Glory Season

“Good, now close your eyes. Move a little closer and I’ll move your head to see best. Don’t open till I say so!”

It was one of those rituals that seemed so natural when you were three. Maia felt her sister’s hand take her braid and maneuver her until she brushed cool glass with the tip of her nose. “Okay, you can look now,” Leie said, suppressing a giggle.

Maia cracked one eye, and at first saw only a blur. The glass had several thin layers, separated by air pockets. She pulled back a bit and an image fell into focus. At least it seemed focused, remarkably magnified from this great height. Still, what she saw appeared more a jumble of fleshy colors— peppered with short black fur that was patchy in most places, but thick where one small pink appendage joined the intersection of two large ones. The latter, she realized, must be somebody’s legs. The small one in between …

“Oh!” she cried, rocking back until she had to flail for balance. Leie grabbed her, laughing at her surprise. Almost instantly Maia was back against the glass, trying again to bring the scene back into focus. “No, let me in now. It’s my turn!” Leie importuned. But Maia held fast and her twin grudgingly moved on to find another place, which she quickly declared to be “even better.” Maia was too intent to notice.

So that’s what a man looks like without clothes, she thought. The magnifying effects of the glass were confusing, and she found it hard to get any sense of proportion, let alone relate what she was seeing to those sterile diagrams she had studied in school. Where do they keep it while they’re walking around? I’d of thought it’d get in the way, hanging like that.

Maia was too embarrassed by her next thoughts to voice them even subvocally. Fascination won a hard- fought battle over revulsion and she peered eagerly, hoping to see when the thing changed. Does it really get bigger than that?

A hand entered her field of view, and reached past the limp appendage to scratch a hairy thigh. Maia drew back so her field of view encompassed the arm and torso and head of the reclining man, resting on silk pillows as he watched the dancers. He turned to say something to another man, lounging to his right, who laughed, then straightened and leaned forward with a more sober expression on his face, as if trying to pay close attention to the show. By their elbows lay piles of food and drink. The first man picked up a wineglass, draining it. He did not seem to notice the enticingly clad woman who moved to his side to refill it, nor others waiting nearby, prepared to move in with privacy curtains, at need.

“C’mere and see the sixers!” Leie called urgently. With some reluctance, Maia tore herself away, leaving her perch to sidle near her sibling. “Over by the north wall,” Leie suggested.

This pinkish pane was flawed by ripples, and the magnification wasn’t as good as back at the clear lens. It took a while to find the right viewing position, but Maia at last perceived a covey of girls waiting off to one side, dressed in pale, filmy gowns. They were made up to look less virginal—and no doubt doused liberally to fool the male sense of smell. Naturally, men were more attracted to older women who had already birthed once or twice. But this ceremony was for sixers alone. It was their special day and the mothers had spared no expense.

Maia did not have to count. There were thirteen of them, she knew. An entire class of Lamai winterlings, all primly, delectably identical, but each one hoping she would be the one reached for, when and if the moment came.

They’d be lucky if two or three made it this year. You didn’t expect much from sixers. At that age, whether you were a lowly var or haughty cloneling, your body only produced the right chemistry for reproduction during the height of winter. Even at seven, your fecund season wasn’t broad. Most women, even when they had the full backing of their clan, never got a ripening until they were eight or more. By then their season was wide enough to overlap some of the summer passion left in males during autumn, or starting to bud in springtime.

Lamatia wasn’t counting on much out of today’s solstice ceremony, but it was important anyway. A rite of passage for newly adult members of the clan. An omen for the coming year.

Now, as Maia watched, Lamai sixers began joining the Oosterwycks in the dance, slipping in one by one with their meticulously practiced steps. Somehow—probably by design—the smoother movements of the dusky professionals seemed to cause attention to flow toward the lighter-haired neophytes. The sixers had studied their moves with typical Lamai care. The dance was choreographed to give each one equal time, sweeping in controlled stages ever closer to their audience, yet Maia saw how eagerly each tried in little ways to upstage her sisters. Somehow, it only served to make them look more alike.

Leaning back to take a wide view of the proceedings, it struck Maia how the men below were in a situation they would possibly have killed for, only half a year ago, when all city gates were locked and guardia patrols kept a fierce eye on those few males allowed passes from nearby sanctuaries. In summer, men howled to get in.

Now, with womenfolk at their peak of receptivity, the male sailors lay there looking as if they’d rather have a good book, or something diverting on the tele. Perched on the edge of the dome, watching things she had only heard vaguely described before, Maia felt a sense of wonder mixed with jarring insight.

Irony. It was a word she had learned just recently. She liked the sound it made, as well as its slippery unwillingness to be pinned down or defined. One learned its meaning by example. This was a fine example of irony.

I wonder why Lysos made it this way … so nobody ever gets exactly what she or he wants, except when she or he doesn’t want it?

“Maia, psst!” Leie waved from the clear, convex section. “Come look!”

“Has one of them gotten big?” Maia asked breathlessly as she hurried over, almost losing her footing along the way. She quivered with an eerily enticing mixture of repugnance and excitement as she put her head next to her twin’s.

What swam into focus was not the mysterious appendage, after all. It was the bearded face of a man Maia recognized—the handsome, virile captain of the freighter Empress whose hearty laugh and thundering voice were such a delight to hear whenever the mothers had him and his officers to dinner. Half of Lamatia’s summerling boys wanted to ship out with him; half the summer girls fantasized he was their father.

But the sixers below weren’t seeking fathers for their children. Not this time of year. The same physical act was more valuable in winter than in summer, because fathering had nothing to do with it.

What the sixers sought was sparking, insemination as catalyst to start a placenta forming. Triggering a clonal ripening within. And this captain was said to have sparked seven, sometimes eight or more winterlings some years, all by himself! Like in the nursery rhyme…

Summer Daddy,
       sperm comes easy.
Eager Daddy,
       makes a var.
Winter Sparker,
       sperm comes precious.
Wonder Sparker,
       one goes far!

The captain’s eyes narrowed as he followed the movements of the dancers, now gyrating around him, almost in arm’s reach. His oiled, powerfully muscled body reminded Maia not so much of a lugar’s as that of a perfect race horse, rippling with more power than any human ought ever need. His face, hirsute yet full of that strange masculine intelligence, seemed to concentrate on a thought, tracking it intensely. As one Lamai sixer whirled close, he squinted, working his jaw in what appeared to be the start of a smile, a dawning eagerness. He lifted his hand… And used it to cover his mouth, trying gallantly but in vain to stifle a gaping yawn.

* * *

It was dawn before the muddle of dreams and warped recollections gave way to a foggy sense of reality.