Authors: David Brin
Nothing was made easier by the film of carbon dust coating nearly every surface. The cargo of Bizmai anthracite sent black puffs through poorly sealed cargo hatches each time the Wotan shifted in the wind. Luckily, Maia didn’t have to climb the grimy sheets, which crewmen scaled with such uncanny diligence, like apes born to dwell in treelike heights amid the wind.
Whenever duties sent her to the port side, she tried stealing glimpses of their sister vessel, the Zeus, keeping pace two hundred meters to the east. Once, Maia caught sight of a trim shape she felt must be Leie, but she dared not wave. That distant figure appeared plenty busy, running awkwardly about the other collier’s deck.
At last they cleared the tricky coastal waters and the convoy’s course was set. A north wind rose, filling the squat sails and, as a bonus, spinning the electric generator on the fantail, giving rise to a shrill whine. When the mates seemed satisfied that all was well in hand, they shouted fore and aft, calling a break.
Maia slumped amidships as her throbbing arms and legs complained.
Get used to it
, she told them.
Adventure is ninety percent pain and boredom.
The saying supposedly went on, “and ten percent stark, flaming terror.” But she hoped to give that part a miss.
A crusty ladle appeared in front of her, proffered by a stick-thin old man with a sloshing bucket. Maia suddenly realized how ravenously thirsty she was. She put her mouth TO THE CUP, SLURPING GRATEFULLY … and instantly gagged.
Seawater!
Maia felt eyes turn toward her as she coughed in embarrassment, trying to cover the reaction. She managed to clamp down and drink some more, recalling that she was just another vagrant summerling now, no longer the daughter of a rich, uptown clan with its own artesian well. In poorer sections of town, vars and even low-caste clones drew their drinking water from the sea and grew up knowing little else.
“
Bless Stratos Mother, for her mild oceans
,” went a sardonic adage, not part of any liturgy.
And bless Lysos, for kidneys that can take it.
Thirst overcame the bland, salty taste and she finished the ladle without further trouble. The old man then surprised her with a gap-toothed grin, tousling her ragged-cut hair.
Maia stiffened defensively … then self-consciously relaxed. It took more than the passing heat of hard labor to trigger male rut. Anyway, a man would have to be hard up to waste time on a virgin like her.
Actually, the coot reminded her a little of old Bennett, back when that aged male’s eyes still danced with interest in life. Hesitantly, she smiled back. The sailor laughed and moved on to water others in need.
A whistle blew, ending the work break, but at least now commands came at a slower pace. Instead of the former frenzy of reefing and unfurling sails, coaxing the sluggish vessel past frothy shoals toward open water, their new chores consisted of stowing and battening down. Now that she had a chance to look around, Maia was struck by how much
less
mysteriously alien the men of the crew appeared than she’d expected. Moving about their tasks, they
seemed as businesslike and efficient as any clan craftswoman in her workshop or mill. Their laughter was rich and infectious as they bantered in a dialect she could follow, if she concentrated … although the drift of most of their jests escaped her.
Despite their dronelike behavior ashore, ranging from boisterous to slothful, depending on the season, Maia had always known men must lead lives of toil and danger at sea. Even the crew of this grimy lug must apply both intelligence and concentration—among the best womanly traits—as well as their renowned physical strength in order to survive. She was filled with questions about the tasks she saw performed with such industry, but that would have to await the right opportunity.
Besides, she found even more interesting the
women
on board. After all, men were another race—less predictable than lugars, though better swimmers and conversationalists. But whether summer- or winter-born, women were her kind.
At the elevated aft end of the ship, distinguished by their better clothes, stood or lounged the first-class passengers, who did not have to work. Few summerlings could afford full fare, even on ships like this one, so only clones leaned on the balcony, not far from the captain and his officers. Those winter folk came from poorer clans. She spotted a pair of Ortyns, three Bizmai, and several unfamiliar types, who must have come from towns further north before changing ships in Port Sanger.
The working passengers, on the other hand, were all vars like herself—uniques whose faces were as varied as clouds in the sky. They were an odd lot, mostly older than she was and tougher looking. For some, this must be one more leg of countless many as they worked their way around the seas of Stratos, always looking for some special place where a niche awaited.
