carried a rolled-up chart, which she unfurled with both hands. “You ever get a good latitude fix with that toy Pegyul gave you?” she asked.
Maia nodded. After two dips in the ocean, she hadn’t yet inspected the minisextant, and feared the worst. Before yesterday, however, she had taken several good sightings from their prison pinnacle. “Let’s see … we must’ve been dumped on…” She bent to peer at the chart, which showed a long archipelago of narrow, jagged prominences, crisscrossed by perpendicular coordinate lines. Maia saw a slanted row of cursive lettering, and rocked back. “Well I’ll be damned. We’re in the Dragons’ Teeth!”
“Yeah. How about that.” Naroin replied. These were islands of legend. “I’ll tell you some interestin’ things about ’em, later. But now—the latitude, Maia?”
“Oh, yes.” Maia reached out and tapped with one finger. “There. They must have left us on, um, Grimké Island.”
“Mm. Thought so from the outline. Then that one over there”—Naroin pointed westward at a mist-shrouded mass—“must be De Gournay. And just past it to the north, that’s the best course toward deep water. Two good days and we’re in shipping lanes.”
Maia nodded. “Right. From there, all you need is a compass heading. I hope you make it.”
Naroin looked up. “What? You’re not coming along?”
“No. I’ll take the skiff, if it’s all right with you. I have unfinished business around here.”
“Renna an’ your sister.” Naroin nodded. “But you don’t even know where to look!”
Maia shrugged. “Brod will come. He knows where the man sanctuary is, at Halsey Beacon. From there, we may spot some clue. Find the hideout where Renna’s being kept.” Maia did not mention the uncomfortable fact that Leie was one of the keepers. She shifted her feet. “Actually, that chart would be more useful to us, since you’ll be off the edge just a few hours after…”
Naroin sniffed. “There are others below, anyway. Sure, take it.” She rolled the vellum sheet and slapped it gruffly into Maia’s hands. Clearly she was masking feelings like the ones erupting in Maia’s own breast. It was hard giving up a friend, now that she had one. Maia felt warmed that the woman sailor shared the sentiment.
. “O’ course, Renna might not even be in the archipelago anymore,” Naroin pointed out.
“True. But if so, why would they have gone to such lengths to get rid of us? Even as witnesses, we’d not be much threat if they’d fled in some unknown direction. No, I’m convinced he and Leie are nearby. They’ve got to be.”
There followed a long silence between the two women, punctuated only by the sounds of nearby raucous chopping, hammering and scraping. Then Naroin said, “If you ever finally reach a big town, get to a comm unit an’ dial PES five-four-niner-six. Call collect. Give ’em my name.
“But what if you aren’t … if you never … I mean—” Maia stopped, unable to tactfully say it. But Naroin only laughed, as if relieved to have something to make light of.
“What if I never make it? Then if you please, tell my boss where you saw me last. All the things you’ve done an’ seen. Tell ’em I said you got a favor or two comin’. At least they might help get you a decent job.”
“Mm. Thanks. So long as it has nothing to do with coal—”
“Or saltwater!” Naroin laughed again,, and spread her small, strong arms for an embrace.
“Good luck, virgie. Keep outta jail. Don’t get hit on the head so much. An’
PART 3
Today I told the heirs of Lysos all about the law. A law they had no role in passing. One they cannot amend or disobey.
The assembled savants, councillors, and priestesses listened to my speech in stony silence. Though I had already informed some of them, in private, I could still sense shock and churning disbelief behind many rigid faces.
“After millennia, we of the Phylum have learned the hard lesson of speciation,” I told them. “Separated by vast gulfs of space, distant cousins lose their sense of common heritage. Isolated human tribes drift apart, emerging far down the stream of time, changed beyond recognition. This is a loss of much more than memory.”
The grimness of my audience was unsettling. Yet Iolanthe and others had counseled frankness, not diplomatic euphemisms, so I told the leaders accounts from the archives of my service—a litany of misadventure and horror, of catastrophic misunderstandings and tragedies provoked by narrow worldviews. Of self-righteous ethnic spasms and deadly vendettas, with each side convinced (and armed with proof) that it was right. Of exploitations worse than those we once thought jettisoned in Earth’s predawn past. Worse for being perpetrated by cousins who refused to know each other anymore, or listen.
Tragedies that finally brought forth Law.
“Till now, I’ve described how renewed contact might prove advantageous. Arts and sciences would be shared, and vast libraries containing solutions to countless problems. Many of you looked at me, and thought, ‘Well, he is but one man. To get those good things, we can endure rare visits by solitary envoys. We’ll pick and choose from the cornucopia, without disrupting our ordered destiny.”
“Others of you suspected more would be involved. Much more. There is.”
I called forth a holographic image to glimmer in the center of the council hall, a glistening snowflake as broad as a planet, as thin as a tree, reflecting the light of galaxies.
“Today, a second service links the Phylum worlds, more important than the one provided by peripatetics. It is a service some of you will surely loathe, like foul-tasting medicine. The great icecraft move between ten thousand suns—more slowly than messengers like me. But their way is inexorable. They carry stability. They bring change.”
A Perkinite delegate leaped up. “We’ll never accept them. We’ll fight!”
I had expected that.
“Do what you feel you must. Blow up the first icecraft, or ten, unmindful of the countless sleeping innocents you thus consign to die. Some callous worlds have murdered hundreds of snowy hibernibarges, and yet, finally surrendered.
“Try what you will. Bloodshed will transform you. Inevitably, guilt and shame will divert your children, or grandchildren, from the path you choose for them. Even passive resistance will give way in time, as curiosity works on your descendants; tempting them to sample from the bright new moons that circle in their sky.
“No brutal war fleets will force compliance. Vow, if you must, to wait us out. Planets are patient; so are your splendid, ancient clans, more long-lived than any single human or government.
“But the Phylum and the Law are even-more persistent. They will not have ‘no’ for an answer. More is at stake than one world’s myth of mission and grand isolation.”
The words felt hard, yet it was good to have them out. I sensed support from many on the council who had coached my presentation to shock matters from a standstill. How fortunate that here, unlike Watarki World or New Levant, a strong minority sees the obvious. That solitude and speciation are not human ways.
“Look at it this way,” I concluded. “Lysos and the Founders sought seclusion to perfect their experiment. But have you not been tested by time, and validated, as well as any way of life can be, in its context? Isn’t it time to come out and show your cousins what you’ve wrought?”
A lingering silence greeted my conclusion. Iolanthe led some tardy, uncomfortable applause that fluttered about the hall and fled through the skylights like an escaping bird. Amid frigid glowers from the rest, the Speaker
