Ursulaborg — pearl of the Mediant Coast. Some ancient clans there are so big and powerful, they've got pyramids of lesser clans underneath them, who have client families of their own, and so on. Clones serving clones of the same women who first employed their ancestors, hundreds of years ago, with everybody knowing her place from the day she's born, and all potential personality conflicts worked out ages ago.

Maia remembered having seen a cinematic video — a comedy — when she and Leie were three. Coincidentally, the film was set in the magnificent Ursulaborg palace of one such grand multiclan. The plot involved an evil outsider's scheme to sow discord among families who had been getting along for generations. At first, the stratagem seemed to work. Suspicions and quarrels broke out, feeding on each other as women leaped to outrageously wrong conclusions. Communication shattered and the tide of misunderstandings, both incited and humorously accidental, seemed fated to cause an irreparable rift. Then, at a climactic moment, the high-strung momentum dissolved in an upswell of revelation, then reconciliation, and finally laughter.

"We were made to be partners," said one wise old matriarch, at the moral denouement. "If we met as vars, as our first mothers had, we would become fast friends. Yet we know each other better than vars ever could. Is it possible we Blaine sisters could live without you Chens? Or you without us? Blaines, Chens, Hanleys, and Wedjets . . . ours is a greater family, immortal, as if molded by Lysos herself."

It had been a warm, mushy ending, leaving Maia feeling terribly glad to have Leie in her life . . . even if her sister had muttered derisively, at the movie's end, about its manic illogic and lack of character development.

Leie would have loved to see Ursulaborg.

There was no land in sight. Nevertheless, she looked past the bowsprit to the west, blinking against spray that hid a salty bitterness of tears.

Renna found her there. The dark-eyed man called her from the foremast. "Ah, Maia, there you are!"

She hurriedly wiped her eyes and turned to watch him clamber into the sheltered area. "How are you doing?" asked cheerfully. Dropping to sit across from her, he reached forward to squeeze her hand.

“I've been unhappier," she answered with a shrug, somewhat befuddled by his warmth. It pierced the protective distance she had been working to build between them. Maia made sure not to yank her hand back, but withdrew it slowly. He appeared not to notice.

"Isn't it a fine day?" Renna inhaled, taking in the broad expanse of sunny and cloud-shaded patches of sea, stretching to every horizon. "I was up at dawn, and for a little while I thought I saw a swarm of Great Pontoos, off to the south among the clouds. Someone said they were just common zoor-floaters. . . . I've seen lots of those. But these looked so beautiful, so graceful and majestic, that I figured—"

"Pontoos are very rare now."

"So I gather." He sighed. "You know, this planet would seem perfect for flying. I've seen birds and gasbag creatures of so many types. But why so few aircraft? I know spaceflight might disrupt your stable pastoralism, but what harm would it do to have more zep'lins and wingplanes? Would it hurt to give people a chance to move around more freely?"

Maia wondered how a man could be so talkative, so early in the day? He would've gotten along better with Leie.

"They say long ago there were a lot more zep'lins," she answered.

"They also say men used to fly them, like seaships, but then were banished from the sky. Do you know why?"

Maia shook her head. "Why don't you ask them?"

"I tried." Renna grimaced, looking across the ocean. "Seems to be a touchy subject. Maybe I'll look it up when I get back to the Library, in Caria." He turned back to her. "Listen, I think I've figured something out. Could you tell me if I'm wrong?"

Maia sighed. Renna seemed determined to wear down her carefully tailored apathy with sheer, overpowering enthusiasm. "Okay," she said warily.

"Great! First, let's verify the basics." He held up one finger. "Summertime matings result in normal, genetically diverse variants, or vars. Is that word derogatory, by the way? I've heard it used insultingly, in Caria."

"I'm a var," Maia said tonelessly. "No point being insulted by a fact."

"Mm. I guess you'd say I'm a var, too."

Of course. All boys are vars. Only the name doesn't cling to them like a parasite. But she knew Renna meant well, even when dredging clumsily through matters that hurt.

"All right, then. During autumn, winter, and spring, Stratoin women have parthenogenetic clones. In fact, they often can't conceive in summer till they've already had a winter child."

"You're doing fine so far."

"Good. Now, even cloning requires the involvement of men, as sparklers, since sperm induces placental—"

"That's sparkers," Maia corrected in a low voice.

"Yeah, right. Okay, here's the part I've been having trouble with." Renna paused. "It's about how Lysos meddled with sexual attraction. You see, on most hominid worlds, sex is an eternal distraction. People dwell on it from puberty to senility, spend vast measures of time and money, and sometimes act incredibly disagreeably, all because of a gene-driven, built-in obsession."

"You make it sound awful."

"Mm. It has compensations. But, arrangements on Stratos seem intended to cut down the amount of energy centered on sex. All in keeping with good Herlandist ideology."

"Go on," she said, growing interested despite herself. Do people on other planets really think about sex more than I, How do they get anything done?

Renna continued. "Stratoin men are stimulated by visual cues in the summer sky, when women are least aroused. Today, on the other hand, I got to witness this peculiar ice-frost you get in winter—"

"Glory."

"Yeah. A natural product of some pretty amazing stratospheric processing that I plan looking into. And it stimulates women!"

"So I'm told." Maia felt warm. "According to legend, Lysos took the Old Craziness out of men and women, and poked around for someplace to put it. Up in the sky seemed safe enough. But one summer Wengel Star came along. He stole some of the madness and made a flag to wave and shine and put the old rut back into men, through their eyes."

"And during high winter it sneaks back down as Glory?"

"Right, seizing women through their noses." "Mm. Nice fable. Still, doesn't it seem queer that women and men should be so perfectly off-sync in desire?"

"Not perfectly. If it were, nobody'd get born at all." "Oh sure, I'm oversimplifying. Men can enjoy sex in winter and women in summer. But how odd that males are aggressive suitors during one season, only to grow demure half a year later, when women seek them out."

Maia shrugged. "Man and woman are opposites. Maybe all we can hope for is compromise."

Renna nodded in a manner reminiscent of an absent-minded but eager savant from Burbidge Clan, whom the Lamai mothers used to hire to teach varlings trigonometry. "But however carefully Lysos designed your ancestors' genes, time and evolution would erase any setup that's not naturally stable. Those few males who escaped the program just a little would pass on their genes more often, and so on for their offspring. The same holds for women. Over time, male and female urges would come into rough synchrony again, with lots of tension and two-way negotiating, just like on other worlds.

"But here's the brilliant part. On Stratos there's greater payoff, in strict biological terms, for a woman to have clone children than normal sons and daughters, who carry only half her genes. So the trait of women seeking winter matings would reinforce."

Maia blinked. "And the same logic applies to men?"

"Exactly! A Stratoin male gets no genetic benefit from sex in winter! No reason to get all worked up, since any child spawned won't be his in the most basic sense. The cycle tends to bolster the cues Lysos established." He shook his head. "I'd need a good computer model to see if it's as stable as it looks. There are some inherent problems, like inbreeding. Over time, each clone family acts like a single individual, flooding Stratos with . . ."