There she counted on Brod. He knew many of the emblems from their use as labels in shipboard life. Box, can, and barrel, were tokens for containers, written, appropriately enough, across several of the static, "target" plates. Quite a few food items were included on movable ones. Beer was portrayed by a stein with foam pouring over the sides. There were also biscuit, hardtack, and the bread-and-jelly symbol she had seen earlier. Other insignia Brod identified as standing for compass, rudder, and cargo hook, while some still eluded interpretation. He had no idea what the fire-arrow stood for. Nor the depictions of a bee, a spiral, or a rearing horse. Still, Maia felt reinforced in her notion. This puzzle was meant to be easy for men to understand.
Or easier. I don't imagine all men were welcome, either. You'd still need to have been told some trick. Something simple enough to pass on from master to apprentice for generations.
Refreshed by food and drink, though not fully sated, they resumed experimenting for as long as the dim light lasted. That wasn't very long, unfortunately. Outside, it might remain day for several more hours. But even with their irises slitted wide, too little illumination pierced cracks in the cave wall to allow work past late afternoon, when Maia and Brod had to stop.
In darkness, huddled together for warmth, they listened to the tide return. Lying with her head on Brod's chest, Maia worried about Renna. What were the reaver folk doing to him? What purpose did they have in mind for the man from the stars?
Baltha and her crowd definitely had reason to make common cause with Kiel's Radicals, back when Renna languished in Perkinite hands. Perkinism preached taking Stratoin life much farther along the track designed by Lysos, toward a world almost void of variation, completely dedicated to self-cloning and stability. It suited the interests of both groups of vars to fight that.
Rads wanted the opposite, a moderation of the Plan, in which clones no longer utterly dominated political and economic life, and where men and vars were stronger, though never as dominant as in the bad old Phylum. Their idea was to sacrifice some stability for the sake of diversity and opportunity. That made the Radical program as heretical as Perkinism, if not more so.
Ironically, Baltha's cutthroat gang of reavers had a goal far less broad in scope, more aimed at self-interest. As Baltha hinted back on the Manitou, she and her group wanted no change in the way of life Lysos had ordained, only to shake things up a little.
Maia recalled the var-trash romance novel she had read back in prison, about a world spun topsy-turvy, in which stodgy clans collapsed along with the stable conditions that had made them thrive, opening fresh niches to be filled by upstart variants. She also remembered. Renna's comments on Lysian biology — how it had been inspired by certain lizards and insects, back on Old Earth. "Cloning lets you keep perfection. But perfection for what? Take aphids. In a fixed environment, they reproduce by self-copying. But come a dry spell, or frost, or disease, and suddenly they use sex like mad, mixing genes for new combinations, to meet new challenges." .
Baltha and the reavers wanted enough chaos to knock loose some ancient clans, but solely in order that they might take those heights. It was a scheme more classically Lysian than either of the Perkinite or Radical dogmas. The Founders included vars like me because you can never be sure stability will last. They must have known it would mean some vars plotting to help nature along.
In fact, it must happen more often than she had imagined. Whenever such a scheme succeeded, it would be toned down in the histories. No sense encouraging other vars, downstream, to try the same thing! If Baltha managed to whelp a great house, she would not be depicted as a pirate by her heirs. It made Maia wonder about those embroidered tales told about the original Lamai. Had she, in fact, been a robber? A conniver? Perhaps Leie had it right, choosing such company. If Maia's twin had tapped a ruthless side to their joint nature, should she be cheered, rather than reproved?
How does Renna fit into all this? Maia wondered. Do the reavers plan to provoke some sort of war among factions on the Reigning Council? Or retribution from the stars? That would shake things up, all right. Perhaps more than they realize.
