Brin, David - Glory Season
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T
mer.
wenty-six months before her second birthday, Maia learned the true difference between winter and
sum-
It wasn't simply the weather, or the way hot-season lightning storms used to crackle amid tall
ships anchored in the harbor. Nor even the eye-tingling stab of Wengel— so distinct from other
stars.
The real difference was much more personal.
"I can't play with you no more," her half sister, Sylvina, taunted one day. " 'Cause you had -a
father]"
"Did n-not!" Maia stammered, rocked by the slur, knowing that the word was vaguely nasty. Sylvie's
rebuff stung, as if a bitter glacier wind blew through the creche.
"Did so! Had a father, dirty var!"
"Well . . . then you're a var, too!"
The other girl laughed harshly. "Ha! I'm pure Lamai, just like my sisters/mothers an' grandmas.
But you're a summer kid. That makes you U-neek. Var!"
Dismayed, too choked to speak, Maia could only watch Sylvina toss her tawny locks and flounce
away, join-
2 D A V I D B R I NJ
ing a cluster of children varied in age but interchangeable in appearance. Some unspoken ritual of
separation had taken place, dividing the room. In the better half, over near the glowing hearth,
each girl was a miniature, perfect rendition of a Lamai mother. The same pale hair and strong jaw.
The same trademark stance with chin defiantly upraised.
Here on this side, the two boys were being tutored in their corner as usual, unaware of any
changes that would scarcely affect them, anyway. That left eight little girls like Maia, scattered
near the icy panes. Some were light or dark, taller or thinner. One had freckles, another, curly
hair. What they had in common were their differences.
Maia wondered, Was this what it meant to have a /other? Everyone knew summer kids were rarer than
winterlings, a fact that once made her proud, till it dawned on her that being "special" wasn't so
lucky, after all.
She dimly recalled summertime's storms, the smell of static electricity and the drumbeat of heavy
rain on Port Sanger's corbeled roofs. Whenever the clouds parted, shimmering sky-curtains used to
dance like gauzy giants across distant tundra slopes, .far beyond the locked city gates. Now,
winter constellations replaced summer's gaudy show, glittering over a placid, frost-decked sea.
Maia already knew these seasonal changes had to do with movements of Stratos round its sun. But
she still hadn't figured out what that had to do with kids being born different, or the same,
Wait a minute!
Struck by a thought, Maia hurried to the cupboard where playthings were stacked. She grabbed a
chipped hand mirror in both hands, arid carried it to where another dark-haired girl her own age
sat with several toy soldiers, arranging their swords and brushing their long hair. Maia held out
the mirror, comparing her face to that of the other child.
"I look just like you!" she announced. Turning, she called to Sylvina. "I can't be a var! See?
Leie looks like me!"
Triumph melted as the others laughed, not just the light-haired crowd, but all Over the creche.
Maia frowned at Leie. "B-but you are like me. Look!"
Oblivious to chants of "Var! Var!" which made Maia's ears burn, Leie ignored the mirror and yanked
Maia's arm, causing her to land hard nearby. Leie put one of the toy soldiers in Maia's lap, then
leaned over and whispered. "Don't act so dumb! You an' me had the same father. We'll go on his
boat, someday. We'll sail, an' see a whale, an' ride its tail. That's what summer kids do when
they grow up."
With that surprising revelation, Leie returned contentedly to brushing a wooden warrior's flaxen
hair.
Maia let the second doll lay in her open hand, the mirror in the other, pondering what she'd
learned. Despite Leie's air of assurance, her story sounded easily as dumb as anything Maia
herself had said. Yet, there was something appealing about the other girl's attitude . . . her way
of making bad news sound good.
It seemed reason enough to become friends. Even better than the fact that they looked as alike as
two stars in the sky.
PART 1
\^ 1 ever understate the voyage we're embarked on, or I ^>| what we knowingly forsake. Admit
from the start, my sisters, that these partners cleaved to us by nature had their uses, their
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moments. Male strength and intensity have, on occasion, accomplished things both noble and fine.
Yet, even at best, wasn't that strength mostly spent defending us, and our children, against
others of their kind? Are their better moments worth the cost?
Mother Nature works by a logic, a harsh code, that served when we were beasts, but no more. Now we
grasp her tools, her art, down to its warp and weft. And with skill comes a call for change.
Women—some women—are demanding a better way.
Thus we comrades sought this world, far beyond the hampering moderation of Hominid Phylum. It is
the challenge of this founding generation to improve the blueprint of humanity.
—from the Landing Day Address, by Lysos
1
Sharply angled sunlight splashed across the table by Maia's bed, illuminating a meter-long braid
of lustrous brown hair. Freshly cut. Draped across the rickety night-stand and tied off at both
ends with blue ribbons.
Stellar-shell blue, color of departure. And next to the braid, a pair of gleaming scissors stood
like a dancer balancing on toe, one point stabbed into the rough tabletop. Blinking past sleep
muzziness, Maia stared at these objects —illumined by a trapezoid of slanting dawn
light—struggling to separate them from fey emblems of her recent dream.
At once, their meaning struck.
"Lysos," Maia gasped, throwing off the covers. "Leie really did it!"
