David Brin - Glory Season

Savant Judeth had explained why it was grudgingly allowed.

“It would’ve happened anyway, sooner or later,” the Lamai teacher once said. “By laying down rules, Lysos kept piracy from getting out of hand. Call it welfare for the desperate and lucky. A safety valve.

“And if reavers get too uppity?” There had been confident menace in Judeth’s smile. “We have ways of dealing with that, too.”

Maia never intended to find out what the great clans did, when provoked too far. At the same time, she pondered the sanitized legends told about the very first Lamai… the young var who, long ago, turned a small nest egg into a commercial empire for her clone descendants. Stories were vague about where the first mother got her stake. Perhaps a red bandanna lay somewhere in a bottom drawer of the clan’s dustiest archive.

As expected, most of the vars aboard were working off passage while seeking permanent employment ashore. But a few actually seemed to consider themselves regular members of the Wotan’s crew. Maia found it strange enough that women were able to interact with the planet’s other sapient race to reproduce. Could women and men actually live and work together for long periods without driving each other crazy? While using a stiff brush to scrub the lunch dishes, she watched some of these “female sailors.” What do they talk to men about? she wondered.

Talk they did, in a singsong dialect of the sea. Maia saw that the petite woman who had spoken kindly to her was one of these professional seawomen. In her gloved left hand, the brunette held a treppbill, a practice model bearing a cushioned Y-shaped yoke at one end and a padded hook at the other. From the way she joked with a pair of male comrades, it appeared she was offering a challenge which, grinning, they accepted.

One seaman opened a nearby storage locker, revealing a great stack of thin, tilelike objects, white on one side, black on the other. He removed one square wafer and turned it over, checking eight paddles set along its edges and corners. Maia recognized an old-fashioned, wind-up game piece, which sailors used in large numbers to pursue a favorite pastime known as Life. Since infancy, she had watched countless contests in dockside arenas. The paddles sensed the status of neighboring tiles during a game, so that each piece would “know” whether to show its white or its black face at a given time. By the nature of the game, a single token by itself was useless, so what was the man doing, inserting a key and winding up just one clockwork tile?

If programmed normally, the simple device would smoothly flip a row of louvered panels exposing its white surface unless certain conditions were met. Three of its paddles must sense neighboring objects within a certain time interval. Two, four, or even eight touches wouldn’t do. Exactly three paddles must be triggered for it to remain still.

The burly sailor approached the small woman, laying the game token on the deck in front of her, black side up. With one foot resting lightly on its upper surface he kept it from activating until, gripping her treppbill in both hands, she nodded, signaling ready .

The sailor hopped back and the tile started clicking. At the count of eight, the woman suddenly lanced out, tapping the piece at three spots in rapid succession. A beat passed and the disk remained still. Then the eight-beat countdown repeated, only faster . She duplicated her feat, choosing a different trio of paddles, making it seem as easy as swatting zizzers. But the piece had been programmed to increase its tempo. Soon the tip of her treppbill moved in a blur and the clock-ticking was a staccato ratchet. Sweat popped out on the small woman’s brow as her wooden pole danced quicker and quicker…

Abruptly, the disk louvers flashed with a loud clack! turning the upper surface white. “Agh!” she cried out. “Twenty-eight!” a sailor shouted, and the woman laughed in chagrin as her comrades teased her for falling far short of her record.

“Too much booze an’ lazin’ about on shore!” they chided.

“ You should talk!” she retorted, “jutzin’ with them Bizzie hoors!”

One of the men started rewinding the game piece for another try, but Wotan’s second mate chose that moment to descend from the quarterdeck and call the small brunette over for a talk. They spoke for a few minutes, then the officer turned to go. The woman sailor fished a whistle out of her halter and blew a shrill blast that got the attention of all hands.

“Second-class passengers aft,” she called in an even tone, motioning for Maia and the other vars to stand in a row by the starboard gunwales.

“My name is Naroin,” the petite sailor told the assembled group. “Rank is bosun, same as Sailor Jum and Sailor Rett, so don’t forget it. I’m also master-at-arms on this tub.”

Maia had no trouble believing the statement. The woman’s legs bore scars of combat, her nose had been broken at least twice, and her muscles, if not manlike, were imposing.

“I’m sure you all saw last night that the rumors we been hearin’ are true. There’s reaver activity farther north than ever this year, an’ it’s startin’ earlier. We could be a target anytime.”

Maia found that a stretched conclusion to reach from one isolated incident, and apparently so did the other vars.

But Naroin took her responsibilities seriously. She told them so, laying the padded bill across her back.

“Captain’s given orders. We should be ready, in case o’ trouble. We’re not goin’ to be anybody’s sealfish steak. If a gang o’ jumped-up unniks tries hopping this ship—”

“Why would anyone want it!” a var muttered, eliciting chuckles. It was the sharp-jawed woman who had cursed earlier about “Lamai brats.”

“What kind of atyp bleeders’d hop us for a load o’ cffall the half-Chuchyin went on.

“You’d be surprised. The market’s up. B’sides, even a coerced split of profits could ruin the owners—”

Naroin’s explanation was interrupted by an offensive blat, imitating a fart. When the bosun glanced sharply, the Chuchyin var nonchalantly yawned. Naroin frowned. “Captains’ orders needn’t be explained to likes of you. A crew that doesn’t drill together—”

“Who needs drill?” The tall var cracked her knuckles, nudging her friends, apparently a tight-knit group of tested traveling companions. “Why fret about lugar-lovin’ reavers? If they come, we’ll send them packin’ for their daddies.”

Maia felt her cheeks redden, and hoped no one noticed. The master-at-arms simply smiled. “All right, grab a bill an’ show me how you’ll fight, if the time comes.”

A snort. The Chuchyin variant spat on the deck. “I’ll just watch, if it’s all the same.”

Naroin’s forearms revealed bowstring tendons. “Listen, summer-trash. While on board, you’ll take orders, or swim back where you came from!”

The tall woman and her comrades glared back, confrontation certain in their hard faces.

A low voice interrupted from behind. “Is there a problem, Master-at-Arms?”

Naroin and the vars swiveled. Captain Pegyul stood at the edge of the quarterdeck, scratching a four-day growth of beard. Banal of appearance back at the Bizmai tavern, he now cut an impressive figure, stripped down to his blue undershirt, something males never did in port. Three brass armrings, insignia of rank, circuited an arm like Maia’s thigh. Two other crewmen, taller and even broader in the shoulders, stood bare-chested behind him at the head of the stairs. Despite the redolent tension, Maia found herself fascinated by those torsos. For once, she could credit certain farfetched stories… that sometimes, in the heat of summer, a particularly large and crazy male might purposely torment a lugar into one of those rare but awesome furies the beasts were capable of, just to wrestle the creature one-on-one, and occasionally win!