ship's officers—six of the middies hardly spoke to Michael. That two of these, Sally Pike and Kareem Jones, had been among Michael's circle of friendly acquaintances at Saganami Island, made this ostracization confusing as well as painful.
But there was nothing Michael could say to them that wouldn't make the situation worse, so he hauled his way through his day, wondering if what he was feeling was anything like what he'd heard about the isolation of command.
At fourteen, after several very intensive sessions with Dinah—sessions that were represented to a pleased Ephraim as preparing Judith to resume her childbearing duties—Judith had been initiated into the very small, highly secret, and slightly mystical Sisterhood of Barbara.
The Sisterhood took its inspiration from Barbara Bancroft, the woman who had foiled the Masadan plot to destroy all life on Grayson following the failure of their attempt to seize control of it. Even before she was captured by Ephraim, Judith had heard of Barbara, for on Grayson she was revered as the planet's savior. The Barbara of whom Judith heard from the Faithful was a completely different person: evil, conniving, traitorous, faithless, and blasphemous.
Indeed, the Faithful's version of Barbara Bancroft was so horrendous that initially Judith wondered that the Sisterhood had taken 'this Harlot of Satan' as their patron. After a few secret meetings with Dinah and her cell, Judith understood that it was precisely because Barbara was so vilified that these brave Masadan women named themselves for her. However else Barbara Bancroft was represented by the Masadans, the one thing the Faithful could not say of her was that she was cowardly. Moreover, Barbara had won in her battle against Masadan tyranny. She had paid a terrifying price for that victory, but she had won.
The Sisterhood had two goals. The first was to educate and, when possible, to protect other women. That protection was granted to any woman, but the educational benefits were only extended to those women who had been tried and found perfectly trustworthy. Maintaining secrecy was made easier in that any woman who so much as learned to read a few simple lines or do more complex mathematics than could be worked out by counting on fingers was considered suspect by the Elders of the Faithful.
Tales of the punishments doled out to those who had transgressed were told in the nursery, repeated in sermons, and reinforced in a hundred little ways. There was even a sub-set of the Faithful who viewed these simple arts as the first step down the slippery slope to technological corruption. These, known as the Pure in Faith, refused to have even their men learn to read or write. As a result, the Pure lived in isolated enclaves and had little to do with the rest of the Faithful—other than providing some of the most ferocious and unquestioning soldiers.
Such indoctrination made it highly unlikely that any Masadan woman who took the daring step of joining the Sisterhood would betray her Sisters later. Indeed, that irrevocable loss of intellectual virginity drew the women closer to each other, bound by their awareness of the penalties all would share—even one who might later regret her learning and report the rest.
Judith rapidly discovered that the Sisterhood did more than teach forbidden arts and knowledge. The Sisters were also trained in dissembling so that the accidental revelation of their knowledge—even by something as casual as being seen to read a printed label—could not betray them.
But these were all elements of the first of the Sisterhood's missions. The second of the Sisterhood's goals was far more daring, perhaps impossible, for the Sisterhood hoped to someday lead an Exodus that would set the Sisters free from domination by their masters.
No matter how hard the Faithful tried to keep knowledge of the outer universe from their women, the truth had filtered in—often hinted at in the very restrictions and rulings the men enforced upon their women. The Sisters knew that somewhere beyond the reach of Masada's sun were worlds where women were not regarded as property. There were worlds where women were permitted to read, write, and think; worlds where, so the most daring among them whispered, women were even permitted to live without male protectors.
From the day Ephraim had dragged the shocked and traumatized Grayson ten-year-old into the nursery, Dinah had dreamed that Judith might be the promised Moses who would lead the Sisterhood to freedom. Nor had the girl disappointed the older woman's hopes. From the start Judith had demonstrated both education and self- control—and the intelligence to hide both. Her innocent anecdotes about the life she had left, mostly told before she realized how dangerous they were, had confirmed the Sisterhood's most sacred hopes and dreams.
Thus Judith, while believing herself alone, had been cocooned within the watchful web of the senior Sisters. They had not dared draw her into their secret, not until they saw if Judith would, like so many women, perversely fasten onto her tormentor, envisioning him as a hero who had the right to treat her as a mere thing. Four years of brutal testing, two of those after Judith was married to a man who had set his seal on ostensibly stronger souls, were allowed to pass before Dinah confronted Judith and drew her into the Sisterhood.
Now, two years after Judith's initiation, faced with Ephraim's plans to abort her unborn daughter, confronting a future marked by similar abuse, Judith accepted the mantle the Sisterhood had set upon her shoulders. She would be their Moses, and, though hearing no divine voice to guide her actions, she decreed that the time for the Sisterhood's Exodus had come.
Although he understood the reasons, Michael still found the wholly male diplomatic corps bound for Endicott rather odd. Every political meeting he had attended since his father's death had been dominated by Beth. Even when Beth had been a minor, her regent had been their aunt Caitrin, the Grand Duchess Winton-Henke. This all male group was positively weird.
Then again, maybe the fact that gender and availability, rather than pure ability, had been key elements in selecting this group was why it was so peculiar. There was also the fact that much of the Manticoran diplomatic corps felt that its first task was preserving peace rather than preparing for war. Many of the best and the brightest among them were employing their energies trying to figure out how to work with the Peeps. Doubtless the Masadan mission was not an assignment those would seek.
Perhaps, too, the reality that Masada was not the Queen's first choice for an ally in this region of space had something to do with those who had volunteered. Those diplomats, like Sir Anthony Langtry, more of Her Majesty's way of thinking and ready to embrace the possibility that war could not be prevented would be striving to win over the Graysons.
The men who had volunteered for the Masadan mission were eager for any chance to prove themselves— as they most surely would if they could win the misogynistic and egocentric Faithful over to an alliance.
Forbes Lawler, a first generation prolong recipient and former member of the House of Commons, was the head of the group. Handsome, with iron grey hair, and a lean, athletic build, Lawler spoke in a straight-at-them, square-jawed fashion that reminded Michael of his first gym teacher. Although Lawler never said so directly, he clearly hoped that in addition to bringing new instructions he would soon be replacing the current ambassador.
Quentin Cayen served as Lawler's personal assistant. Young enough to be a second-generation prolong recipient, Cayen tinted his hair silver at the temples and affected reading glasses in an attempt to bring gravity to his otherwise boyishly plump features. Michael thought Cayen looked rather silly, but since Cayen was otherwise competent, and eager to please without being offensive, the midshipman tried to overlook the other man's cosmetic enhancements.
The last member of the delegation, John Hill, was ostensibly a computer specialist. He was very knowledgeable about the Masadans, including being familiar with the Faithful's religious rituals and dietary restrictions. Hill was pretty clearly a spy, but Michael thought he might well be the most competent member of the trio.
On the day
'Where are you going, Michael?' Astrid asked, setting her own reader aside, apparently prepared to accompany him.
'Mr. Lawler wants me,' Michael replied.
'Oh,' Astrid said, disappointed, and turned back to her work.
Michael, who had the vague feeling that Astrid had been trying to get him alone for several days now, saw