Sudden shivers drew a second realization. Her sister had also left the window open! Zephyrs off
Stern Glacier blew the tiny room's dun curtains, driving dust balls across the plank floor to
fetch against her bulging duffel. Rushing to slam the shutters, Maia glimpsed ruddy sunrise
coloring the slate - roofs of Port Sanger's castlelike clan houses. The breeze carried warbling
gull cries and scents
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DAVID BRIM
of distant icebergs, but appreciating mornings was one vice she had never shared with her early-
rising twin.
"Ugh." Maia put a hand to her head. "Was it really my idea to work last night?"
It had seemed logical at the time. "We'll want the latest news before heading out," Maia had
urged, signing them both for one last stint waiting tables in the clan guesthouse. "We might
overhear something useful, and an extra coin or two won't hurt."
The men of the timber ship, Gallant Tern, had been full of gossip all right, and sweet Lamatian
wine. But the sailors had no eye for two adolescent summerlings—two variant brats—when there were
plump winter Lamais about, all attractively identical, well-dressed and well-mannered. Spoiling
and flattering the officers, the young Lamais had snapped their fingers till past midnight,
sending Maia and Leie to fetch more pitchers of heady ale.
The open window must have been Leie's way of getting even.
Oh, well, Maia thought defensively. She's had her share of bad ideas, too. What mattered was that
they had a plan, the two of them, worked out year after patient year in this attic room. All their
lives, they had known this day would come. No telling how many dreary jobs we'll have to put our
backs to, before we find our niche.
Just as Maia was thinking about slipping back between the covers, the North Tower bell clanged,
rattling this shabby corner of the sprawling Lamai compound. In higher-class precincts, winter
folk would not stir for another hour, but summer kids got used to rising in bitter cold—such was
the irony of their name. Maia sighed, and began slipping into her new traveling clothes. Black
tights of stretchy web-cloth, a white blouse and halter, plus boots and a jacket of strong, oiled
leather. The outfit was more than many clans provided their departing var-
daughters, as the mothers diligently pointed out. Maia tried hard to feel fortunate.
While dressing, she pondered the severed braid. It was longer than an outstretched arm, glossy,
yet lacking those rich highlights each full-blooded Lamai wore as a birthright. It looked so out
of place, Maia felt a brief chill, as if she were regarding Leie's detached hand, or head. She
caught herself making a hand-sign to avert ill luck, and laughed nervously at the bad habit.
Country superstitions would betray her as a bumpkin in the big cities of Landing Continent.
Leie hadn't even laced her braid very well, given the occasion. At this moment, in other rooms
nearby, Mirri, Kirstin, and the other summer fivers would be fixing their tresses for today's
Parting Ceremony. The twins had argued over whether to attend, but now Leie had typically and
impulsively acted on her own. Leie probably thinks this, gives her seniority as an adult, even
though Granny Modine says I was first out of our birth-momma's womb.
Fully dressed, Maia turned to encompass the attic room where they had grown up through five long
Stratoin years—fifteen by the old calendar—summer children spinning dreams of winter glory,
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whispering a scheme so long forming, neither recalled who had thought it first. Now . . . today .
. . the ship Grim Bird would take them away toward far western lands where opportunities were said
to lay just waiting for bright youths like them.
That was also the direction their father-ship had last been seen, some years ago. "It can't hurt
to keep our eyes open," Leie had proposed, though Maia had wondered, skeptical, If we ever did
meet our gene-father, what would there be to talk about?
Tepid water still flowed from the corner tap, which Maia took as a friendly omen. Breakfast is
included, too, she thought while washing her face. If I make it to kitchen before the winter smugs
arrive.
10
DAVID B R I XI
... ...-,. tiny table mirror—a piece of clan property
;_• would miss terribly—Maia wove the over-and-be-. ,',-een braid pattern of Lamatia Family,
obstinately doing a neater job than Leie had. Top and bottom ends she tied off with blue ribbons,
purchased out of her pocket. At one point, her own brown eyes looked back at her, faintly shaded
by distinctly un-Lamai brows, gifts of her unknown male parent. Regarding those dark irises, Maia
was taken aback to find what she wanted least to see—a moist glitter of fear. A constriction.
Awareness of a wide world, awaiting her beyond this familiar bay. A world both enticing and yet
notoriously pitiless to solitary young vars short on either wit or luck. Crossing her arms over
her breast, Maia fought a quaver of protest.
How can I leave this room? How can they make me go?
Abrupt panic closed in like encasing ice, locking her limbs, her breath. Only Maia's racing heart
seemed capable of movement, rocking her chest, accelerating helplessly . . . until she broke the
spell with one serrated thought:
What if Leie comes back and finds me like this?
A fate worse than anything the mere world had to offer! Maia laughed tremulously, shattering the
rigor, and lifted a hand to wipe her eyes. Anyway, it's not like I'll be completely alone out
there. Lysos help me, I'll always have Leie.
At last she contemplated the gleaming scissors, embedded in the tabletop. Leie had left them as a
challenge. Would Maia kneel meekly before the clan matriarchs, be given sonorous advice, a Kiss of
Blessing, and a formal shearing? Or would she take leave boldly, without asking or accepting a
hypocritical farewell?
