Glory Season (30 page)

Before her lay the message she planned to send. Maia had used big, blocky squares and spaces, intended to be read even by dim light.

Well, here goes
, she thought.

Touching one wire to the nub on the wall had no effect. But placing one against the nub and the other on the plate caused a spark that startled her briefly. Setting her teeth, Maia leaned forward to better see the paper sheets, and started tapping—creating a spark for each black square and resting a beat for each white one.

She had no idea whether this was doing anything but draining the batteries. Theoretically, she should be able to restore them by putting the game board in the window, to absorb sunlight. But in fact, she might be ruining them for nothing.

It was hard keeping track of her place, staring closely at row after row of hand-blackened squares. Despite the cold, she soon had to blink away beads of sweat, and at one point saw that she had skipped an entire line! There was nothing to be done about it. One error like that ought to leave the message readable, but she could not afford to let it happen again.

Finally reaching the end of the last row, Maia sighed in relief and sat back, stretching her arms. A break in time would let the other party know a termination had been reached. But the savant probably had been taken by surprise. So after a short breather, Maia bent forward to repeat the entire exercise.

Is anything getting through?
she wondered.
I’ve forgotten what little I knew about voltages and such. Maybe I needed to make a resistor, or a capacitor. Maybe I’m just pouring electricity into the ground, without creating sparks anywhere else.

Click, click
, pause, pause, pause,
click
 … She tried to concentrate, keeping a steady rhythm as the savant had. This was especially important counting the long pauses making up margins on both sides of her simple message. Talking aloud seemed to help. Inside she kept hearing the message she was trying to send, as if part of her was broadcasting by force of will.

I’m Maia … I’m Maia … I’m Maia …

This second time was much harder. Her fingers felt on the verge of cramping, her neck ached from leaning forward, and her eyes stung from sweat-salt. Still she kept at it stubbornly. Comfort held no attraction. What mattered was the slim chance of talking to someone.

Please hear me … I’m Maia … oh, please …

By the time she finished the second transmission, her hands were too numb even to let go of the insulated wires, so she just sat there, staring at the blank stone wall, listening to the tension in her spine slowly unwind. There would be no third attempt. Even if she and the batteries had the stamina, it would be too risky. The guards might be accustomed to one set of clicks in the night, like a friendly cricket. But too big a change in routine just wouldn’t do.

A sudden spark made her jump. It took a moment to realize she hadn’t caused it by misplacing the wires. No, it came from the wall! More sparks followed. Maia scrambled for her pencil and pad.

Each tiny arc illuminated her accompanying slash-mark. Darkness she noted with a dash. It was easier work than sending, though her eyes now hurt worse than ever. With rising excitement, Maia realized this was no repetition, but an entirely new message. She had gotten through!

Then, as abruptly as before, it ended, and she was left in silence, staring at several sheets of mysterious code.

Frustration made her already tense muscles quiver. Even if she carried the game board up to the window, there would not be enough light to reassemble it properly. Not until morning.

I can’t wait till morning. I can’t!
Maia fought down a strangling wave of impatience.
You can do whatever you have to do
, she answered herself, and forced her taut body to relax, one muscle at a time. Finally, she was breathing evenly again.

Well, at least I can tidy this up
, she thought, looking at her scrawled transcription. Standing, Maia took a few moments to stretch, then carefully climbed her pyramid of boxes toward the slit.

Durga was no longer in sight. A lesser moon, Aglaia, shone barely bright enough for her to work. Gradually, line by line on a fresh page, she drew each “click” as a black square. Each pause translated into a blank one. At the end of the first row of fifty-nine, she moved up to the next and began snaking backward again. This way, if she succeeded in repairing the game device tomorrow, she’d be able to load the starting conditions right away, and quickly set the game in motion to read the message.

It was hard work. After this she might even be able to sleep.

So intent was she on copying squares in long rows that she failed to notice the difference in the pattern for some time. Finally it occurred to her. Unlike before, the “clicks” seemed to come already clustered in tight groups. Blinking, Maia pulled back, and saw—

 … HI MAIA. T’MORO. – RENNA …

Of course. She answered the way I sent, without coding! I can read it tonight!

