator coughed twice and bent over. “We’ve already been usin’ all the obvious movin’ parts.” Gently, delicately, he touched pieces of the sextant, until his hand stroked the eyepiece, where one normally looked to sight horizon and stars. The image ahead of them jiggered slightly, and the number in the little indicator screen shifted just a little. “Of course,” he said, with another cough. “It’s the depth-of-focus adjustment. Give me room, please.”

Maia stepped back. Her eyes itched and she sniffed a smoky smell. Abruptly, at the exact same moment, she and Leie sneezed. They looked at each other, and for the first time in several minutes surveyed the room. The air had changed noticeably. There was a sooty, hazy quality.

Shouts came from the back. Maia turned to see the cabin boy hurry downstairs, calling and waving. Around his nose, he wore a torn strip of cloth.

“Ensign an’ doctor want t’know… you havin’ any luck?”

“That depends,” Maia replied. “We’re getting some exciting philosophical insights, but not many practical applications.”

The boy looked puzzled by her reply, and anxious. “We’re gettin’ smoke, ma’am. Doc says it’ll take a while, since we’re below the pirates, but the good air’s gonna get sucked out, in time. They may attack before that, when it gets hard to see.”

Maia had figured as much, from the evidence stinging her nose and lungs. This time she spoke earnestly. “Please tell the doctor and the ensign …” She turned to point at the forward wall—and instantly forgot what she had been about to say.

The image of the room’s past was changing moment by moment. What had looked like an elegant, well-appointed lecture hall began deteriorating rapidly. First the banners and cushions vanished. Then, in a single, abrupt instant, cracks propagated across the walls. The artificial light, which had bathed the chamber until now, went out, leaving the depicted room visible only by a strange, luminous glow, apparently given off by the rocks themselves.

In the speeded time frame, dust could be seen settling and spreading in thin, advancing ripples, like wavelets washing ashore. Then even the dust froze in place.

“That’s it,” the man said, standing up. On the sextant dial, the number read,

There was another click. The display went blank for two seconds, and relit.

Maia exhaled a tense breath. She had half expected, when the simulation caught up to its “present,” to come face to face with images of themselves, staring back as if from a mirror. But the room ahead of them lay dark and empty. “It won’t go any farther forward, in case you’re wondering,” the navigator said, with a note of disappointment.

Leie coughed. “This is all very interesting. But how’s it helping us get out of here?”

Maia’s lips pressed together. “I’m thinking!”

She glanced back and saw that the messenger boy had departed. The haze, which had already lessened visibility, caused things to get even worse when scratchiness in her eyes triggered the nictitating inner lids. From the hallway, she overheard harsh coughs and frantic mutterings.

Are they planning to charge out of here? It may come to that, if the reavers are willing to wait us out.

But if the smoke and heat were bad here, they would be worse upstairs, and the pirates’ wood supply was limited. So this might be just the prelude to an attack.

Maia shook her head, trying to break out of a desolate spiral. She reached for ideas, and found none. The picture wall lay static before them, showing—if not today’s desolation—then what might have been the scene when the simulation was last updated.

We could find out when that was, by using the other controls to go outside and check the stars … or, better yet, zoom over to the nearest town and read the date on a newspaper! Providing the simulation parses that finely.

Such thoughts were a sign of oxygen deprivation, she felt sure. Maia coughed, lowering her head. At least Renna ought to be all right, wherever he’s gone to. Stronger still, her never-absent concern over Brod caused her to pray briefly to the Mother of All, and also to the God of Justice honored by men. Let Brod get out of this. Please let him live.

“I guess…” Leie wheezed behind a closed fist, “we oughta go join the boys. Help get ready … for what’s next.”

The air was going bad faster than Maia had expected. Visibility dropped rapidly, and breathing caused an ache in her chest. “I guess you’re right,” she agreed between coughs. Still, she was reluctant to leave. I can’t help feeling we’re close. So damn dose!

