Glory Season

It's actually a simple shape, she recalled thinking numbly. Boys probably memorize it before they're four.

As if that weren't enough, the invader pattern began displacing the guardian's undamaged core. Beat by beat, the pseudobeast she and Re

It was only a game, she tried convincing herself the next morning, as she swept. At least, that's what women think, and they're the ones who count.

Still, memory of the humiliation lingered unpleasantly as glory frost evaporated under the rising sun. Those thin patches she and the other young var had missed soon sublimed. With visible reluctance, Captain Poulandres went to the railing and rang a small bell.

At once, the deck thronged with women passengers and crew, inhaling the last aromas and looking about with liveliness in their eyes. Maia saw one broadly built var come up behind a middle-aged sailor and pinch him, causing the man to jump with a low yelp. The husky-victim whirled around, wearing a harassed expression. He responded after an instant with a wary laugh, shaking a finger in admonishment, and quickly retreated to the nearest mast. An unusual number of sailors seemed to have found duties to perform aloft, this morning.

It wasn't a universal reaction. The assistant cook seemed pleased by the attentions of women gathered round the porridge pot. And why not? Aroused fems were seldom dangerous, and it was doubtful the poor fellow got much notice during summertime. He would likely store a memory of brief flirtation to carry him through lonely months in sanctuary.

Two nearby vars, a short blonde and a slender redhead, were giggling and pointing. Maia turned to see what had them going.

Re

The two rads laughed. Maia didn't like the way they were looking at him.

"I guess if one were desperate enough . . ." one said to the other.

"Oh, I don't know," came the reply. "I think he's kind of exotic-looking. Maybe, after we reach Ursulaborg."

"You got hopes! The committee's already picked those who'll get first crack. You'll wait your turn, and chew a Kilo of ovop if you're lucky."

"Yuck," the second one grimaced. Yet a covetous gleam did not leave her eye as she watched the man from space depart for the quarterdeck.

Maia's thoughts whirled. Apparently, the rads had designs to keep Re

Then she bit back her initial wrath and tried hard to see it calmly. I guess he's in their debt, Maia admitted reluctantly. It would be churlish to refuse his rescuers at least an effort, even in the dead of winter. The Radical organization had no doubt promised members of the rescue party rewards if they succeeded — perhaps sponsorship of a winter sparking, with an apartment and trust fund to see a first cloneling child through primary schooling. The leaders, Kiel and Thalia, will be first, Maia realized. Given her education and talents, Kiel would then be in a good position to become a founding mother of a growing clan.

So politics is just part of it, Maia thought, considering the motives of her former cottage-mates. None of my damn business, she told herself, knowing that she cared intensely, anyway. The first rad glanced at Maia standing nearby, listening. "Of course, there's an element of choice on his part, too," she said. "Equal rights, y'know. And there's no accounting for alien tastes. . . ." The var turned to Maia, and winked.

Maia flushed and strode away. Leaning on the starboard rail, she stared across foam-flecked waves, unable to contain her roiling thoughts. The busybody had voiced a question Maia herself hadn't admitted: I wonder what Re

Think. Soon they'll take Re

What assets do you have? What skills can you sell? She tried to concentrate — to bring forth a catalog of resources — but found herself facing only disconcerting blankness.

The blankness was not neutral. Born in a tense moment of angst, it spread outward from her dark thoughts and seemed to color her view of her surroundings, saturating the seascape, washing it like a canvas painted from a savage palette, in primitive and brutal shades. The air felt charged, like before a lightning storm, and a sense of fell expectation set her heart pounding.

Maia tried closing her eyes to escape the distressing epiphany, but extracted impressions only pursued her. Squeezing her eyelids shut caused more than familiar, squidgy sensations. A coruscation of light and dark speckles flickered and whirled, changing too fast to be tracked. She had known the phenomenon all her life, but now it both frightened and fascinated her. Combining in overlapping waves, the speckles seemed to offer a fey kind of meaning, drawing her away from centered vision toward something both beautiful and terrible.

Breath escaped her lungs in a sigh. Maia found the will to rub her eyes and reopen them. Purple blotches throbbed concentrically before fading away, along with some eerie, unwelcome sense of formless form. Yet, for a stretch of time there lay within Maia a vague but lingering surety. Looking outward, she no longer saw, but continued imagining a vista of everchanging patterns, stretching into infinite recursion across the cloud-flecked sky. Momentarily, the heavens seemed made of ephemeral, quickly wavering, emblematic forms, overlapping and merging to have the illusion of solidity she had been taught to call reality.

Relief mixed with awed regret as the instant passed. It could only have lasted moments. The atmosphere resumed its character of heavy, moist air. The wood rail beneath her hands felt firm.

Now I know I'm going crazy, Maia thought sardonically. As if she didn't have troubles enough already.

Breakfast was called. Tentatively, as if the deck might shift beneath her feet, Maia went to take her turn in line.

She watched the cook serve two portions — one for Re

The porridge nourished without pretense at good taste. It didn't matter. She had mastered her thoughts now, and was able to contemplate what she might do when the ship reached port.