Glory Season

wondered why the precautions. Surely nobody was interested in her, now that Renna was gone. Then she noticed her attendants glancing backward, keeping a wary eye on a foursome of identical, formidable-looking women trailing ten meters behind, dressed as civilians but walking with the calm precision of soldiers. It marred the sense of normality that otherwise flowed over her while passing through bustling market streets.

For the first time since she and Leie had explored Lanargh, Maia felt immersed back in ordinary Stratoin life. Trade and traffic and conversation flowed in all directions. Countless unfamiliar faces came in trios, quintets, or even mixed-age octets. No doubt it would have seemed terribly exotic, had two innocent twins from the far northeast come ashore here on their first voyage from home. Now, myriad subtle differences from Port Sanger only seemed trivial and irrelevant. What she noticed were similarities, witnessed with new eyes.

Within a brick-lined workshop, open to the street, a family of artisans could be seen making a delicately specialized assortment of dinner ware. An elderly matriarch supervised ledger books, haggling over a wagonload of clay delivered by three identical teamsters. Meanwhile behind her, middle-aged clonelings labored at firing kilns, and agile youths learned the art of applying their long fingers to spinning wet mud on belt-driven wheels, molding shapeless lumps into the sturdy, fine shapes for which their clan was, no doubt, locally well-known.

Maia had only to shift her mental lens a little to imagine another scene. The walls withdrew, receding in the distance. Simple handmade benches and pottery wheels were replaced by the clean lines of pre-molded machinery, accurately tuned to squeeze clay into computer-drawn templates, which then passed under a glazing spray, then heat lamps, to emerge in great stacks, perfect, untouched by human hands.

The joy of craft. The quiet, serene assumption that each worker in a clan had a place—one that their daughters might also call theirs. All that would be lost.

Then, as her litter bearers threaded the market throng, Maia saw the stall where the potter clan sold their wares. She glimpsed prices… for a single dish, more than a var laborer earned in four days. So much that a modest clan would patch a chipped plate many times before thinking of buying a replacement. Maia knew. Even in wealthy Lamatia Hold, summer kids seldom dined off intact crockery.

Now magnify that by a thousand products and services, any of which might be enhanced, multiplied, made immeasurably cheaper and more widely available with applied technology. How much would be gained?

Moreover, she wondered, What if one of those clone daughters someday wanted to do something different, for a change?

She spied a group of boys running raucous circles around the patient lugars, then onward toward the park. They were the only males she had seen, even now, in midwinter. All others would be nearer the water, though no one barred their way this time of year. Maia found it odd, after so long in the company of men, not to have any around. Nor were vars like her common, either. Except within the temple grounds, they, too, were a tiny minority.

On arrival at the park, Maia gingerly got off the litter and walked a short distance to a walled ledge overlooking Ursulaborg. Here was one of the world’s great cities, which she and Leie had dreamed of visiting, someday. Certainly it far exceeded anything she had seen, yet now it looked parochial. She knew the place would fit into the vest pocket of any metropolis, on almost any Phylum world… save only those others which had also chosen pastoralism over the frantic genius of Homo technologicus.

Renna had earnestly respected the accomplishment of Lysos and the Founders, while clearly believing they were wrong.

What do I believe? Maia wondered. There are tradeoffs. That much, she knew. But are there any solutions?

It was still terribly hard, thinking of Renna. Within a corner of her mind, a persistent little voice kept refusing to let go. The dead have come back before, it insisted, bringing up the miraculous return of Leie. Others had thought Maia herself finished, only to find out reports of her demise were premature.

Hope was a desperate, painful little ember… and in this case absurd. Hundreds had witnessed the Visitor’s vaporization.

Let go. She told herself to be glad simply to have been his friend for a while. Perhaps, someday, there might come a chance to honor him, by shining a light here or there.

All else was fantasy. All else was dust.

* * *

As she gradually improved, Maia started getting visitors.

First came a covey of erect, gracile clones with wide-set eyes and narrow noses, dressed in fine fabrics, modestly dyed. The priestess introduced them as mother-elders of Starkland Clan, from nearby Joannaborg, a name that sounded only vaguely familiar until the women sat down opposite Maia, and began speaking of Brod. Instantly, she recognized the family resemblance. His nose, his wide-open, honest eyes.

Her friend had not been exaggerating. The clan of librarians did, indeed, keep caring about its sons, and even, apparently, its summer daughters, after they left home. The elders had learned of Brod’s misadventures, and wanted Maia’s reassurance, firsthand. She was moved by their gentleness, their earnest expressions of concern. Midway through an abbreviated account of her travels with their son, she showed them the letter proving he was all right.

“Poor grammar,” one of them clucked. “And look at that penmanship.”

Another, a little older, chided. “Lizbeth! You heard the young lady speak of what the poor boy’s been through.” She turned to Maia. “Please excuse our sister. She true-birthed our Brod, and is overcompensating. Do go on.”

It was all Maia could manage, not to smile in amusement. A prim, slightly scattershot sweetness seemed a core, heritable trait in this line. She could see where Brod got some of the qualities she admired. When they got up to leave, the women urged Maia to call, if she ever needed anything. Maia thanked them, and replied that she doubted she would be in town for very long.

The night before, she had heard the priestess and the archdeaconess arguing as they passed near her window, no doubt thinking she was asleep.

“You don’t have to wade through the thick of it as I do,” the rotund lay worker said. “While you var idealists sit here in a rustic stronghold, taking moral stands, there’s heaps of pressure coming down. The Teppins and the Frosts—”

“Teppins cause me no unsleep,” the priestess had answered.

“They should. Caria Temple spins at the whim of—”

“Ecclesiastic clans.” The tall one snorted. “Country priests and nuns are another matter. Can the hierarchs call anathema on so many? They risk heretics outnumbering orthodox in half the towns along the coast.”

“Wish I felt as sure. Seems a lot to risk over one poor, battered girl.”

“You know it’s not about her.”

“Not overall. But in our little corner of things, she’ll do as a symbol. Symbols matter. Look at what’s happening with the men…”

Men? Maia had wondered, as the voices receded. What do they mean by that? What’s happening? With what men?

She got a partial answer later, after the matrons of Starkland Hold departed, when an altercation broke out at the temple gates. Maia was by now well enough to hobble onto the porch of her guest cottage and witness a fierce argument taking place near the road. The var dedicants who doubled as watchwomen warily observed a band of clones like those Maia had seen before, following her litter through town. These, in turn, were trying to bar entry to a third group, a deputation of males wearing formal uniforms of one of the seafaring guilds. The men appeared meek, at first sight. Unlike either group of women, they carried no weapons, not even walking sticks. Eyes lowered, hands clasped, they nodded politely to whatever was shouted at them. Meanwhile they edged forward, shuffling ahead by slow, steady increments until the clones found themselves squeezed back, without room to maneuver. It was a comically effective tactic for males, Maia thought, compensating for winter docility with sheer bulk and obstinacy. Soon, they were through the gate, leaving the exasperated clone-soldiers puffing in