"Cockcrow for breakfast, or none," her reluctant host said, departing without another word. Maia closed the door, then set to laying out the bedclothes. Finding a pitcher of water on a rickety table, she washed her face, took a long drink from the spout, and reached up to turn out the light.

Elsewhere in the rambling farm complex, people were vigorously occupied making strong, atonal harmonies. The music of joy, poets sometimes called it. To Maia it sounded much more serious.

Of course, there were different rhythms for each time of year. In summer it was men who eagerly sought, while skeptical women sometimes let themselves be convinced. These were patterns Maia had known all her life. Nature's way.

Well, the way chosen for us by Lysos and the Founders, Maia pondered, listening in the dark. It's hard to imagine any other.

Maia had thought about sex — two willing partners coming together, whether by wooing or after being wooingly pursued. It seemed an act partly sublime, but also filled with all the frenetic, damp, clasping after life that came from certain knowledge of it slipping away. A fusion aimed at immortality, some called it.

As a young virgin, Maia would not feel that hormonal rush of desire, if at all, until winter's deepest nadir. Still, for as much as a year before departing Port Sanger she had begun experiencing sensations she felt must surely be related. A faint longing, a void. She vaguely suspected sex might have a role in filling it. A partial role.

Sighs and murmured cries. The sounds were fascinating, yet again Maia wondered if there wasn't something more to it than a mere rubbing, release, and a mixing of fluids. A union that enhanced and magnified what each party brought separately.

Or am I just naive? It was a private suspicion she had never dared share, even with Leie. "You want to keep a smelly, scratchy man as a pet?" her twin might have taunted. Even now, Maia had no idea what it was she really desired, as if her desires had any relevance to the world.

It took an hour or two. Then matters settled down, allowing the prairie wind to win by default, rustling the tall cane fields beyond the house and yard. Still, Maia couldn't sleep. Her feelings were a churn from all that had occurred today. Finally, with a sigh, she threw off the thin blankets, went to the door, and stepped out to inhale the night.

The scents were heavier than she was used to, growing up in the icy north. Yet one musty-pleasant aroma she identified quickly. It accompanied a low, humming rumble, emanating from the open-sided lugar barracks, where those shaggy, obsessively gentle creatures huddled at night, whatever the temperature. Their piquant scent, she had once read, was one of countless features programmed by the founders, who gave the beasts great physical strength to serve womankind, breaking one link of dependency that used to bind females to males.

Certainly the aroma was less pungent than the sweat tang given off by sailors back on Wotan, whenever hard labor brought on that glistening, other-species sheen. Did men also perspire so while making love? The thought added to Maia's heavy ambivalence of attraction-revulsion.

Walking under the stars, she greeted with a smile her friends Eagle and Hammer. The familiar constellations winked at her. On impulse, Maia snapped two leather catches, opening the brass sextant at her wrist. Unfolding the alignment arms, she took angle sightings on the horizon, on Ophir, the polestar, and the planet Amaterasu. Now, if only she had a decent chronometer . . .

Dogs barked at some neighboring clanstead. Something winged and swift fluttered a few meters overhead. Wind rustled the trees by the river, where glow beetles were still busy at their mating display, more persistently amorous than humans, casting glittering, ecstatic wavefronts to eerie rhythms. Whole swatches of forest came alight, then winked off in unison. I wonder if there's a pattern, Maia thought, fascinated by the spectacle of countless individual insects, each reacting only to its nearest neighbors, combining in a life-show of tantalizing intricacy, like the constellations that had always drawn her, or a labyrinthine puzzle. . . .

As she reached the corner of the house, an ebb in the breeze caused the quiet to deepen, abruptly revealing a low murmur of voices.

"… you don't know what she said to the Pessies?"

"That's what scares me! I got no clue what she was at them about. But they reversed charges, so it must've been more'n a nuisance call. We already heard from cousins on the coast about a police agent nosing around. This stinks. You people promised discretion, complete discretion!"

The fire bugs were forgotten. Maia slipped into shadows and peered toward the rear veranda. She could make out the second speaker. It was the mother Jopland, or one roughly the same age. The other person lay hidden, but when she laughed, Maia felt a shock of recognition.

"I doubt she was calling about our little secret. I know the wench, and I'll bet tit-squirrels to lugars that she's no agent. Couldn't figure her way out of a gunnysack, that one."

Thank you, Tizbe, Maia thought with a chill. All of a sudden things seemed to make sense. No wonder the Joplands had a successful wooing party, after such a dismal start! While she had been talking to authorities in Caria, Tizbe must have arrived carrying bottles brimming with distilled summer. What wouldn't the Joplands pay to have their slow population decline turned around in a simple, efficient way? All the more so for devout Perkinites, who didn't even like men.

They were planning to give up their summer-banishment rule. The valley councils were going to build sanctuaries, like along the coast. But with Tizbe's powder there'd be no need to compromise their radical doctrine.

Maia had wondered if there was a practical side to the drug. Now she had her answer.

I was bothered by incidents in Lanargh, and the train collision in Clay Town. But those happened because people were fooling around with the stuff, because it's new. If it's used carefully, though, to help make winter sparking easier, where's the harm? I didn't hear any of the men tonight crying out in misery.

Naturally, the Perkinites' long-range goal was unattainable. Perkies were crazy to dream, of making men as rare as jacar trees, drug or no drug. Meanwhile, though, if they found a short-term method for having their way in this valley, so what? Even conservative clans like Lamatia tried to stimulate their male guests during winter, with drink and light shows designed to mimic summer's aurorae. Was this powder fundamentally different?

Maia was tempted to walk up and join the conversation, just to catch the look on Tizbe Beller's face. Perhaps, after getting over her surprise, Tizbe would be willing to explain, woman to woman, why they were going to such lengths, or why Caria City should give a damn.

The temptation vanished when Maia's former assistant spoke again.

"Don't worry about our little var informer. I'll see to things. It'll all be taken care of long before she ever makes it back to Grange Head."

A sinking sensation yawned in Maia's gut. She backed around the corner of the house as it began dawning on her just how much trouble she was in.

Bleeders! I don't know anybody. Leie's gone. And I'm in it now, right up to my neck!

One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise.

Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage — whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else.