Maia felt more sure than ever that she and Leie were
correct to travel separately. These women might have resented twins, just as Captain Pegyul said. As it was, Maia felt conspicuous enough when the noon meal was served.
“Here you go, li’l virgie,” said a gnarly, middle-aged woman with gray-streaked hair, as she poured stew from a kettle into a battered bowl. “Want a napkin too, sweetie?” She shared a grin with her companions. Of course the var was having Maia on. There were some greasy rags about, but the back of a wrist seemed the favored alternative.
“No, thank you,” Maia answered, almost inaudibly. That only brought more hilarity, but what else could she say? Maia felt her face redden, and wished she was more like her Lamai mothers and half sisters, whose visages never betrayed emotion, save by careful calculation. As the women passed around a jug of wine, Maia took her plate of mysterious curry to a nearby corner and tried not to betray how self-conscious she felt.
No one’s watching you
, she tried convincing herself.
Or if they are, what of it? No one has any cause to go out of their way to dislike you.
Then she overheard someone mutter, not too softly, “… bad enough breathin’ this damn coal dust all th’ way to Gremlin Town. Do I also gotta stand th’ stink of a
Lamai brat
aboard?” Maia glanced up to catch a glower from a tough-looking var in her mid-eights or nines. The woman’s fair hair and sharp-jawed features reminded Maia of the Chuchyin clan, a rival of Lamatia based up-coast from Port Sanger. Was she a Chuchyin half or quarter sister, using an old grudge between their maternal houses as an excuse to start a private one of her own?
“Stay downwind from me, Lamai virgie,” the var grunted when she caught Maia’s gaze, and snorted in satisfaction when Maia looked away.
Bleeders! How far must I to go to escape Lamatia?
Maia had none of the advantages of being her mother’s child,
only an inheritance of resentment toward a clan widely known for tenacious self-interest.
So intent was she on her plate that she jerked when someone nudged her arm. Blinking, Maia turned to meet a pair of pale green eyes, partly shaded under a dark blue bandanna. A small, deeply tanned, black-haired woman, wearing shorts and a quilted halter, held out the wine jug with a faint smile. As Maia reached for it, the var said in a low voice, “Relax. They do it to every fiver.”
Maia gave a quick nod of thanks. She lifted the jug to her mouth …
… and doubled over, coughing. The stuff was awful! It stung her throat and she could not stop wheezing as she passed the bottle to the next var. This only brought more laughter, but now with a difference. It came tinged with an indulgent, rough-but-affectionate tone.
Each of them was five once, and they know it
, Maia realized.
I’ll get through this too.
Relaxing just a bit, she started listening to the conversation. The women compared notes on places each had been, and speculated what opportunities might lie to the south, with storm season over and commerce opening up again. Derisory comments about Port Sanger featured prominently. The image of a whole town called to arms because some clumsy reavers spilled a lantern had them in stitches. Maia couldn’t help also grinning at the farcical picture.
It didn’t seem funny to that dead woman
, a part of her recalled soberly. But then, hadn’t somebody written that one essence of humor is the tragedy
you
managed to escape?
From hints here and there, Maia surmised that some of these vars had worn the red bandanna themselves.
Say you gather a pack of down-and-out summerlings, resentful at society’s bottom rung, and sign a sisterly compact. Together, you hire a fast schooner … men willing to pilot their precious
ship alongside some freighter, giving your band of comrades a narrow moment to dare all, win or lose.
Savant Judeth had explained why it was grudgingly allowed.
“It would’ve happened anyway, sooner or later,” the Lamai teacher once said. “By laying down rules, Lysos kept piracy from getting out of hand. Call it welfare for the desperate and lucky. A safety valve.
“And if reavers get too uppity?” There had been confident menace in Judeth’s smile. “We have ways of dealing with that, too.”
Maia never intended to find out what the great clans did, when provoked too far. At the same time, she pondered the sanitized legends told about the very first Lamai … the young var who, long ago, turned a small nest egg into a commercial empire for her clone descendants. Stories were vague about where the first mother got her stake. Perhaps a red bandanna lay somewhere in a bottom drawer of the clan’s dustiest archive.
