It wasn't easy. Her thoughts collided with fantasies and improbable scenarios of rescue, such as the policewoman from Caria, arriving in a grand zep'lin, waving seal-encrusted writs. Other images were less cheering. Memories of Leie beckoned Maia back toward despondency. Drifting sporadically toward full consciousness, she wondered if the clickings were really a message. If so, was it aimed at her, specifically?
Idiot, she thought while passing through layers of half-slumber. How could anybody know you were here?
Eventually, Maia dreamed of Lysos.
The Founder was dressed in a flowing gown, and sat with piles of molecules to one side, adding one at a time to a string, like pearls on a necklace, or wooden balls on an abacus. The molecular chains clacked each time another joined the queue. Laying DNA codons in an endless chain, Lysos hummed sweetly as she worked.
It took two more nights to copy the entire message and confirm she had it right, an exercise in patience unlike any Maia had known since she and Leie worked to solve the secret gate in Lamatia's wine cellar. Taking the time was necessary, though. Only on the third day did Maia feel ready to load the entire code string onto the Game of Life board.
She began by making sure the board was set up with the same special rules as before, when it had played that "message in a bottle." The little window said RVRSBL CA 897W. Maia hoped the program would make sense of the clicks in the night. As before, the game area contracted to a square just fifty-nine units on a side, surrounded by a complex border.
Okay, let's get started. Maia commenced laboriously turning each transcribed click into a black square, and leaving a space blank where there had been a second's worth of pause. On finishing one row of fifty-nine, she continued marking the next level, wrapping the presumed message back and forth like a snake climbing a brick wall. After what felt like hours, she finished fitting the entire sequence into the assigned space. The match couldn't be a coincidence! The resulting jumble of dots offered no meaning perceptible to the eye.
Exhausted, she was relieved to hear the rattle of keys at the door. Maia covered the game board, though it probably made no difference if the Guels saw. Her muscles and joints hurt from spending so much time bent over the machine. This had better be worth it, she thought while silently eating under her keepers' dull gaze.
If I was off by even one space, it could ruin the whole thing. What'll I do if it doesn't work?
The answer was obvious. I'll just try again. What else is there to do?
The guards took away her tray and slid the bolt. Breathlessly, Maia got back to the game board and double-checked her transcription. She crossed her arms and tugged both earlobes for luck, then pressed the start button.
Swirling cyclones of pulsing Life forms instantly told her she was right. The nightly clickings had been meant for this! They were a recipe. A complex set of starting conditions for this weird game. Despite the variant rules, most of the patterns were once again recognizable. Two glider guns fired fluttering wedge shapes across a terrain strewn with microbes and eaters, beacons and dandelions. Scores of other shapes merged and separated. An "ecology" expanded to fill the entire fifty-nine-by-fifty-nine array. Maia poised over the board, pencil in hand, but the patterns were so enthralling, she was almost caught short when the chaotic forms coalesced suddenly into rows of rippling letters.
CY, TELL GRVS IMAT
49° 16' 67° 54'
NO DEAL W/ ODO!
LVIFNEC
Once more, the message began dissolving almost as soon as it took form. Maia hurriedly scribbled it down before it vanished, along with all other "living" remnants on the board. Soon the board lay pale and empty before her. She stared at the copied version of the four-line missive, reading it over and over again.
Clearly, it hadn't been meant for her, after all. Several of her favorite fantasies evaporated. No matter. There was more than enough here to keep her speculating about the sender's intent. Could "CY" stand for a friend or clanmate of the other prisoner? Is "GRVS" a group or clan powerful enough to come and set her free? Maia's imagination would come up with the wildest notions if she let it, so she firmly stayed down to earth. The other prisoner might be a business rival of the local Perkinites, perhaps kept here by the Joplands and their allies to coerce a better deal.
The last, self-sacrificial phrase in the message, demanding to be abandoned, if necessary, bespoke somber stuff. Or was she wrong assuming that it meant "Leave if necessary"?
Could it have to do with the drug that makes men rut in winter?
Possibly the other prisoner was no more virtuous than Tizbe or the Joplands, merely a competitor. That hardly mattered at this point. Right now Maia couldn't be choosy about her allies.
