Brin, David - Glory Season

by Glory Season (mobi)

  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. Dawn of which day, Maia could not tell, since her body ached as if she had been wrestling fierce enemies night after endless night. Only in stages did she come to realize her hands were bound in black cloth, and so were her legs. She was in the back of a jouncing buckboard, triced up like a piece of cargo.

  Blearily, Maia managed to wrestle her torso up against what felt like several sacks of grain, so the level of her eyes, came even with the sideboards of the wagon. Above her loomed the backs of two women driving the team. From behind, they didn't look much like Joplands. They said nothing, and did not look back at her.

  Turning her head was painful, but it brought some of the countryside into view—a high, rolling steppe covered with sparse grass, apparently too dry for farming. Red-and orange-tinted cirrus clouds laced a rich blue sky, still lustrous with latent night. There was a faint cawing of some large bird, perhaps a raven or native mawu.

  I remember now. They were waiting for me at the toilet. They grabbed me. That awful smell ... It still filled her nostrils, as the fading tendrils of her dreams reluctantly vacated recesses of her foggy brain. Thought came sluggishly, like heavy syrup from a jar.

  A wagon. They're taking me someplace. North, from the looks of things.

  That much was simple enough from the angle of the rising sun. To see more meant struggling to a sitting position, which took several increments in order to keep from fainting. When at last she craned around to see what lay ahead, the wagon took a turn in the road, bringing a tower of monumental proportions into abrupt view. It spired into the sky, columnar and prismoidal, light and dark bands alternating along its height. Without being able to bring all faculties to bear, Maia guessed it must be over two hundred meters high and a third of that across.

  The spire was scarred in places. Scaffolding told of recent excavations that had gouged the natural obelisk, leaving piles of rocky debris around its base. A series of arched window-openings followed one pale band of stone, girdling the periphery halfway up. A second row of smaller
perforations paralleled the first, a few meters below.

  Near the base of the stone monolith, a broad, steep ramp came into view, leading upward toward a gaping portal.

  Maia's captors were taking her straight toward it.

  We were lucky to find a habitable world in such an odd binary-star system, of a type seldom visited. Its orbital peculiarities, as well as size and dense atmosphere, should keep our colony hidden for a long time.

  Those same features mean genetic tinkering will be required, before the first settlers step outside these domes. While making ambitious changes in such fundamentals as sex, we shall also have to modify humans to live and breathe in the air of Stratos. As on other colony worlds, carbon dioxide tolerance and visual-spectrum sensitivities must be adjusted. Moreover, shortly before departing the Phylum, we acquired recent designs for improved kidneys, livers, and sensoria, and shall certainly incorporate them.

  This planet's slow, complex orbit presents special challenges, such as ultraviolet excess whenever the dwarf companion, Waenglen's Star, is near. We may find this seasonal variation useful, providing environmental cues for our planned two-phase reproductive cycle. But first we must make sure the humans and other animals we plant here will be rugged enough to thrive.

  —from the Landing Day Address, by Lysos

  9

  An extensive cavity had been drilled into the mountain monolith, creating a network of rooms and corridors. Perhaps the workwomen had taken advantage of preexisting caves or fissures. By the time they finished with their machines and explosives, however, the warren of tunnels and storage chambers owed little to nature. The man sanctuary had been near completion when all further work was abruptly canceled, leaving an empty shell, inhabited only by echoes.

  Maia's glimpse of the outside was brief and harried as her captors drove their wagon up a long earthen ramp leading to a massive wooden portal. One of them leaped off to knock on the door, sending deep, resonant booms reverberating within. The other clambered back to untie Maia's ankles. Peering through a drugged daze, Maia saw the ramp was surrounded by dusty rock tailings, dumped from openings that girdled the stone tower halfway up. The upper row consisted of airy galleries, broad enough to let in summer breezes when the sanctuary was meant to have its largest population. The lower circumference of windows were mere slits in comparison.

  None of this had come cheaply. It was one hell of an investment to write off.

  That was among her few lucid, observational thoughts while being dragged off the wagon and through the gate at a pace almost too brisk for her wobbly feet to manage. Maia stumbled behind the two massive, harsh-faced fems, who had left her arms bound in front to use as a kind of leash. They did not speak, but nodded to a third representative of their kind, who locked the outer door and accompanied them inside. Maia did not know the name of their clan.

  It was hard to give more than a cursory look around, as her captors pulled her up endless flights of stairs, along deserted, empty corridors, then through a central hall equipped with wooden dining trestles and a massive fireplace. Farther down one of the main tunnels—lit by strings of dimly powered glow bulbs—they passed an indoor arena capable of seating several hundred spectators, overlooking a vast grid of intersecting lines.

  Maia obtained only glimpses, as more passageways went by in a blur, followed by more tiring stairs, until at last they reached a heavy wooden door set in the stone wall with iron hinges and a stout padlock. Still blinking through a fog of unreality, Maia felt a peculiar sense of misplaced pride on recognizing that the hardware, and even the iron key the guard pulled from her vest, were all products of the forges at Lerner Hold.