Leie held out her hand. With a grim smile, Maia turned and made a step forward to take it. When her weight came down on her left knee, however, it gave way and she fell, striking the hard stone floor beside the podium. The impact sent bolts of pain up her arms. Leie’s hands were on her, solicitous, helping, and Maia knew a kind of gladness. At the end, they would be reconciled. She looked up to meet her sister’s eyes, and felt refreshed by a wash of poignant love.

Refreshed? Her body bathed in a rush of welcome coolness. It wasn’t psychological, she realized, but a strong physical sensation. “Do you feel that?” she asked her twin. After a moment’s puzzlement, Leie nodded.

“Feel what?” the navigator said, squatting anxiously beside them. “Come on! They’re calling muster for—”

“Quiet!” Leie hissed. “Where’s it coming from?” She began crawling, casting left and right, searching for the source of the soft breeze. “It’s over here!”

Helped by the man, Maia followed on eager instinct, for by now there was no other supply of good air. It seemed to come from a crack where the many-ton podium met the semicircular platform. A thin breeze emanated from that narrow passage, though it would never have been detected except under present circumstances.

Overhead, smoke billowed. The plumes shook visibly as several rocking explosions concussed the air. The men in the hall were firing, either to repel attack or in preparation for one of their own. “Go!” Maia urged the navigator. “Make them hold on awhile longer!”

Without another word, he was on his feet and gone. “Help me up,” Maia told her sister, although leaving the fresh airstream was like tearing away from life itself. Coughing, they both managed to reach the sextant. “Aim downward!” Maia gasped as Leie seized one of the measurement wheels. It was increasingly difficult to see the image of the dim room, portrayed on the magic wall. It jiggled at Leie’s touch, then took a jerk upward. There was a glimpse of naked rock, some dark emptiness, a quick blaze of color, and then dark rock again.

“Don’t say it!” Leie snapped, bending over to focus on one thumb and forefinger, despite her body’s quivering. Maia marveled at her twin’s concentrated intensity. In her own case, it was all she could do to keep from folding over and vomiting.

The picture wall jittered, shifting in fits and starts.

Must break the sextant, if reavers get through, Maia reminded herself. Mustn’t let ’em see the simulation … or know that the wall can come awake.

More shattering booms echoed, and there were loud cries. Had battle been joined? If so, the scene outside was appallingly sinful even to imagine… men against women … a Perkinite propagandist’s dream come true. In fact, sex had almost nothing to do with the issues in question—crime versus law, ambition against honor. Gender was incidental, but legend would say otherwise, when and if word ever spread.

The picture jogged again. A bright wedge appeared across the upper fifth of the wall, hurtful in its brilliance. Leie grunted and tried again; the bright patch shot downward so that now the lower half of the screen blazed.

Blinking through the choking haze, Maia saw something she hadn’t expected. It was not a simulated image of a room, some chamber below this one, but an abstract set of nested rectangles. Against a radiant background, three squares contained distinct glowing symbols—a snowflake, a fire-arrow, and a sailing ship. As Leie gradually nudged the scene so that it filled the wall before them, the borders around each of the squares began to throb.

A red dot appeared. Responding to Leie’s controls, it wandered about. Both twins reached the obvious conclusion, at the same instant.

“I’ll pick the sailboat,” Leie said. But Maia shouted, “No!” She coughed, a series of rasping hacks, and shook her head. “Too obvious… go… with the arrow.”

Behind them, they now heard screams. More gunfire and an angry clamor of combat. Leie’s brow furrowed, running with perspiration, her eyes riveted on the screen. Wheezing from the effort, she brought the red dot into the square chosen by Maia.

A deep-throated tone rose beneath their feet. A growling,, deeper than the groans coming from the hallway. Those shouts grew closer as Maia and Leie fell back from the podium, which began vibrating powerfully. Rumbling from age and disuse, a hidden mechanism rolled the heavy stone aside. Light spilled from the widening gap, along with a welcome rush of cool, fresh air.

