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That calculating use by mother of daughter might have made Michael pity Astrid, except for something that had become all too apparent during the days Astrid had been trailing him. Despite her intelligence and willingness to work hard—traits proven by her completing Saganami Island—Astrid was one of those impossible members of the Manticoran nobility who really did believe that an accident of birth made her better than anyone else. Astrid didn't see Michael's attempts to avoid her as anything other than a fellow dodging the awkward attentions of a pretty girl, simply because it didn't occur to her that anyone would want to avoid her. Moreover, despite the logical twisting involved in such thinking, Astrid's already good opinion of herself was enhanced by the fact that she now shared a berth with the Crown Prince.
Osgood "Ozzie" Russo was a more subtle character, though one would never guess it on initially meeting this bright-eyed, laughing imp. His family was co
Not surprisingly, given his family interests, Ozzie was specializing in Supply. Logistically, he was brilliant, able to glance at a complicated schematic and reduce it to its component parts before Michael had finished reading the headers. Although Supply was outside the line of command, and thus often discounted by ambitious sorts, Michael was enough of a history buff to realize that many battles had been won or lost even before they were joined due to logistical considerations.
The problem with Ozzie was that he apparently saw Michael as another resource to be cultivated for the future benefit of himself and his family—and he figured Michael should see him in the same light. Michael didn't like this one bit, but although Ozzie was not ostensibly co
What united Astrid and Ozzie was a sense of superiority over their fellows, though ironically Michael was fairly certain that each privately thought little of the other. Like a lodestone attracting iron filings, these two had drawn the more amorally ambitious middies toward them. In doing so they had pushed away what Michael, at least, saw as the better elements of the middy berth, those who wanted to earn their rank on their own merit, not because of whom they knew.
Not wishing to be seen in the same light as Astrid and Ozzie—neither by Michael nor by the rest of the 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, co
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 tyra
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 i
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.