  "Look," she said to the women with a mouth as dry as sand. "Can't you tell me—"

  "Ye'll jest have t'wait," one of the stolid clones answered gruffly, pulling back the door as Maia's other custodian sent her whirling into the dark room. Maia couldn't even spread her arms for balance. A few meters inside, she tripped and fell amid what felt like scattered bundles of rough, scratchy fabric.

  "Atyps! Bleeders!" she screamed from the floor, her voice breaking. Maia's curse was punctuated by the door slamming shut, and a clank as the bolt was thrown. It was a desolating sound that hurt her ears and savaged her already bruised soul.

  Silence and darkness settled all around. She tried to rise, but a wave of nausea made that impractical, so she lay still for several minutes with her head down, breathing deeply. At last, the dizziness and drugged stupor seemed to ease a bit. When she tried sitting up, waves of pain swarmed her aching arms and along her sides. Maia felt a sob rise in her throat and suppressed it savagely. I won't give them any satisfaction!

  Weeks ago, the physical sensations coursing her body would have left her a quivering, fetal ball. Now she found inner resources to fight back just as fiercely, overcoming pain's tyranny by force of will. It would be another matter dealing with the pit of hopeless depression yawning before her. Later, she thought, putting off that rendezvous with despair. One thing at a time.

  As her eyes adapted, Maia began to make out details of her prison. A single spear of daylight penetrated through a high, narrow opening in the stone wall opposite the door. Other walls were lined with wooden crates, and burlap-covered bundles lay strewn across the floor. The ones Maia had landed on seemed to contain bedding or curtain material . . . fortunately, since they had cushioned her fall.

  A storage chamber, she thought. The builders must have already begun stocking supplies for the intended sanctuary, when the project was called off. Were they now trying to recoup some of their investment by turning the place into a brig? Maia hadn't seen signs of other occupants. What a joke if all this were set aside just for her! A big, expensive jail for one unimportant varling who knew too much.

  Maia pushed to her knees, swayed, and managed awkwardly to stand. Not allowing herself a pause that might break her momentum, she at once began casting about for some way to extricate herself from her bonds.

  Fine crystalline dust wafted from freshly cut stone, sparkling in the narrow window's angled shaft of sunlight. A whitish gray patina covered every surface, including broom tracks where the floor had last been swept. Looking up, Maia saw that a rail ran down the center of the barrel-vaulted ceiling, reminding her of the cargo crane she had used in the Musseli Line baggage car. Only here the winch had not been installed.

  She searched among the stencil-lettered boxes. CLOTHING-MALE, one crate displayed along its side. Another contained DISHES and two announced WRITING MATERIALS. She had never thought of men as being particularly literate, but there were many crates of the latter.

  Maia tried to think. Broken dishes might be useful to cut the layers of fabric wrapped around her forearms. Unfortunately, all the boxes were nailed firmly shut. She could feel her little portable sextant, still strapped to her left arm. One of its appendages might be sharp enough, but its bulge was out of reach beneath the same cloth fetters.

  Sitting on a crate, Maia bent to examine the bindings more closely. She blinked, then sighed in disgust. "Oh! Of all the patarkal ..."

  Just under her wrists, where she had been least likely to notice, the fabric was simply laced together, finishing in a simple slipknot.

  "Bleeders and rutters!" Maia muttered as she lifted her arms and twisted to grab the loose ends with her teeth. After some tugging, the knot gave way, and soon she was picking the laces free one by one. Relapses of dizziness kept interrupting, forcing her to pause and breathe deeply. By the time she finished, Maia had reevaluated her first impression—the bindings weren't so dumb after all. No doubt the jailers had meant for her to free herself eventually, but this wasn't something she could have managed earlier, with guards nearby.

  At last she flung the cloths aside with a curse. Her hands tingled painfully as full circulation returned. Rubbing them, Maia stretched, waving her arms and walking to get the kinks out.

  Near the door, she found a small table she hadn't noticed before, on which stood a pitcher of water
and a dented cup. Forcing her trembling hands to master the movements, she poured and drank ravenously. When the pitcher was half-empty, she put the cup down and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.

  I don't suppose there's anything to eat?

  There was no food, but underneath the table she found a large ceramic pot with a lid. Glazed depictions of sailing ships battled high seas along its side. She removed the cover and squatted on the cold porcelain to relieve yet another of her body's cataloged complaints.

  As immediate concerns were satisfied, more afflictions came to the fore, awaiting attention. Despair, her old nemesis, seemed to rise up and politely ask, "Now?"

  Maia shook her head firmly. I've got to keep busy. Not think for a while.

  She set to work struggling to push heavy boxes together and then levering one on top of another. Strenuous labor set off renewed waves of dizziness, which she waited out before recommencing. Finally, a makeshift pyramid lay beneath the high window. Clambering onto the ultimate pile of folded carpets, she was at last able to bring her eyes level with the narrow slit, to peer out upon a vast expanse of prairie that began right below her at the foot of a steep, vertical drop. The hole looked pretty narrow to worm through, but even if she managed, it would take a warehouse full of rugs and curtains, tied together, to make a rope long enough to reach the valley floor. This room might not have been designed as a prison, but it would do.