"What do you mean?"

Baltha tossed the toothpick in an arc that carried it overboard. "Think about it, virgie. You see how they're already workin' on him. He'll be asked to earn his keep, in Ursulaborg. An' I just bet he's able."

Maia's face felt warm. "So? So he sparks a few—"

Baltha interrupted. "Sparks, hell! You just can't see, can you? Think, girlie. He's an alien! Now that may mean he's too different even to spark Strato-fems like us. Can't tell unless they try. But what about th' other extreme? What if his seed works, all right? What if it works the old-fashioned way, even in winter?"

Maia blinked as she worked out what Baltha meant. "You mean, his sperm might not spark clones … but instead go all the way and make vars?" She looked up. "No matter what time of year it is?"

Baltha nodded. "Then, what if his var-sons inherited that knack? An' their sons? An' so on? Now wouldn't that throw a spanner in Lysos's plan?" She spat over the side.

Maia shook her head. "Something sounds wrong about that—"

"You bet it's wrong!" the big var cut in again. "Meddlin' with the design set down by our foremothers an' betters. Arrogant rad bitches."

Actually, Maia hadn't meant "wrong" in that sense. Although she couldn't spot the flaw at that moment, she felt certain there was something cockeyed with Baltha's reasoning. It struck Maia intuitively that the design of human life on Stratos wouldn't be so easily diverted, not even by seed taken from a man from the stars.

"I thought you hated the way things are, as much as the rads do," she asked, curious about the venom in Baltha's voice. "You helped them get Renna away from the Perkinites."

"Alliance of convenience, virgie. Sure, my mates an' me hate Perkies. Stuck-up clans that want a lock on everything without keepin' on earnin' it. Lysos never meant that to happen. But from there on, we an' the rads part. Bleedin' heretics. We just want to shake things up, not change the laws o' nature!"

Why is she telling me this? Maia wondered, seeing a gleam in Baltha's eyes as she regarded Renna. "You have ideas about using him, too," Maia surmised.

The blonde var turned to look at her. "Don't know what you mean."

"I saw what you collected in your little box," Maia blurted, eager to see how Baltha would react when confronted. "Back in the canyon, while we were escaping."

"Why, you little sneak . . ." the woman growled. Then she stopped and a slow grin spread across her rugged features. "Well, good for you. Spyin's one of th' true arts. Might even be your niche, sweetums, if you ever learn to tell enemies from friends."

"I know the difference, thanks."

"Do you?"

"Like I can tell you'd use Renna for your own ends, at least as much as the rads want to."

Baltha sighed. "Everybody uses everybody else. Take your friends, Kiel an' Thalia. They used you, kiddo. Sold you to th' Bellers, in hopes of trackin' you to jail, an' maybe findin' their Starman wherever you were stashed."

Maia stared. "But … I thought Calma Lerner . . ."

"Think what you like, citizen," Baltha answered sarcastically. "I know better than tryin' to tell nothin' to a upstart fiver, who's so sure she knows who's her good pals, who ain't."

The eastlander turned and sauntered away, wandering the railing that overlooked the cargo deck, where she began a low conversation with a large blonde woman, one of the female deckhands serving aboard the Manitou. Below, on the main deck, Naroin's voice could be heard, pulling a small band of women away from bothering sailors to take their turn at obligatory combat practice. Baltha grinned back at Maia, then picked up her own polished short-trepp, and slid down the gangway to join the session. Soon there came a staccato clicking of sticks, and a thump as somebody hit the ground.

Maia's thoughts rolled. She saw Thalia, about to take her turn in the practice ring, pluck a bill from the weapons rack. Glancing up, Thalia smiled at her, and in a rush, Maia was filled with an outraged sense of confirmation. Baltha's right, damn her! Kiel and Thalia must have used me.

A tidal surge of hurt and betrayal caused each breath to catch painfully in her throat. She had been angry with her former cottage-mates for trying to leave her behind in Grange Head, but this was worse. Far worse. I … can't trust anybody.

The sense of perfidy hurt terribly. Yet, what strangely came to mind most strongly right then was the memory of cursing Calma Lerner and her doomed clan. I'm sorry, she thought. Even if Baltha turned out to be wrong, or lying, Maia felt ashamed of what she'd said in wrath, invoking maledictions on the hapless smithy family, whose members had never done her any real harm.

In the background, contrasting to her dark brooding, Renna's voice continued blithely, describing his strategy for the evening's match. ". . . so I was thinking, I could put a pinwheel at each end of the board, near the boundary . . ."

The voice was an irritation, scraping away at Maia's guilt-wallow. Even if Baltha lied, I'll never be able to trust Thalia and Kiel again. I'm as alone now as ever I was in my prison cell.

She closed her eyes. The rhythmic clicking of battle sticks was punctuated by Naroin's shouted instructions. Renna droned on. ". . . Naturally, they'll be struck by simulated objects coming from my opponents' side of the board. Most of those will be deflected by the pinwheel's arms. But there are certain basic shapes that worry me . . ."

Vagaries of wind caused the steersman to order a slight turn, bringing the sun around from behind a sail to shine on Maia's closed eyelids. She had to tighten them to sever innumerable stabbing, diffracted rays. In her sadness, Maia felt a return of that odd, displaced feeling she had experienced that morning. Sunlight enhanced those omnipresent speckles in their ceaseless dance before covered retinas … a dance without end, the dance that accompanied all her dreams. Void of will, her awareness drew toward their flicker and swirl, seeming to laugh at her troubles, as if all worries were ephemera.

The speckled pavane was the only lasting thing that mattered.

"… You see how even a simple glider, striking at an angle, will cause my pinwheel to break up. . . ."

Unasked-for memories of those long days and nights in prison swarmed over her. Maia recalled how she had been entranced by the Life game, the patterns wonderfully mysterious as Renna's artistry unfolded in front of her. That had been a far more subtle exercise than playing a simple set match, throwing simulated figures against those devised by an opponent. But it was a cheat, since he had been able to use a form of the game that was reversible. The machine did all the work. No wonder he was having so much trouble dealing with the most trivial concepts of the competitive version.

She did not have to be looking at the board to envision the shapes he was describing. In her current state of consciousness, she could not prevent envisioning them.

The rads sitting around him must be bored out of their mind one part of her contemplated with some satisfaction. Yet it was a small part. The rest of her had fled from unbearable unhappiness into abstraction, only to be brought in a swirl of cavorting forms.

"… So I was thinking of placing an array of simple beacon patterns around the pinwheel, like this . . . you see? That ought to protect it from at least the first onslaught—"

'"Wrong!" Maia cried out loud, opening her eyes and turning around. Renna and the women stared in surprise. She strode toward them, brusquely shooing aside one of surprised vars to get at the game board. She took the stylus out of Renna's hand and quickly erased the array he has been building at one end of the boundary zone.

'Can't you see? Even I can. If you want to protect against gliders, you don't let your shapes just sit there, waiting to be hit. Your barrier's got to go out to meet them.