Maia's thoughts rolled. She saw Thalia, about to take her turn in the practice ring, pluck a bill from the weapons rack. Glancing up, Thalia smiled at her, and in a rush, Maia was filled with an outraged sense of confirmation. Baltha's right, damn her! Kiel and Thalia must have used me.
A tidal surge of hurt and betrayal caused each breath to catch painfully in her throat. She had been angry with her former cottage-mates for trying to leave her behind in Grange Head, but this was worse. Far worse. I … can't trust anybody.
The sense of perfidy hurt terribly. Yet, what strangely came to mind most strongly right then was the memory of cursing Calma Lerner and her doomed clan. I'm sorry, she thought. Even if Baltha turned out to be wrong, or lying, Maia felt ashamed of what she'd said in wrath, invoking maledictions on the hapless smithy family, whose members had never done her any real harm.
In the background, contrasting to her dark brooding, Renna's voice continued blithely, describing his strategy for the evening's match. ". . . so I was thinking, I could put a pinwheel at each end of the board, near the boundary . . ."
The voice was an irritation, scraping away at Maia's guilt-wallow. Even if Baltha lied, I'll never be able to trust Thalia and Kiel again. I'm as alone now as ever I was in my prison cell.
She closed her eyes. The rhythmic clicking of battle sticks was punctuated by Naroin's shouted instructions. Renna droned on. ". . . Naturally, they'll be struck by simulated objects coming from my opponents' side of the board. Most of those will be deflected by the pinwheel's arms. But there are certain basic shapes that worry me . . ."
Vagaries of wind caused the steersman to order a slight turn, bringing the sun around from behind a sail to shine on Maia's closed eyelids. She had to tighten them to sever innumerable stabbing, diffracted rays. In her sadness, Maia felt a return of that odd, displaced feeling she had experienced that morning. Sunlight enhanced those omnipresent speckles in their ceaseless dance before covered retinas … a dance without end, the dance that accompanied all her dreams. Void of will, her awareness drew toward their flicker and swirl, seeming to laugh at her troubles, as if all worries were ephemera.
The speckled pavane was the only lasting thing that mattered.
"… You see how even a simple glider, striking at an angle, will cause my pinwheel to break up. . . ."
Unasked-for memories of those long days and nights in prison swarmed over her. Maia recalled how she had been entranced by the Life game, the patterns wonderfully mysterious as Renna's artistry unfolded in front of her. That had been a far more subtle exercise than playing a simple set match, throwing simulated figures against those devised by an opponent. But it was a cheat, since he had been able to use a form of the game that was reversible. The machine did all the work. No wonder he was having so much trouble dealing with the most trivial concepts of the competitive version.
She did not have to be looking at the board to envision the shapes he was describing. In her current state of consciousness, she could not prevent envisioning them.
The rads sitting around him must be bored out of their mind one part of her contemplated with some satisfaction. Yet it was a small part. The rest of her had fled from unbearable unhappiness into abstraction, only to be brought in a swirl of cavorting forms.
"… So I was thinking of placing an array of simple beacon patterns around the pinwheel, like this . . . you see? That ought to protect it from at least the first onslaught—"
'"Wrong!" Maia cried out loud, opening her eyes and turning around. Renna and the women stared in surprise. She strode toward them, brusquely shooing aside one of surprised vars to get at the game board. She took the stylus out of Renna's hand and quickly erased the array he has been building at one end of the boundary zone.
'Can't you see? Even I can. If you want to protect against gliders, you don't let your shapes just sit there, waiting to be hit. Your barrier's got to go out to meet them.
"Here, try—" She bit her lip, hesitating a moment, then drew a hurried swirl of dots on the display. Maia reached over to flick on the timing clock, and the configuration began throbbing, sending out concentric ovals of black dots that dissipated upon reaching a distance of eight squares from the center. It was reminiscent of the persistent, cyclic pattern of waves emanating from where drips from a faucet strike a pool of water. Left alone, the little array would keep sending out waves forever.
Renna looked up in surprise. "I've never seen that one before. What's it called?"
"I . . ." Maia shook her head. "I don't know. Must've seen it when I was a kid. It's obvious enough, though. Isn't it?"
