The final chock stayed stuck. With a sigh, she crawled underneath the conveyer to pound it with the heel of her hand, already bruised and sore. "Come on, you stupid, atyp chunk!" she cursed the tightly wedged block. Her hand throbbed. "Move! You lugar-made piece of homlog—"
A sharp, nipping pain in an alarming quarter caused Maia to jump, slamming her head against a bucket, which responded with a low, throaty gong.
"Ow! What the tark'l hell—?"
Emerging, rubbing her head with one hand and left buttock with the other, Maia blinked in confusion at three sailors who stood grinning, just beyond arm's reach. She recognized the off-duty crewmen who had seemed so ineptly casual with the stylish male from town. Two smirked, while the third let out a high-pitched giggle.
"Did . . ." Maia almost couldn't bring herself to ask. "Did one of you pinch me?"
The nearest, tall and rangy with several days' beard, laughed again. "An there's more where'n that come from, if yer want it."
Maia tilted her head, quite sure she'd misheard. "Why would I want more pain than I've already got?"
The giggler, who was short but barrel-chested, tittered again. "Only hurts at first, sweets . . . then ye ferget all that!"
"Ferget ever'thing but feeling good!" the first one added, to Maia's growing confusion and irritation. The third man, of average height, with a dark complexion, nudged his companions. "Come on. You can whiff she's just a virgie. Let's go clean up an' head for Bell House."
There was an eager wildness in the small one's eyes. "How 'bout it, li'l var? We'll fetch yer sister off'n our ship. Dress you both fancy. It'll look like some pretty little clan, holdin' a frost party for us. Like that idea? Your own little Hall o' Happiness, right on board!"
He was so close, Maia caught a strange, off-sweet odor, and glimpsed a powdery stain at one corner of his mouth. More importantly, she now recognized, in stance and manner, several signs taught to girls at an early age. His eyes stroked her body closer than the clinging dust. Breathing heavily, his grin exposed teeth glistening with saliva.
There was no mistaking these omens of male rat.
But it wasn't summer anymore! All the myriad cues that set off aurora season in males were months gone. Oh, surely some men retained libido through autumn, but to make blatant advances . . . on a var? One covered head to toe in grime, yet? One without a hint of fecundity—scents from past births?
It was incredible. Maia hadn't a clue how to react.
"Button an' jet," a stern voice cut in.
The lanky sailor kept leering, but the other two stepped back for Wotan's master-at-arms. "Uh, bosun"—the darker man nodded—"We're off duty, so we were just—"
"Just leaving, so my work party can go off-duty too, was that it?" Naroin asked, fists on hips, forming the words sweetly, but with an edge that cut.
"Uh huh. Come on, Eth. Eth!" The dark sailor grabbed the one ogling Maia, breaking his unnerving stare and dragging him off. Only then did Maia start controlling her own adrenaline surge. Her mouth felt dry from more than coal dust. The pounding in her chest slowly abated.
"What," she inquired of Naroin, "was that all about?"
The master-at-arms watched the three sailors walk away, their footsteps neither uneven nor intoxicated. Rather, there was a prowling, even graceful menace to the way they departed. Naroin glanced at Maia.
"Don't ask me."
Without another word, she got down and crawled under the conveyor to pound at the recalcitrant chock, giving Maia a few moments more to recover. It was a kindness, yet something had not escaped Maia's notice. Naroin's answer implied ignorance. That was what the phrase usually meant. "Don't ask me."
But the tone hadn't conveyed ignorance. No, it had been an order, pure and simple.
Maia's curiosity flared.
Leie waxed enthusiastic as the sisters strolled the market quarter before dusk, munching fish pies, listening to the cacophonous street-jabber, speculating what deals, intrigues, and treachery must be going on all around them. "This detour could be the best thing to happen to us!" Leie announced. "When we finally do reach the archipelago, we'll know much more about commercial prospects. I was thinking . . . maybe next summer we should get work in one of these plastics factories. . . ."
Maia let her twin rattle on, feeling pensive, restive. This afternoon's incident had left her sensitized. The heretic's crumpled pamphlet lay unforgotten in her pocket, a reminder that the fervid activity on all sides might not be "normal," even for a big-city port.
Now that Maia looked for them, she saw signs everywhere of an economy under strain. Near the city hall, bulletin boards showed basic labor, even skilled crafts, going for record low wages. Long-term contracts were nonexistent, and the sole civil-service post on offer was in the city guard. Just like back home, Maia thought. Only more so.
Then there were the men, more than she had ever seen before. And not just playing endless Game of Life tournaments on quayside grids, or whittling to pass the time between voyages, but moving briskly, intently, quite some distance inland. Look down any crowded street and you'd catch sight of two or three, standing out amid the crowds of women. Again, all the shipping might explain it. Except why were such a high percentage of them so young?
In nature, just being male was enough to lower an animal's life expectancy, and it was no different among humans on Stratos. Storms and shifting reefs, icebergs and equipment failures, sent ships down every year. Few men lived to become retirees. Still, there seemed so many young ones on the streets. It made her nervous.
