While Herlandia's radicals went too far, we can surely do better than those timorous compromisers back on New Terra or Florentina, making timid, minuscule changes by consensus only. For instance, without eliminating male feistiness entirely, we can channel it to certain narrow seasons, as in rutting animals like deer and elk. Other inconvenient or dangerous traits can be quarantined, isolated, so our daughters need no longer face them year-round, day in, day out.

Boldness and insight are needed for this endeavor, as well as compassion for the inevitable struggles our descendants shall have to endure.

The sun was low when Maia finished helping the big woman load her buckboard. On their way out of town, they paused at the transients' hostel, where Maia ran inside to store her duffel. Not that it held much of value. Just clothes and a few mementos, including a book of ephemerides Leie had given her as a birthday present. There was also a small, blackened lump of stone. A gift from Old Coot Bennett — before the light left his rheumy eyes — which he had sworn was a true meteorite. Maia didn't want to leave her possessions, but it made no sense to haul them to Jopland Hold and back for just one night. Stuffing a few items into her jacket pockets, she took a receipt from the Musseli attendant and hurried to catch her ride.

Heavily laden, the horse-drawn wagon moved slowly along the narrow dirt road north of town, jostling over ruts and bumps left untended since the storms of summer. Floating dust tickled the membranes under Maia's eyelids, causing them to flutter intermittently, dimming vision. "Valley council keeps puttin' off fixin' these paths," the wagon's owner complained. "The biddies say there's no money, but always seem to find it b'fore harvest time! Farmers run everything here, virgie. Remember that, an' you'll get by."

Perforate farmers, Maia added silently. The sect appealed to smaller clans, not long risen above the status of lowly vars. Even the wealthiest clans in Long Valley were modest by coastal standards, unless they were cadet branches of more-extended hives elsewhere.

Maia's benefactor came from such a branch. She was a Lerner. Maia knew the family, whose scattered offshoots had wedged holdings throughout Eastern Continent, wherever there were ore deposits too meager to attract big mining concerns, and communities with needs a smalltime forging operation could fill. Hard experience had taught Lerner Clan the limits of their talents. Whenever one of their operations grew large enough to draw competition, they would always sell out and move on.

It's a niche, though, Maia supposed. Few vars established a nameline of their own, let alone one so numerous. She was in no position to judge.

Calma Lerner seemed friendly enough. A woman with man-sized hands nearly as hard as the gritty, reddish ingots Maia had helped load, brought on today's train from far-off Grange Head. The alloys would be mixed with local iron, using household recipes passed down from mother to daughter for generations, to make unpretentious Lerner Steel.

Back in Port Sanger, the local Lerners did not endure the prairie sun, and so were much paler. Yet, there was a sense of familiarity, as if she and Calma ought to be gossiping about acquaintances they had in common. Of course they had none. The familiarity went one way. Nor would Calma likely recall Maia if they met again. People tended not to bother memorizing, or even much noticing, a face with just one owner.

Still, as tawny countryside rolled slowly by, the older woman began showing some of her clan's well-known affability, letting herself be drawn out about life on this great, flat, alluvial plain. Calma and her family worked the earth out north of Holly Lock, where faulting had brought to surface a rare fold of bedrock containing a promising mix of elements. Back when settlement at this end of the valley was still new, three young cadets from an established Lerner hold had arrived from the coast to work those narrow seams and set up smithies. Across four generations there had been hard times and some years of prosperity. There were now six adults in the midget offshoot clan, and four clone daughters of various ages. That did not count one summerling boy, plus a dozen or so transient var employees.

When she discovered that Maia's education included a tape course in chemistry, Calma began warming to her, growing effusive about the challenges and delights of metallurgy on the frontier — shaping and transforming the raw stuff of the planet to satisfy human needs. "You can't imagine the satisfaction," she said, waving broad arms toward the horizon, where the setting sun seemed to set fire to a sea of grain. "There's great opportunities out here for a youngster with the right hardworkin' attitude. Yes. Fine opportunities indeed."

Out of courtesy, and because she had taken a liking to her companion, Maia refrained from laughing aloud. Some dead ends weren't hard to spot, and poor Calma was describing a real loser. "I'll think about it," Maia replied carefully, concealing amusement.

With a sudden pang, she realized she had been filing away the Lerner clone's words. Storing them with the habitual intention of repeating them later … for Leie. She couldn't help it. Patterns of a lifetime die hard. Sometimes harder than frail human beings.

"You'd think they already had enough wine for a funeral," she recalled complaining to her twin one winter when they were four, as they labored at a ratcheted crank, operating pulleys to descend into a pit of stone. "Are they gonna have us goin' up and down all night?"

"Could be," Leie had replied breathlessly, her voice echoing down the narrow dumbwaiter shaft. Clicking softly, the winch marked each centimeter of descent like the beating of a clock. "There was glory frost on the sills this morning an' you know that puts 'em in a party mood. I'm bettin' the Lamais have more in mind than a ceremony to mulch three grandmas."

Maia recalled wincing at the sarcastic image. Although Lamais were cool toward their var-daughters, they tended to mellow with age, even going as far as showing real affection late in life. Two of the departed grannies had almost been nice. Besides, it was wrong to speak ill of the dead. They say Stratos reuses all the atoms we give back to her, and each piece of us goes on to help new life.

Abstract solace had seemed pallid that day, after Maia's first direct contact with death. The cramped elevator car had felt stifling, rocking unpleasantly as they turned the crank. Their lanterns set the stone walls glittering where moisture leaked from the poorly caulked kitchens above, and echoes of their heavy breathing had fluttered like trapped souls against the walls of the pit. When the wooden box hit bottom, they stepped out with relief. In one direction, sealed bins contained enough grains and emergency supplies to withstand a siege. Tier upon tier of shelving held kegs and glittering rows of wax-dipped bottles.

Carrying a hand-scrawled list, Leie sauntered toward the wine racks to fetch the vintages they had been sent for. Knowing her sister wouldn't mind a brief desertion, Maia had walked down another narrow aisle, using her lantern to play light across a stone portal enclosing a door made lavishly of reinforced steel.

The surrounding rock was a maze of deep cuts and grooves. Some incisions were twisty, others straight and wide enough to slip a blade inside. A few knobs would depress a little if you pushed, emitting enticing clicks, hinting at some hidden mechanism.

The one time she had asked a Lamai about the door, Maia had received a slap that left her ears ringing. Leie used to fantasize about what mysterious riches lay beyond, while Maia was seized by the puzzle itself. Smuggling paper and pencil to trace the outlines, she would spend hours contemplating combinations and secret codes. It had to be a tough one, since the Lamai blithely sent unsupervised varlings to the cellar, on errands.