Escaping Jopland Hold was easy enough. Stepping quietly to avoid alerting the dogs, she had crept down to the nearby stream that ran beside the orchard, and then sloshed a kilometer or so through icy water with her shoes tied together, hanging from her neck, until the mansion was well out of sight. Next she had to spend several minutes rubbing sensation back into her half-frozen feet before lacing up again. Shivering, Maia then spent an hour trampling a path across successive wheat fields until at last finding the road.
So far, so good. Thinking through her predicament was much harder. After weeks of depressed numbness, the abrupt effect of all this adrenaline was both dizzying and exhilarating. She couldn't help comparing her situation to those adventure reels Lamatia let summerlings watch during the high seasons, when the mothers were too busy to be bothered. Or illicit books Leie used to borrow off young vars from more lenient holds. In such tales, the heroine, usually a beautiful, winter-born sixer from an up-and-coming clan, found herself thrown against the dread schemes of some decadent house whose wealth and power was maintained by subversion rather than honest competition. Usually there was a token man, or a shipload of decent, clear-eyed sailors, in danger of being gulled by the evil hive. The ending was always the same. After being saved by the heroine's insight and courage, the men promised to visit the small virtuous clan each winter for as long as the heroine's mothers and sisters wanted them.
Virtue prevailing over venality. It seemed exciting and romantic on page or screen. But in real life, Maia had no mothers or sisters to turn to. She was a lone summerling fiver without a friend in the world. Clearly, Tizbe and her Jopland clients could do whatever they pleased to her.
That's if they catch me, Maia thought, biting her lip to stop a quiver. Clenching her fists also helped. Defiance was a heady anodyne against fear.
Uh oh.
Coming to a dead stop, she swallowed hard. The trail had been meandering along a lip halfway down the canyon wall, but on turning a corner she found it suddenly plunging straight for a precipice. A rickety suspension bridge lay ahead, half of it in shadows and half reflecting painful moonlight to her dark-adapted eyes.
I must've taken a wrong turn. Calma could never have taken her wagon across that!
Tracing its spidery outline, Maia saw that the bridge hung over a gulch strewn with heaping mounds of ash and slag, trailing from a row of towering beehive structures on the opposite ridge. Here and there, Maia glimpsed red flickers from coal fires that were banked for the night, but never allowed to go out.
Iron foundries, she recognized with some relief. So this was Lerner Hold after all. Calma must have taken a slower freight route across the canyon floor. This was the more direct way.
Setting foot on the creaky, swaying bridge would have been frightening even by daylight. But what choice had she? I was never very good at this, she thought, remembering camping trips with other summerlings on the steppe near Port Sanger. She and Leie had loved the expeditions, putting up cheerfully with biting bugs and bitter cold. But neither of them had much love for crossing streams on teetering logs or skittish stones.
The bridge was definitely worse. Stepping forward cautiously, Maia took hold of the guide rope, which stretched across the ravine at waist level. She worked her way from handhold to handhold and plank to groaning plank, fearing at any moment to hear a shout of pursuit behind her, or the snap of some cable giving way. Eerie silence added further discomfort, driving home her loneliness.
Finally, on reaching the other side, she leaned against one of the anchor pillars and let out a ragged sigh. From the promontory, Maia surveyed the trail down which she had come. There was no sign of any full-scale search party, whose lights would be visible for kilometers. You're probably making more of this than it deserves, she thought. To them you're just a stupid var who stuck her nose where it didn't belong. Lay low for a while and they'll forget all about you.
It made sense. But then, maybe she was too stupid to know how much trouble she was in. Standing there, Maia felt the wind grow colder. Her fingers were numb, almost paralyzed, even when she blew on them. Shivering, she rubbed her hands and began peering among the furnaces and cliffside warehouses for the mansion where this branch of Lerner Clan dwelled and raised its daughters.
The house was a disappointment when she found it. She had envisioned the industrial Lerners constructing an imposing structure of steel arches, lined with stone or glass. What she came upon was a one-story warren, made of sod bricks, that rambled over half an acre. Just a few windows faced a front courtyard strewn with scrap and reclaimed junk of every description.
The windows were dark. If not for the soft hissing of the idle furnaces—and the odors—Maia might have thought the place deserted.
There was another sound, she realized. A faint one. Maia turned. She stepped carefully through the scrapyard until, rounding a corner of the house, she came in sight of a jumble of low structures, even more ramshackle than the "mansion." Each had a small chimney from which trailed thin columns of smoke. Housing for the employees, she guessed.
One of these dwellings, set apart from the rest, seemed different. Dim light from the narrow curtained window illuminated a raked gravel path . . . and a small bed of neatly tended flowers. Approaching, Maia made out soft strains of music coming from within. She also smelled the aromas of cooking.
By the time she reached the door, Maia was shivering too much from the cold to be shy about lifting her hand and knocking.
Since taking jobs with the foundry only a month before, Thalia and Kiel had transformed the little cabin at the far end of the workers' compound. "You'll give up that foolishness soon enough," the other employees had said. But the two young women faithfully set aside an hour each day, even after long, grueling shifts at the furnaces, to tend their garden and put their frayed house in order.
