The porridge nourished without pretense at good taste. It didn't matter. She had mastered her thoughts now, and was able to contemplate what she might do when the ship reached port.
Ursulaborg—pearl of the Mediant Coast. Some ancient clans there are so big and powerful, they've got pyramids of lesser clans underneath them, who have client families of their own, and so on. Clones serving clones of the same women who first employed their ancestors, hundreds of years ago, with everybody knowing her place from the day she's born, and all potential personality conflicts worked out ages ago.
Maia remembered having seen a cinematic video—a comedy—when she and Leie were three. Coincidentally, the film was set in the magnificent Ursulaborg palace of one such grand multiclan. The plot involved an evil outsider's scheme to sow discord among families who had been getting along for generations. At first, the stratagem seemed to work. Suspicions and quarrels broke out, feeding on each other as women leaped to outrageously wrong conclusions. Communication shattered and the tide of misunderstandings, both incited and humorously accidental, seemed fated to cause an irreparable rift. Then, at a climactic moment, the high-strung momentum dissolved in an upswell of revelation, then reconciliation, and finally laughter.
"We were made to be partners," said one wise old matriarch, at the moral denouement. "If we met as vars, as our first mothers had, we would become fast friends. Yet we know each other better than vars ever could. Is it possible we Blaine sisters could live without you Chens? Or you without us? Blaines, Chens, Hanleys, and Wedjets . . . ours is a greater family, immortal, as if molded by Lysos herself."
It had been a warm, mushy ending, leaving Maia feeling terribly glad to have Leie in her life . . . even if her sister had muttered derisively, at the movie's end, about its manic illogic and lack of character development.
Leie would have loved to see Ursulaborg.
There was no land in sight. Nevertheless, she looked past the bowsprit to the west, blinking against spray that hid a salty bitterness of tears.
Renna found her there. The dark-eyed man called her from the foremast. "Ah, Maia, there you are!"
She hurriedly wiped her eyes and turned to watch him clamber into the sheltered area. "How are you doing?" asked cheerfully. Dropping to sit across from her, he reached forward to squeeze her hand.
“I've been unhappier," she answered with a shrug, somewhat befuddled by his warmth. It pierced the protective distance she had been working to build between them. Maia made sure not to yank her hand back, but withdrew it slowly. He appeared not to notice.
"Isn't it a fine day?" Renna inhaled, taking in the broad expanse of sunny and cloud-shaded patches of sea, stretching to every horizon. "I was up at dawn, and for a little while I thought I saw a swarm of Great Pontoos, off to the south among the clouds. Someone said they were just common zoor-floaters. . . . I've seen lots of those. But these looked so beautiful, so graceful and majestic, that I figured—"
"Pontoos are very rare now."
"So I gather." He sighed. "You know, this planet would seem perfect for flying. I've seen birds and gasbag creatures of so many types. But why so few aircraft? I know spaceflight might disrupt your stable pastoralism, but what harm would it do to have more zep'lins and wingplanes? Would it hurt to give people a chance to move around more freely?"
Maia wondered how a man could be so talkative, so early in the day? He would've gotten along better with Leie.
"They say long ago there were a lot more zep'lins," she answered.
"They also say men used to fly them, like seaships, but then were banished from the sky. Do you know why?"
Maia shook her head. "Why don't you ask them?"
"I tried." Renna grimaced, looking across the ocean. "Seems to be a touchy subject. Maybe I'll look it up when I get back to the Library, in Caria." He turned back to her. "Listen, I think I've figured something out. Could you tell me if I'm wrong?"
Maia sighed. Renna seemed determined to wear down her carefully tailored apathy with sheer, overpowering enthusiasm. "Okay," she said warily.
"Great! First, let's verify the basics." He held up one finger. "Summertime matings result in normal, genetically diverse variants, or vars. Is that word derogatory, by the way? I've heard it used insultingly, in Caria."
"I'm a var," Maia said tonelessly. "No point being insulted by a fact."
"Mm. I guess you'd say I'm a var, too."
Of course. All boys are vars. Only the name doesn't cling to them like a parasite. But she knew Renna meant well, even when dredging clumsily through matters that hurt.
"All right, then. During autumn, winter, and spring, Stratoin women have parthenogenetic clones. In fact, they often can't conceive in summer till they've already had a winter child."
"You're doing fine so far."
"Good. Now, even cloning requires the involvement of men, as sparklers, since sperm induces placental—"
"That's sparkers," Maia corrected in a low voice.
"Yeah, right. Okay, here's the part I've been having trouble with." Renna paused. "It's about how Lysos meddled with sexual attraction. You see, on most hominid worlds, sex is an eternal distraction. People dwell on it from puberty to senility, spend vast measures of time and money, and sometimes act incredibly disagreeably, all because of a gene-driven, built-in obsession."
"You make it sound awful."
"Mm. It has compensations. But, arrangements on Stratos seem intended to cut down the amount of energy centered on sex. All in keeping with good Herlandist ideology."
"Go on," she said, growing interested despite herself. Do people on other planets really think about sex more than I, How do they get anything done?
