Glory Season

Maybe she was letting her imagination run away with her. It sounded like no code she had ever heard. There were no obvious spaces that might go between words, for example. Was there any reason for the clicking to happen at the same time each night?

It might just be a faulty timepiece in one of the great halls, or something equally mundane. I wonder how the sound carries through the walls.

Sleep came without any resolution. She dreamed of brasswork clocks, ticking with the smooth, just rhythms of natural law.

The third book was even riper than the prior two — a romance about life in the old Homino-Stellar Phylum, before Lysos and the Founders set forth across the galaxy to forge a new destiny. Such accounts, dealing with an archaic, obsolete way of life, ought to be fascinating and instructive. But Maia had read widely in the genre as a four-year-old, and been disappointed.

Like so many others, this tale was set on Florentina, the only Phylum world familiar to most schoolgirls, since that was where the Founders' expedition began. The story even featured a cameo appearance by Perseph, a chief aide to Lysos. But for the most part, the exodus was seen in glimpses, being planned offstage. Meanwhile, the poor heroine, a sort of everywoman of Florentina, suffered the trials of living in a patriarchal society, where men were so numerous and primitive that life could only have been a kind of hell.

"I did not mean to encourage him!" Rabaka cried, covering the left side of her face so that her husband would not see the bruises. "I only smiled because—"

"You SMILED at a strange man?" he roared at her. "Have you lost your mind? We men will seize any gesture, any imaginable cue as a sign of willingness! No wonder he followed you, and pushed you into the alley to have his way."

"But I fought. … He did not succeed—"

"No matter. Now I shall have to kill him!"

"No, please …"

"Are you DEFENDING him, then?" Rath demanded, his eyes filling with flame. "Perhaps you would prefer him? Perhaps you feel trapped with me in this small house, bound together by our vows for eternity?"

"No, Rath," Rabaka pleaded. "I just don't want you to risk—"

But it was already too late to stem his rush of anger. Rath was already reaching for the punishment strap that hung upon the wall. …

Maia could only take it half a chapter at a time. The writing was execrable, but that wasn't what made her stomach queasy. The incessant violence repulsed her. What kind of masochist reads this kind of stuff? she wondered.

If the point was to show how different another society could be, the book was successful, in a gut-churning way. On Stratos, it was virtually unheard-of for a man to lift his hand against a woman. The Founders had laid an aversion at the chromosome level, which was reinforced from one generation to the next. Summer matings were a man's only chance to pass on his genes, and clan mothers had long memories when the time came to send out invitations during aurora season.

On Florentina, though, there had been a different arrangement. Marriage. One man. One woman. Stuck together forever. Apparently, women even preferred quasi-slavery to a single life, because vast numbers of other men patrolled outside, in ceaseless rut, always eager to pounce. The brutal consequences depicted on page after page of the historical novel left Maia nauseated by the time she finished.

Of course she had no way of knowing how accurate the depiction was, of Old Order life on a Phylum world. Maia suspected just a little authorial exaggeration. There might have been specific cases like the one described, but if things were this bad for all women, all the time, they surely would have poisoned their husbands and sons long before gene-molding came along with alternate solutions.

Still, it was enough to give a girl religion again. Bless the wisdom of Lysos, Maia thought, drawing a circle over her breast. Again that evening she exercised hard, running in place, doing pushups and step workouts, on and off crates. At dusk, she went back to the window and found that she could just manage to squeeze into the long, narrow passage. Thoughts of escape blossomed, until she reached the far end where it was possible to look straight down at the valley floor … a hundred meters below.

I might be able to come up with a plan. Find a way to get some of these crates open. Maybe start weaving a rope from yarn taken from the carpets? There were possibilities, each of them dangerous. It would take some mulling over. Anyway, she obviously had plenty of time.

There were no majestic zoor-floaters to watch as night fell, though several birds fluttered past, pausing on their way to roost long enough to taunt her, squawking at this silly, flightless human, crammed within her cleft of stone.