Maia quickened her pace. Two rows later, the message could be read.

 … HI MAIA. T’MORO. – RENNA …

The wind picked up, riffling her papers, sending them tumbling down the makeshift platform like a flurry of discarded leaves. All but the single sheet she clutched in both fists, soon smeared by hot, grateful tears.

S
ome of our expedition’s more radical members claim that I am not angry enough to lead this effort. That I do not hate or fear males enough to design a world where their role is minimized. To these accusations I reply—what hope has any endeavor which is based on hate and fear? I admit, I proudly avow, to having liked and admired certain men during my life. What of it? Although our sons and grandsons will be few, the world we create should have a place for them as well.

Other critics declaim that what really interests me is the challenge of self-cloning, and expanding the range of options for human reproduction. They say that if males were physically able to bear copies of themselves without machines, I would have given them the power, too.

That is possibly true. But then, what is a man whom you have equipped with a womb? A womb-man would
necessarily take on other traits of woman, and cease being identifiable as male at all. That is not an appealing or practical innovation.

In the end, all of our clever gene designs, and corresponding plans for cultural conditioning, will come to nought if we are smug or rigid. The heritage we give our children, and the myths we leave to sustain them, must work with the tug and press of life, or they will fail. Adaptability has to be enshrined alongside stability, or the ghost of Darwin will surely come back to haunt us, whispering in our ears the penalty of conceit.

We wish our descendants happiness. But over time one criterion alone will judge our efforts.

Survival.

O
ver the following days, Maia and her new friend learned to communicate despite the thick walls separating them. From the first, Maia felt stupid and slow, especially when Renna went back to sending coded, compacted messages designed to be deciphered by the Game of Life board. Maia could not blame her, since the method was more efficient, enabling a full screen to be sent in just a few minutes. Yet it made Maia’s responses seem so clumsy in comparison. One line of text was all she could manage after a day’s work, and sending it left her exhausted, frustrated.

 … DON’T. FRET. MAIA …

 … I’LL TEACH ANOTHER CODE …

 … FOR SIMPLE LETTERS … WORDS …

Gratefully, Maia copied down the system Renna transmitted, one called Morse. She had heard of it, she was sure. Some clans based their commercial ciphers on variants of very ancient systems.
Another item that should have been in the Lamatia curriculum
, she thought grimly.

O= +++, P= −++−, Q= ++−+

The code seemed simple enough, with each plus sign standing for a long stroke and each dash for a short one. It greatly speeded Maia’s next effort, though she remained awkward, and kept making mistakes.

IF YOU KNOW MORSE WHY USE LIFE CODING ISN’T IT HARDER

To this question, Renna answered,

HARDER. SUBTLER. WATCH

And to Maia’s astonishment, the game board proceeded to shake her friend’s letters into coruscating patterns, like a fireworks show on Founders Day.

Maia found even more amazing the next message Renna sent. Though compacted, it was long, taking up thirty-one rows by the time Maia finished laying down a snaking chain of black and white squares. Pressing the launch button set off a wild, hungry “ecology” of mutually devouring pseudo-entities that finally resolved, after many gyrations, into what looked like a
picture
 … a crude sketch of plains and distant mountains, seen through a narrow window. It was recognizably a scene looking out from this very stone tower—not the view from Maia’s window, but similar.

The other prisoner followed this with

LIFE IS UNIVERSAL COMPUTER CAN DO MORE THAN MORSE & HARDER TO EAVESDROP

Maia was impressed. Nevertheless she answered

I DID. Y NOT OTHERS?

Renna’s reply seemed sheepish.

NOT AS CLEVER AS I THOUGHT

The game board next rippled to show a slim face with close-cropped hair, eyes rolled upward in embarrassment, shoulders in the act of shrugging. The caricature made Maia giggle in delight.