Renna continued. "Stratoin men are stimulated by visual cues in the summer sky, when women are least aroused. Today, on the other hand, I got to witness this peculiar ice-frost you get in winter—"
"Glory."
"Yeah. A natural product of some pretty amazing stratospheric processing that I plan looking into. And it stimulates women!"
"So I'm told." Maia felt warm. "According to legend, Lysos took the Old Craziness out of men and women, and poked around for someplace to put it. Up in the sky seemed safe enough. But one summer Wengel Star came along. He stole some of the madness and made a flag to wave and shine and put the old rut back into men, through their eyes."
"And during high winter it sneaks back down as Glory?"
"Right, seizing women through their noses." "Mm. Nice fable. Still, doesn't it seem queer that women and men should be so perfectly off-sync in desire?"
"Not perfectly. If it were, nobody'd get born at all." "Oh sure, I'm oversimplifying. Men can enjoy sex in winter and women in summer. But how odd that males are aggressive suitors during one season, only to grow demure half a year later, when women seek them out."
Maia shrugged. "Man and woman are opposites. Maybe all we can hope for is compromise."
Renna nodded in a manner reminiscent of an absent-minded but eager savant from Burbidge Clan, whom the Lamai mothers used to hire to teach varlings trigonometry. "But however carefully Lysos designed your ancestors' genes, time and evolution would erase any setup that's not naturally stable. Those few males who escaped the program just a little would pass on their genes more often, and so on for their offspring. The same holds for women. Over time, male and female urges would come into rough synchrony again, with lots of tension and two-way negotiating, just like on other worlds.
"But here's the brilliant part. On Stratos there's greater payoff, in strict biological terms, for a woman to have clone children than normal sons and daughters, who carry only half her genes. So the trait of women seeking winter matings would reinforce."
Maia blinked. "And the same logic applies to men?"
"Exactly! A Stratoin male gets no genetic benefit from sex in winter! No reason to get all worked up, since any child spawned won't be his in the most basic sense. The cycle tends to bolster the cues Lysos established." He shook his head. "I'd need a good
computer model to see if it's as stable as it looks. There are some inherent problems, like inbreeding. Over time, each clone family acts like a single individual, flooding Stratos with . . ."
Renna's enthusiasm was infectious. Maia had never known anyone so uninhibited, so unrestrained by conventional ideas. Still, a part of her wondered. Is he always like this? Was everybody like this, where he came from?
"I don't know," she cut in when he paused for breath. "What you're saying makes sense . . . but what about that happy, stable world Lysos wanted? Are we happy? Happier than people on other planets?"
Renna smiled, meeting her eyes once more. "You get right to the heart of the matter, don't you, Maia? How can I answer that? Who am I to judge?" He looked up at low, white cumulus clouds, whose flat bottoms rode an invisible pressure layer not far above the Manitou's topmast. "I've been to worlds which might seem like paradise to you. All your terrible experiences, this year, would have been next to impossible on Passion or New Terra. Law, technology, and a universal maternal state would have prevented them, or instantly stepped in with remedies.
"On the other hand, those worlds have problems rarely or never seen here. Economic and social upheavals. Suicide. Sex crimes. Fashion slavery. Pseudowar, and sometimes the real thing. Solipsism plagues. Cyberdysomism and demimortalism. Ennui. ..."
Maia looked at him, wondering if he even noticed his lapse into alien dialect. Most of the words had no meaning to her. It reinforced her impression that the universe was vast, unfathomably strange, and forever beyond her reach.
"All I can do is speak for myself." Renna continued in a low voice. He paused, looking across the sun- and shadow-splashed sea, then turned back and squeezed her hand again, briefly. His face crinkled in a startling manner at the edges of the eyes, and he smiled.
"Right now I'm happy, Maia. To be here, alive, and breathing air from an endless sky."
Maia cheered up considerably once the talk moved on to other things. Answering Renna's questions, she tried to explain some of the mysterious activities of Manitou's sailors—climbing the rigging, unfurling sails, scraping salt crust, oiling winches, tying lanyards and untying them, performing all the endless tasks required to-keep a vessel in good running trim. Renna marveled at myriad details and spoke admiringly of "lost arts, preserved and wonderfully improved."
They told more of their personal stories. Maia related some of the amusing misadventures she and Leie used to have, as young hellions in Port Sanger, and found that a poignant warmth of recollection now overcame much of the pain. In return, Renna told her briefly of his capture while visiting a House of Ease in Caria, at the behest of a venerable state councillor he had trusted.
"Was her name Odo?" she asked, and Renna blinked. "How did you know?"
Maia grinned. "Remember the message you sent from your prison cell? The one I intercepted? You spoke of not trusting someone called Odo. Am I right?"
Renna sighed. "Yeah. Let it be a lesson. Never let your gonads get ahead of clear thinking."
"I'll take your word for it," Maia said dryly. Renna nodded, then looked at her, caught her expression, and they both broke down, laughing.
