Glory Season (65 page)

Brod was rambling, and Maia found it hard to see what he was driving at. Did the lad have his own heretical sympathies? Did he dream of a way to live in one home year-round, in lasting contact with mates and offspring, experiencing less continuity than a mother, but far more than men normally knew on Stratos? It might sound fine in abstract, but how did the two sexes keep from getting on each other’s nerves? Clearly, poor Brod was an idealist of the first water.

Maia recalled the one man she had lived near while growing up. An orthodox clan like Lamatia would never condone the sort of situation Brod described in a Yeown commune, but it did offer occasional, traditional refuge to retirees, like Old Coot Bennett.

Maia felt a shiver, recalling the last time she had looked in Bennett’s rheumy eyes. Demi-leaves had swirled in autumnal cyclones, just like the image in her recent dream—as if subconsciously she had already been thinking about the coot.
I used to wonder if he was the only man I’d ever know more than in passing. But Renna, and now Brod, have got me thinking peculiar thoughts. Keep it up, and I’ll be a raving heretic, too.

This was getting much too intense. She tried returning things to an abstract plane.

“I imagine Yeownists would get along with Kiel and her Radicals.”

Brod shrugged. “I don’t think the few remaining Yeowns would risk trouble, making political statements. They have enough problems nowadays. With the rate of summer births going up all over Stratos, making everybody
so nervous, Perkinites are always looking for var-loving scapegoats.

“But y’know, I was thinking about the people who once dwelled here in the Dragons’ Teeth. Maybe
they
started out as Yeown followers, back at the time of the Defense.

“Think about it, Maia. I’ll bet these sanctuaries weren’t originally just for men. Imagine the technology they must’ve had! Men couldn’t keep that up all by themselves. Nor could they have ever managed to beat the Enemy alone. I’m sure there were women living here, year-round, alongside the men. Somehow, they must’ve known a secret for managing that.”

Maia was unconvinced. “If so, it didn’t last. After the Defense, there came the Kings.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Later it corrupted into a fit of patriarchism. But everything was in chaos after the war. One brief aberration, no matter how scary, can’t excuse the Council for burying the history of this place! For centuries or more, men and women must’ve worked together here, back when it was one of the most important sites on Stratos.”

The temptation to argue was strong, but Maia refrained from pouring water on her friend’s enthusiastic theory. Renna had taught her to look back through a thick glass, one or two thousand years, and she knew how tricky that lens could be. Perhaps, with access to the Great Library in Caria, Brod’s speculation might lead to something. Right now, though, the poor fellow seemed obsessed with scenarios, based more on hope than on data, in which females and males somehow stayed together. Did he picture some ancient paradise amid these jagged isles, in that heady time before the Kings’ conceit toppled before the Great Clans? It seemed a waste of mental energy.

Maia felt overwhelming drowsiness climb her weary
arms and legs. When Brod started to speak again, she patted his hand. “That’s ’nuff for now, okay? Let’s talk later. See you in the mornin’, friend.”

The young man paused, then put his arm around her as she lowered her head once more. “Yeah. Good rest, Maia.”

“Mm.”

This time it proved easy to doze off, and she did sleep well, for a while.

Then more dreams encroached. A mental image of the nearby, blood-bronze metal wall shimmered in ghostly overlay, superimposing upon the much-smaller, stony puzzle under Lamatia Hold. Totally different emblems and mechanisms, yet a voice within her suggested,
True elegance is simplicity.

Still more vivid illusions followed. From those Port Sanger catacombs, her spirit seemed to rise through rocky layers, past the Lamai kitchens, through great halls and bedrooms, all the way up to lofty battlements where, within one corner tower, the clan kept its fine old telescope. Like the wall of hexagons, it was an implement of burnished metal, whose oiled bearings seemed nearly as smooth in action as the flowing plates. Overhead in Maia’s dream lay a vast universe of stars. A realm of clean physics and honest geometries. A hopeful terrain, to be learned by heart.

