Maia froze, halting as if she had been quick-frozen. Sweat-blinded, save through a crimson-rimmed tunnel of terror and wrath, she peered at the face — a mirror to her own.

"Le … Le …" she goggled.

Recognition also lit the young reaver's eyes. "I'll be a bleedin' clan-mother," she said with a wry, familiar smile. "It's my atyp twin."

Too stunned to move, Maia heard Renna's voice shouting through her muzzy shock. But Leie's presence filled every space, engulfing her brain. Glancing past Maia's shoulder, her sister said, "You better duck, honey."

Slowly, glacially, Maia tried to turn.

There was a distant crumping tumult of polished wood striking somebody's skull. She had come to know the nuances of such sounds, and pitied the poor victim.

Dimly perceived movement followed, as if viewed through an inverted telescope. Perplexed by the suddenly approaching deck, Maia wondered why her muscles weren't responding, why her senses all seemed to be shutting down. She tried speaking, but a faint gurgle was all that came out.

Too bad, she thought, just before thinking nothing at all. I wanted to ask Leie. . . . We have so much . . . catching up to do. …

Peripatetic's Log:

Stratos Mission:

Arrival + 50.304 Ms

Myth envelopes the male-female bond. Countless generations since supposedly winning conscious control over instinct, most hominids still cling to notions of romantic love and natural conception — the way of a woman with a man. Even where societies encourage experimentation and alternative lifestyles, the presumption remains that a parental pair, one male and one female, compose continuity's spindle.

On Stratos, few songs or stories celebrate what is elsewhere obsession. Males are necessary, sometimes even liked, but they are peripheral beings, somewhat quaint. Anachronistic.

Passion has its brief seasons on Stratos. Otherwise, this world does not seem to miss it.

Still, partnership happens, often through business or cultural alliances. Caria's leading symphony orchestra has long consisted mostly of musicians from four extraordinarily gifted groups — O'Niels provide the strings, Vondas focus on woodwinds, Posnovskys at horns, and Tiamats on percussion. (I hope to hear them if I'm still here in autumn, when the season starts.)

On occasion, clans join in even closer associations. Relationships that might be called romantic, marital. They may even share offspring.

It's simple, in practice. First, both clan A and clan B arrange to have clutches of summer offspring. If clan A has a boy child, it does the usual thing, raising him carefully and then fostering him to one of the oceangoing guilds. Except in this case, he promises to return one summer, when he's older.

Meanwhile, clan B has had summer daughters. One is chosen to receive the best education a variant girl can get. She is sponsored a niche, even a winter pregnancy, all so she'll be ready to repay the debt when the son of house A returns from sea. Any child resulting from that union is then technically the heterozygous grandchild of both clans.

It makes for interesting comparisons. If one likens clans to individuals, that makes the girl-intermediary the equivalent of an egg, and the boy a sperm. The two clans fill the role of lovers.

At times I find all of this quite boggling.

How much more can I take? I must keep my mind on the job. Yet that job is to investigate the intimate workings of this human subspecies. I cannot escape the subject of sex, from dawn to dusk. Sometimes my head feels like it's spinning.

If only the women of this world weren't so beautiful.

Damn.

19

"That thing'd break up in the first good squall. Or even sooner, when you drop it over th' cliff. How d'you plan on steerin' the smuggy thing?"

With a bang that made Maia wince, the big sailor, Inanna, slammed down the rock she had been using for a hammer. "Bosun, you just shut up. You're no shipcrafter, an' you sure ain't givin' orders no more."

Maia watched Naroin consider this, then reply with a shrug. "It's your necks."

"Ours to risk," Inanna assented, gesturing at the other women, hard at work cutting saplings and dragging them toward an area laid out with chalk lines on the rocky bluff. "You two are free to come along. We can use good fighters. But all the arguin' and votin' are over. Either put up or take your samish asses to 'tarkal hell."

Preparing to give a hot reply, Naroin cut short when Maia grabbed her arm. "We'll think about it," Maia told Inanna, trying to pull Naroin away. The last thing anybody needed, right now, was to have a shouting match come to blows.

For a long moment, Naroin seemed rooted in stone, unmovable until she abruptly decided to let it go. "Huh!" she said, and swiveled to march up the narrow, forested trail toward the campsite. Despite being taller, Maia had to hurry to keep up. All this noise and shouting wasn't easing the headache she had nursed since awakening, days ago, with a concussion, a captive of reavers.

"They may have the wrong plan," Maia suggested, trying to calm Naroin. "But it keeps them busy. There'd be fights and craziness without something to do."

Naroin slowed to look at Maia, and then nodded. "Basic command principle. Shouldn't need you to remind me." She glanced back at where the women sailors of the Manitou labored alongside a half-dozen of Kiel's younger rads, cutting and trimming saplings with primitive tools, laying out the beginnings of a rude craft. "I just hate to see 'em try something so dumb."

Maia agreed, but what to do? It had all been decided at a meeting, three days after the reavers dumped them on this spirelike isle whose name, if any, must be lost to another age. Naroin had argued for a different scheme — the building of one or two small boats, which a few selected volunteers might sail swiftly westward in search of help. That proposal was voted down in favor of the raft. "Everyone goes, or nobody!" Inanna declared, carrying the day.

Left out was how they proposed to make such a big contraption seaworthy, then get it down the sheer fifty-meter drop, and away from the spuming interface of wave and rock. Only one place along the forested rim of the jagged promontory featured a way down. There a winch had lifted the prisoners and their provisions, just before the Reckless and the captured Manitou sailed off. Inanna and her friends still schemed to use the lifting machine, despite its metal casing, locks, and earlier warnings of booby traps. In the long run, however, they might have to resort to building a primitive crane of timbers and vines.

"Idiots," Naroin muttered. She thrashed at the low foliage by the trail, using a short stave she had trimmed just after landfall. It was no trepp bill, but the small, wiry seawoman seemed more comfortable with it in her hands. "They'll never make it, an' I'm not drownin' with 'em."

Maia was getting fatigued with Naroin's impatient temper. Yet, she did not want to be alone. Too many dark thoughts plagued her when solitude pressed close. "How can you be sure? I agree your plan would have been better, but—"

"Bleeders!" Naroin slashed with her staff, and leaves flew. "Even a bunch o' frosty jorts oughta see that raft's all wrong. Say they do get it down, an' the sea don't smash it right up. They'll just get plucked again, like floatin' melons. If the pirates don't grab the chance to send 'em straight to Sally Jones on the spot."

"But we haven't seen a sail since we were marooned. How would the reavers know when and where to find them unless . . ." Maia stopped. She stared at Naroin. "You don't mean . . . ?"

The bosun's lips were thin. "Won't say it."

"You don't have to. It's vile!"

Naroin shrugged. "You'd do the same, if you was them. Trouble is, there's no way to tell which one it is. Or maybe two. Didn't know any o' them var hands before I hired on, at Artemesia Bay. Can't be sure of any of 'em."