What gave her pause, ironically, was a consideration of pure practicality.
With the braid off, there'll be no breakfast in the kitchen.
She had to use both hands, rocking the shears to win
CLORV S £ A.J o
11
them free of the pitted wood. Maia turned the twin blades in a shaft of dawn light streaming
through the shutters. She laughed aloud and decided.
Even winter kids were seldom perfectly identical. Rare summer doubles like Maia and Leie could be
told apart by a discerning eye. For one thing, they were mirror twins. Where Maia had a tiny mole
on her right cheek, Leie's was on the left. Their hair parted on opposite sides, and while Maia
was right-handed, her sibling claimed left-handed-ness was a sure sign of destined greatness.
Still, the town priestess had scanned them. They had the same genes.
Early on, an idea had occurred to them—to try using this fact to their advantage.
There were limits to their scheme. They could hardly put it over on a savant, or among the lordly
merchant houses of Landing Continent, where rich clans still used the data-wizardry of the Old
Network. So Maia and Leie had decided to stay at sea awhile, with the sailors and drifter-folk,
until they found some rustic town where local mothers were gullible, and male visitors more
taciturn than the gossipy, bearded cretins who sailed the Parthenia Sea.
Lysos make it so. Maia tugged an earlobe for luck and resumed hauling her gear down the twisty
back stairs of Lamatia's Summer Creche, worn smooth by the passage of generations. At each slit
window, a chill breeze stroked the newly bare nape of her neck, eliciting a creepy feeling that
she was being followed. The duffel was heavy, and Maia nursed a dark suspicion that her sister
might have slipped in something extra while her back was turned. If they had kept their braids for
another hour, the mothers might have assigned a lugar to carry their effects to the docks. But
Leie said it made you soft, counting on lugars, and on that she
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was probably right. There would be no docile giants to ease their work at sea.
The Summer Courtyard belied its name, permanently shadowed by the towers where winterlings dwelled
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behind banks of glass windows with silk curtains. The dim quad was deserted save a single bent
figure, pushing a broom under dour, stone effigies of early Lamai clan mothers, all carved with
uniform expressions of purse-lipped disdain. Maia paused to watch Coot Bennett sweep autumn demi-
leaves, his gray beard waving in quiet tempo. Not legally a man, but a "retiree," Bennett had been
taken in when his sailing guild could no longer care for him—a tradition long abandoned by other
matriarchies, but proudly maintained by Lamatia.
On first taking residence, a touch of fire had remained in Bennett's eyes, his cracking voice. Alt
physical virility was certifiably gone, but well-remembered, for he used to pinch bottoms now and
then, rousing girlish shrieks of delighted outrage, and glaring reproval from the matrons. While
formally a tutor for the handful of male children, he became a favorite of all summer kids for his
thrilling, embroidered tales of the wild, open sea. That year, Bennett took a special shine to
Maia, encouraging her interest in constellations, and the mannish art of navigation.
Not that they ever actually talked, the way two women might, about life and feelings and matters
of substance. Still, Maia fondly recalled a strange friendship that even Leie never understood.
Alas, too soon, the fire had left Bennett's old eyes. He stopped telling coherent stories, lapsing
into gloomy silence while whittling ornate flutes he no longer bothered to play.
The old man stooped over his broom as Maia bent to catch his rheumy eye. Her impression, perhaps
freighted with her own imaginings, was of an active void. Of anxious, studied evasion of the
world. Did this happen naturally to males no longer able to work ships? Or had the
CLORV 5 A J o Nl
13
Lamai mothers somehow done it to him, both erasing a nuisance and guaranteeing he really was
"retired"? It made her curious about the fabled sanctuaries, which few women entered, where most
men finally went to die.
' Two seasons ago, Maia had tried drawing Bennett out of his decline, leading him by hand up
narrow spiral steps to the small dome holding the clan's reflecting telescope. Sight of the
gleaming instrument, where months earlier they had spent hours together scanning the heavens,
seemed to give the old man pleasure. His gnarled hands caressed its brass flank with sensuous
affection.
That was when she had shown him the Outsider Ship, then so new to the sky of Stratos. Everyone was
talking about it, even on the tightly censored tele programs. Surely Bennett must have heard of
the messenger, the "peripatetic," who had come so far across space to end the long separation
between Stratos and the Human Phylum?
Apparently, he hadn't. Bewildered, Bennett seemed at first to think it one of the winking
navigation satellites, which helped captains find their way at sea. Eventually, her explanation
sank in—that the sharp glimmer was, in fact, a starship.
"Jelly can!" he had blurted suddenly. "Bee-can jelly can!"
"Beacon? You mean a lighthouse?" She had pointed to the spire marking Port Sanger's harbor, its
torch blazing across the bay. But the old man shook his head, distraught. "Former! . . . Jelly can
former!" More phrases of slurred, nonsensical man-dialect followed. Clearly, something had
happened that was yanking mental strings. Strings once linked to fervent thoughts, but long since
fallen to loose threads. To Maia's horror, the coot began striking the side of his head, over and
over, tears streaming down his ragged cheeks. "Can't 'member . . . Can't!" He moaned. "Former . .
. gone. . . . can't ..."
