Maia watched as he pulled off his shirt. Unshaven and unwashed for several days, he exuded maleness like nothing she had seen or smelled since those sailors aboard the Wotan, and that, after all, had been at sea. Were a man to show up at any civilized town in such condition, he would be arrested for causing a public nuisance. That would go doubly in summer, and fourfold in high winter! Being an alien, perhaps Renna didn't know the rules of modesty boys were taught at an early age, rules that held especially when glory had fallen. Attractiveness, at the wrong times, can be a kind of annoyance.
"I never saw any walls," she answered absently. "You mean people lived near here?"
"Mm. From the weathering, I'd say about five hundred years ago."
Maia gaped. "But I thought—"
"You thought this valley was settled for only a century or so, I know. And the planet just a few hundred years before that." Renna lay back against the saddle he was using for a pillow, and sighed. Apparently untroubled by the cold, he picked up the decomposing brick and turned it over. The muscles of his arms and chest knotted and shifted. Now that she was used to it, his male aroma did not seem as pungent as that of the Wotan sailors. Or was winter affecting her, as well?
"Um," she said, trying to keep up her end of the conversation. "You mean I'm wrong about that?"
He smiled with an affectionate light in his eyes, and Maia felt a mild thrill. "Not your fault. The savants purposely muddy the histories made available outside Caria City. Not by lying, exactly, but giving wrong impressions, and implying that precise dates don't matter.
"It's true that Long Valley was pioneered a century ago, by foremothers of the Perkinite clans living here today. Almost no one had lived here for a long time, but several hundred years before that, this plain used to support a large population. I figure waves of settlement and recession must have crossed this area at least five or six times . . ."
Maia waved a hand in front of her face. "Wait. Wait a minute!" Her voice rose above a whisper, and she paused to bring it down again. "What're you saying? That humans have been on Stratos for … a thousand years?"
Renna still smiled, but his brow furrowed as it did whenever he had something serious to say. "Maia, from what I've been able to determine by talking to your savants, Lysos and her collaborators planted hominid life on this world more than three thousand years ago. That's compatible with their date of departure from Florentina, though much would depend on the mode of transport they used."
Maia could only blink, as if the man had come right out and told her that womankind was descended from rock-salamanders.
"They intended their design to last," he went on, looking at the sky. "And I've got to hand it to them. They did one hell of an impressive job." With that, Renna put aside the ancient brick and opened his blanket to slip inside. "Goodsleep, Maia."
She answered, "Goodsleep," automatically, and lay back with her eyes closed, but it took a while for her thoughts to settle down. When at last she did drift off, Maia dreamed of puzzle shapes, carved in ancient stone. Blocks and elongated incised forms that shifted and moved over each other like twined snakes coiling across a wall of mysteries.
Maia had wondered if the escape would change rhythm, now that they were in the open. Would the group hole up by day, keeping out of sight until nightfall? After hectic, almost-continuous flight, she wouldn't mind the rest.
That, apparently, was not, the plan. The sun was still low when Baltha shook her awake. "Come on, virgie. Get your tea and biscuits. We're off in a sneeze and a shake."
Thalia was already tending the rekindled fire while Kiel prepared the mounts. Standing and rubbing her eyes, Maia searched for Renna, finding him at last downstream, sitting in a semicircle of objects. When Maia drew near, she recognized the brick from last night, and several bent aluminum fixtures — a hinge and what must have been a large screw — plus several more lumps impossible to identify. The man had the Game of Life set on his lap. After examining one of his samples for a while, he would use a stylus to write an array of dots on the broad tablet, then press a button to make the pattern vanish. Into memory, she presumed.
"Hi!" he greeted cheerfully as she walked up, carrying two cups of tea. "One of those for me?"
"Yeah. Here. What're you doing?"
Renna shrugged. "My job. Found a way to use this game set as a kind of notepad, to store observations. Awkward, but anything's better than nothing at all."
"Your job," she mused. "I never got to ask. What is your job?"
"I'm called a peripatetic, Maia. That means I go from one hominid world to another, negotiating the Great Compact. It sounds grand. But really, that's just to keep me busy. My real job is … well, to keep moving and stay alive."
Maia thought she understood a little of what he had said. "Sounds a lot like my job. Moving. Staying alive."
