Glory Season

But Maia wasn't her sister. Back in school she might watch a dozen bouts without recalling who had won, let alone who parried when for points. While her churning guts wanted to find some dim shadow, her rational mind said, Just get it over with. Anyway, if Naroin was trying to encourage proper womanly combat virtues, Maia could offer a good contrast to the Chuchyin, and surprise those who called her "virgie."

Fighting a queasy tremor, she stepped forward, silently drew the other padded training bill from the rack and faced the arena. She ignored the staring clones and vars, ritually scuffed the dust thrice, and bowed. Bearing her own cushioned weapon, Naroin beamed beneficence toward Maia's courtesy. Both of them extended their bills, hook end forward, for that first, formal tap …

Someone splashed water in her face. Maia coughed and sputtered. It stung not only of salt but of coal. A blur slowly resolved into a face … an old man's … the one who earlier had tousled her hair, she dimly recalled. "Here, now. Y'all hokay? Nothin' broke, i'zer?" He spoke a thick mannish dialect. But Maia got the drift. "I … don't think so . . ." She started to rise, but a sharp pain lanced through her left leg, below the knee. A bloody cut went halfway around the calf. Maia hissed.

"Mm. Ah see yet. S'not so bid. Here's sum salve that'll seer a beet."

Maia felt a whimper rise in her gorge and stifled it as he applied medicine from an earthenware jar. The agony departed in waves like an outgoing tide. Her throbbing pulse settled. When she next looked, the bleeding had stopped.

"That's . . . good stuff," she sighed.

"Our guild maybe small 'n' poorly, bit we got smart tube-boys beck in sanctuary."

"Mm, I'll bet." Between shipping seasons, some men dealt with extra time on their hands by fiddling in laboratories, either as guests in clanholds or at their own craggy hermitages. Few of the bearded tinkerers had much formal education, and most of their inventions were at best one-season marvels. A fraction reached the attention of the savants of Caria, to eventually be published or banned. This salve, though — Maia vowed to get a sample and find out if anyone yet had the marketing rights.

She rose up on her elbows and looked around. Two pairs of second-class passengers were out on the hatch cover, sparring under shouted direction from the master-at-arms. Several others lay sprawled like she was, nursing bruises. Meanwhile, two female crew members sat by the forward cowling, one blowing a flute while the other sang in a low, sad alto voice.

The old man tsked. "Really pushin' this yar. Fool'sh, runnin' fems too ragged t'work. Not roit, boy my lights."

"I s'pose," Maia murmured noncommittally. She rose to sitting position and then, grabbing a nearby rail, managed to hobble onto one leg. She was still woozy, and yet felt vaguely relieved. Real pain was seldom as bad as the expectation.

Funny, hadn't Mother Claire once said that about childbirth! Maia shivered.

One of the practicing vars shouted and landed on the hatch with a loud thump. The women playing music switched to an ancient, plaintive melody that Maia recognized — about a wanderer, yearning for a home, a beloved, all of the hearth-joys that came so easily to some, but not others.

Resting against the gunnels, Maia gazed across the seascape and found the Zeus keeping pace a bit behind, plowing through choppy waves with billowed sails. So far, this voyage had been at least as much a learning experience as her sister promised.

I do hope Leie's finding her trip just as interesting, came Maia's biting thought.

Two weeks later, on hitting their first landing in Queg Town, the twins finally set eyes on each other after their longest separation, and their reactions were identical. Each looked the other up and down . . . and simultaneously broke up laughing.

On the lower part of Leie's right leg, in a spot perfectly mirroring her own left, Maia saw a strip of new, pink scar tissue, healing neatly under the benign influence of sun, air, hard work, and saltwater.

Problem number one; lacking natural controls, our human descendants will tend to overbreed until Stratos can no longer support their numbers. Shall we then have come all this way to repeat the catastrophe of Earth?

One lesson we've learned — any effort to limit population cannot rest on persuasion alone. Times change. Passions change, and even the highest flown moralizing eventually palls in the face of natural instinct.

We could do it genetically, limiting each woman to just two births. But variants who break the programming will outbreed all others, soon putting us back where we started. Anyway, our descendants may at times need rapid reproduction. We mustn't limit them to a narrow way of life.

Our chief hope lies in finding ways of permanently tying self-interest to the common good.