Glory Season

"I'm trying to get an idea how introduced forms were designed to fit in, and how much adaptation took place afterward. You have some pretty sophisticated ecologists at the university, but figures are hardly a substitute for getting out and seeing for yourself."

Although they were hard to make out in the dim starlight, his features seemed revived from the earlier moodiness. Maia found herself wondering if his eyes would shine strange colors by day, or if his skin, which she had only seen in lantern or moonlight, would turn out to be some weird, exotic shade.

Perhaps it was a mistake to interpret an alien's facial expressions by past experience, but Re

"All told, it seems your Founders were pretty good designers, making clever changes in the humans, plants, and animals they set down here, before fitting them into the ecosystem. They made some mistakes of course. That's hardly unusual. …"

It felt blasphemous, hearing an outsider say such things. Perkinites and other heretics, were known to criticize some of the choices made by Lysos and the other Founders, but never before had Maia heard anyone speak this way about their competence.

". . . Time has erased most of the errors, by extinction or adaptation. It's been long enough for things to settle down, at least among the lower life-forms."

"Well, after all, it's been hundreds of years," Maia responded.

Re

Maia frowned. "Um . . . sure. I mean, I don't remember an exact figure. Does it matter?"

He looked at her in a way she found odd. "I suppose not. Still, that fits with the way your calendars . . ." Re

Maia glanced at her wrist and the little instrument wrapped in its leather case. Re

He handled it carefully, first using his fingertips to trace the engraved zep'lin design on the brass cover, then unfolding and delicately experimenting with the sighting arms. "Very nice tool," he commented. "Handmade, you say? I'd love to see the workshop."

Maia shivered at the thought. She had seen enough of male sanctuaries.

"Is this the dial you use for adjusting azimuth?" he asked.

"Azimuth? Oh, you mean star-height. Of course, you need a good horizon …"

Soon they were immersed in talk about the art of navigation, picking their way through a maze of terms inherited from altogether different traditions — his using complex machines to cross unimaginable emptiness, and hers from a heritage of countless lives spent refining rules learnt the hard way, battling the elements on Stratos's capricious seas. Re

Sometimes, when a moon cleared the canyon walls to shine directly on his face, Maia was struck by a subtle difference which seemed suddenly enhanced. The long shadow of his cheekbone, or the way, in dim light, his pupils seemed to open wider than normal for Stratoin eyes. Would she have even noticed if she didn't already know who, or what, he was?

They cut short the discussion when Baltha called a break. Their guide indicated a path to take their tired mounts onto a stony beach, where the party dismounted and spent some time rubbing and drying the horses' feet and ankles, restoring circulation to parts numbed by cold water. It was hard labor, and Re

Re

"There!" he shouted, pointing to the west, just above the rim of the canyon.

Maia tried to sight along his arm. "Where? I can't . . . Oh!"

She had seldom seen flying machines, even by daylight. Port Sanger's small airfield was hidden beyond hills, with flight paths chosen not to disturb city dwellers. Not counting the weekly mail dirigible, true aircraft came only a few times a year. But what else could those lights be? Maia counted two . . . three pairs of winking pinpoints passing overhead as the delayed rumbling peaked and then followed the glitters eastward.

"Cy must've heard!" Re

For you, don't you mean? Maia thought. Still, she was glad, intensely glad. This certainly verified Re

Baltha, Thalia, and Kiel refused to even consider turning back.

"But it's a rescue party! Surely they've come with enough force to—"

"That's good," Kiel agreed. "It'll distract the bitches. Keep them off our trail. Maybe they'll be so busy scrapping and arguing, we'll have smooth sailing to the coast."

Maia saw what was going on. Kiel and her friends had invested a lot in rescuing Re

Maia saw Re

Anyway, suppose he did turn around. Tizbe wouldn't have waited long to set out on their trail. Even if the prison-citadel was taken by Carian forces, Re

We really haven't got much choice, Maia realized.

Still, in that moment her loyalties crystallized. She moved to stand next to Re

"All right, let's ride."

Peripatetic's Log:

Stratos Mission:

Arrival + 40.157 Ms

Cy complained about having to use archaic codes to guide my shuttle down the ancient landing beam. I was too nervous to be sympathetic. "Who had to learn an entirely new language?" I groused, while white flame licked the viewing ports and a heavy atmosphere tried to crush my cocoon like a grape in a vice. "It's supposedly a dialect based on Florentinan, but they have parts of speech nobody's seen before — feminine, masculine, neuter, and clonal . . . with redundancy cases, declensions, and drift-stop participles …"