Masked figures were tumbling down the aisle behind them. The first rush of males arrived in an orderly fashion, bearing wounded comrades. After them spilled others, panicky, near-doubled-over, their makeshift smoke veils askew. There was no time for organization. “In here!” Leie cried, guiding refugees toward a set of stairs that had appeared below the podium. Sailors tumbled downward, pell-mell, although Maia now wondered.

What have I done?

A rear guard fought on, five or six men wrestling desperately with twice as many smaller figures, expertly wielding trepp bills. A gunshot bellowed, and one of the men clutched his abdomen, falling.

“Come on, Maia!” Leie screamed, shoving her into the bright aperture. Howls of angry pursuit rose as three reavers broke free to leap down rows of benches after them. One tripped and fell, then Maia was too busy negotiating the steep steps to look back. At bottom, a waiting man took her arm, preventing her from turning.

It’s okay, Leie was just behind me, Maia told herself as she fled with other fugitives along a narrow hallway, under a low luminous ceiling, between cables and conduits. The constrained passage filled with sound as everyone seemed to be shouting at once. Alternate steps sent waves of pain swarming from her knee. At last, they reached a set of double doors made of sheet metal. An ad hoc squad of wounded men were using whatever they could find to wedge one of the doors shut. As soon as Maia was through, they started on the other. “Wait!” she cried. “My sister!”

She kept screaming while they finished, ignoring her pummeling assaults. It was the doctor who took Maia’s face in his hands and repeated, over and over, “There was reavers behind ya, honey. Just reavers, a little ways behind ya!”

In confirmation, the doors shook resoundingly as they were struck from the other side, again and again. “Go on!” one dark, bloodstained man urged, leaning against the portal. “Get outta here!” Blinking, Maia recognized her recent fellow investigator—the navigator.

“But—” she complained, before being lifted into the arms of a massive sailor, who turned and ran, leaving crimson blemishes behind him on the cold stone floor.

What followed was a blur of shaking, wild turns, and sudden reverses. Yet, combined with pain and fear and loss came a strange sensation, one she had not experienced since infancy—of being carried and cared for by someone much larger. Despite knowing countless ways men were as frail as women—and sometimes, much frailer—it came as a kind of solace to feel engulfed by such gentleness and power. It coaxed a deep part of her to let go. Amid a headlong plunge through eerie corridors, chased by despair, Maia wept for her sister, for the brave sailors, and herself.

The passage seemed to stretch on and on, at times descending like a ramp, at others climbing. They mounted a steep, narrow stair where some men had to duck their heads and others lagged behind. Sounds of pursuit, which had faded a while back, now grew closer once more. At the top, the diminished band of fugitives found another metal door. Several men laid down their wounded comrades and formed one last rear guard, vowing to hold on while Maia, her bearer, the doctor, and the cabin boy hurried ahead.

What’s the point? Maia thought miserably. The men seemed to believe in her ability to work miracles, but in truth, what had she accomplished? This “escape route” was intrinsically no good if the foe could follow. Most likely, all she had done was lead the reavers straight to Renna.

Her original thought was that she had found a secret path to the old defense warrens, which the Council in Caria had kept preserved for millennia. Now Maia knew they had traveled much too far, no doubt threading narrow stone bridges through one after another of the Dragon’s Teeth comprising the Jellicoe cluster. Except for Renna, they might be the first humans to tread these halls since the great banishment, after the Age of Kings.

They heard no more clamor at their rear. The last detachment must still be holding out at their barricade. Upon coming to a flat stretch, Maia insisted that the panting sailor let her down. Gingerly, she put weight on her knee, which throbbed, but deigned to let her walk. The sailor expressed willingness should she need help again. “We’ll see,” Maia said, patting his huge forearm and hobbled ahead.