It had been tall, broad-shouldered Thalia who opened the door that night, clucking in concern and drawing Maia inside, putting her with a blanket and steaming teacup by the smoldering peat fire. Kiel, with her almost-pure black complexion and startlingly pale eyes, was the one who went to the Lerner clan mothers the next morning, and returned shortly with word that Maia could stay.
Naturally, she would have to work. "You'll start in the scrap pile," Kiel announced the morning after Maia's flight from Jopland Hold. "Then you're to spend a week learning how to shovel and ladle with the rest of us. Calma Lerner says if you're still around after that, she'll talk to you about an after-hours 'prenticeship in the alloys lab."
The black woman laughed scornfully. "A 'prentice-ship. Now that's a good one!"
Laboring for a clan of smiths wasn't the life path Maia would have chosen. But barring some brilliant strategy to get to Grange Head without crossing paths with Tizbe's gang, or the Joplands, it would have to do. Anyway, it was honorable work.
"What's wrong with an apprenticeship," she asked the older girl. "I thought—"
"You thought it was a way up the ladder, right." Kiel waved a scarred, callused hand in dismissal. "Maybe in a fancy city, where you can hire a clone from some lawyer hive to go over your contract for you. But here? I guess you don't know what 'after hours' means at Lerner Hold, do you?"
Maia shook her head.
"It means you get no wages for 'prentice time, no room-and-board points. In fact, you pay for the privilege of workin' extra in their lab. They charge you, for lessons!"
"No quicker way into debtor's trap," Thalia agreed. "Except gambling."
Debtor's Trap was something Thalia and Kiel talked about all the time, as if they feared falling into bad habits if they ever let the subject drop. Only constant attention and thriftiness would let them prevail. Along with weeding the garden and sweeping the floor, the two young women ritually counted their credit sticks each night.
"It's possible to come out ahead, even after food an' lodgings are deducted," Thalia said on the second evening, while helping Maia gingerly dab where hot cinders had scorched her skin. Heavy leather aprons a
nd goggles had spared her body a worse singeing, but wearing all that armor made more exhausting the work of dragging heavy ladles brimming with molten, sunlike heat. It was labor even harder than working on ships, calling for the strength of a man, the patience of a lugar, and the disciplined diligence of a winter-born clone. Yet, only vars were employed in the furnaces. Only vars in need of work would put up with the miniature, artificial hell.
"Isn't it required by law?" Maia asked, dipping her washcloth sparingly in a shallow basin of rationed water. "I thought employers had to pay enough so you could save."
Thalia shrugged. "Sure it's the law, handed down since the time of Lysos ..."
Maia half-raised her hand at mention of the First Mother's name, but stopped short of drawing the circle sign. Somehow, she didn't figure Kiel and Thalia were religious.
"It's close to the edge, though," the stocky woman went on. "Buy a few luxuries from the company store. Lose a few credits gambling . . . you see how it goes. Get into debt an' there's no escape till Amnesty Day, in late spring! And then where do you go? Me, I don't plan stayin' here past my seventh birthday. Got things to do, y'know."
Maia refrained from pointing out that despite their dedication, Thalia and Kiel spent money on more than bare necessities. They had a little radio, and paid Lerner Hold for electricity to run it, sometimes late into the night. They bought flower and vegetable seedlings for the garden.
But then, maybe those were necessities. As she fell into the routine of labor at the mill, Maia came to see how such trimmings of civilization, slim as they were, made a key difference between holding your heading and losing your way, drifting into the endless half-life that seemed the fate of other var employees. Oh, the vars worked hard. Off hours, they laughed and sang and threw considerable energy into their games of chance. But they weren't going anywhere. Proof lay in the next vale, upwind and out of sight of the factory, where the creche and playgrounds lay. Children, both winter- and summer-born, were housed and schooled there. Every single one had been born of a Lerner mother. No var's womb had ripened here for as long as anyone recalled.
Maia, too, began counting her credits each night. Some went toward secondhand work clothes, a bar of soap, and other needs. When the weekly electricity bill came, Maia paid one-third. That left very little. Against all expectation, Maia found herself feeling homesick for the sea.
The policewoman promised me a stipend for showing up at Grange Head, she pondered wistfully. Even a modest reward for testifying would match what she cleared through hard labor here. Almost a week has passed. You could find out if it's safe to make a break.
Her housemates quickly guessed that Maia was in flight from serious trouble. Though they did not press, and she withheld details, Maia took a chance and told the two women it was the mothers of Jopland Clan who were after her. That seemed to raise her standing with Kiel and Thalia. Kiel volunteered to check things out next Greers-day, when the supply wagon went to town. If it wasn't too heavily laden, off-duty var employees could hitch a ride, for a small fee. Kiel had shopping to do, anyway. "I'll look around for you, virgie, and see if the coast is clear."