Bennett’s large hand lay upon her little one. A warm, comforting presence, guiding her, helping Maia dial in the main guide stars, iridescent nebulae, the winking navigation satellites.

Suddenly it was a year later … and there it was. In the logic of dreams, it had to show. Crossing the sky like a bright planet, but no planet, it moved of volition all its own, settling into orbit after coming from afar. A new star. A
ship
, erected for traveling to stars.

Thrilled at this new sight, wishing for someone to share it with, this older Maia went to fetch her aged friend, guiding his frail steps upstairs, toward the gleaming brass instrument. Now dim and slow, the coot took some time to comprehend this anomaly in the heavens. Then, to her dismay, his grizzled head rocked back, crying into the nigh—

Maia sat bolt upright, her heart racing from hormonal alarm. Brod snored nearby, on the cold stone floor. Dawn light crept through crevices in the rubble wall. Yet she stared straight ahead for many heartbeats, unseeing, willing herself to calm without forgetting.

Finally, Maia closed her eyes.

Knowing at last why they had sounded so familiar, she breathed aloud two words.

“Jellicoe Beacon …”

A shared context. She had been so sure it would turn out to be simple. Something passed on from master to apprentice over generations, even given the notoriously poor continuity within the world of men. What she had never imagined was that luck would play a role in it!

Oh, surely there was a chance she and Brod would have figured it out by themselves, before they starved. But Coot Bennett had spoken those words, babbling out of some emotion-fraught store of ragged memory, the last time she heard him speak at all. And the phrases had lain in her subconscious ever since.

Had the old man been a member of some ancient conspiracy? One that was still active, so many centuries after the passing of the Kings? More likely, it had started out that way, but was by now a tattered remnant. A ritualized cult or lodge, one of countless many, with talisman phrases its members taught one another, no longer meaningful save in some vague sense of portent.

“I’m ready, Maia,” Brod announced, crouching near one blank-featured hexagon. She placed her hand on another. “Good,” Maia replied. “One more try, then, at the count of three. One, two, three!”

Each of them pushed off hard, setting their chosen plates accelerating along the wall on separate, carefully planned, oblique trajectories. Once the first two were well on their way, Maia and Brod shifted to another pair of hexagons. Maia’s second one bore the stylized image of an insect, while Brod’s depicted a slice of bread and jam. It had taken them all day to get launching times and velocities right, so that their first pair would arrive in just the right positions when these later two showed up for rendezvous. Ideally, a double carom would result—two simultaneous collisions at opposite ends of the wall—sending the inscribed hexagons gliding from different directions toward the same high, stationary target.

It seemed simple enough, but so far they had failed to get the timing close enough to test Maia’s insight. Now daylight was starting to fade again. This would have to be their last attempt. Maia watched with her heart in her throat as the four moving hexagons approached their chosen intersections, collided, and separated at right angles … exactly as intended!

“Yes!” Brod shouted, grinning at her.

Maia was more restrained. So far, so good.

Gliding on across the bright metal expanse, the selected pair of plates converged from opposite directions toward a single static platter, whose surface bore the etched design of a simple cylinder—the symbol used on ships to denote a kind of container.

“
Bee-can!
” Old Coot had shouted, that fateful night when she showed him Renna’s starship. Even then, Maia had guessed the phrase stood for “Beacon,” since many sanctuaries doubled as lighthouses. The rest of his babble
made no sense, however. Without context, it
could
make no sense.

But it wasn’t garbled man-dialect, as she had thought. No random babble, it had been a heartfelt cry of desperate faith, of yearning. An invocation.

“… 
Jelly can! Bee-can Jelly can!
”

There had been other prattled syllables, but this was the expression that counted. Whatever Bennett had thought he was saying that night, originally it must have meant “Jellicoe.”

Jellicoe Beacon
, of the Dragons’ Teeth. The same reasons that had drawn Maia here with Brod, that had caused the reavers to choose its defensible anchorage, had conspired to make this isle special in ages past. One of the linchpins of the Great Defense, and of the ill-fated man-empire called “the Kings.” A place whose history of pride and shame could be suppressed, but never entirely hidden.

