Glory Season

Maia knew she had stretched Odo's patience once, almost to the limit. Odo and her cohorts were busy pulling a thousand threads, political, social, and economic. Open and furtive. If they felt Maia and Leie and Brod were more trouble than useful as pawns in their game, she could expect ruthlessness. Maia nodded agreement, and followed Odo out the door.

By now, she knew the Persim household well. There were Yuquinn maids and Venn cooks and Buju handywomen, all of whom seemed nimble and content in their inherited niches, needing no command or incentive to anticipate every Persim whim. Why not? Each was descended from a var woman who had served peerlessly, and been rewarded with a type of immortality. An immortality that could end any time the Persims withdrew patronage. No violence would be required. No one need even be fired. The Persims had only to stop sponsoring expensive winter matings for their clients, then wait the brief interval of a generation or two.

Was the relationship predatory? Unfair? Maia doubted the Yuquinn or Venn would think so. If they were prone to such thoughts, their lines would have ended with the natural passing of their first var ancestress. Of late, though, Maia had come to adopt Renna's attitude. All of this was well-designed, as natural as could be, and from another point of view, appalling.

I am no longer a daughter of Lysos, she realized. I'll never adjust to a world whose basic premise I can't bear.

"In there," Odo said, pointing through a set of double doors. "Behave."

The threat, implicit, sufficed. Odo turned and walked away. Maia entered the conservatory, where the striking, dark-haired woman she had met at the opera was laying papers on a fabulously expensive table made of metal frames supporting nearly flawless panes of glass. While one of Odo's younger clone-sisters observed from the corner, Brill indicated a chair. "Thank you for seeing me. Shall we begin?"

Maia sat down. "Begin what?"

"Your examination, of course. We'll start with a simple survey of preferences. Take these forms. Each question features five activities—"

"Urn, pardon me … what hind of examination?"

Brill straightened, regarding her enigmatically. Maia experienced a fey sensation of depth. As if the woman already saw clear through her, and had no real need for exams.

"An occupational-aptitude test. I've accessed your school records from Port Sanger, which show adequate preparatory work. Is there a problem?"

Maia almost laughed out loud. Then she wondered. Is this a pose? Might she have been sent hereby Iolanthe Nitocris and her allies?

But then, Odo would have checked Brill's bona fides. The small civil service of Stratos was supposedly outside politics, and its testers could go anywhere. If this was a pose, Brill made it believable. Maia decided to play along.

"Uh, no problem." She looked left and right. "Where are your calipers? Will you be measuring bumps on my head?"

The Upsala clone smiled. "Phrenology has its adherents. For starters, however, why don't we begin with this?"

There followed a relentless confrontation with paper. Rapidfire questions, covering her interests, tastes, knowledge of grammar, knowledge of science and weather, knowledge of …

After two hours, Maia was allowed a short break. She went to the toilet, ate a small snack from a silver tray, walked in the garden to stretch her back. Ever businesslike, the Upsala clone spent the time processing results. If she had been sent to convey a message from Naroin or Clevin, she was good at concealing the fact.

"I saw two of your sisters after we spoke at the opera, Maia commented, aware of the watching Persim clone. "One of them played Faust . . :"

"Yes, yes. Cousin Gloria. And Surah, at the baton. Bloody showoffs."

Maia blinked in surprise. "I thought they were very good at what they did."

"Of course they were good!" Brill glanced sharp! "The issue is what one chooses to be good at. The arts are fine, for hobbies. I play six instruments, myself. But they pose no great challenge to a mature mind."

Maia stared. It was passing strange to hear a clone disparage her own kin. Stranger was the implication of her words.

"Did you say choose? Then your clan doesn't—"

"Specialize?" Brill finished the word with a disdainful buzz. "No, Maia. We do not specialize. Shall we resume work now?"

The return to neutral professionalism cut short Maia's line of inquiry. Brill next presented a wooden box, and asked Maia to grip two levers while peering down a leather-lined tube. Within, a horizontal line rocked back and forth, reminding her of an instrument she had seen in the aircraft carrying her from Ursulaborg. "This is an artificial horizon," Brill began. "Your task, as I add difficulty, will be to correct deviations …"

An hour later, Maia's finery was damp with perspiration, her neck hurt from concentration, and she moaned when Brill called time for a halt.

"O-oh-h," she commented in surprise. "That . . . was fun."

The Upsala clone answered with a brief, thin smile: "I can tell."