"I wish you'd tell us what you did to those biddies," the dark woman said on her return, dropping her groceries on the rickety table and turning to Maia, wide-eyed. "You've sure gotten those Perkies riled. At train time I saw two Joplanders hanging around the station, about as subtle as a plow, pretending to be waiting for someone while they checked every var who came or went. Saw another pair on horseback, patrolling the road. They're still lookin' for you, vestal girl."
Maia sighed. So much for a quick getaway. Make a note. Next time you take on those more powerful than you, pick a place with more than one back door. Holly Lock was about as far into the middle of nowhere as she could have found, and the railroad was the only fast way out of the valley. Even stealing a horse would do no good. The hue and cry would track her down long before she got near the coastal mountains, let alone Grange Head.
"Guess you made a smart choice after all," Thalia suggested. "Headin' further inland instead of trying for shore. Last place they'll look is stinky Lerner Hold."
Apparently. Or maybe Maia's pursuers didn't feel any need to check every hut and farmstead. All they had to do was watch all exits, and wait.
"Were they asking questions? Putting out my description?" she asked Kiel, who shrugged.
"Now, what var would tattle another var to a Perkinite? They know better than to ask."
That sounded a bit facile to Maia. Antagonism between clones and summerlings was pretty intense in Long Valley. But she didn't have much faith in var solidarity. More likely the other Lerner workers would sell her in a trice, for a big enough reward. Fortunately, only Thalia and Kiel seemed to much notice her existence. The renowned Jopland trait of stinginess was her chief hope. Plus the fact that Lerners themselves weren't Perkinites, and had a tradition of staying at arm's length from local politics.
We'll see if I'm still hot in a week or so. If they lose interest, I could try walking out in stages, traveling by night and doing hobo labor for meals along the way ...
Maia felt deeply the loss of her bag, left with the station-keepers in Holly Lock. The duffel contained her last mementos of Leie. Thinking about losing them made her feel even more lonely and sad.
At least she had two new friends. They were no substitute for Leie, but the sisterly warmth shown by Thalia and Kiel was the biggest reason Maia felt reluctant to go. The work was hard and the little cottage wasn't much more than a hut, but it felt closer to "home" than anywhere she'd been since departing her attic room in Port Sanger, ages ago.
Days passed. The rhythm of the furnaces, the stench of local brown lignite, the rumbling of the metal rollers ... even the heat ceased bothering her quite as much. The day set for her appointment at Grange Head came and went, but Maia didn't figure the magistrate missed her much. She had told the officer in Caria all she knew. She had done her duty.
Besides, listening to Kiel and Thalia talk each night, Maia began to wonder. What did she owe to a power structure that offered so little to vars like her, while other women flourished simply because of a twist of birth timing? Her roommates didn't seem to think it was heretical to ask questions about the way things worked. It was a frequent topic of conversation.
Sometimes at night they tuned their radio to a strange station, twisting dials to catch tinny voices reflected off high, magnetic layers. "No one can count on justice from corrupt officials in Caria City, who are bought an' sold by the great hive-dam of Landing Continent. It's up to the oppressed classes themselves to take a bold hand and change things. ..."
Maia suspected the station was illegal. The words were angry, even rebellious, but more surprising to Maia was her own reaction. She wasn't shocked at all. She turned to Kiel and asked if "oppressed classes" referred to summerlings like them.
"Sure does, virgie. Nowadays, with every niche sewn up by one clan or another, what chance do poor vars like us have to get something of our own started? Only way things will change is if we get together and change them ourselves."
The voice on the radio echoed these sentiments. ". . . The tools used for suppression are many. We have seen a tradition of apathy promulgated, so that the nonclone turnout in elections on Eastern Continent hardly reached seven percent last year, despite intense efforts by the Radical Party and the Society of Scattered Seeds ..."
That was how Savant Claire used to refer to the var-children Lamatia Hold cast forth each autumn. Scattered seeds. In theory, summerlings were supposed to search for and eventually find that special occupation they were born to be good at, then take root and flourish. Yet so many wound up in dead ends, either taking vows and sheltering in the church, or laboring like the Lerner employees, for room, board, and enough coinsticks to buy a few cheap pleasures.
Maia thought about all she had witnessed since leaving Port Sanger. "Some say there've been a lot more summer births, lately. That's why there are so many of us."
"Blood-spotting propaganda crap!" Thalia cursed. "They always complain there's too many vars for open niches. But it's just an excuse for poor pay. Even if you get a job, there's no tenure. And usually it's work no better than fit for a man."
That answered Maia's next question, whether males were also included under the classification of "oppressed classes." Kiel had a point, though. Sure, the Lerners were good at what they did. In the furnaces and forges they always seemed to know where the next problem would arise, and watching a Lerner work metal was like seeing an artist in action. Still, did that give them the right to monopolize this kind of enterprise, wherever small-time foundries made economic sense?
"Perkinites are the worst," Thalia muttered. "They'd rather have no summerlings at all. Would reopen the old gene labs if they could, fix things so there'd just be winter brats. Nothing but clones, all the time."
Maia shook her head. "They may get their way without reopening the labs."
Brin, David - Glory Season Page 16