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DAVID BRIN
The fit had continued while, distraught, she maneuvered him downstairs to his little cot and then
sat watching him thrash, muttering rhythmically about "guarding" something . . . and dragons in
the sky. At the time, Maia could think of but one "dragon," a fierce figure carved over the altar
in the city temple, which had frightened her when she was little, even though the matrons called
it an allegorical beast, representing the mother spirit of the planet.
Since that episode on the roof, Maia had not tried communicating with Bennett again . . . and felt
ashamed of it. "Is anyone there?" she now asked softly, peering into his haunted eyes. "Anyone at
all?"
Nothing fathomable emerged, so she bent closer to kiss his scratchy cheek, wondering if the
confused affection she now felt was as close as she would ever come to a relationship with a man.
For most summer women, lifelong chastity was but one more emblem of a contest few could win.
Bennett resumed sweeping. Maia warmed her hands with steamy breath, and turned to go just as a
ringing bell cracked the silence. Clamoring children spilled into the courtyard from narrow
corridors on all sides. From toddlers to older threes and fours, they all wore bright Lama-tia
tartans, their hair woven in clan style. Yet, all such bids at tasteful uniformity failed. Unlike
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normal kids, each summer brat remained a blaring show of individuality, painfully aware of her
uniqueness.
Except the boys, one in four, hurrying like their sisters to class, but with a swagger that said,
I know where I'm going. Lamatia's sons often became officers, even shipmasters.
And .eventually coots, Maia recalled as old Bennett blankly kept sweeping around the ruckus. Women
and
CLORV
15
men had that much in common . . . everyone grew old. In her wisdom, Lysos had long ago decreed
that life's rhythm must still include an end.
Running children stopped and goggled at Maia. She stared back, poker-faced. Dressed in leather,
with her hair cropped, she must look like one of last night's revelers, gone astray from the
tavern. Slim as she was, perhaps they took her for a man!
Suddenly several kids laughed out loud. Jemanine and Loiz threw their arms around her. And sweet
little Albert, whom she used to tutor till he knew the constellations better than Port Sanger's
twisty lanes. Others clustered, calling her name. Their embraces meant more to Maia than any
benediction from the mothers . . . although next time she met any of them, out in the world, it
might be as competitors.
The clanging resumed. A tall lugar with white fur and a droopy snout lurched into the courtyard
waving a brass bell, clearly perturbed by this break in routine. The children ignored the neckless
creature, peppering Maia with questions about her braid, her planned voyage, and why she'd chosen
to snub the Parting Ceremony. Maia felt a kind of thrill, being what the mothers called a "bad
example."
Then, into the courtyard flowed a figure smaller but more fearsome than the upset lugar—Savant
Mother Claire, carrying a tang prod and glaring fiercely at these worthless var brats who should
be at their desks. . . . The children took heel, with a few of the boldest daring to wave one last
farewell to Maia before vanishing. The distressed lugar kept swinging the bell until the wincing
matron put a stop to the clangor with a sharply driven elbow..
Mother Claire turned and gave Maia a calculating regard. Even in old age, she embodied the Lamai
type. Furrow-browed and tight-lipped, yet severely beautiful, she
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DAVID B R I.KI
had always, as far back as Maia remembered, cast a gaze of withering disdain. But this time,
instead of the expected outrage at Maia's shorn locks, the headmistress's appraisal ended with an
astonishing smile!
"Good." Claire nodded. "First chance, you claimed your own heritage. Well done."
"I . . ." Maia shook her head. ". . . don't understand."
The old contempt was still there—an egalitarian scorn for anything and everybody non-Lamai. "You
hot-time brats are a pain," Claire said. "Sometimes I wish the founders of Stratos had been more
radical, and chosen to do without your kind."
Maia gasped. Claire's remark was almost Perkinite in its heresy. If Maia herself had ever said
anything remotely slighting the first mothers, it would have meant a strapping.
"But Lysos was wise," the old teacher went on with a sigh. "You summerlings are our wild seeds.
Our windblown heritage. If you want my blessing take it, var-child. Sink roots somewhere and
flower, if you can."
Maia felt her nostrils flare. "You kick us out, giving us nothing. . . ."
Claire laughed. "We give plenty. A practical education and no illusions that the world owes you
favors! Would you prefer we coddled you? Set you up in a go-nowhere job, like some clans do for
their vars? Or drilled you for a civil-service test one in a hundred pass? Oh, you're bright
enough to have had a chance, Maia, but then what? Move to Caria City and push papers the rest of
your life? Scrimp on salary to buy an apartment and someday start a microclan of one?
"Pah. You may not be all Lamai, but you're half! Find and win a real niche for yourself. If it's a
good one, write and tell us what you've got. Maybe the clan will buy into the action."
e A S o
17
Maia found the strength to voice what she had wanted to say for years. "You hypocritical cat—"
"That's it!" Mother Claire cut her off, still grinning. "Keep listening to your sister. Leie knows
it's tooth and claw out there. Go on now. Go and fight the world."
With that, the infuriating woman simply turned away, leading the placid lugar past the nodding,
bleary-eyed old coot, following her charges toward the classroom where sounds of recitation rose
to fill the cool, dry air.
