"Lysos!" Maia cried, hopping back onto the tiles. Her clothes were gone — no doubt to help strand her here. With a curse, she now recalled Thalia's parting words, which had seemed odd for someone you expected to see again!

Clutching a towel, Maia dashed from the room and swept downstairs, only to be blocked momentarily by the innkeeper, holding a cloth bag and a paper envelope.

"Oh, it's you, miss. Your friends told me to give you—"

Her words cut off as Maia pushed her aside and streaked out the front door, leaping down the steps onto the gravel road. Shopkeepers stared and a trio of three-year-old clones giggled, but Maia dug in, kicking pebbles as she ran, ignoring the bite of cold sea air. Turning fast at the embankment, she skidded and sprawled hard onto hands and knees, but was up again in an instant, not bothering to check for bleeding or to pick up the spilled towel. Maia ran naked past loading cranes and moored ships, to amazed looks from sailors and townswomen alike.

Two longboats had already set out from the pier, oars-women pulling with steady, even strokes. When Maia reached the end of the wharf, she screamed at Kiel, who was near the helmsman in the second boat.

"Liar! Damn you! You can't just—" Stamping, she sought the words to express her fury. Kiel's jaw dropped in surprise, while several of the vars Maia had fought next to, now laughed at the sight of her standing there, unclothed and quaking with anger.

The dark woman cupped her hands and called back. 'We can't take you along, Maia. You're too young and it's dangerous! The letter explains—"

"Julp on your damn letter!" Maia screamed in anger and disappointment. "What does Renna have to say about . . ."

Then she saw what she had not noticed before. The man from space had a glazed, unhappy look on his face, and was not focusing on anything or anybody in particular. "You're kidnapping him!" she cried, hoarsely. .. "No, Maia. It's not what you—"

Kiel's voice cut off as Maia dove headfirst into the frigid water and came up sputtering. She inhaled a painful, salty rasp, then set out after the boat, swimming with all her might.

Peripatetic's Log:

Stratos Mission:

Arrival + 41.051 Ms

Cloning, as an alternate mode of reproduction, was used long before the emigration from Florentina World. An egg cell, carefully prepared with a donor's genetic material, is implanted within a chemically stimulated volunteer, or the artificial womb recently perfected on New Terra. Either way, the delicate, expensive process is generally reserved for a world's most creative, or revered, or wealthy individuals, depending on local custom. I know of no planet where clones make up a significant fraction of the population . . . except Stratos.

Here, they comprise over eighty percent! On Stratos, parthenogenetic reproduction is as easy or hard, as cheap or dear, as having babies the normal way. Results of this one innovation pervade the whole culture. In my travels, I have never witnessed such a bold experiment in redirecting human destiny.

This was the essence of my address before the Reigning Council in Caria. (See appended transcript.) There was an element of diplomatic flattery, since I left all my troubled questions for another occasion. Time and observation will surely reveal cracks in this feminist nirvana, but that by itself is no indictment. When has any human culture been perfect? Perfection is another way of spelling death.

Some in the audience seemed eager for my proxy recognition of their founders' accomplishments. Others smiled, as if indulgently amused that a mere man might speak to a topic beyond his natural ken. Many simply stared blankly, unable to decide.

Then there was the quiet, polite rancor I could not miss on the faces of a large minority. Their hostility reminded me that Lysos, for all her scientific genius, had also been leader of a militant, revolutionary band. Centuries later, there remains a deep undercurrent of ideological fervor here on Stratos.

The season of the year is no help. Can it be coincidence that consent-to-land was finally granted during midsummer, when suspicion of males runs highest? Were opponents of contact hoping I'd misbehave, and so sabotage my mission?

Perhaps they count on assistance from Wengel Star. Or from hot season's shimmering aurorae. If so, the Perkinists will be disappointed. I am unaffected by glowing cues in their summer sky.

Still, I must take care. The men of this world are used to being few, surrounded by womankind, while I was shaped in a different society, and have just spent two lonely years of my own subjective span in cramped isolation between the stars.

16

Incised figures on a granite wall . . . geometric forms . . . nested, twining-rope patterns … a puzzle, carved in ancient rock . . .

"We can't stay down here much longer. I told you! Your code's no better'n a Lamai's spit!"

I Focus on an image . . . of a child's hand . . . reaching upward toward a star-shaped knot of stone . . .

"Shut up, Leie. Lemme think. Was it this one? Um — I can't 'member."

. . . yes, this one. The star-shaped knob. She must touch the stone. Twist it a quarter turn. A quarter turn to the right.

It was hard to do, though. Something was making her sluggish. A force of will was needed just to make her arm extend, and motion felt like pushing through a jar of bee honey. The dank air of the cellar felt humid, smothering. The stone outcrop receded, even as she stretched out for it.

… a star-shaped stone . . . key to the sequence of opening.

The image wavered. Her own hand warped, growing indistinct behind swells of dizzying distortion. The surrounding, twining-rope carvings began to slither, twisting and writhing like awakening snakes.

"Too late," Leie's voice warbled from somewhere out of sight, mixing sadness with recrimination. A grinding sound told of the walls closing in, converging to crush them, to immure them in granite, leaving no escape.

"You're always so damn late …"

What hurt most was a vague sense of betrayal. Not by her sister, but the patterns. She had felt so certain of them. The figures on the wall. She had put her faith in them, and now they wouldn't play.

Blurry patterns. Fickle, blurry forms, carved in living, moving stone. . . .

"… is … she . . . doin' . . . any . . . better?"

It was a woman's distant tenor that surged and faded so … as if each word came floating out of a mist, packaged in its own quavering bubble.

The reply, when it came, was much deeper, like a sea god intoning from the depths.

". . . think … so. … doctor said . . . hour ago . . . ought to … soon."

At first, the voices were welcome intrusions, stirring and dissipating the clinging terror-strands of a bad dream. Soon, however, the words became irritants, luring her with hints of meaning, only to jerk away all sense, teasing her, thwarting an easy slide to quiet sleep.

The tenor returned, wavering less with each passing moment.

"Good thing … or those . . . heads would be … same as … ing murderers."

A pause. The sea god intoned, "I … never forgive myself."

". . . had nothin' . . . with it! Damn fools, tryin' to … her behind, like some kid. Could've told 'em she . . . stand for it. … Spunky little var."

At least they were friendly voices, she realized. Soothing. Unthreatening. It was good knowing she was being cared for. No need to worry yet over things like how, or why. Natural wisdom counseled her to leave it for now. Let well enough alone.

Wisdom. No match for the troublemaker Curiosity.

Where am I? she wondered despite herself. Who are these people?

From that moment, each word arrived defined. Freighted with meaning, context.

"So you've told me," the deeper voice resumed. "We had some chance to exchange life stories in prison, but she never mentioned the details you told me. Poor girl I had no idea what she's been through."