David Brin - Glory Season

“Guess you made a smart choice after all,” Thalla suggested. “Headin’ further inland instead of trying for shore. Last place they’ll look is stinky Lerner Hold.”

Apparently. Or maybe Maia’s pursuers didn’t feel any need to check every hut and farmstead. All they had to do was watch all exits, and wait.

“Were they asking questions? Putting out my description?” she asked Kiel, who shrugged.

“Now, what var would tattle another var to a Perkinite? They know better than to ask.”

That sounded a bit facile to Maia. Antagonism between clones and summerlings was pretty intense in Long Valley. But she didn’t have much faith in var solidarity. More likely the other Lerner workers would sell her in a trice, for a big enough reward. Fortunately, only Thalla and Kiel seemed to much notice her existence. The renowned Jopland trait of stinginess was her chief hope. Plus the fact that Lerners themselves weren’t Perkinites, and had a tradition of staying at arm’s length from local politics.

We’ll see if I’m still hot in a week or so. If they lose interest, I could try walking out in stages, traveling by night and doing hobo labor for meals along the way …

Maia felt deeply the loss of her bag, left with the station-keepers in Holly Lock. The duffel contained her last mementos of Leie. Thinking about losing them made her feel even more lonely and sad.

At least she had two new friends. They were no substitute for Leie, but the sisterly warmth shown by Thalla and Kiel was the biggest reason Maia felt reluctant to go. The work was hard and the little cottage wasn’t much more than a hut, but it felt closer to “home” than anywhere she’d been since departing her attic room in Port Sanger, ages ago.

Days passed. The rhythm of the furnaces, the stench of local brown lignite, the rumbling of the metal rollers … even the heat ceased bothering her quite as much. The day set for her appointment at Grange Head came and went, but Maia didn’t figure the magistrate missed her much. She had told the officer in Caria all she knew. She had done her duty.

Besides, listening to Kiel and Thalla talk each night, Maia began to wonder. What did she owe to a power structure that offered so little to vars like her, while other women flourished simply because of a twist of birth timing? Her roommates didn’t seem to think it was heretical to ask questions about the way things worked. It was a frequent topic of conversation.

Sometimes at night they tuned their radio to a strange station, twisting dials to catch tinny voices reflected off high, magnetic layers. “No one can count on justice from corrupt officials in Caria City, who are bought an’ sold by the great hive-dam of Landing Continent. It’s up to the oppressed classes themselves to take a bold hand and change things. …”

Maia suspected the station was illegal. The words were angry, even rebellious, but more surprising to Maia was her own reaction. She wasn’t shocked at all. She turned to Kiel and asked if “oppressed classes” referred to summerlings like them.

“Sure does, virgie. Nowadays, with every niche sewn up by one clan or another, what chance do poor vars like us have to get something of our own started? Only way things will change is if we get together and change them ourselves.”

The voice on the radio echoed these sentiments. “…The tools used for suppression are many. We have seen a tradition of apathy promulgated, so that the nonclone turnout in elections on Eastern Continent hardly reached seven percent last year, despite intense efforts by the Radical Party and the Society of Scattered Seeds …”

That was how Savant Claire used to refer to the var-children Lamatia Hold cast forth each autumn. Scattered seeds. In theory, summerlings were supposed to search for and eventually find that special occupation they were born to be good at, then take root and flourish. Yet so many wound up in dead ends, either taking vows and sheltering in the church, or laboring like the Lerner employees, for room, board, and enough coinsticks to buy a few cheap pleasures.

Maia thought about all she had witnessed since leaving Port Sanger. “Some say there’ve been a lot more summer births, lately. That’s why there are so many of us.”

“Blood-spotting propaganda crap!” Thalla cursed. “They always complain there’s too many vars for open niches. But it’s just an excuse for poor pay. Even if you get a job, there’s no tenure. And usually it’s work no better than fit for a man.”

That answered Maia’s next question, whether males were also included under the classification of “oppressed classes.” Kiel had a point, though. Sure, the Lerners were good at what they did. In the furnaces and forges they always seemed to know where the next problem would arise, and watching a Lerner work metal was like seeing an artist in action. Still, did that give them the right to monopolize this kind of enterprise, wherever small-time foundries made economic sense?

“Perkinites are the worst,” Thalla muttered. “They’d rather have no summerlings at all. Would reopen the old gene labs if they could, fix things so there’d just be winter brats. Nothing but clones, all the time.”

Maia shook her head. “They may get their way without reopening the labs.”

“What do you mean?” Both young women asked. Looking up quickly, Maia realized she had almost let the secret slip.

What secret? she pondered. The agent never exactly told me not to speak. Besides, Thalla and Kiel are my kind, not like some faraway clone of a policewoman.

“Um,” she began, lowering her voice. “You know that trouble I got in at Jopland Hold?”

“The mess you didn’t want to talk about?” Thalla leaned forward eagerly. “I been putting one an’ three together and have got a theory. My guess is you tried crashing that party they held a couple weeks back, sneaking in to get yourself a man without payin’!” Thalla guffawed until Kiel pushed her arm and shushed her. “Go on, Maia. Tell us if you feel ready.”

Maia took a deep breath. “Well, it seems at least some of the Perkinites have found a way to get what they want. …”

She went on to tell the whole story, feeling a growing satisfaction as her companions’ eyes widened with each revelation. They had categorized her as some sweet, helpless young thing to be given sisterly protection, not an adventuress who had already been through more excitement and danger than most saw in a lifetime. When she finished, the other two turned to look at each other. “Do you think we should—” Thalla began.

Kiel shook her head curtly. “Maybe. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Right now it’s late. Past a fiver’s bedtime, no matter what a born pirate she’s turned out to be.” Kiel gave Maia’s ragged haircut a friendly tousle, one that conveyed newfound respect in an offhand way. “Let’s all kick in,” she concluded, and reached over to turn off the radio.

When the light was out and all three of them had settled into their cots, Maia lay still for a long time, thinking.

Me? A born pirate?

Yet, why not? With her tender muscles starting to throb less and tauten more each passing day, Maia was toughening more than she had ever thought possible. And now, listening to rebel radio stations? Sharing police business with homeless, radical vars?

What next? she wondered. If only Leie could see me now.

Suddenly, all her newfound toughness was no bulwark against resurgent grief. Maia had to bear down in order not to sniffle aloud. Damn, she thought. Damn it all to patarkal hell. The kindness of her housemates only made her more vulnerable, it seemed, by easing the numbness she had wrapped herself in since leaving the temple at Grange Head. Maybe I’d be better off alone, after all.