The next day, a vast squadron of zoor passed to the north, like gaily painted parasols, or flattish balloons that had escaped a party for festive giants. Morning sunlight refracted through their bulbous, translucent gasbags and dangling tendrils, casting multicolored shadows on the pale waters The convoy stretched from horizon to horizon.
Maia watched from the precipice, along with Brod and several women, remembering the last time she had seen big floaters like these, though nowhere near this many. It had been from the narrow window of her prison cell, in Long Valley, when she had thought Leie dead, had yet to meet Renna, and seemed entirely alone in the world. By rights, she should be less desolate now. Leie was
Misery is relative, she knew. And present pain is always worse than its memory. This softer captivity didn’t ease her bitterness thinking of Leie’s actions, her angst for Renna, or her feelings of helplessness.
“Look!” Brod cried, pointing to the west, the source of the zoor migration. Women shaded their eyes and, one by one; gasped.
There, in the midst of the floating armada, emerging out of brightness, cruised three stately, cylindrical behemoths, gliding placidly like whales among jellyfish.
“Pontoos,” Maia breathed. The cigar-shaped beasts stretched hundreds of meters, more closely resembling the fanciful zep’lin on her sextant cover than the surrounding zoor, or, for that matter, the small dirigibles used nowadays to carry mail. Their flanks shimmered with facets like iridescent fish scales, and they trailed long, slender appendages which, at intervals, dipped to the waves, snatching edible bits, or siphoning water to split, with sunlight, into hydrogen and oxygen.
Despite protective laws passed by council and church, the majestic creatures were slowly vanishing from the face of Stratos. It was rare to sight one anywhere near habitable regions.
Then she recalled some of Renna’s stories of other worlds and vistas, strange beyond imagining. It brought on a pang of loss and envy. Maia had never thought, before meeting the Earthling, of
“I just remembered …” young Brod said contemplatively. “Something I read about zoor and such. You know, they’re attracted to the smell of burning sugar? We have some we could put on the fire.”
Women turned to look at him. “So?” Naroin asked. “You want to invite ’em over for supper, maybe?”
He shrugged. “Actually, I was thinking that flying out of here might be better than trying to sail that raft. Anyway, it’s an idea.”
There was a long stretch of silence, then women on both sides laughed aloud, or groaned, at the sheer inanity of the idea. Maia sadly agreed. Of all the boys who tried hitching rides on zoors each year, only a small number were ever seen again. Still, the notion had a vivid, fanciful charm, and she might have given it a thought if the prevailing winds blew toward safe haven … or even dry land. While terribly bright, Brod clearly did not have practical instincts.
His longing expression, followed by sheepish blushing, finished off one lingering doubt Maia had nursed— that Brod might just possibly be a spy, left here by the reavers to watch over the prisoners. She had grown suspicious after all that had happened, the last few months. But no one could fake that sudden shift from wistfulness to embarrassment! His open thoughts seemed more like her own than old Bennett’s had ever been. Or, when you got right down to it, most of the women she had known. He was much less romantically mysterious than her hearth-friend, the Earthling stranger, but that was okay, too.
The raft had been prepared in four parts, to be linked quickly by hand as each was lowered at high tide. The vars practiced all the necessary movements over and over again, on a clearing by the converted winch. While it would doubtless be many times harder on bobbing seas, they finally felt ready. The first window for a launch would, come early the next morning.
There were reasons for haste. Provisions would run out in eight to ten days. A lighter from the reaver colony was due about then. Inanna and the others wanted to leave well before that.
And if the lighter never came? All the more reason to depart soon. Either way, they’d be hungry but not starved by the time they reached the Mediant Coast.
No one tried very hard to persuade Maia and Naroin to change their minds and come along. Someone ought to stay and put up a pretense, when and if the supply ship came, thus giving the raft crew more time to get away. “We’ll send help,” Inanna assured.
Maia had no intention of waiting around for the promise to be kept. Those left behind would set to work at once on Naroin’s alternate plan. Maia had motives all her own. If a crude dinghy did get built, she would not sail with Naroin and Brod to Landing Continent, but ask to be dropped off along the way. It had to be possible to find out which neighboring island held Renna and the rads—the secret reaver base where Maia planned on snaring Leie, pinning her down, and getting a word in for a change.
The night before launching day, eighteen women and one boy sat up late around the fire, telling stories, joking, singing sea chanteys. The vars kidded young Brod about what a pity it was that glory had been so sparse, and was he sure he didn’t want to come along, after all? Though relieved in a way, by the kindness of the weather, Brod also seemed ambivalently wistful at his narrow escape. Maia guessed with a smile that something within him had been curious and willing to take up the challenge, if it came.
The mood of anticipation had everyone keyed up. Two of the younger sailors, a lithe, blonde sixer from Quinnland and an exotic-looking sevener from Hypatia, started banging spoons against their cups to a quick, celebratory rhythm, then launched a session of round-singing.
It was a famous drinking song, and it hardly mattered that no one had anything to drink. The singers alternately leaned toward Brod, then shied off again, to his embarrassment and the amusement of everyone else. Taking turns one by one, going around the circle, each woman added another verse, more bawdy than the last. At her turn, Maia waved off with a smile. But when the round seemed about to skip past Brod, the young man leaped instead to his feet. Singing, his voice was strong, and did not crack.