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To Maia, the courtyard, so long such a broad part of her world, suddenly felt close,
claustrophobic. The statues of old-time Lamais seemed more stony-chill and stark than ever.
Thanks, Momma Claire, she thought, pondering those parting words. Ill do just that.
And our first rule, if Leie and I ever start our own dan, will be—no statues!
Maia found Leie munching a stolen apple, leaning against the merchants' gate, looking beyond the
thick walls of Lamatia Hold to where cobblestone streets threaded downhill past the noble
clanholds of Port Sanger. In the distance, a cloud of hovering, iridescent zoor-floaters used
rising air currents to drift above the harbor masts, on the lookout for scraps from the fishing
fleet. The creatures lent rare, festive colors to the morning, like the gaudy kite-balloons
children would fly on Mid-Winter's Day.
Maia stared at her twin's ragged haircut and rough attire. "Lysos, I hope I don't look like that!"
"Your prayer is answered," Leie answered with a blithe shrug. "You got no hope of looking this
good. Catch."
Maia grabbed a second apple out of the air. Of course Leie had swiped two. On matters of health,
her sister was devoted to her welfare. Their plan wouldn't work without two of them.
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"Look." Leie gestured with her chin toward the slope-sided clanhold chapel, where a group of five-
year summer girls had gathered on the portico. Rosin and Kirstin munched sweet cakes nervously,
careful not to get crumbs on their borrowed gowns. Their braids were all primly tied with blue
ribbons, ready to be clipped in ceremony by the clan archivist. In cynical conjecture, Leie bet
that the pragmatic mothers traded all that glossy hair to burrower colonies to use as nest
material, in exchange for a few pints of zee-honey.
Each of those young women bore a family resemblance, having effectively shared the same mother as
Maia and Leie. Still, the half sisters had grown up knowing, even better than the twins did, what
it meant to be unique.
They must be even more scared than I am, Maia thought sympathetically.
Within the dim recesses of the chapel, she made out several senior Lamai and the priestess who had
come up from the city temple to officiate. Maia envisioned wax candles being lit, setting aflicker
the deep-incised lettering that rimmed the stone sanctum with quotations from the Founders' Book
and, along one entire wall, the enigmatic Riddle of Lysos. Closing her eyes, she could picture
every carven meter, feel the rough texture of the pillars, almost smell the incense.
Maia didn't regret her choice, following Leie's example and spurning all the hypocrisy. And yet
...
"Suck-ups," Leie snapped, dismissing their peers with a disdaining snort. "Want to watch them
graduate?"
After a pause, Maia answered with a headshake. She thought of a stanza by the poet Wayfarer ...
. Summer brings the sun,
to spread across the land.
CLORV SEASON
19
But winter abides long,
for those who understand.
"No. Let's just get out of here."
Lamai clan mothers had their hands in shipping and high finance, as well as management of the city-
state. Of the seventeen major, and ninety minor, matriarchies in Port Sanger, Lamatia was among
the most prominent.
You wouldn't imagine it, walking the market districts. . There were some russet-haired Lamais
about, proud and uniformly buxom in their finely woven kilts, striding ahead of hulking lugars in
livery, laden with packages. Still, among the bustling stalls and warehouses, members of the
patrician caste seemed as scarce as summer folk, or even the occasional man.
There were plenty of stocky, pale-skinned .Ortyns in sight, especially wherever goods were being
loaded or unloaded. Identical except in the scars of individual happenstance, the pug-nosed Ortyns
seldom spoke. Among themselves words seemed unnecessary. Few of that clan became savants, to be
sure, but their physical strength and skill as teamsters—handling the temperamental sash-
horses—made them formidable in their niche. "Why keep and feed lugars," went a local saying,
"when.you can hire Ortyns to move it for you."
A gang of those stocky clones had Musician's Way snarled, their dray obstructing traffic as six
identical women wrestled with a block and tackle slung from the rafter of an upper-story workshop.
Like many buildings in .this part of town, this one leaned over the street, each floor jutting a
little farther on corbeled supports. In some neighborhoods, edifices met above the narrow road,
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forming arches that blocked the sky.
A crowd had gathered, entranced by the creaking load
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high above—an upright harp-spinet, constructed of fine wood inlay by the Pasarg clan of musical
craftswomen for export to one of the faraway cities of the west. Perhaps it would ride the Grim
Bird along with Maia and Leie . . . if the workers got it safely to ground first. A gaggle of the
sallow-faced, long-fingered Pasargs had gathered below, trilling nervously whenever the sash-
horses stamped, setting the cargo swaying overhead. If it crashed, a season's profits might be
ruined.
To other onlookers, the tense moment highlighted a drab autumn morning. Hawkers converged, selling
roasted nuts and scent-sticks to the gathering crowd. Slender money rods were swapped in bundles
or broken to make change.
"Winter's comin', so get yerself a'ready!" shouted an ovop seller with her basket of bitter
contraceptive herbs. "Men are finally coolin' off, but can you trust yerself with glory frost
due?"
Other tradeswomen carried reed cages containing live birds and Stratoin hiss lizards, some of them
trained to warble popular tunes. One young Charnoss clone tried to steer a herd of gangly llamas
past the high wheels of the jiggling wagon, and got tangled with a political worker wearing a
sandwich board advertising the virtues of a candidate in the upcoming council elections.