They continued telling stories. His concerned fascinating, faraway worlds of the Great Phylum of Humanity, while Maia lingered over the tale of her ultimate conquest, with Leie's help, of the most secret, hidden part of Lamatia Hold, solving the riddle of a very strange combination lock. Renna seemed impressed with the feat, and claimed to feel honored when she said it was the first time she had ever told anyone about it.
"You know, with your talent for pattern recog—"
A shout interrupted from the radar shed. Two boys went scrambling up the mainmast, clinging to an upper spar while peering in the distance. One cried out and pointed. Soon, the entire ship's complement stood at the port rail, shading their eyes and staring expectantly.
"What is it?" Renna asked. Maia could only shake her head, as perplexed as he. A murmur coursed the crowd, followed by a sudden hush. Squinting against reflections, Maia finally saw an object hove into view, ahead and to the south.
She gasped. "I think . . . it's a greatflower tree!"
It had all the outward appearances of a small island. One covered by flagpoles draped with tattered banners, as if legions had fought to claim and hold a tiny patch of dry land in the middle of the sea. Only this isle drifted, floating at an angle to the steady progress of the ship. As they approached, Maia saw the flagpoles were like spindly tree trunks. The ragged pennants weren't ensigns at all, but the remnants of glowing, iridescent petals.
"I saw a clip on these, long ago," Maia explained. "The greatflower lives off tiny sea creatures. You know, the kind with just one cell? Below the surface, it spreads out filmy sheets to catch them. That's why Poulandres ordered us to move away, instead of going closer for a better look. Wouldn't be right to hurt it, just out of curiosity."
"The thing looks pretty badly damaged already," Renna commented, noting the frayed flowers. Yet he seemed as enthralled as Maia by those remaining fragments, whose blue and yellow and crimson luminance seemed independent of reflected sunlight, shimmering across the waters. "What are those? Birds, picking away at the plant? Is it dead?"
Indeed, flocks of winged creatures—some with filmy wingspans wider than the Manitou's spars—swarmed the floating island like midges on a dying beast, attacking the brightly hued portions. Maia replied, "I remember now. They're helping it. That's how the greatflower breeds. The birds carry its pollen in their wings to the next tree, and the next."
As they watched, a small detachment of dark shapes swirled off the cloud of birds and came swooping toward the Manitou. At the captain's sharp command, crewmen dove belowdecks, emerging with slingshots and wrist catapults, which they fired to drive the graceful, soaring beasts away from the straining sails. The fliers inflicted only a little damage with narrow jaws filled with jagged teeth, before losing their appetite for canvas and flying away . . . though not before one tried nipping at the bright red hair of one of the boys aloft. An event that everyone but the poor victim seemed to find hilarious.
The greatflower flowed past only a hundred meters away. Its maze of color could now be seen extending beneath the water's surface, in tendrils that floated far behind. Schools of bright fish darted among the drifting fronds, in counterpoint to the frenetic feeding of the birds. Maia snapped her fingers. "Too bad we missed seeing one in late summer, when the flowers are in full bloom. Believe it or not, the trees use them as sails, to keep from being blown ashore during storm season. Now I guess the currents are enough, so the sails fall apart."
She turned to Renna. "Is that an example of what you mean by ... adaptation? It must be an original Stratoin life-form, or you'd have seen things like it before, wouldn't you?"
Renna had been staring at the colorful, floating isle with its retinue of scavengers, as it drifted behind Manitou's wake. "It's too wonderful for me to have missed, in any of the sectors I've been. It's native, all right. Even Lysos wasn't clever enough to design that."
Soon another greatflower hove into view, this time with fuller petals, diffracting sunlight in ways Renna excitedly described as "holographic." In turn, Maia told him about a tribe of savage sea people who had cast their lot forever with the greatflowers, sailing them like ships, collecting nectar and plankton, netting birds and fish, and snaring an occasional, castaway sailor to spark their daughters for another generation. Living wild and unfettered, the runaway society had lasted until planetary authorities and seafaring guilds joined forces to round them up as "ecological irresponsibles."
"Is that story true?" Renna asked, both dubious and entranced at the same time.
In fact, Maia had based it on very real tales from the Southern Isles. But the connection with greatflowers was her own invention, made up on the spur of the moment. "What do you think?" she asked, with an arched eyebrow.
Renna shook his head. "I think you're quite recovered from your near-drowning. Better have the doctor ta
ke you off whatever he's been giving you."
The last greatflower fell astern, and both crew and passengers soon returned to the tedium of routine. To pass the time, Renna and Maia used her sextant to take sights on the sun and horizon, comparing calculations and betting to guess the time without looking at Renna's watch. They also gossiped. Maia laughed aloud and clapped when Renna puffed his cheeks in a caricature of the chief cook, announcing in anomalously squeaky tones that lunch would be delayed because glory frost had gotten in the pudding, and he'd be cursed before he fed it to "a bunch o' unruly vars, too hepped t'ken a man from a lugar!"
"That reminds me of a story," she responded, and went on to relate the tale of a sea captain who let his passengers frolic in a late-evening glory-fall, then fell asleep, ". . . only to waken hours later when the women had set fire to his sails!"
Brin, David - Glory Season Page 36