Glory Season

Ignoring her own bleeding, Maia cast around for anything to use as a weapon. There were bits of metal, but none in any useful shape. For lack of an alternative, she drew from her jacket pocket the small paring knife she had found aboard the Manitou. The cabin boy helped her rise, and they both crouched behind the pile of debris. They heard shouts. Approaching footsteps.

Suddenly, the keening noise halted. The growling had stopped moments before, as the roof-iris finished opening.

The abrupt silence felt pregnant with expectation. Then, as if Maia had known it all along, there came a combination of sound and sight and every other sensation that felt like the clarion of Judgment Day. The world shook, while powers akin to, but violently more potent than she had experienced near the coil, tried to fill all space. That included space she had formerly occupied alone, forcing each of her molecules to fight for right of tenancy. Air needed for breath blew out as a presence passed nearby at terrible speed, streaking toward the sky.

From her back, Maia blearily watched as a sleek object tore through the heavens, leaving a blaze of riven, flaming air in its wake.

A fire arrow … she thought, blankly. Then, with but a little more coherence, she cast after it a silent call.

Renna!

Air returned, accompanied by a sound like thunder clapping. The debris mound shook, and then collapsed, tumbling rough, heavy shards over her battered legs. Yet she was left able to continue staring upward. Undistracted by distant pain, Maia had a clear view of the streaking, diminishing sparkle in the sky, wishing with all her heart that she was part of it . . . that he had waited only a little while longer, and taken her with him.

But he did it! she thought, switching over to exultation. They won't have him. He's out of their reach now. Gone back to —

Her rejoicing cut short. Overhead, almost at the limits of vision, the sparkling pinpoint abruptly veered left, brightened, and exploded in radiance, splitting apart amid an orgy of chaos, scattering fiery, ionic embers across the dark blue firmament of the stratosphere.

PART 4

Is ambition poison? Is Phylum society's headlong rush to power and accomplishment synonymous with damnation?

Ancient cultures warned their people against hubris, that innate drive within human beings to seek God's own puissance, whatever the cost. Wisely, early tribal folk restrained such fervid quests, save via spirit and art, adventure and song. They did not endlessly bend and bully Nature to their whim.

True, those ancestors lived just above the animals, in primeval forests of Old Earth. Life was hard, especially for women, yet they reaped rewards — harmony, stability, secure knowledge of who you were, where you fit in the world's design. Those treasures were lost when we embarked on "progress."

Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand.

I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, "Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination."

His point is well-taken. Yet, should we not try?

The paradox does not escape me — that we mean to use advanced technical tools to shape conditions for a stable world . . . one which, from then onward, should little need those tools again.

So we return to the question at hand. Are human beings truly cursed to discontent? Caught between conflicting yearnings, we strive to become gods even as we long to remain nature's beloved children.

Let the former pursuit be the chaotic doom of frantic, driven Phylum Civitas. We who depart on this quest have chosen a warmer, less adversarial relationship with the Cosmos.

 — from My Life, by Lysos

26

Loss of consciousness was not the result of her injuries, or even the gassy, pungent odor of anesthesia. What made her let go this time was a morale sapped beyond exhaustion. Distant sensations told her that the world went on. There were noises — anxious shouts and booming echoes of gunfire. When these ceased, they were followed by loud cries of both triumph and despair. Sounds intruded, swarming over her, prying at windows and doors, but none succeeded in making her take notice.

Footsteps clattered. Hands touched her body, lifting objects away so that a hurt of ministration replaced that of crushing injury. Maia remained indifferent. Voices rustled around her, tense and argumentative. She could tell, without caring, that more than two factions engaged in fierce debate, each too weak or uncertain to impose its will, none of them trusting enough to let others act alone.