Two moving hexagons glided before her, one bearing the image of a bee, the other the common shipboard symbol for stored jam … or jelly. Maia held her breath as both plates cruised toward the same target at the same time.

The most elegant codes are simplest
, she thought.
All they ask here is for us to say the name of the place whose door we’re knocking at!

That is
, she thought, clenching her fists,
providing we aren’t fooling ourselves with our own cleverness. If this isn’t just one layer of many more to solve. If it works.

Please, let it work!

The plates converged upon the target with the
can
symbol inscribed on its face. They touched … and the stationary hexagon simply, cleanly absorbed them both! At once there followed a double gong sound, deep-throated and decisive, which grew ever louder until the tolling vibration forced Brod and Maia back, covering their
ears. They coughed as soot and dust shook off the great door and its jamb. Then, along seams too narrow heretofore to see, a diagonal split propagated. The humming, shivering portal divided, spilling into the grimy vestibule a flood of rich and heady light.

I
have not heard from Renna since his last report, over two hundred kiloseconds ago. Meanwhile, I have been picking up radio and tight-beam traffic below, which appears to indicate a police emergency of the first order. From contextual data, I must conclude that my peripatetic envoy has been kidnapped.

We had discussed the probability of precipitate action after his speech. Now it has come about. I estimate that none of this would have happened, had not the approach of iceships from Phylum Space forced his premature revelation. It is an inconvenience we did not need, to say the
least. One that may have tragic consequences ranging far beyond this world.

Why were the iceships sent? Why so soon, even before our report could be evaluated? It seems clear now that they were dispatched about the time I began decelerating into this system, before Renna and I knew what kind of civilization thrived on Stratos.

I must decide what to do, and decide alone. But there is not sufficient data, even for a unit of my level to choose.

It is a quandary.

M
aia had been in trouble before. Often more immediately life-threatening. But nothing like this.
Trouble
seemed to loom all around the two young vars, from the moment they nervously forsook the known terrors of the sealed cave to walk into that blast of mysterious brilliance, hearing only the massive door shutting behind them with an echoing boom. A long hallway had stretched ahead, with walls of almost-glassy, polished stone, illuminated by panels that put out uniform, artificial light unlike any either of them had known, save coming from the sun. An even layer of fine dust soaked up bloody specks left by Brod’s torn feet. To Maia, it felt as if the two of them were trespassing delinquents, tracking mud into the home of a powerful, punctilious deity. She kept half-expecting to be challenged at any moment by a resounding, disembodied woman’s voice—a stern, stereotypical alto—as in some cheap cinematic fantasy.

That first stretch of hallway wasn’t straight, but took several zigzag turns before arriving at another door, similar to the first one, covered with more of the same burnished hexagons. The fivers groaned aloud at the prospect of tackling yet another enigmatic combination lock. But
this time, as if in response to their approach, several of the plates abruptly began moving on their own! By the time Maia and Brod arrived, the portal had already divided, opening onto another series of brightly lit twists and turns. They passed through quickly, and Brod sighed with relief.

Did a prickly corner of her mind feel just a momentary touch of cheated disappointment? As if it had actually been looking forward to another challenge?
Just shut up
, Maia told the mad puzzle-freak within. Meanwhile, her direction sense said they were plunging ever deeper into the convoluted mountain that was Jellicoe Isle.

The next barrier almost made the entire journey pointless. Upon turning a corner, the youths were bluntly disconcerted to suddenly confront a heap of broken stone and masonry filling the passageway before them. The ceiling had collapsed, spilling rubble into the hallway. Only a glimmer of artificial light showed through a gap near the top, suggesting a possible path to the other side. Brod and Maia had to scramble up a slope of rocky fragments and start pulling aside heavy chunks of debris, digging to create a passage wide enough to crawl through. It was a queer feeling, to burrow with bare hands, deep underground, your life depending on the outcome, and yet working under such pure, synthetic radiance. One conclusion was unmistakable.