David Brin - Glory Season

Only, what happened after victory?

The good men—those who might have been trustworthy on any Phylum world, even before Lysos—would have voluntarily given up the powder. Or at least kept their heads until it ran out. But men come in all types. It’s not hard to picture a plague like the Kings’ Revolt erupting during the chaos after a war. Especially with tons of Tizbe’s drug floating around.

Was that enough cause to betray the Guardians of Jellicoe?

Maia knew that the Council didn’t do things without reasons.

“I guess your assignment changed, by the time we met again,” she prompted Naroin.

The petite brunette shrugged. “I heard some odd things. Known mercenaries were gettin’ offers, down the coast. Radical agents were reported drifting into parts around Grange Head. Wasn’t hard to figure where I might get a billet close to things going on.”

Maia frowned. “You didn’t suspect Baltha…”

“Her treason, going over to the reavers? No! I knew there was tension, of course. Lookin’ back, maybe I should have surmised…” Naroin stopped, shook her head. “Take it from an experienced hand, child. It’s no good blamin’ yourself for what you couldn’t prevent. Not so long as you tried.”

Maia’s lips pressed together. That was exactly what she had been telling herself. From the look in Naroin’s eyes, it didn’t get much more believable as you got older.

That evening she learned who had lived, and who had died.

Thalla, Captain Poulandres, Baltha, Kau, most of the rads, most of the reavers, nearly all of the Manitou crew, including the young navigator who had helped Maia and her twin find their way through the dazzling complexity of the world-wall. The tally was appalling. Even hard-crusted Naroin, who had seen many formal and informal battles, could scarcely believe the prodigious manufacturing of bodies that had taken place at and near Jellicoe. Is this what war is like? Maia thought. For the first time she felt she understood, not just in abstract, but in her gut, what had driven the Founders to such drastic choices. Nevertheless, she felt determined not to let Perkinite propagandists seize on this episode. If I keep any freedom of action at all, I’m going to make sure it’s known. Poulandres and his men were forced to fight. This was more than a simple case of males going berserk.

What was it, then? There would surely be those who pictured Renna as the culprit, a blight carrier whose mere presence, and threat to bring more of his kind, inflamed the worst in several branches of Stratoin society. To Maia, that seemed cruelly like blaming the victim. Yet, the point could be made.

After dinner, while Hullin wheeled her along the promenade deck, Maia encountered Kiel a second time. On this occasion, she saw the other woman more clearly, not through a curtain of resentment over things that were already ancient history. The rad agent had lost everything, her closest friends, her freedom, the best hope for her cause. Maia was gentler with her former cottage-mate. Commiserating, she reached out to console and forgive. In gratitude, the forceful, indomitable Kiel broke down and wept.

Later, as dusk fell, the western horizon began to glitter. Maia counted five, six … and finally ten slowly turning beacons whose rhythmic flashes cut across the miles of ocean with reassuring constancy. From maps studied in her youth, she recognized the tempos and colors and knew their names—Conway, Ulam, Turing, Gardner… famed lighthouse sanctuaries of the Mediant Coast. And, beyond far Rucker Beacon, a vast dusting of soft, glimmering diamonds covering a harbor and surrounding hills. The night spectacle of great Ursulaborg.

She was taken to a temple. Not the grand, marble-lined monument dominating the city from its northern bluffs, but a modest, one-story retreat that rambled over a fenced hectare of neatly coppiced woods, several kilometers upriver from the heart of the busy metropolis. The semirural ambience was an artifact, Maia could tell, carefully nurtured by the small but prosperous clanholds that shared the neighborhood. Clear streams flowed past gardens and mulch piles, windmills and light industrial workshops. It was a place where generations of children, and their daughters’ daughters, might play, grow up, and tend family business at an unhurried pace, confident of a future in which change would, at most, arrive slowly.

The walled temple grounds were unprepossessing. The chapel bore proper symbols for venerating Stratos Mother and the Founders in the standard way, yet Maia suspected all wasn’t orthodox. Vigilant guards, arrayed in leather, patrolled the palisade. Within, the expected air of cultivated serenity was overlaid by a veneer of static tension.

Except for Naroin and her younger sibling, none of the women looked alike.

After passing the chapel, the lugars bearing Maia’s palanquin approached an unassuming wooden house, detached from the main compound, surrounded by a covered plank veranda. The doctor who had treated Maia aboard the Gentilleschi conferred with two women, one tall and severe-looking, dressed in priestly habits, the other rotund, wearing archdeaconess robes. Naroin, who had walked alongside during the brief journey from the riverside quay, took a quick lope around the house, satisfying herself of its security, while Hullin briskly looked inside. Upon reuniting near the porch, the pair exchanged efficient nods.

With the help of a nurse-nun, Maia stepped down, bearing stoically the profound pain spreading from her knee and side. They assisted her up a short ramp into the house, pausing at the entrance when the tall, elderly priestess bent to meet Maia’s eye.

“You will be at peace here, child. Until you choose to leave, this will be your home.”

The round woman wearing deacon’s robes blew a sigh, as if she did not approve of promises that might prove hard to keep. Despite pain and fatigue, Maia felt she had learned more than they intended. “Thank you,” she said hoarsely, and let the nurses guide her down a veranda of polished wood into a room featuring sliding doors made of paper-thin wood panels, overlooking a garden and a small pond. The mat bed featured sheets that looked whiter than a cloud. Maia never remembered being helped to slip between them. The sounds of plinking water, and wind rustling boughs, lulled her to sleep.

She awoke to find, next to her bed, the slim volumes given her by the Pinnipeds, plus a small box and a folded slip of paper. Maia opened the note.

I’ll be gone a while, varling, it read. I’m leaving Hullin to keep an eye open. These folk are all right, tho maybe a bit nutty. See you soon.

The detective’s departure came as no surprise. Maia had wondered why Naroin stuck around this long. Surely she had work to do?

Maia opened the box. Inside a tissue wrapping she found a case made of aromatic leather, attached to a soft strap. She opened it and found therein a gleaming instrument of brass and gleaming glass. The sextant was beautiful, perfect, and so well-made she found it impossible to tell how old it was, save by the fact that it possessed no readout window, no obvious way to access the Old Net. Still, it was on sight far more valuable than the one she had left behind, at Jellicoe. Maia unfolded the sighting arms and ran her hands over the apparatus. Still, she hoped Leie would manage to recover the old one. Cranky and half-broken as it was, she felt it was hers.

She pulled the blanket over her head and lay in a ball, wishing her sister were here. Wishing for Brod. Wishing her mind were not full of visions of smoke spirals and glittering sparks, spreading sooty ashes amid stratospheric clouds.