As expected, most of the vars aboard were working off passage while seeking permanent employment ashore. But a few actually seemed to consider themselves regular members of the Wotan’s crew. Maia found it strange enough that women were able to interact with the planet’s other sapient race to reproduce. Could women and men actually live and work together for long periods without driving each other crazy? While using a stiff brush to scrub the lunch dishes, she watched some of these “female sailors.”
What do they talk to men about?
she wondered.
Talk they did, in a singsong dialect of the sea. Maia saw that the petite woman who had spoken kindly to her was one of these professional seawomen. In her gloved left hand, the brunette held a treppbill, a practice model bearing a cushioned Y-shaped yoke at one end and a padded hook at the other. From the way she joked with a pair of
male comrades, it appeared she was offering a challenge which, grinning, they accepted.
One seaman opened a nearby storage locker, revealing a great stack of thin, tilelike objects, white on one side, black on the other. He removed one square wafer and turned it over, checking eight paddles set along its edges and corners. Maia recognized an old-fashioned, wind-up game piece, which sailors used in large numbers to pursue a favorite pastime known as Life. Since infancy, she had watched countless contests in dockside arenas. The paddles sensed the status of neighboring tiles during a game, so that each piece would “know” whether to show its white or its black face at a given time. By the nature of the game, a single token by itself was useless, so what was the man doing, inserting a key and winding up just one clockwork tile?
If programmed normally, the simple device would smoothly flip a row of louvered panels exposing its white surface unless certain conditions were met. Three of its paddles must sense neighboring objects within a certain time interval. Two, four, or even eight touches wouldn’t do. Exactly three paddles must be triggered for it to remain still.
The burly sailor approached the small woman, laying the game token on the deck in front of her, black side up. With one foot resting lightly on its upper surface he kept it from activating until, gripping her treppbill in both hands, she nodded, signaling
ready.
The sailor hopped back and the tile started clicking. At the count of eight, the woman suddenly lanced out, tapping the piece at three spots in rapid succession. A beat passed and the disk remained still. Then the eight-beat countdown repeated, only
faster.
She duplicated her feat, choosing a different trio of paddles, making it seem as easy as swatting zizzers. But the piece had been programmed to increase its tempo. Soon the tip of her treppbill moved in
a blur and the clock-ticking was a staccato ratchet. Sweat popped out on the small woman’s brow as her wooden pole danced quicker and quicker …
Abruptly, the disk louvers flashed with a loud
clack!
turning the upper surface white. “Agh!” she cried out. “Twenty-eight!” a sailor shouted, and the woman laughed in chagrin as her comrades teased her for falling far short of her record.
“Too much booze an’ lazin’ about on shore!” they chided.
“
You
should talk!” she retorted, “jutzin’ with them Bizzie hoors!”
One of the men started rewinding the game piece for another try, but Wotan’s second mate chose that moment to descend from the quarterdeck and call the small brunette over for a talk. They spoke for a few minutes, then the officer turned to go. The woman sailor fished a whistle out of her halter and blew a shrill blast that got the attention of all hands.
“Second-class passengers aft,” she called in an even tone, motioning for Maia and the other vars to stand in a row by the starboard gunwales.
“My name is Naroin,” the petite sailor told the assembled group. “Rank is bosun, same as Sailor Jum and Sailor Rett, so don’t forget it. I’m also master-at-arms on this tub.”
Maia had no trouble believing the statement. The woman’s legs bore scars of combat, her nose had been broken at least twice, and her muscles, if not manlike, were imposing.
“I’m sure you all saw last night that the rumors we been hearin’ are true. There’s reaver activity farther north than ever this year, an’ it’s startin’ earlier. We could be a target anytime.”
Maia found that a stretched conclusion to reach from one isolated incident, and apparently so did the other vars.
But Naroin took her responsibilities seriously. She told them so, laying the padded bill across her back.
“Captain’s given orders. We should be ready, in case o’ trouble. We’re not goin’ to be anybody’s sealfish steak. If a gang o’ jumped-up unniks tries hopping this ship—”