That was when she had shown him the Outsider Ship, then so new to the sky of Stratos. Everyone was talking about it, even on the tightly censored tele programs. Surely Bennett must have heard of the messenger, the "peripatetic," who had come so far across space to end the long separation between Stratos and the Human Phylum?

Apparently, he hadn't. Bewildered, Bennett seemed at first to think it one of the winking navigation satellites, which helped captains find their way at sea. Eventually, her explanation sank in — that the sharp glimmer was, in fact, a starship.

"Jelly can!" he had blurted suddenly. "Bee-can jelly can!"

"Beacon? You mean a lighthouse?" She had pointed to the spire marking Port Sanger's harbor, its torch blazing across the bay. But the old man shook his head, distraught. "Former! . . . Jelly can former!" More phrases of slurred, nonsensical man-dialect followed. Clearly, something had happened that was yanking mental strings. Strings once linked to fervent thoughts, but long since fallen to loose threads. To Maia's horror, the coot began striking the side of his head, over and over, tears streaming down his ragged cheeks. "Can't 'member . . . Can't!" He moaned. "Former . . . gone. . . . can't …"

The fit had continued while, distraught, she maneuvered him downstairs to his little cot and then sat watching him thrash, muttering rhythmically about "guarding" something . . . and dragons in the sky. At the time, Maia could think of but one "dragon," a fierce figure carved over the altar in the city temple, which had frightened her when she was little, even though the matrons called it an allegorical beast, representing the mother spirit of the planet.

Since that episode on the roof, Maia had not tried communicating with Bennett again . . . and felt ashamed of it. "Is anyone there?" she now asked softly, peering into his haunted eyes. "Anyone at all?"

Nothing fathomable emerged, so she bent closer to kiss his scratchy cheek, wondering if the confused affection she now felt was as close as she would ever come to a relationship with a man. For most summer women, lifelong chastity was but one more emblem of a contest few could win.

Bennett resumed sweeping. Maia warmed her hands with steamy breath, and turned to go just as a ringing bell cracked the silence. Clamoring children spilled into the courtyard from narrow corridors on all sides. From toddlers to older threes and fours, they all wore bright Lamatia tartans, their hair woven in clan style. Yet, all such bids at tasteful uniformity failed. Unlike normal kids, each summer brat remained a blaring show of individuality, painfully aware of her uniqueness.

Except the boys, one in four, hurrying like their sisters to class, but with a swagger that said, I know where I'm going. Lamatia's sons often became officers, even shipmasters.

And eventually coots, Maia recalled as old Bennett blankly kept sweeping around the ruckus. Women and men had that much in common . . . everyone grew old. In her wisdom, Lysos had long ago decreed that life's rhythm must still include an end.

Running children stopped and goggled at Maia. She stared back, poker-faced. Dressed in leather, with her hair cropped, she must look like one of last night's revelers, gone astray from the tavern. Slim as she was, perhaps they took her for a man!

Suddenly several kids laughed out loud. Jemanine and Loiz threw their arms around her. And sweet little Albert, whom she used to tutor till he knew the constellations better than Port Sanger's twisty lanes. Others clustered, calling her name. Their embraces meant more to Maia than any benediction from the mothers . . . although next time she met any of them, out in the world, it might be as competitors.

The clanging resumed. A tall lugar with white fur and a droopy snout lurched into the courtyard waving a brass bell, clearly perturbed by this break in routine. The children ignored the neckless creature, peppering Maia with questions about her braid, her planned voyage, and why she'd chosen to snub the Parting Ceremony. Maia felt a kind of thrill, being what the mothers called a "bad example."

Then, into the courtyard flowed a figure smaller but more fearsome than the upset lugar — Savant Mother Claire, carrying a tang prod and glaring fiercely at these worthless var brats who should be at their desks. . . . The children took heel, with a few of the boldest daring to wave one last farewell to Maia before vanishing. The distressed lugar kept swinging the bell until the wincing matron put a stop to the clangor with a sharply driven elbow..

Mother Claire turned and gave Maia a calculating regard. Even in old age, she embodied the Lamai type. Furrow-browed and tight-lipped, yet severely beautiful, she had always, as far back as Maia remembered, cast a gaze of withering disdain. But this time, instead of the expected outrage at Maia's shorn locks, the headmistress's appraisal ended with an astonishing smile!

"Good." Claire nodded. "First chance, you claimed your own heritage. Well done."

"I . . ." Maia shook her head. ". . . don't understand."

The old contempt was still there — an egalitarian scorn for anything and everybody non-Lamai. "You hot-time brats are a pain," Claire said. "Sometimes I wish the founders of Stratos had been more radical, and chosen to do without your kind."

Maia gasped. Claire's remark was almost Perkinite in its heresy. If Maia herself had ever said anything remotely slighting the first mothers, it would have meant a strapping.

"But Lysos was wise," the old teacher went on with a sigh. "You summerlings are our wild seeds. Our windblown heritage. If you want my blessing take it, var-child. Sink roots somewhere and flower, if you can."

Maia felt her nostrils flare. "You kick us out, giving us nothing. . . ."

Claire laughed. "We give plenty. A practical education and no illusions that the world owes you favors! Would you prefer we coddled you? Set you up in a go-nowhere job, like some clans do for their vars? Or drilled you for a civil-service test one in a hundred pass? Oh, you're bright enough to have had a chance, Maia, but then what? Move to Caria City and push papers the rest of your life? Scrimp on salary to buy an apartment and someday start a microclan of one?

"Pah. You may not be all Lamai, but you're half! Find and win a real niche for yourself. If it's a good one, write and tell us what you've got. Maybe the clan will buy into the action."

Maia found the strength to voice what she had wanted to say for years. "You hypocritical cat—"

"That's it!" Mother Claire cut her off, still grinning. "Keep listening to your sister. Leie knows it's tooth and claw out there. Go on now. Go and fight the world."

With that, the infuriating woman simply turned away, leading the placid lugar past the nodding, bleary-eyed old coot, following her charges toward the classroom where sounds of recitation rose to fill the cool, dry air.

To Maia, the courtyard, so long such a broad part of her world, suddenly felt close, claustrophobic. The statues of old-time Lamais seemed more stony-chill and stark than ever. Thanks, Momma Claire, she thought, pondering those parting words. I’ll do just that.

And our first rule, if Leie and I ever start our own clan, will be — no statues!

Maia found Leie munching a stolen apple, leaning against the merchants' gate, looking beyond the thick walls of Lamatia Hold to where cobblestone streets threaded downhill past the noble clanholds of Port Sanger. In the distance, a cloud of hovering, iridescent zoor-floaters used rising air currents to drift above the harbor masts, on the lookout for scraps from the fishing fleet. The creatures lent rare, festive colors to the morning, like the gaudy kite-balloons children would fly on Mid-Winter's Day.

Maia stared at her twin's ragged haircut and rough attire. "Lysos, I hope I don't look like that!"