Leie bought a candied tart and joined those gasping and cheering as the delicately carved spinet
narrowly escaped clipping a nearby wall. But Maia found it more interesting to watch the Ortyn
team on the back of the wagon, working together to free the jammed winch. It was a rare electrical
device, operating on battery power. She had never seen Ortyns use one before, and thought it
likely they had mishandled it in some way. None of th clans in Port Sanger specialized in the
repair of sucl things, so it came as no surprise when, without a word o any other apparent sign,
the Ortyns gave up trying to
CLORV J £ A J p
21
make it work. One member of the team grabbed the release catch while the others, as in a
choreographed dance, turned and raised callused hands to seize the rope. There were no cries or
shouts of cadence; each Ortyn seemed to know -her sisters' state of readiness as the latch let go.
Muscles bunched across broad backs. Smoothly, the cargo settled downward, kissing the wagon bed
with deceptive; gentleness. There were cheers and a few disappointed boos as money sticks changed
hands, settling wagers. Maia and her twin hoisted their duffels once more, Leie finishing her tart
while Maia turned pensive.
The Ortyns almost read each others' minds. How are Leie and I supposed to fake something like
that?
When they were younger, she and her sister sometimes used to finish each other's sentences, or
knew when and where the other was in pain. But at best it had been a tentative link, nothing like
the bond among clones, whose mothers, aunts, and grandmothers shared both genes and common
upbringing, stretching back generations. Moreover, the twins had lately seemed to diverge, rather
than coalesce. Of the two, Maia felt her sister had more of the hard practicality needed to
succeed in this world.
"Ortyns an' Jorusses an' Kroebers an' bleedin' Slos-kies . . ." Leie muttered. "I'm so sick of
this rutty place. I'd kiss a dragon on the mouth, not to have to look at the same faces till I
julp."
Maia, too, felt an urge to move on. Yet, she wondered, how did a stranger get to know who was whom
in a foreign town? Here, one learned about each caste almost from birth. Such as the willowy, kink-
haired Sheldons, dark-skinned women a full head taller than the blocky Ortyns. Their usual niche
was trapping fur-beasts in the tundra marshes, but Sheldons in their mid-thirties often also wore
badges of Port Sanger's corps of Guards, overseeing the city's defense.
Long-fingered Poeskies were likewise well-suited to
22 DAVIDBRIXl
"-.f.T :asks—deftly harvesting fragile stain glands from : jked stellar snails. They were so good
at the dye trade, vadet branches had set up in other towns along the Parthenia Sea, wherever
fisherfolk caught the funnel-shaped shells.
Near cousins to that clan, Groeskies used their clever hands as premier mechanics. They were a
young matriarchy, a summer-stock offshoot that had taken root but a few generations ago. Though
still numbering but two score, the pudgy, nimble "Grossies" were already a clan to be reckoned
with. Every one of them was clone-descended from a single, half-Poeskie summerling who had seized
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a niche by luck and talent, thereby winning a posterity. It was a dream all var-kids shared—to dig
in, prosper, and establish a new line. Once in a thousand times, it happened.
Passing a Groeskie workshop, the twins looked on as ball bearings were slipped into axles by
robust, contented redheads, each an inheritor of that clever forbear who won a place in Port
Sanger's tough social pyramid. Maia felt Leie nudge her elbow. Her sister grinned. "Don't forget,
we've got an edge."
Maia nodded. "Yeah." Under her breath, she added, "I hope."
Below the market district, under the sign of a rearing tricorn, stood a shop selling sweets
imported from faraway Vorthos. Chocolate was one vice the twins knew they must warn their daughter-
heirs about, if ever they had any. The shopkeeper, a doe-eyed Mizora, stood hopefully, though she
knew they weren't buyers. The Mizora were in decline, reduced to selling once-rich holdings in
order to host sailors in the manner of their foremothers. They still coiffed their hair in a style
suited to a great clan, though most were now small merchants, less good at it than upstart Usisi
or Oeshi. The Mizora shopkeeper sadly watched
CLORVJ6ASOXI 23
Maia and Leie turn away, continuing their stroll down a street of smaller clanholds.
Many establishments bore emblems and badges featuring extinct beasts such as firedrakes and
tricorns— Stratoin creatures that long ago failed to adapt to the coming of Earth life. Lysos and
the Founders had urged preservation of native forms, yet even now, centuries later, tele screens
occasionally broadcast melancholy ceremonies from the Great Temple in faroff Caria City, enrolling
another species on the list to be formally mourned each Far-sun Day.
Maia wondered .if guilt caused so many clans to choose as symbols native beasts that were no more.
Or was it a way of saying, "See? We continue. We wear emblems of the defeated past, and thrive."
In a few generations, Mizora might be as common as tricorns.
Lysos never promised an end to change, only to slow it down to a bearable pace.
Rounding a corner, the twins nearly plowed into a tall Sheldon, hurrying downhill from the upper-
class neighborhood. Her guard uniform was damp, open at the collar. "Excuse me," the dark-skinned
officer muttered, dodging by the two sisters. A few paces onward, however, she suddenly stopped,
whirling to peer at them.
