"In ancient days, in olden tribes, men obliged their wives and daughters to worship a stern-browed male god. A vengeful deity of lightning and well-ordered rules, whose way it was to shout and thunder at great length, then lapse into fits of maudlin, all-forgiving sentimentality. It was a god like men themselves — a lord of extremes. Wrangling priests interpreted their Creator's endless, complex ordinances. Abstract disputes led to persecution and war.

"Women could have told them," Lysos supposedly continued. "If men had only stopped their bickering and asked our opinion. Creation itself might have been a bold stroke of genius, a laying down of laws. But the regular, day to day tending of the world is a messy business, more like the inspired chaos of a kitchen than the sterile precision of a chartroom, or study."

Intermittent breezes ruffled the page she was reading. Leaning on the crumbling stone wall of a temple orchard, looking past the sloping tile roofs of Grange Head, Maia lifted her gaze to watch low clouds briefly occult a brightly speckled, placid sea, its green shoals aflicker with silver schools of fish and the flapping shadows of hovering swoop-birds. The variegated colors were lush, voluptuous. Mixing with scents carried by the moist, heavy wind, they made a stew for the senses, spiced with fecund exudates of life.

The beauty was heavy-handed, adamantly consoling. She got the point — that life goes on.

With a sigh, Maia picked up the slim volume again.

"A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger Father, with a bigger fist," the passage went on. "If an omniscient, all-powerful Dad ignores your prayers, it's taken personally. Hear only silence long enough, and you start wondering about His power. His fairness. His very existence.

"But if a World-Mother doesn't reply, Her excuse is simple. She never claimed conceited omnipotence. She has countless others clinging to Her apron strings, including myriad species unable to speak for themselves. To Her elder offspring She says — go raid the fridge. Go play outside. Go get a job.

"Or better yet, lend me a hand! I have no time for idle whining."

Maia closed the slim volume with a sigh. She had spent a good part of the afternoon pondering this excerpt, purported to have been written by the Great Founder herself. The passage was not part of formal scripture. Yet, even while working in the temple garden, Maia kept thinking about it. Priestess-Mother Kalor had lent her the book when more traditional readings failed to help ease her heart-pain. Against all expectation it had helped. The tone, more open and casual than liturgy, was poignantly humorous in parts. For the first time, Maia found she could picture Lysos as a person she might have liked to know. After weeks of depression, Maia managed her first, tentative smile.

Her injuries had been worse than anyone thought, on steppmg from the Wotaris barge some weeks ago. Or perhaps the will to heal was lacking. When the manager of the small, dingy hotel found her in bed one morning, sweating and feverish, the clone had sent for sisters from the local temple, to come fetch Maia for tending.

"So sorry, younger sister," the acolytes replied each morning. "There is no sign of the Zeus. No woman resembling Leie has made landfall." The temple mother even paid out of her own pocket to make Net calls to Lanargh and other ports. The ship Leie had been aboard was listed missing. The guild had filed for insurance and was in official mourning.

Maia had thanked Mother Kalor for her kindness, then went to her cell and threw herself, sobbing, onto the narrow cot. She had wailed and clenched her fists, pounding the mattress till all sense left her fingers. She slept most of each day, tossed and turned each night, and lost interest in food.

I wanted to die, she recalled.

Mother Kalor had seemed unconcerned. "This is normal pass. We vars tend to cleave more closely, when we vi to someone. It makes mourning harder than any clone ..'I understand.

"Unless the clone has lost all of her family at once, that is. Then such devastation you or I could not imagine."

But Maia could imagine. In a sense she had lost a family, a clan. All her life, Leie had been there. Sometimes infuriating or stifling, that presence had also been her companionship, her ally, her mirrored reflection. The separation on departure morn had been Maia's idea, a way to develop independent skills, but the ultimate goal had always been a common one. The dream shared.

She had cursed herself. It's my fault. If they had stayed together, they would be united now, living or dead.

The priestess said all the expected things, about how survivors should not blame themselves. That Leie would have wanted Maia to prosper. That life must persevere. Maia appreciated the effort. At the same time, she felt resentment toward this woman for interfering in her misery. This var who had chosen to become a "mother" the safe and convenient way.

At last, partly in exhaustion, Maia started to let go. Youth and good food sped physical healing. Theological contemplations played a small part, as well. I used to wonder how it is that men still have a thunder god. An all-seeing deity who watches every action, cares about all thoughts.

Old Coot Bennett had spoken of his faith, which he thought fully consistent with devotion to Stratos Mother. Apparently it's passed down within the male sanctuaries, and couldn't be eradicated now, even if the savants and councillors and priestesses tried.

But how did it get started? There were no men among the Founders, when the first dome habitats bloomed on Landing Continent. Multiple lab-designed generations came and went before the Great Changes were complete. Our ancestors knew nothing but what the Founders chose to tell them.

So how did those first Stratoin men learn about God?

It was more than an intellectual exercise. If Leie's gone, perhaps her soul field has joined with the planet's, and is part of the rainbow I see out there. The image was poetic and beautiful. Yet there was also something tempting about Old Bennett's notion of afterlife in a place called heaven, where a more personal continuation, including memories and a sense of self, was assured. According to Bennett, the dead could also hear you when you prayed.

Leie? She projected slowly, solemnly. Can you hear me? If you do, could you give a sign? What's it like on the other side?

There might have been a reply in the play of light upon the water, or in the distant cries of gulls. If so, it was too subtle for Maia to grasp. So, she took wry comfort imagining how her twin might respond to such an impertinent request.

"Hey, I just got here, dummy. Besides, telling you would spoil the fun."

With a sigh, Maia turned around and took a pair of pruning shears from the pocket of her borrowed smock. While healing, she had paid for room and board by helping tend the orchard of native Stratoin trees each temple was obliged to keep as part of a duty toward the planet. It was gentle work, and seemed to carry its own lesson.

"You and me, we're both endangered, aren't we?" she told one short, spindly shrub she had been caring for, before abstraction took her away. Eons of evolution had equipped the jacar tree's umbrella leaves with chemical defenses to keep native herbivores at bay. Those toxins had proved useless at deterring creatures of Earthly stock, from rabbits to deer to birds. All found the jacar delicious, and only rarely did it take to cultivation. This garden's five specimens were listed in a catalog maintained in faraway Caria.

"Maybe we both belong in a place like this," Maia added, taking a final snip and stepping back to regard a finished job. Then she turned to regard the orchard, the flower beds, the stucco-walled temple of refuge. Having second thoughts? she asked herself. A little late for that, now that you've said you're leaving.