Soon they came to another set of doors. On pushing through, the group stopped, staring.

A vast chamber stretched ahead, taller than the temple in Lanargh, wide as a warehouse. She marveled that the entire spire-mountain must be hollow. Maia’s eyes couldn’t take it all in at once, only by stages.

To the right, a series of semicircular bays had been gouged out of the rock, ranging from ten to fifty meters across, each containing jumbled mechanisms or piles of stacked crates. But it was the wall to the left that drew them, in awe. It appeared to consist of a single machine, stretching the entire length of the chamber, consisting of a numbing combination of metals and strange substances embedded in stone, plus crystalline forms like the huge, dimly flickering entity she and Brod had glimpsed, back in the Defense Center. At intervals along its length, there were what appeared to be doors, though not shaped for the passage of people. Maia guessed they were meant for the entry or egress of materials, and speculated as much to the doctor.

The old man nodded. “It must be … We all thought it lost. The council had it. Or else it was destroyed.”

“What?” Maia asked, drawn by the man’s reverential tone. “What was lost?”

“The Former,” he whispered, as if afraid of disturbing a dream. “Jellicoe Former.”

Maia shook her head. “What’s a former?”

As they walked, the doctor looked at her, struggling for words. “A former… makes things! It can make anything!”

“You mean like an autofactory? Where they produce, radios and—”

He shrugged. “The Council keeps some lesser ones runnin’, so as to not to forget how. But legends tell of another, the Great Former, run by the folk of Jellicoe.”

Blinking, Maia grasped his implication. “Men made this?”

“Not men, as such. The Old Guardians. Men an’ women. All banished after the Kings’ revolt, even though the Guardians had nothin’ to do with macho traitors.

“The Council an’ Temple were scared, see. Scared of such power. Used the Kings as an excuse to send ever’one away from Jellicoe an’ the other places. We always thought Caria kept the tools, for themselves.”

“They did, some of them.” And Maia spoke briefly of the Defense Center, elsewhere in this honeycombed isle, maintained by specialized clans.

“Just as we thought,” the doctor said moodily. “But seems they never found this!”

Till now, Maia pondered unhappily. It might have been better if they had all died, back in the sanctuary. Over the short term, this windfall would give Baltha and her reavers more power, wealth, and influence than they needed to set up their own dynasties, enough to win high places on the social ladder of Stratos. Once established, though, they would quickly become defenders of the status quo, like any conservative clan. In the long run, it would not matter that criminals first seized this prize. Council and Temple would control it.

This must be what made the weapons Brod and I saw, that were used against the Enemy. Now Caria will be able to manufacture all it wants, to shoot down Renna’s ship and any other that dares venture dose.

Oh, Lysos, what have I done?

“If only we had time,” the doctor went on. “We could make things. Guns to defend it. Radios to call our guild, an’ some honorable clans.”

As they hurried along, he turned to survey the row of storage bays to the right. “Maybe the Guardians left some-thin’ behind. You see anything useful?”

Maia sighed. Most of the enclaves contained machines or other items that were completely unrecognizable. Nevertheless, she learned something from what she had just seen and heard. Lysos and the Founders didn’t turn completely away from science. They felt it needful to hold onto this ability. It was a later, frightened generation that damped down, scared of what trained, independent minds might do.

It made her angry. The councillors in Caria didn’t know about this place—not yet. But surely the savants at the university had books containing the basic wisdom all this technology was built upon. How? she wondered. How could people with access to so much knowledge turn away from it?

The question underlay so much of her pain at all the death and futile struggle. Like a trail of broken pieces, she had left in her wake first Brod, then Leie and so many others. And ahead… Where was Renna? Was she a judas goat, foiling his brilliant escape?

Now the bays on the right revealed frayed remnants of curtains, drooping from teetering rods. There were beds, chairs, items of clothing. “Legend says, after the banishment, a secret lodge stayed at the Former.” The doctor sighed. “No one knows what for. In time, those with the secret died out.”

