Glory Season

I have never been so nervous before a mission. This sub-species has much to offer. Their bold experiment may enrich humanity. Too bad, as chance had it, they were rediscovered by a male peripatetic.

The omens might have been better were I a woman.

13

Maia was soon disoriented in the stealthy dash through dark corridors and down unlit stairs. Kiel, who led the way, kept rushing ahead and then causing a bump and jostle each time she stopped abruptly to use a small penlight, consulting a hand-drawn map.

“Where did you get that?” Maia whispered at one point, pointing at the vellum diagram.

“A friend worked on the digging crew. Now be quiet.”

Maia took no offense. A few gruff words were nothing compared to what else Kiel and Thalla had done. Maia’s heart was full to bursting that her friends had come all this way, at untold risks, to rescue her.

And Renna, she reminded herself. As they hurried through the gloomy halls, she tried not to look at the person she had just seen for the first time, whom she had beforehand thought she knew so well. A creature from outer space. Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Renna hung a few paces behind. Maia felt irritated with him, and with herself, that her feelings were so obvious. “Is he telling the truth?” she whispered to Thalla, as Kiel consulted her map again near a meeting of two vast, unlit dormitory chambers. “About being… you know?”

Thalla shrugged. “Never know with males. Always goin’ on about their travels. Maybe this one’s been farther than most.”

Maia wanted to believe Thalia’s nonchalance. “You must have suspected something when you picked up the radio message.”

“What radio message?” Thalla asked. As Kiel motioned them forward again, Maia found her confusion redoubling. She pursued whispered questions as they walked.

“If you didn’t get a message, how did you find us?”

“Wasn’t easy, virgie. Day after they took you, we tried following the trail. Seemed to be takin’ you east, but then a big gang of sisters from Keally Clan rode up and drove us off. By the time we circled round, the tracks were cold. Turns out they pulled a switch over by Flake Rock, so it wasn’t east, after all.”

Maia shook her head. She had been unconscious or delirious during most of the ride out from Lerner Hold, so she had no idea how long it had taken.

Thalla grinned. The tall woman’s pale face was barely visible in the reflection of Kiel’s swaying beam off stone walls. “Finally, we got wind o’ this Beller creature, comin’ upland with an escort. Kiel had a hunch they might be headin’ for this abandoned site. We got some friends together an’ managed to tag along out o’ sight. An’ here we are.”

Thalla made it sound so simple. In fact, it must have involved a lot of sacrifice, not to mention risk. “Then you didn’t come just for … him?” Maia jerked her head backward, toward the one taking up the rear. Thalla grimaced.

“Ain’t a man a man? It’ll drive the Perkies crazy he’s gone, though. Reason enough to take him, at least till the coast. There he can join his own kind.”

In the dark, Maia could not read Thalia’s features. The woman’s tone was tense and perhaps she wasn’t telling the whole truth. But the message was sufficient. “You came for me, after all.”

Thalla reached over as they walked, giving Maia’s shoulder a squeeze. “What are var-buddies for? Us against a Lysos-less world, virgie.”

It was like a line from that adventure book Maia had read, about stalwart summer women forging a new world out of the ruins of a brittle, broken yesterday. Suddenly, Kiel interrupted with a sharp hiss. Their guide covered her light and motioned for quiet. Silently, almost on tiptoe, they joined her near an intersection, where their dim corridor crossed another one, more brightly lit. Kiel cautiously leaned out to peer left, then right. Her breath cut short.

“What is it?” the man asked, catching up from behind, his voice carrying startlingly. Thalia’s hand made a chopping sign and he said no more. Standing still, they could hear faint sounds—a clinking, a low rattle, voices rising briefly, then fading to a low murmur. Kiel moved her hands to pantomime that there were people in sight, some distance down the cross corridor.

What now? Maia worried, a tightness in her throat. Clearly Kiel’s map was incomplete. Would it offer an alternate route? Was there enough time?

To Maia’s surprise, Kiel did not motion for them to turn around. Instead, she took a deep breath, visibly braced herself, and stepped boldly into the light!

Maia knew it was only her dark-adapted eyes overreacting. Still, when Kiel entered the wan illumination of the hallway, it was as if she had briefly gone aflame. How could anyone not notice such a shining presence?

But no one did. The older var glided smoothly across the exposed area without a sound, reentering darkness in safety on the other side. There was no change in the mutter of conversation. Thalla took the next turn, trying to imitate Kiel’s liquid, silent stride. Sudden reflection off her pale skin seemed even more glaringly impossible to ignore, lasting two ponderously long seconds. Then she, too, was across.

Maia glanced at the man, Renna, who smiled and touched her elbow, urging her to go ahead. It was a friendly gesture, an expression of confidence, and Maia briefly hated him for it. She could just make out the two women, dim figures across the bright intersection, also waiting for her. To Maia, her own heartbeat sounded loud enough to echo off the rocky walls. She got a grip on herself, flaring her nostrils, and stepped forward.

Time seemed to telescope, fractional seconds stretching into subjective hours. Maia’s distant feet moved on their own, freeing her to glance right toward a searing image of bracketed flamelight … of broken furniture burning in a chiseled fireplace, while silhouetted figures drank from goblets, leaning over to watch the arcing fall of dice onto a wooden table. Their cries made Maia’s skin crawl.

The scene was so dazzling, she became disoriented and veered off course to collide with a sharp corner of the intersection. Thalla had to yank her the rest of the way into blessed darkness. Maia rubbed where her forehead had struck stone, blinking to reaccustom her eyes to obscurity.

She looked up quickly. “Renna?” she whispered, casting about.

“I’m here, Maia,” came a soft reply.

She turned to her left. The man stood with Kiel a little farther down the dim hallway. Maia hadn’t heard or sensed him cross. Embarrassed by her outburst, she looked away. This person was not at all like the sage, older woman she had envisioned. Though there had been no lies, she nonetheless felt betrayed, if by nothing else, then by her all-too-human tendency to make assumptions.

Unless it has to do with the ships or sparking, you just suppose a person is female till you learn otherwise. I guess that’s not very nice.

Still … he should have told me!

Now she and Thalla took up the rear while Renna and Kiel forged ahead. For the first time, Maia noticed that the man was carrying a small blue pouch at his belt and something much larger strapped across his back. A slim case of burnished metal.

A Game of Life set, she realized. Oh, he’s a man, all right!

I was such an idiot, picturing some noble savant who’d figured out how to send such clever messages out of pure resourcefulness. I don’t suppose those tricks were difficult for a man who’s spent his whole life playing the game.

It was obvious enough, now. But trapped in her cell with only clicks in the night for company, she had been looking more through wishes than reason. How strange, to feel a sense of mourning for a friend who stood just a few meters away, alive, healthy, and, for the moment, free. Yet the Renna Maia had imagined was dead, as surely as Leie. This new Renna was an unwelcome replacement.