Glory Season

Glancing through one expensive glass window, Maia watched three high-browed redheads consult with customers over leather-bound folders. Perusing gilt posters, Maia gleaned that this was a local branch of a farflung family enterprise, one offering commercial message services. On a separate chart, the redheads advertised a local sideline — designing private languages for up-and-coming houses.

"Now there's a niche," Maia murmured admiringly. Success on Stratos often lay in finding some product or service no one else had mastered. This was one she might have enjoyed exploring herself. She sighed. "Too bad it already seems pretty well filled."

"They're all filled, sister. Don't you know? It's one of the foretold signs."

Maia spun around to face a young woman about her own age and height, wearing a cowled robe with the embroidered stripes of some religious order. The priestess, or dedicant, clutched a sheaf of yellow pamphlets, peering at Maia through thick spectacles.

"Um . . . signs of what, sister?" Maia asked, overcoming surprise.

A friendly, if fervent, smile. "That we are entering a Time of Changes. Surely you've noticed, a bright fiver like yourself, that things are on edge? Clan matrons have long complained about the climbing summer birthrate, but do they act to stop it? A force within Stratos Herself wills that it be so, despite all inconvenient consequences."

Maia overcame her accustomed reaction to being accosted by a clergywoman — an impulse to seek the nearest exit. "Mm . . . inconvenient?"

"To the great houses. To the bureaucracy in Caria. And especially to those selfsame hordes of summerlings, for whom there's no place on this planet. No place save one."

Aha! Maia thought. Is this a recruitment drive? The priesthood was even less selective than the Port Sanger city guard. By taking vows, any var might guarantee a full meal bowl for the rest of her days. If it also meant forsaking childbearing, or ever establishing a clan of one's own, how many summerlings achieved that anyway? Abjuring sex someday, with a sweaty man, was no decision-stopper. All Stratos was your lover when you took the robe, and all Stratoins your children.

Still, why go recruiting? In Lanargh, a stone thrown in any direction would pass over some priestess or deacon. More were choosing that route to safety every day.

"Meanin' no disrespect," Maia said, backing away. "I don't think the Temple is my place."

The priestess seemed undismayed. "My child, that's obvious from the look of you."

"But . . . then what . . . ?" Maia suddenly found her hand filled with a printed broadsheet. She glanced down at the first few lines.

The Outsiders — Danger or Challenge?

Sisters in Stratos! It should be obvious by now that the sages and councilwomen of Caria are concealing the truth about the spaceship in our skies, said to contain emissaries from the Hominid Phylum, which our ancestors left so long ago. Why have they told the public so little? The savants and officials make excuses, talking about "linguistic drift" and careful "quarantine procedures," but it is growing apparent to even the lowliest that our great ones, sitting on lofty seats within the Council, Temple and University, are in their deepest hearts cowards. . . .

It was hard to follow the run-on screed, but a tone of antagonism to authority was stridently clear. Maia looked again at the dedicant, seeing that the stripes of her robe were broken with colored threads. "You're a heretic," she breathed.

"Smart lass. Not many where you're from?" Maia found herself smiling faintly. "We're a bit out of the way. We had Perkinites—"

"Everyone has Perkinites. Specially since the Outsider Ship gave 'em an excuse to spread boogie-man stories. You know the ones. . . . Now that Stratos is rediscovered, the Phylum will send fleets of ships full of drooling, hairy, unmodified males, worse than the Enemy of old."

"Well" — Maia grinned at the image—"that may exaggerate what they say."

"And your local Perkies may be milder than ours, O virgin from the frozen north!" The heretic laughed sardonically. "At any rate, even the temple hierarchy's in a lather over alien humans barging in, possibly changing Stratos forever. It never seems to occur to the silly smugs that it might be the other way around. That this may be the moment Lysos was planning for, from the very start!"

Maia was confused, "You don't see the starship as a threat?"

"Not my order, the Sisters of Venture. In early days, restored contact might've been harmful. But now our way of life is proven. Sure, we have problems, injustices, but have you read about the way things were back on the Old Worlds, before our founders' exodus?"

Maia nodded. It was favored fare in books and on the tele.

"Animal chaos!" The woman waxed passionate. "Picture how violent and uncertain life was, especially for women and children. Now realize, it's probably still going on out there! That is, on whatever worlds haven't been destroyed, by the Enemy, or by aggression among male humans."