On Stratos, continuity was reserved to clans. Commercial companies, governments, even the sailing guilds, had to recruit members from the offspring of hives, who controlled education, religion. These barracks—this sad tale of perseverance—had been doomed to futility. Perhaps the effort lasted many generations… still too little time to make any difference.

Maia wondered if Renna had slept in one of these alcoves. Had he combated ennui, and slaked his curiosity, by piecing together the melancholy tale of this lost refuge? Had he found anything to eat? Maia feared discovering his corpse, and thereby knowing that all of this—losing everything—had been for nothing.

They had crossed more than three-quarters of the vast chamber when the cabin boy noticed a sound. “Listen!” he urged. They paused, and Maia detected it. A bass thrumming, which came from somewhere up ahead. “Come on,” she said.

The doctor looked longingly at the mammoth machine, the Former. “We might try…”

There came another sound, a faint bang of metal far behind them, accompanied by shrill, excited exclamations. Come on,” urged the big sailor. They limped forward and made it through a set of doors at the chamber’s far end, just in time to look back and see a crowd of women warriors pile through the distant entrance. The reprieve won by the brave rear guard was over.

The fugitives plunged into a new corridor, this time as dark as a mine. Only a single glow ahead eased their way. As Maia and the others approached, they saw that it was a hole in the right-hand side of the passageway. She sighed at the welcome touch of sunlight and fresh air. For a moment, despite the dread of pursuit, the four of them paused to look out upon the lagoon, and each, in his or her own way, expressed astonishment.

Down below, where two sailing ships had lain moored to a narrow dock, only one stood partially intact—the smaller Reckless, whose sails were burned away, its masts singed. Of the Manitou, just the burnt prow remained, still tethered to the smoke-stained pier. The sailor and cabin boy moaned at the sight. But there was more.

The sheltered harbor now thronged with other vessels. One, Maia saw clearly, bore at its pointed bow the figurehead of a sea lion. Rowboats set forth even as they watched, carrying stern-visaged men toward the sanctuary entrance. Perhaps, she hoped, one of them was Brod, having somehow managed to escape and call his guild-mates.

“Look!” The cabin boy pointed much higher. Maia craned her head and was able to make out the tops of the sleek, stony monoliths opposite. She gasped at a vision of power and loveliness. A zep’lin, far bigger and more powerful than the mail couriers she had known, hovered above one scarred, flat-topped peak, tethered to a straining cable.

Your presence has been noted… She recalled the placard, within the Defense Center. It might have been wise to take the Council at its word.

Meanwhile, the thrumming sound was growing louder, causing vibrations to be felt through the soles of their feet. “We must go,” intoned the big sailor. Despite fascination with the view outside, Maia nodded. “Yeah, let’s hurry.”

They hastened with the light now on their backs, striving to reach the far end before the desperate reavers, with their long rifles, came into sight behind them. Yet it took some will to approach the growling sounds ahead. There were now two tones, one a grumbling, urgent, bone-shaking basso; and another climbing in pitch and penetration with each passing second.

The cabin boy banged through the far set of doors and light spilled around him. More sunlight, this time pouring down from above. They stared across a vast, cylindrical volume, its stone walls lined with machinery. Overhead, the source of the rumbling grew apparent—an iris made of crimson metal was widening with each passing second.

But what had the four fugitives transfixed was an object filling the center of the room—a vertical multi-twined spiral coil of translucent crystalline material, which started high overhead and plunged downward into a central cavity. The coil throbbed with imprisoned lightning. Inside those windings, they glimpsed a slender, pointed shape, burnished gold, which had already begun descending slowly down the tube. In moments, its tip vanished from sight. “Come on!” Maia called to the others, and rushed, limping, ahead.

