In the craft halls, I witnessed tournaments of pottery, woodworking, and other skills. Many coastal industrial clans had sent their brightest daughters, I was told, to participate in a close-watched competition involving the use of coal and clay and simple ores, hand-working raw materials all the way to finished tools. There were even holovid cameras to cover that event, while mere horseraces went untelevised.
By the riverside we watched water competitions, beginning with sculls and shells and rowing barges. Most were pulled by teams of bronzed, well-muscled, identical women, who needed no coxswain to guide their perfect unison. The culminating trial, however, was a regatta of trim sailing sloops, threading a hazardous course amid sandbars and shallows. To my surprise, these larger craft were crewed by teams of energetic young men. When I learned what prize they strove for, I knew why they competed with such fervor.
It was a thrilling battle of skill, raw energy, and luck. Two of the leading craft, contending violently for the wind, collided, entangling their sails, driving them together on a gravel bank. Whereupon a more cautious team swept by the judges' buoy, to raucous cheers from watchers on shore. Amused women chuckled and pointed as the lucky dozen males, preening with eyes afire, were led away by representatives of clans who had chosen to have summer offspring this year.
It reminded me of the racecourse — those leashed stallions, prancing off to stud for their proud owners. With that thought, I had to look away.
"Come. I know you'll want to see this," Iolanthe said. She and her sisters led me to a pavilion at the far end of the fairgrounds, dingier than most, made of a gray, coarse fabric meant to last many seasons. On entering, I blinked for a moment, wondering what was simultaneously strange and familiar about the people gathered at various booths and exhibits. Then I realized. Almost no one looked alike! After weeks in Caria, meeting delegations of high clans, getting used to double, triple, and quadruple visions of the same facial types, it felt disorienting to see so much diversity in one place. There were even some elderly men, come from far citadels to show their crafts and wares.
"This place is for vars," I essayed a guess.
Iolanthe nodded. "Or singleton envoys from poor, young clans. Here, anyone with something new and special to display gets her chance, hoping for that lucky break."
What point was she trying to make? That Stratoin society allows for change? That their founders had left ways for newness to enter, from time to time? Or was she subtly suggesting something else? Moving from booth to booth, I was struck by a certain deficit. A lack of smoothness or the relaxed presumption of skill that daughters of an older clan wore as easily as clothes on their backs.
The women under this tent were eager to show the products of their labor and ingenuity. Buyers from great trading houses could be seen threading the aisles, aloofly on the lookout for something worth their time and interest. Here, in a moment, a var's success could be made. Generations later, her innovation might become the basis for a clan's wealth.
Clearly that is the hope. And just as clearly, few in this vast room would see it come true. How often hope comes salted with a bitter tang.
They used to say, on Earth, that we find immortality through our children. It is a solace, although most of us know that when we die, we stop.
On Stratos, though … I no longer know what to think. Under that canopy, at the far end of the festival grounds, I felt something familiar that had seemed remote at Nitocris Hold, or in the marbled chambers of the acropolis.
Beneath the Var Pavilion, I remarked a familiar scent of mortality.
18
Their opponents offered to waive the rules. It was done quite often, Maia knew. About one Life match in five that she had witnessed featured some agreed-on variation. These ranged from using odd boundaries to altering the fundamental canons of the game — including more than two colors, or changing the way pieces responded to the status of their neighbors.
In this case, nothing complicated was involved. To save time — and perhaps rub home the helplessness of their adversaries — the junior cook and cabin boy suggested that each side lay down four rows at a turn, instead of just one. Since their own round came first this time, it was a generous concession, like spotting a chess opponent one rook. Maia and Renna would get to see large swaths of the other side of the board, and discuss possible changes before placing each layer of their own.
Maia watched tensely as the two youths positioned their game pieces. Seconds passed, and she felt a knot slowly unwind in her belly. They aren't very imaginative, after all, she thought. Or they're being lazy. The boys' oasis zone was already apparent, protected by a spiky variety of a standard pattern called "long fence."
Maia found it bemusing, standing here reading a game board this way. Last night, during their first match, she had experienced one or two moments of inspiration, but had been too confused and worried to enjoy the process, or let go and watch the game as a whole. That had changed with this afternoon's epiphany and during the subsequent session exploring possibilities with Renna. Now she felt strangely detached, yet eager, as if a barrier had broken, releasing something serenely beyond mere curiosity.
Almost certainly, it had been triggered by that cruel conversation with Baltha, causing her to despair at last of comradeship from womankind. But that didn't go all the way toward explaining her sudden passion for this game.
Face it. I'm abnormal.
It hadn't begun with this voyage, or on meeting Renna, or even studying navigation with old Bennett. At age three, she used to love going down by the piers, watching sailors scratch their beards and mull over arrays of clicking game pieces. Many women enjoyed the dance of shapes and forms, yet there had always been something implicit in the townsfolk's indulgent appreciation. No one came right out and said it wasn't for girls. The tenor of complaisant scorn sufficed, especially when shared by Leie. Eager to fit in, young Maia had mimicked words of affectionate contempt, suppressing, she now saw in retrospect, that early fascination.
I've always loved patterns, puzzles. Maybe it's all a mistake. I should have been a boy.
That passing, sardonic thought she did not take seriously. Maia felt profoundly female. No doubt what she'd stumbled on was simply a wild talent manifesting itself. One lacking much use in real life, alas. She knew of no lucrative niche in Stratoin society for a woman navigator who was also able to play man-games.
No niche. No golden road to matriarchy. But perhaps a life. Naroin seems to do all right, spending most of each year at sea.
It was funny, contemplating a career as a woman-sailor. There were attractions to the rough camaraderie Naroin and the other var hands shared with the seamen. On the other hand, a life of hauling ropes and yanking winches . . . ? Maia shook her head.
Spectators gathered. The boys laid down their pieces, hurrying along for a stretch, then stopping to point and argue before reaching consensus and resuming. Maia stifled a yawn, shoved her hands back into her coat pockets, and shifted her feet to keep up circulation. The midwinter evening was mild. Tiered banks of low, dark clouds served to keep in some of the day's warmth. While a range of ocher, sunset shades still tinted those along the western fringe, lanterns overlooking the cargo game area were switched on.
Up on the quarterdeck, the helmsman sniffed the air and exchanged a look with the captain, who returned a brief nod. The tiller turned a few degrees. Soon, a gentle shift in the ship's swaying accompanied an altered rhythm from the creaking masts. Without being told, two sailors sauntered to a set of cranks by the starboard side, ratcheting them just enough to tauten a sail.