Glory Season

She began by summarizing the cipher key Renna had drawn upon the wall, how each cluster of dots probably represented an array of living figures on a Game of Life board. Or, more likely, a variant game, differing in its detailed ecology. Maia could perceive that each configuration dabbed on the wall might be self-sustaining given the right rule system, though it was hard to explain how she knew it.

While she told Leie about this, they were interrupted twice more by loud reports — single warning shots, fired to keep the reavers at bay. There were no cries of full-scale attack, so neither of them moved. Leie's rapt attention encouraged Maia to accelerate her story, rapidly skimming over the violence, tedium, and danger of the last few months, but revealing her astonishing discovery of a talent — one bearing on a strange, intellectual-artistic realm.

"Lysos!" Leie whispered when the essentials were out. "And I thought my time was strange! After I heard you were ashore at Grange Head, and had a safe job in Long Valley, I decided to stay awhile at sea with—" She stopped and shook her head. "But that can wait. Go on. Does this Life stuff help us figure how Renna got out of a sealed room with no exits?"

Maia shrugged. "I told you, it doesn't! Oh, the game can carry data, like a language transformed into another kind of symbol system. Renna must've translated something out of these phrases on the walls . . . maybe in context of stuff he learned at the Great Library, in Caria.

"But even when you have information, and know how to read it, you still need a way to act! To apply that data to the real world. To cause physical events to take place."

"Like breaking out of jail."

"Exactly. Like breaking out of jail."

Leie stood up and stepped before the first row of benches, onto the semicircular stage where lay a rectangular dais-podium made of polished stone. "After he vanished, most of us took turns looking over this room," she said. "Hoping to find secret panels and such. It wasn't that I was trying to be helpful, not since they killed Captain Corsh and his men . . . and especially after I thought you'd been blown up. . . ." Leie briefly closed her eyes, memory of pain written on her face. "Mostly, I was searching for a way to follow Renna, to make my own getaway. That's how I can tell you there aren't any secret panels. At least none I could recognize. Still, I did notice a thing or two."

Maia's dour mood kept her looking down at her hands. "What did you notice?" she asked, sullenly unresponsive.

"Get your butt up here and see for yourself." Leie rejoined, with a hint of the old sharpness. Maia frowned, then stood and hobbled closer. Leie waited beside the broad dais, where she stooped and pointed at a row of tiny objects embedded in the side of the giant stone block. Some of them looked like buttons. Others were little metal-rimmed holes.

"What are they for?" Maia inquired.

"I was hoping you'd tell me. Each of us tried pushing them. The buttons click as if they're supposed to do something, but nothing happens."

"Maybe they were for turning on lights. Too bad there's no power in the sanctuary."

For lack of time, Maia hadn't given any details about the military catacombs that she and Brod had explored, and which still hummed with titanic energies. Maia assumed the two networks of artificial caves were completely severed, so that hermits and treasure-hunters using this part would never stumble across the hidden defense facility, just next door.

"I said nothing happens," Leie replied. "That doesn't mean there's no power."

Maia stared at her sister. "What do you mean?"

At that moment, another gunshot pealed, echoing down the hallway to resonate within the chamber, setting Maia's teeth rattling. Both girls waited in suspense, and sighed when no more shots followed. With the tip of a finger, Leie pointed to a pair of tiny metal rings, about a centimeter apart, set into the edge of the dais near the buttons. The rings surrounded thin, deep holes. Maia pressed her finger against one, and looked up, perplexed. "I don't feel anything."

"Have you got a piece of metal?" Leie asked. "Like a coinstick? A half-credit will do."

Maia shook her head. Then she recalled. "Maybe I do have something." Her right hand went to her left forearm and unstrapped the leather cover of her portable sextant. Gingerly, she drew the tiny instrument from its padded case.

"Where'd you get that?" Leie commented, watching the brass engraving of a zep'lin pop open. Maia shrugged. "It's complicated. Let's just say I found it useful, on occasion."

She unfolded the sighting arms. One of them terminated in a pointed prong — normally used as an indicator for reading numbers against a measuring wheel — that could be rotated outward. It seemed narrow enough to use as a probe.