While most sailors were well-behaved, strolling, shopping, or drinking quietly at taverns set aside for their kind, each day had its whispered tales of incidents like one overheard last night—concerning a bloody corpse found in an alley, the killer fleeing wild-eyed, pursued by city guards-women armed with stun tridents.
After the episode next to the conveyor belt, Maia found herself overreacting to those lazy smiles of halfhearted flirtation young men normally cast this time of year, more as a courtesy than any kind of offer. When one gangly youth winked at her, Maia scowled back, eliciting a look of hurt dismay that instantly made her feel embarrassed, contrite.
Should all males be feared, because a few go crazy?
It wasn't only men causing problems, after all. The three races—winter folk, men, and vars—mingled peaceably for the most part. But the twins had seen incidents of rowdy summerlings—wildly varied in shape and color, but united in poverty—harassing small groups of identicals from some local clan. Frustration boiling over in rebellious hostility.
Are these really signs? The heretic spoke of a "time of changes," a term familiar from teledramas and lurid storybooks. Stability, the great gift of Lysos and the Founders, was never guaranteed to any particular generation. Even scripture said a perfect society must flex, from time to time.
Is it just Lanargh, or is this happening all over Stratos? Maia felt more determined than ever to try catching the tele-news tonight.
She reacted with a startled jump to a nudge in the ribs, and quickly saw that they had wandered onto the chief city square. Strollers, who had spent midday under shaded loggias, were emerging to enjoy the late sun's slanting rays. Leie pointed across the broad piazza toward a row of elegant, multistoried houses. "Over there, leaning against that column. Ain't that your Bosun, trying to look invisible?"
Maia picked out the trim figure of Naroin, resting one shoulder on a pillar, acting as if she had only to watch the world go by. What's she up to? That var never relaxed a day in her life.
As if reading her thoughts—which she still did all too often—Leie nudged Maia a second time. "I bet your bosun's spying on that lot over there."
"Hm. . . . Maybe." Naroin appeared well-positioned to discreetly observe a mixed gathering of lavishly dressed males and females sitting at an open-air cafe. The men didn't look like sailors, while the women had a massaged, billowy appearance Maia associated with pleasure clans, specializing in relieving the tensions of oth
ers in houses of ease. Several such houses lined the square, positioned to serve clients coming from the harbor in summer, and uptown in winter. Above each entrance, gaily painted signs depicted a leaping rabbit, a snowflake, a grinning bull clutching a bell between its jaws. Servants labored on the house overlooking the cafe, changing the decorations from warm, aurora shades to those of frost.
In autumn, the two clienteles of such places overlapped like incoming and ebbing waves, which explained the mixed group at the veranda cafe. Maia wondered what the men and women found to talk about.
Was Naroin's surveillance also out of curiosity?
Unlikely. Especially when Maia noticed among the loungers a man in a floppy hat. "So that's the guy?" Leie asked. "I don't know what he did to Lem and Eth, but those boys sure got in trouble. Think your bosun's gonna pick a fight? The fop's got twice her mass."
Whatever the reason or season, Maia wouldn't bet against the petite sailor. "Don't ask me," the Naroin had said. Or, Keep your nose out of this.
Despite the power of her own inquisitiveness, almost hormonally intense, Maia decided to quash it. At her station in life, wisdom dictated keeping a low profile.
And yet ... . .
An abrupt clattering broke out to their left. The bell tower overlooking the piazza emitted a loud thunk, and beaten copper doors, green with verdigris, rattled open. Soon the famous clock figures of Lanargh would emerge to start their stately dance—five minutes of choreographed automation, finishing with the tolling of Three-Quarters Day. Crowds began moving up to watch the sublime, hundred-year-old gift from Gollancz Sanctuary perform its evening ritual, timed to satellite pulses from Caria University, halfway around the world.
Maia hadn't realized it was so late. The program she wanted to watch would be on soon. "Come on," she urged. "Or we'll miss the news."
Leie shook her head. "There's lots of time. I want to see the first part again. We'll go after that, I promise."
Maia sighed, knowing by instinct when Leie's tenacity could be fought, and when it was futile. Fortunately, they had a good view as the clock-tower doors finished opening with a reverberating clang. Then, first out its portal, emerged the bronze figure of the He-Ape, knuckle-walking above the onlookers, carrying a twitching four-legged animal under one arm and a sharpened stone in its mouth. The ape turned three times to a ratcheting beat, appearing to scrutinize those below. Then the figure rose up on its hind legs, miraculously unfolding into the erect figure of a man, now carrying loops of chain. The stone in his mouth had transformed into the stylized phallic protuberance of The Bomb.
Leie's eyes gleamed with appreciation, the intricate play of bronze plates seemed so smooth and natural. It was a renowned rendition of one of the most famous allegorical tales on Stratos—a metaphor for one side of evolution.
Another door parted. The figure of a She-Ape emerged, carrying her traditional bundle of fruit. Same as last time, and the time before, Maia thought. It's cute, but monotonous.
She took a moment to glance back toward the cafe . . . and started in surprise. Only moments had passed, but now empty bottles lay where the lounging customers had sat. Naroin; too, had vanished.