Thankfully, she hadn’t damaged the Life set during that first experiment. Over the following days, Renna taught her how to connect the machine directly to the wall circuit, so she could send messages directly, instead of laboriously and dangerously touching wires by hand. Renna still made transmissions at high power every midnight, attempting to use crudely generated radio waves to contact friends somewhere out there, beyond the walls. The rest of the time, they communicated using low currents, to avoid arousing the guards.

Renna was so friendly and welcoming, reinforcing Maia’s sense of a warm, maternal presence. Maia soon felt drawn into telling her story. It all came spilling out. The departure from Lamatia. Leie’s loss. Her encounters with Tizbe and involvement in matters far murkier than any young var should have to deal with, newly fledged from her birth clan. Laying it out so starkly brought home to Maia how unfair it was. She’d done nothing to deserve this chain of catastrophes. All her life, mothers and matriarchs had said virtue and hard work were rewarded. Was
this
the prize?

Maia apologized for stumbling through the story, especially when emotion overcame her at the sending key.
THIS IS HARD FOR ME
, she transmitted, trying to keep her hand from trembling. Renna’s reply offered reassurance and understanding, along with some confusion.

AT 16 YOU OUGHT TO BE HAPPY SUCH A ROTTEN SHAME

Sympathy, after so long, brought a lump to Maia’s throat. So many older people forgot there had been a time when they, too, were inexperienced and powerless. She was grateful for the compassion, the shared empathy.

Conversing with her fellow prisoner was an adventure of awkward moments followed by cordial insights. Of double meanings and hilarious misunderstandings, like when they disagreed which moon hung in plain view, in the southern sky. Or when Renna kept misspelling the names of cities, or quotations from the Book of the Founders. Obviously, she was doing this on purpose, to draw Maia out of her funk. And it was working. Challenged to catch her fellow prisoner at intentional inconsistencies, Maia found herself paying closer attention. Her spirits lifted.

Soon she realized something astonishing. Even though they had never met in person, she was starting to feel a special kind of hearth-affection toward this new friend.

It wasn’t so difficult when you were winter-born. Hearth feelings were predictable after many generations.

For instance, three-year-old Lamais almost always passed through a phase when they would tag after a chosen clone-sister just one class ahead of them, doing whatever that older sibling asked and pining at the slightest curt word. Later, at age four, each winter Lamai took her own turn being the adored one, spending the better part of a season taking out on a younger sister the heartbreaks she had received the year before.

During her fifth-year winter, a Lamatia Clan full-daughter
started looking beyond the walls, often becoming obsessed with a slightly older cloneling from a neighboring hold, usually a Trevor, or a Wheatley. That phase passed quickly, and besides, Trevors and Wheatleys were family allies. Later on, though, came a rough period when Lamai sixers seemed inevitably bound, despite all their mothers’ warnings, to fixate on a woman from the tall, stately Yort-Wong merchant clan … which was awkward, since the Yort-Wongs had been feuding off and on with Lamatia for generations.

Knowing in advance what to expect didn’t keep Lamai sixers from railing and weeping during their autumn of discontent. Fortunately, there was the upcoming Ceremony of Passage to distract them. Yet, when all was said and done, how could the brief attentions of a man ease those pangs of unrequited obsession? Even those lucky sixers chosen for sparking emerged from their unhappy Yort-Wong episode changed, hardened. Thereafter, Lamai women wore emotional invulnerability as armor. They dealt with clients, cooperated with allies, made complex commercial-sexual arrangements with seamen. But for pleasure they hired professionals.

For companionship, they had each other.

It had been different from the very start for Maia and Leie. Being vars, they could not even roughly predict their own life cycles. Anyway, hearth feelings ranged so, from almost rutlike physical passion all the way to the most utterly chaste yearnings just to be near your chosen one. Popular songs and romantic stories emphasized the latter as more noble and refined, though all but a few heretics agreed there was nothing wrong with touching, if both hearts were true. The physical side of hearthness, between two members of the female species, was pictured as gentle, solicitous, hardly like
sex
at all.