Glory Season

There was an afterword in another hand—a left-handed scrawl Maia instantly recognized.

Hey, Sis. You know me. Lousy at writin’. Just remember, we’re a team. I’ll catch up, wherever they take you. Count on it. Love, L.

Maia reread the last few paragraphs, then folded the letter and slipped it under her pillow. She rolled over, away from the soft light, and fell asleep. This time, her dreams, while painful, seemed less desolate and alone.

* * *

When they wheeled her on deck the next day, to get some sun, Maia discovered she wasn’t the only recuperating patient aboard. Half a dozen other bandaged women lay in various stages of repair, under the gaze of a pair of militia guards. Naroin’s young clone—whose name was Hullin—told her that others rested below, too ill to be moved. The injured men were being carried separately, of course, aboard the Sea Lion, which could be glimpsed following a parallel track, so sleek and powerful it almost kept pace with this white-winged racer. Hullin couldn’t give Maia any information about which of the Manitou crew survived the fight at Jellicoe Sanctuary, though she promised to inquire. There had not been many, she knew. The doctors, inexperienced at treating gunshot wounds, had lost several on the operating table.

That news left Maia staring across the blue water, dejected, until a presence wheeled up alongside. “Hello, virgie… S’good to see you.”

The voice was a pale shadow of its former mellow, persuasive croon. The rad leader’s nearly-black skin now seemed bleached, almost pale from illness and anemia.

“That’s not my name,” Maia told Kiel. “The other thing’s none of your business. Never was.”

Kiel nodded, accepting the rebuke. “Hello, then… Maia.”

“Hello.” Pausing, Maia regretted her harsh response. “I’m glad to see you made it.”

“Mm. Same to you. They say survival is Nature’s only form of flattery. I guess that’s true, even for prisoners like us.”

Maia was in no mood for wry philosophy, and made her feelings known through silence. With a heavy sigh, Kiel rolled a few feet away, leaving Maia to watch the world-ocean glide by in peace. There were questions Maia knew she should be asking. Perhaps she would, eventually. But right now, her mind remained stiff, like her body, too inflexible for rapid changes of inertia.

A little before lunch, ennui began to rob even petulance of its attraction. Maia reread the quick-scrawled letter from Brod and Leie a few more times, allowing herself to begin wondering about what lay concealed between the phrases. There were tensions and alliances, both stated and implied. Local cops and priestesses? Acting at odds from their official bosses, in Caria? Had their union with the Pinnipeds extended only to wiping out a band of pirates? Or would it go farther?

What of the special, secretive defense clans who had also arrived at Jellicoe to secure their hidden base? —which was no longer hidden, after all. Then there were Kiel’s radical supporters, on the mainland. And the Perkinites, of course. All had their own agendas. All felt passionately endangered by possible change in the order of life on Stratos.

It might have been a situation fraught with even more violent peril, perhaps risk of open war, had the object of their contention not evaporated in midair before everyone’s eyes. With the centerpiece of struggle removed, the frantic mood of excess may have eased. At least the killing had stopped, for now.

It was much too complicated to focus her mind on, for long. She was glad when an attendant came to wheel her back to her room, where she ate, then took a long nap. Later, when Naroin knocked and entered, Maia felt marginally better, her mind a little farther along the path toward rational thinking.

The former bosun carried a stack of thin, leather-bound volumes. “These were sent over before we sailed, for when you felt better. Gifts from the Pinniped commodore.”

Maia looked at Naroin. The detective’s accent had softened quite a bit. Not that it was posh now, by a long shot. But it had lost much of its rough, nautical edge. The books lay on the side of the bed. Maia stroked the spine of one, drew it closer, and opened the fine linen pages.

Life. She recognized the subject instantly and sighed. Who needs it?

Yet, the paper felt rich to the touch. It even swelled voluptuous. Brief glimpses of the illustrations, featuring countless arrays of tiny squares and dots, seemed to tease a corner of her mind in the same way that a bright, sharp light might tickle the beginnings of a sneeze.

“I always figured that for some men it was, well, addicting in a way, like a drug. Is that how it is with you?” Naroin seemed genuinely, respectfully curious.

Maia pushed the book away. After several seconds she nodded.

“It’s beautiful.” Her throat was too thick to say more.

“Hm. With all the time I’ve spent around sailors, you’d think I’d see it, too.” Naroin shook her head. “Can’t say as I do. I like men. Get along with ’em fine. But I guess some things go beyond like or dislike.”

“I guess.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Naroin moved closer to sit on the edge of the bed.

“That’s why I was on the ol’ Wotan, when you first came aboard, in Port Sanger. My experience as a sea hand gave me cover for my assignment. The collier would make many stops along the coast. Let me look around all the right places for clues.”

“To find a missing alien?”

“Lysos, no!” Naroin laughed. “Oh, he was already kidnapped by then, but my clan wasn’t brought in. Our mothers knew somethin’ fishy had happened, all right. But a field op like me sticks to her assignment … at least till given clear reason to switch tracks.”

“The blue powder, then,” Maia said, remembering Naroin’s interest in events at Lanargh.

“That’s it. We knew a group had started pushin’ the stuff again, along the frontier coast. Happens every two or three generations. We often pick up a few coinsticks helpin’ track it down.”

There it was again, the change in perspective separating vars from clones. What a summerling had seen as urgent must appear less pressing in the patient view of Stratoin hives. “The powder’s been around a long time, then. Let me guess. Each appearance is a bit less disrupting than the last time.”

“Right.” Naroin nodded. “After all, winter sparkings don’t have any genetic effect. It’s only during summers that new variants come about, when a man’s efforts profit him in true offspring. Males who react less to the drug are just a little better at stayin’ calm and passin’ on that trait. Each outbreak gets a smidgen milder, easier to put down.”

“Then why is the powder illegal?”

“You saw for yourself. It causes accidents, violence during quiet time. It gives rich clans unfair advantages over poor ’uns. But there’s more. The powder was invented for a purpose.”

Maia blinked once, twice, then realized. “Sometimes … it may be useful to have men …”

“Hot as fire, even in the dead o’ frost season. You get it.”

“The Enemy. We used this stuff during the Defense.”

“That’s my guess. Lysos respected Momma Nature. If you want to push a trait into the background, fine, but that’s not the same as throwin’ it away. Thriftier to put it on a shelf, where it might come in handy, someday.”

Maia’s thoughts had already plunged ahead. The Council rulers must have flooded Stratos with the stuff, during the battle to fight off the Enemy foeship.

Imagine every male a warrior. Almost overnight, it would have multiplied the colony’s strength, complementing female skill and planning with a wrath like none other in the universe.

Only, what happened after victory?

The good men—those who might have been trustworthy on any Phylum world, even before Lysos—would