"There you are. I almost didn't recognize you!"
"Bright mornin', Cap'n Jounine." Leie greeted with a mocking half-salute. "You were looking for
us?"
Jounine's keen Sheldon features were softened by years of town life. The captain wiped her brow
with a satin kerchief. "I was late catching you at Lamatia clanhold. Do you know you missed your
leave-taking ceremony? Of course you know. Was that on purpose?"
Maia and Leie shared brief smiles. No slipping anything by Captain Jounine.
24
DAVID B R I XI
"Never mind." The Sheldon waved a hand. "I just wanted to ask if you'd reconsidered—"
"Signing up for the Guard?" Leie interrupted. "You've got to be—"
"I'm sure we're flattered by the offer, Captain," Maia cut in. "But we have tickets—"
"You'll not find anything out there"—Jounine waved toward the sea—"that's more secure and steady—"
"And boring ..." Leie muttered.
"—than a contract with the city of your birth. It's a smart move, I tell you!"
. Maia knew the arguments. Steady meals and a bed, plus slow advancement in hopes of saving enough
for one child. A winter child—on a soldier's salary? Mother Claire's derision about "founding a
microclan of one" seemed apropos. Some smart moves were little more than nicely padded traps.
"A myriad thanks for the offer," Leie said, with wasted sarcasm. "If we're ever desperate enough
to come back to this frigid—"
"Yes, thanks," Maia interrupted, taking her sister's arm. "And Lysos keep you, Captain."
"Well ... at least stay away from the Pallas Isles, you two! There are reports of reavers ..."
As soon as they turned a corner, Maia and Leie dropped their duffels and broke out laughing.
Sheldons were an impressive clan in most ways, but they took things so.seriously! Maia felt sure
she would miss them.
"It's odd, though," she said after a minute, when they resumed walking. "Jounine really did look
more anxious than usual."
"Hmph. Not our problem if she can't meet recruitment quotas. Let her buy lugars."
"You know lugars can't fight people."
"Then hire summer stock down at the docks. Plenty of riffraff vars always hanging around. Dumb
idea ex-
QLORV 5 A J 0 XI
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25
panding the Guard anyway. Bunch of parasites, just like priestesses."
"Mm," Maia commented. "I guess." But the look in the soldier's eye had been like that of the
Mizora sweets-merchant. There had been disappointment. A touch of bewilderment.
And more than a little fear.
A month ago wardens had stood watch at the getta gate, separating Port Sanger proper from the
harbor.
Maia recalled how the care-mothers used to take La-matia's creche kids from the high precincts
down steep, cobbled streets to ceremonies at the civic temple, passing near the getta gate along
the way. Early one summer, she had bolted from the tidy queue of varlings, running toward the high
barrier, hoping to glimpse the great freighters in drydock. Her brief dash had ended with a sound
spanking. Afterward, between sobs, she distantly heard one matron explain that the wharves weren't
safe for kids that time of year. There were "rutting men" down there.
Later, when the aurorae were replaced in northern skits by autumn's placid constellations, those
same gates were flung back for children to scamper through at will, running along the docks where
bearded males unloaded mysterious cargoes, or played spellbinding games with clockwork disks. Maia
recalled wondering at the time— were these men different from the "rutting" kind? It must be so.
Always ready with a smile or story, these seemed as gentle and harmless as the furry lugars they
somewhat resembled.
"Harmless as a man, when stars glitter clear." So went a nursery rhyme, which finished,
But wary be you, woman, when Wengel Star is near.
Traversing the gate for the last time, Maia and Leie
26
DAVID B R I XI
CLORV StAJOXI
27
passed through a variegated throng. Unlike the uphill precincts, here males made up a substantial
minority, contributing a rich mix of scents to the air, from the aromas of spice and exotic
cargoes to their own piquant musk. It was the ideal and provocative locale for a Perkinite
agitator to have set up shop, addressing the crowd from an upturned shipping crate as two clone-
mates pushed handbills at passersby. Maia did not recognize the face type, so the trio of gaunt-
cheeked women had to be missionaries, recently arrived.
"Sisters!" the speaker cried out. "You of lesser clans and houses! Together you outnumber the
combined might of the Seventeen who control Port Sanger. If you join forces. If you join with us,
you could break the lock great houses have on the town assembly, and yes, on the region, and even
in Caria City itself! Together we can smash the conspiracy of silence and force a long-overdue
revelation of the truth—"
"What truth?" demanded an onlooker.
The Perkinite glanced to where a young sailor lounged against the fence with several of his
colleagues, amused by the discomfiture his question provoked. True to her ideology, the agitator
tried to ignore a mere male. So, for fun, Leie chimed in. "Yeah! What truth is that, Perkie?"
Several onlookers laughed at.Leie's jibe, and Maia could not hide a smile. Perkinites took
themselves and their cause so seriously, and hated the diminutive of their name. The speaker
glared at Leie, but then caught sight of Maia standing by her side. To the twins' delight, she
instantly drew the wrong conclusion and held out her hands to them earnestly, imploringly.
"The truth that small clans like yours and mine are routinely shoved aside, not just here but
everywhere, especially in Caria City, where the great houses are even now
i
selling our very planet to the Outsiders and their mascu-linist Phylum ..."