They reached the coil but were held back by a force they could not see, which palpably resisted all efforts to approach closer. Their hair-stood on end. Maia could now see that the pit plunged vertiginously some indeterminable distance, girdled all the way by spiral coil. Within that tight embrace, the slender javelin-shape continued its descent.

“Wait!” she screamed. “Oh, wait for us!”

It was almost impossible to hear her own voice over the rising keen. Someone yanked her arm. She resisted, then blinked in surprise as a strange, tiny object entered view. A tapered cylinder of metal, no larger than her smallest toe, had arrived from her left, pushing forward into the unyielding field, decelerating rapidly. It came to rest, then reversed course, accelerating swiftly the way it came, to be expelled with a report of riven air.

The same thing happened again. This time, Maia’s brief glance recognized a bullet, before it, too, was ejected backward toward its source. She stopped fighting the tug on her arm. Accompanied by a roar and swarming vertigo, the four of them ran tangentially to the coils and the surrounding, impenetrable field. To her left, Maia glimpsed kneeling markswomen, firing at them, while others, armed with trepps and knives, approached cautiously, their flushed faces alive with conflicting emotions—wrath versus frightened astonishment.

“Uh!” the big sailor cried, and foundered, clutching his thigh. Maia and the cabin boy took his arms and helped him stumble toward another set of doors at the far end of the chamber. While more bullets pinged around them, they could feel awesome power building nearby, intensifying toward some titanic climax.

The doors were still thirty meters distant when the big sailor collapsed again. “Gowon!” he cried hoarsely. “Get ’er outta here!” he urged the other males. But already bullets were striking the metal doors. Maia pointed. “Over there!”

They towed the wounded man toward what appeared to be a junk pile. A midden of boxes, crates, broken and discarded machines. Detritus of whatever project had created this incredible, mysterious edifice. As they, were about to dive behind the nearest hulking mound of debris, Maia cried out. A searing stroke of pain had brushed the back of her right calf, like a hot poker.

The doctor dragged her the rest of the way. A bullet had grazed her skin, plowing a long red trail. “Never mind that!” she urged the physician. “Take care of him!” The sailor was clearly much worse off.

Ignoring her own bleeding, Maia cast around for anything to use as a weapon. There were bits of metal, but none in any useful shape. For lack of an alternative, she drew from her jacket pocket the small paring knife she had found aboard the Manitou. The cabin boy helped her rise, and they both crouched behind the pile of debris. They heard shouts. Approaching footsteps.

Suddenly, the keening noise halted. The growling had stopped moments before, as the roof-iris finished opening.

The abrupt silence felt pregnant with expectation. Then, as if Maia had known it all along, there came a combination of sound and sight and every other sensation that felt like the clarion of Judgment Day. The world shook, while powers akin to, but violently more potent than she had experienced near the coil, tried to fill all space. That included space she had formerly occupied alone, forcing each of her molecules to fight for right of tenancy. Air needed for breath blew out as a presence passed nearby at terrible speed, streaking toward the sky.

From her back, Maia blearily watched as a sleek object tore through the heavens, leaving a blaze of riven, flaming air in its wake.

A fire arrow … she thought, blankly. Then, with but a little more coherence, she cast after it a silent call.

Renna!

Air returned, accompanied by a sound like thunder clapping. The debris mound shook, and then collapsed, tumbling rough, heavy shards over her battered legs. Yet she was left able to continue staring upward. Undistracted by distant pain, Maia had a clear view of the streaking, diminishing sparkle in the sky, wishing with all her heart that she was part of it… that he had waited only a little while longer, and taken her with him.

But he did it! she thought, switching over to exultation. They won’t have him. He’s out of their reach now. Gone back to—

Her rejoicing cut short. Overhead, almost at the limits of vision, the sparkling pinpoint abruptly veered left, brightened, and exploded in radiance, splitting apart amid an orgy of chaos, scattering fiery, ionic embers across the dark blue firmament of the stratosphere.