Oh, well. She shook her head. None of my business. Besides, it's time to head uptown.
Maia tugged her sister's arm. Leie tried to shrug her off, entranced by the swiveling dance of metal figures. But now Maia insisted. "We've seen this part twice already! I don't want to miss the broadcast again."
Leie sighed dramatically, and Maia thought, I wish for once she wouldn't milk it, every time I want something, making it a "favor" to be repaid.
"All right," Leie agreed with an exaggerated shrug. "Let's go watch the news."
Behind them, across the cobbled plaza, the giant figure of Mother Lysos emerged through her own door above the other automatons, holding a bioscope in the crook of one arm. Looking down benignly, she took the scroll of law in her other hand, and used it to strike a mighty blow, severing forever the chains binding Woman to the will of Man.
Sure enough, a long queue had formed four streets uphill, outside the wooden amphitheater. Maia groaned in frustration.
"Guess we'll have to wait our turn," Leie said. "Oh well."
That was her twin, all right. Hot-tempered toward the faults of others. Fatalistically philosophical about her own. Maia fumed quietly, craning to see any sign of movement ahead. A guardia marshal stood by the ticket booth, both to keep order and to make sure no under-five summerlings from town creches sneaked in without notes from their clan mothers. Women by the door could be seen leaning inside, listening to snatches of amplified speech, then popping out to report to their friends. Murmurs of progressively degraded news riffled back to the sisters. As during the night of the reavers, Leie listened avidly and joined in this bucket brigade, even when the snippets were so obviously debased as to be worthless.
"You were right," Leie reported. "There was a piece about the Outsiders." She gestured vaguely skyward. "No pictures yet of the one that landed."
Maia exhaled disappointment. She had never before thought much about the Grand Council's stinginess with news. Power and wisdom went together, the clan mothers taught. Now though, Maia wondered if the heretic was right. The savants, councillors, and high priestesses seemed unwilling to say much, as if fearing the reaction of the masses.
From a clone's point of view, I guess every person who's not one of your full sisters is an unpredictable dilemma. It's just the same for us vars, only we're used to it. Maia found it a curiously comforting insight—that there was one way in which the winter-born went through life more afraid than summerlings. Uncertainty must be their biggest dread.
The middle moon, Athena, hung above the western horizon, a slender crescent with the plain of Mare Virgin-itatis brightening rapidly as the sun quenched behind a bank of sea clouds. It was a clear evening above Lanargh, with a chill in the air. The first stars were coming out.
There were separate lines for first-class and second-class viewing. The latter queue moved in stuttered fits toward the ticket booth, staffed by several pug-nosed women wearing spectacles and expressions of bemused skepticism. You'd think with demand this high, they'd build more theaters, no matter how much sets cost out here. Could all this public interest have taken them by surprise?
By the time standing room was available, and the twins squeezed into the back of the sweaty room, the program had finished with the headlines and main features, and was into a nightly segment called "Commentary." The young interviewer on the big wall screen looked familiar, naturally, since the same show appeared back home in Port Sanger. Her guest was an older woman, from attire clearly a savant from the university.
". . . despite all assurances we have received, what guarantee do we have that our Outsider friends are harmless, as they claim? We Stratoins recall with horror the last time danger arrived from space—"
The interviewer cut in. "But, Savant Sydonia, when the Enemy came, it was in a giant vessel, big as an asteroid! We can all see—those of us living in towns with astronomy clubs—that the Visitor Ship is far too small to carry armies."
Maia felt, a thrill of luck. They were discussing the aliens, after all. On the screen, the wise-looking savant nodded her head of noble gray hair. Camera beams highlighted wisdom lines around her eyes, though Maia suspected some of them might be makeup.
"There are dangers beyond outright invasion. Serious potentialities for harm to our society. Remember, consciousness isn't everything! Sometimes the race has more wisdom than its individual members."
The young interviewer frowned. "I don't quite follow."
"There are signs—portents, if you will. For example, one might mention the increase, during the last several seasons, of—"
A sudden, jerky shift. Maia would have missed it, had she blinked. Studio editing. Something excised from the interview before transmission.
"—making it impossible to completely dismiss the prospect of harm coming from restored contact with the Phy
lum . . . much as we deplore some of the wilder fear campaigns being waged by certain radical groups . . ."
Blips like that were common on shows 'cast by Caria City. So common, Maia might not have given it much thought, if she hadn't been so intensely interested in the answer. Now, she wondered. The heretic has a point. Vars grow up not expecting to be told much. We get used to it. But aren't we citizens, too? Doesn't this affect us all?
Just having such thoughts made Maia feel bold and rebellious.
". . . so we must all strive together to reinforce the underpinnings of this good world left us by Lysos and the Founders. One that tests our daughters, but leaves them strong. Even the interstellar Visitor proclaims wonder over all we've achieved, especially our remarkable social stability, as hominidal colonies go."
Maia took note. The savant seemed to be confirming the common rumor, that just one alien had actually landed on the surface of Stratos.
Brin, David - Glory Season Page 8