Maia's ears perked at mention of the alien ship. Alas, it soon grew clear that the speaker wasn't
offering news, only a tirade. The harangue quickly sank into platitudes and cliches Maia and her
sister had heard countless times over the years. About the flood of cheap var labor ruining so
many smaller clans. About laxity enforcing the Codes of Lysos and the regulation of "dangerous
males." Such hackneyed accusations joined this year's fashionable paranoid theme—playing to
popular unease that the space visitors might be precursors to an invasion worse even than the long-
ago horror of the Enemy.
There had been brief pleasure in being mistaken for a "clan," just because Maia and Leie looked
alike, but that quickly faded. Autumn meant elections were coming, and fringe groups kept trying
to chivvy a minority seat or two in the face of en masse bloc-voting by holds like Lamatia.
Perkinism appealed to small matriarchies who felt obstructed by established lines. The movement
got little support from vars, who had no power and even less inclination to vote.
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As for men, they had no illusions should Perkinism take hold in a big way on Stratos. If that ever
seemed close to happening again, Maia might witness something unique in her lifetime, the sight of
males lining up at polling booths, exercising a right enshrined in law, but practiced about as
often as glory frost fell in summer.
Though Leie was still chuckling over the Perkinites' political tract, Maia nudged her sister.
"Come on. There are better things to do with our last morning in town."
The rising sun had sublimed away a shore-hugging fog by the time the twins reached the harbor
proper. Midmorn-ing heat had also carried off most of the gaudy zoor-float-
28
DAVID B R I Kl
ers that Maia had glimpsed earlier. A few of the luminous creatures were still visible as bright,
ovoid flowers, or garish gasbags, drifting in a ragged chain across the eastern sky.
One laggard remained over the docks, resembling a filmy, bloated jellyfish with dangling,
iridescent feelers a mere twenty meters long. A baby, then. It clutched the main mast of a sleek
freighter, caressing.the cloth-draped yards, groping for treats laid on the upper spars by nimble
sailors. The agile seamen laughed, dodging the waving, sticky suckers, then dashed in to stroke
the knotty backs of the beast's tentacles, or tie on bright ribbons or paper notes. Once a year or
so, someone actually recovered a ragged message that had been carried in such a fashion, all the
way across the Mother Ocean.
There were also stories of young cabin boys who actually tried hitching rides upon a zoor,
floating off to Lysos-knew-where, perhaps inspired by legends of days long ago, when zep'lins and
airplanes swarmed the sky, and men were allowed to fly.
As if proving that it was a day of fate and synchrony, Leie nudged Maia and pointed in the
opposite direction, southwest, beyond the golden dome of the city temple. Maia blinked at a
silvery shape that glinted briefly as it settled groundward, and recognized the weekly dirigible,
delivering mail and packages too dear to entrust to sea transport, along with rare passengers
whose clans had to be nearly as rich as the planet goddess in order to afford the fare. Both Maia
and Leie sighed, for once sharing exactly the same thought. It would take a miracle for either of
them ever to journey like that, arnid the clouds. Perhaps their clone descendants might, if luck's
fickle winds blew that way. The thought offered some slight consolation.
Perhaps it also explained why boys sometimes gave up everything just to ride a zoor. Males, by
their very natures, could not bear clones. They could not copy them-
GLORV J £ A J o
29
selves. At best, they achieved the lesser immortality of fatherhood. Whatever they most desired
had to be accomplished in one lifetime, or not at all.
The twins resumed their stroll. Down here near the wharves, where fishing boats gave off a humid,
pungent miasma, they began seeing a lot more summer folk like themselves. Women of diverse shapes,
colors, sizes, often bearing a family resemblance to some well-known clan—a Sheldon's hair or a
Wylee's distinctive jaw—sharing half or a quarter of their genes with a renowned mother-line, just
as the twins carried in their faces much that was Lamai.
Alas, half resemblance counted for little. Dressed in monocolor kilts or leather breeches, each
summer person went about life as a solitary unit, unique in all the world. Most held their heads
high despite that. Summer folk worked the piers, scraped the drydocked sailing ships, and
.performed most of the grunt labor supporting seaborne trade, often with a cheerfulness that was
inspirational to behold.
Before Lysos, on Phylum worlds, vars like us were normal and clones rare. Everyone had a father .
. . sometimes one you even grew up knowing.
Maia used to ponder images of a teeming planet, filled with wild, unpredictable variety. The Lamai
mothers called it "an unwholesome fixation," yet such thoughts came more frequently since news of
the • Outsider Ship began filtering down, through rumors and then terse, censored reports on the
tele.
Do people still live in old-fashioned chaos, on other worlds? She wondered. As if life would ever
offer any opportunity to find out.
With storm season over and the getta fence wide open, the harbor was a lively, colorful precinct.
A season's pent-up commerce was getting under way. People bustled among the loading docks and
slate-roofed warehouses, the chapels and recurtained Houses of Ease. And ship chan-
30
DAVID B R I
dleries—a favorite haunt while the twins were growing up, crammed with every tool or oddment a
crew might need at sea. From an early age, Maia and her sister had been drawn by the bright
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