Maia found that believable. "And you rads don't have plans, I take it?"

"Of course we do. We want to make a better world. But the peripatetic's goals aren't incompatible with our—"

The physician closed his bag with, a loud snap. His authoritative glare must have been learned at Health Scholarium. "S'cuse me for interruptin', ladies, but did you say something about gettin' this poor girl some clothes?"

Medicine was one rare track of higher education in which gender hardly mattered. Some excellent practitioners were men, who seldom let the innate mood swings of their sex interfere with professionalism. Thalia nodded quickly, at once the attentive and compliant var. "Yes, Doctor. I'll get 'em now."

At the door she turned back. "Meanwhile, don't you run around naked on deck, Maia! Not a good habit in the big cities we're headed to!" She giggled at her own wit and departed. Maia briefly glimpsed Renna pacing outside. He looked relieved when Thalia gave thumbs-up while closing the door.

"The youngster is undernourished," the physician went on telling Kiel, while regarding Maia over the rims of his glasses. Maia crossed her arms and lifted her chin while he clucked disapprovingly over her thinness. "I'll tell Cook double rations for a week. You make sure she eats every bite."

"Yes, Doctor." Kiel nodded obediently, waiting till he left before mimicking his stern look with knitted eyebrows and pursed, smacking lips. Under other circumstances, Maia might have found the lampoon hilarious. Now she succeeded in remaining grim, sending the dark var what she hoped was a fierce glower.

Kiel answered with a shrug. "All right. Crawl back under the covers. I'll answer your questions."

Maia chose to take the maternalistic tone as patronizing. She remained standing and held up one finger. "First, what are you planning to do with him?"

"Who, Renna? Why, nothing much. There are some areas of technology we want to ask about. He may not know the answers in detail, but he can give us a general idea what's possible and what isn't. The solutions may lie in his ship's computer.

"Mostly, though, we want to take him somewhere safe and comfortable, while we dicker with certain people in Caria."

"Dicker? About what?"

"About how to get him back to the State Guest House without an accident happening along the way, and from there safely to his ship. He won't really be out of danger till then."

"Danger," Maia repeated, rubbing her shoulders. "From whom?"

"From people who've convinced themselves they can forestall the inevitable. Who think contact would mean the end of the world. Who would fight it by killing the messenger."

Maia had figured as much. Still, it was chilling to hear it confirmed.

"Oh, it's not the whole government," Kiel went on. "I'd say the majority of savants, and a good many council members, realize change is coming. They argue over ways of slowing it down as much as possible …"

"And you don't want it slowed," Maia guessed.

Kiel nodded. "We want to speed it up! Lots of us aren't willing to wait two or three generations till the next starship comes, and then through more delays, and more. The old order's finished. Well past time to turn it on its head."

"So Renna's a bargaining chip."

Kiel frowned. "If you want to put it that way. In the short term. Over the long run, our goals are compatible. If he does have a legitimate complaint or two about our methods, can he honestly say he's not among friends? We want him to live and accomplish his mission. The rest is just details."

Against her own wishes, Maia found herself believing Kiel. Am I being gullible? Why should I even listen, after what she tried to do?

"You could help him call his starship, to come and get him."

Maia didn't like Kiel's indulgent smile, as if the suggestion were naive. "The ship had but one lander. Anyway, it can only be sent back into space from the launching facility at Caria."

"Convenient." Maia sat on the edge of the bed. "So Renna's stuck down here, where he just happens to be useful against your enemies."

Kiel accepted the point with a nod. "You met some of them in Long Valley. Mighty old clans, holding place in a static social order not by competing in an open market, the way Lysian logic says they should, but by conniving together, suppressing anything that might bring change.

"Take that drug plot you uncovered. Suppose they have their way and alter the balance of reproduction on Stratos. There'd be almost no summerlings born! Nothing but clones and a few tame males, raised as drones to be milked dry each winter."

"I already figured that out," Maia grumbled uncomfortably.

Kiel's eyebrows arched. "Did you also figure out why the Perkinites didn't eliminate our visitor from the stars, just as soon as they got their hands on him? They plan to squeeze data out of him, like juice from a doped-up slor."

"So? You want information, too."

"But with different goals. They want to learn how to shoot down hominid starships" — Maia gasped; Kiel went on without a pause—"and much more. They think Renna can help solve a problem that stumped even Lysos: how to spark clonal pregnancies entirely without sperm."

"But . . ." Maia stammered. "The placenta . . ."

"Yes, I know. Basic facts of life we're taught as babes. You need sperm to trigger placental development, even if the egg's chromosomes come from the mother. It's the basis for our whole system. Meant they had to arrange things so a few 'normal,' sexually induced pregnancies occur each summer, in order to get boys to spark the following generation. Vars like you and me are mere side effects, virgie."

Maia shook her head. Kiel was oversimplifying by leagues, especially about the motivations of Lysos and her aides. Still, if the great clans ever found out how to reproduce at will, without even brief participation by males, it would make Tizbe Beller's rutting drug look like a glass of warm tea.

"Did Renna mention anything like this, when he was in Caria?"

"He did. The big dummy doesn't comprehend that there are some things people simply oughtn't to know."

Maia agreed on that point. Sometimes Renna seemed too innocent to live.

"You see what we're up against," Kiel concluded, forming a fist. Her dark complexion flushed. "Sure, we Rads are also proposing big changes, but in the opposite direction! We'd redirect life on Stratos toward more normal modes for a human species . . . toward a world right for people, not beehives from pole to pole."

"You'd take us back to when men were . . . fifty percent?"

Laughter broke Kiel's earnest scowl. "Oh, we're not that crazy! For now, our near-term goal is only to unfreeze the political process. Get some debate going. Put more than a few token summerling reps on the High Council. Surely that's worth supporting, whatever you think of our long-range dreams?"

"Well . . ."

"Maia, I'd love to be able to tell the others you're with us."

Kiel was trying to meet her eyes. Maia preferred looking away. She paused for a long moment, then gave a quick half-nod.

"Not yet. But I'll . . . listen to the rest."

"That's all we can ask." Kiel clapped her on the shoulder. "In time, I hope you'll find it in your heart to forgive us for stupidly underestimating you. That'll be the last time, I promise.

"And meanwhile, since you've shown yourself to be such a woman of action, who better to choose as our guest's bodyguard, eh? You'd keep a special eye on him. Prevent anyone from slipping things into his feed, as we did at Grange Head! What better way to make sure we stay honest? Does that sound acceptable to you?"

Kiel was being wry, but the offer appeared genuine. Maia answered with grudging respect. "Acceptable," she I said in a low voice. It was irritating to know that Kiel could read her like a book.