"Um," she said, trying to keep up her end of the conversation. "You mean I'm wrong about that?"

He smiled with an affectionate light in his eyes, and Maia felt a mild thrill. "Not your fault. The savants purposely muddy the histories made available outside Caria City. Not by lying, exactly, but giving wrong impressions, and implying that precise dates don't matter.

"It's true that Long Valley was pioneered a century ago, by foremothers of the Perkinite clans living here today. Almost no one had lived here for a long time, but several hundred years before that, this plain used to support a large population. I figure waves of settlement and recession must have crossed this area at least five or six times . . ."

Maia waved a hand in front of her face. "Wait. Wait a minute!" Her voice rose above a whisper, and she paused to bring it down again. "What're you saying? That humans have been on Stratos for … a thousand years?"

Renna still smiled, but his brow furrowed as it did whenever he had something serious to say. "Maia, from what I've been able to determine by talking to your savants, Lysos and her collaborators planted hominid life on this world more than three thousand years ago. That's compatible with their date of departure from Florentina, though much would depend on the mode of transport they used."

Maia could only blink, as if the man had come right out and told her that womankind was descended from rock-salamanders.

"They intended their design to last," he went on, looking at the sky. "And I've got to hand it to them. They did one hell of an impressive job." With that, Renna put aside the ancient brick and opened his blanket to slip inside. "Goodsleep, Maia."

She answered, "Goodsleep," automatically, and lay back with her eyes closed, but it took a while for her thoughts to settle down. When at last she did drift off, Maia dreamed of puzzle shapes, carved in ancient stone. Blocks and elongated incised forms that shifted and moved over each other like twined snakes coiling across a wall of mysteries.

Maia had wondered if the escape would change rhythm, now that they were in the open. Would the group hole up by day, keeping out of sight until nightfall? After hectic, almost-continuous flight, she wouldn't mind the rest.

That, apparently, was not, the plan. The sun was still low when Baltha shook her awake. "Come on, virgie. Get your tea and biscuits. We're off in a sneeze and a shake."

Thalia was already tending the rekindled fire while Kiel prepared the mounts. Standing and rubbing her eyes, Maia searched for Renna, finding him at last downstream, sitting in a semicircle of objects. When Maia drew near, she recognized the brick from last night, and several bent aluminum fixtures — a hinge and what must have been a large screw — plus several more lumps impossible to identify. The man had the Game of Life set on his lap. After examining one of his samples for a while, he would use a stylus to write an array of dots on the broad tablet, then press a button to make the pattern vanish. Into memory, she presumed.

"Hi!" he greeted cheerfully as she walked up, carrying two cups of tea. "One of those for me?"

"Yeah. Here. What're you doing?"

Renna shrugged. "My job. Found a way to use this game set as a kind of notepad, to store observations. Awkward, but anything's better than nothing at all."

"Your job," she mused. "I never got to ask. What is your job?"

"I'm called a peripatetic, Maia. That means I go from one hominid world to another, negotiating the Great Compact. It sounds grand. But really, that's just to keep me busy. My real job is … well, to keep moving and stay alive."

Maia thought she understood a little of what he had said. "Sounds a lot like my job. Moving. Staying alive."

The man who had been her fellow prisoner laughed appreciatively. "When you put it that way, I guess it's the same for everybody. The only game in town."

Maia recalled the night before, the way shifting winds would bring his aroma as she slept fitfully, waking once to find that she was using his chest as a pillow, and he asleep with one arm over her shoulders. This morning, he seemed a different person. Somehow he had found a way to clean up. His stubble had been scraped away, in places, transforming it into the beginnings of a neat beard. Right now she could smell herself more than him.

Moving to place herself downwind, she asked, "Then you aren't here to invade us?"

She had meant it as a joke, to make fun of the rumors spread by fearmongers ever since his ship appeared in the sky, one long year ago. But Renna smiled thinly, answering, "In a manner of speaking, that's exactly what I'm here for … to prepare you for an invasion."

Maia swallowed. It wasn't the answer she'd expected. "But you—"

She didn't finish. Thalia called, leading a pair of horses, "Off your bottoms, you two! Daylight riding's hard and fast, so let's get at it!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Renna replied with a friendly, only-slightly-mocking salute. He left his archaeological samples where they lay and stood up, folding the game board. Maia hurried to tie her bedroll to her saddlebag, and glanced back to see Renna bending over to check the cinch buckle of his mount. I wonder what he meant by that remark. Could the Enemy be coming back? Did he come across the stars to warn us?

While Maia was looking at the man, Kiel crossed between them and smoothly, blithely, reached out to pinch him as she passed by! "Hey!" Renna shouted, straightening and rubbing his bottom, but clearly more surprised than offended. Indeed, his rueful smile betrayed a hint of enjoyment, causing Kiel to chuckle.

Lysos, what a shameless tease, Maia grumbled to herself, irritation pushing aside her earlier train of thought. Miffed without quite knowing why, she ignored the man's glances after that and rode ahead with Baltha for most of that afternoon. Her annoyance only grew as Renna took small detours several times with Kiel and Thalia, showing them ruins he spotted and explaining which structure might have been a house and which a craftworks. The two women were embarrassingly effusive in their show of interest.

Baltha snorted. "Silly rads," she muttered. "Making a fuss like that, trying to talk to a man, even when it won't get 'em anywhere. As if those two could handle a sparking if they got one now."

"You don't think they're trying to—"

"Naw. Just flirting, prob'ly. Pretty damn pointless. You know the saying —

"Niche and a House, first of all, matter,

Then sibs and allies, who speak the same patter,

Only then, last of all, a man to flatter.

"Still makes plenty sense to me," she finished.

"Mm," Maia answered noncommittally. "What's a … rad?"

Baltha glanced at her, sidelong. "Pretty innocent, ain't you, virgie? Do you know anything at all?"

Maia felt her face flush. I know what you've got hidden in your saddlebag, she thought of saying, but refrained.

"Rad stands for 'radical' — which means a bunch of overeducated young city varlings with dimwitted ideas about changing the world. Think they're all smarter than Lysos. Idiots."

Maia recalled now, listening to the tinny radio in the cottage at Lerner Hold. The clandestine station used the word to represent women calling for a rethinking of Stratoin society, from the ground up. In many ways, rads were polar opposites to Perkinites, pushing for empowerment of the var underclass through restructuring all of the rules, political and biological.

"You're talking about my friends," Maia told Baltha, in what she hoped was a severe tone.

Baltha returned a sarcastic moue. "Am I? Now there's a thought. Yer friends. Thanks for setting me straight." She laughed, making Maia feel foolish without knowing why. She turned straight ahead, ignoring the other woman, and for several minutes they rode in silence. Eventually, though, curiosity overcame her resentment. Maia turned and spoke a question in carefully neutral tones. "So, from what you say, I figure you don't want to change the world?"